Herakaeli Cluster

> "***The Machine Cult rules here, any noble who tells you otherwise is lying to ya, an upstart lookin' to carve out their own domain, tryin' to sell you something, or a traitor. The Iron Sight is upon us**.*"
> ― Merchant-Captain Montegue to a client
>
>

The **Herakaeli Cluster** is a dense collection of lesser worlds and systems which makes up the coreward region of the Ixaniad Sector. For millennia, this sub-sector has served as the mechanical heart of the sector, peopled by industrialized clusters of highly productive planets and filled with rich mining worlds, the cluster serves the mechanical overlords well. Uncomfortably close to the Eye of Terror, this sub-sector has seen intermittent conflict and strife for millennia as the powers of chaos wane and wax strong again.

Since the surge of warp storms as the Lightless Century began, several planets have vanished from astrographic cartography, whole worlds have fallen to chaos, and others to rebellion. In the grim years since, the sub-sector has felt the iron grip of the Mechanicum bear down upon them with crushing force, both to stabilize flagging Imperial authority and gain valuable resources becoming ever more scare in the Imperium Nihilus.

The sector at large possessed several stable warp routes; the only means of faster than light travel during the Lightless Century in many cases. Though destabilizing gradually, these routes trace their slipstreams coreward through the cluster. Magi Astrologis suspect that the influence of the numerous gravity wells creates a 'perfect storm' of immaterial affect that hellish realm.

## Noted Worlds

The cluster itself is under waning Imperial Rule, facilitated by millennia of undermining and overshadowing by the Mechanicus. As such, the planets of the Herakaeli Cluster broadly fall under the influence of the Mechanicus. In ages past Imperial authorities retained their overall influence through economic prowess, trade deals, and occasionally displays of military force. With the Imperial focus shifting further and further to combating the presence around the Eye of Terror, leeway was gradually given to the Cult as priorities shifted within the Imperial Hierarchy, coming to a dramatic head with the loss of Cadia and tearing open of the Great Rift.

With the chaos of the Imperium Nihilus taking its toll, the Machine Cult has risen to ascendancy as the dominating guiding power. The core worlds are considered under the direct rule of Forge Hephaestia are watched over and protected by the Vigilance Domains.

### Imperial Worlds

* Echthrikos: A miracle of a world located deep within the Ba'ku Nebulae; a surviving world of the Dark Age of Technology contacted by the Imperium in 500.M40. Initially placed under central control of the sector Capitol of Lordrium, the world came to the attention of the Hephaestian Mechanicum in late M40, in which gradual elements of the Priesthood began to integrate themselves with the world's Imperial Government. With the recognition of the technological capability of the world, and the existing output, the Mechanicus maintained a broad 'hands off' policy, choosing to harvest the worlds output for their own. With the advent of the Great Rift, the Mechanicus presence has grown as active defense of the world's stable warp pathways has become direly necessary.

### The Iron Marches

The sub-sector is centralized around the Forge domain of the Aglaean System, and its governing Forge World of Hephaestia. As the centralized bastion of stability and protection in a galaxy increasingly gone mad, more emphasis and scrutiny is being paid to the Tech-Magi. The fief of the Forge stretches throughout the Herakaeli Cluster to encompass scores of mining worlds, research stations, outposts, and cohabited Imperial/Mechanicus planets, but at the core of it all lie eight prime worlds which feed into the great Forge. Two of those systems contain stable warp routes that lead directly toward Hephaestia, and with the warp in turmoil, these routes remain the only easily accessed ways in and out of the system.

Each of the Mechanicus controlled worlds contributes to the wider region through its industrial output, manufacture of specialized goods, slave labour, and military populace. The remaining systems in the cluster are each valued gems in their own rights; boasting mandeville points which connect to neighboring sub-sectors, distant agri-worlds, and notably, the Morlock's Channel, a direct warp channel exiting near the Knights of Steel's homeworld of Zunus and terminating spinward towards the galactic south.

