Juno - Juno: Juno is an Imperial Hive World that has stood as the capital planet of the Askellon Sector since time immemorial. It is commonly held as the first of the sector's so-called "Founding Worlds" to have been settled. The planet's ruling classes regard themselves as the elite of the sector, claiming the ancient Age of Technology colony vessel that seeded their civilisation was the one carrying the finest members of the fleet.Whether this is truth or fantasy, the rulers of Juno have always comported themselves as aristocratic masters, and place enormous stock in preserving what they regard as the purity of their labyrinthine bloodlines. While the Juno aristocracy live artificially-extended lives of unimaginable luxury, their world cracks apart and their claimed control over the sector becomes more precarious.Each standard year, more shards of the cyclopean edifice sheer away, eroding the aristocracy's power, though they have yet to realise how badly. Their retainers dare not speak such truths to them, as the majority care little for such things and are concerned only that their existence should continue uninterrupted. An increasingly small number amongst them are still loyal to the greater Imperium of Man and struggle to maintain the Askellon Sector, though most fear it is in vain.As the raging Pandaemonium Warp storm present in the sector grows in this era, the aristocracy of Juno grows ever more distant and detached. Their balls and banquets become ever more decadent and outré, their costumes ever more flamboyant, and their behaviour ever more outrageous.Those who have witnessed these excesses whisper of the Emperor's judgement being brought down upon their pampered heads, while rebellion simmers amongst the teeming masses. Indeed, some masked harbingers of doom preach sermons blaming all of the sector's woes on the debauchery of the Askellian nobility, holding that only by casting the ruling classes down might the fall of the entire sector be averted. Life on Juno is fast approaching a tipping point, though its rulers appear entirely unaware of their own peril.The surface of Juno reflects the planet's long and war-torn history. Nothing of its original environment remains, the seas having been replaced by swamps of toxic sludge, and every shred of native biomass has been consumed in one manner or another. Numerous sprawling hive cities exist on the surface, but only a minority are occupied at any one time, officially at least. The world has been assaulted or invaded so many times throughout its long history that its cities have each been abandoned, re-occupied, levelled, or rebuilt many times over.The world's ruling classes, as well as the headquarters of the various branches of the Adeptus Terra and other Imperial institutions, occupy structures that resemble mighty bastions. The roads are lined with statues many metres high, and ragged banners sway in the breeze along processionals hundreds of kilometres long. The skeletal remains of cities lost to long-forgotten wars fill the war-torn wastes between those cities currently thriving.Within these wastes are said to exist all manner of outcasts: mutants struck low by the taint of genetic corruption from the toxins saturating the very ground, Warp-worshipping cults, recidivist enclaves, and even infiltrators of any number of xenos species. Periodically, the rulers of Juno order such areas purged, partly out of paranoia and disgust, but as much because it is inevitable that they will have to be rebuilt at some point as the tides of war sweep their existing cities away.The hive cities of Juno are places of enormous contradiction. The weight of power and age rests heavily upon them, even as new structures are thrown up to replace those entirely torn down. The greatest edifices of Juno are riddled with craters and plasma fractures many thousands of standard years old. All is dilapidated grandeur, grand balls and banquets being thrown in towering halls where walls are pock-marked and the cracked roofs are open to the pollution-streaked heavens. Despite the damage wrought upon its fabric, the world still retains a palpable air of age and power that few can deny.