Editing Nobledark Imperium Notable Planets (section)

== The Pastoral Worlds ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">

After the Unification of Old Earth many nations across the Imperium found themselves having to rebuild their government from scratch after having thrown off the chains of their old oppressors. The people of the steppes had the additional difficulty in creating a centralized government in a land where there had been none since. Jaghatai had been elected Khan of all the nomad tribes east of the Kashgar Pass, but he did not command the allegiance of all the steppe nomads. As the Khanate extended its influence west into places that had once been known as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Khanate found itself in contact with nomad tribes which it had not heard from for decades. As the Imperium’s influence grew, these tribes gradually flocked to Jaghatai’s banner. They realized that out of all the high-ranking figures in the Imperium, the Khan spoke for them, and confederating with the Khanate was the best way to preserve their way of life.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

One of these nomads from the western steppes was Temir Baltubekov, better known by his nickname of “the Iron Scribe”. Despite being a nomad Temir showed an aptitude for administration, and Jaghatai took advantage of his ability to organize things. Most people today think of the Iron Scribe as figure of steely resolve and indomitable will, able to do ten times the work of other men. The people who actually knew him remember him as an exasperated, overworked man who found himself having to do the day-to-day minutia and logistics of running a country that Jaghatai had no ability for. Jaghatai was a capable leader, but he was a doer who preferred to inspire people and lead from the front rather than sit around making commandments. Jaghatai’s idea of building infrastructure was to physically go and put a building together with his own two hands rather than sign the decrees to make it possible. As a result, the Iron Scribe was a key figure in turning the Khanate into an actual country, and when Jaghatai stepped down from control of the Khanate to avoid a conflict of interest he named the Iron Scribe his successor as ruler of the Khanate.

As the Great Crusade spread across the stars, the Khan came across numerous worlds that reminded him of his old homeland. At the same time, Jaghatai was not blind to all the changes happening on Old Earth, hearing of what was happening from his friends in the other legions and letters from his extended family. However, when he returned to Old Earth early in the Great Crusade to bury his wife Kasha, Jaghatai saw the writing on the wall. Old Earth was becoming hyper-urbanized, and soon there would be no room for his kind of people. Seeing the future that lie before him, the Khan decided to call a kurultai of the Khanate to discuss their future as a nation and a people.

At the kurultai, Jaghatai told the assembled leaders of the Khanate that there were two paths that lie before them. One was assimilation, to completely lose their identity in the changing world that would have no place for their people. The other option was migration. The Khanate didn’t have to abandon their ancestral homelands, let them be the urbanized, administrative hub of the Khanate if need be, but it could spread out, establish colonies all across the galaxy so that something of their culture could survive. As primarch, Jaghatai could get them first and exclusive rights on settlement if he can get the paperwork through before anyone else, a fact made easier by only him and his crew knowing where the planet was for the moment. Hearing Jaghatai’s vision, the overwhelmingly vast majority of the Khanate decide that yes, the future he described does sound like a vast improvement over the way things here are going.

Having the approval of his people, the Khan (or rather, Jaghatai and Temir, given the Khan’s “talent” for paperwork) set into motion his plan to earmark a number of worlds for the expansion of the Khanate. It helped that many of these worlds were not useful for much other than livestock herding. Most of these planets were either uninhabited, or inhabited by feudal or feral worlders that easily assimilated into the Khanate's way of life, much like Skandian culture and the inhabitants of Fenris. These worlds would form the core of what would come to be known as the Pastoral Worlds. Not all Pastoral Worlds are former Khanate colonies (Solomon is a good example of one that is not), but many are, and even the ones that do not can relate to the other Pastoral Worlds through their shared history of livestock farming to the point that the Pastoral Worlds form a distinct socio-ethnic unit within the Imperium similar to the Fenrisian Colonies.

Among the planets claimed by the Khanate was Chogoris, the future home of the White Scars chapter. However, when Jaghatai and the White Scars first discovered at the planet, they found it was completely depopulated. The planet had obviously been inhabited in the past, as indicated by the abundance of abandoned ruins across its surface less than a few centuries old, but something must have happened since then to its original inhabitants. Some historians suspect Chogoris' original inhabitants had become involved with the Ruinous Powers, which ended up wiping out the planet's native population. Upon hearing these suspicions Jaghatai remarked that this was exactly why the Khanate was better off for having broken free of Ursh, and his only regret was that he hadn’t done it sooner. Ursh was a self-destructive fire that would have consumed itself. Nevertheless, Chogoris was perfect for the Khanate's needs, being virtually a large-scale version of the lands of the Khanate back on Old Earth. Chogoris became one of the most successful of the Pastoral Worlds, the closest thing they have to a cultural hub, and today is what most people think of when one thinks of Pastoral Worlds.

Jaghatai’s vision proved eerily prescient, though not in the way he had expected. He had expected the steppes and the mountains that he had once called home to be swallowed up by skyscrapers over the course of a millennium. He hadn’t expected them to be burned to their bedrock by the Warboss of Warbosses within a few hundred years after he called for his pilgrimage to the stars. Yes, Old Earth was rewilded after the War of the Beast, but it was tamed wilderness, in the manner of parks and farmland. Livestock were present, but they were raised in pens, not herded on the open range. It was no place for a steppe nomad. After the War of the Beast, and the Khanate being absorbed into the Imperium, the Iron Scribe found a position in the Administratum. He was a minor figure, at best, in the organization’s history, but Pastoral Worlders love to bring him up when talking about their people’s achievements.

Today, the old Khanate is only distantly remembered by the people of the pastoral worlds, mostly in the sense of a semi-mythological lost homeland. People from pastoral worlds like to come to Old Earth to see the remnants of the old Khanate as a sort of cultural pilgrimage. One of the few things that remains of the Khanate on Old Earth is an obelisk inscribed with a message that the Iron Scribe had sent to Jaghatai during the Unification of Sol. In it, the Scribe requests that Jaghatai always remember who he was and where he came from, even as he sought to build a brighter future for his people in the stars. Jaghatai apparently found the words of the message so profound that he ordered it carved onto an obelisk for posterity. This obelisk was discovered amidst the rolling irradiated wastelands of the Old Khanate, a miraculous salvage from the horrors of the War of the Beast. Today, it sits in a quiet, open plaza in a park between two hives of Old Earth, the closest place one could get on the planet to its old home. This "Last Piece of the Khanate" is considered a relic of paramount historical importance to the people of the Pastoral Worlds, and is often the centerpiece of any pilgrimages Pastoral Worlders make to Old Earth.

</div>
</div>