Nivalis
| Name | Nivalis |
|---|---|
| |
| Sub-Sector | Primus |
| Type | Shrine World |
| Population | 3.5 billion |
| Climate | Subarctic |
| Status | Non-Compliant, Temple of the Saviour Emperor Control |
“We arrived deep in local winter and stayed for nearly a week. C complained, of course – unpredictable ground, foul weather, all the usual Voidborn grumbles. Secretly I think he was as impressed as I was by the capital. The holy statues are too vast to comprehend, even for someone used to Navy ships. More like mountains than artefacts. Went hunting in hill forests – unsuccessful but hugely enjoyable; hired snow gear from native guide, wasted a lot of ammunition. Local wildlife faster than expected!” – Travel Diary of Lucius di Firro, 575.M41
About Nivalis
Nivalis is an inhospitable but beautiful planet just far enough inside its sun’s orbit to avoid the designation of Ice World. The habitable zone on the planet is restricted to a mountainous strip a few hundred kilometres wide at the Equator, with the rest of the planet locked in permanent glacial cold. Settlement on Nivalis was well-established prior to the arrival of the Imperium - the mountainous regions were home to a hardy, hospitable breed of Ruwwad who greatly prize physical courage and cunning. Their favoured hobby is hunting, and anyone of birth or breeding on the planet is expected to prove their worth by tracking and killing one of the many dangerous mountain beasts. Native Nivalian Mountain Folk view the wearing of furs, or jewellery made from the teeth or claws of one’s kills, as a status symbol, and tend to look down on those who do not wear them.
But alongside this hunting culture the Nivalian Mountain Folk or Qawm’Aljibal also were a deeply spiritual culture even before the arrival of the Imperial Cult to their world. For millennia the Qawm’Aljibal maintained what some Ecclesiarchy scholars have suggested is some protoform of the Imperial Cult defending mountaintop shrines from Regency attempts to stamp out their beliefs. The Qawm’Aljibal religion venerates the healing of the body as an important part of their practices and as such many of the Temples in the mountains have maintained datastacks filled with millennia of accumulated Ruwwadi medicae lore. The Bayt Alshifa' (Houses of Healing) in the planets Western Hemisphere appear to be the center of this pre-Imperial Cult where the mountain meltwater filters though salt veins within a set of natural cave systems to form saltwater pools considered to useful for hydrotherapy on patients recovering from injuries.
When the Imperium arrived on Nivalis on the 300’s.M41 the Qawm’Aljibal were at first eager to accommodate the new arrivals. Initial integration of their Priesthood into the Ecclesiarchy by the Missionarius Galactica was not hard, like most of the Ruwwadi the Qawm’Aljibal religion claims to have been influenced by a non-binary Philosopher-Healer figure, carvings in some of the more venerated mountain shrines talk of lessons taught by this figure of a distant godlike beacon of hope and life on the birthworld of humanity, and that worship was easy enough to coopt towards Ecclesiastic integration.
Initial Imperial settlement of the world began in earnest towards the 350’s.M41 - the Qawm’Aljibal had for millennia relied on the integration of small mountainside, cave and cliffside townships to exist as settlement within the mountains as the lowland plains before the icy tundra had made those few who had attempted to establish settlements there vulnerable to Regency raids. With the drawing of the Imperial era for Nivalis, Imperial colonists began to establish settlements in these unsettled lowlands which rapidly, with the aid of Imperial industry, grew into sprawling settlements and the first cities on Nivalis in its history sprung up under Imperial rule.
As the Imperial presence on Nivalis became more prevalent, so too did its shrines attract more and more attention from pilgrims and the Ecclesiarchy. The influence of the more traditional Ecclesiarchy priesthood began to swell on the world during the century between 400-500.M41. Travellers and pilgrims said that every valley and secluded peak boasts its own shrine to the God-Emperor and His saints, and so the Ecclesiarchy began to make it so co-opting Qawm’Aljibal shrines to house sacred relics, recarving statues and in a few particular instances laser-carving entire peaks into likenesses of the God-Emperor and Heroes of the Imperium.
