Necromunda (Planet) - Origins: Araneus Prime was first settled over 15,000 Terran years ago during the Age of Technology as a mining and manufacturing colony. It became the capital of a small stellar empire known as the Araneus Continuity.The worlds of the Araneus Continuity were a series of planets close to the Sol System in the Segmentum Solar which had maintained commercial and communications links to one another even during the vast Warp Storms of the Age of Strife due to the existence of a series of ancient Warp Gates of unknown origins.Ruled by a caste of Technobility from the world of Araneus Prime at the heart of the network of Warp Gates, the Araneus Continuity was a kingdom of iron and hungering industry.Contact between the Imperium and this pocket of Humanity occurred by accident. A lost squadron of warships returning from the Gehenial Prosecution of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium was forced from the Warp into one of the Continuity's peripheral systems.Before they could jump back into the Warp, the squadron was surrounded, boarded, and overwhelmed by cybernetically-grafted warriors. The cries of the squadron's astropaths echoed through the Immaterium, and far away the Imperium heard and turned its gaze upon the worlds of the Araneus.An envoy fleet was sent, and was allowed to return bearing the Continuity's answer to the Emperor's demand of fealty. The Technobility flatly refused to bow to the Emperor, but instead invited Him to join their empire as a tributary.For its response, the Imperium turned to the Imperial Fists Space Marine Legion. It fell to Hashin Yonnad, commander of the 39th Household (chapter) of Inwit, to prosecute the war.A superlative warrior, Yonnad was reckoned by many to be one of the Imperium's greatest strategists. Called upon many times as fleet commander and siege master, he planned meticulously and executed his plans with brutal swiftness.Marshalling his fleet at Tallarn, thousands of warships carrying over 20,000 Imperial Fists, alongside millions of troops of the Imperial Army and the ancient Mechanicum, launched their assault upon the unsuspecting systems of the Araneus. Within two solar months the Continuity was reduced to the single core world of Araneus Prime.Their empire cut from around them, the Technobility in their iron towers looked to the night sky and saw the darkness stolen by the light of the Imperial fleet. They surrendered then, and the sun rose the next day on the seat of yet another stellar empire brought to Imperial Compliance.But even as the Imperium moved in to claim their prize, the worlds of the Araneus Continuity were beset by an unknown menace.A few accounts speak of a darkness deeper than the void, of living lightning and flame-wreathed chrome. Six systems burned, their stars igniting to terrible life before crumbling to cold embers.Commander Yonnad made the terrible decision to defend only some of the worlds, otherwise they would lose all. As the unknown enemy appeared in system after system, they met the Imperial Fists.As more of the enemy came the Imperial Fists detonated warheads they had attached to each Warp Gate. Without their gates, the unknown enemies simply vanished. Their advance had been halted on Araneus Prime when its gate exploded.All but one of the star systems of the Araneus Continuity died, and at the cost of thousands of Imperial Fists and billions of Human lives Araneus Prime survived, but barely.The death of the Warp Gate and the cluster of xenos craft which had penetrated the Imperial Fists' lines had changed the shape of the planet.Its surface had been ravaged by unnatural fire, its world-city cracked and rendered to dust and ash, from which the shattered roots of its great towers rose like broken teeth.Looking upon the charred remains taken from the pyre, the Imperium gave the world of Araneus Prime a new name, one that echoes with a world brought to the threshold of death but one that still lived -- "Necromunda" they called it.