Ryza

Ryza during the Horus Heresy. Producer of 80% of the Imperium's plasma weapons.

Ryza, poetically referred to as The Furnace of Shackled Stars, is an Imperial Forge World located in the Segmentum Ultima. It is one of the most prominent and powerful Forge Worlds in the Imperium, and has even been considered a rival to Mars in years past.

Symbol of Ryza.

Overview and Early History

Ryza is most well known for being the sole producer of the Leman Russ Executioner, a variant of the classic Russ tank equipped with a powerful plasma destroyer cannon. Though the weapon's raw power is undeniable and it's a popular choice for tank-busting, it's also prone to explosive failures due to some genius having placed the feed lines for the coolant system on the outside of the turret. Ryza also developed the Stormblade, a variant of the Titan-killing Shadowsword equipped with a plasma blastgun instead of the Shadowsword's volcano cannon. This was done out of necessity, since there was high demand in the Imperial forces for super-heavy tanks and the toasters on Mars refused to share the STC for the Shadowsword. Ryza's leaders worked out that they could take the Shadowsword's chassis and stick a plasma weapon in it; though this meant sacrificing some of the Shadowsword's raw killiness, it also came with several advantages, including decreased power consumption and increased ease of maintenance compared to the temperamental volcano cannon. Ryza shared the Stormblade and its specifications quite readily, meaning that the Solar Auxilia and the Legiones Astartes were able to field large numbers of the tank during the Horus Heresy, and it remains a popular choice in the 41st Millennium for Imperial Guard regiments who can't get their hands on a Shadowsword.

The planet's skitarii legions wear a distinctive shade of orange that mimics the planet's endless rust-dunes, with red lining on the interior. Red is also used as a mark of seniority in the local hierarchy; the more red a Ryzan wears, the higher their rank. Ryza's skitarii are famed for their aggression and skill in melee combat, which the planet's tech-priests explain as the result of specialized training and combat protocols. Some in the Imperium regard this tendency as a bit suspicious.

Ryza was settled during the Dark Age of Technology. Originally a lush world, it became the heart of a powerful technological empire aligned with the Cult Mechanicus, and its rich, diverse biosphere was slowly wiped out, replaced by endless forges, manufactorums, and reclamation plants. Outside these areas of industry, the planet's two continents were reduced to arid plains and endless dunes of rusting metal. Its sea was boiled away by the endless demands of industry, replaced by a toxic soup of sewage and industrial runoff known as the Sea of Reclamation. When humanity's first stellar civilization collapsed, faith in the Omnissiah sustained the world and its people through the dark centuries of the Age of Strife. They were even able to maintain communication with nearby star systems, allowing them to remain a force to be reckoned with. The planet was peacefully incorporated into the Imperium during the Great Crusade, though some of the Mechanicum bigwigs on Mars were concerned that Ryza's strength might one day lead to its overtaking the Red Planet as the Mechanicum's chief world. They probably had good reason to be afraid, since Ryza had two major advantages that allowed the planet to have its shit together in a way that was rare for human worlds in the aftermath of the birth of Slaanesh and the War Against the Men of Iron. First was its Titan Legion, known as Legio Crucius, or the Warmongers. The Warmongers by themselves were nearly as powerful as the three original Titan Legions of Mars combined, and with the might of a Forge World behind them, they were a credible threat to anyone who might piss Ryza off. Indeed, during the Great Crusade, the Warmongers claimed so many worlds that they ultimately had no fewer than two dozen forge outposts under their command, each garrisoned by a Titan battlegroup. The second advantage was the local Ryzan cult, the Omnissiah Igvita. This cult believed that plasma was the lifeblood of the Omnissiah and that using it bestowed a measure of His power upon them. Thus, Ryza's Titans, war machines, and skitarii all tended to use plasma weaponry in its many forms. Though Ryza tried to make nice by sharing some of its advances in plasma technology, significant elements of the Mechanicum remained suspicious of the planet. This would prove to have severe repercussions for Ryza when the Warmaster's Big Bitch Fit got rolling.

