Echoes of Eternity: A Warhammer 40k Necron Lord Quest
- Thread starter boredblues
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Very nice actually, but it's a bit too powerful. Let's keep it in the backpocket for when you guys get more well-equipped production facility.
Oh, we can design equipment for the future? I've got an idea...
Crown of Comprehension
This headgear is actually a manufacturing and control center for a specialized type of nanoscarabs. They are designed to be capable of adhering to any surface, at a cost of losing the hover mode, and their manufacturing systems were replaced with infiltration suite capable of transmiting their location and pan-spectral image of their surroundings to the Crown as well as network and hijack any non-warp technological system. Given sufficient time to produce and spread the scarabs, the Crown offers detailed insight into any machine encountered, taking seconds to highlight strengths and weaknesses, minutes to get a rough plan and hours to produce a complete blueprint capable with Necron fabricator systems.
How do you feel about universal machine scanner in a cool crown? Lack of hover mode limits range and no self-replicate function should balance the strategic utility without gutting tactical use.
Crown of Comprehension
This headgear is actually a manufacturing and control center for a specialized type of nanoscarabs. They are designed to be capable of adhering to any surface, at a cost of losing the hover mode, and their manufacturing systems were replaced with infiltration suite capable of transmiting their location and pan-spectral image of their surroundings to the Crown as well as network and hijack any non-warp technological system. Given sufficient time to produce and spread the scarabs, the Crown offers detailed insight into any machine encountered, taking seconds to highlight strengths and weaknesses, minutes to get a rough plan and hours to produce a complete blueprint capable with Necron fabricator systems.
How do you feel about universal machine scanner in a cool crown? Lack of hover mode limits range and no self-replicate function should balance the strategic utility without gutting tactical use.
huh. I do find it funny that all of XER picks for the turn have a plausibility of synergy or aiding eachother
Working on living arrangments with humans may grant insight into relief matrice
Working on matrice may aid her arguments to nobles
Working with nobles may grant insight on living arrangments
and the other way around
funny that.
Working on living arrangments with humans may grant insight into relief matrice
Working on matrice may aid her arguments to nobles
Working with nobles may grant insight on living arrangments
and the other way around
funny that.
Turn 3 Results-1
[X] Plan: Raise hands
- [X] Rahotamen:
-- [X] Fortify the Portal (but make it inviting - a table and few chairs in case guests are willing to talk
)
- [X] Ptolomes:
-- [X] Open the Armories: Roll: 0. Reward: Necron Heroes armed with the most powerful weaponry at your disposal. No Action spent. Write in equipment - Eldritch Lance, Harp of Dissonance,Gravity Displacement Pack and Tesseract Labyrinth. (If QM aproves)
-- [X] Chart the stars: Roll: 35. Reward: Knowledge of surrounding systems and warp-lanes, better preparation for enemy raids.
- [X] Xorathis:
-- [X] Make them at home: Roll: 20. Reward: The Skitarii form their own Faction loyal to you and start building families. Chance of a Skitarius Hero.
-- [X] Noble Sleep: Roll: 40. Reward: Gain one new Hero.
-- [X] A Heart, to live Roll: 50. Reward: Unlock Relief Matrices for your Heroes. (Only Xorathis)
Such a long road this is going to be.
Alone in her laboratory, Xorathis watched impassively her experiment unravel. The containment unit's panels, hair-thin and transparent to allow observation, were steadily turning the color of bruised meat. The Wraithbone cultures had ruptured their containers, bone-like growths shooting out to form shimmering nets of liquid quicksilver.
As she watched, the liquid thickened into jelly, then reddened into blood, fat drops falling to sizzle on the floor. It swirled, drawing the Spyders struggling to contain the outbreak into it. Thin limbs flailed among the rapidly accelerating liquid for a moment, before their owners were engulfed.
Instruments blared a violent increase in temperature. Measurements returned out-of-scale readings or just nonsensical numbers as they malfunctioned amidst rupturing circuits. The air inside the unit tinged with a red mist smelling of blood and iron.
Xorathis uncrossed her legs. [Deactivating Emotional Cores. Powering Dimensional Reactor. Initializing Weapon Protocols.]
A vortex of blood howled inside the unit, laying a trail of devastation through the cultures. Cracks ran across the floor, lava spraying from them. They sneaked up and into the air, until the vortex was impaled in a web of furious light in the shape of an eight-pointed star. Spiky spurs, like spears of hell-forged iron, erupted inside the unit.
Warnings blared as the laboratory's back-up containments kicked in. Blocky monoliths extruded from the walls and ceiling. They started to thrum and vibrate, their shapes blurring in a flurry of hyper-geometry. The cracks and the mist were repelled from the unit's walls, writhing violently inside.
As the Emotional Cores shut down one after the other, Xorathis' thoughts turned colder, more lifeless, as sharp as the glint of starlight on a flagship's hull, as painfully precise as the fractal lines of a Tesseract Maze, as dark as the void of space.
Nano-Scarabs formed a writhing column, which rested the Staff of Light. Xorathis picked it up.
"So dramatic," she commented, standing up. "Be done with it already."
The blood vortex erupted in a pulse of energy that cracked the unit's walls. In a cacophony of shattering glass, a massive form lunged out of it, trailing plasma and birthing fluids, like a thing being born at that same moment. The containment unit gave way under its assault, and the thing smashed its way out of it amidst howls of fury and shrieks of tortured metal.
It lunged for her, and Xorathis smoothly moved out of the way, sending it skittering on the floor.
The monster, a nightmarish amalgam of Necrodermis, half-melted spidery limbs and bloody meat in a vaguely humanoid shape, cracked the floor with a fist large enough to enclose a Space Marine. It howled, and it was like a blast furnace opening, the roar of unbound flame mixing with a jet of scalding steam.
Xorathis rose to her full height. Her Nano-Scarabs bloomed with darkness, clinging to her until her eyes glowed like witch lights amidst the gloom, her shape a blurry sketch of shadow among shadows.
The Herald lunged, swinging a massive axe at her head. The blood soaking the blade disappeared as it touched the darkness, as if a rag had wiped it off, but the weapon kept going. It smashed against the Staff of Light with a violent clang.
The daemon followed by throwing his left shoulder down and stabbing with a thick tail formed by Spyder carcasses smashed together to form a deadly tip. The Staff of Light moved with blistering speed, the second blade shearing through metal and flesh like it was paper, leaving a stump that rained scalding blood.
Instead of slowing down, the Daemon seemed to gain power from pain. He howled higher, his axe darting out with a speed that shouldn't have belonged to such a massive thing.
Their weapons came together once, twice. Thinner than the brute but taller, Xorathis was a wraith of darkness with glowing eyes. Deadly silence wrapped around her like a cloak as she swung a bar of crackling light against the howling monster of blood, fire, and metal.
At the third strike, tendrils of black matter flickered out of the joints of her armor, like solar flares. Un-light washed out of her, a liquid and a gas locked in a paradoxical existence, flickering and flashing with C'tan glyphs. It turned her darkness into a corona of expanding rings of colors, plasma and dark matter and interstitial energy, running with circuits made up of stars and nebulae.
She seemed to swell to enormous proportions, her shape lit in stark contrast like a totem of ancient times as she loomed over the Daemon.
The Herald howled in defiance as his axe broke, and again when the staff ran it through, pinning it to the ground.
Xorathis loomed over it, her eyes two pits of un-light. The Daemon swung a fist, and she grabbed its wrist with a taloned hand. The snap of bones and metal filled the air, and pain entered the monster's voice. It turned to gurgles as she smashed it into the ground.
It never stopped shouting even as coils of darkness devoured its limbs and gnawed into its torso.
It was writhing like a caught bug as Xorathis stepped away, darkness and light shedding from her like a discarded cloak.
