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- Location
- Dresden, Germany
Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest
- Thread starter Uniquelyequal
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
A Host of Problems: Part 6
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
You only have a split second to make your decision, but that is more than enough. Monofilament Wire shoots out and wraps itself around the arm of the Space Marine descending towards the Colonel.
He arrests its momentum before they can even begin slicing through ceramite and bone, pivoting neatly around and freeing his trapped arm, even as his other hand slices through pseudo-flesh and the noose that is trapping it. The Daemonic Fragment tears itself loose with a triumphant screech, feathered wings bursting from its back as it scurries away, out of the wreckage of the command tank and into the depth of the ruins.
The Ogryn has recovered, now, and whirls around his pneumatic hammer. It impacts the center of the Space Marine's pauldron, and it actually staggers, crushing one of the cogitators under its weight. The Lightning Claws lash out in retribution, slicing through Moro's shield and the arm that is holding it below. Parlo fires, once, twice, las bolts impacting the armored gorget of the Power Armor to no apparent effect, but he is retreating as he does so, throwing himself out of the back of the Salamander and into the sight of the Space Marine. A smart choice, really: as the Lightning Claws sink into the Ogryn's stomach, you follow suit, skittering through the tear ripped into the roof and throwing yourself clear.
"Everyone clear?", Theama-Nul cants from somewhere to your right, and when he receives the affirmative from both you and Regicia, he sends out a detonation signal, and the Salamander goes up in a massive fireball: a detonation strong enough the blast wave lifts you up and tosses you a good ten meters.
You did not notice him plant the charge, and the fact this does not even make the list of the three most concerning things currently going on says unfortunate things about your situation.
The Space Marine has survived. It rides from the ruins of the tanks on a trail of fire, Jump Pack blazing behind it, the metal stripes affixed to it burning brightly and hotly. A barrage of Las Bolts follows after it. The Yulrasians have formed up, and their fire is disturbingly precise.
A single Las Gun is an adequate weapon, more than capable of overcoming most enemies it might come up against. It is far from the most destructive weapon conceived by humankind, far even from being the most destructive weapon at its side.
What it is, however, is cheap to make in great numbers, and destructive enough to still be useful in those numbers. One Las Gun would stand no hope at all of hurting a Space Marine in Power Armor.
Fifty of them firing at the same target, however, is an entirely different topic.
The Space Marine goes down in a trail of flames, craters blooming across the armor.
You see him limping away through the lines of the Insurgents, because of course he does. The Emperor built resilient, if nothing else.
You carefully regulate down the adrenaline levels in your body to stop your limbs from shaking and clear your head. The Insurgents break, as they see the Space Marine retreat. You cannot blame them for this. What hope do they have, if even the so-called Angels of the Emperor are being brought down.
You still meet resistance after that, on occasion, but it has largely collapsed: any lingering conviction that this was all a trap has now turned into a blazing fire, and the insurgents are largely just trying to flee. Occasionally, you find lines stiffened by Space Marine Scouts: youths in Carapace Armor in the same black and white patterns as the Marine that attacked you before, wielding Shotguns and Sniper Rifles.
They tend to disintegrate as soon as the Flamers set to work, but each of them represent a delay that the Hand of Transformation might use to flee. Still, Colonel Parlo seems to have taken the attempt on his life somewhat personally, and channeled that rage into conducting the battle.
You move through decayed storehouses and past half-active factory floors at the heels of the Assault Regiment, crushing all that stand in your way. Colonel Parlo has split his forces in two, the arms of the pincers spreading around the outskirts of the Manufactorum to cut off any possible routes of escape.
You sprint past the assembly lines as fast as your eight legs can carry you, Theama-Nul and Ko-Bea as close to your heels as they can manage. The theory that this place was used to produce spare parts has borne out to be true, you notice in passing, as you rush alongside an assembly line that has plainly been assembled mid-shift, half-finished parts piling up towards its end point. One of the Insurgents, a man barely old enough to be called and adult, tries to stand in your way, and you disembowel him before he can pull the trigger, already ten paces on before his body hits the ground.
You know where you are headed. The map of the Manufactorum Complex was woefully incomplete, but the quickest path out was still all too clear.
Six Rail Terminals are dotted around the complex, intended to ship raw resources to and the finished goods made from them away from the Three Saints Manufactorum. Of these, three have rails that lead deeper into the Hive, from the direction you are coming from, and two more are within reach of the Yulrasians, far too risky to approach for the Hand of Transformation. It is the last one you are now racing towards, with the fastest troops at Parlo's disposal at your heel.
A Space Marine Scout suddenly appears out of a dimly-lit hallway, Shotgun raised, and actually manages to fell one of the mutants before counterfire tears him apart. You barely notice the tripwire that spans across the hallway as your legs slice it apart, leaving the Grenade it was attached to harmless against the wall. These are the last, desperate rearguard actions of a force in retreat, you reason. By your reckoning, the Space Marine and most of the Scouts are going to get out, along with a good number of Insurgents: they have enough weight to push their way past any perimeter you can establish.
The Hand cannot simply follow along with them, however, for one simple reason: being at least somewhat daemonic is going to make it wholly unwelcome amongst these loyalist forces.
It will have to make its own way out.
There is a symbol on the Scout's shoulder pad that bears a striking resemblance to the mark used by the Raven Guard, which tells you the lineage of the Chapter if not it's precise identity. The Scout himself is tan, the marks of excessive exposure to the sun visible even on his very young face.
These are all the details you can take in, before your steps carry you further, past an attempt of an ambush that becomes abortive the second you burst through a thin wall instead of taking the path expected to you, slicing apart the carotid artery of a woman with your arm blades and killing two more insurgents by quick bursts of needler fire before they even have a chance to react, which goes a long way towards breaking the rest. You are close to the Train Station, now: if your speculations are correct, there will not be forces there once you have breached the final line of defense, the Hand having used whatever means it has to control these insurgents to clear its own escape route at their expense.
The next barricade you reach seems to confirm your suspicion: the three men manning it are facing the wrong direction. They turn far too slowly and far too late: you shoot one of them with the needler, slice through the neck of the next with your inbuilt blade, and crush the chest of the last with your leg, before clambering over the piled-up scrap they have assembled to create their strongpoint. Behind it lies another door, and beyond that Terminal Extremis Spireward.
Your team, you note, has begun lagging somewhat behind, though not so much you cannot hear Theama clear the barricade with an explosive charge and coming after you. You slow, slightly, as you take in the Terminal itself: a vaulted hall held in the gothic style of the Imperium, cranes rising above ten parallel rail lines. A train loaded with finished Chimeras stands ready to depart on one of them, apparently hastily abandoned during the conquest.
You are not too late, you note, with a sigh of relief.
Then the train starts moving, and you sprint forward, all thoughts of waiting for your team temporarily forgotten.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9 35: Mobility: 2d6: 1, 4: Partial Success]
You set off at full tilt, legs skittering across the ground as quickly as you can make them go. Somebody opens fire on you, though thankfully they are only using one of the heavy pintle mounted Stubber instead of a Bolter or any of the Turret-mounted guns, and their angle is bad. Only one of the bullets hits you, and it ricochets off your leg harmlessly in a shower of sparks. The train is picking up speed now, and you see your window of opportunity slipping away. You leap, desperately, stretching the components of your legs to a dangerous extent, and then you are aboard the train, clambering across a Chimera as it speeds out of the station.
"We'll try to catch up", Regicia cants after you, and then you are out of range, speeding away from the tunnel at absolutely unsafe speeds.
You clamber across the Chimera, and are almost decapitated for your troubles as the train rushes into a tunnel. For a second, you are at an impasse: stuck between two Chimeras with tunnel walls and ceilings too close to proceed. You stop, for a moment: the Hand, at least, is not going to be able to escape: not at these speeds, and not with tunnel walls all around you. Black smoke soon envelopes you: the exhaust of the train, confined to the tunnel and harmless to your augmented lungs, though it would be utterly lethal to any still beholden to their weak flesh. When it becomes clear that the tunnel is not going to let up for a long while, you carefully push yourself up, onto the roof of the Chimera, bowed down deep enough that your head never pushes across the crest of the turret.
The tunnel, you reason, has been deliberately created in order to transport Chimeras without damaging them. The Chimeras loaded had their turret mounted, and so it stands to reason that the tunnels fit the Chimeras along with their turrets. By moving carefully alongside them, you can slowly make your way forward, tough it's hell on your back and the roof of the tunnel remains uncomfortably close to your spine.
You make it almost halfway up the train when you hear and awful, terrifying sound: the sound of a switch being thrown, followed by the terrifying clamor of metal impacting metal.
Unless you are missing your mark, the train has just entered a tunnel very much not constructed to transport Chimeras with turrets attached.
Your ability to move forward at a slow, reasonable pace has been severly compromised. If you do not wish to impact the tunnel or be pushed off the train, you best move quickly.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9 35: Mobility: 2d6: 5, 6: Full Success]
You move as you have rarely moved before, weaving past turrets and leaping over the temporary gaps that spring up with all the Agility afforded to you by the eight limbs that have replaced your natural legs. At one point, what must have been the possessed man that fired the Stubber at you passes you by, mouth agape, eyes filled with fear.
You ram your blade through his skull as you pass him by, before clambering along the tunnel wall for a few steps to avoid the barrel of a Lascannon that has somehow turned sideways. Then, the last of the Chimeras drops down below you, and you throw yourself as flat as you are able, your head missing the top of the tunnel by mere centimeters.
The frantic rush of acrobatics has cost you a good bit of your process, and you are near to the end of the train again. It is now, however, clear of any obstacles. You rush forward, the walls of the tunnel passing you by, the smoke still obstructing your visibility to a mere few centimeters.
As such, you nearly run straight into the blade that comes for your neck. The only thing that saves you is the faint sound of a power field buzzing.
You stop dead, and the blade passes over your head, power field shimmering in the smoke like some Spectre from an old Terran scare tale.
Your unseen assailant strikes at you again: once, twice, and you find yourself each time. One of your mechadendrites is severed just below the tip, and you let loose a burst of absolutely filthy binaric as a surgical drill you have calibrated just right clatters onto the bed of the train.
You give ground, finding yourself rapidly driven backwards, unable to retaliate due to the lack of visibility.
Your eyes are modified to pick up radiation well outside the spectrum visible to the human eye, from the thermal to the electro-magnetic to the radioactive. All they see is the ghostly powerfield, and even that only barely, treacherously, seemingly flickering in and out of existence as they strike at you.
You feel one of your legs reach the edge of the train, and prepare to launch yourself forward in one last, desperate assault, ready to take grievous wounds in order to defeat your opponent.
Then the tunnel opens, and the smoke clears in a rapid gust of wind, and for the first time you see what can only be your target: the Hand of Transformation, in all its terrible, overwrought glory.
Magos Raskol has fashioned his creation from ceramite, which gives it an appearance disturbingly like that of a doll made for some high-born brat, though the features moulded into the mask that makes up the things main face seem likely to terrify more than delight: a daemonic grimace straight out of nightmares, exaggerated brows framing eyes of blazing, empyrean fire and blood-red lips drawn back from sharp, pointed teeth of steel in a fashion that is somehow both mocking and threatening.
Circles of rune criss-cross across the creature's body, trailing down from its neck and across the rest of its slender body, connecting the main face to eight more grimacing faces:two alongside the main one, two on either side of its neck and one on each clavicle. Of these faces, only two are alive with the same blazing fire that animates the creatures main face: the rest are asleep, as though whatever animating force might inhabit them is currently gone.
Six of the fragments still remain at large, then, you reason. Only the one you captured and the one inside the possessed man on the train have returned to the main body.
That, however, is a worry for a later time. Right now, it is the thing's arms and legs that are of more immediate concern.
The Hand of Transformation has six three-jointed arms, one of them holding the slender, strange power blade with which it has been attacking you, the rest of its hands bare of either weaponry or tool: maybe it has discarded them, or found it unwieldy to clamber along the train ladden with tools or weapons. It's legs are digitirade, bird-like claws sharp enough to bury themselves into the metal of the train's bed attached to them.
The sudden disappearance of the smoke seems to surprise it, if only for a moment: long enough, however, to allow you to skitter along the side of the train through the suddenly open air, putting distance between yourself and the gap at the end of the train.
It whirls around and strikes at you, but with its arms visible you can see the strike coming and dodge it far more comfortably then before. You come up with a rudimentary strategy, as you give ground. It's limbs, you reason, are not covered with the silvery symbols that mark its head and body: as such, they are probably surplus to requirement, and between yourself and Regicia you should be able to replace them regardless. It moves fluidly, forcing you back across the train, the three-jointed construction of it's arms allowing it to move them in unexpected ways. At one point, it drops the sword from it's top right hand into the bottom left in a motion so fluid and natural it almost manages to surprise you, tearing your robes as you are forced to throw yourself back once again. You cant a curse as you find your back hitting the back of the locomotive, avoiding the thrust of the sword only by the barest of milimeters and nearly doubling over as three fists hit you at once, though they fail to do any damage.
Then, you lean forward, looking straight into the eyes of the Hand of Transformation, and do something that you have not done in the longest of time: through conscious force of will, you pull at the atrophied muscles in the remnants of your face, pulling your lips back from the ruins of what once was your teeth.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9 35: Combat: 1d6: 6: Full Success]
You do not know if it recognises your triumphant grin for what it is: maybe the panic it shows as it tries to withdraw the blade from the Locomotive is just projection on your part.
It never manages to do so. Monofilament wires draws taut and severs its sword-hand at the wrist, and then you are on the attack, the blades of your arm striking out in rapid fashion, each strike shattering a joint or severing a limb. The Hand of Transformation looks at you, wide-eyed, and then it tries to launch itself off the train, into the abyss you had not noticed until know had sprung up around you.
You catch it with one of your mechadendrites, a claw closing around it's neck as delicately as you can manage, and then you strike out twice more with your blade, watching impassively as both of it's leg disappear into the burning Hive below.
And it is burning, you suddenly notice: not in its entirety, mind, but a good part of it appears to be on fire, while all around you on the raised streets you can see, fighting is going on: the masked figures of the Macabian Jannissaries and the ragged Conarian Rangers, wielding Flamers, Las Guns, and what you assume are farming implements remade into improvised chain glaives, against people armed, at best, with antique revolvers.
Fighting, you reflect, as you put the Hand of Transformation down very carefully onto the bed of the Train, is the wrong word for what is going on down there.
A massacre might be the more correct term: the sort of atrocity that might be committed by an occupying army stretched beyond its breaking point, or a Chaos Warband as a matter of course.
If you had to guess at the inciting incident for this, the armless and legless machine in front of you might provide the best of explanations.
Ah, well: all that does not really concern you. What does, however, is how you wish to proceed, once you have brought this train to a halt and allowed your subordinates to catch up to you.
Namely, you have to decide where and how you wish to fix the Hand of Transformation.
[Where?]
[] In Place
You will find a relatively safe location nearby, and go about enacting your repairs there. You will not have tools beyond what you have on your person, and you may find yourself exposed to sudden danger, but this will allow you to fix whatever problem you have quickly, before the Hand can destabilize the situation around you further and make everything much worse then it already has.
[] At Base
You will return to the Court of the Lady Czevene, where you will have access to more advanced tools and protection. Travel there, however, might be dangerous, and of course all the while the Hand of Transformation might continue to enact its terrible wiles.
[How?]
[] Material Focus
You will treat this thing as you would any other unruly servitor, focusing on whatever Tharc Raskol fucked up in its construction and programming and endeavoring to correct its behaviour that way.
[] Empyrean Focus
You will treat this thing as a daemon engine somebody has bound with insufficient stringency, combing through whatever bindings Raskol has put into place to to see what has allowed the daemon within the machine to go rogue in this way.
He arrests its momentum before they can even begin slicing through ceramite and bone, pivoting neatly around and freeing his trapped arm, even as his other hand slices through pseudo-flesh and the noose that is trapping it. The Daemonic Fragment tears itself loose with a triumphant screech, feathered wings bursting from its back as it scurries away, out of the wreckage of the command tank and into the depth of the ruins.
The Ogryn has recovered, now, and whirls around his pneumatic hammer. It impacts the center of the Space Marine's pauldron, and it actually staggers, crushing one of the cogitators under its weight. The Lightning Claws lash out in retribution, slicing through Moro's shield and the arm that is holding it below. Parlo fires, once, twice, las bolts impacting the armored gorget of the Power Armor to no apparent effect, but he is retreating as he does so, throwing himself out of the back of the Salamander and into the sight of the Space Marine. A smart choice, really: as the Lightning Claws sink into the Ogryn's stomach, you follow suit, skittering through the tear ripped into the roof and throwing yourself clear.
