Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest

The monstrosity you make is, ultimately, nothing to really write home about: a captured Ursine of a variety that is apparently fairly frequent around these parts, cybernetically modified to stand up to the cold even better and enhanced with your standard regimen of steroids, cybernetic replacements of its teeth and claws, and the usual regimen of electronic control goads and aggression enhancers. The end result is a bloated monstrosity, white fur falling out of its muscle-bloated hide, pain and rage warring in its eyes. It'll do, for the hours that you need it. It does still rip apart one of the poor menials that get too close to it when you unload it from the Lighter with almost casual ease.

You do take some satisfaction in the fear you see on Ishmael's face when you force the beast into submission through a simple mental command, sending crackles of electricity through its body.

Serves that little worm right.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Icoros Zhan is an annoying ball and chain around your ankle, but he does turn out to be a blessing in disguise as well: the moment you begin asking around about Digging Equipment, the Space Marine stops all your inquiries and leads you to a warehouse that contains several Terrax Pattern Termite Assault Drills: highly convenient for your purpose. "They got used to tunnel when the fortress was first laid down", Zhan informs you. It is, you concede, useful, although you do note that it is another piece of surprisingly sophisticated equipment for a Warband that really shouldn't have access to it.

"You still haven't figured it out", Theama-Nul cants at you, and the undercurrent of his binaric is smug enough that you decide not to give your subordinate the satisfaction of asking him what the hell he means.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You send out a call to your subordinates, which causes Regicia to trundle in this time around, an apologetic smile on her face and broadcasting canticles of contrition.

"Sorry, darling, for not warning you", she tells you as she approaches, "I was being watched, and Camail couldn't get a second message to you."

You decide to accept the apology, though not without some misgivings. She did wander off to meddle, after all.

"That woman cannot be trusted", Theama-Nul cants at you on a tight beam, and they don't even try to hide their undertones of admiration.

8-Doxa turns up a few days later, a good chunk of his face missing, the gaping wound apparently cauterized to prevent further bleeding and otherwise largely left alone. He is being trailed by a bevy of new skulls, and blade-armed Servitors amble along behind him, some of them still wearing the ragged clothing of whatever mutant tribe he captured them from. He also looks, to your unskilled eyes, happier than you have ever seen anyone in your life. "There's going to be a fight?", he asks, and you feel a great synchronicity of minds, all deciding to not ask any stupid questions.

"Yes", you answer, and he nods, showing all of his metal teeth in what might be a smile.

"Good", he says, and then stops talking.

You realize only belatedly that this is the first and only time you have heard him speak.

It is very easy to convince Taal Voyos to bring along a part of his Warband. You suspect trying to decline them would be impossible, at this point.

So would not going yourself, apparently. He makes that much clear in no uncertain terms, when he has you escorted to the embarkment area by Zhar, who is polite enough not to do it at bolter point, even when the option is very clearly on the table.

You are met by Taal Voyos, and an assembly of about twenty Space Marines. The Terminator has donned a helmet now, though it is not of any Mark you can identify: instead, it appears to be a custom-made piece of equipment, formed into what appears to be the shape of a dragon's head, needle-sharp teeth formed from what you presume to be more human bones.

One of the Space Marines is Captain Camail, face hidden beneath a Mark VII helmet heavily embellished in gold. One could almost believe him to be a loyalist Space Marine, one of the Sons of Sanguinus, if it weren't for the fact that a row of grisly trophies now adorns his armor: a row of nine severed hands, neatly pinned to the trim of his Pauldron.

"You have already met my Keeper of Vows, I believe", Taal Voyos asks with some bitterness in his voice, and Camail gives you what you assume to be an ironic salute, fist curling in the center of the Star of Chaos upon his chest.

A Space Marine that has so far been quiet steps forward, this one clad in the fairly distinctive Corvus-Pattern armor. The distinct beaked helmet has been significantly modified, made to resemble the head of some kind of scaled, dagger-fanged serpent. Scales decorate the man's entire armor, and you note that these are too organic to have been made by human hands. Warp-growth, then: an unfortunate reality of technology within the Eye of Terror, especially technology in frequent contact with sentients.

The man gives you a grin, and it takes your brain a microsecond to catch up to the impossibility of that, and then the entirety of suit of armor is moving in a distinctly organic manner, muscles bulging beneath scaly skin, and a forked tongue darts out towards you as the daemon-possessed Space Marine hisses at you, leathery wings unfolding from his Power Pack.

Your Needler is in your hand before you expend a thought on drawing it, but before you can put it to use, Voyos steps into your way, the smile on his face a cruel one. "I doubt Tyhpaon would give you an opportunity to fire before he ripped you apart, Priest '', the Terminator Lord drawls, and the warp-addled thing grins at you, serpentine neck coiling forward in an attempt to make you flinch.

