Editing Setting:Tri-Sector (section)

==Regional Terminology and Astrocartographic Nomenclature==
The Cloudburst Sector is a loose sector, with many large star clusters or nebulae. The sector is on the east side of the Segmentum Ultima/extra-Obscurus border, at the extreme galactic north. Large belts of asteroids drift through the void, with the occasional Space Hulk ejected from the Warp and skidding through the darkness. There have never been any large incursions of [[Tyranids]] or [[Necrons]] in the sector, though there are some feral Orks here and there. There is evidence of a much larger [[Ork]] presence in the past, perhaps the remains of an abortive Waaagh! No Tau have reached the sector, and what few Demiurg, Thraxians, Vespids, and [[Kroot]] there are about are mere mercenaries, ultimately of no political consequence. There are no Eldar Craftworlds or Exodite colonies about, and what Eldar are present in the sector are generally pirates, Dark Eldar raiders, or refugees fleeing the Necrons, never in one place for long. Oddly, the sector appears to have been partially passed over for colonization by the ancient Eldar, the Slann, and the primeval Martian and Terran Empires. This is especially strange in the case of the Septiim system itself, since it contains a shocking three shirtsleeves-habitable planets, which in any other sector would have been a prize of unfathomable value to the colonists of old. No unique STC printouts or creations, or components, have ever been found within thirty lightyears of the Septiim system, and there are only four Webway gates within moderate Warp flight distance. The Ork colonies in the area are small, feral, and of little threat, though the Navy has made a point of annihilating the ones it finds growing in size, generally with space-to-surface artillery or precision lances. Were there more battleships in the sector, they may even try to destroy the greenskins. The principal consistent alien threat in the region is instead from Ork Freebooterz. They constantly visit the area, refueling at Gorkypark, the one significant permanent Ork presence in Cloudburst.

The Cloudburst Sector centers on the Celeste system, which contains the moon after which the sector is named. Celeste itself is a planet, a verdant and beautiful paradise world. There are no peripheral Sectors, as the Cloudburst Circuit is not a sector; the Drumnos Sector borders Cloudburst coreward. To trailing, there is the Oldlight Exo-zone, spinward is the Naxos Sector.

The Sector has a common trend among the names of its worlds and stars: they tend to be named after the first or middle names of the Rogue Traders who found them (if an Explorator didn’t get there first). This stems from ancient conflicts among Rogue Trader houses of neighboring Naxos fleets. The Naxos Trader houses competed viciously for naming rights on new Proximate Circuit systems and properties, and thanks to the unpredictable time effects of traveling uncharted Warp routes, sometimes Rogue Traders would arrive at Fabique having equally legitimate claims to having discovered a world.

To resolve this, the Administratum’s Departmento Astrocartigraphicae and the Mechanicus’s Astra Explorator stepped in. They decreed that all Rogue Trader ships that were seeking new worlds in the Proximate Circuit would carry clocks, built to Forge World precision on Fabique itself, all set to the same time. When a Rogue Trader came to a Forge World with a claim of discovery or conquest on a new world in the Circuit, and it was contested by another, the clocks would be compared, and the one with less time displayed on it would be judged accurate. Tampering with the clocks would result in the striking of Colonization Rights from the Warrant of Trade or Writ of Marque the offending Trader Dynasty possessed, plus the less quantifiable scorn of the Machine God.

This new system was immediately put in place and uniformly enforced. It became common practice among exploring Rogue Traders to find a world, perform the fastest possible scans of its atmospheric composition, officially name it after themselves, leave a beacon at the edge of the system declaring this to be the case, and then make a direct course for Fabique to lay staked claims. Worlds with names like Gorum, Johdclan, Foralds, Vasari, and Locke appeared on maps in the Fabique Astrocartigraphicae vault, each with bare minimum settlement data and a meticulously determined date attached. Before long, between the relentless pace of MacDonald’s fleet and over two dozen Rogue Trader flotillas hard at work, the outline of the modern Cloudburst Sector formed. Even the sector’s capital moon orbits a world named after a Rogue Trader, though the Capital was placed on the rainy moon instead of the magnificent paradise of the world itself – perhaps, some mutter, to prevent a Rogue Trader from getting too much credit for their lucky discovery.


