Index Apocrypha: Umathron Ur-Wodan Confederacy

[//Umathron Ur-Wodan Confederacy soldiers patrol the inner asteroid belt of the Artex system during the Partisan gambit Operation Gauntlet. {Chronident 5.731.804.33M}+]
[//nathan_s/@natedungeon+]

Précis

The Umathron Ur-Wodan Confederacy was a mutual alliance of cultures and mercantile entities within the Heliopolis sector. Residing in the far Corewards frontier of the Heliopolian void, amongst the wide sweeping nebulae, the primary members of the coalition were the void clans of the Umathron people, the techno-barbarians of Ur-Wodan, and the proud Kurganians, who reportedly bore relics of the Dark Age of Technology. 

Disparate and mobile, the 'damned void-nomads' had long demurred or actively avoided the direct rule of the Imperium, remaining independent. Like the scattered kin strongholds across the region, and the scattered extra-galactic outlier systems, the Confederacy had – at last – wearily been declared a Protectorate of the Imperium. Free of the demand to provide a tithe, the Umathron could in turn expect little support from the Imperium in times of need.

[//The difficulty in translating across or within the Heliopolian Void (lower right of the map)

Neverthless, the Void-clans traded freely and to the mutual profit of the Imperial merchant Navy and Rogue Traders of the Sector, and frequently lent their support either as mercenaries or volunteers in mutually beneficial conflicts – such as the interminable raids and attacks of the orks of Krostos, or the unintelligible needling of nebulous Eldar of Craftworld Dain Mir.

The loyalties of the Umathron Ur-Wodan Confederacy were tested throughout the early years of the War of the False Primarch. As distant as it was possible to be within the Sector from the Silver Stars' arrival, word did not filter through to the void-clans until the War itself was underway. While a few of the clans were impressed by the promise of the False Primarch and gathered under his banner, the majority retained  their habitual neutral stance. Once the High Lords unleashed the Pentarchy of Blood, and both Partisans and Orthodoxy began to impinge on the region, however, all were forced to choose a side. 

'Alea Iacta Est'

***

Void Clans of Umathron 

Amongst the primal wilderness of the nebulae of the Heliopolian Void lies the home of the fair-skinned, stygian-crowned people of the Umathron void clans. A tightly-connected collective society of stellar miners, scrappers, salvagers, and aggressive entrepreneurs, the doggedly independent void-clans were famed for working tirelessly to gather ore and rarer materials from the nebulae. They were known for the high refinement of their work.

'What a strange and beautiful material! I declare it is of a quality I have rarely seen outside of the finest workshops of the red-robed priests of Mars!'

[//Jomo Jomo, Merchant Princeling+] 

In this society all are equal, all brother, sister, or cousin – no matter how distant. The clans enjoy a healthy rivalry, both within and between themselves, but those who achieve the greatest for the clans are acknowledged and recognised for their contributions to the Confederacy as a whole – For together all profit, and contribute to the continued freedom from the bounds of the ever-present Imperium. 

[//Umathron void clan prospector with C.A.T. unit surveying, and collecting samples.+ 7.683.793.33M+]
[//nathan_s/@natedungeon+]

As long as the products of their industries continues to serve the needs and greed of the Imperium, the greater Imperium is broadly content to leaves them to their own. 

At least... so it is said. While the clans celebrate and boast of their independence, such is the reach of the Imperium – both in physical and cultural pressure – that it is all-but impossible for the cultures to avoid 'Impollution', as it is often derisively called within the clans. The songs and traditions of the clans are fiercely protected and repeated, as though these totemic practices will preserve the soul of the people against the ever-present monolithic Imperium.

Worse than this intangible influence, however, is the direct predation upon them – for the darkness between the stars is not always void.

***

The Dangers of Independence

'In words that your kind will understand 'Payment is due'.'

[//Headsman Cyreus+] 

Being independent, the Void-clans benefitted from no preferential treatment when it came to the periodic slave-raids conducted by the Imperium or its allies in the Adeptus Mechanicus. As with any independent planet or people, there are those in the Imperium who will gladly abduct their populace. The Imperium has a great and insatiable hunger for hands and hearts, whether the bearers are willing or not.

While the Void-clans have long protested this treatment to individual Imperial Governors, there is little that can be done. An Imperial Commander might well sympathise with their Umathron allies, but since his or her territory fades away at the edge of their planetary domain, they can do nothing more than offer their own  world's promise to avoid slaving clanners – though more often, they offer nothing more than platitudes.