You spray it with holy water you stole from a Shrine World once, just to make a point. The head withdraws, confused and insulted but otherwise unhurt.

That's what you get for relying on superstitious nonsense, you figure, emptying the water reservoir to replace it with a less useless compound later.

Things almost come to blows, then, as nearly half the Space Marines present reveal themselves to be equally possessed, revealing fangs and wings and rounding on you.

"There you are, Zarur", Voyos says, stepping in between you and the Possessed. Heads turn to a group of ten more Space Marines that are just now arriving.

Their leader is dressed in heavily modified Heresy-Era Armor, molecular bonding studs on his helmet, left pauldron and the shins of his power armor, and ablative scales cover it. Sensible, if one expects to face enemies armed with Flamers frequently, though they are probably hammered out from melted down icons of the Ecclisiarchy or some other nonsense of that sort.

Still, he seems almost sensible, bare of any of the mutations or embellishments that mark the other Space Marines. His helmet doesn't even have horns, you note with some approval. "I am Jaladun Zarur", the man introduces himself, his voice distorted by the vox caster of his helmet. He carries a simple, unembellished Bolter: Stalker-Pattern, if you are not mistaken. It's nice to have at least one halfway sensible person along for the ride.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You have never ridden inside a Terrax Pattern Siege Drill before, and you cannot say that you regret it. It is miserable: a blind plunge through solid matter in a machine that has put no consideration whatsoever into shock absorption, heat management, or counteracting the inevitable vibrations of its circulating bore heads.

In a way, there is something admirable about that, you have to admit. It has the same stripped-down charm of a lot of Space Marine Equipment: machines stripped down of all things necessary for comfortable human occupation, on the understanding that those that occupied them had such needs stripped from them both through genetic engineering and psychological conditioning.

Still, if you hadn't removed such functionality from your digestive systems, you have no doubt that it would have emptied itself several times over. At some point, you are forced to simply shut off your vestibular system.

The Ursine is, of course, miserable, but with the modifications you've made to it's hormonal system that'll just mean it'll be more enraged the moment you restore it control of it's limbs.
"Temperature dropping", Zhan announces next to you, as though you didn't have a thermometer feeding the very same information straight to your visual nerve.

That does give you an idea though. Talef has modeled the temperature dispersal inside the planet, and so measuring temperature inside the cabin and the speed at which it drops will give you a good measure of how far along you are. The pilot, you suspect, must have access to Augur readings, but you are not piloting, and the one attempt you made to get near the controls was met with a raised Bolter and a very unambiguous warning.

"Not much longer, now", Regicia cants at you, and you once more marvel at the way her teeth interlock to create a vacuum-proof seal, the outer layer of her biomechanical construct creating a heat barrier that gives off almost nothing of her body heat. You have been forced to make yourself space-suitable, though for you that is as easy as attaching a breathing mask to what little organic flesh still remains of your face and shuttering your exhaust vents. 8-Doxa has donned a helmet with some reluctance, and Myges Talef seems to be entirely content to go without further adornment, having instead simply opted to shut down his cooling unit as soon as the environment became cold enough to disperse the heat he produces.

The temperature this takes, you note, is disturbingly low.

You have looked at Theama-Nul several times in your attempts to tell if he has changed anything about his clothing, and came away wondering why you even bothered.

"Breaching in sixty seconds", Icoros Zhan announces. He is plugged into the Court's Vox Network, a privilege they haven't afforded to you. It is, you suppose, somewhat courteous of him to announce at least that much to you.

"Thirty Seconds"

You tense, needler in hand. You have some idea what you might find down here, but not nearly enough information to be certain.

"Twenty"

8-Doxa's Murder Servitors come to painful life, artificial eyes blazing with electrical fire, power crackling across the blades that have replaced their limbs, and he begins revving his Chain Sword, gore he hasn't bothered wiping away splattering across the inside of the Siege Drill.

"Ten"

You slowly begin dialing back the electric force holding the Ursine in check, and it begins twitching and snarling, barring electrified teeth and unsheathing power claws.

"Breach, Breach, Breach."

There is a horrible, grinding noise, and for a brief moment the Drill simply halts, as though in contact with something that it cannot penetrate. Several more seconds pass, and then there is a lurching drop, and the side panels of the drill drop away.

