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Death World

2021-01-09T22:54:11Z

2603:7080:4D00:BDE4:E814:7B3D:E42D:47EF: /* Notable Death Worlds */

''Not to be confused with [[Deathworld]], a homebrew alternate universe setting inspired by a picture of Barack Obama looking badass in a Soviet uniform.''

A '''Death World''' (''Mundus in Articulo Mortis'', which is <s>Latin</s> High Gothic for "world at the moment of demise") is a classification of world used by the [[Imperium of Man]] to describe various worlds where everything on the planet is trying to kill its human population, much like the good ol' Ice Age. You know the old saying if you can't adapt to an environment, make it adapt to you? Doesn't apply on Death Worlds. You have predators the size of [[Land Raider]]s, environments so extremely hot or cold most don't make it into their teens (let alone out of them) and resources are so scarce that every human settlement has adopted a philosophy of "kill or be killed" toward outsiders. However notably the planet still has to technically be colonizable to be a death world. A gas giant may have 400 mile per hour winds and rains acid, but you can't colonize a gas giant. (Note: You can colonize the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, though there are engineering challenges associated with remaining buoyant in supercritical fluid hydrogen. You'd need to use a vacuum as the lifting volume, and somehow deal with super-critical hydrogen leaking through everything, even molecular bonds. So you'd need some kind of carbon-nano-bullshit, foamed ultra-dense-yet-ultra-light metal or or /tg's preferred substance, unicorn horns.) Hence death worlds only apply to worlds hostile enough to mean you would have to be crazy to live there, but you could live there if you were crazy enough to do it.

One must ask why the Imperium allows such worlds to exist, and there are two reasons. One: some of these worlds were colonized many ages ago and only became death worlds later on. Krieg, which was nuked long after it had been settled, and [[Chemos]] (Before it was properly exterminatused), are examples. In these cases, the Imperium did not knowingly settle a death trap, but got one either due to enemy action or them losing dark age technology that kept it from being a death world. Evacuating a planet is nigh on high impossible so the Imperium just tells the people to deal with the new problems. The other reason is that if you can survive all of that, then you're badass enough to become an Aspirant into the [[Space Marines]]. The leftovers? They're a veteran, self-replenishing recruitment pool for some of the most badass Regiments of the [[Imperial Guard]].

==Notable Death Worlds==
*[[Baal]] and its moons, homeworld of the [[Blood Angels]].
*[[Barbarus]], homeworld of the [[Death Guard]] (subjected to [[Exterminatus]] during the [[Great Scouring]])
*[[Caliban_(Warhammer_40,000)|Caliban]], homeworld of the [[Dark Angels]] (destroyed). Though they were determined to civilize it, consequences be damned.
*[[Catachan]], homeworld of the [[Catachan Jungle Fighters]], the Death World of all Death Worlds.
*[[Fenris]], homeworld of the [[Space Wolves]], both before and after [[Magnus]] [[/tg/ gets shit done|came along]] and [[Rip and Tear|wrecked everyone's]] [[Anal circumference|shit]].
*[[Medusa_(Planet)|Medusa]], homeworld of the [[Iron Hands]]
*[[Nocturne]], homeworld of the [[Salamanders]].
*[[Cretacia]], homeworld of the [[Flesh Tearers]], AKA a planet with MUTHERFUKIN DINOSAURS!
*[[Krieg]], homeworld of the [[Death Korps of Krieg]], nuked by loyalists so [[Emprah]] could rule another bare rock. Shit version of Fallout.
* Phaedra, a major part of Peter Fehervari's sub-setting, [[The Dark Coil]]. It's full of predators, bugs, flora, and fauna that will kill or infect you in the most painful way possible. If you don't get taken in by its unusually subtle Chaos corruption, that is. It's not as outrageously lethal as the other planets on this list, but the sheer ease with which humans and Tau alike painfully die or go insane on the planet more than qualifies it here.
*Phyrr of the [[Dark Heresy|Calixis Sector]]. Yeah the air and waters are clean, and the whole place looks normal, but the spores and animals are lethal there as they have some bizarre gene-toxin that kills grown-up people in an instant. So deadly that there is no cure for it, as the Adeptus Mechanicus tried for years unsuccessfully. Thus it's both a Death World and Penal World, as well as an [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] Harvest World where the Biologis Branch sees the unique compounds as extremely valuable. If riots occur inside one of the filtered domes, then the Techpriests simply [[Grimdark|turn off the filtration]]. Home to the beautiful, yet deadly, Phyrr Cat.
*Jemadal, The planet that the [[Raptors]] crashed their entire chapter into after getting blown of course in a warp storm. A planet covered in dense slimy jungles with carnivorous plants, swarms of voracious predators, and enough humidity in the atmosphere to suffocate a Space Marine. Since the entire Chapter was stranded there for 7 years, they got pretty good at jungle warfare and basically turned into Space Marine Catachan.

