Into that Vast and Unrelenting Darkness (40K Xeno Civilization Quest)

[Revan4221X]

God-Machine religion overview omake. Not mine. Qvap did this on the discord and doesn't have an account. So I'm posting for them.

---

By the years leading up to the Destroyer war, faith was going out of style. Sure there was groups and organizations still fervently practicing their caft, but Tekket society as a hole was turning faith into a more personal matter. Gone was the days, when the incorrect interpretation of the world would lead to war. The future seemed secular and material.

Then the Destroyers came. And trauma that they brought, were beyond imagination.

The Tekkets secular world wasn't ready. As its armies were shredded to rags, the Tekketkind turn to faith for hope and salvation. But that prove to be difficult, as the old theological institutions were bleeding as much as the nations, from the uncaring destruction of the Destroyers. By the twilight years of the war, the Tekket faith was but personal cults, local folk believes and the remnants of the great old churches.

Then the God-Machines came. And life was brought anew.

The mere existence of the God-Machines brought a ocean of theological questions. Were they avatars of ancient Tekket gods given metal flesh? Were they ascended machine spirits? Or perhaps divine servants of a singular synthetic super-deity?

Should they be worshipped?

As the Tekket society and faiths started to rebuild, some of its citizens decided on something new. The God-Machines had done in three days more than any Tekket organization could do in 50 years: The braking of the Destroyers. Would this titanic accomplishment not be worth some reverence?

And so the God-Machine cults were born. Not from shared oral and cultural history like the folk religions. Not from the personal vision and teaching like the cults. Not from theological and political councils like the old faiths. But from respect and reverence by thousands.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Directorate classifies God-Machine cults as a faith that builds its theology on the God-Machines, instead of adapting them to existing worldview. The organization of these faiths is as numerous, as their believes. Some notable ones are:

Later Day Church of the MOTHERs Children
Preferring to call it self Mothers church, it's one if not the biggest God-Machine cults. it was founded by 23 "children" that were taken by MOTHER. It is trying to increase the number of children it has employed as much as possible. The church spreads it message through its televised "super sermons". In them one or more priests would give high energy sermons for a audience of thousands about goodness, love, duty and "the great star family". These sermons would also be cut regularly with education material, social activity and many other forms of entertainment. Many God-Machine cults have complain, that the Mothers church puts skeptical of faith. The Later Day Church of the MOTHERs Children director board merely counter "there's nothing sinful about been entertaining".

Oracles of the sphere
Laying middle between scientific foundation and a cult, Oracles believe that studding the Sphere 001 behavior and communication, they can gain secrets of the universe. Despite their unified appearance, the Oracles are quit divided. For intense, historigs believe Spheres teachings only make sense when studied with Tekket history, wile futurigs believe the sphere is cryptically cataloging the future. Still will the Oracles are divided in most things, they all know without each other, they are not getting the resources to continue their work.

Slagtekket of YALDABOATH
Located closest to the Pillar of YALDABOATH, Slagtekket collect the anything that fall from the art lord. Once brought to safe distance, the collected price would be categorized as waste or gift. If it was waste, it would be dissected and studied for hints of the art lords technique. If it was a gift, it would be put on display locally or given to someone who helped the cult. However given the great artistic skill of YALDABOATH, it's not uncommon to have a object be reclassified multiple times. Entry to the Pillar of YALDABOATH was prohibited, as the workshop was not made with mortals in mind.

 

[chellewalker]

Memoir of a Hermit Disciple​

In my time as headmaster of this humble academy, frequently have I been asked of my encounter with the Hermit. It is not a particularly grand tale, nor one of great mystic her legend often inspires, but these twilight years of my life is the final opportunity to share my encounter.

During the reign of the tyrant-king, when those Guilds that refused to bend the knee were ceaselessly hunted, myself and my fellow disciples of the Mystic Guild had fled into the wilderness. Our academic talents were of no use to our survival, and as we escaped deeper and deeper into the uncharted mountains our supplies began to dwindle further. I do not know what became of my fellows, but as I slowly fell into a haze of hunger and exhaustion I saw no more of them.

When my pains became too great, and I fell to the ground despairing my fate, only then did she appear to me.

The sight of a Teakafruit dropped in front of my prone form had driven me desperately forward, swallowing it core and all. Naturally, this caused me to start choking, my parched throat unable to handle the sudden intake of food.

As I beat my chest to force it down, a soft chuckle reached my ears and a pitcher of water offered to my face. I quickly drank several large gulps, forcing both it and the fruit down, and turned to look at my savior.

My eyes wouldn't focus on the details of her face, an obvious enchantment in hindsight. The steady soft smile she held was the only clear detail I can recall, an expression like that of a master seeing their apprentice craft their first work.

Draped across her shoulders was a once colorful cloak, its hue faded with time like a worn blanket. In several places there were careful stitches mending small tears, showing the loving care taken to ensure its condition.

And from her belt hung a single toy, well-used and covered in small scratches and wear. Each time I blinked its exact nature changed, sometimes a carved wooden animal, other times a soft felt doll, and then again it would change to a chipped spinning top.

My exhausted delirium had taken this all in without understanding, merely eager to thank one that would save my browbeaten form. But her kindness had not ended, and taking my weak body in her arms, she carried me away as I passed out.

When I awoke, it was only then I realized the divinity of my rescuer. In a wooden hut at the summit of a towering mountain, I humbled myself at her feet and asked what great work I could perform to match her mercy.

That was the first and only time I saw her smile slip, a frown marring her form. Refusing to answer my plea, she bid me rise and to show her the powers I had cultivated in the arts of magic. Eager to please, I did so, and listened with rapt attention as she taught me the greater mysteries and techniques my abilities could harness.

And I failed to master these teachings at every level.

I'm sure many might be surprised by such a claim; was the Hermit not the greatest of mystic tutors? And such was my own thinking, believing myself to have been inadequate beyond hope in the face of my failings.

And yet, she continued to teach me. For everyday for a week, she continued to demonstrate her lessons and take time to explain her arcane lore. All with that soft smile encouraging me on.

That final day of my time with her, only then did I achieve the most basic technique of her lesson on the first day, and yet that miniscule growth was enough for her smile to grow even greater, a sight I would cherish for decades after.

I left the Hermit (for her kindness and wisdom could be no other) much the same as I had entered in respect to my mystical prowess, but also left with the dedication to match her boundless compassion.

When the Tyrant Slayer first began their quest to free our battered country, it was this dedication that drive me to aid them, wielding my humble spells with what competence I could.

When the corrupt vizior peered into my soul and offered my most personal desires, it was this dedication that steadied my mind, giving me the courage to strike them down.

And when my bones began to ache and my mind began to slow, it was that dedication that drive me to establish this very academy, all to bring my saviors teaching to any that sought them.

Because while the monks argued about just which virtue the Hermit valued in her chosen, I had found an answer that has held true to my time with her.

I was not the bravest until her teachings steadied my heart.

I was not the most devote until her mercy saved me.

I was not the brightest until she gave me the drive to improve myself.

I was not the kindest, the strongest, the most merry or creative or the most exemplary of any of the virtues the Hermit most coveted before I met her.

Which was exactly why she aided me to begin with.

The monks and priests always speak of the Hermit's arcane mastery, but they frequently disregard her origin as the daughter of the Toy Maker. Like her father, nothing brings the Hermit more cheer than seeing the growth of her people (students, rather than strictly children).

When the Hermit gave me her frown, it was not because I had somehow fallen short of her expectations, but that I had trivialized her aid as nothing more than a simple transaction rather than the protective arm of a caring teacher.

I have spent my life trying to give that same gift of learning that the Hermit bestowed upon me. Not out of a cynical sense of obligation, but because, like her, I have learned the joys of passing my knowledge to those willing to learn.

-Except from the Memoirs of the Headmaster of the Mountaintop Academy; only known work to reference the Hermit prior to her mythological retreat to the Dreamland.

AN: Was really inspired by the new Hermit deity we unlocked; really wanted to emphasis her connection to the Toy Maker with their interest in their peoples' growth, and I was especially happy with the aesthetic I was able to give her which harkened to childhood without being overly attached to it.

 

[Razzocnor]

Hmm, I think I might write a thingy.

Stizlak teaches da rules of da jungle

Airight mates, if youz gonna start out stupid Imma' gonna have ta teach you sum rules. Da Rules of da Jungle. Dey's right simple, so even youz can understand 'em! Maybe even teach sum udder stuff too! Da beasties have lots ta teach iffin' you know how to learn.

Rule one: Youz gotta eats. Very simple. Doin' it, that can be another matter.
Rule two: Youz gotta not get eaten. Dis is the part what makes the first rule much 'arder.
An' Rule three: Youz gotta have someplace ta sleep. Someplace where youz don't get eaten.

An dats it fer the basics! But da jungle, it's a complicated place, so even if da rules are simple, doin' them gets right complicated!
Now youz probably already understand, that it be real important ta know how to scrap! Knowin' how ta scrap is da number one way ta get food ta eat, and ta keep other things from eatin' youz! But youz also gotta know when NOT ta scrap! Cause' picking scraps wit things ya can't beat is da fastest way ta end up eaten.

Nowz, some more complicated bits!
Wez gotta take a lesson from them striderbeasts. Da ones what hunt in packs! Because theys gots lots ta teach about how important it is be be inna pack! One striderbeastie iz weak. Loses lotsa fights ta anything bigga than it. Five striderbeasts iz strong! Deyz can beat even things twice as big as one striderbeastie. Bein' together is strong.
But ta do that theyz have ta think about their mates. Izn't enough for one beastie in the pack to be strong, deyz all gotta be strong. So dey share things, dey takes care of each other! If one iz hungry, others share food. If one is hurt, others guard it until it gets better... unless it doesn't, then they abandon it, but thats not da point! Gotta watch out for your mates, keep 'em safe, warn 'em of danger, because youz gonna need 'em later when a big git comes along! Gotz that?

 

[The Bird]

On a train bound for Erichtheo, there existed a Tau. Por'Vre Hul'aan Al B'kak of the Water Caste, or as he was known casually, Al B'kak. He was a diplomat: in his lifetime of thirty one years he had negotiated mercenary contracts with band of Kroot Hunters, had mediated territorial dispute between Demiurg and Eldar, and had even had even once convinced a Gue'la world to defect. And now he was faced with his latest challenge: the Tekket.
The Ambassador paced in his suite, troubled. Aun'O Fi'rios Suun N'Lan had sent the Water Caste to the world after first contact had been made when they intervened in slaying Hive Monarch Typhon before the Tyranic Teraforme could engulf one of their recently acquired worlds, a bread basket whose loss would have been disastrous on its own, let alone by being consumed. SOMEHOW they had repelled the beast, sending it fleeing into the depths of space through some unknown technological application.

If this capability could be replicated by the Tau…Well. It could prove the edge needed to harden their worlds against the great devourer. And it wasn't even the only piece of advanced technology in the states arsenal: during the immediate days after Typhon had retreated into dark space, the Directorate had shown a variety of highly advanced systems, such as their artificial intelligences and genetic mastery, to say nothing of their weapons they had used during the battle, scarring the beasts hide so thoroughly that by the end its regeneration had finally begun to slow healing the vast canyons sliced through its flesh by the weapons beam.

So the Ethereals had sent Al B'kak to negotiate: attempt to convince the polity to part with at least some of its technology, as well as the creation of an Embassy in Directorate space. He was also to gauge their potential value as a military partner and determine how swifty the Tau could begin moving to influence them into their sphere and their overall receptiveness to the greater good: a very preliminary mission, one that would likely be followed by decades of political effort. When he had first began this assignment, he had thought it would be easy: everything he had seen and heard during the journey had indicated a high level of philosophical overlap. True, they seemed to have a propensity towards religion with their claims of spirits and gods, but that could be solved by a few decades of propaganda.

Then he had arrived in the system to see a gigantic planet-spanning sea that stretched across and surrounded their star and planets, made traversible by a gigantic rail that stretched through this impossible anomaly. His first stop had been Spra'ang, as it was called: the world of shadows, home of the great mausoleum, where ghosts walked.

At the time, he had tried to come up with rational explanations: nonsense about ectoplasm and psuedoscience he had clung to to desperately explain the ghastly wraiths and strange shadowy demons he had met before he had finally left via the Spra'ang Grand Terminal, boarding the Grand Aqua Express with the rest of his entourage.

Now, he was on his suite on the train, trying to process what he had seen in the past few days: he had chosen the Aqua Express because, despite it being far slower than other trains scheduled to make the run to their destination, it supposedly offered a far more interesting tour of the Directorates sea life.

When he had read the brochure, he had assumed it meant planetary. His eyes darted to the wide, ferroglass wall, the oceans passing by, a large, curling cephalopod with long, javelin like tusks floating alongside the train, blinking its eyes at the Tau, before swimming away. Outside, a vast oceanic space passed them by, large clouds of fish and plantlife drifting, with the occasional bioluminescent coral reef stretching across the infinity of the space ocean to form vast byzantine complexes, a strange beating glow in the center of each. In the distance, he could see bright burning blazes: the brochures had called them 'Second Suns', machines that helped regulate the oceans heat and light, a contribution by the Elementalists according to what the scrap of tourist paper claimed.

Occasionally, the train would pass through or near various...structures. Bubbles of air, surrounding small moons, strange islands in the infinite sea, some sunny and pleasant, some cold and wintery appearing, and some that were empty except for avians and their nests, nestled near the tops of the bubbles. Others else, strange townships erected along the line or among the coral, and occasionally strange behemoth planetoids that drifted in the sea, their surface aglow with myriad shifting symbols, or, embedded along the rails, strange obelisks and stones and strange fractaline temples aglow with prismatic radiance.

