- Location
- yorkshire
I was thinking of a weak energy sheild being installed in there chassis the energy shield can take say to lasgun rounds or one bolt round but it recharges very quickly after being bought down its to make it cheap but effective
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Echoes of Eternity: A Warhammer 40k Necron Lord Quest
- Thread starter boredblues
- Start date
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- Tags
- warhammer warhammer 40k necron war
I was thinking of a weak energy sheild being installed in there chassis the energy shield can take say to lasgun rounds or one bolt round but it recharges very quickly after being bought down its to make it cheap but effective
Like marines from starcraft? the kind of shield that is just attached to arm so you can still shot with two-handed weapon...
Or mayby more japanish style of side armor-pauldron thing.
Certanly more viable than force fields to grunts
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- Location
- yorkshire
If that's the case add more armour
That's two ways. It'll make them slower though.
- Location
- yorkshire
That's why I thought of the energy shield
birdmaster01
Big Tech's Strongest Soldier
Answer,of course,is jetpacks
Just a shitload of jetpacks
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Cool, like the ones used by the Triarch Praetorians?
birdmaster01
Big Tech's Strongest Soldier
How are they praetorians if there are three of them ?
Man. that some shelfing of ideas. Pros: in future our forces will be a menace
Actually necron storm troopers does sound awesome. Just need to make them cheaper
For now the question is:
How can we/Khuphra make our Lychguard even better? They are the ones being upgraded. Ideas?
- Location
- yorkshire
Arm mounted or shoulder mounted gauss weapon a energy sheild give them sothing like a miner anti grave motor to make them lighter
birdmaster01
Big Tech's Strongest Soldier
When I say jetpacks,it means anti-gravity packs for Necrons
They need to be zipping around in Mach 20
They need to be zipping around in Mach 20
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It's an elite unit name
Like these?
- Gravity Displacement Pack - A Gravity Displacement Pack is a piece of ancient Necrontyr technology which allows a Praetorian to swiftly hover over a battlefield. They are similar to the Imperium's cruder Jump Packs.
... I would like to imagine Beta using the mask to intimitade people into being honest with her, putting them at dissadvantage in any form of negotiations.
Wheather its true or not, if she figure out how to make it work, how to recreate it, or how to upgrade it with lessons provided it will be something impactfull to her reputation.
At the very least its likely to look well on her wall.
Not that it has that much of a narrative effect -unless it somehow grants a +1 to intrigue - its just something I was reminded of on a re-read.
And yes flying lychguard strike teams are a scary image. We have like a thousand of them. We could genually pretend to have a Astartes chapter under us for publicity.
Like holy heck There is a story about that on SB. We would acctually do a better job at that than most acctual independed chapters.
It would certanly throw IoM for a loop.
Turn 5 Results - Masks, to fool
New
The first was broken.
"Oh, my skin! Where's my skin?" He groaned, mechanic fingers running up and down his fused ribs. Sadness filled his voice as the green blazes in his eyes flared with awareness. "Oh, how I miss my flesh," he moaned. He turned inside the sarcophagus, only the forest of connectors covering his body stopping him from curling into a ball. "My breath…" He devolved into mutters, eyes flickering like broken lights.
"Inject mind-stimulants and run an acclimatating mind-simulations," Xorathis instructed, clipped and business-like. Chalchun obediently wrote it down, skittering after her as she strode down the row of stasis-tombs.
The second was demented.
"The flesh cannot prevail against the machine," he droned, hanging from his sarcophagus like a prisoner from a torture rack. "Fleeting is the life ensouled, easy to snap and sever. A stone, an arrow is all that is needed to end biological patterns and that is unworthy. The machine holds, the machine endures. It is purity of purpose, superiority of power, immortality embodied. The flesh cannot prevail against the machine." He shuddered and trembled, litanies pouring from his open mouth like a broken record.
The fire in his sockets narrowed into two slits of vague incomprehension as he focused on her. "Is that you, Nephetra? Do you mind bringing me the scroll on chrono-sculpting? It's on the second shelf."
Xorathis hummed, inspecting him. "Catastrophic engram damage," she sentenced. "Administer last rites and proceed with ritual entombment." She strode to the next.
The third was hostile.
"Pretender! Usurper!" He barked, eyes burning with malice. The connectors tensed under his struggling, some snapping and writhing like severed snakes. "You shall perish for your crimes! The memory of our Phaeron shall be avenged in your impure blood! Oblivion is too good for you! You shall be made into an empty puppet!" His torrent of abuses didn't stop as the sarcophagus closed on him.
"Engrams have survived the transfer perfectly," Xorathis mused. "Keep in stasis for a few cycles for study, then proceed with disposal." She didn't wait to listen Chalchun's acknowledgment, moving on.
The fourth was silent.
Nestled among the connectors like an insect caught in a web, he watched her carefully. His burning gaze glowed with consideration, a cascade of plotting backed by eons of practice.
Xorathis smiled. "Start the resurrection protocols. Get this one up and running."
---------------
Unep wandered the complex in a forlorn daze.
As a noble lord, his was the right to pursue whatever he wished. He could scheme, make war, or indulge in whatever hobby caught his fancy.
And for what? A moment of relief in an eternity of torment? It was pointless. Every little joy he could snatch from the endless pit burrowing in his chest would melt away, and the emptiness would return. Like trying to fill a bucket with a hole at the bottom. Pointless.
The Tomb hummed, the energy conduits that radiated through every surface glowing with Gauss power. Canoptek, big and small, scurried everywhere, emerging in columns from the service tunnels, scuttling in swarms, or flying in compact formations from task to task. Battalions of Warriors and Immortals tromped in the long halls and corridors, arraying themselves for the coming campaigns.
Others would have seen glory, power and order. Unep saw only a legion of soulless puppets. Loyal, brave soldiers reduced to honorless things of empty eyes. He would have laughed if he could, he would have cried.
Even the Lords and Crypteks he met, the few with something approaching self-awareness, only garnered a fleeting glance. They had fallen back into their old habits of conspiracies and intrigue with shocking speed after the reawakening. Part of him was outraged by it. With most of the high nobility snuffed out, the sharks had been quick to start scrambling for the empty places at the table.
How couldn't they see how pointless was it all? Without soul, without death, what a sorry sight they made. Damned things that danced, not understanding that they were damned.
Pointless. So pointless.
He never asked for this. They dragged him to the Forge. And now, he was damned to eternal undeath.
Despite himself, his mind returned to the moment when he realized what his world had become.
The carcass fell in a heap of clattering limbs, a smoking hole where his face-mask had been.
Nobody among the assembled nobility said anything as a Lychguard dragged the latest Lord to protest the new management in the pile of sparking wreckage. It had been growing fast in the few micro-cycles since the crypts had been opened, faster as stunned surprise gave way to startled realization gave way to outrage gave way to rage.
Someone bellowed. Someone protested. Someone demanded. Someone called for duels and revolts and oaths of loyalty. They ended all in the same way, with a hole in the skull and not a glance. Utep had kept his silence, stunned bewilderment fighting with terror.
Those who remained were an island in a sea of metallic statues and burning green eyes. Lords and Crypteks were built to the highest standards of power, but even they couldn't do much when outnumbered one hundred to one.
"As I was saying…" The giant lunged on her throne, barely fazed as Korissah lowered her rifle. Her frame, vibrant and supple, on a level of quality he never imagined let alone saw, radiated elegance. Her voice was a soft purr. There was no threat, not in her posture nor in her signature, and maybe that was the scariest thing of them all. "I am Xorathis. I challenged Khepren and crushed him. As per right of conquest, the Anahakara now answers to me." Her eyes were twin neutron stars as they lazily took them all in. "We heard from those dissenting with the new management. Anyone else?" Nobody spoke. She clapped her hands, and stood up. "Good!"
Xorathis didn't walk and didn't stride. It was like she glided, her long legs carrying her hyper-frame as effortlessly as she was moving on clouds. She was massive, looming even over the gigantic Lords, many of whom drew back.
"Welcome, my friends," she greeted, spreading her arms wide, her welcoming smile doing little to soften the way her shadow loomed over them.
She leaned forward, going eye level with the scared Crypteks and Lords.
"I am Xorathis," she whispered. "Will you repeat it for me?"
"You… you are Xorathis."
"Again."
"You are Xorathis."
"Again."
"You are Xorathis."
She straightened up, smiling gently.
"What is my name?"
"Xorathis."
A Cryptek and a Lord on the first row shuddered as she laid her hands on their heads, but didn't dare draw back.
"Anahakara lives in you. And you serve Mictlan now."
"And what does that mean?" A Lord asked in a moment of pride. It withered quickly as she turned to him, but her smile didn't dip.
"That you stay busy," she added with a small shrug. The two clacked and whirred as she patted them. "You'll be safe and powerful under my employ." She leaned forward, voice lowering like she was trusting them with a secret. Her fingers traced a curve on both the Cryptek and Lord's lower faces, Necrodermis pliably giving way. "I'll put a smile on your face and light in your eyes."
The Lord of earlier stood up. "We won't…!" His words ended in a screech as his body imploded. Unep squeezed eyes that weren't there as the sounds of snapping tendons and crashing limbs filled his audio receptors.
