Aroth

### Ruler

Supreme Stadtholder Graesher van Ankker IV, Imperial Governor of Aroth, Patriarch of Rogue Trader House Ankker, and Lord Temporal of Panzerholdt-Erste

## Location

### System

Ferunus

**Aroth** is a world of contradictions. First founded by the notably pious, yet greedy, Rogue Trader Luuk van Ankker within less than three decades after the colonization of Forge World Ferunus by the latter's invitation, a colossal amount of resources in ice, uranium, thorium, petroleum oil, diamond, and especially adamantium - contained in a kilometers-thick layer of outer crust on the barren world demanding the Adeptus Mechanicus' attention. The balance of power is delicately maintained between the planet's ruling Rogue Trader House, the Adeptus Mechanicus, Ecclesiarchy, and the many sovereign mining, industrial, and service Guilds and their subordinate Free Union workers and militias.

## Early History & Planetary Culture

Although the Rogue Trader House of van Ankker was chosen by the Triumvirate of Fabricators of Ferunus for its good relations with the Adeptus Mechanicus and several STCs it had brought to Mars, its noble members were strongly religiously dedicated to the Imperial Cult. This resulted in both a strong Cult Mechanicus and Ecclesiarchial presence.  The first hive of Ferunus' partially terraformed moon was built around a dock built for the Rogue Trader dynasty's flagship, a mercantile-optimized *Armageddon*-class Battlecruiser, *Aquila Advancing,*over a meteorite that crashed into the moon over 200 millennia ago, destroying its burgeoning pre-historic ecosystem. A mining colony formed the underhive, with the original retainers being appointed nobles of the world as it was colonized and various members of House van Ankker being tasked with forming seven other hives on the surface of the large moon at roughly equal distance from one another. The crew of *Aquila Advancing* were given the right to form the middle class of the first hive-city, now christened Hive Erste. Centuries into the rapid colonization of Aroth, the planet had grown into one of the most significant in the sector - not insignificantly due to the practice of the Azuran Sector's most proactive defenders, the Ordnators, of taking refugees from many different warzones that had faced rebellious elements or xenos invasions and resettling them in the burgeoning eight Hives of Aroth. Upon his death in 679.M40, Luuk van Ankker left the planet to be divided between his 8 eldest children. War shortly followed as each son or daughter sought to claim the planetary governorship, though throughout it, the Imperial Tithe and demands of the Adeptus Mechanicus were always met - each of the eight hives struggling for dominance of the many resources required by the Adeptus Terra and the Forge World of Ferunus.

Life on Aroth in the cut-throat Darwinian competition for resources and political capital that involves everyone from the great nobles to the lowest mining deck shanty deck scrapper ensures that the men and women of the world look to collective protection in ascending institutions from their local unions to the guilds, the houses that rule them, and ultimately the Imperium. “*Supreme Strength through Eternal Unity*” is the mantra of the Imperial House of van Ankker, and posters and murals artistically depicting the power of a society forged by competition and protected by the collective cover the walls of every Panzerholdt Hive, and the sentiment tends to ensure that Arothi Imperial subjects are clannish and insular as well as strongly loyal to the idea of protecting the whole of their social groups through hard work as well as violence - the two inextricably linked in the culture of the world.

Soldiering comes naturally to the Arothi who seek an escape from the rule of the guilds over their daily life. Most conscripts are taken from guilder militia and already experienced in fighting off wasteland scrappers, mutants, and bandits from their tracked mining and surveying landships. Volunteers are typically even longer termed workers who escaped annual drafts by sheer chance but tend to be assigned to the more elite regiments. The Arothi Storm Guard and Shield Guard are allowed to impose recruiting quotas on certain job types from each guild to maintain its standing

## The Panzerholdt States and the Rise of the Tracked Fortress-Hives

The cities of Aroth, dependent on the various massive, tracked Landtschlatschipp of the Guilds, long ago learned that the semi-perpetual state of warfare between each for competition of the abundant resources of the moon could easily lead to smaller hive cities being excluded from crucial industries and being made subservient to cities of lower population and size but greater wealth.

