The Tellian Sector: Bhadra System

The Bhadra System: Overview

The Bhadra system is a K-type orange dwarf located in the Cinders subsector of the Tellian Sector. It has three main planets and an asteroid belt. Kangyur is a highly-geologically-active temperate agri-world orbiting around 0.77 AU from Bhadra, while Kailasa is a geologically-dead colder hive world located 2.2 AU from the star. Bhadra Tertius is an uninhabited gas giant located outside of the asteroid belt.

Bhadra is a former Varosi system that was pacified in late M38 by the Imperial Fleet. At the end of pacification, the entire population of Kangyur and the system's central government was removed through the use of atomic bombardment, while Kailasa's government was replaced with Imperial collaborators drawn from collaborators amongst the traditional elites.

An Explorator Fleet was sent to investigate the post-atomic state of the world, and discovered the dranj fungus, which had flourished in the absence of human civilisation. This led to the chartering of several large corporations to fully exploit its potential, the same corporations that now rule the planet.

Kangyur

Population: 110 million (counting 3 million in orbital facilities)
Leader: Planetary Castellan Timon Arceaga
Government: Autonomous megacorporate protectorates under Imperial coordination
Capital: Vajra Station (orbital)
Stability: 80%

Holo-Illumination of Kangyur (Bhadra Secundus)

Kangyur is classified as an agri-world, but unlike most agri-worlds it produces very little food. Instead, the planet is dedicated to cultivating the dranj fungus and its promethium output. 

Dranj is of unknown origin, though it is believed to be of archaeotech rootstock, perhaps mutated by radiation. In the presence of sufficient heat energy, the fungus converts carbon dioxide and salt water into large amounts of promethium (and several waste products that are easily removed during refining). After the extraction of promethium, older, less productive fungus deposits can be easily milled into a low-quality bioplastic feedstock suitable for civilian manufactures. 

Dranj means that Kangyur alone produces hundreds of giga-tons of promethium per Terran year, at a lower cost than almost any other source, and can do so renewably for millennia to come, so long as water-ice comets are regularly diverted from Bhadra's Oort Cloud to replenish its oceans. This incredibly level of production is possible despite only 40% of all land area given over to it, though there is incredible pressure to expand production further into more marginal and dangerous areas.

The vast majority of dranj farms and promethium transportation infrastructure are owned by a handful of megacorporations who employ the bulk of the planetary population. Dranj farms are typically underground boreholes cut into the sides of the once-spectacular canyons and gorges that cover the planet, both to take advantage of cheap geothermal energy and to protect against the radioactive winds.

Key Locations

Dhawala: Kangyur's largest continent, its northern highlands are the centre of dranj production while its southern reaches are a radioactive wasteland primarily inhabited by small religious groups and ash waste nomads fleeing corporate rule.

Nyengchen: The new gold rush is for territory in Nyengchen, Kangyur's southern continent. Previously unexploited due to geological instability and heavy radiation, the Imperial government has decided to resolve both issues by simply bombarding the landscape with comets, burying the problems under billions of tons of meteoric dirt and selling new stakes. Nyengchen's coastal settlements, home to many of the small, independent mining guilds and combines, are deeply opposed to this plan, while the megacorps are engaged in a range war further inland.

Varosi Ruins: Most of Varosi civilisation's traces have been wiped out on Kangyur, but two ruined megacities remain, one on each of the two smaller continents. The ruins sprawl for thousands of kilometres, and at their highest points are over 5km tall, even in their ruined state. Dozens of small prospecting combines brave the radiation, toxic waste, and robotic defenders in exchange for lucrative contracts from the Adeptus Mechanicus, hoping to strike it rich by returning with still intact Varosi artifacts.

Vajra Station & Anchor Point: The two ends of Kangyur's space elevator. Vajra Station is the "buckle" of the Glass Belt ring-garden encircling Kangyur's orbital equator. It is a large tiered conical structure with dozens of ships docked with it on any given day, sucking millions of tons of promethium into their holds. Planetary Castellan Timon Arceaga, as well as most of the Imperial bureaucracy and the military authorities, are based here, well-off planet.

