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

"It will be fine!" you said, then decided you would prove it. You stepped over to the Bonesinger and placed your hands behind your back. She was still drawing her finger along the smooth curve of her sword, her head cocked as she regarded the blade. You opened your mouth behind the resperator - but before you could ask anything, she looked up and transfixed you with an intense look.

"Your Earth, it has a moon, does it not?" she asked, her voice pointed. "Not two? One?"

"Of course!" you exclaimed. Every child across the Imperium had some variation of The Twelve Fables of Holy Terra, and you were able to bring forth this childhood learning to impress a xeno. You supposed it was in the general direction of what the schola was meant to teach, yes? "Earth's moon, Luna, is famous. Did you know across the galaxy, no other moon is as uniquely perfect."

"Is that so," Ilthandier said, her voice still holding that lilting amusement all Eldar seemed to affect at all times. She looked down at her sword and started to sharpen it again, humming quietly as her finger and her focus alike honed the blade.

"Yes it is!" you said, hotly. "Luna is placed, by the divine will of the God-Emperor himself, precisely far enough to produce the most auspicious and unlikely celestial movement - the holy Eclipse." You held up your thumb, as if to cover the sun. The books were quite clear on all this.

Ilithandier's musical laugh pealed off the wall. "You know all worlds have eclipse, yes?"

You scowled, then went to the wall. "No, like this!" You drew out your standard issue transcription device and scribbled out the diagram - shocked at how much you remembered from the book. "See! A total eclipse!"

Ilithandier cocked her head at the diagram. Then she sprang to her feet. "Truly!?"

"That wasn't in my copy of the Twelve Fab-" Amberly started, then, at your look, hastily said. "Yes, truly, it's...truly, truly. Luna is quite a moon, sacred. Holy, even."

"I have long wondered at mon'keigh pretense," Ilithandier said, looking at the diagram with an intense, almost avidoid focus. "Maybe there is something behind it."

You sat next to Ilithandier, then leaned against the wall, looking out the window out of the corner of your eye. The endless foundries continued to pass by. Quietly, you asked: "Have you seen anything like this?"

"There are dead paths of slain gods that I think harken to this," Ilithandier said, her voice soft. "Vaul, the smith."

"You referred to him about me," you said, cocking your head to get a better view out the window. Crys took a banking turn to avoid a massive pillar that looked a bit like a smokestack. Conveyors ran in and out of bricklike buildings that had to be the size of small mountains - and from them emerged cooling ingots carried on racks, which were conveyed off to more hammers and pistons. Whirring robotic arms were stabbing forth, and star-bright pinpricks of cutting and welding systems flared and flashed. Ilithandier smiled, wanly.

"Vaul, oh Vaul...born lame of leg and swift of mind, ugly and bent, he was mocked by the other gods...sickly, he was born dying. Of an immortal kind, he alone knew the fear of death, and so, he understood mortalkind best of all," she said, quietly. "He hid his face, often. In the old inscriptions, his back is to us, his head bowed, his hair long."

You fidgeted, uncomfortable with her words.

"There is a saying among the Drukari, the ones that you call Dark Eldar - when you see any difference at all - that pain reveals as much as it transforms." She turned, looking at you. "Vaul suffered, and it revealed a great genius, and a great kindness. Save, of course, when his spouse was involved." Her lips quirked up. "But that-"
"Is a tale for another time, yes, yes, I know, how many stories do you Eldar have?" you asked, angrily.

"Less than your kind," Ilithandier said. "I still haven't read every book on the Horus Heresy and I'm immortal."

"Why is every other word out of your mouth an insult?" you asked.

"To a wound, every caress is an agony," Ilithandier said.

"I'm not a wound!" you said, flaring angrily.

"And yet, you wear a mask, still," she said.

"She doesn't always," Kit said, cutting into the conversation with a casual interjection - something that made you freeze bodily. He turned in his chair and grinned warmly at you. "And it's not a mask, the way you and I think of masks. 41-22 doesn't hide her face from shame. Her mask is part of being Kreig - it's how she...expresses herself."

"Is that so," Ilithandier said, her eyes suddenly sparkling, brightening far more than it seemed possible considering the dim lights of the cabin and the shadowy realm you were flying through. Her teeth flashed just as brightly. "And in what situation, oh perfect moon, did you get to see her face?"

"That is a story for another day," Kit said, smiling slightly.

"For another day! Ever! never! Never! That is, a never day!" you said. "So, uh...do you think...this...automachinery out here is clearly producing ingots that, oh, look, we're just now flying over the next output array, and see...are..." You turned, cheeks burning and the rest of the room forgotten as you mashed your rebreather against the window, the panes of your eyeholes clacking against glass. "Emperor above, are those self sealing stembolts? Mass produced and, oh! There's flying machine spirits taking them off - this organ is actually providing material for the rest of the body...we're in a production facility! it's doing something."

