My first attempt at fluff-writing for anything, constructive criticism welcome. Feel free to point out gramattical misses or inconsistensies too, with the exception of incorrect usage of its and it's. For some reason my Word program likes messing with my texts...
Also, sorry for the Wall o'text, I looked for a fluff section in the
40k part but couldn't find anything, so I continued writing
.
The world of Kaleva Prime, located in the Segmentum Solar, is an Agri-/Death world. The planet itself is covered by vast forests of shrubs and small, hardy trees, while the inhabitants live in domed structures, where they grow one of the only edible things that will grow on the planet, the famous Kalevan turnip. A plant that, while bitter and with a horrible taste, contains great amounts of almost everything a human needs to survive. Freak atmospheric phenomena around the planet chills the air and spontaneously creates hurricanes, blizzards, hailstorms, tornadoes and other extreme types of weather, thus forcing the inhabitants to take cover rapidly. Because of this, Kalevans rarely venture outside their great domed agri-shelters. As a result, when they DO venture outside, the Kalevans always wear an all-terrain survival suit, to protect them from the extreme weather. Despite this, many natives are killed, especially during the harvest season, when the harvest of the various agri-shelters is transported to the space docks for off-world transportation.
Being situated in the Segmentum Solar, Kaleva Prime has the privilege of having Mars as its closest forge-world, and thus Kalevan regiments have access to the best armour and equipment that the Adeptus Mechanicus can bestow upon Imperial Guardsmen. Similarly, the armoured, mechanized and artillery units from the planet have access to most of the vehicles that Mars is capable of producing.
Two of the other worlds in the Kaleva system, Kaleva Secundus and Kaleva Tersus, were once agri-worlds covered in verdant fields where all sorts of crops grew. None of the atmospherical conditions of Kaleva Prime were present, but (perhaps as a result of the lack of extreme weather) neither was the Kalevan turnip. The fourth and final planet in the system, Kaleva Ultima, was a Hive World, but held only 6 billion inhabitants. Most of the planet was covered in giant, high-tech defense platforms and giant energy generators, capable of defending the entire system from enemy attacks. The original settlers had intended Kaleva Ultima to be a bulwark for Terra, serving as a naval base for the starships protecting the home of humanity from xeno races. During the Age of the Imperium, the spacedocks in orbit around the planet had long since fallen into disuse and were no longer operable.
While the colonization of the Kaleva system took place before during the Dark Age of Technology, and much thus is shrouded in mystery, it is specifically recorded in one of the few surviving pieces of an
STC printout (which also contained the plans for the agri-shelters in use on Kaleva Prime) that the sole reason that humans ever settled on Kaleva Prime was the Kalevan turnip.
When the forces of the God-Emperor of Mankind arrived in the Kaleva system in early M31, the Kalevans first fiercely opposed the Space Marines of the Salamanders Legion sent to conquer the system. Using ancient technology from the Dark Age of Technology, the Kalevans handily destroyed several starships, including the Battle-Barge “Furor Terrestris”, using the giant orbital defence cannons of Kaleva Ultima. Feeling quite proud of themselves, and sure that they could withstand whatever the Imperium threw at them, the Kalevans didn’t even fire the mighty main cannon, the giant behemoth preventing the firing of any other weapon systems while charging the planet’s entire energy output into its firing matrix. The Kalevans sent a message to the Space Marine fleet, boasting that not even a God could conquer them. However, when the God-Emperor himself arrived in the system and descended to the surface of Kaleva Ultima, the Kalevans immediately submitted themselves to his mercy.
During the Horus Heresy, the Kalevan system stood, as intended, as a mighty bulwark against the forces of Chaos. Horus, on his way to Holy Terra, knew that the Kalevan bulwark would decimate his forces and gathered his forces outside the system and intended to fire specially modified long-range viral torpedoes loaded with the dreaded life-eater virus. However, he severely underestimated the range of the main gun of Kaleva Ultima. Originally named “Malleus Terra”, the mighty time-rending cannon had been renamed “Gloria Imperator” upon the Emperor’s arrival. It is said that when the cannon charged, the entire surface of the planet shone in a brilliant light blue colour, and a sound like a billion souls crying out in agony could be heard. With an anticlimactic “swoosh”, the cannon fired a sphere a mere 300 meters in diameter. The sphere shone with the same brilliant light blue hue that the surface had, and made its way towards the Chaos fleet, travelling near the speed of light. Upon seeing the cannon fire, the planetary governor was severely disheartened. “Was that all? The mighty bulwark of humanity and THAT is all that happens?!” was what he, along with most of the guardsmen operating the cannon, thought. They were all severely mistaken.
