Setting:Cloudburst/Nauphry

System
Galactic Position	Cloudburst Sector, Nauphry Subsector
System Overlord	Lord Subsector Nauphry Matheus Soldati
Worlds in the system	Seven, two inhabited

Nauphry

The Nauphry system is the Subsector capital. The system was colonized in the earliest years of the Long March colony venture in ancient Terran history, and some of the scars of the hasty colonizing - and the Cybernetic Uprising that followed - can be seen to this day.

System
World Type, Name	Industrial World: Nauphry IV
Tropospheric Composition	Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon Dioxide .04%
Religion	Imperial Cult
Government type	Adeptus Terra
Planetary Governor	No
Adept Presence	Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum
Climate	Temperate, formerly oceanic, becoming toxin seas
Geography	Active tectonics, landmasses occasionally damaged by catastrophic earthquakes, .92 times the size of Terra, large oceans
Gravity	0.91 Terran Gravity
Day Length	31 Terran Hours
Economy	Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones
Principal Exports	Cogitator Parts, Terraformation Starter Kits, Processed Metals, Fertilizers, Imperial Guard, Plastics, Starships
Principal Imports	Raw Resources, Food, Servitors
Countries and Continents	Two countries, one of which serves as the hub of Imperial government, spread out over three continents
Military	Nauphry Guard, Nauphry Ironclads, Nauphry Bastions (high quality Guards, high quality Navy, high quality PDF)
Contact with other Systems	Constant, as a Subsector Capital
Tithe Grade	Decuma Particular
Population	9,090,000,000

Nauphry IV Description

The proud home of the Cloudburst Imperial Navy, a smog-choked hell, and the Imperial Cloudburst world most likely to dissolve into civil war, Nauphry is by any metric a fascinating world. The planet’s lengthy day-night cycle and steep axial tilt makes most days recognizably different from the day before in weather, and its sky routinely darkens from the number of ships passing by in its orbit.

Nauphry IV – never Four – is an Industrial World. These worlds tend to have been in the exact position between the number of people needed to make a Hive World and having the technology to actually do it at the time the Imperium contacts them first. As a result, they also tend towards being polluted, heavily populated, and suffering from nationalistic fervor. Of course, as long as the world continues to produce and refine minerals and goods for the Imperium, the Adeptae generally do not care much about the specifics of each world’s environment and local governing. Nauphry IV may be an exception to that trend. The planet is not only a major Imperial Navy anchorage, but also a local hub of trade and travel thanks to its neighbor, Nauphry VII. The world contributes a higher percentage of its population to the Adeptae than any other world in the sector, including Celeste. Cloudburst itself barely contributes less in percentage. Consequently, the Imperium is more aware of local political rumblings on the planet, and the Inquisition has at least two Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus and one of the Ordo Militarum present at all times.

The actual government of the planet is that of the Adeptus Terra itself, with the System Overlord serving as the Subsector Overlord, and with no Planetary Governor serving between them and the structure of the planetary administration. This was an effort of necessity, stemming from the binary nature of the planet’s civil government.

Nauphry is a world divided. At the moment, two countries, each controlling roughly half the planet’s population, sprawl over the surface of the world. The Imperium permits neither country to build up local ground militaries. All defensive military assets on the planet stage from large bases under direct Imperial control. This was a precaution, to prevent the two active nations from destroying each other. While this has allowed the local PDF to reach a level of preparedness and non-tribal mindset that few other PDFs reach, it has forced the governments to compete by other means. At times, this competition has taken the form of friendly sporting events, building increasingly opulent cathedrals to the Emperor, or similarly good-natured efforts. More recently, however, the competition has switched to rapid resource generation, to satisfy the planet’s tithing effort.

