Hobby: Cerberus Mercenary #1

I've been working on my own game 'With Strength Enough' which has been going very well, and a test copy is also available. Inquire in the comments below if youre interested in helping out!  The Beta version of the game is set in Warhammer 40,000. But the final version will be set in the Rennaissance of Flesh. A Biopunk setting of my and Sophie's design that we have been brainstorming for several months.  

The fellow below is a Cerberus, a transhuman species created early in the setting's history, during a time known as 'Lucy's War'. In the modern setting the Cerberi live their lives like anyone else, but due to their unique enhanced physiology are adept at combat roles and so many find work as guns for hire. 

We based the cultural morae's of the Cerberi on modern Mongolia, and obviously incorporated aspects of cyberpunk into the mix as well. I wanted to make something that felt like a mix of mis-matched practicality and efficency. 

The model is primarily a Mantic Games Enforcer, with Anvil Industries Cape and head added.  

Thanks for reading!

-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-

Jornath: The Sect Recidivia

Pontry Contras, scrabbled through the dust-choked valley of bookcases and data terminals, the soft hum of his flock of servo-skulls the only sound disturbing the crypt-like silence of the Librarum Est Tricondriari.  He arrived at his objective in short order, picking up with his work, where had left off only a few hours before. A hand of pistons and iron gripped yet another book of deeds and actions of the noble families of the Jornathii, and deftly begins to turn page after page, Contras' cognito-enhancements absorbing and categorizing the information on each page in a heartbeat, while a lexigraphic node scribbled away on an auto-quill implanted on his back, recording the necessary alterations the adept superior felt needed to be implemented.

"Thrice benighted planetaries..." Contras breathed annoyed to himself

"What even is a..."Jurl"... that will have to go." he continued stumbling over the unfamiliar titles.

With a harsh metallic screech, a data log popped up from the mechanisms on his back, the lexigrapher having finished its work.  With the tone, one of the servo skulls descended and picked up the log, before floating off to add it to the ever-growing mountain of such logs filling the chambers of the Sect Recidivia's chamber house here in Kula Hive. 

Barely paying the skull any mind, Contras placed the book back upon the shelf and moved to the next, and the activity of exasperation and annoyed scribbling would play out once more. 

The Sect Recidivia

The Sect would find its origins upon the Sector Capital of Casa Urient, that shrine worlds various factions of the Administratum constantly battling with one another and the Ecclessiarchy about what version of history should be preserved and which should be placed upon the crematoria pyres. The Sect, believes in homogeny above all else, attempting to get as many worlds as close as possible to mirroring the titles and systems of the Adeptus Terra as it can, which means in many cases the destruction of local held titles and systems of government, which they typically view as unnecessary fat on the body of government. 

While they have been met with limited success on Casa Urient, the Sect has tried to preempt its rivals within the neighboring systems, setting forth thousands of adepts to hundreds of worlds within the Urient Sector.  On Jornath, the Sect Recidivia has been viewed with at best suspicion and disgust, and at worst with outright hostility. It is no secret that the Jornathi are not fond of off-worlders and are very proud of their traditions and culture.  Though, the Sect Adepts come from the capital and carry the licenses of authority from that governmental position, and so must be tolerated.  

For nearly five centuries, several hundred members of the Sect have combed the major libraries and studied Jornaths system of administration and each year have compiled an exhaustive list of changes and alterations, that should be imposed upon the planet.  Not least amongst these changes was the total abolition of the Roll of Honored Families, the cornerstone of the Feudal system on the planet, and the forfeiture of all private property over to larger state-run blocs controlled by the Administratum. Each of these proposals has "tragically" been lost or mired in beauracracy as to have been effectively stopped indefinitely,  though the Sect seems not to notice the outward hostility, nor the seemingly pointless nature of their exercise on the world. 

