User:Montonius/Sandbox - The Uprising of the Pauper Princes: The seeding of a Genestealer Cult on the world of Vigilus had begun long before the War of Beasts. With the firstsuccessful invasions of the Orks, the cult burst forth in a tumultuous eruption, its members falling uponnot only the citizens they had planned to eventually usurp, but the other xenos invaders that sought to deny the cult its prize.In the Vigilant year 210.33 previo VCM.M41, a clutch of Purestrain Genestealers had been sent out from the planet of Chancer's Vale by the Genestealer Cult known as the Pauper Princes. Only one managed to make it to Vigilus, but one was always enough.Secreting itself in the seismic caverns beneath Megaborealis, it began to spread its insidious genetic curse and the creed that supported it across the planet. Over the ensuing years, it grew larger and more powerful as it became the dominant father of brood cycle after brood cycle, and ultimately the Genestealer Patriarch known as "Grandsire Wurm" by its millions of Broodmind members.Two Terran centuries later, when the Greenskins descended upon Vigilus, they triggered -- completely unwittingly-- a premature general uprising of the Genestealer Cultists who had long been hidden among the populace. Just as possessive of the planet as were its Imperial authorities, and a good deal less divided, they refused to see their long years of subterfuge and infiltration wasted amidst the anarchy of an Ork onslaught.They staged insurrections within every hivesprawl on Vigilus and, thanks to the psychic coordination of Grandsire Wurm and his Nexos strategists through the Broodmind, they rose with eerie synchronicity to enact ambushes and cunning strategies across the planet. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Dirkden Hivesprawl.Dirkden was under-resourced and underdeveloped. Here, the Pauper Princes had gained such a foothold that in some sub-districts their faithful actually outnumbered the genetically pure non-believers. Moreover, the cult had infested the ranks of Dirkden's Astra Militarum defence regiments, the Vigilant Guard, at nearly all levels, from the grunts to its local commanders.Acting upon secrets pried from the minds of Mechanicus Magi compromised by the Genestealer's Kiss, the cult leaders gained access to alpha-level data psalms and scriptoral mnemonics that enabled them to temporarily shut down Dirkden's Bastion-class force fields.The shields had wreathed Vigilus' hivesprawls for many centuries. Had such a failure occurred during more normal times it would have been immediate cause for suspicion and investigation. However, with the baleful influence of the Great Rift playing havoc with a;; the Adeptus Mechanicus' psychic energy-based shield technologies, it was a simple matter for cult-corrupted officers of the Vigilant Guard to convince their fellows that the shut-down was caused by a technical glitch.Panic ensued, just as the cultists had known it would. The Orks of the SPEEDWAAAGH! were quick to respond to Dirkden's weakness, and dust-trails choked the horizon as the xenos invaders grew near.It was those same cultist agents who contrived to order elements of the Vigilant Guard's 86th, 94th and 313th Regiments out into the dusty wastes beyond the shield-line. Each platoon was handpicked for the duty of defending the hivesprawl, their officers given stern assurances that they would be drawn back within the walls as soon as the Magi had placated the truculent Machine Spirits.Some four thousand soldiers marched into the wastes from Glaive Point to the Rescalid Underworks. They faced an onrushing horde of over fifteen thousand Orks, but took solace in the knowledge that they would only have to hold until the Bastion-class shields were reactivated.It was then that the cult's undercover agents in Dirkden staged their uprising. Outnumbering the remaining Loyalists ten-to-one, they seized control of the sprawl's military assets. Then, as their dismayed former comrades realised the scale of their betrayal, the Pauper Princes raised the force field again, stranding Dirkden's Vigilant Guardon the wrong side of it. The Orks fell upon their horrified victims, who now had no line of retreat. The slaughter was brief and horrific.Not all of those remaining within the sprawl were xenos-corrupted. Sensing their peril even if they did not fully understand it, thousands of genetically pure industrial labourers, dust-miners and menials gathered their families and meagre possessions before fleeing over the Hyperia-Dirkden Fortwall.Yet this, too, worked in the favour of the Pauper Princes' uprising. Swathing themselves in rags, or donning theworkers' coveralls, hundreds of cultists mingled into the refugee tide. Thus was their curse carried to the southern reaches of the Hyperia hivesprawl.At Oteck Hivesprawl, too, the Pauper Princes struck hard. If Dirkden had been chosen for its comparative weakness, Oteck was selected instead for its strategic importance. Its vast reservoirs of water, known locally as the "Hollows," were one of arid Vigilus' primary water sources. On such a dry and barren world, this made each reservoir as valuable as a lake of liquid adamantium.The battle to control Oteck was far more bitter than that in Dirkden. Still, thanks to their frightening levels of preparedness and the utter fanaticism of their Brood Brothers and Genestealer hybrids, the Pauper Princes were able to seize control of Greigan Hollow and start corrupting the drinking water of billions with their insidious genetic taint.In the early days of the conflict, Vigilus' ruling Aquilarian Council had watched pict-thief relays of the Orks being hurled back by their psy-tech force fields with a sense of confident superiority. Now they received reports of a new force rising. To their consternation, the messages told of a threat coming from within, rather than without.The scattered missives detailing subterranean uprisings were at first attributed to malcontents, criminals and opportunists raking advantage of the Ork assault to make trouble. The prevailing opinion was that the perpetrators would soon be put down by the local precincts of the Adeptus Arbites or, failing that, the companies of Astra Militarum despatched to destroy such rebellions before they could gain too much ground. These forces of the Emperor's law and order were sent to deal with uprisings and demagoguery wherever they were reported. Then the Hyperian leaders and their ilk went back to focusing on how best to capitalise on the industry of war.But the after-action reports that made it back from those violent suppressions revealed signs of something far worse than mere civilian unrest caused by the demands of wartime. Strange sigils had been spotted on many walls and archways, depicting a curled and spined creature that some called a "wyrm-form." There were rumours of sinister four-armed creatures scuttling in the darkness of the underhives, and the word "xenos" was being whispered more and more amongst the common folk.It was enough to cause those who held power to shore up their defences -- it was always their instinct to look to their own safety above all other concerns. The Ministorum ensured those Imperial armed forces over whom they held the most sway -- the resident Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas and the ever-faithful Vigilant Guard -- stayed close at hand within its own territory of Saint's Haven, even though the nearest xenos sighting was some hundreds of kilometres away.The Adeptus Mechanicus withdrew many of its glacier claimants and aqua-prospectors from the arctic region of Kaelac'sBane at Vigilus' south pole, though a skeleton crew remained to quarry for water.As the industry of Vigilus broke down under the strain of the rebellion and invasion, the frequency of the convoys that were crossing the wastelands on export missions or trade delegations to the other hivesprawls slowed to a crawl. To make matters worse, the Speed Freeks that used those desolate reaches as their hunting grounds were merciless.The leadership of Vigilus launched tentative counterattacks, but prioritised their own safety, putting aside all political and commercial alliances and pacts between the hivesprawls in favour of simple self-preservation.