Like all regions of His Divine Majesty’s territory, the Cloudburst Sector either uses, or is germane to, terms that come up often in Inquisitorial discussions of it. The following is a list of several.

'''Cloudburst Circuit''': A term for the distant, hard-to-navigate, and mysterious clusters of stars and radioactive gasses that hang beyond the formal ‘edge’ of the Cloudburst Sector, between Imperial territory and the roiling Warp Storms that delineate the outer limits of the Galaxy. Prior to the establishment of the Sector proper, this was titled the Oldlight Proximate Circuit; it was larger, and encompassed the region now known as Cloudburst Sector and the Cloudburst Circuit. The galactic limit Warp Storms, called Terminus Shock, of severity ranging from hideously tumultuous to nearly ‘safe,’ shroud the entire Galaxy. In the Cloudburst Circuit between the Cloudburst Sector and the Galaxy’s northern edge, the storms are thin but violent, and on the rarest of occasions, unmanned probes may even pass beyond them. The Circuit itself has thousands of planets and superasteroids within, but thanks to the high radiation levels of the Circuit’s ubiquitous nebulae, they are hard to reach. Among Imperial Astrocartigraphers, there is a persistent and empirically sound theory that the Warp storms are generated by the fact that the Warp is a mirror of all sentient life, and there are no bodies near the Galaxy that could support life. Therefore, the Warp Storms represent not only the physical edge of the Galaxy, but the practical limit on the range of human Faster-Than-Light travel that relies on total Warp Immersion (as all human and Ork ships do). While this also means Chaos cannot spread to other Galaxies if true, this is small comfort for the Imperium and no comfort for those mad Rogue Traders who have travelled beyond the Warp Storms to find new galaxies to inhabit, who are most surely all dead now.

'''Emergency Command Asset Force (ECAF)''': This formation is unique to Cloudburst. It consists of a single flag-grade officer, usually a Brigadier General, along with their Honor Guard, a small group of specialists including Chaplains, Sanctioned Psykers, Commissars, and Stormtroopers, a handful of vehicle crews, and roughly two hundred veteran infantry. These forces stage from Coriolis and Septiim and fly to their destinations in Fast Clippers manufactured over Hapster.

Each ECAF dispatches to locations where official Guard leadership is needed, and take command of whatever forces await them. ECAFs dispatched to sites of larger conflicts, where an officer higher in rank than Brigadier would command, instead serve as advisors to whomever is already present, perhaps to fill gaps in a chain of command. The field units from each ECAF filter out to cover deficiencies in the present Guard or PDF structure, while the specialists and advisors either attach to the command staff to consult, or take to the field as well as force multipliers. The exact composition of ECAFs can change as Sector Command attaches or removes assets as needed.

For instance, it is common practice to append an extra sniper or rangefinder to an ECAF that will be taking command over an artillery-heavy formation, to augment their target acquisition capability, or a snowmobile Rough Rider unit to an ECAF that will take over an arctic warfare infantry force. ECAFs can exert no control over Navy assets, but they do sometimes include paratroopers with an attached Imperial Navy transport.

Each ECAF lasts only as long as it needs to in order to complete a mission, after which all surviving personnel and equipment are recycled into the general pool of assets on Coriolis and Septiim. When an ECAF is needed, the Imperial Guard authorities on Septiim and Coriolis pack whatever personnel are needed into the new ECAF, which is then given a serial number and the services of an Astropath, shoved into a Navy ship, and sent wherever they are required. Of course, not all Imperial Guard and PDF officials take well to being displaced by a newcomer from off-world, but when the alternative is losing a war, they generally manage to stifle their pride.

Elevation to ECAF General is challenging, and the criteria are different from most advancement opportunities in the Imperial Guard. In order to be promoted to a flag-grade rank and become eligible to assume command of an ECAF, an Imperial Guard officer must have spent at least two years as a Colonel or Lieutenant Colonel in the Guard and have won at least two campaigns against the Emperor’s enemies. Given that wars in the Cloudburst Sector are usually either small brush fires among factions in a planetary population or fought by Rogue Traders in the Circuit, this means that there are relatively few opportunities for a Guard officer to actually qualify to run an ECAF inside the Sector proper.

