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Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest

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Beacon's Shadow: Part 4
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    • You are here for a task, and you will fulfill it. That task is not to stand against the band of transhuman murderers that is barreling down towards you, though you get the uncomfortable feeling that you will not be able to avoid such. Still, it seems exceedingly unlikely that their arrival and the strange invasions into the Beacon have nothing to do with one another: stopping whatever it is that they are trying to achieve is probably prudent.

    That, of course, leaves you to figure out who exactly was smart enough to force their way into a device as unique and complex as this one. You cannot even begin to comprehend the technical knowledge and arcane mysteries it would take to gain entry to a construction as masterful as this one.

    That one, you reflect, is probably that inbuilt Van Hex aggrandizement talking, but nonetheless you are leaving this task up to Talef.

    He is, after all, the Cogitator person, and this seems closer to a Cogitator issue then anything else.

    You help, of course, but you figure you can keep an eye on the encroaching enemy. Getting a picture of the Space Marines that are even now coming for you might prove crucial in the time to come.

    Madama Kapriosa has, in a fit of foresight, sent you an image of the vessel that is coming for you, and it is this you now study.

    The Skinpiercer is, you find, without a doubt a vessel that flies for the Night Lords: everything from its midnight black colorations to flickers of lightning that keeps crackling across its skin.

    There are, of course, things that are different: the usual individualizing features of independent Warlords, present in one way or another with every Warband. In this case, this seems to be expressing itself by the addition of thorn-studded vines, laid out in gold along the midnight blue flanks of the ship, the blood frozen across them seeming disturbingly authentic.

    "Well, no mysteries who they're with", 8-Doxa murmurs, and you note that he is looking over your shoulder even though the image you are looking at is literally being projected directly onto your optic nerves.

    It is indeed no mystery who they're with, though you have to object to 8-Doxa's overly personalizing language. The mark of Slaanesh is prominent across the vessel, marked out in the curving of the vines across both of its flanks.

    There is, also, another mark of their allegiance, and one that catches your eyes far more. The Skinpiercer, you see, holds a figurehead: shaped in what you recognize, vaguely, as a Keeper of Secrets, its bovine features stretched forward and snarling, it's single breast exposed to the void. A pair of human arms grasp the bow of the ship, vines wrapping around it, while a second pair of arms, this one bearing a pair of long, sharp claws, stretch into the void, seeming to cut through the emptiness of space itself.

    It is, you notice, almost as an afterthought, missing an eye. Interesting as that is, though, there is another detail that catches your eye and keeps your attention.

    You recognize those claws. They have been rendered down to perfect detail, and you have seen them before: recently, even. These are the same claws that tried to force their way into the Beacon: you would be willing to bet on it.

    You cannot do anything with that revelation. Talef sends you a code blurt indicating that he has found the problem.

    You frown, and check your internal chrono, then run an error diagnostic and check it again.

    Ten minutes have passed. Talef's message sounded somewhat frustrated, and it takes you only a moment to figure out why.

    "That's it?", you cant at Talef, not even bothering to hide the frustration that creeps into your otherwise pure binaric. Talef does not respond, except by a simple shrug. Ten minutes have passed. You have both been staring at the same spot for the entirety of those. You can tell your subordinate is also upset by the whirring of his cooling unit becoming erratic.

    "That's it?", you repeat. You have repeated it 60 times in the last ten minutes, at a rate of approximately once every ten seconds. You realize you are caught in a loop, but it is very hard to break out of it.

    Before you, woven into one of the strands of the nerves that connect the dying astropaths, is a single piece of golden wire.

    It isn't even particularly thin wire.

    "So, I think whoever did this is using this wire to receive and insert commands", Talef tells you.

    "Could…we have just done that?", you cant back, somewhat acidly, and he shrugs.

    "It wouldn't have worked as well, probably"

    There is a whine behind you, and you turn around to see that 8-Doxa-Krainanima has activated his Chord Claw. "So, are we going to stand around and gawk some more or are we going to go and find out who did this", he asks, and you suppose you cannot argue with that.
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Once you have detected it, following the golden thread is easy. It is, of course, insulated soon after it leaves the nerve circuitry, and after a while it disappears into one of the thick bundles of cables that run through maintenance shafts.

    The parts of the station you find yourself in are at once oddly familiar and utterly wretched: a realm of grease and rust, stripped bare of all the symbolical considerations and geometrical precision of the relay station above and replaced with the pure, simple-minded ritualistic functionalism of the blinkered Mechanicus.

    Such places exist everywhere, of course: the liminal layer inhabited by the least of your own kind, so necessary for keeping anything technological afloat, so overlooked by the great and powerful.

    It has been desecrated, of course, just as the rest of the station has: demonic faces have replaced the hybrid skulls at the center of the Cog Mechanicum, and both the eight-pointed star and the Symbol of Slaanesh have been carved into the walls with the sort of neatness and regularity that would usually indicated some sort of ongoing psychotic episode.

    The air stinks: your olfactory receptors cannot quite make out the exact chemical composition, but detect at the very least traces of putrescine and cadaverine, as well as acidic fumes of some sort and a relative lack of oxygen in the air. Somewhere, something is dripping: a coolant pipe, if you had to guess.

    Whoever is in charge of this place, they are clearly not taking very good care of it.


    As you round the corner, you come face to face with the reason for this.


    The laboratory is, you have to admit, not unimpressive, given that it was plainly created with whatever materials could be scrounged up from the rest of the stations. A tangle of pipe and vats takes up most of a room six meters in diameter, the smell of acid emanating from it far stronger then it did in the corridors leading to it. You can identify it now: a psychedelic drug, relatively primitive by the standards of a society that is made up in part of people chasing unfathomable excess, but potent nonetheless. A half-filled crate has been placed against the wall next to the exit, filled with glass syringes, and an auspex scan reveals they are filled both with the drug and with water that seems enriched with the energy of the empyrean. You find this curious, for a moment, until your gaze is drawn upwards, and you realize that the dripping had not been unintentional at all: a coolant pipe has been bored into, and there is a steady flow of water into the wider chymistry apparatus.

    There is, of course, no reason whatsoever that coolant water running in close proximity to an empyrean-based machine preoccupied with dreams would alter the hallucinogenic properties of a psychedelic at all. The water still has an unaltered chymical composition.

    You would not bet against it doing so, however.

    The golden thread, you find, runs to a cogitator on the other side of the room, and it is here that you find the person who must be responsible for the entire setup.

    It is an unspoken truth that there is a wide gradient, between the adherents of the Path of Knowledge: this is true for the members of the False Mechanicus, where the distance in knowledge, skill, and prestige between even a mere Magos and a lowly Engineseer can be utterly staggering.
    It is truer still for the True Mechanicum, where one end of the spectrum might contain mechanical abomination so steeped in the Empyrean that it is difficult to determine where their flesh ends and the swirling madness of the Warp begins, while the other might contain those basically indistinguishable from the ordinary Enginseer except for the color of their robes. Maintenance, after all, is a universal need, as much as the Powers the be occasionally neglect that fact.

    Of course, despite all the similarities, things are not really the same: the warp suffuses everything within your vicinity, and it seeps through the sort of flaws your lesser kind is sent to repair with some preference.

    The dark-robed figure that now stands before you is an example of this, in all its wretchedness. You cannot actually tell if its lower jaw has been replaced with the strange, articulating mandibles by its own mad whims or that of the Warp.

    The warp is definitely present, however: from the nose-like protrusions visible beneath the rim of its robes to the melanoma forming the eight-pointed star across its face. A Servo Arm hovers across its shoulders like the stinger of a Scorpion, and a Mechadendrite studded with the standard array of tools needed for maintenance is fidgeting behind its back. Red Lenses stare at you, the skin around them an inflamed red where the implant is being rejected by the flesh.

    It begins to demand your reason for entering its domain, though doesn't get very far, on account of 8-Doxa ripping one of its cybernetic arms out at the socket.

    That is perhaps a little bit harsher than you would have begun, but it does set the tone for the conversation nicely.

    The golden wire, it transpires, is indeed a way to tap into the astropathic chorus: a handmade solution to the issue of long-range communication.

    The wretch, it seems, used it primarily to arrange for sales of his hallucinogen, traded in turn largely for the materials to keep the station functioning.

    You have heard worse reasons for disrupting the work of a great master, you have to admit.

    That doesn't mean you don't shoot it through the head, when it is finished with his explanation.

    Talef has already broken into its cogitator, by the time the body hits the floor. There is a brief comical interlude as a miniature version of the wretch breaks free of the body and tries to make its way into the thicket of pipes, but 8-Doxa quickly puts an end to that, Chord Claw howling as the little homunculus is obliterated.

    "Definitely Warp Based", Talef murmurs, "fascinating thing, really. An empyrean entity is forcing the cogitator to send out an electrical signal that in turn triggers a fear response."

    He taps several keys, eyes racing across runes too arcane even for you to pick up.

    "Something calling itself the Bringer of Nightmares and Devourer of…"

    You wait for Talef to finish his translation, then send a burst of inquiries when he never does. "Devourer of what?", you ask, and Talef shrugs. "Doesn't say. It just stops there, in every instance I can find."

    You frown, and run your hand across your scalp. There is something strangely calming to the way the spines that are beginning to push through your head's skin push against the metal of the hand, an idea you push aside as quickly as it enters your head.

    You will deal with the mutation, in time. For now, however, there are more pressing matters. "Can you stop it from transmitting that signal", you ask, and Talef shrugs, reaches behind the cogitator with one hand, and unplugs the golden wire.

    You think it is to your credit that you do not get stuck in another cycle of incredulity again. A minute, you figure, barely counts.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    You leave the laboratory setup to its own devices, the corpse of its own sprawled out on the floor where it fell. You figure it will, without attention and maintenance, disable itself without doing too much damage to the station as a whole before long.

    In the meantime, you have work to do.

    The relative simplicity at the root of the issue has meant that you have not lost too much time. Still, as you glance at the trajectory the Skinpiercer is taking towards the Relay Station, it is abundantly clear that you are not going to make it out without coming into engagement range of the Gladius, and you do not trust the Night Lords to not take the time out of their approach to board and then systematically flay a fleeing vessel.

    "I have taken the liberty", 8-Doxa tells you, "to draw up an overview of your assets and options."

    He pauses, for a moment, and when he speaks again, something almost like pleading has entered his voice. "Please let me fight them", he asks, as he hands you the datapad.

