Faemark

The flag of Faemark, depicting the Divine Dragon

**Records:**
Highest 34°C
Lowest -52°C

"*Faemark has many faults, yes, but this is my home. I belong to her, and I will not abandon her to the ravages of daemonic corruption or mortal stupidity. Even an alien can understand that.*"
—Inquisitor Morrigan Redfield to Sir Artan Thrandiel of Tair-Melann
**Faemark** is a Civilised World of the Imperium of Man, located in the approximate centre of Segmentum Tempestus. At first appearance, Faemark is a relatively unassuming and unremarkable planet, not renowned for anything in particular. This is seen as a great boon by many Faemarkers; after all, in such a hostile and hateful galaxy, it is better to go unnoticed. However, the more one learns about Faemark, the more bizarre secrets one uncovers - secrets which are kept tightly under wraps, as they could shake the foundations of Imperial ideology if allowed to become public.

Although Faemark is not renowned for anything significant, it does have a number of respected exports. Faemark is noted for producing fine ceramics, jewellery and textiles, the latter of which is made from the supremely soft wool of the native Bloomhoof. Fine robes and dresses made from Bloomhoof wool can be found across the galaxy, even in Holy Terra itself, worn by those rich enough to access it - though few of them actually know the origin of the fabric. The profits from these exports make up a significant proportion of Faemark's total planetary income, and are a part of the planet's tithe.

Faemark was once an Aeldari Maiden World named Sureyan, whose native Exodite population was driven to extinction by unknown causes several millennia before human settlement began in early M35. The vast majority of Faemarkers are unaware that their planet was terraformed and made habitable by the Aeldari, but the academic circles are vaguely aware that an alien civilisation preceded them, given the limited presence of their ruins. The only Craftworld which has had contact with Faemark, Tair-Melann, has expressed no desire to reclaim the planet in the name of their race, believing that such a venture would be an unnecessary waste of time and lives - however, many within the Craftworld have expressed the belief that they should at least take measures to ensure that the *Mon-Keigh* treat the planet with respect.

Faemark fields three distinct classes of soldier. The Faemark Fyrd consists of conscripts who are chiefly raised in times of war, or when the threat of war arises; in peacetime, this force is kept small and is mostly used to keep order. The Royal Huscarls are professional volunteer soldiers who receive substantially more training and the best equipment that Faemark has to offer; these form the bulk of Faemark's standing army and serve as the elite of its Planetary Defence Force. The Varangians are all those destined to join the Astra Militarum to fight across the stars, and who are regularly taken away as part of the planet's tithe. As of yet, all Varangians have been volunteers, but the laws are in place to conscript soldiers into the Varangians if the Imperium demands it.

## Technology

Faemark is a Civilised World comprised of many economically and technologically diverse societies. Faemark is mostly - but not entirely - industrialised, with a greater degree of industrialisation in the mineral-rich south, despite its more challenging terrain. Only the capital of Helmwic approaches the typical technology level found elsewhere in the Imperium.

The majority of the planet's land is inhabited by subsistence farmers, many of which do not have access to mechanised farming equipment; this is a luxury mainly reserved for farms feeding the industrialised cities, typically transporting their harvests to the hungry metropolitan areas with the planet's extensive rail network. High-capacity rail lines are usually pulled by diesel-electric locomotives, but steam locomotives remain in service throughout the northern hemisphere. The only fully electric rail system is Helmwic's local light rail network. Since Faemark does not have indigenous flight technology and automobiles are both expensive and slow, the vast majority of passenger travel and cargo transportation on Faemark is done by rail and ship.

The general technological level of the indigenous Faemarkers is strongly contrasted with equipment imported from elsewhere in the Imperium, which is only available to wealthy elites and veteran soldiers. Where the Royal Huscarls use Lasguns, the hunters and militia of Faemark mostly use conventional bolt-action rifles; where nobles travel in sleek aircraft, the common people travel in antiquated trains.

