Freya

Departmento Cartographicae pict-file of Freya, Chapter home world of the Crimson Prowlers.

## Planet

### Class

Death World/Adeptus Astartes Chapter Home World

## Location

### System

Freyan System

**Freya** is an icy death world located on the northwestern border of the Segmentum Pacificus that borders near the Segmentum Obscurus. It is the Chapter home world of the newly created Ultima Founding Crimson Prowlers Space Marine Chapter, a feral Successor Chapter created from the potent gene-stock of the feral Space Wolves.

## Background

The Crimson Prowlers have eschewed the establishment of a Chapter home world, preferring to take to the stars in their mighty war fleet. Rather than constructing a single fortress-monastery as most Space Marine Chapters do, the Crimson Prowlers establish Chapter Holds upon each world they have conquered, the greatest of which is Æsirhold, upon the icy death world of **Freya**. This way, they are able to keep watch for encroaching Heretic Astartes activity, to stage future Crusades and to recruit new battle-brothers.

Leaving only a skeleton force to protect their fortress-monastery and local Planetary Defence Forces to protect their primary recruitment world, the majority of the Crimson Prowlers' substantial warfleet is often continuously deployed as part of a perpetual Imperial Crusade. Like wolves stalking their prey, the Chapter prefers to utilise the ancient 'Nomad-Predation' pattern of operations. This enables them to be an entirely self-contained force that can sustain itself almost indefinitely without any Imperial support whatsoever. Collaborating as a well organised pack, the Crimson Prowlers work together to take down prey much larger than any individual wolf; prey that might otherwise elude them. Utilising these tactics, the Crimson Prowlers have quickly garnered a reputation for excellence in out-hull void warfare and starship assaults without peer.

### Freyan System

The Freyan System is an Imeprial star system which is strategically located at the edge of both the Segmentum Pacificus and the Segmentum Obscurus. This region of space is part of the demesne of the Crimson Prowlers Chapter. The heart of the system is a white star named Odin's Eye. The Crimson Prowlers maintain the vigil over this system and watch over a hundred worlds in the immediate stellar region besides. Their demesne stretches across the scattered stars that girdle the Freyan System and all the way towards the eternal frigid night of the intergalactic void known as the Halo Stars. The deadly and bitterly cold death world of Freya lies at the heart of the Freyan System, and plays a vital role in the survival of the Crimson Prowlers, serving as the Chapter's primary recruitment ground. Thus, Freya maintains one of the primary bulwarks of the Imperium's defence against the Forces of Chaos.

#### Freya

The feral death world of Freya, the primary recruitment world of the Crimson Prowlers, is situated to the north-westernmost border of the Segmentum Pacificus, along the border of the Segmentum Obscurus and near the Halo Stars. The Freyan System is located to the galactic Northwest of the Eye. Freya is therefore at the forefront of the Imperium's defence against the foul denizens of Chaos.

Freya is a turbulent world of ice, dominated by extremes of climates that constantly change. When this isolated world was initially discovered by an Expeditionary Fleet during the Great Crusade, it was deemed inimical to life, but despite the odds, descendants of the original human colonists not only managed to survive the harsh planetary ecosystem, but to thrive. The original colonists barely survived, holed up in their spacecraft against the the world's deadly elements and fauna. Only a small minority managed to learn the necessary skills to survive such a harsh and deadly world, skills that saw them through the horrors of Old Night for millennia. By the time of the Great Crusade, the surviving colonists had reverted to a feral state.

When this deadly world was rediscovered during the dawning of M31, Imperial observers found this frigid planet to be inhabited by native barbaric tribes. Their skills at surviving on Freya came to the notice of the the newly constituted Deparmtento Munitorum, whose purview was to maintain the Emperor's armies in perpetuity by unifying Imperial supply and recruitment structure for the Imperialis Auxilia. The logisticians of the Deparmtento Munitorum quickly realised the native Freyans were of hardy and strong stock, and would make excellent Imperial Army soldiers dedicated to service in some of the galaxy's most hostile planetary environments, particularly those that were sub-arctic in nature. Following the end of the Great Crusade and the Age of Darkness that followed, the majority of these regiments were wiped out due to high attrition rates. With the Imperium in shambles following the Horus Heresy, the Freyan System soon became forgotten, and the people of this backwater system were left to their own devices for ten millennia.

With the destruction of the fortress world of Cadia during the 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41, a great tear in reality occurred, ripping a titanic warp rift known as the Great Rift across the width of the galaxy, which spread from the Eye of Terror to the Hadex Anomoly on the Eastern Fringe. This allowed the denizens of Chaos to overrun several Imperial systems located near the Eye of Terror, including the worlds of the Freyan System. Though travel and communications between many Imperial system were greatly affected by the formation of the Great Rift, all was not lost.

