Mitu Conglomerate

The Mitu Conglomerate was one of the countless xenos empires that rose to power and preyed upon human worlds during the Age of Strife. Powerful and possessing devastating weapons and technologies, the Mitu Conglomerate comprised scores of worlds and held dominion over several vassal systems, both human and alien. Their empire would eventually be crushed during the Great Crusade after a protracted and bloody war led under the flag of the 7thundefinedExpeditionary fleet of the First Legion, the Dark Angels. The records of the Great Crusade contain precious little information on the Mitu and their empire – the alien horror being too complete to warrant anything less than a writ of extermination. However through their interaction with several human cultures in the Segmentum Obscurus, most notoriously the domains of the Manachean Commonwealth - which has suffered for centuries under the baleful tutelage of the xenos – and the Forge World of Mezoa and its allies of the Imperial Knight Household of House Hermetika. At the pinnacle of their might, the Mitu Conglomerate posed a serious threat to the Imperium’s expansion, effectually dominating a great deal of the Coronid Reach and held only in check by the Orks of the Grail Abyss and the might of Forge World Mezoa in the Cyclops Cluster.

History
Almost nothing is known of the Mitu’s Conglomerate inception or indeed history. What few archives or fragments remained from the Dark Age of Technology don’t mention them, which leads to the conclusion that their empire emerged only after Old Night had taken its hold on humanity.

Originatin from somewhere within nowadays Cyclotrathine Holdfast, over centuries the Mitu Conglomerate expanded deep into the Coronid Reach and the Cyclops Cluster. This we know from the archives of Mezoa and even distant Damaetus III/II, the home of House Vyronii,  which both had to repeatedly fend of attacks from this growing empire. Other human words like those of the Manachea system were however less fortunate and were overrun by the xenos. Where it encountered other populations, both human and alien, the Mitu did not push for expansion but culled the existing populations into submission, exacting a periodical tribute of flesh under the menace of more thorough purging. Those worlds that lived beneath the thumb of the Mitu Conglomerate did not suffer as harshly as under the iron-shudded rule of the Orks or the depredations of the Eldars, but they were slaves none the less. However the Mitu did not interfere much with the planets' governances: apart from culling the nascent psyker population and forbidding any attempt at space flight, the planets were mainly left to govern themselves. The ruthlessness the Mitu displayed in their track of psykers indicate that at the very least they had a notion of the perils that lie within the Warp although it is unclear if they knew anything about the existence of the Chaos Gods. Perhaps they simply sought to deny a powerful weapon to the populations they oppressed, or safeguard their technology.

On a technological level, the Mitu were a formidably advanced empire, mastering both space flight and interstellar travel. The damage sustained by the mighty Felweather Keep on Damaetus III/II constitutes a testimony of their military might, the imposing fortress proving no match for the high energy weapons used by the Mitu. It would seem that although technologically advanced the technolog of the Conglomerate was mostly organic and activated by psychic impulse, thus explaining both the Mitu’s reoccurring need for tithes of lives and flesh and the cull of human psykers. Such horrors could naturally not be permitted to live.

When the Imperium ventured forth in the Coronid Deeps it encountered scores of worlds subjugated by the Mitu. Mezoa was by then involved in its own modest xenocidal campaign, which had already lasted for many decades, and on Damaetus III/II House Vyronii readied itself to make a glorious final stand before being overwhelmed by a new tide of alien horrors. Bound on the total annihilation of the Conglomerate, the Imperium waged a bloody and protracted war against the Mitu. Several times the use of Exterminatus-class weaponry was sanctioned, for Mankind could ill-afford to let such monstrosities live. The conflict itself was fought largely in the void  as a series of  brutal close-quarters boarding engagements interspersed with sudden and world-shattering assaults by both sides which would mobilize forces of several Expeditionary fleets and require no fewer than three Space Marines Legions and hundreds of Solar Auxilia cohorts to prosecute. The liberation of the Manachea-system would prove to be the major turning point of the conflict and heralded the complete extermination of the Mitu whose core-worlds were all subjected to the Exterminatus.

In the final days of this conflict, the Mechanicum war-barque Cyclopean Mind was so badly damaged that it was left behind on the savage world of Cyclothrathe to become the birthstone of the Forge World which would gain so much infamy during the Age of Heresy.

Physiology
The Mitu were not a unified people or even a single species but an alliance of different civilisation that are believed to have evolved from a common stock. As such, all Mitu were pseudo-actinaric entities that proved psychically empowered, highly intelligent and masters of both biologic and arcane technologies. Descriptions of their physique have sadly all been lost.

Homeworld
The Imperium has thus far been unable to identify the original home world of the Mitu and it is likely that it never will as no resources are wasted on this research. Logic dictates that it would have to be one of the worlds ravaged by the Great Crusade that now form the Cyclothrathine Holdfast. However the two principal worlds of this domain, Cyclothrathe itself and the Mining World of Arrian seem not to have been colonized by the Mitu due to their inimical nature to life.