"No insolence now," she chided. A ball of wreckage clustered around a keening skull hovered above her palm. Holding it up, she returned to her throne. "We are Mictlan," she said, sitting down, and there was an imperious authority radiating from her now. "We dream, and we do so with more weight and a wider sight than anybody before us ever did. Our vision dominates, changing the world, shaping it to what we see and will it to be." She turned to the ball, which had gone silent now. "Look. This is the beginning of my empire." She tilted her head, eyes sparking with amusement as they laid on them. "Shall we get to work?"
She never turned to address him specifically, never even gave the impression of acknowledging his existence. And yet Utep had the visceral certainty that she was talking to him specifically, that she would be watching him closely. And something told him he wasn't the only one thinking that.
He trembled, in a way that had nothing to do with the emptiness inside.
Since then, he had been wandering. His family was somewhere in the crypt, he was sure, scheming and preparing for any requirement their new liege may ask of them. They were only one of the many lineages on the move. The mix of possible favor from a Phaerakh clearly more powerful than Khepren had ever been, the chances that the disappearance of the higher nobility had opened and the fear of failing her had sent them into a frenzy of work.
As for him, he didn't care. Even the fear she had elicited in him had long dried up. He had no intention of following another mad tyrant in unclear, hair-brained schemes, didn't even want to know more. Szerakh had been more than enough. Now, only a slow undeath remained.
He was so taken by his self-pitying that he didn't notice the strange new place he had entered until a Canoptek sent him a request for a data-transmit.
Dazed, he accepted, and found himself staring at a bizarre sight: organics, many of them. It was so surprising to see them here, in the kingdom of the dead, that for a few seconds, he was speechless, just absorbing what his data-banks told him of them.
Uhn'Saekh, of the machine-cult called Mechanicus. A foolish race, young, impetous, filled with contradictions and mistakes. Alive, oh, so alive.
It was a family of them, he realized with a start. Two Uhn'Saekh, male and female, stood with their three children in front of a stripped Necron frame. The frame stood still like a column as the adults taught about the "Heavenly Guardians", of how they welcomed them in that place of dark wonder, and were teaching them about the True Way. And the children, oh, they were so awed. Small, with eyes wide and filled to the brim with excitement, shining with vitality and the wish to see and do.
Suddenly desperate, Utep let her cognition wander across the connections. There were dozens of them, open at all times for anyone interested among the nobility. The Viewing Hall, his memory banks supplied, and he barely glanced at the term before diving into what it offered.
With bated breath, he saw an ancient Uhn'Saekh, his body ravaged by radiations, watch with approval three young men as they worked on a primitive generator. And then a young organic standing in front of a simple tombstone, offering a prayer to scratched names and memories. Two females laughing, making small talk as they fixed circuits. A circle of kids, playing skip and jump at a disjointed tune. Three friends, just standing in companionable silence. And again, and again, and again, glimmers of what life was truly about, what had always been about, in spite of empty power and the flailing of the dead.
Utep didn't know how long he remained in the Hall, not seeing the Crypteks and Lords who, like thieves in the night, came to snatch a moment of unconfessable remembrance of something they didn't admit to miss dearly. He knew that he cried, even if there were no tear ducts for him to do so. He knew he yearned without words, prayed without thought.
A small touch brought him back, a jolt that was as much physical as a jab to his processors.
Dazed, Utep blinked at Xorathis' sinuous form. The Arch-Cryptek glided past him, her visor fixed on the small city of green holograms filling the hall. Utep had been too absorbed in the data-streams. He didn't even notice it.
"They are something, aren't they?" She said, and there was fondness in her voice.
"Yes…" Utep struggled to regain his composure. His data-streams were tangled in knots.
Xorathis glanced at him. Close by, without her entourage, the High Mistress was an idol of dark elegance.
"You, on the other hand…" she said with a hint of regret. She waved and to Utep's disappointment, the image disappeared. "…are a disgrace." She looked down at him with disdain. "A proud lord of the Necrontyr inhabits that shell? More likely, the Bio-Transference caught a coward, a thief who stole a noble's rightful place."
Utep was stunned. When he was alive, he never had a taste for his chaste's penchant for powermongering. Rather, he had been an explorer, he and his family carrying out dangerous missions to bring back news about their enemies. But even he had a honor, and words he wouldn't allow to slide, no matter who uttered them.
The Warscythe was in his hands before he could think.
"As if you could talk, pretender," he barked, trembling with rage. He felt alive again, but it was waning away fast. His grip was already losing strength. Despair surged inside him. "You… you're just another tyrant."
Xorathis's visor flickered to the tip of the Warscythe.
"If you want to die," she cooed. Her finger felt to Utep like the weight of worlds as it pressed down on the weapon. He couldn't resist it. "Do it yourself."
Utep slumped to the ground, any strength leaving him. He couldn't even get angry. What was the point anyway? He yearned, no, needed to return to the watch. He needed to… to lose himself.
"We're dead!" He rasped, his head feeling too heavy to raise. "What's the point of going on? Szerakh burned us! Nothing remains but ash and mockery! We… we should all just kill ourselves!" Even as he said, ice filled his veins at the thought. His data-streams clawed for the feeds, only to be swatted away by negating protocols.
He felt her move around him, part of him desperately hoping for a killing blow. What came was sickly sweet poison instead.
"How utterly pathetic," her voice was a stiletto through his ribs. "You cannot change. You're too weak to learn to live with yourself and too cowardly to end your existence. You're stuck, a pathetic little thing that can't do anything but wallow in its self-pity. No no no, you won't receive oblivion from me. Cowards like you don't deserve it." A pause. Utep felt at the bottom of his existence. "Yet again…"
He didn't notice when she got close. Her claw molded itself around his chin, his cheeks, coaxing him to look upward. The hologram had been reactivated. Utep's felt like somewhere in his chest a slight beat was starting again.
"If you cannot live for yourself, you pathetic thing, why not try and live for them? They are important, are they not?"
Utep couldn't find his words. The claw let him go before he managed.
"Return to your family, Utep of the Household of Rasetra. Some wait for you still, even if you forgot them."
Her disappearance was like the night moving away. Utep was left alone, watching the figures moving in the holograms, living a life he couldn't have anymore. Right. I have a family yet. They were probably waiting for him, back at the family crypt.
The heartbeat was clear now, thudding slow and somber in his ears.
--------------------
Dimensional frequencies, recorded, scrambled and reassembled, mixed with traditional Necrontyr drums in a smooth, tasteful melody.
"Dimensional Depths", by the Ethermancer and virtuoso Ta-se-sert, premiered at the Silent Court and with multiple versions across the Empire.
Ta-se-sert, a curious Cryptek, had discovered that interstitial energy-transport created sonic by-products that, if woven and orchestrated properly, made for celestial music. The Voices Among Spaces, the Ethermancer had called it, and he had become galaxy-wide famous for his renditions of them. His sonatas were played before Phaerons and his services fought over among Dynasties.
Some even said that at the culmination of his career he played for an audience of C'tan, a performance which the revered musician didn't survive, regretfully. Or that's what the legends said anyway. However his illustrious career ended, Ta-se-sert had been entombed in the Ringing Temple of Djat-Neftut, his body preserved in stasis to supply with inspiration any virtuoso seeking to emulate the master.
Akathra's data-banks provided all of that, and the Necron Lord dumped the packet as fast as it reached his artificial cortex. Useless claptrap. His artificial mind moved too fast, learning protocols interpreting every stray thought as a need for clarification. A lesser noble would have long had a Cryptek take a look at it, but he was loath at letting one of them touch his engrams. Or anyone else. Only an utter fool would give his rivals such a golden chance to mess with his mind.
One such rival stood beside him at the table. Ament was his cousin three times removed by his mother's side, and a tasteless, greedy cretin who reached way above his station.
"A cup, dear cousin?" The idiot asked, pouring the oil himself in a gesture that he probably thought was endearing. Since there was no smiling with the Necrons' deathmask, Ament entrusted his hunched posture to convey hospitability. A pitiful attempt, but what could you expect from a jumped-up peasant?
Beside Ament, a gaggle of Ladies and Lords of high standing all gave him their undivided attention. He despised them all. Not one of them had to fight like he had to remain among the nobility. His family, long harried and persecuted by the Anahakara, had barely avoided falling among the Lychguard ranks at the Bio-Transference's eve.
"Why, yes. Thank you kindly, cousin." Akathra did one better, gesturing and bowing his head in a welcoming gesture as he snatched his cousin's cup. Worm, he thought, downing the drink. He enjoyed the feeling of nano-scarabs tickling his synapses, almost as much as the shudder of outrage running through Ament.
The quickest snatch the prize, dear cousin. His motto, and one he prided on living. He regretted not being able to smile.
Ament hid his annoyance behind a mask of civility. He nodded, not so eager as to look greasy and not so dismissive as to look rude. A whole imbecile, in Akathra's opinion. He could read the snake like an open book.
"I took the liberty of sending you data about that particular matter we discussed earlier," Ament said, offhandedly. "Please, go over it at your leisure. I wouldn't want to intrude on your certainly busy schedule."
"Your patience does you honor." Sneering, Akathra scanned the thick, muddy liquid filling the cup. His sensors sent back illusory feelings of good health. "Truly, your family branch never offers surprises."
"You're too kind," Ament drew back, as if glad and embarrassed. "I could say the same for you and yours. The lineage shows all its qualities in your figure."
Akathra aknowledged the compliment with a tilt of the head. Except that it was an insult. The only "qualities" his second-hand lineage had was in being good at being trampled upon.