"Everyone clear?", Theama-Nul cants from somewhere to your right, and when he receives the affirmative from both you and Regicia, he sends out a detonation signal, and the Salamander goes up in a massive fireball: a detonation strong enough the blast wave lifts you up and tosses you a good ten meters.
You did not notice him plant the charge, and the fact this does not even make the list of the three most concerning things currently going on says unfortunate things about your situation.
The Space Marine has survived. It rides from the ruins of the tanks on a trail of fire, Jump Pack blazing behind it, the metal stripes affixed to it burning brightly and hotly. A barrage of Las Bolts follows after it. The Yulrasians have formed up, and their fire is disturbingly precise.
A single Las Gun is an adequate weapon, more than capable of overcoming most enemies it might come up against. It is far from the most destructive weapon conceived by humankind, far even from being the most destructive weapon at its side.
What it is, however, is cheap to make in great numbers, and destructive enough to still be useful in those numbers. One Las Gun would stand no hope at all of hurting a Space Marine in Power Armor.
Fifty of them firing at the same target, however, is an entirely different topic.
The Space Marine goes down in a trail of flames, craters blooming across the armor.
You see him limping away through the lines of the Insurgents, because of course he does. The Emperor built resilient, if nothing else.
You carefully regulate down the adrenaline levels in your body to stop your limbs from shaking and clear your head. The Insurgents break, as they see the Space Marine retreat. You cannot blame them for this. What hope do they have, if even the so-called Angels of the Emperor are being brought down.
You still meet resistance after that, on occasion, but it has largely collapsed: any lingering conviction that this was all a trap has now turned into a blazing fire, and the insurgents are largely just trying to flee. Occasionally, you find lines stiffened by Space Marine Scouts: youths in Carapace Armor in the same black and white patterns as the Marine that attacked you before, wielding Shotguns and Sniper Rifles.
They tend to disintegrate as soon as the Flamers set to work, but each of them represent a delay that the Hand of Transformation might use to flee. Still, Colonel Parlo seems to have taken the attempt on his life somewhat personally, and channeled that rage into conducting the battle.
You move through decayed storehouses and past half-active factory floors at the heels of the Assault Regiment, crushing all that stand in your way. Colonel Parlo has split his forces in two, the arms of the pincers spreading around the outskirts of the Manufactorum to cut off any possible routes of escape.
You sprint past the assembly lines as fast as your eight legs can carry you, Theama-Nul and Ko-Bea as close to your heels as they can manage. The theory that this place was used to produce spare parts has borne out to be true, you notice in passing, as you rush alongside an assembly line that has plainly been assembled mid-shift, half-finished parts piling up towards its end point. One of the Insurgents, a man barely old enough to be called and adult, tries to stand in your way, and you disembowel him before he can pull the trigger, already ten paces on before his body hits the ground.
You know where you are headed. The map of the Manufactorum Complex was woefully incomplete, but the quickest path out was still all too clear.
Six Rail Terminals are dotted around the complex, intended to ship raw resources to and the finished goods made from them away from the Three Saints Manufactorum. Of these, three have rails that lead deeper into the Hive, from the direction you are coming from, and two more are within reach of the Yulrasians, far too risky to approach for the Hand of Transformation. It is the last one you are now racing towards, with the fastest troops at Parlo's disposal at your heel.
A Space Marine Scout suddenly appears out of a dimly-lit hallway, Shotgun raised, and actually manages to fell one of the mutants before counterfire tears him apart. You barely notice the tripwire that spans across the hallway as your legs slice it apart, leaving the Grenade it was attached to harmless against the wall. These are the last, desperate rearguard actions of a force in retreat, you reason. By your reckoning, the Space Marine and most of the Scouts are going to get out, along with a good number of Insurgents: they have enough weight to push their way past any perimeter you can establish.
The Hand cannot simply follow along with them, however, for one simple reason: being at least somewhat daemonic is going to make it wholly unwelcome amongst these loyalist forces.
It will have to make its own way out.
There is a symbol on the Scout's shoulder pad that bears a striking resemblance to the mark used by the Raven Guard, which tells you the lineage of the Chapter if not it's precise identity. The Scout himself is tan, the marks of excessive exposure to the sun visible even on his very young face.
These are all the details you can take in, before your steps carry you further, past an attempt of an ambush that becomes abortive the second you burst through a thin wall instead of taking the path expected to you, slicing apart the carotid artery of a woman with your arm blades and killing two more insurgents by quick bursts of needler fire before they even have a chance to react, which goes a long way towards breaking the rest. You are close to the Train Station, now: if your speculations are correct, there will not be forces there once you have breached the final line of defense, the Hand having used whatever means it has to control these insurgents to clear its own escape route at their expense.
The next barricade you reach seems to confirm your suspicion: the three men manning it are facing the wrong direction. They turn far too slowly and far too late: you shoot one of them with the needler, slice through the neck of the next with your inbuilt blade, and crush the chest of the last with your leg, before clambering over the piled-up scrap they have assembled to create their strongpoint. Behind it lies another door, and beyond that Terminal Extremis Spireward.
Your team, you note, has begun lagging somewhat behind, though not so much you cannot hear Theama clear the barricade with an explosive charge and coming after you. You slow, slightly, as you take in the Terminal itself: a vaulted hall held in the gothic style of the Imperium, cranes rising above ten parallel rail lines. A train loaded with finished Chimeras stands ready to depart on one of them, apparently hastily abandoned during the conquest.
You are not too late, you note, with a sigh of relief.
Then the train starts moving, and you sprint forward, all thoughts of waiting for your team temporarily forgotten.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9 35: Mobility: 2d6: 1, 4: Partial Success]
You set off at full tilt, legs skittering across the ground as quickly as you can make them go. Somebody opens fire on you, though thankfully they are only using one of the heavy pintle mounted Stubber instead of a Bolter or any of the Turret-mounted guns, and their angle is bad. Only one of the bullets hits you, and it ricochets off your leg harmlessly in a shower of sparks. The train is picking up speed now, and you see your window of opportunity slipping away. You leap, desperately, stretching the components of your legs to a dangerous extent, and then you are aboard the train, clambering across a Chimera as it speeds out of the station.
"We'll try to catch up", Regicia cants after you, and then you are out of range, speeding away from the tunnel at absolutely unsafe speeds.
You clamber across the Chimera, and are almost decapitated for your troubles as the train rushes into a tunnel. For a second, you are at an impasse: stuck between two Chimeras with tunnel walls and ceilings too close to proceed. You stop, for a moment: the Hand, at least, is not going to be able to escape: not at these speeds, and not with tunnel walls all around you. Black smoke soon envelopes you: the exhaust of the train, confined to the tunnel and harmless to your augmented lungs, though it would be utterly lethal to any still beholden to their weak flesh. When it becomes clear that the tunnel is not going to let up for a long while, you carefully push yourself up, onto the roof of the Chimera, bowed down deep enough that your head never pushes across the crest of the turret.
The tunnel, you reason, has been deliberately created in order to transport Chimeras without damaging them. The Chimeras loaded had their turret mounted, and so it stands to reason that the tunnels fit the Chimeras along with their turrets. By moving carefully alongside them, you can slowly make your way forward, tough it's hell on your back and the roof of the tunnel remains uncomfortably close to your spine.
You make it almost halfway up the train when you hear and awful, terrifying sound: the sound of a switch being thrown, followed by the terrifying clamor of metal impacting metal.
Unless you are missing your mark, the train has just entered a tunnel very much not constructed to transport Chimeras with turrets attached.
Your ability to move forward at a slow, reasonable pace has been severly compromised. If you do not wish to impact the tunnel or be pushed off the train, you best move quickly.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9 35: Mobility: 2d6: 5, 6: Full Success]
You move as you have rarely moved before, weaving past turrets and leaping over the temporary gaps that spring up with all the Agility afforded to you by the eight limbs that have replaced your natural legs. At one point, what must have been the possessed man that fired the Stubber at you passes you by, mouth agape, eyes filled with fear.
You ram your blade through his skull as you pass him by, before clambering along the tunnel wall for a few steps to avoid the barrel of a Lascannon that has somehow turned sideways. Then, the last of the Chimeras drops down below you, and you throw yourself as flat as you are able, your head missing the top of the tunnel by mere centimeters.
The frantic rush of acrobatics has cost you a good bit of your process, and you are near to the end of the train again. It is now, however, clear of any obstacles. You rush forward, the walls of the tunnel passing you by, the smoke still obstructing your visibility to a mere few centimeters.
As such, you nearly run straight into the blade that comes for your neck. The only thing that saves you is the faint sound of a power field buzzing.
You stop dead, and the blade passes over your head, power field shimmering in the smoke like some Spectre from an old Terran scare tale.
Your unseen assailant strikes at you again: once, twice, and you find yourself each time. One of your mechadendrites is severed just below the tip, and you let loose a burst of absolutely filthy binaric as a surgical drill you have calibrated just right clatters onto the bed of the train.
You give ground, finding yourself rapidly driven backwards, unable to retaliate due to the lack of visibility.
Your eyes are modified to pick up radiation well outside the spectrum visible to the human eye, from the thermal to the electro-magnetic to the radioactive. All they see is the ghostly powerfield, and even that only barely, treacherously, seemingly flickering in and out of existence as they strike at you.
You feel one of your legs reach the edge of the train, and prepare to launch yourself forward in one last, desperate assault, ready to take grievous wounds in order to defeat your opponent.
Then the tunnel opens, and the smoke clears in a rapid gust of wind, and for the first time you see what can only be your target: the Hand of Transformation, in all its terrible, overwrought glory.
Magos Raskol has fashioned his creation from ceramite, which gives it an appearance disturbingly like that of a doll made for some high-born brat, though the features moulded into the mask that makes up the things main face seem likely to terrify more than delight: a daemonic grimace straight out of nightmares, exaggerated brows framing eyes of blazing, empyrean fire and blood-red lips drawn back from sharp, pointed teeth of steel in a fashion that is somehow both mocking and threatening.
Circles of rune criss-cross across the creature's body, trailing down from its neck and across the rest of its slender body, connecting the main face to eight more grimacing faces:two alongside the main one, two on either side of its neck and one on each clavicle. Of these faces, only two are alive with the same blazing fire that animates the creatures main face: the rest are asleep, as though whatever animating force might inhabit them is currently gone.
Six of the fragments still remain at large, then, you reason. Only the one you captured and the one inside the possessed man on the train have returned to the main body.
That, however, is a worry for a later time. Right now, it is the thing's arms and legs that are of more immediate concern.
The Hand of Transformation has six three-jointed arms, one of them holding the slender, strange power blade with which it has been attacking you, the rest of its hands bare of either weaponry or tool: maybe it has discarded them, or found it unwieldy to clamber along the train ladden with tools or weapons. It's legs are digitirade, bird-like claws sharp enough to bury themselves into the metal of the train's bed attached to them.
The sudden disappearance of the smoke seems to surprise it, if only for a moment: long enough, however, to allow you to skitter along the side of the train through the suddenly open air, putting distance between yourself and the gap at the end of the train.
It whirls around and strikes at you, but with its arms visible you can see the strike coming and dodge it far more comfortably then before. You come up with a rudimentary strategy, as you give ground. It's limbs, you reason, are not covered with the silvery symbols that mark its head and body: as such, they are probably surplus to requirement, and between yourself and Regicia you should be able to replace them regardless. It moves fluidly, forcing you back across the train, the three-jointed construction of it's arms allowing it to move them in unexpected ways. At one point, it drops the sword from it's top right hand into the bottom left in a motion so fluid and natural it almost manages to surprise you, tearing your robes as you are forced to throw yourself back once again. You cant a curse as you find your back hitting the back of the locomotive, avoiding the thrust of the sword only by the barest of milimeters and nearly doubling over as three fists hit you at once, though they fail to do any damage.
Then, you lean forward, looking straight into the eyes of the Hand of Transformation, and do something that you have not done in the longest of time: through conscious force of will, you pull at the atrophied muscles in the remnants of your face, pulling your lips back from the ruins of what once was your teeth.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9 35: Combat: 1d6: 6: Full Success]
You do not know if it recognises your triumphant grin for what it is: maybe the panic it shows as it tries to withdraw the blade from the Locomotive is just projection on your part.
It never manages to do so. Monofilament wires draws taut and severs its sword-hand at the wrist, and then you are on the attack, the blades of your arm striking out in rapid fashion, each strike shattering a joint or severing a limb. The Hand of Transformation looks at you, wide-eyed, and then it tries to launch itself off the train, into the abyss you had not noticed until know had sprung up around you.
You catch it with one of your mechadendrites, a claw closing around it's neck as delicately as you can manage, and then you strike out twice more with your blade, watching impassively as both of it's leg disappear into the burning Hive below.
And it is burning, you suddenly notice: not in its entirety, mind, but a good part of it appears to be on fire, while all around you on the raised streets you can see, fighting is going on: the masked figures of the Macabian Jannissaries and the ragged Conarian Rangers, wielding Flamers, Las Guns, and what you assume are farming implements remade into improvised chain glaives, against people armed, at best, with antique revolvers.
Fighting, you reflect, as you put the Hand of Transformation down very carefully onto the bed of the Train, is the wrong word for what is going on down there.
A massacre might be the more correct term: the sort of atrocity that might be committed by an occupying army stretched beyond its breaking point, or a Chaos Warband as a matter of course.
If you had to guess at the inciting incident for this, the armless and legless machine in front of you might provide the best of explanations.
Ah, well: all that does not really concern you. What does, however, is how you wish to proceed, once you have brought this train to a halt and allowed your subordinates to catch up to you.
Namely, you have to decide where and how you wish to fix the Hand of Transformation.
[Where?]
[] In Place
You will find a relatively safe location nearby, and go about enacting your repairs there. You will not have tools beyond what you have on your person, and you may find yourself exposed to sudden danger, but this will allow you to fix whatever problem you have quickly, before the Hand can destabilize the situation around you further and make everything much worse then it already has.
[] At Base
You will return to the Court of the Lady Czevene, where you will have access to more advanced tools and protection. Travel there, however, might be dangerous, and of course all the while the Hand of Transformation might continue to enact its terrible wiles.
[How?]
[] Material Focus
You will treat this thing as you would any other unruly servitor, focusing on whatever Tharc Raskol fucked up in its construction and programming and endeavoring to correct its behaviour that way.
[] Empyrean Focus
You will treat this thing as a daemon engine somebody has bound with insufficient stringency, combing through whatever bindings Raskol has put into place to to see what has allowed the daemon within the machine to go rogue in this way.
Vote closed
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
A Host of Problems: Part 7
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
Getting the train to stop is a trivial process. You do wait until it has reached the end of the bridge. There is no sense, you consider, in walking all that way.
The brief delay does give you time to consider the Hand of Transformation, and the strange sword that is still stuck in the cabin of the train. The blade is, you consider, possibly daemonic, and certainly not a normal weapon. Empyrean Runes still glow in its hilts, though the ghostly power field has been turned off.
You do not know what it would have done had it struck you, and you do not regret that fact, for all the thirst for knowledge. Still, that leaves you to decide what to do with the potentially dangerous blade.
[Sword]
[] Keep it
[] Gift it to a Subordinate
[]Regicia Ko-Bea
[]Theama-Nul
[] Toss it
Finding a safe space within the charnel house that has become of the middle hive proves a lot more difficult than stopping the train. You wish for your allies to find you again, so do not dare to stray too far from the train once you manage to stop it, but you suspect that even outside of the section of hab blocs and warehouses that directly surround the track much of the Middle Hive are the same.
Every spot that is not exposed is crowded with those seeking refuge from the unleashed wrath of the fallen Regiments: every place that isn't proves such because it has proven insufficiently hidden, and is thus littered with corpses. Often, these spaces are on fire: though the Maccabian Janissaries have traded in one faith for another, they seem to have kept their love for flamers, and delight to turn them on the insurgents.
In the end, you give up finding a space unmarred by the massacres around you: the warehouse you set up shop in is stained with soot and littered with blackened bones. There is something like delight flickering in the eyes of the Hand of Transformation, though you know this to be simply a trick of perspective: the daemon is not, after all, a thing of actual sentience or intelligence: merely a perverse reflection of some twisted human desire, given shape and traits by your own imagination. If you had to guess what that trait might be, you would wager it to be the desire for the violent overthrow of order. That such a thing would strain against any restraints placed upon it seems blatantly obvious to you: one might as well attempt to tie a string around liquid water.