With the outbreak of the Ork Invasion and the struggle for the Jornaths survival spurring on sweeping changes to the military organization of the planets defense forces to be more effectively coordinated in mutual defense rather than in opposition to rival lords and guilds. The Sect Recidivia pushed their agenda of homogenous governance ever harder, even petitioning high ranking off-world members of the Astra Militarum for audiences to back their proposed changes to the government of the world. While none of the Imperial commanders even bothered to entertain the notion, many members of the Jornathii Noble families and of the Honored Guild Houses saw this as a blatant attempt at a coup by the Sect.

Tensions would continue to rise, until the autumn of the War for Jornath's third year, when a high ranking member of the Sect Recidivia on Jornath, a man named Jakub Gendricoll was found dead in his private apartments in the Deadalus Spire of Oakenzid Hive. The enforcers who investigated the man's demise blamed heart failure, though the Sect's own investigations quickly blamed the multiple gunshot wounds as the cause of death.  The Sect Recidivia accused the Guilder Houses of Oakenzid Hives as having conspired to kill an agent of the Golden Throne, a bold accusation which would on many worlds have caused a series of Arbites raids and the deployment of a PDF regiment to maintain order during the investigation. Jornath though was embroiled in the middle of a system-wide battle against Orks, and the Sect was despised as political dissidents by the systems government.  With its hand forced the director of the Sect on the planet requisitioned the aid of a Rogue Trader named Isandore Mandic, hiring his Voidsmen to act as a personal security detail and "enforcement body" for the vital work of the Sect on the planet.

There are some that worry Sect aligned Voidsmen might soon come to blows with Guild Mustermen in the terraces of the Deadalus Spire, though even if fighting should break out among the two factions it will likely be eclipsed by the greater conflict, becoming just another footnote in the War for Jornath.

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: Gretchin #1

Hey everyone, just posting up some photos of a few greenskin ankle bitters for you to look at. Nothing particularly mind-blowing in terms of scheme or presentation, but from a purely technical level I'm happy with the result. 

Thanks for Reading

-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: Unit Spotlight [Kula Conservator Cohort]

This will be an in depth exploration about the men and women of the Kula Conservator Cohort, for more information about Kula Hive, click HERE

Notes on Nomenclature

  The Kula Conservator Cohort, (hereby abbreviated to simply "KCC")  is a bit of an enigma, in terms of its categorization and designation in Imperial Guard records for Jornath. This is of course not a particularly rare occurrence given the sometimes maddeningly eclectic manner in which Jornathii military units, especially those comprising the Planetary Defense Force were formed out of historical feudal warbands. As Such the KCC is referred to by the Regional Munitorum (which does not recognize local/planetary designations only those issued by Sub-Sector Command) as Jornath PDF Regiment 78 through 88, this designation follows the short-sighted assumption that Jornath's PDF commanders organize their units strictly in adherence to the Cadian standard of Shocktroops; this being infantry and armored units combined together in well-drilled and disciplined formations.  

  

 Of course in the Sub-sector's Tactica Command Headquarters on Casa Ureint, the records are more open-minded and flexible towards the eccentricities of each planet's ancient military traditions, with the mindset that attempting to record these variances, would save valuable time during briefing, should an emergency arise. However,  even these records are flawed,  here they refer to the KCC, as the "Kula Conservator Regiment" mistakenly assuming a Jornathii "cohort" as equivalent to that of a single standard infantry regiment (an issue that occurs many times in this particular record) a mistake that would exclude over 200,000 men and several hundred fighting vehicles from the order of battle.  Fortunately, for Kula this would be a clerical error that would very likely save the city, as Tactica Command's plan of defense for the region, appointed vast reserves to flood the area to make up for what it perceived as a lack of strength. Therefore, when the Orks first landed in the opening days of the Battle for Jornath, the KCC brought an effective strength of 230,000 guardsmen, and was supported by nearly as many mustermen, and Oakenzid cohorts appointed to the defense of the vital tidal flats. meaning the initial Ork landing zone was quickly surrounded and suppressed by a half million soldiers. 

