Manachean Commonwealth - Planets of the Manachean Commonwealth: Aestellica – Aestellica is a life-sustaining world of little strategic value and is only known for being the homeworld around which the Armada Imperialis Segmentum-fortress of Port Maw orbits. Due to the rising importance of Port Maw's facility for the Segmentum and indeed the whole northern Imperium, Aestellica would soon become a thriving Hive World. Anticipating the major role that Port Maw was to play in the Imperium, several sensitive administrations of the Armada Imperialis, the Officio Astra, the Administratum and the Imperialis Arbites were established on Aestellica to support Port Maw's development. Overshadowed by the sector headquarters of Battlefleet Gothic, the name of Aestellica quickly vanished and was supplanted by that of Port Maw.Bredac Junction – Bredac Junction was a small human colony that suffered harshly under Horus' offensive on the Manachean Commonwealth. On Breda Junction he unleashed the Knights of House Ærthegn against the small settlements. Much of their population was enslaved and banished to an unknown destination. Cryxa – Cryxa is no true planet, but a planetoid that shattered as the result of some unknown cataclysm. Naturally rich in carbide, exploitation of the planetoid by the Imperium soon began and a permanent mining colony was established to house its ever-growing workforce. During what was to become the Manachean War, Cryxa would become the location of one of the many atrocities perpetuated by the Death Guard. The lone Battle-Barge, the Forth Horsemen, delivered an entire Company of Grave Warden Terminators into Cryxa's mines where they would enjoy their month-long cruel sport, hunting the miners in the dark corridors that had been their workplace. Fen RockLethe – First contact with Lethe was made in 824.M30 by the Rogue Trader Vaspperly Elgin then on pathfinder duty with the Great Crusade as it advanced into this region of the Coronid Deeps. Having seemingly been spared by the baleful attention of the xenos empire known as the Mitu Conglomerate, Lethe is a world of vast mist-shrouded forests crisscrossed by an extensive network of rivers. Lethe's human population barely survived the Age of Strife, the population having regressed to a borderline pre-industrial state, clustering around the rivers for fear of the native fauna. Extremely conservative, Lethe has ever remained a Frontier World, whose feral inhabitants would, however, contribute to the Imperial war effort by supplying the Imperium with some elite pioneer light infantry cohorts for the Imperialis Auxilia such as the famed 905th Solar Auxilia Cohort, "the Ash Scorpions." As would be demonstrated in the millennia to come, Lethe's people would always make exceptional fighters, which would lead the planet to become the homeworld of the Flame Falcons Space Marine Chapter. Its fate irremediably locked with that of its new masters, Lethe is now sadly a Dead World, purged by Exterminatus on the orders of the Emperor's Inquisition.Manachea Lux – Second planet of the Manachea System, Manachea Lux is an arid world thanks to its proximity to its sun and whose landscape is dominated by silica dune seas and sprawling manufactoria. Lux –- as it is commonly called within the Commonwealth - is perhaps the world most changed by its adherence to Imperial Compliance, having become a heavily industrialised, populous world where order reigns and production capabilities regularly surpass their prior output. It is an industrialised world that equips the many Solar Auxilia Cohorts and tank regiments maintained by the Commonwealth. Lux also harbours the site of the last battle fought to liberate the system from its baleful former overlords, the dread xenos of the Mitu Conglomerate. After its liberation, Lux would also be protected by the Bastion Kvet, a fortress watch-station built and garrisoned by the Imperial Fists who had fought hard to liberate the world and sworn never to see it fall again under the sway of the xenos. True to their oath, Bastion Kvet would continuously be manned by an Imperial Fists detachment and was the only notable Astartes presence within the Manachea System when the Manachean War erupted. Manned by the soldiers of the 135th Demi-Company -- a mix of Tactical and Heavy Support Squads -- the Bastion would come under heavy assault by the Warmaster Horus' forces but valiantly held out for eight solar days against wave after wave of human troops even after its fortifications had been blasted to little more than ruins by orbital bombardment. Rallying behind Sergeant Reinor, the former hero of the defence