Uran

**Uran** is the Legion Homeworld of the Berserkers of Uran and the capital world of their so-called Ashen Kingdom. Lying under the rule of this most ruthless Legion Astartes, it is given over to the making of killers and their weapons. In terms of raw function, however, it retains the purpose it served in the Age of Strife: a Prison World to which men and women were consigned to toil and perish.

### **The Pit**

The prisons of the Imperium are, as with so much else, numerous enough to defeat any attempt at counting them. Some were torn down and their inhabitants freed by the Emperor’s soldiers, while others were filled anew with the enemies of the Imperium. Many became great warehouses of manpower, whose inmates would be taken away to serve sentences on mining worlds or in penal regiments while the worst were processed into servitors. A few were known widely for their sturdiness, the nature of the criminals they held and the brutality with which these were kept in check. Yet it is unlikely that any were the equal of Uran.

Serving a small empire in a less enlightened backwater of the Galaxy, Uran was once a world where the condemned were placed to find some utility, criss-crossing the planet’s crust with excavations much as Cthonia was, albeit not so far along the same trajectory. Foundries were raised and mighty forge-satellites constructed in orbit; the prisoners on the surface were to be kept far away from the weapons their labour created. Simply running the planet demanded colossal supplies of manpower, and six hive cities grew up, populated by the soldiers and civil officers who governed the world and those prisoners deemed suitable to serve their needs. The rest inhabited seven great catacomb-cities, built around clusters of mines, agri-chambers and other places where they might be made useful.

As the Age of Strife reached its crescendo, however, creatures of a strange and macabre nature appeared. Resembling a twisted mockery of mythical angels, they tormented the populace in growing swarms. The skies became perilous, forcing the rulers of the world to heavily arm the conveyors which ferried Uran’s wares offworld. The empire, rife with internecine disputes, would brook no loss of productivity, and finally the foundries were moved into the catacomb cities, accompanied by an increasingly heavy military presence to deter any attempts to take the weapons. This was not always successful, and savage battles were fought in the dark, often ended with culls. The overseers of Uran became an ugly mirror to the prisoners they managed, cruel and yet wracked with fear of the Angels who claimed their skies. Gangs emerged from the inmates, often grouped together according to their “profession”.

Where once some efforts had been made to ensure that the prisoners served only the years of their sentence, now to be cast into the warrens was a sentence imposed on the descendants of the condemned. Arboreta and agri-chambers were replaced with reclamation plants, which took the place of burial or cremation. Gangs became clans, warring with each other for dominance beyond the sight of the hive armies. They grew bolder and stronger as they wrested weapons from unwary guards. In other cases, guards “went feral” and these too fed the ranks of the gangers. Finally first in one prison and then the others, armouries were breached and ransacked. The gaolers retrieved what they could from the prisons, but within a few months of the first breach they had been driven out or killed, and the hives were forced to fend off the Angels with their own toil and blood.

The catacombs knew little of the Angels beyond the few that penetrated the tunnels and wreaked bloody violence until they were glutted or killed, for the surface-dwellers had taken care to destroy the conveyors which had been the only point of access into the prisons. Archeotech devices lurked in the very soil, waiting to kill anyone foolish enough to try and dig for the surface. Besides, the gangers were more interested in dominance within their subterranean world.

### **Raktra**

Into this cauldron of violence came a Primarch, his incubation pod tearing through the earth to rest within the largest of the prison complexes. Wandering the tunnels, he was found after an unknown length of time by one of the most powerful gangs, known as the Architects. From them he learned what it was to lead, and the myriad methods of killing practiced in the tunnels. They also gave him the name which would echo through the Galaxy in years to come - Raktra Akarro.

Soon, he was the strongest man ever known to roam the tunnels, strong enough to slay any opponent he faced and gifted with the ability to find weakness wherever it might exist. His kills were not just men and women, but feral animals and the Angels which occasionally made their way into the depths. With Raktra fighting amongst them, the Architects grew strong, breaking the gangs with whom they vied for territory. Often a clan would pledge allegiance when Raktra slew their leaders. It was a custom among all the gangs to burn one’s slain foes and wear their ashes. Even before he was fully grown, Raktra’s skin was stained a dirty white by the remains of his vanquished enemies.

Soon, the entire complex lay under his control, Raktra having attained absolute control of his gang and the rest through fear, his natural authority and sheer violence. He had grown up hearing of other warrens and the hive-dwellers who set themselves up - in the tales of the gangers, at least - as the rulers of the world, casting others into the pit to achieve that end. Whether he saw a grievance to be redressed is debatable. Certainly he took exception to anyone but himself dominating Uran, and resolved to expand his power further. He set the population to tunnelling, forcing a unified effort to reach the other warrens as no tyrant before him had. When another complex was reached he would lead his followers into it. The gangs they found were as divided as those Raktra had first known, and they fell easily. Over three decades Raktra expanded and defended his power, fanning the fires of industry even as he fended off challengers.

