The Granite Spire and the Crown of the World It was only after centuries spent aboard the seaborne cities that the people of Rheelas began to gain an understanding of their new home. By then, the cities had expanded; some joined together, and began to resemble floating hives, crammed with people and thrumming with countless machines. What they discovered was that one part of the world never seemed to change, despite the tectonic chaos that ensued around it. Atop the world’s magnetic pole, a single vast spire of diamond-hard volcanic rock rose from the ocean like a dagger driven into the heart of the world. Whether it was linked to the planet’s magnetic field, or held in place by some other force of nature, the Rheelas people chose it to be the seat of their planetary government and built a city at its tip, naming it the Granite Spire. Since that time, the Granite Spire of Rhee has remained the primary city of Rheelas, the seat of its government and its primary spaceport. From its immovable position atop the world, it governs the floating hives and ferries much of the planet’s ore and metal off world. During the dark times when the Jericho Sector became the Jericho Reach, the miners revolted against the nobility of their world and slew many of them. The planetary governor and a few loyalists were able to escape into orbit on a voidship and were never seen again. The descendant of the leader of the great rebellion bears the name of the stone that his people mined in his title and is known as the Granite Lord; it is his duty to oversee the annual meetings of the Hive Captains (the lords of the seaborne hive cities) and adjudicate in their disputes. The Granite Spire was also the center for the Administratum, Adeptus Mechanicus, and Adeptus Ministorum before Imperium rule faded away during the Age of Shadow. As such, much of their infrastructure remains in place, including a failed attempt by the Ministorum to carve a statue of the God-Emperor into the Spire, leaving only an ugly scar in its ultra-hard surface. The Granite Spire was the first place to fall when the Achilus Crusade reclaimed Rheelas. Storm Warden Kill-teams and Imperial Guard Storm Trooper units quickly overwhelmed the city and took the Granite Lord and his advisors into custody, without much violence. It was planned that the Imperium would then install its own governors and re-establish the districts of the city given over to the Administratum, Mechanicus, and Ministorum. The Adeptus Mechanicus was especially interested in Rheelas’ wealth of ancient mining technology, devices and tools whose manufacture had long been thought lost. But before the Administratum could even begin its paperwork, Lord Ebongrave stepped in and enacted the quarantine. The Imperium withdrew, taking their prisoners with them and leaving the Granite Spire without a ruler. Granite Spire Rumors table 1-1 Roll Rumor Difficulty to verify 1-2 Green Sector houses the cloning facilities where the Cog Boys are grown, that's why you never see any female tech-priests they are all grown in tubes like the hydroponic gardens where they grow vegetables. Ordinary (+10) 3-4 "I don't know why they sent us this way when Shaft IX houses a massive bulk cargo lift big enough to carry a Hades breaching drill or a small tank, its the quickest way into the depths." Challenging (+0) 5-6 The Adeptus Mechanicus worship an Abominable Intelligence that dwells in the depths of the Spire and secretly plots to forcibly convert everyone into Servitors. Easy (+30) 7-8 There is a treasure vault in Yellow Sector near the statue of the Machine God that contains suits of golden power armor from the Great Crusade Difficult (-10) 9 The Granite Spire is actually a Xenos ruin that was retrofitted by the Cult Mechanics who are still studying the Xenotech left in the Red Sector which is why Red Sector is forbidden to non-Mechanicus. Difficult (-10) 10 The Granite Spire is in actuality the original colony ship that brought the first humans to Rheelas. It landed vertically and ejected the habitats that would become the various floating hive cities. Hard (-20) Land Far too dangerous to set foot on, the continents of Rheelas have been largely ignored by its people. Broken and desolate, they stretch endlessly in all directions, clouds of ash blotting out the sun and red streams of lava spurting periodically from gaping cracks in the ground. At any moment, the whole horizon might change as a mountain range falls away or rises like a great surfacing sea beast. Showers of flaming rock and fire are also common, as the earth breaks apart and gases are released from deep in the world’s core, sending debris high into the air (sometimes reaching high enough to be a danger to sub-orbital craft). The true danger to travellers who are crazy enough to try to cross the broken continents of Rheelas, however, is not just fire and ash, but the shifting landscape itself. While hardy or well-equipped travellers might be able to survive the constant earthquakes and subsidence, they would soon become lost as the horizon changed and ash clouds and magnetic fluctuations jammed their equipment. Since the time of Imperial settlement on Rheelas, only a handful of people have ventured out into the continental plains and mountains. This is largely because there is no need; the minerals can be harvested from the ocean floor by the hive cities and the abundance of ore has yet to force the population to look beyond the seas. Those that have walked the continents (and returned) speak only of a landscape cloaked in ash, lifeless and barren. In the early days of the settlement, the Adeptus Mechanics conducted its own surveys and, while these largely agree with other reports, one in particular stands out: a report from Jolus, a Tech-Priest of the Explorator Fleet to first chart Rheelas. Jolus claimed that upon his first surveys of the world he recorded alien ruins, or the remains of them, among the shifting mountains of its continents. The Explorator claimed these ruins were created by a species yet unclassified, a claim supported by pict recordings of reliefs on the ruins. Jolus believed that the aliens had made Rheelas the way it is today, through some ancient device or dark pact in an effort to ward off some terrible enemy. Mysteriously, the pict recordings vanished, as did Jolus, and the theory was wiped away by the Mechanicus. However, some of these Sea Because the seas of Rheelas are in constant flux, it is impossible to navigate courses or set out clear regions within them. Instead, the Hive Captains allow the currents to take them where they will, crossing paths with each other from time to time or spending years alone, drifting far from the shadow of the Granite Spire. Each Hive Captain is lord and master of his own city, but has no domain beyond its borders. There are no disputes of mining rights or claims to a stretch of sea because there is no need. The world is constantly pushing up new veins of ore, and even the richest ones only last for a short time before the surface shifts again and it disappears. In this way, the Captains are more like nomads, wandering the oceans of Rheelas and farming its minerals from beneath the waves before moving on to mine new locales. Once their factories have refined the ore into a transportable state, low orbit shuttles ferry it to the Granite Spire, where it awaits transport off world. Since the quarantine, this system has broken down. With no demand for off world ore and the loss of the Granite Lord, many of the cities have gone dark, cut off from the rest of the world, their fate unknown. Those few which have tried to maintain the order on Rheelas have banded together and formed the Free Captain’s Alliance. It is a union which has been plagued with internal conflict and strife. For centuries the cities have remained apart, their cultures becoming distinct. Now, the populations of the cities can see few reasons to trust or work with each other, especially as there is nothing they can offer each other, each one hungry for off-world goods which have never materialized.
