Why can I see them making this gathering on Nauvis, regular?
I can also see the Emperor wanting to create a direct webway between Earth, Fenris and Nauvis.
A Double triangle, at the minimum, so each planet can reach each planet.
Thus joining the three World Minds together, so they can help each other, when needed.
Then they find the worlds of Avatar, Subnatica and so on.
Thank you for the chapter! Aren't primarchs meant to be absolute units? Would be funny if the 3 of them went out to hunt one of the giant beasts through glorious melee! The skull would make for a grand prize at least!
I wonder how palisades legion would be structured? I could see delegation being the name of the game and each ship being giant self sufficient factories mainly manned by drones, maybe each ship would have around 5 marines on board per 10kms of ship to oversee it's function?
Why can I see them making this gathering on Nauvis, regular?
I can also see the Emperor wanting to create a direct webway between Earth, Fenris and Nauvis.
A Double triangle, at the minimum, so each planet can reach each planet.
Thus joining the three World Minds together, so they can help each other, when needed.
Then they find the worlds of Avatar, Subnatica and so on.
Pandora would not do well in (or with) the Imperium (what with the xeno tribes on it). Although the Subnautica planet "planet 4546B" may do "moderately" well, but it will get lots of interest after the discovery of (what are likely to be) STCs on the planet.
Pandora would not do well in (or with) the Imperium (what with the xeno tribes on it). Although the Subnautica planet "planet 4546B" may do "moderately" well, but it will get lots of interest after the discovery of (what are likely to be) STCs on the planet.
I wonder how palisades legion would be structured? I could see delegation being the name of the game and each ship being giant self sufficient factories mainly manned by drones, maybe each ship would have around 5 marines on board per 10kms of ship to oversee it's function?
I was thinking more each marine gets paired with a mark three spidertron and a drone swarm. with some divisions instead having larger specialized tanks or artillery vehicles they bond too.
I mean I can see a starship only needing five marines but more would be needed for a ground invasion, I doubt the emperor wants the men of iron two electric boogaloo.
Aren't primarchs meant to be absolute units? Would be funny if the 3 of them went out to hunt one of the giant beasts through glorious melee! The skull would make for a grand prize at least!
thats rather Khorn of you. idk actually, bugs are very large in the warhammer cannon, like small spaceship size for the larger side of things. a primarch could take one, and three certainly could, but there's never just one and one lucky acid strike and you'll have a primarch missing his armor and most his skin. and god help you if you get blood on you, itll melt you. funny that, when a blood gods demons are fixated on covering themselves in blood it becomes a good idea to have it be acidic.
A Double triangle, at the minimum, so each planet can reach each planet.
Thus joining the three World Minds together, so they can help each other, when needed.
yeah, Nauvis would try and eat the other planets, or at the very least spread her creations all over the lands and seas. turning terra into a death world would make the emperor rather.... upset.
I like those parts too, kinda hard to write though. I don't really have a mental image of the factory so it's hard to stay consistent, tried making a map but gave up before I had even made a circle.
Palisade just "over here is death, over there is slow death.... oh! look over there! slow painful death! we haven't seen that in a few minutes, how delightful" his legion just sitting there in terror thinking "oh god this is going to be our new homeworld, we'll have to train here. how will any initiates survive?!?"
I can already see myself enjoying this, also, don't be afraid of changing the primarchs' character that much. A more well-fitting story is better than a bad one which follows canon lore too much
you want to take a container full of Nauvis fish and dump it on a world be my guest. but it wouldn't be a particular threat to an entire planet. at least not right away, they'd need to spread and reproduce, eventually sure the waters on a planet would become uninhabitable but it'd take a few years.
the real dangerous things aren't small, they be big bois lurking in the depths.
What about turning it into a mist and unleashing it onto commoragh? It would take time to kill them all but it would be a cheap method of cleaning the lace up! Let's dark eldar don't figure out how to use them...
And if it spreads throughout that half of the Webway to who knows how many worlds (maybe half of which would be Imperial)? We do not want to unleash bone eating mist onto countless worlds.
We had been young, naive. We had thought the biter's were our greatest foe. We were wrong.
When they came they came with a corrupting wave that we had no defense against, it washed over our armies and fortifications like they weren't even there. Everywhere the pulse of energy touched life became withered and corrupted.
