Phobetor

Phobetor

Phobetor is an unpleasant planet, situated in the far East of the Galaxy, in what are commonly referred to as the Ghouls Stars. A world of dark infested forests and misty valleys, permanently locked into twilight due to its position between a binary star and the heavy pollution in the atmosphere caused by its ancient industry.

During the dark age of technology, the planet was both a garden world and an industrial powerhouse, great factories spewed out equipment used that was used across the breadth of the region, but with the fall of wider galactic society, the industry could not be maintained and slowly but surely collapsed into ruin.

Unfortunately for the population of Phobetor, this released all kind of toxins and pollutants into the biosphere, leading first to the drastic decline of the inhabitants, and then the slow mutation of the flora and fauna making it the death world that it is today.

Not finished with the planet, there was one final disaster to befall the world. During the chaos of the time, a deadly phage was accidentally released. Known as the Creeping Rot, the first symptoms were not noticed for many years. The virus began to breakdown the cell walls in the host, slowly causing the victim to literally decay from the inside out. This would eventually leave the victim little more than a walking husk, inevitability cast out of its abode, mindlessly wandering the wasteland between settlements, claiming sustenance from wherever, or whoever, it could.

Unable to find a cure for this fatal curse, a religion sprang up. It preached that your time on this plain is nothing more than a trial, only through great feats could an individual go on to the promised afterlife, and the longer that they tarried in the world, the more their spirit would be corrupted, both spiritually and physically. On these teachings, individuals would via to be the best at whatever they pursued, be it art, science or martial prowess. However, unless taken by some misfortune earlier in life, all would eventually develop the Creeping Rot, and venture out into the wilds to met a heroic death against the horrors of the wilds, rather than face a slow and honourless demise safe in their homes.

After a few centuries, the number of human settlements started to dwindle, as more and more of the remaining farmable land was lost to the growing hordes of phaged. One by one first cities and then towns began to be abandoned and became infested with new shambling inhabitants, until only a few hundred bastions survived, the greatest of which was the home of the Harbingers, a religious order dedicated to self sacrifice so that they might attain a better afterlife. It was into this fortress that Johannes was to fall.

Coming of the Imperium

Since the arrival of the VI Legionnes Astartes, the planet has been largely left to its own devices and is used mostly as a recruiting ground for the Harbingers Legion. The remaining fortress monasteries still serve as bastions for the human population, but a number of settlements have been refounded, using "Phaged" labour for the manual work.

The Harbingers have based their Fortress monastery on the orbiting Moon, this allows visitors to interact with the Legion without fear of contracting the Phage for themselves. The Mechanicum also have a large presence in the monastery, and use it as a base for Archeotech foraging expeditions to the surface.