A school for the cursed: A Psyker Quest. Warhammer 40k quest.

[Mayto]

​

A disclaimer.

You will be playing as a citizen of a semi-fascist authoritarian hyper-militaristic brutally repressive theocratic space oligarchical hegemony.

The Imperium is the only government humanity could ever have. Anything else is nothing but recidivists or humans that have not been incorporated yet.

The Xenos are monsters to be destroyed. Nobody will second guess xenocide as being a moral virtue.

The Mutants are a threat to the purity of humanity, and therefore do not have rights and are only suffered to live at the whims of their rightful rulers.

Psykers are cursed beings and can only be granted the right to live by a most Holy and merciful Imperial Sanction.

These are not views held by the author.

There will be no treason against the Imperium in this thread!

Expect the quest to embrace Warhammer 40k and revel in both the grimdark and the absurdity of it without disrespecting the source material.

Ave Imperator! ​

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Since the founding of the Glorious Imperium of Man by the most blessed God Emperor of Mankind during the Great Crusade, the fate of Psykers has been one of the hardest questions humanity had to handle for Psykers are men and women, tainted from birth with the 'gift' of being able to channel the raw power of the warp.

In the days when the Nine Primarchs walked the galaxy, Psykers were only trained as Astropaths beneath the Emperor's benevolent eyes. But after the Nine Devils of darkness waged the Horus Heresy upon mankind, a new purpose was found for these most loathsome of 'humans'

The Astra Telepathica is just one Adeptus of the Imperium's many august bodies. In it, the League of Black Ships ensure that the planets of the Imperium are safely culled of unsanctioned Psykers, while the Scholastica Psykana ensures that these Psykers are found suitable service within the Imperium, should they be found deserving of the gift of life.

Those too unstable to control their power, are brought to Terra to have their souls bonded with the Golden Throne, so our Glorious God Emperor of Mankind may benevolently rule us eternally. May their sacrifice be honoured.

Those too weak to serve on their own are inducted into the choir of the great psychic beacon of the Astronomicon, where with prayers on their lips, their souls burn brightly enough to create the guiding light in the Immaterium that our Navigators use to safely travel through its treacherous currents.

You are one of these cursed individuals. A Beta-Class Psyker discovered by the Psykana shortly after their power awakened. A precious gem plucked from an ocean of underhive trash and elevated to greatness.

---

Hello!

Time to do this quest without the baggage of a failed system and with changes now I have a better understanding of Quests.

Link to the old version.

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...d-a-warhammer-40k-psyker-school-quest.119829/

 

[Mayto]

The role of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica:

The Astra Telepathica is responsible for running the astro-telepathic network that spans the Imperium. Each of these networks were established by either The Emperor, The Primarchs, or the High Lords of Terra. These networks are to be maintained by the Astra Telepathica without exception, and a failure to do so is a capital offense for the local Astra Telepathica leadership.

The Telepathica also operates the Scholastica Psykana to train the Imperium's many Psykers. It must also be able to provide a set amount of Psykers to the Administratum, with the value of each Psyker being taken into account. In exchange for these vital services the Astra Telepathica is allowed to own fortresses, maintain a sizable security force, hire out Psykers, and run its own fleet of ships in the form of the League of Black Ships.

The Astra Telepathica is incredibly rich due to its ability to charge for the establishment of new astro-telepathy networks beyond the ones ordered by decrees from the High Lords of Terra as part of colonisation charters, and as the only legal source of Psykers for those who wish for their services.

Diplomatic Relations within the Imperium of Man:

The Imperium of Man is a very loose organisation of different interlocking and interacting governmental institutions, each with their own internal leadership structures, tasked with their own roles and duties, and blessed with different privileges. Careful diplomacy is needed to safely make one's way through this tangled web of feudal ties, promises, oaths, and bonds of fealty.

The Astra Telepathica is routinely picked on by the other Adepta, with many loathing and fearing its existence. Meanwhile the Astra Telepathica fiercely upholds both its independence, and seeks to make the most of the curse of being born a Psyker in this benighted galaxy. It is through soft power and economic pressure that these Psykers influence the Imperium around them.

You will need to carefully manage these matters if you wish to survive.

Astra Telepathica Fortresses:

The number of Psykers born each year has grown, and so the League of Black Ships operates a series of fortresses across the galaxy where they can offload Psykers which are stable enough to be trained immediately, not valuable enough to transport to Terra, or are better off being trained off the Throneworld than on it. These fortresses start as processing centers, but in time, they can become bastions of Psychic learning and a haven for those Psykers gifted with the power to control their abilities.

The purpose of this quest will be managing such a fortress.

 

[Mayto]

Psychic Disciplines and training facilities:

The Adeptus Astra Telepathica names five disciplines as the core of its organisation. Telekinesis, Telepathy, Divination, Pyromancy, and Biomancy. Alongside these disciplines are numerous possible training programmes for Imperial Psykers, each of which has their own interested parties within the Imperium. There are also obscure and esoteric psychic disciplines which verge upon sorcery that some Psykanas fortresses teach their students.

You are currently able to train Psykers in the following disciplines:

Black Ship processing - Wyrdvanes:
To reduce pressure on the Black Ships, Psykers of moderate ability and control are taken from the ships for training as future sanctioned battle psykers. This process either produces upstanding Primaris Psykers, or corpses.

Psykers are formed into conclaves of up to ten Psykers, trained to assist each other with their powers, and put under the control of an experienced Primaris Psyker to guide them. These Psykers are the simplest ones that can be trained. After serving a tour of duty in a warzone, Wyrdvanes are then sent to an Astra Telepathica base to complete the sanctioning process.
Master of Initiates: None
Quality of teachings: Average

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Psyker Grading:
The Telepathica grades all Psykers on a scale that marks their ability to draw upon energy from the warp and how they can manifest these powers. 'Corporeal' Psychic power refers to the ability to manipulate matter living or otherwise, conjure energy, and control space. This means Biomancy, Pyromancy, and Telekinesis

The Telepathica grading system is measured by a combination of raw psychic potential, training, and knowledge. As Psykers can learn from any or all of the major disciplines, but generally find themselves to favor one of the five, their official designation is always their strongest Psychic discipline.

A Gamma Biomancer can therefore be graded as an Mu Pyromancer, Eta Telepath, and a Zeta Telekine, and Omicron Diviner, but will under any formal setting or circumstance be referred to as a 'Gamma'

Psychic grade.	Description.
Omicron(1) Xi(2) Nu(3) Mu(4) Lambda(5) Kappa(6)	The lowest level of psychic ability that is able to be registered by active scanning. Inability to manifest corporeal psychic abilities like pyromancy, biomancy, and telekinesis. Rarely taken by Black Ships due to their powers passing as luck or skill. Rarely used as Astropaths.
Iota(7) Theta(8) Eta(9)	The weakest Psykers that can be discovered with passive scanning methods. Are still too weak to manifest corporeal psychic ability, but can reliably wield telepathic and divinatory Psychic powers. If successfully trained, these Psykers are fated to join the Astronomicon's choir, or be given to the God Emperor. These Psykers are generally chosen to become Astropaths.
Zeta(10) Epsilon(11)	The first grade of Psykers capable of manifesting psychic power. Their weakness means that they find it easier to learn to control their powers. Can reliably perform telepathic, divinatory, and telekinetic feats, but are limited in pyromancy and biomancy. The bulk of Imperial Psykers are of this level. Able to become Sanctioned Psykers for the guard, lead Astropathic Choirs, read the tarot, and perform commercial Psychic roles.
Delta(12)	These Psykers are blessed (or cursed) with enough psychic ability to fully manifest psychic powers, able to learn and practice any of the major psychic disciplines. They are passively visible to the Daemonic. Considered the 'safe' limit of power that a Psyker can safely awaken into without losing control. These Psykers are on the verge of suffering deleterious mental effects from their psychic potential, and are considered to be an ideal pool for Primaris Battle Psykers and Ordo Hereticus and Malleus Inquisitors.
Gamma(13)	This grade is the point at which a Psyker can not only manifest corporeal Psychic powers, but also actively choose to manipulate reality. Considered the 'safe' limit of a Psyker that the Astra Telepathica will attempt to take into custody, even if they resist. The majority of Gamma Psykers are not born as such and are instead lower grades who through training and implants have elevated their Psychic ability.
Beta(14)	Where a Beta Psyker walks, reality shudders. These Psykers are strong enough that they can passively warp reality around them, sometimes subconsciously. Universal constants in their presence fray around the edges. These Psykers are considered to be the strongest Psykers that can be 'reliably' trained by the Astra Telepathica using equipment and facilities that are still in production by the Imperium. These Psykers, on the first sign of hesitation to give themselves up to acquisition teams, are to be killed on sight due to their inability to be contained without the aid of a generic Blank or overwhelming firepower. They are also considered the lowest rank of Psyker that can become a gateway for the Neverborn without sorcerous involvement. These rare individuals are rigorously tested and screened, and if inducted, are destined for lives in the highest echelons of the Imperium, elevated to heights of power undreamt of by the average Imperial.
Alpha (15)	Where an Alpha Psyker walks, reality breaks. Reality is like clay to an Alpha-Level Psyker, and they can lay waste to entire worlds either through their power, or through the Neverborn that seek to use them as hosts. These Psykers are only recruited if they are found as children, then placed in stasis capsules for their transfer to Terra. The vast majority are elevated to this level through advanced training, implantations, and genetic manipulation. Only a Sisters of Silence, Culexus Asssassin, or Grey Knights can reliably take on a rogue Alpha-Level Psyker Biomancers, Pyromancers, and Telekine Alpha-Level Psykers on average, do not survive awakening into this level of power without daemonic possession, and are rarely trained due to their sheer destructive potential. Telepaths and Diviners, however, are actively sought out by the Imperial Palace itself.
Alpha Plus	Reality is a suggestion and the Psyker isn't listening.

 

[Mayto]

You are Primaris Psyker Occam Parsimonn.

You were born on a meaningless backwater hive world, destined for a life of menial labour, when your psychic powers awakened. You killed people when it happened, and were nearly lynched by a mob, were it not for the Telepathica Prefector whom saved you. He did all he could to prepare you for the Black Ships.

The trials and rituals you have endured would have broken lesser men, but you have come out stronger for it. A true paragon of human psychic ability.

For your extreme power, adherence to the Imperial Creed by attempting to give yourself to the Telepathica, and stability, you have been elevated to the ranks of the Primaris Psykers of the Imperium, a noble among commoners and destined for a life of power and privilege as one of the highest elite of the Astra Telepathica.

Characteristics:
These are used for rolling non-psychic actions.

Weapon Skill:
Using melee weapons.
30 + 10 = 40
Ballistic Skill
Using ranged weapons.
30 + 10 = 40
Fitness:
Performing physical feats. Primarily in regards to physical toughness and strength.
30 + 10 + 10 = 50
Intelligence:
Knowledge, management, and trivia.
30 + 5 + 10 = 45
Willpower:
The ability to resist the touch or allure of the warp.
30 + 5 + 5 + 10 = 50
Fellowship:
The ability to inspire and lead others.
30 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 45

Psy-Rating:

Your capacity to draw upon and use your psychic powers in combat without needing to draw deeply upon your powers. Failing a psychic roll will require you to draw deeper from the warp, which is both painful and dangerous.

This does not represent raw power, instead it represents the ability to draw upon your power. Actual raw psychic power is too abstract to be easily defined.
You start with a Psy-Rating of 5. You must roll under 50 to perform psi-craft without building up Warp Charge

Warp Charge:

Your body can handle a certain amount of warp charge before you lose control over your powers. This charge is dispersed between combat, and decreased during it by training and augmentations. For every Degree of Success failed when using psychic powers, you build up charge.
When you max out your warp charge, you roll for perils of the warp.
You can contain 10 Warp Charge


Characteristic improvements:
Several events from your childhood give a good view of just what kind of a person Occam is.