The Melta Cutters have set fire to some of your surroundings, throwing a strange, orange light at your surroundings. They are strangely organic, much different from what you thought they would be: rib-like structures have been worked into a vaulted ceiling made of some sort of red, uneven material, ice crystals formed across the entire structure. The ground is slippery and uneven, made up of some sort of red ice with inclusions in a wide variety of shapes. One of your legs comes to rest on it, and it breaks, revealing a strange difference in consistency between its shell and core.

You look at it, and find yourself sending out confused binaric impulses. The thing looks strangely similar to a human heart, dual-chamber structure and all.

Then the room shifts into perspective, and you realize that that is exactly what it is.

You are standing within a giant charnel house, slaughtered human beings arranged to mathematical precision by some sort of sick, deranged mind.

It takes you less than a second to come to this conclusion. Judging by the startled binaric erupting from Regicia and Talef, they have taken about three seconds longer.

It is impossible for you to gauge the reaction of the Space Marines around you, or of 8-Doxa or Theama-Nul: if they are surprised by any of this, they do not show it.

The first attack occurs six seconds in. A beetle-like thing erupts from the frozen blood of the floor and launches itself at Zhan.

Three Bolters ring out and utterly obliterate the thing before you can take a closer look at it, but that ceases to be a problem mere seconds later.

They swarm. They burst from the frozen floor. They drop down from the ceiling.

Within less than a minute of entering the chamber, you have gone from inactivity to fighting for your life. You shoot one of the things, and the agent in your Needler burns away the flesh that covers it, and reveals the tarnished metal beneath. The second needle has no significant impact, but it still skitters away, giving off a high-pitched scream as it burrows itself into the ground.

It takes you a moment to make the connection. You have seen these things before, in images if not in purpose. You bring the point of your leg down on one of them, and it breaks through the ice and onto the hard metal floor below, crushed beneath the weight of your form.

They're Scarabs, the servant-creatures of the soulless Necrons, but there is something wrong with them. Another of them leaps at you, trailing entrails behind it, its legs sharp and blade-like. You bat it aside with the back of your hand, and one of the Space Marines hits it with a Bolt in mid-air before it can hit the ground.

Sick. They seem sick, somehow. There is no other word for it.

The Space Marines move around you with precise purpose, clearing the chamber. They are, you must admit, brutally efficient: not a single one of the Scarabs manages to so much as touch any of them, or your subordinates. Voyos steps forward ponderously, Lightning Claw crackling with power. Each of his steps shatters the ice that covers the floor. Droplets of blood have erupted where the bolters have hit the floor and wall. Some of them have re-frozen mid-eruption. A more poetic mind than yours would perhaps compare the resulting forms to the blossoms of some sort of flower, but you hold little patience for such frivolities.

"Onewards, little Priestlings", Voyos roars, and you decide then and there that he is not going to leave this chamber alive. Still, for now, you are dependent on him, and so you advance: behind him, of course, because you aren't suicidal.

"Where too?", you ask your subordinates, and the ping of Theama-Nul's augur sets your teeth on edge. "The cable is running down approximately fifty meters polewards", they call out, using his organic voice. "These walls aren't anchored to corresponding metal walls, it's all one big chamber."

Voyos, it seems, has equally heard him. He steps through the wall, bringing it down in a shower of frozen chunks of meat, his Space Marines fanning out around him.

He almost dies for his impetuousness. A clawed thing straight out of a lunatics nightmare rises from the floor and rams its scything talons right into the Terminator's stomach.

It actually penetrates the thick plate: only a centimeter or two, but still deep enough for Taal Voyos to give a grunt of pain and stop short.

For a moment, the two of them are frozen in a morbid tableau: long enough for you to take in the flayed, ragged, frozen skin that covers the metal frame of your assailant, to take note of the frozen droplets of blood that roll from its metal maw.

Then Voyos brings down his Lighting Claw and utterly obliterates his assailant, and it disappears in a shower of red light.

For an eternity your internal clock assures you lasts barely a second, the world seems to be holding its breath.

Then you are once again under assault from all sides.

"Move, move, move", Voyos orders, and you move forward within the cordon of the Space Marines, who have fallen in around you protectively seemingly without needing a command.

You move, at a glacial pace. The slick ground makes movement difficult for your subordinates, and even the Space Marines step carefully, one boot before the other.

You are, of course, not bound by such limitations: an upside to replacing the inefficient human apparatus with something far more efficient. Only Voyos is equally unbothered: each heavy thread simply shatters the ice before him, landing on the metal ground with a dull thud.

Still, fifty meters seems like they might as well be fifty thousand. Around you, the strange, maddened constructs rush on and on in a seemingly never-ending tide.

