Cadia - Society and Economy: Cadia was the home of the Astra Militarum's Cadian Shock Trooper regiments, widely regarded as the best soldiers in the Imperium short of the transhuman Space Marines, as a result of their upbringing in Cadia's martial culture. Their leader was the indomitable Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed, the saviour of Cadia and a hero of the 13th Black Crusade. Since Cadia was the capital world of the Cadian Sector and was often raided by various alien civilisations like the Aeldari and Orks as well as the forces of Chaos, the planet was heavily fortified.All Cadians were required to serve at least a four-year-term in the planetary military, and the amount of military presence on the world led the civilian population to become focused on weapons production. 71.75% of the Cadian population was under arms, either in the highly-skilled and very well-equipped Cadian Planetary Defence Force that was known as the "Cadian Interior Guard" or in the numerous Imperial Guard regiments drawn from the planet's people.One out of every ten Cadians was recruited into the Interior Guard, regardless of ability or achievements, and as a result some of the most able human soldiers in the galaxy spent their entire Imperial military service on Cadia. The troops of the Interior Guard were amongst the most skilled fighting men in the Imperium, the equal of many other worlds' Imperial Guard regiments.Because of its closeness to the Eye of Terror and the constant risk of Chaos corruption this entailed, Cadia also maintained the "Cadian Internal Guard" for defence against Chaos Cult activities. A less well-known part of the Cadian military establishment, the Internal Guard consisted of Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus who had been permanently seconded to the Cadian military, and the Interior Guard made frequent use of Sanctioned Psykers to root out Heretics and mutants.Chaos Space Marines from the Eye of Terror made often launched raids onto the surface of Cadia and had to be hunted down. The bulk of the Cadian army was made up of the Astra Militarum's Shock Trooper Regiments, with the remainder composed of the Whiteshields (conscript soldiers recruited at the age of 14 standard years and trained to take a place in the Shock Trooper regiments) and the elite Kasrkin soldiers of the Ordo Tempestus. Cadian regiments are consistently on average the most well-disciplined and most effective in the entire Astra Militarum.Because of its heavy concentration on military matters, Cadia's global economy is dominated by the manufacture of various weapons systems and exports vast numbers of weapons to its neighbouring Imperial planets, while importing very little other than food. Many other worlds use Cadian equipment to arm their own Imperial Guard regiments, which explains how the Cadian Patterns of personal armour and infantry weapons have become the standard for the entire Astra Militarum.Cadia had a special and honoured place in the history of Mankind. Cadia stood upon the edge of the Eye of Terror within a narrow corridor of stable space called the Cadian Gate. This formed the one and only predictable passage between the Chaos-infested Daemon Worlds of the Eye of Terror and Terra.It seemed that although many Chaos fleets had ventured out of the Eye, very few Imperial fleets ventured in. No battle fleet of any size could rely upon other stable passages from the Eye of Terror and they were required to pass through the Cadian Gate.Cadia was therefore one of the most strategically important planets of the galaxy. On several occasions the forces of Chaos moved against Cadia and raging battles were fought in the depths of space. Such huge battles were rare, but the constant intrusion of Chaos raiding craft into Cadian space was commonplace throughout the period of the Long War.Before the later Imperial re-colonisation of the world in the 32nd Millennium, Cadia was the home of a lost fragment of Humanity that worshiped the four Chaos Gods, probably since the onset of the Age of Strife. This society was encountered by the then-still-Loyalist Word Bearers Legion 40 Terran years before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, and the prevalence of violet eyes amongst the populace was seen as a mark of mutation caused by the proximity of the Eye of Terror, which also appears violet in the visible light spectrum.This civilisation was eventually wiped out by the Word Bearers Space Marine Legion in the late 30th Millennium at the conclusion of the Pilgrimage of Lorgar. Cadia was later resettled by Imperial Humans of all creeds and genetic stock. The Cadian people of the 41st Millennium were naturally tall and solidly built. The fact that this new line of Cadians of untainted Imperial stock also sported violet eyes lends credence to the theory that the proximity of the Eye of Terror caused this mutation in the original population.Cadian society in the 41st Millennium is more martial than civilian, mostly due to the disproportionate ratio of soldiers to citizens in its population. The birth rate and the military recruitment rate are synonymous. Most Cadian children learn to field-strip a Lasgun by the age of ten standard years, and many young Cadians served in the Astra Militarum as Whiteshields.Cadian society was so martial that camouflage patterns made their way into the everyday fashion of even the wealthy and successful. It was always very easy to determine who was an outsider or local on Cadia simply by what they wore.Being a constantly embattled world, Cadia suffered numerous casualties in the defence of the Cadian Gate and the Imperium. Cemetery space on the planet was at a premium so the local priests of the Imperial Cult routinely checked the grave markers of the honoured dead for legibility.When a section of a Cadian cemetery's grave markers were deemed illegible, those graves were exhumed and the bones were added to a communal pit. The Cadian belief was that once the names on a grave marker were illegible, the honours of those dead were forgotten.Long ago Cadian cities changed from a plan of broad avenues to one where the streets of its cities were arranged in zig-zag patterns meant to make any intruding enemies fight for every block. At the heart of each Cadian city was a fortress called a kasr in the local dialect of Low Gothic.The largest kasr as of 241.M41 was Kasr Derth. Cadia's earliest kasrs had been built in the High Terran Style, with the wide streets laid out on a grid system. Early in the 32nd Millennium, soon after the planet's resettlement, during the first of the Black Crusades, most of the Cadian kasrs were destroyed by the Chaos invasion.The broad, ordered avenues of the kasrs had proven impossible to hold or defend. Since then, the kasrs were rebuilt in elaborate geometric patterns, the streets juking back and forth like the teeth of a key.From the air, Kasr Derth looked like an intricate angular puzzle. Given the Cadians' mettle and their skills at urban warfare, a kasr could be held street by street, metre by metre, for solar months if not standard years.