Nidavellir
Nidavellir is a hive world in the Ultima Segmentum, a crucible of heavy industry and the ceaseless production that fuels the Imperium’s endless wars. Described as “an ashtray stuffed with factories” by the Colonel of the 13th Elysian Drop Troops during a brief visit for cross-training and resupply, outsiders come away with the impression of crowded tunnels, pounding forges and ever permeating ash and dust. Its three major hives, containing a third of the population, were once dug into mountains, but have over time come to replace the geological features, now standing as part of the mountain chains around them. Surrounding these massive, ancient complexes are smaller hive spires and agglomerations, home to billions more. The landscape may once have been beautiful, with meandering rivers, verdant floodplains and snow-peaked mountains, but these days all that is found outside the walls of the hive cities are ash wastes, ruins and dangerous mutants.
On Nidavellir it is said that in ages past, their planet was famed for its natural beauty, and offered a utopian existence to all that set foot upon it. All this ended during the Horus Heresy. Nidavellir had remained a loyal subject to the emperor and was in the process of mobilizing its brave men to guard Terra from the Arch-Traitor, when a warfleet of the Iron Warriors legion translated out of the immaterium. The murderous rebels did not stop to invade Nidavellir, only seeking to deny its vast resources to the loyalists. To this end, they immediately unleashed a devastating barrage of viral and chemical weapons, designed to destroy every living thing on the planet. For all its idyll, however, Nidavellir was equipped to protect the Emperor’s subjects, and many hundreds of thousands found refuge in sealed bunkers, transit stations equipped with blast doors and bombardment shelters. When these survivors left their refuges though, they found a changed planet - no living thing remained on the surface. Billions of humans, countless animals and all plant life had been turned into toxic ashes by the Iron Warriors' devastating, Chaos-given weapons. These survivors swore vengeance upon all traitors, vowing to annihilate all worshippers of the dark gods whatever the cost and to rebuild their planet into a massive forge, to provide them with the means of doing so.
Every couple of centuries, a scholar, archivist or particularly bookish noble claims to find another tale of Nidavellir, however. One where the planet is indeed a garden world, ruled by an assembly of citizens during a golden age of peace and progress, later reduced to an ash waste by planetary bombardment with terrible weapons. However, in their findings, this would take place during the Great Crusade, after Nidavellir declined to join the Emperor’s realm, and the scouring was carried out by the Iron Hands legion, not the Iron Warriors. Such rank treachery and falseness has, however, always been quickly stamped out by both the iron fist of the Trifectum and, in particularly dire cases, the always-alert gaze of the Inquisition, for such fanciful tales serve no purpose other than to lead loyal subjects astray and bring the blight of rebellion to Nidavellir.
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