A Space Marine goes down underneath their claws, then a second, then a third: they reap a fearsome toll in return, but your assailants just keep on coming. The Cyber-Ursine roars as one of the Necrons sinks talons deep into its flank, and then retaliates by utterly obliterating his foe with tooth and claw. Voyos roars too, and cuts another of the assailants into three pieces with the sweep of his claws, taking another of the flesh walls down along with it.

It is then that you finally see the Cable, breaching the ceiling and disappearing into the layer of gore that covers the floor even here.

More of the strange, twisted Scarabs are attached to it, their blade-like wings pulsing. They drop down as you breach the chamber, giving off strange hisses as they attack with a fury that feels, somehow, desperate.

More of the clawed Necrons claw themselves up from the floor, seeming almost birthed from the ground. Something is different about these ones, though it takes you a moment to realize what exactly that is. These Necrons are pristine in their warped nature. Though the metal that makes up their skin remains pitted and tarnished, it isn't covered in organic matter, besides what remains stuck to them from the floor they claw themselves out of. For long, drawn-out minutes, the Space Marines simply fire their bolters, fully automatically, bolt after bolt impacting the holes in the ground and obliterating everything that crawls from them. "Do not fire on the cable", you shout, as several of the Scarabs drop shattered to the ground.

They listen, to their credit. You did not fancy replacing the entire thing, on top of everything else. "Clear organic matter", you order, "I need to see what I am working with."

The Space Marines pause, looking to their leader.

"Do as the Priest says", Voyos orders, and you fruitlessly try to grit teeth you rid yourself of long ago. Two of them set to work with flamers, even as Camail and another Marine move to clear the Scarabs that infest the cable, working their blades with precision even you cannot help but be impressed by.

What the flames reveal could not be any more different to the imperfection that has been spread above it. You are not a sentimental man, and have done away with notions of sacredness or holiness eons ago, and still the perfect geometry of the metal below would be enough to make you weep, if you still possessed such capability. There is something subtly alien, in its perfection: no human hand could carve something so precise, or even make the tools to make the tools to allow its creation. Once upon a time, perhaps, your species had approached such mastery, but that time and potential is long lost, perhaps never to return again.

The cable bursts from the perfection of the floor like a malignant tumor bursting from the skin of a terminally ill patient. The metal has curled around it almost like a living thing trying to close a wound, and has even crept up the cable in a few places. Whatever else one might say about Magos Gwo, though, he knows his craft. You cannot even begin to fathom how he did it, suspect that a decade of dedicated study could not get you close to comprehending what he did, but there is no closing that gap.

And there lies your issue, because precisely 242 centimeters away from the base of the cable, there is another hole, its edges ragged and uneven like those of a festering wound.
It must be this one from which the Necrons have come.

Red, flickering light shines from beneath.

"I expect they'll try working their way around our flanks", Voyos says, casually sweeping his Combi-bolter over the flesh walls that still remain. "Huios, you and yours are best for close-in work. The tip of the Spear is yours. Zhan, Rarth, go with the Priestlings. Take our Melta Charges, you'll need them. Priestlings." He turns to you, contempt clear even beneath this helmet. "If you fail me in this, I will personally ensure that your souls are bound to the Chamber Pots of my lowest slaves."

He couldn't do that, of course, and even if he could it'd be a worthless threat. Even a moment within the churning tides of the Immaterium would likely make anything inflicted on your soul after child's play by comparison.

And besides, you consider, as you watch the Possessed shift their forms, bounding down the narrow crevice on all fours, it's not like being afraid is going to affect the quality of your work at all.

An empty threat, really. But then, Taal Voyos has built his entire personality around hollowness, so you really should not be surprised.

You send the Ursine in after the Possessed. It's bleeding from multiple wounds, now, but may still do its duty. You did not expect it to survive the trip anyways. You go after, skittering ahead of your subordinates, the two Space Marines ordered along with you bringing up the flank, bolters raised. You take some pleasure in watching them squeeze themselves through the tighter passages. For all the Emperor's ingenuity, it seems he never considered the possibility his creations might have to fight in spaces less than two meters in diameter in each direction.

[Roll: Eta-Nu 35-9: Biological Engineering: 4d6: Roll: (4, 6, 3, 3) Full Success]
[Roll: Possessed: Combat: 4d6: Roll: (5, 2, 5, 1), Partial Success]

By the time you make it to the Chamber, the fight is already in full swing. Huios Tyaphon is wounded, three weeping gashes running across his armored skin, but he is also standing above a heap of destroyed metal, teeth buried into the ravaged skull of one of the monstrous Necrons.

The Ursine has rampaged through the entire area, a trail of destruction left in its wake.