The constant presence of pilgrims travelling to and from the planet led to extensive development in the urban centres. The planetary capital and many secondary cities boast all the facilities that the discerning and pious citizen might need, and there is an extensive transport network connecting the most popular pilgrimage sites. In happier times, it was said that one could walk into a cathedral in the capital and find worshippers from every world in the Sector at prayer together. Though it is easy to categorise the riots of 584.M41 as the events that changed the world, tensions on Nivalis had been growing for centuries before that, Qawm’Aljibal found themselves increasingly marginalised by intrusive pilgrims and off-world Priests who sought to alter their sacred places. The Ruwwadi are not known for being resistant to change, but what they objected to was the intrusive and disrespectful nature of this development, many of it designed to entice pilgrims to shrines that had stood for centuries without need of alteration. They viewed the practice as grubby, and based on economical and not spiritual concerns by the Priesthood in the lowlands. Pilgrims were often rude, and outright hostile towards the Qawm’Aljibal, and the balance of respect the Qawm’Aljibal held with the initial colonists began to slip towards tension - riots and violence had begun to pick up long before the events that would happen later. Life on Nivalis prior to Ecclesiarchy, and later Temple of the Saviour Emperor, takeover was one of three lifestyles;
The Qawm’Aljibal living in the mountains were, where the Imperium did not intrude into their spaces, relatively content maintaining a culture described in detail above that had lasted millennia, hunting and trapping and existing between limited mountain settlement and some nomadic lifestyle following the movement of native fauna. But they experienced extreme inequality, the Imperium did little to enhance their lives, and where Qawm’Aljibal were enticed to move towards the lowland cities to look for work they found themselves treated as second class citizens and very little space for their culture alongside that of Imperial Colonists.
The majority of permanent Imperial Colonists on the other hand were relatively wealthy, their reliance on a pilgrim-driven economy and their success in encouraging Ecclesiarchy investment in their world drove a massive influx of wealth to the cities. Many Houses and Guilds of Nivalis were amongst the wealthiest minor nobles in the Sector, lifestyle in the Colonial districts was above-average for the Prosperitas Sector with even the most lowborn colonists enjoying a good standard of living and a relatively safe and stable environment. Historical cultural intermingling long with the Qawm’Aljibal meant that furs were prominent parts of Nivalian Colonial fashion and served often as a point of strong contact between those mindful of the mountain folk’s situation prior to the collapse of order on the world. Nivalian Colonists do have a reputation for hardiness against the icy temperatures of their home and a similar spirituality and tendency towards medicae arts due to initial relationships with the Qawm’Aljibal resulting in the sharing of medicare data, and indeed up until its destruction in the rioting of 584.M41 the Nivalian capitol held a very respected Medicae Schola. Perhaps most importantly they were graced with the formal planetary estate of House De Sousa and a fairly substantial Navigator Enclave existed here.
Pilgrims on the other hand were a much more problematic influence for both societies that already existed on Nivalis, bringing with them their outside problems, prejudices, demands, and a willingness for violent confrontation with those who did not, in their eyes, hold their beliefs. For the Colonists these problems were contained to the Pilgrims Quarters of the city where most were lodged before they set out to the shrines of the mountains after spending their coin on the Colonial businesses created to enable their journeys. But the Qawm’Aljibal found them to be intrusive, the paths up to the Bayt Alshifa’ had long begun to suffer from erosion from heavy pilgrim traffic and tensions had already developed between the Priesthood there and their Ecclesiarchy superiors over accommodating guests not in need of medical care who simply wished to ‘experience’ the halls of their Temple.
The Planetary Riots – 584.M41
All sense of balance on Nivalis’ came to an abrupt end in 584.M41 though, as noted above, tensions with the Qawm’Aljibal had been growing for some time. Inquisitorial records confirm that House De Sousa had long housed members of the Navigator Diaspora amongst their guests on Nivalis and through inaction and innocence had given a festering Navigator Warp Cult sanctuary. During the traditional annual Candlemass celebrations this cult interrupted festivities, murdering the Arch-Confessor of Nivalis, Danic Vitalus, the Cultists attempted to bring about some form of warp disturbance, they were stopped at cost by the Inquisition. It is now believed by the Inquisition that a heretical cabal was responsible for encouraging this situation to spiral out of control in order to lay the grounds for the arrival of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor as a result of the chaos that followed.
In the wake of Arch-Confessor Vitalus' murder and the warp disturbance on the planetary surface a wave of psychic disruption washed out into the sleeping minds of the planet setting many humours unbalanced. Exacerbated by the unsanctioned broadcast of violent scenes from the epicenter of the chaos, riots spread in an uncontrolled wave across the planet, taking the meagre Planetary Defence Force by surprise and shattering the once-peaceful planet into civil conflict. Prejudices magnified by psychic unease Pilgrims marched on the Navigator Quarter in the planetary capitol and raised it to the ground, before focusing their attention on the Qawm’Aljibal as the next sources of their paranoid fears. This was the final straw for many Qawm’Aljibal many of who outright declared secession from the Imperium in reaction to these unprovoked assaults.
Fearing the loss of such an important religious site and source of wealth and income in the frontier sector, the Ecclesiarchy formally requested the aid of the Adepta Sororitas to suppress and control the unrest, with the Convent Primary on Ophelia IV sending a detachment of Sorors from the Order of our Martyred Lady to engage in counterinsurgency operations.
