Sepheris Secundus

Sepheris Secundus is a world of immense mineral wealth, city sized mines, billions-strong hordes of serfs and the sharpest divide between the elites and the masses in the Calixis Sector. It is a grim place of dry, arid lands, feral mutants, and lives spent in back breaking labour deep beneath the ground. The Imperium's eagerness to exploit Sepheris Secundus's vast resources is such that the planet is at the same time the richest and poorest world in the sector.

While Sepheris Secundus's climate is reasonable in temperature, it has no oceans save for the small polar seas, so the moisture in its atmosphere comes from below the crust, spewed out from failed mine workings or natural geysers that pockmark the planet like pustules, still providing no where near enough to maintain reasonable humidity. Its surface is split between the vast open mines like deep scars in the crust broken only by the ruins of failed kingdoms that tried to claim Sepheris Secundus in the past. Sepheris Secundus would be a meaningless backwater were it not for the enormous rare mineral wealth beneath its surface.

The Suffering Kingdom

While the whole Imperium is a feudal empire, feudalism is an extreme on Sepheris Secundus. Everyone born on the planet must have a master to whom they pay nine-tenths of everything they produce, which for most citizens means the ore they hack from the rock faces of the planet's mines. Queen Lachryma III, the planet's absolute monarch, sits at the top of this feudal system. The rights to the labour of these billions of serfs belong to the barons appointed by the queen or to noble families and business consortiums that purchase them from the crown. The queen's own master is the Imperium, to whom she hands over truly staggering amounts of ore and metals to fulfil the planet's tithe. Sepheris Secundus's tithe is the highest among the Calixis Sector's mining worlds, and without its immense output of raw materials, the economy of the whole province would be badly unsettled.

Two principal forces maintain Sepheris Secundus's feudal system. The first is the weight of tradition: every serf labouring in the mines is doing what his father did and his grandfather before that, often at the same rock face. The second force is physical violence. One of the reasons that Sepheris Secundus's culture is so primitive by many standards is that weaponry and other technology is monopolised by the crown. The queen's Royal Scourges are equipped with lasguns, grenades and chainblades, contrasting with their gaudy armour. Though few in number, the technological advantage that these troops possess has been enough to put down a great many uprisings in the mines of Sepheris Secundus, and the planet's history is littered with massacres where thousands of serfs fell to volleys of lasgun fire.

Planetary Data

• Galactic Position: 52/34/CS/NNE.

• Satellites: Three moons, none inhabited.

• Planetary Governor: Queen Lachryma III.

• Economy: Chips or Lumps - In the mines and villages of Sepheris Secundus life revolves around endless mining, to the point where chips and lumps of ore are sometimes used as a default currency. Nobles use Golden Thrones as normal.

• Principle Exports: Sepheris Secundus is one of the larger metal and ore exporting planet in the Calixis Sector. Most important are its vast deposits of rare metals, particularly osmiridum.

• Principle Imports: Sepheris Secundus relies on imports of food from the sector's agri worlds.

• Imperial Guard Recruitment: Its vast population makes it a potential supplier of Imperial Guard recruits, although a relatively small proportion of the population would be suitable because of universally poor health, along with the risk of exposing the subjugated masses to the possibility of life outside the mines.