    You do not need to look to Talef to know how much he wants to do with that.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    [Overall Goal]

    [] Escape
    A simple goal, and probably the simplest one to achieve: you will wait until the Night Lords are engaged, and then do the minimum necessary to disengage from the fighting, cut, and run. This on is probably the easiest to achieve, but obviously it is likely to lead to either the Beacon's destruction or else the Coterie of the Blessed Lantern being very displeased with you, which might have unknown consequences down the road.
    [] Drive Off
    You have not yet known a Night Lord who wasn't, at heart, deeply pragmatic. Some might call this cowardice, and perhaps they are right, but the truth of the matter is that if you can inflict sufficient damage onto the Night Lords, they are likely to disengage. Of course, that means having a band of transhuman killers somewhat angry at you personally out there, but on the other hand it is somewhat easier to achieve then killing them all.
    [] Eliminate
    Space Marines are famously resilient: killing them all is a big task. On the other hand, this will both ingratiate the Coterie of the Blessed Lantern to you and ensure that the Night Lords don't bother you again, not to mention whatever pieces of loot you might find in the wreckage their destruction leaves behind…
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    [Assets]

    [Eta-Nu 9 35]
    [] Aggressive
    You will fight at the front, aggressively meeting the enemy with your toxins and gasses to achieve your goal
    [] Defensive
    You will stay on the defensive, deploying tricks and traps to inflict attrition on the enemy and slow them down.
    [] Reactive
    You will stay in reserve, ready to back up either the defenders or one of your subordinates as the need arises: this is a more flexible approach, but one that will by necessity risk delays and ceding the initiative to the enemy.
    [Myges Talef]
    [] Aggressive
    Talef is a master of electronic warfare, and he is to deploy that mastery in order to aggressively disrupt and overwhelm enemy communications and systems.
    [] Defensive
    The enemy clearly holds some expertise of their own, when it comes to scrap code: Talef is to counteract any attempt of theirs to attack the Machine Spirit of the Station.

    [8-Doxa-Krainanima]
    [] Aggressive
    8-Doxa-Krainanima is to throw his murder servitors, and himself, aggressively at the enemy, seeking to soak up as much fire and inflict as much damage as he can.
    [] Reactive
    8-Doxa-Krainanima is to form the core of a reaction force, aiming to counterattack towards any breaches in the line and react to any surprises.
    [Reptilian Beast]
    [] Aggressive
    You will find the place the Reptilian Beast can cause the most damage, and throw it there.
    [] Reactive
    You will wait until a problem that can be solved by throwing a Reptilian Beast at it presents itself, and throw the beast at it.

    [Wilful Eternity]
    [] Aggressive
    The Wilful Eternity has in its possession a Plasma Cannon that can, under the right circumstances, cause serious damage to the Gladius-Class Frigate that is now bearing down on it. It will lie in ambush and deploy it at the earliest opportunity.
    [] Defensive
    The Eternity's Plasma Cannon possesses a single effective shot: after it is spent, she is basically defenseless. You will tell Kapriosa to hold onto it, in order to use it should it be needed to prevent serious harm to yourself or the ship.
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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    • Beacon's Shadow: Part 5
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    • Establishing any kind of noospheric link over any length of space inside the amalgam of ships around the Relay Station proves to be something of a hassle: the constant broad-spectrum vox messages act as a fairly effective jammer, swallowing up any signals that travel too far.

    Talef solves this, ultimately, though it takes him most of a day, rushing frantically from ship to ship to manually rewire their Vox Arrays. What results is somewhat ramshackle, and you do not really appreciate the ten seconds of delay it gives you, but it is better than nothing.

    It does also give Talef the opportunity to rewire the outer sensors of the Hulk, giving you a fairly clear view of the approaching Skinpiercer from your newly established command center.

    The Coterie of the Blessed Lantern, it turns out, is not entirely without means of defending itself. While you were below, they mobilized these: more than a regiment worth of men in Cadian Battle Dress, what you surmise to be the mark of the Coterie impressed onto their breastplates and burned into their face.

    "They are out latest order", Adriel tells you. They have donned a suit of carapace armor, gleaming in the light like Mother of Pearl, the mark of their strange coterie burned into the surface: the sweeping claw of the Mark of Slaanesh, the circle at its base transparent and burning with an inner fire. The Lantern, you presume, though a second circle at its care makes it look almost like an eye.

    "intended for the Apostles of Blasphemy. Perfectly able soldiers, retaining all their training, but uncompromisingly loyal to their new masters."

    You peer at one of them, who's purple eyes mark him out as a Cadian. They're not actually all from one Regiment, you note: they seem to have been drawn from a wide variety of worlds, before they were reshaped into what they are now. The Cadian looks back at you with blank, hollow eyes, and you find yourself doubting how much he can do on his own initiative.

    Not, you suppose, what they are intended for, and they do seem to take orders well enough: when Adriel barks at the soldier to get into position, the Cadian moves, his back perfectly straight, his steps perfectly precise.

    Not entirely useless, then. You leave the exact allocation of military resources entirely to the Coterie: they would not take your order and you are not a tactician besides. Instead, you focus on the noospheric transmission you are receiving from 8-Doxa, and on the data that is transmitted by the hodgepodge of sensors.

    It is not, all told, of particularly high quality: none of the ships that brought the prey of the Beacon to its doorstep had much need for anything but the most rudimentary of sensors, and despite Talef's best effort, they keep overlapping and interfering with one another.

    The result is that the Skinpiercer seems to flicker as Auspex Eddies play along her shields and skin. If you had not removed much of your capacity to feel nervous, surely now would be the time you would do so.

    You ignore the way the spines that are even now painfully pushing out of the skin of your scalp are standing up. They mean nothing. You decide to focus on something else.

    8-Doxa-Krainaima does not seem like a man prone to choosing a position in reserve, but obviously today he does not have much of a choice: though the semi-hulk of ships around the Relay Station is your biggest defensive asset, the biggest asset the Night Lords have right now is their ability to pick and choose their angle of attack. Your reserves can move through the ship quickly, of course, but they will still need time, and paradoxically staying farther away from the front means a quicker chance to get to the enemy.

    The last thing you want is for Night Lords to breach your first line of defense and be set set loose inside the labyrinth that surrounds the beacon. You have seen them work before. That is the exact environment they tend to thrive in.

    And so, 8-Doxa-Krainaima is cooped up inside a borrowed Drop Ship alongside the Murder Servitors and the complement of the Yulrasian Heavy Assault Infantry that you had honestly forgotten about until he requested them, ready to, in his own words, 'bring the fight to the enemy'.

    The fact that he is willing enough to be in reserve does not, you gather, mean he enjoy it very much. You can see faint traces of the workings of his mind in the noosphere,alternately plotting and replotting routes of attack and screeching wordless 8-bit pleas for blood and skulls and glorious slaughter into the atmosphere.

    It is grating, yes, but you do not ask him to stop. It is, for one, oddly reassuring, and for the other you do not want to be the focus of the Magos Mactators wrath, now or ever.

    You keep his feed in the back of your awareness as you switch to the one monitoring the reptilian monstrosity, now encased in the specialized torpedo that will deliver it to its destination. You busy yourself fiddling with its hormone levels, for a moment, optimizing them to deliver the maximal degree of rage once the beast is delivered, then dialing them back down to avoid premature exhaustion, then picking a target trajectory that will deliver it where it should go.

    You aim it right at the Frigate's bridge. With the shields up, that is of course a fool's errand, and you expect to retarget it at wherever a beach head ends up being established.

    "The Skinpiercer has launched a spread of Macro Shells", Talef tells you, and that brings you, unfortunately, back to reality.

    The ship is close now. It has, of course, been in effective attack range for days: if they had wanted to, the Night Lords could have launched an attack to destroy the station basically from the edge of the system.

    It isn't like you can dodge.

    That does indicate to you that they want to take the station intact, which is fortunate, because it means you are less likely to die in a superheated ball of expanding plasma. It is also unfortunate, because it increases your chances to be taken alive by Night Lords.

    "Not the real attack", 8-Doxa cants, frantically enough to distort and double up in your vox, and you are inclined to agree. The Skinpiercer is too far out, for now: the shells are more likely than not intended to cause a rush forward of any reserves, ensuring them to be out of position when the real attack does occur.

    You really wished there were guns pointed outwards, instead of just the turrets that make the labyrinth so lethal for the sort of small craft used to penetrate it.

    The Hulk does not shake: it has too much mass to do this, of course, even as the shells impact the shields and they begin to fail. Still, it feels like it does through your interface: pinpricks of energy, massive enough to do serious damage to a city.

    Void Warfare is mad, you consider. You have not, strictly speaking, been in any Void Battles yet: the desperate attempt to break through the encroaching vessels of the Ultramarines after Terra surely does not count. Still, as you watch the Skinpiercer maneuver and rush in a slow circle around the Relay Station, it is that precise experience that you are reminded of: plotting the vectors of shells you know are capable of destroying you if they hit in the wrong place, waiting always for the shot that will kill you.

    The Skinpiercer, you realize, after long hours, is toying with you. A Gladius is a small ship, relatively speaking, but a maneuverable and fast one, and the Night Lords are putting it on full display.

    It is getting close enough that the claws of their figure head seem to almost scrape the hull, arcs of lightning sparking off from it and dancing across the surface of your amalgam.

    "Scrap Code", Talef cants out, suddenly, frantically, and then "contained. The daemonic entity again."

    You do not have time to parse the implications. There is a spike of aggressiveness from 8-Doxa, and he is suddenly submitting a flight plan, plotting an intercept vector with the enemy frigate.

    You begin to send an order to stand down. His current course of action is, on the face of it, insanity.

    You also do not get around to finishing that order. A shrill warning rings across the noosphere.

    Fusion Generators are things of incredible power: a miniature star, contained within the heart of a ship by powerful magnetic forces, their potential for destruction instead chained and carefully channeled into powering the ship.

    It would, in theory, be possible to render one into a weapon, though at terrible cost to the ship that contains them. Your brethren in the blinkered Mechanicus are, of course, too hidebound and keen on tradition to ever do this. Your colleagues in the True Mechanicum usually have more potent weapons at their disposal. To tamper with the electromagnetic forces containing fusion reactions is an incredibly dangerous, foolhardy thing, especially if one has to rig it up to avoid damage to the rest of an entire amalgamation of other ships.

    And yet, as the Skinpiercer skims past a ship called the 'Cornhauler', just this happens.

    The entire process takes about eight seconds, which gives you just enough time to put into context that 8-Doxa spent several days traveling the outer ships to 'prepare defenses'.

    Then a tongue of plasmic flame shoots out, engulfing the Skinpiercer like the fist of an angry deity.

    [Roll: 8-Doxa-Krainaima: Weaponsmithing: 3d6: 3, 5, 3. Partial Success)
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    You are suffocating. You are a lump of meat, stuck in a shell of cold, inert metal. Your lungs are not expanding. Your heart is not beating. You taste metal in your mouth, and when you try to spit out whatever is within it, you realize it is your own jaw, and that you cannot move your tongue.


