Fenris

Fenris is the Death World in the Segmentum Obscurus that is the homeworld and recruiting ground for the Space Wolves Space Marines Chapter and their Primarch Leman Russ. Fenris takes its name from the mythical Norse wolf fathered by the god of tricksters Loki that would assault the Norse gods during the Final Battle of Raganarok. Most of the names of locations on Fenris are also drawn from the Norse mythology and languages of Old Earth. Fenris is situated in the galactic south of the Segmentum Obscurus, at the end of the Warp rift known as the Eye of Terror, from which come the Forces of Chaos to raid and pillage. Fenris thus lies at the forefront of the Imperium's defence against Chaos. The Space Wolves maintain the vigil that began many millennia ago at the close of the Horus Heresy and watch over a hundred other worlds besides. Their domain stretches far and wide across the scattered stars that girdle the Fenrisian star system, but it is the bitterly cold Death World at its heart that the Space Wolves proudly call home.

Planetary Environmental Conditions
A planet of fire and ice, dominated by extremes of climate, Fenris is listed in the Apocrypha of Skaros as one of the three most deadly and turbulent worlds inhabited by humanity in the Milky Way Galaxy. Its surface is mostly covered by water and its tiny land masses are no more than islands scattered sparsely upon the ever-churning sea. The single sizable continent, Asaheim, lies at the world's northern polar region. Fenris follows a highly ellipitical orbit around its pale K-class sun that takes approximately 2 Terran standard years to complete. This period of time is known as a "Great Year" to the people of Fenris. For much of each long year the world is remote from even this feeble star and its surface remains deeply frigid. The oceans freeze over as Fenris draws away from its sun and at its farthest point even the equatorial seas are covered with ice, making the planet appear to be a frozen snowball from orbit. The bleak mountains that punctuate the waters are stilled so that at the height of the Fenrisian winter a man can walk between the many isles upon which the Fenrisians dwell. Towards the end of the year, as the planet sweeps close to its sun once more, the Wolf's Eye swells in the sky and the brief spring warms the surface. During this period, the ice retreats to the world's poles and the gargantuan dwellers of the deep waters emerge to enjoy the bounty of sun-spawned plankton, bladefish and other short-lived aquatic fauna. As Fenris reaches the point at which it is closest to its sun, the passage of the planet near the star produces tidal forces that break and twists the sub-oceanic crust, exposing Fenris' molten mantle to the frigid waters. It is then that the time of fire and water has arrived. With explosive violence the world is torn asunder. Blazing islands rise from the steaming sea spewing flames, with lava pouring down their slopes. Below the surface the waters boil into steam that engulfs Fenris with its sulphurous fumes. Great tidal waves scour the coastlines of Asaheim and the islands. Islands created in the upheavals of preceding years are cast into turmoil by this global metamorphosis. Some endure, but many are broken apart or swallowed by the seas, engulfed in the churning waters and casting their unlucky inhabitants into the deeps. But the great lump of rock the Fenrisian tribesmen know as Asaheim always stands fast, a single, changeless continent on a world of fire, ice, ruin and torment. This extreme geography has resulted in the human population of Fenris becoming one composed largely of primitive, nomadic barbarian tribes. The tribes constantly seek secure territory, and as a result skirmishes and feuds over land between rival tribes are common. The people are hardened to the changes in temperature and environmental extremes, and so is the fauna.

Asaheim and the Fang
Native Fenrisians are used to this pattern of destruction every Great Year and have learned to love the endless mutability of their lands with a fierce warrior pride. Only on the northern polar continent of Asaheim are the human populations of Fenris protected from the extreme climate. Here there are many unique creatures not able to live elsewhere on the world. These include massive ice bears, gigantic elk and shaggy mastodons as well as stranger creatures such as the snow trolls, shape-changing doppegangrels and the great white wyrms that burrow through the glaciers and fjords. The deadliest creatures are the native semi-sentient Fenrisian Wolves themselves, for their wits are as sharp as their teeth and the largest of their number is the equal of any of the great predators that slither and stalk through the icy Fenrisian wastes. Yet Asaheim is remote, surrounded by towering cliffs that rise thousands of feet into the air above the seas and separate it from the oceans. Its fabled land mass provides no refuge for those that live beyond its rocky confines. To a Fenrisian tribesman, it is truly the land of the gods.

The Space Wolves' fortress-monastery, known widely as the Fang and Aett by its inhabitants, is a massive citadel built atop the tallest mountain of Asaheim. This mountain is known by many names, including The Shoulder of The Allfather, and volda hammarki, the World Spine. The Fang is the home base of the Space Wolves and extends into the surrounding mountain range as well as into orbit, drawing energy from the geothermic source of the planet's molten core. The complex includes huge ground-based anti-ship orbital defence laser weapons concealed as nearby peaks, docks at the summit for the Space Wolves' Battle Barges and Strike Cruisers, numerous shrines to the Emperor along the lower slopes, and massive fusion and geothermal reactors deep underground. Outside of Terra itself, the Fang is considered one of the most impregnable fortresses in the galaxy, constructed by the Adeptus Mechanicus during the Great Crusade using technology that has long since been lost. It has never been conquered, although the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion, the Space Wolves' most hated foes, did manage to briefly occupy the outer slopes of the Fang after luring the bulk of the Space Wolves' forces away.