Thus, many ECAF Generals rise to their rank by being part of a regiment raised to fight in the constant battles against Chaos in the Naxos Sector or against the never-ending pirate hordes of the Drumnos Sector. The Inquisition is aware of this and encourages it, for the most part. High Inquisitrix Lerica may not call herself a Monodominant, but she does hold its tenets that humans should work together to drive all other contenders for galactic rulership extinct in high regard.

Some ECAFs arrive in time to see the war they were supposed to oversee end before they can make a difference, either because the Imperium has lost or because the PDF and Guard were able to drive their threat away. When that happens, by the request of Sector Command, the presiding General can become a permanent part of whatever remains of the Astra Militarum structure on the planet, or collect any defeated survivors and take them for quarantine and interrogation elsewhere. On the rarest of occasions, an ECAF may merge entirely with the command structure of an existing larger formation of the Astra Militarum, and serve as the elite core of that formation. However, this costs Sector Command their most experienced assets, and is done only if Sector Command believes that there is a significant chance that the planet in question might actually fall if it is not done.

Because of the scarcity of psykers in Cloudburst and the sheer distance between Cloudburst and Terra, ECAFs are sometimes the only source of Primaris Psykers and War Psykers in an Imperial command structure. Their use against pirate forces in Drumnos is especially devastating; even pirate lords with a pet hedge witch or two cannot counter the raw, horrible power of a Terra-trained Adeptus Astra Telepathica War Psyker. A Primaris Senior can devastate a whole infantry company with just a few seconds of prep time, drive daemons back into the Warp, or explode the minds of Orks; mere pirates stand little direct threat.

The ECAF model is so successful that some Imperial Commanders have pointedly asked why so few other Sectors have embraced them. The obvious answer of territorial conduct by nearby Sectors, jealous of their own structures and tactics, doesn’t seem to hold up, since the Imperium is desperate for advantages over its enemies. In reality, however, the layout of most Sectors prevents the ECAF structure from being especially useful elsewhere, since most Imperial Sectors are more densely packed with worlds than Cloudburst. 
Cloudburst’s astrogeography has small clusters of worlds shoved close together by the billowing gas of its host supernebula, isolated from each other by up to a dozen light years of hard-to-traverse, radioactive space and Warp rifts. It also has a relatively low population and few psykers. Other Sectors simply do not have these problems, and so the ECAF structure would be more redundant than helpful.

'''Orbitals and Void Platforms''': While the ancient nature and diverse roots of culture and architecture in the greater Imperium have resulted in wildly differing types of space construction before, the Cloudburst Sector is much smaller, younger, and more internally organized. Thus, the types of deep-space construction common in the Sector can be sorted into several distinct categories for the convenience of travelers. Some belong to more than one category.

