Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest

It feels a little strange to be ready to travel before you know where you wish to go. You had directed the Wilful Eternity towards the Mandeville Point the second you could, reasoning that you could type up the report while you were going and hopefully have your next destination ready by the time you had completed your days-long journey to the edge of the system.

You were done in a day. Apparently, not including every single detail out of spite significantly speeds up the process, and the ship not being repaired and refitted speeds up the time it takes to depart significantly, even if Lady Czevene's generosity meant it took a while until all the provisions had been put into the hold. You turn in your report, and receive nothing back. You check that everything has been entered correctly, turning back the scroll of vellum that acts as the Machine's Medium, and find that you definitely have. You also find that, while you were gone, the machine has apparently been in use.

You cannot tell what most of the message says: the scroll has not been moved forward, and so the letters jumble into one another, forming a blot of ink pressed into the scroll with so much pressure it has almost broken through to the other side. The impressions you get are those of frantic, careless, desperate: there are no spaces, no evidence of capitalisation, no punctuation whatsoever. The only thing you can make out is two words, repeated again and again, printed over each other so often you can see traces of it carried over to the layer behind it.

ithurts, the message says, again and again and again, and you sigh, and scroll the vellum back into its neutral position before you miss something important to this strange malfunction.

No message arrives. You stare at it for five more minutes. Still no message.

You decide that at some point, they're probably going to start wondering what you're doing and ask about that. If they cannot order you around due to shoddy craftsmanship on their part, that is not your problem in any way whatsoever.

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The wait, you find, is surprisingly tortuous. Within your laboratory, gene seed is prepared, waiting for your attention, and you dare not enter and begin the process of experimenting with it, for fear of being called away at some crucial moment to attend to the whims of your overlords. Neither are you really mentally prepared to deal with any of your subordinates right now: you've just spent several weeks in close cooperation with them, so a few days of rest are more than warranted. Instead, you pore over the reports Ludmilla has forwarded to you because she doesn't know what to do with them: one Captain Gaola, reporting for duty and then reporting that they have found accommodations to their liking and established what is termed as a 'productive line of communication' with the ship's pre-existing armsmen. "Urshgursh tried to establish dominance, so she headbutted him and now they drink together", Ludmilla explains to you, when you get bored enough to ask. "It helped that those Ogryns of theirs put nine of the Beastmen on their asses, I think. They commandeered one of the lower corridors for quarters and training, if you want to go meet them."

You demur, glad to have found limits to your boredom. You do not, it transpires, have any more reason to keep yourself occupied anyways. Nuton's Folly has responded. The message they have sent you contains mercifully little by way of instructions for behavior.


You frown, at that, already formulating the necessary follow-up request. The Imperium is not exactly in the habit of revealing the location of their Astropathic Relay Stations to the public: they are both far too valuable and far too tempting prey for that.

Thankfully, a more detailed description of the path there does arrive shortly after.

You are deeply worried: you have heard of neither the Coterie of the Blessed Lantern nor the Beacon of Perfection, but if they have build whatever they have build inside an Astropathic Relay Station, that suggests empyrean nonsense, and if it is malfunctioning, that suggests the nonsense is out of control. That, you consider dourly, does not bode well.

Well, at least you are freed up to do other things now that you have a place that you are sent.

May as well get on with it.

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You do not remove the Gene Seed from it's Stasis Vault until you have safely made the translation into the Warp: you do not fancy losing your prize to some sort of freak warp anomaly, and if you know anything of the Wilful Eternity with any certainty, it is that warp anomalies are woefully common. Instead, you have assembled your assistants, and now they are assisting you in your research. One of the Glands will need to be sacrificed, unfortunately: it is only through its systematic dissection that you have any hope of unlocking the proper way of unraveling the others.

You sterilize one of the less rusty areas of your workshops, spare the glowing mutant that seems to have assumed command of your hirelings a passing glance, and then set to work.

You are left, when you are done, and have cleaned your scalpels and decrypted the results of your gene-sniffers, in utter awe of the Emperor's craft. You knew he was an exceptional gene-wright: that much was blatantly obvious: the Primarchs, for all their flaws, were obviously the pinnacle of such craft, and the Astartes in all their mass-producible glory a stroke of genius you continue to have to respect. Frequently, you are left stumped by how he has achieved a specific result, how the molecular chains left within the Gland before you unravel into the magnificent organs in evidence upon the Astartes. Still, you are decently sure that you can unwind one of these in the proper way now: tease forth the organs hidden within and perhaps even attempt an implantation into a youth of proper age. You can even make some rough predictions on the likely genetic profile necessary for such an implantation: a clue to the origin of your attackers, perhaps, and you file that away for potential future use.

