A Patreon & Wiki !

 Well, the past few months have been rather exciting for me as we have rapidly closed in on some of our goals at work in the conservation lab, and more importantly for you fine folks reading here, we have been hard at work in Grey Mountain Gaming getting multiple facets of our club's infrastructure and background admin off the ground.  I have contracts with both Wesley Durham and Layla Hill to work on art for Vahland and for the group's wider narrative interests, both of whom are local artists from the same art college as myself. I have the first prototype T-Shirt for the group, we have set up a patreon (link below) and have started reformatting the wiki for my Vahland sector (the place where Jornath is taking place) so that those interested in reading about the wider context of our games can enjoy the full breadth of nerd-lore on offer. I hope you are as enthusiastic as I am, and I hope to see you around. 

Please consider supporting our club, and the Jornathii War Effort on Patreon!

If you are interested in reading more about our lore click here, more is being added all the time!

The meat and cheese spread from our most recent January Gamesday 'Siege of Terico Part 3, 4th Tyrannic War' 

Terican PDF move into a contested landing zone against perfidious Tyranid bioforms, in a skirmish scenario at the January Gamesday

Above is the first draft of the club T-shirt, I'd like to explore some other fabric and design choices before placing the shirts up for sale to interested parties, and I can talk at length about the exact application of funds spent for club merchandise and membership if there is interest. 

Our February Games Day is upcoming, to allow members to have hobby time for the finale for the first arc of the 4th Tyrannic War campaign set on Terico Prime, we will be hosting an open day for February, all are welcome to bring Age of Sigmar, 30/40k, Necromunda, Mordhiem, Grimdark Future, Osprey Games or any other rules set or force of interest, lunch, terrain and minis will be present at the venue disclosed to members.  

-Your Favorite Madman-

Personal and Hobby Update

 

Well hello there, it's been almost two years since last I posted here. In that time I've been hard at work, both in a very literal sense professionally and in the much less important hobby sense.  Jornath and the wider Vahland sector have been very much progressing in the time I have been away from Skies of Flies, Ground of Rust.  

Many thousands of Orks, Guardsmen, and countless others have perished in the many ferocious battlefields of the 41st Millenium and in countless other settings. Perhaps the most exciting update in this period is the founding of Grey Mountain Gaming, which is a fledgling gaming club in the heart of North Carolina's Triad area focusing on narrative wargaming. I and the other members of GMG are old hats at this point in the hobby and looking to normalize the style of narrative gaming we have enjoyed within the wider hobby space, both in the traditional blog formats and in the video space. 

To digress from the hobby for a moment, in the past two years I have broken up with my long-time girlfriend, moved house, and been promoted twice in my career. I've learned quite a bit, about my personal values and about the direction that I want to move in as a professional. That being said, I think that for the forseeable future, I would like to use this space to encompass a variety of my interests and thoughts on a whole spectrum of topics not just specific to miniatures gaming. I hope that those of you who still visit this place will find that interesting. Ultimately, I've been writing here on Skies of Flies, Ground of Rust since I was in middle school, this blog has become for me a very real chronicling of my life and interests. I want to lean into that more, I hope you'll all enjoy things as they develop. 

Sons of Medusa purge alien's in the Orkish scrap cities East of Kula Hive

PDF and Guard forces on a desperate mission deep in the heart of the infested Ghostway District within Priver Wharf, capital of Edras' College.

Until next time, 

Your Favorite Madman,

Jornath Location Profile: The Moon of Ankou [pt1]

Ankou is one of several planetary bodies within the solar system of the Imperial world of Jornath. While considered by Imperial auguries to be a moon of the system’s capital its distance from the coreworld, would truly classify the stellar body as its own settled dwarf planet. The planets role in the social and political organizations of the Jornathii culture is curiously part guardian and part enslaved penal world.

Ankou was founded early in the systems settlement in the dawny days of human expansion to these regions significantly before the onset of Long Night, though the original intentions of the planet in these early days have long since been forgotten. During the period of the Unification Wars on Terra, several centuries before the great crusade would bring the light of the Emperor to Jornath, several histories suggest that Ankou enjoyed a status as its own free state within the system, engaging in trade and at times conflict with other colonial holdings and the crownworld of Jornath itself. However, by the time that Jornath and its satellites bent the knee to the Throne of Old Earth, Ankou had been thoroughly brought under the administrative control of Jornath. Like all places, Ankou enjoyed a great deal of lively development with its reconnection with wider humanity, and its immense bounty of mineral wealth which had already started to be exploited was broken open by the immense capabilities of the Mechanicum

The vast majority of this mineral bounty was in the form of Gypsum, indeed Mechanicum Surveyors calculated that the composition of the moon may be as much as 45% made of the mineral. Tantalized by the numerous practical industrial applications of gypsum, the Adeptus of the Imperium began establishing hundreds of servitor controlled harvesting installations across the surface of the moon, each linking to one of three hub cities with an interlacing web of terrestrial roadways, promethium pipes, and kilometers of cabling.

