Terra Beyond
Barbarus
While everyone on Terra worked themselves to the bone—
A breeze swept through the fields, tall crops rustling in the wind as pale waves rolled from one ridge to the hazy horizon. A faintly pink sun slowly rose at the edge of the sky, bringing a moderate warmth.
Distant bells rang with the dawn. Startled birds took wing, streaking past the forest toward the fields. The silent Death Guard vanished with the night, while the streets gradually came alive. Children and youths commuting to military school noisily ran toward class, occasionally crashing into red-robed Tech-priests strolling slowly along the road.
The magi emitted a few displeased electronic chirps, but the children paid them no mind. After laughing, they continued on their way. On Barbarus, there were always pilgrims from the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the morning, noon, and evening formations that spontaneously sang praises had long become an unremarkable sight to the people of Barbarus.
When the first ray of sunlight shone upon the ears of wheat in the three-headed hound's jaws atop the church, the priests of the Cult of the Underworld opened its doors, cooked and cleaned, and saw off those who had spent the night there.
After the children's laughter faded from the streets, farmers, hunters, merchants, and Wraithspawn appeared. Compared to a Hive City world, Barbarus, under Mortarion's direction and with the military's involvement, had retained a relatively archaic social structure.
And the demands of the entire Death Guard Fourteenth Legion were enough to consume all the productive capacity of Barbarus and its Star Ring.
Barbarus, this pale-green and charming world, seemed like a calm, gentle lake amid this noisy, chaotic, mad galaxy. She was silent, but not voiceless; dim, but never ashamed. A society that had run for thousands of years would remain