Aubray's Anvil

“You see a place like this and you wonder. You wonder how it could fail. What forces could pull down a people who possessed technology like this? What blasphemy, what heresy could they have perpetrated to make the God-Emperor turn His loving eye from them? Whatever it was, you need only look to the piles of bones in the streets here to see the final fruits of their labour.”
—Attributed to the Rogue Trader Cort Saldanus
Located on the far rimward side of the the region, Aubray's Anvil
is one of the dead worlds recently discovered among the
Ragged Worlds. Long bereft of human habitation and given
over completely to beasts and plants, the Anvil more closely
resembles an abandoned forge world than a typical hive. The
face of the planet is covered with obscure laboratories and
sprawling factories hundreds of kilometers long. Its great
hives are a twisting maze of steel and stone and unidentifiable
composites under crystalline domes thousands of meters high.
Endless piles of rusted machinery and drifts of scrap materials
clog the streets, where the bones of men lie tangled in snarls
of wire or the limbs of long destroyed walking machines.
Above it all orbit silent stations whose corridors are choked
with dust and shriveled remains, and empty shipyards,
some still with keels laid in their slips, waiting for
shipwrights who will never come.
While seemingly of human design, there are precious few
hints as to the identity or fate of the previous inhabitants or the
nature and purpose of their industries. A few antediluvian vox
systems broadcasting repeated messages in an indecipherable
language through the echoing ruins and the sun bleached
bones piled in the streets are the only evidence that humans
lived here at all.
A relative newcomer named Cort Saldanus—praised by his
peers as a master navigator and voidman—discovered (and
named) Aubray’s Anvil. Rumours abound that he forced an
unknown rival to battle in orbit at this planet, his foe driven
into the atmosphere by the force of Saldanus’s guns.
==Using Aubray’s Anvil==
The sheer vastness of the ruins on Aubray’s Anvil presents
a number of potential money-making opportunities for the
enterprising Rogue Trader. Obviously there is the archeotech
trade, as the place is littered with ancient and wondrous
technology. There is also the opportunity to gain or exploit
contacts within the Adeptus Mechanicus, who will surely be
intensely interested in what lies beneath the wreckage of this
lost world. Finally, there is the question of the final fate of
Cort Saldanus. Is Saldanus still alive and if not, what killed
him? Perhaps the unknown rival is part of the mystery?
Category:Dead Worlds
Category:Planets
Category:Ragged Worlds
Category:Koronus Expanse