Setting:Cloudburst/Soak

System
Galactic Position	Cloudburst Sector, Rampart Subsector
System Overlord	Lord Watanta Sjoman
Worlds in the system	Four, one habitable
World Type, Name	Obelisk 2
Tropospheric Composition	Nitrogen 78.2%, Oxygen 20.5%, Argon 1%, Water 1.5%, Carbon dioxide .06%
Religion	Imperial Cult
Government type	Adeptus Terra
Planetary Governor	No
Adept Presence	Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Arbites
Climate	Frequent superstorms, lightning squalls
Geography	92 times the size of Terra, with one superocean, broken by small volcanic islands
Gravity	.9 Terran gravity
Day Length	30 Terran Hours
Economy	Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones
Principal Exports	Water, Food, Cobalt, Medicines
Principal Imports	Textiles, Ammunition
Countries and Continents	None
Military	Obelisk Sea Dragons (low quality Guard), Obelisk Waterguard (medium quality PDF)
Contact with other Systems	Periodic
Tithe Grade	Solutio Extremis
Population	65,030,000

Description

Description: Obelisk is a world in constant turmoil. Mostly, this is limited to the gargantuan storms that wrack its tortured surface, but at the present time, it could just as easily apply to the political morass that has now swallowed four cities and threatens Obelisk’s precious fisheries.

Settled in the second wave of colonization that swept through the region, the planet takes its name from something about which its citizens know nothing. Far below the buoyant cities of the planet, far below its sub-aquatic Guard training zones, far beneath its leviathan-hunting submarines, cities lie dead on the seafloor. Ordo Xenos investigators estimate that the cities are at least four hundred thousand years old, and are made of materials not native to Obelisk. At least, if they are native, they have all been used up. The cities notably are not sealed. This means one of two things to the Ordo Xenos. Either the inhabitants were water-breathers – unlikely, given how badly the items in the cities have weathered the passage of time – or they were once on the surface. As to their cause of their abandonment, the Ordo suspects war. Craters, some with energy burns, pock several buildings; nearly a third yield a chemical residue that looks suspiciously like white phosphorous. With no exact estimate as to the aliens’ size, it is impossible to guess how many beings could once have lived in the ruins, but the most common Inquisitorial estimate falls around one billion.

The regions that lack ruins are open for business. Cities float over them. Reassuringly made of Mechanicus-pressed metals and rubber, polymers and plasteel, these bobbing homes on the waves drift hither and yon, harvesting fish. Life is hard in the cities, with little industry or art to distract the people from their toil and drudgery. The great noble yacht races and occasional gang war are the only major diversions the Obeliskans have.

Food is a scarcity on Obelisk. The fish of the planet aren’t inedible, but they are few in number relative to the enormous size of the planet. The word ‘overcolonization’ has come up once or twice in discussions among the politicians and Administratum Adepts in the Governor’s Megayacht. The reason for the small fish population was eventually discovered, however, and had nothing to do with humanity. The first sensor returns from the city that spotted the cause were dismissed as malfunction, as were the next several. It was only after maintenance crews, sent down to repair buoys, either found nothing wrong or never came back that the truth was accepted: the planet has at least fifty colossal beasts, probably far more, well over fifteen kilometers in length, swimming around near the seabed. They appear to eat by spreading vast net-like appendages from their horrible mouths, snagging any organic object, including plastic, and forcing it into their guts. Overeager hunters and commercial enterprises sometimes send submarines down to find the beasts, and even succeed on occasion, but any indication that these tiny vessels can destroy the monsters should be taken with a grain of salt.

What little sport and entertainment there is to find on Obelisk 2 stems from the surface, regardless. Yacht races, with ships crewed by hand-picked local officers and sponsored by bored nobles, occur between cities that grow close enough. These races have few rules, and often end in bloody spectacle. Laser and gunpowder weapons are expressly forbidden, but pneumatic and hydraulic harpoon launchers are not, and yachts crewed by victory-starved sailors will often fire great anchors on magnetic clamps to enemy vessels. Boarding actions were permitted before some people took the idea to its logical extreme. New rules forbidding the use of flares to falsify distress signals are under consideration, as is banning the use of plasma guns.

Beyond the races, parasailing and surfing are also fairly popular, though climatological concerns mostly limit these activities to the planet’s few islands. These islands are reserved for the exclusive use of the Adeptus Terra, to the annoyance of the planet’s native population. The islands glow with chapels, landing pads, weather stations, and military bases, so brightly that they shine over the horizons. Few are large enough to house true cities, but partially submerged Arbites Precinct-Harbors with fleets of fast attack submarines and riot control craft nicknamed The Boatorcycles lurk near some popular anchorages.

The largest islands house starports for the world’s little commerce. Terra is due her goods from Obelisk 2 as much as from any other world. What the world does export flies up to tithe barges in orbit from elevated VTOL squares and ski-jump-style liftoff ramps on these islands, under the watchful gunsights of Obelisk Waterguards, the local PDF.

Politically, the entire system falls under the control of the ancient noble family Sjoman. Its current patriarch is a patron of the Ministorum in good standing, but knows that Obelisk’s time of relative stability and peace is coming to an end. Between the facts that the world effectively can’t defend itself from a Glasian Migration and the exploding gang wars, and that the world’s fish supply can’t sustain both so many humans and the leviathans of the deep, Obelisk may soon have to evolve or die. Lord Sjoman has entered into secret talks with the Rogue Trader Dynastic House of Rondlee and the Merchant House Herrera to begin terraforming the moon of Soak 4, which he knows to be easily terraformable, into a proper colony candidate. This will ensure that the population of Obelisk 2 has somewhere to go if the worst should happen. The Traders, he suspects, are stringing him along, given that what little about them he has gleaned suggests that they can’t afford a terraformation on that scale. The price they may demand for beseeching the Adeptus Mechanicus on his behalf could be anything, if they even work together at all.

