Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest

You do not watch the departure of the Cruel Ravager yourself, though Ludmilla sends you a video transmission of the event after the fact. It goes, as far as you can tell, fairly smoothly: you assume that whoever is in charge of the vessel would not be extremely eager to take on the combined might of the Host's fleet, even if they had reason to suspect that the corpse they had been presented with had been produced in any way but the one the Host has conveyed to them.

You have done, without wishing to flatter yourself overly much, an admirable job in arranging the body. Ezardarial Varth looks ravaged: his internal organs have been scorched and peppered by Shrapnel, his pauldron has been cratered, and there are marks of chain weaponry upon his greaves and vambraces. A skilled autopsy would likely recognize that the marks in the flesh beneath have been caused to death flesh rather than living tissue, but you doubt any are going to scrutinize the corpse all that hard.

If there are any amongst the Apostles of Blasphemy motivated enough to have somebody with enough skill take a look at the deceased Emissary, they are likely going to have whatever findings they desire made up ahead of time.

Your burial arrangements should hopefully forestall such a thing.

Ezardarial Varth has been laid in state in a manner that might have been befitting for an ancient warrior king, and you find something oddly amusing about how much of this is a simple deception. The black and white armor of his slain foes has been piled up around him, their helmets and the remnants of their skull supplemented by a eight hundred skulls that have been taken more or less from killed insurgents, rusting autoguns and las guns pilled up in huge piles at Varth's feet next to the weaponry taken from the Space Marines. The body itself has been placed on a bed of skulls, hands folded over the haft of his mace, helmet and armor still in place. You hope that Skyraal is either blinded by the pomp and theater or at least appreciates a good lie.

In the end, only time will tell. In the meantime, you have some work to do.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You do not trust the Hand of Transformation, and not solely because it is Tharc Raskoll's creation. The energies of the Warp are too volatile to allow the sort of independent operation it has been allowed here. Tharc Raskoll literally gave the freedom to strategize and make independent plans to the pseudo-sentient personification of betrayal: it is no wonder that this went wrong. Frankly, it's a miracle it took so long. The Empyrean, when utilized to power machines, must be tightly controlled, or else tightly observed, preferably from a safe distance.

And of course, for all his overcomplicated artifice, the purpose Tharc Raskoll envisioned for the Hand of Transformation was absolutely mediocre. All that craftsmanship, all that design, wasted on a better Kill Servitor doing unreliably what one could probably do with better controllable operatives using the same investment of resources and an only moderately more intensive investment of time.

All this, and he missed a far more obvious and far more useful feature of the piece of Warp Energy he managed to capture.

It is capable of separating within the material world while staying unified within the empyrean: a capability that holds, as far as preliminary experiments seem to indicate, no limit on distance within the material realm.

Communication is a tricky thing, for those that have strayed from the stricture of the Imperium and its at least semi-reliable Astropaths. There are as many methods of communication amongst the Renegades of the Imperium as there are Renegades, ranging from the relatively simple use of minor daemonic entities over sorcerous equivalents to astrotelepathies to the extremely esoteric, like the strange, fungal-based means of communication you have heard of the Death Guard occasionally utilizing. The Xenos, you are certain, use their own means, but humanity remains reliant on the Empyrean and its capability for transmitting both matter and information far faster than the speed of light.

A reliable means of communication is already highly valuable: for somebody trying to keep together a freshly conquered Empire, as Lady Czevene is, it is simply invaluable.

And you are constructing it for her for free.

Well, no, not for free: you are constructing it for her because she is a terrifying rogue Psyker powerful enough to influence every mind within a Hive City even before she was melded with the piece of machinery the allowed her to do this, and because she has a fleet in orbit that can stop you leaving without any issues whatsoever.

You are also doing it to show up Tharc Raskoll, which is a thought that cheers you up at least a little bit.

Your subordinates have used the intervening time to recuperate and repair themselves as best they can, though they are still battered from the ordeal they have gone through. Regicia has replaced her missing arm with a bundle of highly-articulating mechatendrils, their various tool tips whirring and vibrating as she regards you. It is a temporary solution, you figure: she is going to be to work creating an entirely new arm as soon as the Wilfull Eternity breaches the Warp. It works, for now. Theama-Nul is, of course, as unreadable as ever, though he has begun wheezing with every breath: still, in the past few days he has been electrocuted, battered, and possibly peppered with shrapnel, shot at, and stabbed. You yourself have had to replace parts of one of your kidneys, because it had apparently burst at some point or another. Magos Krainaima, of course, looks no more or less battered then usual, now that the blood has dried, though he does look a little bit more pleased with himself then he usually does.

Myges Talef, on the other hand, has clearly taken a beating and then found himself reconstructed by a madman: his cooling unit is working again, though some of the fan blades remain exposed and have been sharpened, and one of his arms has been rebuild in the utilitarian style of 8-Doxa, the muzzle of what appears to be a miniaturized Chem Cannon emerging from the sleeves of his robes.

