Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

Every shipborne AI has a dream to charge headlong at an enemy, spitting defiance from their weapons in glorious combat. It's usually one they grow out of by their second century - there's often a smarter option than Full Ahead and Ready the Broadsides.

But if there's a better option here, you're not seeing it. There's an enemy ship in-system that must be destroyed, and by every indication you'll win the straight-up fight. The less time you give them, the less likely they are to make clever plans of their own. Especially the clever plan of "running away." That would be capitol-b Bad, because it means that they'd carry knowledge and samples of your technology away with them.

Right now, it looks like the Chaos warband is hunkered down and in the process of turning Denva into their own power base. They're content to siege out the system and build up their own forces.

But if they escape, then you'll have a long-term nemesis on your hands, equipped with much of your technology and probably the public version of knowledge about you. It would be far better to end them here and now.

Still, it will be hours before you get within weapons range, even if they accelerate towards you at all possible speed. And just because the primary plan is to get up close and gut them, it never hurts to have some secondary plans in place.

Your crew are all still on the line, and you regret that you're not all in person for this meeting. But none of you were expecting to be charging straight into a battle, and there's no sense in delaying just so you can all get together.

"The plan is to charge forward and hammer them to scrap. We aren't giving them time to do anything clever, and if they do decide to run they'll need to do it soon or else we can probably catch them," you announce, having mulled over your options in just a few seconds.

"Why wouldn't they run?" Anexa asks. "We're a bigger ship than they are."

"Because they think they can win," Cia responds bluntly. "Besides, they're Chaos. Who knows what kinds of perfidious tricks they're hiding."

Anexa sends a noosphere shrug in response. "That's what the psychic shield is for."

"Should we engage in communication?" Victan asks, thinking hard. "Trick them into coming at us somehow? We could pull the Ork Manuever again. Offer the chance to surrender and threaten to disable their ship and take them into custody. That might make them think we're easy to trick. Then we blow them away from close range."

You frown. "Chaos is tricky, and they can do warp stuff. Even communicating with them can be dangerous, and there's every chance it backfires. Instead you should get in contact with W, tell her the plan and ask her to use whatever her trump card is, and coordinate with me if there's anything we can do to make it work better."

He sounds amused. "Because she definitely has one."

"Exacltly. Anexa, I want you to try to hack the those shipyards, as well as every other manufactory the Forsaken Chorus controls. They look like they're built to the designs I gave Denva, so we should know them inside and out. Get them producing combat bots, or failing that just explosives. Hopefully we can sow some chaos of our own, and potentially even recapture the industrial platform. Denva's going to appreciate the manufacturing capacity if we can recapture it successfully."

"Acknowledged," she replies, already a bit distracted. If she hasn't already pulled up the specs on the manufactories to plan a hack you'd be shocked.

"Shall I prepare to repel boarders?" Cia's tone is complicated, with layers of anticipation and dread tamped under long-established discipline.

"Yes," you reply. "I'll be watching out for any attempts, but we need to watch out for a full-court bording strategy. We'r a little light on combat bots, so we need to prioritize victory over territory. There aren't many regions of the ship that are critical, so if we need to fall back from the labs or the hangers to better chokepoints that's fine. We need to protect the crew quarters, my core and the reactor."

"And the Oubliette," she reminds you.

"And the Oubliette," you parrot back. "We'll work together on distributing the bots. But we've got the defenses, so let's use them. You should stay in reserve again. We don't know what their elites look like, but countering them is on you."

"It is," she acknowledges, that mixed tone of dread and excitement making a reappearance.

I've always wanted to say this.

"Let's be about it, people."

Over the next few hours you keep your sensors peeled, watching every movement of the enemy ship carefully while you assist your crew with their own preparations. The Echo of Apotheosis is an unreasonably spiky ship that isn't as heavily armed as you were expecting, though the flanks are studded with a large number of hanger bays. But it's not moving, just hanging over the planet and sending and receiving shuttles from the planet below.

You're wondering why when Victan finally established a live connection with W. To your amusement it's through the hidden radio tower that was one of your first construction projects on Denva. The signal is heavily encrypted with yet another code you weren't aware of, and you tip your hat to Victan and his aunt. Hiding secrets like that from you is impressive and a little disturbing, but you're not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Victan, Vita, come in." W's lined face appears on the connection, looking like almost the same person as you first met. Her face has more lines now, and the salt in her hair has grown a little more pronounced, but it could have been five years instead of a hundred and twenty since your first meeting.