Obviously, this is of huge benefit to the Imperium, which has successfully built multiple starships from the resources raised on Nauphry and plans to build more. However, the comparatively primitive technology of the planet is both inefficient and polluting. The surge in huge manufacturing and mining efforts is now polluting the planet so heavily that one of the two nations of the world has calculated that the world‘s agriculture will fail within the century. The nation intent on pillaging the planet’s resources without constraint, Emericos Federocracy, presently represents a majority of the world’s industrial base and tithe, and is thus favored by the Administratum. The nation that has successfully predicted the planet’s economic failure, Barnap Federocracy, is physically larger, but its less productive and more efficient manufacturing systems produce about 40% of the planet’s tithe output. It also plays host to the planet’s largest Schola Progenum, though its Abbot makes a conscious effort to stay detached from local politics. The planet’s growing ecological problems are not the concern of the Adepta, though Barnap officials are appealing to them for aid in resolving this dispute. Both nations have cities with vast Imperial Guildhalls within, and each employs trains bearing goods in and out of the cities to spaceports.

The two nations are forced by system law to contribute identical tithes of troops for the PDF and other military, which they do on the surface military bases of the Officio Munitorum. The world’s military forces have allegiance to their home nation beaten out of them in training, thanks to previous incidents of friendly fire between PDF platoons of differing nationalities. The PDF garrison in chains of partially underground buildings, mass-built by the Mechanicus. The structures usually have a surrounding maze of barbed wire coils and sentry towers. Road access to these imposing bases is denied to all vehicles that can’t present identification for every passenger, and those who fail to provide it are turned away at the first checkpoint and vaporized at all checkpoints after that. Nauphry PDF tithe their most skilled 10% of each rank and rating up to the Officio Munitorum, though not all up to the Guard. Some tithe up to the Imperial Navy instead, and do so at a higher rate than any other world in the Sector.

Nauphry IV also fields a wet navy, with aircraft carriers, submarines, and battleships. It patrols the shores of the islands on which the world’s Mechanicus temples and Astropathic shrine are built, and also guard the gigatons of shipping that crosses the world’s increasingly polluted seaways. The SDF of the system recruits heavily from the larger cities of the planet, so the surface and space defense fleets rarely draw from the same population. This can create more of the same rivalries that have all but paralyzed the PDF in the past.

The Nauphry system also provides many of the colonists drawn from the Sector to colonize worlds beyond. The Cloudburst Circuit is the largest destination, but is not the only one. Worlds in the war-torn Naxos Sector and pirate-ravaged Drumnos Sector also sometimes require Cloudburst colonists, and Nauphry IV provides hundreds of thousands of them. The ships upon which they fly are the product of Nauphry’s own shipyards, the unique Glowing Light colony barge. The barge model is designed to be as radiation-resistant as Mechanicus technology can make them, to best survive the arduous flight through the curtains of gas that bedevil the Cloudburst Sector. After all, just because the gasses do not leak into the Warp doesn’t mean that colony ships will be able to fly directly to their targets.

Aside from its unhealthily bipolar political outlook, Nauphry is very much a Cloudburst world. Its defensive mindset, its expansive clergy and ostentatious living, and its love of digging are all very much in play on Nauphry IV. Beyond that, the world has its own quirks. Unlike on most Cloudburst worlds, Nauphry IV has a near-overwhelming love of sport. Scrumball, archery, wrestling, professional dueling, and full-contact regicide are all crowd pleasers. Nauphry IV’s Intersystem Scrumball Champion team has won the last five Subsector Tournaments, and its citizens often cram themselves into any space with a holo to watch the latest updates on strategy and hiring. Popular among the children is ‘kite jousting,’ wherein knives are tied to kites and the last man standing wins.

Nauphry IV’s large Schola provides many of the Commissars of the Sector, and trains much of the local Imperial Navy and Chartist Captains’ League officer corps, as well as some of the most decorated privateer officers in Cloudburst Circuit history. The facility is isolated by conscious choice. Nauphry tradition and the protocols of its leadership ensure that the Commissars and Arbites produced by its instruction may not serve in brigades or precincts that contain any other residents of Nauphry, to prevent any favoritism amongst its graduates. This is not the case for Ecclesarchal and Imperial Guard officers, who are encouraged to serve in the local power structure so that their familiarity with the culture can ease transfers of power.

