Betalis III

Betalis III is an Ice World and Mining World of the Imperium of Man, located in the Betalis Binary System, being one of the two inhabitable planets orbiting the Betalis stars. The primary star is a central massive Blue Giant, at least twenty times larger than Sol and a million times more luminous. This star expels enormous amounts of stellar matter into the void surrounding it, which renders the all but the outermost worlds unsuitable for human existence due to the sheer levels of radiation they are afflicted with. This ejection of stellar matter is also the cause of a miniature local nebula being present in the system.

History
The planet was first discovered in the later part of the Omniel Crusade, when the Crusade Fleet was returning victorious from the wars against renegade worlds in the Saint Altus Constellation. During a long range scan of the Betalis System, an explorator team sent from the Crusade vessel Divine Unification discovered an ancient alien craft. Until xeno-survey teams could arrive on the world to examine the finding, the system was declared off-limits to all other Imperial ships by the Inquisition, and an area stretching thousands of kilometres away from the system was planted with mines. The Ordo Xenos survey team confirmed that the alien vessel had been created by the Eldar. The craft was secured and taken away from the planet for further examination whilst the entire system was scrupulously scoured by hundreds of thousands Servitors. Decades passed as they carried out their task, but ultimately no further trace of Eldar presence in the system was discovered. The Ordo Xenos contingent departed from the world after determining that the vessel had been abandoned and its pilots have escaped the planet in some other way, leaving the ice-blue Betalis Star to drift alone in the vastness of space.

The system remained uninhabited for some time following this event, but eventually the Imperium's Administratum cast its gaze upon it and rich natural resources that it contained: ores, rare elements from the stellar matter expelled from the system's pale star, heavy metals from the system's inner planets and valuable gases from the outer worlds. The conditions on the majority of the worlds within the system were deemed too dangerous and unsustaining to support life, but two outermost planets -- Betalis III and Betalis IV -- were declared fit for human habitation.

The colonisation of Betalis III then began in earnest. Over the course of four standard decades fifty-seven million Imperial citizens were transported from an overpopulated Hive World, the name of which is now lost in the enormous archives of Sector histories of the Imperium's vast bureaucracy. When the colonists arrived, they stared in awe as their craft flew over vast areas of featureless landscape; a world so fundamentally different from the cramped, human-infested hives that they had left behind.

Any who ventured out onto the planet's surface were quickly overcome by the frigid conditions, or were driven mad by agoraphobia -- the wide open landscapes of the world were so alien to the people who have grown up in the confines of a hive that many a psyche simply could not bear it. The colonists also quickly came to realise that the "brave new lives" they had been promised came at a price, one which had to be first repaid through generations of labour in the mines already being dug into the planet's crust or in the overpowering heat and fumes of the recently constructed massive smelting plants.

Twelve generations had been born and died since that time, and the original colonists' descendants are still chained by the Administratum's mandate to the planet and its industry until their forefather's debt had been fully repaid. The only legitimate way of escaping their ancestor's due being enlisting into one of the Imperial Guard regiments that are formed as the planets Departmento Munitorum human tithe.

Departmento Cartographicae Planetary Data

 * Planetary Governor: Jamuel Escava


 * Population: Approximately sixty-two million (human only). There are no major population centres on the surface of Betalis III. Instead, the population is spread across the entire planet at mine bases, water processing facilities, herder stations, hydroponics works, chemical works, power plants, airbases, orbital landing fields and many other industrial facilities. Most of those sites are subterranean.


 * Climatic Phenomena: Magnetic Solar Flaring: the Betalis System primary star expels vast amounts of stellar matter which render the majority of the worlds in the system uninhabitable due to sheer radiation levels. Betalis III is protected from the worst of this effect by its unusually potent magnetosphere.


 * Natural Satellites: Three moons.


 * Water Supply: Frozen water melted and purified in industrial processes.


 * Principle Exports:
 * High quality iron ore (large hematite, magnetite, siderite and goethite deposits found on the planet).
 * Cyanogen. Used in chemical fertilizers on Agri-worlds, majority of the world's output exported to Levilnor System.
 * Hydrogen Sulphate. Extracted from naturally occurring gases and converted into fuel.
 * Ammonia compounds. Extracted from naturally occurring ammonia, used for: ammonia-based fuel, water purification, solvents and textile production. Note: Ammonia based ice on Betalis III is highly unstable, as at temperatures over -78°C it quickly becomes liquid, and at temperatures over -33°C it vapourises. It is not unusual to find ammonia in all of these states of matter during the course of a day and night cycle.


 * Principle Imports:
 * Manpower
 * Foodstuffs
 * Technology (sanctioned)
 * Mining equipment


 * Defences: Planet's own Planetary Defence Force and Imperial Guard regiments. Military headquarters located at Port Ryira -- originally a temporary station, it has grown into a sprawling fortified military centre which serves as a barracks, airbase, spaceport, supply centre and training facility. It is well defended by anti-aircraft emplacements, razorwire, minefields and an array of Void Shield generators, as well as surrounded by an ocean on three sides.