# Deep Voids: These are constructs designed specifically to drift through the depths of space, nowhere near a star. The common Imperial Navy anchorage series model Xerxes is one such Deep Void. These can technically include most models of Star Forts, as well, as those are generally too large to orbit a planet directly.
# Star Forts: This is a category of enormous and self-sufficient space platform, so large as to be able to stage whole starships of capital displacement or even construct warships of Escort weight. A Star Fort is able to defend itself with firepower equivalent to or greater than that of a Battleship with ease, and serve as the lynchpins of large fleet maneuvers and campaigns. They are generally immobile, and must be pulled into port with a tug or many tugs. These are ruinously expensive to build and relocate, and so are only fielded in times of great need.
# Firepoints: These are former asteroids. Sometimes called ‘monitors,’ a Firepoint is a hollowed-out natural planetoid or rock that has been filled with life support and combat equipment, and uses its natural rocky shell to serve as extra armor. Hard to destroy and cheap to build, they are very popular among Imperial Navy personnel who must station these defenses along the Imperium’s outer border. However, they are also not very well-armed for their weight, and their spherical shape makes it challenging to bring a preponderance of their firepower to bear on a single target.
# Void Platforms: A general term for any space platform constructed within the gravity of a star but not in direct orbit of a planet. Some Void Platforms have large, self-contained solar and hydroponic wings, able to provide abundant light, heat, food, and electricity to the crew of the Platform, or even export a surplus. These tend to have light point defenses, if they have any at all. Others are bristling walls of guns and armor, and defend the most direct routes from nearby Mandeville Points or Warp Gates to the orbital pathways of inhabited planets.
# Orbitals: This is the term for any space construct that has a permanent human crew and directly orbits a planet. This can range from the colossal orbital plates of ancient Terran Federation worlds with hundreds of millions of residents to the light observation rings that circle Frontier Worlds with a crew of four. Some are defended, but most are purely scientific or commercial.
# Satellites: While this term technically refers to anything that orbits a world, the common usage is for an unmanned device that circles a planet and fulfils some purpose-built role, like observation, debris interception, or defense. These are cheap and easy to replace, and any vessel with an internal hangar can repair them, so they are very common as throwaway defenses of planets with no dedicated surface-to-space guns, but may also augment the defenses of the worlds that do. Others use telescopes and cameras to record objects at the outer limits of a system, using machine patience to record an area too huge for direct human observation.
# Space Station: Imperial Space Stations are a broad subject. Common Space Station types include the commercial hubs and customs platforms that allow for the trade of cargo in a system far away from its defensive perimeter. They also often include those constructs that fill the gravitationally-predictable Lagrange points of a planet or moon’s orbits. Technically, all orbital plates and Void Platforms are Space Stations, but not all Space Stations fit into those categories. Some laymen use the term ‘space station’ to refer to all inhabitable objects built in space, but this is not strictly accurate, for a Space Station is generally purpose-built and well within the gravitational range of a star, and are rarely self-sufficient.
# Orbital Spire: In the most purely technical sense, a Spire is not a void construct at all. However, all Orbital Spires have two anchors, and one is invariably an Orbital itself. These Spires are vast spindles of carbon nanotubes, homogenous mixtures of metals that bond together, and power transmitters in the form of microwave beamers. A Spire is essentially a combination of roadway and elevator, and can take many shapes. The simplest is a single cable that connects an asteroid in geosynchronous orbit to the planet below, and serves as a guy-wire to a flotilla of tiny floating cargo cars that ride the cable up and down, carrying cargo without having to use polluting rockets or expensive plasma boosters. More complex models include entire enclosed roads, on which electric cars drive over charged strips of metal and plastic, collecting motive energy from the very surface beneath them. These are ludicrously expensive, and are used only in worlds with extremely high gravity where space flight would be too costly to regularly perform, or worlds with enormous shipping volumes where fuel needs couldn’t be realistically met. The most expensive of all Orbital Spires are nothing less than orbit lifter trains, which use vast robotic cargo lifting machines to drag thousands of tons of cargo in vacuum-tight boxes from freight depots on the ground to Orbitals high above. Only Forge Worlds and the wealthiest Paradise and Hive Worlds can afford these, and in Cloudburst, only Cognomen can.

'''Oldlight Exo-zone''': This is the first section of the galaxy’s territory outside of the Cloudburst Sector to trailing, and it is at least partially within the light of the Astronomican on the southern edge. It is not a Sector, per se, but is instead the region of space between the northern edge of the Segmentum Obscurus and the edge of the Galaxy proper. For over eleven thousand years, since the first Iron Warriors scouts visited the place during the early Great Crusade, this region of space has been of little interest to the Imperium. Were it not for the existence of the Eye of Terror, it would no doubt have been explored and exploited thoroughly. However, the Storm of the Emperor’s Wrath and several smaller Warp Storms stand between the edge of Obscurus and the actual maximum range of the Astronomican, thus screening it from Terra and making Navigation excruciatingly slow. As such, the border of the Cloudburst Sector is traditionally the border of the Imperium. Thus, though ships that follow the Warp currents without Navigators can travel there as easily as they can anywhere else, there are few colonies here; Imperial warships could not come to their defense in haste if they were attacked. The name stems from the fact that at the outer edges of this region, light from before the opening of the Eye is visible, and the galaxy can still be viewed un-marred by the hubris of the Eldar. The region once played host of the savage war between the Imperium and the Rangdan, and possibly their mysterious allies/servants, the Slaugth. Only specific Explorators and Inquisitors are aware of this. Unofficially, however, the general Ordo Xenos is fully aware that the region is a terrible hotbed of violent aliens even now. There are no fewer than four massive Deathwatch Watch Fortresses within three weeks’ travel of the Oldlight Exo-zone: Excalibris, Pykman, Castillos Nullifact, and Dascomb.