System
World Type, Name	Agri-world/Contested: Nauphry VII
Tropospheric Composition	Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon Dioxide .01%
Religion	The Imperial Cult
Government type	Local Prme Minister
Planetary Governor	Yes
Adept Presence	Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (in orbit), Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum
Climate	Temperate, with arctic poles
Geography	Tectonically active and violent, with jagged mountains and deep canyons
Gravity	91 Terran Gravity
Day Length	19 Terran Hours
Economy	Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones
Principal Exports	Food, leather, manganese, copper, silver
Principal Imports	Agricultural equipment, convicts, agri-servitors, clothing, ammunition
Countries and Continents	No national divisions, military training confined to single island, five continents
Military	Nauphry Shields, Nauphry Bastions (high quality Guards, high quality PDF)
Contact with other Systems	Infrequent, as needed
Tithe Grade	Solutio Extremis
Population	1,000,000,000 (human), 500,000,000 (servitors)

Nauphry VII Description

While its neighbor roils in political tension, the breadbasket world Nauphry VII enjoys tranquil agriculture. The whole world has been re-tasked to farming from pole to pole, save for one large island chain where the military and Mechanicus headquarter their assets. The planet’s quiet, peaceful agrarian life and abundant natural resources make living on the world far more enjoyable and comfortable than living on Nauphry IV, but that comes at a cost. The world’s personnel transportation, luxury resource, and non-religious entertainment sectors are far less developed. The loss of the world’s natural vistas and most wildlife also make the world rather monotonous, outside of the few cities. Nauphry VII’s peace and quiet are hard-won. At one time, the planet had a troublesome feral Ork population, though it was tiny compared to Oglith’s or even Oromet’s. The native Orks seemed content to stab each other in the hills and valleys of the earthquake-wracked planet, until the human population of colonists moved in. The Orks promptly turned on the invaders, and two full regiments of Coriolis Light Rifles rushed to the world to keep the greenskins from killing the entire colony. After two years of grueling war, the Light Rifle regiments killed the last known Ork being in the system and set fire to their primitive dwellings and cave garages. The surviving Coriolans were given Rights of Conquest, and became the new nobles of the planet. New Orks periodically emerge from the valley caves, but these are swiftly curtailed by heavy military reaction. Because the world’s entire noble population enjoy common history and are not from the contentious nobility of Nauphry IV, the planet does not endure the sectarian competition of their more populous neighbor.

Nauphry VII does have some heavy industry, generally in the polar areas where year-round planting is not possible. The metallic products that the world makes ship off to Cognomen and Thimble, and Nauphry IV to a lesser extent. The world imports all of its ammunition for its military from Cognomen, but has just enough industry to manufacture some of its own local armaments.

The nameless island on which most of the world’s government holds court plays host to the single largest Arbites Precinct Fortress in the system, a towering sixteen-story ziggurat that looms over all nearby structures. The building is equipped with its own Astropathic Choir, a Triple Icarus AA battery, and over three thousand Arbites and Marshals. The fortress actually sits atop the underground prison that holds most of the world’s criminals, separated from the main prison body by a Void Shield of the type more typically seen in cities on worlds with catastrophic volcanism like Nocturne. The Arbites insist that the colossal fortress is the final fallback of the system, if all of the orbitals, palaces, garrisons, and other bastions of system defense and administration are overrun. The fortress does have a shielded VTOL pad and retractable landing platform to allow visitors to bring their entire shuttles inside.

Outside the fortress, the island also houses the few million PDF and hundred thousand Guard of the Nauphry VII defense, in a sprawling base that boasts a half-mile runway for non-VTOL aircraft and thousands of housing buildings. Somebody who grew up in the island’s massive military and law enforcement overbuild would no doubt be floored by the sight of the massive grain fields and vegetable plots of the majority of the planet. There are thousands of points in the farmlands of the planet where one could stand on a stepladder and look around, and see literally no artificial structures as far out as the horizon. Large Mechanicus harvester engines crawl about the fields like ships in the green and gold sea, collecting food and dispersing fertilizers and water. The population of the mainland live in planned communities dotted about the endless farms, and enjoy the Ministorum’s direct guidance in arranging marriages. The world imports convicts from other planets and puts them to work in chain gangs, maintaining the roads that carry the massive harvesting combines. Sometimes these individuals are used until broken and rebuilt as servitors, but more often, they are deemed rehabilitated after end-of-sentence interviews with the local law enforcement officials, and granted limited colonization rights, often doing the same work they were doing before without the chains.

