Gazetteer I

Tal Nayah clutched the holy icon in her grasp, the prayer beads rattling, as the troopship rattled around her, and fought the urge to be sick; he gravity plates kept her feet magnetised to the floor and her body from being flung about by the forces pulling at the troopship as it descended, but it also made her feel as if her body was in constant freefall – which, she supposed, was accurate, seeing she was in a metal box falling from the skies - albeit in a controlled fashion. She whispered prayers to the Angels, so they might hear her, as the preacher howled their sermon over the ships dirge-casters. Out of habit, she reached up and stroked the sacred patterns etched into her rifle, racked above her head.

Next to her, her siblings in faith and war did the same -Sek Abray, her squad’s marksman, made use of his ever-steady hand to paint the divine script along the side of his helm. Every inch of his armour had similar script - the Enemy had cracked his old helmet in their last deployment, so this forge-fresh one was receiving the treatment. In front of her, Tor Sayem swayed, ritually anointing her blessings from the Angels with sacred oils. Tal Nayah was envious of her sister having been blessed so, but she could not fault the decisions of the Angels - she had not yet been blooded in war, and, thus, not yet worthy of gifts.

So she prayed to the Angels and the Divine Eight of the Way; the Preacher was of the Coiling Ones - the Serpent Cult had taken ascendancy in recent months, but Nayah had always found her heart with the Centurion, the armoured warrior who blessed those who followed her with the might of warriors. So, she clutched that icon more tightly, though she carried the star of the divine octad wrapped on a leather thong around her wrist.

Straight backed and disciplined, they were the children of the Regency, the rightful rulers of this Sector -not the tyrants that had claimed it in the name of their False God, in denial of the True Pantheon. She let the divine rage of the Warrior boil up in her, letting it drown her fear with faith, as she felt the vessel slowing down.

Tal Nayah’s father had been a Naval officer - he had told her the stories his grandfather had told him of when the True Pantheon’s Priesthood tended to the Sector, before the Corpse-God’s followers had brought their selfishness and greed with them, before they had ruined entire worlds with their industry, and torn down the Temples. Tal Nayah had been raised in the shadow of a memory of something great, and, like all her siblings in faith and war, she fought now to retake what rightfully belonged to the True Pantheon.

The troopship jerked as it struck the ground, and slewed to a halt on its grav-impulsors. The ramp slammed down, and Tal Nayah joined her squad in a roar, as they braced to charge forth from the hold.

And then all was white, and Tal Nayah’s soul was with the howling hungry 'Angels' of her Gods.

Sardar Janakii Bhattacharya Qureshi, First-Born Child of House Qureshi, watched the troopship erupt in a shower of flame, as her auto-loaders cycled another shell into the siege breaker cannon set at the apex of her mount. Lion’s Roar strained against the grip of her will through their symbiotic link in the throne mechanism: the Knight Valiant was an old warrior, and preferred to kill up close to the enemy. It had been her Father’s steed before hers, and his Mother’s before him – and she knew it well. She restrained its animalistic drive to fight, as more troop-ships slammed down and disgorged troops of the Primordial Destructor out at the Imperial-held strongpoint.

“This is pest control, Honoured Sardar, why are we not on the front?” Sardar Khosrau Ariobarzan Zahak was not of her blood, but rather of her mother’s sworn Subject-House of Zahak. They affected politeness, but she could hear the tension in their tone, as their Paladin Argent Fury strode past her mount, belching shells from its battle cannon into the onrushing hordes of the Primordial Destructor’s servants.

She considered the question - the Sardar was not wrong; the Knights belonged at the front, yet they had been held back in every fight thus far, relegated by the war-cogitators of Naximus Prime to rearguard actions and duties normally reserved for Skitarii and Imperial Guard armoured columns, not Knights. She suspected the answer lay with the growing mistrust between their Naximan Masters and her Mother: the Magi did not trust the House with their most important missions, perhaps because they knew that the Households of Anaximund were bond-slaves, due the Sidon Protocols that would deny their sacred mounts the supplies and repairs needed to maintain them – bond-slaves did not fight for you out of love, but because they had no other choice - and such was the state of affairs.

