It takes you seventy-two hours to finish your report. You could have been much quicker, but the Infernal Machine (which is what you have come to call the strange daemonic communication device that the Court of Eight has settled you with) turns out not to have any input device except for the clunky, mechanical keyboard. You will be limited to words, then: any attempt to transport anything physical seems far beyond this thing's capabilities.
You spend only about an hour trying to input the report with your remaining hand. After that, you simply retask a Servitor which you
can interface with, and force it to type out your internal records verbatim. It's a clunky way to do this sort of thing, but the entire thing is clunky and awful.
That is honestly no surprise. You've never met a Magos Diabolus who wasn't in some way fundamentally lazy. Half the time, their machines wouldn't even work without the reality-bending interference of the Warp.
It takes 72 more hours for you to hear anything back from Nuton's Folly, which worries you somewhat. Someone might actually be reading the damn thing.
Either way, it gives you enough time for you to run the first preliminary tests on the samples you have taken, and to store them in a stasis field which will hopefully prevent any sort of residual xeno scrap code from infecting any of the surrounding machinery.
The preliminary tests you conduct are both interesting and frustrating at the same time: most of them can't even begin to get a proper read on the materials you have taken, and what little you can decipher is extremely perplexing. The silvery material is far too light for how hard it is to damage, and seems to have a strange ability to repair damage, drawing back together when you manage to break it apart, which is no mean feat in itself. The black stone is strangely dread-inducing, in a particular way that seems indicative of interaction with the very Empyrean itself, and your soul through it. Both of them seem to be almost actively resistant to any attempts to discern their molecular makeup, either absorbing or reflecting most radiation you can think to throw at it. They don't react with anything. They do not, to the best of your ability to discern, conduct heat or electricity.
You understand why somebody would want to use this stuff as building material. If it could be shaped at will, as the Necrons seemed to be able to do, you struggle to come up with how it could be made more suitable.
There is potential here. It's a shame that you cannot seem to unlock it yet.
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Research Project Unlocked:
Secrets of Necrodermis
1/12
Secrets of Blackstone
1/12
Research Projects are a way to unravel the deeper mysteries of the Universe, conducted over a long period of time. Every downtime period, you will be able to invest time and effort into one of these, which will give you both the possibility of progress and expose you to the risks that might be associated with the material studied. At certain points within the progression you might unlock benefits through the knowledge already accumulated. Equally, you may on occasion hit roadblocks that require specialized equipment or additional samples to overcome.
___________________________________________________________________________
The containment fields you create are also at least useful for throwing the Tokens Talef brings by into.
You elect not to interrogate when and where he had the time to infiltrate his scrap code into the Precogitator. You suspect it would only make you angry.
By the time the response arrives, the ship is mostly patched up again, and the gigantic Plasma Cannon has been installed, even if it isn't patched into the ship's systems properly yet. That is something you can do while underway, however: the quicker you are away from Zerom, the better you will feel about yourself. You retrieve the parchment somewhat impatiently, noting, with some interest, that it seems to be regrowing at the back of its spool as you use it up.
That, you begrudgingly hand to whoever constructed the machine, is somewhat clever.
Your momentary good mood immediately evaporates, once you read your instructions.
Destroy Xenos Sample posthaste
Prevent Regicia Ko-Bea from making further local political ties
Condense report to essential information
Continue reporting on performance of subordinates
Proceed to Seriphon Prime
Make contact with the Host of Ninefold Revelation
Repair the Hand of Transformation
You'll be damned. Somebody actually read your report. This would be a satisfying feeling, if it wasn't so damned inconvenient.
___________________________________________________________________________
You have received direct orders to destroy the samples of Xenos Technology you have taken.
Do you comply with them?
[Order]
[] Comply
[] Do Not Comply
___________________________________________________________________________
Regicia Ko-Bea's workshop seems to be about as different from yours as it can possibly be: she, much like you, has repurposed one of the old Grain Silos. Where you only made the bare minimum of adjustments to make it usable as your Workshop, however, the Magos Malefactors seems to have gone all out, molding it perfectly to her tastes both professionally and aesthetically. Six large, faceted mirrors are set into the walls, each section of it giving you a perfect all-around view of yourself when you gaze into them. The walls visible in between them are painted top to bottom with anatomical images, most of them human, some unmutated, some mutated, some distinctively xeno. You recognize Aeldari bones, and a cross section of distinctly orkish muscle mass, as well as something that looks like the beak of a Kroot. You also, impressively, don't recognize some of what is on display there.
Regicia Ko-Bea notices your gaze drawn to one particularly bewildering cross section of a pincer of some sort.
"That's a Daemonettes', darling."
You scoff at that, which luckily does not translate to your facial features. That would explain why none of the nerve endings or sinews made any particular sense. Regicia gives a slight chuckle. "Not particularly useful for material applications, of course, but a fascinating afternoon of dissection anyways."
She is wearing a robe that does not really qualify as such, in your opinion: it is sleeveless and form fitting, a slit at it's side revealing legs that seem to be moved by a deeply intricate system of fine cogs, seemingly with almost no electrical components to steer it.
