Planetary Designation: RIMWORLD
- Class: Dead Forge World / Quasi-Habitable
- Sector: Unknown (likely lost during the Age of Strife)
- Original Function: High-yield pre-Imperial Forge World
- Current Status: Planetary rotation failure; extreme axial dichotomy; fractured ecosystems; technologically degraded societies
Planetary Catastrophe
Rimworld was once a thriving pre-Imperial Forge World, its crust riddled with industrial tunnels, manufactora, vault-cities, and gravitational engines buried deep beneath the mantle. At the height of its operation, it was said that the world itself pulsed like a mechanical heart.
Then, something broke.
One of the planetary gravitic stabilizers—a titanic machine-core used to regulate tectonic forces and rotation—collapsed. The planet’s spin halted completely, leaving one hemisphere in eternal day, and the other in perpetual night.
The Twilight Belt – The Rim
Between the scorched and frozen hemispheres lies a thin band of eternal twilight: the only zone where life can persist unaided. Here, the atmosphere remains breathable, and heat is survivable—though barely.
The Rim is now a war-torn strip of broken megastructures, fading light, shattered hab-domes, and dying machines. The last remnants of humanity fight over the last functioning tech, water reservoirs, and power vaults.
Factions of the Rim
Techno-Barbarian Clans
- Remnants of industrial populations, now reverted to tribal warfare.
- Wear scrap-forged armor, wielding plasma-edged axes, and relic stubbers.
- Live in shattered manufactora, clan-fortresses, and mobile steam-crawlers.
- Worship forgotten machine-spirits with echoed binharic hymns.
- Fight each other for access to power conduits, vent-stations, and gene-purified water tanks.
The Machine Lords
- A few isolated Mechanicus-descended technocrats holding on to ancient knowledge.
- Control a few functional data-fortresses and core-fusion nodes.
- Periodically send raiding parties into the ruined depths to retrieve data-cogitators, plasma cores, or archaeo-weapons.
- Most are augmetically overburdened, physically frail, and spiritually fractured by centuries of isolation.
The Scorched Side – Day That Burns
The sun never sets here. The skies are white-hot with solar overexposure, the ground glassified, and temperatures exceed 800°C.
Still, myths persist.
Legend of Shangri-La
- Whispers tell of a city that still lives, hidden beneath a continuous force field and sun-shielded vault.
- Said to be a domed metropolis, still fed by automated food dispensers, and lit by cool artificial suns.
- Machine Lords debate its existence. Techno-barbarian warlords have burned entire legions chasing it.
The Frozen Side – Night That Never Ends
A dead hemisphere covered in kilometers of glacial ice, black storms, and atmospheric collapse.
But even here, life endures.
Miners of Ice
- A hardy tribe of post-human survivors encased in layers of bone, steel, and thermoplastic.
- Carve into the primordial glaciers, extracting not just water, but the preserved remains of ancient megafauna, flash-frozen during the great planetary halt.
Ignis Aeternus WH 40K campaign notes 