Below them, the opening of what you can only describe as a Sarcophagi glows in an eerie, red light. There is something sickening about this light, something organic in the way of a disease. Even as you watch, one of the sick, twisted Necrons rematerialises within, throwing itself back into the fight with reckless abandon.

They are half-buried on a floor of ice, and you almost do not need to consult your thermometer to know where you are.

Below the floor of this room, the temperature has plunged to absolute zero. You suspect that the only reason you can move and breathe at all, even in your insulated suits, is the heat produced by these Sarcophagi.

Theama-Nul's Augur pings besides you, and you can see the subtle note of dread in the readings that he sends you.

There's more of these Sarcophagi below: hundreds, perhaps thousands, reaching to the edge of the limited range of the Augur. This is a Tomb, but not in the manner that the Necrons are known for: more in an all too familiar, all too human way.

The Necrons have walled up victims of a plague here, intent never to let them see the light of day again.

Except, of course, they are waking up. Magos Gwo's unrelenting work has seen to that.

"Every row of Sarcophagi would increase the rate of melting", Talef says beside you, and you can see the calculations running in his head. You do not have to let them reach their conclusion, to know what he will say, in the end.

"Within three weeks, enough heat will be produced to reach the core of the planet within moments."

And whatever is kept down there, buried within the very center of the planet, is enough to utterly destroy the Precogitator, and will inevitably do so.

"Destroy the Sarcophagi", you order. "And don't use the Melta Bombs. Any additional heat might be enough to set off the next row."

You go to work, quietly and efficiently, hacking and slashing at the Sarcophagi that have been revealed. Only a small slice of the core has been molten, it seems. You cannot make more than educated speculation, but if you had to guess you'd say the Scarabs had channeled the heat somehow, sacrificing broad coverage for a small area. Perhaps it's also the fact energy is being diverted away from containment and to the Machine above. Whatever the case may be, it means that your task is actually achievable.

You set to work with power tools and bolters, with chainswords and power weaponry. It is incredible, you idly think, just how much punishment this technology can stand up to: there are tanks in the service of the Imperial Guard that could be destroyed quicker then they can.

As you work, bolter fire starts up above once more. The xenos seem almost panicked now: even more frantic in their attacks, with even less regard for their own preservation.

They burst forth from their sarcophagi, one after the other, some in dire states of disrepair: anything at all to stop you, anything at all to make you slow your work. The ice beneath your feet is weeping, you note with some consternation: the exhaust of a dozen power packs doing its part to slowly heat up the room. "Faster", you implore, setting to work yourself, circular saws screeching against material they were not made to cut, before they hit something of enough importance to make the light within the Sarcophagus beneath you die.

You move one to the next, Zhan ever by your side, wordlessly protecting you as you go about your work.

The Possessed spread out, frantic and inefficient in their destruction. The rest of your subordinates do as well, Mechadendrites working without pause, hacking, boring, firing bursts of Plasma.

Because of this, you are almost alone, when the ice below you suddenly cracks and a claw grips Zhan's leg, pulling him halfway into the ground as a second claw opens up his power armor as though it was made from tin, entrails draping themselves across the creature as it leaps from the ice below in a motion that should be impossible.

It rounds on you, and for a moment you are convinced that you are about to die.

You hear the roar of a Chainsword and the singing of transonic blades, and then 8-Doxa Krainaima suddenly stands between you and the monstrosity that has raised itself from the ground.

The Khornite locks eyes with the twisted abomination, and for a brief moment it strikes you just how similar they are in appearance.

You are, it seems, not the only one noticing the similarity. The hatred and wrath flees from 8-Doxa's eyes. Something like reverence replaces it, and in that moment, that terrifies you so much more than any hatred ever could. The Abomination screeches and rears up, blood-stained claws raised, and the Tech Priest responds in kind, Chain Sword and Chord Claw singing in terrible harmony with his all-too-organic roar. He rushes forward to meet the Necrons charge, and the two combatants meet in a terrible clash of claw and sword against claw. What follows is awe-inspiring. It is terrifying.

Two machines of murder clash in mathematically perfect animal frenzy, each stroke as wild as it is precise, each combatant marked by two extremes.

The first extreme is an utter disregard for their own life. The second is a deep, driving need for the destruction of the other.

8-Doxa lands the first blow in the first eight seconds of combat: his chain sword rips through the entrails that freshly adorn the Necron and then hits the metal beneath with a screech. Sparks fly. Several teeth of the Chain Sword tear away, ricocheting through the air with enough force to embed themselves into the ice of the wall. The thing responds with a wild swing, and then it's claw is embedded in Krainaima's sword arm, and the Chord Claw is locked against the second, and several drills are striking forward from the Tech Priest's Mechadendrites, screeching as they try to find purchase against silver metal.