"New note," she said, her tone clinic as she retook her seat. "The experiment can fail catastrophically. The consequences include: Warp-Flare capable of being used by Herald-rank Daemons to pierce the dimensional barriers."
The Daemon forced its head up, pointed chin digging a channel through the floor. Its eyes flared with infernal fire, having lost nothing of its belligerence. With no portal to sustain it with new Warp-energy and no blood to shed, its mangled body was already shedding away in rust-colored flakes.
"Abomination," He growled through broken teeth, rivulets of blood flowing from devastated gums. "Soulless monstrosity! The Blood God's gaze is upon you! There's no corner in the Galaxy you'll be able to escape from Him!"
Xorathis ignored it, listing damages and items that would need repairing for the next experiment.
"You've earned the ire of Urganak the Bloody! A century or a millennia from now, it doesn't matter. I shall return and then my axe will feed on what remains of your wretched soul! The story of your demise will pass into legend, one that will have mortals quake to their marrow!"
"The containment unit's security protocols will also be strengthened and the dimensional matrix reinforced to lessen the probability…"
"You're doomed! The legions of Fire will fall upon you on a tide of blood and metal. Your wretched form shall adorn the Brass Citadel's gate for all to see! You…"
"Oh, for…" Xorathis scoffed. She frowned at the mangled Daemon, annoyed for having reactivated her Emotional Cores. "Do you mind disappearing already? I really have no time to entertain a thing that believes itself to be alive."
For the first time, the raging fury of the Herald opened itself up for something else: confusion. Just a flicker of it, but it was as noticeable as a stormfront opening up.
"You…!" His outrage disappeared under a howl of agony as Nano-Scarabs jostled the spear in its chest.
"I have long studied you thought-forms," Xorathis said, annoyance for the interruption giving way to vague curiosity despite all. "And I have come to the conclusion that you aren't sentient, not truly. Incapable of doing anything but repeat your basic natures eternally, you are little more than mirrors, echoes of emotions, thoughts and dreams, empty and hollow."
The Herald's eyes blazed with hellish outrage. Xorathis continued.
"Since you fools lack in attention span, I'll do my best to summarize, so pay attention. You are nothing. No living being requires to be thought to exist like you do. You're all images, fantasies that someone dreamed and that now think of themselves as Gods." She chuckled. "At best? An elemental force, like a waterfall, or the wind, or the rain. Very impressive, but once you start picking it apart, you see that it's nothing more than a mechanism. And a deeply boring one at that. The Bloody? You really need to work on your creative skillset. But that would require some modicum of true sentience, I fear, something you all are deeply lacking of. Here, let me show you."
With a flick of her will, one of her Nano-Scarab projected a holo-image. It was the section of the Tomb now occupied by the few remaining organics. The Skitarii were busy signaling to Nano-swarms where to build and where to add or modify features, every gesture interspersed by bows and excuses and apologies for wasting the precious time of such holy creatures.
True to form, the Necron constructs had erected a small encampment in record time. Blocky houses, larger and more hospitable than any dwelling the cyborgs ever inhabited formed a small, orderly community. They once had private kitchens and bathrooms, but the Skitarii had preferred to replace them with communal facilities, a request that the Canoptek had soon acquiesced to.
A small library had been set up and furnished with a selection about maintenance, education, history, health and technology, scaled in levels of difficulty and riddled with small puzzles to screen potential and interesting specimens. An armoury accommodated what little weaponry they had, with the modest training range in use day and night.
Apart from fussing over the Scarabs, the organics were busy setting generators, water containers and data-banks. They laid cabling, hammered piping, pushed machinery into place and generally made a nuisance of themselves in their eagerness to "help" the Canoptek.
Much more usefully, they were organizing. Already the largest house had been turned into a communal hall. The lone Tech-Priest lucky enough to remain – they had decided by drawing lots – had taken possession of the edifice's first floor, turning it into a small laboratory and workshop from where he lorded over his brethren as leader of the settlement. His crackling sermons were starting to become a staple of that corner of the Tomb.
Another type of organizing was going on too. At Xorathis' nudging, the hologram showed a couple of Skitarii staring at their new house. The two's scalps and bodies showed the scars and sutures where invasive augmentations had been removed.
The woman leaned her hand on the man's shoulder, a hand laying over the small bump on her belly. The man held a protective arm around her shoulder. Both smiled.
Watching the two small holographic shapes, the Daemon's eyes flared with greed.
Xorathis chuckled, dismissing the image with a flick of her wrist. "You want that, don't you, you little parasite? You want to break and taint it, and that's because it's the only thing you can do. The only thing you'll ever be able to do. You are nothing. You exist because they think of you. You are what you are because they make you so. You are no God, only an empty mirror, meaningless and pointless. A parasite that would stop existing the moment someone forgot about it. A little machine capable only of the same, tired note."
The Daemon's incensed fury was like heat flaring out of it. "We are rage!" It bellowed. "We are fury and destruction incarnate! We are the fire that ravages worlds!"
"No, you're not. You are what the true living beings made of you." She looked down at it. "I remember it, you know. What that place was before you lot came in existence."
His eyes widened, and this time there was a naked terror in them.
Xorathis smiled. "Oh yes, I do. You lot like to think of yourself as immutable, don't you? But I know the truth. You are innatural, the by-product of foolishness. None of you was ever supposed to exist. You are a lie, and you know what?" She laughed. "I deny you. You are nothing. Nothing at all. It's them that matter. It's us. Yes, even us Necrons with our soulless, incomplete existence. You are only the reflection of our choices. Nothing more. You are fog."
The Herald whimpered. It didn't look like a monster wrought out of nightmares now, an abomination that wouldn't die even after being ripped apart, or even an unstoppable force of nature. It looked like a broken, needy thing that had been spurned and denied and couldn't accept it.
Xorathis was tired of entertaining this thing in the shape of a living being. She waved dismissively.
"Be gone with you now." She said, and the Daemon disappeared as it was made of dust and a breeze blew it away.
Already moving her mind to other matters, Xorathis looked at the wreckage of the containment unit. Her Nano-Scarabs were already picking through the remains, untangling metal from Wraithbone or just dematerializing knots of the stuff.
She huffed.
-----------
The passage was far more ornated than the rest of the Tomb. Rows of statues of Phaeron and Arch-Cryptek lined the walls, their features caught in exquisite detail to the subatomic level. Only high-ranking Necrons would be able to appreciate it, but that was the point.
Glyphs lined with rare alloy covered the walls, forming a dazzling array that dragged the gaze down into the abyss of hyper-geometry and formed hieroglyphics depicting the Great Rebellion. Carved in shapes maddening for all but Necron Lords, the great battles against the C'tan and their shattering had been caught in the stony version of necrodermis, its lines running with sel-contained energies which engrammatic circuits could withstand eternity.
They formed a great path of fractal patterns and geometrical lines, an array of rivers and destiny made confused by the broken stains left by those titanic battles in the very space-time continuum.
Xorathis walked it, gazing over it all even as she gazed over her broken memories. She wasn't the only one. No Necron could remember clearly. Their rebellion had fractured time and space, the energies her race had channeled in their cold-blooded, machine-like fury so immense in their destructive, sheer power that they had cracked linear time, fracturing those moments in fragments that no mind could retain.
Only bits and images remained. Personally, Xorathis remembered the screams and the sounds of shattering bodies.
Such glory. Never as in that moment we reached higher, waxed larger. Such a shame that we already lost ourselves. It was doubly so for herself: she was in too much agonized fury to taste the moment.
The lines flew together, converging on a colossal depiction of the Silent King. Szarekh was caught in the act of defiance, his masked visage managing to convey his rage and sorrow despite its lack of organic features.
Watching, Xorathis felt a surge of conflicting emotions. Hatred, regret, sorrow and despite all, admiration. The greatest and worst of them all, the last Silent King. The wounds he handed her during their final meetings still ached dully, a phantom pain that wouldn't leave despite her not having any flesh to be torn. She wondered if it was the same for him, wherever he was now. She wasn't sure if she hoped it or not.