In these early days, before the heresy, the Imperial Truth still reigned as the predominant ideological current of humanity. On Ankou though, this truth was being manipulated by the early vestiges of groups which would become the Cult Imperialis, these groups viewed the Emperor of Mankind and his sons as divine and held the early colonial ruins under the surface of Ankou as holy places. The Mechanicum overseers of the mining efforts were only too happy to corroborate and promote this view, as the number of converts willing to accept the suite of invasive bionics to survive unaided on Ankous airless surface increased significantly as these groups grew in popularity. It was decided by the Ankouvian High Civitian and the Mechanicus Magos that these groups should be given a formal voice in the administration of the moon if only to better control the masses. Thus the Moulding Gate of Gouibon was founded, the Moulders established chirurgical centers around each of the cities of Ankou, these places were known as Gatehouses, and within aspirants would worship the Emperor and the Omnissiah, progressing through the ranks of the order, by doing good works within the wider community or by fundraising for ventures into the subterranean ruins. As an aspirant progressed, they would surrender more and more of their body and organs over to mechanical augmentation until they could survive without aid on the surface. These followers would be known as the Gouibon Susareian (the name for the Men of Iron in Jornathii Low Gothic, and the term for explorer) and it is these souls who would go forth into the darkened depths of the world in search of divine answers and archaeotech.

When the Horus Heresy erupted in the Imperium, and loyalties on planets across its breadth were tested, Ankou found itself in a particularly favorable situation. On Jornath small skirmishes broke out between families and guilds loyal to the warmaster and those who still held the emperor as master, but on Ankou the spread of the Moulding Gate and the singular control of only one group of the Mechanicum ensured that only limited rioting and a rather pathetic miners uprising in the warmasters name occurred.

In the wake of the Heresy, Ankou was lauded for its loyalty. It was given the task of re-educating those that stood against the Imperium in the Civil War. A task which the already zealously enthusiastic men and women of the moulding gate and the vengeful scions of the now mechanicus took too with particular vigor. The punishment of the families sent to Ankou in disgrace for their transgression of betrayal would be 100 generations of servitude in the Emperor’s name. None of these generations could enter their deeds in the noble enscroll of the families of Jornath, though they would still retain their noble titles and wealth. All were permitted to bring their associated retainers, huscarls, cohorts, and servants to the surface Ankou. It was seen as completely un thinkable to kill the traitors, they were after all, still nobility. So it was that the Equites Redempto, was created on Ankou. These Penal colonists would comprise a huge amount of the workforce, the noblemen acting as the defacto overseers who were, in turn, ruled over by the true Imperial administration of the High Civitan of Ankou and those Ankouvians not beholden to the penal sentence of the Equites Redempto.

For thousands of years, Ankou continued to grow in scope, its cities growing into hives, and its mines running ever deeper into the flesh of the planet. By this point the Ecclesiarchy had taken firm control over the doctrine of the Moulding Gate, seeing its beneficial nature to the function of the planet, they contributed their own assets to the furthering of the Gate’s goals, all while making enormous sums of money from the sale of augmentations. To expand this enterprise the leaders of the Moulders, reached out to the chartist captains in the region who ferried pilgrims around the sector to its various cardinal worlds. They signed an under the table agreement called Concordant 92d, with a chartist line heading through the neighboring Bantin system en route to Casa Urients seaborne cathedrals. The Concordant meant that every tenth vessel would deliver its cargo to the surface of Ankou instead, a journey which took a quarter of the time, and the Moulder’s were willing to pay the same amount as the Cardinals of Casa Urient.  It was not hard to convince the captains that this venture was worthwhile. The pilgrims on board these vessels, were of course less enthusiastic about this prospect, though many have little money left to them to get off-world, leaving the mines and the Moulding Gate as the only real alternatives left to them.