-"Making the ones in your gang do better":
Occam has an excellent eye for talent. Seeks to uplift and improve those he has to work with.
+5 Intelligence +5 Fellowship

-"The direct approach":
Occam has always favoured a direct approach to problems. Especially when being blunt surprises the enemy and opens them up for an attack.
+10 Fitness

- "I...I need help":
Occam is prideful and stubborn, but ready and able to swallow this for the sake of calling for the aid of others.
+5 Fellowship +5 Willpower

-"Give yourself up":
Sought to surrender himself to Telepathica custody upon Psychic Awakening. Was blocked by Blunt mob. But nevertheless sought to do the right thing
+5 Willpower + 5 Fellowship
This will be remembered by the Telepathica.

Rolling system

Rolling system:
Rolling will be using the 40k RPG standard of needing to roll UNDER the test using a characteristic. The difficulty or ease of the test adds a modified to the test.

Difficulty	Modifier
Very Easy	+60	Waking up to an emergency klaxon, jumping a small gap
Easy	+40	Fixing a minor jam in a familiar weapon
Routine	+20	Using a cogitator to perform basic research
Challenging	+0	Shooting a target in a well lit room, climbing a stone wall
Difficult	-10	Recalling an obscure fact about the Sector Governor
Hard	-20	Swimming upstream in a rapidly flowing sewer
Very Hard	-30	Convincing an Arbites to 'let this one slide.'

For each of the first digit of the roll that is higher or lower than your target, you get a Degree of Success
I.E
A Challenging Intelligence test has no bonus, so you need to roll under 35
If you rolled a 14, you'd do so with two degrees of success.

---

Appearance:

Occam is an average-looking imperial with a bald head, brown eyes, and a strong if normal soldier's physique. He is of average height, size, and build, and would easily fit in among any Cadian-pattern Imperial Guard regiment were it not for his augmentations.

Equipment:

Mars-Pattern Laspistol: A fine laspistol. Only a century old.
Force Staff - Telekine Configuration: A simple unadorned force-staff made for your personal use. Made of sanctified silver around a core of psi-reactive lumber.
Mercy-Blade: A monomolecular blade for committing suicide.

Cybernetics:

Cybernetic plugs have been implanted into your wrists and your temples, allowing you to plug into medicae equipment and Astra Telepathica training and scanning equipment.

A 'Psi-Bridle' covers your neck along the length and width of the spine. A simple but high quality cybernetic interface covering the back of the neck and plugged into the spinal cord and brainstem through implanted sockets of replacement vertebrae. This device is the basis through which any further augmentations will be implanted, serving to both generate power from your bodily processes, and to regulate and moderate their functioning.

Above the bridle, the back of your skull has been removed and replaced with a Psi-Discharger. This augmentation looks like a short ponytail of thin rigid carbon-fibre strands aimed directly away from your head. These psi-dischargers disperse psychic energy from your brain to reduce the pressure on the body. The Discharger is connected to the Psi-Bridle through a single large cable emerging from the hollow at the back of your skull.

Your left eye, part of the upper cheek, and the surrounding skin has been replaced with a large cybernetic eye with a single red lens. This cybernetic is attached to the optic nerve but has not been attached into the brain.

---

Psy-Cybernetics:

Silent City Psi-Bridle:
A reliable design made by the psi-artisans of the Silent City for the Psykers of the Imperium. This design is only for those Psykers that have a fundamental control over their power, due to the cost of production.
Your warp charge capacity is 10

Silent City Beta-Grade Psi-Dischargers:
A design dating back to the first of the Primaris Psykers assigned to the Imperial Guard. This implant is a simple but reliable method for reducing the psychic pressure known to plague Gamma-Plus Psykers. Each one is a handmade masterpiece.

This augmentation looks like a short ponytail of thin rigid carbon-fibre strands attached to a plasteel plate on the back of the skull. These psi-dischargers disperse psychic energy from your brain. Also automatically flushes the brain of excess psychic energies between combat.
Reduces all warp charge buildup by one.
After half an hour without conflict, your brain will be cleared of all buildup.


Psykana Conditioning:

The Scholastica Psykana has implanted the following thought patterns and subconscious compulsions into Occam to improve his psychic potential and protect him from the perils of the Immatereum.
Conditioning of martyrdom:
Upon losing control of his powers and feeling the Warp beginning to twist his body and/or mind, Occam will immediately attempt to commit suicide with his mercy-blade.

Conditioning of acceptance:
Occam does not feel offended or hurt if he is insulted or cursed for being a Psyker. The ability to be genuinely hurt or offended has been conditioned out of him.

Conditioning of control:
Occam subconsciously prays to the God Emperor whenever his thoughts are not occupied. The thirty-three prayers of mental fortitude strengthen his thoughts against subversion.
+10 Willpower

Conditioning of endurance:
Occam can push himself beyond physical endurance and consciously exceed the natural limits of the human body. He can continue performing his psychic powers even should he be, for instance, set on fire, or suffering grievous bodily harm.
+5 Fitness
Pain will not make rolls more difficult for you.

Conditioning of focused thought:
Occam can only get bored if he wants to be. Otherwise his conditioning kicks in and he tends to his memory palace, examining memories of past events and written knowledge.
+10 Intelligence

---

Esoterica and minor arcana:

All humans are connected to the Immatereum, and the Immatereum suffused all reality. The idea that the warp is something that can be avoided is a foolish one, as our every act changes the world around us. You have a handful of small items in your possesion that have been imbued with power and meaning to you, and could be used for creating psychic items.

These esoterica can be used in the creation of items and equipment, with what they embody determining the capabilities of the item you are creating. The following types of items are known to you already.

-Psi Focus
-Trinkets
-Psi-Hood or crown.
-Force weapon.
-Force shield.

Known groups with the ability to forge Psi or Force weapons and armour are:

The Psi-Smiths of the Astra Telepathica. Generational artisans from terra who descend from ancient pre-Mechanicus Terran smiths and artisans.
Magos Psykana of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Tech Priests with the knowledge to create items able to channel Psychic power.
The League of Votann. Their descent from humanity makes their technology not classify as xenotech, and it can be passed off as Imperial creations.

You possess:
Blade shards.
A fine mono-molecular blade for ending your life in the event of possession. Has a very strong psychic connection to you. Symbolizes both your readiness to kill, but also to not find joy in it.
This esoteric item embodies:
The power to take lives.
Self control.
Your advancement as a Psyker.

Childhood pendant:
A golden Aquilla made on Terra for Astra Telepathica acolytes. It symbolizes your belief in the Emperor's protection of mankind, and the power to banish the daemonic and ruinous powers.
This esoteric item embodies:
Protection.
Purification.
Defense.

---

Psychic Aptitude Grading:
Upon induction, acolyte achieved the following grades of psychic potential.
Telepathy: Theta (8)
Divination: Kappa (6)
Telekinesis: Beta (14)
Pyromancy: Theta (8)
Biomancy: Zeta (10)

Psychic Abilities:
Training has resulted in the following abilities being readily available to Adept Occam.

Theta-Grade Telepathy:
Adept Occam possessed some telepathic ability upon induction. Due to his inability to filter out incoming telepathic communications, he underwent Conditioning of Control, ensuring he is subconsciously performing prayers of purification and therefore can't hear what those around him are thinking.
Adept Occam can if he consciously chooses to:
-Hear "internal screaming" from those looking at him within thirty meters. Ability to receive depends on the volume of the interal voice, and mental shielding.
-Read surface thoughts of those he is looking at.


-Kappa-Grade Divination:
Adept Occam possessed no aptitude or affinity with Divination upon induction into the Astra Telepathica. His training in this school has focused on subconscious precognition.

This manifests as:
-Fast reaction times.
-Heightened senses.
-A mathematically improbable rate of successfully predicting an opponent's actions.
+10 Weapon Skill
+10 Ballistic Skill

Note: This same ability being seen among ostensible non-psychic Imperial soldiery is not a coincidence. Divination regularly manifests among weak latent psykers as 'Luck' or 'Instincts'. Current estimates put a quarter of Cadian Kasrkin and Tempestus Scions as latent divinatory Psykers.


Beta-Grade Telekinetics:
Adept Occam is capable of Beta-Grade telekinetic attacks, this allows him to without tapping into dangerous amounts of psychic power:

-Throw armoured vehicles, rip the turrets off tanks, and bring down buildings through telekinetically gripping structures and pulling at them. He is limited only by line of sight and the amount of power he is willing to channel.

-Grip objects and people and apply mechanical forces. This means pulling, shearing, twisting, applying pressure to crush, and equivalent actions. His telekinetic grip does not intrinsically destroy what is held.

-Despite attempts to improve, Adept Occam's telekinetic manifestations are strictly Eluclidian. His kine-shields manifest as mathematically perfect hexagrams, squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles. Even three-dimensional shapes are composed of a minimal amount of two-dimensional planes.

-The adept can lift and move up to three objects telekinetically, one with each arm and one with his gaze. But he has trouble performing fine manipulation reliably or at speed. It requires his full concentration if he seeks to push buttons or perform other actions using small objects he holds telekinetically.

Example: Adept Occam can not reliably use telekinesis to lift a lit candle and use it to light another. He can lift the hab block the candle is in and flip it onto its back.

Manifest Gravity: Occam can forego wrapping objects in telekinetic fields, and instead directly manifest gravitic forces. By focussing upon a point in space, Occam can generate an omnidirectional gravitic pull towards it.


Theta-Grade Pyromancy:
Adept Occam can manifest true fire with a thought. But this takes more effort than any of his telekinetic attacks. Nevertheless, he is capable of it.


Zeta-Grade Biomancy:
Adept Occam has a firm understanding of passive and subconscious biomancy. As his Telekinesis is already a superior combat Psykana, his Biomantic training has been focused upon strengthening the body and healing.

Adept Occam can:
-Increase the caloric content and nutritional value of food he consumes.
-Perform full body muscle exercises through biomantic meditation and the focused regrowth of muscle tissue.
-Strengthen his body and empower himself.
-Heal wounds ranging from flesh wounds to organ damage. Can not grow new organs, but can regenerate damaged ones.
+10 Fitness

 

[Mayto]

Nautilus Scholam Psykana:
Built as an expansion of the Astro-Telepathica fortress named 'The Sapphire Keep' which was established in Nautilus six millenia, on the edge of what is currently called 'The Pit'. The Scholam Psykana is intented as a processing centre for Psykers not worthy of transport to Terra, but stable enough that they can be trained, are offloaded for training. Each new Psyker is stored in a mass-transport stasis pod aboard the orbital tether, before being conveyed down and loaded onto a transport submarine by servitor crews.

The Scholam Psykana is intended to grow into a massive operation, but as of now, has no students.

The Scholam Psykana has the following amenities and sub-components:
Scholam Psykana Faculty Quarter
No school is functional without the teachers, and the Scholam Psykana is no exception. It is from the faculty quarter where the Lord Prefect and his five Prefects manage the day to day running of the Scholam Psykana.

For the day to day running of the Scholam, there is a staff of twenty Zeta-grade Psykers that serve as the backbone of the Scholam, primarily concerned with ensuring that the students learn mastery over their powers.

Black Sentinels:
Created during the Great Crusade at the Council of Nikea, the Black Sentinels are the personal guards of the Astra Telepathica, clad in suits of psychically shielded armour and using lances with psi-suppressing crystal tips. They also carry special null-rods which weaken ambient psychic phenomena and will send a Psyker unconscious from sheer pain when used to strike them.
The Scholam currently fields twenty Black Sentinels.

