Mawite Legend
Goshen War Camp
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To expand the lore for the Brotherhood of the Maw's occupation of Lao-mon.
- Image Credits:
- Top Image: Karak Eight Peaks Gate by Jonathan Kirtz
- Marauder Camps: Warhammer Online Development Diary
- Slave Quarters: Art for "Friends Like These", by Chris Allen Peuler
- Airfield: Ork Deffcopta Launch Base, via CoolMiniOrNot
- Mega-Rail Depot: YouTube thumbnail featuring Necromunda: Hired Gun content
- Beast Pens: Warhammer Online December 2006 Newsletter
- Central Keep: Warhammer Online 2007 Screenshots
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Lao-mon, Shi'ido, BotM Starting Planets, Chaos references to Goshen, Invasion of Lao-mon, Aftermath
- Military Base Name: Goshen War Camp
- Classification: Fortified Outpost
- Location: Lao-mon
- Affiliation: Brotherhood of the Maw
- Population: Heavy. Home to half a dozen large marauder tribes and three times their number in slaves and Drudges.
- Demographics: 40% Human, 37% Drudges, 23% Various Other Sentients
- Accessibility: Openly built in the center of Goshen, the planetary capital.
Description: Goshen War Camp is a great, ugly tumor sitting upon the ravaged flesh that is the ruined Shi'ido city of Goshen. Its tribalistic buildings are built onto and over the conquered capital, with a slapdash aesthetic that clashes badly with the ancient and refined architecture favored by the changelings. The outpost thrums with screams, war cries, and the clashing of blades, along with the occasional blaster discharge. The scents of blood, ash, and unwashed bodies befoul the humid wind at all hours. The whine of repulsorlift engines is constant as fighters and bulk freighters come and go, and the ground shakes with the passage of underground mega-rail cargo trains speeding through buried tunnels.
POINTS OF INTEREST
Marauder Camps: Each of the six tribes of marauders stationed on Lao-mon has its own encampment, a reeking circle of primitive huts built of resources torn from the local vicinity. Here the marauders rest, train, and induct new members. No two encampments are like, for the tribes serve different warlords and revere different totems, each an aspect of one of the Three Avatars revered by the Brotherhood. All six tribes take part in patrolling the outpost to keep it secure (and the slaves in check), though usually at least one of them has the bulk of its strength outside the walls, hunting and taming the local beasts or engaging in survival training.
Slave Quarters: At one time Goshen War Camp teemed with slaves, but most of them were either freed or killed during the Jedi invasion. There is still a small - and growing - population of captives housed at the camp, kept beaten and half-starved to prevent any uprising, but much of the work is now performed by Drudges - strand cast clones designed for manual labor. Drudges do not sleep, and can be fed through an IV drip while working in the field, so they do not required housing or mess halls. As a result, many of the former slave quarters currently stand empty... though Mawite slavers are hard at work across the galaxy, dragging back fresh captives to fill them.
Mega-Rail Depot: The heavy industrial processors that were once the War Camp's heart, turning raw materials into stacks and ingots to be shipped out to Mawite factories, were destroyed by NIO infiltrators during the Jedi invasion. Raw materials are now processed directly at the Mawite mines and plantations, to prevent sabotage at any single location from setting back Brotherhood industry too much. The processed goods are then transported to Goshen War Camp on high speed mega-trains, an underground rail network that crisscrosses Lao-mon's surface. The rail lines run beneath the War Camp's walls, meeting in a massive terminal linked to the airfield and keep dungeons.
Beast Pens: Around the edges of the outpost, huge cages built of stone, bone, and timber have been set into the ravaged ground. Within these cages are kept captured jungle predators, massive life forms that stalk the deep forests of Lao-mon. Large enclosures of barren earth, ringed by an inward-pointing palisade of sharpened timbers, surround the cages. Taskmasters and marauder tribes work in these enclosures, breaking the megafauna to their will. It is here that the Brotherhood's siege beasts are created, fitted with metal armor fused to their flesh, and then trained to destroy their enemies. The crack of the lash and animal screams always fill the air.
Central Keep: At the center of the War Camp is the one building that does not appear slapdash and run-down: the central keep, the outpost's heart and brain. It is here that visiting Warlords, Heathen Priests, and Knights of Ren survey the troops and resources, and lay their plans for the continuing exploitation of Lao-mon. The dungeons beneath the keep were once used for the breaking of captured Shi'ido, but after the Dark Voice's decree of genocidal revenge, they are instead used to develop and store powerful bioweapons such as The Wretchedness. Only a few chambers are still used for torture, with most slave-breaking now occurring on other worlds such as Exegol.
SECURITY
High. After the camp was heavily damaged during the Jedi invasion, security measures were upgraded.
The most potent security system in the War Camp are the six tribes of marauders that call it home. This massed force of crazed, battle-hardened warriors knows no fear, and can overwhelm most attackers with force of numbers even discounting their prodigious ferocity and skill at arms. The marauders are vigilant, constantly on patrol around the outpost in the hopes of finding something to capture or kill. They are all the more on guard whenever Warlords or Knights of Ren visit the planet, seeking to prove themselves to their superiors. However, during conquests of distant worlds, the garrison is much reduced; only one tribe is left behind.
To hold back aerial and vehicle attacks that might punch through even massed marauder warbands, the outpost is studded with dozens of 3t3 missile system emplacements capable of rapidly locking onto and destroying even nimble targets such as starfighters. Per the Brotherhood's general aesthetic, there appears to be little rhyme or reason to the exact placement of the launchers. They are well hidden within the outpost's ramshackle walls and leaning towers, often surprising attackers when a seemingly innocent set of timber beams suddenly disgorges a deadly rocket. E-Web heavy repeaters are similarly concealed, granting the defending marauders added firepower.