Vajra Anchor Point is the heart of the planet's promethium infrastructure and its largest settlement (30 million). Built as a sprawling concrete and metal maze, it is split into concentric circles arrayed around the glittering black pillar of the elevator. The megacorporations and their shared institutions are headquartered here, and there is a decorum that keeps the open violence of the range war out of the city. It is the only truly urban zone on the planet, and many smaller businesses who serve the needs of the megacorps are based here.

The Glass Belt: A set of linked cylindrical glass garden-stations that encircle Kangyur's equator, the Glass Belt grows almost all food eaten on Kangyur, and as much as 0.2% of the food Kailasa's hives require. It is a smuggler's dream, allowing all sorts of shuttles and ships to dock on the other side of the planet from the prying eyes of the Imperium at Vajra Station.

Major Institutions and Personnel

Political: The Kailasan nobility want Kangyur as their own private colony to maximize their profits, while the Administratum just wants brutal efficiency and every ounce of promethium obtained as cheaply as possible. This puts Castellan Timon Arceaga, representing Kailasa's rulers, House Bagh-Nam, at odds with Magistrate Octavia Prex, Tithe Prefectus of the Administratum. She controls the Imperial Bank of Kangyur and the tithe-inspection system, while he dominates the Corporate Parliament through his control of the Kangyur Stock Exchange which assigns their votes. Arch-Warden Kelsang Rowd of the Adeptus Arbites serves as the third pillar of political control, using his arbiters to brutally suppress worker uprisings whenever the underpaid and under-equipped corporate enforcer squads find themselves unequal to the task.

Economic: There are three main megacorps who operate autonomous protectorates under Imperial license and dominate the planetary Corporate Parliament, then a band of approximately one hundred smaller companies who supply goods and services to them and have at least one representative in the Corporate Parliament, and then roughly two thousand small combines, guilds, contractors, and other economic production groupings that lack representation and survive providing services that larger companies ignore.

The megacorps are:

Stilgon Mining Enterprises: House Bagh-Nam's state-owned enterprise, and the largest company on the planet. It subcontracts out dranj farming in its territory to small players in order to control the transportation infrastructure for promethium and set the bench prices at Anchor Point. It has extensive holdings in Dhawala, Gangschen, and Nyengchen.

Ranthar Nutritional Developments: A front company for the Pratik Fleet, the most powerful Rogue Trader dynasty in the Cinders. The Pratiks ship in slaves and servitors from across their vast world-holdings to farm dranj on Kangyur, and are one of the few entities in the system powerful enough to challenge House Bagh-Nam. They are the primary offenders in the corporate range war, with corporate enforcers backed by the fleet's armsmen killing and intimidating the many small players to sell out to Ranthar.

Yan-Mesmer Industries: The two smaller noble houses on Kailasa united to form a joint-venture, and then paid an obscene sum to have the Adeptus Mechanicus grant them access to cloning vats and genetic alterations. Most of Yan-Mesmer's dranj farmers are tailored clone-types only a blood sample away from being declared abhumans, and they kept on massive plantations in the hinterlands that they are forbidden to leave. The upper ranks are all "real" humans, mostly from Kailasa, as are their enforcer squads. Yan-Mesmer operates the largest water-based navy on Kangyur to ship its promethium, attempting to avoid Stilgon Mining's pipeline charges whenever possible.

Two other notable companies are considered to be contenders for a possible fourth megacorp:

Amalthean Logistics: The Kailasan Ecclesiarchy's attempt to stick their nose in the trough that is Kangyur. Amalthean Logistics reinvests the tithes of the faithful of Kailasa and Kangyur into "rehabilitation" facilities for those undergoing periods of "spiritual struggle". In practice, this means they run dranj farms that are vast prison camps full of Kailasan underhivers rounded up in mass exactions. Amalthean Logistics also sells its services at neuro-conditioning, hypno-control and "faith-responsive pharmacological compliance" (addicting workers to drugs to better control them) to other corps.

Solomar Holdings: A group of chartist captains who ship promethium off-world, Solomar Holdings is also a major importer of advanced technology that Kangyur cannot build itself, both from Kailasa and elsewhere. In practice, this means the vast majority of weapons more advanced than a stubber or grenade launcher come from their holds. They have also made some investments into mercenary companies as the corporate war has heated up. It's widely believed that Solomar is angling for an Imperial license so it can establish its own bench price for promethium, instead of having to deal with Castellan Arceaga's whims. Solomar's main representative on Kangyur is Factor Raskol Might.