But such is exactly what Tharc Raskoll has done, and now it is on you to fix it.
[Roll: Eta-Nu 9-35: Warp Craft: 1d6: Rolled: 1. Failure]
You do not, you have to admit to your chagrin, understand what it is that he has done. You have some experience in the utilization of the Empyrean: they are necessary to rise to where you have risen within the true Mechanicum, for even if you do not worship it, to ignore the potential of that dark mirror of sentient reality is foolish indeed. But your expertise extends to the Empyrean's mutative qualities, and to the occasional shackling of its pseudo-intelligences in an organic form. Wards, contracts, and the bindings involved in creating daemonic engines have always been difficult for you: there is too much uncertainty for you there, too many circular assumptions made true by nothing but the power of belief and symbolism. Your grasp of Colchisian, which seems to be the language the silver bindings that cover the Daemon-Servitors organic shell are written in, is also pretty rudimentary. You haven't even managed to decipher a single of the nine circles when Theama-Nul and Regicia Ko-Bea find you.
You can actually hear the arrival of the Yulrasian Assault Regiment: not by any fanfare, but simply by the rumbling of their Chimeras and the sudden drop in the snap-crack of Las Fire and the hissing of flamers wherever they make their way. Order is being restored, you become dimly aware. It is one of the mutant scouts that finds you first, and the Yulrasians have moved past your position for half and hour by the time it returns, alongside your two subordinates and Colonel Parlo and Captain Borj.
"We are bringing these Regiments back into line", Parlo informs you. "They have apparently been set loose after some sort of suicide attack took out parts of their command staff."
His face twists, as he regards the remnants of carnage around you. "There will be consequences for this", he promises, somewhat melodramatically in your opinion, and then he sets off, Ogryn Bodyguard and mutant runners in tow. You are left to wonder, briefly, if they would have been at each other's throat had the Hand of Transformation's plot succeeded. It does not bear thinking about, you consider: what has happened has happened.
[Roll: Theama-Nul: Warp Craft: 3d6: Rolled: 4,5,4. Partial Success]
Your subordinate is already bent over the toppled Hand of Transformation, by the time you turn back to him: though Theama-Nul's expression remains impossible to read, there is something like excitement in his canting as he relays his findings.
"Most of these bindings are fairly standard, meant to keep the daemonic essence contained within the Machine." He traces a finger across one of the circles. "This part here is what allows it to send out the fragments, though as expected the actual mind remains bound within the machine."
He pauses, for a moment, and you find yourself once again frustrated at not being able to read his expression. "Ah", he says, finally, "I see."
Mechadendrites push aside a cunningly hidden port at the back of the Hand's skull, revealing an interface port: custom-made, of course. You would bet basically anything that the only data-jack compatible with the thing now lies utterly destroyed in the burned-out husk of the Chimera. "These", Theama-Nul says, pointing at the circles on the outside of the Daemon-Servitor, "are the framework, forcing the essence bound within to obey instructions inscribed through this". He taps the interface port, and you nod. "Inscribed on what", you ask, and Theama-Nul shrugs, letting go of his facade just enough to allow you to perceive the gesture. "It's in there", he says, pointing at the metal-toothed mouth, and you emit a frustrated burst of static. Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be.
The thing starts screaming, when you start taking out its teeth, but you steadfastly ignore this, besides noting to yourself that it is surprisingly authentic in its pleading screams. Your career has given you sufficient experience to judge such things. It is, you suppose, not the worst of defense mechanisms, though of course against you it is entirely pointless. The teeth are fully formed, roots of silver rammed into gums of ceramic: a choice that might be artistic or serve some sort of artistic vision, but simply seems utterly pointless to you. Behind the teeth, where a tongue would be, you find the first organic component: a scroll made of what you identify as human skin, spanned beneath two wheels. Something that looks like a tattooing needle is suspended above it, while small blades seem to stand ready to flay away the top layer of the skin.
More of the cuneiform script is inscribed into the skin, though you are unable to read it properly. "Let's see", Theama-Nul says, leaning in close.
"In essence…Destroy government of Sephirot Nine, return for new instructions."
You frown at that. "Well, the government was destroyed, right? So…why didn't it come back"
"Because it's task hadn't been fulfilled yet", Regicia Ko-Bea says, realization dawning on her face. "Its task wasn't to wait for the destruction of the Government, it was to destroy the Government itself. The Host took over before it was able to perform this task, and assumed the responsibilities of Government in place of the Imperium."
You emit a warble of frustrated static. This exact sort of thing is why you don't like working with Warp Pseudosentiences.
"So", you cant, "we remove the inscription, present the device back to our employer, and she can do whatever she wants with it."
You see the wince on both Ko-Bea's and on Theama-Nul's face, and send them a sharp burst of frustration.
"The scroll is a part of its binding. Removing it altogether might disrupt the binding, and leaving it blank might result in….undue autonomy of function"
"So it might go rogue", you say, and both of them cant in the affirmative. "I can put up a rudimentary warding circle around it, ensuring that it doesn't escape from the immediate surroundings. But whoever performs the operation is going to have to step inside the circle, and will be exposed the attention of the Daemon if things go wrong."
You nod, and step forward. It's going to be you. Regicia has some experience with surgery, but you are the most equipped to handle this situation.
"Put it up", you say, and Theama-Nul complies. He uses the bones and ashes of the massacred citizens around you, because that is just what Warp-meddling is like. Before long, you are perched over the prone body of the Hand of Transformation, holding its mouth open with a clamp as your Medicae Mechadendrites stand ready to flay the first layer of flesh off the scroll.
"You'll need to replace the words as you write them", Theama-Nul tells you, some nervousness creeping into his canting. "I can translate whatever you wish to write into Colchisian, if you tell me. There's an issue, though: it'll need to be nine words, nothing more, nothing less."
You give a curt nod, and prepare the syringe you have repurposed into an improvised tattooing needle.
You already know exactly what you want to write.
[Replacement Command]
[] Write-in
The brief delay does give you time to consider the Hand of Transformation, and the strange sword that is still stuck in the cabin of the train. The blade is, you consider, possibly daemonic, and certainly not a normal weapon. Empyrean Runes still glow in its hilts, though the ghostly power field has been turned off.
You do not know what it would have done had it struck you, and you do not regret that fact, for all the thirst for knowledge. Still, that leaves you to decide what to do with the potentially dangerous blade.
[Sword]
[] Keep it
[] Gift it to a Subordinate
[]Regicia Ko-Bea
[]Theama-Nul
[] Toss it
Finding a safe space within the charnel house that has become of the middle hive proves a lot more difficult than stopping the train. You wish for your allies to find you again, so do not dare to stray too far from the train once you manage to stop it, but you suspect that even outside of the section of hab blocs and warehouses that directly surround the track much of the Middle Hive are the same.
Every spot that is not exposed is crowded with those seeking refuge from the unleashed wrath of the fallen Regiments: every place that isn't proves such because it has proven insufficiently hidden, and is thus littered with corpses. Often, these spaces are on fire: though the Maccabian Janissaries have traded in one faith for another, they seem to have kept their love for flamers, and delight to turn them on the insurgents.
In the end, you give up finding a space unmarred by the massacres around you: the warehouse you set up shop in is stained with soot and littered with blackened bones. There is something like delight flickering in the eyes of the Hand of Transformation, though you know this to be simply a trick of perspective: the daemon is not, after all, a thing of actual sentience or intelligence: merely a perverse reflection of some twisted human desire, given shape and traits by your own imagination. If you had to guess what that trait might be, you would wager it to be the desire for the violent overthrow of order. That such a thing would strain against any restraints placed upon it seems blatantly obvious to you: one might as well attempt to tie a string around liquid water.
But such is exactly what Tharc Raskoll has done, and now it is on you to fix it.
[Roll: Eta-Nu 9-35: Warp Craft: 1d6: Rolled: 1. Failure]
You do not, you have to admit to your chagrin, understand what it is that he has done. You have some experience in the utilization of the Empyrean: they are necessary to rise to where you have risen within the true Mechanicum, for even if you do not worship it, to ignore the potential of that dark mirror of sentient reality is foolish indeed. But your expertise extends to the Empyrean's mutative qualities, and to the occasional shackling of its pseudo-intelligences in an organic form. Wards, contracts, and the bindings involved in creating daemonic engines have always been difficult for you: there is too much uncertainty for you there, too many circular assumptions made true by nothing but the power of belief and symbolism. Your grasp of Colchisian, which seems to be the language the silver bindings that cover the Daemon-Servitors organic shell are written in, is also pretty rudimentary. You haven't even managed to decipher a single of the nine circles when Theama-Nul and Regicia Ko-Bea find you.
You can actually hear the arrival of the Yulrasian Assault Regiment: not by any fanfare, but simply by the rumbling of their Chimeras and the sudden drop in the snap-crack of Las Fire and the hissing of flamers wherever they make their way. Order is being restored, you become dimly aware. It is one of the mutant scouts that finds you first, and the Yulrasians have moved past your position for half and hour by the time it returns, alongside your two subordinates and Colonel Parlo and Captain Borj.
"We are bringing these Regiments back into line", Parlo informs you. "They have apparently been set loose after some sort of suicide attack took out parts of their command staff."
His face twists, as he regards the remnants of carnage around you. "There will be consequences for this", he promises, somewhat melodramatically in your opinion, and then he sets off, Ogryn Bodyguard and mutant runners in tow. You are left to wonder, briefly, if they would have been at each other's throat had the Hand of Transformation's plot succeeded. It does not bear thinking about, you consider: what has happened has happened.
[Roll: Theama-Nul: Warp Craft: 3d6: Rolled: 4,5,4. Partial Success]
Your subordinate is already bent over the toppled Hand of Transformation, by the time you turn back to him: though Theama-Nul's expression remains impossible to read, there is something like excitement in his canting as he relays his findings.
"Most of these bindings are fairly standard, meant to keep the daemonic essence contained within the Machine." He traces a finger across one of the circles. "This part here is what allows it to send out the fragments, though as expected the actual mind remains bound within the machine."
He pauses, for a moment, and you find yourself once again frustrated at not being able to read his expression. "Ah", he says, finally, "I see."
Mechadendrites push aside a cunningly hidden port at the back of the Hand's skull, revealing an interface port: custom-made, of course. You would bet basically anything that the only data-jack compatible with the thing now lies utterly destroyed in the burned-out husk of the Chimera. "These", Theama-Nul says, pointing at the circles on the outside of the Daemon-Servitor, "are the framework, forcing the essence bound within to obey instructions inscribed through this". He taps the interface port, and you nod. "Inscribed on what", you ask, and Theama-Nul shrugs, letting go of his facade just enough to allow you to perceive the gesture. "It's in there", he says, pointing at the metal-toothed mouth, and you emit a frustrated burst of static. Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be.
The thing starts screaming, when you start taking out its teeth, but you steadfastly ignore this, besides noting to yourself that it is surprisingly authentic in its pleading screams. Your career has given you sufficient experience to judge such things. It is, you suppose, not the worst of defense mechanisms, though of course against you it is entirely pointless. The teeth are fully formed, roots of silver rammed into gums of ceramic: a choice that might be artistic or serve some sort of artistic vision, but simply seems utterly pointless to you. Behind the teeth, where a tongue would be, you find the first organic component: a scroll made of what you identify as human skin, spanned beneath two wheels. Something that looks like a tattooing needle is suspended above it, while small blades seem to stand ready to flay away the top layer of the skin.
More of the cuneiform script is inscribed into the skin, though you are unable to read it properly. "Let's see", Theama-Nul says, leaning in close.
"In essence…Destroy government of Sephirot Nine, return for new instructions."
You frown at that. "Well, the government was destroyed, right? So…why didn't it come back"
"Because it's task hadn't been fulfilled yet", Regicia Ko-Bea says, realization dawning on her face. "Its task wasn't to wait for the destruction of the Government, it was to destroy the Government itself. The Host took over before it was able to perform this task, and assumed the responsibilities of Government in place of the Imperium."
You emit a warble of frustrated static. This exact sort of thing is why you don't like working with Warp Pseudosentiences.
"So", you cant, "we remove the inscription, present the device back to our employer, and she can do whatever she wants with it."
You see the wince on both Ko-Bea's and on Theama-Nul's face, and send them a sharp burst of frustration.
"The scroll is a part of its binding. Removing it altogether might disrupt the binding, and leaving it blank might result in….undue autonomy of function"
"So it might go rogue", you say, and both of them cant in the affirmative. "I can put up a rudimentary warding circle around it, ensuring that it doesn't escape from the immediate surroundings. But whoever performs the operation is going to have to step inside the circle, and will be exposed the attention of the Daemon if things go wrong."
You nod, and step forward. It's going to be you. Regicia has some experience with surgery, but you are the most equipped to handle this situation.
"Put it up", you say, and Theama-Nul complies. He uses the bones and ashes of the massacred citizens around you, because that is just what Warp-meddling is like. Before long, you are perched over the prone body of the Hand of Transformation, holding its mouth open with a clamp as your Medicae Mechadendrites stand ready to flay the first layer of flesh off the scroll.
"You'll need to replace the words as you write them", Theama-Nul tells you, some nervousness creeping into his canting. "I can translate whatever you wish to write into Colchisian, if you tell me. There's an issue, though: it'll need to be nine words, nothing more, nothing less."
You give a curt nod, and prepare the syringe you have repurposed into an improvised tattooing needle.
You already know exactly what you want to write.
[Replacement Command]
[] Write-in
Vote closed
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
A Host of Problems: Part 8
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
Surgery is a skill every Magos of the Mechanicum, true or shackled, has to acquire at some point in their career, at least on the basic level. It is simply unavoidable: to replace the flesh, one must cut it, one must understand the basic lay of nerves and muscles and sinew, one must understand how much pain may be inflicted without causing lethal shock and how to suture an incision shut.
Many of these things are made easier for your brethren then for the unaugmented: a lack of trembling is merely one of the myriad advantages metal has over flesh, and much of what would take exceptional skill without augments is a mere matter of the right tool to the Mechanicum. There is a reason, you consider, that even in the most hostile environments, far from the light of technology or knowledge, Doctors are frequently augmented to at least some extent.
You are, of course, a cut above even the already high basic level of medical knowledge within the Mechanicum, capable of operating even on the most exotic of mutants and performing even the most precise operations with minimal time and under adverse conditions, supported by a suite of highly specialized tools and a long lifetime of practical experience.
None of that experience covered crouching in the midsts of a circle made from bone and ash, inscribing runes from a language you do not understand onto the freshly-flayed meat of an ersatz-tone inside the mouth of a daemonic machine hell-bent on preventing you from doing so.
You are glad you took its teeth out, because it tries to bite down within moments of you beginning. Its ceramite gums actually manage to put enough stress onto your hydraulic spread to crush an organic appendage with ease, you note. Unluckily for it, you haven't used one of those for anything in over a hundred years.
You are forced to shut off your audio-receptors when it starts screaming: a high-pitched wail, loud enough and of just the right frequency to shatter glass and burst organic eardrums. Instead, it forces you to communicate with Theama by light instead of by sound, which would be an issue if you didn't prefer the higher speed of that method anyways.
You manage to flay the tongue, first incision to complete removal of previous instructions, in less then a second: not a difficult operation at all.
The inscription, however, is another matter altogether. You dislike having to rely on somebody else for translation: even if Theama-Nul has nothing to gain from sabotaging you, the century spent in the cut-throat environment of Nuton's Folly still has you anxious. The fact that you have no choice but to rely on him anyways only heightens your anxieties. You focus, before you begin your inscription: shut off all external receptors, save those trained on the scroll, power yourself down, banish all but the cuneiform letters your subordinate has sent you from your thought processes. You only get one shot at this, and you do not wish to know what happens if you fail. Already, you can see the daemonic form within the ceramite puppet stretch and strain against its bindings. You will be dead, if it slips them, and that is only if you are exceedingly lucky. You have had some glimpses of the sort of existence that awaits one of your kind after his demise: you do not intend to ever experience it firsthand.
And so, you work carefully: not hastily nor with undue slowness, each line etched to perfection, each letter inscribed perfectly according to it's instructions. Colchisian is a language that seems crafted at least to some extent to engender ambiguity and hide meaning: Theama-Nul has given you extensive instructions not simply for the shape of each letter, but also for the direction in which each individual stroke is supposed to be drawn, and which end of them is supposed to be thicker or thinner.
