The Prosperitas Crusade and High Command

Once, the Prosperitas Crusade was the entire reason for the Sector's existence, but several shameful performances from its leadership and the loss of multiple prominent Leaders have seen it loose the support of Terra and of the Prosperitas Nobility in recent years.

It endures, but its existence has long-hung on the knife edge, kept alive by skilled commanders. But with a resurgent Archenemy it becomes all the more important to the survival of the Sector. Without the forces of the Prosperitas Crusade dedicated to the liberation of the Sector from the grip of heresy and the expansion of the Imperium's frontier the Prosperitas Sector would still be a cesspit of foul heretic cults and wayward xenos powers.

Five Things To Know About the Prosperitas Crusade

• It is under-resourced. Fighting on the frontier of Imperial space the ships and equipment of the Prosperitas Crusade are far from the finest that the Imperium has to offer, many Regiments rely on local-made vehicles that the famous patterns of battle tanks found elsewhere in the Imperium, and many vessels are aging things often taken as prize-vessels during the taking of the sector.
• It is stretched thin. It would nice to imagine the Prosperitas Crusade surrounding the frontiers of the Sector like an iron wall against the threats beyond, but this is fantasy. The Crusade is too few to cover every region and the sector vast enough for enemy fleets and raiding parties to slip through to attack vulnerable worlds defended only by system defences and PDF forces.
• It is locally raised. It would be common in most Crusades to see forces raised from worlds well beyond the sector from famous worlds such as Harakon, Savlar, such storied regiments are not found in the Prosperitas Sector however and the majority of personnel are raised from worlds of the prosperitas sector.
• It is a mark of pride to serve. Though many who serve in the enlisted ranks soon discover the brutal reality of Crusade service, the duty is still desired especially by many of Noble birth who can often 'purchase' a commission due to ancient rights of birth. To have served in the Crusade is a mark of status no matter your birth and many citizens desire it.
• It is autonomous of the Prosperitas Administratum. Though it has had to fight off attempts by the nobility of the Prosperitas Sector to take control of it, the Crusade has traditionally been rigidly independent of the Sector Governor's Office and recently this has shielded it from internal strife between the ruling Houses of the sector.

An Overview of the Imperial Military

Though it can call on elite forces such as those of the Adepta Sororitas and the Adeptus Astartes, the Hammer and Sword of the Imperium are it's Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy. These are ordinary men and women who fuel the massive war machine of the Imperium, conquering worlds, putting down rebellions and sometimes being called upon to deliver the ultimate sanctions. Without the Imperial Guard and Navy the Imperium would likely fall to pieces, because for all the legends of the might of the Emperors chosen warriors, alone of them the elite forces of the Imperium would be overwhelmed by it's myriad foes.

Drawn from a billion worlds, across the Imperium, the Noble Regiments of the Imperial Guard are vast in number and range from whole units of technologically superior soldiers, to vast tribes of savages barely capable of maintaining the weaponry they are expected to carry into battle. The Imperium is a vast place, and many of the vast cultures are reflected in the bizarre variety of regiments within the Imperial Guard. To an outsider, in a galaxy of horrors, the Imperial Guard might seem like cannon fodder, but the truth is that many members of the Imperial Guard are the product of the elite of the militaries on their homeworld, the cream of the crop mustered to support the vast might of the Imperium's fighting forces.

The High Guard, the Void Nobility, the Imperial Navy is a culture unto itself, many of its Officers and Crew are born aboard the vast city-sized Battleships, and the leadership of many vessels is often determined by a combination of merit, breeding and heritage. Every ship has it's own community, and every Fleet it's own culture. The Ships of the Imperium are truly deadly things, each carrying enough firepower to utterly destroy anything from a city, to an entire planet.

Coordinating the movement of the Imperial Navy and Guard, the Adeptus Munitorum are responsible for ensuring that logistics and strategies are in place to unify the movements of the Imperial Guard and Navy, with distances as vast as the Galaxy has, this is a near impossible task, and it is testament to the endless work of the Logisticians and Quatermasters of the Munitorum that the lines of supply have not completely collapsed.

A sub-division of the Adeptus Munitorum worth making note of, the Commissariat is responsible for ensuring the moral and loyalty of both the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy. Commissars are a breed of fanatical disciplinarians whose loyalty to the Emperor is often seen as unshakable, and the few Military Officers who hold rank and power over both Guard and Navy when it comes to matters of discipline, loyalty and moral.

Crusade High Command

The rank of Warmaster is something of a cursed one in the Imperium, it is an ancient rank, giving an individual authority over all of the fighting forces of the Imperium - it is only ever bestowed in times of great need, or to establish a single united leadership for the massive military operations that are an Imperial Crusade. It is a roll that balances political acumen against military leadership, and more often than not most Warmasters die long before they see the end of their Crusade. Such can be said for the Warmaster of the Prosperitas Crusade, of which there have been no fewer than ten individuals to hold that title, all of which have died in battle.