20 minutes after the cannon fired, the sphere struck the Battle-Barge “Talon of Hatred”. At first the orb simply passed through the armour plating, seemingly disappearing, but after eight seconds, the contours of the Battle-Barge, along with those of two Emperor Battleships and thirty-six smaller craft, started warping and bending. The ships affected disappeared and reappeared, made sudden jumps in position of about a hundred meters and finally shattered, their warp-generators harmlessly destroyed by the time-rending powers of the mighty cannon.
Upon realizing that one shot from the cannon he thought he was safe from had destroyed a force that could probably have captured the Kalevan system ten times over, Horus went into a fit of rage. Before he had time to do anything, however, a blinding flash of light reached the fleet, the origin Kaleva Ultima. After so many years of neglect and disuse, the firing of the mighty cannon had overloaded the ancient generators generating the time-rending forces of the cannon, causing them to rupture. In a single second, the entire planet’s mass was converted into a small, incredibly bright and dense sphere the size of a small asteroid. For three seconds, the orb floated in space, harmlessly. Then, it imploded, sending a wave of time-rending energy throughout the system.
The wave only had enough power to affect one quarter of the system, but the only planet that was out of range was Kaleva Prime. Kaleva Secundus and Tersus were both engulfed by the wave and, just as the Chaos ships had, flickered in and out of reality for a few seconds before shattering.
Seeing no reason to destroy Kaleva Prime, Horus ordered the mighty Chaos fleet onward to Terra, its force barely scratched.
When the Horus Heresy was over, and the God-Emperor was interred in the Golden Throne, the surviving Kalevans started to try to rebuild as much of their lost culture as possible on Kaleva Prime. While the climate on Kaleva Prime prior to the catastrophe was warm, almost tropical, the climate after the explosion turned deadly. Some say that the weather anomalies were due to the Emperor’s interment, and that the skies themselves lamented the loss of the leader of all mankind. Others say that the time-rending wave caused some damage to Kaleva Prime and its star, or somehow warped reality in the system, causing the abnormal weather. No one knows for sure.
What is known, however, is that one century after the Heresy, the Kalevans found an
STC printout beneath one of their agri-shelters after a Ork Rok struck the agri-shelter, killing everyone inside both the shelter and the rok. The information gathered from the printouts contained, among other incomprehensible things, the information needed to build and maintain the agri-shelters. This event would have long-lasting effects that no one could predict at the time…
Deciding that the Imperium could benefit greatly from the information, the Planetary Governor had the printout sent with all haste to Mars, so that the Adeptus Mechanicus could use the information for the benefit of all mankind. Grateful, the Adeptus Mechanicus set up an outpost on Kaleva Prime, which remains to this day.
Time went on, and as most other planets did, Kaleva Prime supplied the Imperial Guard with regiments of soldiers. As the planet had very few inhabitants however, the regiments were small and far between. 250 years after the Heresy, there was only three regiments.
These three regiments were all called to battle, however, in 267.M31, when Waaagh! Fazemelta stumbled upon the agri-world. When the Ork warlord first arrived on the planet, the Kalevan 1st regiment that made up the majority of the PDF rapidly attacked his stronghold in the Kafelmann Mountains. Upon reaching the Ork staging grounds, the commanders were shocked to find several hundreds of thousands more Orks than the warlord should have been able to bring to the planet. After several days of intelligence gathering and pondering, the commanders suddenly realized that the inhabitants of the Rok that struck 150 years earlier must have spread Ork spores over the entire planet, thus creating a massive Ork population.
The Guardsmen of the 1st regiment took up defensive positions in the only pass out of the mountains, known locally as “Tempest Gorge”. The pass got its name from the numerous sudden and powerful tornadoes that spawned there. The guardsmen dug in, utilizing all their skills and knowledge to protect themselves from the tempests, but despite this, the regiment lost nearly 10% of its strength in less than two weeks.