  Indeed in reality, the KCC, is a grouping of eleven separate regiments; ten infantry, and one mechanized infantry collected under the title of "Cohort" a holdout from the pre-imperial history of the planet. There is no standard size for a Cohort, nor does it reference all the forces of a particular area, city or nobleman.  A Cohort simply put is a group, bearing forward a particular enscroll of military traditions, practices, and most important to Jornathii history, an honor roll of victories and noble defeats. As a result a cohort's size and capabilities are wrapped within the histories, legends, and complicated familial social structure of Jornath's aristocracy. An off-world commander would look at the massive tome containing the deeds, actions, strategies, size and battlefield cant of a particular cohort, and chaff at the sizeable task of weaning all the data into useable and helpful bytes for theatre command. Whereas a local Jornathii commander would know intrinsically the capabilities, history, and size of any given cohort. The issue of course becomes family bias, and heated disputes over territory, trade agreements, and dozens of other petty arguments between nobles skewing the account of a Cohorts ability, this occurred many times during the first three years of the Battle for Jornath, when local PDF commanders would provide inaccurate accounts of local forces to Tactica Command groups or Astartes, not through pettiness in all cases,  despite their ancestral feuding, all Jornathii hated the Ork and wanted to contribute to its eradication from their planet, in the vast majority of these cases the social dialogue of discussing a rival's cohort had become so ingrained in Jornathii low gothic that they simply had difficulty accurately communicating the information to off-world commanders accurately. 

Equipment and Payment

   Cohorts are raised from volunteers, each has its own stipulations as to whom is eligible to apply for admittance into a Cohort's ranks,  the more well known and successful, the more difficult it is to gain entry. For the KCC, the applicant must be at least nineteen years of age, have no less than one year of prior military experience in a Huscarl, Mustermen, or Militia unit, be in healthy physical condition, and must be a citizen of Kula Hive, Bolasku, or any of the villages or towns in the Kula Province.   

   The KCC is supplied and funded by the citizens of Kula Hive primarily, as Cohorts are required by Jornathii planetary law, to draw funds only from the population in which the unit recruits. However, the KCC act as an interesting exception, in that they are also given funding from the entire nation of Manfredi-At-Prima, of which Kula is the capital. This is due to the prestige of the city globally, and the high regard afforded to the Cohort as professionals, and particularly loyal troops. 

   As a result the KCC is spoilt for options when they look to create their wargear, while the exact equipment and its sourcing is stated elsewhere, it will be restated here for continuity's sake. The basic equipment is fashioned in the Cadian style, but with a bent towards the finery and circumstance consistent in traditional Jornathii Battledress.  The Cadian Flakhelment 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 effectively, 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 Cohort, use the M36-C Kantrael Pattern Lasgun, for the carbines obvious benefits in naval, urban, and mechanized operations.  The Cohort uses 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.  

   The Specialized nature of the  Tolkhan Dura-Curiass 023, sets the KCC a cut above its peers in the Jornathii PDF, who are generally lucky to have Lasguns rather than autoguns. What the KCC lacks, is solid communication on an infantry level, while it makes use of the backpack mounted Vox kit, this flies in the face of the streamlined and fast moving kit that the KCC quartermasters worked so hard to create. The workaround to this,  which is being partially introduced, as funding arises, is the retrofitting of Helstannon carriers into Vox boosting relay's, using the same antennae system most hab-blocks use for picking up entertainment frequencies, obviously in these machines are dialed to receive transmissions specifically from KCC Vox's and the Indigo Sparrow Command Center.  The Helstannon "Vox Carriages" then allow for Microbeads, purchased from Alar-Median in small batches, to be used over longer distances effectively streamlining the basic wargear of the average KCC armsman or NCO.  The KCC has 3 patterns of fatigue, a dress fatigue, in grey with red trim, reminiscent to the one the unit had in the 31st millenium.  A camouflage speckled woodland pattern, produced in Kula province, and finally an arid/tan speckled camouflage pattern, which is produced by Altheri Hive for its Aeroscant crew, and Drop Infantry, but is sometimes used by the KCC for operations in the northern mountains

