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Part One - Background
Date: 997.M41
Ref.: Squat/282/enc>nine
Scribed by: Histographer Vulm
Re: Squat Background
Thought: Burn the mutant
Much of what we know of the history of the Squats comes to the
Antiquaricary Priests of the Empire from the legends the Squat Longbeards
tell within their Great Halls. Recounted during the great Squat
feasts of FelWynter, the oldest of these oral histories tell of the human
settlement of the systems of the Galactic Eye in the earliest days of the
Dark Age of Technology, tens of thousands of years before the Immortal
Emperor of Mankind forged the Imperium of Terra.
These were the darkest of days for humanity. The heady centuries of
the First Expansion were dragging to a close. Earth had become a
worn out husk, sucked dry by the millennia-long exodus of her finest sons.
Her resources were spent, exhausted by the burden of her offspring
scattered across a thousand score of planets. Her industry had
collapsed, no longer able to support this surge of humanity outward among
the stars.
Earthıs oceans had become lifeless, stagnant pools; her lush forests were
burning deserts, while the once fertile farmlands had become roiling toxic
wastelands. The mighty factories and foundries stood empty. The
planet-circling power grids were cold and silent and the sprawling
equatorial spaceports fallen into disuse and disrepair, as the
self-absorbed children of her youth forgot the sacrifices of their Mother
Earth.
At this time of despair, the eyes of the great captains of Earthıs
industry turned once more to the skies. To secure their future, they
reasoned, they must stake their own claims among the stars. Only
then would they find the unlimited resources, metals and energy needed to
bring life back to their insatiable manufactories.
The finest minds of Terra turned to the problem - where best to send the
ships of exploration. Earthıs scientists pored over their star
charts and spectrographs, seeking clues. After decades of debate,
evaluation and argument, the final decision was made. Gambling the
last of their precious metals, they constructed one last flotilla of
starships and mustered it forth to the unexplored regions of the Eye of
the Galaxy - into the ancient star systems of the Galactic Core.
There the stars were cold and dying, and the planets huge, grim,
foreboding giants. But under the sand scoured crusts, their dense
cores might hold mineral wealth beyond reckoning; adamantium, transuranium,
gold, silver, iron and radium. Wealth formed by the Gods of Creation
themselves during the birth of the Galaxy, wealth for the taking.
Or, the scientists and their charts, graphs and cyphers could be wrong and
they may find nothing. Embarking on Mankindıs greatest gamble, the
vast mining ships set forth into the warp, bound for the high-gravity
planets of the Core.
Long years later, the surviving vessels of Mankind made planetfall. From
the bellies of these great warp-going factories poured the hardiest of
humanity, the explorers, the geologists, the engineers, the miners, the
adventurers; all driven by their hunger for the life-giving resources of
the heavens.
Overnight the barren wastes of planet after planet retreated before the
attack of pick and shovel, drill and blast. Deeper and deeper the
mineshafts were driven, while elsewhere huge earthmovers scoured out vast
pits, opening like boils on the tortured surface. Refineries and
smelters darkened the rancorous skies with poisoned vapors, while the
thin, cold air thrummed with the cacophony of industry, struggle and life.
And soon the ships were returning Earthward with the first rich shipments
of metals and minerals. Earthıs industries, fueled by the pillaging
of a dozen dozen worlds, worked around the clock once more. From
them poured limitless streams of ships, tools and machinery. Earthıs
ascendancy was assured for centuries to come.
The settlers of planets of the Core were celebrated as heroes, and such
they were.
But even men such as these could not bend the will of entire planets to
their bidding. The surface of each harsh, nightless world was bathed
in the sapping radiations of a hundred dying suns, while the crushing
gravity grasped old and young alike in the slow embrace of death. Raging
sandstorms crisscrossed the continents, claiming the careless and the slow
with winds of a thousand mile an hour and more.
And these worlds, at first thought lifeless, held other horrors. Giant
sand rays rose from the surface, riding the fierce winds to attack and
destroy settlements without warning. Subterranean mine slugs
burrowed thru solid rock in search of living creatures, driven to slake
their thirst for moisture by absorbing the body fluids of the unwary.
The inhospitable landscape and fierce predators forced the new settlers
and miners to quickly seek refuge underground, creating labyrinth
communities out of exhausted mines and natural tunnels. They became
expert miners and tunnelers, many living for years under the sheltering
rock without seeing the light of a natural sun.
During this time the humans of the Core Worlds prospered greatly. Theirs
were the most productive worlds in all the dominions of Man, mining in
days as much mineral mega-tonnage as other planets took months to produce.
Seeing the profits to be made, Earthıs huge manufacturing
corporations, virtual countries in their own right, established great
automated factories on these worlds so as to be nearer the source of their
raw materials. Soon more vehicles, machinery and weapons were
flowing from the Core Worlds then were being produced throughout all the
rest of mankindıs scattered domains. They became the wealthiest of
all the planets of Man.
