Bardarian

Map	Basic Data		Planetary Image
	Name:	Bardarian
	Segmentum:	Tempestus
	Sector:	Eternum
	Subsector:	Confedus
	System:	Bardarian
	Population:	800,000
	Affiliation:	Imperial
	Class:	Feral World
	Tithe Grade:	Solutio Tertius

Overview

A world that has stayed firmly feral, Bardarian is an ocean world with a temperate climate with little of note besides its native fauna and resilient tribals.

History and Life on Bardarian

Bardarian's oceans are broken up by what original colonists believed were islands, though they soon learned they had settled on the backs of gargantuan native fauna. The Great Bardarian Island Turtles struck back against settlers who dug into their shells thinking it was normal ground, and submerged to destroy any buildings or technology, leaving only a fraction of the original colonists who had to survive without the technology of Man. The Island Turtle's backs are the ecosystem of Bardarian, with both flora and fauna growing and living on the slowly roaming turtles.

The descendants of the original colonists devolved into simple tribes that hunt for sustenance and maintain simple bronze age farms, occasionally trading with tribes on other turtles when they pass near or during the turtle mating season. Befitting their state as barely organized tribes, the tithe (carried out by the Governor from his orbital station) is merely one of tribesmen, an event where transports land on the more populous turtle islands and gather the tribe's offering of their people. The tribes suffer twice for this tithe, losing their best warriors but also suffering an immune reaction from the turtles themselves - the engines of the transport craft irritate the turtle, and the turtle's immune system sends monstrous Cytotoxates to hunt fauna on the turtle's back until long after the transports have left. These Cytotoxates swallow the tribesmen whole, and few tribes are powerful enough to actually fight one. For their part, the tribes believe the tithe to be payment to the God Turtle of Mankind (missionaries sent to ensure the Imperial Creed was present diverted the native turtle centric religion to recognize the Emperor as the singular God turtle), and the Cytotoxate hunt as a test from the God Turtle's Angel Turtles.

The Mechanicus has investigated the possibility of killing the native Giant Island Turtles to allow the world to become productive, but two critical factors stand in the way. First, the turtle's shells are so thick and resilient that only concentrated heavy macrocannon fire could eventually break through, with the second reason being that the entirety of Bardarian's ecosystem is reliant on the Giant Turtles - without them the poisons in the ocean that the turtles naturally eat and filter would build up to lethal levels for all life, and the world's atmosphere would quickly become unbreathable, filled with the same poisonous gasses constantly vented by the massive oceanic vents and all oxygen would no longer be replenished, turning the world into a sulphuric poisonous barren world. As such, any project to reclaim Bardarian would be a massive terraforming endeavor, one that Eternum can neither easily afford nor heavily needs as there are plenty of worlds far more accessible for heavy production.