Trantor

## Administratum World Trantor

*"There lies the first world Trantor upon the reefs of azure nebulae, a golden jewel ever bright, world of buried kingdoms" - v.321421 Of Trantor and the Old World*

Holy is the Ecumenopolis of Trantor, the hive of hives, matryoshka shellworld of the Reef, the monument of the Administorum Imperialis. It is the second of the Triumvirate Worlds governing Sector Gondwana. The grand city Trantor spans eight worlds nested within each other, its inhabitants of uncounted billions of subjects to the administrative duty of many hundred planets, colonies and thousands of hives more.

Associated Pages:

* Scribe Legions of Trantor
* Fleet Celestia Trantor

## First of the Triumvirate

Trantor was the first to harbor power in the name of the greater Imperium. Here, the Adeptus Administratum established its stronghold and garnered power, coordinating the colonization and conquest of many further worlds. From this first bridgehead of mankind arose the foundation of a new golden age.

### Link to the Imperium

Of all worlds in Sector Gondwana, Trantor maintains the closest ties to the Imperium at large, remaining in contact with the core worlds and neighboring sectors, whereas the worlds of Gondwana elsewhere fight on their own. It is this link to the greater Imperium which is one of the greatest assets at the disposal of Trantor, rivaled only by Cambria's access to resources from the whole Mechanicum.

## History

### Colonization of the Old World

When humanity first reached out and across the stars, long before Trantor was given its name, this planet was settled as one of the first in this faraway region of space. Nothing is written of this time, but from stellar patterns and elemental decay, from the visions of Xenos and legends of local men, the wise of the Mechanicum surmised to be the first colony of Gondwana, founded long before the great Ring Cambria was made.

### Forgotten Rise

From the first arrival of humanity rose upon Trantor a mighty civilization. Its relics still cover all of the old world, buried beneath the many shells this planet now bears. Great machinery was built and the first shells and they were filled with brutalist architecture and technology for purposes long forgotten. For nothing survived of this age, not even distant remnants of the stellar empire which was here built.

### Oblivion

For all which is to be known of this world fell into Oblivion. It did so, despite the obvious design of all of Trantor to preserve. It seems the entirety of Trantor's first human civilization eventually turned to protect and prolong their knowledge, creating one of the most elaborate crypts and archives in the known galaxy. Indeed, the Pandemonium Archives appeared intact after all the Age of Strife, even though the Thetys Rift was bound to have enveloped the world for centuries.

And yet, all of Trantor's protected databanks were left empty and no memory survived. A tragedy so great, its extent cannot even be comprehended by the distant children.

### Rediscovery

At the height of the Great Crusade, the planet was rediscovered and then, for the first time, named by the Pioneers of the Emperor "Trantor", the holy capital of an ancient empire, for this was how the locals of distant worlds held it in memory. To those, its star was but a dim light in the sky. And yet, such tales led the Crusaders to the ringed world, which would become one of the Triumvirate, alongside Cambria.

### First Breach

Most notable after the landing was the first breach of Imperial troops into the lower shells of Trantor. Ever since its creation, Trantor appears to have remained indomitable and to the 41st Millennium could not be conquered as long as a dedicated defender resides therein. But when the Imperium came, the civilization of Trantor lay in ruin, reduced to barbaric strongholds in a deep layer without any proper defense.

### Resurgence

The cleansing was short and bloody, followed by the resurgence of Trantor as it stands. Lordship over it was given to the Adeptus Administratum and the scribes of the Imperium began quickly to take inventory of their new possession, beginning to construct the great machinery which would administrate and govern the sector.

It was then when the Administratum first found the Governance Machine, the neural network probes which would bind all souls on this world together and give voice to their minds. It would become a great instrument of power on Trantor. It would be the people's greatest power and burden at the same time.

### Seat of Power

From the ashes of strife, Trantor arose, ready to claim its throne of old. It rose alongside the newly discovered Ringworld of Cambria in the hands of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Over the course of ensuing millennia, a rivalry arose of a kind which may very well have existed in the ages old, when the star empire of Trantor stood against the newly founded Ring of Cambria. The struggle never erupted to war, for the Pax Imperialis ever applied. But to the days of the Brass and Iron Crusade, two powers here stand against each other, a bitter armistice holding them back.

