Myriadenburg

See also

* System Myriaden
* Myriadenburg Revolutionary Guard
* Patronus Fleet St. Myriaden

On the edge between the civilized domains of the Imperial Triumvirate of Gondwana and the forlorn No-Man's-Land, there lies a single bastion of old power, preserved through millennia by ancient dynasties of technocratic nobility. This is the knight world Myriadenburg, home to an order of warriors tracing back even before the Weltenbrand.

Close to the Thetys Rift, Myriadenburg has been subjected to invasions and war many times in its history. But no conflict could shatter the halls of great glory buried deep into the crust of this world. Only its surface bears the scars of conflicts past, and even these are overshadowed by the skyward spires and domes of noble palaces.

## Protectorate World of Trantor

Since the War in the Deep and the disastrous split between Myriadenburg and Forge World Cambria which followed in its aftermath, the Knight World is free from any fielty to the Adeptus Mechanicus, being under the patronage of the Administratum World Trantor instead. Its loyalties to the Administratum and its power in the Triumvirate have been upheld despite the revolution and toppling of the old knightly noble houses. Now, under the leadership of the civilian Merchant's Council, Myriadenburg seeks to elevate its status and become a valuable ally to Trantor instead of just a vassal.

## Astrography

Myriadenburg lies in a vast empty region caught between the No-Man's-Land and the Glacial Nebula. It's closest links to civilized space are the routes from Cambria passing through Glaive's Reach. To the Pilgrimage Fleets of the Hallowed Glaive, Myradenburg has been a friendly port for centuries, even though the pilgrims are seldom welcome in the world itself.

Since the loss of Forts along the Limes Gondwana during the last swelling of the Rift, Myriadenburg is now effectively on the Imperial Frontier, maintaining strong intra-system defenses to fend off any invasions directly from the rift. It's efforts to rebuild the Lost Star Fort on its own merits have been overthrown by incursions of an ancient demon fixated on the fate of this particular world.

## The Winter World

Set on a highly elliptical orbit, Myriadenburg experiences decades of winter followed by a few precious years of summer. These seasons have long dictated the rhythm and culture of this world, forcing much of the population to dwell deep underground for the winter and allowing widespread life on the surface for only a comparatively short time.

During the winter season, the planet ventures out far from its parent sun and into the interstellar medium filled with cosmic snow of the Glacial Nebula. These winds from the Borealis Stars not only freeze the world in dense sheets of ice but even solidify its very atmosphere, until nothing but an uninhabitable frozen rock is left of the world.

When Myriadenburg once again plunges toward its sun come the summer, the elements of the atmosphere are the first to thaw and form once again a life-giving shell around a world reborn from the long sleep of winter. The first years of summer are turbulent with storms and thunder, but eventually, the chaos stabilizes and for a few precious years, the warm sun shines over living oceans and continents.

## The Civilization of Myriadenburg

The most habitable space upon Myriadenburg was artificially created by the ancestral human settlers of this world. They carved huge underground caverns and habitats from the crust and mantle of the planet, reinforcing them in huge complex designs of brutalist architecture. These chambers are of such magnitude that they may house entire cities and self-sufficient nations, being connected to one another via long series of tunnels and shafts.

### Living Chambers

For the long winter years Myriadenburg endures, the living chambers are the true heart of its civilization. Billions of citizens live and work in these halls, where the only light stems from age-old technologies preserved by many guilds of engineseers and artisans. Most of these guilds are only loosely aligned with the Adeptus Mechanicus by name, but their mastery of the technology makes them completely indispensable.

### Abandoned chambers

The abandoned chambers are all those lost to the civilization of Myriadenburg when most of it died out during the age of strife. They were once thriving places, which fell into darkness and are now ruled by feral tribes and warlords, rogue machinery and even older horrors. Some even say native monstrosities are living in the planet's stone, who have nested in the old catacombs and are enemies of all living civilizations.

### Trading Season and off-world contact

While some shafts to the surface are maintained during winter, traditionally any business off-world is only conducted during the summer seasons, when the extensive facilities and starports on the world's surface area free of ice.

During this trading season, almost all of the population migrates to the surface and for a few years, the cities there become crucibles of resources and culture.

### The beating heart

At the core of Myriadenburg lies the beating heart, the living core of the planet where the heat of its conception still burns as bright as the mother-sun. It is from this heat that all souls upon this world draw their breath, and they dwell ever deeper into the mantle to come closer to the warmth.

Since the old halls of the deep are reclaimed once more, the people of Myriadenburg no longer mine in solid rock and stone. instead, they siphon the raw material of their world from the magma of the inner layers surrounding the beating heart. What machines they build were forged in the radiation heat generated at the molten core, and not by any man-made flame. This gives the machines and armor of Myriadenburg's knights their unique strength and durability.