    You try to scream, but have no mouth to do it with.

    For a moment, you are back on Nuton's Folly, hurtling away from the expanding rubble of Nuton III in a dead shuttle.

    This has all happened before. You know what it is. You are powerless to stop it.

    In detonating the Plasma Reactor, 8-Doxa-Krainaima has set off a Haywire Field.


    You do not know how much time has passed, when your implants start working again. Your internal chrono has gone with everything else, and you do not have any central time to synchronize it with.

    It cannot, at least, have been very long. You woke up, after all.

    A few seconds at most.

    You are still standing: the improved arrangement of your legs has seen to that, where Talef has toppled over and is now heaving and breathing quite heavily.

    "Sensors out", he cants to you. His cooling unit is trying and failing to start again, until you give it a whack and its fans spin into motion with a penetrating whine. "Trying to reestablish."

    You nod. The monitors around you are still dead. For the moment, you are completely without information.

    Then, the transmissions begin coming in. Every Vox Unit is out, right now, which means that any interference to noospheric transmission has gone as well. 8-Doxa is transmitting. There is, you consider, likely considerable lag in transmission. They are also utterly lacking in messaging discipline: a direct transmission of 8-Doxa's mind as he fights.

    They are also the best you are likely to get, for the next moment.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    For a moment, you are utterly disoriented: the image seems to split half a hundred times.

    The Murder Servitors, you realize, after a few seconds: your subordinate is splitting his attention across them, coordinating the input of several dozen pairs of sensors along his own senses.

    That, you are forced to admit, is rather impressive: even receiving them is overwhelming. Beneath all of this, a constant chanting: rage and hatred, spun into code and flowing in a perfect cycle. You see the interior of the Drop Ship, and the Yulrasians in their gleaming armor. You see the course that is plotted. And you see…open void, the shape of a ship that has been battered, but is not broken, lightning arcing out into the void in broad arcs. A quick burst of the auspex confirms it: shields are still down. "Rebreathers", you wheeze out (8-Doxa wheezes out), and the Yulrasians recheck the masks they have donned five minutes ago. Their oxygen supply flashes on your internal display: they (and you) (and 8-Doxa) will be good, at least for the next hour or so. If you are still forced to fight, after the next hour, you are dead anyways.

    The Drop Ship screams into a rent in the hull and sets down, and then you are off, clawed feet crashing into the surface of the deck. The Murder Servitors rush forward around you. You order one of them cut through a door, and brace as oxygen comes rushing out, carrying with it debris. Your Chord Claw cuts apart the corpse that was about to slam into you, and then you are inside the ship, and then you are amongst the enemy.

    There is not a lot of light within the Skinpiercer. You can feel your eyes dilating, trying to catch as much light as they can. The human vermin that infests the lower reaches of the ship is used to these conditions, of course. Even now, they surge forward to meet your assault.

    They are prepared for these conditions. They are not prepared for you.

    The Murder Servitors do not need a specialized command to surge forward and begin the killing. That is your secret, to how you control so many of them at once. You are, by and large, not ordering them to kill. Rather, you are holding their leash, as you are holding your own.

    And here, now, in the bowels of the enemy ship, you let go. You give up control, completely and utterly.

    And in doing so, you find serenity.

    The distinction between yourself and your constructs blends. You hack apart the Mutant that stands directly in front of you with a Chain Sword. Your Chord Claw obliterates a rating that is trying to rush you with a rusting cleaver. You step forward, on heavy clawed feet. You roll forward, on heavy treads. You stomp forward, on artificial limbs. You hurl yourself forward on organic legs that do not quite work like they are supposed to, anymore. You float forward, on devices inserted just below your neck.

    And you kill. You kill with Chainsword and Claw. You kill with your inbuilt guns. You tear your enemies apart with servo arms and circular saws. Your Flamers roar and burn them.

    You kill. You kill. You kill. You kill. None of the ones you kill are worthy of notice. None of these bodies will be useful for recovery. You grind their skulls under your clawed feet as you move forward. You notice, at the edge of your periphery, the pain as some of your servitors are torn down, killed in the inevitable attrition of lucky shots.

    You are fine, for now. Within projections. You move forward, and you kill, and you leave the thinking up to your subordinates. Behind you, you vaguely notice the Yulrasians setting charges and generally doing their level best to keep the ship disabled.

    They're doing well, you decide. Then you completely ignore them, again.

    You cannot tell how much time has passed, when you finally hit your first real opposition. At some point, the crew of the Skinpiercer simply broke, and you began chasing them and killing them.

    They are used to terror, but it is terror of a familiar shape, terror that comes to them in the dark and stalks them at night.

    It is an entirely different kind of terror to be faced with a tide of walking corpses, fresh blood intermingling with the unguents on their claws and blades.

    The Space Marine appears seemingly from nowhere. In one second, there is nothing, and then he is there, standing on the deck before you, Lightning Claw already rushing for your guts. He is fast, but you are in control. A Servitor reaches besides itself, head not even turning. You still almost die. The Claw sweep that cuts the Servo Arm now holding his wrist still almost kills you. It gets close enough you can feel the lightning claw sear the skin of your face. Then a Servo Skull impacts the Night Lord's head and detonates, and before the Space Marine can recover, a circular saw has been driven through his gorget.

    You rip the half-severed head from its seat, and hold it over your head with a roar.

    Then, the broken cultists come rushing back towards you, eyes wide with desperate fear, and you know what awaits you ahead.

    You kill them. You kill every one of them that comes rushing at you. This time, they do not break. Right when they are gone, when you have expended every resource you could have possibly been made to expend on them, the true assault begins.

    You are hit, and suddenly the tapestry of your vision begins unraveling, because you know it is not you. You are not on the ground, your chest obliterated by a Bolter Shell. You have not been torn apart by a Chain Sword. A Power Fist has not taken apart everything above your waist.

    There are four of them. Just four. Still, they put up a resistance fiercer than anything their crew managed. For a few moments, nothing seems able to touch them. For a few moments, you see your casualty rates rise, see more and more of the sensory perceptions that make up the tapestry of your current existence disappear.

    For a moment, your projections tell you that this is unsustainable, that with the current rate of exchange, you are going to lose.

    Then the first of the Space Marines goes down, the blades that have replaced the arms of one Murder Servitor crashing through the lenses of his helmet, and it is as though a dam has broken.
    The Night Lords are good at what they do. They are masters of fear, and of the shock assault, and that is what they have done now. For ten heartbeats, they have succeeded in this.

    But they are not going up against beings that can be shocked, or broken.

    They are going up against unfeeling, uncaring murder machines. For ten heartbeats, they outpace the response of the Murder Servitors through sheer speed, and then they get overwhelmed. A second goes down moments after the first, disappearing under skittering, spider-like constructs. A third has his arm ripped off by a servo claw and then continues fighting, attempting a withdrawal before a series of concentrated las shots bring it down in a stagger.

    The Fourth….

    You are lying on the ground, and your leg is gone. You are ripping apart a Space Marine, Bolter still smoking in his hand, still firing. You are bleeding. You are in pain.

    You crawl forward, but then there are more heavy footsteps, and the Yulrasians are suddenly there, picking you up and carrying you away.

    Then, everything goes dark.
    [Roll:Combat: 8-Doxa-Krainaima: 4d6. 4, 2, 5, 1. Partial Success]

    You shake your head, and remind yourself where you are, who you are. You are Eta Nu 9 35. You are in the control room of the station known as the Beacon of Perfection. All your limbs remain attached to your body.

    "Sensors are back up", Talef tells you. "Turrets are back up. Unknown contact tracked within the Labyrinth…destroyed."

    You check over the Sensors, letting Talef's reports watch over you. The Skinpiercer seems to be dead in space, you notice: smoke is pouring from several gashes in it's side, and something seems to have impacted it's bridge, just where you had intended the Reptilian Beast's drop pod to go.

    Instinctively, you reach out for it, and notice that it is gone. Either losing connection to you caused a premature launch, or Madama Kapriosa interpreted her orders somewhat liberally. It doesn't matter either way. It seems to have been delivered. The lack of communications means you cannot check in, but you also would not want to be on that bridge right now.

    "...reports of engagement in the sunward reaches", Talef cants to you, and you immediately snap back to attention.
    The enemy, it seems, is not yet spent. "Seems to be contained, for now", Adriel tells you. You don't relax. You are fighting Space Marines. The situation can change at any moment.

    Next to you, Talef lets loose a burst of angry binaric. "Scrap Code", he explains, and then he is rushing from cogitator to cogitator, frantically making adjustments.

    You can see the issue. Talef too is transmitting to you. Something has snuck its way in, when the Haywire field was up and Talef was distracted, and now it is using the reactivating vox casters to move forward, jumping from device to device like a wildfire. It is, you note, making for the center of the station.

    "Oh", Talef says, suddenly, and you see a smile spread over his face all of a sudden, "I know what they intend now."

    He sends out bursts of scrap code of his own, and a ring of Vox Casters die, all at once, stopping the infection short of the crystal at the core of the station.

    "It's a beacon", Talef says. "They intended to use the dread caused to home in on the beacon and bypass defenses via teleportation."

    "You stopped this?", you ask, and Talef nods.

    "Unless they can find another group of psykers that can emanate dread, they're done. And since they cannot, at this point of time, reach the core, they can't reach the astropaths."

    "Would it be just Astropaths", Adriel asks, curious, "or Psykers in general."

    You look to Talef, leaving the floor to him to respond, only when you look at him you realize he seems awfully, terribly afraid, and when you look at Adriel you realize the tone his voice had wasn't one of curiosity.

    It was one of dread.

    [Roll: Electronic Warfare: Myges Talef: 3d6: 4,3,5. Partial Success]

    "They know where we are", Talef cants to you the moment after the realization hits.

    For a moment, you know nothing but fear. For a moment, there is absolutely nothing you wish to do more than run.

    You only make it halfway to the door.


    Once upon a time, the things that burst from nothingness might have been called Assault Marines. Once they might have been known as Raptors, the name belying a certain amount of twistedness, but nothing of the things you are now seeing. Now, however, though there are many names they go by, one resonates the most.

    Warp Talons.

    The night blue of their armor has warped, turned to a swirl of hypnotic patterns, thorns of tarnished gold playing along the rims of their pauldrons and the twisted remnants of their jump packs. Their armor has twisted to be almost insect-like, their helmet resembling the shape of a praying mantis, their lightning claws the pincer of a crab…or a Daemonette. The lenses of their helmets are a deep, emerald green, and they scream as they fight, so loudly that within seconds you are forced to shut off your ears to avoid being rendered combat ineffective.

