The Ring

> "*They are brutes of the highest order, hulking beasts of flesh and muscle, like mini-ogryns and Astartes. I've heard they eat corpses and worship their dead, but damn me if I wouldn't like to have a regiment of their soldiers by my side in battle*"
> ― Attributed to General Geherlok Nazma of the 984th Expeditionary Fleet, commenting on the Hydra Auxilia.
>
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## The Ring

### Type

Space Superstructure/Space Marine Homeworld

### Circumference

Nine Hundred Million Km (Slightly smaller than the orbital circumference of Terra)

### Population

Two Hundred and Fifty Billion (At the time of the Antarus Apostasy)

### Segmentum

On the border of Segmentum Solar and Ultima Segmentum

### Tithe Grade

Adeptus-Non

Homeworld of both Shaaa Hydrades and the Star Guardians, IVth Legions Astartes of the Emperor of Mankind, the space superstructure known only as "The Ring" was constructed in the distant past of the Dark Age of technology, the Ring is a technological marvel, and yet by estimates it is barely even half completed, the rings structure alternating from enclosed cramped corridors, to the skeletal construction opened to the void. Standing at roughly one million miles wide and with an approximate diameter the size of Terra’s orbit, the station encircles a large blue star, and a mineral rich Death World, known as Hydra. Anyone who observed the station from a distance would be forgiven for thinking that the system is a binary star system, the second smaller star being encompassed by The Ring. This is not entirely true, the second sun is a Dark Age solar siphon, the Ring drawing its power directly from the star to power its own fusion reactor.

The origins of the Ring have long since been lost to time, stolen away in the Age of Strife as with so much of human history. However, the Mechanicum of Mars has come to several potential ideas of its beginnings, and that of the people who now call it home. In ancient times, Terra’s own mineral wealth has all but dried out, leading to thousands moving towards the Core World’s, establishing mining colonies to feed their ancestral home. These worlds would eventually go on to form the Astra Khazadi Empire, but in the time before the Navigators, travel was much harder over long distances. A refinery was needed to gather the mineral wealth, to transform them into useful products to be shipped out across the stars. Enter the Ring. Constructed by the mastery of pre-Imperial human technology, it used the very planets within the system in its construction, utterly consuming all of them, only Hydra remaining, unconsumed due to the stations unfinished nature.

A truly gargantuan structure eclipsing the defensive rings that many worlds had, the Ring used the power of a star itself to fuel its forges, STC technology allowing it to create everything from personal firearms to the keels of mighty battle cruisers. It was hard work, living in cramped quarters in the depths of space, entirely reliant on other worlds to continue to function. Normal humans could not function for long in these conditions, burning themselves out with the back breaking work in short order. This was where the people of the Ring diverged from baseline humanity.

   With gene-therapy to enhance the population and with a simple increase of the gravity aboard the station, the new breed of human were born. Massive, hulking beasts, they were said to be similar to smaller Ogryns, bred for strength over brains. As the gene-therapy took hold, they began to rely less and less on vegetation, transitioning to a meat-based diet and lessening their reliance on other worlds to provide their own sustenance.

It was this that allowed the Ring and its people to weather the Age of Strife cut off from all around them, but it did not grant them unity. Prized for their strength, factional warfare was inevitable when faced with such a dire situation, the people tearing each other apart in a bid for dominance. Though the people of the Ring have begun to evolve past their forces evolutionary step, their brains returning to close to baseline levels of intelligence, they are and will always be, brawn over brains, making them perfect soldiers for the Great Crusade.
When Shaaa arrived, the station was in a near constant state of war, various factions vying for the important forges or few agri-domes that were dotted around the station. The largest of these was ruled by Asher Hydrades of the Hydrades dynasty, and it was this one that Shaaa was adopted into. Soon, the Hydrades dynasty was poised to rule the station, before Shaaa and his father came to blows. In short order, Shaaa tore down the old order, uniting the station under him as the Imperium arrived.

With a fledgling empire to call on, the Ring prospered in ways that hadn’t been seen on its surface for centuries. Food supplies meant the population that had always teetered on the edge of starvation could flourish, and the expertise of the Mechanicum, who flocked to the rediscovered relic in the tens of thousands, helped to bring the stations manufacturing capabilities and defences to full efficiency.