"Of course it's doing something," Crys said, sounding offended.

"Something we can understand though," you said, taking out your tool and scribbling on the wall. You craned your head, grumbling, trying to see more clearly. With a little sigh, Ilithandier stood and then peered down with you.

"The converyors connect like so," she said, plucking your transcription device from your fingers - her fingers shockingly warm and hot to the touch, as if she burned with fever. She scribbled a few junctions you had been trying to make out. She handed the transcription device back, then smiled at you. "Does it illuminate the issue more for you?"

"Y-Yes..." You said. "There's inefficiencies down there."

"How can there be inefficiencies!?" Amberly exploded. "This is the Omnisiah, a manifestation of the Emperor himself."

Crys bit her lip. "Don't..." She turned back. "Don't tell anyone back home. We don't like to talk about it. But the Blight Zones? The Gremlins? They're...spreading. Growing. The orthodoxy is that they're products of voidbringer cults - that order and stability can be maintained and expanded against them, that we can fight back. But...I've seen some projections. Doc did them for the team, in a private meeting. The Great Maker is dying."

"Yes, the Emperor has been wounded, and he needs his sacrifice, but..." Amberly hesitated. "There's a difference between...there...the parts that work should work! The astronomicon doesn't blink or fail. It works! Because the Emperor is eternal."

"Eternal wounds for an eternal faith," Ilithandier said, her voice soft.

You started to pace through the room. "Well, obviously, we just have to fix him," she said.

Everyone looked at you.

You blinked behind your mask.

"...fix him?" Crys asked. "Fix the Great Maker?"

"Fix the Emperor himself?" Amberly asked, sounding just as offended.

"Well, I can't fix the Emperor," you said, thinking as you did so, the thoughts flowing through your brain. The realization ticked over in a single lurch, an obvious conclusion springing on you right out of the blue. It was so staggering that you stood there silently, working backwards. Your mind spooled backwards. Autocthon was dying. He was born dying, with a sickness in him - expressing itself in the tiniest little inefficiencies here, then building outwards. Fixing him was possible, you could just barely begin to see where to go. Because you were an Exalted. And then your mind came back to that thing you had refused to think about, all the way back on Cathexias II.

A chaos worshiping sorcerer had said...He was dead.

"41-22?" Kit asked, quietly.

"I..." you were silent for a while. "Crys. Uh. You said Alchemical Exalted, uh...I...how did they...happen?"

"Well, the Great Maker provided the schematics to them in sacred visions and dreams to the first Soldaties - he had designed them," Crys said.

"And you said, uh, you're Jade caste, what are the other castes?" you asked.

"Orichalicum, Moonsilver, Starmetal, Soulsteel, Jade and Adamant," Crys said. "Why?"

The glittering brightness of gold. In your mind your could see it flowing before you.

"Solar, Lunar..." you said, trembling. "Sidereal oh my you're a prototype." You started to pace around and around.

"You said you weren't the Emperor, but you were of him," Amberly said. "When you spoke to the heretic. That means the Emperor's still alive, he's just blessing us." She spoke with a kind of confidence that made you realize that you hadn't thought about this because it still felt like standing on the precipice again. Again, again, again. You'd come back here again a third time, if you pushed away. And back again. And again. Until you actually reckoned with it.

"...I think he was right," you whispered. "Thark-Thakunen."

Amberly's eyes narrowed to slits. "What?" she asked.

"Who?" Crys asked.

"I think the Emperor is dead," you whispered. "I can't fix him."

Crys was silent for a long moment. Amberly, though, simply shook her head. "Incorrect," she said. "I think you're letting your own concerns and worries run yourself ragged and allowing doubt to infiltrate your mind. Simply bulwark yourself against such things and reject it."

"Also-"

Whatever Kit was going to say smeared as your entire body locked into warm ice. Colors bled from the room and a smearing of patterns started to draw itself across your eyes. The sensation was hideously familiar. You strained and trembled - clenching your teeth and glowering at the image...of Asdrubael Vect as he flowed into your perceptions again. It felt like every neuron in your brain was on fire at once - and then there was a CLICK and you found yourself able to move. The rest of the cabin seemed perfectly still, caught in the transitory moment, and you and Vect were the only beings with color. You crossed your arms over your chest and glared daggers at him.

"How are you doing that!?" you snapped. You felt like the connection wasn't just easier and faster, it was...more...

Intuitive.

