Ferunus

The Forge World Ferunus is one of the most influential planets in the Azuran Sector of the Segmentum Pacificus. Settled less than two millennia ago by the remnants of a large Martian Explorator fleet seeking refuge after a devastating journey through the warp and harrowing encounters with daemons that shaped the founders of the world into a distinctly new culture, it has grown rapidly into a major regional industrial powerhouse in the Segmentum and is known for its aggressive exploration, examination, and destruction of xenos ruins across the galaxy as well as possessing several rare STCs.

History
Founded by a Martian Arch-Magos Dominus, Aeschylus Leander, the inheritor to leadership of an Explorator fleet to the Western fringes of the Segmentum Pacificus in conjunction with a shadowy Ordo Mechanicum Inquisitor, the Adeptus Mechanicus forces that departed did so in early M37, yet only arrived at the Mandeville Point in the system that would be named Ferunus in 781.M38. The fleet had been lost in the warp and suffered multiple Gellar Field failures in what they described as nearly four thousand years of travel recorded by Terran days on their chronometers. Within this long and harrowing journey, many ships of the fleet were lost, and those that remained each banded together to form a distinctly different culture from that of Mars, as well as a new sub-cult of the Cult Mechanicus which placed great emphasis on defending the mind and body against the enemies of the Omnissiah surrounding them within the warp: the Cult of Pure Animus. Generations of leaders and Skitarii soldiers were born, lived, and died among the millions of crew of the fleet. When they finally found an exit from the warp into an unsettled Subsector of the Azuran Sector, they seized upon the chance to enact the "Omega Dagger Directive" emplaced by the First Elder Magi and the now-legendary Inquisitor Zenophon.

Without wasting even a day, the fleet identified the massive, relatively temperate (if cold, rocky, and often icy) tundra-dominated world of Ferunus as being capable of being rendered hospitable to life with minimal atmospheric processing. Its largest peak, a mountain christened Ontol Mons, was the landing site for the fleet and its remaining forgeships. It soon made contact with the relatively nearby Adeptus Astartes world of Azuran, home to the Ordinators Space Marine Chapter. To their concern, they found that the Ordinators themselves were seemingly fixated on the warp, Chaos, and their corruptive capabilities and suffered a blockade while the chapter and an Ordo Malleus and Hereticus Conclave fell upon their new forge-city and vetted its occupants for corruption - only to find that the adherents to the Cult of Pure Animus had long ago learned to detect and eliminate those of their ranks who had begun to show signs of spiritual, mental, or corporeal Chaotic corruption using various new and old technological processes and equipment. The two came to an accord quickly after purity among the founders of Forgeworld Ferunus was verified, and the dominant Inquisitorial Conclave in the Sector began to reach out to the Segmentum Pacificus forge worlds of Artemia Major, Urdesh, and Stygies.

Within four centuries, with the aid of its fellow Adeptus Mechanicus kindred forge worlds and the Ordinators' frequent deliveries of rescued Imperial citizens taken from various warzones across the Imperium, a thriving system of forges, mines, and other critical facility-cities were founded across the barren and cold tundra of Ferunus. In time, the population grew to outstrip the capability of the Forgeworld to provide and find use for them, and the survivors were given to newly constructed, hermetically sealed Hive Cities on its barely hospitable moon, Aroth (which, in time, would grow to both feed the need for human bodies and minds of Ferunus, as well as depending on it for countless necessities and structural expansion).

By M40, Forgeworld Ferunus had grown to the status of a full Adeptus Mechanicus military power in the Segmentum Pacificus with aid from the forge worlds Mars, Stygies, and Graia, primarily. It began its first dispatching of Explorator Fleets tasked with enforcing subdirective tasks of the mysterious "Omega Dagger Directive". Forgeworld Ferunus Skitarii, Robotica, and occasionally Titans, began to scour the unknown expanses forming gaps in the known and settled Imperium seeking information often found in the ruins of worlds once belonging to extinct xenos civilizations. They began to become known for leaving the planets they explored utterly annihilated, often breaking them up through multi-stage melta core detonator torpedoes from their dread Ark Mechanicus, the Omega Katheron. This crusade has proven to have no end in sight, and its leader was afforded a rank equivalent to a Fabricator-Locum on another Forgeworld. His or her importance so great that a system of two Fabricator-Loci were emplaced to ensure the triple duties of Forgeworld industrial Production, the Cult Mechanicus' Quest for Knowledge, and the Cult of Pure Animus' Omega Dagger Directive were never neglected.

