COG-PORT LORE

"Oh, heard tell of Cog-Port have you? Scummers got you wondering about the Howling? Landlubbers, Water Guilders and Ferrymen who couldn't handle it I'll bet... Let me fill me' Lho pipe and come and pay no mind to that rumblin' tis only Ol' Grimharl sleepin' off 'is grog. Let me tell you a real tale o'the Port..."

COG-PORT, THE HIVE CITY

From man-eating plants to man-eating zombies, from man-eating ash storms to man-eating men, the denizens of Cog-Port have seen it all and often been eaten by it.

Cog-Port sits on the eastern shore of the Worldsump Ocean, connected to Hive Primus and other hives by the Great Ash Road and its tributaries. It once contained all the industries, hab-sectors, and support processes of its larger cousins across the surface of the planet, but the top of its spire never grew high enough to penetrate Necromunda’s permanent cloud cover and, since it’s (literal) fall, likely never will.

For generations the dominant sounds of Cog-Port have been the rust-whispers of machinery decaying in the twisting wind; the strongest scents stale death and whatever fresh decay the tide leaves amid the piles of failing piers. The reasons for its fall were many. For one, the cost for traders and their captains as one ship and shipment after another were lost to the sump or the ash without explanation and salvage became unsustainable. For another, disease of unknown provenance but terribly visible results ravaged the flesh of captain, helot, and slave alike. But the final blow was what some called ‘the perfect storm.’ In truth, the storm lacked one element -sound. For the first time in living memory, the world around Cog-Port fell silent. As the storm approached over the sump sea Cog-Port’s people and technology fell silent, machines sputtered and died as their masters stared mutely at the pulsing black clouds. Even the howling ceased.

No records remain of what the breaking of the storm was like. When it at last cleared and outsiders were able to reach Cog-Port, they first passed through fields of the dead, those who had attempted to flee the port for the ash wastes and fallen. Once inside, they found the port and hab-blocks scoured of human life, the port’s skeleton the run of rats, ripperjacks, milliasaurs, and other vermin identifiable only by the glitter of their eyes.

The port’s outer areas have since been colonised by nomads, scavvies, and others fleeing life in the major hives, but the machinery, piers, and docks of the main industrial areas were never restarted… until now.

Lord Helmawr, backed by the Mercator guilds, wishes to see Necromunda’ssurface trade routes reopened. So, it is into this terminal that the Commercial Committee of Cog-Port orders House gangs and other prospectors. But as Cog-Port reawakens, so too do it’s memories and mysteries. Beyond the port’s trade and commerce infrastructure, who knows what mysteries drift in the blackened and abandoned hulks and freighters or lie abandoned in the upstart-palaces of merchants, pirates, and explorators. Who knows how those brave, hardy, and outcast souls who made Cog-Port a home will react to these newcomers. And who knows if the howling, silent since the storm, will return.

THE COMMERCIAL COUNCIL OF COG-PORT

The new arrivals in Cog-Port are nominally overseen by a ruling council composed of representatives of each of the Merchant Guilds and Clan Houses.

The Council is principally responsible for managing relations with Lord Helmawr (or his 'successors'), ensuring that He is dissuaded from taking a more active role in the retaking of Cog-Port.

Since this is to the benefit of all those scrapping over its territory, the council is broadly tolerated and its calls for certain areas of the old port to be prioritised for retaking generally heeded. Nonetheless, it continues to have a high staff turnover with most of the representatives the 5th or 6th person to have held the post.

THE WASTES OF COG-PORT

A man once said of Cog-Port that, “Necromunda has not anything to show more fair than Cog-Port”. The name of this man is not recorded. All that is known comes from the rest of his entry in Cymzo Bastard’s personal memoir, Men I Killed That I Can Remember, Vol. 2. (3rd edition). It reads: “Wordy, worthless, scum sucking liar: Cog-Port’s ugly as arseholes. Anyone who says otherwise deserves to die. (Killed with own pen (pen fired from blunderbuss)).”

For all the dangers of Cog-port and indeed any of Necromunda’s hives, there are few who would willingly leave a hive to chance life in the Ash Wastes beyond. For in these wastes even the ash is out to kill you and what havens there are stand few and far between, joined by what can only generously be called roads.

For the wastes outside of Cog-Port the situation is even worse for the only accessible wastes lie to the north. And, as on any planet, the north is always worse.

Here, the native inhabitants of the northern Cog Wastes are violent, ignorant, and intolerant of outsiders - even by the standards of Necromunda. In addition to the roving bands of Ash Wastes Nomads that fiercely defend their territories, Cog Waste settlements are inhabited by hordes of drunken scummers, pale faced and mal-proportioned, slurring in a barely coherent mess of misplaced consonants and mispronounced vowels, gimlet eyes scrying for hivers from whom they can extract creds, blood, and teeth for their own defeated dentures. The north is a cruel and unfriendly place.

gimlet eyes scrying for hivers from whom they can extract creds, blood, and teeth for their own defeated dentures. The north is a cruel and unfriendly place.

Yet, there are always those hivers deluded or desperate enough to believe that a Waster’s life is a better life. Few return and those that do usually do so gibbering about degenerate locals, freezing cold weather, and the horrific warm, brown Second Best. These lucky survivors can usually be found seeking solace in a chilled bottle of locally-brewed Wild Snake and vowing never to leave Cog-Port again.

Those that do remain in the wastes find themselves engaged in a fight for survival even harder than thatwhich they had fled. This, then, is the fight those gangs that escaped the carnivorous plants and zombies of the Outer Hive Areas find themselves in.

Having fled the land of the living dead, they find themselves attempting to live on land that wants them dead. What’s more, the closest refuge, the settlement of Cog-Haven, is as welcoming as any northern town to outsiders. Under administration by the Helmawr-appointed Adept-Senezal Colonicus Rimzest III, the settlement offers refuge at a price. Like the rest of Necromunda, the price of life is service and Colonicus has work for idle hands…

The Howling...
Among all the myths, legends and stories of the glory days of Cog-Port, “the howling” is one of the only consistent elements. Nonetheless, there is little objective documentation of the phenomenon beyond scratchy vox-capts in which some claim the sound can be discerned in the background. What can be gleaned from the tales is that “the howling” was an omnipresent wailing or keening usually at the very edges of hearing, but most audible on becalmed sump-trudgers. The howling appears to have fallen silent only with the final fall of Cog-Port, yet those hardy souls who made their homes in the its ruins between then and the recent efforts to reopen the port still speak warily of “the howling” and all will frequent express the hope that it will never return.

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