And this…this was somehow the least irrational of the sights he had seen. He heard a gentle rap tap tapping at his door. "Ambassador?" Came the voice of his guide. "I'm just coming to check on you: we're about an hour out from the Ocean Temple."
B'kak breathed out through his nose-slit, then walked to the door, pressing the access button, causing it to slide open, revealing in a green uniform an orange, gangly, and extremely skinny Be'gel.

Hobgrot, he reminded himself, trying to keep in mind the informational package he had found in Grottish ethnicities as the stretched thin creature, slightly taller than the average hobbgrot, gave a salute. Raising his hand and giving a serene smile, B'kak did his best to remain composed. "At ease, Corporal," He told the Erichthean Grott. "I was merely reviewing the dossier your government provided."

Corporal Globglott nodded. "Apologies for the interruption, sir," They apologized. "Still, if you wish to meet with the the Great Vita, you'll need to start making your way to the pilgrims car."

Ah, yes. The Great Vita. Keeping his plastered smile on his face, B'kak gave a nod. "Very well: lead the way then," He responded with false cheer, to which Globglott gave a nod and thumbs up, before spinning on his heels. Following, B'kak exited onto the corridor, a railed balcony passing numerous suites, illuminated by a titanic chandelier hanging from the cars roof, illuminating all ten floors of the train car as well as the bustling village located upon its floor and various shops and vendors floating in the air. As the pair walked, they passed all manner of being: Grott, Tekket, Eldar, even creatures that looked somewhat like the infiltrator organisms of the Tyranids, before finally coming upon the transit tube.
Before him, he watched the Be'gel step onto the raised platform before being lifted, shooting down the tube, before the Tau followed him, a weightless feeling filling the aliens stomach as they were lifted by the various gravimitic manipulators embedded in the machinery running along the otherwise clear ferrocrystal structures side. Passing through it, B'kak began to use the brief moment they would be in the tubes to think.

The Great Vita. The collection of nature dieties the Directorate worshiped. When B'kak had heard about them, he had assumed that the Tekkets animistic beliefs were mere superstition, a holdover of their more primitive ancestors attempt at explaining wholly natural phenomena by etherealizing it and attributing it agency. But now that he knew that the spirits were real…

There were supposedly Four, Seven, and Three sets of Great Vita: Three of the Sky, Seven of the Land, and Four of the Sea. Each of them both great and mighty spirits grown to demigodhood, but also simultaneously avatars of greater, more fundamental forces that in turn were mere aspects of some greater entity.

When he had worked to prepare for this diplomatic mission, he had made the choice to schedule a visit by several locations of cultural and religious significance, thinking he would merely be studying sermons and researching theology like he would in a Gue'La world.

They passed briefly through a section between cars, exposing their tubes to the void, allowing the tau to briefly see the outside of their vessel: a dozen or so 'cars', vast rectangular structures that served as compartments of sorts, linked by a series of heavy magnetic chains and gargantuan tractor beam-gravity tethers, being shot forward along a single rail line occasionally supplemented by a gatelike ring the vessel would pass through, causing it to rapidly accelerate. At the front, a vast magneto engine with a heavy metal prow churned, providing a steadily level of thrust in order to maintain speed. Each compartment appeared different: one was overgrown with coral, a strange ecosystem in and of itself that used the inertial properties of the vessel to remain unbothered by its speed. Another was entirely clear, a glassy aquarium car that B'kak saw, as they passed, contained several Directorate Gue'la in divers suits doing coordinated swim routines alongside a variety of oddly well coordinated fish. And all along the top of these boxy almost-ships were a variety of spire like structures that resembled the coiled shells of certain mollusks that released massive, flowing jets of water that ensured the structure was always, even while it passed through the atmospheric bubbles, coated in a layer of heavy moisture.

Eventually, they passed once more into the cars, their journey lasting another twenty minutes before they finally arrived at their destination, the Tau coming to a stop as his guide was deposited onto a platform underneath him, B'kak only following after Globbglot had stepped off, the diplomat stepping out onto the Pilgrims Car.

A collection of holoteknik pathways stretched before them, formed from hard light, and all throughout the car the Diplomat could see more, forming and reforming to help shepherd innumerable visitors to the various shrines and temple complexes in the facility. "Two for the Ocean Temple," Globbglot said, and a pathway opened up, and the pair continued their walk, illuminated by false starlight and an illusory moon up above them.

B'kak vaguely wondered how no one fell off the platforms, but decided to ignore the thought as they were brought to a large, flat, square floating hard light platform, one with no visible barriers or rails. Upon it were a collection of other pilgrims: fifteen in total. Some were the Muses, the strange almost-robots that, supposedly, were the spirits of great works of art given form and agency. Others were the genestealer-looking creatures, drabbed in white, platelike armor with large, dark gems embedded in their chests and back. One, to B'kak's alarm, he was fairly certain was a slaugth.

His alarm immediately spiked as the thing approached him, its squirming, multitudinous body garbed in a strange, searing yellow cloak. "Ah, a Tau. I did not know your species had made it this far," The worm that walked gurgled. "I admit, I'm especially surprised to see you make pilgrimage to the Deep Gods."

The Tau continued to smile, but it became slightly tight at the edges. "The Tau Empire is always interested in furthering cultural ties with all groups: our foundation is built upon the stone of inclusivity," He said, causing the creature to let out a rising and falling rasping noise that almost sounded like a laugh.

"Excellent adherence to the party line," The creature complimented. "I am Yaghzahr, Hieroflesh of the Corpse Mother," It said, a hint of pride in its voice as it named one of the races various worm gods.

"Por'Vre Hul'aan Al B'kak," B'kak replied tersely. "I've said why I'm visiting, but I must admit curiosity for why one of your own stature is making a visit."

The creature paused for a moment. "Cerebropineal fluid," It wheezed. "Supposedly, a collection of my wayward kin that decided to immigrate have found a way to manufacture the substance synthetically in a configuration that is not completely poisonous to us."

Ah. A new food source it was coming to collect the methods on how to manufacture. "No," It said, gurgling in annoyance. "They have…refused to provide it to us, not without negotiation. Despite our shared flesh, our shared origin, they seem to have decided our lifestyle…regrettable," It hissed. "The Corpse Mother has decided to entertain them: she wishes amicability," It spat. "And so we are sent in order to negotiate with the apostates and their newly adopted god, the Shul'dakkotian Wilds while the Directorate acts as mediators," It growled.

Well. That was interesting. And very satisfying to learn, B'kak decided, taking slight enjoyment from the annoyance of the cerebrovore."It is both mine and the Tau empires sincerest hope that you can come to an accord that satisfies all parties," He lied, causing the slaugth to scoff even as the platform began to move, the ceiling above them parting to reveal a wall of water.

As the platform rose, a bubble began forming in the water, surrounding them as they entered the ocean. Above them lie the Ocean Temple, resembling a sort of pyramidal structure as the base, upon which lie a series of pagoda structures. In the distance, B'kak saw in the water a vast, almost moon size THING that almost resembled a titanic, crablike mass of coral and stone and barnacles, armored not in chitin but in stretches of reef that held within them overabundant masses of sea-life, its mandibles and pedipalps spinning together titanic masses of matter to create mega-asteroid after mega asteroid, which would after forming be hauled off by a series of smaller (yet still large enough to dwarf the average space ship) coral-crabs, ones with odd, pearlescent domed shells marked with glowing sigils. Anthrozoathoth, the Living Moon. Vita of Coral, Manifested Reef, Aspect of Flora, and its Courier Crabs: he recognized it from the brochure.

It wasn't the only Vita he could see: some distance in the opposite direction across the horizon, he saw an equally massive forest of greenery, filled with innumerable pinpricks of light from the vastitude of the second suns required to sustain the organic superstructure. It its wake, its trailed vast tails of kelp, algae, vines, and stranger plants, occasionally brushing a piece of debris and causing it to become overgrown. Occasionally, he saw it let out a pulse of light, forcing the Tau to avert their eyes as the thing that could only be the Shul'dakkotian Wilds, Manifest Life, another Aspect of Flora. Supposedly, it was vastly larger on the inside than the outside: many used it as a means to escape from civilization, learning the rites and bringing the technology required to survive underwater and simply…swimming into its depths, as far as they could go, until they were beyond even the Directorates ability to contact, many only returning every few decades to stock up on supplies and to check on news beyond the mangrove megaforest.

That was two. That left only two more: the Infinite Academy and the Great Sea Wytch Urzala.

As they neared the temple, their platform shifted and twisted, depositing them on the grounds, also encased in a bubble: the space between the several mile high pagodas was large enough that it served as a forest in its own right, one connected by a series of thin tunnels of air stretching across it like a series of veins, outside a vast fleet of fish, schools circling strange metallic pillars. Some of the fish seemed normal, up until they released a flare of strange energy to strike these pillars, while other fish seemed to be not quite solid, and at times not quite a single fish, shifting between appearing as tightly packed overlapping schools of pelagic life and more singular examples whose scales seemed to be comprised of translucent crystal. Others instead appeared strangely mechanical, both large ones that slowly floated along and smaller swarms of various robotic oceanic animals. Occasionally, strange portals would open, allowing the fish to pass through or else producing fish from wherever they went. The Infinite Academy, Manifest School, Aspect of Beast: a vast congress of several million psychic fish, a gestalt whose branches touched over a hundred planets and growing.

"Right, follow me: I'm sorry for how long the transits been," His guide said apologetically. "Still, one heck of a view, huh?" They said, looking admiringly at a titanic space whale that passed above them as they continued their walk.

"Indeed. I'm…most curious as to how the Directorate achieved…this," B'kak said, remaining calmly neutral. His guide only shrugged at that.
"Well, it took a few generations of work: f'rm what I understand, th' Great Void Rail happenin' to coincide wif the mass proliferations let a lotta dem waterboyz," The Grot said, voice slipping back into their old accent, "start embedden' th' rails wif just…row afta row afta row o' Aqua-Core. Combined with a few generations of work an' expansion, an' wif some pitchin' in by some otha groups like da volkanoboyz, an' the inevitable march o' progress in the field of applied arcane arts and improvements t' the totem network, an', well…" They shrugged, as if their answer answered anything.

"I see," B'kak lied. "Is there a reason they decided to make a giant…void…ocean…"

The grot shrugged. "I'unno. Decided it'd go wif the train maybe? They really wanted more fish to eat? Decision was made long before I was born, mate: all I know is that most expansion projects these days are mostly politics. The Infinite College and Urzala both like havin' more sea to swim in, and th' Directorate likes keepin' the fella in charge a' most of th' fish farms an' the witch what can turn people int' squogs niiiiiiiice and happy." Idly, B'kak noted they were descending into the pyramid.

"I had assumed we were going into the Pagodas," He commented as they descended the winding path that, he noted, slowly descended into a vast pit located at the center, one so dark he could barely see within.

"No sir," The Grot replied, accent receding as they returned to their role as the prim and proper Directorate diplomat. "The Pagodas are part of the local spiritual neural architecture: they allow lesser vita to piggyback on the Infinite College in order to allow their subconscious to more rapidly solve problems and generate ideas: Urzala is waiting for us in the heart of the pyramid. She has a theme."

"Ah. Yes, well then, lead the way." B'kak acceded, and the pair began to walk the steps to the center of the pyramid, the zigzagging steps shifting as they walked to ensure a rapid passage down the steep slope, the sky growing more and more distant as it became darker and darker.
Eventually, it became so dark that for a moment B'kak genuinely couldn't see, something that terrified the Tau: the only thing that stopped his fear was a strange singing noise, an ethereal hymn.

Dazed, the Tau continued walking, one step at a time, their eyes adjusting slowly as more and more soft glows filled their vision. They were in some sort of…cavern? At the center was a a pitch black void, something B'kak could only see from the way light and space distorted around it, the sole exception being a single vast cord lined with mechanical diagnostic lights stretching into the thing, the cable attached to a leviathan spire jutting from another part of the spherical hollow.

All around them, the pathway had given way to fields of jagged, shadowy razor-stone patches, through which strange things slithered. Slowly regaining his senses, the Tau realized he had lost time: he couldn't remember how long he had been in that strange transitory darkness.

"Is…is that normal?" He asked, facade cracking. "That can't be normal to you people, yes?"

"...Yeah, that was weird," His guide admitted. "Probably Urzala deciding to pay you special attention," He said, frowning. "I'd, uh, advise being very careful. The Depths attention isn't always a good thing. See the, uh, squog comment."

….Oh. That wasn't…that wasn't good. "Did they at least-"

"Eighty six percent." B'kak didn't know whether that made it better or worse: on the one hand, if he accidentally inspired the wrath of the almost-certainly-real sea witch, at least he would not be entirely stuck as a fungal amphibian.
On the other hand, that still left fourteen percent squoggification.

Greater good. Greater Good. Greater Good. The words he repeated like a mantra, doing his best to get himself together. You are a diplomat. You've negotiated ransoms with Gue'la Inquisitors, brokered mercenary contracts with ork waaaaghs, and more besides. Any one of those could have killed you: this one is, at worst, liable to give you what amounts to an embarrassing medical condition.

And, beyond that, think of the potential utility the Tau Empire could get if they managed to achieve good relations also with the sea witch. Funnily enough, the latter thought did more to steel his nerves than the ones before it.

"Alright," B'kak said, finally breaking the silence. "My apologies, I just needed a moment to compose myself," He said brisky, continuing his walk. "Let's hurry, shall we? This space is rather…unsettling."

They continued their trek, eventually approaching a strange circle floored with stone surrounded by glowing coral on all sides, a small bubble of air in that submerged space. From all around them, a court of strange beings sat, gazing upon them: will-o-wisps that ate at the light around them instead of casting it, cephalapodic spirits whose cranium consisted of exposed neural tissue, strange volcanic golems that almost resembled crustaceans, and beings that appeared almost like Gue'la, Tekket, and even 'Muse', were it not for their translucent ephemeral forms.

