Geography: Continent-spanning muster grounds marked by barrack cities, stores, and bunkers; surface dominated by immense military infrastructure.
Population: Estimated 10 Billion (Permanently stationed staff officers, maintenance menials, and continuous flux of assembling Imperial Guard regiments).
Tithe Grade: Exactus Prima (Bulk weaponry, troop outfitting, and logistical services).
Government Type: Departmento Munitorum Council of Proxy (Formerly ruled by a Lord Lieutenant of the Departmento Munitorum).
Planetary Governor: None (Currently ruled by an unauthorised Council of Proxy).
Adept Presence: High (Departmento Munitorum staff, Imperial Guard command elements, and logistical Adeptus Administratum oversight).
Military: Imperial Guard regiments in transit; Laran 9K Planetary Muster Garrison (Inferred: Staff officers and armed logistics corps).
Trade: Provision of military equipment and supplies for Imperial Guard regiments, and logistical services for regimental launches.
"Once a lowly Clerk-Ensign of the Muster, Harlon had lived his entire life on Laran 9k, and there worked several of the sector’s largest regimental launches. Tens of thousands of men, tanks, and support vehicles regularly prepared for embarkation and outfitting here; he carefully recorded each detail, as well as engraving the regiment’s name on the grand arch each marched through on their way to their shuttles."
– Sample Sage: Harlon Onnis
The Laran system is vital to the defence of the entire Askellon Sector, for it serves as mustering ground, depot, and bulwark for the sector’s many ground based defence forces. When Imperial Guard regiments are raised in the sector, they invariably gather at Laran 9k, where they are provided with any equipment and supplies their own world was unable to furnish.
The continent-spanning grounds of Laran 9k have seen use countless times over the millennia as regiments have gathered there from across the sector, entire army groups parading before the most highly ranked of marshals. A triumphal arch, tall enough to accommodate an Imperator Titan striding beneath it, stands in the centre of a sprawling city of barracks, stores, and bunkers. It is traditional for newly-raised regiments to pass beneath the triumphal arch before boarding the troop ships beyond, the name of each regiment etched into the stone that it might be remembered for all time.
Laran 9k is not ruled by an Planetary Governor, but by a Lord Lieutenant of the Departmento Munitorum. This was for many generations a position of great honour, often conferred on a respected war leader past his prime but still of value. The last incumbent, Lord Lieutenant General Vazkho, has been declared too old and infirm to fulfil his duties and his nominated successor, General Ryken Dow III, is believed to have been lost in transit.
Without a duly appointed commander, the planet’s authorities have appointed a council to rule in his stead until such time as segmentum high command sees fit to dispatch another replacement. This Council of Proxy has become mired in internecine squabbles and bureaucratic rivalry, and the world’s defences have fallen into a state of desperate unpreparedness. The hundreds of thousands of staff officers and menials that maintain the stores and training grounds now spend their time maintaining their own personal fiefdoms, all traces of cooperation slowly ebbing away.
Those areas of the surface not host to the sprawling mustering facilities are set aside for weapons training of every possible variation. An entire continent is dedicated to armoured manoeuvres, and it is not just the tank commanders who are able to train there using live ammunition. Army groups consisting of dozens of armoured regiments with aerial support have taken part in exercises of unimaginable scale. Thousands of vehicles have swept across the blasted, crater-strewn landscape, the skies black with the smoke of their engines.
The last of these exercises, carried out two decades ago, escalated to an actual war as rival generals vied for supremacy. The resulting battle raged for three months before a Munitorum delegation could broker a cessation, though by that point very little of either army remained. Both generals would have normally been executed for such gross misconduct, but both had powerful allies reaching back to Terra itself. They were instead each granted a Warrant of Trade, so that they could continue their personal vendetta elsewhere.
Laran 9k is one of Askellon’s strategically vital systems as the central coordination point for most of its military forces. What none on the planet realise is that deep beneath its surface is a strategic command bunker, constructed millennia ago at the order of segmentum high command. Knowledge of this reserve asset is limited to the planet’s Lord Lieutenant, and with this individual struck down by infirmity, its existence is now a lost secret.
The Council members snipe and plot against each other, setting off flares of combat, unaware that stocks of cyclonic munitions are stored in a cavernous chamber scant kilometres beneath the northern pole. The power source maintaining that chamber’s stasis field is slowly failing, and when it does, the mad scramble for control over the bunker could tear the planet apart.