Politics and Culture
Forgeworld Ferunus utilizes an unusual governing system as a result of the unique nature of their founding connection to the Ordos Mechanicus, Xenos, and Malleus. As a result of their frequent exposure to artifacts of the warp in their role as finders, cataloguers, and destroyers or containers of baleful warp techno-sorcery, they have have a triumvirate of a Fabricator-General and the two lesser triumvirs that fulfill the traditional role of lieutenants to the administrator of the world that would be filled by a single individual (the Fabricator-Locum) in a traditional Forgeworld hierarchical structure - the Fabricator-Syntir and the Fabricator-Ziton. The Fabricator-General acts as the senior member tasked with the production output of Ferunus, the position currently being held by Aristotle Aleixos. The Fabricator-Ziton is responsible for the exploration and purgation of xenos and warp-based technological caches and recovery of STCs - currently Klymene Lazarus. The Fabricator-Syntir is responsible for the cataloging and protection of sensitive data pertaining to both technology and the warp - currently Olysseia Orpheus. Major decisions affecting the entirety of Forgeworld Ferunus must be approved by a majority of the triumvirs, though each has primacy in their own sphere of responsibility. This is a unique state of affairs as most Forgeworlds rely on a single Fabricator-Locum assisting an autocratic Fabricator-General.

Both the Cult Mechanicus and the Cult of Pure Animus act as state religions on Ferunus, with no heresy (particularly towards the tenets of the Cult of Pure Animus) tolerated by the Tech-Priests or the Skitarii of Macroclade-Alpha. Blasphemy by residents is punishable by sentences in the mines or Servitude Imperpetuitis as a servitor, while heresy and apostasy are punishable by death.

Forgeworld Ferunus maintains close ties with Azuran's Ordinators chapter and the Inquisitorial Conclave Ordinatorum that reside upon it - even maintaining a small orbital forge over the world itself to provide classified and specialized anti-Chaotic equipment and munitions to the chapter. Each new Machinator (Techmarine) of the Ordinators is required to spend a half decade in study on Ferunus after returning from their initial training in Mars, and the Armorius (Master of the Forge) of the chapter is expected to attend another half decade of even more specialized training. The result is a particularly strong influence by the culture of Forgeworld Ferunus in the practice of operating and venerating technology in the Ordinators.

Defensive Forces
The forge world's military forces consist of a wide variety of types of forces, the mainstay of which is the highly specialized Skitarii Legion Macroclades and their Legio Cybernetica Support.

Skitarii Legion Omega -
The Skitarii legion of Ferunus is divided into two primary forces and four Macroclades of which each constitutes a special-tasks corps. Each in turn contains 4 Cohorts, each of which contains 3 Maniples - a common operating unit for the legion, though full cohorts are also deployed at times. The Aegium Macroclades; those tasked with the protection of the Forgeworld itself, and the Sarrisium Macroclade; tasked with manning Explorator fleets and other missions and crusades to recover lost knowledge the Forgeworld might undertake. Both utilize heavy amounts of Rangers, Vanguard, Sicarians, Ironstrider walkers, and heavy neutron laser and icarus-array Onagers, as well as Kastelan robots and Kataphron battle-servitors. Legio Omega is well known for its prolific usage of Fury starfighters and Starhawk bombers crewed by well-trained and commanded Skitarii crews as well.

The Legion consists of the following units:

Aegium Macroclades

Macroclade Alpha (MC-Α) - Forge Defense Corps

Macroclade Gamma - (MC-Γ) Menial Control Corps

Macroclade Delta (MC-Δ) - Tech-Priest Guard Corps

Sarrisium Macroclade

Macroclade Omega (MC-Ω)- Explorator-Purgation Corps

Ordinatus Stratos Ultima -
The Centurio Ordinatus of Forgeworld Ferunus contains a Maniple-sized crew element of Skitarii Rangers, Peltasts, Tech-Priests, and 6 super-heavy archeotech weapons mounted on treaded chassis. Each is offensively far more powerful than any standard superheavy tank available to Imperial forces, and each god machine is treated with tremendous reverence - its machine spirits appeased daily with offerings of sacred oil, incense, and daily prayers - and only utilized in times of dire need. Each Maniple is divided into 3 Cohorts of 2 Ordinatus weapons. Two are archeotech models brought from Mars in the original colonization, while the remaining four are of a subtype known as the Ordinatus Pyriox created by Forgeworld Ferunus itself in the Defensor Mons Forge - each protected by powerful void shields, and armed with four twin Mauler-pattern Boltcannons and its primary weapon - a strange weapon that fires like a mortar delivering strange and arcane rounds containing an unknown incendiary substance that seems to create an air pressure change that can produce raging storms of huge light blue fire-whirls that burn hot enough to melt almost any type of armor within meters of each tornado. No more than one Ordinatus Cohort is usually deployed away from the Forgeworld at any given time.