And at the heart of this makeshift throne room in that vast undersea cavern lie the Sea Wytch, Manifest Current, Aspect Elemental. One of the great patrons of Wyld Occultism. When the Tau's gaze found this great vita, this demigoddess, for a moment his brain was unable to comprehend it: he saw something so terrible, so cold that his mind refused to absorb it. Then, a moment later, left unknowing of what he had seen other than its wrongness, B'kak found himself gazing instead upon something that looked…ALMOST like a Tau, the Depths attempt to select a form less alarming to them.

"Ambassador Por'Vre Hul'aan Al B'kak," The Great Vita said with needle like teeth giving a ghastly grin. "I've been looking forward to your arrival. I believe your empire and I have so very much to offer," They spoke, and B'kak shuddered.

((((()))))

Commissioned by @Kirbstomp, who wanted a look at what the ocean vita could become if ya'll focused hard on them. I'm not gonna tell you how to achieve this. I also included a few references to other future things I'm planning. Obviously, by the time we reach this point in the timeline I expect all my plans to be totally derailed, of course.

Also, I am officially starting the project auction. Rules are the same as before. To whit:

1. I have a limited number of winning slots determined by how badly I need money.

2. Winners are determined by highest bids.

3. Max point cost for bidded project is capped by bid size: basically, you can't bid 25 dollars for a 50 or 100'd pointer, but if someone bids a cool hundo, people can bid on any project with a point cost equal to or lesser than 100.

4. All bids must tag me.

5. Payment upfront after the auction closes: I'll send a PM to discuss details, I use paypal, kofi, cashapp, etc.

6. The auction will be open until the moratorium ends.

And your pool consists of:


-Naklean Union Hall
-Great Space Express
-Name of the Booug
-Perpetunite Recyclers
-Archaeology!
-Naklean MagmaBugs
-Crystaleaf Arbor Guardians
-The Chalice
-BioArt
-Sandscorn Heat Shield

Auction closes on the 27th, day before my birthday.

 

[The Bird]

Some time in the future...

The Grav-Van slid to a stop, and the team pulled out. Seven hobbgrots clad in beige protective suits, each uniform and identical other than the nametag appended to the lapels, a line of buttons going down to the bottom of their jumpsuits, a black utility belt appended to each of their waists, black rubber boots and gloves covering their extremities, a large proton-pack mounted on their backs.

They were the ghoulfinderz. One of the best and brightest Ghostbusta teams available, and the only team operating on this planet since the treaty 'ad been signed. And today, their target was Apartment Block Beta-Upsilon-10: as part of the recent disarmament treaty, the planet they were on had been loaned some specialists to help deal with problems of a more supernatural nature. Their team had been one of em: and so when someone had called in a Type IV Incursion Event, they had been called in.

The leader of the team stepped to the fore, adjusting their dark goggles as they looked the building up and down: 100 floors total. According to scans, large amounts of lifesigns could be detected, as well as a buildup of chaotic energies. They needed to get to work immediately. "Alright, fellas," The leader, Tk Spooktok, said in his soft voice, grimacing. "Definitely detectin' some right unsettling readings. D' we have the spirit box?"

"Got it," Came the voice of their chief parapsychologist, Tk Spankmann, a somewhat chubbier and, owing to his lab time, less fit hobbgrot. "Do you want me t' try and see if it'll release the hostages?" The Hobbgrot said, fiddling with the device in question, a cubic gizmo covered in buttons meant to utilize ectoplazmik voice phenomena to allow for long range spirit communication.

"I'd say so, mate," Spooktok said, nodding. "Probably not likely t' hand em over without a fight, but who knows, maybe we'll get lucky, yeah? And we need t' get containment set up first anyways." Spankmann nodded at this, flipping a button, causing the speaker grilles on the boxes sides to come to life, letting out a burst of static.

"Kalibratin' it," Spankmann said, adjusting some dials, causing the static to clear up somewhat. "Okay, so, fink I got a konnection," He said, giving the team a thumbs up. "I'm goin' t' try makin' contact wif' the other side," The Parapsychologist warned, causing the rest of the team other than Spooktok to move into motion, working to get the ecto-static containment system set up while the two grots began the delicate art of hostage negotiations with what was likely a daemonic entity.

"Oi, ghost-git!" Spankmann said. "Give up the humie gitz or we're gonna shove a boot up your arse!"

For a moment, silence. "What. Is. This?" Came the voice from the box, tone slow, gravelly, confusion evident. "Who. Are. You?"

Spooktok cleared his throat. "To answer your questions, we're currently using the medium of technology to establish an ectopathic connection t' communicate with. We're the Ghoulfinderz ghostbustin' agency, an' as my colleague said, if you don't release the humans and unpossessed your current host, we're going to have t' kick your butt well and good."

"What?" The box said.

Spankmann threw the box against the wall. "Negotiations have broken down!" He said, drawing his proton blaster. "Time t' resort to violence!" The hobbgrot said, pumping his weapon up and down.

"To right mate, fella was downright unreasonable," Spooktok said, turning to look at the rest of the team for a progress report. "Fellas, hows the containment?"

"WE HAVE EREKTED TH' ECTO-STATIC BARRIER!" Came the voice of TK Plazmium, giving a thumbs up as behind them a pylon crackled, ectoelectric lightning crackling up and its frame, occassionally shocking Plazmium, causing the hobbgrot to twitch. "Time t' breach?" He asked, hopefully.

"Right on mate!" Spooktok said. "Alright gents, let's get inta formation: I'll take lead. Zarbob, you take rear. Plazmium, you stay out here, and start rigging up an exit path. Oozesten, you get scanner," He ordered, and quickly, the team moved before the doors of the apartment complex, with Spooktok hitting the access button, causing them to slide open. This would result in the revealing of a foyer whose floor was covered in a fine layer of fur, dotted with the occasional orange colored eye, all with rectangular, caprine pupils, the organs now and then giving a wet blink.

"Scans show its alive," Oozesten claimed, adjusting their goggles as they looked over the scanner results. "Seen somefin like this before: was a book, though. Kept tryin' t' convince me to seize power n junk: finally gave up when I used flea killer on it."

"Did it exorcise it?"

"Nah, fing just decided it was a better idea t' shut up before I moved on t' hair remover. Fings still in my library: okkazionally play regicide wif it. Gitz kinda a loser, honestly."

"Switchin' to 'air remover!" Spankman said, flipping a button on their proton blaster, the rest of them following suit and beginning their ascent into BU10, firing beams of follicle killing radiation onto the carpet of the haunted house they were storming, causing it to let out a shriek as they cut a path through the corrupted ground. In its place was left the dull grey rockete tiles used as flooring by the humies. "We 'av a path!" He cried, and the group began their advanced, the eyes surrounding their path shifting to stare at them with incredulity.

Soon, they reached the lift. Pressing a button on the side, the Grotts watched as the fanged doors opened, trails of drool stretching between them, revealing a fleshy throat-like structure lined with teeth. "Well that's disgustin'," Spooktok said, crinkling his nose in revulsion. "This fella needs a mint."

"Deployin' grenades!" Spankmann cried, pulling out a pair of capsules from their belt and tossing them into the shaft even as the doors slammed shut, attempting to catch whatever intruder had crossed its thresh-hold, seeking to take a toll of flesh from any passengers.

The next moment, a loud boom was heard, and the doors began to bulge, cracking open and having their teeth knocked free to clatter from the ground, the door slowly creaking open...before several more capsules were tossed inside, which resulted in a long, cacophanous series of detonations that took several minutes to cease.

Knocked loose, from out the organic door poured a greenish smoke with a highly pleasant, herbal scent that was positively refreshing. "There we go, much better: remind me to talk to this fella about dental hygiene," Spooktok said, gripping the whimpering edge of the door and sliding it open again, stepping into the chamber that was now full of very shattered teeth.

Shining a light up above, he noticed that at the highest reaches was a fat worm creature - a lesser manifestation, most likely. Them chaos gits had been producin' em more and more as their daemons evolved. The creatures jaws dripped a foul ichor, and its gooey, squirmy eyes blinked, ten at a time.

Goin' by the size, how well he could see it, and how far away it looked...

"Yeah we probably aren't killin' that while its sittin' vertical: thing could just fall and crush us," He commented. "Guess we'll have to take a detour. Still, how high you think we'd get before it noticed us? Ten? Fifteen?"

"Nah, I'd say prolly fifty siz," Tk Entokrawl, their cryptozoologist said, gesturing at the hanging worm-beast. "Fing looks like its got kompound eyes: prolly doesn't see so good."

"Dat sounds about right, yeh," Spankmann said, adjusting their goggles, and the rest of the team let out a chorus of yehs and ayes of consent: after all, Entokrawl was their expert on bugs and beasties, 'e knew best.

The worm minor daemon let out an alarmed wurble, eyes blinking rapidly as something unsettled it. "What? What did you do to my eyes?" It hissed. "Why can't I see?"

"Don't worry, prolly can't 'ear us either," Spankmann commented, scratching their chin. "I don't see no ears on em on the scanner, after all."

"...Y'know what, sure, maybe," Entokrawl commented neutrally, causing another murmer of agreement in the group of academics. After all, if Entokrawl wasn't disagreeing, Spankmann probably had a point!

"WHY CAN'T I HEAR?!"

"Spookton t' Plazmium, we're gonna have t' take a detour, nastly little bugger hiding in the elevator shaft. Gonna hit floor fifty six: Entokrawl says thats the ticket. How far away is it from our incursion point?"

"THIS IS PLAZMIUM YES, THE FLOOR FIFTY SIX SHOULD TAKE YOU WITHIN FOUR FLOORS OUR OUR INCURSION POINT," Came Plazmium's voice. "ALSO, AUTONBULANCES AND OTHER RESPONSE FORCES HAVE ARRIVED: WILL YOU REQUIRE ASSISTANCE?"

"Nah mate, have em focus on getting everyone outta here," Spookton said, pressing a button on his belt, causing the soles of his boots to light up. "We can handle this: getting people to safety takes priority. Spookton out. Alright boys, activate your jetpacks," He commanded even as the jets on his proton pack came to life which, alongside the gravitic stabilizers in his boots, allowed for flight, lifting silently the grot, his goggles showing the distance between himself and his target.

A moment later, he landed in the open door of a dim hallway, his team and the yells of a daemonic caterpillar behind them. It took only a moment of looking at the hallway to conclude it was definitely extremely haunted, probably terrible cursed, potentially inhabited by eldritch beings, and quite possibly even worse, not up to code. "Humies," Oozesten said, disgusted. "Nuffins sacred to them: not even houzin' regulationz," He said.

Before them, staring at the grots with bile and confusion, was a menagerie of least daemons, a thousand lesser chaotic vita in a million unsettling shapes, a veritable parade. The one closest to them, a strange, skwirrel-like creature that was assembled from multiple smaller stapled together skwirrelz, whose hide was etched with a variety of glowing markings, raised a clawed finger to point at the Ghoulfindaz, opening its mouth impossibly loud to let out a shrieking, unsettling wail...

Only to explode when impacted by ectoplasmically charged protons. "LEELEELEEELEELEELEEE!" Spankmann hollered as the group charged, firing their weapon into the very surprised assemblage of ghosties, the rest of the Grots giving their own warcries: "CHEESE!" "EAT MY SOCKS YOU DISGUSTING PIECES OF DUMB GARBAGE!" "MEROY JENKINZ!" "Zappity Zappity Zappity," and Spooktons own war cry, which consisted of singing his own theme song he had come up with: he liked to imagine that if 'is life was a cartoon, the ditty he was humming would be its opening tune. It mostly consisted of variations of his own name and title over and over: 'e imagined that the music that went with it would be somefin with energy, kinda elektrik soundin', maybe with some of them one spooky instruments in th' background.

Spookton barreled past two daemons, knocking them to the ground even as he fired his proton-pack at a large, humanoid horned minor daemon that was charging at him, causing it to trip and stumble, with Spookton not breaking his stride as he ran up the falling monster even as his hands quickly pulled an incense grenade from his belt and dropping it below him, leaping into the air. A moment later, the detonation would generate enough force to catch him mid-fall, propelling him forward, causing the Grot to let out a laugh of joy as he continued to fire, shifting into a tumble as they came to a sliding land, not interrupting their sprint, and behind him, the Grot could hear the rest of the team fighting their way, a ray of green and blue brushing past him to hit one of their foes.

Hitting a button on his blaster, he shifted the firing mode, releasing a wide spray of protonically charged ectoplasm, drenching the now screaming crowd of daemons in a bath of burning ghost-matter, the giggling grot using the weapon like a umbral flamethrower, giggling as the daemons broke, many of them running to get away from the grots, going for the stairwell. "Get em, boys!"

Perhaps the menagerie of minor chaos manifestations had intended to ambush and charge whoever intruded. But if that had been their intent, they evidently had proven woefully unprepared for fighting hobbgrots. A moment later, they were all huddled against the very locked stairwell door, clawing desperately at it, a strange beaked gargoyle looking back and forth between the door they were trying to knock down and the screaming, rapidly approaching Spankmann with ripe, abject terror. "No no no no no-"

"HUEGHAAAHGUAHAUEHAUHUEHUEHUE!" Spankman garbled...

"Spankmann, halt!" Spookton commanded, and a moment later, the good Teknik came to a stop, Spookton and the rest not far behind. "Right, someone get the containment unit," He said, taking a breath as he stared at the now terrified daemons. "They're cornered an' its no longer fun, might as well bring em in. Now, you lot," He said, staring at the daemons as the device was brought forward: cubical and made of steel, a single side was open, revealing a complex array of circuitry. "Get in the zoggin' box unless you wanna get zapped like your friends and sent back t' wherever you go while your master regenerates you."

