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Jove's Descent

History

 
Jove's Descent landscape

Believed to be named for the Rogue Trader Hadrian Jove, in the days of the Great Crusade, this world was the explorer’s final resting place. His dying command, legend has it, was to send a distress signal to alert one of the Expedition Fleets operating near the region, to summon the forces of Imperium and purge it of the Xenos that infested it.[3]

Jove’s Descent, like many worlds in the region, was in the clutches of the Ghanathaar, an advanced, ancient nonhumanoid xenos breed who were believed to have suffered some cataclysm millennia before to rob them of much of their former power. Little now remains that refers to the Ghanathaar, save for a few scattered references in the archives of the Blood Angels and Ultramarines, and the myths of those who now dwell on Jove’s Descent. As part of a protracted campaign of extermination, the Blood Angels forces made landing on Jove’s Descent, waging a deadly war with the xenos inhabitants that cost the lives of thousands of Battle-Brothers. The details of this conflict are, alas, unknown to the modern Imperium, and even the Blood Angels themselves have little in the way of lore that speaks of the battles there. What is certain is that the Sons of Sanguinius eventually triumphed, scouring the world of the xenos that infested it, and soon after departed the Jericho Reach for reasons unknown.[3]

The centuries that followed saw the Jericho Reach transformed into a fully fledged and loyal sector of the Imperium, and by late M31, the first attempts to colonise Jove’s Descent were made. In the four millennia between the Jericho Sector’s founding and the Age of Shadow, eleven distinct attempts to establish colonies on Jove’s Descent were made, none of which were successful. Each colony fell afoul of some disaster that left only desperate survivors, reverting to an atavistic state in the untamed wilds after as little as a generation.[3]

In 814.M41 Jove's Descent began suffering a series of disappearances, which drew the attention of the Deathwatch's Watch Fortress Erioch due to their suspicious nature. A Kill-Team was sent to investigate the matter and placed a stasis trap to catch the culprit. However when it activated, the Kill-Team could find nothing inside of it. Since they were unable to find fault with the device, they transferred the stasis trap to Erioch's Xenos Bestiarium for further study. It is now believed that the trap caught an Unknown Genus of the Tyranid species, which has exceptional chameleon-like powers.[2]

Culture

The prevalent civilisation on Jove’s Descent cannot easily be defined as any single culture, but rather as a collection of different tribes scattered across the planet’s surface. To date, the Adeptus Ministorum has catalogued only a fraction of the different tribal structures and belief systems to be found on Jove’s Descent. However, amidst that, a number of common themes have been observed.[3]

A noteworthy proportion of the tribes observed seem to fall within one of two main categories: those who worship a primary deity analogous to the God-Emperor, as some remnant of pre-Age of Shadow Imperial civilisation, and those who appear to have fallen to worship of beings believed to be either the Ruinous Powers or the Ghanathaar. Other belief systems exist outside of these groups, but cannot be so easily categorised.[3]

Notable Locations

Angels’ Landing

A large clearing in the jungles on the north-eastern continent, Angel’s Landing appears little different to countless other locations across Jove’s Descent but for the crudely wrought totems and signs that adorn the clearing’s edge. Each of these adornments bears familiar imagery—angelic figures clad in gold and crimson, the double-headed eagle, and the mailed fist clutching a pair of lightning bolts—reminiscent of the Imperium in general and the Blood Angels in particular.[3]

Local tribes regard the clearing as a site of religious veneration, their priests—understood by Imperial scholars to be psykers almost without exception—visiting it to commune with “the Angels” who they claim once walked upon the world. Angels’ Landing, they believe, is the place where these Angels first set foot upon Jove’s Reach.[3]

Given the strong psychic presence possessed by many Astartes, and the psychic phenomena so common to Jove’s Descent, it seems likely that the Angels’ Landing was actually a landing site for the Blood Angels strike force that fought there during the Great Crusade, their presence imprinted upon the world. The psychic shamans that guide the disparate tribes seem to possess the ability to discern these psychic echoes, gaining insight into a war that happened more than ten thousand years before, of which little record remains.[3]

The Hollow Lands

The ancient and war-shattered ruins of a xenos city-fortress, these broken structures litter an area more than seventy kilometres across. The region is a twisted and corrupted place, covered in dry, ashen earth and black, thorny, twisted foliage, grown over the ruins of black glass structures that are said to have once dominated the horizon.[3]

The local tribes refer to this place as the Hollow Lands, and regard it with great fear and superstition, with only the shamanic priesthood setting foot within its boundaries willingly, as a rite of passage and a test of prowess against the shades and revenants that haunt it.[3]

The ruins that litter the Hollow Lands are thought to have come from one of the fortresses of the Ghanathaar, torn asunder by the Blood Angels during their war so long ago. Whatever dark science or foul sorcery the Ghanathaar employed during the height of their civilisation corrupted the land around the tower when the structure was destroyed, leaving a soulless and unnatural place, haunted by psychic echoes of the warriors who fought to destroy it, and the creatures that opposed them.[3]

See Also

Sources

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