Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest

Getting the train to stop is a trivial process. You do wait until it has reached the end of the bridge. There is no sense, you consider, in walking all that way.

The brief delay does give you time to consider the Hand of Transformation, and the strange sword that is still stuck in the cabin of the train. The blade is, you consider, possibly daemonic, and certainly not a normal weapon. Empyrean Runes still glow in its hilts, though the ghostly power field has been turned off.

You do not know what it would have done had it struck you, and you do not regret that fact, for all the thirst for knowledge. Still, that leaves you to decide what to do with the potentially dangerous blade.

[Sword]
[] Keep it
[] Gift it to a Subordinate
[]Regicia Ko-Bea
[]Theama-Nul
[] Toss it

Finding a safe space within the charnel house that has become of the middle hive proves a lot more difficult than stopping the train. You wish for your allies to find you again, so do not dare to stray too far from the train once you manage to stop it, but you suspect that even outside of the section of hab blocs and warehouses that directly surround the track much of the Middle Hive are the same.

Every spot that is not exposed is crowded with those seeking refuge from the unleashed wrath of the fallen Regiments: every place that isn't proves such because it has proven insufficiently hidden, and is thus littered with corpses. Often, these spaces are on fire: though the Maccabian Janissaries have traded in one faith for another, they seem to have kept their love for flamers, and delight to turn them on the insurgents.

In the end, you give up finding a space unmarred by the massacres around you: the warehouse you set up shop in is stained with soot and littered with blackened bones. There is something like delight flickering in the eyes of the Hand of Transformation, though you know this to be simply a trick of perspective: the daemon is not, after all, a thing of actual sentience or intelligence: merely a perverse reflection of some twisted human desire, given shape and traits by your own imagination. If you had to guess what that trait might be, you would wager it to be the desire for the violent overthrow of order. That such a thing would strain against any restraints placed upon it seems blatantly obvious to you: one might as well attempt to tie a string around liquid water.

But such is exactly what Tharc Raskoll has done, and now it is on you to fix it.

[Roll: Eta-Nu 9-35: Warp Craft: 1d6: Rolled: 1. Failure]

You do not, you have to admit to your chagrin, understand what it is that he has done. You have some experience in the utilization of the Empyrean: they are necessary to rise to where you have risen within the true Mechanicum, for even if you do not worship it, to ignore the potential of that dark mirror of sentient reality is foolish indeed. But your expertise extends to the Empyrean's mutative qualities, and to the occasional shackling of its pseudo-intelligences in an organic form. Wards, contracts, and the bindings involved in creating daemonic engines have always been difficult for you: there is too much uncertainty for you there, too many circular assumptions made true by nothing but the power of belief and symbolism. Your grasp of Colchisian, which seems to be the language the silver bindings that cover the Daemon-Servitors organic shell are written in, is also pretty rudimentary. You haven't even managed to decipher a single of the nine circles when Theama-Nul and Regicia Ko-Bea find you.

You can actually hear the arrival of the Yulrasian Assault Regiment: not by any fanfare, but simply by the rumbling of their Chimeras and the sudden drop in the snap-crack of Las Fire and the hissing of flamers wherever they make their way. Order is being restored, you become dimly aware. It is one of the mutant scouts that finds you first, and the Yulrasians have moved past your position for half and hour by the time it returns, alongside your two subordinates and Colonel Parlo and Captain Borj.

"We are bringing these Regiments back into line", Parlo informs you. "They have apparently been set loose after some sort of suicide attack took out parts of their command staff."

His face twists, as he regards the remnants of carnage around you. "There will be consequences for this", he promises, somewhat melodramatically in your opinion, and then he sets off, Ogryn Bodyguard and mutant runners in tow. You are left to wonder, briefly, if they would have been at each other's throat had the Hand of Transformation's plot succeeded. It does not bear thinking about, you consider: what has happened has happened.