That was unsettling. Previously, you had needed to scream in your mind. Now, you felt as if you were present in the same room as he.

"It's a little tiny bit beyond a mayfly mon'keigh," Vect said, sneering at you. "But one thing I did not expect to be beyond you was to be so slow. How-"

"Direct neural stimulation of a quantum entangled pattern that matches some part of my brain's internal architecture, using direct interfacing," you said, throwing out the theory you had been batting around.

Vect frowned at you. "You know, no one is impressed when a canine can play regicide, yes?"

You stepped closer, glowering at him. "And we're not slow! We're on the way. WArp travel takes time-"

"And yet, my Hamunclai say that you are within the webway. I assumed you'd be at my door any second after that, and yet, here you are!" He looked around himself. "Have you gotten lost? Do I need to send a guide?" He sneered. "Or maybe I should destroy a planet or two to hurry you up?"

"We're getting there!" you said, snarling at him.

Vect narrowed his eyes - bloodless lips pursing. Then he started to smirk. "I'm curious where precisely in the webway you are, right now. It's confusing my poor Homunculi...maybe you could tell me that, rather than risk that I might destroy...say..." He sneered. "Scintilla? Necromunda? Oh, maybe poor dear Ilthar-Kalak."

You bristled at him.

---
What to offer Vect to buy time.

[ ] Tell him precisely where you are and let him chew on the fact his webway connects to the terrifyingly vast and dangerous Realm of Brass and Shadows. It'd be funny to see how many Eldar get themselves mangled here.
[ ] Start speculating on the communication system to annoy him
[ ] Refuse to communicate at all and try and get Kit or Amberly to break the connection, like they did last time
[ ] Try and get Ilithandier's help. She was an Eldar. She might be able to stick her Eldar nose in?
[ ] 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

You scowled at Vect from behind your gas mask. "So, like, how are you even doing this? It's not psychic, our psychics couldn't detect it. And I don't think that you Dark Eldar have psychics, right? Something to do with the damage to your souls? Is that right? Am I right?" you asked, starting to pace. Asdrubael Vect shook his head and sighed.

"I-" He started, his voice icy.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait!" you said, lifting your palm up and the dark lord of Comorragahg looked a bit like if someone had splashed a felinid in the face with a cup of water. He was going to be angry, but his features were still caught in the shocked expression, the disbelief anyone would ever tell him to wait, stop, or hold his tongue - and in that momentary lapse, you barreled forward, your brain running through every option. "It can't be through any kind of direct signaling, it can't be through the webway, you used it when I wasn't in the webway. It has to be something directly interacting with my neurons - because I felt it, and heard it, and your homunculi said...said..."

You tapped your temples.

"You da-"

"Transmission system! There's a tool, a device, and it leads to direct neuronal interference, possibly using...the only thing that could possibly subvert the restrictions on luminal transmission of information and the issues of the relative frames as laid out by the natural magos Newtonien...is..." your eyes widened behind your resptirator. "You're inducing mirror neurons using the quantum entanglement principles, tied into my exaltation!"

Vect looked to his left, then back to you. "How?" he rasped. "How could you possibly know th-"

"Well, it's obviously the only way you could possibly create this kind of communication, because merely using essence channels would never work because instant communication is fundamentally impossible without the influence of She Who Lives In Her Name, the Titan of the Endless Desert, that is, the Primoridal who created the concept of spaces and distance, and wait, wait, wait!" You held up your finger. "But you can't just make a neuronal connection without a mirror'd bridge! But you can't possibly have a mirrored bridge of my brain, that'd require a perfect duplicate of my head! So, the only possible way wo-"

The way to do it exploded into your brain. ALl at once. You knew how to do it. And it made you sick. And it was also impossible.

But every other method of doing it was impossible. They'd all work differently - different boundary effects. Maybe he was using an elemental? no, then the elemental would arrive, you'd talk to it, it wouldn't just be Vect standing here. Maybe...a portal, a teleportation, a warp effect? No, no, that'd read as psychic. The Dark Eldar could use psychoreactive devices, but then Aurora would have recognized it. And there'd be the secondary bleed effects. He couldn't have been using Elsewhere for communication, the webway interplexing would have led to a...no there-

"...and now, you insult me, you interrupt me? You pathetic worm, I should exterminate a planet just for the insult," Vect's rasping, snarling voice broke into your head.

"You..." you whispered, slowly. "How the...how...how the fuck did you clone the Emperor of Mankind and why are you using him as vox unit!?"

Again, the shocked felinid look.

Then, suddenly, a bink and the connection popped away. You wobbled slightly, and Kit, immediately standing up and turning to face you, put his hand on your shoulder. "41? Are you okay?"