When the War for Jornath broke out, Ankou’s roll in the systems defense would be early warning and limited defensive outpost for the systems monitor fleet.  The moon is in a far orbit from the planet, placing it closer to the systems cardinal mandeville points, and this makes it perfect to act as a staging place for defense forces. When the initial Ork invasion force arrived, Ankou was on the opposite side of its orbit from the fleets approach, meaning that Jornath’s orbital platforms and a limited number of its monitoring ships were available to counter the Ork’s arrival. For the first several years Ankou continued in its mandated roll guarding the systems perimeter, and harvesting material for export, awaiting the potential call to send aid to its liege world.

In the early months of the War’s third year, a massive burst of psychic and digital energies slammed into the moon from the heart of the combat zones on Jornaths surface. This event was called the Emerald Scream by Imperial authorities and would send the entire battlespace into chaos. The long range vox and astropathic choirs were scrambled or killed, leaving communication with the moon during this period totally severed. On Ankou this immense burst of energy would have much more extreme effects, each of the Hives on the moon began transmitting repeating psychic and electromagnetic signals into the void on repeat. Every device capable of sending the transmission into space was bent to that task. For many within the society of Ankou, the signals brought madness. Converts into the Moulding Gate, were affected severely their minds wired into the planets digital network were affected by a form of orkoid psychic scrapcode. The Equites Redempto were similarly affected, the inhibitor circuits, implanted in their brains from birth as insurance of loyalty acted as conduits for the screams corrupting influence. Ankou turned into a bloodbath, in later years it would be called the Ankouvian Civil War, though this name implies that uncorrupted forces on the planet were able to mount any sort of significant resistance to the Berzerker’s tearing the moon apart. What resistance was available came from the High Civitan Sabrina Tursur, and roughly ten thousand miners, and novitiate converts into the Moulders, who were spread across each of the three hives. Their resistance to the corrupting influence of the Emerald Scream, was also the thing that trapped them inside the hives, unable to survive for any length of time outside the protective bio-domes, the loyal Ankouvians that remained attempted to fight their way into the Hive Spires using mining equipment, and cheap autoguns. They suffered incredible casualties in the attempt, and by the time that Battlegroup Ankou arrived to the planet, to reinforce it against the encroaching alien reinforcement fleet, and to shut down the screaming void signals. Only about 2500 loyalist Ankouvians remained alive, held in the High Civitans palace at the pinnacle of Linces Hive. These loyalists would be reinforced by the Imperial Dragoons of Task Force Gideon, and would be removed to the Battlegroups flagship for through investigation by the Ordos of the Inquisition, who were hoping to glean some useful morsel of information about the mysterious and catastrophic situation which had unfolded here.

Thanks for reading!  This post was a part of an ongoing narrative campaign, in the "living setting" of Jornath. For more information about Jornath as a setting, including units, missions, and posts from other Jornath bloggers be sure to click on the Jornath [40k] tab at the top of this page for an up to date list of all posts.

-Your Favorite Madman-

Hobby: Ur Onceboss

Currently still in the process of working on a wide-ranging scope of different Jornath lore posts, focusing heavily on the Dramatis Personae, and the Regiments making up the Imperial Defense. While I'm still piecing all those lovely words together, I thought I'd continue to show off a few more of the minis I've gotten around too. This time we have an actual participant in the Battle for Jornath, Ur Onceboss. Ur was a Snakebite Warlord who was a part of the Ork forces to land on Jornath proper during the second wave of the invasion, following the break up of the precursor kroozer which heralded the beginning of the ground war. Ur's Warband fought in the Kulan Exclusion zone, which saw him deep in the thick of the early wars most intense combat encounters. When J.S.O.B. and the Sons of Medusa began their targetted raids on Ork commanders following the containment of the attempted breakout onto Nizajain Isle, Ur was one of the Task Force's primary HVT's. The Astartes strike, left Ur's warband totally annihilated, and the vicious warboss missing his left hand. Left not only physically and mentally scarred, Ur had become a social pariah within the traditionalist society of the Snakebites, causing him to wander the scrap cities of the Ork landing zone looking for mercenary work. He would eventually find purpose in the employ of Bonebeard Blakkstaff, whose powerful magic and possession of the strangest jet-black choppa Ur had ever laid eyes on convinced the Once-boss to act as the psykers personal bodyguard. Soon placing him to the center of numerous more Imperial assassination raids.

Ur is constructed from the old Mordhiem Pit Ogre, with multiple boss poles, a head and arm from the Nobz frames

Thanks for reading!  This post was a part of an ongoing narrative campaign, in the "living setting" of Jornath. For more information about Jornath as a setting, including units, missions, and posts from other Jornath bloggers be sure to click on the Jornath [40k] tab at the top of this page for an up to date list of all posts.