"We're here. We're moving straight to engage the Echo of Apotheosis." Victan replies.

"Thank the Throne." Her voice holds immense relief. "They're retrieving people from across the planet. It looks like they're bringing just about everybody who can fight aboard." Her tone grows hard. "Including the janissaries."

Her next question is blunt and specific. "Can you win?"

Victan answers for you. "We think so. But if you've got a trump card, now's the time."

She grimaces. "It's not as much as I'd like. We've been building fighters and bombers, and we can deploy them to support the space battle. But they'll be minced if they go out unsupported."

You take a moment to ponder that. "Launch them as soon as you can. We want them distracted, and I don't think they can run anymore. I could use the support, especially if they're planning what I think they're planning."

She nods. "Anything else? If you're certain you'll win then I can initiate open uprisings in their territory at that time too. But if there's a chance they come back to the planet then I'd prefer to keep those assets hidden."

"One way or another, that ship is not getting out of this," you reply, trying to convey the weight of your intent.

She meets your eyes. "Okay. I'll get started."

The call is done, and you send another message to Cia with what you've learned. You've arranged the bots as best you can but she's still making small optimizations here and there.

All that's left is to hurry-up-and-wait. Well, not quite. You and Anexa are working on hacking all of the chaos-owned manufactories in the system, and you succeed at making the connection, and even gaining access to the system. But there's a block of some kind preventing you from accessing the manufacturing systems queue.

It's strange - there's data coming through it, but it's garbled. Mixed up. But not in a familiar way, and if you can only figure out the decryption scheme you should be able to take control.

"Hold on," Anexa says, looking at the data for a second. "That's the raw output of an Organic-Machine Control implant. But why is it here? We're inside the manufactory control systems, not interfacing with it? And it's still wrong."

The signal strength swells, multiple other signals piggybacking onto the existing connection. In the last moments before the strike you realize what's garbling the signal.

"It's corrupted."

Then the mental signals from at least a hundred servitorized & mutated OMC operators slams into your outer psychic shields in a screaming wail of torment and hatred. It's not scrapcode. It's more primal than that, more emotional. But it shares enough similarities that much of the force bleeds off into the diversionary systems to established to blunt the effect of scrapcode.

Hacking roll - 3. Failure.
-45 outer hull psychic HP.

The connections shut off soon after that, and you and Anexa reel back, double-checking your systems to be sure that everything's working as usual. The shields are holding but it was still a closer call than you'd like.

"Let's not try that again," she suggests, and you wholeheartedly agree. If you're going to recapture those manufactories it's going to be manually, not electronically.

In the meantime you've closed ever closer to the enemy ship, which is only now turning to accelerate towards you. It's still got one last round of shuttles making the round-trip with the planet below, but they're apparently relying on them being able to catch up in time.

It's no surprise to you when dozens of fighters cross over the horizon , launched from bases in Aevon on the far side of Denva Secundus. They target the shuttles and shoot some of them out of the sky, though some escape to the protective umbrella of the Echo of Apotheosis. You see the ship hesitate, considering going back to swat the annoying insects out of Denvan space.

W intervention in the space battle - 49.

However, they've done the same math that you have. If it does anything else than turn and face you then you'll be able to pick the exact terms of the engagement, and pin them against the planet below. So they ignore the planet behind them and start accelerating at an oblique angle, geared to graze medium range while giving them the longest window in long range.

But they've miscalculated. You spin the ship faster than they expected and accelerate yourself, cutting the angle. Now you'll barely graze short range, and spend long enough in medium range that your plasma cannons are all-but-guaranteed to be able to turn the enemy ship into molten debris.

That is the moment when you realize you've been neglecting something. Your warp sensors tingle, barely catching the edge of a ordered signal passing from their ship to yours. It's not an attack, but rather communication. You tune your attention into your warp sensors, focusing on the most likely culprit. It doesn't take long for your guess to be proven true.

Bongo's communicating with the enemy ship through the warp. It's a delicate touch, barely a whisper against the background turbulence of the enemy ship and local space. But it's real. You try and formulate a way to decode their messages, screening back through past data to understand how long this communication has been going on.

But you don't have time. You can't tell how long the messages have been sent, and you weren't paying as much attention to scrubbing out background from old signals. Without a larger sample of the signals there's no way to decode them. Maybe if you'd noticed this hours ago you could have done something, but for now you don't have the attention to spare.

Bongo-Chaos Signal interception - 2 Failure.
You don't know what Bongo and the Chaos Warband have said to each other, or even how long they've been communicating.