Faemarker medical technology is somewhat primitive, but medical *knowledge* is on par with other, substantially more developed worlds - partly due to indigenous discoveries and partly due to this knowledge being shared by off-worlders. For example, Faemarker doctors understand germ theory and understand how to manufacture and properly use vaccines, utilising them to completely eliminate some human diseases - most notably smallpox. However, tuberculosis remains a persistent problem in the less developed regions, and diseases transmitted from Faemark's native wildlife to humans remain a serious issue since the world's doctors only have access to primitive antibiotics.

Imperial authorities from beyond the planet take a cautious attitude to the technological development of Faemark. On the one hand, sharing with them the full extent of Imperial technology would greatly boost their productivity; on the other, keeping them as a backward society ensures that any rebellion would be swiftly crushed. Though the consensus has shifted to developing Faemark to meet the increasingly desperate needs of the Imperium at large, the Imperial bureaucrats have resolved to do so gradually, not wishing to destabilise the planet's social order.

## Geography

Faemark has many similarities with Holy Terra. The star it orbits, much like Sol, is a type G2V main sequence star, of roughly the same mass and size as Sol. Faemark has the same density as Terra, but it is smaller, making its gravity slightly weaker. Faemark is also situated further away from its star than Terra, but the nature of its atmosphere combined with high forest coverage gives it a substantially lower albedo, causing it to retain heat more easily. This results in Faemark having a lower but more stable average temperature than Terra, with less fluctuation between geographic areas and between seasons. Faemark also has comparatively lesser temperature variation because its axial tilt is merely 12.1°, just over half that of Terra's angle of 23.4°. Faemark takes 26 standard hours to rotate on its axis, and it makes a full rotation around its star every 187 days.

### Environment

Faemark has a cool temperate climate with moderate rainfall. It experiences mild summers, and while the temperature in winter is often below freezing, it only regularly drops below -15 degrees celsius at the poles. Most of the planet's climate is comparable to northwestern Europe in Holy Terra's extremely ancient past. The southern hemisphere experiences more rainfall than the north, since this hemisphere is significantly more mountainous; its mountain ranges are younger and therefore taller and steeper, causing them to have a more pronounced effect on the weather. The mountains of the north, by comparison, are immeasurably ancient, and are weathered and worn-down rugged things.

### Urbanisation

As one would expect, most arable land is taken up by farmland and pastures, with the northern hills and mountains playing host to many thousands of Bloomhoof pastures to harvest their famously soft wool. Few settlements on Faemark exceed a population of 100,000, and fewer still are larger than a million. The capital city of Helmwic is by far the largest, its entire metropolitan area housing a population of 21 million. This is partly by design, and partly a natural consequence of Helmwic's political importance and strategic location. Helmwic is known across Faemark for its pollution (and, in the poorer districts, the unpleasant smell), but the rest of the planet is generally environmentally sound and suffers little pollution. Influential figures on Faemark frequently call for action to be taken to improve the cleanliness of Helmwic, but very little has been done.

### Divine Dust

Faemark's atmosphere is notable for having a high concentration of solid particulates in its upper layers, which affects the atmosphere's properties of reflectiveness and heat retention and also has the effect of scattering light to make the sky pinkish-orange during the day, pink at twilight, and pale blue at dawn or dusk - somewhat similar to Mars. The particulates also reflect the light of the planet's star, an effect which is barely noticeable during the day but causes the night sky to be remarkably bright, filled with flowing and floundering uncountable specks of light. The particulates additionally cause the planet's auroras to be vast, long-lasting and bright.