{{40k-Planets}}

The Dark Coil

2021-01-09T22:46:13Z

2603:7080:4D00:BDE4:E814:7B3D:E42D:47EF: /* Linking Threads */

The setting (if such a term applies) to the stories written by [[Black Library]] writer Peter Faheravi.

==Wait... What?==

The Dark Coil is a rather unusual setting / concept / something created in novels and short storys of Peter Faheravi. Although they take place on a few common settings or involve a few overarching general organisations, there are no direct links between characters or the main plotlines of each story. And given the horror / pyshcological elements of most of Faheravi's stories, attempting to figure it out can be tricky. Or [[skub]]. Or both.

A crucial conceit of the setting is the malleability of reality depending on individual perception, often aided by Chaos shennanigans. Whilst regular lovecraftian Chaos stuff does still occur within the Coil, it's rarely as direct and clear cut as most depictions in the fluff.

Attempting to unpick the Coil is tricky because most characters are either unreliable narrators, mad, delusional, or deliberately hiding things from the reader. This said, there are a few linking factors that overlap over most of the stories.

==Linking Threads==

* The Angel's Resplendent / Angels Penitent - Originally two seperate chapters that GW gave Fehervari permission to turn into different incarnations of the same chapter. The former were inspiring, humanistic craftsmen. The latter were Judge Dredd calibre fun police. Both incarnations had their dark sides ; the Resplendent apparently thought getting their aspirants to walk through a Chaos haunted forest (and situating their Fortress Monastry near it) was a good idea. The Penitent apparently abandoned most of their duties to the Imperium in favour of removing all stains of their past, despite significant numbers of their chapter still doing forbidden artistic things on the downlow.

* Phaedra - Space-Vietnam. [[Catachan|No, not that one]], specifically Space-Apocalypse Now. It's a [[Death World]] the Imperium and [[Tau]] use as a dumping ground for their broken and problematic troops and commanders, keeping them fighting in a contrived proxy war to avoid having to contest a wider area of space. People down there go crazy, if they aren't already. Ostensibly loyal regiments defect to the T'au or otherwise go renegade from Imperial Command. It's all but stated the planet is ''extremely'' chaos-tainted, with oddities such as coral temples made by forgotten civilizations around which no vegetation grows, characters being haunted by ghosts, and a tendency to drive any inhabitants but the native population (the Saathla) insane. If they don't get infected by the mutagenic fungus or poisoned by the local fauna. For some reason, the native human(?) population bears a resemblance to the Deep One hybrids from the work of [[H.P. Lovecraft]].

* Vytarn/Redemption-219 - A shrine world. Originally an endless ocean, bad things happened there and it turned into an ocean of fire. Unknown to everyone who lives there, the planet is effectively a sewer grate for the Webway. It ends up being a magnet for cults of all stripes and creeds - at one point there are at least two competing chaos cults, one genestealer one, and numerous Imperial cults all duking it out.

* Providence - a recent inductee into the Imperium from before the DAOT. It was conquered in a religious crusade, initially made tricky by Providences pro-science stance. Ironically enough, they start discovering Chaos juju after they join the Imperium. Uniquely for 40k, they are unambigously based on pre-20th century United States, with elements of the US Civil War thrown in. A core belief of it's people is that of the "Thunderground" - a point of their lives where they face their greatest challenge that either changes them forever or ends them entirely - sometimes both at once. Other characters in the Coil face similar pivotal moments and such "Thundergrounds" have a propensity to overlap.

* The Sunken Worlds - a system of seemingly oceanic worlds, many of which have a tendency to spawn some of the most fanatical and cruel Imperial Guard regiments.

