Kalto - Lords of the Harvest: Following the cessation of disputes over command of Kalto, the Adeptus Administratum took direct control of the planet’s governance, installing one of their own as Praefect to ensure the continued flow of vital crops. Though supposedly only a temporary precaution, this provision has remained in effect for centuries. Whether this oversight is the result of bureaucratic gridlock or devious design remains uncertain. Recently, however, the servants of the Kaltan Adeptus Administratum have been more concerned with collating the increasingly disjointed and outdated trade manifests, mercantile parchments, and anticipated tithe projections than exercising any real power on the planet below. Their leader is Adept Torintane, a man who has spent the majority of his two hundred year tenure as Praefect submerged within the potent juvenant salts and bioinvigorant fluids of a personalised data-tank. Despite his advanced age, the Adept’s increasingly overwhelmed staff continue to feed him a constant stream of information through a neurolink interface, though the centuries of confused and contradicting reports have gradually taken their toll on the elderly man’s sanity.As a result, the puritanical adept is now convinced that every department of his order is rife with heresy and rebellion, and he has ordered his ruthless Vigilance Servitors to exterminate anyone found guilty of even the most minor infraction. A term of service within the austere walls of his orbiting residence-basilica is a death sentence, and the paper-strewn corridors are said to echo day and night with the sounds of terrified screams and insane laughter. His primary rival is Planetary Governor Naullis Von Maunx, who also rules the infamous Metothine Gate. However, the Adeptus Administratum’s refusal to rescind its claim on the Praefecture makes him beneath the aged Torintane in authority, a status which Von Maunx has attempted to reverse many times during his reign. He is a deceitful, dangerous man whose contempt for the aged Torintane has led him to gradually usurp much of the old man’s influence through bribery, intimidation, and deliberate infusions of contradictory data to hasten the erosion of Torintane’s sanity.Torintane, meanwhile, sees Von Maunx as yet another devious malefactor in his ailing domain, and the ancient adept never misses an opportunity to censure his subordinate, or submit his decrees to endless reviews, tedious debate, or in-depth scrutiny. In recent decades, their relationship has become so poisonous as to threaten open hostility, though both sides hesitate to act without assurances of support from their respective allies. By contrast, the natives of Kalto are a hardworking and simple lot, their lives dedicated in equal measure to their faith in the Emperor and their hereditary duty towards the harvest. Such lessons often come at the end of a lash, and many of the more seasoned workers develop a distinct tolerance for pain and privation before their first season is out.The Kaltan faithful are also taught to regard rest as a transgression of faith, and that to collapse from exhaustion is preferable to failing their sacred burden. Many do just that, and the fields are said to be littered with the bodies of those who fell during their labours, their corpses constituting a final offering of flesh to the world that sapped their strength. As this extreme workload takes its toll on their physical bodies, many workers are eventually modified to supplement their failing physiologies, with limbs replaced with specialised harvesting implants, and bodies augmented with water recyclers and thick slabs of vat-grown muscle. Most workers also wear various rudimentary wire cages or other crude implants over their faces that serve as constant reminders of their devotion and sacrifice, while preventing them from partaking of the crops they harvest. Such augmentations are a pivotal moment in the life of Kaltan workers, who often view them as symbols of the devotion and sacrifice necessary to commit themselves fully to their sacred burden. The Kaltan Mechanicum has not been hesitant in recruiting those who proudly display their mechanical improvements into the Cult of the Machine, though many question exactly what these enigmatic keepers of technology hope to achieve by enlisting so many souls to their cause.