Hierarchy and Order of Battle

    The KCC as previously stated consists of 225,000 men and women, which comprises 5% of the population of Kula Hive.  These guardsmen, are broken into 10 infantry regiments of 22,000 apiece, and a single 5,000 men mechanized unit. These numerical accounts may seem particularly inflated, as most Imperial Guard Regiments comprise around half this number in a standard Infantry regiment, this is because all of the logistical, administrative and support personnel for each regiment are included in the regiments fighting strength, as the suggestion of not being considered a "fighter" in a cohort you are a member of would be deeply insulting to a Jornathii. When we subtract these personnel from the total fighting strength, we find that the total frontline personnel of each unit to be around 10-12,000, much more in-line with the munitorum standard.

Regiment 1 -  Commanded by Regent Col. Hugh Enniol [OiC]

Regiment 2 - Commanded by Col. Janyce Nemes [Mistress/Master of Quartermasters]

Regiment 3 - Commanded by Col. Petyr Kendisoplis [Mistress/Master of Euclidian Loyalty]

Regiment 4 - Commanded by Col. Dand Ceellis 

Regiment 5 - Commanded by Maj.Chri Wenwyl 

Regiment 6 - Commanded by Maj. Zacc Olliem -Unit Destroyed in Defense of Bolasku 

Regiment 7 - Commanded by Maj. Tenta Eckrad 

Regiment 8 - Commanded by 1st. Capt. Lueff Sentagato - Unit suffered 78% Casualties.

Regiment 9 - Commanded by Maj. Kenlo "Crash" Ean. 

Regiment 10 - Commanded by Maj. Ashwyn Honon.

Regiment 11 - Commanded by Knight Regent. Isabella Jan. [Mechanized Inf.]

The Cohort commander, also doubles as the field commander of the 1st Regiment, and also attains the honorific of "Regent Colonel",  it is the duty of the Regent Colonel, to authorize officer commissions,  and to receive direct orders from Jornath Planetary Command.  During the Battle for Jornath, the Regent Colonel, also acted as the emergency theatre commander of the central Kula province for a short time, as planetary defenses were martialled to properly meet the Greenskins. 

The commander of 2nd Regiment is also the head of the quartermasters, and must approve any wargear deviations for the Cohort, they are also second in rank to the Regent Colonel, and will act as his/her replacement should the commander be slain. 

The commander of 3rd Regiment is the head of the Cohort's spiritual and moral needs, while in no way a member of the Ecclesiarchy, the Mistress/Master of Euclidian Loyalty, informs new recruits of the legendary 1st commander of the cohort, Euclid Kinnell, and reminds all others of what it means to be an armsmen of the KCC. 

Battle Honors

March of Saint Euclid the Loyal - The seminal battle of the KCC during the breakout of the Horus Heresy. The cohort marched en mass, to counter Mustermen and Huscarls of House Genntim, who had massacred Kula's civic leaders, in a bid to effect a coup d'etat in the name of the Warmaster. After a lengthy urban battle, the Cohort was successful in forcing the Traitors to surrender. 

The 1st Battle of Rotthresh Creek - Around 450 years before the Battle for Jornath, The Regiments 3, 5, and 11 as part of a large scale search for a group of missing youthful hive nobles, and local citizens, stumbled upon a heavily disguised Traitor, Sslyth, and Eldar, raider encampment. The Xenos and Pirates fought fiercely to break out of the situation, but were eventually surrounded and obliterated, leading the Cohort to the missing civilians, thankfully before they were spirited away to slavery. 