As if to punctuate this, the voice of Magos Xerial-noh invaded her thoughts, “Scion Qureshi,” she bristled at the use of her High Gothic title, over its translation into the Anaxiamandian low-gothic dialect, when it did not come from a friend, “you will instruct your bonded-infantry to grid-sector 1544, where they will hold the servants of the Primordial Destructor to enable the egress of my transport convoy, before falling back. Compliance?”

So, whatever the Magos had been stealing from the cracked shell of the ancient Titan they fought in the shadow of, he had acquired it.

She swept her senses out through the vision of Lion’s Roar, studying the consequences of those orders; the Imperial Guard was fighting alongside the bonded techno-agumented tribespeople of Anaximund, “Respectfully Magos, that would not permit any of our infantry forces to retreat - condemning the majority to death…” she didn’t know why she was voicing the objection. Truly, she knew the answer before it was voiced.

“Casualties within acceptable levels, logic: if we manoeuvre them to retreat, then, the Archenemy will become alerted in a shift in our mission objectives, and potentially prevent my egress – compliance?”

She gritted her teeth at the order, and took a moment to use her born-senses and look up at the hatch of her Knight - at the charms that hung there, the cog mechanicus, but beside it, the sign of the Aquila, a faith politically hidden by her House. She flexed her fingers, and her conflagration cannon fired, gouts of flame incinerating an opposing battlegroup.

“Unacceptable. These are our allies… and my house’s serfs, we owe a…”

“Emotional weakness. You are of the Questor Mechanicus; such deviances are not tolerated. Compliance?”

Janakii bit back another retort to the unfeeling Priest, and cursed the day her House had been bonded to Naximus Prime by mutual needs of defence. She could not break the protocols, she was her mother’s firstborn: if she was seen breaking them, then it would be seen as if the House was breaking them, not just a Knight going Freeblade.

“Compliance.” She muttered, and keyed back to the private vox-link with Argent Fury. Khosrau made to speak but she cut them off, “No, I don’t want to hear it. Now is not the time for sedition, we must comply - but we were never ordered to abandon them.”

She looked over to the crimson-hulled Knight, marked with the colours of House Zahak. Khosrau paused for a moment, and then spoke, “The order to fall back seemed specifically intended to abandon them.”

Janakii fixed a grim grin on her features and touched the Aquila above her head, “The Magos did not specify a direction of fall back, noble Sardar Zahak, and back we shall fall... through the enemy…” she could feel the satisfied mood of Lion’s Roar’s machine spirit. Her Knight approved, and that was all the permission she required...

Seh Marduhn ran her fingers through the blood slicking the altar-top, savouring the sensations of the warm liquid over her fingertips, as she studied how the guts had fallen, the gentle motion of her familiar as he coiled around her, causing her to look aside to where the serpent’s head had risen aside her own to study the divination. She reached with blood-marked fingers up to fondly caress his head , leaving stripes of gore like tribal markings on him.

She was of the Priest-caste, rulers of the Regency, marked out as blessed by her gift to touch the realm of the True Pantheon without aid - and now ever more in power by the ascension of the Coiling One's star. They had taken it as a sign to seize the seat of the Priesthood of the Divine Octad – for the first time in living memory, the Primate of the Coiling Ones was now the High Primate of the Regency.

“What do you see, Priestess?”

She glanced sharply to the warrior who had spoken. The woman might be a General, but Seh Marduhn was a Priest - her impatience was highly irregular, yet did any of the old customs stand when the eyes of the True Pantheon’s Angels were upon them? Monstrous shadow-shapes half-formed and not-quite stalked like phantoms beneath the shade of the Temple – normally, they only spoke to her when she prayed, but never in her life had she seen them manifest like this, and in such number… Truly, the divine eight-point star had risen to permit such egress upon the realm of mortals.

She lifted the offal from the altar, and one of the shapes snatched it up, devouring the life pouring from the still-warm corpse, before it leaned into her ear and whispered madness to her.

