Cadia

And they say there are no female commanders among the Guard...especially among Cadians.

Cadia is an Imperial Guard fortress world located right beside the Eye of Terror. Due to being proximate to the only safe warp-passage into and out of the Eye, as well as large Xenos mobilization throughout the sector, it has become a fortress world and a strategic gem for the Imperium of Man. On another note, that place is a hellhole. Avoid if at all possible. It might be a good vacation spot if you LIKE trenches filled with bodies and tracer fire lighting up your hotel room... on second thought... fuck that shit!

The Planet Itself

Fortress. That's the one word that can sum up the planet of Cadia. Since it's close neighbors with those nice boys from across the street, Cadia always needs to be on active defense. All the time you have your Lasgun shouldered and are twitching from a combination of going 47 hours without sleep and being raised to be paranoid as fuck.

As far as geography goes, Cadia holds a temperate climate not unlike the Holy Hiveworld of Terra. 70 percent of its surface is covered in bodies of water, and its landmasses are covered with bodies of guardsmen. Actually, at the end of the 41-st millennium, Imperial forces control near 30% of Cadian land; the other 30% is controlled by Chaos forces and the remaining 40% is a bloody mess of constant carnage, daemon incursions and artillery barrages. Think Lancashire but with more laser guns and fewer even more Chinese.

Only the Emperor knows why that planet was not subjected to Exterminatus.

Cadia and you

First, let me start with saying that it sucks to live on Cadia. Oh, you think where you live sucks? Live in a crime infested ghetto or something similar? A couple drive by shootings and a stolen TV are nothing compared to how much it sucks to live on Cadia. Why does it suck you ask? Oh, not much of a reason at all. Just the fact that it's like, six feet away from the Eye of Terror (It also sucks to live there, but for many reasons other than Cadia).

Cadia: A very, very shitty place to live

It just sucks to live on Cadia, period. Yes, there are several manly, redeeming qualities (see below) about the planet, but if you live on Cadia you're too busy replacing the batteries in your flashlight to notice. A short list includes, but is not limited to:

• Being drafted before you can walk, learning to shoot before you can count, and getting thrown in the the meat-grinder (mostly figuratively, sometimes literally) by age 16.
• Learning how to shoot so young that when you're toilet-trained you're told to aim your dick like it's a lasgun.
• Marauding bands of Chaos Space Marines and assorted heretics trying to kill you.
• Random WAAAGH!!!s of greenskins trying to kill you.
• Stealthy platoons of Space Elves trying to kill you.
• Your own superior officers trying to ki-*BLAM!*
• No privacy whatsoever for your entire life.
• Constant fear of death before you reach puberty.
• Constant fear of death during puberty.
• Constant fear of death after you reach puberty.
• Superior officers barking orders down your neck for the 10-16 years that you're alive.
• No time to screw around, you're always on duty. Sometimes said duty is to help train new recruits for their inevitable deaths.
• The top fashions in Cadia are camo patterns and body armor.
• Heretical cults springing up by the dozen every week.
• Voices keep telling you to ditch the duty and relax, let loose, call in sick, or try something different.
• The fact that the planet's main only export is Soldiers should clue you in.
• Mutants springing up everywhere wanting to try out the new pincer claw they just got on your neck.
• Abaddon finally stopped failing and is currently sending so many daemons through the Cadian Gate that even Creed is having trouble forcing them back now. And rumor has it that the Daemon Primarchs are on their way too...
• Even after you die, Cadia doesn't stop being shitty to you, because once the engraving on your tombstone is illegible, it means you've been dead for so long nobody alive cares about you anymore, so your corpse is dug up and thrown into an incinerator while a fresh corpse is thrown into your hole. And then they will be dug up and thrown away as well.

Seriously, it just sucks to live there, just take my word for it. Avoid prolonged stays on Cadia at all costs.

Redeeming Qualities

Fuckers so hardcore, they take on fieldtrips on other hellhole planets when their own hellhole planet gets too stale.

Yes it sucks to live on Cadia, sucks beyond all Hell, but there are several reasons why it's one of the most awesome places in the Imperium.

Cadian Shock Troopers

First and foremost, the finest (and perhaps most numerous) breed of the Imperial Guard are born, trained, and live on Cadia. You see the Cadian as the common model for your generic, garden variety guardsmen figurine, and as such they are the most easily recognized. They fight tenaciously for the Empra and die with the same degree of vigor. Manliness is never in short order here on Cadia, making it one of the most awesome planets around.