"I wanted to be able to at least run if somebody sprung a haywire field on me", Regicia explains, when she catches you staring, "and besides, it was an interesting challenge."
You shudder at the thought of a haywire field. It wouldn't kill you outright, probably, but it would still be exceedingly unpleasant.
"Do you want to take a closer look at it", Magos Ko-Bea asks you, and places it onto one of the delicate stools with which she has for some bewildering reason chosen to litter her living space before you can process what she just asked of you.
You stare for exactly ten seconds, dumbfounded. Displays like this are virtually unheard of. You can see almost the entirety of her design through her transparent skin.
And yet you couldn't recreate it, you admit to yourself, at least not without more effort then any gain it would bring.
Perhaps that is why she is showing you, to revel in her own superiority and your recognition of it. Perhaps she simply likes showing off. Perhaps, you admit to yourself, she is simply trying to throw you off-balance, knowing what effect such artistry is likely to have on you.
You look at her face and find her expression to be utterly intransparent: a smirk that might be mocking and might be bemused. Until you can find further evidence, you decide to assume all three are true, to some extent.
It does certainly advertise her skills as a Cyberneticist. "You have decided to take my offer, then?", she asks, and you give her a cant in the affirmative. Your old arm was destroyed because of her: it is only right for her to use her time and materials to replace it.
She smiles, her entire noospheric presence lighting up with excitement, and even if you suspect she is deliberately transmitting it you do not think she would be capable of faking such in its entirety.
Wall of shining metal close around you from the ground at the clap of her hand, articulate robotic arms attached to them. Sterilizing agents descend in a mist that tingles on what remains of your skin.
It is, you have to admit, an impressive operating theater, even if the presentation is a little ostentatious for your taste.
"I've taken the liberty to draw up some designs for your perusal", she says, seemingly very exciting. "I can make all of these fairly quickly. Just tell me which ones you want."
She transmits them noospherically, one after another. Some of the designs are outlandish to an extreme, or incompatible with some internal system she cannot know about, and you dismiss them immediately. Others, however, are more interesting. In the end, you settle on three options from which you may choose.
___________________________________________________________________________
The [Cybernetic] you ultimately settle on is…
[] transparent and humanlike
-Created in the style of Ko-Bea's own prosthetic, this is the most human-like arm amongst the lot. It would, of course, clash somewhat with the aesthetics of your other cybernetics, and her hand would be clear to see in its creation. On the other hand, this is likely the kind of cybernetic she has the most experience making, and be exceedingly useful for all kinds of versatile precision work to boot
[] sharp and spider-like
-Regicia Ko-Bea's take on your own style of cybernetics, this is a long, segmented limb, eight symmetrically ordered claw-like appendages serving as fingers towards its end. Its movement seems governed by a complex system of hydraulics, which means it's hand could likely exert significant crushing power, and the limb itself could be articulated in almost any direction at any of its three joints. Of course, using tools intended for human hands with it would be all-but impossible, though she has added interface-slots for tools and weaponry adapted specifically for it.
[] subtle and brimming with concealed weaponry
-The third option is, on a surface level, much more restrained and normal then the other two, but it also contains a truly staggering amount of hidden weaponry: a needler is integrated into its palm, compact Las Weapons concealed in it's knuckles, a short blade springing from it's forearm and spools of monofilament wire hidden within it's fingers. You would likely still not gain any particular advantage, but the weapons within this arm are well-concealed enough that surprising an unsuspecting (or even a somewhat suspecting) foe should be a simple exercise.
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The process of implantation and integration is a long and arduous one: it always is with these things. You spend several days of your journey locked in the operating theater with Ko-Bea. She operates with what you recognize as sheer artistry, something that helps you somewhat in enduring the painful process of nerve-machine interfacing and the thousand little corrections and readjustments she makes to the remaining and the regrown muscle strands that will ultimately allow your brain to control your limb. Her primary motivation for prolonging this process far further then you yourself ever would is her perfectionism, of this you are fairly certain. Any enjoyment of your pain is probably a distant second at most.
You try not to stare at her too much, but that's difficult to outright impossible: the mirrored walls of the operating theater are arranged in such a way that she is always visible no matter where you look. After the first twenty-four hours you simply give up, choosing instead to marvel at the workings of her cybernetics as she wields her scalpels and nerve-welders.
It is only after a particularly strong spike of pain that you choose to start talking to her. In part, you do this to distract yourself from the pain. In part, you do it to distract yourself from the way she smiles when she receives the pain impulses within the diagnostic data you are transmitting to her.
You talk for hours, perhaps even days: they begin to fly by after a while, as you are made to regale her with tales of the Siege of Terra and she gives you a brief crash course in cybernetics fashion within the wider Eye of Terra over the centuries.
"So why exactly did you ask me to kill Taal Voyos", you ask at one point, and she freezes for a fraction of a second, before continuing to operate, her face suddenly all smiles. "He was planning on killing us", she tells you, which is no doubt true and also not an answer to your question.