The walls surrounding the outpost and dividing the various sections from each other are made of a jumbled variety of materials, mostly local wood and stone over a core of duracrete and durasteel rubble, but they share two important characteristics: they are quite tall, fifteen meters at a minimum, and more than half that thick. Because they are built of stacked materials, they don't explode cleanly even when hit with overwhelming force, making lasting gaps difficult to create; more rubble tends to fall into the holes, so even a determined effort to annihilate them will create a path strewn with difficult terrain. Hidden paths strewn with firing ports run atop and through them.
After the wall was breached in the Jedi invasion, a second, larger wall was built around the (repaired) first.
The beast pens around the edges of the outpost also assist with defense. Huge jungle predators, some fully broken and others still all but feral, sit in their massive enclosures, and can easily be driven out to attack any force that attempts to besiege the outpost from the surrounding mountains and jungles. The Jedi invasion showed that the War Camp was vulnerable to air attack, prompting the Brotherhood to install a large shield generator to cover the base. This gives the camp some protection against bombing runs and orbital strikes. The local airbase also allows for more support craft to be stationed at Goshen, assisting against enemy air and ground attacks alike.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
When the Brotherhood of the Maw established its new capital on the shadowed world of Rhand, they found a planet brimming with dark energy... but very few material resources or native populations to exploit. In order to fuel their war machine for the coming conquests, the Warlords cast their gaze outwards, seeking nearby worlds that could provide what Rhand's darkened halls could not. Their voracious gaze soon fell upon Lao-mon, the jungle homeworld of the Shi'ido. Its virtually untapped resources would be a great asset to the horde, and its native species - both huge predators perfect for warbeasts and stealthy changelings - would strengthen their armies.
Long isolated thanks to the solitary nature of its inhabitants, Lao-mon proved unable to mount much of a defense when the vast fleets of the Maw descended upon it. However, when the Brotherhood's landing craft descended upon Goshen - practically the only major city on the sparsely-populated planet - they found the capital all but abandoned. The Shi'ido had simply melted into the jungle ahead of the invaders, departing for secret homesteads hidden among the thick vegetation. Marauder tribes scoured the planet for them, dragging away a few at a time to be broken and reconditioned as servants of the Maw, but capturing the slippery shapechangers was slow going.
Despite this time-consuming setback, the exploitation of Lao-mon continued. Large chunks of the abandoned city were torn down, and a barbaric outpost was built upon the rubble. From this outpost, a small legion of slaves was deployed daily to hack their way through the jungle, clearing the land by fire and blade. Vegetation was extracted to provide nutrients for the cloning vats, and mines were dug to provide more raw materials for the shipyards on Osseriton. Thousands upon thousands of slaves captured in previous Brotherhood raids, those considered too weak to be broken and remade as marauders, were soon transferred to the outpost to participate in its new industry.
To keep the local marauders from getting bored, and to ensure that they remain in fighting shape, the tribes were constantly pitted against the jungle as well. They hunted and tamed the mega-predators of the deep forests and high mountains, a process that earned many scars and claimed many lives, but made the strong even stronger. They also hunted the Shi'ido, doing their best to capture more changelings to be turned into mindbroken living weapons by the Taskmasters. For their part, the Shi'ido fought back, forming resistance groups across the planet that repeatedly infiltrated and raided the War Camp in an effort to free the captives imprisoned there.
At first, this was little more than a nuisance, and the War Camp continued to expand and fulfill its role largely unimpeded. Over time, however, the scattered changelings began to consolidate and coordinate their forces. They also began receiving material support through the efforts of Jedi Master Errik Nimdok of the Silver Jedi Concord. Growing stronger and bolder, they began calling themselves the Lao-mon Planetary Defense Forces, and soon escalated their attacks against the Mawite occupiers. Ultimately, they planned to coordinate with the governments of the Bastion Accord to mount a large-scale attack to destroy the War Camp and drive the Brotherhood offworld.
This attack did come to pass. In addition to the large Shi'ido rebel army, Jedi and soldiers from the Silver Jedi Concord, Galactic Alliance, and New Imperial Order descended on Goshen War Camp, aiming to annihilate the center of Mawite operations on Lao-mon. The resulting battle was bloody and brutal. The outer walls of the camp were breached, many of the key industrial processors destroyed, the slave quarters emptied (with some captives liberated and others killed in the crossfire), and the dungeons beneath the keep infiltrated. In the end, however, the Brotherhood proved to be too entrenched to displace, and the overextended forces of the Bastion Accords retreated.
Despite the Mawite victory, Goshen War Camp had sustained serious damage, and had been left largely without the slave workforce that would normally have been pressed into labor repairing that damage. The Dark Voice, Prophet of the Maw, was furious. He decreed that there would be no further efforts to capture and break the Shi'ido; instead, the changelings would be exterminated for their insolence. The damaged War Camp became a hub for Mawite bomber squadrons as they began systematically carpet-bombing the planet's jungles with The Wretchedness, a bioweapon designed to kill Shi'ido. Sector by sector the planet was brutally scoured of its native inhabitants.
Temporarily short on slaves, the Brotherhood brought in strand cast clones known as Drudges to pick up the slack. The Drudges performed the brute labor of rebuilding the War Camp, strengthening it to become even larger and stronger than before. Among the additions to the camp were a second thick wall ringing the first, an airbase, and a mega-rail depot providing rapid transit of personnel and materials to various other Mawite facilities across Lao-mon. Additional defenses, such as a shield generator capable of protecting the base from airstrikes, were also added. Although the Shi'ido threat was expected to be finished, the camp would be better protected regardless.
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