### **The White Devil's Conquest**

Whispers, brought back by the garrisons watching the pits, began to circulate in the hives. They told of a white devil that lurked in the bowels of the world. Few believed them at first, but Raktra had long since resolved to show the surface-dwellers the truth of those words. He mounted raids to the surface, seeking engineers to perfect the tunneling machinery the gangs used, and avenues of attack which he might exploit to invade the cities. Crude power armour was created in the forges, accompanied by weapons often adapted from mining tools. Thus Raktra equipped himself and his followers, and they struck the first city.

The war that followed raged for six years, Raktra subjugating each city in turn and finding new weapons for his use. He became a figure of terror, but on a world long resigned to fear, that only added to his grim authority. Uran’s people had long ago shed any illusions about siding with the strong, and Raktra demonstrated his potency in ways that left no room for doubt. Oppression and violence were ubiquitous and dissent met with a hammer, fist, blade or bullet. Yet Raktra was unsatisfied, for still he was not entirely the world’s master. The angels still tormented the people, forcing Raktra’s own warriors to shy away from open spaces.

He resolved to destroy them much as he had all other opposition, and led ten thousand warriors out into the wastes in a brazen challenge. For three days they journeyed, marching with grim purpose. Nearing the mountains where the creatures gathered, they were set upon, and for all the Architects’ brutality and Raktra’s might, the Angels fought in ways that few could withstand. With talons, beaks and gouts of unnatural flame, they ravaged the White Devil’s horde for hours. With his army teetering on the verge of annihilation, Raktra was forced to withdraw. He himself was severely wounded, his jaw so badly mangled that even with his physiology, it would not heal cleanly. The White Devil knew defeat, and this sent shockwaves through Uran.

Raktra was denounced as a false prophet by men eager to exploit the situation. Conflict blossomed, the old gangs emerging along with new factions as the Architects’ empire splintered. Blood ran through every city, every district, every street. But Raktra was not so easily thrown aside, and over two decades he purged Uran of all the recalcitrants. When he broke the final warlord who stood against him, he revealed that he had let matters escalate so. Conflict bred strength, and he would expunge such weakness as had cost him the battle in the mountains. In his eyes, the war was nothing more than two generations of accelerated natural selection. From the remainder he would build his army, letting the gangs war for his notice. Those who excelled in the struggle were rewarded with forges, archeotech and other weapons to use against their brethren.

Finally Raktra gave the word, and the fighting ceased. Forges were turned towards the purpose of the Ashen King, and his arsenal augmented with archeotech found in the furthest-reaching tunnels. Nearly twenty-five Terran years after the disaster in the mountains, Raktra set out with a far larger army at his back. With a colossal length of chain he swatted Angels from the sky, and in his right hand he bore a massive chainblade. This time, no Angel could resist him, and though his dead outnumbered the entire army he had brought before, they were relentless. Over four days and three nights, they scoured the mountains, using aircraft taken from the hives to attack the Angels when they flew out of reach. Eventually, all that remained was feathers and ichor, and Raktra ordered the entire range to be bathed in fire. Finally, the Angels who had blighted Uran were purged.

### S**eat of the Ashen King**

After its integration into the Imperium, Uran became one of the Emperor's most severe sanctions against His enemies, and for a sector around convicts feared it more than the gallows or a firing squad. Raktra had the factory hives expanded to feed his Legion's demand for wargear as his younger warriors became the first generation of the "true Seventh": the Berserkers of Uran. The squalor of the underhives ensured a steady intake of killers who would swell the ranks of his armies, both Astartes and the ruthless Auxilia who would fight alongside them.

A pocket empire grew up around Uran as Raktra cemented his rule and fashioned the VIIth Legion into a form more to his liking. Iron and blood were its currencies. Tithes were imposed on other prison-worlds and the Legion retained its old rights to recruit from Cthonia, but none were allowed to rival the primacy of Uran. Several times, Raktra demanded fresh influxes of stock from newly conquered worlds or existing prison colonies. In the sectors around Uran, the death penalty for rioting or inveterate disobedience was replaced with transportation to the Ashen Kingdom, as it became known. Fresh blood was rapidly subsumed into the population, and the weak eradicated. No gang or clan, transplanted from elsewhere, retained its own identity for long.

On the mountains where Raktra had done battle with the Angels, the Berserkers raised their fortress-monastery, the Obsidian Spire. Surrounded by a thicket of lesser towers, it dominated the horizon for hundreds of miles in every direction The founding of the Legio Yharma on nearby Gulaka and the pledging of House Lorthryk to Raktra's banner saw new holdfasts take their place on Uran's jagged skyline and new tyrants join the ranks of the world's rulers.