When the Ork attack finally came, it came in style. Three Gargants spearheaded the Ork push towards Tempest Gorge, vaporizing everything they could see with their soopah-zzapgunz. Warboss Fazemelta proved that he was worthy of his name that day, accounting for more than two hundred killed guardsmen with his looted meltagun. Guardsmen and Orks fought each other over every bloody meter, hiding in caverns, pillboxes and trench systems in the mountains. All was not lost, however. The Baneblade “Fury of Kaleva”, the pride of the planet, arrived and destroyed two of the Gargants, while the four Leman Russ Vanquishers that escorted it destroyed the last one. The Kalevan Defence Fleet also launched a series of devastating air raids against the Ork forces, destroying most of their vehicles. The conflict was ended when Warlord Fazemelta’s meltagun malfunctioned and sent a wave of destructive energy into his face. With the words “Oi! Dat’s not right an’ proper, MY faze ‘aint da un dat melts!”, Fazemelta died. The rest of the shattered Waaagh! was no match for the Kalevan 1st, who quickly destroyed the remaining Orks.
With the defeat of Fazemelta, Kaleva entered a time of peace and relative tranquility. The inhabitants of the planet gradually built up their defenses against the elements, and six millennia after the Heresy, the planet had a population of 8 million, and had supplied the Imperial Guard with a total of nine regiments. The peace was not to last, however. During the Age of Apostasy, the treasonous High Lord Goge Vandire requested Kaleva to provide him with three regiments, with which he intended to reinforce the garrison in the Ecchlesiarchal palace. The Kalevans refused, choosing instead to support Sebastian Thor in his “rebellion”. Enraged, Vandire sent the Brides of the Emperor to pacify Kaleva Prime.
Upon arrival on Kaleva Prime, the Brides of the Emperor quickly learned that the weather was as, if not more, dangerous as their enemies. Thirty Battle-sisters died before they even touched the ground, their transport destroyed by a mighty hurricane. The rest of the forces, however, quickly established a foothold on the vast Termeiran Plains.
The coming battle was cut short, however, as the Adeptus Astartes intervened, in the form of the Black Templars chapter. With extreme ferocity, the Angels of Death descended upon the planet, obliterating the unprepared Brides of the Emperor. Their cleansing completed, the Black Templars immediately departed for Terra, to finish the reign of the mad High Lord once and for all.
After the reign of Vandire ended, Kaleva returned to the relative peace it had had before, remaining an insignificant planet until late M40. When the Macharian Crusade began, the Kalevan 12th artillery regiment, since then named the “Macharian Sternguard”, quickly requested to be placed under the Lord Solar’s command. When the request was granted, the regiment quickly mustered its troops. At 75,000 strong, with more than 10,000 cannons of varying shapes and sizes, the Macharian Sternguard was a mighty force in its own right, but when combined with the rest of the Lord Solar’s forces, the army became nigh unstoppable. Fighting throughout the entire campaign while assigned to the Second Army Group, the 12th regiment gained a reputation for an almost zealous hatred of the Emperor’s enemies. The priests of the Ecchlesiarchy assigned to the regiment took advantage of this, focusing the minds of the regiment on one thing: Victory. Even as the rest of the army refused to go further, some of the members of the Kalevan 12th were willing to follow Macharius wherever he went, even if it meant leaving the light of the Astronomican behind. As such, they were extremely upset when the rest of the army refused to advance. The regiment remains the most prestigious Kalevan regiment to this day, and it is every Kalevan guardsman’s dream to be accepted into the 12th regiment.
While not as prominent during the Macharian crusade, the Kalevan 8th airborne, nicknamed “The Grot Feeders” after an unfortunate incident involving a failed airdrop and an Ork Waaagh!, also participated, joining forces with the Elysian drop troops of the Third Army Group, under General Tarka. During the battle for Adrantis Five, the Kalevan 8th suffered heavy losses, and when the fighting was over nearly 95% of the guardsmen were dead. The remaining guardsmen were lost soon after when their transport ship disappeared in the warp. Only the regimental commander, Knight-Defender Tharkin, and his staff survived due to the fact that they were on another ship undergoing surgery after their bunker taking a hit from an artillery shell.
