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The Outreaumer Worlds

The Outreaumer Worlds are located along a rimward portion of the Calixis Sector of the Segmentum Obscuras, and is composed of over two dozen inhabited systems, subdivided into a over a dozen discrete territories.

Classified as a 'troublesome province', the Outreaumer Worlds have a long history of civil unrest and ongoing dispute, suffering from savage border wars with the Archenemy tribes inhabiting the neighboring Satyressian Worlds, situated rimwards of the Outreaumer World's extents in the Halo Stars region of the Galaxy.

Eventually reclassified as 'unstable/hazardous', the Civitas Imperialis was officially suspended and the court of the regional governor removed to the neighboring sector for safety.

Satyressia Warp Interface
(image of Supernova Remnant E0102 in the Small Magellanic Cloud - Photo Courtesy of NASA)

Before the Fall

Lyubov is located in the Eastern Fringe, the Outreaumer Worlds Cluster near the so-called Saytressia Worlds Cluster and the outer septs of the Tau Empire to be precise. Settled by Terran exodites during the Dark Age of Technology, the people of Lyubov retained higher levels of technical know-how and even today, the world enjoys a higher than average technology. Liberated in the early 36th millennium by Tzarina Katarina of Nyue Valhalla, Lyubov is a temperate world, but cooler than Earth. Its native population was joined by exiles from Valhalla in the mid-36th millennium it quickly grew to become a civilized world of considerable population with significant local military forces.

Lyubov is only lightly settled. It is slightly larger than Mars but boasts a population of less than 100 million souls. Much of the world is untracked wilderness. Large forests of howood trees cover much of the landscape. Howood is highly prized for its durability as the Howood tree absorbs large amounts of iron from the soil making the wood a rich reddish brown with a lustrous sheen when polished.

The world was divided between squabbling factions, each suspicious of the other. While differences rarely came to blows they did divide the people into mutually hostile cantonments. The leaders of many of these cantonments were bloated with wealth, corruption and indolence. Petty vendetta and vindictiveness were the order of the day. The ruling Oligarchs became increasingly insular and debauched, paranoid over any outside influence that could shatter their dictatorial rule. They farmed the vast resources of the world into building private armies and defending their ancestral seats with private armies. Many of the cantonments even boasted spaceborne forces and slowly, the world acquired a formidable - if uncoordinated - planetary defense system.

The fractionalization of the world made a fertile ground for the forces of Chaos. Slowly, heretical cults gained a foothold on the world. Distortions of the True Faith and treasonous political movements abounded and when the Alpha Legion and their Death Pact allies invaded, Lyubov was like an over-ripe fruit waiting to fall into their hands.

Several cantonments welcomed the forces of Chaos as liberators, others were overrun as their indifferent neighbors looked the other way taking short-sighted advantage to the shifts in the balance of power. Within a single generation, some ¾ of the world was in Chaos hands. Lyubov was the last of the Outreaumer worlds to fall. Effectively conquered in 750.M41, Lyubov languished under the heel of the Jieshi Is'Malal of the Alpha Legion and their allied Death Pact cultists for nearly 25 years. However, despite the enemy occupation of most of the world, several arcologies remained under Imperial control thanks to the determination and iron will of the local PDF and Guard units.

The situation for the loyalists was dire; rebel and invader forces numbered in the millions and soon only a few cantonments remained in Imperial hands. To make matters worse, the planetary and orbital defenses were in the hands of the enemy. These defenses made a full-scale assault by the Imperial Navy unlikely due to the high costs involved. Given the untenable Imperial position in the Outreaumer, a fleet element capable of such an assault was not available in any case.

The people of Lyubov were forced to provide fuel, spares and munitions for the Archenemy and Lyubov became a major source of supply for the Chaos Legions operating in the Saytressia Star Group particularly the Is'Malal Cultists of the Alpha Legion.

By late 741.M41, Tancred subsector the Outreaumer Worlds were regarded as lost to the Archenemy and a seventy-five year (Terra standard) long reign of terror began for the inhabitants of the region. The people of Lyubov, like the rest of the people of the subsector, were put to work in backbreaking labor to produce arms and supplies for the forces of Chaos. Millions were worked to death in the factories of the Archenemy. A call for aid went out and, in time, the Imperium answered.

The Liberation

A Crusade into the sector and reclaim the Outreaumer Worlds, purging the taint of Chaos for good was launched in 755.M41. At the head of the great armada, Lord Militant Nappo, known as Warmaster Nappo, led his forces into the heart of the disputed region and waged a war that would last for more than twenty years. Though Nappo was eventually killed during the conflict, in single combat with the Archenemy's Archon, Agmar ibn al'Fa, the Crusade would continue under the command of its new Warmaster, Stenn, who completed the liberation of the Outreaumer Cluster in 815.M41.

The task of liberating Lyubov was given to General Carnhide. Carnhide was the scion of a noble house with a competent, if uninspiring, record. Having been given a rag-tag collection of Space Marines, Imperial Navy, and Legio Titanicus forces, as well as Imperial Guards and Inquisitorial troopers all having been rotated out of the front line of the Imperial crusade, Gen. Carnhide had his work cut out for him. None of the Imperial factions was all that well disposed to any other. Gen. Carnhide himself was a staff officer with limited command experience, having only recently been promoted from Colonel specifically for this mission. Many suspected, with good reason, that Carnhide was promoted in order to protect more well-connected officers from being saddled with the Sisyphean task of liberating a well-fortified world with such disparate forces. Carnhide, however, proved himself to be made of sterner stuff than anyone, himself included, suspected.

General Carnhide used a combination of guile, diplomacy and outright deception to get the diverse forces under his command to work in a coordinated fashion. Rather than immediately assaulting Lyubov, Carnhide opted to establish his base of operations on one of the satellites of the system's smaller gas giant. He spend countless hours conferring with Space Marine commanders, Naval officers, Guard colonels and the Father-Visitor of the Inquisition, often resorting to diplomatic subterfuge to get each to eventually agree to a coherent strategy for the liberation of Lyubov - naturally, each commander endorsed Carnhide's plan, believing it to be their own genius thanks to Carnhide's gift of gab.

The actual campaign took longer to plan than to carry out. Imperial forces liberated Lyubov in 777.M41 with a lightning campaign that pushed the Archenemy from the major population centers in a mere 80 days. With the grip of Chaos broken, the world has been placed under the protection of the Maccabees Chapter of Space Marines (a Dark Angels successor chapter). The people of Lyubov have religious opinions similar to the Dark Angels themselves, so the influence of the Ecclesiarchy on Lyubov is weaker than you might expect on a world so recently liberated from Chaos. Then again, the hatred of Chaos and those who collaborated with the Archenemy is extremely high, so the Inquisition tolerates the religious deviation of Lyubov, so long as they continue to adhere to Dark Angels monotheism... for now.

Lyubov and the other worlds of the Outreaumer rejoined the Imperium, but with conditions. Under the terms of the re-integration Lyubov and her sister worlds in the Outreaumer are guaranteed tolerance of their religious and cultural autonomy in return for political adhesion to the Imperium. For over two centuries the Imperium has kept its word and Lyubov forces assisted in the Defense of Piscina IV and defended the Imperium in the 3rd Armageddon War and in the 13th Dark Crusade.