Their attitude is Calm and Professional:
The Black Sentinels are confident about the state of the fortress and are therefore less prone to stab first and ask questions later regarding the Psykers of the fortress.

Chapel to the God Emperor of Mankind:
"Our thoughts light the darkness that others may cross space. We are one with the Emperor, our souls are joined in his will. Praise the Emperor whose sacrifice is life as ours is death. Hail his name the Master of Humanity."
-The Creed of the Astronomicon
Even among those not assigned to the Astronomicon, this prayer and creed is popular among the sanctioned Psykers.
Provides for the spiritual needs of the Scholam.

Administratum Enclave:
As with all parts of the Adeptus Terra, the Telepathica has close connections to the Administratum, whom are responsible for the administration involved in the running of a Scholam. Their task is primarily to facilitate connections through the proper channels with other Imperial Adepta.

Adeptus Mechanicus Shrine:
A single Magos and a dozen Tech Priests live within the Scholam, ensuring that the technical needs of the Scholastica Psykana are met. It is a small shrine, seen as little more than a backwater assignment for the unlucky Magos.

 

[Mayto]

The Psychic Awakening of Mankind continues apace. Each year the Black Ships are more packed than the year before, and each year more potential Psykers are culled for an inability to transport them to Terra for sanctioning.

We kill the unstable to take those who could be trained as sanctioned Psykers to Terra, burning our future just to keep ourselves alive.

This situation is unacceptable. You need to establish more training sites in the Imperium at large, so you can stop forcing me to burn potential Sanctioned Psykers because they are the worst I am sent.

Let those who can not control their power burn, lest they bring doom down upon us. But let us save those we can! No matter how much the rest of the Adeptus Terra refuses to listen to us on this matter, we need to take action ourselves, this is the task that the Emperor passed down to our institutions!

I have a proposed sector for one of your training fortresses.

-Message from the Master of the Astronomicon to the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, intercepted by Monodominant Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors.

---

Astra Telepathica Survey.
Torvum Sector, Ultima Segmentum.
Conducted:
1.142.600M41 Primary Terran Calendar.
1.142.700M42 Terran Primary Calendar.
1.142.249M40 Ordo Chronos Calendar.

The Founding of the Torvum Sector:
Torvum is one of the oldest continually inhabited sectors of the galaxy, colonisation having occurred in M21. The sector has a storied history, maintained in part through songs and surviving historical accounts of ancient wars. Seven worlds have successfully preserved proof of participation in these ancient wars in the form of alien military structures kept as examples, although the names of the defeated aliens were expunged by what our records suggest was an extreme Puritan Inquisitor.

The Torvum Sector suffered from the Age of Strife like all human worlds, being nearly entirely conquered by a variety of alien species, The Khrave and the Tergragh are the only ones whose names survive in our archives, although there's mentions of fungal species, half-forgotten legends about a hive species, and some form of cerebral parasite that required the deaths of all humans enslaved on their world, lest the threat return.

The humans of the sector fled into space and distributed themselves amongst the many asteroids and moons, forming self-sufficient void-dwelling societies named Brotherhoods consisting of kin-groups called Clans. These societies raided Tergragh shipping, and provided arms and equipment to planetary rebels.

According to the official histories of the Torvum Sector, these Voidborn continued to offer stiff resistance to the Xenos until the arrival of the Great Crusade. An engraved plaque held in a stasis field in the Sector Governor's palace on Menagerie, kept-off limits to the general public, tells the story of how [Redacted], [Redacted] was a part of the battle. It had taken heavy damage and was in the process of leading the fleet out of an encirclement, when the Voidborn, and the human slave-crews aboard alien vessels staged a coordinated attack.

Level Three Astra Telepathic Clearance required to read unredacted version:
Granted

According to the official histories of the Torvum Sector, these Voidborn continued to offer stiff resistance to the Xenos until the arrival of the Great Crusade. An engraved plaque held in a stasis field in the Sector Governor's palace on Menagerie, kept-off limits to the general public, tells the story of how The Bucephalus, flagship of the God Emperor, was a part of the battle. It had taken heavy damage and was in the process of leading the fleet out of an encirclement, when the Voidborn, and the human slave-crews aboard alien vessels staged a coordinated attack.

Addendum: It is understandable that this knowledge appears contradictory if not blasphemous to the Emperor's invincible nature. Therefore it is vital to remember that the Immortal Master of Mankind has been recorded as possessing multiple flagships. It is therefore easy to conclude that in this battle, one of the sacred Custodes was commanding the ship.

During the battle, the Voidborn tribes of the sector attacked the Xenos fleet from behind, while slaves aboard the Tergragh fleet rose up in rebellion. Even the alien flagship was crippled by revolt, while the Voidborn launched boarding actions on most ships, even boarding Imperial warships to fight the Xenos that had previously boarded them.

The nascent Administratum formally recognized each of the Voidborn Brotherhoods as independent entities, with legal status equivalent to planets. This decree, signed by the hallowed Malcador the Hero, Sigilite of Terra, is in force to this day, although many of the Brotherhoods have since faded, there are still dozens of them operating within the Sector, each a quasi-planetary entity made up of smaller kin-groups named Clans.

The Sector's history going forward is little different from the rest of the Imperium, however records of the Horus Heresy are fragmentary, to say the least.

The sector has managed to maintain a strong identity, largely through holding onto the fragmentary knowledge of the pre-Age of Strife civilization that once thrived here. They were here before the Imperium, have thrived during the Imperium, and although this is left unspoken, they are certain they'll be around after it.

The most noteworthy event to happen since the founding of the sector is the return of the Tergragh in M36, an event that will be described in more detail in the section regarding the xenos threats to the sector.



Current Leadership:
The sector governorship is currently held by the recognized Ozmandus noble family, a family that has maintained power by making itself indispensable to the many powerful factions of the sector. Whose occasional conflict of interest is not unheard of.

Unlike the majority of sectors, power within Torvum is unusually decentralised, with the power of the Sector Governor being curtailed through a combination of legislation, ancient decrees, and other political interests. The many organisations of the Adeptus Terra operate with a greater degree of economic freedom than in other sectors, in exchange for which they provide larger contributions to the sector military.

The Ozmandus line, currently led by Ozmandus the XXXIV, has shown a canny ability to control the sector through indirect means. With space controlled by the Voidborn, and the planets ruled by Planetary Government, their household has instead cemented its rulership by becoming the de-facto military leaders of the sector.

In exchange for minimal meddling beyond facilitating economic development, the many parts of the sector provide larger contributions for the purposes of defence than other sectors. An example of the Ozmandus's widespread influence in the sector is the Torvum Tribune and Triarii patterns. The House of Ozmandus aggressively ensures that planetary PDF regiments maintain this pattern, and are always ready to support and reinforce Imperial Guard activity.

House Ozmandus also courts and works with the Voidborn Brotherhoods, and ensures that the void-economy of the sector thrives. Examples of this include the 'free extraction edict of M32', which allows anyone to scoop, harvest, or syphon gas from any stellar bodies and bans attempts to tax or impede this. Due to this, the price of fuel in the sector has been kept very low.

Asteroid mining rights work by a homesteading system, where anyone with a registered spacecraft can claim an asteroid, so long as they actively mine the rock. If the rock is abandoned with a hold full of ore, and no remaining presence, then it is up for grabs for the next person to start mining. This results in a glut of raw materials in the sector, most of which are quickly snatched up by a perpetually hungry market.

Another example of this is the hundreds of small shipyards scattered around the sector and generally operated by Voidborn clans for smaller yards, with whole Brotherhoods operating the larger ones. These are always ready at any moment to repair the ships of the Imperial Navy. And if no yards are available, then the local voidborn are nearly always ready to patch up a Ship's hull and repair its gellar field generator, as the Sector Government pays generous rewards to any Voidborn that saves a registered vessel. Be they a private trader or an Imperial Navy warship.

Where other sectors require long scrutiny and examination before granting the right to build ships to any would-be shipyard, House Ozmandus has granted these privileges freely and quickly, working with the Adeptus Mechanicus to ensure that all production works along sanctified lines. This is an unorthodox decision, but it has allowed the Torvum sector to dominate the civilian spaceship industries of their corner of the Segmentum.

Addendum: Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors are in the habit of launching investigations into this unusual PDF structure, concerned as they are, with it being the prelude to a sector-wide secession.

Political forces within the sector - Members of the Adeptus Terra:

The name for the massive branching organisation that contains the Adepta of the Imperium, under the umbrella of the Administratum. Those working for (not indentured, enserfed, employed) one of these organisations are the closest thing in the Imperium to true 'Citizens.' and actually have rights and legal protection.

Sector Administratum:
The Administratum within the Torvum sector has, by its standards, run a mostly clean ship. Although the functional running of the sector has made the Administratum take a mostly advisory position, as is usual for sectors that have grown beyond needing constant Imperial supervision.

The Departmento Exacta is charged with ensuring the tithes are extracted, catalogued, and sent on to where they are needed.

The Officio Fidicius is responsible for finding inaccuracies in paperwork and is known to ruthlessly ensure that the books are set straight.

The Officio Medicae ensures Adeptus Terra citizens are cared for, and if the Planetary Governor requests it, the people as well.

The Officio Agricultae ensures that Agri-world production is distributed as needed. After they oversaw the building of several new agri-worlds within the sector, they have large departed.

The Officio Mineralae ensures that mining worlds are founded as needed and that their riches are distributed where the Administratum has need of them.

The Officio Parchmentae ensures that there is always enough parchment. Assignment to this officio is a highly prestigious position.

League of Chartist Captains:
In most sectors, the League has a monopoly on interstellar trade, controlling the Imperial Merchant fleet through the Nexus Axiomatic on Earth, the massive continent-covering megastructure which stores all approved trade routes and through unknown means, coordinates the flow of state-sanctioned imperial trade.

With the abundance of Voidborn in the system, the League has found itself denigrated primarily to conveying goods in and out of the sector, and providing bulk transportation.

The Adeptus Arbites:
The Torvum Sector is a loyal sector, and hence the Adeptus Arbites focuses primarily on targeting cross-sector crime, breaches of the Lex Imperialis, and assisting in the suppression of recidivist activity.

Navigator Houses:
The Navis Nobilite has a presence in the Torvum sector in the form of three large Navigator houses.
House Tular: Specialises in providing navigators for Cargo Ships.
House Gorchek: Specializes in providing Navigators for smaller ships. Has strong bonds with the Voidborn.
House Ventor: An ancient house of Navigators that holds a monopoly on providing Battlefleet Torvum with Navigators.



Political forces within the sector - Imperial Organizations not bound to the Adeptus Terra
These organisations, although part of the Imperium and therefore bound to the High Lords of Terra for those chosen men and women interpret the Will of the Emperor, are not part of the Adeptus Terra and outside of its chain of command.

The Silver Rings:
When the Adeptus Mechanicus arrived in the Torvum sector they found a thriving technologically capable civilization that had survived the Age of Strife through maintaining infrastructure and creating a new tech base.

Due to the Voidborn's favoured status for their assistance of the Bucephalus, the Mechanicus instead focused on spreading its influence across the planets of the sector, while forming lucrative trading pacts with the Voidborn.

The Mechanicus chose a system with three barren worlds rich in minerals, and proceeded to build the Silver Rings. Three worlds almost entirely devoted to mining and processing, surrounded by segmented orbital rings which are dedicated to manufacturing and processing. The Silver Rings, fuelled by armies of Voidborn miners, produce the bulk of the sector's military equipment and its dedicated warships.

Over time, the Mechanicus and the Voidborn have learned to co-exist, and now most Voidborn Brotherhoods can count Tech Priests among their ranks. These Tech Priests follow a variant of the Omnissian Creed that values living hard lives kept alive only through technology.

