Sub-pages are barely polished personal notes for me (deadstar) but I'm sharing some of them with you because you asked so nice.
About.
The world of Margard hangs like an emerald jewel veiled in perpetual mist at the very edge of the Koronus Expanse, a scant few light-years from the perceived (and often perilous) edge of the Calixis Sector’s influence. Its origins lie shrouded in the mists that cling to its sprawling, verdant valleys and curl around the lower slopes of its geothermally active mountain ranges. Millennia ago, during the chaotic twilight of the early Imperium, a small fleet of colony vessels, carrying hardy pioneers and a significant number of Terra-bred hunting hounds, made a fateful warp jump towards the galactic rim. It was a jump that would forever alter their destiny.
Within the unpredictable currents of the immaterium, a localized warp anomaly tore through the fabric of their journey. The raw, chaotic energies intertwined with the genetic material of both human and canine within the close confines of the voidships, a bizarre and improbable melding that subtly reshaped the colonists' very being. They emerged into real space… different. A primal undercurrent now flowed beneath their human skin, a heightened awareness of hierarchy, a fierce territoriality, and an instinctual drive for dominance, echoing the pack dynamics of their terrestrial companions.
Upon settling the mist-drenched valleys of Margard, this inherent primalism blossomed into a unique cultural phenomenon: the Beast Cult. Initially a reverence for the alpha instincts that had somehow become ingrained within them, it evolved into a structured societal framework. Their feudal system mirrored the strict hierarchies of a wolf pack, with power determined by displays of strength, ritualized dominance, and an unwavering adherence to the established order, 'Dominus-Law'. The most powerful families, like the noble van Hecutors and von Fellners, often traced their lineage back to the strongest leaders of the early settlements, their authority unquestioned.
Despite this deeply ingrained primalism and the planet's relative isolation – exacerbated by the notoriously unstable warp currents that made consistent travel to and from Margard a perilous undertaking – the tenets of the Imperial Cult eventually took root. Missionaries, braving the treacherous void, found fertile ground in the existing reverence for powerful figures and the established hierarchies. The local beliefs were not eradicated but artfully integrated. Ancient wolf-like figures became local saints, their primal strength and loyalty reinterpreted as virtues in the Emperor's name.
Most strikingly, the ubiquitous Imperial memento mori, the skull, underwent a unique Margarethan adaptation. Embraced by the Beast Cult as a symbol of mortality and the shedding of the earthly form in service, the skull was given fangs – a potent visual fusion of Imperial dogma and the planet's ingrained lupine identity. This fang-skulled icon became a common sight, adorning everything from noble banners to simple shrines, a testament to Margard's unique and somewhat unsettling devotion to the God-Emperor.
The very air of Margard is thick with a cool, damp mist that swirls through valleys carpeted in vibrant green mosses and ferns. Low mountain ranges, scarred by geothermal vents that exhale plumes of steam into the already saturated atmosphere, rise like slumbering giants. The constant moisture nourishes a unique ecosystem, where strange flora and fauna have adapted to the humid, often dim conditions. The scent of damp earth and mineral-rich steam hangs heavy, a constant reminder of the planet's primal, almost primordial nature.
It is a world of stark contrasts: a feudal society with a deeply ingrained, wolf-like social structure, fiercely loyal to a distant Emperor yet wary of the void that connects them to his vast Imperium. A place where ancient instincts and Imperial dogma have intertwined, creating a culture as unique and potentially dangerous as the mists that shroud its valleys. And from this world hails Calix von Fellner, a noble scion bearing the marks of its singular heritage, his ambition and aggression tempered by the ingrained hierarchy of his people, and perhaps touched by something more ancient and strange from the perilous journey that birthed them on Margard.