Vestus
The Furnace World
Sector: Corva SectorThe Furnace World
System: Vestus System
Population: 1.2m
Dominant Species: Human
Government: Ninth Scar Control
Overview
Vestus is a furnace-world where the very ground seems to burn with hidden fire. The planet orbits close to its sun, its thin atmosphere doing little to shield it from the relentless glare. From orbit, its surface gleams reddish gold and white, iron oxide and crystallised salt glinting like old wounds.
Once, Vestus is believed to have supported shallow seas and a stable climate. Today, only vast salt pans and scorched plateaus remain, relics of an age when water still flowed. Geological scans show deep fissures leading to magma chambers below the crust, which heat the planet’s core and produce geysers of superheated vapour that erupt without warning.
Though officially uninhabitable by Imperial classification, Vestus serves as the beating heart of the Patron’s military empire, a world of testing, training, and transformation. The Ninth Scar call it holy ground, for here they are forged anew.
Environment
Vestus’s surface is a hostile tapestry of dunes, cracked stone, and glittering salt plains. The great deserts are divided by tall ridges that rise like spines across the horizon. During the day, temperatures soar high enough to melt standard alloys; by night they plummet below freezing, turning the air sharp and brittle.
Dust storms roam the planet like predators, carrying glass-shard sand capable of flaying flesh from bone. Lightning arcs across the sky during these tempests, striking the salt flats and fusing them into plates of mirrored glass.
Life persists in scattered pockets where geothermal vents and subterranean moisture provide refuge. Some regions bear traces of ancient alien ruins long swallowed by the sands; half-buried ziggurats and shattered monoliths etched with symbols no scholar has yet deciphered. The Ninth Scar consider them sacred, believing the Patron found the world guided by fate, not chance.
Settlements and Population
While the planet’s surface is dominated by barren wasteland, several key settlements and stations exist to support the Ninth Scar’s operations:
Tarlon Basin
The vast depression at the planet’s equator, rimmed by high cliffs and salt plains. It is home to the Furnace, the Ninth Scar’s principal fortress, and by extension the heart of the world’s infrastructure. Landing platforms, slave barracks, and processing stations sprawl across the basin floor, forming a city of dust and heat.
Varnis Reach
A mining settlement near the planet’s southern pole, built around a geothermal vent field. The air here shimmers with rising heat, and the ground is pocked with boreholes. Varnis Reach supplies refined metals and minerals to the forges of the Furnace. Life expectancy among its workers rarely exceeds six years.
The Constellation of Wrath
A string of twenty-six outposts stretch across the northern poles of Vestus, originally established as a communications relay. Now used as a network of listening posts for the Ninth Scar’s operations in the region, the Constellation monitors signals throughout the sector and reports directly to the Furnace’s central command.
Port Wrath
Vestus’s only formal starport, carved into a canyon that shields it from the desert winds. Incoming transports are guided here before being escorted to the Tarlon Basin. Though officially a trade hub, it functions mainly as a processing centre for slaves and captured material from the Patron’s conquests.
The Wastes of Solaine
An uninhabited expanse of fused salt and glass, stretching hundreds of kilometres east of the Furnace. Strange lights are often reported there at night, some slaves say the result of plasma storms, others claim to have seen marching silhouettes glowing faintly beneath the surface.
Culture and Life
To live on Vestus is to endure. There is no leisure, no mercy, and no softness of any kind. The Ninth Scar enforce absolute discipline; every citizen, from soldiers to slaves, exists to serve the furnace of war. The air itself becomes part of the doctrine, each breath is a reminder of struggle.
Many of the inhabitants are not volunteers. Criminals, deserters, and captives from conquered worlds are sent here as expendable labour or as initiates for the Serpent’s trials. Those who survive are reshaped, some through training, others through more nefarious means.
Religious devotion to the Patron saturates Vestan society. Temples of black stone rise amid the dust, their altars perpetually aflame. Every death, every act of endurance, is offered as a prayer: a spark to feed the Serpent’s eternal fire.
Last edited: