88 Tanstar

88 Tanstar is a frontier world in the Drusus Marches of the Calixis Sector. Currently, an Imperial Navy depot has been placed on the outlying colony world (seventy eight million population).
==The Incident at Fall Narrow==
The Calixis Sector has had only a single formally identified
instance of a Cryptos infiltration being discovered and destroyed
since its foundation, although several more are suspected. This
single verified infestation occurred at the mining community of
Fall Narrow on 88 Tanstar nearly two centuries ago.
Numbering under a thousand inhabitants, the settlement of
Fall Narrow was relatively efficient and quite unremarkable; it
met its quotas, people were born, worked, and died without
unusual incident, and various officials passing through did not
find any cause for concern. So things might have continued
were it not for a mining accident that was witnessed by a
travelling Administratum scribe detailed to carry out a local
census. Dozens died during this mishap, and the scribe, to his
horror, saw the settlement overseer impaled by a fallen joist. As
he died, the overseer’s body thrashed about and a green cloud
billowed out of his eyes and mouth. The scribe recorded the
unwholesome sight on his ocular augmetic before fleeing. In
response, the panicking regional governor deployed enforcer
units that attempted to storm the settlement and conduct an
investigation.
The assault turned into a massacre as the ordinary men
and women of the settlement resisted fiercely. The violence
quickly and dramatically escalated with the miners attacking
the enforcers with makeshift demolition charges and industrial
machines and the enforcers responding with heavy assault units
(the locals seemed to be under the delusion that they were being
attacked by corsairs and outlaws). Captured prisoners showed
signs of psychic suggestion and mental tampering, and it was
clear something alien and malign was at work. This became
particularly evident when the enforcers’ own encoded vox-net
was compromised and an entire strike-force was led into a trap
and destroyed.
At some point during the assault, the central explosives
store detonated, (although whether deliberately or by a stray
round remains unknown). In the explosions and fires that
followed, the settlement and almost all of its inhabitants and
many of its besiegers were killed. When the Inquisition arrived
shortly afterwards, it found that in a demonstration of either
compounded incompetence or xenos conspiracy no records
were kept of surviving inhabitants (if any) or the names of
surviving enforcers involved in the incident. Given the ability
of the Cryptos to possess victims, their evident intelligence,
and their skill at evasion, the xenos threat was likely merely
displaced to another quiet and unassuming backwater. Despite
a full Inquisitorial investigation, no further trace of the Cryptos
colony was ever found.
Category:Calixis Sector
Category:Planets
Category:Drusus Marches
Category:Frontier Worlds
Category:Red Links