Void-clan merchants are thus careful when making trades or delivering materiel. Their crew, family all, are rarely permitted – and indeed seldom desire – shore leave on Imperial territory. Lacking ident-chits or papers, clanners are non-persons in the eyes of Imperial authorities; barely greater in status than mutants, and subject to all the restrictions and laws that entails.

***

A captured Confederacy clanner might be lucky enough to be rescued, ransomed back or otherwise retrieved, but the vast majority are lost forever to the clan, and mourned as though dead. Most will be chipped and serve unremarkable lives every bit as miserable as those around them – perhaps made worse by having once been free.

Even these, however, are lucky in comparison with those who have the misfortune to be claimed by the Astartes.

[//Pre-war Star Wardens board and raid an Umathron vessel.+]
[//dan_j/@dark_isles+]

Unlike Imperial Commanders, the Star Wardens will not admit to the possibility of contrition; nor of mercy; nor of reparation. Brutal, decisive and utterly ruthless in their course of action, the fact the Umathron Ur-Wodan Confederacy is non-Imperial designates them – in the Star Wardens' eyes – as Other; and thus fair game. 

Isolated Confederacy craft unlucky enough to confront the Star Wardens in their prowling of the Heliopolian Void usually have two options: flight, or death. Particularly well-armed or numerous Umathron caravans occasionally turn to fight, but the dread reputation of the 'Dark between the stars' is usually so corrosive to morale that resistance is hampered.

This is not to suggest that the Star Wardens – or indeed the other Chapters that the Void-clans have had occasion to confront – are invincible. The Wardens themselves admit to two occasions in the distant past in which they have been forced to retreat, bloody-nosed, from the Umathron and Kurganians. 

***

It is from the Void-clans that the Star Wardens capture most of their Chapter staff, for they require little adaptation or training to serve on the ever-mobile craft of the Chapter. Likewise, many 'uplifted' Void-clanners are found amidst the ranks of the Star Wardens, for the Chapter has long preyed upon the Confederacy.

[//The Star Wardens were mysterious to the broader Sector, but their reputation for brutal precision – and peculiar ancestor-worship – preceded them with the Heliopolian Void.+]
[//dan_j/@dark_isles+]

Such is the Chapter's dread reputation amongst the Umathron Void-clans that their name, if spoken aloud, is followed by a ritual spitting. The wearing of red sleeves or gloves is seen as ill-starred, and the Confederacy as a whole has a long-standing hatred and aversion to the Astartes in general as a result of the predations of the Star Wardens. 

'Ware the immortal Argo, my child! A red-armed beast of steel who has embraced death. Pray to the Ancestors that you never meet the Lord-Harrower. Better you should die of fright than confront that, my kin'

It is to this fact, rather than love of the High Lords, to which is generally attributed the Confederacy's Orthodox-leaning attitude during the War of the False Primarch. It is a bitter irony, then, that it was the 'Primarch's' most fanatical servants that likely drove away a potential escape route from the sector.

***

Life in the clans

Once a void-clanner attains adulthood – generally around the age of 13 or 14 – they enter the fields of labour of their clan, usually amongst the asteroid belts of a system or a planet-bound manufactorum. After a period of time, most progress to an apprenticeship or enter a Collegia to gain the general and practical training that the clans require. Some, of particular aptitude, instead specialise in a trade or field of study, but this is comparatively rare. The life for most of the people of Umathron is broken between periods of base labour and periods of more specialised work; be it as instructors, overseer, engineer, or even politician or merchant. To the pragmatically-minded void-clans, the latter two duties are regarded almost as the same. 

'The overseers of industry, retrieval, and exploration are the Doma. They are the leaders of the clan's day to day lives. The Dominar are ambassadors of trade and coin. It is their duty to manoeuvre the web of business and politics.'

[//Rote-learning manual of the Clan Carmel+]

Even the Doma and Dominar are regarded as equals – the egalitarian belief that all remain 'brothers, sisters, and cousins' is paramount to the Void-clans, and treated with almost religious respect. Those that have tried to remain in places of prestige or authority through power or deception – or who have attempted to extend their personal influence through nepotism – usually find themselves having a vigorous 'discussion' with their clan cousins in a less well-travelled section of a ship or station, and invited to reconsider their proper place within the society. 

Those who persevere in their attempts to aggrandise themselves invariably meet their end in industrial accidents, or the spontaneous decompression of their life-quarters. An infamous fate befell Konros of the Umathron, who was bundled into a life buoy and jettisoned into space rumoured to be the hunting ground of the 'Red-arms'.

