With the upheaval thwarted and relative peace restored, Temperance’s second-wave colonists made planetfall. The Legion of Twelve looked at the state of Temperance’s shattered capital and decided to establish a new city to house the incoming colonists, and to expand the farming lands so desperately needed by the growing population.
Located several thousand kilometres from Bastion, Beacon is a more ordered and structured town. Lacking a history of devastation, its buildings are simpler and clean, built quickly and efficiently to house its three-million-strong population. A far larger city, Beacon stretches outwards over an area six times greater than the capital. Sadly, the exploding population and increased urban sprawl sits at the heart of Temperance’s major problems. Large portions of Beacon’s population see themselves as the real planetary leaders. They resent the continued presence of the Arbitrators, and with their more successful crop yields and growing herds of grox, the Beacon citizenry cannot see why they must answer to a smaller and less successful city. The Bastion Deputies only make the situation worse, as the population see them as little more than hired thugs, and numerous gangs offer bounties for the heads of captured deputies.
Despite the threats, the gangs are little more than a sideshow compared to the emergent cult activity within Beacon. Dozens of would-be preachers and proclamators stand daily before large gatherings of angry farmers preaching the “truth” of the Legion of Twelve, that the Pandaemonium proved the Emperor’s disdain for Temperance, and how there were other, older powers more than willing to fulfil the wishes of each and every farmer. The largest of these cults call themselves the Sons of Temperance. Originally a charity dedicated to helping outlier farms recover after periods of heavy rain, the Sons admonished Temperance’s sinful history and spoke of an inevitable reckoning, where the wicked and lazy would vanish into the turmoil of the Pandaemonium. They preached how years of rebellion against the Imperium and the foul acts of past millennia created the Mind-Mould, something that made little sense given the frontier world’s relative short history. Soon after that, the bombings began. Specially-designed explosives and spore bombs detonated across Bastion and Beacon in a campaign of terror that lasted weeks. The subsequent mould infestations cost the lives of thousands, but wherever the infections flared, the Sons of Temperance emerged to ease the suffering of the afflicted.
When the population of Temperance’s newest city, Thirdstone, disappeared overnight, the Sons claimed the event as vindication of their beliefs. Beacon elevated many of the cult’s leaders to positions of prominence, as scores of fearful farmers bolstered the cult’s ranks, opening themselves to the wisdom of the cult’s “prophets.” From that fateful day forward, the cult has only grown, and now the Sons’ ranks outnumber those of the Bastion Deputies. Reluctant to turn the unrest into a full-scale civil war, Proctor Vigdis maintains a level of patience with the Sons’ activities. Moreover, with Adeptus Ministorum representation on Temperance abnormally low since the Thirdstone incident, she needs someone to manage the spiritual wellbeing of her people, and until the Pandaemonium subsides and greater numbers of colonists arrive, the Sons of Temperance remain her only choice.