"Doesn't have to be aimed", 8-Doxa tells you cheerfully, when he notices your gaze. Magos Talef seems to have emerged from the other side of his terror into a sort of stoic equanimity. "I will still endeavor to aim it as best I can", he promises you, which worries you somewhat, though a quick analysis of the chemical used calms your nerves a little: a fairly simple acidic solution, highly aggressive against organic materials, but mostly harmless when it comes to metal. If you go up against Necrons again, that might become an issue, but at least the damage he can do to you is limited.

In any case, he is here, and seems fairly eager to do something that holds a relatively low likelihood of being shot at.

In basic form, what you are trying to achieve is relatively simple: you are seeking to provide eight identical units to house the eight fragments of the Daemon, and to enable these units to transmit information. The interesting thing, the challenge, is in what you want these units to be capable of, and how you want that information to be transmitted.
[Unit Form Factor]
The form of the central array is a given, though the torso may end up quite removed from its original form given the modifications you intend to make to it. The very basic shapes of the end points, however, are very much up for debate.
[] Humanoid
You will be working with besouled parts for this project, that much is out of the question: making a daemonic possession work without some organic components for them to inhabit is possible, but outside of your normal skill range and also pointlessly more difficult. It would be a simple step, then, to simply take the basic components of the servitors, modify them minimally, and use them for the transmitter. There's downsides to this, of course: some of Lady Czevene's more squeamish allies might be disturbed by the display and the end result would end up a lot more fragile than the other result, not to mention the difficulties of modifying them too far from their original human form. Of course, the flipside is that things humans are expected to do, such as speaking, would absolutely be easier.
[] Cubic
You could, of course, put all the components into a simple box: easy to transport, easy to conceptualize, relatively neutral aesthetically, though there really isn't a way for a box containing the fragment of a Daemon to not look at least a little bit sinister. Of course, this basic form doesn't provide any particular advantages or disadvantages when it comes to the further augmentations: you can throw all of them on there in one way or another, but a cubic shape doesn't make it particularly easier or harder. The major downside is that the daemon might not particularly like being put into a boring box: it probably can't resist you, but it can at least make your life more difficult.
[] Bespoke
The last option is to throw any preconceived notion of form factor out the window, and go with a creation that is entirely fitted to the ultimate requirements: a custom-created daemonic engine made precisely as you need it. This will make fitting some of the weirder attachments easier, but its very bizarreness might stand in the way of the humanlike and mundane, at least in the sense that you might build a wholly custom piece of equipment where just using a human body part would have served a similar purpose.

[Locomotion]
[] None
The thing doesn't need to move, only to be moved. Put a couple of hooks onto them for a crane to latch on to, but that's the height of it.
[] Tracks
Capable of supporting a lot of weight, and to move over difficult positions: ideal if you want to move a heavy piece of equipment nearly everywhere an army might need to go.
[] Wheels
Simple, efficient, and capable of moving the unit quickly over the sort of territory it might need to move through to serve for basic administrative functions
[] Legs
Relatively slow and unstable, but with crucial advantages in buildings: this thing could actually move over stairs at reasonable speed, and follow whoever it is set to accompany basically wherever they want to go.
[Transmission]

[] Written
Give the things eyes, and arms with which it can write out whatever is dictated to it. Usually this would be highly inefficient, but the main unit already has an attachment point for arms, and ink isn't that expensive. The main issue here would be the input device, but that isn't too hard to do either. Not limited in what it could transmit either, as long as that transmission can fit onto a piece of parchment.
[] Typed
Alternatively, one could attach a typewriter, and simply have messages that go in on one side come out on the other. Pretty limited in what it could do, but also intuitive to use, and at least decently easy to implement
[] Spoken
In concept, this means of communication is fairly simple: somebody talks on one side, and the voice is transmitted to the other. In practice, this is significantly harder to implement than text: you need to figure out how to deal with several messages being transmitted all at once, for one thing, and how to patch hardware needed to speak into the central unit. Of course, the end result of that is being able to actually have a conversation with the person on the other end, which may prove invaluable.
[] Combination
Of course, if you are willing to take on the additional workload, you could simply combine two or more of these options in order to combine their advantages, at the cost of additional weight and added complexity.

[Security]
The communication concept you are creating is very secure and very insecure at the same time: it is secure because it cannot be intercepted by almost any mundane means, and at the very same time insecure because it might be vulnerable to empyrean forms of attack, relying, as it does, on a pseudo-intelligence that might be accessed externally. There are not very many people who could do such a thing, of course, but on the other hand you really don't want the people who can to get their hand on any more information than they already have.
[] None
Securing the device is not your business: it can be done by your employer, for all you care.
[] Material
Encrypting the data that is put in ahead of time will go a great length to securing it against extra-mundane means of interception. Of course, this makes it important that the only input the Daemon is capable of receiving is the encoded information, but that should at least theoretically be doable. Put in biometrical locks and the like as well: wouldn't do, after all, for your device to be defeated by somebody walking in and planting a listening device or grabbing a piece of paper.
[] Empyreal
There are means to prevent empyreal manners of interception. You're going to ask Theama-Nul to implement them. Also allow the daemon to eat people who try to gain unauthorized access: might as well go all out.
[] Both
Combine both methods of security, for added complexity and security.