The Story So FAr
————— The Background To Cog-Port and the Slump —————
Inter-Hive Trade
The effects of the Cicatrix Maledictum on the economy of Necromunda have been catastrophic. While the planet continues to meet its tithe of weapons, materiel, and manpower, trade routes for the additional goods which its Imperial and Noble Houses buy and sell for profit and luxury are severely curtailed. To ensure his coffers remain overflowing, Lord Helmawr has decided instead to drive up on-planet trade by reopening long-abandoned trade routes between the hives. The proto-hive of Cog-Port, a cyst in the coastline of the World Sump Ocean, was once a major nexus on one of these routes.
COG-PORT: JEWEL OF THE WORLD SUMP OCEAN
Some say that the port’s centrality to trade on the Worldsump Ocean birthed the name: Cog-port was the gear around which produce moved between land and sea. Some attribute the name to the ancient symbols of the Adeptus Mechanicus that still adorn much of the machinery crusting the wharfs, manufactorums, and other sites. Yet, the truth is likely to be more prosaic: the original, natural (if anything on Necromunda can truly be called natural) island on which Cog-port’s central terminal was constructed resembles a toothed wheel spinning between sump and land. Its teeth soon became piers, wharfs, and bridges, while also sheltering moored trudgers from storm and wave.
Nonetheless, in Cog-port’s glory days, all versions could be true. Machinery glittered and span, trade and travel surged between sump and land, and trudgers and hawlers, skiffs and barques spat from its teeth like sparks. But today the cog in Cog-port has seized. Rusted and broken, it’s traders, overseers, and helots (long since fled or perished) and those stubborn few remaining resentfully ignorant of the machinery’s works, even as they linger amid its ruin - caught like grit in dirty grease.
Yet, if Cog-port is to be reawakened and rebuilt, the orders of Lord Helmawr fulfilled, the cog at its heart must spin again. So, it is into this terminal that the Commercial Committee of Cog-Port orders the gangs and other prospectors.
Centuries ago, Cog-Port sang to the sound of Sump Trudgers’ horns, the sales cries of traders along its wharfs and marketplaces, and ringing of noble jewellery and crystal finery. Yet, beneath these songs, the Howling also sang; an eldritch rasp on vox, wind, and wave with no known source. When Cog-Port fell silent, the first to investigators to arrive from Hive Primus found nothing but ruins and all the few survivors would gibber was “the Howling.” What the link was between the hive’s fall and this mysterious sound, no one knows.
COG-PORT TURNS AGAIN
CHAPTER 1: Overview
Generations later, Lord Helmawr ordered that Cog-Port would turn again. Clan Houses, guilders, nobles, and other adventurers wormed their way back through Cog-Port’s rusted gates. A group was formed calling itself the Commercial Committee of Cog-Port (CCCP), consisting of Guilders and powerful nobles that had a vested interest in seeing Cog-Port returned it its former glory. Together they used their influence and vast wealth to drive a number of local gangs into the Port in an effort to re-populate and get the industry up and running. At first, things went well: The Main Terminal, the cog-shaped island of docks and wharves, crusted with cranes, load-lifters, and other port machinery, was returned to service. By bullet, blade, and brawn the gangs carved away decay to prise profit from the rust.
In chapter 1 we followed this expansion as it attempted to reclaim the main port
CHAPTER 1.5: Overview
Following this, the prospectors next set eyes upon the Teeth – islands that resembled the broken gear teeth of the port’s great cog. Their promise was great: many of these islands had once been the havens of traders and pirates, and the newest had been towers on the side of the great hive itself that had tumbled into the ocean – their riches falling with them. Gangs ventured the crossing and for a time, it seemed the teeth might shine again. But, decay ran deep and so did disease and the walking dead until the wise fled and only the foolish remained to die. The assault had failed.
CHAPTER 2: Overview
Feeling undeterred by the failure of the previous assault on the teeth, the CCCP redoubled their efforts and gathered a fresh batch of recruits to claim the islands. This time it worked and the new colony was established although not without its setbacks.