Horus Heresy

During the Heresy, Ryza became the target of those elements in the Dark Mechanicum who had resented its meteoric rise to power and now sought to tear it down for the glory of the Warmaster. Fortunately for the Ryzans, they had predicted some kind of civil conflict was coming and had spent decades preparing themselves for it, hence why they had been so aggressive in expanding the Warmongers' reach and power. Several of the Legio's battle groups were destroyed in major engagements such as the Battle of Molech, but they had grown so powerful by this point that they were able to shrug off what would have been crippling losses to any other Titan Legion. Such was not the case when the traitor forces rolled up to Ryza itself. Horus sent a large Dark Mechanicum force to invade Ryza as he was preparing to march on Terra itself. This force was made up of elements from multiple Forge Worlds that had pledged themselves to Horus and wanted to loot the shit out of Ryza and/or trash it beyond recognition. Two full Titan Legions were sent with this force, Legio Vulturum (the Gore Crows) and Legio Magna (the Flaming Skulls), along with a detachment from the infamous Legio Mortis, the Death's Heads. In response, Ryza mustered the Warmongers, plus Legio Osedax (the Cockatrices) and Legio Honourum (the Death Bolts), along with backup from several Knight Houses, including Taranis, Zavora, and Ioeden. Even with such a powerful force, the Dark Mechanicum found the going heavy. They were able to take the gateway station on the moon of Ryza Secundus, but despite this their initial attacks on Ryza itself were thrown back with ease. A fifth column of dissidents and traitors rose up and managed to force the loyalists to spread their forces more thinly across the planet, allowing the Dark Mechanicum to set up a trap at the spaceport of Conveyance Terminus Nine-Omega that destroyed the Death Bolts and threw the loyalists onto the defensive. A series of Titan-vs-Titan battles ensued, with the Cockatrices and Warmongers suffering heavy losses. A group of Warmongers led by the Legio's senior princeps made a last stand at the Salvation Isthmus, a key chokepoint between Ryza's continents, allowing the loyalists time to regroup at the planetary capital of Prosperity. Unfortunately, Prosperity fell shortly thereafter to internal sabotage, forcing the loyalists to retreat to the forge city of Endeavour. After a series of seesaw battles, the loyalists recaptured Endeavour, broke the Death's Heads, and slew their commanding princeps. Ryza's ruling hierophant cracked open the planet's war vaults, unleashing their previously forbidden technology on the traitors, and a brand new Knight House, Sidus, emerged from beneath Endeavour, having been kept hidden for this very moment. As the traitors retreated to Nine-Omega, they enacted a scorched-earth policy, demolishing everything in their path and leaving Ryza a broken and sundered world. Most of the traitor forces managed to escape, while those that were left behind were obliterated by the vengeful loyalists. The Imperial forces had won, but it was a pyrrhic victory. Four-fifths of the planet's industrial capacity was wrecked in the battle, and the loyalist Titan Legions and Knight houses had been decimated.

41st Millennium

Despite getting the shit kicked out of it by Horus' forces, Ryza rebuilt itself and regained its former prominence in the Imperium, aided by its specialization in plasma technology. That said, it hasn't been doing well in recent 40K canon, having been invaded by two separate Ork WAAAGHs!. The first was WAAAGH Grax, which hit the planet in 925.M41 and required intervention from twenty regiments of the Imperial Guard, along with the planet's own skitarii legions and the Warmongers. For a while, the fighting for Ryza came as close to producing the state of "enuff dakka" as any conflict in the galaxy. Both sides were freely cracking open the planet's armories and reliquaries and turning whatever they found on each other, unleashing weapons the like of which hadn't been seen since the Dark Age of Technology. Ultimately, the Orks proved so impossible to shift that the Ryzans decided to drop a bunch of virus bombs on one of their own continents, using Kastelan maniples to clean up whatever survived, while modified Onager Dunecrawlers blasted greenskin asses in the hives and hastily rebuilt Titans waded into the fight against equally hastily patched-up gargants. After four decades of fighting, Warboss Grax was killed by the Warlord Titan Pugnus Vindictae, and the WAAAGH! collapsed into the usual mess of infighting, allowing the Mechanicus to mop them up. A second WAAAGH!, led by another warboss named Rarguts, attacked at essentially the same time and was seen off in short order. Ryza didn't get much breathing space, however, as they finished the mop-up just in time for the 13th Black Crusade to get going and the Great Rift to split the Imperium in half. The planet was promptly invaded by daemons and was only held thanks to all the Guard regiments who were still there from the Ork campaigns. Despite all this, Ryza was in sufficiently good shape to answer Roboute Guilliman's call for reinforcements during the Plague Wars.