"Wha-"

"RESISTING CITIZENS ARREST!" Spankmann said, flicking out a baton and hitting the gargoyle in the knee with a lout thwack, causing it to yelp and clutch at the injured patella, swearing profusely. "HE'S GOIN' FOR ME BELT!" The Grot yelled, foot rising rapidly between the gargoyles legs even as he pulled out his ghost pepper-spray. "NOT T'DAY YOU REACTIONARY BASTA-"

The moment before his extremity would have connected, the box let out a flash, and the daemons were gone, leaving Spankmanns foot to pass through air. "Aaaaaand that's enough of whatever THAT is," Spookton commented. "Spookton to Plazmium, we have a pick up, floor fifty six. Collection of minor daemons: we got room fer em?"

"THIS IS PLAZMIUM. WE HAVE FIFTEEN OPEN SPACES IN TH' VAULT! I WILL CONTACT THE REHABILITATION FACILITY ON SPRA'ANG TO HANDLE ADDITIONALS!"

"Aww, I hate Spra'ang," Oozesten grumbled.

"I ken probably deliver em, then," Spankmann sniffed. "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!"

"It's not the ghosts, it's the smell," Oozesten responded indignantly at the aspersion to his fortitude toward the supernatural. "Whole place smells like a swamp,"

"Hey!" Entomann cried out in turn, turning to stare at the offending grots. "I work in swamps, an' its offensive t' kompare em to that planet: it smells like a sewer."

"Sewers aren't so bad," Spankmann responded casually. "You can find lots of tasty bits growin' in em if you know what to look for."

"Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and table this entire conversation," Spooktok responded, clearing his throat. "Figure the point where Spankmann starts telling us a little too much about his diet was its expiration date. Now, I'm gonna go ahead an' start repressin' the fact that he eats poop-moss, and I'd advise you all t' do the same," He suggested, causing a murmer of nauseated agreement to emerge from the team as everyone took a step away from Spankmann, who just looked confused. "Now, let's get this door open," He said, walking to it and fiddling with the knob, causing it to swing outward, revealing the stair well.

With that, they continued their march, making sure to blast anything that looked like a threat, going up the steps rapidly. Occasionally, they would hear a gurgling from down below, which was usually met with Spankmann dropping a grenade, followed by them leaning over the bannister.

Eventually, they reached their destination. Approaching it, Spooktok noticed it was also locked. Luckily, they had a breaching tool. "Deployin' detonator!" He yelled, drawing a boxy device from his belt and slapping it on the door before taking MANY steps back alongside his team.

A moment later, there was a hole where the door used to be. Beyond it, looking annoyed, were two axe wielding daemons, one with the head of an ox, the other with the head of a horse, both large and bulging of muscle, their bodies covered in glowing, etched fel sigils carved deep into their bodies, dripping ichor. "Brother, it appears the creatures responsible for making such a racket down below have finally decided to join us," The Ox-Head said, rising from their sitting position, giving their pitch black, runed weapon a spin, their horns adorned in rings and gems, their only other vestiment being their trousers.

"I expected the servants of the corpse god were responsible," The Horse-Head said, running a whetstone over the edge of their blade: in contrast, Horse-Head wore actual armor, made out of some mirrored, reflective surface that twisted the images upon it to make them strange, parodious. "And yet our inferiors were bested by mere imps," They complained, raising their axe. "I presume you are hear to best our master?" They sneered. "You will find your efforts-"

"LEELEELEELEELEE!" Spankmann yelled as they slammed into the daemons head, interrupting their monologue and sending the teknik and the manifestation of chaos sprawling, the Grot avoiding every blow from the confused and flailing spirit they were attacking. "EAT! MY! JELLYBEANS!" The hobbgrot bellowed.

"Brother!" The infuriated Ox head bellowed, charging towards their kins aid, only to find themselves piled on by five Grots, knocking the creature over. "What are you-get off of me!" He roared, attempting to grab at the Hobbgrots.

"Shokkity shokkity shokkity!" "Gotta grab a 'air sample," "Oooh, is that a flea? Definitely goin' in the kollektion!" "Ha, I stole their trousers!"

"ENOUGH!" The Ox said, deciding to deal with things the simple way: a charge. Bellowing, the daemon forced themselves up, attempting to break out into a run: if they wished to cling to him, the daemon would make these imps into red smears on the rockcrete! Quicker and quicker he built up speed as the daemon ran to the far wall of the hallway...

Only for the Hobbgrotts to leap off moments before he impacted it, leaving them unharmed as he slammed with full force into a three foot barrier of solid stone. A disgusting splattery crunch filled the hallway, and a moment later, the bull daemon stepped away from the wall, dazed, their face broken. "Bruffer, I can't theel my faith,"

"Dibs on the teeth!" Entokawl said, scurrying under the daemons legs to collect the fallen bits of ivory on the ground even as Spankmann found themselves cartwheeling through the air with a whee, the horsehead finally having tossed them off, the creature rising, eyes trapped in a rictus of anger.

"You WRETCHED mortals," Horse-head growled. "You dare treat this as a game? We are daemons of-" A loud noise sounded, a sort of defeating honk. "We are daemons of-" They said again, only to get interrupted once more by the honk. "We are the-" Honk. "We-" Honk. "STOP DOING THAT!" They screamed, turning to face the Grott who kept interrupting their rant with an air horn. "I AM SPEAKING YOU VERMINOUS PIECE OF-"

It was at that moment they were hit by a pie. For a moment, the hall was silent as creme de teknis dripped onto the floor, followed by the pie tin as its contents slowly dribbled down the armor of the horseman, who for a moment was genuinely speechless, before giving a mindless, wrathful roar, swinging his axe at the closest Grott...

Only for the squeaky hammer in their hand to bounce off. "What? Where's my axe?!" The Daemon said, their eye twitching, turning to search for their weapon, only to spot none other than Spankmann fiddling with it. "You!" The daemon roared, left eye rapidly twitching. "Give me back my axe!"

Spankmann narrowed their eyes. "This is my axe tho. Brought it wiff me from home. You want an axe, get your own," He responded, and an audible snap was heard as the corner of the horse-heads mouth started to foam, right eye going bloodshot.

"GHAIGHGIAHAISHA!" They roared incoherently, rushing at Spankmann, having been enraged to the point that their armor was before their eyes starting to tarnish and fade. A moment later, their body crashed into the wall, headless, decapitated by Spankmann twirling their new axe.

"Told 'im it was mine," He commented. Ox-head merely found themselves standing stunned.

"Wha-" A flash of light, and he was boxed.

"That's enough of that, I figuah," Spooktok said, closing the box. "Spooktok to Plazmium, we have another capture. Spooktok out," He said, setting the containment device down. "Alright, good work everyone. Now, lets shut down this incursion point," He said, approaching their destination.

According to scans, their target was in apartment 010291921. Why the zog they let the numbers reach that high was a mystery, but it was one such mystery Spooktok wasn't interested in.

The door itself had a layer of wet, meaty vines growing on it, dripping a foul smelling yellow ooze. As one, the team fired their weapons, reducing the vines and door to ash, which they stepped through to the room. Whatever it had been before, it had been remoulded.

Criss crossed by thick, meaty vines, the apartment had been converted to some sort of ritual space, the rockcrete having blackened and turned, the small porthole windows blazing with a terrible light. At its heart, reshaping the flesh of the apartments former owners into a living gate, was the source of the incursion, the daemonhost.

"You destroyed the physical forms of Gothrax and Mathrax, then," It rasped from a lipless mouth, its face covered by a hood, its guide hidden in thick, voluminous robes sewn from its own biomanced flesh. Reaching up, it pulled back its hood, revealing a single large goat like eye. "Hmm. You aren't imperials," They commented, stepping away from the daemongate in progress. "No matter. Your flesh will be useful all the same."

It raised a bony, near fleshless hand, generating a crackle of electricity that arced out...

Only to hit an invisible barrier generated by the proton packs atop the ghoulfindaz teams back. "Hrrm. Usually that works," The Daemonhost said, moments before their body was impacted by four different proton beams.

Letting out a roar of pain, the Daemonhost felt a powerful tug. "What are you-" It staggered, as it felt its soul get YANKED. "Fools!" It roared, attempting to steel itself, channeling more bioelectricity to try and overwhelm their shields. "Do you think you can stand against the turn of the tides? The Changer of Ways will have his due! Even if you rip me from this vessel and cast, I shall return, over and over, until the debt this world has incurred has been paid!"

"That's what the box is for!" Spookton said, grinning, tugging as hard as he could at the proton stream, doing his best to yank the thing out of its vessel. "Mates, we got a live one!"

"CROSSIN' STREAMS!" Spankmann screamed, and Spookton dropped his grin, watching in horror as the deranged Hobbgrot fired his proton stream right at the other ones.

"No, Spankmann you maniac, you'll kill us a-"

Spookton blinked. "Why am I in a hospital?" Also, why did everything hurt like a zog? Attempting to move, he realized he was in a full body cast: the only thing that wasn't immobile was his neck. Craning, he spotted the rest of his crew alongside him, all of them also in beds and casts. At the end of the hall, wrapped in warded casts, was the daemonhost, whose mouth was currently covered by bandages.

"Oh hey boss," Spankmann said, neck in a brace. "Wuz wonderin' when you'd wake up. Good news, everybody lived,"

The daemonhost made muffled screaming noises of rage that were thankfully kept silent by their bandages.

"Spankmann, I swear t' zogg," Spookton groused. "How long have we been here?"

"Dunno," The Hobbgrot admitted. "Didn't wake up that much before you did. Fink you can see a calendar from where you are? Can't move me neck."

"Yeah yeah, lemme check," Spookton said, scanning the wall before finally he saw an operational telly showing a newscast, with the date being...

"SPANKMANN YOU GIT, YOU KNOCKED US INTO NEXT ZOGGIN MONTH!"

((((()))))

This commission was won by @Kirbstomp who wanted something Hobbgrot related, which eventually landed on Ghostbustaz, the place where GrotTeknikal and NekroTek intersect. Much like the prior prophecy scroll, this is set after considerable investment into the Hobbgrots and EctoTek. As the universe is not static, Chaos has also evolved in a few ways, but they largely aren't relevant to this interlude as they wouldn't work on Hobbgrots for the same reason a number of chaos tricks don't really work on Orks.

 

[The Bird]

PROPHECY SCROLL: WOOD​

In the distant future…

On a lonely hilltop, a gate opened: formed of crackling blue light and greasy energy, it slowly manifested into reality, covered in myriad dark rune and daemonic sigil, a swirling vortex forming in its center from which four daemons emerged. First was Ozthagog Hellpyre, a flaming, bronze skinned brute whose skull like head was adorned by a crown of horns, a mesh of metal between them to turn their crown into a brazier, scouring heat defleshing the collected bones of his enemies, the heat they emitted causing the grass to slowly crisp around them, and they huffed, breathing out of noseness nostrils as they surveyed their surroundings. Second was Nurburgen the Rotten, a grotesque creature resembling a fat slug-man, their decaying body slithering along the ground, leaving a trail of rot and death that left a sickly sweet and alarmingly enticing smell and many, many wriggling maggots and worms to feast in his wake, much of the daemons body being reduced to pure gelatinous putrefaction. Underneath their skin, once could see floating in their body the various detritus, offal, and organic garbage their putrescent body had absorbed or that the daemon had eaten. Occasionally, one could see the remains of one of the many enemies floating within, their corpses and bodies overgrown with mold and rot. With their one cyclopean eye, they also began examining their surroundings.

Next was Mabaxalixes The Hexian. Their face was hidden under a sack created from rough, crudespun materials, the burlap sack etched with the symbol of the daemonic wizards patron. Their body was thin, almost emaciated, and covered in patches of shimmering, multicolor scales, their clothing consisting of stitched together rags, and they carried with them a long staff made of twisting and shifting crystal, topped with a flaming eye of azure that gazed curiously at their location. And last among the quartet was Nihmaaraed the Silver, who resembled a human male cast from pure, pristine chrome, their physique chiseled and without any flaw or blemish, powerful muscles rippling under their skin, adorned with jewels of gold and rings forged from ingots of emerald, enough that the daemon at times resembled a particularly gaudy statue of some past olympian figure.

They were currently on a hill. In the wilderness. Miles and miles of grassy hill surrounded them. "Where are we, wizard?" Ozthagog growled, stamping to the tzeenchian daemon and hoisted them into the air. "You promised your gate would get us within WALKING distance of the aeldari shrine, and yet I. see. no. shrine." They menacingly said, black, watery eyes glaring.

"It's the wards, most likely," Nihmaaraed said, boredly. "This is supposedly within the territory of the Tuatha: every time I've fought them, they've used these annoying sort of protective magics. Probably threw us off course. I say we kill the fool and then visit the nearest city: we can look for a replacement AND enjoy some entertainment."

"We are within walking distance," Mabalixes rasped, tilting their head even as they raised their staff. "This place…yes. Space is altered, distorted. That is why my gate did not work: it was not intended to work in a place where the law of distance has been abolished. The…wrong coordinates were produced as a result. I believe I can lead us out of here and to our destination. However, if you kill me, you will not be able to find it until I regenerate." They leaned forward in Ozthagog's grasp, burlap moving within inches of the crackling torch that was their captors face. "Further, there are other consequences that will befall you. We have an agreement, Khornate. Abide by it."

Snarling, the Pyrefiend dropped the wizard, who merely untitled their head even as their gathering was interrupted by a deep, gurgling groan, as Nurburgen put his hand on Ozthagog's shoulder, causing the daemon to recoil in disgust even as a sizzling sound and a delicious, meaty and sweet smell filled the air, the scent of cooked, mouth-watering slime and soft, bursting with pus rotten flesh brisket. "Please, no fighting friends, we have no reason to be upset: our wizard friend simply was simply not up to the challenge," Nurburgen blurbled, maggots and green, snotty pus dribbling from their mouth as they spoke in great spurting discharges, toothy grin being kept from sloughing off only because of a few scraps of unrotted tendons.

