Spite

Spite is the Fortress World within the Canis Salient of the Jericho Reach. It is here from which Lord Commander Sebiascor Ebongrave marshals the Achilus Crusade against the T'au. It is a world recovering from a terrible attack by Human malcontents, widely assumed to have been supported by the T'au, which killed millions and left Spite a ruined and shaken planet.

Captured relatively intact from T'au infiltrators early in the crusade, Spite is a heavily settled and industrialised world, which turned its whole production over to the war effort. Less than three years ago, it was subject to an unexpected and devastating attack known as the "Blasphemy".

Fanatics calling themselves the "Vengeance Sept" hijacked a factory ship loaded with fuel and crashed it into a major fault line on Spite's largest continent. The resulting earthquakes and volcanoes devastated several cities and rendered vast swathes of the continent uninhabitable.

Fortress Spite has barely been able to function as a military headquarters since the Blasphemy, and refugees choke the remaining cities in the millions.

A great many cities still stand on Spite -- the largest is home to tens of millions. These cities are patrolled by Moral Hygiene Militias, raised under Ebongrave's orders to watch for sedition and xenos sympathisers, and suffer frequent visits by the field purgation platoons of Astra Militarum sent to hunt down the worst offenders.

Each city is now so paranoid it is effectively its own isolated state, with citizens refused entrance or exit without authorisation from Ebongrave's command. The millions of refugees created by the Blasphemy cower outside the city gates, begging to be let in before Spite's merciless winter descends.