The fact that this language has an individual word for a machine animated by daemonic forces makes some pieces about the advent of Horus's great misadventure fall into place for you, at least. Not the most useful piece of information, perhaps, but of some amusement value as a piece of trivia.
[Roll: Eta-Nu 9-35: Medicae: 3d6: 1, 5, 4, Partial Success]
You take your time, crafting each letter and each word carefully, running into difficulties only once. Your name is not made for Colchisian: theirs was a woefully inefficient system, and the combination of letters and names seem to not have frequently occurred in their culture. Add to that the fact that they worked with a duodecimal rather then a decimal system, and you almost manage to omit the 5 from the end of your name, making the entire exercise pointless. You catch yourself in time, however, even as the Daemonic Machine ceases it's trashing beneath you and regards you with a sort of hateful obedience that is almost as good as any drug you could ever think of creating. You withdraw your instruments, and shut off the restriction on your senses, one by one, as you straighten yourself.
Then you duck again, because a bullet almost rips through your neck and kills you.
The men that have come to kill you are Insurgents, though a better class then the rabble you fought at the factory: Enforcers or PDF, you would wager: some sort of specialist outfit, judging by the light Carapace, the complex optics on their helmets, and the high quality of their silenced guns. It is no coincidence that they are here, past the line of Yulrasian Heavies and right where the Daemon Engine is located: these are the last, desperate attempt of the Hand of Transformation to gain its liberty.
Whoever they are, they are good enough to have made it this far, and good enough to take out Theama-Nul: judging by the body you cannot quite place, the Tech Priest has been struck down by a bullet not far from the entry, and is lying in a puddle of spreading hydraulic fluid. Not a lethal wound, you don't think: for one, he seems to still be able to maintain his bothersome ability.
Regicia seems to have done a little better: you see a streak on her armor where a bullet must have glanced off, and judging by the corpses at her feet she has some tricks still up her one remaining sleeve: still, the assailants are closing in rapidly on your position, and you do not think you have it in you to fight all of them off.
Luckily, hopefully, you don't have to.
"Daemonbot, harken", you shout, speaking the phrase as Theama instructed you to in Colchisian. It is time, now, to see if your theory worked out. "Terminate your pawns", you instruct, and with ruthless efficiency, the Hand of Transformation complies.
The leader of your assailant screams and clutches at his ears, swiftly followed by the remaining six members, and you do not give them time to recover: instead, you raise your arm and fire your needler as fast as it will go.
The toxin you use is not particularly inventive: the most basic of neurotoxic agents, blocking synaptic transmission on a very short timeframe. Your assailants go limp as their body ceases to obey their brain, and then they choke as the muscles moving their lungs refuse to work.
You do not observe this process to its very end: it is likely to be lengthy, and you have better things to do.
Instead, you bend over Theama-Nul. "Got me in the leg", your subordinate cants, possessing the decency to be somewhat chagrined. "I can walk, but it's not likely to be fast."
You cant your disapproval back at him, even as you offer one of your Mechandendrites for him to lean on, slinging the Hand of Transformation over your back with your Servo Claw.
"The clutched their ears", Regicia opines, "as if somebody was sending feedback through their earpieces. Do you think that means communications are back online?"
That…is a good point, actually: you open up your communication channels to check, and are immediately rewarded with a chaotic jumble of mercifully non-counting voices. Whatever the hell Talef was up to, he seems to have gotten it under control.
That's a relief. You frown as you realize that this is a sentiment you are actually, genuinely holding.
Then you are hit by a sudden burst of deep, forceful anxiety. Lady Czevene is in danger. You need to go help her right now: drop anything you're doing. Any delay might mean it is too late.
"Another psychic signal", Theama-Nul wonders, and you send a curse-cant.
This is a cry for help, then, and if you know anything about psychic powers, she is taking serious risk in order to send it out. "Daemonbot, harken", you bite out, "cease your efforts to subvert the government of the Hive, and destroy all those you engaged in carrying them out."
"As you command", the daemonic Engine rasps out, with a voice that reminds you of nothing so much as a flock of gathering carrion crows. Then it begins laughing, and does not cease until you order it to stop.
Well. That's not at all worrying.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Arranging for transport back to the Administratum District is made easy by the reestablishment of communications: Captain Borj comes to pick you up, face drawn taut and worried.
"My Regiment's command staff was wiped out in the advent of the troubles", he informs you, without prompting. "Apparently, they withdrew themselves in the aftermath, to select new leadership and await new orders."
He seems discontent with this decision, though you are unsure why: it is not like another force of armed men in the mix would have made the situation any less chaotic. "Do you know anything about what's going on in the Administratum District?", Regicia asks, and the Captain shakes his head: "only that we need to get there, quickly. The Lady is in danger."
He feels it too, then. That there isn't a mundane effort to communicate to go along with the psychic is worrying indeed.
You listen for it all the way back, as you ride through a Hive that has now been scarred twice. Evidence of the chaos is visible wherever you go: more then once, your convoy is required to double back and seek a different past, it's way blocked by some obstruction or the other, be it a burned-down Chimera, a collapsed section of highway, or, in one case, a pile of corpses so thick the Taurox could not traverse it without getting stuck. A mass panic and death, you decide looking at it: not deliberate effort, though it is not hard to guess how they might have come to occupy this space.
What is absent, however, is also notable: nobody takes a shot at you, nor even dares to glare at you from the doorway of a Hab or the protection of some pillar. You see soldiers, in all kinds of uniforms: the battledress of the Cadians and the cloth of the Rangers, the masks of the Maccabians, as well as several of the other regiments: men and women in dark green tunics and Flak Armor, some of them riding upon scaled quadruple lizards, as well as those wearing black Kepis, the Nine-winged Eye prominent in gold upon their black Uniforms. As you proceed, you bypass tanks rumbling steadily along: Leman Russes painted to blend in in a desert utterly dwarfed by a Baneblade which forgoes all attempts at stealth, covered instead in the Heraldry of it's owners and bold declarations of carrying the favor of one 'Lady Morgana'. Regicia points to a piece of cloth tied around the barrel of one of the sponson guns, and insists that this is what the favor is: some sort of feudal-world chivalric tradition, apparently.
All of the Regiments that make up the Host of Ninefold Revelation seem on the move, and they are all converging on the same location: the Administratum District. You feel your worry and anxiety mounting, and do not know whether it is because of increased psychic effort or because of the plume of smoke that seems to be rising from the Administratum District.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Somebody has driven a truck laden with explosives into the checkpoint at the outskirts of the Administratum District and detonated it: at least that's what you assume happened from the footprint of the explosion. Whatever it was, it has been utterly obliterated, along with a good chunk of the improvised fortifications that had been piled up here: fire still rages through some of the surrounding structures, belching out the black smoke you saw from a distance. An opening to an attack, you assume, though not something unexpected: there is a second checkpoint a little farther back, far enough away from the blast area to be able to respond to such an attack with minimal delay.
"We expected an attack like this", Captain Borj says, deep worry on his face. "The second checkpoint should've delayed any insurgent attack long enough for the reserves to deploy from the barack."
He falls silent, as the Taurox emerges from the smoke. For an insurgent attack, such a strategy would probably have worked.
As the torn-apart corpses come into view, fallen where they stood, it becomes quite readily apparent that the force that attacked was far from an ordinary effort by the insurgents.
You speed up your step, leaving Theama-Nul in the care of the Cadians, though you are not entirely sure what you are even supposed to do. This wasn't just a single Space Marine, and you barely survived that: this looks like the work of an entire Squad, moving at speed and with purpose. The Administratum District was built, as most of the edificies of the Imperium tend to be, at least partially with defense in mind, and staffed and modified further by a woman who knew what she was doing in terms of military science.
It did not matter at all. This place, this scenario: it is what the Space Marines were made for, for all that they were thrown into mass combat during the great Crusade. You pass by shattered strongpoints and half-erected barricades, step over bodies torn in two by bolt and power weapon. The Space Marines seem to have prioritized speed, and still there seem to have been no survivors. You pass over a group of Tzaangors, at least eighteen of them, though their state does not make identifying individual bodies easy. There is blood on their blades, you notice as you race by: by its clotting it belongs to one of the Space Marines.
You do not think they hurt them much, or even slowed them down much. Still, they seem not to have hesitated to throw themselves in the path of certain death.
Perhaps it was enough. Lady Czevene, you reason, is still projecting her cry for help. It must have been enough. It has been hours.
You find the first dead Space Marine at the entrance to the throne: the front of it's armor is scorched black by the impact of Las Bolts, and several of them seem to have impacted his gorget, searing through it and then incinerating his neck. The second made it barely farther into the room before the Las Bolts killed him. The third lies amongst a gaggle of corpses, some of them Tzaangors, some ordinary humans, who seem to have literally swarmed over it and stabbed it to death with bayonets, blades, and swords. The fourth lies a few steps further, it's head blown apart by what you quickly identify as Bolter Rounds. The Commissar stands at the foot of the throne, his Bolt Pistol holstered again, seeming at a loss for words. Others of the Sephirot 99th mill around, some looking towards the throne, some facing outwards, rifles races: to their credit, they do not fire at you as they see you. Instead, they part.
The last of the Space Marines has made it almost to the throne. His helmet, seemingly intact, seems to have lost its connection to the rest of the armor and rolled a bit forward, coming to rest in Lady Czeven's lap. Something, and looking at the powerful psyker you are fairly certain what, has burst his head like a grape.
It has not done so, however, before he was able to get off one last shot.
It was not a direct impact: the fact Czevene is still alive indicates as much. Instead, the bolt seems to have impacted the throne upon which she now rests and thrown loose shrapnel which has torn through her ribs and the side of her stomach. A grievous wound, though not one that can't be survived: in fact, you see several medicae at work even now, who seem to have done a passable job at stabilizing her.
And yet it will not be enough: that much, you grasp almost instantly.
Her throne is not the same throne she sat on earlier, or at least barely recognizable as such: it is a construct of crystals and arcane circuitry, arranged around the Psyker in a circle of jagged edges, cables running into ports within her spine and heads. Arcane lighting courses through it, wracking her body, and several of the crystals have been broken off, equally lodged inside her flesh. She is stable, right now, but only in the most tentative of senses, and only by what must be a supreme effort of will.
'Help! Me!', she commands, the order stabbing into your mind with such force that you almost move to obey it before catching yourself.
You very likely can, you consider. If there is anything alive on this world who can, it is you. "We have to help her", Regicia Ko-Bea cants at you, and you can see some of the calculations she is clearly making. Saving the Psyker from this will indebt her to you without doubt, and you can see why your ambitious subordinate would want this. Theama-Nul's cant, on the other hand, surprises you: "Don't intervene", he cants, "keep her alive, but nothing further. Plans beyond us are unfolding here, and we ought not to stand in their way."
You look at the woman, wracked by the powers of the Empyrean, in the grasp of a machine that she probably got from the very same idiot that messed up the Hand of Transformation.
Perhaps, you consider bleakly, death is the kinder outcome here.
___________________________________________________________________________
[] Safe Her
[] Keep Her Stable
[] Kill Her
Many of these things are made easier for your brethren then for the unaugmented: a lack of trembling is merely one of the myriad advantages metal has over flesh, and much of what would take exceptional skill without augments is a mere matter of the right tool to the Mechanicum. There is a reason, you consider, that even in the most hostile environments, far from the light of technology or knowledge, Doctors are frequently augmented to at least some extent.
You are, of course, a cut above even the already high basic level of medical knowledge within the Mechanicum, capable of operating even on the most exotic of mutants and performing even the most precise operations with minimal time and under adverse conditions, supported by a suite of highly specialized tools and a long lifetime of practical experience.
None of that experience covered crouching in the midsts of a circle made from bone and ash, inscribing runes from a language you do not understand onto the freshly-flayed meat of an ersatz-tone inside the mouth of a daemonic machine hell-bent on preventing you from doing so.
You are glad you took its teeth out, because it tries to bite down within moments of you beginning. Its ceramite gums actually manage to put enough stress onto your hydraulic spread to crush an organic appendage with ease, you note. Unluckily for it, you haven't used one of those for anything in over a hundred years.
You are forced to shut off your audio-receptors when it starts screaming: a high-pitched wail, loud enough and of just the right frequency to shatter glass and burst organic eardrums. Instead, it forces you to communicate with Theama by light instead of by sound, which would be an issue if you didn't prefer the higher speed of that method anyways.
You manage to flay the tongue, first incision to complete removal of previous instructions, in less then a second: not a difficult operation at all.
The inscription, however, is another matter altogether. You dislike having to rely on somebody else for translation: even if Theama-Nul has nothing to gain from sabotaging you, the century spent in the cut-throat environment of Nuton's Folly still has you anxious. The fact that you have no choice but to rely on him anyways only heightens your anxieties. You focus, before you begin your inscription: shut off all external receptors, save those trained on the scroll, power yourself down, banish all but the cuneiform letters your subordinate has sent you from your thought processes. You only get one shot at this, and you do not wish to know what happens if you fail. Already, you can see the daemonic form within the ceramite puppet stretch and strain against its bindings. You will be dead, if it slips them, and that is only if you are exceedingly lucky. You have had some glimpses of the sort of existence that awaits one of your kind after his demise: you do not intend to ever experience it firsthand.
And so, you work carefully: not hastily nor with undue slowness, each line etched to perfection, each letter inscribed perfectly according to it's instructions. Colchisian is a language that seems crafted at least to some extent to engender ambiguity and hide meaning: Theama-Nul has given you extensive instructions not simply for the shape of each letter, but also for the direction in which each individual stroke is supposed to be drawn, and which end of them is supposed to be thicker or thinner.
The fact that this language has an individual word for a machine animated by daemonic forces makes some pieces about the advent of Horus's great misadventure fall into place for you, at least. Not the most useful piece of information, perhaps, but of some amusement value as a piece of trivia.
[Roll: Eta-Nu 9-35: Medicae: 3d6: 1, 5, 4, Partial Success]
You take your time, crafting each letter and each word carefully, running into difficulties only once. Your name is not made for Colchisian: theirs was a woefully inefficient system, and the combination of letters and names seem to not have frequently occurred in their culture. Add to that the fact that they worked with a duodecimal rather then a decimal system, and you almost manage to omit the 5 from the end of your name, making the entire exercise pointless. You catch yourself in time, however, even as the Daemonic Machine ceases it's trashing beneath you and regards you with a sort of hateful obedience that is almost as good as any drug you could ever think of creating. You withdraw your instruments, and shut off the restriction on your senses, one by one, as you straighten yourself.
Then you duck again, because a bullet almost rips through your neck and kills you.
The men that have come to kill you are Insurgents, though a better class then the rabble you fought at the factory: Enforcers or PDF, you would wager: some sort of specialist outfit, judging by the light Carapace, the complex optics on their helmets, and the high quality of their silenced guns. It is no coincidence that they are here, past the line of Yulrasian Heavies and right where the Daemon Engine is located: these are the last, desperate attempt of the Hand of Transformation to gain its liberty.
Whoever they are, they are good enough to have made it this far, and good enough to take out Theama-Nul: judging by the body you cannot quite place, the Tech Priest has been struck down by a bullet not far from the entry, and is lying in a puddle of spreading hydraulic fluid. Not a lethal wound, you don't think: for one, he seems to still be able to maintain his bothersome ability.
Regicia seems to have done a little better: you see a streak on her armor where a bullet must have glanced off, and judging by the corpses at her feet she has some tricks still up her one remaining sleeve: still, the assailants are closing in rapidly on your position, and you do not think you have it in you to fight all of them off.
Luckily, hopefully, you don't have to.
"Daemonbot, harken", you shout, speaking the phrase as Theama instructed you to in Colchisian. It is time, now, to see if your theory worked out. "Terminate your pawns", you instruct, and with ruthless efficiency, the Hand of Transformation complies.
The leader of your assailant screams and clutches at his ears, swiftly followed by the remaining six members, and you do not give them time to recover: instead, you raise your arm and fire your needler as fast as it will go.
The toxin you use is not particularly inventive: the most basic of neurotoxic agents, blocking synaptic transmission on a very short timeframe. Your assailants go limp as their body ceases to obey their brain, and then they choke as the muscles moving their lungs refuse to work.
You do not observe this process to its very end: it is likely to be lengthy, and you have better things to do.
Instead, you bend over Theama-Nul. "Got me in the leg", your subordinate cants, possessing the decency to be somewhat chagrined. "I can walk, but it's not likely to be fast."