***

Alien masters

The reason for the Umathron's fiercely-defended independence and carefully-maintained communal fashion of living dates back to the pre-Imperial period. During the later period of what is known in Imperium as the Age of Strife, the clans suffered beneath the yoke of an alien species, little more than chattel, and  compelled to do as they do now, but with no gain but a life of toil. 

As the warp storms that had raged for so long abated – which, unbeknownst to the Umathron, heralded the beginning of the Great Crusade, the Void-clans came into contact with the Wodan, and together the cultures began plotting rebellion. There are many tales and folk-myths of this time from both the Umathron and Wodan, but suffice to say the alien empire found itself breaking apart from within, its slave population in full revolt, with little regard for the life of the individual if it meant their cruel masters would also be left in ruins. The length of the uprising was short, the grip of the xenos dominion splintered and the survivors fled into the blackness of the far outer dark. 

[//+ + + pict capture 3:147 _ Coldforge _ + 6.537.827.33M + The subjects pictured are members of the Umathron Ur-Wodan Confederacy: two techno-barbarian tribesmen of the Wodan. They are accompanying an electro priestess of the matriarchal electrocult that rules Ur-Wodan.//]
[//nathan_s/@natedungeon+]

Within scant decades, the Great Crusade touched the galactic west – but the people of Umathron avoided those connected to distant Terra, as alien to their understanding as their previous masters. 

Fervently wishing to avoid being absorbed by the monolithic Imperium or entangled with the machinations of the Mechanicum of Mars, during the Great Betrayal the Umathron and Ur-Wodan absconded, abandoning those few planets they occupied in what is now the Myrean League, and vanished into the Heliopolian Void as nomadic starfarers. 

Only after several centuries did they reappear, now politically united as the Umathron-Wodan Confederacy. Standing in lockstep were the Void clans of Umathron and the techno-barbarian tribes of Ur-Wodan, devotees of the Machine Cult in the aspect of the Motive Force. Besides them also stood the Kurganian, an advanced society of scholars and philosophers that had flourished within the Heliopolian Void for millennia; and amongst whom were preserved the remnants of martial traditions and technology which serve as keystones to their world’s cultures. Much of Kurganian's wealth of technology is said to pre-date the Age of Strife, and the location of their worlds is hotly sought by the Explorator fleets of the Sector's Forgeworlds. 

By the commencement of the War of the False Primarch, the Confederacy had formed a large and stable micro-empire that also supported non-Imperial traders, mercantile houses, the Ferrum league, and various small societies scattered throughout the nebulae of the Heliopolian void. 

***

The realm of Umathron 

The void clans of Umathron have many holdings throughout the Heliopolis sector. Mostly, these are found around or within the nebulae wastes of the Sector's coreward reaches, but a number stand beyond as well. These are all primarily prospecting sites amongst asteroid belts, hinterland frontier worlds, or forgotten wreckage of the past. Some, however, are of notable worth beyond mere mineral wealth or salvage. 

Upon the edge of the Heliopolian void, coreward of Lark’s Opus, and in an unremarkable solar system resides a most remarkable place: the free city of Tezhotl, which is seen by many as the seat of the Umathron’s mercantile power. In truth, Tezhotl is a space hulk which was fixed into orbit about the system’s star through the combined efforts of the Kurganians, Ur-Wodan and Umathron cultures. The Umathron supervise the busy corridors of the city, and run most municipal duties and operations, but owing to their peculiarly obsessive egalitarianism, stake no claim to full ownership; instead regarding themselves as stewards. 

The conglomeration of warp-fused space debris has, over centuries, been industriously transformed into a bustling market of commerce and cultural exchange. Its strange winding holds, domes, and tunnels, however, betray the peculiar xeno-mongrel origin of the world-city, and many even within the Confederacy regard it as a hive of scum and villainy. Peculiar noises and events within its walls are far from unknown, and amongst its few Imperial visitors, it is regarded as cursed.

The order of the day is simply that commerce will operate peacefully and orderly. The clan’s enforcers do not care what activities or merchandise moves through the city as long as it does not interfere in the peaceful daily business, or safety of the city as a whole. The Umathron use vast areas of the city as a base of production, and also to market their goods. It also serves as a less formal hub for the Confederacy where its many diverse parties gather to do business, all under the benevolent conservatorship of the void clans. 