## History

### The Colonies of the Deep

When the planet of Myriadenburg was first colonized, the ancestors created their first dwellings in natural cave systems relatively close to the surface. As their population grew, these colonists were forced to carve new living spaces from the rock of this world for every new soul born. Every generation pushed deeper through the crust and into the mantle, driven by their need for the life-giving warmth and energy of the planetary core.

### Weltenbrand and the Last Stand of the Knights

The vast majority of this thriving population did not survive humanity's fall and the chaos which followed. One after another, the deep-dwellings fell to corruption, chaos, and techno-heresy. By the end, the scarce few survivors were pushed back to the very caves the early pioneers had inhabited.

A lesser world would have been pushed to extinction by the onslaught of dire threads from within, but not so the defiant people of Myriadenburg. Every one of their chambers was a fortress, every corridor blocked after their retreat. For every layer of their world, they fought for centuries and despite all that which was lost, their fight against a common foe forced all great lords of the world into an alliance. Unsteady at first, the bond between the knightly houses was forged in the fires of endless war and united as one, they managed to stand against the forces from underneath.

And above all else, they maintained some measure of mastery over the technologies of old, most notably the great knights, protectors, and re-conquerors of Myriadenburg. At the oldest sites of their colony, the people erected great bulwarks and bastions against the horrors from below, and they gathered all parts of old technology and machinery they could preserve.

For a thousand years, these bulwarks alone stood between the people of Myriadenburg and their extinction. Guarding these last bastions of humanity, were the Knights of the noble houses, warriors of old.

### Once more into the depths

It took a long time for the people of Myriadenburg to recover, even after the first waves of chaos receded and the long age of strife was slowly lifted from the domains of man. As their lineages once again thrived and populations grew, they slowly began to expand into an endless, gargantuan maze of abandoned halls and caverns, extending far into the mantle of their homeworld.

The knights once sworn to protect Myradenburg against horrors from the stars were forced to turn their gaze inward during the Age of the Imperium. In the deep labyrinthine Catacombs of the winter, the world had festered ancient evils, cults and even Xenos strains, who now called the ancient kingdoms of old their own.

On the world of Myriadenburg, the same war was fought as everywhere else in the galaxy. The scarce remaining forces of civilized order sought to reclaim what had been unjustly taken from them by the forces of evil and chaos. Thus, every advance of Myriadenburg's civilization was spearheaded by crusades of noble knights. Alongside the numerous planetary forces hailing from the bulwarks of the surface, the knights of Myriadenburg marched into the black underground, toward the burning heart of their world to set it free.

Every chamber repopulated and bathed in the light of the Emperor since the Great Crusade, was paid for in the blood of many thousand souls.

### The Coming of the Mechanicus and the Feud

The technology and artifacts deep inside of Myriadenburg were far from dead when the Imperium came to rule over this world. Evil spirits of half-forgotten wars had befallen the machines, and soon attracted the keen interest of Explorators from the Cult Mechanicus Cambria.

The Cult came to the world of Myriadenburg at the onset of one long winter. At first, they were welcome reinforcements to the new crusades of the knightly houses, who had carefully planned yet another advance to new depths and long-lost chambers described in their chronicled history.

However, they did not anticipate the fervor of the Adeptus Mechanicus in its mission.

The forces of the Cult Mechanicus Cambria sent to Myriadenburg were under the command of one Grand Magos Explorator Summanus Invictus, who had his heart set to unravel all secrets of this world by the end of the first long winter.

Some say that coming from the Ringworld in its inexhaustible glory and scale, the Grand Magos Summanus had forgotten the fragile nature of natural worlds, and because of it took risks that endangered the civilization of Myriadenburg as a whole. Perhaps he was aware and simply uncaring toward the survival of mere unaugmented human souls. Either way, he set his forces to work on creating a passage right toward the chambers closest to the core.

Disregarding the endless maze and structures created by the ancient humankind, against the wishes of the knightly houses, the Explorator forces plunged into the depths. This sparked a feud between the planetary nobles and the Magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose sole interest lay in the retrieval of all forgotten blessings granted by the Omnissiah.

### The War in the Deep

Mechanicus war-machines, Skitarii and even titans of the Cambrian Legio Theomachia walked into the unknown abyss. With starship-grade weaponry, they forced their way through ancient blockades and even through the natural stone of Myriadenburg's crust, where the old pathways and chambers seemed too convoluted to the Grand Magos and his circle of command. On their hasty descent, they quickly left the Knights of Myriadenburg behind, disregarding the ancient warriors as obsolete compared to the magnificent force the Grand Magos had assembled.

Despite this great dishonor, the knightly houses did not insist to partake in the coming battles, for they anticipated the fate awaiting those charging underneath. And before long, the spearhead of the Explorators encountered untold horrors in the deep.

These were the horrors the knightly houses and people of Myriadenburg had come to know over millennia of war in the depths of their world. They knew what destructive power those eldritch foes would unleash when they were stirred. Because of this, they had made the plan disregarded by the Grand Magos Summanos, to only ever take one or two chambers at once on their path down.