These particulates are commonly referred to by the nickname of "Divine Dust". Even a cursory examination reveals that they do not obey the standard laws of physics. There is no sufficient scientific explanation for why the Divine Dust never falls to the lower atmosphere, and it defies chemical identification; the particulates are made of a material utterly unknown to Imperial science. The seemingly supernatural nature of the Divine Dust is part of what gave rise to its nickname, but the name mostly originates from the tale of the Divine Dragon, the creature that appears on the planet's flag. Sir Artan Thrandiel, an Aeldari visitor from Craftworld Tair-Melann, speculated that the Divine Dust may be Wraithbone, spewed into the atmosphere as part of a terraforming effort by the ancient Aeldari.

## The Emperor's Fairies

An utterly bizarre characteristic of Faemark, but one which is barely known at all beyond the planet itself, is the existence of what are termed the Emperor's Fairies by the locals. This is a collective term for a variety of inexplicable and clearly supernatural disturbances and apparitions that happen infrequently but semi-regularly across Faemark, some of which are harmful to the locals but most of which are benign or even helpful in nature. They are the origin of the planet's name of Faemark. The Emperor's Fairies have been known to manipulate the Divine Dust, coerce both domestic and wild animals, influence the growth of crops or even directly physically move objects.

The first colonists were greatly fearful of the Fairies. Some believed them to be the ghosts of the extinct aliens that clearly preceded them, whereas others who were more in the know feared that they might be entities from the Immaterium. Indeed, the historical record suggests that in the early generations of the colony, the Fairies were largely hostile in nature and frequently brought harm - or, at least, extreme inconvenience - to the colonists. However, for largely unknown reasons, the behaviour of the Fairies became more peaceful over time, and the colonists began to fear them less.

As new generations arose who had no experience with hostility from the Fairies, or who even benefitted from their intervention, a belief started to emerge on Faemark that the Fairies were, in some way, divine agents of the God-Emperor. If they were the ghosts of an alien civilisation that continued to haunt the planet, as earlier generations believed, there is no possibility that they would be benign; after all, every righteous Imperial citizen knows that the alien is to be distrusted, doubted and hated at every turn, for all they desire is the enslavement or outright annihilation of mankind. Those who believed this theory came to refer to the supernatural entities as the Emperor's Fairies, and explained away their rare harmful actions as being judgement passed by the God-Emperor, or part of a divinely ordained trial.

The belief that the Fairies were in fact the Emperor's Fairies remained a relatively fringe one until the rise of the Divine Dragon, which was clearly a manifestation of the Fairies that saved the planet from extermination. To the overwhelming majority of Faemarkers, this dispelled any doubt about the nature of the Fairies and confirmed them as servants of the God-Emperor, and the populace have since treated the Fairies with reverence and respect.

## The Divine Dragon

In mid-M39, roughly two and a half millennia after the planet was first colonised, Faemark came under attack from an Orkish warband. The fleet had few ships, but it was headed by a gargantuan flagship named "Da Rippa", which sported a terrifyingly huge assortment of ramshackle guns. Faemark's populace made ready to defend their home, but it was an open secret that resistance was utterly futile and the planet was doomed. Rather than hoping for victory, the people instead grimly took up arms to die in battle on their own terms rather than be hunted down and slaughtered like wild prey.

As Da Rippa neared the planet and began a mighty bombardment, there was a sudden disturbance in the dust in the sky. Over the course of roughly half an hour, the dust came together to coalesce into a ball, which began to shine brighter and brighter as more dust joined the swarm. Just as Da Rippa began to send drop pods down onto Faemark's surface - or, at least, what passed for drop pods to an Ork - the ball of dust exploded with a thunderous crack, and from it burst forth a shining golden dragon, a massive creature wrought from the supernatural dust. The dragon caught the drop pods as they fell and destroyed them, crushing them in its mighty fists and melting them to slag with its blinding fiery breath.

Da Rippa's guns turned on the dragon and blew great chunks out of the dragon's flesh, but these wounds were healed again in mere moments. The dragon flew towards the ship at an astounding pace, leaving a sonic boom in its wake as it pierced the sound barrier, and latched onto Da Rippa. The astonished Faemarkers below could only watch on in amazement as the dragon quite literally tore the Orkish fleet to shreds over the course of the next hour, melting the debris and corpses that fell to the surface below. When the deed was done, the dragon simply disintegrated, its essence returning to flow eternally over Faemark's skies.

