Taros Campaign - Pre-Invasion Preparations: Before any military plans could be put in place, Gustavus and his staff first needed to know what they were facing. Nobody on the staff, except Dree, had ever even heard of Taros until now, let alone knew anything about the planet or system. Gustavus wanted information about the planet. Climate, population, industrial capacity, rulers, topography, history, anything. It was a huge research task to be undertaken by the Adepts of the Administratum. In charge of the information gathering would be Curator Adept Skel: an Administratum official promoted from the Archive Historicus. Curator-Adept Skel had access to thousands of archives throughout the Segmentum and across the Imperium, including the great archives on Terra itself. In those archives, thousands of curators, prefects, archivists and menial workers went to work, finding out anything they could about Taros. From ancient records, a picture of the planet and its population was slowly compiled. From tithe levels and tax records, a picture of the planet's mining industry was built. Old censuses revealed the planet's population growth. No piece of data about Taros was to be considered too trivial.A team of Lexmechanic and Logis, under the command of Magos Volta, was also assigned to the information gathering task. They worked with computer speed to compile all the data Skel was producing. The Adeptus Mechanicus' part-human, part-machine servants forecast the planet's population growth, weather patterns, climate, volcanic activity, atmospheric conditions, and orbital cycles. Information stretching back as far as the Great Crusade was found. Even a scrap of the original Exploritas report on the planet's suitability for terraforming and colonisation was found. In all, millions of fragments of information were gathered to create a complete picture. Satellite survey images, language studies, missionary reports, journals of long dead servants who had visited or been stationed on Taros. There were old genetic studies on the population and the ruling households, carried out by the Orders Famulous seeking evidence of genetic deviation or mutation, Adeptus Arbites crime rate reports, and geological and seismic surveys. No detail could be ignored; anything that might inform Gustavus' staff decisions was included. In all, it took six months to compile all the information the High Command staff needed before the invasion planning could get started. After six months of work Gustavus had as good a picture of what was facing him as the Adeptus Terra could provide. He knew what the planet was like, how big the population was, and how this might translate into the Planetary Defence Forces' military strength, given the equipment that had been supplied to Taros down the years. He knew how the planet might be able to re-equip or resupply its forces, or create new units. He even had a forecast of what the criminal population of Taros was likely to be (often the first supply of manpower to be used as replacement troops). What he didn't know was anything about the Tau's strength on Taros.Finding information about what the Tau might be planning was far harder, and not a task the Adeptus Terra could help with. The man on the Lord High Commander's staff assigned to this task was Staff Colonel Scheja, Gustavus' Director of intelligence. A secretive individual, Scheja was a spy-master with former experience of working with the Inquisition. The Tau, with their philosophy of 'the Greater Good', were a difficult prospect. There were few informers or spies on the inside of the Tau Empire. There were a few humans, mostly merchants or mercenaries, whose loyalty could be bought by the Imperium, but most humans within the Tau Empire were simply traitors who had abandoned the Emperor. By assessing information from other planets along the borders of the Tau Empire, studying previous estimates of Tau military strength and historical precedents, Colonel Scheja could himself make an educated guess as to how strong Tau forces might be on Taros, but without people on the ground, he had no confirmation.Whilst the information gathering was going on, the other members of the High Command staff were not idle. The Departmento Munitorum officials on the staff began the long process of finding the fighting forces and supplies needed for the invasion. Imperial Guard regiments needed to be raised, trained and transported across the Imperium. This was no easy task. The demand for troops in the build-up around the Cadian Gate was vast, particularly now, as the 'Plague of Unbelief' around the Eye of Terror continued to spread. The Imperial Guard might be huge, but still demand for regiments is always far greater than supply. To counter the effects of increased demand, Gustavus devised a scheme to overestimate the troop strength needed. He knew all along that he would not get all the forces he requested, but this way he might get close to his actual requirements. As yet he could give no definitive numbers, but he set the logis to work making an initial statistical analysis, and this gave him a starting point. Over the coming months the numbers would be modified and gradually evolve into a final figure, but for now it was enough to have a figure which the Departmento Munitorum could base its work on, and so get the slow turning wheels of the Departmento's bureaucracy rolling.