### Siege of Trantor

During the Surge of the Thetys Rift, Trantor was last besieged. For twenty years, the forces of Chaos lay a blockade around this world and after eight breached as far as into the Vitreous Gardens. In this time, Trantor burnt and was pushed deeper still. Yet it was still fighting strong when relief was sent and in a great battle raging for ninety weeks, the fate of this world was finally decided and Trantor freed from the chaos fleet which had rained fire and death for so long.

## The Governance Machine

Trantor is the sector's largest processing machine of information. Its vast Pandemonium Archives hold more data about the state of its worlds than any other Library beyond the Elder Frontier.

### Voice and Will of the Populace

Among these data are vast records of collected thought, insights into the minds of all living souls throughout the world-metropolis Trantor. These are produced by a surveillance system of the Dark Age, an unfathomable web of neural network probes implanted into the brainstem of each and every last soul within the shells of this world. From them arise the collective voice and will of the gargantuan populace, the soul power feeding the leviathan that is their nation.

### Executor Council

The collective will of Trantor is enacted by the myriad circles, councils of scribes and archivists, interpreters and administrators, who rise and fall by the will of their subjects. Their machinations and works become part of Trantor's political and algorithmic hierarchy, an unfathomable machine of power, holding the balance between needs and requirements, wishes and feuds among the untold billions living on this world.

Atop this vast machine sits the council of executors, highest leaders of Trantor second only to the god-emperor himself. Their word represents the will of many billion souls and holds sway over all activities upon and beyond their world.

### The All-Seeing Machine

The authority to govern themselves weighs heavily on the masses of Trantor, for the governance machinery of the Administratum is all-seeing and all-knowing, nigh-omnipotent to enact any punishment for foul deeds and corrupted thought. All life on Trantor exists by the grace and in service to the Emperor of Mankind, supreme sovereign of the galaxy and all the universe.

## Shells of Trantor

The world of Trantor is clad in seven concentric matryoshka shells, each offering a surface worth a planet on its own. Nested within each other, these layers of Trantor are each a world of their own, intertwined by a web of towers, pillars, tunnels, and entwined systems. All but the outermost layer look up to a sky forged by mankind.

The four innermost layers were made during the Dark Age of Technology and are, by all means, known to the Imperium, indestructible. The three outer shells were made during the millennia since the end of the Great Crusade. Though not as monolithic and indestructible as the ancient hulls below, these layers are inlaid with countless machines and weapons to protect this world and within them live mighty machine spirits, which may unleash the raw power siphoned from the planet's glowing core, to smite any foe daring to test the strength of their domain.

### Hives Incandescent

The outermost shell of Trantor is aflame with golden light, shining like a jewel in the galaxy's relentless night. Here lie the greatest centers of population on Trantor, bar the Ecumenopolis of the Lithic Hives. On the surface live traders and void-farers, artisans and dockyard workers and all in service to the Administratum, who make contact with other worlds.

Its glittering surface and glistening spires, vast circles of palaces and docks, cities along fine tethers leading to the stars, may seem vulnerable and decadent to the unknowing beholder.

But in truth, the incandescent shell of Trantor is an unyielding bulwark of Civilization, tested in long sieges over the Millennia. Mountain ranges of adamantium rise from its surface, speckled with trillions of entrenchments, military installations, and firing positions. Energy lances, channeling the pure power of the planet's core, reach up from pits of glowing lava to mighty batteries atop. Invisible shields in overlapping layers cover every square kilometer of this shell, trenches deep as canyons await the enemy who should ever make landfall. Titans of the Legio Theomachia stand guard at the entrance gates of every city, and regiments of every hive on Trantor have their staging grounds here.

It is said in times of war when the enemy approaches, all the golden lights of the Hives Incandescent go out and the entire world falls black and silent. For days then the silence might hold, before the world erupts in the crimson red of war, the fiery flames of the Emperor's fury when the arsenal of Trantor is unleashed against its foes.

### Vitreous Gardens

Just below the outermost layer lie the most vivid and flourishing realms of Trantor. The Vitreous Gardens are the food basket and pleasure garden of this world, home to a wide array of flora and fauna imported from the many different systems of Sector Gondwana.

Vast regions of the gardens may be likened to overgrown forests and plantations, stretching hundreds of kilometers in each direction and reaching as high as to touch the shell above, from where the glowing light of countless lamps emanates. These farming regions provide produce and crops to the upper classes, as well as rare spices and delicacies of which many are exported as well.