Seh Marduhn began to weep, began to cry, began to laugh, until her tears ran to blood. Finally, she turned to the impatient warriors, a smile that was also a rictus upon her features, the words of her Masters stained on her mind, as she repeated them aloud, “The Gods have spoken! In accordance with the blessed voices of the Priest-Kings-that-were and the Grand Primate, it has been decreed, too long have we, the Faithful of the True Pantheon, the Sovereign Order, have lurked in the dark of the Colonies. We have drilled, with have hardened our faith and swordarms, and the Gods now find you all READY! The Divine Command is given, and the Divine Command is what we have awaited for too long a time!”

Across the fleet of Regency vessels bedecked in the holy icons of the True Pantheon, her eager flock hung on her words, as the Priestess of the 6th Army. Every warrior in the fleet showed their worship to the Twin Serpents, in accordance to the divine numeral, with which their fleet had been numbered. Captains marked with star-serpent icons paused in their duties to listen to the divine proclamation.

“Siblings in faith and war, the Octad have commanded that a Holy Crusade be enacted upon the usurper Empire – the long-wait is over, and now the Long War begins! Izubu Lufut Kul Rad!” she bellowed her last words in black speech as the 6th Army and its fleet took it up as a war chant, repeated over and over, the warriors of the Twin Serpents goading themselves into higher states of ecstatic frenzy. Seh Marduhn looked at the stalking shadows mirroring the emotions of the warriors, growing closer now, and keyed her vox to the Admiral,

“Light the engines!”

Across the 6th Army fleet, engines were lit, Black Magi goading the tortured machine-spirits of the engines to furious life, pushing them beyond normal tolerances, as the fleet surged from the black towards its prey, eager to be the first to meet the Usurpers in battle. The Talons had done their job, ranging far ahead of the proud regency - now was the time for the work of the Legions Divinatatum, the holy army of the True Pantheon. Now was the time..

For a Crusade.

Prosperitas Gazetteer I - Dark Crusade

The Regency Returns

You would be forgiven, unless you were a scholar, if you did not know what the Regency was: the once-proud ‘Followers of the True Pantheon’ were the unchallenged rulers of the Prosperitas Sector for over ten-thousand years. A dark echo of the Ecclesiastic hierarchy ruled a society structured by castes, with the ruling Priest Caste at the top of a hierarchy of heretics, who governed the so-called ‘casteless’ masses that the Imperium now controls as the native Ruwwad and Annwfyn ethnic groups. Planets were overseen by individual Priest-Kings, and, above them, their society branched between the spiritual leadership of four Primates of each of the primary cults of the ‘True Way’ faith (each representing an interpretation of four gods of Chaos) led by a Supreme Primate, and the political leadership of the Regent of the Prosperitas Sector, a role first claimed to come from the Archtraitor Horus.

When Jacinta Durovera, Rogue Trader and first Warmaster of the Prosperitas Crusade, took Duroverum (then called Legio Venia) from the Regency, she slew the Regent ending that line, but some of the Priest-caste survived to limp into the shadows with the remnant of the Regency.

If the Imperium thought it had broken their back years ago, then it was sorely mistaken - when the Imperial forces failed to push into the Rimward Marches, they had also failed to root out - and discover - the true extent of the surviving Regency forces.

Long-Range Augurs and Psychic Scrying have revealed, at least, sixteen fleets (which the Regency refers to as part of its ‘Armies’, having never separated Fleet and Ground Forces like the Imperium does), consisting of several hundred vessels in total. While the Imperial fleets are better unified by design, the Regency has a myriad of ancient ship-designs lost to the Imperium and (corrupted by the maintenance of the Hereteks and Dark Magi) performing at unstable but no-less worrying levels, while armed with weaponry built with forbidden techniques that pervert their holy machines with warp-touched madness.

All sixteen fleets are expected to enter Imperial space within the next few months - some are headed for the front at Henlock, where Imperial and Mechanicus forces are attempting to retake the Titan Graveyard from the Archenemy. The ‘Talons of the Way’ who took this world are little more than an advance force for the so-called Legions Divinatatum, the holy armies of the Regency, that now march to retake what they believe is ‘their’ sector. These forces are very different to what the Imperium has been fighting for the past hundred years: the barbarian forces from the warp-wracked worlds within the Tenebris storm are powerful, but they act and think like the savage warriors they are. By comparison, the Legions Divinatatum are disciplined and function like a true army: their origins (though no Imperial would ever admit it) owed to those elements of the Imperial Army who swore loyalty to the Archtraitor Horus, and they still fight in ancient formations even after all the years in hiding.