Seething inside, Akathra looked down. At the bottom of the hall, a stage was held aloft by thousands of Canoptek, their glowing eyes and the gloom making it look like the stage floated amidst the stars. Akathra barely looked at the automatons performing at the rhythm of the music. He already knew what he would see. Perfect movements, dazzling images, patterns of meaning woven across multiple spectrums of radiation and frequency. An otherworldly, unforgettable sight for a mortal. Just another performance for those like him. And when repeated one million times, what was perfection if not dreadful boredom?
The thought made him feel hollow. The curse of the Necrons, they called it. Fools. He crushed it with the spite he felt for the parasite sitting beside him. He sneered. Dwelling in perfect, eternal bodies was a curse? What a joke. Mortals would kill and die to have what they had, and rightfully so.
To hell with those who cried and whimpered over what they shed. The search for honor and power was what mattered. And they had eternity to chase it now!
"Anyway," he said, like an afterthought. He didn't look away from the performance, but his sensors were all for his cousin. "We are organizing a small gathering later. Family, you see. They are so needy even after ascending." He chuckled, good-natured, echoed by Ament. "We'll be going over the projects for the crypt and I'll need a voice of reason to have my father desist from his stubbornness. You must come." He put a good dose of hope in it. Not for his cousin to be present in his family's business, no. Rather, for him to have an unfortunate accident on the way there. There were so many steps down to the crypt, and they could be so slippery.
Ament, jumped-up peasant that he was, put a hand on his chest in contrition. "We are two martyrs, cousins," he said. "My family wouldn't let me go, and I cannot fathom things changing for the next cycles. But I gather courage in knowing that I don't suffer alone," he laughed, an annoying, grating sound. Akathra felt the need to hit him, but he was no Ament. The "data" his cousin sent were an obvious vector for infection, as his Canoptek data-taster currently spasming two layers beneath his feet could attest to. He scoffed. Snake-heart and no brain. Go figure.
"Well, that settles it then," he said, clapping on his armrest. "But don't think I'll forget this insult. I'll remember it until you pay back my due!" He said it jokingly, but there was no joke here. "I'll let you off for this time only. Duty comes before anything else after all."
Instead of the rebuttal he expected, Ament managed the unthinkable: he surprised him. His cousin remained silent, looking thoughtful.
"Duty, yes. To the dynasty." He turned, and Akathra knew what he was looking at. But he wasn't foolish enough to do the same. His Canoptek scarabs were enough.
Seated in the royal box, surrounded by attendants and servants like planets orbiting a star, the High Mistress looked right in her element.
As they watched, each in his way, a Lady sporting Mictlan glyph offered her a gift: a bundle of necro-dermis micro-fibers, woven and twisted to form a fractal pattern of energy and shimmering hard light.
Elegant fingers flicked and the gift detached itself from the tray it rested on to land on her open palm. She stifled a giggle with her hand as her attendants clapped in awe.
A cute spectacle, if not for the fact that she was twice the size of anybody in the box, hulking Lychguards and Spyders included.
Akathra felt the need to grin nervously. Khepren held his secrets tight. Most of the court had no idea there was a prisoner nestled in the Tombworld, let alone that it came on order of Szerakh himself. It had been quite the surprise when they spilled out of their crypts, only to find that the Phaeron had suffered from a bad case of explosion and they had a new mistress.
Xorathis was amiable, benevolent even. But the purge of those who resisted the new regime had been anything but. Akathra felt a mix of admiration and fear as he remembered, and again as another memory, one far more personal, came to the fore.
The chamber was dark, the anti-matter-induced gloom too much even for his optics to penetrate.
"Do tell, my lord." The voice was soft as sugar, almost seductive. Akathra couldn't see where it came from. All his sensors gave back were nonsensical results. "Do you enjoy power?"
Akathra was used at feeling small. It was the lesser noble's lot to be constantly reminded of his station by those above. At the moment, the feeling reached unprecedented levels.
"Why?" He asked, a tongue he didn't have insisting on trying to wet dry lips. "Is there anything else to enjoy?"
He tried his best not to look at the skeletons hanging from the darkness like it was made of solid stuff. They made for a sorry spectacle, these great Anahakara lords. Why, even he could feel a glimmer of mercy for the way Khepren's cousin looked at him in desperation. Almost. Akathra had understood fast where the wind was blowing. The idiot did not, and that was his reward.
A chuckle. It sounded as if it came from behind him. Akathra whirled around, seeing only darkness. The gloom seemed to pulse, as if it was breathing.
"Ah, a cynic." Xorathis sounded pleased. Or at least, he hoped she was. "And how is your family still of the lesser nobility, I wonder? Ruthlessness is the mark of the great among the Necrontyr."
Akathra didn't need to fake the bitterness. "Why, envious fools all, of course." He bowed deep at Khepren's cousin. "The first of them hanging there in such a pleasant way. And how was your sleep, my dear prince? Good, I hope? You did enjoy power too when you made sure to hinder all of my attempts at advance in your august parent's graces, did you not?"
Another chuckle, lower, almost threatening. Akathra clung to his bravado. It had helped him too many times not to.
"The Anahakara are gone," Xorathis whispered. "Those who stood by them are gone as well. Those who will serve must not follow the same destiny. Which one are you, Akathra of the Household of Inkap?"
Akathra didn't need to think about that. "I stand with the winning side. I always do."
For once, bowing didn't feel humiliating. With the prince's hateful glare on him, it was almost a triumph.
"A man after my own heart," Xorathis purred.
Akathra returned to eyes like pits of darkness. Xorathis gestured in greeting, to which he replied eagerly, basking in the envious looks from the rest of the table.
Turning, he met his cousin's suspicious glare. He was another fool, of those too stubborn to go with the wind when it turned. Akathra wasn't complaining. More space for him.
"For Mictlan, cousin," he corrected him, and there was no need for lips to feel the smirk in his words. He lifted his cup to toast at the Mistress, Xorathis resting a cheek on a fist as she nodded graciously. The subtle but clear way Rahotamen, tall and straight-rod beside, bristled was an added bonus.
Akathra drank, feeling with satisfaction that the show and music, as beautiful as they were, could wait some more for his attention.
The quickest snatches the prize after all.
--------------
Damn the C'tan, damn the Phaeron and damn whoever thought the Great Sleep was a good idea. And just for good measure, damn all the apes blighting the galaxy and, more importantly, him with their presence.
"I am surrounded by idiots!" Yasef yelled, and hit the shard with a manipulator tendril.
The Wraithbone didn't agree with that, erupting in a psychic explosion that sent him flying with a squeak and blasted half of his laboratory to pieces.
"Heraka, you dimwit! Moron!" He raged as his Apprentek extracted him from the half-melted ruins.
Heraka, a hulking, hunched brute, let out a long-suffering sigh. "Yes, Lord Yasef," she muttered. "I am sorry, Lord Yasef."
Yasef whacked her with his rod, smirking inside at the dull thud that her skull gave.
"Foolish girl!" He pointed at the mess left from his experiment. "What do you think you're doing?!? The specimen was defective!" Of course it was. What else could explain the catastrophic end of his experiment? The stupid tin-can must have stolen a shard charged with psycho-reactive energy!
"You hit it, Master." Yasef didn't hear Heraka's mutter, mind already racing with thoughts of rivals and conspirators working to ruin his secret experiments. Who would dare to meddle with his genius? That idiot Mesetra, no doubt, or maybe that meddler Ingif. He threw a suspicious look toward Heraka. His rivals could be working through her. It would explain the disaster. What Apprentek didn't work to supplant his master anyway? He sure did, and the memory of his dear old teacher disappearing alongside his lab in a dimensional implosion was a sweet one.
"Off! Off!" He barked, slapping her hands away and finishing extruding himself on his own. He wasn't allowing no traitor to touch him, that's for sure.
That's when he understood the full extent of the disaster.
"My laboratory! My experiments!" It was all ruined. The delicate lattice of Wraithbone he had grown had been included in the explosion, turning into a scraggly mess of twitching glass.
"Heraka!" He barked, and bonked her again. For her part, the Apprentek got to sort out the mess with her many limbs.
Watching her, Yasef relaxed a little. No, she couldn't be an infiltrator. She was too dumb, too loyal. He had chosen her for those reasons after all. And he rarely was wrong when it came to judging people.
Satisfied, he allowed himself a brief moment of self-congratulations.
"It's shift time, master," Heraka muttered, trying to ruin his attempt at good humor.
Yasef ignored her, glaring at the mess of psycho-reactive material and necrodermis. Interestingly, the Wraithbone was trying to enervate the living metal. It didn't work, obviously. Necrodermis repelled the glassy tentacles by repairing itself, crushing them without pause. Some fragments remained embedded though, and Yasef wondered at it. A Necrodermis-Wraithbone alloy would be a wonder metal, able to be used for all and any occasion.
His fantasy put out wings as he thought about it. He imagined psycho-amplifiers that couldn't be destroyed, or null-constructs powered by the very energies of the Warp. More, he saw armies of the contemptible Eldar squashed like the vermin they were, or those disgusting Chaos goons, drained of the energies empowering them.
He was just about to burst out laughing when Heraka interrupted him again.
"They'll wait!" He snarled, and thumped his staff when she attempted to speak again, shushing her.
Damn, insolent Apprenteks of today. There was respect back in his days! Until you decided that you outgrew your master, you respected him!
Growling, Yusef turned away from the mess, leaving her to pick through the remains of her… sabotage? Maybe, maybe. He would need to think about it.
