Badab Primaris

Badab Primaris, also known as Badab II, is a Dead World located near the Maelstrom Warp rift in the southwestern portion of Segmentum Ultima. It was the homeworld of the Astral Claws Chapter and a thriving, productive Hive World, until shit went sideways and Lugft Huron decided to take matters into his own hands.

Overview

Badab Primaris was first settled in the late 38th Millennium and quickly became a trade hub and industrial powerhouse in the region. Everything was fine until some idiots decided to throw a civil war in 718.M41 and the Astral Claws stepped in to shut that shit down. In the aftermath, Lugft Huron decided that the Badab government couldn't be trusted and took personal control of the planet. Styling himself the "Tyrant of Badab", he purged Badab's nobility and government, then did the same to the rest of the system, proclaiming it to be the Claws' personal fief. He went on to purge the surrounding star systems' governments and install his own cronies as rulers on these worlds, turning the entire region into a kind of pocket empire along the lines of Ultramar. This actually pretty well at first; the sector's defenses had never been stronger and its planets had never been more productive, and Huron was a fairly evenhanded and effective ruler. Things went sideways when Huron asked the Administratum to exempt Badab from its Imperial tithe so that he could use those resources to strengthen the defenses around the Maelstrom. When the Administratum presented him with a counter-offer of "fuck you, give us more", Huron promptly turned off the taps and turned the sector into a heavily fortified no-go zone. After a century and a half of increasing tension, Huron seceded from the Imperium entirely, then set about making the lives of everyone on Badab a living hell. Every symbol of Imperial authority on the planet was torn down and destroyed, while Administratum and Ecclesiarchy personnel were ruthlessly executed. Any baseline human who dared look an Astral Claw in the eye would be blinded, and after an assassin nearly killed Huron in his palace, thousands of innocents were massacred by Astral Claws squads in retaliation.

By the end of the Badab War, Badab Primaris was one of the few worlds still in rebel hands. The Space Marine chapters assigned to the conflict laid siege to the planet, with the Star Phantoms storming the Palace of Thorns while the Exorcists and Sons of Medusa dealt with the orbital defenses and the Carcharodons went after the planet's infrastructure. Being who they were, the Carcharodons quickly got bored with trashing hives and breaking defenses and decided that what they were going to do instead was sabotage Badab's network of atomic and geothermal reactors. Badab's power grid promptly went berserk, with entire hives shaking themselves to pieces or being swallowed by gigantic fissures as colossal earthquakes split tectonic plates and continents wide open, spraying millions of tons of ash and radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. As Badab Primaris tore itself apart, the loyalist Space Marines had to effect a hasty retreat, and the planet's civilian population was eradicated entirely within a few days, either consumed by the earthquakes and fissures or killed by ash storms and fallout. With Badab Primaris now a burnt, radioactive ball of glass and ash, the Carcharodons figured it was a job well done and were a bit confused when the Star Phantoms started yelling at them about all the Space Marines who'd been killed in the retreat.

Trivia

Badab has its origins in the early days of 40K, having first appeared in 1988. In White Dwarf 97, it was mentioned that Badab survived the end of the war and was taken over by an Imperial Mission. It was also the homeworld of Illiyan Nastase before he disappeared into the Retconnian and got spit back out 30-odd years later as Illiyanne Natasé.