Blaant

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Blaant
Betalis IV.png
Imperial Knight World

Segmentum:

Ultima Segmentum

Sector:

Australis Ultima

Subsector:

Beneheventian Sub-Sector

System:

The Scandus System

Class:

Knight World

Type:

Minor

Betalis IV Map.jpg
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Geography

Physics

Type Small iron/silicate

Mass 7.32 x 1823 kg

Density 8.94 g/cm3

Composition 50.9% iron, 19.2% silicon, 18.8% calcium, 3.5% magnesium, 3.2% other metals, 4.4% other elements |style="width: 33%;"|

Gravimetry

Gravity 4.70 m/s2

Escape Velocity 7.81 km/s

Rotation Period 13.4 hours

Axis Tilt 40.81 ° |style="width: 33%;"|

Atmosphere

Type Slight Toxic Breathable

Pressure 775.64 kPa

Composition 77.1% Nitrogen, 20.9% Oxygen, trace other gases |}

Population

Approximately 13 million people

Blaant

Blaant is an Imperial Knight World of the Beneheventian Sub-Sector, mostly famed for being the ancestral home of House Earus. A shadowed, twilight world circling its pale blue-white star at the very edge of its habitable zone, it constitutes an exception amongst the otherwise barren regions of the The Scandus System, located in the northern part of Australis Ultima Sector in the Beneheventian Sub-Sector, which quickly made it a priority target for human colonization which was implemented as early as the 25th Millennium. The planet was covered in a world-spanning forest of vast fungal and pseudo-coral growths which swallowed up every iota of light, casting the red earth beneath them into deep shadow and even shrouding its cold seas into sunless deeps. Aggressive and fast growing, the living web that covered Blaant was nevertheless organic, and therefore a precious resource to be used and harvested, although the planet's great toxicity for many years prevented this. This was a world of considerable hazard, as the planet presented its own predators in the shape of hulking ambulatory mycolidae and less well-understood fauna deep within its shadowed depths. During the time of Old Night, the Knight House of Earus, originally of the Þungur Metallikos Sector, rose to rule Blaant as its own. Earus, previously a minor Household, flourished over the decades of its stewardship of Blaant before the coming of the Great Crusade in the 30th Millennium. After the Knight World was restored to the Imperium, its valuable harvest along with certain exotic chemical compounds, were cultivated for export by legions of servitor-arachnid engines, creating a wealth which further increased the power and independence of this world.

History

During the Dark Age of Technology, a lonely shadowed world that would come to be known as Blaant was discovered deep within a mineral rich but otherwise barren region of the void. In order to exploit and colonise this region for humanity, it had been selected to become a Knight World. And so the House of Earus first came into being, and its domain known for reasons of literal truth as well as poetic observation came to be called Blaant. It was founded during the latter part of the period of humanity's expansion across the stars; its founding ark's journey is recorded as originating from what is now known as the Forge World of Mezoa. This place was indeed almost supra-abundant in life, but within days of the colonising ark's planetfall, a terrible truth had been discovered; the fruits of this benighted world were inimically poisonous to man. The shadowed world was at the very edge of its aged star's habitable zone, and life there had flourished millions of years ever before it had on distant Terra. Here the dominant form of that life was akin to fungus, but infinitely more varied and complex than that of most worlds, forming a planet-spanning web of life. Its patterns varied, from towering pseudo-coral-like structures kilometres high, comprising billions of microscopic creatures, which overshadowed the land and covered the seas, stealing the light, to colossal, ambulatory predators whose venom could sear ceramite and eat through plasteel. All of it was to humanity virulently and fatally toxic when consumed, even given the most stringent methods available for its processing. Blaant was a Death World, misjudged as a paradise of life.

Undeterred, the colonisation went ahead; keeps were built into the few jutting mountain ranges which fought to clear the vast living canopy, attempts were made to clear-cut for settlements and introduce off-world agriculture, supplies were rationed, and additional Magos Biologis (this is used here as a term of convenience, shrouded as the truth of such things is by time) brought in to attempt to address the difficulties with the certain hope of an eventual solution to the planet's toxicity. During its founding decades progress was slow, and life for the settlers a continuous struggle for survival, but one which they held at bay, at least until the coming of the Age of Strife. With exterior contact and the chance of resupply lost, Blaant should have been doomed and as things were, matters rapidly worsened for the dozen Knight Households and their retainers who had made it their cause to dominate the strange world. Soon famine was the enemy, as stockpiled supplies dwindled or became mysteriously tainted. As if sensing the humans' weakness, the planetary ecology itself seemed to turn on them in a violent spurt of aggressive growth unprecedented in its suddenness or speed, and whole settlements were choked and overrun in a matter of hours by berserk fungal growth, their inhabitants slain by ravaging predators or consumed from within by parasitic life. Knightly keeps were only preserved by great trenches and pits filled with volatiles and turned into walls of fire, and the continuous counter-attack of the Knights themselves against the forest and the monstrous creatures within it. Soon, as matters worsened, the Knight Houses of Blaant began to turn on each other for supplies and to assuage their hunger, and it is said that the most unspeakable acts were forced on those who would survive.

