Ludd III

Small and dense High gravity  Moon  Heavy pure atmosphere  Temperate climate  Verdant ecosystem

Resources: Industrial metal, exotic material [weird mineral that facilitates rapid salination/desalination]

Clans of nomadic riders and isolated city-states have warred for millennia, never progressing much beyond the beginnings of Terra’s first Industrial Revolution. Harsh deserts, steppes, and rocky mountain ranges are broken only by a series of large inland seas.

Ludd is an unforgiving world, but is rich in mineral wealth that has been exploited by House Highdown for decades. Today long-laid plans are being put into motion and grand designs begin to play out across and below the planet’s surface.

Imperial City of Raspurn
House Highdown colonial capital on Ludd III.

Population of around 2 million, albeit rapidly increasing and undergoing considerable stress on its services as a result. Situated on a plain a few dozen miles from one of the great seas, over a particularly rich mineral deposit. Surrounded by several open cast mins of varying size, using vast diggers to extract the valuable ore.

Between the pits are processing plants that produce alloyed metals in considerable bulk using ore provided by mines distributed across much of the continent. Rail yards stretch for kilometres, offloading raw ore and taking on processed metals for local construction projects or transport to the rough spaceport for delivery off-world. In amongst the heavy industry are a dozen or so planned settlements where colonists live and enjoy a wide range of luxuries including theological instruction, complimentary sedatives and stimulants, and constant surveillance. Most of the population of Raspurn is employed in mining, directly or indirectly, though its demographics are shifting towards construction and manufacturing with successive waves of immigrants providing new skilled labour and meat for servitors.

City States
The trading cities where most Luddites live, or at least visit from time to time. Organised around feudal clans, capital of each continent is a city. The larger clans are agglomerating in these centre of power, or are riding directly for Raspurn as the cult of the Vulture God takes over.

Tribal lands
Vast deserts, plains, and steppes with sparse population density. Nomadic even by the standards of Luddites, the tribes of the great expanses are skilled survivalists but hostile to outsiders.

Most of the clans roam around in groups of 50-200, purely nomadic, though they are gathering for what they believe is the End Times.

Political landscape
Raspurn is only centre of Imperial politics and is the seat of government, with city-states holding substantial regional power among the local populace.

The nobility of Raspurn is tiny in scale and laughable in wealth compared to established Imperial worlds, though several major trading partners and favoured subordinates of House Highdown enjoy lives of modest luxury.

Luddite physical characteristics
Morphological divergence is a prominent feature of the Luddites - they tend towards either being tall and barrel-chested, or short and stocky. Cultural norms encourage friendships and cooperation between the two sub-groups though interbreeding is taboo, which perpetuates the divergence. Biologis assessments report that the populations are insufficiently separated to be classed as abhuman, though another millennium or two may change the situation.

Religion
The local religion is based around the Cult of the Vulture God - framing The Emperor as an all-knowing king of souls who harvests the essence of those who die in His service and flies them to the afterlife where they bask in His glory. The Ludd vulture holds substantial cultural weight for the locals and has been utilised by the Ministorum, particularly by Fortunus recently, to inspire the tribes to action. They believe that Highdown, as an emissary of the Vulture God, has come to shepherd the worthy into the time of final trials and thus fulfill their long-held prophecies.

A vast cathedral has been erected, covered in bones with a strong vulture theme. The temple is a sky-burial mausoleum, with the bones of those laid to rest atop the bristling tangle of spires being picked clean by circling cyberised Ludd vultures then used to construct more spires.

History
Settled by humans long before records began; oral histories suggest that it was tens of millennia ago, in the Age of Terra.

Was conquered relatively bloodlessly by House Highdown a century or so ago.

Geography
Many inland lakes and a couple of massive inland oceans dominate the surface <span class="" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Waterways connect them, each controlled by a major city state <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span class="" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Lots of scrubland, steppes, and open grassland  <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span class="" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Extensive cave network in a steppe plateau region  <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span class="" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Vast canyon splitting up a scrubland plain  <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span class="" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Couple of large mountain ranges

<span class="" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Expansive border forests with dangerous animals

Military
Small professional PDF based in Raspurn, armed with a grab-back of castoff materiel from the forces of House Highdown.

Most of the warriors on the planet are the Luddite tribesfolk - highly skilled horsemen armed with hunting lances, and locally produced stub repeaters and revolvers.

Planned fortifications

 * Orbital
 * Early warning orbital network throughout system
 * STC defence platforms
 * Nova cannon embedded in asteroid/lesser moon
 * Ground-based
 * Rail network
 * Underground stations and extensive underground tracks
 * Tunnels take circuitous, difficult to predict routes and are anastomosed to provide backup routes if one is collapsed
 * Near population centres tunnels feature well-stocked civil defence shelters
 * Comms relays and ventilation systems located far away from main tunnels, in random directions
 * Fission train based two-stage torpedo launchers with atomic warheads
 * Primary, secondary, and tertiary command and control centres mounted on massive trains, with a half dozen decoy trains
 * Mountain redoubts
 * Large caches of materiel and extensive barracks
 * Used as distribution points for resistance support in case of planet falling
 * Connections to rail network
 * Stealth fields protect entrances
 * Earthscrapers
 * Manufacturing capacity and key infrastructure located deep underground
 * Heavy void shields provide defence
 * Sea-based
 * Ekranoplan fleets
 * Submarine torpedo launchers with melta and atomic warheads for counter-attacking ground and air forces
 * Planning
 * Robust command and control system forms bedrock of Ludd infosphere
 * Analogue, satellite, and digital redundancy in comms

Cargo Docking Station Alpha
Awkwardly jutting out of a small captured asteroid, Station Alpha is Ludd's primary artificial orbital presence. And, other than a handful of sensor and comms buoys, the station is Ludd's only artificial orbital presence. The station mostly consists of warehouse space by volume, with substantial storage capacity mostly sitting empty when none of House Highdown's vessels (or the occasional independent trader) are on/off-loading cargo. A single large hangar bay with mostly-functional atmospheric forcefield over its aperture serves as landing and storage area for shuttle-craft and heavy lifters, and an oversized docking gantry allows for one voidship of up to cruiser size to resupply. Inner portions of the station are primarily given over to maintenance systems and power generation, though a small community of permanent inhabitants ekes out an existence among the crumbling machinery and leaky bulkheads. The janky settlement distributed throughout the station's bowels is eerily quiet most of the time but, when a voidship of significant size docks, the meagre port fills to breaking point with disappointed voidsmen who cram into the station’s deeply mediocre drinking establishment, the Gravity Well.

Ludd Luna
Ludd's only natural satellite of any consequence.

Basically a mini death-world, with a dominant species of tree that features highly desirable qualities

Used as training environment for House Highdown forces Resources: ornamental [high quality hardwood], exotic material [ironbark - super durable, light wood]
 * Small
 * Low gravity
 * Heavy tainted atmosphere
 * Hot world
 * Verdant