The Vestri League

**The Vestri League**

last updated turn 28

Squat Nation

Ruler: Council of Elders

Capital World: Gylfaginning

Size: 187 worlds

Estimated Population: 15 trillion (13 trillion Squats, 2 trillion humans)

Distance to Imperial Trust: 1,000 Light years to Midgard (North)

Tech Level: 16 (Fortification Focus)

Military: 300 Billion Clan Warriors, 50 Billion Auxiliary guardsmen, 2 trillion PDF, 5 Ordinatus Legions

Fleet: 33 battlefleets (capital ship heavy)

Probably the most powerful sane force in the region, barring the Imperial Trust, is The Vestri League. This sector sized polity is nearly a thousand light-years north of the Imperial Trust and is dominated by some of the last known Squats in existence. Between the Squats high technology and the polities heavy fortifications it was able to almost fight the surrounding Ork and Chaos forces to a standstill, though it still slowly shrank under the constant pressure, mostly from a powerful nearby Realm of Plague. This changed in recent decades, when first the Imperial Trust donated enough ships to increase the size of this navy by an order of magnitude, then the local chaos powers started pulling out and finally the Orks left. In response to this, The Vestri League has started to reclaim all of its lost territories from its eight, almost doubling in size in the course of a few decades in a rather ambitious expansion program. While The Vestri League was once an interesting diplomatic challenge due to their intense distrust of the Imperium, and therefore for most Imperial successor states they have decided that the Imperial Trust is trustworthy, and are planning on joining the Imperial Trust once it becomes viable.

## History:

Once, long ago the Squats, or Homo sapiens rotundus were by far the most powerful of the many subspecies of humanity. Being blessed with a robust population, an astro graphically compact territory, formidable technology led to substantial concessions from the Emperor during the great crusade for a peaceful absorption. The Administratum and the Mechanus did not particularly desire this state of affairs but the sanctity of a treaty signed by the Emperor himself, and the power and wealth held by the second most successful subspecies of humanity served to hold the Abhuman hating elements of the Imperium at bay for almost ten thousand years. This changed in late M41, with the oncoming of the Tyranid swarm. The primary advance of Hive Fleet Leviathan thundered towards the heart of Squat Leagues, and they rose to the challenge. Factories churned out armaments at incredible pace, guild apprentices and masters worked like never before to equip their warriors with armor, before donning their own. Ancient Feuds were buried, grudges of a thousand years set aside in the name of unity and survival. Ancient Promises of aid were called, and were honored. Two dozen space marine chapters were called from every loyal astartes legion, and three dozen arrived to fight against the oncoming swarm. Ten Thousand Regiments from One Thousand Worlds headed the call to battle, and Soriritas marched with them. Guildmaster put aside ancient feuds and worked together as one, the finest minds ever assembled by squatkind working with one purpose. It was a show of purpose and unity not seen for many an age, and bright flicker of light in an ever darkening galaxy, and upon his golden throne the Emperor of Mankind looked and smiled.

It was not enough. The Tyranid advance was remorseless, throwing wave after wave of bio forms into the fray, and fleet after fleet. The Squat Legions met them with fortifications that would make Dorn smile, and technology and tactics that the Hive Mind had never seen before in such numbers. For years it looked like the line would hold, but then, the Hive Mind adapted. New Bioforms were made to fight in the barren worlds of the Squats, and new voidforms were made to combat the fleets of Squatkind. The advance resumed and the Squats were pressed worse than ever before. And it is at this time that the Folly of Mankind reared its ugly head. A monodominant inquisitor, his name struck from all history, diverted crucial reinforcements from the Core World of Barak Ulgar even as a decisive clash neared. Barak Ulgar was a disaster, the Ancient Gloriana class Battleship Enduring Home was destroyed with all hands, and with it the hope of the Squat Race. Three Space Marine chapters were lost in their entirety and the Squat homeworlds were annihilated even as Leviathan was mortally wounded. In the aftermath the conservatives pounced, radical preachers loudly proclaiming that the squat’s destruction was a sign from the god emperor, punishing their deviancy from the greater humanity. The powers that be, seeing a chance to curb the unusual, deviant different Leagues, stripped them of almost all of their privileges and powers. A light was snuffed out silenced by monster and prejudice, leaving the Galaxy ever darker, and deep in the warp, an unborn God laughed.