of the frigate Eon of Stone in 856.M30, the Imperial Fists stoically held out against these mortal troops, killing thousands until the Sons of Horus joined the fray. Having pinned down the Imperial Fists garrison and forced it to expend much of its ammunition, the Sons of Horus launched their first attack in the twilight of the eighth day. Still holding out on the ninth day of the siege, Bastion Kvet would eventually fall, the Imperial Fists being the last Loyalists to give their lives in the entire Manachea System.Manachea Mortis – Manachea Mortis is in fact the second moon of the system's principal gas-giant known as Manachea Umbris. The proximity to this gas giant made the moon a readily inhabitable satellite, the tidal forces generated by the nearby gas giant heating up its atmosphere. Manachae Mortis is almost entirely covered in tropical jungles which harbour strange and utterly lethal fauna, which has led to its classification as a Death World. Mortis has a long-standing native human population, generally thought to be descendants of those refugees and outlaws who managed to escape the inhuman reign of the Mitu Conglomerate and sought shelter within Mortis' impenetrable jungles. With the system's liberation, Manachea Mortis' jungles were deemed an important resource and at the time of the Horus Heresy they were still being subjected to as-yet unsuccessful attempts to be managed as an agricultural resource. It is generally believed that much of Mortis' population have taken to the ways of their ancestors, seeking to hide out in the moon's jungles to escape the attention of the Sons of Horus.Manachea Vysidae - Manachea Vysidae, the fourth world of the system is a sprawling Sol Pattern Hive World whose terrestrial climate has yet to succumb to the burdens of endemic urbanisation and the exponential growth of its population. Referred to simply as Manachea by popular convention, Vysidae harbours a total population that numbers into the tens of billions. Living in one of the eleven hive-metropoli interlinked by continent-and-sea-spanning maglev transit systems, Manachea's population is highly disciplined and productive, and the world can readily rival the production capacities of more established Hive Worlds of the Segmentum Solar. It is no surprise then that Manachea Vysidae's influence not only extended to the neighbouring worlds but also into such sub-sectors as the Coronid Reach and the Cyclops Cluster. Having become the home of several Imperial administrative divisions which serve the entire region, such as the Great Tithe or the Arbites Imperialis, Manchea can easily be considered the single most important world of the entire Coronid Deeps. Manachea fields numerous regiments of highly-trained Imperial soldiers, most of them being equipped in conformity with the Solar Auxilia-template, while its industrial resource allows it to field several armoured regiments of Leman Russ Battle Tanks and even manufacture superheavy tanks in limited numbers. The seat of its Planetary Governor was the imposing Palace of Light, a fortified spire of the planetary capital, Hive Illium, where the Commonwealth's government under Pryamus Beket, Lord Protector of the Manachean Commonwealth, ruled his vast domain.Port Maw – The current Sector Headquarters and Sector Fortress for Battlefleet Gothic in the 41st Millennium suffers few rivals in the Imperium. It is one of the Imperial Navy's most prominent and well-secured bases of operation, and has served its purpose for almost ten millennia. Discovered during the Great Crusade by captains of the 60th Expeditionary Fleet, Port Maw owes its name to a five-hundred-kilometre-wide aperture in its planetary crust roughly resembling a fanged mouth. An artificial planetoid of ancient and presumably xenos provenance, Imperial historians have been able to ascertain that Port Maw's construction must have predated the rise of the Eldar empire. Port Maw's existence as an Armada Imperialis Port Majoris began in 001.M31 when construction on the hollow inside of the planetoid was begun, the planetoid's flanks offering insurpassable levels of protection for such sensitive installations as ship-forges and docks. Soon the outer planetoid and indeed the entire star system was given over to other spacefaring installations: battle stations, trans-orbital dock yards, and provender belts. By the time of the Horus Heresy, this grand work was far from completed, but Port Maw was already operational to some degree as a supply base and mustering point protected by its own Battlefleet lead by Grand Admiral Ospeus LaBray. With blood having been shed in the