    They come, and they kill. Adriel goes down within the first second, and the rest of the Coterie follows, sliced apart by the Lightning Claws before they can recover from the sudden appearance of the creatures.

    Within less than a minute, everyone carrying a weapon within the Chamber is dead, with the exception of you..and Talef, who was already halfway out the door by the time they arrived.

    [Roll: Combat: Myges Talef: 1d6: 5. Partial Success]

    You barely escape the cloud of noxious chemicals that washes through the room, as Talef pushes his Chem Launcher back through the door and triggers it. The Warp Talons are not so lucky. The very worst chemical weapons a priest of the True Mechanicum specializing in dealing death could conceive wash over the room, and within seconds, everyone within it is dead, a fleshy soup leaking from the Warp Talon's twisted armor, the rest of the leadership of the Coterie of the Blessed Lantern reduced to blank skeletons upon the floor.

    For a second, you allow yourself to breathe a sigh of relief. Then a power-armored hand grasps you from behind, and you feel the sting of Lightning Claws against your neck.

    You freeze. Then, belatedly, you shut on your ears again, just in time to hear the end of a threat to your life, directed at your subordinate.

    You give Talef some credit. He does not immediately obliterate you both.

    That is probably more than you would've done

    A quick auspex burst confirms a few things: a Space Marine in full Power Armor is standing behind you. Golden piercings are rammed into his skin, vicious hooks digging into nerves, and that just tells you everything you need to know about his religious conviction.

    There is something odd about his Lightning Claws: a presence writhes within, and an eye seems to be staring, unblinking, from the back of his hand.

    Daemon Weapon, you figure, and then you stop listening to him jabbering about being taken to the 'traitorous handmaiden'. You do not, you find, care particularly much, about the reason he is here.

    You throw your head backwards, and your rapidly growing spines pierce both his eyes. He is blind and confused long enough to push away the Lightning Claws. You turn, and your arm blade jumps forward, piercing through

    [Roll: Eta Nu 9-35. Uses Regicia's Cybernetics: 4d6. 2, 4, 6, 1. Full Success]


    The Night Lord topples without a sound, too slow to react. Instead, it is your own hands that grasp his daemonic lightning claw and ram it into your stomach.

    You note, with some faint amusement, seemed to be trying to pull away from your flesh.

    Of course, the quite severe pain prevents you from considering what that might mean for very long.

    Mercifully, you pass out quite quickly.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    You are, you notice, somewhat to your own chagrin, back in the garden, and you are not alone.

    Next to you, skewered upon a broken tree like a butterfly in the collection of some mad god, is the Keeper of Secrets. She…it…seems smaller, somehow: diminished in presence as much as in size in a way you cannot quite explain.

    There is a chuckle, from your left, and as you watch, the Daemonette is sauntering forward, closer and closer. Her robes have been replaced by a suit of gleaming, segmented armor, adhering impossibly closely to the contours of her body.

    Within the armor, set just above the sternum, is an all too familiar eye, glaring at the world in desperate anger.

    You recognize the eye, of course: it's twin is sitting in the face of the Keeper of Secret even know, glaring out into the world.

    The Daemonette grins, revealing a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. She steps past you, eyes fixed on the trapped Keeper, and for a moment you feel yourself filled with an incredible, profound yearning, intermixed with jealousy.

    Unaccountably, irrationally, you wish to be the one her attentions is fixed on, even as she bends down and begins to devour her trapped sister.

    She looks back to you, after what seems like an eternity, chin dripping with ichor. "I'll let you have what is left of her", she purrs.

    "You did me a great service, Eta Nu 9 35. I think, in return, I shall let you leave this place."

    She grins, and it is the quintessential grin of the predator before the prey. Already, she is changing, twisting, ascending.

    Spines are pushing out from beneath her skin, close to those even know sprouting from your spine, though these do not stop at just the scalp: you see them growing from her neck and cascading down her back, until they might be confused, at a glance, with a long mane of hair. Poison drips from their tip, and you know that to taste it would be death, agonizing beyond measure.

    She grins at you, and somehow her face grows more perfect and more beautiful, even as a second pair of eyes opens up beneath the first, all too familiar though their rage is gone.

    She licks her lips, and suddenly the spell breaks, and the strange, enduring yearning is replaced by equally potent fear. You run, as fast as you can.

    You are dreaming. You run, but you do not move. The Daemonette (is that what she is? Does that label even still apply?) laughs, and then she reaches out, and kills you.

    There is, you realize, one difference to an ordinary nightmare.

    You do not wake, upon dying, and the process is very slow, and very painful.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


    You wake screaming, and what you see does not make you feel like stopping. The walls of the command center are shifting and twisting: even as you watch, metal is peeling back to reveal all too organic eyes. Laughter rings through the corridors, and it seems awfully familiar.

    "Time to go", Myges Talef cants at you, somewhat frantically.

    He has waited, you realize, somewhat stunned. Then you realize that there is no hole in your stomach: instead, a Lightning Claw hangs from your belt as though it had always been there, the eye that once blinked from its back now gouged out. Pain emanates from it, and despair: the presence within it is much diminished, but it is still potent.

    The entire situation is a mess, but perhaps you have at least gotten something out of it.

    Now you just have to get out.

    ___________________________________________________________________________

    Escape:

    [] Rapid
    You will move as quickly as possible, hoping that rapid speed will keep you ahead of the twisting corridors. Of course, you might get lost, but with the way the Station seems to be twisting, that might happen anyways

    [] Careful
    You will make your way forward carefully, seeking to understand the station as it is shifting around you and maneuver around any threats that might appear. Of course, you run the risk of not being able to deal with a threat, but at least you're not going to get lost.

    [] Destructive
    You are going to go in a straight line. If walls stand in the way, they will have to go. Risky for all the reasons blowing holes into the walls of a Space Station that is rapidly undergoing warp-based transformation might be risky

    [] Loot
    Well, a lot of things are probably up for grabs right now, and you might as well be the one to grab them. Of course, this means a higher risk, but also a higher reward

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    A/N
    The Yulrasian Heavy Assault Regiment was in the update as an option for the longest time. Then I seem to have accidentally deleted them, and not noticed until the plan was closed. As such, they've been put where I thought they made some sense, and not been subjected to any of the fates they might have been subjected to had you had any input.

    Also, while I'm here: I'm aware that the vote is somewhat disproportionate to the length of the update. The next one is going to be a bit shorter, with a few more vote options. Mostly, I just wanted to get this one out.
     
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    • Beacon's Shadow: Part 6
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    • You look around the twisting, warping relay station, and make a decision.

    You will be damned, if you leave this place empty-handed. You have been tortured, stabbed, had your dreams invaded and are sporting a brand-new mutation: you are owed some recompense.

    Judging by their status as a puddle of fluid on the floor, the current leadership of the Coterie of the Blessed Lantern is not likely to object.

    You can get out, surely. You're good enough to do so.

    Talef objects, at least as first, but the prospect of being left alone makes him hurry along behind you fairly quickly.

    You move at speed: though you have made the decision to linger and extract what value you can, there is still not much use in wasting time. The fact that the walls are beginning to bleed even as you walk past them only hurries your step.

    More of the eyes are opening up, around you, metal eyelids peeling back from them with a horrifying screech. They follow you as you go, and though they sit in the wall entirely devoid of the context a human face would provide, you sense something like bemused surprise in them.

    You move quickly, purposefully, using all that you know about how a station like this ought to be laid out.

    Within six turns, you realize that you are utterly, hopelessly lost. The once unadorned steel of the intersection has been changed, twisted: gold has broken through its surface like a cancerous growth, forming patterns that could not have been devised by a human mind.

    Your new hostess is redecorating, it seems. An amber liquid begins running slowly down the wall, and a quick auspex analysis reveals it to be honey.

    For a moment, you hesitate, considering where best to go next, then you decide to pick whichever corridor seems the least mutated. You're not going to find loot, or escape, by walking into a warp rift and getting turned inside out.

    Instead, you walk into Theama-Nul.

    You almost shoot them, in the split second before they cant their identifier at you: an unrecognized, unknown person showing up out of nowhere tends to have that effect on you.

    You do send them an angry burst of binaric informing them of such and demanding where in the name of the Empyrean they've been, and what they think they're doing here.

    "I am here to get you", Theama-Nul tells you. "This entire station is in the process of turning into a Space Hulk and toppling into the Warp."

    Well. It seems like you have a lot less time than you thought you did.

    "We just have to find the Vault, and then we can get out of here", you tell your subordinate, and even despite the warp-enforced ambiguity, you can tell that he is throwing you an utterly incredulous look. "We are already possibly too late to make our way out of here. We have to go now, before the way back out closes up."

    He turns around, gesturing through the door he just emerged from. Then he curses.

    It is too late. The way back out has closed up.

    Your way is barred by what appears to be a hexagramatically warded vault door, closed up by a fairly run of the mill gene lock. You turn, trying to find the way you yourself came, and find it closed by a similar door.

    So is the way to your left, and to your right. As Theama-Nul reaches up and rips out the grate of an air vent, you are greeted by another vault door.

    The Daemonette, it seems, has a sense of humor. You are going to get what you want after all.

    Defeating the Gene Lock turns out to be no great feat: Magos Talef turn out to have all the genetic material you could ever need stuck in the profile of his boot

    Compensation is something of a sticky topic, within the highly informal power structures of the forces of Chaos. Trading favors is frequent, but also frequently fraught with issues: everyone has good reason to distrust each other. Material Goods, as such, are frequently preferred. This comes, of course, with its own issues. What is seen as extremely valuable to one side is frequently worthless to the other. This can lead to extremely beneficial trades, but it can also lead to situations where establishing a worthwhile trade is extremely difficult.

    What you see in the vault speaks to this: the Coterie, it seems, valued the trappings of luxury and comfort. You do not. For a moment, as you wade through a literal sea of gold that is worthless to you as anything but highly conductive material, hyperweave silk of no practical use whatsoever, and gemstones.

    At first glance, coming here was a mistake.

    "Is that what I think it is", Theama-Nul cants at you, and for once there is no concealing the awe in their voice.

    You follow their gaze, and see something that immediately makes you forget all your misgivings. Propped up on a pedestal, given pride of place within the vault, is a single, oversized gauntlet, cast from a metal that has the shine and luster of gold but certainly isn't, at least going by auspex readings.

    It's Auramite. Unless you are gravely mistaken, you have found the glove of a Custodian. Even the possibility of such is breathtaking. Recovering a single speck of genetical material might provide the single biggest acquisition of knowledge you have ever made.

    The Glove disappears into your pack without second thought or comment. If Theama wishes to object, he does not show it. He wouldn't, though. All the sudden you become aware that you are now in possession of something you yourself definitely wouldn't hesitate killing for.

    After all, who would ask questions about somebody dying in the depths of a warp phenomenon.

