WARHAMMER 40,000: A Thousand Tiny Suns (40k/Exalted Crossover!)

"I believe we have everything we require," you said, then started to lead Gitta aboard the airship. Fortuantely, Gitta was a well trained war-horse, and she easily stepped into the tight confinement of the piloting chamber, sitting down on her haunches and then folding her forearms up under herself in a way that made her look rather like a loaf of bread. You weren't sure if normal horses could have compacted themselves like that, but this was why the Death Riders were superior. You reached up and brushed, gently, along the inner side of the augmetic sealmask that covered her face. A whuff of warm air escaped the filter, while Gitta bumped her head against yours.

"Hmm, she cannot smell flowers."

You started and spun around, and gaped as you saw the Bonesinger, Ilthandier, stepping into the airship behind Kit and Amberly. SHe had discarded her robes for a simple set of mesh armor, the hardened plates and the smooth mesh interlocking together to create an elegant, brightly colored figure - yellow and blue and gold. It was so garish. She had a sleek xenos rifle strapped to her back and a xenos sword hanging from her hip, making her look more martial than she had been before.

"Where did you come from?" Amberly exclaimed.

"The elevator," Ilthandier said, her voice amused.

"Aren't you a civilian? What are you doing here?" you asked, angrily.

"All we who dwell in a craftworld must be called to defend it. I have set aside the path of the Bonesinger to carry the path of the Guardian - for the moment." She smiled, slightly. "There is a rather large and unfortunate dragon quite near to my home - I would prefer to put my own hand on the tiller, guiding the raft through these rocks."

You narrowed your eyes at her.

"Hey, the more the merrier!" Crys said, cheerfully.

You didn't know about that.

The airship 9811 took off from the patropolis of Lund with a fanfare and a lightshow - glittering glyphs flashed along the hive-like spire of the patropolis as the humming essence powered engines clove through the pitch blackness of the chamber that the patropolis had taken root in. You watched through the windows, sitting as far from the xenos as possible, while said xenos worked on sharpening her sword with a quiet humming note. Amberly petted Gitta, and Kit stood behind your chair. Crys had her hands on the controls and was looking a bit awkward. She glanced back at everyone as the floodlights of the airship came on - and spilled across sleek metal and silvery gears. You were cruising along an industrial landscape within a titanic warehouse - huge engineering bay...

It was infuriating to watch skim by because your mind kept catching on threads, like you were being snagged by brambles and thorns. Everything almost made sense, but you knew you just didn't see enough to know where it was all going.

"...so, uh, were you two at war recently?" Crys asked, jerking your attention away.

"Hmm?"

"You and the other lady," Crys said. "Ilthandier."

"Oh, uh...the human race has been at war with xenos for ten thousand years," you said, firmly. "Longer, even. They attacked us before even the Imperium was founded."

"What's a xenos?" Crys asked.

"An alien," you said. "A non-human."

Crys looked at you a bit quizzically. "Like an elemental? Or a machine spirit?"

"No, like, a...they're...they're a xenos," you said, a bit lamely, not sure how to explain it any better. Crys frowned.

"We are of different stock, but the same doom," Ilthandier said, her voice amused.

"...huh..." Crys frowned, tapping her foot. She glanced at you, biting her lip. "Is it going to be a problem? In this kind of mission, we can't have wars going on between an assembly."

You snorted. "You should ask her, the perfidious Eldar are the ones who have always stabbed us in the back."

"Mmm. Yes. Quite." Ilthandier murmured, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

Crys sighed - but before she could continue, a vast wall appeared from the darkness, as stark and sudden as a lightning bolt. The floodlights of the ship shone out towards it as you admired the smooth purity of the wall. There was a single, human scale catwalk, positioned what had to be two, three kilometers above the complex ground, leading to a tiny door which, alone, stood out against the smoothness. Rather than crusiing towards the doorway, Crys dove the airship down, picking up speeds as essence lightning crackled from the skin of the ship and touched the wall. She flew towards the ground and you saw that there was an opening down there: a vast vent, air blooming from it in a slow hissing roar.

The airship dove in, the air pressure change causing the whole ship to shudder and quake as Crys pulled up, taking you through dull red-luminated corridors the size of a hab block. The airship took a left, then a right, then a left, and then burst out of another vent - and above a vast, flowing conveyor belt of shimmering slag metal. Cauldrons of the stuff stung by overhead, while cranes and more catwalks stretched overhead. A crane swung a huge collection of freshly forged pipes overhead while Crys took you up and into the first of the catwalks, which lined above the factory floor. Hammers the size of buildings crashed down onto the slag as it was poured automatically into molds, and the entire place was lit by red and blue - the blue coming from immense arcs of lightning that leaped along the ceiling, springing from capacitator to capacitator.

It was...

Less like a hive city than you expected.

Everything was vast and inhuman - there was no room even for the proles to work, merely the machine. You wondered if this was what Mars looked like, in the dreams of the tech-priests.

"All right, from here it should be fairly easy cruising till we reach the first of the interlock airchambers and the oil tank 2234...assuming it hasn't moved..." Crys said, shaking her head. She turned in her seat as the airship hummed above the factory. She leaned in, grinning a bit. "Now, as I was saying...are you going to be okay with the Eldar?" She asked.

---
[ ] Of course! And to prove it, you will spend the flight talking to her
[ ] Of course! And to prove it, you will spend the flight ignore her existence and doing something else.
[ ] Write In

Health: Fine
Anima: Dim
Willpower: 5/5
Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
XP: 0 | Solar XP: 2
Major Projects: 0/5
SXP: 21 | GXP: 36 | WXP: 11