One of the smaller alcoves within the Governor’s Palace in the city of Palagra. Note the intricate design of white marble, a masterpiece of hand-carved masonry.

Continued from Part 1 . . .

Notable Areas

A view of just part of the Broken Back Falls in the capital city.

Palagra—The capital city of Iconia, Palagra, is known as the “City of Waterfalls” for the 137 cascades within and around the city of 250,000.

A wonder of architecture, the city features several towering gothic cathedrals to the Emperor, as well as a Governor’s Palace of white marble that stands on the precipice of the half-kilometer-wide Broken Back Falls.

Although access to the Palace  is restricted, citizens can tour the adjacent tree-lined Primarch’s Promenade. This walkway skirts the fall’s precipice and allows viewers to watch the Targos River descend 300 meters over a cascade of 17 separate waterfalls.

The nearby Cathedral of Sanctuary is the largest and most impressive holy site on Iconia. It’s granite and plasteel walls are coated with a thin lining of pure gold, and its traditional Imperial gothic architecture features 20-meter-tall, stained-glass windows celebrating the lives of the Emperor, the Primarchs, and Saint Orlanda of the Blessed Chalice.

The Glowing Crystal Maze is one of the natural wonders of Iconia.

Glowing Crystals Maze—The Karst Mountains are famed for the unusual structure of their subterranean grottos, but none match the grandeur of the Glowing Crystals Maze.

Located at the edge of Lake Salaca—and partly submerged by it—the site is a two-kilometer-square maze of caverns made of four-story-tall crystals with a porous quality where a rare bioluminescent bacteria has taken root.

The faint, bluish glow of this bacteria has turned the caverns into a eerie yet surprising calming environment, and a small industry of boat tours has developed to offer affluent citizens a novel, 90-minute visit.

Ruins of Origin Point

According to legend, the first settlers landed their huge colony ship in the Kewu Planis of the northern hemisphere. While there is no documented evidence to support this, it is widely accepted that the plasteel skeleton of a vast voidcraft, half buried in a sea of waist-high grass, is a remnant of this Age of Darkness wonder.

Although stripped of technology millennia ago, the aesthetic design of the ruined ship is still impressive. Delicate arches of shaped adamantium rise from the ground, now draped with flowering Whipple Ivy, and the ancient stones of an old altar—believed to be the first altar to the God-Emperor—stands under one such arch, through which one has a breathtaking view of the snow-shrouded Toraka Mountains nearly 150 kilometers in the distance.

The ash heaps of the Sulpher Pit Manufactorum is one of the most toxic areas of the planet. Its laborers include servitors and violent criminals condemned to a slow and painful death.

Sulphur Pit Manufactorum

One of the few exceptions to the government’s balanced-ecosystem policy is the massive, 50-kilometer-square manufactorum that mines the infamous Sulphur Pit.

The pit is a massive sinkhole that descends into a deposit of sulphur laced with heavy metals, rare earth minerals, and toxic but exotic chemical solutions found no where else in the galaxy.

The manufactorum opened in late M39 when the Segmentum Administratum increased Iconia’s Imperial tithe to a level that threatened to force the planetary government to approve unrestrained industrial growth. Then-Governor Derek van der Sven opted instead to mine the Sulphur Pit, judging that creating a highly toxic industrial zone that damaged a few hundred cubic kilometers was a small price to pay to preserve the rest of the planet.

There is no law against visiting the Manufactum, as few have any interest in entering an environment that is a death sentence to approach without highly advanced protective gear.

War and Defense

An ork warband known as “Speed Freaks” has become a major challenge for Iconia’s Planetary Defense Force.

Unlike many worlds in the Corvus Cluster, Iconia has not been victimized by war since the Great Crusade brought the planet into the Imperial fold.

That changed in late 739.M41, when an ork Rok entered the system and crash-landed in the southern hemisphere. The Planetary Defense Force (PDF) responded quickly. Several regiments made their way to the crash sight, attempted to encircle and contain the xeno threat, and eventually launched an attack to destroy the greenskins.

Alas, the PDF had never fought fought a large military engagement in its entire history, and the orks proved a highly aggressive and resilient foe.  The first regiment to engage the xenos found itself outfought and largely destroyed.

The government wisely ordered an expansion of the PDF, and new troops were sent south to counter ork expansion. Although fighting was constant in the next two years, the PDF managed to contain the threat—but was unable to crush it. Over time, however, ork spores were carried by the wind across the planet, and the PDF now finds itself on the defensive, constantly attempting to destroy outbreaks of greenskin colonies before they grow into  serious military threat.

What’s more, Iconia’s defenses have been increasing hard-pressed by a war band of “Speed Freaks”—essentially an undisciplined mechanized force—that has proven a formidable foe. Known as the “Red Runnas,” this war band wiped out two battalions last year in a battle for a small manufactorum in the planet’s southern hemisphere.

Stellar System

Iconia

The sun of Stellar System G89-87-A2 is colloquially known as Sol, a stable white star of 3.8 billions years in age.  The full spectral class of Sol  is  G3V, indicating a main-sequence star with a surface temperature around 6,000 K. 

The system consists of six planets:

Solaris: An ultra-hot gas giant that orbits its star at a distance of 3 million miles. Tidally locked, the planet’s day side reaches temperatures of more than 3,500 Kelvin. It orbits the sun every 12 hours. No population.

Actium: Mining World. Orbiting at a distance of 72 million miles from Sol, Actium is a crater-pocked, inhospitable world with a thin atmosphere of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium, and potassium. Hundreds of mining facilities operate on the surface. A population of 120 million lives in environmentally enclosed manufactorums beneath the planet’s surface.

Iconia: Civilized world. Population: 2 billion.

Croton: Ice world. A sizable deposit of adamantium was discovered on Croton two centuries ago, and several large mining operations now exist on the planet. Planetary authority was awarded to the Adeptus Mechanicus, which maintains a  10-million-strong workforce in enclosed surface hab blocks.

Naxos: Forbidden World. A dwarf planet on the outskirts of the system, Naxos has a highly eccentric orbit. Over its three-century orbit of Sol, the planet’s distance from the star ranges from 4.7 billion to 11.2 billion miles. All information concerning this planet is classified, although there are rumors of a secret Imperial base in orbit.

Learn more about Iconia by downloading the Encyclopedia of Iconian History, now available on your home cogitator.

Click here to return to Part 1 of planetary summary.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical, sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.