    This makes rummaging through the rest of the vault a somewhat daunting experience, though neither Theama-Nul nor Talef seem to pay you much mind anymore as they begin to rummage through the leavings in the chamber.

    There are a few more things of value or potential value you find, amongst all the displays of shallow wealth. Six doses of a hallucinogen that is exotic and powerful even by your standards. The Warp Eye of a Navigator, encased in amber. A small coil of platinum wire, engraved at a microscopic level with symbols useful for warding off daemons. You do, on a whim, pick up a small bolt of Nightweave Silk, just enough to make a robe from it. Though it is not for you, you think Regicia might enjoy it.

    The station rumbles around you. It may be time to leave.

    You look around for a way out, and instead spot a vaulted door, labeled, in gilded script and high gothic, as the 'Chamber of Cognition'.

    You pause. You peer through the door. Despite the fact you have long replaced your lungs with far more efficient systems, you feel your breath catch in your throat.

    Within the chamber, illuminated by gentle spotlights, you see four artifacts, each of incredible value.

    The Daemonette laughs in your ear. "You are a strange one, Eta. So careful, except when it comes to acquiring. I like it, though. I am very much in favor of striving for more then what you have. Still, we wouldn't want to be too generous, would we? One! You get to pick one."
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    [Artifacts]

    [] The Brain
    It looks to be a standard-pattern Cerebral Preservation Tank, in good working order and with its stasis field intact: in other words, the preserved mind and knowledge of whoever is caught within, at your taking with just a bit of tinkering.
    It is inscribed as containing 'Magos Varduvel Vettel'.

    That name does ring a bell: one of the old monsters, a Magos Malefactor specializing in the construction of Daemon Engine Hulls, last seen when his ship was boarded by the Savage Pact in lieu of payment for the Daemon Engines he'd delivered to them. So that's where he's gotten off to.

    [] The Stone
    An egg-shaped, faceted crystal, about the size and weight of a human heart, psychic energy pulsing inside it. You know what this is, of course: no primer on Xenobiology held by a Daemonette would've held out on this particular detail. You are holding a Spirit Stone, containing the soul of a dead Eldar: useful as a source of energy or a bargaining chip, and perhaps even for the knowledge contained within, if it could be extracted.

    Also, or so the back of your mind keeps insisting, delicious.

    [] The Heart
    The Heart is larger than a human heart would be, and fixed into a frame made of bone by what appears to be razor wire. This, too, your newly acquired knowledge helps you quickly identify: the heart of an Eldar, and probably of a Drukhari, given that it still appears to be beating. The modifications that have been made to it suggest that whoever it belonged was either one of their famed Haemonculi or at least in their care for an unusually long period of time: there is potential there, for trade or the acquisition of knowledge, if you are willing to grasp it.

    [] The Machine
    The Device is made up, as far as you can see, of iridium and platinum, and kept in a cage made of copper wire, but the more you look at it, the more you become certain that it can only be one thing: an artificial brain, created before the prohibition on such devices existed, presumably dormant but probably still possessing whatever intelligence it once held. Who knows what secrets lie hidden in its depth? Who knows what malice does?

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    The Daemonette titters, at your choice. "Very interesting", she tells you.

    "Oh", she says, suddenly thoughtful. "Really, I never introduced myself. I am Salaala, Salaala Gorgefeast."

    She says the second name with relish, with satisfaction, as though it were a trophy freshly won.

    "Well, Eta Nu 9 35, I believe that it is now time for you to go."

    You can hear Salaala grin, even without seeing her, and then your Auspex is going wild, and around you, the vault begins disintegrating, walls made of solid adamantium dissolving as though they were ice in contact with fire.

    You do not look at what is revealed behind them. It is nothing you haven't seen before, of course, but still, looking directly into the Empyrean is never good for your health.

    You run. Theama-Nul and Myges Talef, devoid of any other options, run behind you.
    Salaala did promise to let you leave. She is, it seems, good to her word: you see the hatch of an escape pod appear before you.

    Devoid of any other option, you leap through it, your subordinates closely behind you, just getting in before the hatch closes with a resounding, mechanical clang.

    Charges fire. The escape pod launches.

    Very rapidly, you become aware that you are not in the backwater that housed the Astropathic Relay Station anymore. You have been transported rapidly through space.

    Salaala was precise with her words. She let you leave.

    She just omitted where you would be let out.

    There is a planet in your path, but it is several hours off.

    Theama-Nul uses the delay to fill you in, extremely briefly: 8-Doxa, you learn, is alive, extracted to the Wilful Eternity by the Yulrasians that fought alongside him, though heavily wounded. The Skinpiercer is destroyed: crippled by the boarding assault and then hit by the Eternity's plasma cannon to prevent a last-ditch effort to destroy the newly forming Hulk.

    They cannot tell you more than that: after, they returned to the Hulk to aid in your extraction and subsequently lost contact with the ship.

    "There is…something else", Theama-Nul tells you, and sends an image of a corridor that…appears to be entirely empty.

    "We may have a problem."

    You frown. There is nothing in the image. You check it again. Nothing. You disassemble it into a grid and go piece by piece.

    Wall Plates, the rivets holding them together formed in a way that speaks to having been forged according to Mars-Pattern STCs. Rust, spreading across the walls, speaking of inferior alloying. There is a leak in what appears to be a sewage pipe. Nothing. Tread marks along the floor speak to heavy duty servitors being used to carry cargo.

    You frown. You force your attention back. Nothing. You isolate the offending sector, disassembling it into smaller pieces. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

    Theama-Nul looks at you attentively, and then directs your attention to a puddle of sewage-water on the floor: something is reflected within, if barely. You catch a glimpse of light green and silver.

    "How did you even find this", you ask, and your subordinate shrugs. "You get used to looking for things your mind is telling you aren't there", they tell you.

    You are halfway through telling them that that sounds pathological when your mind suddenly insists, impossibly, that you have never met the person in the pod with you in your life.

    Well. Fair play, you are forced to admit. "So, any idea why?", you ask, and are met with a languid shrug. "None, yet. Seems unlikely for it to be the end of it, though."

    You nod, then look through the tiny viewport of the Escape Pod.

    it is not, you reflect somewhat dourly, as though you are going to be in any position to look into that, for the time being.

    The planet has grown closer, by now, and for a moment you think it is a gas giant, and that you are to be the victim of a particularly mean joke on the part of Salaala. That, at least, is quickly dispelled: the world before you appears solid, but a cloud of dust surrounds it.

    There is something strange, about that cloud: it is too evenly spread around the planet, it's particles of an odd size, of a strange color.

    "Salt?", Talef asks, seeming to temporarily forget that he is currently not talking to you.

    He is correct: it is a cloud of salt, interspersed with what seems like other materials, forming a strangely hypnotic pattern around whatever lies below.

    "Ritualistic", Theama-Nul opines, and obviously it is at this point you get close enough to spot the skeletons: hundreds of them, interspersed with the swirling material in the clouds.

    "Containing something?", you cant to your subordinate, and Theama-Nul shrugs eloquently.

    "Your guess is as good as mind", they opine.

    Whatever it is, it seems entirely unlikely that you aren't going to breach right through it.

    "Sensor Lock", Talef tells you, and for a moment you are convinced you are about to die, that this is actually it, that the Daemonette has sent you to your doom after all. Then you breach the clouds, and one of the Skeletons shatters against the viewport of the pod.

    For a moment, you cannot see at all: a shroud of particulates trails after you and then begins burning up in the atmosphere. It is only when the brilliant colors subside that you can see where you are going. Your own entry, along with the debris that trailed after you, seem to have punched holes into the cloud cover. Beams of sunlight are stabbing towards the ground, illuminating the ground below in what may be the first time in forever.

    You are in an Escape Pod, with limited steering: just one quick burst in one direction or the other at best. That will, however, be just enough to make it to one of the three spots below.
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    [Landing Site]
    [] The Ruined City
    Somebody has gone to great length to destroy the city scape you see sprawling out below you: at a glance, you see the marks of at the very least atomic weaponry, added to by the warping of metal associated with Lance Fire and the general ash cover that tends to endure after viral bombardment. Somebody really wanted to destroy the city, though the limited glance you have tells you that a lot of the ruins seem surprisingly intact.

    Whatever caused the containment of this world in the first place, you are likely to discover hints to it here. Of course, that also means there is likely to be dangers, both from remnants of the weapons used and from whatever they attempted to destroy in the first place.

    [] The Glowing Forest
    Not a forest in the first place, you note, at least not in the traditional sense: fluorescent fungi stretch out far beyond the edge of the limited sunlight, some of them reaching more then ten meters in height. It is, you grasp, an ecosystem not requiring sunlight. If there is intelligent life on the world below, it is likely to be there, and food and water will be more readily available than elsewhere.

    But of course, such ecosystems are likely to be dangerous, and you will need to be careful not to become the prey instead

    [] The Wreck
    Upon a Glacier below lies a shipwreck, a hole burned through its flanks by what must have been an anti-orbital defense cannon, though surprisingly intact other than that. It is likely to be the best way off the planet. It also seems to have come to rest in an environment utterly inimical to life, and repairing it will be a task bordering on the impossible.
     
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    • Spheres and Other Heresy: Part 1
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    • There is a lot of variance, in the construction of Escape Pod, from the slap-dash lifeboats of Intra-system craft, intended only to keep a crew alive for a few hours, to the fully equipped lifeboat you've seen on some Mechanicum Craft, intended to give a Magos stranded far from civilisation the absolute best chance at survival. You have seen some that allow for suspended animation, even: capable of keeping their crew alive for years, decades, and centuries, grasping at even the slightest chance to be found and revived.

    The Escape Pod you are in does not rise to that quality, though that is no great surprise: pods like that are relics in their own right, a ridiculous expenditure reserved for those that hold themselves to the highest importance and have the resources to back it up. If you had to guess, you would say that it comes from a battleship of some kind: it is intended to keep the important personnel of a destroyed ship alive until a battle is won and they can be collected, with atmospheric entry only a distant secondary consideration within the design.

    That means, of course, that when you enter the atmosphere it is absolutely awful.

    Theama-Nul is the only one that can fit into any of the shock seats: you and Talef are forced to stand, feet magnetized, braced for impact in a way that will never be enough. You almost pass out, as you breach the atmosphere. The Oculus turns to a cloud of fire, the particulate you have drawn with you burning up around you even as the ablative plating of the Escape Pod does. You fire the maneuvering thrusters and then almost pass out as the pod tumbles end over end for a brief moment. For a moment, you are utterly, completely convinced that this is it: this is the moment you will die, dashed unceremoniously upon some unnamed rock far away from anywhere else.

    It strikes you as perfectly unfair, and perfectly fitting.

