Editing The Atalantos Worlds (section)

====Slagshed Station, the Cleansing World====
{{Infobox 40k Planet
|name= Slagshed
|bgcolor=black
|fgcolor=white
|image=
|class= Reclamation Facility
|orbdist= 30 AU 
|gravity= 1.64G
|temp= -200C (darkside) +1,200C (sunside) +10,000C (during Flare)
|pop= 750,000,000 (mostly mutants)
|governor= Slagmaster Borx "the Burner" Chelmon
|system= Philovia
|sector= Peltru
|subsector= Ortremen 
|segmentum= Ultima Segmentum
}}

Deep in the Galactic Core lurks a behemoth star. Nearly eighty solar masses, Philovia boils with energy, shedding hot gases and ionizing radiation across a dozen Imperial sectors. It is a marvelous sight, a brilliant blue-white titan which humbles all those nearby. One could easily be forgiven for overlooking its much smaller partner. Just beside Philovia lurks the Slag, a tiny neutron star. The Slag is all that remains of another massive companion, Philovia's long-dead sibling. But the greedy dead still need to eat, and a tendril of indescribably hot gas connects the two. A vampiric umbilical cord devouring Philovia a little piece at a time. 

The Slag is wasteful in its consumption, and the entire system is shrouded in hot gas and tumbling debris that missed its mark. From these ashes, a handful of planets clawed their way into existence at the system's fringes. Life would never evolve here, and even if it did Philovia would soon join its sibling in death, as do all massive stars. No time for evolution. The Slagshed is by far the largest of these remnant embers, significantly more massive than than Terra. It is barren and lifeless, awash in radiation. No useful minerals, no water. Slagshed cannot even boast an atmosphere despite its large size. 

But there is one characteristic that the resourceful Scribes have found use for. The binary pair have a very regular history of abuse. Once every eighteen hours, clockwork precise as the finest Imperial timepieces, the Slag consumes too much. Its accretion disk overflows and a colossal shockwave propagates through the system at incredible speeds. By the time the outburst reaches Slagshed, it is spread into a gigantic cloud, and the planet's exposed hemisphere roasts for hours as it passes through. For unknown millennia this cycle has repeated itself, turning one half of the slowly rotating world into molten lava, while the other half remains perpetually frozen. 

The Atalantos Worlds produce a titanic amount of raw material and industrial goods, but despite Arelex's best efforts they produce an equally tremendous amount of waste. No recycling or reclamation system in the galaxy could handle such a burden. Except for the Slagshed. Every day, thousands of merchant barges dump gigatons of material onto Slagshed's sunside. And every day, those gigatons go up in flames all at once. The repeated cycles of melting and remelting allow the heavy metals to sink and the lighter materials to rise, serving as a colossal molecular sieve for everything imaginable. Organic compounds are broken down, and everything is totally sterilized. By the time any given point on the surface has made it to the night side, it has seen hundreds of flares. As Slagheap's lethargic rotation finally brings cool relief to the boiling material, thousands of Imperial mobile refineries salvage everything they possibly can from the newly cooled slice, launching valuable payloads into the sheltering darkness of the Slagshed's shadow. As the dawn threatens to catch up, they move a few dozen kilometers, burrow as deeply as they can, and wait for the next flare. 

The only law on Slagshed is that work means life. Most of the laborers are hardened criminals and Imperial deserters. Mutants are commonly shipped here in droves. The punishment for any crime is to be given a void suit and chained to the surface, awaiting the victim's final sunrise. And yet, Slagshed is a kind of refuge for many. Despite the danger, most of the work is maintaining machinery. The actual digging is done by colossal mining bores and dredge haulers, for no amount of human labor could do the job quickly enough. It is a harsh, unpleasant planet, but the Slagmaster is fair. Without prejudice or malice, he adheres to the one law of Slagshed absolutely. All workers are equal in his eyes, so long as they work.  Philovia's seething sunlight provides them with all the energy they could possibly need to sustain life's necessities, and virtually anything can be synthesized from the slag residue. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and dozens of other raw elements feed into the recombinators, offering luxury undreamt of on most worlds. Inside the vast machinery, there is clean air, distilled water, and endless food. Everything is pure and unpolluted, for it is created fresh after each flare delivers new energy. Pollution never lingers long in a world designed from the ground up for reclamation and purification. 

In this way Slagshed has become almost a holy site for mutants across the Atalantos Worlds. Though they are despised in the public eye, Slagshed gives them a safety valve when faced with execution, a bolthole to hide in. If one can get past the fear of living next to a routinely exploding star, caged in a shell of moving metal, Slagshed is actually a cut above many other worlds. Even the most wretched mutants can sometimes be purified here. 

Freed of the environmental toxins from their birth worlds, many mutants begin to expel their poisons and heal, for the human body is more resilient than most would believe. For this reason, all mutants within the Atalantos Worlds are sent to the Slagshed as soon as they are identified and caught. One particularly successful policy enacted by the Atalantos government is that any mutant who ''willingly'' turns themselves in will also be given (experimental) medical care by Slagshed's best doctors, some of the absolute best in the Imperium thanks to hard-earned experience treating mutation day in and day out. Though no formal education exists on Slagshed, the master and apprentice system maintains a powerful tradition of oral history, and sheer weight of trial and error has produced libraries of useful information compiled into the vast ''Praecticum Purificatum'', and Magos Biologis from across the Imperium make routine pilgrimages to Slagshed Station in order to get the latest copy. 

Most importantly, deformed parents occasionally give birth to healthy children on Slagshed, to the celebration of all. The War Scribes use these lucky ones as propaganda, trumpeting the resilience of the human genome over all obstacles. Not everyone can be cleansed in such a way, but it provides something more essential than air, water, or food. Hope.

A most unusual world.