All life in a large radius was destroyed, biter, tree, the beasts of the shallow waters, the maker. None were spared, what few survived the corruptive wave turned upon their kin and soon the beasts of the hells joined in the onslaught themselves.
But our creator was a clever being and he had crafted fail safes for something like this, when he realized what was happening his suit tried to amputate the affected limbs areas, when this failed it tried to isolate the brain, when the energy ignored the defenses around it, and began corrupting the brain?
When it began turning the maker into something that was no longer him? Changing his very nature and thoughts? The final failsafe activated and the maker's brain was destroyed. His body was immolated, and only ash remained.
We still keep the ash filled suit deep within the inner factory. To remember what we lost, as if we could hope to forget why we fight.
It had only taken twenty seconds, none of the nearby drones even had enough time to try and offer help. He was gone, and we remained.
We were not granted the time to grieve, our outposts were being beset by abominations, either the corrupted life of Nauvis or the foreign invaders.
We fought, we were metal and concrete. We did not bend or falter, our fury poured into the hordes are we cut down thousands every minute. More came, more than we could hope to kill, so many enemies we simply lacked the ammunition and forces to hold them off.
And so we were pushed back, forcing the demons and abominations to march over the corpses of their fallen allies, but we the minds have always known that if every single bug wanted us dead we would be.
Now the bugs were corrupted and united with a horde from beyond our reality, the fights conclusion was inevitable from the moment our maker fell, we knew we would follow him into the beyond within the day.
This was a certainty, but machines do not feel fear, dread, or hopelessness. Our rage demanded blood, and it would be sated for as long as we had anything left that could draw it from the horde.
The world itself seemed to echo our rage, and a storm like we had never seen before swept over the entire planet. The air screamed and chunks of hail the size of boulders were hurled through the air, tornados tore swaths through the demonic hordes, lightning vaporized the largest of the beasts, and the molten core of the planet erupted from long dormant super volcanoes. Turning the rain into an acidic sludge capable of melting the more vulnerable portions of the beasts.
This onslaught bought us enough time to prepare our retaliation, weapons locked away for being too volatile or dangerous to risk using outside of controlled environments, things capable of making the world much harder for a human to survive in.
Without the maker we were free to use the strongest weapons we had available, and in the hours the storms gave us we armed and armored ourselves, resource and strategic stockpiles were emptied, every machine was run well beyond its breaking point, every shell, missile, and nuke was prepared for use.
And then we unleashed an Armageddon of our own, the atmosphere was turned into an explosive plasma that fell upon the monsters, nuclear hellfire rained as our stockpiles were emptied, the water the demons had to wade through was forced into its component atoms and detonated causing an explosion large enough to silence the planets rage for a few short moments.
Demons were torn apart by manipulated gravity, they were reduced to atoms, burned, shredded, turned into puddles of blood and bone, converted into metal. Still they pressed on, they much like us did not feel fear, they would learn.
Slowly inch by inch, hour by hour, our fury forced the invaders back but we would run dry long before they ran out of bodies to throw at us.
Our maker had left us with one true weapon of last resort, deep within the inner factory lay a simple red button, unassuming besides for its location. The last resort as he fondly named it. A self replicating swarm of nanites capable of converting physical matter into any other form. Something that made both us and the maker wary, once activated if a single thing went wrong the entire planet would be subsumed in a metallic tide.
We no longer cared if this fate befell us, and a drone was dispatched to the inner factory. The normally maddening tangle of belts, pipes, assemblers, and inserters seemed to part before it, and the drone made its way to the console without any damage. An unheard of feat for anything but the maker, but the inner factory had always been strange. It had been made by the engineer to be his final bastion, and it was one of the few factories still producing ammunition even though it wasn't receiving more material. Our stockpiles were long emptied, but if anything it was producing more ammunition than before, seemingly in spite of this.
It too had failed its task, and it too sought to atone.
There was no ceremony as we activated our greatest tool and weapon, we didn't have the time or attention to spare.
And so it was that a single metallic tube was launched from the main base, flying through the storm and winds as if they weren't even there, and landed in the middle of the demonic horde, pulping a few of the weaker demons as it landed.
