Colchis - Colchisian Society: Few records remain of the Colchisian society that arose from the ashes of the Age of Strife. Various fragments of these records are reproduced in the Speculum Historiale, the exhaustive history of the Great Crusade penned by the historian Carpinus. In his description of Colchis, Carpinus tells of a caste of priests calling themselves the "Covenant" who rebuilt the shattered society of Colchis on the promise that a great leader would one day come to deliver them from the darkness their world had descended into.With harsh religious observance, the Covenant's strict dogma became a monolithic belief structure that permeated every facet of daily life on Colchis. Colchis was a world of peace and law, and the people of Vharadesh, the capital city of the world also known as the "City of Grey Flowers," respected its holy leaders above all.Over the generations, civilisation had spread itself thin across the arid continents of Colchis, with most of its city-states clinging to the coasts. Each city-state maintained links to the others though sky trade and ocean freight, on a world where roads across the desert plains would be little more than folly. Unlike much of the emergent Imperium, Colchis was unprotected by vast orbital weapon platforms. More tellingly, it also had little in the way of the industrious void stations responsible for feeding and refuelling expeditionary fleets in their crusades through the galaxy.Colchis at this time still bore the scars of long-forgotten greatness -- an age of wonders, ended in fire. In that sense, it was a future echo of what the world of Khur would eventually become following the rebuke of Lorgar and his entire Word Bearers Legion by the Emperor of Mankind. The world's surface was bruised dark by the bones of dead cities, fallen in unrecorded ages, never resettled. New cities had risen elsewhere with the genesis of a simpler, quieter culture. The ancient ruins suggested a machine-driven empire had once ruled Colchis, though little evidence ever came to light regarding its destruction. The lost kingdom's legacy was evident even in orbit, where drifting, dead hulks -- locked in orbits that would still take millennia to completely decay -- marked the graves of once-thriving interstellar shipyards.At that time, few Imperial fleets ventured near Colchis, and not merely because of its lack of resupply capacity. Rumours circulated, citing unreliable shipping lanes, and the disappearance of the 2188th Expeditionary Fleet in a nearby region added fuel to that particular fire. Colchis seemed a world focused upon looking inwards, even backwards, refusing to clear its skies of wreckage from the Dark Age of Technology, and resisting all Imperial edicts to establish new orbital bases.The planet's one concession was to allow the Mechanicum of Mars access to those serene orbiting hulks, letting the Tech-priests plunder whatever they desired. The region was not haunted. No Imperial commander would ever give voice to such a laughable superstition, when such words were holdovers from a more indecorous age. Yet still Colchis saw scarce Imperial commercial traffic, and its resistance to supplying the Great Crusade remained inviolate.It was said this defiance could only have come from Lorgar, the Emperor's Seventeenth Son, for no other authority would allow a planet to remain so curiously provincial. In the capital city of Colchis, Vharadesh, a golden plaque was fixed to the immense doors leading into the Spire Temple of the Covenant. This tablet marked the primarch's supposed words -- words he had never admitted, yet never denied, speaking to his father. It was also said, by the few that witnessed such rare moments, that the primarch smiled each time he passed those words, and reached out to stroke his golden fingertips across the etched lettering.Colchis was hardly devoid of technology during the Imperial era. It enjoyed the benefits of Imperial life and culture after its unification with the Imperium, despite its master's hesitance to supply materiel for the Emperor's war. Auspices in the skytraffic towers of Vharadesh tracked the activity in orbit, with scanner consoles lighting up at the sudden pulse of so many signals. Word from the XVII Legion's expeditionary fleets was constantly cycled back to Colchis, for the people of the homeworld took great interest, and great pride, in the conquests of their chosen champions.Mothers and fathers listened in the hope some chronicle would detail the glory of a son taken from them in childhood and reshaped as one of the Astartes. Covenant clergy listened for inspiration to preach of the primarch's righteousness. This network was maintained by astropaths, sending short, psychic pulses of information back to their counterparts on the homeworld. Several times a solar week, broadcast from speaker towers across the Holy City of Vharadesh, updates of the Legion's progress drew flocks of listeners. City-wide celebrations were declared by the Covenant, the world's theocratic rulers who maintained their control over the world after being led by Lorgar, each time a XVII Legion expedition completed an Imperial Compliance action upon a new world in the name of the God-Emperor.On Colchis, as on many of the Imperium's most arid worlds, the indigenous life coped with the climate however it could. For the Human population, it was a matter of coastal cities, immense water filtration facilities, irrigation farming, and dealing with the seasonal floods from the rushing rivers that acted as blood vessels for the arid plains.Vharadesh, the Holy City, was the nexus of such industrious efforts. Swathes of irrigated farmland reached out from the city walls, a triumph of ingenuity over nature. Colchis was an arid, thirsty world, but the perfection of the Human form showed in all things.