In the shadow of these luscious farmlands and jungles exist carefully designed horticulture. Hanging gardens and pleasure parks, small castles and palaces, summerhouses and venues for the wealthy have been erected amidst beautiful recreations of alien landscapes, continents of Holy Terra and even entire lands of pure imagination. Even the common masses who would never come to set foot in any such garden can at least enjoy their sight on the way when traversing shells, as many trains and transport are sent via transparent tubes through the gardens.

### Lithic Hives

Where the roots of the Vitreous Gardens end, the high spires of the Lithic Hives begin. This is the first shell of Trantor to be built from the planet's native rock and stone, erected from the original surface many kilometers high to form the foundations and bulk of this massive planet-wide metropolis.

The Lithic Hives have long merged into one continuous city, covering not only the planet-wide surface of their shell but also the inner side of the shell above. As a result, the Lithic Hives know no sky, only the hanging spires of the cityscape above, almost as though the world had been folded onto itself, ready to meet and collapse at any moment. But the stone of Trantor is strong and has held for untold eons. The oldest buildings at the very bottom of this layer are said to have been made in ancient Dark Ages of Technology and are left alone by all but the devout servants of the Omnissiah.

In the Lithic Hives, the greatest part of all souls on Trantor live and die, without ever leaving their layer to ever see the stars above or the fires below. Here, the workings of the great Governance Machine are strongest felt, an ever watchful eye resting on every living thing. Soldiers, Arbites and Administratum Custodians are the most common sight among the general populace, and as a result, few beggars and ruinous denizens remain for long without being brought before the authorities below.

### Dominion and Bastion

All wealth and splendor of the Hives Incandescent, all life, and greenery of the vitreous gardens and every last soul and living thing in the Lithic Hives are held up and governed by the power of the Dominion, wherein the authority and governance machine of this world lies.

The dominion shell contains endless structures predating the Great Crusade and even the Age of Strife, where all survivors of the erstwhile civilization sought refuge when the universe collapsed around them and the warp grew strong.

When Trantor was rediscovered, these ancient bulwarks were rebuilt to house the highest classes of administrators, the myriad councils and executors and not least the inner bastion of Trantor's military might. Here lie the secret cogitator banks and machine growths which constitute the governance machine, as well as the libraries and crypts of daily importance to administrate Gondwana. Few outside the select circles of power ever lay an eye on this shell and even those within rarely come to gaze outside the enclosed rooms of their surroundings.

It is said much of this inner shell has fallen to oblivion and is forgotten forever. Expeditions are mounted to seek out new Atlantean pillars, upon which rests the world above. But what knowledge they bring shall forever be concealed by the authority of Trantor.

### Pandemonium Archives

Little is known about the original purpose of the world which is now called Trantor. Certainty only exists about the purpose of the Pandemonium Archives, the vast catacombs of knowledge which lie below the Dominion and Bastion of Trantor. When they were discovered by the Mechanicum at the peak of the Great Crusade, it was concluded their purpose lay in the preservation of knowledge until the end of time, against all possible destruction which could befall this planet, the system or indeed the whole of Sector Gondwana.

This layer is protected by a physically indestructible shell and gargantuan seals, as well as massive Gellar Fields warding off any warp-intrusion,  should the world of Trantor be ever phased into the Immaterium. These and countless more precautions were taken for this layer alone, to protect endless databanks and crystals, capable of holding data far beyond the imagination of even the Adeptus Administratum.

However, the Explorators were confronted with a terrible enigma, when they found all the databanks and crystals – which had so chiefly been protected – empty.

The Imperium and Mechanicum utilized this curious find for purposes of their own and to the days of the 41st Millennium, still, new data are collected and recorded at the Pandemonium Archives. Blueprints, records, scriptures and all manner of knowledge thought to be essential for the next ten thousand years have already been preserved in the Pandemonium archives, alongside countless dead who wish to be entombed at this place in the hopes of having their souls protected beyond death from the ruinous powers.

### Blackwater Grottos

For long, the Pandemonium Archives were believed to be the lowest artificial layer of Trantor, for below their foundations were found solid bedrock and caves of natural make. Blackwater had carved its way into the storm and formed grottos spanning all around the world. But their extent, at last, followed no random patterns. Instead, expeditions into the black water revealed in the sheer random arrangements of grottos and streams, signs of intelligent design.