As for the shift, pah! He was a glorious Cryptek of the Ahanakara Dynasty! Who was this Xorathis to demand his work?
Even as he thought about it, Yusef looked around, almost expecting to see a damn Scarab watching. No, no Scarabs. The laboratory's inner sanctum was empty apart from him. He huffed, shaking away some of the sudden anxiety. Where was he? Oh, right. How did she dare? Since conscripting the remaining nobility – lesser! Feh! He wasn't the lesser of anybody! -, this prisoner had been setting up work shifts and workshops, and demanding – demanding! - that they worked in it at her standards and the rhythms she set.
Yusef sniffed. As if a genius of his caliber could be shackled to something so mundane as a work shift! But at least, he got to put his hands on Wraithbone. He still hadn't figured out how to grow some of his own, but it was only a matter of time, he knew it.
Yusef chuckled, rubbing his hands. That ignorant heathen Khepren disregarded him, called him a fool with delusions of grandeur. Well, who was dust and who was alive now? And who would unlock the secrets of their greatest enemies to reach results that their so-called greatest never dreamed of?
His dreams were rudely interrupted by steps behind him. He recognized Heraka's plodding gait.
"I said not to…!" He whirled around, and almost choked.
Heraka was fairly massive for an Apprentek. Compared to Xorathis, she looked like a chick just hatched from the egg, especially with the Arch-Cryptek's elegant fingers wrapped around her head.
"Master…" The Apprentek whimpered, and Yusef wondered if he could smack her at least once given the circumstances. He opted not to.
Xorathis' lips were curved into a soft smile. "Ground rules," she said, pleasant, tapping a claw between Heraka's optics. "One. In my workshops, work is done, and that means showing up on time." She looked down at him, and for once Yusef felt very small. "Two. I like for things to be tidy and complete. Right now, there's an empty spot that should be filled. I grieve at that, I truly do. I don't mind that you steal some of my Wraithbone. Why, such curiosity is commendable, and I have more than enough. What I mind is that you don't come to work. Hush," her voice turned frosty like space, and Yusef promptly aborted his attempt to speak. Xortahis smiled, all cold gone like it was never there. "Now, I am an accommodating mistress. This was a one-time mistake. It won't happen again. You, my dear, conscientious Yusef, will do your utmost that it won't happen again. You're a smart man. A truly smart man. I know. That's why I won't get angry. This time."
Xorathis lifted the hulking Apprentek like she was made of foam. Heraka looked like an oversized doll in her hands, whimpering as the Arch-Cryptek patted her.
Her hand darted out, faster than he could see. Yusef managed a choked squeak out as he found himself lifted off the ground.
"Now," Xorathis said, pleasant and welcoming. "The workday is gone, but I guess that we can fix that by having some tea, don't you? Then you can tell me all about these little experiments of yours. A marvelous idea, don't you think, Yusef of the Household of Yaref?"
Yusef squeaked.
"Eloquently put."
-----------------
Action Results
With your efforts in mingle with the Anahakara aristocracy, you found three possible candidate for the mantle of Phaeron for your new puppet dinasty!
Choose the Phaeron of the new Dynasty:
[] Utep of the Household of Rasetra: Dragged in chains to the Bio-Forges, this Necron Lord is a sorrowful soul with no hope for salvation. He believes all Necrons to be little more than walking dead that shouldn't have never left their tombs. Whatever worth they once had died with the Necrontyr. What remains is only mockery of what they were. But they can guard those who still live at least.
A Dynasty under his command will be a mighty warden of the living, with the very un-Necron-like ability to connect with the ensouled, both in forming alliances and governing them. Whatever domain it will build will focus on defense and consolidation, expanding its borders slowly and carefully and with an eye on reducing casualties. United behind their Phaeron's melancholy, the nobles of this domain are sure to hold strong loyalty to the one who showed them a new way.
The Household of Rasetra had begetted many valiant infantry commanders for the dynasty, and Utep is no exception. Ground assaults under his command are sure to be dreaded.
[] Akathra of the Household of Inkap: The quintessential Necron Lord, Akathra comes from a house that had to fight tooth and nail against their superiors' dislike to retain their noble status. It is almost unthinkable for a Necrontyr line to lose its nobility, but Inkap, a lineage marked by insolence and ambition, almost broke the mold.
Bio-Transference robbed nothing from Akathra's strong personality. He's an ambitious cynic who is fixed on raising his lineage's fortunes, which taste for intrigue is only matched by his ability in it. If elevated to Phaeron, he will lead his dynasty to conquer and expand aggressively, using any means for it, even those considered dishonorable by the ancient Necrontyr codes, with little attention to collateral damage. Hidden plots, espionage and brute strength are all tools he will use without prejudice in serving his objective, and he'll do so with competence and efficiency, even if with less loyalty that one could hope for.
Inkap was a great navigator, and his descendants never lost their taste for the stars. Exploration and scouting are this house's strongpoints.
[] Yusef of the Household of Yaref: An eccentric Cryptek, Yusef is overbearing, annoying and sometimes silly, with his long-suffering Apprentek Heraka as the prime target for his outbursts. Paranoid and genial, he was never acknowledged by Khepren, but his pride is such that he never lost certainty in his destiny to become Arch-Cryptek.
Any dynasty led by him would focus on creating a small but strong and well-defended realm, using the full array of Necron technomancy for it. Once that is accomplished, Yusef will disregard more expansion, leaving his court to fall into infighting while he focuses on his research. That will produce a vassal state able to assist Mictlan in research while allowing any organic subject to live in relative freedom and comfort, if only to keep them pliant.
It'd take a direct threat to his tranquillity for Yusef to break his isolation and unite his court, something that will bring a true might falling on any would-be invaders. Yusef remains loyal as long as he's left to his own devices: direct orders will get him moving but are sure to erode his goodwill if repeated.
The Yaref Household supplied the Anahakara with competent Crypteks for dozens of generations. Its scions are technomancers of great talent.
Choosing a Phaeron is not enough. You'll have to decide where he'll implant his new kingdom.
[] Close by: The Dead Archipelago has plenty of Tombworlds to awaken and plenty of space. The new vassal state will be close by, allowing you to keep a close eye on it and someone to cover your flanks at the same time. But you'll have to give up some Tombworlds to him.
[] Farther away: Statistical data gives for certain the presence of more Tombworlds in the Expanse. Sending your Phaeron into it will require you giving up a ship and a sizable force, since you won't be able to assist him directly, as well as affording some measure of trust, but also that you'll have an ally able to create its own zone of influence. Uhn'Saekh resistance is expected, but their fractional nature is sure to blunt it.
[] Into the Stars: Load the Phaeron and his troops on a ship and send them searching for Tombworlds outside the Sector. They'll have plenty of trust, time and space to create their own kingdom. You'll hear from them only after some time, but this could bring you a whole slew of pleasant surprises.
Lastly, you'll have to decide who to send with the new Phaeron. Even a king so mighty needs his army.
[] Detachment: Just enough to start. It'll make establishing the new kingdom tricky.
10.000 Necron Warriors
2.000 Immortals
1.000 Lokhust Destroyers
1.000 Skorphek Destroyers
500 Lychguards
50 Annihilation Barges
10 Lesser Lords
15 Crypteks
[] Armed Contingent: A balanced choice and a fearsome threat for the lesser races colonizing the galaxy.
30.000 Necron Warriors
10.000 Immortals
3.000 Lokhust Destroyers
3.000 Skorphek Destroyers
1.000 Lychguards
100 Annihilation Barges
5 Monoliths
20 Lesser Lords
25 Crypteks
[] Army: The might of the Necrontyr, or a small part of it at least. Still enough to see planets burn and lesser races beg for mercy.
70.000 Necron Warriors
30.000 Immortals
6.000 Lokhust Destroyers
6.000 Skorphek Destroyers
2.000 Lychguards
200 Annihilation Barges
10 Monoliths
5 Doomsday Arks
5 Tesseract Arks
5 Doomsday Monoliths
40 Lesser Lords
45 Crypteks
"Oh, my skin! Where's my skin?" He groaned, mechanic fingers running up and down his fused ribs. Sadness filled his voice as the green blazes in his eyes flared with awareness. "Oh, how I miss my flesh," he moaned. He turned inside the sarcophagus, only the forest of connectors covering his body stopping him from curling into a ball. "My breath…" He devolved into mutters, eyes flickering like broken lights.
"Inject mind-stimulants and run an acclimatating mind-simulations," Xorathis instructed, clipped and business-like. Chalchun obediently wrote it down, skittering after her as she strode down the row of stasis-tombs.
The second was demented.
"The flesh cannot prevail against the machine," he droned, hanging from his sarcophagus like a prisoner from a torture rack. "Fleeting is the life ensouled, easy to snap and sever. A stone, an arrow is all that is needed to end biological patterns and that is unworthy. The machine holds, the machine endures. It is purity of purpose, superiority of power, immortality embodied. The flesh cannot prevail against the machine." He shuddered and trembled, litanies pouring from his open mouth like a broken record.
The fire in his sockets narrowed into two slits of vague incomprehension as he focused on her. "Is that you, Nephetra? Do you mind bringing me the scroll on chrono-sculpting? It's on the second shelf."
Xorathis hummed, inspecting him. "Catastrophic engram damage," she sentenced. "Administer last rites and proceed with ritual entombment." She strode to the next.
The third was hostile.