-Your Favorite Madman-

Jornath: The Day of the Emerald Scream.

The Imperium was ascendant, victory had been attained at the Battle of Mendorus Grove, and with that success, Operation Gray Jewel saw the Orks' subsequent disorderly withdraw from Fortress Behras. In the exclusion zone east of Kula; Imperial Guard assets coupled with pinpoint raids by the Sons of Medusa had crippled the aliens' forward defenses, leaving Kulan Cohorts to sweep into the Xenos cities and begin the process of burning the greenskins out of the marshlands. In the mountains, the Skitarii of Prima Jama marched to liberate the cities and infrastructure in the shadow of their forge hold, which had been under the dominion of the Ork since the beginning of the war.

In the north, the routing aliens were pushed into the Ctre valley proper, placing them far enough from important civilian and military facilities to sanction large-scale orbital bombardment, and indiscriminate bombing campaigns by atmospheric flyers launched from Altheri Hive. The heightened pace of the campaign spurred occasional lapses of decontamination protocols for aircraft fighting in the operations area. While most Imperial Navy airframes are resistant to biological or chemical contaminations, the local PDF aircraft from Altheri do not possess this style of standardized construction, necessitating rigorous checks by maintenance and ecclessiarchal crews. This lapse in protocol would prove incredibly dangerous. An immense amount of Orkoid spores, released by the millions of dead greenskins drifted in yellowish clouds around the Ctre Valley and foothills regions of the Guffmans-Platz administrative area, these spores found purchase within the airframes of PDF aircraft while they refitted at improvised airfields. When these airframes returned from the combat front to their home fields, ground crews skipped their decontamination checks, pushing the aircraft immediately to basic maintenance bays crewed by servitors and menial laborers. In short order snotlings, the lowest level of Orkoid life form, pryed their way from these aircraft and set about turning the disused corners of the maintenance hangers into breeding pits for more complex forms of their malign race.

It was at the beginning of the spring combat season that airfield 2C in Altheri Hive was suddenly attacked by several dozen Ork warriors and droves of gretchin wielding improvised weapons. The surprise of the attack was such, that many of the pilots and ground crew fled the facility in confusion rather than combat the attackers. With a great deal of ordinance and heavy weapons now lying around undefended on various aircraft, the Orks immediately set about crafting these into dangerously effective emplacements. Arbites, in conjunction with reorganized aircrews and crowds of lightly armed militia, attempted to recapture 2C several times over the course of the day but suffered severe casualties. Instead, these forces opted to quarantine the field and wait for more Astra Militarum assistance. This breakout may well have been crushed before it spread any further outside of the airfield if it were not for an event which would shape the dynamic of the War for Jornath for years to come.

In the Exclusion zone to the West of Kula hive, Imperial Guard and Astartes strike teams had spent much of the previous year neutralizing the warbosses and various commander beasts of the Orks nestled in the Scrap cities. They had been brutally effective in this endeavor leaving the majority of the Ork "nobility" fighting each other for control of dwindling resources and ever-shrinking territory. Amid this confusion, a pseudo-religious psyker cult emerged under a Weirdboy called Bonebeard Blakkstaff. Blakkstaff rallied control of a half-dozen Snakebite warbands whose leadership had been assassinated by actions from the Dreadmare Companions and the Sons of Medusa. What made Blakkstaff's force called the Kult of Da Blak WAAGGHH dangerous was due to Blakkstaff's own psychic abilities, which seemingly allowed the xenos witch the ability to give life to slain greenskins and halt death in the grievously wounded. Biding his time, the Ork weirdboy sheltered his forces during the day when Imperial raids would be conducted to neutralize HVT's and strategic locations. In the evening the Kult would emerge from its hiding places and resurrect the fallen warbosses and boyz, wrangling the undead ork's into underground squig pens. The first real intelligence Imperial command had of the Kult's activities came from vanguard PDF forces from the Kula Conservator Cohort, noting that the bodies of orks killed in the previous day's action had been removed in the night en mass.

