Humbalious

Humbalious is a large, wet, and dreary terrestrial ocean world, home to the great floating hive city of Grimsbeck, and the breeding grounds for a vast variety of colossal, deadly, but sought after oceanic creatures, known to the locals as leviathans. It is also the recruiting world for Grim Wardens space marine chapter. The weather of Humbalious consists of eternal overcast, with frequent downpours, despite this, the temperature can range from 25°C to -35°C depending on the season and location. Through planetary surveys and minimal exploration attempts, a vast underwater cavern structure has been detected that runs throughout the subsurface of the ocean floor, creating a vast network of caves that expose accessible rare ore that’s are ripe for mining. The rings of Humbalious are rich in scheelite, an ore of tungsten, this combined with the parent red dwarf star creates a beautiful purple glow in the rings that can be seen from the surface of the planet. The glowing rings in combination with the planet’s glistening auroras gives quite a breath-taking view from orbit. One oddity about Humbalious is its psychic dampening effect that stretches all the way to the outer edges of the Envantis system, with the strongest dampening being within the oceans of the planet itself, where it’s a complete null zone, causing any attempted exploration of the depths to be a disgusting and slow experience to anyone that tries, and anyone that falls into the water to go mad, or painfully die. Humbalious has around 22 moons, however, the largest and most important one being Imminghar, home of the adeptus astartes chapter, the Grim Wardens, who have weaponised and fortified the moon as the first defence against potential invasions. With such a large moon so close to the planet, large tidal variations and heavy asteroid showers are common, and so being occasionally problematic for the residents of the planet.

Geography

The only notable population centre of the planet is the humongous floating hive city of Grimsbeck. Except for the unfortunate few stationed in the underwater mining outposts, the hive city of Grimsbeck is home to almost all of the 1.26 trillion humans on the planet, resulting in a much more overpopulated and poverty stricken hive city compared to others, this creates a crime rate rivalling even Necromunda. The combination of 10 millennia of rationing, privation, and pauperism have created a hardy but bitter people, that work hard in the workshops and manufactures to support their families, then spending their free time hunting the extremely dangerous sea life of Humbalious, for both food and profits, as a large number of families from all around the city come together to create ramshackle oceanic fleets that attempt to track, chase, and kill the leviathans. As the city floats around the planet, travelling from outpost to outpost, people are selected at random to be part of a mining replacement team. These teams are put into action when the city docks to a mining outpost that’s ready for collection. They are then sent down into the depths of the ocean to fulfil their mining duty. A mining group can be down in an outpost from a few months to decades, suffering with no daylight and stuck with disgusting nutrition paste as they are forced to mine until their pickup. Due to the psychic dampening effect of the planet, as well as their unkempt appearance, the people of Grimsbeck are generally unpleasant to be around as outsiders often feel nauseous when trading on the planet. A consequence of this is that the people of Humbalious are so disliked that they still pay tithe, even though they are an astartes recruiting world. However, the psychic dampening also affects people themselves, dimming their soul, and making them incredibly psychically dull, so not even demons want to possess them, allowing a world surprisingly clean of any chaos corruption. Despite this, the planet's mining outposts are rife with madness and confusion, often leading to devastating mining accidents as the weak willed succumb to the psychic void that entombs the mining outposts.

Government

The government of Grimsbeck consists of a single planetary governor, looking over representatives from all 650 districts that are within the great city. The representatives form the Great Grimsbeckian Council, where decisions, laws, and the future of the city are proposed and discussed, to be then sent off to the planetary governor to approve or refuse the proposal. As well as being in the Grimsbeckian council, the representatives look over their own districts and attempt to maintain order while keeping the food and refined exports flowing. The planetary governor does many jobs, such as appointing a counsellor if one dies, as well as leading the bridge to pick the next destination for the city. In general, the planetary governor is the absolute ruler of the city and its people.The current planetary governor is a fierce elderly woman known as: The Steel Lady, who is the head of the government and the planetary defence force.

Natural Resources

The city of Grimsbeck heavily exports refined rare ores gained from their underwater outposts, and processed in the city, as well as a large amount of fish meat harvested from the gigantic leviathans of the planet’s oceans by the citizens and their fleets. The relationship the hive city has with the Grim Wardens is not exactly a unique one, for protection from xenos, heretics and other threats, the Grim Wardens can recruit freely off the planet. Absolutely anyone from the highest standing counsellor’s son to a crafty slum child, anyone they deem has potential is taken. Despite the protection of the Grim Wardens and their fleet, the people of Grimsbeck are no pushovers, with the Humbalian 501st Regiment numbering 100 million soldiers strong, and the planetary defence force numbering in the billions, combined, they are a force to be reckoned with. Due to the psychic dampening caused by the planet,the systems Mandeville Points are extremely far away from the planets. This generates a huge amount of lag in import and export times, which regularly cost the traders billions of imperial thrones, resulting in a strained relationship between the city and its off world traders. One of the only reasons trade continues is the vast mineral wealth of Humbalious and the exotic leviathans, though some say that the real reason is that none of the traders wish the displeasure of the Steel Lady.