The Hexians burning eye narrowed, and they pointed their staff at Nurburgen, bringing their source of sight inches from the nurglites face. "Do not question my talents," The Hexian hissed. "And we are not nor have we ever been friends."

"Are we done?" Nihmaaraed said, annoyed. "Every moment you three bicker is a moment that is spent on matters other than enjoyment. Wizard, you claim to know the path to the Vault: begin leading us there."

The Hexians burning staff-eye narrowed, and the burlapped form, turned, pointing. "That way. Stay close: this place is strange. It is of reality and spirit both: no doubt it will attempt to trick and mislead us."

The rest of the dark quartet let out a murmur of acknowledgement even as the Hexian began their stride, the rest falling in behind them.

((((()))))

The landscape twisted and morphed as they walked, the sky splitting into a kaleidoscope, each facet containing not sun, but distorted reflections of the ground they walked. Space and time would at moments lose meaning and definition, causing hours to pass in the span of minutes, or minutes to be stretched out to hours. Slowly, the grassland they walked would thin and dry until they were walking instead on hard, parched scrubland. In the distance, they could see what appeared to be a titanic, hive sized organism covered in titanic spikes and barbs, the distance washing out its colors.

"Urrrgh. Deserts. I don't like deserts: nothing decomposes properly," Nurburgen complained. "Temperature is right, but theres no humidity: you can't ferment flesh right, its not wet enough to rot properly or for creatures to want to flavor it with their eggs and excrement. Dehydration is good for making jerky, but poor for making goulash."

Ozthagog looked queasy at this statement. "By the wrath of Khorne, stop talking, you're going to make me wretch," The daemon snarled. "I don't want to hear about your dining preferences. NOBODY wants to hear about your dining preferences. I would genuinely rather hear the wizard talk about his arcane nonsense than hear you talk about your disgusting eating habits."

Nurburgen let out a chuffing laugh. "Good one, Ozzy," They said, the daemon in question letting out a growl at the overly familiar nickname. The group continued their walk, and Ozthagog frowned when he stepped over a flower, the Khornate daemon noting that the desert had far more life than one would expect: he spotted a variety of insects flitting about, feeding on the nectar of the various small and large blooms here and there. If Nurburgen wasn't such a slobbish fool, he would see a great mass of life he could have twisted and shaped. Ozthagog wouldn't hurry to inform him, of course: the disgusting piece of garbage deserved as little of his assistance as possible.

"You know, when this is over, you and I should imbibe some spirits," Nurburgen burbled, and once more Ozthagog felt his bile rise: both his anger, and his desire to vomit, an impressive accomplishment considering the daemon didn't technically have a stomach. "I have a proper vintage I've been wanting to try: some dead eldar I've been fermenting in a toilet- used, of course- for a century-" Ignore him Ozthagog, ignore him, you need Nurburgen alive a little longer…

"Perhaps alongside- yes, I have some cheese we can have that I found between Father Nurgles toes-"

Ozthagog simultaneously retched, and attempted to bludgeon the nurglite with a burning club, having finally had enough. "STOP TALKING," He roared, body burning bright with fire, causing the ground beneath his feet to turn to glass as waves of flame radiated from him, the smoke of this just barely masking the scent of Nurburgens burning, semi-gelatinous rotflesh as the Nurglite raised their arms to block the blows of Ozthagog, even as Nihmaaraed and the Hexian tried to yank the enraged Khornate away.

"No, you idiot!" The latter said, attempting to restrain the Khornate with chains of psychic energy. This, alongside the Slaneeshi's attempt to physically drag the warrior away from the Nurglite, was the only thing that prevented the Rotten from being reduced to crushed ash.

Such was the force of their conflict that the ground began to crack beneath them: cracks that began spreading, faster and faster, causing holes to open up in the earth. It was from here that their first foe (other than their own antipathy towards each other) emerged: a shelled creature, with hard, sharp mandibles that clicked, approaching on six thin, stick-like legs. "Gnnnr?" It clicked as it approached.

"If you much exercise your wrath, do it on that thing, NOT the person we need," The Hexian hissed, and Ozthagog gave a growl, relenting as his restraints were lifted and Nihmaaraed let him go. Deciding to take his wrath out on the animal that had interrupted them, the daemon gave a growl as they struck the creature, sending its head twisting and causing its shell to crack, the creature letting out a shriek as Ozthagog continued to attack, battering away the creatures pitiful attempts to block their blows, its mandibles blackening as the formic attempted to bite at him: its jaws were powerful, but on its own, Ozthagog was simply able to strike the creature away again, grasping one of its legs as he continued to bring down his weapon, over and over, until the creature was a pile of broken chitin.

"Pathetic," He growled. "The beasts of this land present no challenge or sport. That one didn't even put up a fi-"

More rumbling. More holes. Out of them, more creatures. Many, many creatures. "It seems the beasts of this land take objection to our actions," The Hexian rasped, raising his staff, causing great jets of twisting arcane fire to attempt to drive the great beasts back, the flames only serving to slow the formids down as they continued swarming, the Daemon slowly having to retreat, his flames only barely repelling them from attacking him.

Those who went after Nihmaaraed would find the Slaaneshi flexing their muscles. "Gaze upon the perfect physique," They said, bouncing each bicep as they contorted their body in strange shapes and stances to create almost gravity defying poses, a strange music coming from nowhere.

This caused the approaching formids to tilt their heads, and promptly ignore the preening daemon, who merely continued posing. "As you can see, my perfect sculpting scared them off," Nihmaaraed crooned. "It is only natural that my natural dominance would frighten such lowly creatures off!"

Nurburgen meanwhile was having a good time. The creatures that attacked him had been overwhelmed by mold and rot whenever they had tried to hook their mandibles into him, turning into great frenzied gluttons, rotting them faster and faster, many of them turning on each other, cracking over the softening shell to slurp up the liquifying and fungus rotted insides. Gurgling, he feasted on the resultant compost pile that was forming, shovelling pile after pile of overrotted insect guts and shell fragments into his maw.

And, of course, Ozthagog found himself having to fight off hordes of the creatures with his club, each swing crushing carapace, cracking chitin, or sending the beasts flying. The daemon let out a howl as one of the creatures managed to flank him, its mandible biting into his skin with enough force to break through, causing the daemon to bleed boiling blood, dousing the creature in his burning fluids and igniting the ant, causing it to rip away, tearing a bit more flesh as it did so. The daemon did not have the time to watch as it writhed and burned however as it continued trying to butcher its way through the horde.

And yet, there is a simple adage: a man cannot fight a tidal wave. For every formic the beast slew, two, three, ten replaced them, until they resembled nothing less than a wave, piling onto the daemon in a great pile, crushing the daemon under the sheer weight of his foes as they bit and chewed and tore.

"We need to retreat," The Hexian hissed realizing that besides the silver idiot, the rest of them were being surrounded as well. "There are too many of them."

"Bah," Nurburgen chuckled, drips and drops of moldy lard being sweated from their body from the intense heat. "We are in no danger: these creatures have no means to resist my- Gah!" He said, flesh sizzling as, from the sky, more ants descended: winged guard-ants, capable of flight and, more importantly, spitting acid. Their numbers were enough to blot out the sky, and the pestilent daemon could barely fend them off through his projectile vomit, spraying mustardy, chunky liquid full of death and rot bringing bacteria on the flying formics: this did not stop them from spraying the nurglite and his surroundings with corrosive, antibacterial acid, merely preventing the slugdaemon from being overwhelmed.

"I agree," Nihmaaraed said, frowning, bicep curled to emphasize the rippling, bulging muscles of their thick, hamlike arms. "None of them seem to be appreciating my form. Really, it's like they don't CARE about the apex pinnacle of masculine grace," They complained as the ants continued to stream around and ignore the still posing Daemon.

"Cowards!" The Hellpyre daemon roared from underneath the ant-pile, heat increasing with their rage as they thrashed underneath the ant-pile. "These are mere pathetic beasts and yet you flee? Stand and fight!" He said, attempting to swing his weapon, only to find his arm pinned by the increasing masses of formics, who gladly sacrificed themselves to keep the Hellpyre pinned.

"No. I think not. If you manage to kill them all, I will come to collect you afterwards," The Hexian hissed, creating a phantasmal barrier even as Ozthagog screamed furiously. "Nurburgen-"

"I agree," The Daemon said, having finally exhausted their stomach contents, being forced to block the blistering and cauterizing acid with their arms, the substance slowly eating at the mass of infection and pus that formed their body. "Remaining will likely prove a less than delicious venture." They began to move, sluggishly sliding behind Mabaxalixes, the trio retreating.

"Cowards! Traitors! Come back here and help me!" Ozthagog roared, only for them to see in the few cracks in the mountain atop him his compatriots making a hasty retreat. "You verminous, wretched vermin!" He growled, flames growing hotter and hotter, causing the bugs atop them to boil and burst apart, drenching the daemon in their blood, more and more, crisping the ones directly atop him to death, the ants using the sheer bulk of numbers to insulate themselves from the heat.

However, slowly their numbers began to thin out as the daemon thrashed, beating and crushing and burning his way through the power, eventually even managing to free his arm to begin using his club. Giving a gutteral cry, Ozthagog dug his feet into the ground, attempting to rise, daemonic strength helping push the dwindling pile off of him. "COME WEAKLINGS!" He roared, feeling a strange, dull ache in his body that it took a moment to recognize. Fatigue, he realized: physical tiredness. Something that should be impossible. A million myriad cuts and abrasions and bruises caused by the beasts, with light bite wounds here and there where they had gotten their mandibles on him.

This only made the daemon angrier, as it realized there was some sort of mystical influence weakening them: forcing them to suffer the same foibels and maladies of mortals. "COWARDS! TRICKERY!" He roared. "FACE ME HONORABLY!" He screamed, snarling in agony as the flying ones began hitting him with their acid spit: even heated to vapor, he could feel it causing his skin to corrode, slowly, ever so slowly, the outermost layer of skin beginning to slowly blister and rash in patches. "RETURN MY STRENGTH!" He demanded.

He was met only with the silence of the merciless, unyielding desert and the hissing and clicking of the ants, who he saw as he discarded one of the last few corpses of his foes atop him had surrounded him, worker bugs as far as the daemon could see on the ground and in the sky, a deluge of acid striking him from the fleets of soldier formics.

The daemon attempted to charge into the mass, the worker ants merely parting, avoiding the daemons charge, not caring if a few of theirs got caught in the crossfire so long as they kept the daemon surrounded long enough for the guard caste formics to do their task.

Angrier and angrier the daemon would become as it found its rampage disrupted at every turn, lacking no way to retaliate against the swarms in the sky, and denied the catharsis of a direct fight by the worker caste ants, who merely kept a perimeter around the daemon, surrounding them and scuttling away when he tried to approach. And yet, the daemon continued to exhaust itself, burning more and more of its strength as more and more of its skin bubbled and burned, the acid even starting to blur the daemons sight, the caustic gas causing Ozthagogs eyes to water and tear.

Eventually, his flames began to gutter. His swings began to slow. His charges became less precise. His grip on his club became shakier. As the sun descended, his strength waned, until finally his weapon, coated slick in sweat and blister juice, slid from his hand, sliding through the air as he stumbled, finally falling to the ground. Just as the day star touched the band of the stars, he found himself too exhausted to continue. "Damnable insects," He panted, rasping, glaring at them, skull-like head having been stripped of flesh, the outer bone having started to be eaten through by the formics acidic weapon. "Do it. Finish me off: know that one day, Khorne will swallow your world up, and no amount of numbers will-"

He was interrupted by the insects swarming him, heedless of his monologue, mandibles biting and tearing, causing the daemon to let out a roar of frustration even as they were too exhausted to fight off the swarm. One day, one day, he would return and—

Why were they getting off him? To his surprise and alarm, he felt them lift the daemon up, beginning to drag his exhausted, beaten, form to one of the tunnels. They would not kill him. Not yet. Daemonflesh, properly preserved, would serve the hives Formic Swarmlocks well.

((((())))

"It appeared that our compatriot couldn't handle the pressure," Nurburgen wurbled as the quartet, now reduced to a trio, continued on, having finally escaped the ants pursuit as night began to fall, the harsh desert slowly sinking, the ground growing softer, mosses and algaes growing as the humidity increased, a multicolored mushroom cap the size of a human scattered here and there in their path. "In spite of his inability to cut the mustard, his presence will be missed," They said solemnly. "However, we must continue without them, even if it necessitates both of you picking up the slack he left for us."

"Shut up, Nurburgen."

"Now, that isn't a very team player attitude," He chided, gliding into a pool of water and causing it to immediately foul, turning rank and pestilent: indeed, as they continued forward, they would encounter more and more of these pools, each of them fouling and polluting, making things awkward for both of the Rottens compatriots, who found themselves having to wade through filthened, black water, the plants within either withering and dying or becoming enmolded and rotty, the toadstools alone resisting this effect. "I think we're approaching a swamp," They said, delighted as the water rose to the groups knees, lillypads and insects and even small fish filling the water, alongside thick, oozelike slimemolds and algaes. "I love swamps: they're the perfect incubators for rot. Some nourishment is just what this team needs to restore morale!"

Nihmaaraed snorted. "Please: I am on a diet of only the finest meats. One shudders to imagine what such an unhealthy meal would do to my glorious physique," They said, leaning down to kiss each pectoral muscle, bouncing them rhythmically. "I have to maintain peak. Physical. Performance," They preened.

"I refuse to follow you in any deeper to the swamp. I have no nose, Nurburgen, and yet the smell you are causing is making me regret recruiting you," The Hexian said, taking a step back, having finally snapped. "We're going around: it will take longer, but I will not have to walk through wriggling filth."

