+ + +AUTHOR: Martinus Malchus, Senior Adept, Recruiting Section
+ + +SUBJECT: Cadian Diaspora and Aggressive Repatriation
+ + +THOUGHT: The planet broke before the Guard wavered
More than any other world save Holy Terra, and perhaps Ultramar’s Macragge, Cadia has defined the Imperium of Man. The most obvious is her stalwart defense of the Cadian Gate these past ten millennia, serving as and at the front line against the arcane horrors constantly pouring from the wound in realspace known as the Eye of Terror. It was without hubris or exaggeration that a Cadian general stated ‘We are Cadians; we bar the gates to hell itself.’ If the martyr’s grave is the keystone of the Imperium, Cadia is where those stones are quarried.
Just as importantly, but more subtly, is the Cadian Diaspora. Cadia’s primary export is her sons and daughters serving in the Imperial Guard, with their experience, training, and organization following close behind. According to estimates from the office of the Lord High Commander of the Astra Militarum, Cadian regiments make up approximately 0.8-1.5% of the expeditionary manpower of the Imperium at any given point in time. In isolation, this number does not seem impressive, but it must be recognized that Cadia has less that 0.0001% of the overall population of the Imperium. In addition, more Cadians are serving in the expeditionary forces than the entire population on Cadia, including non-combatants- for the Cadian definition of non-combatant.
This means that at some point in any given guardsman’s career, if it lasts long enough, he will serve alongside a Cadian. There is no warzone across the length and breadth of the Imperium that does not feel Cadian boots. The breadth and depth of this influence is felt across the guard, with approximately 70% of regiments raised organized along Cadian lines, and approximately 45% of regiments equipped with Cadian-pattern battledress. Mixed messes and shared trenches have spread Cadian slang and combat cant throughout many regiments, and there is a marked tendency among the officer corps to affect the dialect and accent of the professional, seasoned Cadians they serve alongside.
Despite the near-constant combat experienced by the Cadian expeditionary regiments, they typically have a high rate of survival until retirement age, relative to others. There are several factors to this, including the relatively short lifespan of a particular iteration of a regiment. Approximately every five years, subjective for warp travel, regiments are stood down, then reconstituted with fresh recruits from Cadia herself. The veterans are distributed and promoted to make up the core of these ‘new’ regiments, the corporals, sergeants, captains and above that mentor and train the relatively fresh new troops in war away from the home planet, or return to Cadia to serve in the same ranks in the Cadian PDF. This leads to an unusual situation among Guard regiments of Cadian guardsmen having multiple deployments across the Imperium, with time served back on their homeworld between. This makes Cadia possibly the only planet which a common population that could be conceivably called cosmopolitan, with significant experience meeting and mingling with off-worlders in their day to day lives.
Upon reaching retirement age, or if wounded too badly to continue serving in frontline combat, many Cadians return to Cadia, often taking on administrative or supporting roles within the massive bureaucracy of the Departmento Munitorum structure that serves the Cadian warzone. Some of the younger wounded may receive bionic replacements and augmentations and eventually return to the front line, always finding themselves in remarkably well-supplied platoons or companies (which has no relation to their new-gained experience with the labyrinthine Munitorum paperwork process). Almost all senior officers will receive rejuvant treatments and continue their careers further, with Cadians making up approximately 17% of the General and above ranks across the Astra Militarum, much to the chagrin of the many noble-born officers they are placed above. However, upon mustering out, many Cadians are offered significant bonuses in land, wealth, and prestige to settle the planets that they liberated or reconquered, and many take these offers. This is where the true spread of Cadian culture comes from. Many an agri-world boasts noble houses whose most precious heirloom is a battered M36-pattern Lasgun, passed down and in perfect working order through the centuries and generations. Countless frontier worlds were won with Cadian blood, then tamed with Cadian sweat. While Cadia’s sons and daughters may be the ones keeping the Imperium safe and pusher its borders ever outwards, her grandsons and granddaughters are often the ones who turn the frontier into the Imperium.
Cadia’s blood runs throughout the veins of Imperial citizens, and no matter how dilute it becomes, the Cadians remember their homeworld. When the last astropathic broadcast was sent out from Cadia, the series of metaphorical images were instantly recognizable to all of her extended, and often estranged, family. Astropathic receivers found no need to interpret these images to the once-Cadian nobility, or the expeditionary Cadian commanders. The familiar stylized gate and helmeted skull, engulfed in flames. A coiled crown of the ever-familiar razorwire pressed down on the brow of a figure in flak armor standing defiant before a twisted, leering figure in baroque power armor. A mother standing at an open door, beckoning her children to return home before nightfall.
Munitorum recruitment offices were immediately flooded with volunteers. On the many worlds with significant Cadian heritage, whether on the frontier where the eldest remembered their first firefights in the kasrs, or deep in the heart of the Imperium, no press gang or conscription was needed. Though Cadia herself may have fallen, her system and her sector remain. The war continues, and Cadians will continue to fight. Cadia sent out her sons and daughters to build the Imperium, and now her grandchildren return to carry on her legacy. On uncounted Imperial worlds, regiments are raised with the designation ‘Cadian (Diaspora)’, while the true Cadian regiments petition for reassignment to their home sector in response to the call for aid from Lord Castellan Ursakar E Creed. With their mother lying ravaged on the threshold to hell, the diaspora is flooding to their ancestral home to slam the Gate shut again.
although no one can say it’s the smartest move, you have to respect the balls on the space irs pencil pushers who went toe to toe with space marines over the issue of unpaid taxes
And I’m still surprised that shiggy is a 40k fan(ish).
I’ve never once played it tabletop but I’d be interested in trying it if I had any time whatsoever (or people to play it with)
Take a look at Kill Team. It’s pretty cheap and fast to get into (for 40k), and since it’s the New Thing, game stores are starting to fire up campaigns/groups for it. I’ve got one starting on Monday.
Reblog if you, too, were a member of the Lamenters who fought on the wrong side of the Badab War because the Astral Claws and the Mantis Warriors were some of the few Astartes chapters who appreciated yours and your chapter didn’t know they had fallen to chaos
>Fallen to Chaos
Bitch, they’re Traitor Space Marines, not Chaos Space Marines.
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