It was men from the Precpian Air Cavalry's 20 Brigade 9 Co, fighting in the Totemkrash suburbs which engaged the Kult in direct combat for the first time. 9 Co was engaged in particularly lengthy fighting against Deffskull warbands defending a large refueling depot, in the evening of the second day, the Precpians set out a distress call citing that their forces were now totally surrounded by unidentified Xenos lifeforms. This alarm immediately warranted the deployment of a tactical squad from the Mortifactors, when this squad arrived they found a charnel house, filled with the crashed wrecks of the companies valkyries and heaps of Precpian dead, seemingly placed in ritualistic positions. Of the Ork dead, there was no sign. Tactical Squad Redala, signaled its findings and continued to move to 9 Co's primary objective. Upon entering the refueling depot, Redala encountered trailing elements of the Kult, these "Black Orks" were reportedly able to sustain multiple bolt rounds before succumbing and were possessed with unnaturally elevated strength. Upon destroying the refueling depot, Squad Redala reported its findings and immediately set about coordinating with other nearby ground forces to give chase and eliminate this new threat.

In the next few hours, Scout and Reiver squads in the exclusion zone redirected themselves to harass the Kult as it withdrew, these teams neutralized several pockets of Black Orks and Snakebite fighters in small subterranean outposts below the Scrap cities. But were unable to locate the primary leadership of the Kult. Realizing that much of this new forces' infrastructure was located underground, Navy forces began deep seismic scans of the area. They discovered layers of underground tunnels built in concentric circles which progressed deeper into the crust of the planet. Larger caverns and portions of the Rokk's punctured these tunnels in hundreds of places, creating a lattice of Xenos mine works.

It was as these readings were being transmitted to the Astartes Operations command, that 2C was taken in Altheri Hive, slowing down direct responses to both situations by a handful of hours, as effective strike plans were created. At sundown over the battlespace, just as PDF and Astartes forces were launching to neutralize both threats the Emerald Scream occurred.

A massive surge of warp energy pulsed forth from the core of the subterranean latticework, totally shutting down vox communications, and driving hundreds of astropaths into a fit of blind rage, their eyes glowing a bright green as they attacked their minders or ripped one another apart with their bare hands. The energy pulse traveled past the Navy blockade and through the debris of the early ork fleet, smashing into the Mechanicus controlled moon of Ankou in the systems outer limits. All communication was lost with facilities on the moon, save for an errant signal on loop, a piercing guttural scream of rage which could be detected all across the sub-sector.

As the Imperium worked to understand what had just occurred, dozens of warp signatures were detected at the fringes of the system. Orks from across the sub-sector were reacting to the call of the Emerald Scream and moving to Jornath to aid their kin in battle or for their own sport. While these newly arrived Ork vessels lacked any command structure, it was only a matter of time before the Kaptians of the greenskin navy came to a conclusion as to who was the toughest and turned their attention to the conflict on Jornath's surface. Where Ork warbands on the ground were in possession of deep space sensory equipment, such as the newly seized 2C airfield or in installations in the north around Usmilplatz or Valeri Pesh, they set up signals to call on the new arrivals to join in the fighting.

Tactica Command Jornath and the Astartes Operational Command immediately set to work to counter these new arrivals, putting out a priority call to all Imperial assets across the sector, which was answered by numerous Imperial Guard regiments, the Imperial Dragoons Marine Chapter and even a mighty Watch Fortress of the Deathwatch. On the ground Task Force Crimson Pendant was organized, a combination of veteran militarum special forces, and scout squads from every marine chapter present in the Battle Space, this task force's sole objective was to move into the Stabheelz area of the Exclusion zone, the core of the underground lattice, find and destroy every vestige of the Kult of the Black Waaggh. Ground Operations in Usamiljen and the central conflict zone were permitted to continue as Tactica command felt that these were still progressing favorably. Oakenzid and other previously unengaged Hive cities, as well as nations across Jornath which have remained unmolested thus far by the war, began preparations to receive the new Ork fleet, conscript formations were raised in their hundreds and miles of trenches were dug to bolster the defenses of as many towns as possible. In space, the fleet split itself into two formations, one would remain in high orbit above Jornath to act as a close support and command asset to ground operations. The other would travel to Ankou to hopefully end the Emerald Scream, and harass the new Ork fleet while Imperial reinforcement arrived from other systems.

Stay Tuned for more major lore updates this year for the War on Jornath as things heat up on a fearsome new second front and the situation on the ground gets ever more desperate. Be sure to check on the Jornath [40k] tab at the top of the page to catch up on all the previous Jornath lore, battles, units and posts from other Jornath Bloggers!

-Your Favorite Madman-

Hobby: STC Ruins

I recently picked up the STC Ruins set of terrain from the local GW store, and was very impressed by the results. The set provides quite a bit of table coverage, has good detail on all the wall sections and can be utilized in conjunction with the "classic" cities of death kits to make a very interesting bit of terrain.

