Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Septiim (section)

===Septiim Tertius===

The third of the three habitable worlds of the system, Tertius is a land of farms, cities, military bases, and warehouses.  The rocky world is a breadbasket and a bank, so they are heard to grumble.  The tithe of the Economic Zone is collected here and Secundus, and though the significant majority of the people of Septiim see paying the tithe as a holy and fair responsibility because that is what they are educated to think, the fact that it is a huge drain on Tertius’s economy has not gone unnoticed.  Tertius, however, is the world from which most of the Daggers’ recruits come, which is a point of pride for the people here.  The planet’s orbital defenses are extensive, as most are in Septiim, and the world’s two moons are critical to the sector’s anti-Glasian protection.
On the surface, magnificent fields of golden plants wave and shine in the wind, heavy with grains and vegetables for the markets and tithe-barques.  Roadside chapels are a common sight on the planet, which has far more loose and permissive marriage laws than the other Septiim worlds.  The possibility of a young couple eloping to Tertius, finding work on the farms doing honest labor in the great fields, and wedding at a roadside chapel is a common one in local fiction.

Enormous Defense Lasers protect several cities on the planet proper.  The Lasers are not just a sign of the Emperor’s favor, they are payment.  The Forge Moon of Solstice orbits Tertius, and often pays for its food and ore with defensive weapons or power plants.
Other payments, however, come in the form of buildings.  The planet, for instance, has most of the few surface factories in the system able to manufacture aircraft or Navy units.  The factories manufacture Sky Talons, Vendettas, and civilian aircraft.  Small Marauder Bomber units built on Solstice allow for defense through carpet bombing of anything that dares land on Tertius’s surface.  The factories are generally built underground or in depressions, to prevent shockwaves from accidental explosions from traveling across the surface and damaging local homes.

Tertius’s capital is a sprawling megapolis of over twenty million souls.  The city lies in the shadow of the cluster of tectonic mountains near the planet’s equator, similar to the ones on Secundus, but much taller.  Inside, the solid walls of Arbites Precincts loom over gambling and vice districts like weary chaperones.  Brothels, gambling halls, tourist traps, auction houses, artisan workshops, and other places of spending and making money leech out along the arterial roadways of the vast Tertius Loger City, the largest single city by population in the system.  Though the city has a relatively high crime rate, the imminence of the next Glasian Migration has put both a damper on the fun and an urgent edge to it.

The world has mining at its barren, rocky southern pole, but its north pole is a six-mile-thick of block of solid ice, resting in an asteroid crater.  Its oceans are cold and not very saline, making it excellent for fishing.  The warm equatorial latitudes serve as a paradise resort for Septiim’s wealthy, and there is a huge, formally sanctioned mausoleum in a secluded island chain there.  The Navy has a small shipyard in its orbit, but it pales in comparison to the Gargantuan.  The shipyard can only manufacture vessels of Viper class, or small freighters.

Aside from the capital, the planet is very much an archetypal Imperial Garden World.  The planet has thousands of smaller cities, ranging from small farming villages to enormous metropolises.  Each city with more than one thousand residents has a small military facility in it at least, complete with radar and communication arrays, all of them designed to detect incoming Glasians or pirates and allow rapid response to their arrival.

There is another huge city on the planet: Monarch Processional.  This is the hub of tithe payments for both the planet and the outer worlds, as a bipartite cargo nexus.  Its surface area is a massive, bustling city of trade and shipping, with well over four hundred passenger, cargo, and military train lines.  Its space component is a geosynchronous asteroid base with large cargo bays and a logistical office for the Tithe Collections department of the Adeptus Administratum, the Departmento Exacta.  This sprawling city and spaceport have long merged into one.  It features recruitment centers for many of the Imperial institutions that do not hinge on the lineage of the applicants like the Commissariat does.  Among them is the Blue Daggers Chapter, which draws recruits from the port for testing.

The culture of the cities outside the capital can vary widely depending on the local climate.  Cities nearer to the poles tend to be quieter and more peaceful, with smaller law enforcement and military activity.  Equatorial cities tend to be far more active and have large compounds studded about them.  In these compounds, rich Imperial citizens and nobles live, then fly their aircars to nearby restaurants or other entertainment venues to seek an evening’s diversion.  Their Thimble aircars soar over the heads of the laboring artisan classes, which work on the street-level factories and shops that process the gigatons of raw resources that flow through the planet’s hands.
With relatively few of the great Merchant Houses active in the system, much of the commerce of the Septiim Economic Zone is local.  The Blue Daggers publicly have no comment on this, but privately are glad they don’t have to worry about all the extra traffic that more Guilds would represent.  Policing an area of space in a sixteen-light-year cube is hard enough as it is.