She gives a somewhat irritated burst of code, when you make her aware of this. "Captain Camail proved more reasonable than him", she finally admits, "especially after I replaced the awful piece of junk he called a bionic arm. I thought a change of leadership would be…beneficial."
"Beneficial to you", you inquire, seeking clarification.
"I have received explicit instructions to stop you from forming quote 'further local political ties'", you add, after a short moment of contemplation.
"I like having friends", Ko-Bea tells you, "and the high and mighty of Nuton's Folly do not like a ambition in those below them."
She looks at you, contemplative. "Are you going to do as they say", she asks.
Of course not, you assure her. She does, after all, have about six ways to kill you instantly and sixty to kill you slowly pointed at you.
The question is, are you sincere?
___________________________________________________________________________
[Regicia's Question]
[] Yes
You are not a babysitter, and if Nuton's Folly didn't want Ko-Bea to make connections, they damn well shouldn't have send her away from the Dark Forge.
[] No
Ko-Bea is clearly a savvy political operator with a manipulative streak a mile wide, and allowing her to make these sorts of connections will only see you used as far as she can and then tossed aside. You do not intend to let her get that far.
[] Only somewhat
Her meddling with the Court of the Hollow Idol proved crucial to your own survival, but it also brought you into the situation where it needed to do so in the first place. You intend to limit just what Ko-Bea can get away with without curtailing her ambitions entirely: that way you might limit the danger to you that might come both with enabling her fully and with denying her fully.
___________________________________________________________________________
Regicia Ko-Bea does not show whether or not she buys your answer. Instead, she simply smiles, and a tingling feeling spreads through your new limb. You move one of the fingers, and her smile widens.
That pride, you are decently certain, is real. No matter how masterful she is at faking emotions, you recognize genuine pride when you see it.
You move your new arm slowly, then quickly, testing its functionality.
Her pride, you find, is well justified.
___________________________________________________________________________
[Roll:Eta-Nu 9-35: Biological Engineering:4d6: 3, 4, 4, 5: Partial Success]
Creating an internal ecosystem to mitigate some of the issues that improve the efficiency of the Wilful Eternity is not as straightforward a task as making the heat-absorbing system you used for the Precogitator: the issues you are trying to solve are far more diffuse and multi-facetted then the heat issue was. There are, of course, some low-hanging fruit: one of them you take advantage of with literal low-hanging fruit: vines soon begin snaking from the waste heaps found throughout the ship and across the badly isolated heat vents of the ship, reconverting some of the energy lost back into food for the crew. It is not the most elaborate of tastes, but for many of them it is the tastiest thing they have ever eaten, and with time it might solve the truly terrible issue of nutrient deficiencies you have noticed. Oxygen is already supplied by the home-grown jungle within the silo directly adjacent to yours, but you introduce a retrovirus that mitigates the tendency of some of the plants to give off the smell of rotten meat. You identify the medicinal utility in some of the plant found in said jungle, and enable the spread of those that are the most useful, giving much of the grew access to the means to mitigate the frequent outbreaks of disease. Then you set loose pollinators in the form of bees, and predators for those pollinators in order to control their population. After that and largely on a whim you create a cross between a simian and a feline to hunt after the various critters that make their home within the vents. You call them the Pest Controlling Carnivorous Vent Dwellers, and then not think about them much longer.
This turns out to be a mistake, though not for the usual reasons introducing a foreign predator to control a native species turns out to be one. The creatures you have made are intensely social, and this sociality apparently extends to other species. One of the mutants in the lower deck feeds one of them scraps, and suddenly finds himself integrated as part of a pack. When another mutant tries to rob him a few days later, it dies to a thousand little bites. Within what seems like mere days, the news spread through the entire ship. Within weeks, every two-bit chieftain and officer has one of the things sitting on their shoulder. Their population spirals widely out of control. Rations intended for the crew are partially used to feed animals that were mainly intended as pest control. Ludmilla Kapriosa, it seems, has no intention of stopping this sort of behavior: one of the things soon sits on her shoulder night and day, hissing at passer-bys and purring when it is fed.
When you first hear her call it the absolutely inane pet name of Pecoca, you know that it will be up to you to make any decisions about this unexpected monster of your own creation
[] Cull them
This will be relatively easily done by releasing a virus tailored to their genome into the water supply. This will negatively impact crew morale, but at least people won't starve if rations become tight
[] Leave them be
Yes, people might starve, but that's their own damn fault. Put out information relating to their health, reproductive habits, and diet, and then let people make their own decision
[] Profit from them
There are, on occasion, things you need that it is mildly annoying to get by yourself: specimens from the depths of the Silo Jungle, for example, or people willing to carry heavy objects from one place to another. Now, though, you have something to trade for them: medical care and specialized breeds of the Pecoca. This won't solve any of the potential long-term issues for the ship, but it sure might solve some short term annoyances for you.
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Dealing with the Pecoca issue takes up a good part of the rest of your journey: by the time you have finally managed it to a satisfying extent, the ship shudders and its translation sirens blare.
You have arrived in the Seriphon System.