Now operating at the peak of its capacity, the Ring boasts some of the greatest defences and production facilities in the Imperium, eclipsed by only a few Fortress worlds and Forge Worlds in terms of raw power, protecting the vital Hydian Way warp route that stretches back all the way to Terra itself. It’s orbital facilities in particular were regarded as some of the greatest in the Imperium, creating exceptionally powerful ships for the IVth legion in quantities few other places could match. As such its defences were bolstered even further, creating a bastion by the time of the Apostasy, Indeed, against a conventional foe, few foes could ever hope to land upon its surface, even with a skeletal crew of Astartes manning its defences. In the end however, when the Apostasy struck, the Ring was not assaulted by a conventional enemy, instead being assaulted by creatures that had never been born in the mortal realm, its defences useless against such a foe.

## History

### The Line of Hydrades

According to Imperial legend, the Emperor of Mankind created the Primarchs from artificially-engineered genes using his own genome as a template, carefully imbuing each of them with unique superhuman powers. Imperial doctrine goes on to tell how the Ruinous Powers of Chaos spirited away the Primarchs within their gestation capsules, scattering them widely across the galaxy through the Warp. More than one of the capsules was breached whilst it drifted through Warpspace - the forces of the Immaterium leaked in, wreaking havoc on the gestating being inside the capsule. Undoubtedly damage was done and Chaotic corruption affected several of the Primarchs, although the nature of that corruption would not become apparent until the Horus Heresy.

After drifting for decades, or in some cases even hundreds of years, the twenty gestation capsules came to rest on human-settled worlds throughout the Milky Way Galaxy - distant planets inhabited by a variety of human cultures. The sole exception to this however was the capsule containing the developing form of IVth created of these Primarch’s, passing through space, and crashing through the bulkhead of the giant colossalstructure known as the Ring, close to the galactic core worlds. A bleak station wracked by war, the Primarch’s very arrival brought death as the pod holed the station, all within that section perishing as the atmosphere within was vented into the void.

As fate would have it, this section of the Ring belonged to a warlord-king known as Asher Hydrades, lord of the Hydrades line, and one of the most powerful men to live aboard the station. Recognising that this child was something special, having been found alive within the airless hanger, Asher adopted the young child, raising him as his own and bestowing upon him the name of Shaaa of the Hydrades line.

Shaaa quickly grew into a warrior of unparalleled skill, leading the Hydrades armies in brutal campaigns to conquer the massive space station. Soon, all but one empire had pledged themselves to the Hydrades king, or had been subjugated and now lived in chains. It was here that everything changed, for the Ring, for Shaaa, and indeed for the very galaxy. Asher, fearful of Shaaa’s growing power, moved to eliminate this potential rival, attempting to kill his adopted son, but instead succeeded in creating the very thing he feared; a rival.

Pulling together a great army of the dispossessed of his own campaigns, Shaaa once again set out to unify the station under the name of Hydrades, but this was not for Asher, the bloody Hydrades Civil War threatening to tear the very station apart.

Eventually however, the victor emerged. Asher was wise and skilled in the art of diplomacy and war, but Shaaa was a Primarch, and before the Ring joined the Imperium, the station was finally unified and Asher struck down, Shaaa the last of the Hydrades line.

###  The Siege of the Ring

Late in M31.055, the galaxy would know the first sparks that would quickly grow into an all-encompassing firestorm, the Warmaster Antarus entering into a betrayal as he began a lightning strike towards Terra, brushing aside the surprised defenders with consummate ease, demonstrating his mastery of battle, and showing how he had earned the title of Warmaster.

As one of a hundred feints and true strikes, designed to wrong foot the loyalists and keep them from mustering a true defence, the XIIth legion, the Brothers Encarmine, were split, the majority of their number travelling to the Istvaan system to strike against the Palatine Wings, but the smaller number, the so called ‘Widow Companies’, was tasked with striking at a different target. 12,000 of them in total split from the legion, the memories of their long dead Conjux partners still fresh in their minds, lending them to the near suicidal task ahead of them as they struck corewards.

