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Just another stray thought of the day - what is Life like on Holy Terra?

I mean if the Spectrum is Death World ----------------------- Paradise/Resort World, where would living on Terra fit in assuming you were a normal human being? Or someone of some mid-level rank in the Imperium?

And aside from all the War planning, intrigue, et al.... I take it the Economy of Terra itself is tied to Tribute or Pilgrimage?

So is everyday like being at the Vatican or Mecca? (Millions of devoltional peeps pouring in?)

Terra is a hiveworld IIRC and much of it is on par with the worst that places like Necromunda have to offer. I forget exactly where but one story has a character whose parents were crushed during a stampede at Sanguinala and this didn't seem to be uncommon.

It's basically just massively corrupt and full of backstabbing, fanatics, mercenaries, assassins and the standard Hive World threats.
But it's not particularly dangerous to your average worker because nobody cares about the guy affixing purity seals to bolters or the secretary of some dime a dozen factory. If you're important though, there's every chance you'll walk round a corner and get stabbed 23 times.

Constant terror of being accused of heresy because you farted during one of the 47 prayers you were required to make daily, or blinked in a way that suggested disrespect to someone somewhere. Or maybe you were just picked up at random for inquisition interrogation looking for signs of heresy, then executed in found innocent so as to keep you from revealing inquisition interrogation techniques.

Maybe you were falsely accused of something by someone who didn;t like you and executed for not keeping yourself free from accusation.

And finally after a (short) lifetime of working constantly for the emperor, being told your work output no longer equaled your sustenance costs and were therefore scheduled to be terminated to avoid being a burden on the imperium, and expected to give praise for the decision.

 Karhedron wrote:
Terra is a hiveworld IIRC and much of it is on par with the worst that places like Necromunda have to offer. I forget exactly where but one story has a character whose parents were crushed during a stampede at Sanguinala and this didn't seem to be uncommon.

Carrion Throne. It's set entirely on terra and mostly in the 'normal people hive' bits so is a good read.

"A vessel blasted off from a sancitoned landing site on Terra every millisecond, so they said. Another landed to take its place not long after. They arrived full, they left empty. The Throneworld did not trade with the rest of the Imperium - it consumed it. Goods were sucked in from every corner of every segmentum, dragged out from the holds of the leviathans that carried them, seized by the ravenous populace and devoured, and it was never enough. A million cargo-lifters might touch down in a single hour, and still thousands would starve. Any delay in the endless circular passage, and tens of thousands would die. Like a hopeless opiate addict, the populace could never be satisfied, never given enough. The birthplace of humanity now squatted like some obscene, famished infant at the heart of its web of stellar kingdoms, ingesting the last dregs of energy out of the straggling fringes and gulping them down into greedy oblivion."

From Carrion Throne. TLDR it's a hive world cranked up to 11

I am not very good at long detailed explanations on certain subjects, but i'll do my best.

Life is horrible on Terra, one minute you're working your butt off for some fat-cat entrepreneur, next thing you know you're being breathed down your back by the Inquisition, who is most prominent on Terra. To make things worse, Terra is a hive world, so all the streets are crowded with people, expect to get extremely sick all the time.

Hope this helped, despite how incredibly short it was.

On the positive side of things, Terra is a fortress world of a whole different scale, comparable only to Mars, perhaps. Then there is the Grey Knights nearby on Titan. So, apart from a couple rare instances, war never touches the surface of Terra. On the other hand, there are no trees, no oceans, no life apart from humanity. The atmosphere is thick with noxious gases, etc. So...

Another good resource is the novel Wolfblade. As a punishment for a "transgression" while still a Blood Claw, Ragnar Blackmane is stationed on Terra, guarding House Belisarius Navigators. He has a lofty vision of Terra that is quickly dispelled.

Depending on your status, Terra can be anywhere between Deathworld and Paradise. For most it sounds pretty dismal, and there are apparently over a quadrillion people on Terra at the start of Emperors Legion.

While I know that the surface is completely covered over, is there any space underground that's still free? If the government were to create massive subterranean greenhouses, this could possibly a long way in relieving, or at least somewhat easing, the food problems.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
While I know that the surface is completely covered over, is there any space underground that's still free? If the government were to create massive subterranean greenhouses, this could possibly a long way in relieving, or at least somewhat easing, the food problems.

Nope. It's sewers, old buildings and general nasty stuff, Terra was building orbital cities back before a certain Horus ruined it all.

Life in the Imperium varies a lot depending on your social standing. It's the class system on steroids. If you're in the upper ranks its a pleasure paradise where you are akin to minor gods compared to the rest of the population. Of course it also comes with a lot of upperclass trappings so arranged marriages, intrigue , double crossing, old social values enforced on new generations etc....


Underneath it all you've got huge swarms of low class people who do all the work. Who are basically treated from birth to death as living robots (self replacing ones!). Ground down to nothing at the bottom for the good of the Imperium.



Alongside you've got swathes of pilgrims visiting daily; the religious orders; Inquisition etc...


There's likely quite a lot of variety in the status of living, though many often focus on the teaming masses at the bottom or the middleclasses where life is still a drudge, but where you can rise up a little. Like any strict class system moving up is very hard - harder still because those at the top can prolong their lives for generations. But moving down, oh that's dead easy!

One thing I find interesting about Holy Terra is what life must be like for the pilgrims. If we assume that the process of arriving on Terra and then getting to just one of the major sites of pilgrimage is a multi-generation effort, then this begs the question as to what on earth do they get up to while they're waiting? I can imagine a state of affairs where their position in the queue is the most valuable thing they possess and there are frequent contests of some kind in which their position is the stake. Such contests could be violent informal affairs or formal ones in which families compete based on their knowledge of various holy texts. This meritocratic state of affairs would indirectly create an incredibly Darwinian society, and means that fast-tracking families to senior posts once they've completed their pilgrimage would make a lot of sense. It would also be a fantastic source of recruitment for the Inquisition, especially the Ordo Hereticus. What makes it even better is the way that the pilgrim population is presumably drawn from all across the Imperium and the resulting genetic melting pot (and the hybrid vigour it would create) would add to the quality of recruits.