    Of course, that is the moment the retro-thruster fires, and the tumble to certain death becomes a descent that can be called controlled only in the most technical of terms.

    You do not see much of the planet, as it rushes to meet you: the burning salt as left a fine film of soot upon the Oculus of the pod, and so the very first up-close impression of the new world you get is breaking through the cap of a one of the fungi at an odd angle, followed by skipping of the forest ground, breaching the stem of a second Mushroom, and then coming to rest upside down.

    Your brain would really like you to vomit, now, which is impressive, given your inner ear was replaced by a gyroscope almost a century ago.

    You push the impulse aside and punch through the oculus.

    Behind you, Talef cowers on the floor, cooling unit whirring like never before and audibly retching.
    [Roll: Eta-Nu 9-35: Ecology: 6,1: Success]

    It takes your eyes a few fractions of a second to adjust to the gloom: an uncommonly long time, but allowances must be made for the unusual situation. It is enough time to draw a breath of air, and register the foreign substances that become stuck in your inbuilt filters: spores, largely, released both from the fungi the pod broke through and from the small egg shapes that litter the forest floor.

    Some of them, your analytics tell you, would be at least mild hallucinogenics to the unadjusted organism.

    It is, you notice almost at once, too warm. This place has not seen the sun, perhaps in centuries or millennia. It should not be warm enough to support this much life, should not be warm enough to support water in an unfrozen state. And yet, here it is, hovering comfortably above the freezing point, stable (as far as you can tell) not just where it can support life, but where it can support human life. Livable temperatures, breathable earth, sustained growth despite the lack of light: it is almost not speculation to say that something about this planet is manipulated in some way, made to maintain a population. You take a moment to take scans of your environment, discovering several instances of Fauna: largely small homoiotherm vertebrae, some of them possessing fur, many lacking it. Eyes, your preliminary and entirely superficial analysis shows, tend either to the very large or to the vestigial, with other sensory organs making up the lack.

    The place is in a perpetual gloom, you note: a wide variety of fungi stand around you, the smallest less than a centimeter in diameter, the largest more than ten meters tall. Most of them are fluorescent, in one way or another: a wide variety of patterns are on display, though without deeper analysis, it is difficult to tell which one of these are meant to warn away and which ones are meant to attract.

    There is a thump behind you, followed by a string of binaric curses. Talef, it seems, has managed to leave the pod. Theama-Nul is gone, already, probably having a look around similarly to you.

    You find yourself strangely elated, despite everything: besides a few short-term expeditions, you have rarely had the opportunity to explore a novel ecosystem. Of course, finding out what makes your surroundings tick is going to be absolutely crucial for survival.

    You set to work with a purpose that you have not felt in years. By the time you have to stop to rest, 47 hours have passed, and you have cataloged 124,573 species previously unknown to your internal databases, largely varieties of fungi and small mammalians and microorganisms adapted to their environment. About 500 of them are usable, in one way or another: largely as a food source, though you have also identified six small mushrooms that you ought to be able to extract toxins from, ranging from a hypercoagulant to a powerful hallucinogen.

    You also discover another thing that is both a little exciting and a little worrying: the environment you find yourself in is not natural, at least not entirely. On one hand, of course, there is the usual signs of warp-born corruption: the eyeless vermin with too many teeth, the strange, grasping tendrils some of the fungi seem to sport, the frequent disruption to the bodyplans of the animals you observed by random growths, limbs, or sensory organs.

    But even despite that, and somewhat more excitingly, there is clear evidence of intelligent manipulation: something sapient has done careful and possibly millenia-long work to adapt and change the environment to it's needs, edible and medicinally useful fungi spread in patterns that is too deliberate to be the result of an accident of nature.

    There are sentient beings with roughly the nutritional and medical requirements of a human population: not a small one, either. It is a primitive effort at ecological manipulation, of course, but that is to be expected of autodidacts with no access to the greater variety of toolsets you can make use of.

    "Nomads", you cant at Theama-Nul and Myges Talef, as you stand hooked to the internal generator of the Escape Pod, filling up your energy stores as best you can. "Probably travelling all throughout the forest, following the seasonal patterns of the organisms they rely on."

    Theama-Nul nods: "There's other traces of them, too."

    He holds up something: a piece of sharpened volcanic glass, disturbingly sharp and shaped into an arrow head.

    "Found this lodged into one of the trunks", Theama-Nul explains. "Grown in, so it's been there a while, but not something that happens by accident."

    People, then: an entire civilisation of them, surviving here even after the planet has been shrouded in salt. There is potential, there, and dangers.

    Before you can discuss this any further, however, Theama-Nul suddenly holds a sword wreathed in blue fire in his hand, and your world dissolves into screams.

    Something breaches through the caps of the mushrooms. For a moment, all there is to your world is the noise: a scream that seems to surpass the audible and pierce directly into your brain. You catch sight of something that is mostly angular metal and blades. Theama-Nul's sword blazes, hacking at a wing that seems to be made mostly of knives. Then it spirals away, and you find yourself face to face with a maw of grinding gears, and a yellow, slitted eye.

    A claw sweeps for your guts, crackling with energy. You avoid it, if only barely. A bladed wing almost takes your head off, forcing you backwards, clawed limbs skittering above the uneven ground.

    You strike out with your hydraulic blade, and it glances off the metal hide of the monstrosity that is attacking you, almost becoming embedded in the trunk of yet another mushroom.

    The thing lurches forward, it's maw grinding. You fire a poisoned dart into it's eye mostly out of principle before you dodge, taking three skittering steps up a fungal trunk and slashing downwards with your blade, even as it is shredded below you.

    The mushroom topples, and you throw yourself forward, propelled through the air in a burst of hydraulic energy, metal arms covering your face as you burst through a second mushroom and hit the ground hard.
    There is another screech, and you whirl around, blade raised, only to witness the strange engine of destruction take flight on its strange, impossible metal wings. It stares at you, it's yellow eyes hateful and malign, and then it screeches again, slicing through the mushroom cap above it in a cloud of spores and fluorescent vapor. Theama-Nul's sword is stuck in it still, still blazing with it's blue fire.

    For a moment, it seems like it will escape, taking the sword with it. It rises above the canopy of caps, trailing blue fire.

    Then it detonates, suddenly and almost without warning: black fire shoots from the pseudo-organics, and then it is gone, the shade of a manta-like entity briefly in it's place before it circles upwards.

    You watch the sword fall down, strangely unaffected by the explosion, trailing more blue fire behind it.

    [Roll:Theama-Nul:Combat:2d6.:4,3. Partial Success.]
    [Roll:Eta-Nu 9-35:Combat:1d6:6. Full Success.]

    "It draws power from the Warp", Theama-Nul preempts your request for an explanation, "which means that proximity to warp-based entities kind of makes it go into overdrive."

    "A Daemon Engine", you say, and Theama-Nul nods. "And if the effort put in to contain this planet is anything to go by, I would wager it isn't the only one."

    You let out a burst of frustrated static, and look around yourself, at the landing site. The pod has dug a trench, and the fight with the Daemon Engine has ensured several of the trees have toppled over, fluorescent fluid spattered all around, including, you note, over your own robes. It seems likely more of the Daemon Engines are going to show up, and equally as likely that some of those nomads will be around, attracted either by the ripening vegetation all around you or by the flashes of light repeatedly pointing at the area.

    You have to figure out how to deal with your new situation, and do it quickly.
    [Location]
    [] Move
    The area you are in is not extremely defensible, and it is almost certain that there will be other, more defensible places around. Going to them will mean leaving the resources you cannot carry behind, of course, but might be a trade worth making.
    [Direction of the Move]
    [] Follow the Nomad Trails
    There are a series of foot trails that run through the fungal forest, and following them will lead you either towards other humans, or at the very least towards a place that they have deemed suitable for shelter. There is, of course, no telling how they will react to your presence, should they find you, but having people with local knowledge at your disposal would probably be immensely useful
    [] Uphill
    You will take up position away from any of the obvious Nomad Trails, making your way up the highest elevated place you can find. Lugging equipment up there will be difficult, but on the other hand it will give you the twin advantage of visibility and defensibility
    [] Downhill
    Downhill is the most likely place to find a source of water: running water even, which could serve as a steady source of energy. Probably an easier place to carry equipment, too, all told.

    [Generator]
    The Escape Pod features a small Prometheum Generator: not much, but also potentially your only source of energy available on the planet. Removing and moving it will be difficult, slow you significantly, and probably leave a pretty readable trail, and removing it will take time. On the other hand, it seems unlikely you will get anything even as meager as it, if you move.
    [] Take it
    [] Leave It

    [Sword]
    The Sword took out a Daemon Engine, and then fell…somewhere…into the fungal forest below. The trail of fire has shown the location that might have been fairly clearly, but retrieving it will take time you might not be able to afford to lose. On the other hand, it is a known way to fight Daemon Engines.
    [] Retrieve it
    [] Leave it
    [] Stay
    This place might not be the most defensible, but it is the place you are, and you would rather stick around and prepare than risk being caught unprepared on the move.
    [Preparations. Pick Any Three. Options May Be Double Or Triple Picked for maximized effect]

    [] Physical Defenses
    -Palisades. Moats. Pitfalls. Sling Traps. Poison Darts. Some toxic gasses, perhaps? Securing your campsite against physical attacks will be labor intensive, but also defend against the most likely avenue of assault
    [] Empyrical Defenses
    -Salt Circles. Blood Wards. An attack from the empyrean is harder to ward against, but guarding against it's outpours seems a good way to stop anything that might trample your more physical defenses with ease
    [] Sustainable Energy
    The Generator of the Pod runs on prometheum, of which you only possess rapidly disappearing stores. Setting up a refinery process for new fuel will be difficult, but several of the fungi around you do possess promising materials for it.
    [] Retrieve The Sword
    The Sword took out a Daemon Engine, and then fell…somewhere…into the fungal forest below. The trail of fire has shown the location that might have been fairly clearly, but retrieving it will take time you might not be able to afford to lose. On the other hand, it is a known way to fight Daemon Engines.
    [] Secure Genetic Material
    The Custodian Glove still sits there, unmolested, potentially containing invaluable genetic material that might degrade more with any second it isn't extracted. Doing so will take valuable time, but who knows what will be left if you don't?
    [] The Heart
    The Heart has begun beating more rapidly, and it seems clear by now that it might regenerate into it's former owner…who might be invaluable in helping you out, here. Finding a way to speed the regeneration might be helpful.

    Please vote by plan. I am glad to be back.