"Vect called me again," you said, a bit dazedly. "I need a moment."

Kit looked concerned as you turned, walked towards the back of the airship, found the bathroom. You closed the door, then took off your mask.

Kit and Amberly in the main room exchanged a nervous glance.

"Stupid frakking piece of Emperor be damned xenofilth cowardly backstabbing blackguard Yozi take his essence addled drug peddling extortionist knife eared arrogant gangster maniac!" CLANG! WHUMP! WHUMP! "Rip your frakking head off and shoot bolt shells down it until your-" THUMP THUMP THUMP.

A moment later, you emerged from the bathroom, remasked, breathing steadily.

"We have a mild problem," you said, feeling a bit calmer.

The airship had found a place to berth for a rest cycle - something that made you actually look askance at Crys, who smiled at you with amusement. "Uh, we Alchemicals still need to sleep," she said. "We can also eat, if we want too."

"Huh," you said, while Kit looked out the window of the airship.

"Are we going to be safe here?" he asked. The place you had berthed was not exactly what you'd have picked: A huge crane, suspended above a vast, trackless warehouse that was full of countless stacked crates, arranged in rows and mountains that formed a chaotic, yet perfectly gridlike pattern beneath you. The crane was still and sleeping, but it clearly was designed to move. Crys patted the side of the wall, nodding as she did so.

"Chambers like these rarely move - and a klaxon will wake us if there's going to be movement. Then, we determine if the crane is going to swing us into a train - and if it is, then we stick with. Train-veins that run from this chamber go along the routes we mean to go along, and I want to take advantage of it, if we can."

You sighed. "So, uh...we all...take watches?"

"Don't worry, I'll take first watch!" Crys said. "You three get your sleep. Uh, you kinda need it after that...bad...news you got." She frowned. "Still not entirely sure i understand it."

"Evil aliens, according to this half-mad Kreiger we have running around," Amberly said. "I say it's..." She hesitated for a moment, then took her cap off. "I...hope to the Emperor it's not true. But if they've cloned our god...what does that even mean? I..." she hesitated. "It's possible to clone men. And the Emperor is a god, but he was a god born of humanity. The best of us. We're all meant to try and attain his glory, in our own way. The Creed teaches this - godhood and humanity are one in the same. So...if you can clone a man...can you clone a god?" She looked uncertain.

You tapped your foot against the ground. "Maybe. But..." You sighed. "I can't think of another way for the communication to get through to me." You hesitated. "I could diagram more possibilities-"

Kit and Amberly, as one, looked at the wall you had covered with diagrams over the last six hours.

Kit swung his arm around you, lifted you over his shoulder, and carried him to the bedroom.

"Unhand me!" You squeaked, wriggling.

The door closed and Amberly and Crys exchanged a look.

"How good is your soundproofing?" Amberly muttered.

"Oh extremely good," Crys said, cheerfully.


"...not...good enough," Crys whispered, blinking at the wall as Amberly, her face red, glowered and paced in circles, her hands on her hips.

The airship, sans train, carried on through the vast tracks where a train was meant to go. Cautiously, Crys kept the airship flying higher than the train was wont to go, and kept near the air vents that spanned every few hundred feet. You still felt an anxious tension, and noticed that Crys was being quite attentive, looking ahead with a frown.

Well, at least she-

"So, what is a Cadic, anyway?" Crys asked.

"Uh...huh?" you asked.

"Just, you kept telling Kit to frak your trench with his thick Ca-"

"Cadia is a planet that, er, it was a planet, that is, I, the...you...privacy!" you exclaimed. "Privacy, there is...shut up!"

Crys guffawed - then, immediately, became all serious. "Hold up. See that?"

She jerked her chin. You, face burning brilliantly, stepped up and leaned against the cockpit window.

And you did see it. There was a catwalk that lined the ceiling, allowing people to walk across the immense, five, six kilometer wide mega-train tunnel that served as this train-vein through the Omnisiah. And upon that catwalk...was a small army. You counted at least a hundred people, with heavy crossbows and emplaced essence cannons, as well as nets and other launchers. They wore ragged, underhive garb, and you recognized them immediately.

"Gangers," you said.

"Tunnel folk," Crys said, then turned. "I don't recognize their faction colors - they might be friendly, just making sure we're not hostile by carrying a big stick. They might be bandits." She sighed. "They might be friendly, but got raided by Estasia recently and think any Octet intrusion into their territory is a slave raid."

"Hmm," Kit said.

---
[ ] Approach and then try to communicate
[ ] Try and find a way around
[ ] Frak this, full speed ahead, dare them to attack as you fly past
[ ] 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