The Ring, homeworld of the Star Guardians legion, the Praetorians of Terra, as well as a powerful production base and bastion to rival the greatest fortress worlds. Unaddressed, it would provide loyalist forces with an unmatched bastion from which to reorganise and rearm against the Warmaster’s forces. Antarus would not let that stand, but nor would he commit the manpower needed to fully wrest the station from loyalist hands, not when the push on Terra loomed ahead.

Almost in synch with the Ambush as Istvaan, the Widows struck the Ring, catching the Brigade stationed to oversee the legions recruitment completely by surprise. Battle erupted across the station, tens of thousands of civilians and PDF forces falling before the Star Guardians manage to rally and push the Brothers back. The Widows however had planned for this, pulling back before their own losses grew too great, making for the system edge and waiting just outside the range of the stations mighty guns as they stirred into life. As the system defence fleet prepare to strike back at their new found foes and banish them from the Hydra Sector, a new arrival heralded the next stage of the plan.

Emerging from the Immaterium, the Purest Intent, formerly the flagship of the now shattered and fatherless Palatine Wings, entered the fray. With the very hull itself echoing with the death cries of tens of thousands of Astartes, the ship powered forth, already one of the fastest of its kind, it seemed to move ever quicker, its engines burning far beyond their tolerances. Mighty guns of the Ring came about, aiming at the oncoming vessel. This was where the sabotage of the Widows became evident, many of the guns failing to come about to engage the newest foe, while those that did draw a lock experienced the second surprise the widows had planned.

Entering transmission range, the Purest Intent began to broadcast on all frequencies, diabolical scrap-code seeping into the systems of the Ring, while thousands of slaves nailed to the hull itself began to sing, in discordant harmony with  concussively loud music being blasted from the ship’s internal and external speakers, creating a psychic scream that overloaded the senses of those mortals who heard it, rupturing ears and hemorrhaging brains merely by the sound. Unable to do anything but watch and brace, the Purest Intent drew ever closer, before detonating with the power of a captive star, magnified further by salvaged ordnance packed within its hull at the Istvaan massacre.

For a split second, the Hydra system played host to a second star, before it’s light was snuffer out, little remaining of the once proud vessel. In its place was an ugly scar, ripped in the fabric of reality itself, and from this tear in the warp came the never born.

Chittering and whooping with joy, the neverborn demons flung themselves through the rift, uncaring of the inhospitable nature of space as they poured through the rent hull of the Ring, slaughtering all who opposed them, empowered by the tendrils of their home plane. Only the warriors of the IVth had any hope to turn them back, but they were too few in number to do more than stem the tide, all the while the neverborn running roughshod over the station, millions perishing in agony in the first hours.

The Widows watched all of this uncharacteristically passionately. Long known for their grim attitudes and dour outlook on the galaxy, they were feeling joy as they watched spectacle unknown to their kind for decades. They had played their part, they had delivered the ultimate enemy into the very heart of the Praetorian legion. Now they simply had to watch, those aboard guaranteed a slow, agonising death, possible to stave off for a time, but impossible to halt while the rift remained open. The XIIth remained simply to destroy any who attempted to flee, those who escaped the guns of the fleet soon finding themselves boarded and captured, wishing they had seen the quick death of a macro-cannon, rather than the agony the Widows unleashed to slake their own boredom.

In time, Shaaa and Terra heard of the assault, the Breacher Lord reportedly flying into a rage unmatched since the days of the Squat Wars ending. Only the words of Malchador calmed him, stopping him from sending his own fleet to retake his home. Shaaa was powerless to save the Ring, and those aboard could do nothing but survive, making the neverborn pay for every step they took, holding out for a miracle that seemed to never arrive. Fighting continued for over three years, the death toll continuing to spiral upwards until finally, help came from the most unlikely ally of the IVth legion.

## The Mortuary Cult

To outsiders to the IVth, it would be easy to dismiss them as little removed from the Mechanicum of Mars in their demeanour; cold, unfeeling logic reigning supreme, rather than the emotions that many considered to define the human race. However, were anyone to peer deeper into the minds of the IVth, a different side of the legion would begin to take form, stemming from the culture of their space station home.

Before the coming of the Imperium and its reunification by Shaaa Hydrades, the Ring was in a near constant state of warfare; warriors in the hundreds of thousands fighting for supremacy, thousands dying in droves for every push in the deadly Zone Mortalis type actions. Resources such as food were often scarce, and these corpses could not be wasted by mere sentiment, and were instead quickly reprocessed to a more useful form; sent to be turned into food paste, or even consumed as they were by warriors far from their own supply lines.