The Knights of the Steel Line:
During the Age of Strife the Old Knights held the line against the terrors of the Age of Strife, preserving pockets of civilization in the face of unimaginable devastation. These worlds were praised by the Imperium upon discovery and the Line was expanded with the New Knights. The New Knights are Questor Mechanicus and therefore part of the Mechanicus. This split has never become violent, although the sides generally do not get along.

The Steel Centurions:
Defenders of the sector although not its people. The Steel Centurions cast a wide net in the Torvum sector, aggressively recruiting from its feral and deathworlds. These Space Marines are in a constant crusade, and their numbers fluctuate constantly due to the simultaneously heavy losses they take, combined with their test-slave produced geneseed and large batches of Inductii.

The Deathwatch:
The Deathwatch operates a Watch Fortress in the Torvum Sector, although its location is kept a secret.

Legio Divinatus:
Stationed upon Ring 1, segment 5 , plate 4 of the Silver Rings, this Titan Legion is primarily composed of Packs of Warhound Titans, led by a Dire Wolf titan each. Due to the widespread nature of the conflict along the Steel Line, The Legio Divinatus operates very loosely, and has not needed to deploy its Warmonger Titan and its Reaver Escorts since the Tergragh's return.

Addendum: Screenings of astropathic communications has confirmed that the Legion's Heavy Titans are inoperable.

The Inquisition:
A large inquisitorial presence is active in the sector.

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Political forces within the sector - Imperial civilian organisations:

Civilians of the Imperium.

The Voidborn
One can not talk about Torvum without mentioning its thriving Voidborn civilization. In many sectors, organisations like the Voidborn have historically been forced into line and subordinated to planetary governments, the navy, or the sector as part of power consolidation efforts by powerful factions. Combined with the horrific toll left upon void-dwelling peoples by the Age of Strife, there are few groups like them that can claim pre-imperial history.

But the Torvum sector has instead embraced the Voidborn Brotherhoods, richly rewarding them for services and deeds that strengthen the Imperium. The Voidborn are seen as paragons of the virtues of persistence, self-reliance, and a stubborn refusal to accept defeat.

Chromus Rogue Trader dynasty:
Located at the edge of the Torvum sector. This sub-sector was claimed by a Rogue Trader Dynasty before the scale of the Voidborn civilization was discovered.

The Dynasty has long since ceased its more aggressive exploration attempts except for an occasional aspiring scion. These worlds are the private fiefs of the Chromus dynasty, keeping themselves cut off from the rest of the sector.

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Sector Layout:

The Torvum sector is organised into a single general sub-sector, and a series of smaller ones that each serve a specialized purpose.

The Silver Rings Sub-Sector:

The sub-sector contains a star system owned by the Adeptus Mechanicus built on three barren worlds that have since become a massive hub for industry and trade throughout the sector. Categorised as its own sub-sector for administrative reasons. Source of most of the weaponry and guard equipment for the Sector, as well as half the shipbuilding capacity.

This sub-sector is an Adeptus Mechanicus Fief.

The Steel Line Sub-Sector:

This sector was the home of the Imperial Knights during the Dark Age of Technology and who were joined by the New Houses. The two dozen worlds in this sector are engulfed by war as this sub-sector borders the xenos empire. The border with the Xenos is firmly part of The Leaves, with no stable warp routes between the humans and the Xenos. Fleets must carry their supplies with them and constantly send out patrols to ensure they can take a system-hopping path back.

Currently in an endless border conflict with the Tergragh.

The Torvum Deeps:

This sub-sector is the furthest removed from the Xenos front, but is also nearly entirely upon the Leaves, except for its sector capital which is on the trunk. Due to the unreliable travel between these worlds, each of the systems is ruled by mostly autonomous groups of Voidborn and self-sufficient imperial worlds. When a stable route opens, it usually follows a rush of activity as people on both sides try to make the most of the opportunity.

Within the deeps are also newly founded mining and agri-worlds whose bounty is exported to Katapheuksis whenever a stable route opens up, resulting in fierce bidding wars for access to new shipments of ore, or large shipments of fresh foodstuffs.

Odium:
An ocean world with psi-active wildlife and psi-sensitive minerals and gemstones. More research to follow.

Balearia:
An ocean world that is seeded with iron and nutrients to ensure a massive growth of its populations of sea creatures, followed by brutal hunts as the local PDF attempts to take down the massive seagoing leviathans for food. Provides much of the sector's fresh meat.

Gorek:
A tidally locked world orbiting a red giant. This world is blessed and cursed with titanic hybrid creatures of living rock and organic tissue, that are animated by great deposits of psi-active crystals. These monsters are invaluable if taken down, and are mined after their fall.

The Melded Worlds:
Three imperial worlds corrupted by the warp, their populaces twisted into horrors. These worlds are actively being invaded by the Imperium.

Katapheuksis Sub-Sector:

A sector inhabited by several Human worlds that have stood since before the Dark Age of Technology. This world was the last bastion of humanity during the Age of Strife, and was the location of ferocious battles during the Great Crusade that completely shattered one of the worlds. This sector is the home of the Tribunes, and the source of much of the sector's naval strength. Battlefleet Torvum anchors here due to its centralised location.

Menagerie:
Once a feral world teeming with megafauna. This world was tamed in ages past and is the sector capital of the Katapheuksis sector. Massive hive cities organise the administration of the sector, while armies hold back the tides of horrific beasts that regularly assault the ramparts.
Inactive Warp Gate:
A warp gate of non-human but not-aeldari origin which has resisted any attempt to destroy it. One like it has been found in the Segmentum Solar.

Carg's Hold:
A world containing a population of Ogryns brought to the sector during the Great Crusade. This feral world with its nutritious near-deathworld wildlife teems with the massive abhumans and they are regularly recruited by factions in the Imperium that have need of their brute strength.

Contains 90% of the sector's planets with a population over 100 billion and takes up more space than the other sub-sectors combined.

Chromus Sub-Sector:

The Chromus Rogue Trader dynasty claimed these worlds before the arrival of the Great Crusade and have dwelled here ever since. Whenever the line fell on bad times, it would return here. This sector is one of the most developed of the sector, but is also insular, and its age has resulted in most worlds being on the decline due to overpopulation.
This sector is Off-Limits to the Torvum Sector authorities.

Imperius Sub-Sector.

This Sub-Sector contains a dozen worlds, but of them only two star systems contain terrestrial planets, the rest being primarily voidborn populations.These worlds are important shrine worlds for the Ecclesiarchy, and access to this sector is heavily restricted because of it.

Treadfall:
A world where the Emperor himself set foot. This Shrine World is a jewel of the Ecclesiarchy and is the home of the Inquisitorial presence in the sector. The entire world is one massive temple, with a preceptory of each of the six Orders of the Sisters of Battle being garrisoned here.
Home of the sector Ecclesiarchy.
Home of the Inquisitorial Ordos in the sector.

Sonstep:
A world recently discovered through archival research, to be one where Roboute Guilliman trod on. This Shrine World is unique due it being forbidden to set foot upon. This beautiful garden world is the fourth and last quarantine world of the sector, quarantined by the Emperor himself.

The Ministorum has explicitly forbidden the establishment of a Telepathica stronghold in a sub-sector containing a world the Emperor strode.

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Major Military formations:
The Torvum Sector is home to multiple patterns of human soldiery that are fielded by worlds across the sector.

The Torvum Hoplites:
These warriors are descendants of the ancient planetary defence armies of mankind's long lost empire.

Although their armour is not void-protected, it is fully environmentally sealed and their lasguns are just as good as those of the tribunes. Being planetbound, the Hoplites use heavy bolters, rocket launchers, and mortars as their preferred heavy weapons.

The Torvum Tribunes:
The Torvum Tribunes are a collective term for the PDF and Imperial Guard regiments throughout the Torvum sector that are equipped according to a template derived from the mythical Solar Auxilia and the many voidborn militia regiments that survived the Age of Strife. Clad in fully sealed void armour and equipped with lasgun variants that date back to the Saturnine Ordos and crafted by the Forge Worlds of the Silver Ring, the Torvum Tribunes are the pride of the Sector, with one of their banners hanging in the Imperial Palace itself in recognition of their valour.

The Torvum Triarii:
The Mechanised regiments of the Torvum Triarii are some of the best equipped forces in the Segmentum, equipped with carapace armour and the best lasguns and heavy weapons the sector can produce. Few in numbers, these troops are the best of the best, and have actually received Inquisitorial scrutiny for perhaps giving too much power to their commanders.

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Abhumans of the Torvum Sector:
These are the recognized abhuman strains which have been granted imperial clemency within the Torvum sector.

Ogryns:
The sector has an abundance of Ogryns upon its habitable worlds, brought there millenia ago and who have since propagated.

Beastmen:
A species of abhumans officially labelled as 'intellectually stunted and aggressive'. These Beastmen are believed to be the results of the Xenos occupation during the Age of Strife. The beastmen are typically used as a labour force in the sector, kept separate from the rest of the population.

The Leagues of Votann:
This species of non-imperial abhuman has caused quite the conundrum as imperial organisations are unable to decide upon the classification of this species.

-The Adeptus Arbites has declared them to be 'Votann', an anti-imperial race of abhumans to be destroyed or brought into compliance.
-The Ministorum has declared them to be Demiurge, a xenos species that must be destroyed.
-The Administratum insists that their records mention there being a sanctioned race of abhumans named Homo Sapiens Rotundus, and that this trade league falls under this moniker.

While operating throughout the sector as traders, mercenaries, and miners, none know of the location of their fleet.

---

Torvum Sector warp routes:

The unstable warp routes in the Torvum sector are sorted into three categories:

The Trunk: The term for the stable warp route that leads into and out of the sector, through the sector capital. The coreward trunk leads towards Macragge, five sectors over. The rimward trunk leads in the direction of the galactic rim.

The Branches: The semi-stable warp routes that branch off (hence the name) from the main route that leads through the sector, these lead to the sub-sector capitals and between four and six worlds each. These worlds are the core of the sub-sector. These routes open and close almost cyclically, and cause only little hindrance to trade and transportation.

The Leaves: Warp-routes in the Torvum sector can open one day and close the other. This means that trading ships without navigators need to operate primarily within the Trunk and Branches. To travel through the leaves, one needs a navigator. This has resulted in the use of massive bulk-transport ships or even mobile space stations that make bi-yearly jumps between the branches and the leaves, with other ships in their holds.

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Known Alien Threats:

The threat posed by the nefarious Xenos can never truly be forgotten. The Torvum sector has fought the alien foe for millenia, and the memories of the Age of Strife run deep in its people.

The Tergragh:
Of the species that threaten the sector, one is of particular note. It is a xenoform known as the Tergragh, although in Torvum they are referred to as the Xenos, with extreme emphasis.

They are a race of aggressive quasi-reptilian xenoforms that the Torvum sector has fought since before the Age of Strife. The Tergragh conquered much of the Torvum sector during the Age of Strife, turning the local worlds into brutally subjugated client states, forced to provide slave warriors and labourers for the Tergragh fleets and armies.

This despicable breed fought the arrival of the Great Crusade and even managed to damage the Emperor's flagship Bucephalus, and forced it to pull away from an overwhelming ambush.

Addendum:
The Astra Telepathica Historical Archives records that the Inquisition in 1.251.123M33, ordered the removal of a monument on Treadfall that honoured ''The Adeptus Custodes who fell defending the bridge of the Bucephalus.' It was removed in accordance with an Inquisitorial edict that Custodes defeats are not allowed to be recorded.