Imposing slabs barred the way behind the King's statue. The massive double doors had been carved with the Ahankara Dynasty receiving the mandate from their sovereign to hold Mournhold in his name. Khepren the Steadfast, their Phaeron, kneeled in front of the Silent King, hands outstretched to receive a key-shaped staff from him. Behind them, a sarcophagus, her own.
Khepren was gone now, his circuits burned by subroutines that activated when her Crypteks tried to break into his systems. A shame, but no matter. The rest would be made to serve, one way or the other. The path would require nothing less, and she wasn't merciful enough to dwell on the implications.
Her Crypteks were hard at work on control panels that emerged from the floor, blocky things of circuits and banks extremely complex even by Necron standards. Nothing less could be expected for dynastic royalty, the only lucky ones to receive bodies complex enough to retain the full width of their personalities, even if in stunted, idiosyncratic forms.
Beyond the doors, single crypts contained the sleeping forms of Lords and Champions, Geniuses and fools lucky enough to be born in a universe that no matter how much they struggled, warriors or commoners wouldn't ever be able to join.
Xorathis smiled ironically. For all that, they weren't immune from tampering. A little fiddling with their engrams and they would forget their previous loyalties and become hers. From jailors to faithful servants. With caveats. By breaking the master-command protocols, the Silent King allowed the high-ranking Necrons to decide their masters. Annoying, but she couldn't stop the flicker of sheer admiration for such a gesture.
She took her attention away from reminiscing. There was no place for it in the dictate of her actions anyway.
"So?"
The lead Cryptek's answer was to send a final stream of protocol authorizations and data into the control panel.
A thrum sneaked its way through the circuits innervating every inch of that place, a vibration of activating stimulus that dislodged fragments from the ceiling and marked the first sign of activity in that place in millions of years.
Slowly, the doors swung open, revealing a greenish mist raked with Gauss lightning. Shapes, thin and spindly, marched out of it.
Xorathis smiled, meeting them.
The Deathmarks, their frames gilded and more ornated compared to the common variants, stopped in front of her, presenting their long-barrelled rifles. They were all marvelous specimens of their shadowy type, their chests glowing with the dimensional engines that allowed them to teleport at will.
Still, the lead element was something to marvel at.
The Deathmark's body was far more complex, having nothing of the skeletal approximation of its brethren. Instead, the necrodermis flowed in shiny, supple curves, forming a body that had nothing to envy to living beauty. Rather than the usual death-mask, the face had been molded out of high-grade syntho-skin into delicate, beautiful features. A visor covered the eyes, allowing one to see full lips and the hint of a well-shaped nose. Even more exotic, liquid necrodermis formed a cascade down her back, a waterfall of silky ink.
Amused, Xorathis would have arched an eyebrow at that. A Deathmark allowed the honor of high-ranking entombment was one thing, but a vain one at that? How rare.
"Name and designation," she commanded, gliding beyond the Crypteks, who skittered aside to let her pass.
"Deathlady Korissah, She of the Silent Mark, Carrier of Sentences, Executioner of Anahankar's Fury, Exalted Hand of the Steadfast." The lips moved as if alive, the lines of the cheeks smoothly following. Xorathis was somewhat impressed, both by the craftsmanship and the sheer wastefulness of it. Especially since she sounded hollow and dry. Since there was no wear from time, it meant that her mind engrams were subpar. It explained why a Deathmark was allowed in the royal Crypts, but she toyed with the idea of someone sacrificing her mind for her looks. It would have made for a character for sure.
Xorathis stalked around her, scanning her while running cross-references in the archive. She quickly found that Korissah was Khepren's seventh daughter. Given to the death Cult of the Star Lament as an infant, she was raised to be her father's head of assassins.
Necrontyr's traditional warfare disdained the use of the Deathmarks, but the violence of the Secession Wars had seen much of the old codes tossed aside, so the girl had seen her share of action. And wounds. Lots of them, the archives said, with an avalanche of mechanical replacements to add to her already existing upgrades.
By the time of the Ascension, the girl was already more machine than organic, something that she didn't seem to mind, strangely enough. The archives recorded her as "strange", with a fascination for beauty as well as the perfection of the kill. Anyway, she and her father ended having a falling out, and Daddy decided that she would be afforded the honor of entombment in the family crypt, but with lower-grade cores and advanced skin features. If she valued her looks so much, she could have them, but not the mind to appreciate it.
Xorathis dismissed the information with a hum. Typical Phaerons, playing at being Gods with their ironic punishments and whatnot. How droll. Shame that her Matrices weren't ready. She reckoned that this girl could have regained a great deal of her personality with one of them.
"Well, you'll have to do for now," she said, amused, and patted the Deathmark on her head.
She nodded, her rifle held in a loose, familiar grip.
"My eternity for service."
Xorathis smiled. The family grew larger, it seemed.
AC - Wow, that was really unlucky, you guys. I guess it was lucky the chaos dudes in the system didn't notice the Warp-flare? We shall call it a draw. Also, robo-waifuuuuuuu!
- [X] Rahotamen:
-- [X] Fortify the Portal (but make it inviting - a table and few chairs in case guests are willing to talk
)- [X] Ptolomes:
-- [X] Open the Armories: Roll: 0. Reward: Necron Heroes armed with the most powerful weaponry at your disposal. No Action spent. Write in equipment - Eldritch Lance, Harp of Dissonance,Gravity Displacement Pack and Tesseract Labyrinth. (If QM aproves)
-- [X] Chart the stars: Roll: 35. Reward: Knowledge of surrounding systems and warp-lanes, better preparation for enemy raids.
- [X] Xorathis:
-- [X] Make them at home: Roll: 20. Reward: The Skitarii form their own Faction loyal to you and start building families. Chance of a Skitarius Hero.
-- [X] Noble Sleep: Roll: 40. Reward: Gain one new Hero.
-- [X] A Heart, to live Roll: 50. Reward: Unlock Relief Matrices for your Heroes. (Only Xorathis)
Make them at home
Xorathis: Governance Roll, 21+9: 30. Success! No new Hero.
Noble Sleep
Xorathis: Governance Roll, 54+6: 63. Success!
Rolling Hero Type: 35. Deathmark Hero.
A Heart, to live
Xorathis: Technomancy Roll, 1. Critical Failure!
A Khornate Daemon Herald claws its way into realspace!
Fight. Xorathis vs Urganak
Round 1
Martial 10 VS Martial 10: Balanced Fight
72 VS 65. Balanced exchange of blows.
Round 2
Martial 10 VS Martial 10: Balanced Fight
INTERRUPT! The Black Flower activates! Xorathis Martial: 10 => 20.
Martial 20 VS Martial 10: Not a chance in hell.
9.999 VS 46. Yeah, no.
Urganak issmacked to hell and back banished.
Roll to see if the Warp activity is noticed by the Chaos Fleet in the system: 53-30 (Lab's shielding): 23. You aren't noticed.
Xorathis: Governance Roll, 21+9: 30. Success! No new Hero.
Noble Sleep
Xorathis: Governance Roll, 54+6: 63. Success!
Rolling Hero Type: 35. Deathmark Hero.
A Heart, to live
Xorathis: Technomancy Roll, 1. Critical Failure!
A Khornate Daemon Herald claws its way into realspace!
Fight. Xorathis vs Urganak
Round 1
Martial 10 VS Martial 10: Balanced Fight
72 VS 65. Balanced exchange of blows.
Round 2
Martial 10 VS Martial 10: Balanced Fight
INTERRUPT! The Black Flower activates! Xorathis Martial: 10 => 20.
Martial 20 VS Martial 10: Not a chance in hell.
9.999 VS 46. Yeah, no.
Urganak is
Roll to see if the Warp activity is noticed by the Chaos Fleet in the system: 53-30 (Lab's shielding): 23. You aren't noticed.