The grottos appear to be a deliberate recreation of some natural system predating even the original colonization of Trantor by mankind. Few such relics of so venerable age exist, and fewer are of such size. Yet time had drastically changed these caves and left nothing technological to find but the faint imprints of unnatural particles and elements in the water.

In the 41st Millennium, the highest and clearest grottos serve as organic material farms and algae cultures to feed the entirety of Trantor should ever the Vitreous Gardens Burn. This function was already fulfilled by the Grottos once, during the last Siege of Trantor, when the diminished populace was fed for twelve years on the algae of blackwater alone.

### Machine Aeviternal

Underlying the Blackwater Grottps are even stranger relics of the Dark Age of Technology. Machines exist here on the scale of continents, mechanisms larger than any star fort of a spacefaring vessel, larger even than some of the greatest machinations on Mars itself. But they lie all lifeless and dead, soulless without essential components left out of their heart. Before the end of all, when the Age of Strife reigned, the core components of these machines have been removed and their fate, as well as the purpose of the eternal machine, remains a mystery after ten Millennia of the tireless investigation by the Adeptus Mechanicus.

But among the dead machinery of the Dark Age, there exist new machines built by the Imperium. Most notable among them are forges, mines, and thermic energy plants, all fueling the continued life in layers above. The civilization of Trantor rests on a graveyard of mechanical giants, a clockwork standing still until the end of all times.

### Pit

Deeper than even the Machine Aeviternal lies a place scarcely known. Only a handful of expeditions in the last ten Millennia made the descent into the Pit and returned, bringing nothing but news of death and torment which had befallen them. By all accounts, the Pit should be a lifeless place, where water exists only as steam and the stone is hot and beginning to melt.

And yet, in these depths, on isles of cold crust, there exist the last remnants of Trantor's old civilization, a race mutated and changed beyond even the abhuman. Not even the wise among the Ordo Biologis know with certainty if the creatures of the Pit are the last of a wicked Xenos species or an extremely abhuman strain of mutants, bred by heat and radiation.

Time and again, the pit is pierced by imperial machinery, scraping raw material of the lowest portions of Trantor. Whenever such excavations begin or end, they bring about a stirring of the creatures below and their corpses are brought up in droves. Their bodies are burnt and thrown back into the pit, from where none return.

### Core

Below the pit lies only the molten stone of Trantor's mantle, a liquid ocean of Magma and at last – the core. The ancient heart of the planet, an undying flame of the raw cosmic forces binding this galaxy together – the Core feeds all of Trantor's industry and civilization. From its liquid layers, the material for all spheres and everything therein was siphoned and brought to the surface.

### Atlas Pillars

Standing atop and below all shells of the world of Trantor are the Atlas Pillars, towering monuments to the creators of this wonder. The pillars hold up the heavens above all shells, facilitate transport and transfer of energy and are as indestructible and mighty as the core itself. There exist millions of them, scattered about each shell. On the outer ones, they stand in irregular patterns, raised by the Mechanicus according to necessity. But on the lower shells, they mark huge patterns on the shells, standing as close together as mighty trees, whose branches entwine into the next upper layer.

Often times the atlas pillar form the spines of mighty hives, bastions of military force and hubs for transport and trade. These pillars, at their heart, are still the brutalist monoliths as which they were created, but overgrown with gothic architecture and habitats, gardens and terraces of ten millennia.

Apart from the shells themselves, they are the most notable and mighty features planetside of Trantor.

### Rings

Standing on the outmost layer of the world of Trantor, one could see golden pathways painted in the sky. These are the hallowed rings of Trantor, golden bands in orbit around the planet, where the havens of voidships and starward lanes lie. These rings are the anchorage for the People's Navy of Trantor and staging grounds for the PDF and Imperial Guard forces raised on the Administratum world, going out to fight wars under the light of different stars.

Suspended in the heavens by forces of the Omnissiah, the Rings are ever growing, just like the shells of Trantor itself. New rings are constantly being built, fine lines across the sky, which than band together and form wider rings, more and more, until one day they shall enclose the planet whole and form the outermost, final shell, a shell above the sky of Trantor and the Hives Incandescent, which will ward off all evils and make the planet anew.