You cant your disapproval back at him, even as you offer one of your Mechandendrites for him to lean on, slinging the Hand of Transformation over your back with your Servo Claw.
"The clutched their ears", Regicia opines, "as if somebody was sending feedback through their earpieces. Do you think that means communications are back online?"
That…is a good point, actually: you open up your communication channels to check, and are immediately rewarded with a chaotic jumble of mercifully non-counting voices. Whatever the hell Talef was up to, he seems to have gotten it under control.
That's a relief. You frown as you realize that this is a sentiment you are actually, genuinely holding.
Then you are hit by a sudden burst of deep, forceful anxiety. Lady Czevene is in danger. You need to go help her right now: drop anything you're doing. Any delay might mean it is too late.
"Another psychic signal", Theama-Nul wonders, and you send a curse-cant.
This is a cry for help, then, and if you know anything about psychic powers, she is taking serious risk in order to send it out. "Daemonbot, harken", you bite out, "cease your efforts to subvert the government of the Hive, and destroy all those you engaged in carrying them out."
"As you command", the daemonic Engine rasps out, with a voice that reminds you of nothing so much as a flock of gathering carrion crows. Then it begins laughing, and does not cease until you order it to stop.
Well. That's not at all worrying.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Arranging for transport back to the Administratum District is made easy by the reestablishment of communications: Captain Borj comes to pick you up, face drawn taut and worried.
"My Regiment's command staff was wiped out in the advent of the troubles", he informs you, without prompting. "Apparently, they withdrew themselves in the aftermath, to select new leadership and await new orders."
He seems discontent with this decision, though you are unsure why: it is not like another force of armed men in the mix would have made the situation any less chaotic. "Do you know anything about what's going on in the Administratum District?", Regicia asks, and the Captain shakes his head: "only that we need to get there, quickly. The Lady is in danger."
He feels it too, then. That there isn't a mundane effort to communicate to go along with the psychic is worrying indeed.
You listen for it all the way back, as you ride through a Hive that has now been scarred twice. Evidence of the chaos is visible wherever you go: more then once, your convoy is required to double back and seek a different past, it's way blocked by some obstruction or the other, be it a burned-down Chimera, a collapsed section of highway, or, in one case, a pile of corpses so thick the Taurox could not traverse it without getting stuck. A mass panic and death, you decide looking at it: not deliberate effort, though it is not hard to guess how they might have come to occupy this space.
What is absent, however, is also notable: nobody takes a shot at you, nor even dares to glare at you from the doorway of a Hab or the protection of some pillar. You see soldiers, in all kinds of uniforms: the battledress of the Cadians and the cloth of the Rangers, the masks of the Maccabians, as well as several of the other regiments: men and women in dark green tunics and Flak Armor, some of them riding upon scaled quadruple lizards, as well as those wearing black Kepis, the Nine-winged Eye prominent in gold upon their black Uniforms. As you proceed, you bypass tanks rumbling steadily along: Leman Russes painted to blend in in a desert utterly dwarfed by a Baneblade which forgoes all attempts at stealth, covered instead in the Heraldry of it's owners and bold declarations of carrying the favor of one 'Lady Morgana'. Regicia points to a piece of cloth tied around the barrel of one of the sponson guns, and insists that this is what the favor is: some sort of feudal-world chivalric tradition, apparently.
All of the Regiments that make up the Host of Ninefold Revelation seem on the move, and they are all converging on the same location: the Administratum District. You feel your worry and anxiety mounting, and do not know whether it is because of increased psychic effort or because of the plume of smoke that seems to be rising from the Administratum District.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Somebody has driven a truck laden with explosives into the checkpoint at the outskirts of the Administratum District and detonated it: at least that's what you assume happened from the footprint of the explosion. Whatever it was, it has been utterly obliterated, along with a good chunk of the improvised fortifications that had been piled up here: fire still rages through some of the surrounding structures, belching out the black smoke you saw from a distance. An opening to an attack, you assume, though not something unexpected: there is a second checkpoint a little farther back, far enough away from the blast area to be able to respond to such an attack with minimal delay.
"We expected an attack like this", Captain Borj says, deep worry on his face. "The second checkpoint should've delayed any insurgent attack long enough for the reserves to deploy from the barack."
He falls silent, as the Taurox emerges from the smoke. For an insurgent attack, such a strategy would probably have worked.
As the torn-apart corpses come into view, fallen where they stood, it becomes quite readily apparent that the force that attacked was far from an ordinary effort by the insurgents.
You speed up your step, leaving Theama-Nul in the care of the Cadians, though you are not entirely sure what you are even supposed to do. This wasn't just a single Space Marine, and you barely survived that: this looks like the work of an entire Squad, moving at speed and with purpose. The Administratum District was built, as most of the edificies of the Imperium tend to be, at least partially with defense in mind, and staffed and modified further by a woman who knew what she was doing in terms of military science.
It did not matter at all. This place, this scenario: it is what the Space Marines were made for, for all that they were thrown into mass combat during the great Crusade. You pass by shattered strongpoints and half-erected barricades, step over bodies torn in two by bolt and power weapon. The Space Marines seem to have prioritized speed, and still there seem to have been no survivors. You pass over a group of Tzaangors, at least eighteen of them, though their state does not make identifying individual bodies easy. There is blood on their blades, you notice as you race by: by its clotting it belongs to one of the Space Marines.
You do not think they hurt them much, or even slowed them down much. Still, they seem not to have hesitated to throw themselves in the path of certain death.
Perhaps it was enough. Lady Czevene, you reason, is still projecting her cry for help. It must have been enough. It has been hours.
You find the first dead Space Marine at the entrance to the throne: the front of it's armor is scorched black by the impact of Las Bolts, and several of them seem to have impacted his gorget, searing through it and then incinerating his neck. The second made it barely farther into the room before the Las Bolts killed him. The third lies amongst a gaggle of corpses, some of them Tzaangors, some ordinary humans, who seem to have literally swarmed over it and stabbed it to death with bayonets, blades, and swords. The fourth lies a few steps further, it's head blown apart by what you quickly identify as Bolter Rounds. The Commissar stands at the foot of the throne, his Bolt Pistol holstered again, seeming at a loss for words. Others of the Sephirot 99th mill around, some looking towards the throne, some facing outwards, rifles races: to their credit, they do not fire at you as they see you. Instead, they part.
The last of the Space Marines has made it almost to the throne. His helmet, seemingly intact, seems to have lost its connection to the rest of the armor and rolled a bit forward, coming to rest in Lady Czeven's lap. Something, and looking at the powerful psyker you are fairly certain what, has burst his head like a grape.
It has not done so, however, before he was able to get off one last shot.
It was not a direct impact: the fact Czevene is still alive indicates as much. Instead, the bolt seems to have impacted the throne upon which she now rests and thrown loose shrapnel which has torn through her ribs and the side of her stomach. A grievous wound, though not one that can't be survived: in fact, you see several medicae at work even now, who seem to have done a passable job at stabilizing her.
And yet it will not be enough: that much, you grasp almost instantly.
Her throne is not the same throne she sat on earlier, or at least barely recognizable as such: it is a construct of crystals and arcane circuitry, arranged around the Psyker in a circle of jagged edges, cables running into ports within her spine and heads. Arcane lighting courses through it, wracking her body, and several of the crystals have been broken off, equally lodged inside her flesh. She is stable, right now, but only in the most tentative of senses, and only by what must be a supreme effort of will.
'Help! Me!', she commands, the order stabbing into your mind with such force that you almost move to obey it before catching yourself.
You very likely can, you consider. If there is anything alive on this world who can, it is you. "We have to help her", Regicia Ko-Bea cants at you, and you can see some of the calculations she is clearly making. Saving the Psyker from this will indebt her to you without doubt, and you can see why your ambitious subordinate would want this. Theama-Nul's cant, on the other hand, surprises you: "Don't intervene", he cants, "keep her alive, but nothing further. Plans beyond us are unfolding here, and we ought not to stand in their way."
You look at the woman, wracked by the powers of the Empyrean, in the grasp of a machine that she probably got from the very same idiot that messed up the Hand of Transformation.
Perhaps, you consider bleakly, death is the kinder outcome here.
___________________________________________________________________________
[] Safe Her
[] Keep Her Stable
[] Kill Her
Vote closed
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
A Host of Problems: Part 9
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
A Bolter injury, even one caused by an indirect, is a horrific thing to treat. This is by design: the Emperor, for all his pretensions at humanitarianism and enlightenment and reason, was not a very merciful man. Bolters are made not only to disable their target, not only to kill them, but to do so in a spectacularly brutal way, to inflict as much damage on the target and as much terror on those that witness the kill as is possible. It is no coincidence that the Bolter is a favored weapon of the Commissar: its secondary purpose is without question to intimidate.
Three of Lady Czevene's ribs have been fractured by the impact. Her left kidney and small intestines have been perforated. There are, according to your medical auspex, fragments of indeterminate genesis stuck in three places in her spine, in her liver, and uncomfortably close to her vena cava inferior, along with a total of forty-six additional objects stuck throughout her body. She has lost an indeterminate, but large amount of blood.
It is a freak occurrence that she has survived until now: if shock didn't claim her, toxic shock should have. You revise up your estimate of the skill of the Medicae at her disposal as you regard their work: they have done an admirable job at stabilizing her and minimizing the chance of her dying.
A Bolter Injury is a terrible thing to treat, but hers is as close to an ideal case as you could think of, safe perhaps for a glancing shot that failed to detonate for some reason or the other. It is still a monstrous medical crisis, requiring specialized skill and equipment to resolve properly, but you have both at your beck and call.
Very quickly, as you cauterize her wounds and do what you can to patch up the damage to her internal organs, you find that these mundane wounds are the very least of her worries.
She is mutating as you are treating her, occasionally in ways that seem to actively resist your attempts at treating her injuries. Her spine actively twists and fuses when you attempt to retrieve the splinters logged into it. The piece of crystal lodged below her heart is being rapidly engulfed by what seems like the vitreous body of a strange eye, something further born out by the nervous tissue spreading from it and the spine. Her lower pair of arms is actively shifting inside her body, their joints moving further onto their back, their fingers elongating, their muscles shifting. Soon, you are fairly certain, they will sprout feathers.
You wonder, briefly, if they will look like the wings of a Raven, and then you banish that thought. The warp is in the air, here: strange flights of fancy are both to be expected and to be controlled tightly.
The longer you work on the woman, the more one thing becomes apparent: the Bolter Injury, lethal as it would be to an ordinary woman, is the least of Lady Czevene's worries.
The fallen Primaris Psyker is connected to a psychic engine that is now malfunctioning, and the energies of the Empyrean are continuously coursing through her flesh.
Her connection to this engine consists of nine neural interface plugs: two at the base of both of her skulls, one at the intersection of her dublicated cervical vertebrae, and six more running evenly spaced down her spine.
Usually, your first step would be to remove her from this source of mutagenic energy: unfortunately, however, her interface jacks seem to have melted and fused with the ports, and Tarc Raskoll has for some reason you find utterly unfathomable decided to sink them into the spine in such a way they cannot be removed without also severing the spinal column. For all your skill, that has a low probability of a non-lethal outcome.
The next best thing of simply severing the cables shortly above the spine also fails: the second your saw blade makes contact, Czevene reaches into your mind and delivers a burst of pain so tremendously strong it nearly makes you pass out. The machine, you grasp, is now near irrevocably a part of her: had you returned earlier it may not have been, though who knows what other damage the Hand of Transformation could have caused with that additional bit of time.
Loath as you are to admit it, you cannot fix the throne: Tharc Raskoll has created a mess of interlocking organo-crystal arrays and runic circuitry, their workings as much determined by the annoyingly symbolical manner of empyrean engineering as much as by the laws of the Materium.
That leaves the other end of the equation: the Psyker who has lost control over her powers.
The very first thing you try is sedation, but it does not take: the energies coursing through her body seem to burn away whatever you pump into her veins
She is, you are rapidly realizing, losing her connection to her physical form: she is becoming a creature of the Empyrean, what the benighted, warp-addled worshippers of the pseudo-intelligences dwelling within it would call a Daemon Prince: simply a random expression of one of the ideo-forms of the Warp wearing a caricatured imprint of her personality.
It is death by another name, and so you set out to stop it.
This, luckily, turns out to be simpler than expected: a scan of her two heads reveals a tumor-like growth, though there is a bit too much deliberateness in there for you to be entirely comfortable labeling it as such. Whatever it is, it is exerting pressure on the regions of the brain surrounding it. You activate your surgical drill and curse as an error message pops up. The biopsy needle will have to do, then. You check the medical auspex one last time, and then you thrust the needle through her skull and into her brain.
You try not to pass through anything important on the way to the affected area. She has redundancies anyways, you figure, and nobody needs all their prefrontal cortex anyways.
In the end, it is a simple matter to synthesize a toxin keyed to the cells that are growing within Lady Czevene's skull. Whatever it was that was growing within her, it screams as it dies.
Your biopsy needle is beginning to develop a bony growth as you withdraw it from Lady Czevenes' skull, and you discard it rapidly before the mutation can spread.
There is much potential, in the warp's potential to meld flesh and machine, but you generally do not desire to run those experiments on yourself in an uncontrolled fashion.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9-35: Medicae: 3d6: 3, 3, 4, Partial Success.]
That does, unfortunately, seem to have been the fate of Lady Czevene. You've saved her from her transformation, from death in all but name, but it has come at a cost.
She has been fused to the throne thoroughly, her spine fused into the back of the chair, her legs literally sunk into the metal of the throne. An eye has begun to form on her sternum, half-finished but recognizable enough to express pain. Parts of her hair have turned to feathers, and the beginning of feathers are beginning to spread over what the half-formed wings her lower pair of arms has turned into. Parts of her teeth have fused, you note: if you had to guess, this was a prelude of them becoming a beak. You step back, exhausted. You have done what you can. Everything else will require extensive cybernetic reconstructive work, and even then you would be surprised if she could ever walk on her own two feet again. You turn, and see Magos Ko-Bea unloading her tools and a strange assortment of materials.
"Stellar work, darling", she says, smiling at you, "if you don't mind, I'll take it from here?"
You cant your assent. This is her area of expertise, and the political favor she wants to gather. She can also do the work.
Lady Czevene has regained consciousness again, by the time Ko-Bea goes to work. By the screams that begin shortly afterwards, she rapidly awakens afterwards.
The Commissar, Enos Stok, does stop you when you go to try to collect the corpses of the Space Marines.
"We need the heads", he says, and you do not have the energy to argue with him: their brains are interesting, and the alterations to their optical nerves are fascinating, but much of the actual substantive work occurs in the body. The most valuable thing of all, of course, is the Progenoid Glands.
You remove them right away, within the throne room, your saw breaking through the Space Marine's Sternum without much of an issue. You do not have the canopic jars used by the specialists the Space Marines have, but your sample containers will have to do.
Only when you are done with this does it occur to you that the request for the heads is somewhat strange. It wouldn't be, for any other Chaos Warband: to claim trophies from what they have killed is common practice, after all. The Host, and Enos Stok in particular, somehow doesn't strike you as the type.
So you ask, more out of wishing to fill your time until Magos Ko-Bea is finished with her work then out of any thirst for knowledge.
You somewhat regret it, of course, when you are told the actual reason.
Ezadarial Varth seems even more irate in death then he was in life: a hole has been melted through the middle of his chest, caused, you note, by what looks like the impact of several hundred las shots. "He was assaulted by one of Czevene's guards that had been possessed by the Hand of Transformation", Enos Stok explains to you, regarding the body impassively. "When communications went down, he chose to take that as part of a larger plot on his life, and decided to go for the throat himself."
A completely foolish thing to do, of course: a single Space Marine, no matter how formidable, could not hope to breach the defenses that surrounded Czevene except for extraordinary circumstances. Of course, you grasp, the ability to realistically appraise his own situation is not what landed Emissary Varth in this situation. "He was a sacrificial pawn", you opine, and Enos Stok nods, a somewhat sour look on his face. "Astra Militarum Politics could get cut throat", he opines, "but, well, no, this does seem like something some of the aristocratic regiments might do."
He sighs, looking at the corpse with something like disgust. "He genuinely thought himself favored, I think."
