Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop

Actually I do have something vaguely meaningful to post. The following is my background 'fluff' for an attached unit to my 40k Imperial Guard army, the 110th Ryza Menial Co. The 144th Podunk is my conscript platoon & their commanding officer, Commissar Naxos (Commissar Lord). I'm using the Pig Iron miniatures 'Kolony' line. The Commissar is one of their sniper models, converted only slightly by adding the head & shoulder guards from the new Hellhound tank commander, and the addition of a sheathed sword (from a Mordheim sprue as I recall). He'll be armed with a hellgun (instead of a boltgun), power sword and carapace armor. The rest of the Podunks (currently numbering 20) just have lasguns. I've yet to purchase the technicals for their vehicular support, but am thinking on using the 'Provider transports' from Old Crow Models.

Well, some work has FINALLY made it to my desk (YAY!) so I'll get to it now.


The 144th Podunk

Mining outpost designation # 0014.4 was established in final year of M39. Situated along the coreward edge of the Adrantis Nebula (ref.: Calixis Sector, Segmentum Obscurus), 0014.4 was intended to further the exploitation the mineral resources discovered in the region. Mechanicus assessment teams determined that planet designated 0014’s fourth moon was the most viable candidate and the aforementioned outpost was created. A preliminary dispatch of approximately 10,000 workers were imported, and mineral prospecting was initiated.

Orbiting its parent planet designated # 0014 (a barren and lifeless world containing no valuable elements or properties), # 0014.4 itself is a rather inhospitable moon. Having a barely breathable atmosphere, an expansive habitation dome was erected encapsulating the most profitable mine excavation site, with several smaller supporting habitat domes surrounding the primary*. Local fauna & flora are little more than a collection of molds, mosses, fungi, and varying species of rodent. All of which are farmed for food purposes. Several small deposits of Xygnite were discovered. Which, while enough to sustain the colony, were not in enough abundance to facilitate further expansion. Desolate and isolated, 0014.4 was destined to never be anything more than an Imperial backwater. It is not recorded when or by whom exactly, nor is the name officially sanctioned by the Administratum, but 0014.4 is instead recognized throughout the region by the name of ‘Podunk”.

In early M40 the governor of Podunk, paranoid of a civil uprising due to poor living conditions, decreed that a colony defense force should be established and formally requested the deployment of several Imperial Guard regiments from the Munitorum. Lacking any real strategic value, the Munitorum refused instead sending a single commissar to establish a defense force that would be the equivalent of an Imperial Guard regiment. Commissar Naxos arrived to no fanfare (the Governor’s disappointment was palpable), was assigned meager quarters and a sparse budget to do with as he saw fit. Commandeering a small and generally unproductive support dome, Commissar Naxos redesignated it the command center for the 144th Podunk infantry regiment. A prefabricated Imperial bastion was erected to function as a military command center, trenches dug by the first batch new recruits (conscripted from the least productive and disciplined of the mines’ employees), and a training regimen initiated. In the first few years of its existence, the 144th Podunk appeared to be on its way towards fruition.

Despite its modest mineral reserves, Podunk (as its name implies) is too small and isolated of a colony to be a target of any particular value. Not even registering with Xenos raiders and/or pirates, the moon’s inhospitable atmosphere proving to be far more of a deterrent than the 144th itself. Bored, with little to do much less defend, Naxos soon realized that the Guard (seeing himself a casualty of internal politics within the Commissariat) had shelved him. Instead of building a regiment of capable troops, he pursued his own base desires. Reoutfitting the bastion as his personal, fortified palace, with subterranean apartments, staff, delicacies on which to dine, imported concubines, and the finest of personal luxuries. He adorns himself with the finest arms and armor that he uses to impress the local aristocracy, as well as offer an implied threat to any who feels he is misappropriating funds for personal gain. The 144th however, has languished. Substandard lasguns, and kit of cheap manufacture, no armored vehicles or heavy weaponry of any sort, minimal training, and neither junior, nor noncommissioned officers fit to lead them. The 144th has degenerated from what was to be a regiment, to little more than a glorified platoon supported by a few technicals (old, second hand cargo trucks used as improvised fighting vehicles), and ‘trained’ in little more than mob tactics. Once a formidable warrior who lead by example. Naxos is now little more than a petty tyrant, executing those whom he perceives to have failed him, and commanding more or less with a ‘point and shoot’ mentality. Any shred of combat prowess that he may have left within him will in all likelihood be a frantic display, intended to impress his superiors so that he may cling to his scraps of power and authority, rather than be executed for negligence.


*Interestingly, given the complete lack of concern for their environment, the air quality within the domes is now just as unbreathable inside as it is outside, just for different reasons. The structures within the domes are built with over pressure filtration systems and scrubbers (the colony’s number one imported product) and a both complex and tiring system of airlocks which are required to enter and exit all structures within the domes. Anyone outside of a structure (both within the domes as well as beyond them) is thus required to wear a filtration mask. The air qualities of the surrounding support domes vary, but all require both structural and personal air filtration systems.