Judges peer out at the cities from behind the polarized visors of their helms and from the battlements of their huge precinct-fortresses.  The Arbites presence in the system sorties from Tertius, and it is from here that the Arbites boarding practice station in the outer system draws its staff and budget.

Above the planet, its defenses sit ready for Glasian assault.  Unlike the other Garden worlds of the system, Tertius employs a single, colossal defense platform, with fifty satellites orbiting it, no larger than Lightnings.  The platform is a rough cube of metal, four kilometers on a side, and mounts battlecruiser-level weapons on each side.  The satellites each sport four aspect-seeking missile launchers, and one larger anti-bomber missile tube, along with one point defense multi-laser.  They are too small to stop a Glasian ship by themselves, but that’s the point of having fifty.


Equinox is a chuck of iron and space rock, with no real material value, but its gravity is just high enough to support simple hab structures.  With a complement of solar panels augmenting its plasma reactors, this station serves as the hub of the system’s auspexes and sensoria nets.  The System Defense Force naval construction plans include a Defense Laser on both poles of Equinox in the future, to help stave off the short-ranged but brutally powerful Glasian Cylinders.

There is an asteroid belt between Tertius and Tetranus.  The asteroids are manganese, stone, vaporous nitrogen, iron, nickel, zinc, and trace amounts of gold.  Gargantuan is here, the headquarters of the Blue Daggers and their Chapter Fortress.  It contains a small shipyard of its own, capable of manufacturing the Chapter’s vessels of sub-battlecruiser class.  Its enormous plasma reactor is more than capable of powering anything up to a Ramilies with ease, giving it extra power for its void shields and weapons.  Though the thick stone and metal ore of the asteroid serve as almost impenetrable armor, the true might of the station is its colossal Triple Nova cannon, which many times superior in power to that of an Ark Mechanicus’s main battery.  Its external size is less than that of a Ramilies, and its interior space is significantly less as well, but its serfs and servitors do not require the numbers needed to maintain a larger station.  Its dedicated Astropathic temple serves as the communication hub of all military assets in the system, including all local Mechanicus, Navy, SDF, and Astartes vessels.  A huge gallery of skilled Tech-adepts and naval ratings maintain the cogitators that control the vox arrays and psy-hubs, while a dedicated team of Scholastica Psykana and Adeptus Astra Telepathica laborers carefully operates the psycrystal web that allows for Astropathic communications.  Arbites and other Imperial institutions use the Astropathic temple on Primus instead.

There is increasing concern by the superstitious on Tertius about the blackening of their moon, Solstice.  Some even believe it to be a sign of the Emperor’s disapproval of whatever it is that they happen to feel guilty about at the time.  In reality, of course, it is nothing more than the vacuum-preserved exhaust of the subterranean factories, mining gear, and power plants of the growing Forge Moon, as well as its massive solar panel arrays.  Naturally, however, the Imperial proletarian mindset rarely lets inorganic chemistry get in the way of a superstition.  Some particularly exploitative charlatanry has even convinced some Tertius residents that the Glasians are responsible for the darkening, and that the total darkness of the surface will be a sign of the very end of Septiim.

There are extensive mining and refining void platforms in the belt, but none even approaches the scale of the Gargantuan, which started life as a Mechanicus mining site.  Some small observation platforms, similar in design to those that defend Armageddon, keep watch for Glasian invaders.  They are vastly weaker than those huge structures, but are defended by small, belt-fed close-in weapons.  The Arbites anti-pirate taskforce maintains a microgravity boarding training center here.
Beside it, the Blue Daggers maintain their memorial.  Once, the Daggers were headquartered in the Gleamlock Asteroid Mine, not the Gargantuan.  The Glasians destroyed Gleamlock during the second invasions, when the Daggers were just Exigent Task Unit Cloudburst.  Now, all that remains of their ad hoc command center is a hollow shell of melted rock and metal, and the tiny memorial plaque the Daggers guard with a volunteer, year-round.


{{CloudburstSystemFull
|worldtype=           Forge Moon Solstice
|satellite=     N/A
|troposphericcomposition=      Argon 40%, Nitrogen 40%, Krypton 20%
|religion=      Cult Mechanicus
|governmenttype=     Adeptus Mechanicus
|planetarygovernor=   Yes (interim)
|adeptpresence=    Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astartes, Adeptus Mechanicus
|climate=   N?A
|geography=             Dead, barren rock
|gravity= Solstice has .5 Terran Gravity on the surface, but artificial gravity plates make the gravity Terran standard within the warrens
|daylength=    N/A
|economy=      Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones
|principalexports=     Machines, Astartes Wargear, Military Vehicles, Bombers, Prefabricated Houses
|principalimports= Industrial Slag, Food, Water, Air, Convicts
|countriesandcontinents=   N/A
|military=      Skitarii, Legio Cybernetica Solstice, Vigil-Keepers Marauder fleet
|contactwithothersystems=          Daily, thanks to its industrial importance
|tithegrade=   Aptus Non (all industrial output goes to adjacent worlds anyway)
|population=    2,908,000 (humans), 3,000,000 (servitors, estimated)
}}