Distant from the hustle and bustle of Tezhotl is the formal centre of the Confederacy’s political power, Ochag Cya. An ancient space station in orbit above Ur-Wodan, Ochag Cya serves as the ceremonial and legislative headquarters of the Confederacy. While it also serves as a hub for commerce, its importance truly rests on the fact that it facilitates the Confederacy’s mutual organisation and cooperation. Holding numerous data-stacks, well-stocked docks, it also serves as anchorage for a few very capable vessels that stand ready to be used by the members of the Confederacy as the need arises. Perhaps most importantly of all, it holds a powerful astropathic choir, its members procured at ruinous expense through the Imperial grey market. It is this that allows the Confederacy to navigate the Heliopolian Void with unerring accuracy. 

[//Umathron Clanners+]
[//nathan_s/@natedungeon+]

The home system of the Umathron is the most guarded of all their secrets. A ferociously independent people, it is not known if even the Wodan, their oldest allies, know of its location. It is believed to be a realm of vast mineral wealth – and is likely the source of the fabled umathrite, an eye-wateringly rare ore that only they seem to possess. Such is the tale told by the Umathron to outsiders – but it is possible that the system acts a shibboleth; and that they are truly nomadic journeymen, the fabled system little more than a metaphor for the stability of family.

The strongest indication that there is a physical primary system, or at a least several hidden holdings within close astrographical distance, is the clan's relationship with several Navigator houses. Indentured to the Imperium, Navigators that come to serve the Umathron are hidden to the Imperium; perhaps even to the Paternoval Envoy. They serve as permanent ambassadors to the void clans, never to return to their house. They never leave the service of the Void-clans, and are by far the most protected members of the clan's members. 

While the number of Navigators and Astropaths the Confederacy rely upon is vanishingly tiny, it is by their fragile presence that the group is able to maintain its independence. Nothing in the Confederacy is more precious than these outcasts.

Indeed, it is entirely possible that the Confederacy might have sat out the War entirely, were it not for the actions of the 'Primarch' in gathering and capturing Astropaths and Navigators alike in the years prior – and during – the war. The infamous Methuselahan incident had been a major concern for the Umathron – had something like that happened to them, their culture would be broken – and almost forced them to push for entering the war much earlier. 

'Here be dragons. That's about as much help as these vague myths and hints bring me. That their dominion appears in most maps of Heliopolis is about all that can be said with certainty. All contain a great degree of variation between them. All I can tell you is that their main holdings must be within the nebulae wastes – perhaps a few outside the edge [...]. So, the mystery holds about the Umathron. Other than old tales of their origin, the location of a possible home remains withheld. Few care to inquire, fewer dare to delve.'

[//Inquisitor Eos+]

***

The War of the False Primarch 

The clans were mostly indifferent to the stories of a returned Primarch – besides their suspicion of the Imperium at large, they are a pragmatic people, and agnostic to grand ideology. Rumours, of course, reached the Confederacy's ears that the High Lords had sent the Extinction Armada; of an army of Inquisitors; of assassins and priests and more besides. Through it all, they remained neutral. 

Worst of all, they began to hear tales of Astartes chapters committed atrocities – and so mostly hunkered down, hoping to ride out the worst.

[//'Madness walks with them. Best to be left aside.'+]
[//oliver_n/@magos_nexnbo+]

Eventually, after receiving news of events such as of the massacre of Gurro VII, and the atomic annihilation of Praesu, most leaders of the clans had enough of the wasteful conflict. While war can be profitable for the cunning, and wise, this schism had now become a series of escalating retributive genocides that threatened to leave the Sector – and its neighbours – in tatters. Worlds filled with corpse strewn ruins could not engage in trade, and services. Many holdings had lost contracts, and shipments costing them their precious profit. While the massive blockade of the sector had made trade with outside sectors a challenging, and dangerous task to say the least. The clans Domniars had grown tried, along with many other members of the Confederacy. 

[//Dark things are abroad+]
[//liam_m/@6pluspainting+]

The Umathron are a renowned stubborn, tenacious, unflinching people. They are also an undeniably pragmatic one. The members of the Confederacy who came to support the Abomination, notably the Kurganians and several large trader houses, did so with great fervour. But as years passed of increasing violence and wanton destruction, the clans could take it no longer. 

Despite their comrade's passionate idealism, and alliance with a supposed son of the Emperor, they saw only one option. The Orthodox Imperium would see the entire sector burned black and empty before giving any ground to this supposed false Primarch – and bystanders would not be spared the wrath of the High Lords of Terra. 

***

'Woe betide those who serve alongside killers. They that touch pitch shall be defiled.'