This record was maintained in accordance with an Adeptus Astra Telepathica edict that information regarding the Custodes not be wiped without the involvement of the Adeptus Custodes.

With the Tergragh fleet broken, what followed was a campaign to destroy their worlds. With the arrival of the Ultramarines Legion, the Tergragh were broken after a decade of war, their attempts to flee retribution were intercepted and the species was declared extinguished so utterly, the location of their homeworlds was lost.

This has proven to be a rare failure of the Great Crusade, as the Tergragh emerged in M36 from beyond the sector at the head of a large armada that although lacking the psychic weaponry of old. The Tergragh conquered six hive worlds and two dozen smaller worlds within the Steel line Sub-Sector, bypassing it and putting a dozen worlds to the torch.

In the end, their offensive ground down in the orbit of the Sector Capital in the face of a Black Templar-led crusade numbering three chapters worth of marines from eleven chapters, and an Imperial Crusade from across the Ultima Segmentum. The Xenos knew their knockout blow was no longer possible and they fled.

The Xenos then retreated, razing the worlds they could not hold and pulling back to a line of fortified now-conquered Hive Worlds on the other side of The Leaves. As of this survey, the war has developed into a stalemate with once every generation, the Imperium or the Xenos launching an invasion, only to be destroyed shortly after breaching the enemy's borders.

Telepathica level 2 clearance required:
GRANTED
Addendum:

The Tergragh pulled back in good order, and retained the Hive Worlds they had conquered, as well as two dozen worlds on the other side of the Leaves. The Black Templars and the Imperial crusade chased the Tergragh and were defeated in detail after the Tergragh hid a second fleet. The Imperium, spreading itself thin to retake these worlds, was defeated in detail with no ships surviving the battle. No Imperial ship that breached the Tergragh Front, and enter their space, has lived to tell the tale.

The average Tergragh soldier is two metres tall, fused into a suit of semi or even powered armour. They are lean and fiercely strong, able to throw baseline humans around and rip them apart with their claws. Their battlefield equipment is disturbingly similar to Imperial technology, damning them of tech-heresy as well as being Xenos. Their warriors wear suits akin to semi-powered carapace armour, which are universally fitted with wrist-mounted lasers and power claws. These are sidearms for their regular weapons, which are universally energy weapons.

Observed weapon types are:

An X-Ray laser rifle.
A reverse-engineered Imperial Hellgun, made using cheaper and therefore more unreliable parts.
Microwave weaponry used by power-armoured Tergragh to bypass Adeptus Astartes armour.

Tergragh Spacecraft are ugly graceless things, built from standardized components and constructed with no decoration beyond a layer of protective paint. Their ships are able to match Imperial ones in toughness, but they are led by cowardly admirals who prefer to command from their carriers instead of leading from a battleship, and who will flee the instant a battle turns against them.

The species fights in a most ignoble way. Before an invasion they deploy biological weaponry to weaken their foes. When assaulting, they begin by saturating the enemy with atomics, before blanketing the area with chemical weaponry. They'll then launch a combined arms assault, bypassing valiant defenders for weaker targets in the rear, and often burying their bunkers out of spite. The dominant theory for these cowardly tactics is that the Tergragh repopulate slowly, and are hence unable to spend the lives of their warriors.

Eldar Presence:
An Eldar Craftworld is speculated to exist somewhere in the remotest parts of the Torvum Deeps in light of the Aeldari presence in that part of the sector.

The Greenskins:
Before the coming of the Imperium. The armies of the human civilizations in Torvum broke an Ork Waaagh!!! During a battle now remembered only as 'the war of the false moon'. Ever since this war, Feral Orks have become endemic to Feral and Death Worlds throughout the sector.

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Known Heretic Threats:

The threats from within endanger the Imperium as much as those from without. Currently the sector is dealing with the following crisis.

The Mutant War:
In late M39, three Imperial Hive Worlds in the Torvum Deeps vanished in a warp storm. Their loss was mourned by all, and they were presumed lost.

Until they returned, changed.

Ten years ago these ruined Hive Worlds returned, their populations twisted into what is now known as 'The Melding' for the habit of these monstrosities to employ cybernetics.

The Melded are currently being attacked by the Imperial Guard, as they attempt to expunge the warp-taint before it can spread. Exterminatus has not been declared, as the Inquisition has forbidden this, necessitating a ground war.

The war is slow, brutal, and exceedingly costly for the sector in terms of manpower. But the inquisition insists that what is being sought shall be worth it.

Possible Threats:
There are several worlds in the sector that have been put under a complete quarantine.

The Quarantine worlds
Four worlds in the sector have been stricken from the chart and made off-limits on pain of death. The first of these includes the worlds of the Arkasit system, three barren lifeless worlds declared off-limits by the Inquisition.

The final quarantine world is the Garden world of Sonstep, which was declared under quarantine by a decree from The Emperor himself.
Those who have attempted to land have not survived.

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I agree with your assessment, old friend.

A healthy interplanetary economy. Above-average experience with void-travel. Non-intrusive sector governance. Relatively low rates of anti-Psyker violence. And interesting statistics on the average Psykers produced by this sector?

Yes, this sector will receive a Fortress. We merely need to find the right location.

By the way.

The Monodominants are spying on us again. Do not worry about the leak, I have dealt with it. I've already killed two of their operatives among my staff.
-Magna Zahn Uldo, Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica

 

[Mayto]

Old friend.
The Blunts truly fear the possibility of attempting to train more Sanctioned Psykers.

I discovered several agents attempting to steal census data and other information on the rates of Psionic awakening.

I sent them on their way.
-Message from Anton Sul, Master of the Adeptus Astronomicon.

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Astra Telepathica Survey.
Hadal System, Torvum Deeps Sub-Sector, Torvum Sector, Ultima Segmentum.
Conducted:
1.162.600M41 Primary Terran Calendar.
1.162.700M42 Terran Primary Calendar.
1.162.249M40 Ordo Chronos Calendar.


History of the Hadal System.
The Hadal system is located within the Torvum deeps, in an area of The Leaves where only ships with navigators, or following a pilot ship with one, can traverse the warp. It is far from the war with the Tergragh, but it is often involved as a supply station for ships heading towards the Melded Worlds.

During the Golden Age of Technology, the city of Nautilus was founded at the bottom of the deepest trench, although the origins for the city are unknown. The ancient builders constructed The Rift Wall, the great fortified exterior of Nautilus, which controls access to the underground city.

When civilization fell and xenos empires slaughtered a broken human civilization, Odium called out into the stars, calling for the fragments of humanity's federation to rally in their system, to rally and regroup. For centuries, ships limped into the Hadal system, fleeing the collapse of human civilization, the tide only lessening as the warp storms intensified.
Nautilus's government became a military junta established by a 'Federation General Ataxia', which then over time morphed into a military aristocracy that ruled the world, before becoming a regular aristocracy.

Then the Tergragh invaded the system. Their warfleet bested the remaining human warships, leading to the abandonment of the orbitals and the floating cities. The ancestors of the Voidborn then fled into the outer system, while the people who would become the Nautillians retreated below the Radiotrophic belt.

The Tergragh attempted to build their own floating city and to assault Nautilus, fearing it could become a rallying point for human slaves. But the people of Nautilus fought back with their submarines and superior understanding of ocean warfare. In the end, the Tergragh would downgrade their garrisons before posting monitoring stations and departing.

Below the Radiotrophic Belt, the people of Odium built a complicated civilization well-suited to harvesting whatever its people needed from the oceans. Learning to thrive in an inhospitable world. When the Imperium discovered Odium, they learned of them only through the stories of the Voidborn, who'd maintained records of the city and their ancestors.

The first Imperials to meet the Nautillians were Mechanicus Explorators that searched for a lost city mentioned in ancient records. These were immediately fired upon by the automated defences.

A retaliatory strike to bring the world into compliance was launched, and then immediately ended when the fleet realised they had no force that could actually reach Nautilus short of Exterminatus. Imperial underwater forces were only equipped for deployments up to ten kilometres deep, and the MK2 Adeptus Astartes Power Armour of the early crusade was not rated for the depth.

In the end, sheer practicality ensured that the people of Nautilus were slowly lured out of their hole through the Explorators leaving caches of gifts and long-ranged communication equipment. After news that humanity was in the process of reclaiming the stars finally filtered down to Nautilus, popular support ensured that the High General agreed to join the Imperium.

Nautilus has ever since been a member of the Imperium, slowly adapting to the Imperium through ecclesiarchy missionaries and Adeptus Mechanicus magi, but there still exists a distance between the Two that has yet to be bridged. The difficulty of reaching the city has ensured that assignments are generally reserved for lifetime appointments.

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The Hadal System:
Thalassa: The Gas Giant of the Hadal system lies beyond the radiation of the Black Hole and lies in a great asteroid belt that is all that remains of the original star system. Among these shattered worlds, the voidborn have built their civilization.

The Gravitic Sons:
The Brotherhood of this system, is a confederation of democratic stations and spacecraft who select a Governor to be their representative to the Administratum. The brotherhood, although spread out, has a traditional home in the form of Port Vurn.

Port Vurn is an Ohnyl Colony, two giant spinning cylinders connected by a central core within the L1 Lagrange point of Thalassa. Each cylinder is ten kilometres across and forty kilometres long, and maintains a comfortable spin-gravity of 0.5g.

A great shipbuilding industry exists around Port Vurn. The majority of ships built in the system are from a pair of shipyards that are built upward and downwards from the large core of the central axis of the rotating drums, each as long as the actual drums and containing the space-based industry needed to keep the voidborn civilization prosperous. It is in the habitation quarters of these static cylinders where most of the voidborn live, preferring the zero-gravity.

Port Vurn's cylinders have long since been completely rebuilt, but are supposedly made from the original colony ships that colonised this part of the Torvum sector. They hold great cultural significance to the Voidborn. To live within the grasslands of these cylinders, and to walk the ancient homes of their ancestors, is considered a humbling experience.

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Odium Orbit:
Odium is a world blasted with radiation, ensuring that most orbital trafic and orbital stations attempt to remain in the planet's shadow as much as possible. Traffic is extensive as ships constantly move back and forth throughout the system.

Defiance of Oblivion:
A formidable star fortress which serves as an important recruitment center for the Imperial Navy. Half the Star-Fort is set aside for the use of the Imperial Navy, with the remainder controlled by the Voidborn Brotherhood, the Gravitic Sons.
Contains:
Torvum Deeps Naval Base:
A massive sprawling collection of internal hangars and repair facilities for the fleet that defends the Hadal system. Large enough to accommodate the whole Torvum Deeps sub-sector fleet if need be.
Naval Base Hadal:
Odium maintains a large system defence fleet which is so large that the Imperial Navy does not generally keep a large garrison within the system, allowing them to free up ships needed on the fronts. This has ensured that there is actually a healthy rapport between the System Defence Navy and the Imperial Navy.
-The system defence navy consists of four cruisers and sixteen escorts. They are primarily manned by a combination of Voidborn and planetary inhabitants, with the lower ratings being either hired from the lower hives of Nautilus, or impressed if needed.
Odium Naval Academy:
-This academy processes thousands of aspiring Voidborn each day, finding them positions either as officers, or as senior technicians. While the navy may impress masses of underhivers to do menial labour, the Voidborn are destined only for prestigious voluntary service where their skills are most useful.

Odium orbital Plate:
The Orbital plate connected to the planetary tether is used to dock the constant influx of ships arriving to trade with the planet. The tether has four cars, one arriving and one departing every twelve hours. It is a vital artery of trade for the planet and the overall system and is therefore heavily patrolled and defended by the system defence fleet, and in the case an invading force takes control of the void, it is set to detonate and deny any would-be invaders easy access to the planet.

---

Old friend.