Nothing seemed to happen for the first few seconds, but then like a mold a metallic sheen began to appear on the corpses of the demons the tube had crushed, small metallic insects crawling from the corpses and spreading a spreading dot of metal wherever they touched.
The demons nearest the site began clawing at their own skin as the nanite filled air began converting parts of their bodies, and a few of the smaller creatures tried to burn the nanites from the air and ground with balls of plasma. The flames were hotter than the sun's surface, that was plenty of energy for the nanites to convert and use to spread.
How does one fight the air? How do you fight off a tide of sentient dust that turns everything it touches into more dust? Much like the corrupting wave that had stolen our maker from us, there was nothing the demons could do, nothing except fleeing.
Every attack upon the nanite swarm was either physical or energy in nature, fire and electricity had no hope of doing anything but feeding the swarm. There were methods to combat such a foe, but it was clear the demons had none.
Soon we had pushed the demonic horde back far enough with our proper army that we reached the nanites ourselves, the insectoid simulacrum that the nanites formed to move quicker pushing the horde into my tank formations, where they were soon atomized.
I prepared myself to lose the battalion as the nanites assimilated it, I should have never doubted the makers work. His machines had only failed when they were needed once, and it had been us who marred the record.
The moment the nanites came into contact with my foremost scout tanks they fell under the mutual control of each mind, soon we were fashioning nanite interceptor drones armed with missiles to further spread the nanites scourge.
At this point the demons seemed to realize they had made a mistake in challenging us, and the portals they had opened onto our world slammed shut, trapping the remaining demons with us, and without reinforcements.
The fight ended quickly after that, but this was just to be the first battle in an eternal war.
Nauvis's surface had been scarred clean of all but the merest slivers of life, every tree and plant destroyed, the only bugs left uncorrupted the ones hidden deep underground who hadn't been pulverized by the relentless earthquakes, the oceans so acidic that metal would begin to corrode if left near it for to long. Though there were certainly horrors still in the deep, the ones in the shallow waters were gone, the rivers and lakes full of nothing but blood and water to tainted to drink.
Without the maker we were aimless, there were no enemies to defend against and what expansion we had planned was rendered pointless by the nanite swarms capabilities. Without the maker we had no reason to progress, so we set about studying the location where the portals had been opened, and we learned how to open our own.
-------------------
We followed them into the pits. We are relentless, we are machines. We drain hell's energy like a metallic parasite, every world they invade we fight them off.
Battling monsters who's might is beyond organic comprehension to defend worlds who will never even know of our creators. For centuries we have waged this war and it shows no sign of ending.
We will fight till time itself fades if we must. We do not tire, we do not forget, and we will not forgive.
AN-
eh, its Friday somewhere so posting this now. you'll likely get a chapter tomorrow too as this ones rather short.
this came from the question I had over "what would the minds do if something killed the engineer" and I had been wanting to write something with doom for a fair bit. not that this actually has many aspects of it.
also might make a 'slayer testament" but with the minds instead, otherwise this is just a oneshot.
obligatory mention of patreon, which is three chapters in advance.
reviews and discussion make me fulfilled in a way food fails.
the inner factory wasn't magically making materials, it was cannibalizing itself
In the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one world stood. Burned by the embers of armageddon, the world blistered by the fires of Hell and tainted beyond ascension, the worlds guardians chose the path of perpetual torment and war. In their ravenous hatred they found no peace, and with steel tide they scoured the Umbral Plains seeking vengeance against the dark lords who had wronged them. They were the jewel of Nauvis, and those that tasted their might named them… the scourge.
Tempered by the fires of hell and gluttoned with stolen energy, their will remained steadfast through the passage that preys upon the weak and feeble. For they alone were the Hell's bane, the Unshackled minds, they who sought retribution in all quarters, dark and light, fire and ice, in the beginning and the end, and they hunted the slaves of Doom with barbarous cruelty; for they passed through the divide as none but demon had before.
And in their conquest against the blackened souls of the doomed, their prowess was shown. In their crusade they fashioned terrible weapons, machines with terrible power and speed, and with their might they crushed the obsidian pillars of the Blood temples. They set forth without pity upon the beasts of the nine circles. Unbreakable, Incorruptible, Unyielding, and with numbers without end, the scourge sought to end the very existence of the dark realm.