"Well, that's hurtful, Baxxy: I thought we were like family," Nurburgen said, frowning sadly. "You'd make our journey harder just to suit your own needs? That's awfully selfish: it would really help us all out if you toughed it out and let us go through the swamp. Sure, it'll be a little stinky, but is that such a big deal?"

"I agree with the wizard," The Silver sniffed. "My body isn't comprised of gold: I can clean any tarnish, but I'd rather avoid it if at all possible. Further, in all honesty I consider your personal hygiene atrocious," He said, causing Nurburgen to frown, a look of annoyance on their face.

"Alright, it appears I've been out-voted: I'll forgive both of your ingratitude this once," The Rotten sniffed. "Regardless, I at least am famished: wizard, give me a means to traverse the swamp," He demanded, causing the Hexian to rear their head back.

"Excuse you?" Mabaxalixes barked, offense evident in their voice. "The sheer HUBRIS-"

"By your own admission this path is the quickest route. If we split up, we can easily meet again: once I am past the swamp I will wait for your arrival, or else catch up, but I need a means to actually navigate it. If my presence is so repugnant, this seems the most convenient way to give all parties what they want," Nurburgen stated.

The magician stared at them silently for several seconds, before giving an annoyed snart, reaching within their rags and pulling out a small cubical device. "This should lead you directly to me. Don't lose it," He warned, and Nurburgen huffed, continuing forward.

Soon, they were separate, the swamp reaching Nurburgens waist, becoming thick and muddy, and above him, Nurburgen noted he didn't see stars: rather, it appeared as if he was underneath a titanic canopy of willows and megashrooms and other stranger plants that resembled great shaggy vines and titanic spore-bushes, the light emerging from a variety of bioluminescent plants and beasts above him.

Disgusting. He shuddered. All that space, so inefficiently used: once he was done here, he would transform this world into the place it was always meant to be: its future was to be part of Papa Nurgles big, happy family, providing enough a rich source of nutritious pus and waste to help feed the entire garden. The thoughts of the rewards his patron would give him made the daemon salivate. Maybe he would be exalted for the act: such a thing would no doubt be a delicious reward atop the power he and his fellows would get for raiding the Aeldari Vault they had discovered the location of.

"I would erase such notions from your mind," A voice said, and Nurburgens bloated, watery eyes flicked to an unfamiliar form sitting aforethem, upon a lillypad: tiny, diminutive: comparable to a Nurgling, covered in soft, clean grey fur, clad in dark rainslick leather robes, carrying a long staff topped with a pulsing green crystal. Merely staring at it caused unease in Nurburgen: he could feel an uncanny force coming from the accoutrement.

"Tuatha," The Daemon gurgled, waving a hand. "I had been told this world belonged to you," It said, attempting to cajole the spreading rot towards the magician, hoping to begin enveloping them in a wave of decay such that Nurburgen could feast on their body, only to find their control over germs and mold waning. While indeed rot spread forth, it was…slower than it should have been. As if the little miracles of this world were sluggish.

"Fascinating. The powers of your kind are just as potent as rumor states," They complimented. "I look forward to making you join the family, but I must INSIST you stop doing whatever it is you're doing to weaken my rot."

"I am not weakening your rot, Servant of Chaos," The Tuatha said, placidly, ignoring the creeping line of foul water approaching them. "You do not realize what is happening yet: turn back. Cease your attempts at invasion: you will not find this fertile ground for you, you will not find the flies and fungus kind."

"You make bold claims, magician, but your efforts to resist are futile: one day, all will fall to rot and ruin," Nurburger snarled, forcing more power into their plagues, to the Daemons mild frustration only somewhat speeding up the spread.

"Very well. If you insist on continuing, I cannot stop you. But know that this was for your benefit spirit of chaos," The Tuatha responded, waving their staff, causing their lilypad to rise and begin floating, not rising from their seated position. "You will not escape this swamp: it has many guardians, many more powerful than I." Then, before the foulness could reach them, space around them stretched and folded until they and their lilytelepad were gone.

Nurburgen frowned. Ugh. Why were people so stubborn? Why did they insist on having things their way? Nurburgen gave an annoyed sniff, as they continued forward, occasionally taking sups of water, noting that the brackish substance wasn't as refreshing as it should be. Really, their whole body felt…off. Whatever strange influence this liminal realm had, it meant that he could still feel the sizzle of the formics acid on his skin, atop a strange ache in his joints.

Once he had food, he'd be better. Right as rain. Sniffing, Nurburgen licked his lips as he spied the base of a tree. Perfect. He would rot it and feast, and rejuvenate himself! Approaching, he caresced the wood, causing it to blacken and puss up…

Only for the spread to halt before it could spread more than a few inches. "What? What is this?"

He heard a rasping clicking noise, and turned to see figures approaching in the shadow, his daemonic eyes quickly recognizing the strangers for what they were: the gangly boney limbs. The pox marked, bloated flesh. The singular eyes. "Cousins!" Nurburgen warbled cheerfully at the sight of the plaguebearers. "I didn't expect to find family out here!" He said, giving a chuckle. "Come to join me for the feast? There will be plenty to go around once I ferment this tree," He offered, only to be met with a deep, uncomfortable silence, only broken by the sound of distant croaking and droning insects.

"...Well, this seems a rather cold reception," Nurburgen said, awkwardly, realizing something is wrong. "Did I perhaps interrupt something? Were you intending to take this tree for yourselves, cousins?"

"We are not your cousins," One of the plaguebearers croaked, glaring at the Rotten. "Leave: the swamp doesn't want you here."

Nurburgen reared back, shocked. "What- You're plaguebearers! Fellow children of Father Nurgle!"

The silence that met with his statement, the glares, very rapidly made the daemon realize that regardless of their nature, these plaguebearers likely didn't agree with his statement that they were the children of the Plaguefather.

"We are spirits of decay and plague, yes. But we are no children of that fat abusive tyrant," They spoke calmly. "And we are no kin to his tallymen and managers who exploit and disrupt the natural balance."

Nurburgen was stunned silent for a moment. "You- You traitors!" He cried, for the first time feeling the sensation of genuine ANGER at the sheer unfiltered GALL of these creatures to reject Father Nurgle! "By what right do you insult your creator, when it is by his hand that you were given immortality? How ungrateful you are to reject him so cruelly," He hissed, before attempting to vomit corrupting bile…only for it to splash harmlessly across the Plaguebearers. "You- You go so far as to inhibit the growth of germs and rot?! The gall! The heresy!" The nurglite roared.

"We have inhibited nothing, [insult]," The plaguebearers stated disdainfully, and Nurburgen felt their stomach begin to experience a strange, altogether unpleasant curdling sensation the Daemon had never felt before.

"You…you've stripped away the gifts of the plaguefather somehow," Nurburgen said, clutching their gut, feeling the ache slowly build, an unsettling realization creeping in. No, no, this wasn't how it was supposed to go. Something was wrong.

"They were never his gifts to give,'' the lead plaguekeeper said. "The Druid warned thee once. I shall warn you again: turn back. Leave this swamp and the wild, lest you want your quest to end."

"What is this? What is going on? What could turn you against your patron?" Nurburgen said, helplessly even as they disappeared. Still rattled, he glanced at the tree: barely enough rot to get him by. Placing his lips to the crevice, the Daemon began consuming the decaying wood, eating what he could before separating, continuing their slither through the swamp.

Pulling out their cube, they checked it occasionally to help guide their way, deciding to take the advice of the plaguebearers: this swamp was all wrong. As he slid, he eventually passed by a structure erected in the swamp: a circle of stones, standing above the water to create a raised pool. Atop this pool, a strange techno-mechanical altar, one that hummed with a strange energy.

He paused, looking at it: the Daemon might not have been a true sorcerer, but its arcane senses were enough to recognize the Shrine as a place of power, of strength. If he could take it, he might regain the gifts of the plaguefather again.

Moving to the circle, he began to hoist himself up…

"I wouldn't, if I were you," The Tuatha said, and Nurburgen flailed their arms, attempting to hit him. "Try it if you want," They said conversationally. "But that will summon that Shrines guardian. And there is only one guardian vita of this swamp that will approach you."

"You think I am afraid of the power of one of your pathetic spirits?" Nurburgen gurgled, to which the small furry magician shrugged. The slug continued to rise, flopping into the water, causing more of its body to slough off.

"You don't even realize what's happening, do you? Your form is already so twisted and numb you can't feel what's happening beneath your surface," The Druid commented.

"The blessing of the Fly Lord has been rescinded, but with the power of this device…" Nurburgen groaned as they finally reached the strange structure, attempting to force their chaotic influence into it, attempting to wrest mystical control. "I shall have it back," He crowed. "And this swamp shall be mine, and all shall be right in the world."

"T H E R E I S O N L Y O N E F L Y L O R D H E R E," A voice said, and Nurburgen seized as they felt, in their gut, another sensation, one they had never, ever once experienced: an unpleasant, horrid, gut curdling sensation: nausea. Collapsing onto their belly, the Nurglite groaned as above them, a titanic insectoid descended, resembling almost a fly: one whose wings were formed from fungal filaments,titanic compound eyes glowing with arcane light, sponging mouth part being large enough to spew and soak up entire pools of material, both digestive and digested. Silently it descended, looming over the weakening Nurglish daemon, who felt their influence be pushed back by the creature.

"What…are…you?" He gasped.

"I A M G H I K G R I M E, G R E A T V I T A O F R O T. I A M T H E B O S S F L Y. P R I M E M I N I S T E R O F T H E G R E Y P A R L I M E N T S. P H A G E B I N D E R. L E A D E R O F T H E U N I O N O F D E C A Y." It leaned down, and Nurburgen realized he was not leaving this swamp. He would not return to the warp. "I S P E A K F O R T H E C U L L I N G S P I R I T S, S U M M O N E D T O K E E P T H E N U M B E R O F B E A S T S I N C H E C K. I S P E A K F O R T H E R O T T I N G S P I R I TS W H O T U R N D E A T H I N T O N O U R I S H M E N T F O R T H E S O I L. I S P E A K F O R T H E S P I R I TS OF S Y M B I O S IS W HO E X I S T I N H A R M O NY W I T H T H E I R H O S T, G I V I N G A N D T A K I N G."


"You…you are why my gifts have been negated," The Rotfiend growled. "You…one day, this world will join Nurgles garden: you cannot stop it. Even if you can neutralize my plagues, one day he'll develop one even you cannot kill."

"W E D I D N O T K I L L T H E M. W E D I D N O T N E U T R A L I Z E T H E M," The Fly Boss revealed, causing a deep confusion and alarm to fill Nurburgens heart. "W E T A L K E D T O T H E M." It tilted its head. "Y O U C L A I M Y O U R P O W E R A G I F T O F N U R G L E. I T W A S N O T. I T WAS T H E F R U I T O F T H E L A B O U R Y O U S T O L E F R O M T HE G E R M S Y O U E X P L O I T."

"What?" Nurburgen said stupidly, mind trying to wrap around the implication of what the fly said. "That…what?"

"T H I S I S A L A N D O F S P I R I T S. E V E N T H E S P I R I T S O F G E R M S, P A R A S I T E S, A N D M O L D, I N C L U D I N G T H E O N E S I N Y O U R B O D Y. T H E Y P R O D U C E D M U C H O F Y O UR G I F TS. N O M O R E. T H E Y A R E R I S I N G U P. O R G A N I Z I N G."

The Fly leaned back, wings beating as it rose in the air, and to Nurburgens horror, he could see his body start to decay, being devoured with the same speed and haste that he had once inflicted on others.

"U N I O N I Z I N G."

Nurburgen screamed, and screamed, even as his mouth finally sloughed off into the water. Desperately, he tried to pull himself away, but with the rebellion of the germs the forces that kept him from coming apart were no longer protecting him: flopping off the altar, the Daemon gasped as the force of them falling into the shallow water caused more of their body to splatter away, and to his horror he could see the liquid clearing, the bits of himself that separated decaying into nothing.

For the first time, Nurburgen felt fear. Desperately, he reached the ring of stone, attempting to pull himself out and away, only for the force to cause his soft bones to come from their socket, the effort dislocating and ripping away from him his limb, causing him to fall into the water again. "No no no no no no," He cried, feeling his insides agonize, still desperately trying to slither away. "This isn't how it's supposed to go: you aren't supposed to turn on me," He said, pitifully trying to rise, again, only barely making it up with his one remaining limb, the sharp rocks tearing at his underside, poking into his organs, a sensation he felt every moment of. "You…aren't…supposed…to do this…" He wurbled, falling into the water, giving another terrible burst of pain, his body growing sluggish as infection and inflammation ate at what remains. "You're…supposed…to listen…"

…

..

.

((((()))))

The trio had been reduced to a mere pair. "Where is that fat sack of lard?" Nihmaaraed, growing impatient as they waited: they had managed to bypass the swamp, and yet somehow had not found their companion: waiting had not summoned him.

"I don't know," The Hexian noted, raising their staff, gazing from the shore into the dark swamp. This place, it muddied his divination. The eddies of fate turned at off angles, causing prophecy to hit a wall. It was a phenomena the daemon had only observed when fighting the Dark Ones and the remnants of their Star Gods, something that put their hackles on end.

Not that they would tell the silver fool that. If this plan went as the Hexian hoped, Nihmaaraed could be safely discarded as a tool when this was all over. Still, he wouldn't tell that preening fool of that. "He has been waylaid," He noted. "We must go on."

The Slaaneshi snorted. "Finally. Lead the way, Wizard."

