Juno

The world of Juno has stood as the capital of the Askellon Sector since time immemorial. It is commonly held as the first of the founding worlds to have been settled. The planet’s ruling classes regard themselves as the elite of the sector, claiming the colony vessel that seeded their civilisation was the one carrying the finest 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 aristocracy live artificially- extended lives of unimaginable luxury, their world cracks apart and their claimed control over the sector becomes more precarious. Each 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 and struggle to maintain Askellon, though most fear it is in vain.

As the Pandaemonium 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 aristocracy, 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 Nothing of its original environment remains, the seas having been replaced by swamps of toxic sludge, and every shred of native biomass having been consumed in one manner or another. Numerous sprawling 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 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 miles 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 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 cities 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 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.

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Outcasts

While official census enumerations list the population of Juno at approximately fifteen billion, it is feared that the true figure is far higher. This is due to the fact that Juno has been consumed by war so many times over its impossibly long history that entire sub-populations have risen from those made refugees and outcasts. Over the centuries, these groups have multiplied and taken over wide stretches of the ruin-strewn wastes between the major cities, despite the regular purges unleashed against them. Some in the Grand Army claim that the constant strife that the planet is subject to keeps its bloodlines strong, but for most, constant war and uprising is simply how Juno exists, and they cannot imagine any other manner of life.

Myriad are those counted amongst the hordes of Outcasts, from fallen priests to cannibal mutants. There are entire gangs of psychic wyrds, as well as Adorii Cults that venerate them. Untold numbers of mutants scour the ruins as they fight their rivals for the smallest scrap of food, while archaeotech hunters sift through the rubble of countless thousands of years of war and rebuilding in search of priceless relics from more puissant ages.

In recent decades, an entire population of religious zealots has risen up, their founder cast out fifty years ago for his extreme views in denouncing the ruling classes for their decadence and arrogance. Now, that same message is gaining traction, but the descendants of his disciples roam the wastes, forcibly converting any and all they encounter and amassing an ever-increasing host of frenzied fanatics. Few of the nobility seem aware or caring of this growing threat, sure in the knowledge that eternal Juno has prevailed for ten millennia, and no wasteland rabble can disturb their rule.

February 27th, 2023 April 30th, 2023

Adeptus Terra Presence on Juno

As the capital world of an entire sector, Juno is host to the missions and holdings of a wide range of the Imperium’s countless institutions. Many have been allowed to become reduced or degraded, with senior officials caring less for even the appearance of control. Some offices have been vacant for many years, awaiting replacements that may never arrive due to garbled or lost astropathic transmissions.

The Adeptus Arbites maintain several formidable Bastion-Precincts on Juno. The majority of these are located in and around Vesuna Regis, the headquarters located in the notorious Bastion-Precinct Omega. This is also the seat of power of Grand Arbiter Wilhelm, High Marshal of the Askellon Grand Precinct, the most senior officer in the region. Her life extended by juvenat treatments, Wilhelm is well into her second century, but the mind and body of this once much-feared officer have degraded drastically in recent years. As the situation in Askellon has grown ever darker and Wilhelm’s mind has slipped further into the depths of decrepitude, she has become ever more strident and extreme in her pursuit of the sin, conspiracy, and damnation she sees in every shadow. She has unleashed countless purges upon the sector, often with no shred of evidence of any wrongdoing. Nonetheless, Wilhelm holds firmly to the notion that the execution of one recidivist is worth the incidental suffering of thousands of the supposedly innocent, a state she holds to be at best temporary in any case..

Vesuna Regis is also the home of the sector’s principle astropathic choir, housed in an ancient complex on the very edge of the city, overlooking a ragged coastline of noxious swamp. Its master Astropath died in the course of his duties a decade ago, his mind ravaged by Daemons during an unexpected surge in the Pandaemonium. No successor has yet been named, and so the task of directing the mind voices rotates amongst the senior members, resulting in erratic communication to and from the capital. Only those messages coded with the highest levels of priority and clearance gain the choir’s full attention and power, but even then there are difficulties. Some claim their messages have been twisted out of all recognition, and blame fell powers intent upon seeding anarchy and madness across the domains of Askellon.

The single largest division of the Adeptus Terra present on Juno is the Adeptus Administratum, its headquarters located at the mighty Regis Chancellery near the centre of Vesuna Regis. This and numerous subsidiary locations house many millions of scribes, factors, and overseers, many of whom live out their lifetimes within a few metres of their ink-stained desks. Lord High Comptroller-General Avak Numinor leads the mission, and is responsible for cataloguing the sector’s resources so that proper tithe levels can be maintained for each world. It is said that the staff of the Regis Chancellery never cease in their efforts to record every possible detail of the sector’s holdings, and given the massive datavaults that litter the planet and other worlds in the Juno system, this is likely true.

While it has been dutifully transmitting tithe-data to Terra, there have been few responses in recent years, and the Chancellery grows ever more worried the tithe-levels are now generations out of date. The atmosphere within its basalt walls is one of fear and desperation, as the countless sub-divisions and bureaus slip ever further from their targets of agglomerated tithe-data. All are terrified that emissaries from distant Terra might arrive at any moment and demand explanations, determined to execute any they deem to have failed in this sacred duty.

The numerous other pillars of the Imperium maintain holdings on Juno, but not always in plain sight. Such huge divisions as the Departmento Munitorum tend to be headquartered in other areas of the sector, though they maintain missions on Juno for ease of interacting with the sector’s highest authorities as well as the numerous other bodies. Some, like the Adeptus Mechanicus, distrust and are in turn are distrusted by the many planetary and sector authorities, and choose to remain aloof and apart, even if their presence is vital to the administration of the region. Such tensions only serve to hasten and multiply the effects of the growing Pandaemonium and bring the collapse of the entire sector one day closer.

February 27th, 2023 April 30th, 2023

Outcasts

Adeptus Terra Presence on Juno

Attributes