Chancer's Vale

Chancer's Vale is an Imperial planet unofficially designated as a "Slum World" because its poverty-stricken population clusters in large shanty-towns along the planet's coasts. The planet's spaceport is a settlement known as Senfarr.

The world's primary export is salt evaporated from the world's seas by its slum-dwelling population. The world's people were so desperate that they became easy targets for the spread of a particularly pernicious Genestealer Cult, the Pauper Princes.

Though still formally controlled by the Imperium of Man, Chancer's Vale is now ruled by the Pauper Princes in all but name.

History
The Pauper Princes originally hailed from the ochre-hued Imperial slum world of Chancer's Vale, which although still listed as an Imperial-held planet is almost entirely under the cult's sway. Much of the populace lives in the squalid shanty towns that pepper the coasts, their skin badly desiccated by the constant mining of minerals from its barren seas.

The planet exports millions of tonnes of saline cubes every year to those planets in the same sector that have no seas of their own; these are used for scores of purposes, from curing meat to the preparation of healing salves. Those of the Pauper Princes who hail from Chancer's Vale have a wrinkled, pale cast to their skin -- an appearance that marks them out as blessed scions of the cult's "holy land" to those who have colonised other worlds in the cult's name.

Such is the deprivation and abject poverty of Chancer's Vale that many of its people originally joined the cult not because they were forced to by coercion or the Genestealer's corrupting "Kiss," but because they were desperate for a way off the planet.

Word had spread that there was an offshoot of the Imperial Cult thriving in the principal spaceport of Senfarr -- though the source of its formation, the Purestrain Genestealer that still made its lair on the super-barge Just Strength, remained secret.

From the Just Strength came a cult which preached hope, solidarity and new beginnings, an intoxicating mixture to the downtrodden and desperate population of the planet's searing coasts.

The first and most talented demagogue of the cult, Magus Marovitch Tenndarc, spoke with such conviction about a new life amongst the stars that thousands fell under his sway in the space of a few short solar weeks. Swathes of the world's populace united in their devotion to the messiah known as the "Star Saviour" -- the cult's Genestealer Patriarch.

Every Emperor's Day, the Magus sermonised to rapturous applause about the glories to come. Tenndarc died saving the Star Saviour himself -- the cult's Patriarch -- by diving in front of a Ratling sniper's bullet. The Abhuman assassin was torn to pieces within the solar hour, Tenndarc attained the status of saint, and the cult's flock quadrupled in size overnight.

Since that day the cult has had a fierce hatred of Ratlings, and in any war zone that harbours these diminutive Imperial Guardsmen, they will go to great lengths to destroy them -- for that which nearly killed their Patriarch may one day finish the job, and this they cannot allow.