[Roll:8-Doxa Krainaima: Combat: 4d6: Roll: 1,6,3,1, Full Success]

For a brief moment, the combat is locked in a delicate balance.

Then the Magos withdraws his sword, and the Necrons claws surge forward, sinking deep into its opponents midsection and piercing out of the other side.

Blood spills. Oil and hydraulic fluid spills. Krainaima emits a terrible binaric screech, and it takes you a second to decipher it, to understand that it is not a random noise of pain, but a short, simple message, repeated eight times and layered across each other.

"Blood for the Blood God", Krainaima cants, and then the Necrons other arm is lying on the ground, and the Tech Priests Chord Claw raises with a terrible, screeching noise.

"Skulls for the Skull Throne", he finishes his prayer, and the exhortation echoes throughout the room as the Chord Claw severs the Necrons neck, and the xenos' body collapses at the Tech Priests feet like a marionette with it's strings cut.

There is a short beat, and it takes you a moment to notice that despite the fact he has spoken his idiotic prayer in binaric, every Space Marine in the room seems to have understood it.
8-Doxa raises his skull-trophy above his head with a triumphant roar, and the Space Marine Rarth raises his own Chainblade in turn. "Bloooood", he roars, and brings it down onto another Sarcophagus. Even the Possessed seem driven on to further destruction, though the impression you get from them is one of competition rather than inspiration.

You ignore them, and instead go to gut the Sarcophagus from which this creature has attacked you. By the time you retreat your circular saw, you are almost unable to move it. The cold is rising steadily, you note. Enough of the Sarcophagi have been shut down for whatever is sapping the heat to overtake what they can generate.

"Out", you order, and then you hesitate, for a moment. A wide scattering of Xenos Materials lie around you, some small enough to take along without issue.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
[Xenos Tech]
[]Take a Sample
-the Xenos clearly posses capabilities far in excess of those of humanity: it would be folly not to study them where you can

[] Don't, because of the risk of infection
-something has infested these Necrons, and it seems worryingly adaptive. You do not wish to risk it spreading to your systems

[] Don't, because it repulses you
-however efficient the Xenos tech is, it still repulses you on a fundamental level. Better for it to be buried here, never to see the light of day.

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You return upwards, to the main cavern, and find that much of the flesh has been taken apart by Bolter fire in the meantime. Broken Necrons lie scattered about the Court of the Hollow Idol, but so do eleven of the Space Marines that have accompanied you. At least that is your best approximation: several of them have been mangled so thoroughly you can't be sure where one of them begins and the other ends.

Taal Voyos has taken more hits. Deep gashes mark his armor, and he is breathing heavily. A punctured lung, if you had to guess: not remotely lethal for a Space Marine, but unpleasant nonetheless.

You make the calculations within a mere millisecond. Your Needler is still in your hand. The needle will be almost invisible, and your aim is unerring. If you shoot him now, his death will look natural enough that none will question it.

[Roll:Eta Nu 9-35: Combat: 1d6: Roll:2. Failure.]

You raise your arm in a motion intended to look casual, and then Taal Voyos locks eyes with you, and perceives your intent in an instant.

You find yourself impacting with the Chamber Wall, the sound of the Combi-Bolter firing reaching your ears a split second after two bolts have already detonated, shearing off your arm neatly beneath your shoulder. Error messages come in along with pain impulses. There are splinters within your torso, though they seem to have missed your vital organs.

Taal Voyos roars in anger and advances towards you, Lightning Claw raised and crackling. You muster up every bit of strength you can find, trying to command your legs to work.

If you are to find your death here, in this pathetic hole, you will at least stand.

You fail. You feel your vision narrowing around you.

[Roll:Camail: Combat: 4d6: Roll:6, 6, 5, 5. Critical Success!]

It's strange, what the brain will show a dying human. You spent some strange weeks during Terra studying this, actually: taking a thousand readings at the behest of some Emperor's Children Space Marine utterly obsessed with it. Neurons fire wildly and randomly in a process you could never quite replicate to the man's satisfaction.

Like right now. You see a flash of silver light, passing through the neck of Voyos' Terminator Armor. Then the man topples down, and Captain Carmail stands over his toppled corpse.

He seems, you think, like an ancient image you saw once, on Terra, an eon ago.

A twisted Saint, standing over the corpse of a slain dragon.

Then you pass out.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Court's Civil War:
Carmail: [Consolidation:2d6: 6,6: Critical Success!!]
Jaladun Zarur: [Consolidation: [1d6: 6: Full Success]
Huios Thyaphon: [Consolidation: 1d6:5: Partial Success]

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Three hours have passed when you regain consciousness. You know this because you have an internal chronometer, and an inquiry for error does not give a return.