It is the glowing mutant who finds her voice to dare to speak to you, and you are grateful that she does.

"Some of these cell lines seem to not be dead yet", she tells you, and as you look, you realize with a start that she is right.

If you work quickly, you may be able to secure cell lines which you could then use to make replicating one of these effects significantly easier. Unfortunately, you will only be able to save one of them.

[Organ]
[] Ossmodula
A small organ which will encourage bone growth, essentially creating a second layer of hardened armor within the body of the target in the long run
[] Omophagea
A strange one to be sure, this organ seems to enable to recipient to decode information from ingested organic material: something that would be unremarkable if you weren't reasonably sure that eating bits of brains would unlock glimpses of the memories of the target ... .somehow. You are not sure at all how that works, and that is in equal measures intriguing and terrifying. Anything you make will likely not quite rise to that level, but it might at least grand a highly efficient tool for analyzing your environment. Through putting things in the mouth, but it at least isn't going to be your mouth.

[] Betcher's Gland
A gland allowing the production and excretion of a wide variety of acids and poisons: nothing you could not create yourself, probably, but the Emperor has proven his remarkable talent for destructive genetics once more: the thing incorporates toxins ingested by the target, somehow, and is generally unbelievably efficient.

[Roll: Eta Nu 9 35: Biological Engineering: 4d6: 5, 6, 2, 1. Success]
[Assistant Roll: 1d6: 6. Success]
Overall Critical Success
Research: Geneseed: 2/4
Assistant Upgrade: 2/4
Further Geneseed Research Requirement: Suitable Subject for Implantation

You do remember to cant your approval at the glowing one. It is only several days later that it occurs to you you have not given her the implants or training to understand binaric.

Something to fix, that.

One of these days.
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You have been engaged in combat situations a regrettable amount of times, now, and so you set about creating something that will even the scales.
Really, you are making two things: a drop pod, capable of enough steering to potentially maneuver even to the more difficult to get to areas of a world, and a reptilian monster capable of existing within its confines and rapidly striking at any and all threats.

That limits the size, and you are forced to design a significant amount of its internal anatomy to withstand the forces of entry. Still, the thing you create is one of lethal beauty: half a ton of pure muscle and rage, with silicate scales capable of both withstanding bullets and refracting las fire, a lower jaw replaced with a ripping chain sword, and claws crackling with the power fields built into it's powerful feet. It is only when you have set it into semi-stasis within the drop pod that it occurs to you that some more potent form of control then the cursory electro goads would probably have been good: as is, you do not want to drop this thing near anything you wish to keep. Still, it is quite a potent weapon of last resort to have.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9 35: Biological Engineering: 4d6: 5, 4, 5, 1.Partial Success]

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When you imagined the lair of 8-Doxa-Krainaima, you imagined an abattoir: a place of abject slaughter and despair, littered with weaponry and skulls and the discarded corpses of failed experiments, coated with blood and core and stinking to the heavens.

Of course, reality does not at all match your expectations.

Reality is much worse.

8-Doxa-Krainaima holds the title of Magos Mactator, and that makes him a butcher in more than one way: a fighter on the frontlines, yes, but also a designer of weapons mundane and exotic, and a creator of servitors and cyborgs and tech thralls and all the other disposable instruments of war the Mechanicum requires to make war in its own proprietary manner. Cargo Hold Eight is a Servitor Workshop with none of the meager mercies such a thing would hold within the Imperium: it reeks of blood and desperation, not a little of the smell stemming from the cages that have been built into its walls, from top to bottom, a claw on a crane apparently the only means of access the Magos has deemed necessary. There are skeletons in some of these cages. Their flesh has been devoured cleanly enough to leave no trace of flesh or sinew or blood upon them. "Formides", 8-Doxa tells you, in what you have come to learn is cheer on his part: "there's other ways of cleaning of skulls, some of which are quicker, but if you want something reduced to sheer bones without putting in any work you just put in a hive of these."

He points to a pile of bones in the corner, crawling with segmented black bodies. You spot the mark of Khorne on some of their carapaces. The floor around their hive is polished clean, and you can see their paths within the gore that coats all of the workshop, now that you are looking.

It is, you have to admit, an impressive solution. "Have to be careful they don't pick my servitors clean, of course."

Something that is accomplished, you note, with a line of salt in the way of the huddle of flesh and metal that make up your subordinates growing crowd of Murder Servitors. Right before them stands a barrel that is, as far as you can tell, filled with offal.

8-Doxa notices your gaze, and shrugs. "It's a fairly easy way of pacification, while I work on it."