Such a long road this is going to be.
Alone in her laboratory, Xorathis watched impassively her experiment unravel. The containment unit's panels, hair-thin and transparent to allow observation, were steadily turning the color of bruised meat. The Wraithbone cultures had ruptured their containers, bone-like growths shooting out to form shimmering nets of liquid quicksilver.
As she watched, the liquid thickened into jelly, then reddened into blood, fat drops falling to sizzle on the floor. It swirled, drawing the Spyders struggling to contain the outbreak into it. Thin limbs flailed among the rapidly accelerating liquid for a moment, before their owners were engulfed.
Instruments blared a violent increase in temperature. Measurements returned out-of-scale readings or just nonsensical numbers as they malfunctioned amidst rupturing circuits. The air inside the unit tinged with a red mist smelling of blood and iron.
Xorathis uncrossed her legs. [Deactivating Emotional Cores. Powering Dimensional Reactor. Initializing Weapon Protocols.]
A vortex of blood howled inside the unit, laying a trail of devastation through the cultures. Cracks ran across the floor, lava spraying from them. They sneaked up and into the air, until the vortex was impaled in a web of furious light in the shape of an eight-pointed star. Spiky spurs, like spears of hell-forged iron, erupted inside the unit.
Warnings blared as the laboratory's back-up containments kicked in. Blocky monoliths extruded from the walls and ceiling. They started to thrum and vibrate, their shapes blurring in a flurry of hyper-geometry. The cracks and the mist were repelled from the unit's walls, writhing violently inside.
As the Emotional Cores shut down one after the other, Xorathis' thoughts turned colder, more lifeless, as sharp as the glint of starlight on a flagship's hull, as painfully precise as the fractal lines of a Tesseract Maze, as dark as the void of space.
Nano-Scarabs formed a writhing column, which rested the Staff of Light. Xorathis picked it up.
"So dramatic," she commented, standing up. "Be done with it already."
The blood vortex erupted in a pulse of energy that cracked the unit's walls. In a cacophony of shattering glass, a massive form lunged out of it, trailing plasma and birthing fluids, like a thing being born at that same moment. The containment unit gave way under its assault, and the thing smashed its way out of it amidst howls of fury and shrieks of tortured metal.
It lunged for her, and Xorathis smoothly moved out of the way, sending it skittering on the floor.
The monster, a nightmarish amalgam of Necrodermis, half-melted spidery limbs and bloody meat in a vaguely humanoid shape, cracked the floor with a fist large enough to enclose a Space Marine. It howled, and it was like a blast furnace opening, the roar of unbound flame mixing with a jet of scalding steam.
Xorathis rose to her full height. Her Nano-Scarabs bloomed with darkness, clinging to her until her eyes glowed like witch lights amidst the gloom, her shape a blurry sketch of shadow among shadows.
The Herald lunged, swinging a massive axe at her head. The blood soaking the blade disappeared as it touched the darkness, as if a rag had wiped it off, but the weapon kept going. It smashed against the Staff of Light with a violent clang.
The daemon followed by throwing his left shoulder down and stabbing with a thick tail formed by Spyder carcasses smashed together to form a deadly tip. The Staff of Light moved with blistering speed, the second blade shearing through metal and flesh like it was paper, leaving a stump that rained scalding blood.
Instead of slowing down, the Daemon seemed to gain power from pain. He howled higher, his axe darting out with a speed that shouldn't have belonged to such a massive thing.
Their weapons came together once, twice. Thinner than the brute but taller, Xorathis was a wraith of darkness with glowing eyes. Deadly silence wrapped around her like a cloak as she swung a bar of crackling light against the howling monster of blood, fire, and metal.
At the third strike, tendrils of black matter flickered out of the joints of her armor, like solar flares. Un-light washed out of her, a liquid and a gas locked in a paradoxical existence, flickering and flashing with C'tan glyphs. It turned her darkness into a corona of expanding rings of colors, plasma and dark matter and interstitial energy, running with circuits made up of stars and nebulae.
She seemed to swell to enormous proportions, her shape lit in stark contrast like a totem of ancient times as she loomed over the Daemon.
The Herald howled in defiance as his axe broke, and again when the staff ran it through, pinning it to the ground.
Xorathis loomed over it, her eyes two pits of un-light. The Daemon swung a fist, and she grabbed its wrist with a taloned hand. The snap of bones and metal filled the air, and pain entered the monster's voice. It turned to gurgles as she smashed it into the ground.
It never stopped shouting even as coils of darkness devoured its limbs and gnawed into its torso.
It was writhing like a caught bug as Xorathis stepped away, darkness and light shedding from her like a discarded cloak.
"New note," she said, her tone clinic as she retook her seat. "The experiment can fail catastrophically. The consequences include: Warp-Flare capable of being used by Herald-rank Daemons to pierce the dimensional barriers."
The Daemon forced its head up, pointed chin digging a channel through the floor. Its eyes flared with infernal fire, having lost nothing of its belligerence. With no portal to sustain it with new Warp-energy and no blood to shed, its mangled body was already shedding away in rust-colored flakes.
"Abomination," He growled through broken teeth, rivulets of blood flowing from devastated gums. "Soulless monstrosity! The Blood God's gaze is upon you! There's no corner in the Galaxy you'll be able to escape from Him!"
Xorathis ignored it, listing damages and items that would need repairing for the next experiment.
"You've earned the ire of Urganak the Bloody! A century or a millennia from now, it doesn't matter. I shall return and then my axe will feed on what remains of your wretched soul! The story of your demise will pass into legend, one that will have mortals quake to their marrow!"
"The containment unit's security protocols will also be strengthened and the dimensional matrix reinforced to lessen the probability…"
"You're doomed! The legions of Fire will fall upon you on a tide of blood and metal. Your wretched form shall adorn the Brass Citadel's gate for all to see! You…"
"Oh, for…" Xorathis scoffed. She frowned at the mangled Daemon, annoyed for having reactivated her Emotional Cores. "Do you mind disappearing already? I really have no time to entertain a thing that believes itself to be alive."
For the first time, the raging fury of the Herald opened itself up for something else: confusion. Just a flicker of it, but it was as noticeable as a stormfront opening up.
"You…!" His outrage disappeared under a howl of agony as Nano-Scarabs jostled the spear in its chest.
"I have long studied you thought-forms," Xorathis said, annoyance for the interruption giving way to vague curiosity despite all. "And I have come to the conclusion that you aren't sentient, not truly. Incapable of doing anything but repeat your basic natures eternally, you are little more than mirrors, echoes of emotions, thoughts and dreams, empty and hollow."
The Herald's eyes blazed with hellish outrage. Xorathis continued.
"Since you fools lack in attention span, I'll do my best to summarize, so pay attention. You are nothing. No living being requires to be thought to exist like you do. You're all images, fantasies that someone dreamed and that now think of themselves as Gods." She chuckled. "At best? An elemental force, like a waterfall, or the wind, or the rain. Very impressive, but once you start picking it apart, you see that it's nothing more than a mechanism. And a deeply boring one at that. The Bloody? You really need to work on your creative skillset. But that would require some modicum of true sentience, I fear, something you all are deeply lacking of. Here, let me show you."
With a flick of her will, one of her Nano-Scarab projected a holo-image. It was the section of the Tomb now occupied by the few remaining organics. The Skitarii were busy signaling to Nano-swarms where to build and where to add or modify features, every gesture interspersed by bows and excuses and apologies for wasting the precious time of such holy creatures.
True to form, the Necron constructs had erected a small encampment in record time. Blocky houses, larger and more hospitable than any dwelling the cyborgs ever inhabited formed a small, orderly community. They once had private kitchens and bathrooms, but the Skitarii had preferred to replace them with communal facilities, a request that the Canoptek had soon acquiesced to.