The Faemarkers were wholly and universally convinced that this was an act of divine intervention by the God-Emperor, who had sent a Divine Dragon to protect Faemark in its hour of need. It also convinced those who were doubtful that the "fairies" of Faemark were divine agents of the God-Emperor, as they were clearly the ones who had manifested the dragon from the dust above - which came to be known as the Divine Dust in time. The Faemarkers almost immediately began building a cathedral in the midst of Helmwic in honour of this momentous occasion, named the Cathedral of the Divine Dragon, which took 120 years to complete and to this day remains both the largest temple and the tallest structure on Faemark.

## Ghosts of the Past

The Faemarkers are content with the wondrous stories of the Emperor's Fairies and the Divine Dragon, but those with access to more information - namely, the Inquisition - have developed a cohesive theory of the actual truth. They could, of course, still be missing some details, but their version of events is far more likely to reflect reality than the superstitions of the common folk. The truth of the matter is a well-kept secret, hidden both from the populace and from the more extreme fringes of the Inquisition, who would likely just make the situation messy and take some highly undesirable actions.

The Aeldari Exodites of Faemark who preceded the human colonists were driven to extinction, but this does not mean that all traces of them have vanished. Some of their ruins remain, yes, but it goes much deeper. Though the Exodites no longer live, any scholar educated in matters of the Aeldari will know that just because an Aeldari is dead, that does not mean they have ceased to exist. In other words, the fact that the Aeldari are dead does not necessarily entail that the World Spirit of the planet has also been destroyed. On the contrary, the World Spirit is certain to still be "alive" (for want of a better term), as there is simply no other feasible explanation for the existence of the Fairies and the incomprehensible nature of the Divine Dust and the Divine Dragon. Sir Artan Thrandiel of Tair-Melann, the only known Aeldari who has visited Faemark since those ancient Exodites, certainly believes this to be the case.

The locations of the World Shrines, sites which are used by Aeldari Exodites to commune with the World Spirit, are totally unknown. They do not correlate with the few surviving Aeldari ruins, and it is possible that the Aeldari somehow deliberately cut off access to the World Spirit before their extinction to prevent it coming to harm - though this is mere speculation, and if it was indeed the case, how the World Spirit is able to interact so strongly with the outside world becomes a mystery.

Although the behaviour of the "Fairies" remains fundamentally esoteric, the fact that they are manifestations of the World Spirit or of individual long-dead Aeldari souls goes some way in explaining their actions. It is understandable that the World Spirit would, at first, be hostile, and it is understandable that it would take far more drastic action to protect itself from a threat that it can clearly identify as being significantly more dangerous than humans. There are various theories as to why the World Spirit has come to act in a more benign manner over time; some have suggested that it has deduced the humans to not be a threat, some believe that it has recognised that fostering and protecting the human colonists is its best chance for securing its own survival, and others - somewhat heretically - have posited that the World Spirit, while not exactly *liking* the humans, does not want to see them suffer. The truth may be any combination of these reasons, or none of them.

In any case, whatever the true reasoning of the World Spirit, the fact that it is not hostile to humanity but instead sometimes even helpful poses a serious challenge to Imperial ideology concerning xenos. The Faemarkers would be aghast to know that their early theory of the Fairies being the ghosts of extinct aliens was in fact true, and this revelation would inevitably lead them to catastrophe; either by causing them to become heretical alien-lovers and possibly even leading them to forsake the God-Emperor, or by causing them to try and bring harm to the World Spirit, which would inevitably cause their own annihilation. Either case would result in the loss of Faemark, so it is absolutely imperative that the truth of the planet remains unknown.