The Stratos Ultima contains the following Ordinati by Cohort:

 Cohort Lakaidaemika (C-  Λ)

Daedalos - Ordinatus Sagittar

Byzantia - Ordinatus Pyriox

 Cohort Athenaia (C-A) 

Hader - Ordinatus Pyriox

Dykaios - Ordinatus Pyriox

 Cohort Makedonias (C-Ή) 

Basileus - Ordinatus Ulator

Alexandros - Ordinatus Pyriox

Stoliskos Omega -
The two-part fleet of Forgeworld Ferunus. Like the Skitarii, it is divided into two Stoulos: an Aegium and and Sarissium, where the former comprises roughly 75% of the voidcraft of the Forgeworld while the latter operates as a single, powerful unit. It consists of the following:

HOPLON MESH Network -
HOPLON MESH is an interconnected planetary defense grid that covers the entirety of the Forgeworld with some way or another. Orbital mines, held in place in between two gravitational repulsor fields, cover most areas except specific entry and exit lanes used by voidship traffic between Ferunus and the rest of the Imperium. Massive hexagonal shield generators linked by anti-voidship and point defense turrets interlock in great, expansive blocks that cover areas the size of continents at specific regions of the atmosphere that overhang the most populated and strategically important places on the Forgeworld. Massive networks of nanofiber cables utilizing disruptor field technology stretch across most of the rest of the network beneath the mine layer to shred apart ships as small as small shuttles trying to illicitly land on the world's surface. Those ships that pass through powerful enough to plow ahead and snap the cables will may find themselves detonating the tripwires for massive nuclear charges set at both predictable and random points in the HOPLON MESH. Powerful defensive stations are set into orbits that see them rotating over major facilities and underground mag-rail tunnels, and patrols of Fury Interceptors and Sunhawk Bombers often patrol various areas of interest.

Personnel of Note

 * Fabricator-General Aristotle Aleixos: The current Senior Triumvir of Ferunus and the man responsible for
 * Fabricator-Syntir Olysseia Orpheus
 * Fabricator-Ziton Klymene Lazarus
 * Arch-Magos Biologis Neuralis
 * Arch-Magos Dominus
 * Arch-Magos Biologis Xenologis
 * Magos-Explorator

Ontol Mons Forge
The primary and most productive forge of Ferunus is built into the "Ontol Mons" - a mountain twice as large as the famous Terran "Everest Mountain" in the Himalazyian range that houses the Imperial Palace itself. The fleet of the founders was repurposed into the first machines and defensive fortifications for the forge, and remnants of the hulls of several ships can still be made out among the forge's skyline. Stretching kilometers into the air and more than 30 below the surface and across nearly all of the slopes, it is a truly immense city-factory. It is primarily responsible for the production of standard Imperial weapons, armor, munitions, vehicles, aircraft, and parts of voidcraft to be assembled in orbital drydocks either above the Forgeworld or in the Azuran Sub-Sector with the Imperial Navy Star Fortress. It is known for the high quality of its plasma weaponry (utilizing patterns adopted from Ryza), but is primarily renowned for its mastery of the art and science of creating Imperial energy shielding - particularly refractor and displacer fields.

The Asterios Redoubt
The primary military garrison for the Skitarii Legio Omega and Titan Legio Clipeus as well as Ordinatus Stratos Ultima. Approximately half of the forge world's military forces man the Redoubt at any one moment, each utilizing their time there to undergo constant, intensive periods of training lasting months or even years for some unit types and training regimens. Extremely advanced holotech and pre-fabricated training environments is used to create realistic simulated combat training scenarios, alongside many firing ranges for everything from Galvanic Rifles to Titan Volcano Rifles. A military Schola trains all Skitarii, Ordinatus, and Titan crews for their initial training as well. Additionally, the Asterios Redoubt is equipped with titanic anti-voidship Magnaneutron Laser Destroyer Cannon batteries as well as both Fusion and Vortex Missile launch silos capable of destroying threats ranging from ground-based armies anywhere on the planet to attacking battleships in orbit.

Castle Thoden
An isolated redoubt hidden within a mountain range more than 3,300km from Ontol Mons, Castle Thoden functions as a small fiefdom for the Mechanicus-aligned Quaestor House of Thoden. The House - which was once threatened with extinction following the subsumption of their homeworld in the Cicatrix Maledictum where they were brutalized by the Iron Warriors and Dark Mechanicus forces - was invited by the Triumvirate of the Fabricators to resettle in safety on the world in safety. With the help of Tech-Priest Enginseers and Arch Magi from Forgeworld Urdesh, the wreckage of over 130 Knight frames were repaired to functionality. Though this has left them at less than a third of their previous strength, they have accepted this aid with tremendous gratitude and devoted themselves to the Omega Dagger Directive since learning of its true intent. The members of the house fervently observe the rites and rituals of the Cult of Pure Animus with zealous dedication. House Thoden also maintains its own prometheum refineries as well as iron, tin, copper and ruby mines on the land gifted to it, as well as producing foodstuffs within biodomes-towns along the periphery of the mountains the Castle itself is located in - giving it a way to achieve financial stability and maintain its Knight war engines.