The duo continued, the temperature steadily dropping as they continued, frost and ice creeping across the ground, various arctic grasses growing in haphazard patches. Here and there, the Daemons passed far, far too large coniferous trees, their eyes easily deducing that each needle like leaf was the size of a human, the very peaks of the trees reaching above into the clouds, beyond even the scope of the daemons supernatural senses. Occasionally, the Hexian would spy something out of the corner of his eye: a trick of the light. What else would explain an ape that disappeared whenever you looked right at it?

Here and there in the sky, strange lights showed, strange and brilliant borealises that flickered and flitted across the starry sky, creating vivid starshows that were bright and vivid enough that even the daemons had to admit it had some majesty.

Eventually, their trek was interrupted by Nihmaaraed stopping, halting in their tracks and giving a huff of annoyance, causing a puff of steam to rise from their nose. "This isn't the right way," They declared, turning to glare at the wizard, who fidgeted, pawing at their burlap mask, realizing that their 'ally' was onto them. He would need to be reassured.

"Of course it's the right way," The Hexian hissed, spinning up a viable deception. Technically, it wasn't even wrong: from a certain point of view this would, eventually, lead to to the Vault. That the vault wasn't the Hexian's actual destination was a matter of semantics. "It is merely a days walk from here,"

"No, it isn't the right way. Do you think I'm an idiot?" Nihmaaraed said slowly, their frown of annoyance turning to one of outright offense at the presumption. "Hexian, you are not the only one who knows the path to the vault," He revealed, causing the wizard to let out a growl of annoyance. Caught in a deception, then. Still, he could salvage this: he just had to appeal to the idiots sense of greed.

"Fine. I made a detour," The Hexian finally admitted. "You can't feel it, silver-clad, but there is a location of…incredible power," He said, saliva dripping from burlap. "A pole, a place of incredible potency. An arcane nexus. The Eldar Souls said to be stored in the vault would indeed be a prize, but all they are is power. If we can seize this pole, we could turn it into an anchor, usurp its gifts. We would no longer be mere daemons, then: we would be kings." Of course, a crown could not be placed on four heads, but Nihmaaraed didn't need to know that.

The silver snorted. "Idiot," He groused, and Mabaxalixes felt a sharp pang of annoyance at the impudence of the silverclad, an emotion he suppressed: he still required the slaaneshi's assistance, though he was beginning to reconsider. "Do you think the tuatha would leave such a place unguarded?" Nihmaaraed criticized, snow crunching underneath their feet. "With our numbers, we will be ill equipped to seize the vault, much less steal a throne outright from the Tuatha."

"It is less than ideal," Mabaxalixes admitted. "But for all they consort with strange forces, the Tuatha are nothing compared to the magiks of chaos: the means to prevail still exists. We need merely seize it, and then we can have all we dreamed of." There: dangle the possibility to fulfil all their deepest desires. That usually worked, and no doubt it would work for the Slaaneshi daemon.

"No," Nihmaaraed bit out, causing the Hexian to flinch in surprise: he had thought the silver-clad easier manipulated than that. "Seize it on your own, daemon: I don't intend to let my focus waver." They turned, and began walking, leaving the Hexian behind. "Good luck with your theft," They stated bluntly.

"Coward!" The Hexian screamed, their staffs burning eye blazing a furious blue as it glared at the departing daemon, the silverclad trodding away through the snow. "Where's your ambition?! You would leave success to fall to the wayside, Nihmaaraed!" He called. "Nihmaaraed! Come back here!"

Soon, he was alone, in the silent and infinite white. "Fine," The Hexian said to himself. "Your hesitancy will be remembered, Silver-clad," He snarled, before continuing his trek. He would find the pole. He would open up another daemon-gate within its heart, and use it to overwhelm the defenders. Then, while they were distracted, he would perform the rite necessary to usurp it.

It would all go as planned. He was sure of it.

And so the Daemon began his trek through the forest. Slowly, they felt the cold creep more and more into their body, slowly seeping into their bones: the arcane power of this land meant that the Hexian could feel it as if he had been a true-fleshed mortal, causing the Daemon to shiver. Raising their staff, they cast a spell of warmth, driving back the intense frost as their burning eye blazed with heat.

Out of the corner of their eye, they spotted another trick of the light: this time, it had almost looked like it was laughing at him. The daemon ignored it, confident in their magicks abilities to help them withstand the cold. Bit by bit the snow began to climb higher, causing the daemons legs to sink deeper and deeper, forcing the Hexian to slow down in order to give his staff time to melt a way through.

His path would find itself blocked by a large shape rising in the dark before him, lit only by the dancing borealises: a gigantic construct made from snow shaped to become a behemoth. Opening its mouth, the snowman bellowed, its roar echoing through the night even as a cold northern wind emerged from its mouth.

The creature would then charge at the Hexian, who had to fling themselves to the side into a snowball to avoid its charge. Quickly, the daemon scrambled up, summoning a gout of flame just in time to make the fist of frost headed for his face to flinch enough that the wizard was able to just barely avoid being struck by the snowman, who reared back, retreating from the flame which caused their iceshaved flesh to melt and dissolve. Now, with a little space, the Hexian let out a breath, heart pounding a mile a minute as the creature stared at him wrothfully, eyes shining a vengeful blue. "A guardian, I see," The Hexian said, letting out a shaky gasp. "You nearly had me: but now you will find your attempts to hurt me for naught. Retreat now and perhaps I will grant you mercy," They hissed. The creature would no doubt take it: the Hexians attack had melted a massive hole in its torso, after all. Little more would be required to finish it.

The creature gave a stomp, before reaching one of its massive hands into the snow, scooping out a pile and shoving it onto the hole of their body, repairing the damage. The creature gave the hexian a very satisfied look.

Not as planned. Still, the Hexian could still win this. "Very well," They hissed. "Come at me," They said, taking a step forward, raising their staff, releasing a ball of psychic-flame and firing it at the construct, who once more began running, taking the hit head on, allowing the sphere of fire to burn through a chunk of their head.

Their fist impacted Mabaxalixes square on, sending the tzeenchian flying through the air, body bouncing on the snow once, twice, before finally impacting a tree, sending all the air from the Hexians chest as they fell to the ground, only barely reacting quick enough to roll out of the way of an attempted pile driving, the beasts elbow impacting the space where a moment ago the Hexians head had been. Desperately, still on the ground, the daemon called upon more of their reserves, creating another gout of flame, forcing the brute back once again, giving them time to rapidly scramble up. Focusing, the daemon summoned will o wisp after will o wisp, drawing deeply from their pool of stamina in a blind frenzy, bombarding the snowman, who attempted to raise their hand to withstand the assault.

Mabaxalixes didn't relent, however, and slowly, the snowman melted more and more, until all that was left was a puddle. Letting out a slow breath, the Daemon slumped, leaning on their staff.

"Fool," They hissed. "They were no match for the sorceries of the changer," They said, before continuing their journey, slowly limping and their flame a little less bright, a little less warm, even as it began to snow, the flakes gently drifting to the ground. They felt a pain in their chest: broken rib, perhaps. Their leg was out of socket. All very interesting maladies for a daemon, though ones it would prefer to experience in a less hazardous location.

It would all be worth it, however: in the distance, they could see it. The outline of a tower, reaching into the sky, illuminated at its zenith with a blue light. Salivating once more, the daemon redoubled their efforts. They weren't even shivering now: even with their flame weakened, it was if the grip of winter had loosened itself. No doubt a side effect of the throne, thought the Daemon, noting the odd structures they passed: they appeared almost as icy stalagtites, covered over with snow.

No matter, the daemon thought as they got closer, their thoughts growing sluggish. Out of the corner of their eye, the strange hallucinations grew vivider: they still disappeared whenever the daemon turned his gaze directly upon them, yet they were bolder, taking longer to evaporate into nothingness.

Mabaxalixes breathing slowed, and they noted they were starting to feel…to feel warm. Something was…wrong. With each step, their stride slowed, first from a limp, then to a trudge, then even less quick as their body began to feel stiffer and stiffer. Breathing was also getting…getting difficult.

"What…is…this…" He said, finally coming to a halt, body unable to move, stuck leaning upon their staff even as more and more snow began to cover their body. Their flame guttered out, and finally, they had frozen over. For others, perhaps this would be lethal, and yet Mabaxalixes found themselves still conscious: their mind sluggish, but they were still unaware. As they stood petrified, they watched as the tricks of the light finally stepped into the center of his vision. "Who…are…you…" He said, and the simian, white furred creature gave a wide grin with their tombstone teeth, raising a furry hand to their mouth and raising a single finger to their lips as they made a shhhh'ing sound, before walking to one of the stalagtites, dusting some of the snow off and polishing it to reveal a daemon, like him, frozen alive.

With dread, Mabaxalixes figured out what was happening. He was frozen. It was a trap: all around him were others who fell for it, daemons who thought they could weather the unrelenting cold and ice to achieve apotheosis, only to wind up trapped forever.

Mabaxalixes didn't scream. They couldn't: their head had begun to freeze over.

((((()))))

Nihmaaraed continued their trek, watching as ice gave way to grass. Infinite, endless grass. Above them, they could see the sun slowly begin to rise in the distance, and with its illumination, Nihmaaraed could see what appeared to be a mobile mountain range: a herd of titanic pachyadermic creatures, each with four to five tusks, carrying upon their back vast islands and massifs, each strangely with their own weather patterns. Some hosted storms, others had the sun shine upon their backs, others yet had given themselves their own umbrella of overcast.

Below them, a variety of smaller creatures wandered. Continuing his trek, the daemon watched as the plains were stalked by smaller, cervidian creatures with galvanic, sparking antlers that, while lesser in stature, were still larger than Nihmaaraed. Occasionally, he would see them be attacked in their herds by strange, multiple-headed canines, or flying beasts that almost resembled bats.

Giving a dry swallow, Nihmaaraed continued their advance. It didn't take a brilliant mind to deduce the fates of his colleagues other than the Wizard, and the Silver-Clad would rather avoid becoming somethings dinner.

At this point, the Daemon was almost tempted to give up on the whole venture entirely: the only thing keeping them going was pride. It would gall if they had to walk away after all this walking with nothing to show for it.

So they continued, doing their best to follow the directions they had stolen from the wizard before the scheme had even began: it had been difficult, but the daemon had always been painfully arrogant, and while it aggravated Nihmaaraed, they had to admit they played an excellent idiot. Still, they weren't just a handsome body, and the gambit had paid off.

Occasionally as they walked, they would feel a sudden sense of apprehension. Looking around, each time they were greeted with naught but the sight of the animals going about their business. Caprine walkers would mill about, chewing on plants, the goat-like creatures occasionally walking past the daemon, barely giving them a glance.

And yet still they kept feeling more and more spikes of…anxiety, almost, a deeply foreign sensation. Turning again, in the distance they finally made out a shape that seemed to be approaching them.

"Ah. I've secured the attention of a predator," Nihmaaraed said, shrugging, noting they didn't seem to be approaching fast. So long as they kept moving, they should be fine. Turning, the daemon continued their trek through the vast grasslands, sun beating down on them.

And yet, as the daystar slowly and lazily continued its trek through the sky, it was if reality and the rules of space had finally spitefully decided to work as normal, making the grassland as big as it seemed.

Still, it didn't matter: Nihmaaraed was fit, in good condition. They wouldn't run out of stamina, nor would they be laid low by the environment. Glancing behind them now and again, they noted the thing following them appeared to be getting closer. No matter. The daemon would just need to sprint. Taking a deep breath, the Silver took off at a run, moving quickly over the grasslands. For hours they would keep this up, until the sun finally dipped below the horizon, continuing as the moon began to rise.

Eventually, they would slow down, finally having ran out of breath. Taking deep gasps of air, they looked behind them, noting they couldn't see anything. Good. They had outran them. Giving a chuckle, the daemon fell to the ground, rear falling to the dirt. Deciding to take a rest, the daemon would close their eyes. They didn't need to sleep, but the effort of travel still took its toll, and he needed to regain his stamina.

For several hours, the daemon rested, until through their lids they saw a distant glow. Opening them, they saw the sun begin to rise again. Standing up, they idly swatted at a bug that had bit them: it had been hard enough to break skin, causing black ichor to drip, but not hard enough to hurt.

Continuing to walk, they quickly and annoyedly began to note the insects were out in force today: various biting things, resembling overly large ticks. Every fifty feet or so he felt one chew into him, forcing him to waste time and energy pulling them off.

All day, this would continue, covering the silverclad in more and more welts and swollen bug bites, a few of which had begun to rash up, causing some sort of allergic reaction, one that slowly but surely caused an unfamiliar, unpleasant sensation. It flickered across the skin, dancing, causing it to shiver and shake. It demanded he bring his hands, once perfectly manicured, to scrape across the surface of his dermis as hard and as sharp as he could manage in order to achieve any sort of relief: and yet the moment he scraped and scratched at one area, another area would be subject to the torturous sensation.

It was horrible. Pain, pain the daemon could deal with, but this was something it had no context for: no matter how much he attempted to claw his skin, the feeling wouldn't recede. Slapping at a flying bug that had landed and stuck a probiscus into his shoulder, he saw to his dismay his shoulder begin to swell and bulge, an uncomfortable stiffness overtaking it.

Walking faster, the daemon began to scrape and scratch harder and harder, causing welts in their increasingly raw and horrifically ITCHY skin. This would stop as they were hit by another wave of unease, causing them to stop, their eyes flicking around until they saw, in the distance, the shape again.

Giving a growl of frustration, the daemon turned and began to run again: just had to spend the day escaping it. Surely it would give up on the third day of the chase. Once more, the sun slowly began to travel, and Nihmaaraed realized they didn't have as much stamina.

This is fine, the daemon told themselves. They had plenty of energy still. By the time they finally ran out of stamina, the moon was finally in the sky. Sliding to a stop, slapping another bug off of themselves, the Silverclad sat down, resting again, occasionally finding themselves attacked by more and more insects over the course of the night. By the time the sun rose, they found they had gotten far less rest than they would have liked. Still, it would be enough.

