Newseam is a hardscabble Imperial Mining World located on the eastern edge of the Ultima Segmentum that is dedicated to the production of precious metals, up to and including adamantium. Its population makes up what is known as the "Minecorps," and they are ruled by a callous noble class called the "Oremasters."
The oppression and misery of the Minecorps proved fertile territory for the development of a Genestealer Cult known as the Rusted Claw. The genesis infestation was initiated by the unearthing of an old voidcraft in which a Purestrain Genestealer had taken refuge, the cult has spread from Newseam to multiple Imperial Frontier Worlds with the aid of an allied Rogue Trader network.
The cult is nihilistic in the extreme, eschewing all material things in favour of eventually achieving the ascension and spiritual remaking promised by their unknowable alien gods.
History[]
The Cult of the Rusted Claw is constantly on the move. Its adherents thrive on the fringes of Imperial society, rather than within its hidden heart, for they exemplify the cult's need to expand and settle fresh host populations wherever they can support a new gene-sect or infestation. Their willingness to roam across the most hostile reaches of the Imperium in search of settlements means they are hardy and resilient in the extreme.
Despite their dishevelled appearance, a cultist of the Rusted Claw is a formidable opponent; they can go for solar weeks without food or water, work tirelessly under a volatile sun, or take a bullet and keep on fighting till day's end without slowing once.
The cult symbol of the Rusted Claw shows the Imperial cog of industry being consumed by the great metallophagic wyrm that consumes the unbeliever and his creations alike.
The cult can trace its beginning to the arid wastes of Newseam, a planet on the eastern edge of the Ultima Segmentum. The miners who toil beneath Newseam's crust unearth hundreds of tons of precious metal from the planet's strata each day. The sickeningly rich upworlders known as the Oremasters who control their fate forbid the downtrodden labourers from keeping even the smallest portion of the wealth they dig out from the seams, let alone spending it.
This prohibition causes a great degree of ire amongst the populace, who work their fingers to the bone in the name of uncaring masters. The backbreaking labour of their pick work yields them nothing more than food slops, nutrient paste and a few solar hours of sleep a night.
Some of the more precious metal they mine is smuggled away, for the eyes of the Newseam Minecorps Servitoria's overseers cannot be everywhere at once. Those who are caught, however, are auto-flogged, hung by the neck until dead, and their mortal remains branded with the thief's rune as a salutary warning.
The embittered underclasses of Newseam proved fertile ground for a new creed. When the pickaxes of a small work group dug through the remains of a buried voidship, the subsequent explorations awakened the Purestrain Genestealer hibernating within. It was the beginning of the planet's slide into the abyss.
Working in tandem with their Rogue Trader allies, the prospecting divisions of Newseam spread their worker populace from Frontier World to Frontier World -- and with each of its pioneering expansions, the dark secret at its fringes spreads along with it.
Most Genestealer Cults have humble beginnings, but those of the Rusted Claw embrace their disdain for material possessions to the point that it becomes a bitter refusal to accept that anything has lasting value -- not even themselves. They are nihilists all, believing that they are but corroding material in a universe riddled with entropy.
Only by being subsumed, by being remade, body and soul, by the unknowable xenos entities they worship, can they ever become something more. Until that day they are nothing more than ambulatory scraps of flesh and bone, tattered cloth and rusting metal -- and anyone who thinks differently is a fool in need of a rude awakening.
This mindset, when twinned with the harsh lifestyle of the interstellar pioneer, leads to a scruffy and neglected appearance -- to spend too much time maintaining, embellishing or polishing is seen as a despicable and ultimately fruitless indulgence. Objects exist only to serve, and all material possessions are functional and disposable, just like the flesh that will soon enough rot away to leave only the immortal spirit behind.
It was the Kelermorph known as Golden Talon, of the Newseam Saints gene-sect, who first gilded one of his claws by dipping it in molten gold taken from the world's Palace of Commerce. This symbolic act of desecration was a potent reminder that though their Oremasters might grind them down, in the fullness of time the cult would take whatever it wanted, and nothing could stop them.
Although the Rusted Claw eschew wealth, valuing body and soul above ephemeral concepts such as mortal possessions, they are more than happy to remind the overlords of those worlds they infest that their trinkets and gewgaws can be snatched from their weak hands -- just as their breeding stock can be taken from them and turned to a higher cause with a single Genestealer's Kiss.
Sources[]
- Codex: Genestealer Cults (8th Edition), pp. 26-27
- Codex: Genestealer Cults (7th Edition), pp. 18, 44-45