Images from here.

I know I had discussed covering the enemies of man, but I have decided this post to discuss the worlds of the Imperium of Man.  The Imperium is made up of many, many worlds but they do fall into certain categories.  Also all worlds must present tithes to the Imperium yearly or face the Imperium’s wrath.  Otherwise the worlds are left alone as the sector government is too busy with greater issues such as Chaos incursions, Tyranids, Orks, or cultists.

Agri-worlds – These worlds are the breadbasket of the Imperium, producing all the grains, vegetables, and meat required by the trillions of inhabitants of the Imperium.  Not all of these worlds are bucolic ideals, most of them are factory farms with the workers being treated more like serfs or slaves, beaten down and controlled by the nobility and the church.  Others are more like a world of family farms, usually this type of agri-world is one that is owned by a noble and the foods produced are for the nobles family and the retainers of the nobility.  Agri-worlds also refer to worlds retained as hunting preserves, hollowed out planetoids, ocean worlds, ice worlds used for water only, or ranches for the main staple of the Imperium – the groxx.

From the 40K wiki:

Many a world has whole continents given over to livestock or fields of crops. Some Agri-Worlds are covered in oceans teeming with fish and a few are far stranger — worlds covered in edible fungus, scoured by swarms of nutritious insects or are gas giants whose upper atmospheric layers are home to flocks of edible or egg-producing flying creatures.

Hive Worlds – These worlds are the most heavily populated in all of the Imperium, made of self contained arcologies that are large enough to reach up to the outer stratosphere.  These worlds usually start out as a regular world but as the years pass they become more built up, larger and larger buildings as the manufactories increase in size.  The industries slowly pollute the planet with radioactive, chemical, or biological waste, making them almost incapable of supporting life.  But there are still those who live there because life in the hives is hard and dangerous.  Life for those working in the factories is horrible as they eat the worst food – usually made up of algae or even the processed bodies of the workers who died.  They are constantly harangued by recorded sermons praising the emperor and urging them to work harder as their work days are 12 hours per day, every day except for Imperial holidays.  Each hive can hold billions of inhabitants, from those who live in the lowest levels (crime ridden, full of gangsters, and heretical cults) to the nobility who live in the highest levels of the spire.  The daily output from a single hive can equip a million Imperial soldiers.  Hives also produce the settlers for new worlds, soldiers for the military, and the bureaucrats of the Imperium.  Sometimes the Imperial tithe requested stipulates a percentage of the population and the hives round up the most troublesome members of the population and ship them off.

Forge Worlds – These worlds are the domain of the Adeptus Mechanicus and are basically giant factories, with the workers being servitors (mindless cyborgs programmed to perform repetitive tasks) and low level tech priests.  Forge worlds produce the more technologically advanced weapons and vehicles to the military and sometimes to the Space Marines.  Each Forge World is graded as to how productive the world is and the level of technological products it can produce.  The highest can produce Titans and some plasma weapons while the lowest produces some weapons and low level vehicles.  Instead of the Creed of the Emperor being the religion, the Forge Worlds follow the Omnissiah, the Machine Spirit.  Life on these worlds is highly regimented and there are few “true” humans, there are only cyborg tech priests and servitors.  Instead of a tithe, these worlds sign pacts and contracts to support specific sectors or planets, such as Trebor supplying the Cadian sector exclusively.

I will get back to the enemies of the Empire in future posts, but I am thinking about doing more about the Space Marines.