Despite an Imperial quarantine, smugglers are running a lucrative business helping citizens escape the warp-tainted planet of Dargav III.

Citizens desperate to escape Dargav III

Civil unrest grows daily on the doomed world of Dargav III, and the planet’s few operative spaceports are besieged by Imperial citizens seeking to escape on any void-capable spacecraft that remain.

The planet was cursed five years ago when a nearby warp storm, The Heart of Darkness, expanded exponentially, bringing its edge within 23 light years of Dargav III and dramatically increasing the planet’s exposure to the storm’s purple, warp-tainted glow.

Since then, an estimated 270 million people have died and more than 1 billion have suffered horrific mutations due to warp exposure. Lacking the resources to evacuate the planet’s 5 billion citizens, the Imperium essentially abandoned the population to its fate.

That fate increasingly is grim. Many of the world’s political elite, as well as its wealthiest citizens, fled the planet years ago, and Administratum officials still trapped on the planet are struggling to maintain basic services such as food allocations, water access, and security services.

Today, as the remnants of Imperial rule increasingly collapse and food shortages grow, the planet has entered an apocalyptic stage of degeneration, and millions are storming the planet’s still-operating spaceports in a desperate bit to escape.

That seems unlikely. Still functioning elements of the Planetary Defense Force (PDF) have fortified the spaceports and, working with smugglers, are charging exorbitant fees for the few precious seats available on smugglers’ voidcraft.

Hungry survivors on Metaluna wrestle food away from a vulnerable old woman. Yet she is lucky. Many bandits would simply kill her rather than waste time dealing with her hopeless struggling.

Survivors still struggle on new Death World

The odds are turning against Imperial citizens who have survived the apocalyptic environmental disaster on Metaluna.

Starvation remains widespread, and even the small remaining settlements of civilization that still exist are reporting growing banditry and even cannibalism.

Eight years ago, the planet of Metaluna collided with the Esskay Nebula, a thick cloud of interstellar gas that blocked the solar radiation of its star and caused planet temperatures to plummet. Within months, the planet became an ice world, and 99.9 percent of its population was forced to evacuate or die.

Those still alive survived in isolation or organized small communities that attempted to establish hydroponic farming as a means to avoid starvation.

For a number of years, these strategies appeared to be moderately successful—at least according to the handful of vox communications that have ebeen received through the planet’s violent atmospheric conditions. But the situation is changing.

Recent communications indicate that the larger settlements fine the challenges of food production in harsh, below-freezing conditions difficult to provide sufficient nutrition for survivors. Malnutrition is leading to increasing civil unrest, and the threat of a total collapse of organized communities is further threatened by desperate bands of nomadic survivors that will attack any settlement in a desperate bid to find food.

“The survival of anyone on Metaluna is a testament to the spirit of humanity and its determination to survive a hostile galaxy,” Prefect Antaro Taranis wrote in a recent Adeptus Administratum update on the fate of Metaluna. “Alas, ultimate fate of these determined survivors balances on the razor’s edge.”

Although fierce atmospheric disturbances above Metaluna continue to block Imperial assistance to the devastated population, Taranis noted that limited communications with the planet’s surface is improving.

“If Metaluna’s atmospheric disturbances settle down in the coming years, it may be possible to drop useful supplies from orbit to the planet’s surface,” he wrote. “Of course, there is a risk that the delivery of such valuable resources actually could re-ignite violence amongst the various settlements.”

“It remains very possible that the harsh conditions on Metaluna will prove too much for those valiant souls who continue to hold onto life.  Time will tell.”

This Cargo-8 Ridgehauler carries a large Hazubne family and all its possessions across the Morkai desert, one of hundreds of vehicles that make up the largest mass migration of a native tribe in millennia.

Tribal migration worries Morkai officials

A large indigenous tribe has abandoned its ancestral lands on the desert planet of Morkai and embarked upon a mass immigration to escape repeated attacks by the planet’s mutant rebels.

Approximately 10,000 members of the Hazubne Tribe, which for millennia survived as nomads in the northern deserts of Morkai, recently organized a caravan of thousands of decrepit vehicles and Dustback Helamite riding mounts, as well as huge herds of tribal livestock.

This mass migration is headed on a 3,000-kilometer journey to the outskirts of the hive city of Charcharoth near the world’s equator.

“With some trepidation, the Council of Electors has given its blessing to this historic resettlement of the Hazubne Tribe,” announced Grand Elector Fabius Nemetorius in a planet-wide voxcast.

The Hazubne have suffered repeated raids by mutant rebels from the ruined hive city of Ungolath. Although tribal warriors have long defended their ancestral home, their largely small-arms weaponry have proven inadequate to deal with the better-equipped and mechanized rebel mutants.

“Our loyal subjects, the Hazubne, petitioned for government protection, but our military resources are spread thin, and we felt the best option was for the tribe to move to a new territory where Imperial military assets are more readily available to provide protective services.”

Left unsaid was that these military assets would, by necessity, be called from House Fenrig, which rules Charcharoth, and there are rumors that Imperial the Knight Household was coerced into accepting the considerable challenges of helping the Hazubne settle in a new territory where water, grazing land, and other resources are still unclear.

There also are rumors that nomadic tribes local to Charcharoth are unhappy, considering the arrival of the Hazubne as interlopers, and there is talk of possible discord once the Hazubne arrive.

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