    .....and I never actually closed the vote. This actually means this is the fastest turnaround between the vote closing and an update yet, and I certainly didn't take weeks and weeks due to writer's block and work.
    Scheduled vote count started by Uniquelyequal on Jul 27, 2024 at 9:47 AM, finished with 33 posts and 25 votes.
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    • Spheres and Other Heresy: Part 2
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    • The three of you, for all that you have fallen on hard times, are members of the True Mechanicum. This means that all of you hold a plethora of highly sophisticated tools, capable of great feats of craftsmanship and precision that would seem utterly miraculous to the unaugmented person.

    Unfortunately, none of those tools include a spade, an axe, or a saw.

    There is something oddly liberating, about fashioning these most basic implements of human artifice. None of the materials you have to work with are optimal, of course, but some of the taller mushrooms have sturdy enough flesh to fashion tool handles, and the metal of the escape pod proves sufficiently stable for fashioning the tools.

    You leave the digging of the initial moat to Theama and Myges, taking cover in the meager shelter of the pod to see to your own project.

    Obviously, purely rationally, the odds of any remaining genetic material deteriorating further then they already have in the indeterminate amount of time the gauntlet was stored in the vault are low. On the other hand, they are not completely absent, and losing your chance to decipher such a valuable secret would truly be a shame.

    You would, of course, prefer to have use of your laboratory, but the field testing equipment will have to do, for now. The Chymistry Probe you have is fairly sophisticated, anyways: enough to identify any transhuman tissue that might have been left behind, though perhaps not its degree of purity.

    The first results you get, however, are not promising: traces of ethanol and urea, as well as all the myriad and exciting toxins that a Space Marine's Bletcher's Gland might produce. The gauntlet has plainly been used and abused by people with no respect or appreciation for science or the sort of knowledge that might be gleaned from it, but a lot of notion of juvenile dominance rituals.

    The Emperor, in his infinite wisdom, chose children as the base material for his supersoldiers. It is at times like these that you cannot help but wonder if it was that decision above all other that led to Horus' Rebellion.

    [Roll: Eta-Nu 9-35: Biological Engineering: 4d6. Roll: ?, ?, ?, ?. Result: ?]

    You almost give up, on finding the remnants of a drug that you are pretty sure could induce six days of hallucination before killing the subject even in its current concentration. Surely, whatever sample might be left is long gone, subject to the endless abuses and ravages the gauntlet has been exposed to ever since it was prised off the hand of whichever hapless Custodes happened to fall to the Renegades. Then, hidden inside the joint of one of the fingers, you find it: a speck of dried blood and a few skin cells. It will not be enough to decode the Emperor's secrets, of course. You doubt that ten full Bodies and a lifetime of study could do that, even for one as talented as yourself. It will, however, possibly yield something: some secret of the Emperor, capable of improving other organisms just that little bit that is needed to give them an edge. You retrieve the sample, and drop it into your internal storage container. Then you stand up, looking around, taking in how much time has passed. It is strange, you reflect: despite your inbuilt chrono, the general lack of changes in the light seem to be messing with your sense of time tremendously. You have spent three hours, stooped over the gauntlet: a quick glance outside shows that in that time, the improvised moat has grown quite a bit, now encompassing almost a quarter of the intended circumference, dirt piled up behind it quite highly: the lack of proper roots besides the omnipresent mycelium appears to be helping quite a bit.

    The general lack of binaric chatter and the discarded tool grips does suggest that the task is a long and thankless one. For a moment, you weigh the option of just pretending you are busy for a while longer, but ultimately the moat being duck is for your own protection, and the quicker it is done the better. You step forward, and in the tight confines of the pod, your mechdendrites brush against a hollow compartment that had, apparently, become quite deformed by the crash: deformed enough to spring open and reveal the set of tools for an emergency just like this.

    They are, of course, made from sturdy, dependable Munitorum-grade steel: the sort of tools that can survive for years and years without breaking out.

    For some reason, the revelation of your discovery does not cause the sort of universal joy you would have expected.

    Surely, you consider, this is not because of you claiming the one good spade for yourself. It is only fair you do, of course: after all, you are the one who discovered it.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    In the end, your defenses are not all that impressive: a moat with sharpened stakes at its bottom surrounds your camp side, with the displaced earth piled up and compressed behind it, additional digging ensuring that the breastwork can hide a ducking body, should the need arise. As far as it has been possible, the mushrooms within the campsite have been left intact: there are potentially more of the flying monstrosities around, and though any top cover provided is flimsy at best, especially after the first daemon engine shredded the top cover going in and then rushing out again, you still judge it better then nothing.

    You do give consideration of deforesting an area surrounding your improvised fortifications, until Theama-Nul pointed out that you have auspex scanners and weaponry that can at least theoretically pierce through the mushroom stems to quite a large extent.

    The forest is not cover, to your enemies: it is a trap, and an obstacle.

    You work for about twenty-four hours straight, finishing up your defenses, half-sleeping in shifts as needed. Your bionic limbs were obviously not made for mechanical labour, but they are still stronger than any weak flesh, and so you make good progress. It takes another three or so hours to find the necessary material to refine something that should at least be useable for the generator, though setting up the accelerated ethanol reaction does cost you the last bits of hyperyeast you still carry with out.
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    It is then, of course, just as you are settled down recharging and preparing your next steps, that they arrive.

    Despite everything, despite the auspex and the general awareness of your survival, you almost miss the Scout: she is a slip of a girl, barely older than sixteen standard Terran Years by your best evidence, and covered in a coat of supple leather.

    There is a layer of small pyramids below the first layer of her coat, made from a material you cannot quite get a grasp on. Whatever it is, it is distorting your auspex: not enough that you cannot get a fix on her location, but enough to make her appear in a strange, lumpen way, distinctly different from an ordinary human silhouette. It would have worked too, probably, but you are used to the strange shape your fellows in the True Mechanicum can take, and so she tripped your alarms still: later then she would have otherwise, but early enough to have an early warning nonetheless. The fact that she has what appears to be warding signs in silver sown into the outside of the cloak does help you spot her visually, ultimately: her camouflage is quite good though, apart from that.

    An additional layer of defense against daemonic attention has been judged a sufficient reason to break stealth, it seems.The people who live here appear to be pretty reasonable, all things considered

    She observes you for a while, close to an hour: long enough for you to finish charging your internal energy stores, and long enough to trot to the outskirts of the earthenwork.

    You could kill her, of course: quite easily, in fact.

    That would be a pointless waste of ammo, however: it would simply prompt the sort of investigation that would happen anyways, and you doubt that she can tell her group much in terms of damaging information: for all their savviness, you doubt that you are anything remotely within their context.

    So of course, when the assault begins, it does so with the bursting of a clay vessel above your fortifications, followed by the slow descent of metal stripes that make your auspex utterly unusable.

    You do not think that the arrows that impact you are intended to do anything but distract.

    Runes have been inscribed on their shafts, and you see a viscous mass that is probably quite toxic in the hollow channels of their stone tips.

    Still, they feel like a formality, and a distraction: an opening gesture attempted primarily because, for all that it will probably not work, it might, and that would probably safe everyone a lot of trouble.

    As it is, all it does is ensure you have arrows stuck in your outer robes and glancing off your metal limbs, and then a group of mutants is rushing at you, breaking through the slowly falling stripes.

    They are dressed in more of the supple leather, with metal and bone sewn into them to provide additional protection, and several of them sport mutations: patches of see-through skin seem abundant, revealing the bone and blood vessel below.

    Also, the Leader sports a pair of quite impressive curved horns, sprouting forth from his temple: a fact that becomes abundantly clear when he attempts to leap over the moat and atop the Earthenwork and almost gores you, before a solid jab sends him reeling backwards and into the trench below.

    Neither the fall nor the stakes seem to have killed him, but judging by the screams of pain he should stay down for a while. Several more of them attempt to climb the wall, and largely fail. Towards your rear, you hear Theama-Nul open up with a Las Carbine you did not know he had, using the continuous power supply of the generator to send shots at the onrushing attackers in a continuous barrage.

    On your other side, there is a hiss, and a roar, and then Myges Talef does after all deforest a fairly broad swathe of the forest as he depletes the last of his Chem Munitions.

    You do not see all this, except from the corner of your eyes: you are quite busy fending off your own assault, spider legs kicking men off the rampart, monofillament wires cutting hands and bone-clubs in equal manner.

    One of them comes periously close to getting you. A woman springs up onto the earthenwork, eyes wild, swinging her club. She is screaming, of course, swinging her club.

    You turn it asideat the last moment before ramming your hydraulic blade through her stomach, severing her spine right below her stomach. Only then do the words register with you, and you realize she is speaking a version of High Gothic: garbled, perhaps, mistranslated, but still more than legible. The chants, of course, are more then familiar, for all that some of them have apparently fallen prey to linguistic drift.

    "Blood for the Prince!", the mutants scream, as they rush on. "Skulls for her Seat!"

    Despite this, they break quickly. Really, break is not the right word: they simply abandon the assault when they realize it is not work, retreating back into the cover of the fungal forest, dragging their wounded with them where they can.
    [Roll: Eta Nu 9-35: Combat/Regicia's Cybernetics: 4d6+1d6(Cybernetics) 5,3,6,5+1: Full Success]
    [Roll: Myges Talef: Combat: 1d6+1d6 (Fortifications): 5+6: Full Success]
    [Roll: Theama-Nul: Combat: 2d6+1d6: 4,3+6: Full Success]
    The dead and dying, you note, have been left behind: an oddly cold piece of triage, though you suppose they can always collect them later, once you have been dealt with.

    You choose, for the time being, not to waste ammo by firing at their backs.

    Their initial assault has failed. If they try again, you can always shoot it at their fronts.

    A quick survey reveals a surprising lack of casualties, though obviously it is hard to tell in the bio-organic slurry Talef's work has left behind: you spot less then a dozen bodies, littered across the field.

    You do not know, of course, how many of them there are: it could be that these losses are utterly crippling, the sort of defeat that can utterly wreck a tribe like theirs appear to be.

    Yet something tells you that this is not so: the same thing that has your spines stand up, perhaps, when less then a quarter of an hour later a woman appears, dressed in a long, flowing robe made of leather that is strangely translucent, the faces covering her shoulders leaving absolutely no doubt as to its origin. She, too, is mutated: translucent skin forms a strange pattern on her face that seems to continue down her neck, revealing bone and muscle beneath it, and her left hand has been transformed into a crab-like pincer. Curved horns jut from her head, a mane of black hair spilling forth around them: several skulls have been woven into the hair, as well as rings of precious metal: you identify some gold, alongside aluminum and silver.

    In her right hand, there is a staff, and it is formed from wood: actual, real wood, not the matter of the fungi that stand all around you.

    The staff thrums with quiet power, actinic lightning sparking between the horns of the skull that tops it: this one is quite a bit more obvious, and its prolonged shape finally helps you identify why her own horns seemed so familiar.