Istvaan System and the majority of the Cyclops Cluster already fallen to the Traitors, the Grand Admiral called for a great mustering of Imperial forces to oppose the Renegade Horus Lupercal. Falling due to betrayal during the infamous Treachery at Port Maw incident, Port Maw would suffer harshly under the overlordship of the Tyrant of Port Maw, Taloc Thorn and the Cyclothrathine Mechanicum charged with maintaining and expanding Port Maw's facilities for the Traitors. Reconquered by the Imperium during the Great Scouring, Port Maw would become one of the greatest strongpoints of the Imperial Navy and would participate in every major conflict in the region, most notoriously the Gothic War and the 13th Black Crusade.Sagathi (Feral World)Salvis RegnemSubinus - Subinus is one of the numerous minor Knight Worlds that can readily be found in the Imperium. Located on the outskirts of the Manachean Commonwealth, Subinus has been much influenced by the traditions and valour of the Manachea System despite the notorious conservatism of most Knight Households. Its name appears both on the banners of the 204th (Manachean) Cohort to which it contributed and the vexillia of the 1522nd(Agathean) Cohort by whom it was liberated in the Great Crusade. Subinus was destroyed from orbit during the Horus Heresy, when Traitor naval vessels disguised as Loyalist escorts for an expected relief convoy suddenly opened fire on the patrol cruisers they were supposed to help. Upon the destruction of the patrol cruisers, the frigates then turned their guns on Subinus' few cities, blasting them to rubble in total impunity.Taracanis – At the beginning of the Horus Heresy, Taracanis was still listed as a non-compliant world. This was, however, not entirely true as Imperial Compliance measures were still in progress and Taracanis had already been recognised as an autonomous administrative entity with its own Imperial Commander. With a number of Imperial forces at his own disposition, the world's Imperial Commander -- one Guald Numo -- felt confident in his abilities to resist, when the feared Sons of Hours Battlecruiser Ikon broke out of the Warp and demanded the world's obeisance. Numo flatly refused, upon which the Ikon blasted the world's docking station from orbit. Thirteen thousand people on board the station died as they burned in Taracanis' atmosphere or were reduced to a fleshy pulp as the station impacted the surface. This marked the beginning of the Taracanis Genocide when most of the world's population was murdered by the savage Sons of Horus. Upon the discovery of the genocide by the Imperium, Commander Numo's corpse would be found horribly defiled, the words "Mortus Autem Horus Rexia" in High Gothic carved in his flesh. Vlorath Srader – The Commonwealth's main astrotelepathic relay is located in orbit around Vlorath Srader where it was established during the later Great Crusade-era. For unknown reasons, the relay has proven particularly effective in the re-transmission and reception of astrotelephatic messages between the outlying areas of the Ultima Segmentum and the core worlds of the Segmentum Solar. The colony itself was not established until 926.M30 after Imperial Compliance of the entire region was achieved. Vlorath Srader is a terrestrial world, its size and climate analagous to those of Terra during the Industrial Revolution. At the dawn of the 31st Millennium, the colony was well-established. Despite the fact of being located in an unremarkable star system, it had evolved into a functioning planetary society with a mixed economy. Given a few standard centuries more, Vlorath Srader would undoubtedly have evolved from a developmental state to take on a particular role such as a Hive World like those situated in the Manachean System. On a political and cultural level, Vlorath Srader has been heavily influenced by Manachea. During the Manachean War, the Vlorath Srader System was not overrun by traitorous Legiones Astartes or indeed their Dark Mechanicum allies from Cyclothrate, but by an enemy unlooked for: the Orks. Unfortunately for this world, or perhaps as another machination of the powers of Chaos, a Space Hulk, the Red Polyphemus, made its appearance in the Vlorath Srader System, probably misguided –- or redirected -- by a brief but terrible Warp Storm. The Ork rampage devastated the world and destroyed the astropathic relay, thus isolating the Commonwealth from communications and help. To make matters worse, the destruction of the Red Polyphemus would consume valuable military resources and ammunition the Armada Imperialis could ill-afford to lose before the Manachean War.