Gregorn

“S’a good place. Lotsa fings tryin’ ta kill you, lotsa fings ta kill. Big fings dere. Like, really big. Umies dere to fight, too. Dey got no dakka—not any more, anyways. Just stickas. Back when, dey wuz s’posed to have mega dakka, but da Orks put a stop ta dat, hur hur hur.”

–Septikk da Blagga, Blood Axe Nob

Gregorn is a savage, feral planet, a world replete with steaming jungles, colossal beasts, and volcanic activity on a vast scale. Its proud, peculiarly mannered, and primitive human population clings grimly to the planet’s ever-shifting tectonic plates like fleas embedded in the hide of a raging beast, beset on all sides by warlike rival tribes, bizarre megafauna, and the depredations of brutal and cunning xenos mercenaries.

The world swings pugnaciously through a tight orbit around its middle aged yellow star, in a manner resembling an apex predator pacing tirelessly within a cage. It is one of the lesser known worlds of the Cyclopia Sub-Sector, a primitive and little regarded outcast in a region which seeks to portray itself as a mercantile and manufacturing hub in Askellon. While the planet has a formal tithe rating based upon the theoretical export of timber and foodstuffs, it has no actual planetary governor or Adeptus Administratum presence. No sub-sector commander has seen fit to allocate resources to collect its tithe for millennia; this is largely due to adverse local the Warp conditions which impede reliable shipping. As such, Gregorn sees little interaction with the rest of Askellon. Indeed, it is suspected to be one of a number of potential bases forrampaging xenos pirates in recent decades, though the Askellian Navy has notably failed to bring these miscreants to battle.

Gregon’s landmass sprawls messily across the surface of the world in a handful of continents that grind and crash against each other like hastily anchored boats upon a stormy sea. Where the land masses meet, gigantic mountain ranges are thrown up, each range a nursery for dozens of ever-erupting volcanoes, magma flows, and collapsing calderas. The constant tectonic upheaval stirs up rich and fertile minerals from kilometres beneath the planet’s surface; at the edge of each lava field, dense rain forests loom hungrily, awaiting the inevitable cooling of the soil like vultures clustering around a dying traveller, voraciously poised for their opportunity to strike.

The world is warm, with tiny polar ice caps. Most of the continents exist in the tropical band of the northern hemisphere, with the world resembling a blue-green orb dotted with black volcanic regions and flickering orange rivers of fire visible even from orbit. The skies are heavy with silicate dust, but these are regularly cleared away by great storms, with their black rain eagerly devoured by the steaming forests. These fecund jungles fill virtually all available land on the planet and smother the ground in a green
blanket hundreds of metres deep. Freakish behemoths lumber within these verdant depths; herbivorous saurids and pachyderms the size of heavy landers mutely chew the cud alongside colossal armoured ungulates and hirsute multi-tonne beasts which nibble delicately at leaves a dozen meters from the forest floor.

Deadly predators of great size and ferocity lurk there too, living engines of destruction taking a variety of forms. There are great carnidons, scaled bipedal beasts with teeth the length of a human forearm and who mass nearly that of a superheavy tank, yet move through the forests without disturbing a single twig. There are mora, towering flightless avians five times the height of a man, with cruel, hooked beaks that can scissor a hunter apart in a heartbeat. These beasts battle hideous Unknowns, abhorrent predatory pack animals who scour all life from their path and scavenge the dead where they lie. Gregorn’s feral human inhabitants war with these great beasts and others on a constant basis, precariously maintaining dominance and survival.

A single enormous crater almost sixty kilometres wide mars the landscape. For leagues around, barren deserts are littered with the debris from this impact site; nickel-iron ore, rusted, pitted metal, and a thick coating of radioactive dust and black glass. The natives avoid this blasted landscape; though they are primitive, a combination of tribal superstitions and natural caution correctly trains each generation that the area is both cursed and lethal.

Within the ruined realm abutting the great crater lies a ramshackle collection of low shanties, which belch and steam noxious effluent. These shacks surround a succession of rough orbital landing strips, pits, rough circular dirt tracks, foundries, and scrapyards. Within this battered selection of dwellings resides a portion of one of the many small but highly mobile Ork mercenary clans.

These aliens have had a presence here for as long as any human alive on the world can recall. The details of their arrival are lost to time, but ancient legends among the native Gregornians is that the Orks descended to the world in fire and smoke, bringing
misery and death to all.

Ork numbers on Gregorn can vary substantially. At any one time there are always a few hundred, but this changes rapidly as new warbands visit the world, travelling via a variety of vessels, tellyportas, and unreliable bubblefield-shielded Roks or asteroids. Currently, the greenskin population is dominated by the infamous Blood Axe clan, whose militaristic members plague Gregorn and its surrounding stars, raiding and killing across the sub-sector as the mood takes them. Under the leadership of the quixotic and unpredictable warlord Kaptin Gen’ral Kakkbad the ‘Eadbita, this portion of the wider Blood Axe clan has gone from strength to strength, absorbing and assimilating smaller Orkish settlements and tribes under its banner.

Kakkbad has been tremendously successful, having achieved much at a comparatively young age and commanding thousands of Ork boyz. "While his rise is a cause for some concern among Imperial authorities, his disparate forces’ raiding activities have not yet reached a frequency and level where a coherent military response is required by the ancient Askellian ordinances governing Naval deployment. Among the planetary governors and merchant fleet officers who are subject to greenskin attack, this indolent official response is a scandalous indictment of the waning capabilities of Battlefleet Askellon."