History

The planet was discovered by the 28th Expedition Fleet, while it was still under Magnus the Red’s command. The fleet was drawn to the system due to the strange psychic anomaly. The small hive city, it was quickly brought to compliance and thoroughly investigated by the Thousand Sons. After some time investigating the planet's strange properties, the Expedition Fleet moved on. Soon after, trade routes were opened, and the city started to exponentially grow, allowing millions of mining outposts to be deployed across the ocean floor. This stopped as soon as the Horus Heresy kicked off, with trade halting, causing the economy to stagnate, but the high population growth remained. Due to the psychic dampening present in the system, as well as being an unimportant planet, no Imperium forces were seen until after the Horus Heresy ended. The next time Humbalious saw action was during the “Blitz of Grimsbeck”, where in the year 988.M35, a Thousand Sons warband suddenly attacked the city. Due to the complacency and ignorance of the Planetary Governor at the time, the city was caught by surprise and suffered a devastating orbital bombardment. While the city did manage to get its void shields up due to the bravery of a few guardsmen, the warband responded by sending heretic Astartes via drop pods to disable the city defences, before landing cultists to help overwhelm the PDF. While the warband’s goals were unknown, they seemed quite keen to get their hands on the Archeotech Generator at the Hive Cities core, which allows the city to float. With the sacrifice of the ignorant Governor to buy time, and the strategic mind of General Cole Mastull, the PDF rendezvoused to protect the Archeotech Generator, resulting in a bloody last stand for the guardsmen. As all seemed lost, the Grim Wardens space marine chapter arrived, as loyal Astartes landed to eradicate the traitors, and the Grim Wardens’ fleet engaged the chaos ships blockading the planet. Towards the end, General Cole Mastull was told this was now the Grim Wardens’ recruiting planet, and they’ll set up their homeworld on the moon of Imminghar. For General Cole Mastull’s bravery, he would be promoted to planetary governor, in addition to keeping his role as the general of the PDF, creating the tradition of the Planetary Governor being general of the PDF.
Over the next few millennia, not much happened to the planet, as they slowly rebuilt from the Blitz of Grimsbeck. Over the years, many heretical rumours were spreading about the underwater mining outposts. In the 42nd Millennium, the Inquisition caught wind of these rumours and launched an investigation, and when the Inquisition arrived, they spent no time dithering and sent down teams to look into the rumours and kill any heretics. Through a series of unfortunate events, hostile actions and ill-fated discoveries, the Inquisition managed to upset a huge cult, who decided the time for revolution was now. This became known as “The Cryptogenic Revolt''. With half the planet revolting, the Inquisition saw fit to arrange for the planet’s exterminatus, causing the Grim Wardens to intervene, resulting in a standoff between the Inquisition and the Grim Wardens. Just before it escalated, the Steel Lady intevined, and proposed a plan that was so strategically brilliant, that she persuaded the Inquisition to stop their plans for Exterminatus, thus breaking the tense standoff. Through this revolt, the Imperial Guards and Grim Wardens saw horrors most couldn’t even imagine, from hordes of cultists that were becoming increasingly minacious as time went on, to creatures more terrifying and vile than anything the warp could muster. Finally, after 10 years, with 1 trillion lives lost, including half the Grim Wardens and a few Inquisitors, the rebellion had been crushed. Afterwards, the Inquisition left, as the Grim Wardens and the people of Grimsbeck were left behind to rebuild their city. To this day, no one knows who created the cult or who led it, however, one inquisitor remained. He has made it his mission to find out what gave rise to these new cultists and who or what caused this devastating rebellion.
At the current time, the city is slowly being rebuilt, with war exhaustion high, and the rebellion still lingering in the citizens minds, everyone is a bit uneasy about the future. However, with the Steel Lady still in charge, and her Guardsman supporting her, she guarantees a prosperous future.

Segmentum
Segmentum Tempestus
Sector
Juriah
System
Envantis
Population
1.26 Trillion
Affiliation
Imperium
Class
Hive World, Ocean World, Adeptus Astartes Recruiting World
Tithe Grade
Exactis Particular