Hive World Nerrith

Hive world Nerrith was once a powerful planet, with substantial influence in its subsector. Before being taken into the Imperial Fold it was a fertile young world, populated by a reserved and industrious people. Its three continents home to dozens of small kingdoms and fiefdoms. The great oceans teemed with fish and even the shallow mines present extracted plentiful ores. These features made it ideal for development into a hive-world, and work was started on increasing the planet's population within years of being discovered by Explorator ships.

Over 7 millennia later, Nerrith is a very different sight. Covered in sprawling hive-cities, very little of the once-verdant soil is visible. The sky is choked with thick grey smog that once belched from enormous smokestacks. The seas are placid and calm, broken only by mighty auto-trawlers that harvest great schools of gene-altered fish. The hive foundries lie dormant, and once bustling thoroughfares are now empty but for the grim movement of battle-hardened troops.

Due to an impressive degree of foresight during the construction of Nerrith's hives, the planet is largely self-reliant. Great Agri-Strata were built within the lower and middle hive, tended by hundreds of thousands of labourers, and fed by billions of gallons of water, pumped and purified from Nerrith's great seas. The citizens of Nerrith's hives see it as a great honour to be sent to the nutrient tanks in order to return to the soil from which all of their food is grown. Entire herds of Grox live within the planet's great steel spires, while city-sized fields of grain and orchards waft gently in the synthetic breeze. The fall of Nerrith started in these great plantations when supplies of fertilisers and growth-promoters started to become overburdened. As food production decreased, many luxuries that the populace had become used to disappeared, planting the seeds of dissatisfaction that would later bloom into to large-scale sedition.

Productivity dropped still further as the Planetary Defence forces, known as the Nerrith Interior Guard, were forced to step in to quell riots and enforce ever harsher discipline over the labour force. As confrontations between the citizenry and the PDF became more intense a new faction coalesced to provide leadership for the nascent revolution. This group, known as the Parliament of Equals, promised to represent the masses and listen to their concerns. Such populistic and naive ideas are clearly untenable in the long run, but they quickly swayed a large portion of the population. Spreading from Hive Delta, the Parliament of Equals' numbers swelled phenomenally, gaining and holding territory by force if necessary while they spread their ideology throughout the populace. Entire companies of the Interior Guard changed sides during the conflict, fighting against their brothers in arms as they attempt to spread their doctrine.