In response to the emerging Forces of Chaos throughout the galaxy, the recently resurrect Primarch Roboute Guilliman, launched his Indomitus Crusade. He revealed his ultimate contingency plan, unleashing the gene-crafted transhuman warriors known as the Primaris Space Marines, to help aid the beleaguered worlds of several Imperial systems. One such strike force was composed of the newly created Crimson Prowlers, a Space Wolves Successor Chapter comprised entirely of Primaris Space Marines. They helped aid the beleaguered worlds of the Freyan System, breaking sieges and sweeping away the Chaos invaders to bring hope back to the desperate Imperial defenders.

The Chapter found the people who inhabited the worlds of the Freyan System to be of incredibly strong and hardy stock, and had developed superior reflexes compared to baseline humans. Testing their minds and bodies in soul-destroying trials to determine if there was any evidence of corruption caused by their isolation from the rest of humanity, the Crimson Prowlers ultimately deemed them free of deviancy or Chaotic taint. Consolidating their gains, the Crimson Prowlers found the inhospitable terrain, weather and deadly creatures of the various worlds of this backwater system provided an ideal recruiting ground for future potential battle-brothers. Claimed the worlds of the Freyan System as their demesne by right of conquest, the Crimson Prowlers built Æsirhold, the mightiest and the first of many such Chapters Holds, upon the icy death world of Freya.

#### Æsirhold

The Crimson Prowlers have no Chapter home world, and instead opt to live within their large Crusade fleets of Strike Cruisers, Battle Barges and Escorts. They are ever vigilant, and are always ready for battle which is why they have chosen to remain a highly mobile, fleet-based Chapter. The Crimson Prowlers do establish and garrison Chapter Holds on every world they conquer or reclaim, which provide a training base for new recruits for the Chapter and to act as staging points for further Crusade fleets. On the world of Freya, located at the center of the planet's largest continent, *Niflheimr* ('Abode of Mist'), the great citadel of *Æsirhold* (the 'Warriors Hould') is hewn into the cliff face of the tallest mountain, within Freya's highest peaks, known as the Blackskull Peaks.

This mighty citadel is nearly the size of a regular fortress-monastery, and can harbour the entire Chapter when the need arises. With only a tiny fraction of the bulk of this vast peak, the faint glow of lights can be seen from afar, piercing the gathering dark of the dwindling atmosphere. The Freyan tribesmen mark this dire place with trepidation, for they believe it to be the realm of the *Einherjar* - the '*Sky Warriors*' - as the abode of the demigods. In Freyan mythology these 'Sky Warriors' are those who have died in battle and now serve at the right hand of the All-Father Himself. This mighty peak is known as *Jǫtunnheim*, the '*Giant One*', which is surrounded by lesser summits clustered around it. Full of precipitous drops and deep crevasses, only those who have trod their secret ways between the peaks as Aspirants, know how to safely traverse towards the Chapter's formidable citadel. The Crimson Prowlers have cunningly built some hunt-ways out of solid stone, while others are merely bridges of ice that will collapse at the slightest application of weight. Some of these ways lead true, taking a hunter from the clefts in the shadow of the summits down towards the plains far below, where their prey dwell. Others are false, leading an interloper to their doom, as they lead into the darkness of several caves inhabited by the deadly creatures of Freya, and are riddled with ice-gnawed bones, despair and their inevitable doom.

Clad in armour of immense thickness and strength *Æsirhold* and is cloaked by powerful void shields comparable to the mightiest Imperial Navy warship. All along the peak are concealed potent defence lasers and automated servitor gun emplacements cut into cliff face of the mountain itself. These ancient weapons are capable of blasting apart blasting apart even the most heavily armoured spacecraft from orbit. Those foolish enough to attempt a ground assault would be considered suicidal at best, as *Æsirhold* possesses two external gates, known as the *Árvakr* Gate ('Early Riser' Gate) and the *Drengr* Gate ('Warrior' Gate), built high up on the sheer sides of the mountain. These two gates connect at opposite ends of the internal region of the fortress known as the *Svellborough* ('Stronghold of Ice'). These two gates were built to overlook entirely bare approaches, made up of huge causeways of stone, each kilometres wide and worn smooth by the endless gnawing of stone by the Blackskull Peaks' high winds.

Should an enemy attempt to undertake a massed advance upon these approaches, they would provoke a massacre. Even if by some miracle an enemy was somehow able to reach one of these gates, which in themselves are formidable and colossal structures constructed of granite, adamantium and ceramite, which bristle with all manner of deadly weaponry including - twin-linked bolters turrets, static plasma cannons and missile launchers. Over its short existence, *Æsirhold* has stood inviolable while the Forces of Chaos have dashed themselves against it.