GM IMPERIAL PENAL COLONY: PC-897-KARABUTA

“To suffer is to serve. To die is to offer tithe.”
— Inscription above the intake gates

World Classification:

Designation: Karabuta IX
Type: Death World / Penal Colony / Bio-Radiological Research Site
Sector:
Imperial Role:
- Forced isotope mining
- Radiological processing
- Biologis experimentation

Historical Context:

Karabuta IX was first surveyed in M38 by an Administratum resource expedition and quickly classified as “inhospitable for colonization but viable for exploitation.” Ancient geological faults exposed the world’s mantle, radiating lethal isotopic fields across much of the surface. The region known as the “Blightfold” was discovered to hold hyperdense uranium veins and liquid mercury-isotopes—materials extremely valuable for Mechanicus use.

Current Authority:

Penal colony is jointly administered by:

Imperial Adeptus Administratum (Production Oversight Division)
Planetary Enforcer Regiments (Execution and Control)
Magos Biologis Mhur Ancerra (Corpus Radiationis Division)

Each authority oversees a different domain of the facility, forming a triune rule often at odds with itself.

Penal Populace:

Prisoners are drawn from across Imperial space, especially:

Political, religious and social undesirables and failed tithe-world populations
Soldiers convicted of cowardice or disobedience
Involuntary colonists “selected” via Administratum quotas

New arrivals are shackled, shaved, and marked before being marched into the Rad-Zones, where survival beyond 3–4 standard months is rare.

Zones of Operation:

The Ragside Enclosure (Tent Village of the Condemned)

“There are no families here. Only those who haven’t died yet.”

Outside the main shaft entrances, ringed by broken hab-plates, razor wire, and rusted pipelines, lies the Ragside Enclosure—a filthy sprawl of makeshift tents, scrap hovels, and polyfiber lean-tos where the surviving prisoners exist between shifts.

Everything here smells of sweat, promethium, blood, and gangrene.
Fires burn in repurposed oil drums; bodies rot where they fall.
Tribal gangs have formed: The Skinless Choir, The Bone-Oilers, and The Swill Rats

Each tent belongs to someone waiting to be called—for mining, for experimentation, for death.

The Enforcers let them kill each other as long as the tithes remain unbroken.

Butuga Pits

“There is no bottom. Just another shift.”

A web of shaft networks bored into raw uranium-tin seams, located at the base of the Blightfold Fault Line. Butuga Pits are the colony’s primary extraction site and execution-by-labor zone.

Temperatures reach over 50°C in deeper tunnels, with heatstroke and dermal melt a daily hazard.
Radiation is completely unshielded, and isotopic gas vents frequently erupt without warning.
Workers mine with bare hands, rusted chisels, and servo-picks stolen from corpses.
Miners are rotated on 8-hour death shifts, with little expectation of survival past the third cycle.
Supervising prisoners are carrying auto-injectors, delivering stim-slaves enough pain suppressants to keep working long after organs begin to fail.

Barracks of Directive Command

“Our duty is not to die well. It is to manage others who must.”

Located on a ridge overlooking the pits, the Administrative Barracks house:

Enforcer squads
Logistics scribes and Administratum penal accountants
Adepts of Quota Enforcement and Labor Cycle Auditors

The building is austere and fortified, made of prefabricated ceramite blocks, shielded against both external radiation and prisoner revolts. Its lower floors contain:

Punishment cells, for rebellious or failing scribes
Interrogation suites, outfitted with pain-serum servo-arrays to interrogate dissidents
The Ledger Hall, where tithes of flesh and ore are tabulated and sealed after auditing

Enforcers stationed here operate on “rotated discipline”—short-term brutality followed by chemical emotional suppression to prevent long-term collapse.

The Spire of Conversion

“Not all bodies are wasted. Some become useful.”

A cyclopean Mechanicus tower of black adamant and heat-seamed steel rising above the core of the facility. Magos Biologis Mhur Ancerra oversees his grotesque research here, accompanied by lobotomized servitor scribes and chained auto-quill constructs.

Testing human tolerance to sustained radiation
Mapping mutation progressions over multiple generations
Developing rad-absorbent genetic strains for servitor application
Experimenting with adaptive cyber-parasitics in high-rad bodies

Some inmates survive long enough to be fitted with prototype augmetics and cyber-parasites, becoming Radborn servitors—lumbering husks used for the most dangerous harvest operations.

Prisoners selected for experimentation are called “Resilience Stock.” They are hand-picked by magos and marched into the Chambers of Resilience—a soundless complex of white tiles and humming vents.

No individual has ever been observed exiting alive.

Karach-Mire

“To fall in is to be unmade.”

Once a glacial depression, Karach-Mire now forms the central waste basin of the colony—an quagmire of radioactive slurry, sludge, and isotopic waste. All effluent from nearby slag-pits, refinery drainage, and broken isotope tanks are funneled here by gravity-fed pipes and open ducts.

The water is now a viscous, gray-green gel that bubbles intermittently as radioactive reactions churn beneath the surface.
Standing on its shore without shielding leads to lethal exposure in under 4 minutes.
Weather events such as toxic fogs often rise from the mire and sweep through worker encampments.

The Enforcers refer to Karach-Mire as “the soft purge pit.” Traitors, disobedient workers, and agitators are sometimes thrown in while alive.

Biologis Interests:

Magos Ancerra views the penal colony not as punishment, but as living data stock. Objectives include:

Testing human tolerance to sustained radiation
Mapping mutation progressions over multiple generations
Developing rad-absorbent genetic strains for servitor application
Experimenting with adaptive cyber-parasitics in high-rad bodies