Imperial Survey: Yathrib
Excerpted here is the Emperor's survey of Yathrib.
The Last Bastion
Salutations, O Emperor: though I am new among your Company, I am the proudest of those who call themselves Questing Knights. When my father and I arrived on your throneworld after years of long-journeying, we found our hopes made manifest - in your court the Pancreator was still supreme, and from your vassals our homeworld was delivered from the infidel.
Let me give you my tale. I am Joscelin De Moley, son of the Count Joscelin of Yathrib, the world where the Prophet beheld the Holy Flame. In the nine hundredth year of Yathrib's exile - the year 4993 - my father beheld a new, bright star amidst the Fading Suns, and heard an old man in the square preach that this spark meant hope for mankind. Our straits were dire indeed, for the Kurgan infidel had driven back the reflective faithful into a fraction of what they once held, but despite the need for every fighting man my father gathered a small body of men and took flight to seek the source of that reborn sun.
I traveled with him, as did the blind man Tireseus and a company of oathsworn men. Long were our journeys - we fought our way from Yathrib into the lands of the Kurgan, and from there into stranger space amongst Lost Worlds until at last we journeyed through the wild worlds of the Vuldrok to Leminkainen. The first Yathrib knight saw Known Worlds sun again in 4996, where we were swiftly brought to your court.
Oh, that day - that happy day - is burned into my mind forever. Here was a revelation, a promise that mankind could fight back the night. My father raised a force of Crusaders to return along the long night roads to Yathrib while I remained behind, swearing as your man amongst your Phoenix Company.
What follows is known history - my father's crusade arriving at the last hour, the Engineers who accompanied him reopening the gate to Aylon. Faithful Flavius raising a great host to regain some of what was lost, and the state of war since between infidel and faithful that ranges across the skies and sands of Yathrib.
I know in my heart that valor and faith will win the day, but if you are to rule this rediscovered world you must understand. I present to you, then, this Imperial Survey, conducted on Your Majesty's behalf, so that you may understand this holy planet so long forgotten and so recently thrust into the center of the Known Worlds. To accomplish this task, I have spent the last year traveling across the planet, even into Kurgan and Sathraist lands, accompanied by a clever minstrel recommended by your Sir Chamon Mazarin, a wise if eccentric monk, and the most foolhardy Charioteer I have ever met to get us to and from these difficult places alive. I owe this volume to their skill and bravery, and most of all to the grace of the Pancreator who saw us all survive.
Deus Vult!
Sir Joscelin De Moley
Company of the Phoenix
History
Yathrib is a dusty world with scant resources that lies on no appreciable trade route - and yet in 2723 it was the site of the most important event in history, the Prophet's revelation of the Holy Flame. In an instant, Yathrib became the spark that would save mankind.
Founding
Early in the Diapsora, Captain Henry Pym of the Pan Arabian Mercantile Alliance - PAMA - discovered a dusty, habitable world one jump away from Aylon. PAMA's pilots were among the best explorers in the waning days of the First Republic, but the zaibatsu sold most of its discovered systems to other corporations, retaining for itself only out-of-the-way worlds with few resources. At the time, PAMA's rivals laughed - the richest rewards were in colonization and exploitation, not exploration and discovery - but they were not privy to the true agenda that underlay PAMA's discoveries.
Unbeknownst to even the senior management of the zaibatsu, the line pilots who made up PAMA's ranks were riddled with Sathraists, and they subtly wormed their way into the heart of PAMA's decision-making - seeking refuges for their dark religion, places where they could base their cults away from prying eyes. Yathrib - like Mazdak, later linked to it in history - was once such world, and the PAMA colony at Discovery Bay on the northeastern continent of Pymeria became a haven for Sathraists that would last nearly fifteen hundred years.
The PAMA base at Discovery Bay was not the only colony on the planet, however - with Old Urth jammed to the brim, PAMA sold colonial shares to tens of thousands of people who settled - despite the rather inhospitable conditions on Yathrib - first in the southern islands, called the Antipodes because they lay almost exactly opposite Discovery Bay, and then along the coasts of the main continent of Asher. The "share colonists" had hard lives - much of Asher was desert, and a general lack of support from PAMA meant they lagged at least a generation behind the great metropolis planets of Criticorum or New Istanbul, but they lived honestly and simply as farmers, herders, and fishers, manufacturing mostly local craft goods to be exported off-world.