For mine, I went with a pretty simple scheme of a weathered and rusted out grey color, which meant that the whole set could be painted in the space of a single afternoon. Resulting in a sizeable amount of (painted) table coverage in a handful of hours for a few dollars. Not half bad.

Thanks for Reading!

-Your Favorite Madman-

Jornath: Fort Behras

Fort Behras.

Fort Behras is the keystone defensive structure in the north of the continent of Manfredi-At-Prima, in Kula Provence. This structure has existed for generations and stretches all the way into the pre-Imperial history of the planet. During its extensive history, it has played various roles politically and culturally in the identity of the region.

The citadel that would later become known as Fort Behras was established after the system of pseudo-feudalism was introduced to Jornath several thousand years after the initial colonization effort occurred. Jornath in these times saw a great deal of inter-familial skirmishing, large national governments were not established, and so territorial control of prime agricultural land, mineral wealth, and other natural resources was almost constantly in a state of dispute. In Usamiljen, and the glacial plains fed by runoff from the Ctre Valley, this skirmishing was of a particularly elevated intensity. The perfect confluence of agriculture and local material wealth, lords and ladies from Guffmans Platz, and numerous surrounding towns sought to use an asset to hand to fully cement their families claim to the region. Three of these families, representing a coalition of northern mining interests concocted a bold strategy, risking everything these families redirected all of their peasant miners, onto the lone peak to the east of the Ctre Valley, and instructed them to put their skills to use in creating a vast network of hardened tunnels, effectively hollowing out the peak, and turning the mountain into the shell for an underground city. At first, the project seemed to be total folly to the other families of the region. The builders were quickly draining their coffers on what appeared to be a foolish mining enterprise. It wasn't until the first Huscarls moved into the completed mountain complex that the real purpose behind the project was understood. Familial alliances were quickly formed to oust the miner's coalition from their mountain fortress. The extensive tunnel works provided proof enough from initial attacks, impossible to predict the location from which attacks would come, attackers faced enfilade fire from hundreds of hidden bunkers and fire-ports. After the alliances found that conventional attacks would be little proof against the position, their forces withdrew and prepared to lay siege to the mountain. The siege of the miner's coalition lasted for nearly thirty-five years, the mountain was supplied with a reservoir drawn from natural freshwater aquifers, and underground horticultural complexes kept the garrison fed on staple crops. No major fighting erupted for the majority of this period. Sporadic skirmishing would occasionally break out, but no large-scale actions were conducted on either side. The siege would eventually conclude when the families in control of the mining coalition were placed in financial danger by careful posturing from the alliance of families in Guffman’s Platz, who forcefully bought out several transportation cartels that moved ore for the miners. Faced with bankruptcy, the mining families sold their mountain fortress to their rivals, ending the siege.

Within a generation of the siege’s conclusion, Jornath’s nation-states were starting to establish themselves. With much of the contestation of the earlier feudal period slowly fading, the fortress’ role as a military structure began to diminish. Faced with a sizable piece of real estate which now lacked a practical application, the families sought to apply a more domestic purpose to the land. It was decided in short order to turn the mountain to growing a mutation of grape known as the Behras Berry, which has a thick waxy skin and grows small. This makes it horribly bad for eating, but ideal for wine production especially in the foothills where the slopes funnel runoff water and minerals downhill. The tunnel networks under the mountain are the ideal environment to store barrels of wine to ferment, as it's cool and dark. All this combined with the proximity to the transit hubs in Guffmans Platz meant that within a handful of years the Fortress was producing sweet white wine for all of Kula Province to enjoy.

When the Imperium made contact with Jornath, the name “Fort Behras” was a common brand amongst the citizenry of the planet. In the codification of planetary landmarks by surveyors of the Administratum, Fort Behras had its name erased however, purportedly because the adept filing the listings thought that a defensive position named after a grape was terribly inappropriate, and so gave the location the designation Height-906, lumping it in with peaks several dozens of kilometers to the north. The families who owned the fortress took this in stride, in fact, finding it so entertaining that they put the designation on their bottles.

