Heathen Stars

[The Hive Mind]

Heathen Stars
"This is an age for the godless. Better to die a without faith beneath a darkening sun than bend one’s knee to those who would have us call them gods and devour our blinded souls."
—words of the apostate Lucius Greer

The Heathen Stars are a diffuse region of old stars that burn with a darkening light and whose worlds have been inhabited since times long past. Human societies and communities long separated from the greater body of humanity dwell in the Heathen Stars. These communities know nothing of the divine light of the God-Emperor, and some strange cultures harbour unusual technologies from Mankind’s lost past. It is possible that these scattered human domains are the remains of one or more greater empires that have long since vanished, leaving these fragmentary enclaves like detritus left behind the retreating tide.

Tenuous routes have begun to be established from Winterscale’s Realm to Naduesh and Zayth of the Heathen Stars, but the remainder of these fallen worlds are a matter of mystery and rumour. Rogue Traders have barely touched upon the treasures of the Heathen Stars, and have yet to bring the word of the God-Emperor to the human communities. A billion heathen souls await the coming of missionary zealots and great auto-temples dropped from orbit. Some speak of great treasures upon Dead Worlds, whilst others lust after the myths from a lost age kept secret by those who dwell in the baleful light of the Heathen Stars.

Agusia
"Death is a land into which we will all pass in time."
—ancient Terran proverb

Agusia is a Cemetery World that circles a dim red star. A lost human civilisation transported their dead to Agusia for millennia, and in doing so turned it into a necropolis world. The vast ruin-deserts and spire-mountains of Agusia remain desolate, eroded, or half-buried by wind-driven dust, empty of all but the remains of a long-distant past. Every part of Agusia’s surface is buried beneath strata of crumbling edifices and seas of dust eroded from the ancient stonework. Every chamber is a sepulchre of great antiquity, every space a mausoleum. The decaying upper tomb-spires and kilometres of compacted ruins beneath contain the material echoes of a trillion souls.

Agusia remains almost untouched by explorers with the sole exception being a small expedition of the Disciples of Thule sect of the Adeptus Mechanicus, which has penetrated into the catacombs beneath the icy deserts of the northern polar zone. So far the Thuleans have investigated only a small fraction of the world, and vast amounts remain hidden and undisturbed. Yet what the Tech-priests have discovered is both wondrous and puzzling: ornate sloping tomb-fanes, huge dormant prayer-mechanisms of a dozen varieties, mausoleums efficiently filled by stacked biers, impassable walls of blackgreen metal set with intricate silvered magnetic runes, ornate hololithic displays of abstract art somehow still active after millennia. What wonders or terrors lurk in the unexplored portions of the world remain to be revealed.

Naduesh
"We do not know what our ancient ancestors’ purposes truly were. We have only the tools they made to realise those purposes."
—aphorism dictated by Paracelcus Thule

Naduesh is a human-inhabited Frontier World of hot, dry plains and enormous, sprawling megacities that are now little more than ruins but which speak of an awesome and now lost technological achievement. The mega-cities of Naduesh are maze-like warrens beneath an arching dome supported by huge pillars and walls set with massive bastions. Every part of the whole is set with structures that cling like gargoyles and riddled by vaults and tunnels. The bulk of the planet’s population follows a tribal existence away from the cyclopean mega-cities, following herds of herbivores that sustain and clothe them while viciously warring with each other for honour and bloody sport. The people of Naduesh have little understanding of the relics of technology left behind in these ruins, and seem unable to fully rebuild their society. The sounds and structure of the Nadueshi language and culture indicate a distant root in High Gothic and tie the population and its ruined mega-cities to a now lost age of Mankind.

The most influential of the human population on Naduesh dwells in Marajur, an immense enclosure of ruins thirty kilometres broad and three kilometres from ground wreckage to crumbling vaults high above. The interior space of Marajur gapes empty between its support pillars, and the curved ceiling vaults are set with enormous mosaics. The entire structure is large enough for its own weather systems, the haze of distant wall-bastions broken by white cloudsand sudden warm showers. As awe-inspiring as it is Marajur is a shadow of its former self: its base structures are ruined, its upper vault braces failing. With each passing year another of the upper vault structures tumbles down.

Despite its fallen status, Naduesh is used as supply point by many human Renegades and outlaws in search of provender beyond the reach of would-be hunters, trading weapons and slaves in return for livestock and fresh recruits from the planet’s feral warriors.

Zayth
"Of what wars waged beyond the Emperor’s light we will never truly know and can only look at the wreck of the overgrown battlefield and wonder at what has passed."
—remark dictated by Rogue Trader Hiram Sult

Zayth is a War World scarred deeply by constant conflict. Enormous vehicles the size of cities churn the surface of Zayth’s single macrocontinent. Each is a fortress and weapon platform armed with fearsome devices of war and destruction. Within them dwell Zayth’s human population, protected from the radiation and toxins unleashed by long centuries of warfare. Zayth’s surface has been barren for millennia, ploughed and poisoned by shellfire, rapacious, urgent strip-mining, and the passage of hive-vehicles. Despite their weaponry and extraordinary vehicle cities the humans of Zayth have fallen far from the knowledge of their ancestors in all but war, and the knowledge of producing their hivevehicles is long vanished. Great generators and engine vaults are permanently sealed by copper doors or guarded by hereditary Engine Orders who guard the traditions and culture of each clan fortress.

Raakata
"Dreams go astray in the void beyond reason; they become dark and terrible things made of the desires of fools and the artifice of tyrants. When dreams go so astray, it is best to leave them alone."
—from the personal reflections of Inquisitor Hastur Whitlock

Raakata is a ruined world that can only be reached by passing beyond a shifting and treacherous region of the Warp. Its collapsed and empty hive cities are said to be laden with untouched relics of the Dark Ages of Technology, while the void around Raakata is filled with Vox broadcasts of strange languages, garbled binary code, and blurts of static. Its human population is composed of feral and vicious savages who daub themselves in ash and powered rust; the knowledge and sophistication of the ancestors who built the ruined hives and treasures rotting within are long lost to them. All that is known of Raakata comes from the accounts of Toros Umboldt, who claimed its discovery but has subsequently failed to rediscover the world in two later expeditions. All traces of his earlier passage have been erased by the changing Warp, and his standing amongst his peers is diminished greatly as a result.

Vaporius
"What a man believes is more important than what he does. False belief undoes the virtue of any endeavor, and consumes the greatest of achievements."
—from the speeches of Saint Drusus

All that is known of Vaporius and its strange people is gathered from rumours that circulate in Port Wander, Footfall, and wherever explorers and Renegades gather. Vaporius is said to be a world of red deserts, gleaming turquoise seas and great cities of copper towers, enamelled domes, and sprawling buildings covered in brightly coloured tiles of glass, metal, and ceramic. The human population of Vaporius is tall, with proud, almost feline features, and eyes of brilliant cyan. They move about their cities in robes of shimmering fabric that subtly changes hue as they move. The rule of Vaporius is reputed to lie in the hands of Priest-Kings who control the distribution of water that is held as a divine force of life. It is said that decades ago a clutch of Imperial missionaries voyaged to Vaporius to break the rule of the Priest-Kings. Nothing more was heard of them apart from whispers of torture, slaughter, and blood.