    It is the skull of a Bloodletter, or at least of something that looks suspiciously like one.

    The woman, the psyker, raises her paradoxical staff, and waits until she can be assured she has your full attention.

    "We should talk", she says, her High Gothic strangely formed and accented, but more than understandable.

    For a moment, you consider simply shooting her. She had an opportunity to talk: it was before her people launched an immediate assault on you.

    Something, however, makes you pause. Without doubt, she knows the risk of you doing just that.

    So why does she think you won't?

    The reason for this becomes apparent very quickly. You had disabled your auspex, when the chaff had started raining down: no use splitting your attention for something that had been decisively countered. That means, however, that you do not see the engine before it steps smoothly between two of the fungal trunks.

    It strides forward on two massive, digitigrade legs, sharp talons churning up the soil with every step. It is affixed to an elongated, segmented body, the metal of its carapace scarred and pockmarked by age and exposure to the elements, any heraldry long lost under a layer of grime and glowing fungal fluids. You are reminded, in a way, of a wasp, though without the characteristically thin waist between thorax and abdomen. Sharp-edged metal Tendrils jut out of its body where you would expect its first pair of legs, swaying back and forth with significant speed that belies a sort of nervous energy: more of them jut out from the hood that covers what must be it's primary sensor pod, equally twitching and feeling around.

    The hood, you find, is interesting: made of more of the supple leather, metal wire forms a mesh beneath its surface: more silver, unless you miss your mark, tied both as a cage to contain the motive force and as a decently effective sigil of warning. A harness runs out from the hood: lines of sinew and hair run too and fro across the carapace of the engine. There is no lead, but it does not need one. As you watch, the psyker raises her pincer-hand, making a slow gesture from left to right.

    There is a whirring, deep within its: the buzzing of what sounds like a billion flies.

    "I do apologize for the violence that has occurred", the Psyker continues, "we are not used to metal men in these shrooms that are not hell-bent on our destruction."

    She cocks her head, regarding you curiously. "But you are different, aren't you? We might be able to help one another. We should talk."

    You cock your head, curious despite yourself. You do not have anything to counter that daemon engine: neither wards that might hold it back nor the sword that might counter it. You may be able to run: flee towards the sector of the forest Myges has carved out, banking on your superior firepower to keep the organics from following and on your mobility to outmaneuver the engine. Alternatively, you might stand your ground, seeking to break whatever means the Psyker is using to control the Engine: rip that harness, tear down the hood, and it turns from their most dangerous asset to a liability.

    Or you could just talk, and see what she has to say. Who knows, perhaps it is, against all odds, reasonable.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    [Reaction]

    [] Fight
    [] Flee
    [] Talk

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
     
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    • Interlude: Back Home
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    • A/N: So the Update has been seriously fighting me, and work has been kicking my ass to boot. It is still coming, I am committed to that, but in an effort to get at least something out before I go on the vacation I'm about to go on, have this little thing.
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    The Fulcrum Nutonium was not nearly as impressive as its grand name suggested. In truth, it was little more than a former water tank that had been haphazardly but thoroughly outfitted with every method to counter surveillance that had passed through the mind of the cabal of Magi that had originally appropriated it. Between the wards, totems, and sensor baffles, there was not a lot of space left at the bottom of the old basin, especially not if one took the augmentations those that would use it might sport.

    Still, it was one of the few meeting spots upon Nuton's Folly where one could meet and talk with relative certainty of remaining unobserved, and it was remote enough and obscured enough that the risk of assassination was minimized: it would be difficult to strike it from orbit, and any larger forces would be funneled through the labyrinthian corridors that led to it.

    There remained a risk, of course: an engine small enough or lone operative dangerous enough might still be able to strike and kill those meeting at the Fulcrum, and a sufficient commitment of forces or ordinance would be able to bypass the limitations it imposed.

    Still, these risks were deemed worth it, for to those that used the Fulcrum as a meeting place, communication was deemed invaluable. They called themselves the Cabal of Minor Concerns: a deliberately self-effacing title that belied what were, in truth, exceedingly grand ambitions. Those that met within the Fulcrum were, at least within their own understanding, the rightful rulers of Nuton's Folly: having taken it upon themselves to resolve all the minor concerns far below the notice of the Council of Eight and whatever hidden masters it served.

    The meeting that was being held now, in the early hours of what passed for morning upon Nuton's Folly, was about just one such matter. Specifically, it was about the way it was running the risk of becoming something of a major concern.

    "We have lost another of the Lights of Charov"

    The woman that had canted had not been recognisable as such for three centuries: the ravages of the warp and the augmentations that had replaced most of her flesh had not cared for petty social distinctions, and she had clung on to the identifier mostly by long force of habit. Phess Nexiel had long sought to purge herself of petty human emotions, and certainly her binaric did not betray any hint of them. The Warp, however, had undermined all efforts she had made to this effect: the stuff of raw, distilled sentient sensation running through her had outpaced anything she could do through the replacement of glands and the reduction of neural matter. To those that could read the arcs of warpstuff that danced across the frames of her skeletal augmetics and blazed behind octupled lenses that had replaced her eyes, Nexiel was an open book.

    To those that had to deal with her regularly, such skills became a simple matter of survival. Trantian Eyronivo had dealt with her often, and so it was abundantly clear to him that news of another light being extinguished had aroused more rage within his fellow than he could entirely understand. The Lights were useful, yes: beacons for Navigators to lock on to in the absence of the Astronomicon or the Eye of Terror, tremendously simplifying navigation at least within local areas. Losing them would be catastrophic to the glut of would-be empire buildings that had broken forth from the Cicatrix Maledictum.

    Nuton's Folly, of course, was not amongst these. "I do not think I am aware of all the details, honored brethren", Eyronivo canted carefully, expending every effort to keep his pinions from fluttering nervously, powering down his augmetic arms to stop his fingers from fidgeting. He had seen the warp-infused Volkite of Nexiel at work before, in enough detail that he did not even wish to simulate a damage model of what it would do to him. Best to tread carefully. "Nuton's Folly is not dependent on it to meet its obligations, and Charov is one of Bile's Acolytes, not ours. It is neither to our detriment nor our responsibility: merely an inconvenience."

    There was a whir within the depths of Nexiel's robes, immediately identifiable to Eyronivo as the power drill that tipped one of her Mechadendrites. It was not the integrated Volkite, of course: very likely he could react before she closed the distance and sunk it anywhere vital. Still he rerouted power to his reflex circuits, and readied his internal refractor field for rapid deployment. He did not plan to die to a temper tantrum. For a brief moment, the drill continued to roar: then it subsided, and the flickering of the warp light across Nexiel's limbs subsided slightly.

    "Jux-Plea went silent with it", she canted, finally, when she had calmed down sufficiently. There was a sense of embarrassment about her, now. She did not like to be in thrall to irrationalities and emotions.

    Of course, Advos Jux-Plea potentially having gotten himself killed meddling in something that had up to that point been none of her business was, as far as Trantian Eyronivo was concerned, more than enough reason to get at least a little angry. The Magos had been young, less than four decades by his reckoning, but he had been a promising up and comer. He had been a savant when it came to psykers, but more importantly he had had a knack for diplomacy: it had been the hope of the Cabal to bring him into their fold more firmly, as soon as he had returned from his excursion. The wasted potential stung. Still, it did not sting enough to call a meeting such as this, nor enough to cause an outburst such as the one he had witnessed from his peer.

    Something else was afoot, here. Trantian Eyronivo felt a pit open up within his stomach as he considered the possibility.

    "He made assurances, didn't he?", he asked, and nearly flinched when another surge ran across her body. "In his last communication to me Advos Jux-Plea assured me he had ensured good relations with one Skyraal of the Apostles of Blasphemy, by pledging his support in fixing the Lights of Charov."

    Eyronivo powered down his augmetics again, though he could not prevent his wings from starting to flutter nervously.

    "Suboptimal", he canted out, once the initial flutter of nervous energy had passed through him. "Is destroying them an option?", he inquired. A thousand Warbands plied the dark side of the Great Rift, these days: pruning one or the other might prove the better option.

    "He is of Abbadon's lot", Nexiel replied tersely, "and has gained the allegiance of many more of the Warbands in our immediate surroundings, directly or indirectly."

    That was a no, then, though not surprisingly: an answer in the affirmative had never been extremely likely. Jux-Plea would not have made a deal with a bit player, after all: for all that he had apparently gotten himself killed needlessly, he had been fairly shrewd when it came to politics and power.

    "What resources can we deploy to ensure the Lights do not fail in their entirety."

    The energy surging across Nexiel's body subsided slightly: she enjoyed solving problems such as these, even in a situation as dire as this one.

    "Zeta Van Hex wanted to take a closer look anyways", she canted, "and that should cover any issues with the warp. Jingh Soliatid is nearby and would be able to cover any of the more technomatic . I am sending 37-Thaulk along with Van Hex for protection."

    Eyronivo nodded, mentally calculating the favors Nexiel must have called in to ensure the cooperation of such esteemed Magi.

    There was, however, a gap within their shared and considerable expertise.

    "What about the biological component?", he asked, and saw the energy across his peer's limbs surge almost immediately.

    "None of the Magi Abominus are available", she canted out, spitting out the binaric like a projectile. Gwauss Balphanust is away to brew disease for the Death Guard, Iota Plure is working with the Sixfold Excruciators in turning that Eldar World they captured, and Phul Tallene still hasn't gotten in touch with us after they went to make beasts for the Choir Annihilus, which isn't terribly surprising."

    She was working herself up into a rage again, and so he took great care to ensure his defensive measures were ready before he made his own suggestion.

    "What about Eta Nu 9-35", he asked, and ducked under the Mechatendril sweeping through the cramped space with enough force to take his head off.

    "They blew up a moon", Nexiel canted, binaric heavy with enraged artifacts.

    "They have an exemplary record for putting getting a project done before any other consideration", Eyronivo argued, "both before their exile and since."

    "Didn't the Beacon of Perfection get sucked into the Warp after he arrived", Nexiel inquired archly, and he could only shrug. "It resolved the complaint, didn't it? Possibly there wasn't another way."

    "They're….", Nexiel began, and he interrupted her, ignoring the annoyed surge of light at his impudence. "...the best for the work, and also perfectly expendable. My sources tell me they're working with the Sorrowful Martyrs right now, at least going by their last report. It should be perfectly doable to redirect them to the Lights, once that message has been resolved."

    "If the Word Bearers don't torch them for being unable to keep their opinions to themselves", Nexiel canted, quietly.

    Eyronivo gave a reluctant cant in the affirmative, shrugging his wings and shoulders both.

    "I am very open to better ideas."

    She did not have any. He had been afraid of that.
     
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