It was not until after the completion of the Horus Heresy, indeed after the scouring had come to a conclusion that members of the Munitorum began to exert pressure on the nobility to open up land for the creation of planetary defense structures to use in maintaining Imperial authority. Private business interests chafed under this pressure, the Heresy had barely affected Jornath and many of the planets noble families, national administrations, and cartel leaders felt that the planet would be better served continuing with the way things had always been. But no planet argues with the will of the Emperor’s administration for very long, and soon enough the foundations of bastions and orbital batteries were being poured all across Jornath’s surface. At Fort Behras, a deal brokered with the Munitorum’s representatives allowed production of wine to continue in the lowland areas around the exterior of the fortress proper and along the slopes of the mountain itself as curtain walls, barracks, and defensive positions were erected in sections around the site. The completion of the work created the base of the defensive structure seen on modern Jornath, a patchwork of vineyard squares separated by auxiliary roads linking various supporting sites such as rail yards, vehicle repair centers, and sensor arrays to the gates of the fortress. The fortress itself now surrounded by a mighty plastcrete wall, dotted with small gates to allow for various automotive traffic, and bolstered from each cardinal direction by sizeable defensive gatehouses that allow access to the interior for heavier vehicles.

The most modern change in the landscape of the fortress is the town of Saine Yeltsville, which began construction just before 741.M41 as a suburban area to serve as overflow housing for members of the garrison, vineyard workers and other laborers needed to tend to the Fortress’ previously mentioned ancillary sites. The suburbs grew ever larger, with the eastern approach to the walls consisting of winding clumps of small housing, and shops.

When Ork forces entered the system at the beginning of the War for Jornath, the fortress was largely in a state of unreadiness, much of the garrison were part-time reservists from Usamiljen and various cities of northwestern Kula province. Readiness drills, weapons tests, proper maintenance of hardware had all been conducted infrequently if at all, which meant that the fortress was woefully ill-prepared to act as northern kula’s primary defensive keystone.  Garrison commanders frantically recalled all the garrison cohorts and scurried to check that weapons batteries could still be summoned to function.  This lapse in readiness prompted pioneer units, and local cohorts under the direction of regional Tactica command, to create the Ctre Valley firebase hopefully to allow more time for the fortress to be brought up to operational condition.

By the time of the withdraw back to the staging areas around the fortress after Operation Remits Maw’s failure, the complex had organized its garrison and brought half of its defensive weapon systems online. The process of restoring the facility to function was being waylaid by xenos incursions on the Usamiljen Heights mechanicus outpost, limiting the number of techpriests that could be flown safely to Behras, past greenskin flakk positions or through contested skies. Therefore, when Orks under Warboss Krump pushed along the highways southward eventually smashing against the walls of the fortress they were met with less than the full strength of the positions capabilities. Enough to stall the beasts, but not anywhere near enough to obliterate them, leading in turn to the protracted siege of the fortress.

Jornath 40k: Kula

Location:   Kula, Kula Province

Country: Manfredi-At Prima

Province: Kula Province

Population: 4.5 Million

Kula is the capital of Kula Province, the largest civic and maritime producing region in the nation of Manfredi-At Prima along the Imperial World of Jornath’s Northern Hemisphere. It is the focal point of the opening stages of the Battle for Jornath.

History: Kula was founded 3,500 years after initial human settlement on Jornath, springing to life at the confluence of the bountiful river systems flowing in from the coast. It was a combination of numerous agricultural facilities, communications outposts, and minor maritime ship crafting factories. For several generations Kula gathered regional influence, through the petty feuding of local Lords or Kings, it even purportedly enjoyed a brief time as the capital of a regional kingdom. Though much of the information and histories of this period were lost during reunification, with the Imperium of Mankind.  After the Legiones Astartes departed, vast caravans of interplanetary traders, artisans, and the enigmatic tech-priests of Mars, flooded the planet, Kula was one of many cities on Jornath to benefit from the technologies of the wider Imperium. Already a truly labyrinthine metropolis,  the advanced building capabilities and solutions that the techpriests offered turned Kula into North-western Jornath’s first Hive city,  though a meagre hive by comparison to other worlds, Kula’s reputation terrestrially, as a beautiful river city, a place of business, art and mercantile power was amplified a thousandfold.  Soon the Patrician Families from Guffmans-Platz, to Oakenzid and even further south were scrabbling, bribing, and scheming to control the “River Jewel”. This reached a head several years later, during the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. The Genntim Family, with the backing of the Black Cross Shipwrights Union, and a notable supporter of the Warmaster’s cause, (Addolense Genntim, the family patriarch seemed to believe the burgeoning Church of the Emperor was being encouraged rather than dissuaded by the Emperor) marched into Kula’s southern civic basilica, with a few dozen well armed retainers, and began shooting.   The Genntim Massacre, solidified Kula Province in the name of the Warmaster; echoing similar scenes across the planet, and indeed the galaxy as Chaos tore at the soul of the Imperium.  Fortunately, the Traitor’s did not hold Kula for long, thanks in large part to the commander of the (then infantile) Kula Conservator Cohort, Euclid Kinnell, who remained loyal to the planetary governor’s ( an Ultramarine Administrator and Advisor) final order to maintain the Imperial Truth, as laid down by the Master of Mankind himself.  The Kula Conservator Cohort, was at this time billeted several kilometers outside hive spire,  in the Indigo Sparrow Dockyards, Euclid rallied his men, and marched to the southern civic basilica, encountering traitor union men from Black Cross, and mustermann from House Genntim. Eventually the K.C.C.  battered their way to the civic basilica, and therein forced the Genntim families surrender, under pain of having their name expunged from the noble enscrolle of Kulaian Families, a threat worse than the death of each member of the family. Since that time the people of Kula hold loyalty, and pride of arms in high esteem,  the path of the KCC’s march to save Kula’s soul from Heresy is now immortalized and is a must see for any pilgrims to the area,  beginning at the Indigo Sparrow Dockyards (now the regional command center for the planetary defense forces) and ending at the Cathedral to Saint Euclid the Loyal.  