You grasp the shape of Enos Stok's plan, then. The Apostles of Blasphemy sent an Emissary entirely unsuited to the task, in order to present demands entirely unacceptable to the Host. To kill Varth has rid this Skyraal of an annoyance, while also granting him an excuse to subjugate the Host of Ninefold Revelation by military means. Probably his grasp on his Warband is not as firm as it could be: a man whose will goes unquestioned does not, as a rule, need to justify his wars.
Regardless, the presence of Space Marines allows Czevene and Stok to muddy the water: if it was they who killed the Emissary, that is a different enemy for the Apostles to focus on, especially if the matter is framed well.
"The Cruel Ravager has already contacted us, inquiring about the whereabouts of their Master. We have managed to stall for now, but they're getting impatient."
He gestures to the collected skulls. "We intend to send him back with all honors we can grant him, the skulls of the enemies he has personally slain piled up around him."
You cant a thoughtful affirmation, before realizing that Stok cannot understand you. He seems to have gotten the gist, though, because he nods in return. "I am telling you all this", Enos Stok says, "because we could really use your help. You are far more immersed in politics in…this sphere."
He makes a vague gesture which would probably be insulting if you didn't share the implied opinions about the general self-destructive idiocy that riddle the Forces of Chaos. Fortunately for Stok, you share these opinions. Even more fortunately for Stok, he follows his request up by some magical words. "We'll make it worth your while"
Well. Isn't that something worth considering.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
[] Refuse to Help
As much as an offer to help seems tempting, it does not seem worth the potential result of making an enemy of what seems to be one of the myriad sub-warbands of the Black Legion: that's the sort of thing that sees a Magos dead, if pushed to far
[] Offer Slight Help
You can help arrange the letter to strike the right balance between groveling and seeming self-assured, and help pick out the arrangement of skulls and helmets to be sufficiently impressive to the Black Legion. This is far from a guarantee of success, but you can at least claim that you tried. Also arrange the damage to Varth's armor to be less obviously caused by Las Guns.
[] Offer Significant Help
Give up the Power Armor and weaponry that Enos Stok has already granted you: they present a not small boon for any Warband, and will increase both the odds of success of the offering as well as your own standing in the eyes of Enos Stok. You do not know precisely what Enos Stok intends to offer you, but if you give up something of your own, he strikes you as likely to compensate you for this.
[] Offer Massive Help
Adding the Progenoid Glands you have taken, lovingly preserved, to the tribute offered to the Apostles of Blasphemy will probably seal the deal right away: it is an offer of alliance against a common foe, accompanied by the means to replace the annoyance lost five times over. Of course, this will also significantly reduce the utility of the Space Marine Corpses, but the commensurate increase in relation with the Host of Ninefold Revelation and the likely reward might well be worth that trade. You can probably kill some more Space Marines some other day, right?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Regicia Ko-Bea is not done, by the time you are, though very quickly something else that demands your attention occurs: 8-Doxa Krainanima comes limping out of the deep Hive, literally dragging the battered form of Myges Talef behind himself. The Magos Mactator is also somewhat worse for wear, though somehow he wears the coating of fresh blood and the bullet gouges in both his cybernetic limbs and what remains of his flesh as though they were metals. There are new Servo Skulls following him, you notice: ones that seem to have been freshly stripped of their flesh, and the inscriptions present on his other Servo Skulls are not yet present.
"Reporting success", he cants, without even really slowing. "Insurgency decapitated. Predicted decrease of efficiency of 73%."
He catches your curious gaze towards the prone form of Talef, who seems to have been, if the rents and gouges in his cooling unit are anything to go by, hit by about three hundred bullets and fifty swords. He is still alive, though seems to be in something of a traumatic shutdown. "Decent tracker", 8-Doxa cants, "terrible in a fight."
He looks down at his unlikely companion with a fondness that is met with sheer horror in turn. "I will make him a weapon", 8-Doxa declares, and with that unsettlingly ambiguous statement he disappears into the depths of Lady Czevene's court.
You decide following up on this would be foolish, given the mood he is apparently in.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Lady herself emerges after 54 hours of intensive surgery. You have very little input into the whole affair, much to your chagrin: Regicia Ko-Bea had apparently given strict orders not to be disturbed, and though you could have probably gotten past the bodyguard of Tzaangors that stood watch over the repurposed throne room, that would have run rather counter to all the effort you put in to make a good impression.
There are some things you can grasp about her intent by the hasty orders she cants out over the noosphere: requests for gold, surgical steel, copper, and silver, as well as for the esoteric, like an ever-increasing amount of enervated feathers, or 81 meters of wire spun from the inner lining of a warp-drive core.
It is a testament to the sort of week you have been having that it only mildly surprises you when Theama-Nul both has that wire available and is readily willing to part with it.
"There is no resentment, then", you ask him, "over the foiling of some sort of great, cosmic plan?"
The amusement that tinges his response is, as ever, deeply unsettling.
"You think the plan has been foiled?"
The issue with these peddlers of conspiracy, you consider, is that every new development gets neatly slotted into the theory.
If the plan did not work out, it was because it was planned not to.
You decided to go for a walk instead of engaging with this deeply obnoxious twist of ideology.
The Hive is much calmer now, you consider: in the manner of a scared, beaten beast waiting for the next blow to fall, perhaps, but calmer nonetheless. It is as though the entire Hive is waiting with bated breath, tense and anticipating whether to lunge or to relax.
Then, suddenly and all at once, the tension abates. You are gripped by a deep and abiding sense that all is well, and all shall be well: a certainty that seems to begin in the pit of your stomach and run through your entire body, relaxing your muscles and filling you with a deep, comfortable, unaccountable warmth.
It takes you a moment to remember that you do not possess a stomach anymore, and so you hurry back towards the Throne Room, where the Tzaangors standing guard have formed an improvised cordon, discipline warring with clear excitement.
They trill like birds, you note, which says things about their internal anatomy you would love to look into on any other day.
That will have to wait, however. The doors to the throne room swing open, and from them, Lady Czevene steps forth, Regicia Ko-Bea by her side.
[Roll: Regicia Ko-Bea: Cybernetics: 4d6: 1, 6, 4, 6. Critical Success]
She is, in a word, magnificent. Regicia Ko-Bea is a masterful cyberneticist, and in the restoration of Lady Czevene, she has truly surpassed herself.
When you left the Psyker, she was akin to the result of a Chrysalis half-finished: halfway between one state and another, and wretchedly half-formed because of it. Regicia has taken what the warp has begun and brought it to completion: has studded the half-formed wings with magnificent, shimmering feathers, has replaced the wretched half-formed eye in her sternum with a cybernetic with the glimmering crystal as its nucleus. There are a dozen of tiny and magnificent details you notice and some you undoubtedly do not, from the circuitry beneath her skin to the subtle reinforcements around the half-beaks within her mouths, which will, if you read it right, both greatly raise it's crushing power as well as prevent her from accidentally biting off her own tongue.
All this, however, pales in comparison to what Regicia has done with her legs.
You had written off Lady Czevene as unable to walk on her own legs ever again, for a multitude of reasons: the fusing of her vertebrae might in theory have been solvable, but the added weight of the psychic engine that still rests upon her back would still put spent to any such attempts.
You were right. But where you would have solved such a problem by simply removing the entire lower body and replacing it with a more suitable modus of operation, Regicia has instead opted to keep the legs intact, and by the way they are moving, she has even managed to return at least some sensation to them.
What they do not do, however, is bear the main brunt of Lady Czevene and the engine fused to her back. That falls to the four spider-limbs attached to her lower back, cables spliced into the lowest of the Psychic Engines ports running to the ring that mounts the legs. She can pivot them along these, you note: spread them apart to provide higher stability, or fold them backwards and out of sight. It is the sort of mobility setup that would ordinarily impose to high a burden on the on so augmented, requiring additional cogitators to use, but of course Lady Czevene has an entire second brain, doesn't she? From the way she is moving forward, she has mastered the use of her new legs exceedingly well already.
Silk swishes around these legs, and only when she comes to a halt do you recognise its purpose: it acts as a concealing screen of sorts, hiding her prosthetics below an object of clothing probably best compared to a hoop skirt. She looks like a lady at court, when she stands still: besides, of course, the unblinking, metal and crystal eye in her chest, the dual heads crowned with a mixture of black feathers and golden hair, the wings sprouting from her back glowing in the impossibly colors of the warp, the impossible glow of the crystals of the psychic engine melded to her spine, or the force stave she holds in her hand, crackling with force ready to be unleashed.
Nine golden wings have been embroidered in the dark blue fabric of the dress, surrounding the eye that marks her sternum, and it seems to look right past your flesh and into the deepest depth of her soul.
You do not raise objections when she reaches out and none-too-gently rips the details of your endeavors out of your brain.
The woman has detonated the brain of a Space Marine with her mind, and generally does not seem in a conciliatory mood. You're proud, but there is a limit to your pride. Right now, you're akin to an egg placed in a vice: deadly averse to somebody starting to screw around.
Then she begins laughing, and when your brain remains uncooked, you allow yourself to relax somewhat. The fact the laughter between her two heads is a slight bit dissonant is worrying, but also hopefully not going to be your problem. "I had", Lady Czevene tells you, "devised an elaborate and bulletproof text to use as the basis for the Hand's objectives. I would be interested to find out when exactly in the process these instructions got pared down to nine words."
Leave it to Tharc Raskoll, you consider, to compress and simplify instructions given to a Daemon.
"We will have words", the Psyker states, never once raising her voice, "with Magos Raskoll"
You let out a burst of amused binaric. You cannot help it. You have waited for Raskoll to be in trouble for decades, now, and also had a sub-routine in the back of your neural implants chant a prayer for it for the entirety of your time on-world.
"But the weapon, for all its flaws, has potential. You have stopped it's destructive rampage, and brought it back, though far from in one piece."
She stares at you with all five of her eyes.
"What manner of usage for what you have brought me back would you recommend?"
You will be, you grasp at once, expected to carry out whatever course of action you recommend.
You do not think it would be wise to disappoint at this juncture.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
[] Destroy
The Hand of Transformation is a fundamentally shoddy piece of craftsmanship, created by the hand of a charlatan. It can never be trusted, and so should be decommissioned for good.
[] Restore
You have the means to restore the Hand of Transformation to it's original purpose: that of a saboteur, infiltrator, and Agent Provocateur. You, and your subordinates, are more then capable of surpassing Tharc Raskoll's original vision. You shall beat him at his own game.
[] Repurpose
The Hand of Transformation provides opportunities for communication and battlefield coordination Tharc Raskoll was entirely blind of: you can rebuild it to make full use of this apparent potential to communicate instantly across any distance, granting the Host of Ninefold Revelations an unprecedented amount of ability to coordinate across the worlds they control: something that is surely far more valuable than just another assassin.
[] Magnify
The Torso of the Hand of Transformation is, in essence, a self-contained control unit: one that could, if it's unique capabilities were made use of, exercise incredibly fine control over a wide variety of weapon systems, as well as strike terror into the hearts of enemy formation through targeted possession. Creating an entirely new daemon engine to function around a piece that was not originally intended for it would surely be a challenge, but it would grant the Host of Ninefold Revelation a capability it does not already possess, and allow you and your team to create something undeniably your own to boot.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Three of Lady Czevene's ribs have been fractured by the impact. Her left kidney and small intestines have been perforated. There are, according to your medical auspex, fragments of indeterminate genesis stuck in three places in her spine, in her liver, and uncomfortably close to her vena cava inferior, along with a total of forty-six additional objects stuck throughout her body. She has lost an indeterminate, but large amount of blood.
It is a freak occurrence that she has survived until now: if shock didn't claim her, toxic shock should have. You revise up your estimate of the skill of the Medicae at her disposal as you regard their work: they have done an admirable job at stabilizing her and minimizing the chance of her dying.
A Bolter Injury is a terrible thing to treat, but hers is as close to an ideal case as you could think of, safe perhaps for a glancing shot that failed to detonate for some reason or the other. It is still a monstrous medical crisis, requiring specialized skill and equipment to resolve properly, but you have both at your beck and call.
Very quickly, as you cauterize her wounds and do what you can to patch up the damage to her internal organs, you find that these mundane wounds are the very least of her worries.
She is mutating as you are treating her, occasionally in ways that seem to actively resist your attempts at treating her injuries. Her spine actively twists and fuses when you attempt to retrieve the splinters logged into it. The piece of crystal lodged below her heart is being rapidly engulfed by what seems like the vitreous body of a strange eye, something further born out by the nervous tissue spreading from it and the spine. Her lower pair of arms is actively shifting inside her body, their joints moving further onto their back, their fingers elongating, their muscles shifting. Soon, you are fairly certain, they will sprout feathers.
You wonder, briefly, if they will look like the wings of a Raven, and then you banish that thought. The warp is in the air, here: strange flights of fancy are both to be expected and to be controlled tightly.
The longer you work on the woman, the more one thing becomes apparent: the Bolter Injury, lethal as it would be to an ordinary woman, is the least of Lady Czevene's worries.
The fallen Primaris Psyker is connected to a psychic engine that is now malfunctioning, and the energies of the Empyrean are continuously coursing through her flesh.
Her connection to this engine consists of nine neural interface plugs: two at the base of both of her skulls, one at the intersection of her dublicated cervical vertebrae, and six more running evenly spaced down her spine.
Usually, your first step would be to remove her from this source of mutagenic energy: unfortunately, however, her interface jacks seem to have melted and fused with the ports, and Tarc Raskoll has for some reason you find utterly unfathomable decided to sink them into the spine in such a way they cannot be removed without also severing the spinal column. For all your skill, that has a low probability of a non-lethal outcome.
The next best thing of simply severing the cables shortly above the spine also fails: the second your saw blade makes contact, Czevene reaches into your mind and delivers a burst of pain so tremendously strong it nearly makes you pass out. The machine, you grasp, is now near irrevocably a part of her: had you returned earlier it may not have been, though who knows what other damage the Hand of Transformation could have caused with that additional bit of time.
Loath as you are to admit it, you cannot fix the throne: Tharc Raskoll has created a mess of interlocking organo-crystal arrays and runic circuitry, their workings as much determined by the annoyingly symbolical manner of empyrean engineering as much as by the laws of the Materium.
That leaves the other end of the equation: the Psyker who has lost control over her powers.
The very first thing you try is sedation, but it does not take: the energies coursing through her body seem to burn away whatever you pump into her veins
She is, you are rapidly realizing, losing her connection to her physical form: she is becoming a creature of the Empyrean, what the benighted, warp-addled worshippers of the pseudo-intelligences dwelling within it would call a Daemon Prince: simply a random expression of one of the ideo-forms of the Warp wearing a caricatured imprint of her personality.
It is death by another name, and so you set out to stop it.
This, luckily, turns out to be simpler than expected: a scan of her two heads reveals a tumor-like growth, though there is a bit too much deliberateness in there for you to be entirely comfortable labeling it as such. Whatever it is, it is exerting pressure on the regions of the brain surrounding it. You activate your surgical drill and curse as an error message pops up. The biopsy needle will have to do, then. You check the medical auspex one last time, and then you thrust the needle through her skull and into her brain.
You try not to pass through anything important on the way to the affected area. She has redundancies anyways, you figure, and nobody needs all their prefrontal cortex anyways.
In the end, it is a simple matter to synthesize a toxin keyed to the cells that are growing within Lady Czevene's skull. Whatever it was that was growing within her, it screams as it dies.
Your biopsy needle is beginning to develop a bony growth as you withdraw it from Lady Czevenes' skull, and you discard it rapidly before the mutation can spread.
There is much potential, in the warp's potential to meld flesh and machine, but you generally do not desire to run those experiments on yourself in an uncontrolled fashion.
[Roll: Eta Nu 9-35: Medicae: 3d6: 3, 3, 4, Partial Success.]
That does, unfortunately, seem to have been the fate of Lady Czevene. You've saved her from her transformation, from death in all but name, but it has come at a cost.
She has been fused to the throne thoroughly, her spine fused into the back of the chair, her legs literally sunk into the metal of the throne. An eye has begun to form on her sternum, half-finished but recognizable enough to express pain. Parts of her hair have turned to feathers, and the beginning of feathers are beginning to spread over what the half-formed wings her lower pair of arms has turned into. Parts of her teeth have fused, you note: if you had to guess, this was a prelude of them becoming a beak. You step back, exhausted. You have done what you can. Everything else will require extensive cybernetic reconstructive work, and even then you would be surprised if she could ever walk on her own two feet again. You turn, and see Magos Ko-Bea unloading her tools and a strange assortment of materials.
"Stellar work, darling", she says, smiling at you, "if you don't mind, I'll take it from here?"