I have the Ordo Malleus asking for my assistance in trying to find why five Ordo Hereticus cells were wiped out through suicide bombings by psychically compelled operatives.

Please stick to sending a kill-team next time. I know you have them.

-Magna Zahn Uldo, Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica

 

[Mayto]

A habitable world orbiting a black hole is a true rarity. The amount of worlds like it within the imperium can be counted on one's hands, and they would need only a single cybernetic hand.

The black hole after which the star system is named has a single inhabitable planet caught within it, close enough to its accretion disk that the world is heated up by the radiation of the accretion disk, supplementing the heat coming up from the planet's unusually hot molten core and far enough away to stay in a stable orbit. Odium is a world that should not be alive, but somehow is.

Hadal was home to millions of Voidborn when the Great Crusade arrived, who used the black hole as a sanctuary to hide from the Xenos menace and launch piratical raids against Xeno shipping. These pirates aided the Imperium in their liberation of this sector and became solid recruitment grounds for the Imperial Navy in the centuries after.

For ten thousand years, Naval Base Odium's population has steadily swelled, as numerous veterans of the sector navy choose to settle down among the system's Voidborn. Mechanicus scientific missions regularly arrive to study the black hole closely. Meanwhile, the Imperial Navy uses Odium as an important training base for Voidborn crews recruited all over the sector, training some of the finest crews and officers in the Segmentum.

Located within The Leaves, the system is heavily protected from unauthorized access by its complex warp tides. There is no viable way to enter or leave this system without the aid of navigators, making this a perfect place to render escape by renegade Psykers impossible. It is also home to one of the largest astropathic choirs in the sector, located aboard the Star Fortress, Defiance of Oblivion.

The system's only habitable world has an altogether darker but renowned reputation.

Odium is a planet of unique circumstances. It sways in the orbit of Hadal, a Black Hole, yet it still contains a viable biosphere, at odds with what should have been by all rights a dead world. It is disputed by many whether the planet was placed where it is by humans during the golden age, or by Xenos.

If one were able to see Odium from the void, they would glimpse a black pearl, shrouded by massive lightning storms that wrack its atmosphere. On the surface, huge masses of darkness crash against each other, only slightly illuminated by the flashes of lightning up above. For there is no sun to light this world. Indeed, Odium's surface is tumultuous at the best of times, with rogue waves usually over fifty meters in height often disturbing its waters.

Only a few islands reach above the waves, but they are regularly scoured by the storms that rage incessantly, making a permanent settlement seem foolhardy to say the least. The only sign of this world's habitation above the surface is a single orbital tether connecting to an orbital plate large enough to park an Imperial Battleship. This newly piece of mechanicus engineering seems out of place with the rest of the desolate planet.

Only heavily radiation-shielded individuals can survive the surface, and so the only beings around the tether are millions of shielded servitors, commanded by a dozen tech priests and a hundred servants from a rockcrete bunker shielded with adamantium, with a double wall containing molten lead that is cycled so the irradiated lead can be replaced constantly.

To find what brings humanity to such an inhospitable world, one must look below the waves.

Plunging further down and down and down into its depths, you will pass through multiple layers of life, from the radiation-absorbing algae and plankton that simultaneously protect and provide a seemingly limitless source of energy for life in the many strata beneath them, past the massive deep-sea filter feeders, the great predators and hunters of the deep, and then through the increasingly sparse biomes where the creatures get smaller and more exotic, all adapted to a life without light. This is what the locals call The Upper Biosphere.

When you have passed the great leviathans of the deap, you will eventually land on one of the world's many underwater plateaus. Great mesas covered with corals of a dazzling variety of sizes and shapes, all as white as bone. Colour is something anathema to this part of the world. Five kilometres down from the surface, you might think you have found the ocean floor and be satisfied, but this is only the beginning. You are on the Mesa Plain. It is here, far beneath the radiation-blasted surface, that the Adeptus Mechanicus has created a waystation of sorts. Vast cargo containers are placed within large frames anchored to the ocean floor.

A net surrounds this mesa, with a single large aperture kept up by a wireframe. It is always open, although it can be closed if predators have made it through the defensive cordon of aquatic-configuration Skitarii.

Tens of thousands of cargo containers lay within the waystation at any one time, carefully observed from remote-controlled servo skulls within the domed colony. This place is lit by powerful lamps, although the surrounding darkness makes looking around a harrowing experience.

Men and women piloting small submarines with magnet-clamps move the cargo frames into the open maw of a giant submarine half a kilometre long, where they are attached to internal supports. It is one of many submarines they have to attend to each day. The massive submarine will, upon being filled, navigate to the surface, roll onto the beach with its tracks, and disgorge the cargo frames so they can be loaded onto one of the lifts heading up to the orbital plate.

This is all controlled by a domed town holding five thousand humans, who manage the flow of cargo that comes in via a massive underwater maglev line the size of an imperial navy frigate. The colony is slowly being sunk further into the rock like the older cargo ports, to reduce the risk of a dome breach. There are a dozen waystations like these spread around the mesas closest to the tether. All of them regularly receiving cargo from different maglev lines , a precaution in the event one line is cut.

Where you stand was once the peaks of the tallest underwater mountains. A mountain range so vast, that after being levelled, they are considered their own ocean floor.

Leaving the mesas and heading further down, you will sink for another five kilometres, and land upon the black plane. It is a lifeless expanse as far as sensors could detect. No life exists this far down besides the smallest of creatures. It is colloquially called The Black Nothing.

You might be tempted to turn back.

Unless you follow the maglev rails for fifty kilometres. If you do, you will arrive at a cliff that leads into nothing. You are still standing on top of the world's tallest mountain range, and the true surface is yet to come.

And when you look down, you will see the first natural light in this world which was not the lightning of the endless storms. Follow the maglev line down, and as you do so, you will quickly begin to see light.

A surface of orange, like the world below is on fire. Blacks, and yellows, and oranges, and reds. Great geothermal rents which have filled this second biosphere with raw uncontrollable life, grown bigger and stronger than any you might have seen before. Massive carpets of algae and fungi grown strong on Psi-active crystals glow with a myriad of colours. Fish will appear again. Schools of bioluminescent fish. Creatures like glowing jellyfish and eels. Growing bigger and more numerous as you descend. It is a testament to the raw vitality of nature.

The surface of Odium's ocean floor is like this as far as the eye can see. Twenty kilometres down from the surface, the abyssal plane is an ironic moniker for an aquatic ecosystem that matches any in the galaxy. And yet it is a fitting name.

As you near the surface of the abyssal plane you will begin to see the leviathans of the deep. The true biosphere of Odium, separated from the upper one by the Black Nothing. Turtle-like creatures a dozen kilometres long from end to end, their backs covered with their own ecosystems of algae, each of the creatures centuries old and innate biomancers, able to metabolise their food more efficiently than physics should allow.

And even these magnificent creatures are predator and prey for the giant krakens, great tentacled beasts ten kilometres long from end to end, they are vicious telepaths, each able to command whole schools of fish to disappear down their gullets.

The creatures of Odium, grown strong on psi-active crystals and the nutrients spewed out by the seemingly endless underwater volcanoes, are teeming with subtly psionic abilities. They are not human Psykers, the result of an awkward mutation. Their powers are subtle and weak, barely zeta grade. But their understanding is instinctive. And wielded with an efficiency born of thousands of Millenia of natural evolution.

Red and black algae forests cover solid soil, fighting for space with coral reefs that are beginning to adapt by floating on the magma streams.

Great mines have been constructed across this burning hell, each operation involving a million servitors, controlled by crews working from cities hidden underground from the many predators that lurk here. These cities are only for the chosen workers of the mining guilds, for the majority of humans do not live on this plane. The ores are sifted and processed, mixed with water, and then pumped through pipelines to the capital of the planet.

As the lava fields give way to kelp forests, darkness quickly returns. The maglevs run through the dark, carrying crews back towards their homes and families. Then, you arrive at the great chasm.

A deep sea trench between the lava fields. A cliff that looks down into a rift just two kilometres wide, but deeper than the eye can see, and running across much of the equator. And at the bottom, you will see lights.

All underwater maglevs, from the fishing operations, the cultivated algae forests, the many mining operations, each regular route travelled by one of the submarines, all lead to Nautilus.

The jewel of Odium, the great city under the ocean.

The last great city to avoid conquest by the Tergragh. Fortress and refuge. Home.

The city of Nautilus is a hive city built into the sides of the trench. Ten billion humans live within this city, a small world by Imperial standards. It is built like an inside out hive city. The southern wall of the trench is made of unrusting, non corroding metal, a dozen metres thick. To be near the walls is considered a privilege, as those near one of the windows can look out into the magma at the bottom of the trench and gaze upon actual light. Most of Nautilus is dug deeper into the Rift Wall, great underground chambers formerly used for mining now filled with the untold millions of the hive city.

Signs glow in the darkness, showing Imperial propaganda and advertisements. The Rift Wall's value increases as you descend, the symbols of imperial institutions blazing with neon light in the depths. Thousands of small submarines move back and forth as the city's rulers and administrators are hard at work.

The ore of the Abyssal Plane is brought to Nautilus through hidden pipelines that go through their own airlock systems. Two dozen different airlocks, each separate, each with their own security systems. But the ore is moved in such huge quantities that Nautilus never needs for ore.

The city is partitioned into different air-sealed sections along the length of the southern wall, connected through a myriad of different tunnels and pathways, many of which spaning the sides of the chasm. Commercial submarines move between the upper and lower levels of the wall. Pleasure craft, cargo haulers, transports.

Across from the Rift Wall, two kilometres to be exact, are the great submarine docks. Hundreds of cargo submarines are berthed here when not in use. And a hundred more war-submarines for if one of the Kraken returns.

At the bottom of the trench lies the second of the lava fields. It is smaller than the hell on the surface, and the light of it is precious. One has to be able to afford the twenty metre thick transparisteel needed to have a view of the final rift. Great palaces have been built on the bottom of the rift, including the Governor's palace.
-A traveller's guide to the Torvum Sector.

---

Planetary Rule:
Odium has historically been ruled by a planetary governor that was a descendant of a long line of military dictators. This ruling class was classed as nobility in Administratum records upon the planet joining the Imperium, and transitioned into this role. The planet is therefore ruled by a military elite and administrated through a series of Ministries that make up the planetary bureaucracy.

The previous Planetary Governor was discovered to have bribed Administratum officials and passed off substandard production as part of the Imperial Tithe. He was subsequently executed by the Adeptus Arbites, setting off a succession crisis, resulting in the establishment of the Ministry of State in a regency role.

The Adeptus Terra operates fully upon Odium, although generally not getting too involved with planetary governance so long the tithes keep flowing.

Navigator Houses:
The three Navigator Houses have their own colonies on Odium within the Abyssal Plane. What they do is unknown, but the colonies were legally acquired and can not be taken away from them.

Adeptus Mechanicus:
Nautilus has a large Adeptus Mechanicus presence, and they largely recruit and trains locals who are inducted into the priesthood. The city has a healthy relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus, with it diligently ensuring that all the systems keeping life upon the world possible are kept operational.

---

Planetary Economy:
The economy of Odium is built on the processing of the planet's immense natural bounty, and on exporting its advanced technology. The city has maintained a far above average understanding of Dark Age of Technology metallurgical knowledge and gravitic manipulation. The same application of gravity manipulation and advanced material sciences that allows for the creation of cities on the ocean floor, allows for the creation of advanced emergency habs and bases for the Adeptus Terra.

The economy of Odium is connected to offworld trade through connections with sector-spanning trade cartels, resource conglomerates, and Voidborn Brotherhoods, with many having a presence on the planet. The internal economy is slightly more varied, with each of the essentials of day to day life provided by competing mercantile interests especially with the middle sections of the hive having a large middle class. Most trades are represented by one or multiple Guilds, who ensure that anyone with a skilled trade, can be a prosperous citizen by Imperial standards.