"Pretender! Usurper!" He barked, eyes burning with malice. The connectors tensed under his struggling, some snapping and writhing like severed snakes. "You shall perish for your crimes! The memory of our Phaeron shall be avenged in your impure blood! Oblivion is too good for you! You shall be made into an empty puppet!" His torrent of abuses didn't stop as the sarcophagus closed on him.
"Engrams have survived the transfer perfectly," Xorathis mused. "Keep in stasis for a few cycles for study, then proceed with disposal." She didn't wait to listen Chalchun's acknowledgment, moving on.
The fourth was silent.
Nestled among the connectors like an insect caught in a web, he watched her carefully. His burning gaze glowed with consideration, a cascade of plotting backed by eons of practice.
Xorathis smiled. "Start the resurrection protocols. Get this one up and running."
---------------
Masks, to fool:
Ptolomes Martial Roll, 34+4: 38. Success!
- Awakened Nobles - we may find someone of interest.
Rolls: 74, 45, 56. Found three interesting guys.
Ptolomes Martial Roll, 34+4: 38. Success!
- Awakened Nobles - we may find someone of interest.
Rolls: 74, 45, 56. Found three interesting guys.
Unep wandered the complex in a forlorn daze.
As a noble lord, his was the right to pursue whatever he wished. He could scheme, make war, or indulge in whatever hobby caught his fancy.
And for what? A moment of relief in an eternity of torment? It was pointless. Every little joy he could snatch from the endless pit burrowing in his chest would melt away, and the emptiness would return. Like trying to fill a bucket with a hole at the bottom. Pointless.
The Tomb hummed, the energy conduits that radiated through every surface glowing with Gauss power. Canoptek, big and small, scurried everywhere, emerging in columns from the service tunnels, scuttling in swarms, or flying in compact formations from task to task. Battalions of Warriors and Immortals tromped in the long halls and corridors, arraying themselves for the coming campaigns.
Others would have seen glory, power and order. Unep saw only a legion of soulless puppets. Loyal, brave soldiers reduced to honorless things of empty eyes. He would have laughed if he could, he would have cried.
Even the Lords and Crypteks he met, the few with something approaching self-awareness, only garnered a fleeting glance. They had fallen back into their old habits of conspiracies and intrigue with shocking speed after the reawakening. Part of him was outraged by it. With most of the high nobility snuffed out, the sharks had been quick to start scrambling for the empty places at the table.
How couldn't they see how pointless was it all? Without soul, without death, what a sorry sight they made. Damned things that danced, not understanding that they were damned.
Pointless. So pointless.
He never asked for this. They dragged him to the Forge. And now, he was damned to eternal undeath.
Despite himself, his mind returned to the moment when he realized what his world had become.
The carcass fell in a heap of clattering limbs, a smoking hole where his face-mask had been.
Nobody among the assembled nobility said anything as a Lychguard dragged the latest Lord to protest the new management in the pile of sparking wreckage. It had been growing fast in the few micro-cycles since the crypts had been opened, faster as stunned surprise gave way to startled realization gave way to outrage gave way to rage.
Someone bellowed. Someone protested. Someone demanded. Someone called for duels and revolts and oaths of loyalty. They ended all in the same way, with a hole in the skull and not a glance. Utep had kept his silence, stunned bewilderment fighting with terror.
Those who remained were an island in a sea of metallic statues and burning green eyes. Lords and Crypteks were built to the highest standards of power, but even they couldn't do much when outnumbered one hundred to one.
"As I was saying…" The giant lunged on her throne, barely fazed as Korissah lowered her rifle. Her frame, vibrant and supple, on a level of quality he never imagined let alone saw, radiated elegance. Her voice was a soft purr. There was no threat, not in her posture nor in her signature, and maybe that was the scariest thing of them all. "I am Xorathis. I challenged Khepren and crushed him. As per right of conquest, the Anahakara now answers to me." Her eyes were twin neutron stars as they lazily took them all in. "We heard from those dissenting with the new management. Anyone else?" Nobody spoke. She clapped her hands, and stood up. "Good!"
Xorathis didn't walk and didn't stride. It was like she glided, her long legs carrying her hyper-frame as effortlessly as she was moving on clouds. She was massive, looming even over the gigantic Lords, many of whom drew back.
"Welcome, my friends," she greeted, spreading her arms wide, her welcoming smile doing little to soften the way her shadow loomed over them.
She leaned forward, going eye level with the scared Crypteks and Lords.
"I am Xorathis," she whispered. "Will you repeat it for me?"
"You… you are Xorathis."
"Again."
"You are Xorathis."
"Again."
"You are Xorathis."
She straightened up, smiling gently.
"What is my name?"
"Xorathis."
A Cryptek and a Lord on the first row shuddered as she laid her hands on their heads, but didn't dare draw back.
"Anahakara lives in you. And you serve Mictlan now."
"And what does that mean?" A Lord asked in a moment of pride. It withered quickly as she turned to him, but her smile didn't dip.
"That you stay busy," she added with a small shrug. The two clacked and whirred as she patted them. "You'll be safe and powerful under my employ." She leaned forward, voice lowering like she was trusting them with a secret. Her fingers traced a curve on both the Cryptek and Lord's lower faces, Necrodermis pliably giving way. "I'll put a smile on your face and light in your eyes."
The Lord of earlier stood up. "We won't…!" His words ended in a screech as his body imploded. Unep squeezed eyes that weren't there as the sounds of snapping tendons and crashing limbs filled his audio receptors.
"No insolence now," she chided. A ball of wreckage clustered around a keening skull hovered above her palm. Holding it up, she returned to her throne. "We are Mictlan," she said, sitting down, and there was an imperious authority radiating from her now. "We dream, and we do so with more weight and a wider sight than anybody before us ever did. Our vision dominates, changing the world, shaping it to what we see and will it to be." She turned to the ball, which had gone silent now. "Look. This is the beginning of my empire." She tilted her head, eyes sparking with amusement as they laid on them. "Shall we get to work?"
She never turned to address him specifically, never even gave the impression of acknowledging his existence. And yet Utep had the visceral certainty that she was talking to him specifically, that she would be watching him closely. And something told him he wasn't the only one thinking that.
He trembled, in a way that had nothing to do with the emptiness inside.
Since then, he had been wandering. His family was somewhere in the crypt, he was sure, scheming and preparing for any requirement their new liege may ask of them. They were only one of the many lineages on the move. The mix of possible favor from a Phaerakh clearly more powerful than Khepren had ever been, the chances that the disappearance of the higher nobility had opened and the fear of failing her had sent them into a frenzy of work.
As for him, he didn't care. Even the fear she had elicited in him had long dried up. He had no intention of following another mad tyrant in unclear, hair-brained schemes, didn't even want to know more. Szerakh had been more than enough. Now, only a slow undeath remained.
The Viewing Hall
Xorathis Governance Roll, 56+9: 65. Success!
Xorathis Governance Roll, 56+9: 65. Success!
He was so taken by his self-pitying that he didn't notice the strange new place he had entered until a Canoptek sent him a request for a data-transmit.
Dazed, he accepted, and found himself staring at a bizarre sight: organics, many of them. It was so surprising to see them here, in the kingdom of the dead, that for a few seconds, he was speechless, just absorbing what his data-banks told him of them.
Uhn'Saekh, of the machine-cult called Mechanicus. A foolish race, young, impetous, filled with contradictions and mistakes. Alive, oh, so alive.
It was a family of them, he realized with a start. Two Uhn'Saekh, male and female, stood with their three children in front of a stripped Necron frame. The frame stood still like a column as the adults taught about the "Heavenly Guardians", of how they welcomed them in that place of dark wonder, and were teaching them about the True Way. And the children, oh, they were so awed. Small, with eyes wide and filled to the brim with excitement, shining with vitality and the wish to see and do.
Suddenly desperate, Utep let her cognition wander across the connections. There were dozens of them, open at all times for anyone interested among the nobility. The Viewing Hall, his memory banks supplied, and he barely glanced at the term before diving into what it offered.
With bated breath, he saw an ancient Uhn'Saekh, his body ravaged by radiations, watch with approval three young men as they worked on a primitive generator. And then a young organic standing in front of a simple tombstone, offering a prayer to scratched names and memories. Two females laughing, making small talk as they fixed circuits. A circle of kids, playing skip and jump at a disjointed tune. Three friends, just standing in companionable silence. And again, and again, and again, glimmers of what life was truly about, what had always been about, in spite of empty power and the flailing of the dead.
Utep didn't know how long he remained in the Hall, not seeing the Crypteks and Lords who, like thieves in the night, came to snatch a moment of unconfessable remembrance of something they didn't admit to miss dearly. He knew that he cried, even if there were no tear ducts for him to do so. He knew he yearned without words, prayed without thought.
A small touch brought him back, a jolt that was as much physical as a jab to his processors.
Dazed, Utep blinked at Xorathis' sinuous form. The Arch-Cryptek glided past him, her visor fixed on the small city of green holograms filling the hall. Utep had been too absorbed in the data-streams. He didn't even notice it.
"They are something, aren't they?" She said, and there was fondness in her voice.
"Yes…" Utep struggled to regain his composure. His data-streams were tangled in knots.
Xorathis glanced at him. Close by, without her entourage, the High Mistress was an idol of dark elegance.
"You, on the other hand…" she said with a hint of regret. She waved and to Utep's disappointment, the image disappeared. "…are a disgrace." She looked down at him with disdain. "A proud lord of the Necrontyr inhabits that shell? More likely, the Bio-Transference caught a coward, a thief who stole a noble's rightful place."
