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Malfi

Malfi

Type	Hive World
Temperature	20 C
Population	23 Billion
Planetary Governor	The Eminence Glydus Matriarch
System	Malfian System
Sector	Calixis Sector
Sub Sector	Malfian
Segmentum	Segmentum Obscurus

Malfi is an Imperial Hive World in the Malfian System of the Calixis Sector in the Segmentum Obscurus, 800 days' standard travel through the Warp from the sector capital world of Scintilla. Malfi is the main population and manufacturing focus of the rimward territories of the Calixis Sector. Malfi is a semitropical, gloomy world of overbuilt hive cities and habitation ledges. Its population of 23 billion people approaches that of Scintilla and it subsists on its engineering and metalwork industries. The population of Malfi holds a grudge: they believe that Malfi should be the Calixis Sector's capital world and its leaders and common people venomously protest the supremacy of Scintilla in the sector.

Certainly, with its super-continental hives and eradication of natural landscape, Malfi resembles a Segmentum Solar Hive World far more than any of the other worlds in the sector and its claim for capital eminence seems quite reasonable. However, politics and demographics are often fickle mistresses. Scintilla is better positioned astrographically to provide a centre of effective governance for the entire sector than Malfi. The early Sector Governors of the Calixis Sector, following Lord Angevin’s campaign to bring the Calixis Sector into the Imperium of Man, established their headquarters on Malfi, but the sector's population has greatly expanded and spread out since then. Despite its efforts, Malfi remains a border world, colossal in both its consumption of resources and the production of its manufactoria. It satisfies itself in serving as the planetary captial of the Malfian Sub-sector, governing the Calixian territories rimward and spinward of Scintilla. The Sub-sector Governor, Jendrous Kaffiq, answers only to Lord Sector Hax himself. Malfi is a seat of the Adeptus Administratum and several powerful Calixian banking houses. Malfi's nominal ruler and Imperial Planetary Governor is the Eminence Glydus Matriarch.

Malfi is - and this may be the very reason the sector rulers passed over it to serve as the Calixian capital - a place of the most infernal political intrigue. It is impossible to count the courtly factions vying for power and the ear of the Matriarch. The central palace is a labyrinth of chambers and anterooms, a warren that, so Malfian proverbs say, many have entered and subsequently died trying to find a way out again. Guides may be procured to steer a visiting party through the warren of Malfi’s central palace: they cannot be trusted. Every act and motion of Malfian life is about dissemblance and intrigue in the pursuit of personal advantage. Hire the wrong guide and you may be damned to years of squabbling diplomacy and sudden duels. It is said of the Malfian Palace that “life has a thousand separate doors” and this is no exaggeration. Entering Malfian society, one enters a world of complexity and deceit. Few emerge alive.

The Calixian Conclave of the Inquisition, which supports a district office on Malfi, regards the world as a particular hotbed of dissent and heresy against the Emperor and the Imperium. Apart from the many political factions and underground groups (many sponsored or run by Malfian noble houses) that support and promote Malfi’s usurpation of Scintilla's capital world role (it is worth noting that three times in the last two centuries, Malfian dissenters have almost triggered open civil war with Scintilla), the excessively secretive and disingenuous society of the Malfian hive cities propagates many heretical relgious sects and Chaos Cults. These groups find it simple to conceal themselves within Malfi’s layered, elaborate culture of falsehood and deceit. They also find the hive citizenry to be a fertile source of amenable, pliable recruits. In recent years, the Conclave has become aware of two particularly active heretical sects, whose reach is now spreading beyond Malfi.

Planetary DataEdit

Galactic Position: 2-2/34/CS/N

Class: Hive World

Planetary Governor: The Eminence Glydus Matriarch

Sub-Sector: Malfian

Contact with Other Worlds: Stable Warp routes run from Malfi to Landunder, Seedworld AfG:218, Scintilla, Vaxanide and Orbel Quill.

Malfian SocietyEdit

The Masqued, a Chaos Cult with strong connections to an alarming number of Maflian noble houses, is believed to have grown directly out of Malfi’s culture of constant political intrigue. Its original architects took the concepts of falsehood and subterfuge to their limits and arrived at the cult’s guiding tenet: that nothing is what it seems. By extension, human life and the Imperium of Man itself is a deceit, and Chaos is the only truth. The Masqued believe that the “civilised Imperium” wears a mask of refinement and devoted duty, beneath which lies Mankind’s natural affinity with the lurid machinations of the Ruinous Powers of the Warp. They believe it is simply a matter of time before the mask falls away and Mankind’s true nature as a Chaotic species is revealed.

The Masqued revel in licentious, debauched behaviour and delight in extremes of falsehood and mendacity. All cult members are anonymous and wear at their gatherings grotesque and colourful masks derived from the styles worn at the Malfian nobility's courtly masques and entertainments. The Masqued boasts, in its membership, a shockingly large number of Maflian nobles and high-born, for whom the cult is a mere extension of their courtly world, intrigue taken to its natural conclusion. It is likely many of them have no real concept of the dark truth of Chaos lurking at the centre of their compact. More a deviant secret society than an actual Chaos Cult, the Masqued have avoided censure for a number of reasons: they have political connections and influence; they are almost impossible to identify and target; they offer no palpable threat as yet to Imperial control over Malfi or the Calixis Sector. The Masqued do not seem to be striving to achieve anything: their activities are more a broad excuse for licentious, orgiastic behaviour. Attempts made by the Calixian Conclave, in the most part abortive or unsuccessful, to infiltrate the order have revealed that the cult seems content to meet and worship the Ruinous Powers in the form of Chaos Undivided, waiting for “the inevitable” to happen. They seem to show no desire or intent to bring about a Chaotic revolution, as they regard it as a preordained fact. It is known that Inquisitor Lord Caidin himself regards the Masqued as a “dilettante order”, a grouping of deviants rather than an active threat, and therefore not a priority target. However, given the potential membership of the cult, and the wealth, resources and influence that implies, if the order ever did decide to become more proactive, it would be the richest and most insidious Chaos Cult in the entire Segmentum Obscurus. For this reason, several key figures in the Conclave believe it should be dug out and sanctioned without delay.

The range of the cult’s activity is alarming: suborders and satellite lodges have been noted on Scintilla, Sepheris Secundus, Iocanthus and many other high population worlds in the Calixis Sector. Traces of it have been found as far away as Cypra Mundi and Eustis Majoris in the neighbouring Scarus Sector. It spreads wherever the noble houses of the Imperium have influence. Some say it has links all the way back to Terra. It is also chilling to reflect that, in the last three decades alone, four high-level operatives, each of unimpeachable character, sent by the Inquisition to infiltrate the cult, have later turned up as bonded members. It is an alluring, seductive order.