To remedy this, the concept of the Panzerhold was created by the smaller Hive-Cities of Aroth. Emplacing massive, rotating sets of tracks were placed onto the bottoms of each of the Hive Cities, one after another, with the help of certain Arch Magi and Fabricators of Ferunus in exchange for great bounties in resources and manpower far in excess of their nominal tithes needed to maintain the graces of the Adeptus Mechanicus after the Administratum had taken its due. The race to exploit the resources of Aroth had accelerated with the introduction of the Gepanzerkorfen. It was the time of greatest challenge to the Imperial House, van Ankker of Hive Erste. The totality of the military police corps of the Arothi Shield Guard were mobilized as each Hive successfully engaged in an era of mutually predatory aggression and competition for resources, cities dueling voidship pattern lances, macrocannons, and voidshields over mineral, liquid, or gas deposits until one city, inevitably after the loss of several million of its populace, and a tremendous amount of its superstructure, would raise banners of surrender and voxcast an announcement of their retreat to their opposing rival. The only instance of this competition resulting in the total destruction of a Gepanzerkorfen Hive City was in the first decade of the Age of the Gepanzerkorf, during a battle between Panzerkorfeiner and Panzerkorfhold-Salzen known as the Harrowing. Panzerkorfhold-Einer was destroyed utterly, and within the week an armada of Ferunum battleships and an Ark Mechanicus settled into the world’s low orbit and found the offending city. After destroying the tracks of Panzerkorf-Salzen, the Skitarii of Legio Omega of Ferunus swarmed the spires of the 600m-tall city, slaughtering the entirety of the nobility and cornering the Stadtholder-Konig lord of the tracked hive. It is said his death came at the hands of a Secutor and his Sicarian Infiltrators in his command room and consisted of having his body hacked apart viciously by the Secutor’s great power axe. The Secutor, known as Galanos of Ontol Mars, rose to become the greatest Arch-Magos Dominus and commander of the Omega Legion of Forge World Ferunus.

Following this, the Gepanzerkorfhold Protocol was enacted. By force of Ferunus and with the assistance of the observation of the Mediators’ Guild of Gepanzerkorhold-Erste, no city would be allowed to destroy another ever again. The former two cities destroyed in The Harrowing and the Ferunum purge have become known as the Zweipanzergeists - the Twin Armored Ghosts. The two ghost behemoths have become prime targets for illegal scavenger gangs competing with the Arothi Shield Guard Corps of Engineers and the Salvager Guilds of various hives granted rights to do so by House van Ankker of Panzerholdt-Erste. Daily battles occur within its depths as the lawful forces of Aroth clash with desperate wastelander bands - often ending in an endless slaughter of the less-prepared gangs of the latter arriving daily. Only a select few ganger clans are well entrenched enough to have access to the best salvage and smuggling routes out of the area.

As part of the Protocol, Ferunus ensured standardized “Extraction Ports” in the underside of each of the tracked hives that allow them to lock into place onto standardized “Resource Ports”, which, by ancient law must be built around the circumference of any valuable deposit found on the surface of Aroth in five different sizes - allowing the cities to lock onto every mining site or former Underhive-turned-trading post city. The vast majority of resources of any of the Panzerholdts are dedicated to improving the mineral, gas, and liquid extraction machinery within the Extraction Port levels. Millions live within each deck dedicated to this purpose in any given tracked hive, most of the miners, technicians, engineers, runners, and other workers never even know of the existence of the noble Great Houses of the Spires, let alone have the chance to lay eyes on the exterior of a hive. This is the new Undermining Port Deck - replacing the traditional subterranean Underhives of many worlds’ hive cities.

Within the Midden Decks, life is relatively comfortable. Mercantile markets of legal goods, factories, barracks for the Shield Guard regiments assigned to each hive by the Imperial House, and other forums for various respectable trades and professions make their holds here. The primary gunnery decks of each Panzerholdt are located here, as well as traffic ports for airships and atmo or voidcraft.

The Upper Hive is where the wealthy ownership class of the hive and esteemed Adepts and emissaries of the Imperium and the Arothi Guilds tend to inhabit. Gardens of exotic flora from across the Imperium form the corners of intersections between marble streets. Fresh oxygen is chemically generated and circulated here down to the Midden Decks and from there down to the Undermining Port Deck, while water is run through ascending levels of increasingly effective purification plants. The reservoirs for each are shared with the Spire Decks.

The Spire Decks are the home of the Imperial House and several palace-spires reserved for or owned by various emissaries of the Imperium at large, most prominently for the Forge World of Ferunus, the Ordinators’ chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, the Navis Nobilite Houses, Rogue Trader houses, and Arothi Storm or Shield Guard Corps HQs.
Atop the highest peaks of each Panzerholdt Spire reside the Ruling House Primary, as well as the strongest of the Void Shield Generators and the Panzerholdt’s primary rotating-ring turret just below - usually lance projectors or volcano cannon batteries.

## Environment

Between the gravity of their homeworld and primarily mushroom or rarer synth-protein based diets, Arothi males tend to reach only 5'9'' in height on average. Despite this, they are known for their speed of movement and excellent eyesight as well as the due to the prevalence of various genes and epigenetic activators present in the biomes of Aroth. This makes them excellent melee combatants and marksmen, though they are slightly less able to carry large amounts of equipment on their back when soldiering or mining - necessitating the use of mechanized transport and other equipment.