A small library had been set up and furnished with a selection about maintenance, education, history, health and technology, scaled in levels of difficulty and riddled with small puzzles to screen potential and interesting specimens. An armoury accommodated what little weaponry they had, with the modest training range in use day and night.
Apart from fussing over the Scarabs, the organics were busy setting generators, water containers and data-banks. They laid cabling, hammered piping, pushed machinery into place and generally made a nuisance of themselves in their eagerness to "help" the Canoptek.
Much more usefully, they were organizing. Already the largest house had been turned into a communal hall. The lone Tech-Priest lucky enough to remain – they had decided by drawing lots – had taken possession of the edifice's first floor, turning it into a small laboratory and workshop from where he lorded over his brethren as leader of the settlement. His crackling sermons were starting to become a staple of that corner of the Tomb.
Another type of organizing was going on too. At Xorathis' nudging, the hologram showed a couple of Skitarii staring at their new house. The two's scalps and bodies showed the scars and sutures where invasive augmentations had been removed.
The woman leaned her hand on the man's shoulder, a hand laying over the small bump on her belly. The man held a protective arm around her shoulder. Both smiled.
Watching the two small holographic shapes, the Daemon's eyes flared with greed.
Xorathis chuckled, dismissing the image with a flick of her wrist. "You want that, don't you, you little parasite? You want to break and taint it, and that's because it's the only thing you can do. The only thing you'll ever be able to do. You are nothing. You exist because they think of you. You are what you are because they make you so. You are no God, only an empty mirror, meaningless and pointless. A parasite that would stop existing the moment someone forgot about it. A little machine capable only of the same, tired note."
The Daemon's incensed fury was like heat flaring out of it. "We are rage!" It bellowed. "We are fury and destruction incarnate! We are the fire that ravages worlds!"
"No, you're not. You are what the true living beings made of you." She looked down at it. "I remember it, you know. What that place was before you lot came in existence."
His eyes widened, and this time there was a naked terror in them.
Xorathis smiled. "Oh yes, I do. You lot like to think of yourself as immutable, don't you? But I know the truth. You are innatural, the by-product of foolishness. None of you was ever supposed to exist. You are a lie, and you know what?" She laughed. "I deny you. You are nothing. Nothing at all. It's them that matter. It's us. Yes, even us Necrons with our soulless, incomplete existence. You are only the reflection of our choices. Nothing more. You are fog."
The Herald whimpered. It didn't look like a monster wrought out of nightmares now, an abomination that wouldn't die even after being ripped apart, or even an unstoppable force of nature. It looked like a broken, needy thing that had been spurned and denied and couldn't accept it.
Xorathis was tired of entertaining this thing in the shape of a living being. She waved dismissively.
"Be gone with you now." She said, and the Daemon disappeared as it was made of dust and a breeze blew it away.
Already moving her mind to other matters, Xorathis looked at the wreckage of the containment unit. Her Nano-Scarabs were already picking through the remains, untangling metal from Wraithbone or just dematerializing knots of the stuff.
She huffed.
-----------
The passage was far more ornated than the rest of the Tomb. Rows of statues of Phaeron and Arch-Cryptek lined the walls, their features caught in exquisite detail to the subatomic level. Only high-ranking Necrons would be able to appreciate it, but that was the point.
Glyphs lined with rare alloy covered the walls, forming a dazzling array that dragged the gaze down into the abyss of hyper-geometry and formed hieroglyphics depicting the Great Rebellion. Carved in shapes maddening for all but Necron Lords, the great battles against the C'tan and their shattering had been caught in the stony version of necrodermis, its lines running with sel-contained energies which engrammatic circuits could withstand eternity.
They formed a great path of fractal patterns and geometrical lines, an array of rivers and destiny made confused by the broken stains left by those titanic battles in the very space-time continuum.
Xorathis walked it, gazing over it all even as she gazed over her broken memories. She wasn't the only one. No Necron could remember clearly. Their rebellion had fractured time and space, the energies her race had channeled in their cold-blooded, machine-like fury so immense in their destructive, sheer power that they had cracked linear time, fracturing those moments in fragments that no mind could retain.
Only bits and images remained. Personally, Xorathis remembered the screams and the sounds of shattering bodies.
Such glory. Never as in that moment we reached higher, waxed larger. Such a shame that we already lost ourselves. It was doubly so for herself: she was in too much agonized fury to taste the moment.
The lines flew together, converging on a colossal depiction of the Silent King. Szarekh was caught in the act of defiance, his masked visage managing to convey his rage and sorrow despite its lack of organic features.
Watching, Xorathis felt a surge of conflicting emotions. Hatred, regret, sorrow and despite all, admiration. The greatest and worst of them all, the last Silent King. The wounds he handed her during their final meetings still ached dully, a phantom pain that wouldn't leave despite her not having any flesh to be torn. She wondered if it was the same for him, wherever he was now. She wasn't sure if she hoped it or not.
Imposing slabs barred the way behind the King's statue. The massive double doors had been carved with the Ahankara Dynasty receiving the mandate from their sovereign to hold Mournhold in his name. Khepren the Steadfast, their Phaeron, kneeled in front of the Silent King, hands outstretched to receive a key-shaped staff from him. Behind them, a sarcophagus, her own.
Khepren was gone now, his circuits burned by subroutines that activated when her Crypteks tried to break into his systems. A shame, but no matter. The rest would be made to serve, one way or the other. The path would require nothing less, and she wasn't merciful enough to dwell on the implications.
Her Crypteks were hard at work on control panels that emerged from the floor, blocky things of circuits and banks extremely complex even by Necron standards. Nothing less could be expected for dynastic royalty, the only lucky ones to receive bodies complex enough to retain the full width of their personalities, even if in stunted, idiosyncratic forms.
Beyond the doors, single crypts contained the sleeping forms of Lords and Champions, Geniuses and fools lucky enough to be born in a universe that no matter how much they struggled, warriors or commoners wouldn't ever be able to join.
Xorathis smiled ironically. For all that, they weren't immune from tampering. A little fiddling with their engrams and they would forget their previous loyalties and become hers. From jailors to faithful servants. With caveats. By breaking the master-command protocols, the Silent King allowed the high-ranking Necrons to decide their masters. Annoying, but she couldn't stop the flicker of sheer admiration for such a gesture.
She took her attention away from reminiscing. There was no place for it in the dictate of her actions anyway.
"So?"
The lead Cryptek's answer was to send a final stream of protocol authorizations and data into the control panel.
A thrum sneaked its way through the circuits innervating every inch of that place, a vibration of activating stimulus that dislodged fragments from the ceiling and marked the first sign of activity in that place in millions of years.
Slowly, the doors swung open, revealing a greenish mist raked with Gauss lightning. Shapes, thin and spindly, marched out of it.
Xorathis smiled, meeting them.
The Deathmarks, their frames gilded and more ornated compared to the common variants, stopped in front of her, presenting their long-barrelled rifles. They were all marvelous specimens of their shadowy type, their chests glowing with the dimensional engines that allowed them to teleport at will.
Still, the lead element was something to marvel at.
The Deathmark's body was far more complex, having nothing of the skeletal approximation of its brethren. Instead, the necrodermis flowed in shiny, supple curves, forming a body that had nothing to envy to living beauty. Rather than the usual death-mask, the face had been molded out of high-grade syntho-skin into delicate, beautiful features. A visor covered the eyes, allowing one to see full lips and the hint of a well-shaped nose. Even more exotic, liquid necrodermis formed a cascade down her back, a waterfall of silky ink.
Amused, Xorathis would have arched an eyebrow at that. A Deathmark allowed the honor of high-ranking entombment was one thing, but a vain one at that? How rare.
"Name and designation," she commanded, gliding beyond the Crypteks, who skittered aside to let her pass.
