+++PLANETARY DATA+++
JERIKO REACH
SYSTEM: Jeriko
SUB-SECTOR: Hypercleon Ebb
SECTOR: Ios
SEGMENTUM: Ultima
EQUATORIAL CIRCUMFRENCE: 28,000 Miles.
GRAVITY: 1.15G.
YEARS AND DAYS: Jeriko Reach has no day or night in the conventional sense, but a dayside and a nightside. However, the world’s satellites frequently align in such a manner as to create a false ‘night’ on Dayside. The length can vary from a few minutes to many weeks, depending on the alignment. These eclipses are considered highly auspicious by the native population, and many festivals are centred around them. They also often herald increased periods of warfare between the various tribal groupings, and on extended nights, a certain anarchy even creeps into the settled towns where the adepts reside, making life difficult for the garrison and arbites.
SATELLITES: Mutiny. Cantanka.
POPULATION: 30,500,000.
MEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE: +55°C.
TROPOSPHERIC COMPOSITION: Very little airborne vapour, so few if any clouds. Otherwise breathable. Very little atmospheric turbulence. Regions surrounding Honourable Imperial Mining Concern facilities may be subject to localised atmospheric pollution, so the Concern’s troops and senior officers wear rebreathers in such zones (a luxury not afforded the indentured miners).
GEOGRAPHY: Most of the surface is land, with a series of seas dotted around the surface. Some inland mountain ranges, and numerous craters caused in the planet’s distant past and preserved due to minimal winds. The seas have a complex mineral composition, and are toxic to most lifeforms. Processing stations exist along the coasts, but the liquid takes a lot of processing to make potable.
Further from the seas, the vegetation becomes more dense. Much of this is poisonous, dangerous or even hostile, and where thickest home to many carnivorous autochthonic lifeforms as well as creatures probably introduced thousands of years ago, such as wild grox. The most dangerous of these regions are referred to as ‘deathzones’, and are rarely entered.
Nightside is almost entirely unexplored, and even orbital surveys are rare. The Honourable Concern has attempted limited explorations, though these are seen as low priority as enough of the polyioxikon they mine exists on dayside. It is thought the majority of nightside falls into the deathzone category.
GOVERNMENT TYPE: Tribal monarchy
PLANETARY GOVERNER: Grand Exhaltant Salabad the Twenty-Ninth.
ADEPT PRESENCE: Low. Administratum in major settlements; Adepta Sororitas Abbey of the Desert Rose in mountains; Imperial Guard garrison; small Adeptus Arbites presence.
MILITARY: The Jeriko Reach garrison is the main military force, consisting of an Imperial Guard battle group, largely drawn from Mordant regiments following their actions in the war. This force has the task of maintaining the Imperium’s authority and guarding against the sector-wide recidivism that led to the last war. In emergencies, the garrison can be bolstered by troops from the Defence Volunteer Force, drawn from the ‘urban’ native population. This body is irregular and semi-professional, but has a long history of service and it is a great honour for a family to be called upon to send a son to war. The volunteers are loathed by the hill tribes.
The Devine Janissary. Salabad’s personal bodyguard. These warriors are the Grand Exhaltant’s private army. They undertake missions against the Salabad’s rivals and other tribal groups the garrison would rather not get involved with.
The Indentured Defence Corp of the Honourable Imperial Mining Concern. Offworlders brought in by the Concern to guard the mining enclaves.
Hill Tribes. The native hill tribes are highly warlike, and every male of fighting age is expected to take part in constant tribal conflicts. The Bethaljinn tribes are currently the strongest, and these have started raiding on outlying Mining Concern enclaves.
Adepta Sororitas. The Abbey of the Desert Rose in the Beylik mountains is home to a small force of Battle Sisters, but this has yet to fully recover following the war.
RELIGION: The natives worship the emperor as a distant and vengeful figure, though the Bethaljinn have recently started worshipping a figure they call ‘the angel’. To date, it is not known if this figure is a literal person or some personification of the emperor or one of his saints.
Indentured HIMC personnel are drawn from a range of worlds, and therefore worship the Emperor according to the dictates of a thousand different cults. A small contingent of the Missionarius Galaxia is attached to the Mining Concern to provide for their spiritual needs.
CLIMATE: Hot and arid on dayside. The lack of cloud cover is particularly uncomfortable for the troopers of the garrison, who being drawn from Mordant, a night world, must wear glare protection in the open. Nightside is cold, with a single glacier in the very centre.
SOCIETY: Grand Exhaltant Salabad’s authority is centred around the main settlements, and these are populated mainly by ‘urbanised’ natives as well as various adepts of the Administratum, Adeptus Astra Telepathica etc. Further from this centre society breaks down into ancient tribal groupings. The Mining Concern maintains small facilities called ‘mining enclaves’, which it administers largely as it will. The mining enclaves are unofficially considered ‘neutral ground’ where the rule of the Grand Exaltant is ill-defined and even the garrison is careful to operate.
WATER SUPPLY: No potable water exists on Jeriko Reach, and therefore every settlement must rely on its condensers to extract water from the toxic liquids held in the subsoil. These are common features across the world, though the hill tribes, which predate the authority of the Imperium, have there own, closely guarded, means of extracted water.
PRINCIPLE EXPORTS: A chemical compound called polyioxikon, used in the manufacture of low grade mass plasma transmission systems. The Imperial Mining Concern was incorporated at the end of M35 by an offworld cartel in order to exploit and export this material. Polyioxikon remains in demand, though the profits from the operation are not high.
PRINCIPLE IMPORTS: The garrison is periodically re-supplied when segmentum command remember they exist. The Mining Concern ships in machinery and personnel on a semi-regular basis. The Grand Exhaltant is known to maintain a zoo of exotic creatures, many of which are shipped in at exhorbitant prices from offworld. In common with many of the tribal leaders, he also maintains a large harem, and he is known to import Simulacra - artificial humanoids, to add to this. These particular simulacra, sometimes called 'joysims', have blue skin and white hair, and are considered amongst the finist expression of the genomancer's art - they are also highly elicit and only the likes of an Imperial Commander such as the Grand Exhaltant can afford them.
DEFENCES: The garrison forms the world’s primary defence. A network of automated surface to orbit missile silos was built during the last war to defend Jeriko Reach from planetary assault. These were never used, and the secrets of their operation are entirely lost. This causes some concern to Mining Concern and munitorum vessels as they approach the world, though to date, none of these automated defence missiles have fired.
OFFWORLD CONTACTS: Although Jeriko Reach is, on the surface an isolated frontier world of little concern to the Imperium at large, this makes it of interest to a number of other groups. Eldar pirates are known to operate in the Wilderness Space regions beyond the Reach, and these periodically raid the world. It is believed these pirates have recently undergone some form of civil war, and a new leader has taken control. This may lead to heightened activity. It has furthermore been suggested on several occasions that various representatives of the Grand Exhaltant’s authority have colluded with the pirates in highly illegal activity.
Many scavengers and looters have been drawn to Jeriko Reach in the years since the war, drawn by the promise of high value loot amidst the old battlefields. Some of these have established small settlements of their own out in the wastes, sheltering inside long burned-out tank wrecks and shipping high-value goods off world.
The small Adepta Sororitas presence in the Beylik mountains provides further links off world, though the sisters rarely interact with the population at large. The Abbey of the Desert Rose was almost entirely destroyed during the last war, and has yet to be fully rebuilt.