Nauphry Military

The war colleges of the Nauphry System serve as the training grounds for many of the officer recruits taken from other worlds of the Cloudburst Sector. Coriolis and Thimble provide most such recruits, while Septiim and Maskos generally keep their officer candidates for their own fleets. Nauphry enjoys extensive support from the Navy in this effort, and officer colleges in Nauphry have produced most of the Lords Admiral Cloudburst.

However, their record is not spotless. The leader of the FCC, Admiral Reith, is a graduate of the Nauphry war colleges, and so are dozens of other pirates from the sector’s history. The Nauphry college administrators consider it a stain on their honor that so many of their students have turned their guns on the Imperium. Of course, all Sectors have had piracy problems, including the Sol Sector itself, and the war colleges have produced hundreds of thousands of other officers who have never lost their way.

The Nauphry Guard are the Guard of the Nauphry system, creatively enough, and their regiments always strive to reach the highest standards of military conduct and performance. Although their forces are based on the regimental structures of the Septiim system, their individual tithings are quite different. Unlike Septiim’s year-round recruitment drives, the Nauphry Guard recruit solely in year-end tithings of manpower to the Munitorum, and draw their forces at random through lottery from the higher skilled-end of the general Nauphry Bastions. Nauphry Guard have made a name for themselves in fighting in the opposite direction of the majority of Cloudburst Astra Militarum regiments. Most Cloudburst Guards troops either fight their way out to the Circuit and Exo-zone or defend the worlds on which they were raised from Glasians or Orks, but the Nauphry Guard have sortied over one hundred regiments in Crusades that staged in the Drumnos and Naxos Sectors, usually fighting corewards, against enemies within the Imperium’s borders.

This is not a conscious decision on the Munitorum’s part, but a fluke of random chance. The Crusades and other campaigns in those older Sectors are generally retributive actions by the Munitorum against raiders or Chaotic forces, which assault the Imperium whenever they think they can get away with it. The fact that Nauphry always has ships and men to spare thanks to their lottery just means that they are the planet most likely to have small numbers of unengaged Guard forces to send at any given time.

The Nauphry Ironclads, however, are unique. Nauphry IV fields a massive surface naval fleet, larger than any other in Cloudburst or the Circuit. The planet’s history of being attacked by pirates seeking new space vessels, or Glasians doing whatever it is that they do, means that the world’s two nations often find themselves scrambling their navies to defend their shores from attackers. Technically, the local countries’ large navies are not a part of the planet’s PDF, although only because of a creative reading of Imperial law. The planet’s Administratum knows that the two competing superpowers could use their navies to attack each other, and has forbidden it. The world’s Adeptus Terra refer to both fleets interchangeably as the Ironclads, despite their distinct names and designations, to drive home the point that they could seize the fleets for their own use any time they wish it. Both fleets can sortie over two dozen fixed-wing and VTOL aircraft supercarriers, and of the fifty carriers on the planet, three can launch surface-to-space missiles to aid in the defense of the orbitals from pirates or aliens.

Some of these Ironclads sortie as self-contained surface navy regiments for the Officio Munitorum, providing the colossal firepower of modern wet warships to trans-stellar military campaigns for the Imperium. Given the Imperial military’s reliance on VTOL aircraft, infantry, and heavy tanks to do their fighting, the sudden presence of warships on a planet’s surface can shatter the defenses of rebels and aliens who have become used to the more predictable Imperial strategies. Some of the Ironclad Sea Regiments even sortie nuclear assault submarines, capable of launching torpedoes that can burrow through seabed rock and detonate nuclear mines beneath coastal rebel cities, then slip away in the confusion as if they were never there. There is little in the Imperial arsenal capable of more morale damage than this combination of warships and secrecy, and they know it well. Sea Colonels of these regiments – never Captains – sometimes also sortie huge platforms called Megafloats to serve as modular command structures on planetary oceans, wherefrom they can command the dispatch of warships assigned to their regiments to aid Imperial Navy aerospace forces in protracted surface warfare.