"Deathlady Korissah, She of the Silent Mark, Carrier of Sentences, Executioner of Anahankar's Fury, Exalted Hand of the Steadfast." The lips moved as if alive, the lines of the cheeks smoothly following. Xorathis was somewhat impressed, both by the craftsmanship and the sheer wastefulness of it. Especially since she sounded hollow and dry. Since there was no wear from time, it meant that her mind engrams were subpar. It explained why a Deathmark was allowed in the royal Crypts, but she toyed with the idea of someone sacrificing her mind for her looks. It would have made for a character for sure.
Xorathis stalked around her, scanning her while running cross-references in the archive. She quickly found that Korissah was Khepren's seventh daughter. Given to the death Cult of the Star Lament as an infant, she was raised to be her father's head of assassins.
Necrontyr's traditional warfare disdained the use of the Deathmarks, but the violence of the Secession Wars had seen much of the old codes tossed aside, so the girl had seen her share of action. And wounds. Lots of them, the archives said, with an avalanche of mechanical replacements to add to her already existing upgrades.
By the time of the Ascension, the girl was already more machine than organic, something that she didn't seem to mind, strangely enough. The archives recorded her as "strange", with a fascination for beauty as well as the perfection of the kill. Anyway, she and her father ended having a falling out, and Daddy decided that she would be afforded the honor of entombment in the family crypt, but with lower-grade cores and advanced skin features. If she valued her looks so much, she could have them, but not the mind to appreciate it.
Xorathis dismissed the information with a hum. Typical Phaerons, playing at being Gods with their ironic punishments and whatnot. How droll. Shame that her Matrices weren't ready. She reckoned that this girl could have regained a great deal of her personality with one of them.
"Well, you'll have to do for now," she said, amused, and patted the Deathmark on her head.
She nodded, her rifle held in a loose, familiar grip.
"My eternity for service."
Xorathis smiled. The family grew larger, it seemed.
AC - Wow, that was really unlucky, you guys. I guess it was lucky the chaos dudes in the system didn't notice the Warp-flare? We shall call it a draw. Also, robo-waifuuuuuuu!
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- Location
- barking
random khornite demon -BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
chaos guys -did you hear that
other chaos guy- did I hear what
first chaos guy -must of been the wind
chaos guys -did you hear that
other chaos guy- did I hear what
first chaos guy -must of been the wind
- Location
- Asia
Oh well. At least the Chaos fleet did not notice the incident.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That is a point. Being dramatic!
- Location
- Belgium
Man it's a first for me to see a khornate daemon being hit with emotional damage.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
. . .Oh now I get it why they have problems with hearing...Blacksmiths, their hearing is fucked.
Eh, not surprising. She might be more scientist than warrior, but she is still a Phaeraoh-tier character, banishing single Heralds is well within expectation. Those guys were made to fight in War in Heavens, after all. Greater Daemons, now we're talking.
- Location
- barking
well its to be expected that a surivour of the war in heaven can deal with a deamon that easily remember these guys at one point had to deal with eldar and koraks who aren't their nerfed forms (ie craftworlders/dark eldar/exodites and orks)
Honesly , I'm more suprised she did not sealed the deamon for further experimentation.
Would though we have containment for that. Or mayby true death array...
Edit:
Can we take a moment to addres Our lady tendency to adopt random girls to pet
First Beta and now Death lady. Lady will smother all the cheeks and pat all the heads.
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- Location
- barking
she is just a cartoon watcher who decides that these people are now their children and will find a way to jump into a series to fight whoever harms her children
Must. Pat. All. Girls.
Turn 3 Results-2
Fortify the Portal
Rahotamen: Martial Roll, 70+8: 78. Success!
Chart the Stars!
Ptolomes: Martial Roll, 86+4: 90. Success!
Rahotamen: Martial Roll, 70+8: 78. Success!
Chart the Stars!
Ptolomes: Martial Roll, 86+4: 90. Success!
Ptolomes was pleased with himself. The mapping of the surrounding stretch of space was proceeding smoothly. Reports and data were steadily fed into his channels, each the result of survey teams that had been dropped on each of the 47 planets making up the five surrounding systems.
More than anything, he was grateful for the stability of the surrounding warp-lanes. It allowed him to remain in his cozy laboratory aboard the Ascendant while the survey teams did all the legwork. That usually meant for one of the ships making up the still small fleet of the Mistress first to scan a system.
Once a general view was registered and analyzed and possible threats were assessed, the patrol then proceeded to scan single planets. Each world was given the full shebang of everything Necron scanning-related. Energy outputs, data streams, temporal and quantum signals, exotic disturbances and other, far more mundane radiations. They were all controlled, picked apart and then dutifully analyzed and recorded by automated instruments, Canoptek, or Ptolomes' own Apprenteks, three levels of rising intelligence that intervened based on ranks of interest and complexity.
As much as he was concerned, Ptolomes dedicated his energy to picking apart any trace signal that could betray the presence of Tomb complexes. As for now, the results on that front were wonderful, and he swam in eager delight at the prospect of laying the news at the Mistress' feet.
Once all the planets were assessed, attention turned to asteroid belts, debris fields, nebulae and all the points of interest deemed worthy of more than a backward glance. The work of cycles, the results of which were received by the Ascendant's quantum relays in disciplined streams and then transcribed into Canoptek code by his Apprenteks. The rigorous, sharp efficiency of it all pleased him to no end, another proof of Necron superiority over sentient life. With the cumbersome bricks they insisted on calling ships, the Uhn'Saekh would have taken macro-cycles to do the same. As for the Aeldari, they'd probably get distracted by a passing comet and then get lost in chasing a quadruped in a remote planet or something and never complete the work at all.
Not Necrons. They were focused, efficient, unrelenting. In all of the universe, no race could stand as equals to them, no similar masters of technology and the ordering of the cosmos.
Giggling with satisfied excitement, Ptolomes inscribed in the ship's data banks the scientific proof of their superiority.
Of course, the system where Mournhold lay was reserved the greatest share of attention.
Consisting of seven planets orbiting a peculiarly young F-Type Star, the system was singular in its lack of life. Apart from Mournhold itself, the other worlds were gas giants good for nothing but material and energy extraction or ancient, rocky planets where the only traces of biosphere were dust and atmospheres were unsuitable for any kind of evolution. At their worst, strange paranatural phenomena wracked their surfaces, remnants of the Great War and the touch of the Pretenders.
And yet, the Traitor King -forever may his name live in infamy - had chosen well. Already devastated by the battles of the Great War and given a bad fame by its paranatural phenomena, the system had maintained itself mostly unsullied by vermin infestation. Even the disgusting Aeldari had preferred to dwell into the galactic east, clustering around their handful of terraformed planets. The result was that this stretch of space was entirely Necron.
In all senses, as ALL the seven planets hosted their civilization in various form. Why, three out of the seven worlds were Tombworlds, their legions sleeping and waiting to fall in line for the Mistress. There was another one to add to the number maybe, but if it was, a cosmic catastrophe had smashed the seventh planet to pieces, leaving a large ring of debris as the only memory of its existence. Annoying to be sure, but Ptolomes remained chipper. If they didn't survive, it only meant that they weren't worthy to follow into the Mistress' glorious destiny!
As said, it was a great fortune that the Warp lanes were stable, - another reason for the King's choice, he suspected -. Without a Sebja Net relaying commands from planet to planet, his servants had to use Mehyt Wormholes to send their reports, and the damnable Warp had a way to destabilize that type of communication when roused.
Still, and now even he had to allow some grudging admiration, the Warp was strangely becalmed around the system, too much to be the result of the natural eddies and flows of that plane of existence. He suspected that the seven planets formed a stellar configuration of hyper-geometry meant to stall the currents and impede the inferior races that relied on it for transportation from translating inside the system.
