The Swarm of Xandros Prime
Anvil of War
Classification (multiple allowed)
Fleet-based
Sector / Segmentum
Eye of Terror, Segmentum Obscurus
Description
The Fleet of the Damned has threaded the turmoil of the Eye of Terror for three centuries. What began as a desperate flight from the guardians of the Imperium has grown into a peculiar prosperity. Nine capital ships form the core of a chaotic trading power, surrounded by hundreds of smaller vessels clinging like parasites to the damaged hulls. The crews are made up of renegades, pirates and refugees who long ago gave up trying to gain a foothold in the standard galaxies.
In the depots of the Black Cave, an asteroid field east of Xandros Prime, amber is stored and crude oil processed. The tech-priests have struck arrangements with local xenos traders, which in canonical texts would count as heresy. Yet it works. The ships are kept in repair, the machines run, and the crews receive their rations. Chaos itself seems content — or too distracted to intervene. The fleet does not thrive in spite of its damnation, but because it has finally accepted who it really is.
In the depots of the Black Cave, an asteroid field east of Xandros Prime, amber is stored and crude oil processed. The tech-priests have struck arrangements with local xenos traders, which in canonical texts would count as heresy. Yet it works. The ships are kept in repair, the machines run, and the crews receive their rations. Chaos itself seems content — or too distracted to intervene. The fleet does not thrive in spite of its damnation, but because it has finally accepted who it really is.
Fauna & Flora
Algae tanks and fungus chambers in the hulls, rats in the holds; amber is stored in the Black Cave, and in the docks lives a breed of hairless ship's cats that the Damned hold to be lucky.
Population & Society
Several hundred thousand souls on nine capital ships and hundreds of smaller vessels: renegades, pirates and refugees who long ago gave up gaining a foothold in the standard galaxy. People are born aboard and counted by hull number.