Although, if fully assembled, the battlegroups of Battlefleet Prosperitas are more than a match for these incoming vessels. However, it is near-impossible to fully muster the Battlefleet with several vessels caught up in ongoing civil conflict between the Noble Houses, due to their Captain’s family connections - not to mention the need to maintain vessels along the Tenebris border should the Tain Twin’s hordes emerge from the storm the moment Imperium lessens its watch on that flank. Similarly, Crusade High Command are unwilling to leave the Sector border with the Nemean Gulf unguarded - the last time that occurred, the Ork hordes of Waaagh! Gazbag attacked, not to mention there is still so little known of what lurks within the unexplored gulf.

Paralysed by indecision on what front they can commit forces to, the Crusade is unable to bring its full might to bear and stop the Regency Armies. Instead, it has decided to commit fleets to three likely targets of the wrath of the Archenemy.

The fleets around Henlock remain assigned to that conflict, expecting the arrival of Regency fleets to reinforce Archenemy forces already on world.

Fleets originally committed to the defence of Persephon IV have moved to defend the trade routes close to Persephon and the agri-world of Midsummer, which is now feeding most of the sector, as well as engaging in extensive seed-exchange, to re-sow the formerly Ork-blighted Persephon. These fleets have chosen the strategically vital planet of Lerwick to draw their defence line.

Finally, Admiral Ridea Holtz, who has been tasked with theatre command, has anchored her fleets at Helaerus III, expecting the Archenemy forces to use the beachhead of recently-sacked Olethros Secunda to attack the forested hiveworld, in order to push into Subsector Primus and the important trade route nexuses beyond Helaerus III.

House Qureshi

Simultaneously, there are apparent fractures forming on Henlock between the Tech-Priests of Naximus Prime and their vassals of Knight House Qureshi, who rule their satellite colony on Anaximund Alpha. Tension between the two is nothing new - is has long been known that the Knight House rankles under the yolk of servitude to the Tech-Priests but the Sidon Protocols, ancient laws of the Mechanicum that put the maintenance and equipping of Knights of the Questoris Mechanicus (Knights loyal to the Machine Cult) at the mercy of their controlling Forgeworld, have kept this civil.

But, recently, rumours have been swirling of a confrontation between Princeps-Satrap Lalah Qureshi, the head of the House, and Magos Secutor-Navpati Amytis-yazdah, the supreme commander of Naximan forces on Henlock. The rumours are unclear and suppressed, but many believe the Princeps-Satrap to have personally condemned the Magos Secutor-Navpati for committing a Lance of her Knights to being sacrificed as a distraction for the God-Machines of the Demi-Legio Custodii Incudatum, against Archenemy engines, as well as exterminating several maniples of the Techno-Barbarians bonded to her House against the enemy. If rumours are to be believed, the Magos’ cold logic is met by the Princeps-Satrap physically assaulting them and being physically ejected from the Naximund Command Hub by the Magos Secutor-Navpati’s Skitarii bodyguards.

OOC: If you have connections to either House Qureshi or the Tech-Priests of Naximus Prime it’s fairly trivial to confirm the rumours are true.

The direct result of this appears to be a notable snubbing of House Qureshi in strategic planning by the Magos Secutor-Navpati; the Knights are unseen when the God-Machines of the Demi-Legion walk, and are relegated to a series of low-tier missions better dedicated to other forces of the Taghmata (Mechanicus Military). This undiplomatic response only further strains tensions, with the House with the Knight-Scions (who translate the title as ‘Sardar’ in the Houses local dialect) increasingly prone to ‘interpreting’ orders from their Mechanicus masters in creative and interesting ways.

This has not gone unnoticed in the Crusade, and the Imperium proper who have long sort to persuade the House to break its bonds to the Mechanicus and join the ranks of the emancipated ‘Questor Imperialis’ (those knights more openly aligned to the Imperium than the Machine Cult).