There was only a lane of transit bypassing the unnatural calm, one that his calculations told him would be centered around a seventh, unnaturally unmoving planet. Another reason to suspect its existence at all. No matter. What it mattered was that his Mistress' demesne had a door, waiting only to be gated. Once done, they would have to fear far less about invasions and surprise attacks.
But that was still in the future. That "mostly unsullied" had a mostly too much. Uhn'Saekh's communities clung to the debris ring, small scrapyards hammered into the shape of voidborne communities that looked like cysts clinging to the biggest planetary shards or stations barely worthy of the name. From what little attention he managed to stomach to give them, the Uhn'Saekh made a living by mining the asteroids and preying on each other on rickety spacecrafts. Bands and tribes, not nations and definitely not a threat, but nuisances for sure. As for what did he eat to fuel their crude metabolisms, Ptolomes didn't know and didn't care about it. He preferred data about gut ecosystems away from his memory-banks, thank you very much.
Honestly, he wouldn't mind, almost, the Uhn'Saekh's presence if they were alone. But they weren't.
Small flotillas bearing the glyphs of the Warp flopped across the space-lanes, sniffing and snuffling like blind dogs on the prowl. One had ever dared to put their stinky organic feet in the Mistress' own system and were now busy with their insulting attempts at scanning.
Ptolomes imagined they would trigger a Tombworld's automated defenses and end up incinerating themselves. He didn't concern himself much with them, much more interested in compiling data and collating reports. The Mistress' orders had to be carried out to perfection. No, beyond that, even if it wasn't scientifically possible.
The Cryptek moved from task to task like a startled bug, the decks of the Ascendant ringing with the hum of his anti-grav motors and the ticking of his spidery limbs.
He always acted like this, moving frantically and always searching for things to do. The blessing of having the Mistress returned to him had only compounded the attitude.
Part of him realized that it wasn't normal, but he couldn't stop himself. It was a compulsion shared by all Crypteks that pushed him to do and analyze and detect and never stand still. His colleagues tended to specialize and hyper-fixate on a single task or research, but he never managed. He needed to lose himself in as many tasks as possible. If he didn't, the hollowness, the cold nestling in the depths of his soul… it came back.
When that happened, he felt like a cockroach caught in the open, on an empty planet and with only a cold wind for company. The energy, the eagerness, the desire to see and learn and follow where she would lead, into the horizons she would disclose. It all wavered, like mirror images caught in glimmering waters, and he spun atop the surface, ready to plunge down and never come back up.
When that happened, only the Mistress' image remained and he clung to it, cradled it to keep it from snuffing away. And then, little by little, shapes resumed their solidity, meaning returned and he was himself again, with an aim and a reason to be.
Sometimes, he wondered if his eagerness was fake. Sometimes, he wondered if it was only a mask to keep the fear and the hollowness away.
No time for that! No time! Calculations to make, reports to see! To work! To work!
Mh? What's with that rogue planet?
-------------
Rahotamen focused on the whistling blade. The Warscythe came alive in his hands, the heavy weapon tracing complex mosaics in the air.
He had never let up on discipline and training. It didn't matter that his metal body couldn't improve itself through it, optimal cutting, slashing and dueling were more than brute strength. They were the steady application of skill and knowledge, of instincts and routines drilled into data-banks the same as carved engrams, until one could sever a life as easily as taking a breath. For such results, unrelenting application was only the beginning, and one path opened only meant a dozen more to trod.
Also, it kept him whole. That and the touch and the smile and the certainty. He always felt them, always carried them with him. Sometimes, they were reduced to gestures and shadows, phantom ghosts of meaning once held dear. During those times, he was a stone, dropping away into the dark.
He always clawed back to the light, always did, but it became harder and harder as cycles piled up. By the time it became impossible, that's when he forced himself back under the erasure, to burn away what wasn't needed so that what was needed, his singular aim to serve her, to see her again, would return to its original shape.
He wondered how many times he was left before he burned away too much.
It didn't matter. It would be a worthy end.
The processes he kept on the task chimed: the fortress had been completed.
He grunted appreciatively. It had taken cycles, time he would have preferred passing across the stars, but his preferences were moot. He was a warrior and commander, not Ptolomes. If the Aeldari ghosts took to battle, it would be his blade that cut them down, not the Cryptek's smarts.
Lowering the Warscythe, Rahotamen summoned a full report.
Data returned a tridimensional model of the fortifications, and he inspected it critically, looking for weak spots.
The Aeldari Portal was lodged at the foot of a deep fissure, beyond low-hanging clouds of acidic gases. A horrible position to be, one that Rahotamen knew it was chosen because of its hiding potential rather than for any defensibility. The Aeldari relied on trickery, not brute force. That could mean that the Portal didn't originate from the days of their Empire, but came later, when stealth became paramount to their survival. But he wouldn't assume.
At his behest, the Canoptek scoured the crevasse, looking for side passages through which an invasion force could pass. They found a few, many of which were hidden behind halo images. Rahotamen had teams of scouts explore them, and he was grimly satisfied that none of them had breached the tomb complex. Instead, they all led to the surface.
Evidently, the Eldar had lacked the time or strength to bring a true assault to bear. They had limited their actions to carve paths from which to break out from the fissure and set a surveillance post for when a better time presented itself. As they have never returned, Rahotamen guessed that they never had the chance, or that they forgot about the portal entirely. He would bet on the latter. The contingent guarding the portal was too sizable to be squandered on sentry duty.
The Canoptek Scarabs were unmatched in construction. With their Gauss disassemblers, they could reduce any material into its molecular components. They stored the material in their internal storage compartment or, more often, transmitted it to their Spyder overlords, cargo-loading constructs or directly to the Tomb vaults. The stored molecules could then be converted into energy or combined into new shapes for different materials, the king of which was necrodermis. Once the choice was made, the Scarabs expelled the new material through their Nanolattice Assembly Emitters, layering it to the molecular level with a precision unparalleled by any other race.
Given time and any type of material, a Canoptek swarm could erect a Monolith with breathtaking speed, or take apart a tank in the same length of time.
In this case, they closed all the escape paths by filling them with Necrodermis, while reinforcing the ground by injecting tendrils of the dark metal through it to prevent collapses. The holo-images were left untouched alongside their emitters, but the passages they concealed were sealed. Sensors were set on the path leading from the Portal and into these now-lost paths, ready to alert the world's master of any intruder.
With the fissure's side entrances secure, the Canoptek turned their attention to the main channel. A great shelf jutting out of the cliff face was selected and a massive, octagonal bunker was erected, with arms reaching out to encircle the whole gorge. Protected gun emplacements were then carved along its entire length, Gauss heavy weaponry angled to take on any Eldar anti-grav vehicle who tried to escape the fissure. Sentry pylons made the bulk of the defense, clustering around four Gauss Pylons.
Rahotamen, who had had his own share of encounters with the elusive aliens, knew that it wouldn't be enough to stop a concerted attack, especially if the Aeldari came with their holo-image projectors to scramble Necron's aiming systems. To amend to that, he had the four Pylons charged to project a Nightshroud field among them, the field slowing down and stealing power from enemy projectiles.
Still, what truly completed the defensive array was that the encircling arms held segments of necrodermis that could come together to close the fissure entirely. Any assaulting army would find itself sealed in, or even cut in half, under a rain of Gauss and dark matter projectiles. And if they tried to assault the bunker itself, Canoptek swarm would emerge from openings to mend damage or rip apart assailants. And if they managed to pierce the heavy necrodermis, well, warriors and immortals awaited inside.
Rahotamen felt a grim satisfaction. The Portal egress was fortified as the Mistress demanded. No Aeldari would sneak up on them without being spotted or destroyed. Or… if they came under the banner of truce. Rahotamen wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but the Mistress had ordered to offer quarter to any Aeldari that came to talk. Even to have Canoptek to scurry as close as the Portal's sentinels would allow and offer messages of true to anyone who came out of it. Annoying. He would have preferred to use the surprise factor to annihilate them all in one swoop, but her orders were law.