It was not to last, though. Disaster struck as immense warp storms
gathered and cut off the warp lanes to the Core Worlds. Isolated
from each other and from the outside worlds, the Colonies were cut off
from the markets for their goods. Factories closed or were
disassembled and loaded back onto the original starships to find new,
fertile planets elsewhere, while a few far-sighted colonists converted
their forges to the production of items necessary for survival. Of
all ships that left, braving the warp storms, not one was ever heard from
again.
But more hardship was to fall upon those who had chosen to stay on the
Core Worlds. As the decades of isolation wore on in the underground
cities the air regenerators, the power reactors and the food manufactories
began to fail, and there were few among them with the skill or training to
repair them. Many machines had come directly from the Techpriests of
Mars, and could not be puzzled out by the most knowledgeable of
technicians. With replacement equipment impossible to find,
engineering became the most studied profession.
Hundreds of thousands of colonists died, asphyxiating in the darkness of
their underground prisons or perishing in crude surface settlements before
the colonists created their own versions of these life-giving machines,
ultimately even surpassing the work of the technomagi of Mars. Gradually
the surviving settlers and communities became self-sufficient,
constructing huge hydroponic tanks to grow nutritious food algae, and
creating needed tools and new machinery out of the minerals they mined.
Centuries passed in isolation. With the departure of the last
starship, there was little need to brave the hardships of the surface.
Generation by generation, the memories of the surface grew dimmer,
as the colonists lived the entirety of their lives in their underground
refuges. Their origins and history were lost or altered in the passing of
tales from generation to generation.
The surviving settlements maintained little contact one with other,
remaining fiercely independent and jealously guarding their own
technologies. The settlements slowly grew, enlarging their
original tunnelings into great underground strongholds called Keeps, which
were safer and could contain more people than their original tunnel homes.
But inexorably the high gravity and harsh environments of the core worlds
began to have their effects. The continuous background radiation
brought forth mutations with each generation - the weakest of them quickly
dying while the toughest lived to pass the mutated gene-seed on to their
offspring. The Colonistıs bones grew tougher and thicker, their
muscles and sinews stronger, their bodies wider, shorter and darker.
It was during this time that the race became to call itself Squats.
As they grew tougher and more resilient, they became longer lived. Lifespans
of half a thousand years became common. This evolution took thousands of
years, and during that time the new race began to develop its own cultural
identity, based upon feudal and guild ideals.
With Earthıs history and culture a long-forgotten memory, the Squats
developed their own culture and society. Life was hard and survival
was sure only within the Keep, so elaborate family trees were recorded to
prove membership with oneıs home Keep.
Isolated one from another, the mechanical sciences developed independently
from Keep to Keep. Mechanical expertise was prized above all other
learning. Guilds of Engineers arose, along with those of
Smiths, and even a Guild of medical practitioners who called themselves ³Loremeisters².
Members of these guilds were so devoted to learning the full extent
of their field that an apprentice Guildsman would have the knowledge of a
master of their trade in our Imperium. Each Keepıs knowledge was
carefully guarded and passed from generation to generation only within the
Guild.
Warfare between rival Keeps was not uncommon, with the Squats passion for
engineering allowing the construction of mighty and ingenious weapons of
war. These wars stretched for generations, with the Keeps gradually
becoming impregnable, self-sufficient strongholds.
If the ancient tales are to be believed, it was a full twenty millennia
before the warp storms calmed and the questing star cruisers of our
Glorious Emperor rediscovered the Core Worlds. A few mounds of
rusting metal were all that remained of the ancient surface factories,
puzzling ruins for the Empireıs artificers to ponder over. It was
while searching for their builders that the long buried entrances to the
Squat Keeps were discovered.
Forging below, Man met Mutant for the first time, and recoiled in disgust
and horror.
They saw an ugly, disfigured race of gnome-like creatures, all evidence of
their Terran ancestry lost. The Squats no longer even acted as
humans did. They took much pride in their worldly treasures and,
much to the Imperiumıs horror, did not acknowledge the Emperor nor bow in
his service. Unable to recognize their common humanity, the
Xenopriests classified them as alien, hostile and potentially dangerous.
For their part, the Squats believed themselves better than these dimly
remembered forebears of their past. Their distrust of these pale,
spindly Humans was immediate and lasting, and rapidly grew to warfare, a
warfare the Squats were to prove particularly adept at.
For the Imperium had not been the first to rediscover the Core Worlds. The
rampages of Chaos had come to the Squats as the warp storms cast drifting
space hulks into real space. These conflicts, while savage, were
brief and decisive; with the outnumbered Chaos minions quickly falling
before the grim Squat veterans before they turned back to the ongoing
Grudge Wars between the Keeps.
