Editing Setting:Tri-Sector/Naxos (section)

==Common Factors==

The worlds of Naxos Sector are ancient compared to Cloudburst.  Their Hive and Industrial Worlds are smog-choked mazes of buildings, bestial wildernesses, violent gang territories, toxic Nurglite Contaminant zones, and walled-off compounds of unfathomably rich Highborn merchant and noble families.  The Imperial Guard regiments of Naxos include hundreds of millions of men and women recruited from the great Hive Worlds that dot the region, and not far fewer drawn from the populations of the noxious industrial cities that fuel the Hives and Forges on other worlds.  This is not without benefit, as the [[Officio Munitorum]] has been able to use the bonds of gang loyalty between the groups to ensure relatively high retention and low desertion rates among their Hive Scum tithe regiments.  However, it does mean that many of the Naxos Sector regiments do lack any intrinsic advanced technical or motor vehicle skills, which in turn requires extra training and Mechanicus oversight, which are expensive costs in the war-wracked Naxos Sector.  Others from more habitable Hive Worlds have that training, and often lead the countercharge to drive back Nurglite invaders.

As the large cities of Mankind often accumulate pollution and disease thanks to the immense population density they possess, the taint of Nurgle is never far from the Naxos populace.  The Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus is vigilant for any sign of cult activity among either the immense Highborn-packed Hive Spires that decorate the crowns of the vast cities, or signs of other Chaos Gods taking advantage of the cramped living spaces to ferment the strains of sedition.  However, the Ordo Malleus is also present in these places, and focuses more narrowly on ensuring that the huge manpower tithes of the Hives do not contain the seeds of the classic Chaotic infiltration mechanisms: the Warrior Lodges that took the old Legions apart from the inside and spread Warp-taint through the Emperor’s sons.  That, and actual daemons arising from the filth of the Imperial Hives.

The [[Imperial Guard]] of the Naxos Sector must keep a presence active on these worlds at all times.  The threat of [[Nurgle]] can arise slowly or quickly, and to leave the rich worlds undefended would be an unacceptable risk to the Imperium’s ability to contain Warp-spawned threats.  This is a pricy stance, however.  Some Imperial Guard regiments have been raised and stationed at these worlds without ever firing a shot, with all of their soldiers mustering out from age.

Of course, the military consignments of the Sector are more than just Hive Scum in nature.  The vast networks of well-travelled worlds around the physical perimeters of the Sector, far from the Pox Ring from which the Nurglite fleets stage, have less risk of Warp taint, but also fewer residents.  These worlds are the Mining and Agri-world hubs that supply Fabique and the Hives with their endless resources.  The planets around the Naxos periphery provide teratons of food, salt, leather, water, timber, cement mix, and other raw goods to the industrial powerhouses of the region, overseen carefully by experienced Adeptus Terra officials to prevent overharvesting or depopulation.  The Space Marines of the Celestial Knights and the small local Deathwatch stage from here, recruiting from selected worlds and hiding their fleets in the maze of resource-dry asteroids that hang around the edge of the supernovae nebula that birthed the neighboring Sectors.  Here they stand vigil, watching keenly for any sign of Tzeentchian incursions from his target to trailing, or for any sign of the vicious aliens of the Cloudburst Circuit seeking fresh prey in the Naxos Sector’s rich worlds.

Other forces under arms in the region stage from these slightly safer worlds, including a number of small Knight Houses.  Most of these Houses are those that survived the Old Night by hunkering down in the timber-producing worlds of the Rosids Cluster, a network of fifteen systems containing habitable worlds.  These systems are rich in iron, cobalt, nickel, uranium, bauxite, and other useful industrial metals, and the high concentrations of silicon, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in the nebular gasses from which their crusts coalesced ensure that their soils are rich and fertile.  This means that these planets were seized for rapid colonization by the [[Eldar]] and Humans who colonized the region tens of thousands of years ago.  Several of the worlds are still inhabited by Knights and their vassals and peasants, or Eldar [[Exodites]] who have turned their sprawling frontiers into veritable mazes of fortification and concealment that make rooting them out in the face of imminent Nurglite apocalypse a somewhat low priority.

However, some Knights of Naxos Sector do not sortie from these timber-filled paradises or endless fields of grain and tubers.  Some field from the great cities of the Hive Worlds at the core of the Sector’s regional industrial zones.  The core Hive Cities of several of the Terran Federation-era city worlds sometimes field advanced weapons, including Knights, in their own defense, in addition to the huge Hive Scum Guard tithes.  These worlds had the same STC systems as every other, and used the Knight patterns contained within as a template for their own advanced self-defense forces in the face of assault by alien slavers from Old Night’s depths.  Some others of the Hive Worlds surrounding the Pox Ring are so old and so heavily built up that their upper atmospheres contain whole strata of noxious lighter-than-air gas, that vac-suited SDF fliers patrol on great wingships and zeppelins that never need to stop moving or refuel over the tides of pollution.  Others use silent hovercraft and skimmers to patrol the wastes and swamps that dot the land between glowing xenon bulb-studded Hive Spires, seeking mutants or Nurglite cults that hide in the oily water.

Neither are the Hive Worlds the only ones that have unusual defenses.  The Glacier World of Althori is the Imperial planet physically closest to the Pox Ring without being inside it, and has its own methods of defense.  Huge coils of thick iron wire sit beneath the surfaces of some of its ice fields, surrounded by concealed cameras, auspexes, sensorium pods, and even electro-telescopic arrays.  These machines are carefully maintained by incense-swinging priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus in cold-suits, and can detect inbound starships outside of Adeptus Administratum-defined aerial approach corridors from anywhere on the surface.  When they do so, they turn on their heat coils, generating impenetrable mists that completely shroud the ground, buying time for the Althorian Ice Fiend Guard regiments to mobilize their camouflage Rough Rider snowmobiles and Ice Dragoon organic cavalry defenders.  This has saved entire cities from nighttime Nurglite pirate raids, since it makes safe landings almost impossible.