The Ork warlord visits Gregorn with his entourage on a regular basis, finding the planet’s exotic selection of vicious predators much to his liking. Here, he hunts, fights, and holds court accompanied by a train of lesser warlords, alien mercenaries, and sycophants, drawn by his presence and the promise of a good scrap. In particular, Kakkbad has strong alliances with a large number of piratical Freeboota Krews who see much to admire in the warlord’s ambition and sheer naked avarice.

Like all of his clan, Kakkbad enjoys a conflicted relationship with the Imperium, finding as much within it to admire as to hate; he is drawn to its brutality, violence, and cruelty, repelled by its discipline and obsession with order. Kakkbad and his inner circle crudely ape Imperial military dress and mores, giving each other comically inaccurate military ranks, employing bizarre and meaningless military acronyms and even occasionally saluting each other. Such behaviour is relatively typical within the Blood Axe clan, but Kakkbad, controversially, extends his admiration for “’Umie” militarism beyond the norm by indulgently tolerating the presence of a small band of human mercenaries.

Holding their ground against the depredations of the Orks and the encroachments of the various great beasts of the deep forests are the human natives of Gregorn. Clearly the descendants of some lost pre-Imperial civilisation, the tribal human population of Gregorn takes the form of a number of different small kingdoms, "each headed by a single royal family of ancient lineage". These rulers can vary from tribe to tribe in brutality and customs, but all seem to share a common thread of devotion to the survival of their peoples above all else. In even the most barbaric of settlements, there are oral histories "replete with tales of brave royals defending terrified tribespeople from attack by rival clans, creatures, and beasts".

While their technological level is primitive, the Gregornians are culturally sophisticated, and have produced a society which is of great interest to scholars of ancient human civilisations. Several scribes have noted that their very language is replete with calques and loan-words similar to the High Gothic patterns common on many high Askellian societies. Although most tribes have lives that resemble those of hunter-gatherers, "the central control exerted by the royal families permits communal projects for the betterment of all". Invariably this takes the form of the construction of great fortresses and towers which the native population can flee to in the event of attack, while the royals and nobles war with attackers. These fortresses—the majority of which are constructed of simple blocks of volcanic stone carved and wedged into place—are of a sufficient number and quality that humanity on Gregorn can be said to be "mostly free of the threat of immediate extinction".

Gregornian culture is "militaristic and violent". Young Gregornian nobles prove their mettle by hunting the most deadly predators of the deep jungles, using their deadly three metre Nasharn spears, weapons made of an almost impossibly strong and flexible native wood. Uniquely, nasharn spears can be strung with gulas-gut and converted into huge and powerful bows; even more astonishingly, they can be unstrung and instantly re-used as spears without affecting their shape or strength in the least.

Legends of The Deep Jungle

The ancient human population of Gregorn has a rich tradition of storytelling, with legends passed down over hundreds of generations. While many of these tales are "clearly simple, instructive fables designed to teach children practical methods of survival on the harsh world", others contain complex moral codes governing standards of conduct, particularly among the higher-caste warriors of the royal and noble bloodlines. "From birth, those born into these bloodlines are taught that they are inheritors of an ancient legacy, destined to defend the world and its people. This code requires nobles to employ certain, almost ritual, phrases of greeting for various castes, in order to acknowledge their lineage". Thus, royals and nobles alike are much given to courtly and formal modes of address, depending upon the perceived status and seniority of their interlocutors. Woe betide the traveller who inadvertently uses the wrong title for an individual. Offence given—even entirely unintentionally—is met with formal challenges to combat, which can be to first blood, maiming, or death according to the Gregornians’ "bafflingly complex" gradations of societal customs.

Aside from these honour codes and formal rituals of etiquette, there are earthier and more colourful legends passed from storyteller to storyteller amongst the "lower" castes. There are dozens of these stories, but key among Gregornian myth-cycles is the tale of the Iron Kings, the legendary precursor rulers who founded the various royal families and tribes in ages past. This tale tells that in times gone by the ancient Kings walked the land in gigantic suits of iron armour, striding taller than trees. It is said that they were so mighty that they harnessed the power of the sun, casting spears of golden-white sunlight before them that could fell even the greatest giant Carnidon with a single blow. The tale tells of great, epic battles fought between the various kings over slights real and imagined; of lost cities and castles within the deepest jungles where heroes once undertook great quests. The tale describes how the world was humbled before the might of the Iron Kings, and how they chose to populate the forests with beasts from among the stars so as to keep their blades keen. Packs of Gula—now regarded as so deadly that entire clans move miles to avoid them—were said to have been hunted for mere sport by these ancient lords.

The tale ends in blood and fire. At the height of the age of the Iron Kings, a glowing light from the sky fell to the south, searing the sky in its path and sending up a vast cloud that covered all the land in darkness for years on end. After the darkness came the creatures of darkness: Orks. Creeping across the lands in tens, then hundreds, then thousands, they were at first hunted by the Iron Kings for sport in the manner of beasts, but the greenskins eventually overwhelmed them in long battles lasting hundreds of years. For every Ork burned by white hot light, ten more stepped into his place. Eventually all of the Iron Kings were pulled down and torn apart, their bodies rent and battered, their armour used to create foul weapons for the Orks to despoil and ruin yet further.

Those few Imperial scholars who have negotiated the minefield of Gregornian etiquette in order to hear this tale regard it of crucial importance in determining the history of the vanished pre-Imperial culture that once ruled here. Some even believe it might hold the secrets to ridding the world of the greenskins once and for all.