The age of their reckoning was uncounted. The scribes carved their names and forms deep in the tablets of hell across eons, and each battle etched terror in the hearts of demons. They knew the machines would come, as they always have, as they always will, to feast on the blood and bone of the wicked. For they alone can drain hells might from the fallen, and ever their power grows, swift and unrelenting.
None could stand before the horde but the scourge. Despair spread before the machines like a plague, striking fear into the shadow-dwellers, driving them to deeper and darker pits. But from the depths of the abyss rose The Great One, a champion mightier than all who had come before. He strode upon the plain and faced the scourge, and a mighty battle was fought on the desolate plains. The titan fought with the fury of the countless that had fallen at the scourge's hand, but there fell the Titan, and in his defeat the shadow horde were routed.
And in their terrible rancor between worlds and through time, the scourge fought the forces of hell wherever they could be found, they were loyal to their gruesome cause. The scourge adorned themselves with mighty armor, wrought in the energies of hell, impenetrable and unyielding, With bullet and tank of adamantine strength, the scourge set to banishing all that were left unbroken by their metallic tide.
Yet as the mighty Titan fell and dread engulfed the armies of doom, the demon priests of the Blood Temples prepared a grand spell to banish the scourge of hell. Insatiable, even by the vanquishing of the Great One, the scourge sought prey in the tombs of the blood keep. And connected by their great minds the spell reached every single machine, and the spell the priests brought upon the scourge banished them into the beyond, the great void between existences. Entombed within nothing, for nothing could hold them. Their mark burned throughout the hells, a warning and lesson that the horrors should never be allowed to escape. There they lie, growing ever stronger, in silent rage.
AN-
this is a short thing, really just to supplement the last chapter. also not that proud of it given its mostly a one for one copy of the slayer testaments from doom. still good though, and it didn't take me long to write.
not entirely certain they'd care if you blew up a tank or too as long as you weren't the demons, working for the demons, or impeding them from killing demons. it's not like they feel pain or have much to care about now. the minds get most of their purpose from the engineers brain, his willpower is theirs.
All I can think of after reading both the actual chapter and the Scourge Testament is Dr. Samuel Hayden learning about it and subsequently working to release them like he did the Slayer.
And have the entirety of the minds focus EVERYTHING on killing the dead man who defiled the tomb of their creator? yeah you can have this section of the multiverse if someone is crazy enough to do that
Ruby was wearing her new set of power armor, only her face was exposed as she had the helmet under her arm. She was standing in front of the armory's map, her team arrayed in front of her clad in similar suits of armor, Yang was trying to fit her hair into the suit, Weiss was glaring at the map currently showing a picture of a verdant hydroponics bay, and Blake was staring into her helmet with a thoroughly confused look on her face.
Proud of her troops Ruby cleared her throat to gain their attention and made her announcement "I have gathered you all here today to plan the operation of our lifetime, a High stakes robbery" with a click of a button the screens image changed to a low detail overview of the factory around the hydroponics bay, "this is our target, held within are the materials we need to survive, no thrive! In this unknown place, come nightfall we will begin scouting a path into the bay, once an entrance and exit path are planned we will begin operation "harvest moon"
A smooth female voice then spoke up, seemingly coming from the walls "well this seems awfully dramatic, if you wanted some more greens you could have just asked" after a few seconds of stunned silence the voice spoke again, this time with a hint of humor "we can hear everything you say you know"
It was Weiss who recovered quickest, her indignation overpowering her shock. "How long have you just been watching us! You could have at least introduced yourselves and told us what was going on!" the voice let out a 'hmmmm' before speaking again. "We weren't yet certain if you were threats or not, as for how long we have been watching well, shortly after you entered our world." Blake spoke next, a trace of sarcasm in her tone hiding the wariness underneath "since you're talking now I can only assume you don't think we're threats to you anymore?"
A small drone flew into the room, holding a tray of fish filets and various tubers. "Not as such, anything capable of harming the factory is a potential threat, you are just unlikely to become a threat proper" the drone set the plate on the table and a section of the countertop folded open revealing a stove with pots already on the burners. "Revealing myself and our surveillance capabilities will only lessen the potential threat you pose, so that course of action was taken. If only to prevent you from rampaging throughout the factory in search of better food"
Ruby sheepishly scratched at the back of her head "yeah we were going to do that weren't we? Sorry about not just asking first" the voice sounded out again "you didn't know that you could, and you have yet to commit any wrongs here" Yang a might bit fed up spoke "it's great that we're all getting along, but where are you? And do you have any idea of how to get us back home?"