You take stock of your situation. The pain isn't gone. Your right arm remains gone. Somebody has removed the splinters from your side and sealed your carapace. Your internal damage, such as it is, remains unfixed. That's good. You're not in danger of bleeding out, but you prefer not having some unknown person dig around your inside.

Something beeps at your side, and by measuring it against your internal measurements find it to be a Vital Sign Monitor, adapted to your specific physiology.

That, you have to admit, is impressive, even if it seems to just be there to tell whoever has been working on you that you are still alive and that you have regained consciousness. You reboot your eyes, allowing them to take in outside signals again, and find that you are hanging in an industrial-grade harness, your feet about twenty-five centimeters off the ground.

"I apologize", Regicia Ko-Bea tells you, "but you don't exactly fit into a hospital bed."

She is using her organic voice, a particular foible you do not, currently, have much patience for.

You respond with an inquiry burst in its purest form: a request to be updated on all that has happened while you were unconcious. "I know you do not like to use the flesh-voice," Regicia say, " but given our new host, I found it prudent to be polite."

You hit her with another inquiry burst, and then Captain Camail steps into view, helmet under his arm, his armor freshly adorned with that awful serpent-dragon thing Voyos wore for a helmet. He has put it on a spike on his power pack, head and all if the blood is anything to go by. There is another Space Marine by his side, wearing scaled Heresy-Era Armor, helmet equally under his arm.

He is copper-skinned and bald, heavy brows dominating a face that seems familiar in a way that you cannot quite put your finger on. He looks you in the eyes, and as he moves around they seem to shift, from a piercing ice blue to a subtle green and back again.

You look at him, then at the trophy helmet, then back at him again.

Then you groan.

The serpent-dragon thing isn't a serpent-dragon thing at all.

It's the head of a Hydra.

"Good Day to you, Eta Nu 9 35", Jaladun Zarur tells you.

"I am Alpharius."
Regicia stops you from shutting down your systems to throw yourself back into unconsciousness. It is probably a sensible thing for her to do, but if you had your hand and Needler you could not guarantee that you wouldn't have shot her right that second.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Theama-Nul is exceedingly smug when he briefs you on the political situation, an hour or so later. You tune out most of what he says to focus on the most crucial bits: the Warband is under new leadership, and also apparently an elaborate front for the Alpha Legion, aimed at consolidating the pirates of the area. In typical Alpha Legion Fashion, this was so secret that most of its members did not actually know about it, including Camail.

Jaladun Zarur was a failsafe implanted into the Warband to prevent the exact thing that happened from happening: a false personality implanted over 'Alpharius' to put the Warband back on trap.

Camail surprised him with his speed and efficiency, it seems, and so he changed track.

The long and short of it is that Camail is now in charge, Zarur-Alpharius is his second in command and connection to the broader Legion, and Hiuos Typhaon has somewhat reluctantly come into the fold and bent the knee, the losses inflicted upon the Possessed apparently too much of a burden to make a play of his own.

Your unruly subordinate pieced together most of this by walking into their core database, breaching it, and calmly walking back out when the alarm was raised.

"The Battle Barge used to be called the Gamma, apparently. Still had an old broadcast of that open on a lower frequency to identify itself to Horus Loyalists, which was what the Wilful Eternity picked up before it was jammed."

You interrupt Theama-Nul before he can go on any more.

"Does the Precogitator work again?", you ask.

He cants an affirmative.

You turn and make directly for the Lighter.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You have a few days of layover now, waiting for your next instructions. Setting out without a destination simply doesn't make a lot of sense, and the journey to the Mandeville Point is short enough that you can simply spend that layover in orbit.

That honestly suits you well.

It gives you time to work on your report.

The daemonic communication device has luckily stopped screaming.

The demand the Court of Eight sent to you through the infernal thing was to 'Report In Full', but as you grip it's keyboard, it occurs to you that the definition of what this might mean can be stretched quite far, especially if one applies spite to the problem.