Planetary Tithes:
Nautilus meets its tithe obligations primarily through providing the Imperium with prefabricated colonisation habitats. Deep sea mining equipment. Submarines. And a generational Imperial Guard tithe of subsurface infantry.

Mesa Waystations.
Built by the transport guilds, maintained by the Adeptus Mechanicus, and overseen by the Administratum. These waystations started as domed colonies lowered from the surface by Mechanicus bulk landers, followed by a slow but steady entrenching process where an underground base is dug to store the materials. Most waystations are connected to the Maglev lines, although many also have submarine docks.

Cargo containers with imports and with exports are sorted and catalogued beforehand into frames and packages, ensuring that the handover of materials is a smooth and painless process.

Maglev Lines:
Like all things, the maglev lines need constant checks and repairs, which is why small habitation domes are scattered along the lines from which Tech-Priests, Tech-Acolytes, and their Technomat servants maintain the lines of supply that tie the world to the Imperium.
A popular form of goods conveyance on Odium, although reserved for hardy materials, is the use of large pipelines. These are primarily used to transport mined ores in slush form, or rendered biomass for reconstitution in Nautilus. These pipelines go through at least twenty-four separate airlock failsafes, each of which reinforced with gravitic fields which can hold off the ocean if the airlock is broken.

Nautilus Colonies:
Nautilus alone can not provide for the city's needs, and so the city has established a network of colonies. These colonies range from domed cities, to underground domains connected to Nautilus through underground maglev lines.

Alongside the many mining colonies, there are also agricultural and fishing colonies spread across half of the world's surface, either connected to Nautilus through pipelines and maglevs if they are close enough, or with cargo submarines. Large cultivated expanses of kelp forests and managed stretches of the abyssal plane where the agricultural and fishing colonies operate provide most of the influx of nutrients into the hive's Bio-recycling systems. Like most of the world's colonies, most workers are involved in managing and operating large groups of servitors.

The Nautilus Rift:
The home of most of the planet's populations. It's the nerve centre of the planet and where all imperial organisations build their Headquarters. The lips of the Rift are covered with domed factories processing the resources of the colony before transferring their goods onwards into Nautilus itself.

Across from the southern Rift Wall, in which the city of Nautilus is built, the natural rock of the northern rock face has been turned into storage space, habitats, and the vast bulk of the city's docks. There are also large habitat quarters here, largely intended for offworlders visiting Nautilus, with many hotels and entertainment districts being located here.

The City of Nautilus:
Nautilus as a city is laid out in a structure that ensures one's importance increases the closer they are to the Rift Wall, and to the bottom of the Rift, where a geothermal glow provides a rare source of natural light.

The Rift Wall is a great framework of ancient metal that has remained undamaged from the elements, and which no material known to the Imperium is able to breach. The Old City, the part of Nautilus built during the Dark Age of Technology, has retained a spark of the original beauty it once possessed, necessity has ensured that it has not fallen to squalor. Space here is at a premium, as the Old City was originally only built for up to a million inhabitants. This part of Nautilus is directly built into the Rift Wall's superstructure. Old airlocks have been used as starting points for new developments, mostly palaces for the rich, giving the Rift Wall a layer of strata built on top of the untarnished silver metal of the original construction.

The High-Middle, is the expansion of Nautilus made during the early Age of Strife, consisting of large habitats burrowed into the rock for the refugees moving into the city. Closer to the ocean floor, with only five kilometres of structurally reinforced resin-infused and gravity-reinforced rock between it and the sea floor. It is built from the same material as the Rift Wall, although much more densely packed and populated. It is the home of the city's artisans and skilled labour force, with the Ministries operating from here, although their Headquarters are in the Low Middle.

The Low-Middle is the administrative and bureaucratic heart of Nautilus, built when it became clear that humanity could no longer just hide on the world, and had to create an enduring civilization. It is here that the city's bureaucracy, Adeptus Terra officers, offworld trade organisations, and the City Ministries are based. The Ministries are the organisations within Nautilus that ensure the city is kept operational. This includes the Water Ministry, the Lighting Ministry, the Corpse Ministry. These Ministries ensure that their areas of responsibility are maintained to avoid the draconian punishments.

The Deep Hive is the name for the large square uniformly constructed self-sufficient habitation segments that each house up to a hundred million humans in relatively close confines, connected through underground rail lines. Each of these hab blocks is deeper than the other, with many being their own micro-states.

The Pit is the name for the hundreds of old mining tunnels and caverns that have been excavated over the years and turned into living space for the city's massive population. This part of the city goes far below ground, with life being found in anything from small outposts to even cities with some measure of order, here the habitation vary from homes made of metal, to caverns carved from the rock, whose indentured inhabitants have spent generations mining a specific vein for a mining guild that no longer exists.

Nautilus has long given up on fully mapping out the tunnels.

---

Odium Planetary Defences:

To defend the planet from assault, the people of Odium have constructed a series of defensive measures.
Planetary forces:
A world as inhospitable to life as Odium, brings new challenges for the defenders of mankind. However, this world's soldiers have overcome the challenge and have become masters at underwater warfare. Infantry on Odium, when required to patrol the perimeter of bases for pirates or wildlife, will do so wearing an extreme pressure suit with integrated jets, controlled via a Mind Impulse unit. Submarine Infantry or 'Submen' can manoeuvre using mental commands while fighting.
All military units deploy their infantry either as free-moving infantry in armoured deepsuits , or with open-topped submarines able to carry anything from a fireteam to a full platoon. These are supported by sealed submarines of various sizes ranging from ones the size of a car, to ones the size of a landspeeder. Equipment varies with crafts able to take various loadouts, from anti-kraken patrols, to anti-personnel loadouts.

Odium Planetary Defence force:

The Odium PDF is small, primarily focused on maintaining order and civil-defence within the depths of Nautilus. The hive city has a standing army of 10 million PDF members, their numbers constrained by their ability to actually move this army around. This does not count the planetary law enforcement forces, which number 100 million and can be pressed into service to defend the city. Most of this army is maintained for the sake of meeting Administratum standards in the event a tithe of guardsman is expected.
The PDF also operates a hundred war-submarines. Large heavily armoured submarines equipped with missile pods and torpedo tubes with a variety of warheads. They can fire missiles if the submarines surface, or launch torpedoes with explosive warheads for hardened targets, or flechette cases for shredding through flocks of divers.
Twenty dedicated carrier submarines each capable of deploying three thousand soldiers are used in the event one of Nautilus's many colonies requires the deployment of military force. As this is more than the population of most outposts, it has proven more than sufficient in dealing with revolts.

---

Planetary Population:

Baseline humanity:

The humans on Odium are a nearly distinct subset of humanity, and would, if not for immigration from offworld, have become an abhuman species already.
Their average height is one metre seventy one centimetres, and they are broad and stocky due to the world's slightly stronger 1.2 G's of gravity. Their eyesight is markedly worse than the Ultima Segmentum Standard Human Phenotype, and they are sensitive to bright light. Some remote populations within the Hive City have become legally blind, but have compensated for it with excellent hearing, smell, and rudimentary electrosensitivity.
Standard Astra Telepathica Psyker Aptitude Tests have confirmed the population of having an above average amount of telekinetics and pyromancers. Divinatory talent is rare among Odium's Psykers for reasons unknown.

League of Votann:

A population the Adeptus Astra Telepathica has identified as "Kin" from the Leagues of Votann, a recidivist abhuman civilization, have spent some time within the Hadal system. They maintain their own mining operations in remote parts of the Abyssal Plane and are known to trade clandestinely with the voidborn and the planetary authorities. Their efforts are migratory, constantly moving to avoid discovery but a base has been rumoured to exist out in the void.

Nautilus Ogyns:

Nautilus has a large underclass of Ogryns that work the great mines that extend from the Rift Wall deep beneath the earth. These mines produce most of the raw materials used by the city for internal expansion, and to expand the much needed living space. These Ogryns are reliable workers, and exploitation is rare as they're known for quickly 'clapping' (local slang for death by Ogryn) those who insult or abuse them.

 

[Mayto]

You are

[] Write in a name.

You were born on an irrelevant hive world somewhere in the Imperium, one of many. Your world, like many others, has fallen greatly from the glory of the Golden Age of Technology. It has declined alongside the Imperium from a thriving urban world with a mostly functional government and a measure of democracy, into a rotting decrepit state where the people live in poverty and toil in the name of the God Emperor of mankind.

Not that you understand such concepts, or anyone you know for that matter. You are just another

[] Boy
[] Girl

on this world, destined for a life of labour. You were born in an industrial scale maternity ward where a dozen babies were born each minute, an old servitor made from a man convicted of stealing from an ecclesiarchy collection plate.

As you cried your first breath, you were doused in antiseptic and inspected for physical mutations and abnormalities. Deeming you of stable human stock, the Servitor did not insert you into its internally mounted incinerator and handed you back to your parents.

You have grown up in the underhive, scratching out an existence from the day you could walk. From the age of six, you have gone to work in a textile mill. Working is hard, and you have seen children your age dragged into the machinery and torn to shreds. The days you're not working, you are either running with the gangs, or sitting in lectures at the church with all your siblings.

Your life consists of your hab block, the metal ceiling, the factory, and the occasional visit to the market with your ma.

When the factory shutters due to events on a distant world you can scarcely fathom, it lays off many of the child labourers. So you and your siblings go into crime. You're good at it. Crawling into machines to fix them has made you good at sneaking around and stealing.

By the time you're ten, you know how to use a knife, a popgun, and strip a body of valuables before you can be driven off. Your brothers and sisters are good at it as well. Good enough that life improves somewhat, especially when you begin running around with a small band.

You're set to be the leader of a juve gang, and you find that you have a knock for it. You are good at:
(Choose one)
[] Convincing lots of kids to join your gang:

[] Making the ones in your gang do better:

---

The tarp covers you from the noxious liquid dripping from the metal ceiling. You and the gang are gathered there, your little hiding place. The gang is going well. You've got creds in your pocket and even more at hand.

The depths of the old factory district is a good place to hide. Lots of places you can easily crawl into and hide your goods. Your head hurts. A pressure behind your eyes that you just can't get rid of. It makes you angry. It is getting in the way of running with the other kids.

The catch today is good. A fat purse you took from some clerk who'd taken a wrong turn. The rest of your little band gathers around, gawking at the script you pull out. You grin nastily as you begin handing out shares. Each of you takes part of the loot and goes home along a different path to throw off pursuit. You wait for them to leave, preparing to take your own path home.
(choose one)
[] A complex plan that worked just right:

Rickey distracted the clerk. You snatched the purse. Jenny closed the one-way door you dived in to escape. Jix and Jex set off another distraction as well.

[] The direct approach.

You and your gang ran up, took everything the clerk had, then ran off, the enforcer on station too taken aback by such a blunt approach.

"Shrimp!" A large boisterous voice yells out. It is Jexx, one of the older kids, the ones too old to run with the pickpockets and thieves, is making his way over to you. He must have followed you. Shit. You're alone against him.

He is sporting a tattoo on his bicep that marks him as having joined his dad, or what he thinks is his father in the gang life. "What's that you got there?"

Your nasty ten year old mind thinks of the best response. You are angry at your headache and you really want to spend your catch. But you aren't able to say anything before he rushes over and looms over you.

He looks at the purse. "Oh naff. Pip got himself a score." His idiot brain works as he considers what to do. Then his hand shoots out and pulls the purse from your grasp.