Their elite troops are the Kasrkin, basically the elite of the elite of the Guard. That are separate from the Scions as they aren't trained in cozy little Scholas watched over by commissars, but are trained right there on Cadia, combining all the battle conditioning and tactics learned by the Cadia Shock Troopers over the course of KILLING EVERYTHING IN THE GALAXY for the last several thousand years. Only SPESS MEHREENS are better. But the Kasrkin are probably scarier than the Spess Mehreens anyway, because they do about the same on the battlefield, without wearing a concrete wall on every inch of their body and not having mini-rocket launcher guns, no, they're just humans with balls of steel, both of which have their own pair of balls of steel (and that's the women). To be fair though, they get shit done while wearing cardboard instead of the Guardsman's t-shirts, and they still use the older but far more advanced Hellguns over the Scion's Hot-shot lasguns, they shoot a lot more light than the Guardsman's flashlight. For example, a Kasrkin Sergeant literally jumps on the back of a rampaging Daemonhost (which has already incapacitated the majority of an inquisitorial retinue) and stabs it with a regular ol' combat knife to save the life of an Inquisitor. Balls. Of. Steel.

In conclusion, Cadians are the best troopers, and Kasrkin are the best of the best, well at least when it comes to conventional warfare, other regiments have them beat in specialized roles (Siege and attrition warfare? Send forth the Death Korps. Guerrilla warfare and sabotage? Sneak some Catachans in. Rapid insertion and maneuvering? Drop the Elysians on 'em). But when you aren't sure what you'll be up against or are expecting a prolongued encounter with rapidly changing tactical situations then you can't go wrong with Cadians.

Defended

Despite what is said about how much of a hellhole Cadia is due to the constant warfare, because of that selfsame constant warfare Cadia is one of the most well-defended planets in the Imperium. In fact, it's the 2'nd most heavily defended world in the Imperium of Man, only Sol System is better defended than Cadia (And maybe Fenris). All cities are arranged in interlocking blocks that require roads to snake around buildings with blind corners and are defended by rockcrete and adamantium walls, all to favor the defenders in urban combat. Massive shield generators keep the cities safe from all but the heaviest bombardment, forcing enemies to pay for them meter by bloody meter. All "civilians" are technically Cadian military reservists, and have been through the same life-long military training that all Cadians are subject to. As dangerous as Cadia is, the locals have learned to handle that danger and weather it as well as possible. Given its strategic importance, the Imperium is more than willing to commit substantial other resources to the planet's defense, which means lots of ships patrolling the system and lots of depots stationed in nearby systems to quickly reinforce Cadia at a moment's notice.

Creed

CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!!!!!!!! This article has infiltrated your computer. You just got tactical geniused.

Reproduction

Birth rate and recruitment rate are synonymous. And if you see how many men and women die on the battlefield every day... better start doing your part for the Imperium. On Cadia, you're encouraged to fuck around wildly and have your partner push out the kid in a barracks to increase efficiency in recruiting.

Colonizers

Cadia's, as you noticed, only real export is soldiers. The thing is, Cadia pumps out so many that they usually form the core cadre of amalgamated units that get clumped into entirely new Imperial Guard armies, and sent to wage campaigns against taken or occupied planets. These armies are never getting sent back home, and are intended, when they win, to form a new government and society, and settle down (as seen in Dawn of War WA and Dark Crusade). As the core is usually Cadian, a lot of the army doctrines and style end up being Cadian, at least for a millenia or so. Hell, they colonize empty planets this way even, especially if it's a dangerous sector of space. Even now, who knows how many planets that are distinct and vital started this way? Your DNA could be spread far and wide across the galaxy and you wouldn't even know.

This is of course to justify why everyone looks like cadians, aka gw doesn't want to make a dozen different types of guards.

Violet Eyes

Ever fancied having more eye color than is standard for man? Move to Cadia and your kids will likely get glowing purple/violet eyes, may explain how purple-eyed animu characters tend to be awesome, they must be cadians.

The Place of Lorgar's Enlightenment

While the Imperium would consider this quality the highest order of heresy, perhaps the greatest reason for Cadia's importance is that it is, in many ways, the birthplace of the Horus Heresy. It was on Cadia the forces of the Word Bearers met with Ingethel the Chosen and were inducted into the service of the Ruinous Powers. As such, Cadia holds tremendous ideological importance and sentimental value for the Champions of Chaos.

The Fall of Cadia

GamesWorkshop has recently announced a new Warzone book titled "The Fall of Cadia", and from what has been shown things are not looking good for the Imperials. However with all the forces currently present in the sector (including numerous Knight Households, the vast majority of the Cadian Shock Troopers amongst numerous other Guard forces, the remainder of the Space Wolves who have nothing left to lose, a force of Grey Knights and a metric fuck-ton of closet heretics) they might yet stand a chance.