The Fenrisian Seas
Most of the creatures of Fenris live within the sea and it is on those vast oceans that the Fenrisians must live and fight if they are to survive. It is not an easy life at the best of times. Many deadly creatures inhabit the oceans, ancient and scaly reptilian behemoths that are as large as small islands and can swallow a Fenrisian longship in a single gulp. Others are long and serpentine, with boiling acidic blood and scales that glint like pearls in the sun. These sea monsters will sometimes pluck a sailor from the deck of a ship and drag him down to his death in the deep, cold waters. Still others are too uncertain in form to describe, as they are many-tentacled monstrosities with razored beaks and cold black eyes that hide in the depths until they rise to the surface to feed. It is against these creatures that the warriors of Fenris match themselves and those that emerge triumphant live forever in the oral legends of their tribe. To survive on such a world the Fenrisians must be warriors from the time of their birth to the day of their deaths. This is why the child-gift for both boys and girls is always the axe and why those children that are not able to grasp it are cast outside to die quickly in the freezing seas. Their survival, and the survival of their fellows, depends upon their wits and determination as much as their skill with sword and spear and axe. Because their world is almost entirely covered in water, Fenrisians must be masters of the waves, able to fight, navigate and endure through ice storms and tropical squalls. For a large part of each Great Year the tribes endure a savage seaborn existence which often ends in a watery death or in battle against the monstrous creatures of the deep. The competition for food is great and tribes are often drawn into conflict over the planet's precious resources.

The Fenrisian Tribes
Of the resources available on Fenris the most valuable is the land itself. No man knows how much the land will change with the turning of the Great Year. Sometimes old islands survive the changing seasons and good fortune may preserve a tribe's territory intact for many Great Years, but it is more likely that the archiepelagos will be broken and destroyed, submerged beneath the oceans by the vast upheavals of Fenris' crust. When this happens there will be vicious wars between the tribes and only those who succeed in finding new land and establishing themselves on it will survive. Once the time of fire and water has passed, the Fenrisians must settle the newly formed lands quickly, for soon their supplies will run out. If they can find no new land they must resume their wars for the territories of other tribes. So it is that the life of a Fenrisian is one of constant seaborne migration and warfare.

The Sky Warriors
Despite the hardships that define their lives, the Fenrisians consider themselves blessed, for it is only warriors forged by such ordeals that can become the greatest of the Emperor's warriors and the Imperium of Man's defenders. It is from these hardy Fenrisian tribesmen that the Space Wolves recruit all of their kind. Although Fenris is the homeworld of the Space Wolves and held by them as a fief of the Imperium, the Chapter occupies only the island continent of Asaheim, whch rises from the polar oceans like a continental pillar, sheer and shrouded by thick white clouds. The remainder of Fenris is left in its wild and feral state and the people survive as best they can amidst the constant battle between fire and ice. The Space Wolves maintain a careful watch over their tribal kin, but never appear openly amongst the warrior tribes. To uninitiated Fenrisians, the Space Wolves are known only as the "Sky Warriors," glimpsed only occasionally from afar, possessing powers both magical and divinely granted. To them, the Sky Warriors are the warriors of myth, the companions of Leman Russ who will fight alongside the legendary Primarch in the final battle at the end of time. To them, the lands of Asaheim are the forbidden realms of the divine, where their native traditions forbid any man to walk uninvited. Only a warrior chosen by the gods can enter the fortress of Russ at Asaheim's peak. Thus the Fenrisians have become accustomed to the bravest of their young warriors earning a place beside the gods, vanishing from the everyday world and going to live in the high realm of Asaheim. So it has ever been for the people of Fenris. So will it ever be so long as the Emperor of Mankind sits upon the Golden Throne of Terra.

Leman Russ
The Primarch of the Space Wolves, Leman Russ, was flung across the galaxy through the Warp from the Emperor's gene-labs beneath the Himalayan Mountains on Terra by the Chaos Gods to the distant planet of Fenris, a snow-covered death world inhabited by primitive warlike tribes of humans possessed of only Iron Age technology. He was raised by a pack of the massive, semi-sentient Fenrisian wolves that prowled the snowy lands because they sensed an unusual genetic kinship to him as the bearer of the Canis Helix. Among them, he grew to adulthood in only a few short years as a result of his genetic modifications.

The young Primarch was eventually discovered by a Fenrisian tribesman named Thengir, the King of the Russ. Thengir had organized a party of hunters to clear the Fenrisian wolf packs from his lands. Most of the wolves were slaughtered, and the massive young man was captured amongst their number and brought to Thengir. Thengir took the young man into his care, giving him the name ‘Leman of the Russ’. Leman learned the ways of mankind quickly, and many legends sprung up about him, such as how he could defeat a hundred men in only three minutes, or consume an entire aurochs when sitting at a feat in the long hall. Upon his adopted father's death, the kingship of the Russ passed to Leman. Leman became a mighty leader, winning many victories, often fighting alongside packs of Fenrisian wolves, led by Freki and Geri (the names of the Norse god Odin's wolves), two of his own Fenrisian wolf-brothers who had escaped Thengir's hunters.

Eventually, word of his exploits reached beyond Fenris, to the ears of Leman's gene-father, the Emperor of Mankind, who recognized the tales as concerning one of his lost sons. He traveled to Fenris with a fleet of the Great Crusade and became certain that the exploits spoken about among the tribesmen of the primitive world could only be the work of a Primarch. Traveling in disguise and then challenging Leman Russ to combat, the Emperor eventually won him over to his side and gave Leman command of the VI Astartes Legion whose Space Marines had been created from his own genetic stock.