The Prosperitas Crusade began under Warmaster Durovera, a powerful woman, once a Rogue Trader Militant, she is credited with rediscovering the warp pathways into the Prosperitas Sector and the largely untapped wealth that is found there. The entire Crusade is founded on the Imperium's need for resources, though the reunification of the human inhabitants with the Imperium is a worth goal, it is the resources of the sector that the Imperium needs.

In these years of the late 41st Millenium, the Crusade's forces are mostly comprised of the Imperial Guard Regiments raised within the Prosperitas Sector's many worlds, supported by Battlefleet Prosperitas, several companies of elite Stormtroopers, and the Battle Sisters of the Order of His Sanguine Tears. Of the Adeptus Astartes, the Emperor's Angels of Death, their presence on the battlefields of the Prosperitas Crusade has been limited and rare, a few small elements brought from out-sector to support vital Crusade operations, but there has never been a permanent Astartes presence in the Crusade.

The disastrous Second Battle of Henlock robbed it of both it's Warmaster and many of the other obvious contenders for the position many of whom were killed in the fighting there. Many political struggles for control of the Crusade occurred over the years following the death of the Warmaster, before Sector Governor Armelius Durovera successfully made a bid for control of the Crusade based upon his meteoric rise in popularity in y.586-590.M41 - anointed by right of his ancestors role as the first Warmaster of the Crusade there are some concerns that Armelius may well be its last.

Warmaster Durovera II does not share the Crusade's passion for pressing its expeditionary mission further and has erred on the side of caution throughout his rule - focusing on the stabilization of the existing territories of the sector and, some have rumored, going so far as to press for the dissolution of the Crusade altogether.

=== Salients of the Prosperitas Crusade

While Planetary Defence Forces and Garrisoned Fortress Worlds hold the line, there are four major 'Salients' where the Imperium is currently engaged in active military operations against the forces of the Archenemy and the various disparate Xenos and Human worlds of the Rimward Front. Operations in each salient are carried out by combined-arms formations of Imperial Navy, Imperial Guard and other Auxiliary and Specialist Forces under the command of the most senior Officers of the Sector.

With the disbandment of multiple battlegroups and the end of certain campaigns, Warmaster Khan has re-organised her battlegroups into three simplified salient commands; Cerastes, Hydros and Jaculus.

Though they have their own commanders, the twin commands of Cerastes and Hydros Salients fall under the oversight of the Head of Crusade Intelligence, Admiral, Ridea Holtz, who has overall of what is now the heavily splintered Subsector Secundus front. Both Salients in this region are aided by the mysterious Astartes of the Sable Knives who roam between the two Salients striking where their forces matter most.

The wider Secundus front is threatened by insurgent warfare, but most importantly, the Sovereign Order (see: new threats) the resurgent Regency remnant that has risen to face the Imperium.

Cerastes Salient

Cerastes is the central Salient of the Crusade, pushing out into the space around Helaerus III, following the fall and corruption of the tropical world of Olethros Secunda by the forces of the Sovereign Order. The Machine War of Henlock falls under this theatre, but, following the pull-back of Imperial forces from the planet in the aftermath of the arrival of Sovereign Order fleets from the Rimward marches, has left that a conflict largely prosecuted by the more-than-capable Taghmata Omnissiah of the Three Forges.

Command of the Salient falls to General Adora Astara, who earned her position by her swift actions negotiating Mechanicum aid for the retaking of Henlock. Though she has pulled from that theatre, she retains the respect of the Adeptus Mechanicus, which has enabled her to better mobilise their technological age elsewhere in the Salient. Inspiring, young and full of ideas, her good assets are tempered a little by a reputation for being hot-headed and a bit of a technophile - her forces are well-equipped, but some of that technology is untested and dangerous.

General Astara’s command is anchored at Helaerus III despite the ongoing battles above the planet with the Sovereign Order, though the Salient’s reserve forces keep a careful eye on the Strayvian Gateway, where Archenemy forces have previously translated from the Warp to prosecute raids on worlds including the Shrine-World of Nivalis.

Speaking of the Shrine-World, Salient command has studiously kept out of the affairs of the Ecclesiarchy as to the ongoing conflict regarding the apostate Cardinal-Emissarius Grulge. Though the Fidelis Templar fanatics who eagerly flood in front of the Salient forces are little more than a well-armed mob in comparison to the disciplined forces of the Crusade, their value as disposable and often effective troops has ensured that the Crusade has taken no strong opinion as to the future of the Cardinal-Emissiarus’ rule.