More serious was the Ork threat. For tens of centuries the Squats
had stood against repeated Ork invasions. Several of the core worlds
had been overrun and lost to the ravages of the Ork Warlord Grunhag the
Flayer, whose Waagh! finally united the Squats from their internal wars in
the struggle against their common enemy.
Even today, a full two score centuries after the invasion, the Squats
still send out expeditions of steely-eyed warriors to recover the lost
strongholds believed destroyed by Grunhag's horde. The epic ballad
³The Fall of Imbach² reminds each generation of Squat warriors of the
heroism of the Squats in those dark times, and of the foul treachery of
the Ork invaders; while the foul Orkish deeds have been recorded in the
Book of Grudges for all generations of Squats to read.
The Squats had leaned their lessons well when last the Orks invaded their
worlds, so when the Ultramarine 3rd Company and three regiments of
Imperial guard tried to raise the Emperorıs flag on the planet of Durgrim,
the Squats were ready and waiting to show the humans what ³No² meant.
As Marine and Guardsman alike tried to force the Squats into submitting to
the Imperium, they found themselves fighting a failing withdrawal. They
had never fought against weapons that made the earth erupt right out from
under their feet and, though short, the Squats wielded axes as if they
were born with them.
Perhaps the most disheartening part of fighting the Squats in those first
battles was that many Squats, after receiving wounds that should have been
fatal, regained their feet and continued to fight for sometimes even
hours longer.
One such incident, taken from the log of a fallen Marineıs powered armor,
is instructive. Recovered during the retreat from Ironback Ridge, it
records a Squat warrior losing his arm to the searing fire of a lascannon
shot. The Squat rises and, hefting his smoldering battle-axe in his
other fist, grimly fights on. Charging into a formation of
Guardsmen, he fiercely hacks the entire squad to pieces before being
receiving a second, mortal wound in hand-to-hand combat with Ultramarine
Brother Tyllus. Still, the Squat evidently lived long enough
to avenge himself, as Apothecary Leonius reports that Brother Tyllusı
body was recovered with a Squat axe cloven halfway through his armored
torso. It was no wonder that the Imperium only tried to invade once
more before the Emperor, in his beneficent wisdom, graciously
allowed the Squats to remain a free race.
In the centuries since, the humans have found the Squats to be a hard
working and tenacious people, with a strong stubborn streak born into
each. They are a very honorable people. When talked into
giving their word on a matter, they keep it, no matter what the cost of
life or treasure.
Much like the Eldar, the Squats are slowing being whittled away. Over
the last few centuries the Squats have grown fewer in numbers. They
are a great race, now in decline. The continued attacks on the core
worlds by Ork bands have begun to take their toll on Squat civilization.
Every year there are a fewer Squats remaining to defend the
strongholds and the once full Halls are now sparsely populated.
Of great concern to the elders of the Squats is the ever-increasing number
of young Squats who want to see more of the galaxy. These young
Squats never stay long enough to learn of the heritage from the Longbeards
of their Keeps, and in many cases end up joining with mercenary groups or
forming their own squads within the Imperial Guard.
But the majority of Squats hold true to their race and heritage, and
strive to bring back the old way of life that their ancestors followed.
They hold within them the hope that the Squats will once more fill
their strongholds and return to the briefly held glory of their race.
Date: 986.M41
Ref.: Squat/251/Glal>six
Scribed by: Sectum Commander Holt
Re: Squat Disappearance
Thought: Mysteries are simply facts we do not yet comprehend
>Recently, the co-ordinates of the Squat homeworlds have been
excised from all imperial records on planets nearest the
Galactic core. How the imperial garrisons on these
worlds were penetrated is as yet unknown. A reconnoiter
of the Squat homeworlds has been initiated calling upon the
expertise and vast fleet resources of the Black Templar
Space Marines.
>Comment:There is an unusually high concentration of
Durgium Space Fortresses
mining the galactic core.<
Date:987.M41
>It is my duty to report that after months of precise searching
on the part of the Black Templar Crusading Fleet Implacable, it is
confirmed that the homeworlds of the Squat race have vanished
from their positions in space. No known anomaly is recorded as
having happened in these sectors of the Ultima Segmentum to explain
the disappearance and it is Inquisitor Dalius' belief that the
Squats have fallen to practicing the Forbidden and appalling arts of
sorcery and their worlds have suffered the same
abominable fate as Prospero did
in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy. (see The Red, Magnus-Thousand
Sons, Horus Heresy) <
>The following real-space message was
intercepted just prior to exiting the vicinity of a now absent Squat
world. Please analyze and reply:
>Release the field. They are gone.<
>Unknown source.<
Your Ob'dt servant,
Comm. Holt
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