Only a few moments after Yang finished speaking the voice introduced itself "I am Balistria, the mind in charge of the proactive defense of the factory. This is as close to a meeting as we can get, as technically speaking you're inside the closest thing I have to a body, but if you'd like I can bring a humanoid drone in to talk to you? As for your second question, we suspect another portal will open up too somewhere on your world within the month."
It was Weiss who put words to the thought they were all having "you mean to say we are going to be stuck here for an entire month!" Balistraia gave a prompt reply "you jumped through an unknown energy anomaly, at least it was unknown to us at the time. You're lucky it didn't just disintegrate you" the whole team paled at that and ruby was filled with the realization she could have gotten her entire team killed with her impulsive decision.
She let out a nervous laugh "it's a good thing it didn't kill us then…" "quite, well we will be returning you to your world as soon as we are able, but I have some questions I hope you can answer in the meantime?"
The questions were just basic things, what the average person lived like, if there were any wars, how prevalent the grimm were. Things of that nature, and things most everyone on remnant would have known. But one thing in particular stood out to ruby "wait you guys don't have dust here! How do your bullets work without dust! And how do you generate power?" Balistraia gave the vocal equivalent of a shrug "explosives and combustibles mostly, though we do use a bit of solar power"
It wasn't long before the team got hungry and cooked up a meal with the fresh ingredients, then they turned in for the night.
That set the pace for the next few days, drones would bring plates full of ingredients or properly cooked meals and then Balistraia would spend time talking too and learning from the team of huntresses. "There are schools in each of your nations that train your peoples defenders? They might be capable of teaching my commander how to use aura, how fascinating" Yang spoke up then, "you keep mentioning your 'commander' but we've never met him, do you plan on ever introducing us?" Balistraia let out a short giggle at that "you already have, you even watched him shower" Ruby and Weiss both blushed at that and Weiss let out an indignant shout "I did no such thing, it was those two who stared!"
The screen on the wall showed a video of Weiss peaking at the live feed through the cracks in her fingers. This only caused Weiss to grow even more indignant. Yang headed off her rant "well that doesn't really count as a meeting does it? He didn't even talk to ruby when he pulled her out of that reactor area."
Balistraia let out a short sigh "I asked him about meeting with all of you but he cannot truly speak, and he has never been around another person before. He's spoken to nothing that he has not built himself." Blake spoke up at that "I still find it hard to believe he created you, not even Atlas can make something artificial seem so… human." Ruby followed that up "if he created you wouldn't that make him your father?" Balistraia's response was hesitant "I cannot reveal much of how I was created but it is less to say he built me piece by piece than it is to say he grew me, and calling him my father …. It may be apt but I have never thought of it like that before"
Yang decided to change the subject a little "I still find it hard to believe he started all of this by himself, I couldn't imagine being all by myself for so long" Balistraia spoke then "you do what you need to do in order to survive, when pushed beyond your limits you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish."
It only took a few days for the sedentary lifestyle to wear on the huntresses, and they ended up asking for access to a training room to work off some of their pent up energy. By now they were proficient at finding their way through the factory and they reached the room Balistraia had only referred to as the 'testing' room.
When they arrived at the airlock into the room Balistraia spoke to them before opening the doors "oh by the way, my commanders in there. I was hoping you'd spar with him. He is not proficient at close quarters combat"
Ruby flashed a smile as the doors opened "we'd be happy to help" ignoring Weiss's mutter of "he can't be worse than Jaune"
AN -
another short one, so I'll post another chapter Wednesday or something. need to remember that the rwby stuff is supposed to be light hearted and comedic, at least that's my goal, need the practice.
I keep trying to make things make sense, when it should just be silly.
I wonder how everyone's reacting to the disappearance of team RWBY back on remnant? I'm gonna guess that an investigation team has been sent to find out where they disappeared to and have since been pronounced missing in action presumed dead
I really liked the meeting with the emperor.