### The disaster and split

By the time reports of the horrors below forced the magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus to admit the truth of the warnings issued by the knightly houses, it was almost too late. In the depths of Myriadenburg, a titan had fallen, and its last battle had shaken the entirety of the world.

One of the great living chambers of Myriadenburg collapsed, burying three million innocent souls under kilometers of granite and rock-crete rubble.

It was this disaster that caused the Knightly Houses of Myriadenburg to wholly abandon the Explorators crusade and their knights would go no deeper into the abyss.

Had the Grand Magos Summanos Invictus still held supreme power alone, the crusade might have pushed on, but the commanders of the Skitarii and the Princeps of the Legio Theomachia, enraged over the loss of one of their midst, made their voices heard and called for a slowing down of the campaign. Instead of pushing forth as quickly, to reach the core before the end of winter, they decided to fortify their positions. Some of them held sympathy for the Knightly Houses and wanted to halt progress on the descent altogether. Others sought to force the Knightly Houses to participate in their war and wanted to bolster their ranks before going further down.

### The Judgement of Myriadenburg

The souls of Myriadenburg trembled when the next summer came.

In the eyes of the Grand Explorator, the noble knights of this world had defied his holy mandate for a crusade and would not escape the judgment of his order. The furious leader sent word to the Forge World Cambria and asked for the punishment of the Knightly houses, for them to be dismantled and their war-machines returned to the ringworld.

But the high nobles of Myriadenburg were not blind to the Great Games of Power beyond their own world. Through traders from afar, they had long learned of the feud between Cambria and the Administratum World Trantor. And to the latter they sent a message detailing their reasoning to end the war of the Deep, for it would undermine the position of Myriadenburg on the Frontier and as such pose a threat to the interests of the Triumvirate at large.

Moreover, they offered, not overtly but in the way of their writing, the patronage over their world and with it, the Knights of Myriadenburg, to the Administratum seated upon Trantor.

Two messages were sent out from Myriadenburg at the dawn of this summer, and on both worlds, Trantor and Cambria, they set the wheels of politics and bureaucracy into motion.

### Free Myriadenburg

What began as words in High Gothic, writ on two letters from one world quickly grew into an avalanche of exponentially greater events. Through the ranks and chains of messengers, couriers, authority, and power, the opportunity to seize the Myriadenburg gained the attention of ever-greater factions on both worlds. And before long, the first ships and fleets were set into motion, and a race for the knight world had begun.

Over the long years of this summer, the fate of Myriadenburg was decided, and in the end, the political cunning of Trantor prevailed. For all the military prowess the Grand Explorator Summanos Invictus could muster, he was no master of the great games of power. The Administratum seemed to carry the weight of all the Imperium and measured it against the interests of one feeble Explorator. And in the end, the Cult Mechanicus Cambria was forbidden to carry out its punishment for the failed crusade, blaming the leader of the force instead.

Skitarii and Titans were withdrawn from the world, and under the patronage of Trantor, Myriadenburg was free.

### The Revolution

Outwardly Myriadenburg had demonstrated its strength in the unprecedented assertion of its stand against the Explorator Crusade. Inward, however, the world was left in chaos thereafter.

A deep divide had opened between the old Knightly Houses, who controlled the ancient war machines, and the new Merchant Dynasties, which had grown to prominence and wealth through interstellar trade.

The merchants enjoyed the support of the masses, who resented the war machines who had invited the Explorators, and thus a disaster, to their world. They believed the old houses only clung to their power when the means of protection should have been in the hands of the people.

This could have been the beginning of long and bloody strife, a civil war in the chambers just reclaimed from the depth. However, such a conflict could not be allowed to happen, for it would endanger the stability of Myriadenburg as a bastion on the Thetys Rift, the very reason why it had ever been spared.

Forced to withhold the might of all their war-machines by the very allies they had just made to save their world, the old Knightly Houses eventually succumbed to the mounting revolution. It was by no means a bloodless struggle on the steps of the bastion-palaces, but no living chamber was sullied by the blood peasants or nobles alike. When the outer walls of the bulwarks fell, the knights laid down their weapons and bowed before the people, making the sacrifice of their power for the sake of their world.

### The New Era

In the wake of the War in the Deep and the struggles to follow, a new era for Myriadenburg had begun. For the first time since the Age of Strife, the power of this world lay not in the hands of its greatest warrior knights. The bloodlines of the knightly houses were no longer rulers but servants of the people and their grand palaces on the surface became once again bastions against any outside thread instead of the world's seats of governance.

The true power now lay once again close to the heart of this world, at the deepest point the Explorator Crusade could secure, where energy and heat were once again abundant. After all the strife, these riches were now enjoyed by the noble merchants and their people, who carried them skyward and to the stars.

As the forty-first Millennium draws to its end, Myriadenburg prospers at the height of its golden age. But all too often, golden ages come to violent ends.