The Vestri League has its origins in this series of disasters. During the fall of the Squats many refugee fleets fled the disaster zone. Most were lost, either to the ravages of the Tyranids, tides of the warp, Dark Eldar desiring suddenly rare slaves, the depredations of Chaos or intolerance at their destination. Yet what would become the Vestri League survived, landing in a sector in Pacificus, remarkable only for the unusual concentration of heavy gravity worlds and single small squat outpost that attracted the refugees in the first place. The Sector Governor was nonplussed to see billions of Squats arrive upon his metaphorical doorstep, but the bribes of priceless relics worth more than his already extensive collection secured his acceptance of the situation, if not precisely his full blooded support. The Adeptus Ministorum and Mechanus were less happy at the Squat’s presence, and only their own distrust of each other, and hefty bribes of technology and funds, kept them at surly discontent, rather than outright lynching. Things settled down eventually, and the Squats ever so slowly recovered, staying quietly in their worlds, paying exorbitant tithes made possible only by their industrious nature and ever so slowly recovering their population and occasionally colonizing another world after an agonizing approval process.

Things changed when the Emperor died. Suddenly keeping the Squats penned up ceased to be important to most and a new wave of colonization began. Yet others decried this, the local minor Forge World and radical preachers responding with ever escalating rhetoric and vitriol, some beginning to speak of the Emperor reborn calling for the death of the impure. Even as the local situation outwardly stabalized. Then the local Forgeworld fell entirely to Tjapa. The Forgeworld announced their new allegiance with a decapitating strike upon the sector capital even as cults rose throughout the sector in a meticulously coordinated campaign. The Sector Capital defenders died hard, but they did die, taking the entire sector government with them. With the Imperial authorities decapitated, the slaves of the abomination turned their attention to their most hated foe, and the only organized force left capable to oppose them. The Mechanus fleet headed for Gylfaginning, planning to destroy what few warships the Squats had been allowed to maintain to defend their shipyards, before razing the surface. They faced the singular battleship left to the Squat peoples, and its escorts confident in their victory. Then its main canon fired, and they learned to their horror the last secret of Squat Kind.

The Weyland Class Battleship was a desperate development project of Core Worlds to stave off annihilation. Built to unsurpassed standards, its mundane weapons would be the envy of any admiral, yet its true power came from its arcane Volkite Spinal Canon, an archnotech weapon made from ancient STC fragments and the desperate genius of a dying race. Its awesome destructive power was even more deadly upon the living organisms that were Tyranid bio-ships, and its long range would let it target Hive ships from relative safety, potentially crippling a swarm in the opening moments of battle. Yet its creation came too late, for there was no time to build it before the squat’s doom had arrived, only to entrust its designs to five refugee fleets. Four were lost, yet one survived for millennia.

The slaves of the Abomination were routed, and yet the war was just beginning. Decades of brutal combat followed throughout the sector, and by the end of it the Mechanius was almost entirely purged, the Adeptus Ministorum decimated, the Administratum nearly destroyed, the Inquisition wiped out and the Squats the only organized force capable of defending the sector. The resultant assumption of overlordship and declaration of the Vestri League was merely the formalization of an already existing reality. The focus turned to rebuilding, as Imperial authority fragmented around them and ever increasing raids and chaos enveloped them. Yet eventually the last holdouts were crushed, industry was rebuilt, worlds were fortified to a marginally acceptable extent and the armies of the league were ready to venture out beyond the sector.

Their target was the Adjepta sector, caught in a three way war between embattled loyalists, a chaos undivided cult and a minor WAAGH under the command of Warboss Gitstommpa. A long and brutal campaign ensued, with the League proving ultimately victorious, absorbing the human loyalists into their league, recovering many Mechanius designs and beginning the laborious process to recolonize, re-industrialize and refortify the sector while fighting endless waves of Orks, Chaos, a minor splinter fleet and other dangers. They recently finished their work and were in the process of contacting other nearby holdouts for support and eventual expansion when the Green Awakening occurred and forced them back on the defensive, although even now technical experts from the guilds seek to prep a nearby cluster of human worlds for eventual expansion.