Planet: Belsegor

Here is the first planet I'm putting up, the capital world of the Belsegor Sector, also called Belsegor. I have written most of my planet write-ups in roughly this format, with an overview of the planet to begin with and then two or three locations or groups of people which deserve a closer look. 

Belsegor is the administrative capital of the sector which is named after it.  Nowhere else in the sector sees such a diversity and concentration of adepti from the various arms of the Imperium’s ruling caste and many of these organisations have chosen to place their centre of operations on Belsegor.  Moreover, it is on Belsegor, in the Alabast Chamber, that the leaders of the Adeptus Terra meet to discuss matters of local import, and it is to the Vitrian Chamber that the planetary elites and the sector’s foremost chartist captains send their representatives to discuss cooperation and trade throughout the region. 

Being at the centre of sector-wide bureaucracy and legislature, it is little wonder that local culture and local government sometimes seems overwhelmed, but Belsegor’s own nobility frequently rises to the challenge of involvement in higher government.  Although the post of planetary governor, held by the Chancellor of the Belsegorian Senate, is regarded as a rather parochial appointment by comparison, many of the world’s noble houses have built their wealth upon chartist interstellar shipping or service to one of the organs of the Imperium.  Given the number of exemptions and privileges claimed by branches of the Adeptus Terra, the planetary government is in fact a poor choice for those who seek to wield influence; as so much of the planet is beyond taxation and beyond local jurisdiction, the planetary government is left with a very circumscribed role. 

Outside of the rarefied orbit of high politics, the majority of the population lives in relative comfort.  Although not a major academic centre in the manner of Jotunheim or Mandrobaum, the majority of the population is literate, relatively well educated and politically enfranchised.  The senate is elected by universal adult suffrage and, where it is left to administer itself, the planet is generally well managed. 

Belsegor’s status has the centre of the sector dates back as far as the Great Crusade and is a sufficiently well established tradition as to be practically uncontested, even by other important systems such as Procopius Mons or Paladine.  Long before the coming of the Imperium, Belsegor was a major centre of administration and trade, and

The Cities
Belsegopolis and the Imperial City, the two largest hives on Belsegor, have long ago become nearly indistinguishable, merging into one vast double-spired hive-conurbation straddling the sluggish River Tesoro.  Usually, the whole area is simply referred to by its inhabitants as “The Cities”.  Although no law has been laid down to this effect, it is a generally respected custom that the civil authorities of Belsegor and native private interests base their operation in Belsegopolis to the west of the Tesoro whilst the various arms of the Imperial government likewise operate from the Imperial City on the eastern bank. 

Each planet in Belsegoria sends their representatives to the Vitrian Chamber, atop Belsegopolis.  This ancient parliament has evolved over the millennia as a forum for frank discussion amongst the sector’s most important local interests - the planetary aristocracies which hold power on the ground and the chartist captains who ply the void between them, as well as a score of local but important groups such as the couriers of the Frumentarine Sydicate or the various pilgrim guilds. 

Although the Vitrian Chamber likes to project an image of great influence, it is often little more than a talking shop, unable to enforce policy except by the cooperation of planetary goverors and frequently overruled by the judgements of the arbites, administratum and other Imperial authorities.  Nevertheless, the sheer amount of money and influence available to most of its members outside their roles in the chamber is such that, in the rare cases where the Vitrian Chamber reaches a consensus, the various adepti usually find it easier to cajole them into cooperation with bribes and diplomacy rather rankle them with a naked use of power. 

The adepti do have power in abundance, however, and it is their council, the Alabast Chamber, which is properly regarded as the upper house of government within the sector and is located in the Imperial City.  The deliberations of the Alabast Chamber are not open to the public.  It issues pronouncements on all things and imposes the will of Terra upon the many billions of souls within Belsegoria.  A dozen powerful individuals, each of them leaders of their own branches of the Adeptus Terra, convene regularly under the Lord Sector Absalom Vaughn, the man whose writ of office bears the seals of the High Lords themselves and whose power, wealth and prestige are simply beyond the imagination of most of his subjects. 

But beneath these chambers, lower down the flanks of the twin hives and out in the sprawl of the immense urban hinterland, life is more mundane.  Millions of clerks travel to work every day to offices in government departments, trade consortia or as servants of the Adeptus Terra.  Even the planetary government, the Senate, feels like and afterthought to these two massive axes of power which hang over the Cities.  A thriving economy exists to supply the expensive tastes of the potentates who have made their homes near the seats of power.  Only, perhaps, the covered markets of Gnosis can rival the glories of the River Tesoro’s dockyard stalls, where one might find wines imported from Feldspar Brax, stasis-fresh samfire from Elanax or elegant sidearms mastercrafted on  Faraday. 

The local population does well materially out of their masters, living in relative comfort compared with much of the Imperium, but know that the true power on the world is vested in the hands of men and women born on distant planets.  Whole quarters of the city are carved out as exclusive administrative possessions by the Administratum and the Arbites while the Inquisition’s headquarters, the Sublime Court, is avoided by the local population quite voluntarily.  The Senate building, parts of which are pre-Imperial, is dwarfed by the spire of Belsegopolis which has grown above it, and the people it represents are resentful of their second-class status on their own soil. 

The Silent Spire
The Silent Spire was once, despite its name, a hub of communication.  It is the hope of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica that it shall be so again.  The spire, long home to Belsegor's primary astropathic choir, stands in a deeply forested area a hundred miles outside the Cities and two dozen miles from the nearest civilisation. 

The Silent Spire, always an area kept tightly under a security cordon, has been under an almost impenetrable Inquisitorial interdict for the past few years as a result of a serious incident in which all of the resident astropaths lost their lives.  The Adeptus Astra Telepathica is slowly preparing the site for reuse, but each section of the structure is undergoing meticulous exorcisms.  The worst of the psychic backwash from the incident seems to have dissipated, but investigators still disappear from time to time and all those working in the structure are under orders to keep on a constant open vox channel.  Unseasonable weather, which plagued the site for a year after the incident, has thankfully abated. 

Communication is currently routed through the Zemlya, a frigate owned by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and moved around as needed to patch holes in the Imperium's astropathic network, currently geostationary orbit above the Cities.  This provides adequate cover for much of Belsegor's business but full, secure and uninterrupted communications are likely to be restored only once the choir at the Silent Spire is re-established.