Rund

“Hail, great Skylord, blessed of the Sky Father! We stand ready to wage war upon the accursed unbelievers! At your command, we will burn their lodges, halls, and long ships, and cast their worthless bodies into Uguathu, the smoking mountain, where they will burn in the pits of the Sky Father for a thousand seasons!”

–Rundeen Chieftain Maugdan, addressing Naval Underdeck Rating Remmick Stenz of the sloop Emperor’s Fury

Rund is a recently-discovered world whose "barbarous and feral inhabitants have endured uncounted millennia of isolation from the wider Imperium" as a result of the vicious eddies and whorls of the Pandaemonium. The Adeptus Ministorum has eagerly leapt at the chance to draw primitive souls to the light of the Emperor. In the absence of immediately available agents of the Missionarus Galaxia, local religious authorities from within the sector are currently prosecuting an "aggressive proselytisation campaign", which is generating civil war and conlict on a vast scale across the face of this once-isolated planet.

The Coming of the Sky Priests

Rund was only discovered several dozen years ago, deep in the stellar wastelands between the sub-sectors of Rubicon and the Asphodel Deeps. Salawat McDunn, a minor Rogue Trader, encountered the planet whilst conducting a search to find less perilous Askellian Warp routes bypassing the Pandaemonium’s clamour. While no such clear passages were discovered, the unlikely prize of the expedition turned out to be Rund, whose utterly unremarkable sun had lain obscured from distant Imperial astronomical auguries by an equally unremarkable dust nebula.

Lacking the resources to exploit the world himself in the short term, and aware that it lay well within the bounds of the Imperium—and as such beyond the terms of his Warrant of Trade—McDunn petitioned the Lords Sector and the Senatorum Imperialis for formal governorship of the world. Whilst he waited for the ponderous wheels of the Imperial bureaucracy to grind in his favour, McDunn, who had firm links to the Ecclesiarchy, delivered a small-but-fervent contingent of Ardentii Proselytisers to the northern islands. His hopes were that they would slowly convert and civilise the locals to a cultural standard more amenable to the commercial exploitation of the planet. These fanatical emissaries of the Imperial Cult have endured, and even prospered. A score of the northern island tribes now exhibit "genuine zeal" in carrying the Emperor’s holy word out to their unenlightened brethren on the other islands. However, in these early days of the mission to Rund, these new converts are unfamiliar with the "appropriate modes of worship"; their knowledge of the Imperial Faith is patchy at best, and many misunderstandings and ancestral feuds slow the proper transmission of the one true faith to the remaining heathens.

The Imperium’s arrival, and the regular appearance of vessels, has caused a tremendous degree of culture shock. Misguided cults worshipping orbiting spacecraft have sprung up on the unconverted southern islands, and their inhabitants take to the seas in crude vessels crafted to resemble Imperial starships. These sailors war with those of the northern islands who have sworn loyalty to the Imperium. These conflicts escalate with each passing season, and "hundreds of thousands have now abandoned their meagre harvests to war with their neighbours, both on the foaming seas and under the crimson skies of the volcano-studded islands".

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Saltwater, Brimstone and Blood

Rund is a geologically unstable archipelago planet, dotted with thousands of irregular islands across its entire surface. The largest island is only a few hundred kilometres from tip to tip, and most are much smaller. Each is a tiny enclave in a vast stormy ocean that spans from pole to pole. There are tremendous climatic variations according to latitude: there are hundreds of arctic, temperate, and desert islands, with many subtle variations between them. Violent geologies abound throughout the globe; new islands are created and old ones destroyed every year by the rapidly shifting tectonic plates that crumble and grind against each other beneath the raging waves. The seas are shockingly deep, violent, and stormy, and even though many islands are within sight of each other, traversing the channels between them is extremely hazardous.

The oceans are also filled with a variety of dangerous creatures. From the deeps come armoured predators larger than Imperator Titans, and tentacled horrors driven from the pelagic depths by seismic upheavals. Vast shoals of vicious lyers leap from the sea into the air alongside stinging jellyish the size of halo barges, while clamberfish drag themselves aboard ships and pull sailors limb from limb. Worse are the repulsively intelligent Karkinaxi, the terrifying Sea Devils of Rundeen lore that are capable of cunningly luring men to their deaths through a variety of ruses. All these and more ill the planet’s endless waters. "Indeed, the world is so replete with such a rich selection of hostile creatures that some have speculated that they have all been brought here for some reason; perhaps the world was once a kind of pleasure world for big game hunters during humanity’s Dark Age of Technology."

Askelline Adeptus Administratum adepts still fervently debate whether Rund should be classified as a Death World or Feral World. Rund appears to have been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. No clear evidence remains of how human settlers first arrived, but given that the majority of the native Rundeen share "a certain commonality of physical characteristics, it is speculated that they are the descendants of some minor colony".

May 2nd, 2023

The Rundeen and Askellon

The Rundeen are a "highly-superstitious" and spiritual people, and shamanistic beliefs were extremely common on the world before the arrival of the Cult Imperialis. The discovery of the wider human galaxy has generated much "doctrinal confusion" within the native beliefs, and the Imperium’s religious emissaries are brutally exploiting this to spread the influence of the Imperial Creed. As is commonly done, they seek to merge elements of the Imperial Creed narrative with local traditions. In practice, this invariably means that Rundeen converts adopt religious practices that differ on the surface from other civilised worlds in how the Emperor is named and worshipped. This is of little concern to the Ecclesiarchy, which has for millennia accepted minor doctrinal diferences as the fruit of a successful conversion to acceptance of the Emperor. "However, the Rundeen regard themselves as seekers after the truth of the Sky Father, and are often angered and confused when they learn of the variety of modes of worship displayed by offworlders. Exposure to the wider Imperium often leaves Rundeen with their faith shaken, and thus ripe for corruption".

The Rise of the Outworlders

Salawat McDunn and his Ecclesiarchical allies are not the only parties interested in Rund. Over the past five years, slavers from Askellon’s underworld have targeted the world. Many of its islands are being emptied of vulnerable inhabitants, who are spirited away to lives of backbreaking labour in regional mining and agri-worlds. This has angered many tribes, and a number of anti-Imperial cults have arisen. Many natives are "poorly placed" to distinguish between the sanctioned representatives of the Cult Imperialis and venal slavers, and this has led to "tragic misunderstandings". In recent years, rumours have also surfaced of "false or corrupt" Imperial preachers who set themselves up as kings or messiahs.