Utep was stunned. When he was alive, he never had a taste for his chaste's penchant for powermongering. Rather, he had been an explorer, he and his family carrying out dangerous missions to bring back news about their enemies. But even he had a honor, and words he wouldn't allow to slide, no matter who uttered them.
The Warscythe was in his hands before he could think.
"As if you could talk, pretender," he barked, trembling with rage. He felt alive again, but it was waning away fast. His grip was already losing strength. Despair surged inside him. "You… you're just another tyrant."
Xorathis's visor flickered to the tip of the Warscythe.
"If you want to die," she cooed. Her finger felt to Utep like the weight of worlds as it pressed down on the weapon. He couldn't resist it. "Do it yourself."
Utep slumped to the ground, any strength leaving him. He couldn't even get angry. What was the point anyway? He yearned, no, needed to return to the watch. He needed to… to lose himself.
"We're dead!" He rasped, his head feeling too heavy to raise. "What's the point of going on? Szerakh burned us! Nothing remains but ash and mockery! We… we should all just kill ourselves!" Even as he said, ice filled his veins at the thought. His data-streams clawed for the feeds, only to be swatted away by negating protocols.
He felt her move around him, part of him desperately hoping for a killing blow. What came was sickly sweet poison instead.
"How utterly pathetic," her voice was a stiletto through his ribs. "You cannot change. You're too weak to learn to live with yourself and too cowardly to end your existence. You're stuck, a pathetic little thing that can't do anything but wallow in its self-pity. No no no, you won't receive oblivion from me. Cowards like you don't deserve it." A pause. Utep felt at the bottom of his existence. "Yet again…"
He didn't notice when she got close. Her claw molded itself around his chin, his cheeks, coaxing him to look upward. The hologram had been reactivated. Utep's felt like somewhere in his chest a slight beat was starting again.
"If you cannot live for yourself, you pathetic thing, why not try and live for them? They are important, are they not?"
Utep couldn't find his words. The claw let him go before he managed.
"Return to your family, Utep of the Household of Rasetra. Some wait for you still, even if you forgot them."
Her disappearance was like the night moving away. Utep was left alone, watching the figures moving in the holograms, living a life he couldn't have anymore. Right. I have a family yet. They were probably waiting for him, back at the family crypt.
The heartbeat was clear now, thudding slow and somber in his ears.
--------------------
Dimensional frequencies, recorded, scrambled and reassembled, mixed with traditional Necrontyr drums in a smooth, tasteful melody.
"Dimensional Depths", by the Ethermancer and virtuoso Ta-se-sert, premiered at the Silent Court and with multiple versions across the Empire.
Ta-se-sert, a curious Cryptek, had discovered that interstitial energy-transport created sonic by-products that, if woven and orchestrated properly, made for celestial music. The Voices Among Spaces, the Ethermancer had called it, and he had become galaxy-wide famous for his renditions of them. His sonatas were played before Phaerons and his services fought over among Dynasties.
Some even said that at the culmination of his career he played for an audience of C'tan, a performance which the revered musician didn't survive, regretfully. Or that's what the legends said anyway. However his illustrious career ended, Ta-se-sert had been entombed in the Ringing Temple of Djat-Neftut, his body preserved in stasis to supply with inspiration any virtuoso seeking to emulate the master.
Akathra's data-banks provided all of that, and the Necron Lord dumped the packet as fast as it reached his artificial cortex. Useless claptrap. His artificial mind moved too fast, learning protocols interpreting every stray thought as a need for clarification. A lesser noble would have long had a Cryptek take a look at it, but he was loath at letting one of them touch his engrams. Or anyone else. Only an utter fool would give his rivals such a golden chance to mess with his mind.
One such rival stood beside him at the table. Ament was his cousin three times removed by his mother's side, and a tasteless, greedy cretin who reached way above his station.
"A cup, dear cousin?" The idiot asked, pouring the oil himself in a gesture that he probably thought was endearing. Since there was no smiling with the Necrons' deathmask, Ament entrusted his hunched posture to convey hospitability. A pitiful attempt, but what could you expect from a jumped-up peasant?
Beside Ament, a gaggle of Ladies and Lords of high standing all gave him their undivided attention. He despised them all. Not one of them had to fight like he had to remain among the nobility. His family, long harried and persecuted by the Anahakara, had barely avoided falling among the Lychguard ranks at the Bio-Transference's eve.
"Why, yes. Thank you kindly, cousin." Akathra did one better, gesturing and bowing his head in a welcoming gesture as he snatched his cousin's cup. Worm, he thought, downing the drink. He enjoyed the feeling of nano-scarabs tickling his synapses, almost as much as the shudder of outrage running through Ament.
The quickest snatch the prize, dear cousin. His motto, and one he prided on living. He regretted not being able to smile.
Ament hid his annoyance behind a mask of civility. He nodded, not so eager as to look greasy and not so dismissive as to look rude. A whole imbecile, in Akathra's opinion. He could read the snake like an open book.
"I took the liberty of sending you data about that particular matter we discussed earlier," Ament said, offhandedly. "Please, go over it at your leisure. I wouldn't want to intrude on your certainly busy schedule."
"Your patience does you honor." Sneering, Akathra scanned the thick, muddy liquid filling the cup. His sensors sent back illusory feelings of good health. "Truly, your family branch never offers surprises."
"You're too kind," Ament drew back, as if glad and embarrassed. "I could say the same for you and yours. The lineage shows all its qualities in your figure."
Akathra aknowledged the compliment with a tilt of the head. Except that it was an insult. The only "qualities" his second-hand lineage had was in being good at being trampled upon.
Seething inside, Akathra looked down. At the bottom of the hall, a stage was held aloft by thousands of Canoptek, their glowing eyes and the gloom making it look like the stage floated amidst the stars. Akathra barely looked at the automatons performing at the rhythm of the music. He already knew what he would see. Perfect movements, dazzling images, patterns of meaning woven across multiple spectrums of radiation and frequency. An otherworldly, unforgettable sight for a mortal. Just another performance for those like him. And when repeated one million times, what was perfection if not dreadful boredom?
The thought made him feel hollow. The curse of the Necrons, they called it. Fools. He crushed it with the spite he felt for the parasite sitting beside him. He sneered. Dwelling in perfect, eternal bodies was a curse? What a joke. Mortals would kill and die to have what they had, and rightfully so.
To hell with those who cried and whimpered over what they shed. The search for honor and power was what mattered. And they had eternity to chase it now!
"Anyway," he said, like an afterthought. He didn't look away from the performance, but his sensors were all for his cousin. "We are organizing a small gathering later. Family, you see. They are so needy even after ascending." He chuckled, good-natured, echoed by Ament. "We'll be going over the projects for the crypt and I'll need a voice of reason to have my father desist from his stubbornness. You must come." He put a good dose of hope in it. Not for his cousin to be present in his family's business, no. Rather, for him to have an unfortunate accident on the way there. There were so many steps down to the crypt, and they could be so slippery.
Ament, jumped-up peasant that he was, put a hand on his chest in contrition. "We are two martyrs, cousins," he said. "My family wouldn't let me go, and I cannot fathom things changing for the next cycles. But I gather courage in knowing that I don't suffer alone," he laughed, an annoying, grating sound. Akathra felt the need to hit him, but he was no Ament. The "data" his cousin sent were an obvious vector for infection, as his Canoptek data-taster currently spasming two layers beneath his feet could attest to. He scoffed. Snake-heart and no brain. Go figure.
"Well, that settles it then," he said, clapping on his armrest. "But don't think I'll forget this insult. I'll remember it until you pay back my due!" He said it jokingly, but there was no joke here. "I'll let you off for this time only. Duty comes before anything else after all."
Instead of the rebuttal he expected, Ament managed the unthinkable: he surprised him. His cousin remained silent, looking thoughtful.
"Duty, yes. To the dynasty." He turned, and Akathra knew what he was looking at. But he wasn't foolish enough to do the same. His Canoptek scarabs were enough.
Seated in the royal box, surrounded by attendants and servants like planets orbiting a star, the High Mistress looked right in her element.
As they watched, each in his way, a Lady sporting Mictlan glyph offered her a gift: a bundle of necro-dermis micro-fibers, woven and twisted to form a fractal pattern of energy and shimmering hard light.
Elegant fingers flicked and the gift detached itself from the tray it rested on to land on her open palm. She stifled a giggle with her hand as her attendants clapped in awe.
A cute spectacle, if not for the fact that she was twice the size of anybody in the box, hulking Lychguards and Spyders included.
Akathra felt the need to grin nervously. Khepren held his secrets tight. Most of the court had no idea there was a prisoner nestled in the Tombworld, let alone that it came on order of Szerakh himself. It had been quite the surprise when they spilled out of their crypts, only to find that the Phaeron had suffered from a bad case of explosion and they had a new mistress.
Xorathis was amiable, benevolent even. But the purge of those who resisted the new regime had been anything but. Akathra felt a mix of admiration and fear as he remembered, and again as another memory, one far more personal, came to the fore.
The chamber was dark, the anti-matter-induced gloom too much even for his optics to penetrate.
"Do tell, my lord." The voice was soft as sugar, almost seductive. Akathra couldn't see where it came from. All his sensors gave back were nonsensical results. "Do you enjoy power?"
Akathra was used at feeling small. It was the lesser noble's lot to be constantly reminded of his station by those above. At the moment, the feeling reached unprecedented levels.