(Solomar Holdings is a front for the Empty Synod. It's the PCs' notional employer, and Raskol Might is their patron)

Religious: Kangyur's churches are the dumping ground for the Kailasan Ecclesiarchy's unwanted. incompetent, or unlucky priests. Arch-Deacon Theophilus Manutius runs Amalthean Logistics and has de facto control over the religious authorities on planet, though he is more fixated on making money than saving souls. This focus has led to the flourishing of numerous radical cults in the radioactive wastes of southern Dhawala, energized by a set of prophecies that the Cardinal of Bhadra has condemned. Confessor Argus Boateng has been sent out to investigate rumours that abhumans, mutants, and rogue psykers are being inducted into these cults, and to stamp them out if this turns out to be true.

Military: The Planetary Defense Forces is a procurement scheme to divert tithes and taxes into the megacorps' corporate enforcers, of whom there are between five hundred thousand and a million at a time. Most enforcers are nothing more than Kailasan underhiver who volunteered to avoid being drafted into more unpleasant duties and handed stubbers, clubs, and helmets. These are supplemented by up to a million mercenaries, mostly outsystemers, most of whom are engaged in the corporate war or mutant suppression actions. Should the planet come under serious threat, the Kailasan 3rd Reserve Army (a professional combined arms force of 10 million) would be moved onto the planet from their bases in Hive Chuan, supplemented by at least one of the Imperial Knight houses. Vajra Station with its valuable personnel, is protected by a regiment of ten thousand chem-mamluks provided by House Bagh-Nam and a further thousand or so arbiters. 

Criminal: 

The Gasrunners: The biggest smuggling outfit on Kangyur, bringing in illegal goods, rogue psykers fleeing the Black Ships, and anyone or anything else who can pay. They are considered a necessary evil by most of the megacorps, who use their services themselves to gain an advantage over their rivals. They are led by Yusufa One, an escapee from the penal world of Last Woe.

(The PCs will be a cell of the Empty Synod deployed to Kangyur with the goal of liberating it from Imperial rule).

Kailasa

Population: 95 billion
Leader: Dame Soraya of Bagh-Nam, 43rd of her name, Countess of Bhadra, Marquessa of Kailasa
Government: Aristocratic autocracy
Capital: Hive Mei
Stability: 85%

Holo-Illumination of Kailasa (Bhadra Tertius)

Kailasa is a hive world, one of only a few in the Cinders, and just as importantly, it was one of the few Varosi worlds captured with the majority of its industrial base intact. This has blessed it with both extensive defenses and made it a major manufacturing hub for the subsector. While the Noctis Aeterna has brought a great deal of misery to the rest of the sector and the Imperium, Kailasa has profited off the misery of others. Its chem-mamluks, knight walkers, and soldiers go out to defend the Imperium, accompanied by usurers and war-profiteers ready to sell the products of its manufactoriums and the valuable promethium of Kangyur. The unpopular but powerful rulers of Kailasa, House Bagh-Nam, are rumoured to have struck dark bargains with shadowy forces to secure the safety and prosperity of their world while the rest of the Imperium burns.

Most of Kailasa's population lives in three great hives, Mei, Chuan, and Peng, that date back to the Varosi era, and are cut deep into three sweeping mountain ranges arrayed around the planet. In between the hives, another four billion citizens live in scattered freeholds associated with Imperial knight families, and serve to produce and maintain these famous weapons of war. The Adeptus Mechanicus also maintain a single protectorate deep under Kailasa's main ocean, in a vast crystalline dome known as the "Benthic Technika" where they help maintain Kailasa's comparatively sophisticated technological base.

Kailasa was recently rocked by the discovery and purge of a widespread Nurgle cult known as the "Black Dawn" that had built up a significant following in Hives Mei and Peng. While most traces of the cult were purged, at least two knight freeholds were corrupted, and their knights and manufactories removed from the planet before House Bagh-Nam could stop them. This has catalysed houses Yan and Mesmer-Inderio, its greatest rivals, to lodge complaints with the subsector governor on Nuust, hoping that it will lead to one of them becoming the new planetary governor.

(Kailasa won't be the main theatre of the campaign to start but will be lurking in the background as a problem to be dealt with.)