* Enetheos: A former civilized world within the Ansirian system and neighbor to the civilized worlds of Duraneer and Juraneel. Formerly a producer of rare ores and a manufacture of imperial vehicles, commercial goods, and specialty parts for the Forges. In the middle of the lightless century, the system governor and the ruling oligarchy declared their independence from the oaths to the Forge, taking the technology given unto them and succeeding from the Imperium. Being unable to reach the world and unknowing of the betrayal, the world remained as such for decades. When the world finally was uncovered as warp travel became possible once more the Forge came down hard on the world and system. Enetheos was reduced to a factory world and converted to an outpost of the mechanicum, the civilization erased and much of the population reduced to servitors and tech-thralls. Juraneel was mined out and subject to exterminatus and Duraneer was spared punishment as it retained loyalty to the mechanicum and to the Imperium.
* Cadmantium: A mining world spinward of the Ixaniad sector. Long a source of average grade mineral materials, limited supplies of rare elements, and manpower, this world has served the machine cult exclusively since the time of the heresy. Originally settled during the great crusade's period of outward expansion and settlement, the planet was swiftly colonized by Imperial logistics. Cadmantium swiftly entered into a pact with the local forge, trading their mineral wealth in exchange for technological and geoforming support. Forge Hephaestia would make good on their Imperial pacts and their own resources would feed it. During the leadup to the Heresy, the relationship between the colony and the Forge grew deeper, until Hephaestia began recruiting citizens into the priesthood. Tragically the seeds of rebellion would be sown by forces loyal to the warmaster, and discontent groups detested that their best and brightest were being pulled away from their world and in time, moral panic spread, and an uprising was triggered. The people surged into the Mechanicum districts, killing what priests they could get and taking what technology they could in an attempt to secure their own futures. In the wake of their own fight against the traitors, Hephaestia responded violently to this, and dispatched it's Titan Legion to raze the colonies to the ground. The survivors would be reorganized according to cult doctrine in the wake of the heresy, and a new civilization was built up after the heresy, one not so inclined to rebel ever again.
* New Constantine: A survivor of the Dark Age of Technology, this world endured the perils of Old Night and survived to be contacted by Forge Hephaestia. Even more incredibly so, when negotiations turned sour, they were able to fight the Machine Cult armies to a standstill, and in time negotiations would resume. Each side possessed technologies the other sorely desired, and for a great while, the two worlds were amicable, and eventually the world was brought into full compliance with the Imperium. Conservative by nature, this surviving world had always held out, and as the Great Crusade went on, its tithed armies would cycling back home would return to the world speaking of the God-Emperor, in direct contravention to the Imperial Truth, and cults to the Emperor began to spring up. Tragically, others returned with other influences to other powers. The heresy broke the local Forge's focus on the world, and without Imperial or Mechanicum involvement on the planet, competing religious factions rose up against each other and civil war ensued, leading to terrible destruction of the world and an eventual victory for the traitor armies. When the Mechanicum returned to the world in 016.M31, they found a hostile population who once again opposed them. With absolutely no tolerance, the might of the Titan Legion was deployed alongside a full invasion, the ensuing war destroying much of what was left, and the use of widespread atomic weapons left much of the surface world dead and polluted. The world remains dead, its technology scoured, and mining all its good for. New mines created in the wreck and ruin periodically dig up old Dark Age vaults, for better or for worse, and the world is still plumbed to this day.

#### The Eight Demesnes

The eight systems under the direct rule of the Hephaestian priesthood are known as the Iron Marches. Each system is a heavily fortified stronghold of the Machine Cult, their capitols fortress worlds in of themselves, their systems home to deep-void augery posts, and host to ancient weapons of Hephaestian make, and the rule of the Priesthood ensured by the presence of legions of battle automata to preserve these shield-worlds of absolute strategic value. Those systems whose warp routes connect directly to the forge are heavily fortified, matching the defenses of any shield-world. Above each world, the great Hephaestian bastions known as Vigilance Domains maintain their eternal watch.

* Gaerethra: A hive world within the Malaera system, holding a modest population of twenty-five billion, the hive serves as a average output industrial base. At inception, the world was fully apart from the Mechanicus hierarchy, serving to produce a wide variety of sub-mechanicus grade products as well as huge quantities of the raw materials to craft alloys such as durasteel and plasteel. Over time, Mechanicus presence increased and the range of material production increased dramatically, and placing the planetary governor in a position to bargain fruitfully with the sector nobility in trade. In a somewhat rare case, this wealth trickled down to a not insignificant percent of the common population, and the world became renowned for the great Machine Temples, where the laity could come to be educated in the ways of common machines and rites of maintenance, as well as be inculcated into a lesser form of the Machine Cult Dogma. In M40, the planetary governor, a man named Chisseke, ascended to power and began to seize assets of the common folk, concentrating power into the nobility and diminishing the teachings of the Mechanicus, seeing them as opposed to true spiritual dogma. Soon into his term, he would suffer a fatal uprising as the educated populace overthrew the government. When the pacification fleets arrived, they found a world at peace in the process of restarting its factories and a Magos-Intendant in place of the planetary governor. The planet would come under attack from the Dark Mechanicus in 115.M42 before being rescued by the fleets of Forge Hephaestia, who reaffirmed their loyalties to the forge. Gaerethra lies on the galactic east of Hephaestia, its system being a key warp route.
* Nonlak: A research station established by Hephaestia in 103.M38 to pick over the ruins of a Dark Age battlefield that littered over half of the planet, the station worked its way into the ruined superstructures and decimated cities of that lost age, forming the basis of a series of linked and haphazard hive cities. Due to the thin atmosphere and the presence of a strange almost silica like dust in the air, each hive spire is fully enclosed beneath a sealed argodome. Efforts to properly terraform the world have gone underway in ages past, but the presence of the fine particulate seems to be ever persistent, spiraling up from digsites and mine shafts in great wafts. Most telling, and most mysteriously, on those rare occasions a piece of salvageable archeotech is dredged up from the detritus and ruin, it seems to be covered in that dust and only the archeotech, perhaps signifying a deeper mystery yet to be uncovered as to provenance of the world. Under the direct rule of the Mechanicus, the robust mining base has spread to the nearby gas giants, and the system has significantly built up orbital structures, voidborn starforts, vast orbital docks for repair and refit, and other feats of truly titanic spatial engineering, fueled by the seemingly endless wealth dredged out of the system gas giants and star-blasted deserts. The world has been turned into an absolute lynchpin fuel depot of Hephaestia.
* Thaniun XII: Lying at the hub of one of the few sub-sector wide mostly stable warp routes, Thaniun was contacted by the Hephaestian Mechanicum in M37 and maintained trade relations to the fortress world throughout the ages. As a stable and consistent warp route, the Machine Cult and the Navigator Houses maintained a significant presence until the civil conflicts bloomed in M40's which pushed most off-world forces to the periphery. Coming back into Mechanicus control in 729.M41 with the ascension of the fearsome Archmagos Gearhardt, the fortress world funnels hundreds or thousands of crucial voidships through the beleaguered Ixaniad Sector each day.