While several of the planet’s regiments were out winning fame and honour in the Macharian Crusade, things were getting nasty back at Kaleva Prime. Once again, the Orks launched a massive Waaagh!, this time under the command of Warboss ‘Eadsmusha. Launching a swift and brutal attack spearheaded by no less than twenty Gargants, the Orks took everyone on the planet by surprise. Within a week the Hive Cities of Marsoto-Ista and Karandolokas-Ista had fallen, leaving only the planetary capitol, Darmstrom-Ista, to oppose the Orks. When the Imperial forces on the planet understood what had happened, they quickly petitioned other nearby Imperial forces for help, but the future looked grim: No reinforcements would be able to arrive within two months.
A spark of hope appeared, however, as the Greenskins attacked the last remaining bastion of humankind on the planet. The commanding Gargant, “’Umie Stompa”, approached the walls of the Hive, preparing to fire its massive weapons and pulverize the wall. It never got the chance. As soon as the scrap-titan was within range, Corona Imperialis, an Imperator Titan God-Machine of the Legio Ignatum, stood up from its crouching position and opened fire with all of its weapons, vaporizing the unprepared Ork construct within seconds. Three more of the brutish contraptions escort Stompas, too slow to retreat, fell before the mighty mechanical representation of the God-Emperors might before the Orks realized the danger, and by then it was too late, the Imperator had retreated.
Despite this victory, the Orks kept coming. The main weaponry of Corona Imperialis was renered inoperable on the third day of fighting, when an Ork Fighta-Bomma flew straight through the void shields of the Titan, slamming into its mighty dual Volcano Cannons. While the Volcano Cannons remained largely intact, the power supply from the main generators was severed, rendering the cannons useless. Despite this setback, Corona Imperialis fought on, killing seven Gargants in three days with its “secondary” weapon systems.
Two weeks into the siege of the capitol, grave news reached the commanders of the Imperial forces. A lone Adeptus Mechanicus Magos Technicus arrived in the city via a small, one-man aircraft. With fear in his eyes, he exclaimed: “It exists! The Ordinatus Kaleva exists! And it works! And they have it! God-Emperor have mercy on our souls!”. With those last words, he fell to the ground, dead. The Adeptus Mechanicus quickly realized that they had no choice but to inform the Imperial Guard commanders of the nature of the weapon, and so reluctantly revealed what they knew.
The Ordinatus Kaleva was a smaller version of the time-rending cannon that had existed on Kaleva Ultima. While the planet-size cannon was intended to take out entire fleets at once, the Ordinatus was intended to function as a similar weapon for surface battles, destroying entire armies with a single discharge. However, even the Adeptus Mechanicus had thought it to be a myth, and that the Orks now appearently had it was grim news indeed.
Two days later, the Ordinatus stood outside the walls of the city, its surface covered by countless Greenskins installing “upgrades” and “improving” the sacred relic of the Machine-God. The tech-priests could do nothing but watch in disgust and cry as the Greenskins desecrated one of their most holy relics. During the afternoon, the Orks made their first and last mistake during the entire campaign: They tried to fire the Ordinatus. With a brilliant flash of blue light, the machine vanished, taking half the Ork horde with it. While this filled the hearts of the defenders with some hope, they were still hopelessly outmatched. Nevertheless, they fought on for another two weeks, during which the Greenskins brought the walls down and sacked half the city.
In the end, the victory at Kaleva was not the work of humans or Orks, but of the Angels of Death. Once again, the Black Templars descended upon the beleaguered world in their drop-pods. With these reinforcements supporting them, the two remaining Titans (out of originally seven), Corona Imperialis and the Warhound Titan Canis Bellum, advanced and annihilated the remaining Ork forces. ‘Eadsmusha met his demise as Corona Imperialis stepped on the remains of his scrap-Titan, but not before his Gargant managed to sever Canis Bellum’s head with its mighty klaws. Kaleva was saved, but once again reduced to a fledgling world.