Mine Anilipsium
Considered the least unpleasant of the primary mining city-complexes of Ferunus by the menials who have worked at more than one - Mine Anilipsium is a sprawling, enclosed facility stretching deep into diamond and sapphires found in colossal quantities spread throughout the crust of the planet, it is constantly under construction as more and more shafts are opened to reach the deposits as well as more recently discovered copper veins. It produces vast quantities of key raw materials used for diamantine, ceramite, and electroconductive wire through primarily servitor and automaton labor. It’s alumina production (a crucial compound used in the production of ceramite) exceeds the output of the nearest three Imperial Sectors combined - a result of its sapphire processing. Fabricator-General Aleixo has calculated its present output quota as being maintainable for at least 13 more centuries based on known reserves in the massive planet.

Mine Timoria
Uranium, aluminum, calcium, and phosphorous are the primary solid elements mined in this location. Several noble gasses and reagents for chemical weapons are also collected from deep subterranean deposits as well. The death rate among menials and servitors working in the gas deposits are high, and there is daily turnover within the servile workforce. Miners who commit moderate infractions in Anilipsium are frequently transported to Timoria, as well as criminals such as murderers and blasphemers imported from offworld. A massive underground mag-rail freight train system connects Timoria, Anilipsium, and several outlying hubs in Mons Mors to Ontol Mons Forge with the line's primary junction located just under the surface of the center of the complex.

Mons Mors Mine
Also known as the ”Trimeta” by the Underhive dwellers of the Hiveworld Moon of Aroth rotating Ferunus (and generally spoken of as a fate worse than death among them). The Mon Mors facility is an adamantium, silicon, and iron mining complex the size of a small nation built into a huge mountain range emerging from the largest extra-continental island of the world - Mons Mors serves as the harshest penal mine on Ferunus for human criminals (often taken from within the Azuran Sector, particularly the Hiveworld of Aroth) and captives taken in battle against worlds that have fallen from Imperial compliance in the possession of valuable archeotech and STCs, or, worse, those who have impeded the efforts of Ferunus' shadowy Omega Dagger Directive exploratory and retrieval missions. Mortality is high, and each prisoner's mining production is tracked under the watch of cold and uncaring Skitarii Vanguard, Rangers, Sicarian Ruststalkers, and Robotica of the Gamma Macroclade - the Menial Control Corps. Thousands of prisoners are shipped in and hundreds of dead are recycled into mineral reclamation vats on site every week. The bottom 10% of producers in any given production year are turned into servitors, while the top 10% are permitted to join the Skitarii Legion of Forgeworld Ferunus. It is a bleak and brutal place, but offers a steady source of hardened and brutal troops to thank the Omnissiah for their liberation by fighting in his name.

Omnipharmakon
A colossal domed metropolis-sized facility where hundreds of square kilometers of tiered, genetically-modified farmland are tended by servitors and menials to produce the raw material for the nutrient block and gel rations that sustain the inhabitants of the Forgeworld, as well as thousands of species of flora from across the Imperium (and even now-extirpated Terran plants) from which medically useful alkaloids and other pharmacologically active chemical constituents are extracted, refined, and distributed among the Arch Magi Biologis of the world, and Medicae and Apothecaries of many others throughout the Azuran Sector and Segmentum Pacificus. Synthetic drugs are also developed and discovered in massive Alchemia Manufactoria facilities. It is notable for being one of the most restrictive facilities on the world to gain access to due to the need for sterility, with Skitarii Vanguard and other servants of the Machine-God who serve under the affliction of baleful rad energies being prohibited from entry. A widely respected Schola-Collegium is located in a campus within the facility, with the most talented Magi Biologis, Hospitallers, and Medicae from all over the Imperium being invited to tea h and study there regularly. Omnicillin, seraphine and gigaphazepam are the most produced medications made in the Omnipharmakon - all three drugs being crucial to battlefield medicine and surgical induction and post-operative care.

Aquagenesor
The primary source of potable water for a quarter billion people. It is a desalination plant the size of a small nation along the coast of one of the warmer continental ocean coasts (on a planet that is barely 30% water). Water mag-lev freight trains run over 9,000km to the junction at Mine Timoria twice daily, each carrying hundreds of millions of liters of water to be distributed to the potable water supply tanks of each forge and facility. It is overseen by a relatively benevolent committee of Magi, Logi, and Enginseers and is considered a highly desirable post by menials for its merely 12 hour working days, relatively comfortable barracks, and rations supplemented by seafood caught by the menials in their 4 hours of permitted free time each day.