====Solstice====

With the arrival of the Glasians, and the uniformly dire predictions of the Tarot, Septiim’s future looked grim.  After the Second Glasian Conclave, the powers of Septiim decided that in order to prevent the vulnerable system from being overrun, new assets would be needed to fight off the xeno scum.  However, the Cognomen Forges were already straining at maximum production, and the Naxos industrial base was busy with its various problems.  Drumnos Sector Mechanicus representatives came up with a solution: a miniature Forge World.  The large and resource-rich moon Solstice was the natural choice for this ambitious project.  The Forge Worlds of Syracuse in Drumnos, Fabique in Naxos, and Cognomen in Cloudburst would share responsibility for getting the project off the ground, rather than any one bearing the cost unfairly.  Raw labor was not hard to come by in the expanding Cloudburst.  Armies of laborers, mostly Servitors, convicts, and those displaced by the Glasians descended on Solstice, clad in void suits and armed with electric diggers and shovels.  Cognomen and Maskos provided the great mining machines and tunnelers that would take over once the foundations were dug.  Fabique provided the orbiting logistical assets and defenses.  Syracuse provided its deadly Robots to guard the site.  Manual labor gave way to tunnelers as Cognomen’s gifts arrived.  As the snake-like tunneling units dug deep down below, Techpriests and Adepts erected oxygen shields and pressure walls over the huge hole that would someday lead to their future.  Artificial gravity plates came next, and oxygen separators.  Carbon filters and power plants popped up on tunnel walls like fungi as a whole world appeared inside the rocky moon.

For four hundred years, the machines and people of Solstice labored, building habs, factories, temples, great hydroponic and protein recycling chambers, power sources, and places of strictly regulated leisure and retirement.  As the underground world grew and grew, far faster than Drimmerzole or even Maskos’s subterranean networks ever had, the Legio Cybernetica Robots from Syracuse settled into their charging and maintenance cradles, to await their defense of the world.

The armies of Solstice are a force of shifting power in the Septiim system.  Armed with the same collection of eclectic and potent technoarcana as any other force of the Cult Mechanicus, Solstice’s forces are as capable as most Mechanicus forces when it comes to combat.  The issue they face is size.  Solstice is but a Forge Moon, not a Forge World, and therefore has serious scale problems compared to mighty Cognomen or ancient Mars.  Solstice Skitarii are fiercely loyal to Mars, not Solstice, though of course the armies of Solstice would be foolish not to treat their allies well.  Solstice is currently far too small to support a Titan legion, though they would dearly like one.  Given the logistical demands of the Blue Daggers and the local Arbites and Sororitas, Solstice can divert little of its resources to equipping its own, native forces.  These forces mostly take the form of Cult Mechanicus armies, and a small Legio Cybernetica force.  It is the Cybernetica in which Solstice takes the most pride, as even Cognomen does not field Robots.  Solstice also plays home to large Marauder Bomber factories, well below the surface, and can stage a fleet of these craft in defense of the system if needed.

Solstice is beginning to develop its own cultural identity.  The world’s maze of tunnels and steel-walled hab buildings don’t support much non-work activity, but the barren moonscape outside has found its way into some of the hull art of Solstice craft.  Its defense fleet, the Basilikon Astra Solstice, consists of six Sword frigates and a Cobra Missile Destroyer; the Solstice leadership plans to make a new shipyard capable of a four-kilometer-long beam as soon as they can get the money together.  Leaders of all three of its sponsor Forge Worlds meet regularly in its internal meeting chambers to prioritize the expansions, and eventually elect a leader.  If the political contention grows any louder, Mars may send a single Magos to become the new Lord Fabricator, and so all three are presently keeping their dispute quiet.  Nobody wants to become the one who complained loudly enough for Mars to feel the need to step in, least of all Lister Beraxos, who has his own reasons for wanting to avoid Martian scrutiny.
The Solstice military initially consisted of the security crews from Syracuse, Cognomen, and Fabique, but since then, its Skitarii have formed into their own distinct formation, with their own camouflage and uniform codes.  They make heavy use of Rangers, and are far less dependent on scorched-earth weapons than their Cognomen brethren; they also stand more lightly on the general Skitarii disdain for transports for infantry.  After all, their homeworld is a barren wasteland with no atmospheric pressure, so there is a need for them to use transports in daily life if they visit the surface.  Lacking Titans, they have no Corpus Secutarii, but the Solstice Robotic Legion is a clenched fist of steel and Ceramite, and their attendant Electropriests and Cybernetica Dominus warriors are fanatical in their devotion to the Machine.  In fact, this is a source of some derision from Cognomen, which could field a Cybernetica unit but chooses not to.  The most popular Cognomen philosophical mindset has little place in it for Robots, even Imperial ones, and views them as being a shade too close to true Abominable Intelligence.