* "The Emperor Condemns" - A common phrase throughout the Coil as well as an overaching belief ; originally introduced by the Lethean Mariner regiments (imagine Waterworld crossed with Krieg with the fatalism spiced with religious fanatacism). Basically, they believe the Emperor is not the carer of humanity and is instead it's punisher. The Angels Penitent take large parts of their inspiration from the creed and whilst the Torn Prophet who inspired them has possible links to the Lethean Creed, an ironclad link is not certain.

[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Black Library]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

The Dark Coil

2021-01-09T22:45:34Z

2603:7080:4D00:BDE4:E814:7B3D:E42D:47EF: /* Linking Threads */

The setting (if such a term applies) to the stories written by [[Black Library]] writer Peter Faheravi.

==Wait... What?==

The Dark Coil is a rather unusual setting / concept / something created in novels and short storys of Peter Faheravi. Although they take place on a few common settings or involve a few overarching general organisations, there are no direct links between characters or the main plotlines of each story. And given the horror / pyshcological elements of most of Faheravi's stories, attempting to figure it out can be tricky. Or [[skub]]. Or both.

A crucial conceit of the setting is the malleability of reality depending on individual perception, often aided by Chaos shennanigans. Whilst regular lovecraftian Chaos stuff does still occur within the Coil, it's rarely as direct and clear cut as most depictions in the fluff.

Attempting to unpick the Coil is tricky because most characters are either unreliable narrators, mad, delusional, or deliberately hiding things from the reader. This said, there are a few linking factors that overlap over most of the stories.

==Linking Threads==

* The Angel's Resplendent / Angels Penitent - Originally two seperate chapters that GW gave Faheravi permission to turn into different incarnations of the same chapter. The former were inspiring, humanistic craftsmen. The latter were Judge Dredd calibre fun police. Both incarnations had their dark sides ; the Resplendent apparently thought getting their aspirants to walk through a Chaos haunted forest (and situating their Fortress Monastry near it) was a good idea. The Penitent apparently abandoned most of their duties to the Imperium in favour of removing all stains of their past, despite significant numbers of their chapter still doing forbidden artistic things on the downlow.

* Phaedra - Space-Vietnam. [[Catachan|No, not that one]], specifically Space-Apocalypse Now. It's a [[Death World]] the Imperium and [[Tau]] use as a dumping ground for their broken and problematic troops and commanders, keeping them fighting in a contrived proxy war to avoid having to contest a wider area of space. People down there go crazy, if they aren't already. Ostensibly loyal regiments defect to the T'au or otherwise go renegade from Imperial Command. It's all but stated the planet is ''extremely'' chaos-tainted, with oddities such as coral temples made by forgotten civilizations around which no vegetation grows, characters being haunted by ghosts, and a tendency to drive any inhabitants but the native population (the Saathla) insane. If they don't get infected by the mutagenic fungus or poisoned by the local fauna. For some reason, the native human(?) population bears a resemblance to the Deep One hybrids from the work of [[H.P Lovecraft]].

* Vytarn/Redemption-219 - A shrine world. Originally an endless ocean, bad things happened there and it turned into an ocean of fire. Unknown to everyone who lives there, the planet is effectively a sewer grate for the Webway. It ends up being a magnet for cults of all stripes and creeds - at one point there are at least two competing chaos cults, one genestealer one, and numerous Imperial cults all duking it out.

* Providence - a recent inductee into the Imperium from before the DAOT. It was conquered in a religious crusade, initially made tricky by Providences pro-science stance. Ironically enough, they start discovering Chaos juju after they join the Imperium. Uniquely for 40k, they are unambigously based on pre-20th century United States, with elements of the US Civil War thrown in. A core belief of it's people is that of the "Thunderground" - a point of their lives where they face their greatest challenge that either changes them forever or ends them entirely - sometimes both at once. Other characters in the Coil face similar pivotal moments and such "Thundergrounds" have a propensity to overlap.

* The Sunken Worlds - a system of seemingly oceanic worlds, many of which have a tendency to spawn some of the most fanatical and cruel Imperial Guard regiments.

* "The Emperor Condemns" - A common phrase throughout the Coil as well as an overaching belief ; originally introduced by the Lethean Mariner regiments (imagine Waterworld crossed with Krieg with the fatalism spiced with religious fanatacism). Basically, they believe the Emperor is not the carer of humanity and is instead it's punisher. The Angels Penitent take large parts of their inspiration from the creed and whilst the Torn Prophet who inspired them has possible links to the Lethean Creed, an ironclad link is not certain.

[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Black Library]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]