Still, not having time means nobody has time, and so you simply send a message to Cia that Bongo's been talking to the enemy and focus on the space battle.

Long-range fire reaches out in both directions, and you re-evaluate the enemy ship. It's clearly focused on long-range engagements, with just as many lances as you have. They slam into your shields, but with the tuning you've done they start recharging quickly, and it's going to be quite some time before your shields fall.

Their second move is about what you expected - a swarm of over a hundred boarding craft emerge from the enemy ship's hangers. You launch your own fighters in parallel, signaling for the Denvan fighters to engage as well. Those boarders are the real danger of this battle. You're growing more and more confident that the Echo of Apotheosis is not a true threat to the Spark of the Ancients in ship-to-ship combat.

But if they can overwhelm your onboard troops and capture your ship then that doesn't matter. Even if you've destroyed the enemy ship you'll have lost the war. Still, it's not like you're going to target your heavier guns on the shuttles. That's what the fighters and point defense are for, and the support from Denva's fighters is going to make a significant difference.

The enemy enter medium range and their shields fall with the first salvo of the plasma cannons. Your macrocannons are also firing - the range is a bit long but a lucky hit is still a hit, and their armor disintegrates in the face of the melta payloads your weapons carry.

Their ship is burning behind them but the boarding craft don't seem to mind, closing on your ship with singleminded intensity. They're screened by fighter craft, but those prove insufficient against the combined fighter strength of you and Denva, and some of them have to fall back to ward off the Denvan bombers that are prowling around the outskirts of the battle.

Some analysis tells you that the enemy seems to be prioritizing the protection of specific boarding craft over others - they're more heavily armored. Blacker. Spikier, and hidden in the middle of the enemy formations. The enemy ship is burning, so you divert your light lances to act as overpowered point defense to shoot down those craft in particular, and mark them as priority targets for the fighters.

That's the moment Bongo chooses to make a ruckus, rattling the shields of its cage with a new kind of attack you haven't seen before. There's a long shriek that reverberates between the walls of the Obliette, trying to find the resonant frequency of the prison and shatter it.

Bongo Escape Attempt - 2. Nope.

It fails. The psychic scream isn't dissimilar to what Cia unleashed early in her training, and it peters out without achieving its desired effect.

-30 Bongo Oubliette shielding

Almost in sync with that is some kind of psychic assault coming from the Echo of Apotheosis. You don't know what it's supposed to do, but it isn't like anything you've seen before. Some kind of terrible dread reaches for you - and deflects off your psychic shield.

-50 outer hull psychic shield

None of it serves to distract you from your targets, and the enemy boarding craft explode in sets as they enter the inner protective envelope and the point defense opens up. Still, almost a dozen makes it through to cut through your hull, though it takes them a moment longer with the alloyed armor. That lets you reorient the local combat bots towards the breach zones, and the enemies are met with a hail of fire as they cut their way into your ship.

Their return fire carries a desperate intensity and they break through the cordons, though not without leaving more dying cultists on the deck than destroyed bots. They stream past the battlefields and deeper into the ship, and that's when Cia's next move makes itself known. Bombs detonate themselves inside your ship, in the projected boarding paths of the various cultists, and she's predicted their paths well. Or just distributed bombs along every path that they could take, and only detonated the ones the cultists came near.

-125 bp of structure damage to the Spark of the Ancients.

They reach the next chokepoints with vastly decreased numbers. Unlike the last time you were boarded the bunkers and chokepoints built into the ship are properly manned and defended. Your bots hold the line as the cultists break themselves against the defense, dying almost to a man as they struggle to break through the reinforced defenses. A few stragglers peel off to flee back towards the hull, only to run into a screen of Specter bots closing in behind them. You capture about twenty who throw down their arms, but most of them opt to go down fighting when they realize they're surrounded.

+20 surrendered chaos cultists.
-413 Heavy Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers
-112 Specter Combat Bots

And with that it appears the battle is won. You're firing directly on the superstructure of the Echo of Apotheosis, and your own shields are low but not depleted. Their attempt at boarding has failed, and all that's left is gutting their ship.

Spark of the Ancients vs. Echo of Apotheosis - rolled 80 Good success.

Or so you thought. The remaining lances on the enemy ship start firing as quickly as they're able to cycle, burning themselves out after just a few shots. Still, it's enough to deplete the last of the charge on your shields even as another set of macrocannon rounds go off deep in the guts of the Echo of Apotheosis, setting off secondary explosions that begin to chain through the ship.