This age of violence and decay would last for centuries and should ultimately have been the death of the Knight colony, regardless of the tenacity and bravery of its scions, save for the actions of the House of Earus. This House, accounted as but one of the settlement's minor Households -- renowned more for its learning and the skill of its Sacristans rather than its might -- had offered sanctuary to the Magos Biologis enclave stranded on the planet once the great decay had begun, just as others had turned against them. Within Earus Keep, the Magos and their acolytes had laboured long, obsessively pursuing a solution to the problem they had been given when they had first been assigned to the world, even as darkness swallowed and separated the Knight Houses and the monstrous biosphere closed in. The solution when it at last came was a radical one; rather than adapt the world to humanity, they adapted humanity to Blaant, and House Earus was their canvass. It would take generations and many tragedies before their work bore fruit, but they were successful, and as the other Houses of Blaant dwindled and in some cases died out entirely, the Earus waxed strong and slowly multiplied. Soon they fought not simply to survive but to dominate, and many of the other surviving Households looked on them as saviours and joined them through alliances of blood, while others who saw them as enemies -- as something no longer fully human -- perished. Within a dozen generations, only House Earus and its kin remained as stewards and masters of this shadowed and deadly world.

Aside from its inherent hostility, Blaant had lived up to its name during the Age of Strife, and through this long era of trouble and torment it had endured without being subjected to serious outside attack. Such xenos and human marauder traffic which did rarely find their way to the world suffered as badly from the local environment as they did from the bellicose Knight House's resistance, while the Orks, long a menace to the worlds of the Scandus System, avoided the planet as if it was a profound anathema to them. As a result, the House of Earus's dominion of their world went all but unchallenged, while affairs of honour between them and the constant battle to master their home world served to hone their fighting skills.

When the forerunners of the Great Crusade first contacted Blaant, it was by accident, but they found their vox-hails readily answered in ancient and formal courtesy, and Imperial emissaries were both impressed as well as somewhat disturbed by the macabre and formal reception they received on the sinister planet, of which dim legends had already reached them during their exploration of the region. Despite some misgivings, initial relations went well, and Blaant's sealed Compliance was attained bloodlessly by the 9th Expeditionary Fleet led by Lord Commander Aimon Xaradur of the IIIrd Legion in 733.M30, during the fleet's first journey through the region, at a time when much of the Beneheventian Sub-Sector were still entirely uncharted and under xenos control. To the Phoenicians, it is said that, the Earus, represented a culture at once familiar to them and utterly strange. What most provoked the 9th Expeditionary Fleet's interest, however, was House Earus's military strength, which was largely undecayed in sophistication and extremely extensive in range, including several hundred fully operational Knight armours and a moderate but reliable independent capacity to construct and arm more; a rare jewel of discovery indeed.

Mechanicum emissaries were equally impressed, but these the Earus -- perhaps remembering their abandonment long ago -- politely but firmly rebuffed, extracting at best a high price in "gifts" for access to their own techno-arcana, and then only as they saw fit and with much always kept secret. Any acrimony this might have created was quickly and thoroughly forestalled by the authority of Lord Xaradur, who ensured the world's smooth path to Compliance and the granting of full rights and titles under the Aquila to House Earus in return for a full third of the Knight House embarking directly under his command as part of the 9th Expeditionary Fleet. This first pact of arms and alliance was to last for nearly thirty seven years of service, and marked only the beginning of the House of Earus's involvement with the Great Crusade.

Beside the spaceport and Earus Keep the other strategic significant location on the planet is the Earus Knight Manufactori which located at the massive mountain ridge that covers the Northern part of the planet. The ability to construct Knights and the possible of the existence of an uncorrupted STC makes it a prime target for the forces of the Warmaster.

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