"Why?" He asked, a tongue he didn't have insisting on trying to wet dry lips. "Is there anything else to enjoy?"
He tried his best not to look at the skeletons hanging from the darkness like it was made of solid stuff. They made for a sorry spectacle, these great Anahakara lords. Why, even he could feel a glimmer of mercy for the way Khepren's cousin looked at him in desperation. Almost. Akathra had understood fast where the wind was blowing. The idiot did not, and that was his reward.
A chuckle. It sounded as if it came from behind him. Akathra whirled around, seeing only darkness. The gloom seemed to pulse, as if it was breathing.
"Ah, a cynic." Xorathis sounded pleased. Or at least, he hoped she was. "And how is your family still of the lesser nobility, I wonder? Ruthlessness is the mark of the great among the Necrontyr."
Akathra didn't need to fake the bitterness. "Why, envious fools all, of course." He bowed deep at Khepren's cousin. "The first of them hanging there in such a pleasant way. And how was your sleep, my dear prince? Good, I hope? You did enjoy power too when you made sure to hinder all of my attempts at advance in your august parent's graces, did you not?"
Another chuckle, lower, almost threatening. Akathra clung to his bravado. It had helped him too many times not to.
"The Anahakara are gone," Xorathis whispered. "Those who stood by them are gone as well. Those who will serve must not follow the same destiny. Which one are you, Akathra of the Household of Inkap?"
Akathra didn't need to think about that. "I stand with the winning side. I always do."
For once, bowing didn't feel humiliating. With the prince's hateful glare on him, it was almost a triumph.
"A man after my own heart," Xorathis purred.
Akathra returned to eyes like pits of darkness. Xorathis gestured in greeting, to which he replied eagerly, basking in the envious looks from the rest of the table.
Turning, he met his cousin's suspicious glare. He was another fool, of those too stubborn to go with the wind when it turned. Akathra wasn't complaining. More space for him.
"For Mictlan, cousin," he corrected him, and there was no need for lips to feel the smirk in his words. He lifted his cup to toast at the Mistress, Xorathis resting a cheek on a fist as she nodded graciously. The subtle but clear way Rahotamen, tall and straight-rod beside, bristled was an added bonus.
Akathra drank, feeling with satisfaction that the show and music, as beautiful as they were, could wait some more for his attention.
The quickest snatches the prize after all.
--------------
Damn the C'tan, damn the Phaeron and damn whoever thought the Great Sleep was a good idea. And just for good measure, damn all the apes blighting the galaxy and, more importantly, him with their presence.
"I am surrounded by idiots!" Yasef yelled, and hit the shard with a manipulator tendril.
The Wraithbone didn't agree with that, erupting in a psychic explosion that sent him flying with a squeak and blasted half of his laboratory to pieces.
"Heraka, you dimwit! Moron!" He raged as his Apprentek extracted him from the half-melted ruins.
Heraka, a hulking, hunched brute, let out a long-suffering sigh. "Yes, Lord Yasef," she muttered. "I am sorry, Lord Yasef."
Yasef whacked her with his rod, smirking inside at the dull thud that her skull gave.
"Foolish girl!" He pointed at the mess left from his experiment. "What do you think you're doing?!? The specimen was defective!" Of course it was. What else could explain the catastrophic end of his experiment? The stupid tin-can must have stolen a shard charged with psycho-reactive energy!
"You hit it, Master." Yasef didn't hear Heraka's mutter, mind already racing with thoughts of rivals and conspirators working to ruin his secret experiments. Who would dare to meddle with his genius? That idiot Mesetra, no doubt, or maybe that meddler Ingif. He threw a suspicious look toward Heraka. His rivals could be working through her. It would explain the disaster. What Apprentek didn't work to supplant his master anyway? He sure did, and the memory of his dear old teacher disappearing alongside his lab in a dimensional implosion was a sweet one.
"Off! Off!" He barked, slapping her hands away and finishing extruding himself on his own. He wasn't allowing no traitor to touch him, that's for sure.
That's when he understood the full extent of the disaster.
"My laboratory! My experiments!" It was all ruined. The delicate lattice of Wraithbone he had grown had been included in the explosion, turning into a scraggly mess of twitching glass.
"Heraka!" He barked, and bonked her again. For her part, the Apprentek got to sort out the mess with her many limbs.
Watching her, Yasef relaxed a little. No, she couldn't be an infiltrator. She was too dumb, too loyal. He had chosen her for those reasons after all. And he rarely was wrong when it came to judging people.
Satisfied, he allowed himself a brief moment of self-congratulations.
"It's shift time, master," Heraka muttered, trying to ruin his attempt at good humor.
Yasef ignored her, glaring at the mess of psycho-reactive material and necrodermis. Interestingly, the Wraithbone was trying to enervate the living metal. It didn't work, obviously. Necrodermis repelled the glassy tentacles by repairing itself, crushing them without pause. Some fragments remained embedded though, and Yasef wondered at it. A Necrodermis-Wraithbone alloy would be a wonder metal, able to be used for all and any occasion.
His fantasy put out wings as he thought about it. He imagined psycho-amplifiers that couldn't be destroyed, or null-constructs powered by the very energies of the Warp. More, he saw armies of the contemptible Eldar squashed like the vermin they were, or those disgusting Chaos goons, drained of the energies empowering them.
He was just about to burst out laughing when Heraka interrupted him again.
"They'll wait!" He snarled, and thumped his staff when she attempted to speak again, shushing her.
Damn, insolent Apprenteks of today. There was respect back in his days! Until you decided that you outgrew your master, you respected him!
Growling, Yusef turned away from the mess, leaving her to pick through the remains of her… sabotage? Maybe, maybe. He would need to think about it.
As for the shift, pah! He was a glorious Cryptek of the Ahanakara Dynasty! Who was this Xorathis to demand his work?
Even as he thought about it, Yusef looked around, almost expecting to see a damn Scarab watching. No, no Scarabs. The laboratory's inner sanctum was empty apart from him. He huffed, shaking away some of the sudden anxiety. Where was he? Oh, right. How did she dare? Since conscripting the remaining nobility – lesser! Feh! He wasn't the lesser of anybody! -, this prisoner had been setting up work shifts and workshops, and demanding – demanding! - that they worked in it at her standards and the rhythms she set.
Yusef sniffed. As if a genius of his caliber could be shackled to something so mundane as a work shift! But at least, he got to put his hands on Wraithbone. He still hadn't figured out how to grow some of his own, but it was only a matter of time, he knew it.
Yusef chuckled, rubbing his hands. That ignorant heathen Khepren disregarded him, called him a fool with delusions of grandeur. Well, who was dust and who was alive now? And who would unlock the secrets of their greatest enemies to reach results that their so-called greatest never dreamed of?
His dreams were rudely interrupted by steps behind him. He recognized Heraka's plodding gait.
"I said not to…!" He whirled around, and almost choked.
White Ghosts, Redux
Xorathis Technomancy Roll, 76+9: 85. Success!
Xorathis Technomancy Roll, 76+9: 85. Success!
Heraka was fairly massive for an Apprentek. Compared to Xorathis, she looked like a chick just hatched from the egg, especially with the Arch-Cryptek's elegant fingers wrapped around her head.
"Master…" The Apprentek whimpered, and Yusef wondered if he could smack her at least once given the circumstances. He opted not to.
Xorathis' lips were curved into a soft smile. "Ground rules," she said, pleasant, tapping a claw between Heraka's optics. "One. In my workshops, work is done, and that means showing up on time." She looked down at him, and for once Yusef felt very small. "Two. I like for things to be tidy and complete. Right now, there's an empty spot that should be filled. I grieve at that, I truly do. I don't mind that you steal some of my Wraithbone. Why, such curiosity is commendable, and I have more than enough. What I mind is that you don't come to work. Hush," her voice turned frosty like space, and Yusef promptly aborted his attempt to speak. Xortahis smiled, all cold gone like it was never there. "Now, I am an accommodating mistress. This was a one-time mistake. It won't happen again. You, my dear, conscientious Yusef, will do your utmost that it won't happen again. You're a smart man. A truly smart man. I know. That's why I won't get angry. This time."
Xorathis lifted the hulking Apprentek like she was made of foam. Heraka looked like an oversized doll in her hands, whimpering as the Arch-Cryptek patted her.
Her hand darted out, faster than he could see. Yusef managed a choked squeak out as he found himself lifted off the ground.
"Now," Xorathis said, pleasant and welcoming. "The workday is gone, but I guess that we can fix that by having some tea, don't you? Then you can tell me all about these little experiments of yours. A marvelous idea, don't you think, Yusef of the Household of Yaref?"
Yusef squeaked.
"Eloquently put."
-----------------
Action Results
With your efforts in mingle with the Anahakara aristocracy, you found three possible candidate for the mantle of Phaeron for your new puppet dinasty!
Choose the Phaeron of the new Dynasty:
[] Utep of the Household of Rasetra: Dragged in chains to the Bio-Forges, this Necron Lord is a sorrowful soul with no hope for salvation. He believes all Necrons to be little more than walking dead that shouldn't have never left their tombs. Whatever worth they once had died with the Necrontyr. What remains is only mockery of what they were. But they can guard those who still live at least.
A Dynasty under his command will be a mighty warden of the living, with the very un-Necron-like ability to connect with the ensouled, both in forming alliances and governing them. Whatever domain it will build will focus on defense and consolidation, expanding its borders slowly and carefully and with an eye on reducing casualties. United behind their Phaeron's melancholy, the nobles of this domain are sure to hold strong loyalty to the one who showed them a new way.
