Veneris

The last in a chain of shrine worlds across the devout
Drusus Marches, Veneris lacks any clear connection
to the works of the divinely inspired Saint Drusus,
or indeed any of the lesser saints of the Sector’s
apocryphal history. As such, it should be, in terms
of the great Calixian pilgrimage routes, a backwater
useful only for temporary layovers after visits to the
holier worlds of Maccabeus Quintus and Sentinel.
Yet despite its inauspicious history, Veneris is one of
the most popular pilgrimage sites in the entire Sector.
This is due entirely to the vast statues carved out of the
mountain ranges which crisscross the planet.
Veneris is a grey, dry, desert world, with a handful of
shabby towns that cower along the edges of small salty
lakes, the only remnants of once vast seas. Sparsely
inhabited since the days of the Angevin Crusade,
Veneris was never a strategically important or wealthy
world. Indeed, it only came into its own some five
hundred years after the death of Saint Drusus. Inspired
by the devotions of its neighbors, the inhabitants of
Veneris used ancient atomic weapons to reshape dozens
of the planet’s vast mountain ranges into the likenesses
of great Imperial Saints such as Thor, Drusus, Vidicus
and Perditar the Forgotten.
Now Veneris is renowned across the Calixis Sector
and beyond for statues on a scale unheard of outside
the Segmentum Solar. For a brief, three hundred year
period, the planet’s inhabitants engaged in a literally
colossal project to reshape their world. Using atomics,
conventional explosives, and millions of devout sculptor-slaves,
the Venerisians carved titanic religious images
up to twenty kilometres long, using entire mountain
ranges as their building blocks. The larger sculptures
portray Imperial Saints prone, as if sleeping, awaiting
the summons of the God Emperor. Smaller colossi test
the limits of human engineering skill, depicting the
Emperor himself, standing up to three kilometers high,
gazing into the stars as if hungry for further conquest.
Centuries after the world-sculpting project ground
to a halt amid massive dust-storms, depopulation
and starvation, the planet’s lone, grimy starport now
draws pilgrims by their millions, destined to travel via
macro-hauler across the marble wastes, in hushed and
awed silence past the colossal castoffs of the natives’
ancestors: eroded yet noble visages weighing thousands
of tonnes, vast and trunkless legs of stone, and petrified
hands that if living could crush a battle titan.
==Quarry Uprising==
The world of Veneris is well known for its massive statues of
the Emperor and Imperial saints so large they dwarf nearby
mountains. These colossi must be maintained with constant
repairs to fend off the elements. The quarry, therefore, near
the planet’s southern pole is one of the most important
locations on the planet.
When the quarry was infected with recidivists who believed
their toil too great, the mining of stone halted and demands
were sent to the local Ecclesiarchal authorities. Confessor Von
Schteil rallied a force of unknowable size from the pilgrims
come to Veneris to weep. He whipped his Frateris Militia
into a frenzy with sermons on the heresy of sloth and fuelled
the hatred for those who would allow the monuments to die
rather than perform their sacred duty.
Over the course of three bloody days the
Fraeteris Militia killed nearly half of the workers; in one instance the Militia toppled a two kilometer high Macrostatue of St. Berevus onto the assembled rioters. Confessor Von Schteil accepted the confession
of the leaders and they were put to death in front
of an ocean of praying pilgrims.
Category:Planets
Category:Calixis Sector
Category:Drusus Marches
Category:Shrine Worlds