It is not surprising then that other ways to remember warriors soon took shape; while the bodies may have been used up, the memories would forever remain. Grand Mortuary Cults sprung up, not to deify or worship any notion of a ‘god’, but instead to simply provide reverence to those who had found the final peace on a station that would seemingly never know such a state. From the smallest fiefdom to the mighty Hydrades Kingdom, the Mortuary Cults kept mighty edifices to the fallen; constantly adding to their own bulk with new tallies of the dead, new statues being wrought of the greatest warriors, while others would commemorate mighty battles, inscribed with the names of those who had fallen, where they could be known at least. All the while, the Priests of the Cult would walk between their charges, maintaining and adding to them, deep rumbling songs of remembrance filling the rooms with their sombre tones.

If any places on the Ring could have been held as sacrosanct, it would be these Halls of Remembrance, and any who thought themselves above the tradition and stuck at one would suddenly find the entire station arrayed against them, quickly crushed in a brief moment of unity aboard the station, before the wars erupted again. Despite this, people still occasionally tried to strike at the Cults, wishing to recover some artifact claimed by the victor of one battle or another and incorporated into the memorial. For that reason, most kingdoms aboard the Ring would ensure their Cults were well armed, armoured and trained, the Hydrades Cult for example boasting almost two thousand warriors boasting the greatest of energy weapons and the hardiest of armours, solely to protect its great halls, each warrior ready to kill any who would try and breach the sanctum.

Unsurprisingly, this culture has fully carried over into the IVth, a new Hall of Remembrance being constructed specifically for the Legion aboard the Ring. Larger than any that came before it, this hall would soon find itself inundated with new monuments and battle honours, dedicated to the fallen sons of Shaaa. In the wake of any conflict that claimed the life of a Star Guardian, the survivors of the battles would begin their solem task, incorporating aspects of the campaign into the statue, and it was not uncommon to see pieces of Power Armour, unsalvageable and fit for no other purpose, or even a chunk of planetary crust from a world subject to Exterminatus in the wake of the campaign. These will soon be engraved, the names of the fallen being drawn from the IVth’s extensive records to ensure that none are missed, the writing often having to be near microscopic due to the extensive casualties the legion takes in fighting the Great Crusade.

There are only two examples in the history of the IVth where this tradition has not been with strict reverence.

The first is unfinished, a clear oddity amongst the other well polished memorials of the Hall. Larger than almost any other, it is covered in tens of thousands of names, crafted from the rock of a world known only as 30-5 to the IVth legion. This is the dedication to the Squat Wars, one of the most grueling campaigns the IVth had ever fought before the days of the Antarus Apostasy, and a source of eternal enmity for the IVth legion. For them, the peace that was forced upon them was an insult to the honour of all those who had fallen, and the one who enforced it would forever be hated by the Legion and their Sire.

The second however is odder still. It is massive, easily the largest of all the memorials in the room, and yet it boasts no names upon its smooth service. Nor does it boast the materials from a far-flung battlefield, the pitch black metal mined on the Death World of Hydra beneath the Ring and processed in Shaaa’s personal forge. This stands as unique, as no battle the IVth has ever fought has taken place upon the surface of the Death World, just as no other standard bears no names of the fallen. The monument stands alone, a giant, black tear shaped drop of metal, forever remembering a war the IVth are no longer permitted to speak of.

## Places of Note

**The Stellar Siphon** - If the entire space station of the Ring is a crowning discovery of technological might forged in the Dark Age of technology, then the Stellar Siphon is the central jewel in this crown. Drawing power from the star of Hydra itself, this mighty plasma scoop single handedly provides power to the entire space station, distributed far and wide to allow the machinery to function at peak efficiency. None have ever discerned the means of its operation, and none have ever secured the rights to try since Shaaa’s discovery, even the Mechanicus respecting the Primarch’s wishes after he was long gone, refusing the risk disrupting the flow of power the space station needed to continue its service to the twinned empires of man.