Despite her favouring of technological superiority, the planets of Shadowglow and Caracas provide General Astara with a steady flow of abhumans and primitive humans. The human Carachian tribals are not naturally given to technological advancement nor are the abhuman Ekara avian beastmen, who share their world, although the Ekara have been deployed effectively as scouts by Salient forces. The human tribals have been formed into the so-called ‘Reforged’ regiments - where the brutally strong warriors are psycho-indoctrinated and physically-enhanced into heavily muscled brutes under the watchful eye of the Magos Biologis, part of the partnership General Astara enjoys. These shock-troops have proved effective alongside the irregular Fidelis Templar for line-breaking attacks. The Raivans of Shadowglow, on the other hand, have a storied history as commandos and stealth troops, and the contingent that answers to General Astara are potent warriors.

With ongoing Archenemy assaults on Helaerus, most of the fighting on this salient is centred around Helaerus IV, as well as fleet skirmishes around Caracas and Macharion, and deeper into the subsector.

Hydros Salient

On the spinward side of the front in Subsector Secundus, the Hydro Salient has yet to really taste the full brunt of the Archenemy forces deployed by the Sovereign Order, thanks to the mysterious intervention of unknown forces at Lerwick. Its commanders do their best to prepare for the inevitable assault, with warp-routes to the vital agri-world of Midsummer, and the recovering agri-world of Persephon IV, it is imperative that they do not falter.

Command of the Salient falls to Vice-Admiral Rycus Frolan, a Naval officer of classic breeding, who straddles the line between the Traditionalist factions of the Crusade, and the newer philosophies of officers like Warmaster Khan. Frolan fancies himself a warrior philosopher, and has dedicated his life to revisiting the great works of the Imperial military. Of all the Salient commanders, he is the most ambitious, and would dearly love to be warmaster one day. By reputation, Frolan favours more traditional troops formations, and his command contains a higher-than-average number of Line Infantry regiments, alongside supporting carrier vessels to give him air superiority above a planet. Because of the higher-than-average occurrence of rebellion in the theatre, and the Rising Flame activity in the region however, Frolan has been forced to adopt counter-insurgency forces, and often liaises with the Battle Sisters of the Order of his Sanguine Tears for support on this end, given his theatre’s removal from the current Ecclesiarchy conflict.

Hydros’s command is anchored around Persephon IV, slowly stripping Crusade forces off the world as cleanup of the Greenskin invasion rolls to a slow close. The majority of these forces are bound for the fighting at Lerwick, where Rising Flame rebellion and Archenemy forces split the planet - some are sent as expeditionary forces to investigate the space around the frontier worlds of Macharion XIV and Mawson’s Wake, hunting for pirate fleets that periodically raid other worlds in this sector.

The majority of fighting in this theatre is centered around the ongoing conflict on Lerwick, but its forces still see activity fighting off pirates of human, Ork and other xenos nature, and Persephon IV serves as a perfect testing ground for regiments in supporting the ongoing cleanup of the remnants of the Ork invasion there.

Jaculus Salient

Far to the Trailing side of the Sector in Subsector Tertius, the Jaculus Salient is an independent command, far removed from the front in Subsector Secundus. Here, Imperial forces seek to stem the tide of Warp Barbarian Raiders pouring through the breach created by the fall of Kelper Prime to Archenemy assault. The combined might of the Weeping Eye and Creeping Death - both devoted to the Plague God - and their subject tribes may not be as disciplined as the Sovereign Order, but they are savage and just as devoted to their dark gods, even if their motivations are to raid Imperial worlds for the resources their planets lack.

Command of this Salient falls to Commodore Haridax Kirill, the Void Wolf - a former pirate brought under the wing of Warmaster Khan many years ago. Kirill has a dread reputation among Naval Commanders: he is seen as the enforcer of the Warmaster and few dare speak against him, despite his chequered past. Kirill is seen as the long arm of the Warmaster, directing the fighting in the Salient, he favours, as she does, the same unorthodox tactics that saw her rise so meteorically in the ranks of the Crusade. Many irregular and unusual formations operate under his Salient command, and he has no lack of compulsion of recruiting regiments of newly-freed penal-labourers from Lubyanka to do his dirty work for him. These are not the only non-traditional units, as the Void Wolf has notably bargained several strong regiments of Beastman Auxilla off the flesh-wrights of House Vilas-Lobo.

Kirill keeps his command nomadic, occasionally anchoring at Polarnus Station, where the defenses on the warp lanes into Archenemy-held Kelper Prime are solid enough to deter another assault. Because of the vital nature of Kelper Prime, the Salients forces are concentrated around Bachian IV, Agrial III and Amenophis IV, where they seek to cordon off the moments of raider vessels leaving Kelper Prime. It is the Void Wolf’s gift that he knows much of the hidden pirate havens of the region, and many an unusual truce has been bartered here to give his raider-hunting fleets the full run of Pirate regions where the Imperial Navy would otherwise be unwelcome.

The majority of fighting in this region is void-based with the Weeping Eye and Creeping Death having yet to make a significant push following their capture of Kelper Prime. To this end, Imperial strategists are anticipating they are building forces to launch a major offensive and push their realspace territory wider. Commodore Kirill prepares for the inevitable demands from the Warmaster to push back and retake Kelper Prime from the Archenemy.