"Naff!" You spit at him, pulling out your shiv. "Give that back, or I'll gut you so bad, your momma will sell you to the Mechanicus for parts." You're proud of the length and complexity of the insult.

You're stunned as you are sent sprawling, the side of your face bruised from a hit. Nine Primarchs, he is faster than you remember. Must have stimmed up. Shithead really is like his dad. "I was just going to take the purse. But now? I'm going to beat you."

Anger rages through you. You want that damn purse. It was hard to get! You can pawn it, get some new boots and a cut of grox from the creds inside.

As he gives you that shit-eating grin that he always does after taking something from you, you feel your headache getting worse. He grabs you by the throat and lifts you up, punching you in the stomach.

Something inside of you snaps.

Then something swells up from deep within you.

You reach out for the hand holding you, trying to pry the fingers from around your neck.
You:
(choose one)
[] Crush his wrist with your bare hands:

You have an affinity for using biomancy, the manipulation and enhancement of the human body with psychic power.

[] Force him to drop you with a glare:

You have an affinity for telepathy, the manipulating and controlling of minds using psychic power.

[] Deliver a perfect kick at just the right spot to make him drop you:

You have an affinity for divination, seeing that which others can not.

[] Suddenly become hot to the touch:

You have an affinity for pyromancy, calling forth purifying fire to burn away your enemies.

There is a snap and a great shockwave of air from around you, the floor beneath you cracking, the walls tearing, and the ceiling cracking. The world around you seeming to shake for just a moment as power surges within your soul. Whatever you did before, what comes next feels natural.

You:
(Choose one)
[] Crush him:

Your telekinesis manifests as crushing invisible force. You are not very good at holding something without breaking it, let alone holding multiple things at the same time. But you have power.

[] Hit him with a massive rock:

Your telekinesis manifests as the ability to move great objects with limited precision. You can move tanks and armoured vehicles.

[] Shred him with a spray of metal fragments:

Your telekinesis manifests as a great many smaller objectives manipulated with precision. You can operate firearms purely with the power of your mind, not touching them with your hands.

As you stand horrified over his broken corpse, your thoughts race in horror at what you have done. You just killed someone. With your mind. You're a Witch, just like the ones the priests preach against. You breath heavily as you try to think of what to do. You look around you at the crumbling building and the damage you've done.

You resolve to:
[] Make an effort to try to hide your ability:
You tried your best to hide your ability.
[] Use it discretely to get ahead in life:
You tried to use it secretly, when nobody could see you.
[] Make the most of it before you're caught:
Go on a petty crime spree and settle some scores with people you dislike.
[] Give yourself up:
Walk to the local church and surrender yourself.

---

Name change because I realized the person who submitted the previous one had actually made it a reference to Cal Kestis from Star Wars.

Telekinesis will remain the starting ability because I feel it unfair to change after we already picked that last time.

10 Hour Moratorium because crimbas

Plan voting. Feel free to suggest plans.

 

[Mayto]

"What brings you here, Inquisitor?" Lord Prefector Aldin Arat asked the Inquisitor as they made their way down the unadorned stone halls of the Astra Telepathica Keep. The Keep was Aldin's pride and joy, a project he had spent a century of his considerable lifespan working on. And it felt like he was finally truly getting the recognition he deserved. From needing to hide his works from Inquisitors, now he had them visiting just to acquire new Sages or potential Interrogators.

The Keep was built in the middle of the Hive City, back when it had been the surface. Attempts to elevate it to keep up with the growing spires had been foiled by the planet's aristocracy, but he personally found that its location at the heart of the Hive was quite useful. It was hard to reach without knowing which of the old passages and disabled elevators and maglev tracks led there, and that meant his Keep had privacy.

They moved past the scrutinizing eyes of Black Sentinels. Aldin Arat had worked hard to get his position as Lord Prefect of his Scholam Psykana, and this had given him the confidence to talk to the Inquisitor as an equal, or at the very least without fear.

The Inquisitor's eyes moved through the hallway, scanning them intently. "I am in need of expanding my retinue." He says with something that a sentimentalist might recognize as begrudging acknowledgement. "And I wished to see how this operation works. I was surprised to learn of Wyrdvanes being taught off of the hallowed soil of the Homeworld."

Aldin tasted the soft undertone of sarcasm in the words, a bouquet of disappointment at the state of the Throneworld's masses, woven through with apathy and resignation.

"That is the intention. A moment, we will be passing through into the processing sanctum." Aldin said, telepathically reaching out for the hidden servitors and commanding them to open a door. He then telekinetically adjusted a series of hidden levers behind a wall panel to disable the integrated defenses, an application of pyromancy disabled the pilot light for a hidden flamer. The two Black Sentinels on the other side raised scanning instruments. Vitae samplers and gene-pattern recognizers. "Not all Psykers require the Throneworld to be trained and sanctioned full. It reduces the pressure on the Black Ships."

Inquisitor Kelmar Eustace Johan Alexis nodded sternly, his patchwork scarred face twisting into a kind smile. "I support your efforts, naturally. I have found Psykers to be very useful."

Aldin led him into a large hollow space, a massive spherical void within the Keep with psi-dampenings plating covering the inside of the sphere. They crossed a gangway to a round room elevated on a platform inside the shielded room. Aldin put his hand on the scanner and felt a prick as his blood was sampled to open the door.

The walls were made of concentric silver rings like a ball carved from a treestump, each of a different mineral composition to improve their dampening effects. In the room was an elevated marble block atop with an instructor sat in meditation. Around the instructor were the students, each located on a metal plate, leaning against a brace they were strapped into. Each student had a cable connected to the plug at the back of their skull, and an IV drip from a stand connected to their right wrist

Aldin knew the Inquisitor could not see it, but he nevertheless described what was occurring. "Each student is drawing on their psychic power, performing rudimentary exercises to get a grip for handling their power. The instructor there is meanwhile sending out telepathic probes to try and disrupt their concentration." Aldin motioned for one of the students. "The plugs are so bursts of psychic energy can be grounded, while the IV drugs them into a deep meditation. You could fire your pistol in the room and they wouldn't even hear it."

"I am not familiar with this method of training." Kelmar admitted. The words from his lips had a thread of suspicion woven through them, with a smaller ribbon of interest and a sprinkle of fascination.

"This Keep has historically served primarily for training Psykers for secondment to the Inquisition, which means that the Psykers we pick from the Black Ships are the most stable ones they have. We train not for grand displays of power, but for subtle manipulation. You will not find a better tarot-reader in this Sector than our Prefect."

Aldin had given the same tour before, to Militarum Generals, Inquisitors, Rogue Traders, and masters of the Administratum. The words flowed naturally from him.

"Ah. Then there has been no need for minnowing the acolytes." Kelmar said. "I visited the City of Sight. The training there was... more gruelling." His words were laced with and smelled of disapo--, no of different expectations. But there was no dissapointment.

The usual remark. Typical. Aldin thought. "No. Those whose ability to reliable -manifest- their ability have already been picked out by us."

A teenage acolytes suddenly went into a spasm, letting out a pained scream, hoarfrost spreading out from the Psyker. Aldin tensed up. That did not sound like the usual shout of pain from a developing Psyker.

Kelmar reflexively took out his bolt pistol and aimed it at the Psyker, but Aldin stopped him with a raised hand. "Don't. He's a Gamma." He stared at the Gamma, demanding him he control himself, not daring to reach into a mind currently breaking apart.

The plug in the back of the acolyte's neck caught fire as parts of his brain transmuted into living psychic fire. Something pushed against the Keep's wards, drawn by the phenomena.

Aldin cursed, he reached out telepathically to the mind of the Servitor that was in charge of the room's countermeasures. It had already awakened and was counting down to the automatic deployment of the room's sterilization protocol. He commanded it with a mental shout.

+Circle twelve. Administer mercy protocol.+

There was a pneumatic hiss as a monomolecular spike shot up from beneath the floor, shooting up through the Psyker's tail bone, burrowing through the spine between the vertebrae , and unfolding in the brain in a shredding expanse of monofillaments, channels along its length releasing psi-dampening chemicals and neurotoxins, instantly killing the acolyte and removing the threat of psi-active brain tissues contineuing the manifestation. The spike retracted, allowing the body to slump.

The Inquisitor grit his teeth at the sight. Aldin could smell the questions the man had yet to ask in his words and feel the absence of any other emotion. It was a confused disgust, a lack of understanding at just what had happened. "A bad way to die. What was that spike?"

Aldin took a moment to calm himself, allowing his Psykana conditioning to kick in. Was the Inquisitor knowledgeable enough to suspect its origins? Would he care? "Part of the Keep's automated systems." He said.

Kelmar took the hint and did not inquire further. The universal agreement of Inquisitor and Telepathica to not pry in the other's affairs. At least, not too deeply.

Servitors with flamers and sanitation equipment appeared from sliding wall apertures, two of them carrying a large stretcher between them. One placed the dead body upon the stretcher while the other began to clean the circle. Then they lifted up the stretcher and departed the room.

"Manifesting power is different from an ability to control the power that comes forth." Aldin muttered, not at the Inquisitor but at the whims of fate. He looked with dissapointment at the spike as it was being cleaned with a flamer. That particular Psyker had been doing well until this moment. Gamma grade. Excellent performance in all fields. Strong of mind and body. He had thought the boy would become an Interrogator for sure.

Aldin had been on the hook with the Sector Astra Telepathica for the low throughput of Gamma-Grade Psykers. The Emperor had not blessed his students with luck. Training Gamma's was a painful thing. Each was a precious gem of great potential, but also increasingly unlikely to survive training.

---

The Inquisitor received his sages in the end, a trio of Diviners skilled at reading the Tarot, and departed. The Telepathica Keep returned to its usual functioning. New Psykers arrived from the Hive City's Enforcers, with some being chosen to learn locally, and others being sedated in preparation for transfer to Terra for Soul-Binding. It was a good haul, none seemed destined for the Golden Throne.

Aldin took a moment to examine the administration of his Keep. His commitments were stable. The planet's tolerance of the fortress was merely disdainful instead of outright hateful, and his connections with the Inquisition were stronger. It was just another day, except for the regrettable loss of the Gamma.

He felt a ripple in the Empyrean slamming against the wards of the Keep. A psionic siren went out from the Astropathic Choir at its heart, as the choirmaster began sending out a warning to everyone within the keep.

+Beta-grade psychic manifestation detected within the Hive. Probability of Beta-Grade Awakening is high. All defenders to their stations.+

Aldin's heart nearly skipped a beat before Psykana conditioning kicked in. Coordinate disaster response, prepare for emergencies.

A Beta awakening? We can handle one. But we need to be quick. He extended his mind beyond the walls, searching through the hive for devastation. He was preparing to see a firestorm, a floor collapsing, or a tide of eldritch horrors emerging from a newly awakened mind. He sought out with his mind, examining the wards for damage.

A Beta Psyker was not the instant planet-devastating destruction of an Alpha, but the Telepathica took no chances. Beta Psykers had become gateways for Neverborn incursions in the past, especially upon awakening.

With his mind reaching out, he sensed how the Black Sentinels were already guiding the acolytes back to their dormitories, while weapons were prepared in the event the manifestation was the prelude to a demonic event. Silver autogun rounds were being fed into rifles as the wall-mounted flamers near the keep's solitary entrance performed a test-firing sequence.

He felt other minds joining him, the other Prefectors of the Keep, one for each of the five Psychic Disciplines.

But there was no followup. No waves of psychic energy crashing against the wards, no amplified screaming or great firestorms, no hive-quake, waves of biomantic energy.

That was unusual… and very promising. He reached for his vox link to the captain of his Black Sentinels, the man's armour blocking out any telepathy. "Prepare an extraction team and a stasis casket."

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The previous vote is not over, fyi