The Household of Rasetra had begetted many valiant infantry commanders for the dynasty, and Utep is no exception. Ground assaults under his command are sure to be dreaded.
[] Akathra of the Household of Inkap: The quintessential Necron Lord, Akathra comes from a house that had to fight tooth and nail against their superiors' dislike to retain their noble status. It is almost unthinkable for a Necrontyr line to lose its nobility, but Inkap, a lineage marked by insolence and ambition, almost broke the mold.
Bio-Transference robbed nothing from Akathra's strong personality. He's an ambitious cynic who is fixed on raising his lineage's fortunes, which taste for intrigue is only matched by his ability in it. If elevated to Phaeron, he will lead his dynasty to conquer and expand aggressively, using any means for it, even those considered dishonorable by the ancient Necrontyr codes, with little attention to collateral damage. Hidden plots, espionage and brute strength are all tools he will use without prejudice in serving his objective, and he'll do so with competence and efficiency, even if with less loyalty that one could hope for.
Inkap was a great navigator, and his descendants never lost their taste for the stars. Exploration and scouting are this house's strongpoints.
[] Yusef of the Household of Yaref: An eccentric Cryptek, Yusef is overbearing, annoying and sometimes silly, with his long-suffering Apprentek Heraka as the prime target for his outbursts. Paranoid and genial, he was never acknowledged by Khepren, but his pride is such that he never lost certainty in his destiny to become Arch-Cryptek.
Any dynasty led by him would focus on creating a small but strong and well-defended realm, using the full array of Necron technomancy for it. Once that is accomplished, Yusef will disregard more expansion, leaving his court to fall into infighting while he focuses on his research. That will produce a vassal state able to assist Mictlan in research while allowing any organic subject to live in relative freedom and comfort, if only to keep them pliant.
It'd take a direct threat to his tranquillity for Yusef to break his isolation and unite his court, something that will bring a true might falling on any would-be invaders. Yusef remains loyal as long as he's left to his own devices: direct orders will get him moving but are sure to erode his goodwill if repeated.
The Yaref Household supplied the Anahakara with competent Crypteks for dozens of generations. Its scions are technomancers of great talent.
Choosing a Phaeron is not enough. You'll have to decide where he'll implant his new kingdom.
[] Close by: The Dead Archipelago has plenty of Tombworlds to awaken and plenty of space. The new vassal state will be close by, allowing you to keep a close eye on it and someone to cover your flanks at the same time. But you'll have to give up some Tombworlds to him.
[] Farther away: Statistical data gives for certain the presence of more Tombworlds in the Expanse. Sending your Phaeron into it will require you giving up a ship and a sizable force, since you won't be able to assist him directly, as well as affording some measure of trust, but also that you'll have an ally able to create its own zone of influence. Uhn'Saekh resistance is expected, but their fractional nature is sure to blunt it.
[] Into the Stars: Load the Phaeron and his troops on a ship and send them searching for Tombworlds outside the Sector. They'll have plenty of trust, time and space to create their own kingdom. You'll hear from them only after some time, but this could bring you a whole slew of pleasant surprises.
Lastly, you'll have to decide who to send with the new Phaeron. Even a king so mighty needs his army.
[] Detachment: Just enough to start. It'll make establishing the new kingdom tricky.
10.000 Necron Warriors
2.000 Immortals
1.000 Lokhust Destroyers
1.000 Skorphek Destroyers
500 Lychguards
50 Annihilation Barges
10 Lesser Lords
15 Crypteks
[] Armed Contingent: A balanced choice and a fearsome threat for the lesser races colonizing the galaxy.
30.000 Necron Warriors
10.000 Immortals
3.000 Lokhust Destroyers
3.000 Skorphek Destroyers
1.000 Lychguards
100 Annihilation Barges
5 Monoliths
20 Lesser Lords
25 Crypteks
[] Army: The might of the Necrontyr, or a small part of it at least. Still enough to see planets burn and lesser races beg for mercy.
70.000 Necron Warriors
30.000 Immortals
6.000 Lokhust Destroyers
6.000 Skorphek Destroyers
2.000 Lychguards
200 Annihilation Barges
10 Monoliths
5 Doomsday Arks
5 Tesseract Arks
5 Doomsday Monoliths
40 Lesser Lords
45 Crypteks
THERE WILL BE A 4-HOUR MORATORIUM. VOTING WILL GO BY PLAN
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birdmaster01
Big Tech's Strongest Soldier
Let me put my draft here so I don't forget it:
[X]Dr.Goofenschmidt
-[X] Yusef of the Household of Yaref
-[X] Close by
-[X] Army
[X]Dr.Goofenschmidt
-[X] Yusef of the Household of Yaref
-[X] Close by
-[X] Army
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[] Plan: Kingdom of Tears
-[] Utep of the Household of Rasetra
-[] Farther away
-[] Armed Contingent
I like mr. Depresion
-[] Utep of the Household of Rasetra
-[] Farther away
-[] Armed Contingent
I like mr. Depresion
[] Plan: Eye on the horizon
-[ ] Akathra of the Household of Inkap
-[ ] Farther away
-[ ] Armed Contingent
If they can use their exploration skills to narrow down the location of the ice planet and its blue star while also crushing chaos that would be great.
-[ ] Akathra of the Household of Inkap
-[ ] Farther away
-[ ] Armed Contingent
If they can use their exploration skills to narrow down the location of the ice planet and its blue star while also crushing chaos that would be great.
- Location
- FR
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X]Plan: Melancolic humanitarian
-[X] Utep of the Household of Rasetra
-[X] Farther away
-[X]Army
-[X]Write-in: promise that as soon as your human population is stabilized, you'll send some to him to help coalesce any Uhn'Saekh contingent he might acquire.
-[X] Utep of the Household of Rasetra
-[X] Farther away
-[X]Army
-[X]Write-in: promise that as soon as your human population is stabilized, you'll send some to him to help coalesce any Uhn'Saekh contingent he might acquire.
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[]Safe recearch flank
-[] Yusef of the Household of Yaref
-[] Close by
-[] Armed Contingent
[]Fast expansion
-[] Akathra of the Household of Inkap
-[] Farther away
-[] Army
[]Loyal midpoint
-[] Utep of the Household of Rasetra
-[] Farther away
-[] Army
Names self-explanatory for reasoning.
-[] Yusef of the Household of Yaref
-[] Close by
-[] Armed Contingent
[]Fast expansion
-[] Akathra of the Household of Inkap
-[] Farther away
-[] Army
[]Loyal midpoint
-[] Utep of the Household of Rasetra
-[] Farther away
-[] Army
Names self-explanatory for reasoning.
I was planing on making a plan. Was beaten to it. Not much suprise. Like what I'm seeing thou.
To consider: Strategic, tactical, narrative , symbolic
Do like how most we send away is constructs. - point wise. - 100k of soldiers is no small show of trust. Supprised at lack of lychguard.
There will be much in consequences. For a long time.
Still hope we get to make some of us to pretend astartes. heh.
Preety much what I could hope. Love the write in. one suggerstion:
-[] write in: throw him a send off party.
Edit:
So ... A few word form me about some things. If my opinion is of disscusion quality
First Pharons. Akathra may be the best choise... short term. Worst for the long term. Given how self serving he is , he is also the most likely to stab in the back the moment he belives us weakend. Sure his navy skill and recon would be welcomed but are not worthy elevating someone to such position for the detryment of all under him.
Wtep is the most dedicated to he cause. Likely to grow in loyaty even further after having Relif matrix and some organics to dot over.
Given how common land battles are, this is no bad either. He is simply the most in character choiseXor would take as the whole 'restore and refill' thing. He is also most likely to have symphatisers amoung other factions.
Yusef is a hermit. He would handle all of it on auto-pilot, something tell me. Not a bad thing, mind you. Given how dissmissive of everyone else he is however I would not consider him a good spoke-person to shield us form prying eyes.
Then we have location. Each have pros sure. So it would be good to keep our goals in mind.
Having them close would draw attention to our neck of teh woods. Sure control and supply would be nice but its still putting all eggs in one basket.
Further out - which I belive is either Deserted Space or Lost Expanse is the good distance and reliable communication we can worry about. Sure it opens up new theathers of operations but it also draws away attention from us. Plus there is the chance of operational aid
Finally furthers away essentially turns them into an independet ally. Which kind of defeats the purpose for me. Not in range of influencing eachother other than message relays, it would have no impact on our situation on acceptable timeframe. Sure, suprise is nice and someof it can be worth the wait. But I would rather create whole new vassal state than loss a catpaw to greed.
Finally forces: Not sure what drawback would it make long term but short term, we would be giving up on significant portion of our military. Sure we'll refill most ranks with legions of near-by tomb words but it leaves us some-what open in the mean-time.
Definetly worth it to go all out in my opinon. It would be both show of trust and make their job easier. Once they find a tombworld of their own to claim it will still be remebered.
Opinions?
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The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
Do we get to keep the other two as hero units, if not ones with the resources of a Dynasty to maximize their potential?
Nope. Back to the faceless masses with them.
Personally I think utep would be the most logical choice of a new phaeron, his character does speak of someone that xorathis would sponsor as a new head of s dynasty and he should be relatively easy to please with relief matrices and not treating any organics we integrate into our empire like utter shit.
[X]Plan: Melancolic humanitarian