You cant your assent. This is her area of expertise, and the political favor she wants to gather. She can also do the work.
Lady Czevene has regained consciousness again, by the time Ko-Bea goes to work. By the screams that begin shortly afterwards, she rapidly awakens afterwards.
The Commissar, Enos Stok, does stop you when you go to try to collect the corpses of the Space Marines.
"We need the heads", he says, and you do not have the energy to argue with him: their brains are interesting, and the alterations to their optical nerves are fascinating, but much of the actual substantive work occurs in the body. The most valuable thing of all, of course, is the Progenoid Glands.
You remove them right away, within the throne room, your saw breaking through the Space Marine's Sternum without much of an issue. You do not have the canopic jars used by the specialists the Space Marines have, but your sample containers will have to do.
Only when you are done with this does it occur to you that the request for the heads is somewhat strange. It wouldn't be, for any other Chaos Warband: to claim trophies from what they have killed is common practice, after all. The Host, and Enos Stok in particular, somehow doesn't strike you as the type.
So you ask, more out of wishing to fill your time until Magos Ko-Bea is finished with her work then out of any thirst for knowledge.
You somewhat regret it, of course, when you are told the actual reason.
Ezadarial Varth seems even more irate in death then he was in life: a hole has been melted through the middle of his chest, caused, you note, by what looks like the impact of several hundred las shots. "He was assaulted by one of Czevene's guards that had been possessed by the Hand of Transformation", Enos Stok explains to you, regarding the body impassively. "When communications went down, he chose to take that as part of a larger plot on his life, and decided to go for the throat himself."
A completely foolish thing to do, of course: a single Space Marine, no matter how formidable, could not hope to breach the defenses that surrounded Czevene except for extraordinary circumstances. Of course, you grasp, the ability to realistically appraise his own situation is not what landed Emissary Varth in this situation. "He was a sacrificial pawn", you opine, and Enos Stok nods, a somewhat sour look on his face. "Astra Militarum Politics could get cut throat", he opines, "but, well, no, this does seem like something some of the aristocratic regiments might do."
He sighs, looking at the corpse with something like disgust. "He genuinely thought himself favored, I think."
You grasp the shape of Enos Stok's plan, then. The Apostles of Blasphemy sent an Emissary entirely unsuited to the task, in order to present demands entirely unacceptable to the Host. To kill Varth has rid this Skyraal of an annoyance, while also granting him an excuse to subjugate the Host of Ninefold Revelation by military means. Probably his grasp on his Warband is not as firm as it could be: a man whose will goes unquestioned does not, as a rule, need to justify his wars.
Regardless, the presence of Space Marines allows Czevene and Stok to muddy the water: if it was they who killed the Emissary, that is a different enemy for the Apostles to focus on, especially if the matter is framed well.
"The Cruel Ravager has already contacted us, inquiring about the whereabouts of their Master. We have managed to stall for now, but they're getting impatient."
He gestures to the collected skulls. "We intend to send him back with all honors we can grant him, the skulls of the enemies he has personally slain piled up around him."
You cant a thoughtful affirmation, before realizing that Stok cannot understand you. He seems to have gotten the gist, though, because he nods in return. "I am telling you all this", Enos Stok says, "because we could really use your help. You are far more immersed in politics in…this sphere."
He makes a vague gesture which would probably be insulting if you didn't share the implied opinions about the general self-destructive idiocy that riddle the Forces of Chaos. Fortunately for Stok, you share these opinions. Even more fortunately for Stok, he follows his request up by some magical words. "We'll make it worth your while"
Well. Isn't that something worth considering.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
[] Refuse to Help
As much as an offer to help seems tempting, it does not seem worth the potential result of making an enemy of what seems to be one of the myriad sub-warbands of the Black Legion: that's the sort of thing that sees a Magos dead, if pushed to far
[] Offer Slight Help
You can help arrange the letter to strike the right balance between groveling and seeming self-assured, and help pick out the arrangement of skulls and helmets to be sufficiently impressive to the Black Legion. This is far from a guarantee of success, but you can at least claim that you tried. Also arrange the damage to Varth's armor to be less obviously caused by Las Guns.
[] Offer Significant Help
Give up the Power Armor and weaponry that Enos Stok has already granted you: they present a not small boon for any Warband, and will increase both the odds of success of the offering as well as your own standing in the eyes of Enos Stok. You do not know precisely what Enos Stok intends to offer you, but if you give up something of your own, he strikes you as likely to compensate you for this.
[] Offer Massive Help
Adding the Progenoid Glands you have taken, lovingly preserved, to the tribute offered to the Apostles of Blasphemy will probably seal the deal right away: it is an offer of alliance against a common foe, accompanied by the means to replace the annoyance lost five times over. Of course, this will also significantly reduce the utility of the Space Marine Corpses, but the commensurate increase in relation with the Host of Ninefold Revelation and the likely reward might well be worth that trade. You can probably kill some more Space Marines some other day, right?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Regicia Ko-Bea is not done, by the time you are, though very quickly something else that demands your attention occurs: 8-Doxa Krainanima comes limping out of the deep Hive, literally dragging the battered form of Myges Talef behind himself. The Magos Mactator is also somewhat worse for wear, though somehow he wears the coating of fresh blood and the bullet gouges in both his cybernetic limbs and what remains of his flesh as though they were metals. There are new Servo Skulls following him, you notice: ones that seem to have been freshly stripped of their flesh, and the inscriptions present on his other Servo Skulls are not yet present.
"Reporting success", he cants, without even really slowing. "Insurgency decapitated. Predicted decrease of efficiency of 73%."
He catches your curious gaze towards the prone form of Talef, who seems to have been, if the rents and gouges in his cooling unit are anything to go by, hit by about three hundred bullets and fifty swords. He is still alive, though seems to be in something of a traumatic shutdown. "Decent tracker", 8-Doxa cants, "terrible in a fight."
He looks down at his unlikely companion with a fondness that is met with sheer horror in turn. "I will make him a weapon", 8-Doxa declares, and with that unsettlingly ambiguous statement he disappears into the depths of Lady Czevene's court.
You decide following up on this would be foolish, given the mood he is apparently in.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Lady herself emerges after 54 hours of intensive surgery. You have very little input into the whole affair, much to your chagrin: Regicia Ko-Bea had apparently given strict orders not to be disturbed, and though you could have probably gotten past the bodyguard of Tzaangors that stood watch over the repurposed throne room, that would have run rather counter to all the effort you put in to make a good impression.
There are some things you can grasp about her intent by the hasty orders she cants out over the noosphere: requests for gold, surgical steel, copper, and silver, as well as for the esoteric, like an ever-increasing amount of enervated feathers, or 81 meters of wire spun from the inner lining of a warp-drive core.
It is a testament to the sort of week you have been having that it only mildly surprises you when Theama-Nul both has that wire available and is readily willing to part with it.
"There is no resentment, then", you ask him, "over the foiling of some sort of great, cosmic plan?"
The amusement that tinges his response is, as ever, deeply unsettling.
"You think the plan has been foiled?"
The issue with these peddlers of conspiracy, you consider, is that every new development gets neatly slotted into the theory.
If the plan did not work out, it was because it was planned not to.
You decided to go for a walk instead of engaging with this deeply obnoxious twist of ideology.
The Hive is much calmer now, you consider: in the manner of a scared, beaten beast waiting for the next blow to fall, perhaps, but calmer nonetheless. It is as though the entire Hive is waiting with bated breath, tense and anticipating whether to lunge or to relax.
Then, suddenly and all at once, the tension abates. You are gripped by a deep and abiding sense that all is well, and all shall be well: a certainty that seems to begin in the pit of your stomach and run through your entire body, relaxing your muscles and filling you with a deep, comfortable, unaccountable warmth.
It takes you a moment to remember that you do not possess a stomach anymore, and so you hurry back towards the Throne Room, where the Tzaangors standing guard have formed an improvised cordon, discipline warring with clear excitement.
They trill like birds, you note, which says things about their internal anatomy you would love to look into on any other day.
That will have to wait, however. The doors to the throne room swing open, and from them, Lady Czevene steps forth, Regicia Ko-Bea by her side.
[Roll: Regicia Ko-Bea: Cybernetics: 4d6: 1, 6, 4, 6. Critical Success]
She is, in a word, magnificent. Regicia Ko-Bea is a masterful cyberneticist, and in the restoration of Lady Czevene, she has truly surpassed herself.
When you left the Psyker, she was akin to the result of a Chrysalis half-finished: halfway between one state and another, and wretchedly half-formed because of it. Regicia has taken what the warp has begun and brought it to completion: has studded the half-formed wings with magnificent, shimmering feathers, has replaced the wretched half-formed eye in her sternum with a cybernetic with the glimmering crystal as its nucleus. There are a dozen of tiny and magnificent details you notice and some you undoubtedly do not, from the circuitry beneath her skin to the subtle reinforcements around the half-beaks within her mouths, which will, if you read it right, both greatly raise it's crushing power as well as prevent her from accidentally biting off her own tongue.
All this, however, pales in comparison to what Regicia has done with her legs.
You had written off Lady Czevene as unable to walk on her own legs ever again, for a multitude of reasons: the fusing of her vertebrae might in theory have been solvable, but the added weight of the psychic engine that still rests upon her back would still put spent to any such attempts.
You were right. But where you would have solved such a problem by simply removing the entire lower body and replacing it with a more suitable modus of operation, Regicia has instead opted to keep the legs intact, and by the way they are moving, she has even managed to return at least some sensation to them.
What they do not do, however, is bear the main brunt of Lady Czevene and the engine fused to her back. That falls to the four spider-limbs attached to her lower back, cables spliced into the lowest of the Psychic Engines ports running to the ring that mounts the legs. She can pivot them along these, you note: spread them apart to provide higher stability, or fold them backwards and out of sight. It is the sort of mobility setup that would ordinarily impose to high a burden on the on so augmented, requiring additional cogitators to use, but of course Lady Czevene has an entire second brain, doesn't she? From the way she is moving forward, she has mastered the use of her new legs exceedingly well already.
Silk swishes around these legs, and only when she comes to a halt do you recognise its purpose: it acts as a concealing screen of sorts, hiding her prosthetics below an object of clothing probably best compared to a hoop skirt. She looks like a lady at court, when she stands still: besides, of course, the unblinking, metal and crystal eye in her chest, the dual heads crowned with a mixture of black feathers and golden hair, the wings sprouting from her back glowing in the impossibly colors of the warp, the impossible glow of the crystals of the psychic engine melded to her spine, or the force stave she holds in her hand, crackling with force ready to be unleashed.
Nine golden wings have been embroidered in the dark blue fabric of the dress, surrounding the eye that marks her sternum, and it seems to look right past your flesh and into the deepest depth of her soul.
You do not raise objections when she reaches out and none-too-gently rips the details of your endeavors out of your brain.
The woman has detonated the brain of a Space Marine with her mind, and generally does not seem in a conciliatory mood. You're proud, but there is a limit to your pride. Right now, you're akin to an egg placed in a vice: deadly averse to somebody starting to screw around.
Then she begins laughing, and when your brain remains uncooked, you allow yourself to relax somewhat. The fact the laughter between her two heads is a slight bit dissonant is worrying, but also hopefully not going to be your problem. "I had", Lady Czevene tells you, "devised an elaborate and bulletproof text to use as the basis for the Hand's objectives. I would be interested to find out when exactly in the process these instructions got pared down to nine words."
Leave it to Tharc Raskoll, you consider, to compress and simplify instructions given to a Daemon.
"We will have words", the Psyker states, never once raising her voice, "with Magos Raskoll"
You let out a burst of amused binaric. You cannot help it. You have waited for Raskoll to be in trouble for decades, now, and also had a sub-routine in the back of your neural implants chant a prayer for it for the entirety of your time on-world.
"But the weapon, for all its flaws, has potential. You have stopped it's destructive rampage, and brought it back, though far from in one piece."
She stares at you with all five of her eyes.
"What manner of usage for what you have brought me back would you recommend?"
You will be, you grasp at once, expected to carry out whatever course of action you recommend.
You do not think it would be wise to disappoint at this juncture.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
[] Destroy
The Hand of Transformation is a fundamentally shoddy piece of craftsmanship, created by the hand of a charlatan. It can never be trusted, and so should be decommissioned for good.
[] Restore
You have the means to restore the Hand of Transformation to it's original purpose: that of a saboteur, infiltrator, and Agent Provocateur. You, and your subordinates, are more then capable of surpassing Tharc Raskoll's original vision. You shall beat him at his own game.
[] Repurpose
The Hand of Transformation provides opportunities for communication and battlefield coordination Tharc Raskoll was entirely blind of: you can rebuild it to make full use of this apparent potential to communicate instantly across any distance, granting the Host of Ninefold Revelations an unprecedented amount of ability to coordinate across the worlds they control: something that is surely far more valuable than just another assassin.
[] Magnify
The Torso of the Hand of Transformation is, in essence, a self-contained control unit: one that could, if it's unique capabilities were made use of, exercise incredibly fine control over a wide variety of weapon systems, as well as strike terror into the hearts of enemy formation through targeted possession. Creating an entirely new daemon engine to function around a piece that was not originally intended for it would surely be a challenge, but it would grant the Host of Ninefold Revelation a capability it does not already possess, and allow you and your team to create something undeniably your own to boot.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vote closed
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
A Host of Problems: Part 10
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
You do not watch the departure of the Cruel Ravager yourself, though Ludmilla sends you a video transmission of the event after the fact. It goes, as far as you can tell, fairly smoothly: you assume that whoever is in charge of the vessel would not be extremely eager to take on the combined might of the Host's fleet, even if they had reason to suspect that the corpse they had been presented with had been produced in any way but the one the Host has conveyed to them.
You have done, without wishing to flatter yourself overly much, an admirable job in arranging the body. Ezardarial Varth looks ravaged: his internal organs have been scorched and peppered by Shrapnel, his pauldron has been cratered, and there are marks of chain weaponry upon his greaves and vambraces. A skilled autopsy would likely recognize that the marks in the flesh beneath have been caused to death flesh rather than living tissue, but you doubt any are going to scrutinize the corpse all that hard.
If there are any amongst the Apostles of Blasphemy motivated enough to have somebody with enough skill take a look at the deceased Emissary, they are likely going to have whatever findings they desire made up ahead of time.
Your burial arrangements should hopefully forestall such a thing.
Ezardarial Varth has been laid in state in a manner that might have been befitting for an ancient warrior king, and you find something oddly amusing about how much of this is a simple deception. The black and white armor of his slain foes has been piled up around him, their helmets and the remnants of their skull supplemented by a eight hundred skulls that have been taken more or less from killed insurgents, rusting autoguns and las guns pilled up in huge piles at Varth's feet next to the weaponry taken from the Space Marines. The body itself has been placed on a bed of skulls, hands folded over the haft of his mace, helmet and armor still in place. You hope that Skyraal is either blinded by the pomp and theater or at least appreciates a good lie.
In the end, only time will tell. In the meantime, you have some work to do.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
You do not trust the Hand of Transformation, and not solely because it is Tharc Raskoll's creation. The energies of the Warp are too volatile to allow the sort of independent operation it has been allowed here. Tharc Raskoll literally gave the freedom to strategize and make independent plans to the pseudo-sentient personification of betrayal: it is no wonder that this went wrong. Frankly, it's a miracle it took so long. The Empyrean, when utilized to power machines, must be tightly controlled, or else tightly observed, preferably from a safe distance.
And of course, for all his overcomplicated artifice, the purpose Tharc Raskoll envisioned for the Hand of Transformation was absolutely mediocre. All that craftsmanship, all that design, wasted on a better Kill Servitor doing unreliably what one could probably do with better controllable operatives using the same investment of resources and an only moderately more intensive investment of time.
All this, and he missed a far more obvious and far more useful feature of the piece of Warp Energy he managed to capture.
It is capable of separating within the material world while staying unified within the empyrean: a capability that holds, as far as preliminary experiments seem to indicate, no limit on distance within the material realm.
Communication is a tricky thing, for those that have strayed from the stricture of the Imperium and its at least semi-reliable Astropaths. There are as many methods of communication amongst the Renegades of the Imperium as there are Renegades, ranging from the relatively simple use of minor daemonic entities over sorcerous equivalents to astrotelepathies to the extremely esoteric, like the strange, fungal-based means of communication you have heard of the Death Guard occasionally utilizing. The Xenos, you are certain, use their own means, but humanity remains reliant on the Empyrean and its capability for transmitting both matter and information far faster than the speed of light.
