Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Delving (section)

===Delving Military===

As far back as the Unification Wars, the mutants of the Imperium have had two fates: death or service.  Mutants that are genuine in their desire to serve mankind have been lumped into Auxilia units to serve the Officio Munitorum since it was still called the Imperial Army.  Delving is the only world in the Cloudburst Sector (though, notably, not the entirety of Cloudburst, since the Circuit world of Crispin has some too) that produces armed Beastmen for the Imperial Guard.  The Delving Glaistig Auxilia mobilize in rough regiments, using the typical Imperial formation rather than the Cloudburst-specific Septiim template.  They usually append to Delving or Celeste regiments, and specialize in urban and jungle battle.  The animal they most resemble from the waist down is the now-extinct Terran Anthrohircius, or so the Mechanicus theorizes.

When fielded against human enemies, Glaistig are not typically the first line of combatants, given the Delving command’s concern about having humans and abhumans fight.  When fighting anything else, however, Glaistig Auxilia throw themselves into battle with ferocity and zeal that would do a Templar Militia proud.  They typically employ a variety of slug-throwing and shot weapons, but also use the locally-manufactured M938 shoulder-mounted grenade launcher and M939 grenade sling, which propel 25mm and 40mm explosives respectively.  This allows them to lay down a torrent of flash and krak blasts in advance of their forces, suppressing enemy actions until the Glaistig are practically on top of them.

Glaistig Auxilia who perform to exemplary standards are given certain privileges in Delving life, such as owning businesses and even officer commissions, and commissioned Glaistig who live long enough to retire can even join the regional Officio Munitorum command offices, though few choose to do so.

Regular Delving Guard organize in the Septiim template.  Since their Subsector houses the hugely productive Septiim system, and their system produces untold billions of pounds of high-quality ore and petrochemicals, Delving Guard are well-supplied with fresh, high-quality food and weapons, making them excellent campaigners.  As such, they have accompanied Imperial Crusades into regions of space at the edges of the Imperium and within its borders alike.  Delving Guard specialize in night combat and toxic-atmosphere war, but are capable of fighting in other environments if they need to and are warned in advance.

Delving Guard prefer the use of the Macharius and Malcador tanks to that of the Leman Russ.  Because of their size and firepower, these tanks make for ideal Armored Spear formations, charging over the lines of enemies behind a hail of gunfire and shells.  Delving Guard troopers are less specialized than Septiim ones, but their deadly armored vehicles and high-tech body armor allow them to pierce defenses that most Imperial Guard units would struggle with.  The troops of the Delving Guard may, at times, work alongside Skitarii and even the Legio Congelatio to conquer worlds of mutual interest to the Imperium and Mechanicus, often those that are about to stop being in the Cloudburst Circuit and become a part of the Cloudburst Sector.

The same terraforming machines that are (occasionally) rendering Delving comfortably habitable are also now hard at work on the surface of Delving 7, which should be as habitable as any other Imperial world in eight hundred years.  If the stripping of resources on Delving itself ends before then, and its ecology stabilizes somewhat, some terraforming machines could be relocated to Delving 7 to accelerate the process there.  Mechanicus Magi Biologis have suggested dumping quadrillions of cyanobacteria on Delving 7’s slurry of chemical and water oceans to accelerate the formation of an oxygen-rich atmosphere, but so far, the budget for such things is all but spent on Delving itself.  Delving’s moon, Delving b, is a silicate-carbon block with some nickel and iron in it, of no resource value compared to Delving’s vast mineral deposits.  This indicates to the Mechanicus that it may be a capture moon instead of a congealment moon like Luna is.

On occasion, Blue Daggers visit Delving’s capital, to inform them of the Chapter’s developments, actions, and needs.  Either the Chapter Master or an appointed representative flies to Delving prior to each Migration to review the world’s role in repelling the aliens, and to drop off any Marines that will be needed to protect the world itself if the aliens have targeted it.  So far, the world has been hit only once, during the Third Glasian Migration.  However, the Administratum has noticed with unease that the Subsector Capital worlds have been hit disproportionally often by the aliens, as has Septiim in Delving’s own Subsector.  Realistically, if the scale of the enemy attacks increases as it has been, there is no chance Delving won’t be hit again if the patterns hold true.  As such, the Subsector Navy leadership has begun investing in system-edge early warning satellites to detect the strange FTL engines of the Glasian Cylinders, which seem to shut down when they come within a certain distance of bodies with gravity wells akin to those of stars.