Port Wicc

+ System overview +

The system's position between the sector's three principal subsectors (Starfire, Hesiod-Siculus and Anton Antecedent) has made it wealthy, while its proximity to both the slumbering, creeping threat of Hivefleet Dagon and the expansionist Tau of the Brightsword Empire means that the system is heavily fortified – a state of affairs that has predictably led to numerous black and grey markets springing up.

As of M41.998, all worlds in the system have come under sustained attack by a splinter fleet of Hivefleet Dagon drawn into the system in pursuit of Ballistic Fleet Freedom Zodiac, a powerful Tau Expeditionary Force that translated in-system and became unable to escape, for reasons currently classified. The Moon Pirates [ref: 'Notable independents' below) have variously allied with, attacked or ignored the warring groups.

This event has come to be known as the Port Wicc War, word of which has spread owing to the rumours of the miraculous return of saints and saviours that the loose-lipped repeat. An Inquisitorial mandate stifling these rumours has been issued with the genecode of Josiah Necari-Maltheus, though whether this marks his uncloaking after many years undercover or the unsanctioned use of stolen codes is currently unknown.  

What is certain is that raids are occurring across the system, and that all the planets are crying out for aid. 

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+ Major Worlds +

Liminal Tertiary  System staging point and trade hub, Liminal Tertiary is a hive world and minor Navy port, boiling over with sailors, forges and manufactora. Owing to their history as an open trading point, the inhabitants are unusually forward-looking and its Imperial Commander liberal. Even xenos contact, far from being forbidden, is simply heavily monitored. As a result, numerous xenos artefacts – from arms to artworks – pass through the port, with occasional escorted xenos drawing curious glances from the countless pilgrims, merchants and workers bound for destinations across the sector.

While the population might appear precociously free to enjoy suprising freedom, both the workers and vistors are of course monitored by the Arbites. All Tertians are bio-chipped at birth, and all passing through legally must submit to dermal implants. These measures are said to monitor lifesigns and ensure the popultation maintains its health and well-being. Rumours circulate that the Munitorum and Inquisition have their hands in this; treating the planet as an experiment in more open civilisation. Some activists and protestors – mostly dismissed as cranks – openly claim that the dermal implants contain soporifics, hormone-supressants and misgenic termination codes. Certainly the occasional stories of genestealer cults seems to inspire less planic than in similar-sized worlds...

Wulthuz   An unusally verdant Forge World, under the mastery of Xion of Wu, Wulthuz is a Divisio Biologis stronghold and worldspanning laboratory. The autochthonic inhabitants – diverse resilient megafauna and a variety of colossal plantlife that sustains it – provide the Magi of Wulthuz with opportunities for testing atomic, chemical and biological warfare strategies – including antidotes and vaccines. As well as making it a hub for visiting Magi from Forges across the sector, Wulthuz has a booming economy based on medicines and fertilisers.

The elegant, near-white, fractal foliage of the local Martyr trees makes them a popular export, and many Magi of this eccentric Forge cultivate them in a form of ornamental artwork pleasing to the Machine God. The planet is defended by ragged bio-enhanced skitarii allied to the principal (and rival) hive-states of Bogon-munge, the Plotka Slums and the towering Splindle City, home of Xion of Wu. The Legio Clymene, a small but active Titan Legion, patrols the sub-sector vigilantly.

+ The Crooked Reef +

The Crooked Reef (also known by local ork pirates as 'da karibeen' or 'da krooked reef') is an unusually wide asteroid belt with a slightly elliptical orbit that separates Liminal Tertiary from the other planets in the system. 

Dangerous solar activity in the northern and Southern Hemispheres of the sun means that every ship that wants to go further into or out of the system has to navigate the Crooked Reef.  This same solar phenomena make the asteroid belt luminous in key places causing it to appear as a smile (or frown) in the sky of the systems planets.

The Crooked Reef contains a number of verdant, sandy and atmospheric planetoids and is famous for its low gravity, sweet liquor, unusual but delicious fruit, and warm relaxing weather, during the long summer season.

It is also the favoured location for Boss Wazgor, and Big Mek Facewakka as well as a number of other notorious characters (e.g. kap'n Squigbeard, Krumpo the Loon, Aetherred the Unready*, BlueBard*)

Curiously all official imperial traffic in and out of the system is untouched. It is likely a coincidence that many of the mercenary groups that inhabit the reef are licensed and tolerated. 

The legal inhabitants of "Da Krooked Reef" have been unsettled of late. Missing shipments, broken communications, tight lipped traders seeming much less ostentatious than normal... rumour has it that Boss Wazgor is back in the area.

*Aeldari pirates?

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+ Minor Worlds +

Scarceacre  Along with the minor worlds Liminal Primary and Liminal Secondary, Scarceacre is one of the three agriworlds that supports not just the system, but the subsector. All three have been the subject of disputes and raids since time immemorial, their horizon-filling grain fields proving too tempting for the Imperium's many enemies. The planets have small but hard-working populations; notable for the inclusion of genebrutes, sanctioned abhumans and – in the case of Scarceacre – a number of stable ogryn tribes.

Liminal Primary is the location of the Order of the Lowered Eye, a sprawling convent of the Sororitas; which houses both the primary Order and two subsidiaries Orders.

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+ Notable independents +

Despite the attention of the Imperial military, all of the worlds of the systems continue to be pestered by pirates, xenos attackers and renegades who have hidden bases in the dense moon rings that surround all the planets in the system. These include:

• The notorious Houses Luxor and Ceptio, rival dynasties of pirate princelings that have recently allied themselves with the Tau Empire;
• Suns of Violence, an apocalypic, death-worshipping cult of Eldar who include representatives from many races of their fractured and decadent culture;
• A group of religious exiles from Liminal Tertiary, known as the Family of the Eventual Enclosing, who can be recognised by their ritualistic whole body-shaving and warpaint as much as the ragged scars each bears from the forcible removal of their biochips;
• League of Bolt, a rather grandiosely-named squat mining fleet, whose strength is currently unknown.
• The brawling mass of the White Spiderz, a loose coalition of ork freebooters whote raids have been growing in daring and destruction for the past century; 
• At least four xenos species known nowhere else – one of whom, the Wict Diaspora, are the embittered and nomadic remnants of the aboriginal inhabitants of Wulthuz.
• Half a dozen minor groups and cults, ranging from the pacifist Mo to the Clotting Circle, a proscribed and openly blood-worshipping tribe of escaped criminals, abhumans and recidivists.