'''Rangdan Xenocides''': The Rangdan Xenocides were a trio of wars, spanning thirty years from M30.861, and a few skirmishes afterwards, between Imperial Humanity and the Rangdan alien species. The Rangdan, made aware of the Imperium thanks to the Astronomican, were cerbavores, and made a delight and a spectacle of harvesting the nerves and brains of thinking beings. Humans, perhaps the most delicious after Eldar, were ideal prey for the beasts, and they launched a crippling assault against the Imperium as soon as they came within range of it. The resultant slaughter saw the brains of over eighty-nine billion humans eaten by the monstrous creatures from Old Night’s depths. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 11th, and 20th Legions of the Astartes had committed their fullest strength to repelling the monsters, and only barely survived the attempt. The 11th, it is whispered, did not.

The Rangdan, it transpired, were not even the principal threat behind the wars. Living weapons, deployed at the end of the war by Rangdan with oddly shriveled skeletons, revealed that at least some of their technology, so much more destructive than that of the early Crusaders, actually came from the Slaugth. This race of flesh-eaters was the stuff of the nightmares of the Age of Strife. Their frighteningly advanced technology and nearly indestructible flesh-horrors proved to outmatch the Imperium in destructive power; the Emperor was forced to utilize His most powerful weapon to destroy the core of the Rangdan race. Unshackling a secret weapon known only as the Labyrinth of Night, and compelling it to serve him with pure psychic power, He turned the power of the Slaugth against their Rangdan brain-slaves, killing them and destroying nearly all non-Martian technology for light-years in every direction. Between the total devastation of all nearby habitable worlds, the loss of all archaeo- and xeno-tech caches for dozens of light years, and the fact that the Astronomican was barely visible in the area, the Imperium had abandoned the region to its fate. The possibility that the Slaugth were controlling the Rangdan, or the reverse, has been blocked from further investigation by Imperial decree.

'''Septiim Economic Zone''': A term used to refer to the 10-light year sphere around the Septiim system, which contains three star systems with no habitable zones, but many servitor-operated mining platforms and freighter stopover platforms. The Zone contains the Septiim system, the ANKH 909 system, the ANKH 910 system, and the Adeptus Mechanicus mining colony and research base Feldsprite in the ANKH 911 system.
The Zone also contains all of the military facilities belonging to the Loyalist Chapter of Space Marines called the Blue Daggers. The Daggers defend the Zone from the Glasians and other threats, and draw their recruits from the populations of the worlds and mines within. The Zone has its own Imperial Navy detachment at all times, one that is a significant percentage of the strength of a Subsector Battlefleet. This is a necessary measure, however, despite the cost, since the Navy is expected to help the Daggers disable the defenses of the colossal Glasian Control Cylinders that spearhead each Glasian Centennial Migration.

'''The Long March''': This refers to the great colony venture sponsored by the megacorporations of ancient Terran Europe that seeded the first technologically-advanced colonies in the region: Levitna and Hapster. It is of some academic interest to the local authorities for the fact that it apparently missed dozens of habitable worlds in its path, including some more habitable and comfortable than Hapster or Levitna have ever been, like Celeste and Septiim Tertius.

'''Waaagh! Igzok''': This was the first Waaagh! to threaten the region, during the absolute height of the Terran Federation’s power, immediately prior to the rise of the Iron Men. It is known that it managed to enter the region by flying aboard some Space Hulks, but broke against the Federation’s fleet. Records from that era are understandably sparse, but they indicate that the Orks had been set on their course by a massive surge of aetheric energy from the edge of the Galaxy, perhaps from a star falling into a Warp Storm’s core. The exact date of this battle is lost to history.