Maurya

Maurya is a large jungle/hive world with binary moons located in the Segmentum Tempestus. The bigger of its moons is totally covered in industrial cityscape, it is used as a small forge moon so that maurya can retain some of its natural beauty. The smaller moon is close enough to the planet to have a weak but breathable atmosphere, it has been converted for use as a orbital fortress to keep out the xenos raiders that are often seen in the systems outskirts. Besides its moons Maurya also has a handful of orbital colonies to offset there overcrowed surface. Maurya is also in control of the rest of its system and several locations outside of it like the Kazamer system, these holdings are mostly mining and other resource interests but they are all dotted with defense batteries and sensor stations.

Praetorian Occupation
Long before the great crusade Mauryas most powerful neighbor, Praetoria, ruled over the mauryans for hundreds of years and brutally exploited them for there resources and labor as well as for pleasure hunting in there jungles. This ended when the mauryans revolted and were able to beat the praetorian regiments sent to end the uprising. ​to this day regiments form these planets HATE each other and often it ends up with bloodshed if they are near each other.

For a time the new government did its best to fix the damage done to them but eventually much of the exploitive actions were repeated to make more money and power for the Sultans and nobles that made up the top tier of the Castes.

Great Crusade & Horus Heresy
During the crusade millions of mauryans fought with honor and there famous fearlessness for the Emperor of Mankind...as well as the warmaster. When pyskers belonging to the Thuggi heard pyschic rumors of possible chaos within the warmaster they had there highest ranking spy within the forces under his direct control conduct a meeting with horus where they came to an alliance, the thuggi would disrupt Maurya so that it could not bring its regiments to bear in the coming siege of Holy Terra. Thuggi assassins struck around the same time the Istvaan V massacre was happening, killing senior officers loyal to the emperor and anyone else they could find that was a loyalist.

Though they did disrupt the Mauryans ability to fully commit to its defense a large battleship, the venerable Shivea's Wrath, fully loaded with dropships was able to reach Terra and deployed its regiments before a titan legion was able to hit the weakest flank of the palace defense. the ship itself provided oribtal weapon support to the ground forces up to the death of Horus. it then participated in the Great Scouring where the ship harassed chaos warships up to the Eye of Terror. This ship is stil the flagship for the Mauryan PDF fleet & is still used to put down the myriad of raiders in the nearby sectors.

Current Threats
A more recently made and less violent rivalry is with Tallarn. It is over control of the Kazamer system and its main planetoid called KazamerVI, it is a small alpine moon of a resource rich gas giant that is currently held by Maurya though tallarn decended locals in the area constantly harass the mauryan guardsman.

The biggest current local threat to maurya is its close proximity to ork held space and the raids that come from it to hit the asteroid mines and outlying systems, after an ork WAAAGH dropped from orbit about 400 years ago and destroyed one of the southern hives and outlying jungle before being stopped.

On a much lesser note is eldar raiders from both variants have also been sighted trying to establish covert bases in the planets jungle. Unknown to the human colonists millions of years ago the planet was a garden world used to hide relics in sealed temples hidden amongst the undergrowth of the jungle, before being left to over terraform as a way to further hide the temples. These power within the relics could be used to rip open reality to the warp or blast apart a webway branch.

SOCIETY
The leader is called a Sultan and he is treated as a king from the capital hive of Magadrha. He rules over a rigid caste system with little if any room for personal advancement or bettering of life, this pushes many poor youth to join the guard or Navy as a way out. Officers are recruited from the noble elite though are expected to perform without fail and without fear or face punishment just like the soldiers under them.

The main cultural grouping on Maurya are the Sekh who are the majority overall and are mostly found in the hives. though most Mauryans believe in Sekhism the other groupings have there own spin on it that keeps them seperate. Guraka is a catch all term for the various hardy mountain people that tend to keep to themselves and have a prominent ancestor worship instead of saints. The Rajjut are the jungle dwelling people who live in walled palace comounds in the jungles as multi family clans and are the main explorers and traders for the mulitude of ingrediants found there, they have prominent nature worship along with the saints.

Appearance & Clothing
For the most part all mauryans are dark skinned with black hair and eyes due to the original colonists being from the indian subcontinent and the surrounding countries. It is vey common for them to have thick & well groomed facial hair styled with curled mustaches and beards reaching well past there chin. Normal clothing is a mix of older style robes and tunics with modern fashion. Often they will dress ornately when possible with jewelry, tattoos & body painting, hair beads, and gilded augmetics when needed.

Religion
the people mixed there original religion of gods & philisophical mysticism with that of the imperial creed to create there sanctioned offshoot called Sekhism. this offshoot has strong saint worship as well as the addition of another dozen saints from there history, also they believe that worthy followers can be reincarnated. Several other variants of Sekhism exists within the Guraka and Rajjut tribes. Overall the Mauryans are a pious people in there own way but the dark secret of the culture is that they have long battled a cult of chaos fanatics called the Thuggi, they used to have there own walled jungle cities prior to the Horus Heresy but these have been destroyed. Now they operate and recruit from the underhives and a various network of fronts all over the planet as a secet society bent on world domination in service to chaos undivided.

Part of this problem is that mauryans seem to have double the average amount of pyskers born there, a fact the Inquisition is well aware of. Some of the old ways influence is the acceptance of pyskers as a type of shaman or guru, this caused some friction with the inquisition but in the end they always give there share to the blackships as well as already trained sanctioned pyskers for the imperial guard so they are allowed to practice these ideals.