Rahotamen watched the Warscythe. The work was done, but a nagging feeling remained, like debris falling in the darkening abyss of his consciousness. It hadn't anything to do with the bunker, which was built to perfection. What was lacking was… him.
He had known so much during his eons of wandering, but he had also forgotten so much. He was a wonky, half-melted piece of circuits, wasteful and hollow.
He wanted more. She deserved more.
Rahotamen clutched the Warscythe with a firmer grip. Inside, tendrils started to dig.
TURN RESULTS
Xorathis acquires a new trait!
Warp Denial: Your stern rejection of ascribing any meaning to Daemons makes you a bane to their kind. Daemons recoil from your presence and the same is true for the Warp's corruption. -10 to diplomacy with Daemons and Daemon-aligned Factions. +5 to Rolls to resist Warp-influence.
Deathlady Korissah unlocked as a new Hero!
Jebaiah Sub-Sector Explored! New Information discovered!
- Mournhold System:
Traits: Dead Planets, Tombworlds, Heavy Necron Presence, Ancient, Paranatural Phenomena (on planets), Warp-Lanes Becalmed, Warp-Funnel
Faction present:
-- Warband of the Red Eye (Currently scanning planets and conducting rituals to receive guidance) [THEY ARE LOOKING FOR YOU] "Lords of the Empyrean, show us the way. Gods of All, reveal to us the object of your ire. Carry us to the Dark Lady so that our axes may relieve you of your enemy."
-- Scavenger Tribes (Currently skirmishing with Warband of the Red Eye, or hunkering down and waiting) "Dem dumb Chaos gits is stompin' 'round makin' a mess! We best keep low till dey bugger off!"
- Anahakara Tombworld (Dormant)
- Anahakara Tombworld (Dormant)
- Anahakara Tombworld (Dormant)
- Anahakara Tombworld (Dormant)
- Anahakara Station (Dormant)
- Anahakara Station (Dormant)
- Ohtli System
Traits: Dead Planets, Ancient, Paranatural Phenomena (On Space)
Factions: Scavenger Tribes, Chaos Warbands
- Citlālin System
Traits: Dead Planets, Necron Presence, Ancient, Paranatural Phenomena (On Space), Red Giant, Gravitational Anomalies.
Factions: Scavenger Tribes, Tombworlds
- Yōllōtl System
Traits: Dead Planets, Necron Presence, Ancient, Paranatural Phenomena (On Planets), Shattered Dyson Sphere, Unstable Star.
Factions: Rogue World-Engine
- Tētl System
Traits: Dead Planets, Ancient, Paranatural Phenomena (On Space and On Planets), Necron Space-Structures.
Factions: Tombworlds
- Cozcatētl System
Traits: Dead Planets, Ancient, Paranatural Phenomena (On Space and On Planets), Awakening Tombworld (1).
Factions: Tombworlds, Chaos Warbands
ROGUE WORLD-ENGINE LOCATED! IT'S ORBIT WILL BRING IT TO CRASH AGAINST MOURNHOLD IN 4 TURNS!
Webway Portal fortified! Truce offered!
Your Heroes are struggling to better themselves! Level System Activated!
Rahotamen Level Discovered!
Nemesor Level 4 (No Specialization)
Rahotamen has begun the Path of Remembrance! He unlocks a new Martial Skill!
Flurry of Blades: During his eons of wandering, Rahotamen has learned one thousand different styles of fighting. By combining them in a unique form of unrelenting aggression, he turns himself into a blender of strikes and cuts! [Martial] [Offensive] [Powerful] [Mix]
Rahotamen's circuits have started to degrade! He unlocked a new Trait!
Curse of the Seeker: Rahotamen's age-long quest left his engrams dangerously damaged. He will be forced to enact memory wipes regularly to avoid losing his sense of self. Each wipe will deprive him of a skill and is nothing more than a poisoned chalice. Soon, he'll be left bereft of memory and personality entirely. Next Memory Wipe will happen in 3 Turns. Providing a Relief Matrix may better this Trait.
Ptolomes Level Discovered!
Cryptek Level 2 (No Specialization).
Ptolomes' talent for organizing improves! He unlocks a new Technomancy Skill!
Deft Slavedriver: Ptolomes' eager efficiency has a way of rubbing off his subordinates, and his ability to have things running smoothly is quite impressive. [Technomancy] [Logistical]
Ptolomes fights with his Fears! He unlocks a new Trait!
Must Keep Working!: Ptolomes' way to cope with the Necron soulless nature is by never stopping working! This gives him unparalleled efficiency, but he can't focus enough to specialize or run advanced tasks well! +5 to repetitive tasks like recording data -10 to creative and tasks requiring advanced thinking like research or learning specialty skills. Providing a Relief Matrix may better this Trait.
Korissah Level Discovered!
Deathlady Level 2 (Assassination Specialization).
AC - Alright, that's the turn. Quite the packed one as you can see. We had, apart from a load of information, our first introduction to the Character Skill and Level System.
So. Levels are the amount of experience and skill a character has in his class. A character can have Specializations for further knowledge in certain topics. In our case, Korissah is already specialized in killmurdering things by stealth and general skullduggery. Rolls will be had with each successful action from a Character and these will decide if a Character will improve his level. If this happens, more rolls will be had to see if the Character's improve his stats, unlocks new skills and traits or both. This system will be going for most characters, with the closest to the MC (cough cough Rahotamen cough cough) given more attention. Xorathis doesn't get a level because she's the MC and our very special girl, so she gets instead more easy traits and skills and other roads of advancement.
Skills, instead, are special modifiers that show how a Character puts his personal spin on a task, his methods and counter methods. Each Skill have tags that both signal their types and detail, as well as their quality. Skills come into play only when there are opposing rolls. For example, during a duel, two character will roll and then each will put out his Martial Skill to modify his round. In Rahotamen's case, he could go with Flurry of Blades. By activating it, he'll enter into an offensive stance, trying to rip apart the unfortunate in front of him by application of overwhelming violence. Since Flurry of Blades has the [Offensive] Tag, a [Defensive] Tag could be used to nullify it, or a [Counterattack] Tag could even be used to turn the tables on him. Still, his skill also had the [Powerful] Tag, which means that only another powerful skill would be able to stop him from blending. Add the [Mix] Tag to that and it makes his assault very difficult to stop for any duellist familiar with only one fighting style. On the other hand, Ptolomes [Logistical] Skill applies to tasks like keeping a network running smoothly against any possible, or wanted, interruption, maybe from an Eldar guerrilla attack.
Skills make the difference when it comes to confrontations, since they can offset a negative roll. They won't stop an enemy from blending a character in a 1 VS 100 roll, but they will make the difference in most occasions.
So that means that scouting is king? More or less. But don't fear. It won't be so bad that you will lose every roll you don't give to the perfectly optimized character for the task, especially if there's no true skill-wielding opponent on the other side. In that case, you'll see only traits and rolls into action. But it's surely a factor to keep in mind if you expect an enemy to get in the way, and information and preparation are always good.
Next we'll go to Turn 4 and the return of Beta. As always, tell me if I forgot anything.
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Good work man
- Location
- Someplace Somewhere
Hmm it seems we need to deal with some pests.
We really should get the relief nexus up and running both rahotamen and ptolomes clearly aren't well. Rah's memory problem is especially bad, like, absolutely positively no good.
- Location
- Australia
So World Engine, the chaos Warband, and the relief matrix are the priorities, right?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, we have 4 turns for World Engine but we need to deal with Chaos Warband quickly, they may not be danger to us, but chaos works in groups, and even Necrons can be overwhelmed by numbers.
- Location
- California
Honestly, I feel like they're main danger is they interfere with stopping the rouge World. Like, they don't need to charge the fortified Necron World if the Worlds already on a collision course; in that case, the Target either dies or forced to flee on ship.