[Roll: Theama-Nul: Warp Craft: 3d6: Rolled: 4,5,4. Partial Success]

Your subordinate is already bent over the toppled Hand of Transformation, by the time you turn back to him: though Theama-Nul's expression remains impossible to read, there is something like excitement in his canting as he relays his findings.

"Most of these bindings are fairly standard, meant to keep the daemonic essence contained within the Machine." He traces a finger across one of the circles. "This part here is what allows it to send out the fragments, though as expected the actual mind remains bound within the machine."

He pauses, for a moment, and you find yourself once again frustrated at not being able to read his expression. "Ah", he says, finally, "I see."

Mechadendrites push aside a cunningly hidden port at the back of the Hand's skull, revealing an interface port: custom-made, of course. You would bet basically anything that the only data-jack compatible with the thing now lies utterly destroyed in the burned-out husk of the Chimera. "These", Theama-Nul says, pointing at the circles on the outside of the Daemon-Servitor, "are the framework, forcing the essence bound within to obey instructions inscribed through this". He taps the interface port, and you nod. "Inscribed on what", you ask, and Theama-Nul shrugs, letting go of his facade just enough to allow you to perceive the gesture. "It's in there", he says, pointing at the metal-toothed mouth, and you emit a frustrated burst of static. Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be.

The thing starts screaming, when you start taking out its teeth, but you steadfastly ignore this, besides noting to yourself that it is surprisingly authentic in its pleading screams. Your career has given you sufficient experience to judge such things. It is, you suppose, not the worst of defense mechanisms, though of course against you it is entirely pointless. The teeth are fully formed, roots of silver rammed into gums of ceramic: a choice that might be artistic or serve some sort of artistic vision, but simply seems utterly pointless to you. Behind the teeth, where a tongue would be, you find the first organic component: a scroll made of what you identify as human skin, spanned beneath two wheels. Something that looks like a tattooing needle is suspended above it, while small blades seem to stand ready to flay away the top layer of the skin.

More of the cuneiform script is inscribed into the skin, though you are unable to read it properly. "Let's see", Theama-Nul says, leaning in close.

"In essence…Destroy government of Sephirot Nine, return for new instructions."

You frown at that. "Well, the government was destroyed, right? So…why didn't it come back"

"Because it's task hadn't been fulfilled yet", Regicia Ko-Bea says, realization dawning on her face. "Its task wasn't to wait for the destruction of the Government, it was to destroy the Government itself. The Host took over before it was able to perform this task, and assumed the responsibilities of Government in place of the Imperium."

You emit a warble of frustrated static. This exact sort of thing is why you don't like working with Warp Pseudosentiences.

"So", you cant, "we remove the inscription, present the device back to our employer, and she can do whatever she wants with it."

You see the wince on both Ko-Bea's and on Theama-Nul's face, and send them a sharp burst of frustration.

"The scroll is a part of its binding. Removing it altogether might disrupt the binding, and leaving it blank might result in….undue autonomy of function"

"So it might go rogue", you say, and both of them cant in the affirmative. "I can put up a rudimentary warding circle around it, ensuring that it doesn't escape from the immediate surroundings. But whoever performs the operation is going to have to step inside the circle, and will be exposed the attention of the Daemon if things go wrong."

You nod, and step forward. It's going to be you. Regicia has some experience with surgery, but you are the most equipped to handle this situation.

"Put it up", you say, and Theama-Nul complies. He uses the bones and ashes of the massacred citizens around you, because that is just what Warp-meddling is like. Before long, you are perched over the prone body of the Hand of Transformation, holding its mouth open with a clamp as your Medicae Mechadendrites stand ready to flay the first layer of flesh off the scroll.

"You'll need to replace the words as you write them", Theama-Nul tells you, some nervousness creeping into his canting. "I can translate whatever you wish to write into Colchisian, if you tell me. There's an issue, though: it'll need to be nine words, nothing more, nothing less."

You give a curt nod, and prepare the syringe you have repurposed into an improvised tattooing needle.

You already know exactly what you want to write.

[Replacement Command]

[] Write-in