While engaged in counterinsurgency and stabilisation, the Sisters reported a miracle whose echoes are still felt in the religious and political hierarchies of the Sector. Every statue of the God-Emperor on the planet, from tiny household icons to the kilometre-high colossus at the heart of the planetary capital, was witnessed to weep tears of blood. In the wake of this miracle, the Sisters engaged in offensive operations to return Nivalis to order with a bloodthirsty piety unlike anything seen before on the planet - this act would lead to their establishment of a permanent Covent-Garrison on Nivalis and the formation of the Minor Order of His Sanguine Tears to maintain the peace on the world.
But with this brutal suppression of the riots on Nivalis, came the final step in securing Ecclesiarchy influence over the planet transforming it into a Shrine World fully under the heel of
Nivalis fell under the rule of Cardinal-Emissarius Grulge. The ongoing civil conflict was suppressed – often brutally – the insurgency kept to a quiet simmer by the security presence of the Sorors.
Despite this Nivalis was no longer the safe haven for pilgrims that it once was, with scattered groups of heretics and Ruwwad planetary nationalists – bitter at the long arm of the Ecclesiarchy “usurping” their government – still holding out in the rural mountain areas despite the Sorors’ best efforts.
The Invasion of Nivalis – 592.M41
In 592.M41 the Space Hulk Durovera’s Pain appeared from the warp above Nivalis, bringing multiple Archenemy vessels in its wake, exiting close to planetary orbit. This foul fleet made short work of the Pilgrim and System Defence vessels, and soon the orbit of Nivalis burned with the hulls of ruined vessels, in a swift four-hour campaign, the Enemy established orbital control of Nivalis.
Recognising the danger, of orbital attack the Order of his Sanguine Tears evacuated their Fortress-Covent knowing it was vulnerable to orbital attack, letting Archenemy fire destroy it while the Order made its way to the the Cathedral-City of Nivalis and reinforced there beneath its protective void shields alongside the Fidelis Militia. Insurgent Nivalian forces, no friend to the Archenemy or the Cardinal and his Allies, realizing something significant was approaching, retreated from conflict zones.
The Archenemy hordes rained from the skies sparing no one, hordes of diseased barbaric scum charged against Imperial lines, advancing from their dropsites towards the many shrines and places of worship across the planet's surface. Rapid reaction forces of Sorors and Fidelis Militia swept into place swiftly, experienced veterans of the counter-insurgency efforts on the planet Ecclesiarchy forces slowed the Archenemy advance. The second wave of dropships did not hit Imperial lines however, but rather fell upon insurgent-held territories, rapidly wiping out what little resistance remained, and driving a flood of desperate refugees towards Imperial lines with fantastic tales of engaging heavily armoured barbaric warriors.
The Order of His Sanguine Tears retreated from Nivalis in 593.M41 after Archenemy Forces broken their defensive lines at the Cathedral City and ransacked it, only for Cardinal-Emissarius Grulge to return to the system at the head of a host of fanatics and fidelis militia raised from the worlds of the Prosperitas Sector declaring a holy war to retake the world from the heretics that had fallen upon it.
Since 593, Nivalis has been devastated by nearly a decade of constant conflict, it’s once-pristine shrines wrecked, it’s forested stripped barren by traitor and faithful bombardments, though there is a stable area around the ruined Cathedral City of Nivalis controlled by the Cardinal-Emissarius the frontlines of the fight shift back and forth between traitors and the faithful daily, and few pilgrims come here without anything more than the intent to join the fanatical faithful hosts on the planet to retake it from the Archenemy.
Recent History - Reign of the Heresiarch and the Temple
Since the unmasking of Ignatius Grulge as a heretic and member of the proscribed Temple of the Saviour Emperor, war-torn Nivalis as served as a center for Temple rule, fully unmasked the once 'Fidelis Militia' now calling themselves the 'FideliS Templar' have pushed back those Archenemy forces that remain on the world to the wildernesses away from the shrine-cities. This has been aided greatly by the sudden and unknowable translation of the space hulk above the world into the warp, vanishing off into the unknown. With the hulk many Archenemy vessels also departed leaving only those who failed to reach shuttles back to them to plague the Temple's dominance of the Shrine World.
Grulge's new era of rule, is marked by the granting of the derogatory title of Heresiarch to the apostate priest. Grulge, who styles himself with the title of Archimandrite, has only become more tyrannical as the Temple of the Saviour Emperor has moved to openly rule the Shrine World. The Heresiarch brooks no opposition to his rule and those priests and pilgrims who have not fallen in line with the Temple have been violent purged, in 594.m41 this led the martyring of a delegation of Gearwrights at the gates of the Cathedral City of Nivalis by Templar forces.
The Heresiarch has all but contained Archenemy forces that have retreated to the wilder regions of the world and now focuses upon expanding his dominion to Subsector Secundus.