The planet slowly clawed its way back from the edge of oblivion, rebuilding what the Orks had destroyed. A steady stream of immigrants helped bolster the reconstruction efforts, and 200 years after the Macharian Crusade ended, the planet had a population of nearly 14 million.
Exactly 801 years after the Macharian Crusade, the planet suffered yet another major setback as an Imperial Navy destroyer, thrown off its course as the Astronomican flickered, reentered real space too close to the planet. The ship smashed into the biggest spaceport on the planet, Hiram-Ista, and exploded, leaving around 600 thousand dead and the city in ruins. The Kalevans rebuilt the spaceport in a record two years, although the surrounding hab-shelters and agri-shelters took longer, and the planet wasn’t back to its previous agri-output for another century.
During the Great Awakening, almost two centuries after the Astronomican flickered, a large amount of psykers awaken on Kaleva Prime, ripping holes in reality and, to a certain extent, even time itself. The Chaos cruiser “Sidus”, thought destroyed by the “Gloria Imperator” ten thousand years earlier, reappeared without warning and attacked the planet. The Adeptus Mechanicus outpost on Kaleva Prime sent out a distress call, and in a stroke of sheer luck, the Emperor class Battleship “Dominium Imperator” responded and arrived two days later, utterly annihilating the cruiser once and for all.
Down at the surface, however, all was not well. The cruiser had deployed traitor marines of the World Eaters Legion to the surface, and they immediately started attacking the local populace, ruthless in their fury. At the same time as the traitors arrived, warp rifts started to materialize, daemons pouring out of them. The single most terrifying being that came out of the rifts was not a daemon, but nonetheless every bit as terrifying. As the guardsmen protecting the Hive City of Karosl-Ista desperately tried to fight off the daemons pouring of a warp rift that had materialized in the city, they heard a dread voice shouting “MAIM! KILL! BURN!” and saw a red, humanoid-shaped being appear out of the gate. Khârn the Betrayer had come to Kaleva Prime.
Their plight growing more and more dire every day, the guardsmen of Karosl-Ista fought with the tenacity that marks the inhabitants of any death world. When the Betrayer faced “Corona Imperialis”, none could have thought that he would be victorious, and yet he immobilized the great God-Machine with his mighty axe, rendering “Corona Imperialis” almost useless. The only setback was that the Betrayer was severely injured during the attack, not by the mighty weaponry of the Titan, but by a large adamantine slab falling on him as he severed the final piece holding it to the leg of the God-Machine. His followers pulled his bloodied body back through the warp portal.
Relief finally came as the Grey Knights, under command of Grand Master Ignatus Faust, arrived one week later. Numbering a staggering 400 knights, the force had assembled and departed from Titan as soon as news of the massive psychic outbreak reached them, intending to cleanse all worlds they came to from the taint of Chaos. Sweeping like a tidal wave through Karosl-Ista, using the immobile form of “Corona Imperialis”, they killed everything they found, loyalist and traitor alike. Nothing remained when they were done, save for the mighty God-Machine of the Legio Ignatum. Not even the taint of Chaos could affect the God-Machine, which stood resolute as it had since the conflict began. Since Khârn had severed the power supply to the legs, the Titan had taken a pounding from numerous foul devices, but none had the power to destroy an Imperator.
Fortunately for the rest of the populace, Karosl-Ista was located on an island, preventing the taint of Chaos from spreading. Upon examining the other Hive Cities, the Grey Knights quickly established that the only warp portals that had spawned on the planet had spawned on the island of Karosl. Thus, there was no need to exterminate the rest of the population. Having sent his knights towards a multitude of worlds, Faust used the power granted to him by the God-Emperor of Mankind and assumed command of the Kalevan 7th armoured, 8th airborne, 12th artillery and the newly formed Kalevan 14th infantry regiments and directed them toward the nearby Irrafas system, where a planet-wide conflict had broken out on one of the planets. Upon arrival, the Grand Master quickly realized that the conflict, while only present on one planet, was beyond his ability to stop. With his voice unflinching and steadfast, he ordered his flagship, the Battle-Barge “Malleus Malificarum”, to unleash Exterminatus by the means of a cyclonic torpedo. The commanders of the Kalevan regiments watched in awe as Irrafas Quintus was vaporized, leaving only dust behind.
