By Imperial standards, CC-X-7 is a world in its infancy – and it is about to die.
The colony on the small moon was founded just a few centuries ago as an administrative and support hub for mining operations on its parent gas giant and nearby planetoids. It was established on the initiative of a sector-wide mining concern, with a minor rogue trader dynasty providing additional funds and expertise and the Administratum delivering copious consignments of deportees to bolster the initial stock of settlers. Growth was as massive as was it rapid and the moon’s small size made it quickly resemble a hive world, every square inch of its surface covered in artificial structures. Indeed, the official classification as a hive world was soon to follow, when the world’s corporate masters permanently moved their sector headquarters and related assets to CC-X-7 and assumed the mantle of Imperial Commanders of this new addition to the Emperor’s domain.
The rapidity of its growth – and the keen eye towards costs during construction – are apparent in the colony’s man-made landscape. Many of its structures are little more than plasteel skeletons, wrapped in thin foil in place of walls, aided by the moon’s low gravity environment. More robust prefab blocks are used where dictated by structural necessities of their function. The imposing gothic architecture so defining of the Imperial building style on worlds of longer pedigree here is limited to the fortress-palaces and temples of the planetary elite and some Imperial authorities.
Events have recently taken a turn for the worse for CC-X-7 and its population, although the true scope of the disaster is unknown to all but a few of those directly involved.
Outwardly, CC-X-7 has just experienced a change in governorship following a short but intense dynastic struggle spilling over into civil war. Citing the weakness of the last corporate governor and clauses from CC-X-7’s founding charter, Freya Chaste, the last scion of the rogue trader dynasty who helped building the colony, swept in with her crew and toppled the old governor after buying the allegiance of large swathes of CC-X-7’s planetary defense forces. Although Chaste and her supporters massacred almost the entire corporate leadership and the Imperium, more interested in a stable tithe – which had been slipping in the last years of corporate control – than whom paid it, was quick to accept the change in leadership as fait accompli, low intensity insurgency against the new regime continues.
Seemingly part of this is the loss of control over the moon’s only spaceport by the regime. Although not openly declared, CC-X-7 is currently effectively quarantined. No ships are allowed to leave port, however, new arrivals are not turned away, so imports continue to trickle onto the hive world, especially as word of the inofficial quarantine has still to spread. The policy is enforced by a combination of strikes, sabotage, violence and legal and political blockade, especially by health authorities which continue to form a prominent opposition, still not uprooted by Imperial Commander Chaste.
The truth behind these going-ons is that CC-X-7 has suffered not one but two chaos incursions in quick succession and rival cults and their daemonic patrons are now vying for control of the world, all the while the Imperium remains clueless to the presence of even one of these enemies.
Imperial Commander Freya Chaste
Nominally the heir to a rogue trader charter, the Chaste dynasty’s cursed luck had long before Freya was born seen them degenerate into mere pirates. It fell to Freya to turn the fortunes of the dynasty around, first in leading them on a series of highly successful raids, then by ursurping control of CC-X-7. This rebirth of the dreaded pirate queen as a loyal planetary governor is believed to have given rise to the sporadically heard epithet “she who has changed her ways”. Should this alias ever reach knowledgable ears, it would in turn quickly raise suspicions but on CC-X-7 at least, no such ears remain outside of governor Chaste’s inner circle.
Freya herself is not aware of the daemon nested both within her own head and in the heart of the two-headed cyber-vulture she has inherited from her father along with the pact promising greatness for the dynasty. After years of those around her working hard to dissipate any doubts she might feel, she is entirely uncritical of the flashes of “inspiration” she often experiences, although her equally common blackouts and bouts of memory loss still trouble her.
Her current goals are to solidify control of CC-X-7 and she is starting to have “ideas” of how using some realigments of the local sermons and teachings of the Imperial Faith might prove decisive in this. Her councillors, of course, are all ears.
Arch-Pharmacopeist Hildegaard von Farben
Hildegaard von Farben heads the Officio Medicinalis, a strange hybrid entity consisting of intertwined Administratum clerical offices, the planetary public health sector, and bioalchemical industrial conglomerates. This dual nature as a direct Imperial servant as well as a member of the corporate nobility together with her proclamation of the Officio’s neutrality in the civil war protected her during Chaste’s initial purge.
Her direct access to some of the higher arcana of Imperial biotechnology have guaranteed her not only an extended lifespan but continued youthful health, though she rejects mere cosmetic rejuvenat procedures and so she looks the part of the elderly lean but springy scholar.
Skillfully hidden under the antiagathics, Hildegaard is actually massively bio-augmented which in turn she used to remove the otherwise sorely obvious marks the dealings with her patron have left on the original flesh of the accomplished chaos sorceress.
Hildegaard would have been quite content to let her organisation continue to fester and grow slowly under the new regime, hollowing it out from within as the old hierarchy had steadily been, events of her own making, however, have now inadvertedly forced her hand.
Assassin Zero
One reason for Hildegaard’s cult to be on CC-X-7 was the presence of a small monastery there maintained by the Ordo Hospitaller of the Adeptus Sororitas. The sisters had been entrusted with safekeeping certain outgrowths of the alchemists’ craft which were deemed to be too dangerous for use but to which the corporate founders of CC-X-7 still held commercial titles of interest and ownership.
In the chaos following the regime change, Hildegaard decided to finally make her move to obtain the specimens. She would most likely have succeeded, too, were it not that unbeknownst to her a journeyman temple assassin had been present at the monastery, sent there on a pilgrimage by the masters of the Officio Assassinorum to receive bioblessings from the sisters. In the end, the sisters were slain and the monastery destroyed, but the assassin escaped with the specimens into the surrounding hive.
Hildegaard was easily able to cover up her assault on the monastery as the action of an insurgent group, but that did not absolve her of her failure to secure the specimens. Desperate to prevent them from slipping entirely from her grasp, she commenced the lockdown of CC-X-7’s spaceport using all of the secret strength her cult had gathered. The thief would not leave her world.
The assassin, meanwhile, has taken to wage a one-man-war against the entire hive world, as the journeyman’s incomplete neural programming is slowly degrading under the onslaught of the specimens ingested during the first headlong flight.
Bonus: Characters from CC-X-7 (Dark Heresy 1st Edition)
Due to the low-gravity environment of the moon, characters hailing from CC-X-7 use Voidborn characteristics and Fate Points but Hive World skills, traits and Wounds. They also start play with 1d5-2 Corruption Points (minimum 0).
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- Plague servitors might form part of the cult forces wandering the space port.
- To add yet another faction to the mix, Galvina Nullip might have also taken an interest in the Hospitaller monastery or she might have been invited by Imperial Commander Chaste, who has yet to bear an heir to continue her dynasty. Given her perennial state of flight from her erstwhile peers in the Adeptus Mechanicus, she will be most interested in breaking the blockade of the space port, no matter the reason of her being on CC-X-7.
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