What it is becomes clear very quickly, as he pushes an arm through the rotting meat and retrieves the metallic, skull-like head that is buried within. The strange, diseased Necron, distinctly not in stasis, a scepter-like structure made of bone and cables attached at its neck.

"It has been infected by a virus by some ancient godlike thing they killed", 8-Doxa-Krainanima explains, his voice surprisingly soft. "It makes it crave blood, and flesh: to be coated by it, surrounded by it."

He holds up the skull, like a parody of a half-remembered play that was ancient even when you were young.

"Alas", says 8-Doxa-Krainanima, "poor Necrontyr, to win liberation from the flesh and crave it's weakness forever after."

There is a madness shining in his eyes: one that you cannot decipher the origin of.

"It does talk to me", 8-Doxa explains to you, quite matter-of-factly, "but do not worry. It is as close to worship of my god as its kind can get: the voices calling to coat my limbs and body in blood are nothing new."

He gestures to his workbench, where what appears to be a new mechadendrite appears to be slowly assembled.

"I am attempting to isolate the Virus", the Magos tells you. "If its spread can be controlled, it may make for powerful scrap code."

He will not be discouraged from this, and you do not feel like trying: not when he is still irregularly starting and stopping the Chord Claw, fine mists of organic vapor rising where they touch the gore that coats his workshop. Still, there are some things that you can, potentially, do.
[8-Doxas Experiments]
[] Distract
There are a lot of tasks to do around the ship, surely. Ask for weapons to be made for everyone who might possibly need one. Ask him to take a look at the Plasma Cannon. Ask him to do literally anything that might take him away from the skull and this insane plan
[] Disinterest
Take steps to ensure that any fuck-up does not spread beyond him, and then let him do his thing. Maybe it'll kill him, or a lot of bystanders, or the ship. Maybe it'll be useful. You don't rightly care.

[] Support
Put whatever materials he needs at his disposal: this is, potentially, a weapon of significant potency, if it can only be controlled. Myges Talef might be able to help, come to think of it: send him by to do so: he's used to working with 8-Doxa, by now, right?

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Dreams are a strange thing: the random firing of neurons as the body purges itself of built up toxins, interpreted by an organ conditioned to seek patterns, yes, and perhaps even an evolutionarily developed tool to grant catharsis for certain emotions, but also undeniably linked to the Warp, and in this way to that disgustingly ephemeral concept of the soul. Dreaming is important to the soul, in some way you have not discovered, and though you have largely done away with the habit of sleep, preferring to purge any built-up toxins in a more efficient manner, but still occasionally it takes you, voluntarily or not, and even rarer there are dreams.

You can tell that is what they are, usually. This one is, at any rate: the fact your open eyes simultaneously perceive the wall of the workshop is a dead giveaway for that.

Even so, you find yourself following along.

The fact that you are dreaming of the most perfect woman you have ever seen certainly helps.

She comes wearing the black robes of the True Mechanicum, as is good and proper: the bulk of her body is concealed beneath them, though the way they billow out in certain places teases at the mechadendrites that might be hidden beneath, and the tips of claws peek out beneath their hem. From her sleeves, the tips of claws peek: crude-looking instruments that seem, in fact, to be capable of high degrees of precision, that seem sharp enough to split skin and slice nerves and cut bone without causing any pain that is not entirely intended. Only her face is visible beneath the black hood: seemingly organic, but far too perfect for that: too symmetrical and well-formed to be anything but the most masterful of artifice, done so skillfully that you can detect no sign of it. The perfect woman smiles at you, and then she produces one of the Eldar, the corpse appearing on a slab of basalt that was not there before. Her claws slice through skin and flesh, and you catch tantalizing glimpses of xenos biology: utterly alien internal organs, blood and tissue and sinew all of subtly the wrong color. The perfect woman smiles at you, raising her claw and gesturing.

Corpses appear behind her, hanging on a rack: an infinite count of xenos, minor and major, hang from the rags like clothes in the wardrobe of a spendthrift noble, ready for your perusal and dissection. The woman knows these all, and intimately: she can show you all there is to know about their biology, if you are just willing to pay her price.

The first lesson is free, you grasp: a taste of what she has to offer, just enough to whet the appetite. Everything else is a matter of payment to be discussed later.

She smiles, an unspoken promise as she bids you forward to show you the anatomy of the thing that serves the function a kidney might for humans.

You lean in when you realize the lesson will be free. It is, after all, knowledge freely given.

You can still deny her price, though she assures you it will not be ruinous.

You do not quite notice waking, but then, you never do. When you do wake, you find your head filled with just enough knowledge to be tantalized.

Skill Progress: Xenobiology, 1/4

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