Geography: The Hive city of Kula covers an area of 1567 km,  and sits only slightly above sea level,  the city itself is criss crossed by rivers, tributaries and lakes, which sparkle with the millions of lights from the city, which is divided into 27 districts. The land around the city is marshy, and nutrient rich,  covered in agricultural complexes, fisheries, and swamps.

Military: About 5% of the population is permanently enlisted into the Kula Conservator Regiment, which equates to roughly 225,000 fighting men and women.  Which is broken into 10 Regiments of 22,000 Armsmen apiece with a single 5000 Armsmen mechanized regiment.  Basic equipment is fashioned in the Cadian style, but with a bent towards the finery and circumstance consistent in traditional Jornathi battledress. The Cadian Flakhelmet Mk XI, is an expensive and highly technical piece of equipment, which can be difficult for less disciplined or less technically inclined personnel to maintain efficiently,  the Jornathi Defense Forces meeting both of these criteria, the optionable alternative chosen by many cities on Jornath, is the Alar-Median, Slatthelm K1,  which, offers a similar weight and protective capability to that of the Cadian Mk XI, but does not include the Vox interface or advanced user HUD, or sensory deadening suite.  In terms of Body Armor, Jornath sources from Antax, Alar-Median and Tolkhan.  Kula chooses to take from the Tolkhan Dura-Curiass 023, which takes the Cadian style flakvest, removes the shoulder plating, and alters the sensory and trauma response systems to maintain operation at peak efficiency under water, or in highly damp conditions, but it suffers from decreased performance in high-dust situations, it offers similar impact resistance. The Kula Conservator Regiments, use the M36-C Kantrael Pattern Lasgun, for the carbines obvious benefits in naval operations.  The Regiments use the Chimera Armored Personnel Carrier as its chief combat transport,  the Helstannon “Intrepid” Carrier, for both hauling equipment and most terrestrial troop conveyance. The Chief combat vehicle for the KCC units, is the Leman Russ Battle Tank

This has been a detailed look at one location involved in the Battle for Jornath.

-Your Favorite Madman-

15mm Necromunda Terrianbuild (part 1)

The title i feel is fairly self explanatory.  Myself and several other members of my gaming group are going to embark on adventures into the grim dark future of the 41st millennium's favorite hive city.  A couple things are necessary of course for such an endeavor, and number 1 is terrain... A LOT..  of terrain at that.  Necromunda is played in the ruins of a city, built on top of and under and inside and around other cities that over time have all collapsed in on one another to form a sort of industrial ecosystem of waste, dilapidated buildings, toxic ooze and all sorts of other scary things in the dark.    Being taken care of in the 15mm sci-fi minis department for a bit, I've taken the reins on building our underhive. It helps that I've already been working on making a slum city for our generic sci-fi setting.  Here's a quick pic below of the pieces i built last night.   they are.   A two story garage, a small moveable bridge to connect things, a shack on top of a food stand, a Sentry Tower built atop a ruined house, and a large drainage pipe.

The ruins are manned by some modern afghan's which im planning to ally with GZG's alien mercenaries, and some of Armies Army R.U.S.K. troopers to make a Feudal/Communist Nation.

Go to Armies Army  to check out this guys work, its really very nice !   Armies Army Blog


Thanks for reading !


-Your Favorite Madman-