Solstice makes use of convict labor, and sometimes employs bomb collars to keep the convicts in line.  Of course, there is no way off the moon that isn’t under the control of the Mechanicus, so this may not always be needed, but it does come up from time to time.

The world has a few small Lagrange stations between itself and Equinox, and between itself and Tertius.  They consist of various asteroid redirection facilities, which can collect space rocks and debris, which is then either melted on site or redirected to Solstice proper.  This serves to clear the remains of Glasian ships after their assaults on Septiim, at a small scale.  Heavier defense stations and small orbital docks allow for limited manufacture and protection over Solstice’s surface, but the subterranean work takes priority, and is far more productive.

The system of Septiim is a precious jewel in the galaxy’s outer fringes.  The presence of fully three non-terraformed and shirtsleeves-habitable worlds in one system, with three gravity-anchor gas giants in the outer system, is extraordinarily rare.  That humans and Eldar alike would have missed it for colonization beggars belief.  Nevertheless, no alien has yet laid claim to the Septiim system, and it has remained a human colony of the Imperium for well over two thousand years of relative stability, despite everything.  Referred to colloquially as a Pasture Gate system, both for the tendency of such systems to support immense agriculture and the general need for those systems to hold massive defenses, these systems are treasures beyond price for the Administratum.


====Outer Worlds====

The three gas giants in the outer system are economic holdings of the Administratum, and serve to pump chemicals and ores into the greater markets of the system.  However, given the routine beatings the Septiim system takes from the Glasians, the stations demand heavy protection from the SDF and Navy, and don’t always get it.
Septiim Tetranus is a vast gas giant, it is the largest body in the system beside Septiim itself.  The cloudy ribbons of a hundred gasses and orbital rings encircle the solid uranium core, believed by astro-Adepts to be a piece of the core of one of the first second-stage stars to have existed in the galaxy.  Its many dozens of moons are too small to be of great resource value, but their incredible beauty and magnificent vistas have resulted in some of the larger ones to be bought by nobles and made into shrines or vacation homes.  Its atmosphere is mined for rare gasses, including a gaseous form of petrochemical that is identical to the product of the first stage of promethium refinement.  Its rings conceal a top-secret Navy sensor platform, and its two poles have large way-stations for gas freighters on their way to the refineries.  The world has over eight thousand residents on its stations and its eighty-five moons.

Septiim Pentius is also an economically active region.  Large Lagrange stations in this gas giant’s orbit house thousands of pilgrims, who journey here to visit a large shrine on the L1 station.  Within the shrine, known as the Home of the Penitent Traveler, is the cryo-preserved body of a member of the bridge crew of the ''Imperator Somnium'', the ship the Emperor had used during the later years of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.  Exactly why it is so far from Terra is unknown.

The gas giant itself is a nitrogen giant, though its polar clouds include rich and vast clouds of hydrogen and methane, which the orbital platforms mine for fuel.  Its moons are much larger than Tetranus’, and there is some minor mining there, for ice and frozen petrochemicals.

This world has a hair under thirty-one thousand people on its orbitals and moon bases, and twelve moons.

Septiim Septimus, as confusingly named as it is, is the final world in the system.  This cold giant is unremarkable in every scientific way, and its atmosphere is a largely inert mix of light noble gasses, methane, nitrogen, and other common gasses.  Its moons are small and also unremarkable, its gravity is high enough to be annoying to freighter crews, and its sole point of interest is a vaguely pretty brown streak on its atmosphere, where a comet hit the planet at an odd angle.  Its Lagrange points, however, are far more important, as the first one houses a very large void platform, within which the Navy has built a combination dry-dock, hydroponic food growth block, protein recycler, troop garrison, and counter-boarding training center.  The soldiers here have the dubious honor of being the first to be attacked when the Glasians assault the system, and postings here during the buildup to the centennial invasions are regarded as something of a punishment.  The Mechanicus also maintains a small outpost at another Lagrange point, where a repair station and long-range vox relay have been built around a chunk of cometary ice and nickel, caught by Septimus’s gravity.  The Blue Daggers use a small, servitor-maintained void platform here for Terminator deep-space boarding practice and isolation training.  The Daggers abandon the station when the time comes to repel the Glasians once more.

Its seven moons and its various stations hold a wildly fluctuating number of people, from sixty to ninety thousand.