History of Nivalis

See Also:

• Nivalis
• The Ruwwad

The history of the planet Nivalis is complex and war-torn. As the Prosperitas Sector's chief Shrine World and sometime seat of the Sector's most senior Ecclesiarchy, it has undergone a series of devastating events in the unrest which gripped the Prosperitas Sector in the late 500s.M41.

The Qawm'Aljibal

Ancient records attest that the Nivalian Mountain Folk, or "Qawm’Aljibal", 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 their 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. 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 planet's Western Hemisphere appear to be the center of this pre-Imperial Cult. Here, 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 in the 300s.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. In common with many Ruwwadi traditions, 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. This existing worship was easy enough to coopt towards Ecclesiastic integration.

A Pilgrim World

Initial Imperial settlement of the world began in earnest in the 350s.M41. The Qawm’Aljibal had for millennia settled in small mountainside, cave and cliffside townships, disdaining the lowland plains, since those few who had attempted to establish settlements there became vulnerable to Regency raids. With the dawning 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; soon, 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.

Tension and Inequality

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.

Nivalis of the early and mid 500s was a planet of inequality. The Qawm experienced extreme inequality, with many driven out of their traditional settlements and forced to move to the new lowland cities for work, where they found themselves treated as second-class citizens. The majority of Imperial Colonists, by contrast, were wealthy, benefiting from a pilgrim-driven economy and their success in encouraging Ecclesiarchy investment in their world. Many Houses and Guilds of Nivalis were amongst the wealthiest minor nobles in the Sector, and lifestyle in the Colonial districts was above-average for the Prosperitas Sector, even for the lowborn. Perhaps most importantly, Nivalis was graced with the formal planetary estate of House De Sousa, and a fairly substantial Navigator Enclave existed here.

Meanwhile, the millions of Pilgrims which flocked to the planet rapidly became a problematic influence, 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. But the Qawm’Aljibal found them to be intrusive; the paths up to their Bayt Alshifa’ shrines had long begun to suffer from erosion from heavy pilgrim traffic, and tensions began to develop over accommodating guests not in need of medical care who simply wished to ‘experience’ the halls of their Temples.

The Planetary Riots – 584.M41

The tensions simmering on Nivalis came to an abrupt head in 584.M41. 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, and 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 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 gripped the planet. 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 capital 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.

Unknown to the Adepta Sororitas, the brutal suppression was the final step in then Cardinal-Emissarius Grulge's plan to transform the world into the seat of the Temple's power in the Prosperitas Sector. The heretic Cardinal began a great rebuilding project, aiming to transform the central districts of the Capital into an immense Temple to the God-Emperor and his seat of power. This disturbed Ecclesiarchy loyalists and colonists alike, who found their relatively benign Planetary Government replaced by hardline religious rule.

A planetary insurgency comprised of both Qawm’Aljibal Separatists, desiring freedom from Imperial rule, and groups of Nivalian Colonists loyal to the Imperium but in opposition to Grulge's rule continued throughout the 580s.M41, often brutally suppressed by both the Sorors and the Fidelis Militia forces loyal to Grulge. The latter recruited aggressively from pilgrims visiting the world, swelling its ranks with the faithful eager to fight in the name of their Faith.

The Arrival of Durovera's Pain – 592.M41

In 592.M41 the Space Hulk Durovera’s Pain appeared from the warp above Nivalis, apparently ushered there by the the Archenemy Forces of the Creeping Death, and falling in to a stable orbit above the world. The Hulk's looming presence over the already ravaged world was considered one in a long line of ill omens by many of the world's inhabitants. Many Insurgent groups, unexpectedly, declared a ceasefire with each other and withdrew from conflict with Imperial forces; this was reportedly influenced by the long-kept records of the Qawm’Aljibal of the Regency's ancient invasions and raids on their world.

It was only when the Sorors of the Order of His Sanguine Tears emerged from their Convent-Garrison in the Mountains in full retreat that the Ecclesiarchy's Priests awakened to the true scale of the threat. The Archenemy dropped from orbit, hordes of barbarians drawn from the Creeping Death smashing against the defenders of the Shrine World and driving them back behind the walls of the cities while they ravaged the lowlands. In the mountains the Archenemy had less success, their raiders unused to the terrain. Insurgents and scattered bands of Sorors unable to reach Imperial lines were able to pick them apart with ease.

Under cover of these attacks, enemy dropships from vessels bearing markings not recognised by the Imperium made landings out in the icy wastes of the polar tundras of the world. As Sororitas forces retreated en masse from the world to regroup, Inquisition reports suspected the hand of the Regency at play.

Reign of the Heresiarch - 593-597.M41

With the withdrawal of the Adepta Sororitas, Cardinal-Emissarius Grulge was quick to declare them cowards, but gained a significant foothold on the world after counter-attacking in 593.M41 with Fidelis Militia forces. It was Nivalis which acted as Grulge's capital after he was unmasked as a heretic and publicly declared as a member of the proscribed Temple of the Saviour Emperor. Fully unmasked, the once 'Fidelis Militia' now calling themselves the 'Fidelis Templar' served as a brutal reminder of the Temple's fanatic adherence to the belief that it is the 'true' faith of the God Emperor.

Styling himself the "Archimandrite", Grulge ruled Nivalis for four bloody years, including during the Silence. His rule was tyrannical, and those priests who did not fall in line with Temple doctrine were savagely 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.

This created an additional insurgent faction in the form of those pilgrims and Imperials trapped on the world who refused to comply with the Temple's theocratic dictatorship, heavily embodied in the form of the Gearwrights who served as a center to those faithful unwilling to renounce the Ecclesiarchy in favour of the Temple. Brutal purges were commonplace with entire squads of flamer-armed Templars setting flame to areas of the Pilgrim camps where they found heresy, willing to kill a few faithful in the belief that the God-Emperor will know his own.

Fall of the Temple - 597.M41

Ignatius Grulge was arrested and officially executed by Imperial forces on Nivalis in 597.M41. Leaderless, Scores Templar units remain stationed on the planet until the Crusade can find a home for them. The hereditary nobility of Nivalis was has been substantially altered, with many of the powerful Houses which supported Grulge's ascendancy stripped of their lands and wealth. Much of this land was returned to the Ruwwad communities and families it was originally seized from. Many Qawm'Aljibal, meanwhile, found themselves co-opted into the Adeptus Arbites in an agreement which many see as resetting the balance of power across the planet.

The Gearwrights, meanwhile, made themselves at home in the planet's slow recovery from violence; in the city’s defence and the wake of the fighting, the former Olethran refugees quickly emerged as a functioning logistical infrastructure, arranging mutual aid and sharing the words of their Saint with a population hungry for reassurance.