This thought fresh in your mind, you set out to write…

[] Task Accomplished
-two words, nothing more, nothing less. They don't actually care. If they did they should've briefed you on the damned Machine this time around

[] A brief report
-give a brief rundown of what the issue was and what you did to fix it. Stick to the technical issues: they don't really need to know about what your subordinates did, or about the overall political situation

[] a thorough report
-a brief rundown of the technical issues and what you did to fix them, as well as a rundown of the surrounding context, including the role your subordinates played in it. Not too much detail, but enough for them to get an accurate grasp of what went on

[] an angry report
-use this opportunity to complain, both about the Court of the Hollow Idol and about your subordinates. Likely this will be ignored, but it might make you feel better

[] an over-thorough report
-report in full, they said, and so you will: dump a transcript of every single social interaction and technical endeavor onto their desk: something that will take days to sort through if anyone even bothers.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The boarding action by the Court of the Hollow Idol was a swift and efficient thing, but their Dreadclaw Drop Pod still punched a hole through the hull of the Wilful Eternity. As a token of apology, they have agreed to fix it up free of charge, adding another patch to a hull that basically consists of them. Additionally, Camail offers you some spare weaponry, taken from a vast collection of armaments ripped from the hulls of Pirate Vessels that were late on payment.

These are, obviously, not of the highest quality. They are still infinitely better than what you have installed right now.

"You're the boss, boss", Ludmilla Kapriosa tells you. "I narrowed down the options and gave you some upsides and downsides, but the final decision is up to you.

[New Armament]

[] Thunderstrike Macro-Cannons
-essentially the same weapon installed now, except working. Decent balance of power, range, and rate of fire, with ammunition and spare parts relatively available.
[] Ryza Pattern Plasma Cannon
-usually, this would be a strict upgrade over the Thunderstrike Cannon, but in the case of the Wilful Eternity it actually possesses serious problems due to its power draw: it might end a battle with one shot, if that shot is unexpected, but after that it will need a long time to recharge and fire again. Still, given the low likelihood of you ever getting a second shot, that might be a worthy tradeoff
[] Something identified as a Shadow Lance
-this thing looks Eldar, and there's no telling what it can or cannot do. Probably a bit more powerful than Macrocannons would be, but it might bring all sorts of issues if it ever has to be fixed, or if whoever this got stolen from notices we have it
[] Argolid-Pattern Vox Warfare System
-something built specifically for the Alpha Legion, with all the downsides one might expect from that. This thing is supposed to work as essentially a big scrap code generator, shutting down a ship's systems from afar and causing general mayhem. Of course, this will work more or less well, depending on the ship, and it sacrifices actual killing power: on the other hand, it seems like a nasty surprise to have in one's back pocket.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

During your warp journey, you will have the opportunity to speak with all your subordinates: however, your patience will only be sufficient to deal with one of them for any length of time.

[] Regicia Ko-Bea
The Magos Malefactor has reached out, offering to rebuild the arm you lost doing a favor for her. This might also be an opportunity to discover her dealings with the former Captain and now Lord Camail. Of course, this will require to let her work on your arm. It'll be of high quality, of that you have no doubt, but the input you have into its creation will be limited, and there's no telling what else a woman of her talents could build in there.

[] Myges Talef
The Magos Infofector has dropped by to give you your share of the Tokens he has gained from infiltrating the Tally into the systems of the Precogitator. Perhaps it would interest you to learn when and how he achieved this. This will come at the cost of him pitching you on the entire concept once again, however.

[] 8-Doxa-Krainaima
The Magos Mactator was back aboard the Wilful Eternity before anyone else, both to repair the damage he had sustained and to deal with the Trophy he had taken: the head of one of the strange Necrons, defeated in single combat. It might be prudent to talk to him about that before he does anything strange with it.
That does require risking his temper, of course.

[] Theama-Nul
Your enigmatic subordinate apparently managed to breach Alpha Legion codes and discover information unknown even to parts of the Warband, all of it entirely on a whim. A conversation with him might give you more information about whatever plans the Alpha Legions are pursuing in the region. They also might finally tell you what exactly their title is.
Of course, this does come at the risk of getting a massive headache.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Of course, your trip in the warp will give you plenty of time to work on your own projects: it'll allow you to undertake personal projects that might aid you in some way in the future. There is quite a broad spectrum of activities you could undertake: your ambition is limited only by your ability.

[] Make a Monster
-the Ursine was lost somewhere in the shuffle, probably frozen within the core of the planet somewhere, but it has been too long since you had a reliable creature by your side.
Write-in for the exact creature and it's enhancements, though I reserve the right to adjust these to be tone appropriate. Your extensive database means that you probably have something that at least resembles any animal currently alive on Earth, though skewing towards the aggressive and predatory.

[] Learn a new Skill, or improve an old one
Write-in for what you wish to learn: generally, you can acquire a new skill within one downtime and improve a Tier 1 skill with two. Higher Tier Skills require acquisition of significant knowledge to improve further.

[] Other (Write-in)
Again, I reserve the right to adapt any write-ins somewhat, and might chime in ahead of time to clarify such. Still, you know.
Go wild.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And so concludes the first arc of Grim Dark Tech Support.

Please vote by plan.