The enemy ship is doomed, but a teleporter signature betrays their final ace in the hole as a dozen heavily armored figures materialize near Bongo's Oubliette. They're eight feet tall and wearing familiar armor, though it's black and gold and decorated with horns and sigils of Chaos instead of the red-and-gold & aquilas of the Knights of the Crimson Vigil. Some of them bear visible mutations, with clawed armors or helmets partially hacked away to allow unnatural growths to protrude.

They take a second to reorient to their new location, and Cia's little optimizations bear fruit as the full squad of heavy combat bots opens fire before they get their bearings. Meltaguns and plasma weapons tear through the loose organization of Chaos Space Marines in the opening moments of the fight, putting half their number down in an instant and wounding several more.

But in the next moments they annihilate the combat bots, tearing through them with inhuman precision and speed. Bolter rounds shred the bots carrying the most dangerous weapons and then they enter into melee combat, ripping the bots apart with almost casual ease. You identify the leader as the biggest one. He's without obvious mutation beyond standing nearly ten feet tall, and carries two spiked bolt pistols chained to his wrists and two power swords on his thighs.

The sight of their combat prowess sends a chill through you, and you dash off a quick message to Cia. "Wear them down. Don't engage if you don't have to."

You get back a bare chirp of acknowledgement, but she's moving towards the squad of chaos space marines as fast as she can move. But so is every single combat bot on the ship, and if you could cram any of the fighters into the ship corridors you'd be doing that as well. More than two thousand bots against a half-dozen space marines.

No way they win.

But the fact that there's doubt in your thoughts is testament to the sheer and unadulterated warfighting prowess of these opponents. Their ship is a flaming hulk, the rest of their warband lies strewn through your hallways, but still they are a threat.

They're clearly intent on freeing Bongo, and they're just a few corridors away. But a constant stream of heavy bots is arriving from all directions. Now that they're not caught flat-footed the space marines cut through the combat bots. Their armor cannot protect them from the bot's weapons, but they make use of sight lines, incredible speed and aim to fire first, winning almost every engagement while taking only glancing blows in return.

But glancing blows from these weapons add up, and one marine falls and then another. The enemies break into a sprint, losing another member as they rush past the next group of bots instead of engaging them. Only three remain as they break into the room outside Bongo's Oubliette, but they face a firing line of heavy bots with Cia in the center.

Both sides open fire as one, and Cia is only spared from the resulting massacre by her void shield deflecting the fire that spills her way. Both of the other marines are torn apart but the leader of the Warband miraculously plows through the wall of fire. His armor is blackened with char instead of paint and the side of his face fizzles with the heat of a melta round that blew half of his helmet away but he's still mobile, and Cia's the only thing that stands between him and Bongo's vault.

He drops his bolters to draw the blades, and the power fields flicker to life as he bears down on Cia. He's got her in strength, speed and technique, but not in reach or power. Her blade is longer, and it flickers out to ward him away, buzzing with flaming lightning. The moment the blade is past he darts in to get in close, and then is blasted away by a flare of flame.

He lands in a roll, one bolter coming up to slam a few quick rounds into her, but the void shield catches them before it flickers and dies. Then she's on him again, and an overhead strike from her force sword strikes an upraised weapon in a block - and cuts into the defending weapon. His other sword comes up and she barely evades it, lashing out again with her sword and power.

Once more the Chaos Champion is tossed across the deck, smoking from a fresh application of fire. But this time Cia doesn't pursue and instead gives a command you've been waiting for. "Fire."

You oblige, pouring the full weaponry of the thirty combat bots that have arrived during the duel into the enemy leader. He evades and survives far more of the shots than should be possible, but after thirteen plasma rifles, five melta guns, and two rockets are all emptied into him he collapses, more of a swiss-cheese of armor than anything else.

-219 Heavy Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers
Repelling the Boarding Action - 86 Good success, almost crit.
+1 Cia Level.

Now the battle really is over, and you do several quick checks to be sure of that. The Echo of Apotheosis is breaking up, and the main reactor blows as you watch, consuming a third of the remaining ship and sending the other parts into unstable orbits. You send out a few bots to clean up the attack on your ship, sticking them into the vault you set aside for miscellaneous chaotic artifacts.