A reliable means of communication is already highly valuable: for somebody trying to keep together a freshly conquered Empire, as Lady Czevene is, it is simply invaluable.
And you are constructing it for her for free.
Well, no, not for free: you are constructing it for her because she is a terrifying rogue Psyker powerful enough to influence every mind within a Hive City even before she was melded with the piece of machinery the allowed her to do this, and because she has a fleet in orbit that can stop you leaving without any issues whatsoever.
You are also doing it to show up Tharc Raskoll, which is a thought that cheers you up at least a little bit.
Your subordinates have used the intervening time to recuperate and repair themselves as best they can, though they are still battered from the ordeal they have gone through. Regicia has replaced her missing arm with a bundle of highly-articulating mechatendrils, their various tool tips whirring and vibrating as she regards you. It is a temporary solution, you figure: she is going to be to work creating an entirely new arm as soon as the Wilfull Eternity breaches the Warp. It works, for now. Theama-Nul is, of course, as unreadable as ever, though he has begun wheezing with every breath: still, in the past few days he has been electrocuted, battered, and possibly peppered with shrapnel, shot at, and stabbed. You yourself have had to replace parts of one of your kidneys, because it had apparently burst at some point or another. Magos Krainaima, of course, looks no more or less battered then usual, now that the blood has dried, though he does look a little bit more pleased with himself then he usually does.
Myges Talef, on the other hand, has clearly taken a beating and then found himself reconstructed by a madman: his cooling unit is working again, though some of the fan blades remain exposed and have been sharpened, and one of his arms has been rebuild in the utilitarian style of 8-Doxa, the muzzle of what appears to be a miniaturized Chem Cannon emerging from the sleeves of his robes.
"Doesn't have to be aimed", 8-Doxa tells you cheerfully, when he notices your gaze. Magos Talef seems to have emerged from the other side of his terror into a sort of stoic equanimity. "I will still endeavor to aim it as best I can", he promises you, which worries you somewhat, though a quick analysis of the chemical used calms your nerves a little: a fairly simple acidic solution, highly aggressive against organic materials, but mostly harmless when it comes to metal. If you go up against Necrons again, that might become an issue, but at least the damage he can do to you is limited.
In any case, he is here, and seems fairly eager to do something that holds a relatively low likelihood of being shot at.
In basic form, what you are trying to achieve is relatively simple: you are seeking to provide eight identical units to house the eight fragments of the Daemon, and to enable these units to transmit information. The interesting thing, the challenge, is in what you want these units to be capable of, and how you want that information to be transmitted.
[Unit Form Factor]
The form of the central array is a given, though the torso may end up quite removed from its original form given the modifications you intend to make to it. The very basic shapes of the end points, however, are very much up for debate.
[] Humanoid
You will be working with besouled parts for this project, that much is out of the question: making a daemonic possession work without some organic components for them to inhabit is possible, but outside of your normal skill range and also pointlessly more difficult. It would be a simple step, then, to simply take the basic components of the servitors, modify them minimally, and use them for the transmitter. There's downsides to this, of course: some of Lady Czevene's more squeamish allies might be disturbed by the display and the end result would end up a lot more fragile than the other result, not to mention the difficulties of modifying them too far from their original human form. Of course, the flipside is that things humans are expected to do, such as speaking, would absolutely be easier.
[] Cubic
You could, of course, put all the components into a simple box: easy to transport, easy to conceptualize, relatively neutral aesthetically, though there really isn't a way for a box containing the fragment of a Daemon to not look at least a little bit sinister. Of course, this basic form doesn't provide any particular advantages or disadvantages when it comes to the further augmentations: you can throw all of them on there in one way or another, but a cubic shape doesn't make it particularly easier or harder. The major downside is that the daemon might not particularly like being put into a boring box: it probably can't resist you, but it can at least make your life more difficult.
[] Bespoke
The last option is to throw any preconceived notion of form factor out the window, and go with a creation that is entirely fitted to the ultimate requirements: a custom-created daemonic engine made precisely as you need it. This will make fitting some of the weirder attachments easier, but its very bizarreness might stand in the way of the humanlike and mundane, at least in the sense that you might build a wholly custom piece of equipment where just using a human body part would have served a similar purpose.
[Locomotion]
[] None
The thing doesn't need to move, only to be moved. Put a couple of hooks onto them for a crane to latch on to, but that's the height of it.
[] Tracks
Capable of supporting a lot of weight, and to move over difficult positions: ideal if you want to move a heavy piece of equipment nearly everywhere an army might need to go.
[] Wheels
Simple, efficient, and capable of moving the unit quickly over the sort of territory it might need to move through to serve for basic administrative functions
[] Legs
Relatively slow and unstable, but with crucial advantages in buildings: this thing could actually move over stairs at reasonable speed, and follow whoever it is set to accompany basically wherever they want to go.
[Transmission]
[] Written
Give the things eyes, and arms with which it can write out whatever is dictated to it. Usually this would be highly inefficient, but the main unit already has an attachment point for arms, and ink isn't that expensive. The main issue here would be the input device, but that isn't too hard to do either. Not limited in what it could transmit either, as long as that transmission can fit onto a piece of parchment.
[] Typed
Alternatively, one could attach a typewriter, and simply have messages that go in on one side come out on the other. Pretty limited in what it could do, but also intuitive to use, and at least decently easy to implement
[] Spoken
In concept, this means of communication is fairly simple: somebody talks on one side, and the voice is transmitted to the other. In practice, this is significantly harder to implement than text: you need to figure out how to deal with several messages being transmitted all at once, for one thing, and how to patch hardware needed to speak into the central unit. Of course, the end result of that is being able to actually have a conversation with the person on the other end, which may prove invaluable.
[] Combination
Of course, if you are willing to take on the additional workload, you could simply combine two or more of these options in order to combine their advantages, at the cost of additional weight and added complexity.
[Security]
The communication concept you are creating is very secure and very insecure at the same time: it is secure because it cannot be intercepted by almost any mundane means, and at the very same time insecure because it might be vulnerable to empyrean forms of attack, relying, as it does, on a pseudo-intelligence that might be accessed externally. There are not very many people who could do such a thing, of course, but on the other hand you really don't want the people who can to get their hand on any more information than they already have.
[] None
Securing the device is not your business: it can be done by your employer, for all you care.
[] Material
Encrypting the data that is put in ahead of time will go a great length to securing it against extra-mundane means of interception. Of course, this makes it important that the only input the Daemon is capable of receiving is the encoded information, but that should at least theoretically be doable. Put in biometrical locks and the like as well: wouldn't do, after all, for your device to be defeated by somebody walking in and planting a listening device or grabbing a piece of paper.
[] Empyreal
There are means to prevent empyreal manners of interception. You're going to ask Theama-Nul to implement them. Also allow the daemon to eat people who try to gain unauthorized access: might as well go all out.
[] Both
Combine both methods of security, for added complexity and security.
You have done, without wishing to flatter yourself overly much, an admirable job in arranging the body. Ezardarial Varth looks ravaged: his internal organs have been scorched and peppered by Shrapnel, his pauldron has been cratered, and there are marks of chain weaponry upon his greaves and vambraces. A skilled autopsy would likely recognize that the marks in the flesh beneath have been caused to death flesh rather than living tissue, but you doubt any are going to scrutinize the corpse all that hard.
If there are any amongst the Apostles of Blasphemy motivated enough to have somebody with enough skill take a look at the deceased Emissary, they are likely going to have whatever findings they desire made up ahead of time.
Your burial arrangements should hopefully forestall such a thing.
Ezardarial Varth has been laid in state in a manner that might have been befitting for an ancient warrior king, and you find something oddly amusing about how much of this is a simple deception. The black and white armor of his slain foes has been piled up around him, their helmets and the remnants of their skull supplemented by a eight hundred skulls that have been taken more or less from killed insurgents, rusting autoguns and las guns pilled up in huge piles at Varth's feet next to the weaponry taken from the Space Marines. The body itself has been placed on a bed of skulls, hands folded over the haft of his mace, helmet and armor still in place. You hope that Skyraal is either blinded by the pomp and theater or at least appreciates a good lie.
In the end, only time will tell. In the meantime, you have some work to do.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
You do not trust the Hand of Transformation, and not solely because it is Tharc Raskoll's creation. The energies of the Warp are too volatile to allow the sort of independent operation it has been allowed here. Tharc Raskoll literally gave the freedom to strategize and make independent plans to the pseudo-sentient personification of betrayal: it is no wonder that this went wrong. Frankly, it's a miracle it took so long. The Empyrean, when utilized to power machines, must be tightly controlled, or else tightly observed, preferably from a safe distance.
And of course, for all his overcomplicated artifice, the purpose Tharc Raskoll envisioned for the Hand of Transformation was absolutely mediocre. All that craftsmanship, all that design, wasted on a better Kill Servitor doing unreliably what one could probably do with better controllable operatives using the same investment of resources and an only moderately more intensive investment of time.
All this, and he missed a far more obvious and far more useful feature of the piece of Warp Energy he managed to capture.
It is capable of separating within the material world while staying unified within the empyrean: a capability that holds, as far as preliminary experiments seem to indicate, no limit on distance within the material realm.
Communication is a tricky thing, for those that have strayed from the stricture of the Imperium and its at least semi-reliable Astropaths. There are as many methods of communication amongst the Renegades of the Imperium as there are Renegades, ranging from the relatively simple use of minor daemonic entities over sorcerous equivalents to astrotelepathies to the extremely esoteric, like the strange, fungal-based means of communication you have heard of the Death Guard occasionally utilizing. The Xenos, you are certain, use their own means, but humanity remains reliant on the Empyrean and its capability for transmitting both matter and information far faster than the speed of light.
A reliable means of communication is already highly valuable: for somebody trying to keep together a freshly conquered Empire, as Lady Czevene is, it is simply invaluable.
And you are constructing it for her for free.
Well, no, not for free: you are constructing it for her because she is a terrifying rogue Psyker powerful enough to influence every mind within a Hive City even before she was melded with the piece of machinery the allowed her to do this, and because she has a fleet in orbit that can stop you leaving without any issues whatsoever.
You are also doing it to show up Tharc Raskoll, which is a thought that cheers you up at least a little bit.
Your subordinates have used the intervening time to recuperate and repair themselves as best they can, though they are still battered from the ordeal they have gone through. Regicia has replaced her missing arm with a bundle of highly-articulating mechatendrils, their various tool tips whirring and vibrating as she regards you. It is a temporary solution, you figure: she is going to be to work creating an entirely new arm as soon as the Wilfull Eternity breaches the Warp. It works, for now. Theama-Nul is, of course, as unreadable as ever, though he has begun wheezing with every breath: still, in the past few days he has been electrocuted, battered, and possibly peppered with shrapnel, shot at, and stabbed. You yourself have had to replace parts of one of your kidneys, because it had apparently burst at some point or another. Magos Krainaima, of course, looks no more or less battered then usual, now that the blood has dried, though he does look a little bit more pleased with himself then he usually does.
Myges Talef, on the other hand, has clearly taken a beating and then found himself reconstructed by a madman: his cooling unit is working again, though some of the fan blades remain exposed and have been sharpened, and one of his arms has been rebuild in the utilitarian style of 8-Doxa, the muzzle of what appears to be a miniaturized Chem Cannon emerging from the sleeves of his robes.
"Doesn't have to be aimed", 8-Doxa tells you cheerfully, when he notices your gaze. Magos Talef seems to have emerged from the other side of his terror into a sort of stoic equanimity. "I will still endeavor to aim it as best I can", he promises you, which worries you somewhat, though a quick analysis of the chemical used calms your nerves a little: a fairly simple acidic solution, highly aggressive against organic materials, but mostly harmless when it comes to metal. If you go up against Necrons again, that might become an issue, but at least the damage he can do to you is limited.
In any case, he is here, and seems fairly eager to do something that holds a relatively low likelihood of being shot at.
In basic form, what you are trying to achieve is relatively simple: you are seeking to provide eight identical units to house the eight fragments of the Daemon, and to enable these units to transmit information. The interesting thing, the challenge, is in what you want these units to be capable of, and how you want that information to be transmitted.
[Unit Form Factor]
The form of the central array is a given, though the torso may end up quite removed from its original form given the modifications you intend to make to it. The very basic shapes of the end points, however, are very much up for debate.
[] Humanoid
You will be working with besouled parts for this project, that much is out of the question: making a daemonic possession work without some organic components for them to inhabit is possible, but outside of your normal skill range and also pointlessly more difficult. It would be a simple step, then, to simply take the basic components of the servitors, modify them minimally, and use them for the transmitter. There's downsides to this, of course: some of Lady Czevene's more squeamish allies might be disturbed by the display and the end result would end up a lot more fragile than the other result, not to mention the difficulties of modifying them too far from their original human form. Of course, the flipside is that things humans are expected to do, such as speaking, would absolutely be easier.
[] Cubic
You could, of course, put all the components into a simple box: easy to transport, easy to conceptualize, relatively neutral aesthetically, though there really isn't a way for a box containing the fragment of a Daemon to not look at least a little bit sinister. Of course, this basic form doesn't provide any particular advantages or disadvantages when it comes to the further augmentations: you can throw all of them on there in one way or another, but a cubic shape doesn't make it particularly easier or harder. The major downside is that the daemon might not particularly like being put into a boring box: it probably can't resist you, but it can at least make your life more difficult.
[] Bespoke
The last option is to throw any preconceived notion of form factor out the window, and go with a creation that is entirely fitted to the ultimate requirements: a custom-created daemonic engine made precisely as you need it. This will make fitting some of the weirder attachments easier, but its very bizarreness might stand in the way of the humanlike and mundane, at least in the sense that you might build a wholly custom piece of equipment where just using a human body part would have served a similar purpose.
[Locomotion]
[] None
The thing doesn't need to move, only to be moved. Put a couple of hooks onto them for a crane to latch on to, but that's the height of it.
[] Tracks
Capable of supporting a lot of weight, and to move over difficult positions: ideal if you want to move a heavy piece of equipment nearly everywhere an army might need to go.
[] Wheels
Simple, efficient, and capable of moving the unit quickly over the sort of territory it might need to move through to serve for basic administrative functions
[] Legs
Relatively slow and unstable, but with crucial advantages in buildings: this thing could actually move over stairs at reasonable speed, and follow whoever it is set to accompany basically wherever they want to go.
[Transmission]
[] Written
Give the things eyes, and arms with which it can write out whatever is dictated to it. Usually this would be highly inefficient, but the main unit already has an attachment point for arms, and ink isn't that expensive. The main issue here would be the input device, but that isn't too hard to do either. Not limited in what it could transmit either, as long as that transmission can fit onto a piece of parchment.
[] Typed
Alternatively, one could attach a typewriter, and simply have messages that go in on one side come out on the other. Pretty limited in what it could do, but also intuitive to use, and at least decently easy to implement
[] Spoken
In concept, this means of communication is fairly simple: somebody talks on one side, and the voice is transmitted to the other. In practice, this is significantly harder to implement than text: you need to figure out how to deal with several messages being transmitted all at once, for one thing, and how to patch hardware needed to speak into the central unit. Of course, the end result of that is being able to actually have a conversation with the person on the other end, which may prove invaluable.
[] Combination
Of course, if you are willing to take on the additional workload, you could simply combine two or more of these options in order to combine their advantages, at the cost of additional weight and added complexity.
[Security]
The communication concept you are creating is very secure and very insecure at the same time: it is secure because it cannot be intercepted by almost any mundane means, and at the very same time insecure because it might be vulnerable to empyrean forms of attack, relying, as it does, on a pseudo-intelligence that might be accessed externally. There are not very many people who could do such a thing, of course, but on the other hand you really don't want the people who can to get their hand on any more information than they already have.
[] None
Securing the device is not your business: it can be done by your employer, for all you care.
[] Material
Encrypting the data that is put in ahead of time will go a great length to securing it against extra-mundane means of interception. Of course, this makes it important that the only input the Daemon is capable of receiving is the encoded information, but that should at least theoretically be doable. Put in biometrical locks and the like as well: wouldn't do, after all, for your device to be defeated by somebody walking in and planting a listening device or grabbing a piece of paper.
[] Empyreal
There are means to prevent empyreal manners of interception. You're going to ask Theama-Nul to implement them. Also allow the daemon to eat people who try to gain unauthorized access: might as well go all out.
[] Both
Combine both methods of security, for added complexity and security.