Lathe Worlds - History: As the Angevin Crusade ground on into its fourth solar decade, the Imperial forces pushing towards the planet Orendal through the Adrantis region met with greater and greater resistance, contending with more and more severe Warp storms and incurring staggering losses.Essential to those victories that were achieved were the Explorator fleets of the Adeptus Mechanicus, bravely providing reconnaissance and resupply services across all fronts. As the situation within the Calyx Expanse grew more and more grim, supply and support challenges for the forces of the Imperium were mounting.Mechanicus legends speak of the saviours of the crusade, the sudden appearance of a massive Adeptus Mechanicus fleet, complete with ancient Lathe-class Fabricator vessels and full deca-legions of Skitarii. Supported with no less than a demi-legio of medium and light Titans to bolster the war machines of the Legio Venator already present, these forces proved indispensable for the final push to meet Lord Militant Angevin and his forces at Orendal.Arch-Magos Mat Aleph Xenon, commanding the enormous might of the reinforced fleets and armies of the Adeptus Mechanicus, requested as reward for his efforts the stewardship of a small system, Pondus Impare, just inside the borders of the Imperial stronghold of the Golgenna Reach.The erratic orbits of its planets and the strange behaviour of gravity within the system rendered it nearly useless to most colonisation or mining plans.However, situated as it was in the borderlands between the pacified Imperial regions and the half-tamed expanse of Adrantis, and given the role of the requester himself, the Lord Militant did not hesitate to grant this request.Having a massive friendly force garrisoning a system so close to the embattled frontier was ideal for the Imperial generals. The lord militant himself, sorely grieved with the terrible losses suffered in the latest push, had withdrawn from all command decisions, leaving his forces in disarray and confusion.General Drusus, rising to command the crusade, maintained a strong relationship with Xenon, and the forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus continued to serve reliably throughout the remaining phases of the war. During the remainder of the crusade three massive Fabricator ships landed on the three primary planets of the Pondus System, and began to churn out infrastructure needed to supply the material needs of the crusade through the final stages.The needs of the forces tasked with the pacification and policing of an entire fledgling Sector were vast, and only fully developed forge worlds would be able to meet the growing and desperate demand.In less than two solar decades, the unceasing efforts of the Fabricator ships had laid the foundations for three independent Forge Worlds: Het, Hesh, and Hadd, named after the ancient ships now permanently residing on each world.With single-minded purpose, their inhabitants bent their every fibre towards the production of weapons, vehicles, and ammunition to feed the ravenous beast that was the Imperial war machine. Enormous autofactories stripped the planet surfaces for raw materials, crawling their slow, implacable way across the planets, leaving nothing but dry, ruined desolation in their wakes.Imperial soldiers and naval personnel, manning the vast cargo ships sent to collect the equipment and ship it to the front lines, could only stare in awe at the incredible changes being wrought upon the planets in such a short time.Upon seeing the vast canyon systems the criss-crossing pattern of the autofactories had knurled into the surface of the planets, many commented that they appeared to have indeed been turned on a lathe.Arch-Magos Xenon referred to his new domain as "The System where the Lathes Dwell," to honour the venerated machine-spirits bound within the ancient and powerful artefacts, but this proved to be cumbersome for official documentation. Soon the name was shortened to "The System of the Lathes," and then simply "the Lathes System" towards the end of the Angevin Crusade.However, the tendency of Imperial personnel to refer to the planets, rather than the system, caused it to appear as "the Lathes" on most star charts. Over the course of the intervening centuries, even the Adeptus Mechanicus itself has come to refer to its domains across the entire Calixis Sector as the "Lathe Worlds."