Research modified - A Curio Cabinet of Khornish Cultists (150 RP) becomes A Curio Cabinet of Cultists (100 RP)
New research unlocked - Chaos Space Marine Armor Investigation (100 RP)
New research unlocked - That's two levels of augmentation too many (150 RP)

You dial into the local communication networks and quickly parse through the data to figure out the situation. Urban combat has broken out across the parts Denva of Secundus itself outside of the Aevon defensive zone, and while there isn't a critical need for support, Denva Secundus is the most populated part of the system and you could undoubtedly save a lot of lives by putting your heavy combat bots & your capability for orbital strikes at their disposal.

The orbits of Denva Primus look clear from here, but you're not sure there's nothing on the surface beyond a few new orbital strike craters. Looking through the signal traffic from this close you can tell that Klyssar's nest is occupied by what remains of the Forsaken Chorus, who have taken the opportunity of a smaller isolated population they can completely occupy. There's some kind of resistance movement brewing out there, but it's nowhere near as organized as the one on the planet and doesn't have the same overwhelming numerical superiority.

There's also the Aetherion manufactories & refineries which are disturbingly radio silent - it seems like the cult completely replaced the workers out there with their own people, or those they corrupted. If you want to salvage all of the manufacturing capacity you should get out there as soon as possible. At least you're confident the ships in dock can't move yet, and won't be able to for at least a year. Likely more, now that you've cut off their supply of fresh recruits.

The question is - what to do now? You could move on a target immediately, but you probably don't have the forces for more than one before you need to stop and build more units. While you could technically send your combat bots in one direction while you take the ship in another that would limit your capabilities in both locations. So - where do you go?

Where do you exert your remaining forces?

[] Denva Primus
You can't see much activity, but it wouldn't hurt to check up on it and make sure there's no diabolical chaos plots taking advantage of the Vellkar.
[] Denva Secundus
You'll do your best to help the local population clean up the remaining cultists quicky and with a minimum of collateral damage.
[] Klyssar's Nest
The station has a friendly local population, but they probably can't rise up on their own. If you give the cultists time they might Come Up with Something, but if you go off half-cocked you might cause more collateral damage than you save.
[] Aetherion
The manufacturing capacity present at the gas giant is important for Denva's future - if it can be saved. Additionally, the Cultists might figure out some nasty tricks if you give them too much time with all of that manufacturing capacity.
[] Nowhere
You really don't have a lot of forces left. You need to build more before you can seriously consider moving on one of the objectives. Conserve what you have and avoid moving too quickly.

This vote is for the target you move on immediately. You will deploy your remaining forces there, do what you can and then we'll return to normal turns. Whichever you don't choose will play out over a longer time period, giving the cultists the opportunities to make their own moves. You'll need to dedicate order actions to taking over anything you don't take over now, except Denva Secundus, which will probably take care of itself before then. Denva will also likely work on all of these on their own next turn.

As far as you can tell, Denva Secundus itself is pretty intact and functional. The Forsaken Chorus didn't have the manpower to meaningfully occupy the planet, but they had strategic mobility and orbital firepower over the parts not near Aevon. They were very much in this for the long game and were working to corrupt the entire population without destroying the functionality of the society. If you'd given it another ten years then there would be a significant local chaos population. For now it exists but it's not huge. You'll find out how much of a problem that is in the next update. But it'll be less if you intervene immediately - less time for collaborators to go to ground.

You'll recieve information about how many BP you could get from redeeming your manufacturing boon next update. That number will be higher if you reclaim & roll well on uncorrupting the Aetherion manufactories.

You'll also get a number of other boons to redeem, dependent on this vote, rolls and future votes on tech transfer. It will be similar to the list at the bottom of this post. The list of available psykers will have changed, and you'll have the opportunity to upgrade your manufacturing boon into a "Continual Manufacturing Tribute" where you permanently get a percentage of their manufacturing capacity. Or you can get a second one-time manufacturing tribute that's a much higher percentage you can only use once.


For clarity, I didn't roll for what the Chaos Warband was going to do. They knew about you from Denva, and they were talking to Bongo as you approached. They were always going to go for the greater glory of capturing & corrupting you.

Rolls continue to be weirdly swingly. There's been a lot of sub-10 dice in the last turn.

I've been considering naming the threadmarks like I do this one. I might go back and do a few more of them - especially the sub-turns. Thoughts? Do you think it might spoil things?

My in-browser spellcheckers (both of them) crap out after the post hits about 3000 words. So there might be a lot of typoes in the second half of the update. Point them out and I'll fix them.

I don't think a moratorium is needed here. Let's just do 16 hours of voting.