“Worry ye souls, for the Storm rages anew.”
Saint Valerius, from the Apocrypha Askellios
Numerous Warp routes cross the Askellon Sector, the most important of which is the Grand Processional. It is easily the most widely-used and reliable route, and in many ways it is the lifeblood that sustains the sector. Lesser routes branch away from its way, diverting into ever-fragmenting paths that line Askellon like some mad tattoo. The settled worlds of the sector are connected via these routes, with the stability of a route often determining its influence.
The Grand Worlds (Worlds of the Processional): The handful of systems where the Grand Processional visits. These are not always the most powerful of Askellon, but they are the most accessible.
The Tributary Worlds: Greater in number, and though only linked via lesser routes, they are perhaps the sector’s mainstay systems. They are ruled through a complex web of aristocracy bound together with chains of fealty, marriage, and other, less obvious, ties.
The Low Worlds: Only tenuous and hazardous routes reach these systems, though they are still very much part of the sector’s rule.
The Lost Worlds: These exist only in rumour and legend; lacking charted routes (or at least routes not kept as jealously guarded secrets), they are hidden and abandoned - sometimes by design.
There are seven Grand Worlds of Askellon along the Processional: the sector capital Juno; Desoleum, perhaps the oldest of Askellon’s many hive worlds; the dark, feral world of Enkidu; Kalto, the bountiful agri-world; the foetid swamp-world of Orinoca; Pellenne, the enormous mining planet; and Vouxis Prime, home of continent-spanning cities.
The Grand Processional is not itself an eternal pathway, and decaying parchments from millennia ago show other worlds along its trail than those currently listed. Legend has it that Juno and Desoleum have, as best can be told, always been Grand Worlds, and such is their power that none gainsay this. Should the Processional change its path, there could be new Grand Worlds, something many Tributary Worlds eagerly pray for.
Like most sectors in the Imperium, Askellon is divided into a number of administrative regions called sub-sectors. Each of these smaller regions has its own ruler often called a Sub-Praefect Askelline, an adept of the Priesthood of Terra charged with coordinating interactions between the worlds under his purview. He has no direct power over the planetary commanders of those worlds, except in areas pertaining to the payment of tithes and the culling of psyker populations.
The sub-sectors of Askellon are the Stygies Cluster, Cyclopia, the Asphodel Deeps, Thule, and Rubicon, all regions mapped out according to the flow of shipping along the major Warp routes of the sector. Currently, Thule is without a Sub-Praefect, the prior incumbent having been assassinated by a previously unknown psyker cult calling itself the Brothers of Celestial Enlightenment.
“The ambitious are driven to attain power, but they are so often entirely unsuited to holding on to it. It falls, then, to us, the unseen Lords of Askellon, to guide the hand that rules.”
From the suppressed writings of the cult leader Johas Zadok
While most of the systems along the Grand Processional are in some way important to the sector, whether from a military, economic, or governmental perspective, they are only bound through their proximity to the great Warp route that ties the sector together. As such, though, they are important beyond measure as stopping points for interstellar travel, and have been forced sometimes into becoming greater worlds than they would have been if their system had been more remotely located. They are Askellon’s way stations, and few who cross its space have not stepped onto their soil at some point.
“These so-called Lords condemn in others sins they themselves flaunt shamelessly. They burn entire worlds over the slightest divergence. They shall not do so here, even should we all be drowned in the Sea of Souls.”
– Intercepted vox transmission, used to implicate Lord Dyrulli in the Vaxi Atrocity
Other worlds beyond those linked through the Grand Processional wield great power in Askellon’s fate. Systems such as these can have unparalleled influence across the sector, and some even outside of it. Some of these planets claim to date back to Askellon’s founding, others are only several millennia in age, but all are puissant and between them control most of the commerce, industry, and manpower of Askellon.
“Rebels rise up and the segmentum lords blame our sinfulness, never their own incompetence. The Warp surges forth and the cardinals preach that the evil in our hearts has aggrieved the Emperor. Xenos fiends enslave our sons and daughters and the High Lords say that we are to blame, never that the Imperial Navy has been lax in the prosecution of its duties. Little wonder that the very stars abhor the rule of Terra, for what choice of path have we, the true sons of Askellon, ever been offered?”
– Unnamed author, The Decline and Fall of the Askellon Sector
Beyond the Grand Worlds and the Tributaries are those planets categorised as the Low Worlds, those with only fragmented or hazardous Warp routes connecting them to other systems. Many are industrious contributors to the sector, lacking only better routes to allow them to become Tributary Worlds. Some are frontier worlds whose populations have never heard of the Imperium, or planets that have never known the tread of human feet. They are all nonetheless claimed by the rulers of Askellon, even if they exist as little more than an entry on a faded star chart.