**The Forge of Stars -** Formerly the power behind the Hydrades Empire, and now the personal domain of Shaaa Hydrades himself, the Forge of Stars, part of the greater Forges of Nurn complex, is unique, perhaps within the entire galaxy and certainly upon the Ring, in that it uses the power of a star to heat its metals, allowing even the densest and most unyielding of metals to be rendered pliable, creating weapons of exceptional quality, and often unique providence, many of the Star Guardians unique pieces of wargear first being prototyped within this forge. Guardian pattern boarding shields, Watcher Pattern Storm shields and Heavy Thunder Hammers, even mighty dreadnought shells, were produced, tested and shipped from this forge to all warriors of the IVth across the galaxy.

**The Hall of Remembrance** - Constructed upon the unification between Shaaa and the Imperium of man, the might hall known simply as the Hall of Remembrance, is the largest of its kind, taking from the tradition of the Ring’s Mortuary Cult, and dedicated to remembering the dead of the IVth Legion. At any one time, there are one hundred Astartes within the Hall, taken from the 2nd Division of the Star Guardians, sworn to protect the Hall of Remembrance to their dying breath if the need should ever arise. During the Siege of the Ring, this determination was put to the test and found acceptable, all but one of these brave warriors perishing against the Neverborn, but the Hall never knew the foot fall of an enemy of the IVth Legion.

**The Xerxes Nexus** - While there were many different shipyards aboard the Ring, its shipbuilding capacity one of its greatest assets to the Imperium, the Xerxes Nexus was amongst the greatest of these facilities. Boasting enough space to lay down a full score of the largest battleship hulls, as well as dozens of lesser vessels, all to be constructed using the great techniques of the Rings shipbuilders. Giant magnetic forges, created in the Golden Age of Technology, could draw the power of the star into themselves, heating metals to gaseous forms in a split second. From here they could be spun into any conceivable shape before being flash-cooled, electro-magnets aligning the crystals within the metal into the desired form. Ship hulls produced in this way were of a different order of magnitude than ships produced in other, easier ways, seemingly formed of a single piece of metal, rather than countless bonded plates, presenting no weak spots that other vessels of similar designation may have. Alongside these, countless other dockyards produced the other components needed to fuel a voidships construction, engine units, plasma generators, void shields and more besides. This was the true power of the Ring, everything else was just a bonus which Shaaa would have willingly sacrificed if it meant keeping the Rings void production online.

The Xerxes Nexus also has the honour of being the birthplace of the first newly constructed Gloriana-class super battleship, Shaaa himself aiding in the design of the mighty vessel. Though some ships such as the Dragon Lords Furiar Imperator had been constructed before this vessel, soon to be known as the Herald of Destruction, the Herald was the first purpose built vessel of the Gloriana line, and soon all the mighty super-flagships of the Primarch’s would become to be known as Gloriana’s. Xerxes Nexus has always held this highest of accolades high above the other shipyards of the Ring, and has always maintained that the Herald of Destruction is not merely the first of her kind, but indeed the mightiest, few who look at her roll of service able to find much to deny such a claim.

**Hydra** - Not truly part of the Ring, but inexorably linked with the superstructure nonetheless, the large Death World of Hydra is the sole other celestial body within the Hydra Sector after the systems star and the Ring itself. Showing signs of being physically torn apart by highly advanced strip mining technology, presumably in the construction of the Ring itself, the death world is forever a monument to the damage humanity can wreak on a world in pursuit of their goals.

Massive holes and cracks expose the core of the world to the open skies, all but cutting the world in two if one looks from orbit, have caused the atmosphere, axial spin and gravity of the world to fluctuate wildly and utterly randomly, defying even the most advanced and innovative methods devised to try and track and predict these shifts. It is these that make the world utterly inhospitable to humankind, those who descend to the surface only doing so in short and often brutal raids or training exercises, or to set up temporary mining operations, harvesting the precious metals within Hydra itself that fuelled the wars of the Ring in the time before the Imperium.

Since the coming of the Imperium, Hydra is still often visited by warriors of the Ring, both human and transhuman in their breeds. For all forces who train there, it represents the final stage of their initiation, those who can survive on Hydra being deemed acceptable by the high standards set by their commanders, while those that perish are forgotten, stripped of anything of worth, before fed back into the ravenous food processors of the Ring itself.