The largest industry between cities is in shipping and packaging cobalt. Several sub-surface mounts and atoll chains boast enormous cobalt deposits. Freighters carrying self-contained extraction and purification machines, crewed by volunteers from the hydrocities, sail between the islands after the frequent hypercanes wash the sand away from these spots. Mining and harvesting teams scurry down on levitating buoys and boats, pick up as much material as they can, and retreat before the storms return, selling their wares to the larger cities. The larger cities, with the infrastructure to process the purified ore, then make the cobalt into ingots and powders, and give them over to the Administratum for Terra’s Tithe.

Obelisk 2 has one other major problem besides crippling ennui: gangs. The floating cities can house up to seven hundred thousand residents, which is more than enough for tribal war. Facepainted thugs jump travelers and tourists in back alleys; fishermen report their vehicles stolen and taken for joyrides, drug busts are up four hundred percent in two years, and joygirls and joyboys totter into Enforcer precincts to report being attacked because their pimps didn’t pay protection on time. The cities are falling into gang conflicts so quickly that the Enforcers are beginning to suspect the hidden hand of a cult at work. They are correct.

The Circle of Whispers is a pretentious name for a pretentious group. The Circle was originally nothing more than an interest group, but as is so often the case in the decaying Imperium, casual interest in mysteries led to a more consuming need. The Circle has paid over a third of the gangs of the world into serving them, usually to do nothing more than vent their anger at their horrible living conditions in more organized ways in exchange for some xenotech and offworld goods. The Circle has tapped other gangs to directly attack local governmental institutions, though even the most corrupt Circle members strongly recommend avoiding actual Imperial facilities. Picking a fight with local police is one thing, but a protracted battle with Arbites or the Priesthood can only end in fire and terror.

Above the few thousand rank and file members of the Circle, however, a darker force reigns. The original, founding members of the Circle are all, unbeknownst to their lieutenants, committed Techno-recidivists. The abundance of alien relics on the seabed is of immense interest to them and they loot them freely, but that pales in scope compared to the secret the Arbites and Techpriesthood hides on the surface. One of the islands near the main starport of the world, they believe, holds a stasis-fielded underground bunker, in which the residents of the world prior to its abandonment and flooding took shelter. The Techno-recidivists believe that this bunker contains incalculable billions of Thrones’ worth of xenotech, including the fabled Hydrocopaeia, a machine they believe can turn any form of water molecule into any other. This would include the forms that cannot, strictly speaking, exist in our universe, and would be worth any price they could ask of the Dark Mechanicus or even unscrupulous Martians.

The truth, which even they do not know, is that the bunker is very real, but contains nothing of the sort. The bunker is the final resting place of a race of strange robotic beings that nearly overran the islands several centuries before. The anarchy of the first Glasian Migration prevented the robots from grabbing more attention than they did, but the Mechanicus is sure that more are out there on Obelisk somewhere.

The robotic things, the Mechanicus archaeoforensic team asserts, are not the original inhabitants of the world, as ascertained by their completely different arrangement of limbs than the beings that built the seabed cities. Instead, they appear to have arrived thousands of years later, from parts unknown. That would make Mankind the third inhabitants of Obelisk 2, at the least.

The Inquisition is aware of both the Mechanicus’s findings and the existence of the Circle of Whispers, though they are under the false impression that the Circle is unaware of the bunker. For now, the Inquisition is unwilling to assault the Circle in open war, since retribution from their cats-paws gangs would almost surely destroy whole cities of the foundering colony. The Inquisition is instead biding its time, recruiting their own ganger stooges as muscle, and waiting to see what happens next.

Obelisk Sea Dragons

The fierce and difficult life of the Sea Dragons is a testament to the people of Obelisk. This is not a compliment, most would admit. The Sea Dragons need fully twice the disciplinarians and Commissars of most regiments of equivalent size. The constant inter-city rivalries and gang tribal identity fights the conscripts of the Dragons display require so much oversight that circumstances forces some regiments to practice the ultimate disobedience sanction: Manualis Decimatio. This is the practice of picking a squad member by lottery, and forcing the squad leader at gunpoint to beat the chosen soldier to death by hand. Refusal leads to instant death for one full fireteam from each squad in the platoon that contained the objector. It is the most vicious form of punishment the Imperial Guard can legally inflict on a non-Penal Legion force, the most disgusting to watch, and their Commissars grimly assert in the case of the Sea Dragons: necessary.

When Sea Dragon regiments can be whipped into line, however, they excel in exactly one way: boarding actions. Their custom speed boats, boarding craft, three-person jet-skis, liberal use of Voss-Pattern Mako-class stealth submarines, and even parasail-launched boarding gliders allow them to take a ship at lightning speed, often before the crew even realizes what’s happening. Captain Richtein of the Blue Daggers’ First Company Veterans was once heard to note while watching a Sea Dragon company board a ramshackle Ork Karrier that Sea Dragons were the most efficient shipboarding force that he had ever seen.

Preferring the use of serrated short swords for cutting through nets and lines, carbines for their compact size, and suppressed shotguns for cabin-clearing, Sea Dragons are a brutal force in close combat. Lacking (understandably) in artillery and tanks, they are among the most specialized military forces in the entire Sector, and are among the few that the Cloudburst Munitorum does not earmark for general deployment even in the strapped times of the Age of Ending. The Sea Dragons are at best mediocre in general infantry duties, but can make passable Rough Riders on snowmobiles and other simple mechanical mounts; they are not so terribly different from the ubiquitous watercraft of their homeworld.