The Firestorm of Kula- When the orks landed on Kula, they did not do it with subtlety,  the Ork Kroozer, was shot out of orbit by Suetonius Station, as it descended it broke in two, one half crashing in the tidal flats, 20km to the East of Kula Hive,   and the other 475km to the North. The KCC martialled quickly and met the aliens in the burning forests and grasslands of the tidal flats,  they were horrendously outnumbered, by the Orks,  but fortunately the crash had confused and muddled the xenos enough, that the KCC managed to maintain an effective exclusion zone long enough for reserves to arrive. 

Last Stand of 6 Regiment- During the 1st Year of the War, following the botched Operation Remits Maw, Orks on both the Northern and Kula fronts counter assaulted en masse and with good leadership, catching Tactica command off guard. The KCC and other PDF forces had the Ork crash site fully surrounded, with the bulk of forces in the south and west,  where the Orks had attacked the entrenched Imperials everyday since the first day of the war. During the Ork counter assault, in midsummer,  the greenskins struck out with all their forces to the East, into the port city of Bolasku, in a bid to build a ramshackle fleet and breakout to the south along the coast.   The city was held by the 1st Royal Neohuscarl, Militia and the 6th KCC. The militia tried all they could to harass the Orks, but were brutally swept aside,  the Ship building factories, and docks themselves were held by the 1st Royal Neohuscarl and the 6th,  which were able to hold while outnumbered nearly 100 : 1 for 12 full hours before being slain to a man. Major Olliem, is said to have died leading Gamma Company in a bayonet charge to clear the Regiments' mortar pit of aliens, after the company had fully run through its ammo stores.  

Jornath: A Jarl's Defiance and Other Tales

Col. Reynolds 2nd Jornathi Advisory Battalion. Report of Actions.

Under guidance of The Mortifactors Command staff, as well as suggestions from Tactica Command Ultramar.

Guffmans Platz Army Group has begun Operation: Remits Maw. The operation would be spearheaded by Jarl Mondrix, freshly out of hospital, and newly awarded the Crux Dominus Centurion. The Operation would be targeting the largest concentration of Orks in the Ctre Valley, north of the Firebase position.

While initial engagements went well, the nature of the terrain and the tendency for the Blood Axe Clan of Orks towards ambush has meant that resupplying forward units has become difficult and large sections of the task force are being surrounded and cut off from reinforcement.

Mondrix's force is currently pinned down and surrounded by the Xenos, and while they have slaughtered all the aliens that have assailed their location, they have taken multiple losses, and their supplies run low. Their situation is relatively indicative of most units involved in the operation,

While it would be suitable for us to allow the Orks to waste themselves on our guns, The heavy fighting is attracting massive migrations of Ork Warriors southwards from their crash site.

I will send a mission dockett soon with taskings for any local Imperial forces, that will allow us to have an easier time effecting a breakout.

+++END TRANSMISSION+++

Outcome: While the battle escalated quickly, and Orks got very close many times to overrunning the Guard units, the Xenos were foruntately repulsed as they approached,  despite losing both Sentinels, and dozens of men, the heavy weapons and officers of the Company, especially Jarl Mondix, proved essential to victory. allowing for the unit to successfully withdraw south.  

Captian Tömörbaatar, 2nd Company initial report of the situation on Jornath.

Reports of the Blood Axes attacking a nearby power generator grid had me leading a small dispatch to investigate and engage is necessary. Only myself returned unharmed. The aggression of Orks here is escalating, reinforcements are greatly needed.

Outcome: A battle I did not personally participate in, but one in which no other Jornath bloggers were present, that happened around the same time as the above engagement.  This saw a tactical squad and captain from the White Scars 2nd company, tangling with Blood Axes in a combat patrol situation, as part of the actions to draw off Orks swarming the Imperial troops in the Ctre Valley.   The marines were beaten down heavily. and forced to withdraw.

Lastly, we have an engagement that IS document on another Jornathi Bloggers site, so i'll drop you a few pictures, and a link. All these engagements occurred late may, early June of last year.

Sons of Taurus: Jornath: Road Rage