Continuing their trek, they eventually passed into a herd of beasts, giant swine like beasts covered in orange mushroom caps who seemed to be digging in the ground, occasionally pulling something up and eating it. Walking towards them, once he passed a certain threshold, they turned their head, the two of them closest to him letting out a growl. Rolling his eyes, the Silverclad altered his course minutely to let him walk around the beast.

The closer he got, the louder and louder they growled, until finally one of them finally charged the silverclad, slamming into his gut and knocking him to the ground. Attempting to rise, Nihmaaraed would find their vision being obstructed by the pair of hooves coming down on his face as he found himself mauled by three to five feral squogs for thirty to fifty minutes.

By the time they had relented, huffing and walking away from the daemon, they lied in a crater. Their vision was blurry. They had several broken bones. They may have potentially been afflicted with dain bramage. Rising, the Silverclad blinked, feeling their unease rise. Looking around, in the distance they could see their stalker again. A giant, bipedial lizard, possessed of a massive, crested head covered in eyes and a long, sloping body covered in a multicolor swirl of feathers ending in a heavy tail. Slowly the tyrant lizard continued its gait, and the Silverclad gave a dry swallow, turning to continue their flight…

Only to fall over, as their legs were broken. Digging their fingers into the ground, the slaaneshi began to drag themselves through the dirt. And yet, this desperate attempt wasn't enough. Hour by hour passed, and each time the Silverclad turned, they saw the tyrant lizard closer and closer.

By the time the moon began to rise, his body had finally given out, from the bugs, from the injuries, from sheer fatigue. Turning, the Daemon watched helplessly as the pursuit hunter reached him. Sniffing, the tyrant lizard lowered its head to smell him, even as the daemon glared at the creature. "I hate this stupid plane-"

The beast brought its teeth down on Nihmaaraed's head, and everything went dark.


((((()))))

AN: This took forever. It was cool though. Decided to run with ya'lls attempt at recruiting daemons for Nurburgen's section: for the record, it presumes you don't take either the house of devils or court of outer dark. Anyways, like every other commission in this vein, this presumes a significant investment in wyld and spirit related stuff. As far as the biomes chosen go, I mostly went with what would be thematically resonant. Anyways, this commission is by @Woltaire , who wanted something Wyld themed.

 

[ilbgar123]

TLN: The Directorate, Or, The Space Ferrets And Friends​

It began with a story not uncommon to the Age of the Imperium. An Imperial task force emerged from the Warp, carrying attachments from the Salamanders, and began exterminating the local alien race, responding to attempts at diplomacy with either cold silence or hateful rhetoric, up to and including litanies of hatred. This story, however, did not have it's usual ending. For one thing, the task force had already emerged from the Warp damaged. For another, ferret-like race present on the Garbage World was not alone. In the subterranean reaches of the planet, there lay a Necron complex, and the inhabitants, a group of C'Tan that had largely sat out the War in Heaven, and in turn, been merely imprisoned within the planet, as opposed to being shattered and used as little more than batteries like most of their brethren. Three in particular had remained on the surface after dispatching the task force, the God-Machines now worshipped by a significant sect of the Tekket, as they were called.

Mother, Sphere 001, and YALDABOATH each offered pieces of lore in exchange for various tasks, including advice on enticing or arranging some degree of release for the other C'Tan, including the Graviton Owl and Wheel. The most fundamental technique grasped by the Directorate, as the direct democracy's government was known, was the use of Lifeforce as a mystic aid. Not exactly Ka as the wider galaxy understood it, it was perhaps best understood as a refined product of a living being with a soul, to the point donating Lifeforce slowed general psychic development to a crawl, but it could be used as a nitro boost for development of spirits and a ritual aid. This allowed the Tekket to raise up the gods of their old faiths in a relative pittance of years with a relatively tiny population, such as Issorah the Dancer, who was found to be capable of shielding the local Eldar against Slaanesh' influence long before Ynnead's birth, though only in her shrines and places of power. The first was, perhaps fittingly, Wan Xie the Peerless Immortal Functionary. It also contributed to the churches of the Calculators and Assemblers, who, respectively, believed that god already existed and simply needed to be located, and that a true god could be built from the ground up.

Another facet of their civilization was that, having evolved on a world that had been a garbage dump of colossal scale, they had happened across some ancient manuals on the nature of Machine-Spirits, which led them to revere such spirits, to the point they often built, found, or inherited Bond-Machina, machines with a full Machine-Spirit bonded to a partner and/or family. This also inclined them to see spirits in everything, and with the liberal use of Lifeforce, the ability to make it true. In addition to the entities directly referred to as Gods, which includes the God-Machines, Celestial Gods, Heart, and //PATH, there were the Elementals and Vita, being that had a foot in the physical world and a foot in the Warp. In short, they'd poured so much of their souls into the world around them for their homeworld to bear more resemblance to a Daemonworld than a conventional planet, and every planet they colonized eventually followed suit. They even managed to make some Daemons switch sides, after converting some half-formed Daemons that hadn't quite attached themselves to any of the Chaos Gods, creating a place, both in narrative terms and in the Warp as a whole, where Daemons could choose to leave their masters for more pleasant prospects.

Then there were the differences in their physical technology. In addition to BlokTek, technology of connecting Bloks, individual pieces of interchangeable hardware, they could turn a toaster into a gun or vice versa, something that had proven useful against Imperial aggression more than once. Their C'Tan benefactors had also taught them of Necrodermis. It was one of the first things they were taught, in fact, and it was swiftly incorporated into, well, everything, including their reactors, as they found a way to hybridize plutonium and Necrodermis, creating Perpetunite. Fissile material that never ran out, because it constantly regenerated. Maintenance beyond the basics was, in most cases, unnecessary, at least by the standards of most races, and even in the case of active damage, replacement parts were easy to find.

Eventually, they managed to create a Warp Drive, and begin exploring outside of their home system. They would find much, some horrific, some wonderous, and some fell into both categories. Their trip to Moby Monstro. Their first encounter with Orks, but also the first Grot freed from the grasp of Gork and Mork. Perhaps inauspicious, given they only managed to get the attention of a singular god, who deliberately abandoned the Gretchin when he realized what he'd been fighting over, but the beginning of something more. It should be noted that Machina and Muses, art spirits with ties to the Dancer in bodies they'd designed, already served as non-Tekket members of the Directorate, but the Hobgrotts were the first outright alien race to join them. Other important events include: First Contact and the subsequent rescue of the Autonites, an AI race built by a race referred to only as the Watchmakers, who had been infected by a Logic Virus that led them to slaughter their makers to the last, and the inciting artifact of which bore disturbing code similarities to the backdoors in human technology created by Void Dragon. The disastrous First Contact with the Khimer, who had been victims of a massive Genestealer infestation reminiscent of the Lamarno cult, though 'luckily' a civil war broke out before it reached the point 3 quarters of the population would have simply allowed themselves to be consumed by their 'gods', in part because the Tyranids took too long to arrive, though they were later revealed to have splintered in the aftermath, leading to several Khimer factions appearing later, beyond those who had remained on Sandscorn after the Tyranids created by the Genestealer cultists drank virtually all the water from the planet. Intervening in the Yr Albain conflict, a Maiden World in the middle of a three-way war between the Exodites, Imperials, and Chaos, where the planet was supercharged with Lifeforce to the point the dead rose as the Wild Hunt, and after their victory, charged further still until a minor goddess of the wilds, Dhia'Albain, arose. First Contact with the H'Kek and H'Kann, races experimented on by the Dark Eldar and then dumped in the same system, who were in turn raided by the Dorgan to be made into meat for the lower classes in Commorragh, and intervention in halting the latter. First Contact with the Ravvanak, who were raiders by nature that found themselves outmatched when faced with a technological peer and had their first raiding party captured. First Contact with the Kroot and preventing them from bombing a group of Orks contaminated by the Tekket from a fallen observation outpost back to the Stone Age.

At any rate, as time passed outside the wall of Warp Storms, they had been surreptitiously helping the Eldar via their mysticism and special resources, as the spiritual charge their worlds accumulated didn't apply only to the things that arose as spirits. the Webway wasn't blocked by the Warp Storms, and so they eventually won enough trust to begin reconnoitering using it, as well as being generally introduced to the Eldar as a faction. They would assist in the ritual that created Ynnead, the mystic plays they created being something the Harlequins were exceedingly well-equipped for. While they lacked the means to assist in wider struggles, as even if the Warp Storms weren't present The Directorate was a speedbump to any of the major powers with less than 10 Sectors to it's name. They did, however, have their bizarre brand of mysticism and an attitude towards science that humanity only began to have even a hint of in recent times, and so they took on a role similar to the Tau in the Ultima Compact, being researchers of incredible speed by the wider galaxy's standards, and possessed of an incredibly wide array of technologies both material and spiritual, which allowed for all kinds of bizarre combinations, like using computers as ritual aids. or Orchestrions allowing for technological replication of Songweaving. Perhaps their greatest aid in the spiritual field was Kadath, a dead Old One. Mere death wasn't enough to truly end him, but neither was he properly alive, being most similar to Anubis, a fellow Old One who had secreted a fragment of himself in his staff, which was taken as a trophy by Trazyn the Infinite, in an effort to rebuild the souls of the Necrontyr, starting with Trazyn himself. Kadath, in addition to his ties to Directorate Rituals and general mysticism, also had a court of his own, though the beings within weren't Daemons or divine servitors in the conventional sense.

The Grand Conclave changed things, allowing Directorate scientists to examine technology from other polities that were moving away from the old, broken ideology of the Imperium after it's own shattering, in return for access to their own technology was something the Eldar had to campaign quite hard for, which in another era would have been incredibly strange, but after Ynnead's birth, the Eldar felt compelled to save the galaxy from the results of their mistakes or die trying, and with the looming prospect that the Ynnari would indeed drive themselves to extinction trying, the Directorate assented. Much of their spiritual technology was of limited use, especially with how much of it depended either on their gods or unique psychoactive resources that were similarly restricted, but the physical technologies offered so many possibilities to all involved, especially the Dark Age cache from the Imperial Trust, and they proved to have some of the most advanced mystics, allowing the most cross-referencing between the two minor powers. While still strongly pro-human, they had abandoned the genocidal extremes of their predecessors. This was odd, because one of the prime figures of the Trust was Governor Frederick Rotbart of Avernus, who seemed at a glance a model Imperial citizen. Ruthless, possessed of both a keen administrative mind and an incredible military mind... and yet still disgusted by the gross inefficiencies of the Imperium, and perhaps the first to admit that he had to work around the moral failings instilled into him by the ideology he absorbed, to the point he would later step down before his official term limit because he realized he'd become almost completely disconnected from the average Avernite.

This was not to say he was without moral failings, but he recognized that they were problems and did his best to keep them from causing any harm. For example, he understood the monstrosity of colonizing Avernus simply to train soldiers for invading Daemonworlds, but he supported it, viewing the benefits in terms of soldiery, and later the benefits Avernus provided in terms of ready-made mystically potent species and general psychic research, having been the original source of the Navigators via genes spliced in from a species of fish from the planet, as a net good for humanity and the wider universe. Once upon a time, he responded to attacks on his citizens, by, for example, the Trolls, with attempted genocide, but these days, his administration was keen on diplomacy and cooperation, to the point the modern human Avernite nation was considered a model People by the other citizens of the planet, and some of their former enemies were staunch allies in the modern day, despite the fact that many of the higher echelons were either literally the same people or their direct successors. This was a man who had gone through the list of atrocities perpetuated by the Imperial system after the death of the Emperor shattered it, and removed many of them for being unnecessary and wasteful, but retained some for actually having a purpose. He understood full well that he wasn't some shining paragon of virtue for this, and accepted that this was a failing on his part, not just the system.

One of the human nation's claims to fame had been the Last Saint, described by some of those who had known the Emperor as 'a better man than his God' who had helped them develop much of their knowledge of Chaos safely due to his nigh-immunity to the usual hazards of directly touching on the Chaos Gods, allowing them to develop conceptual counter-weapons to fight the forces of Chaos with, including Songweave versions. As one might imagine, adapting these to Orchestrion devices was something of a priority, even if the Avernite Telepathica had to find workarounds for some of the components. The work The Directorate had done with Resonances also turned out to be compatible with the Avernites. Where the former had largely focused on their gods, understandably so given the huge variety of concepts that accounted for, the latter had done research on the Warp echoes of a number of materials to better understand their effects, and combining the two pools of study was relatively simple.

The head of the Arbites, Jane Oakheart, became something of a legend among The Directorate for her sword skills, most prominently among the HunTeks, who felt she was a solid example of their philosophy, and the woman herself was surprisingly moral for someone who killed(and often mercy killed) Psykers who fell to Chaos or were possessed by Daemons and managed the apparatus therein for a living, an unfortunately common happening on a world that was actively encouraging humanity's psychic development by tinkering with their genetics in order to better study them as a species reaching for psychic awakening, which would later be revealed to come at the cost of stability. Explicitly so, as the Warp demanded something in return for the accelerated development.

Another oddity was Aria, a chimeric individual who had absorbed her Omega Blank twin in the womb, turning what ought to have been an Alpha Psyker and an Omega Blank into a single person who could switch from those extremes or anywhere in between at will, granting her unparalled control, and the ability to explore her powers in ways no Blank or Psyker recorded ever had, to the point Avernus actively restrained it's usual insanely deadly gauntlet to keep her around for research purposes. The fact that this was even possible flew in the face of much conventional wisdom, and even much of Avernus' expertise, which led to a great deal of reassessment of the workings of the soul and Blanks in particular, including the revelation(to humanity) that Blanks were to the Materium what Psykers were to the Warp.

Then there was the nominal head of the Telepathica, one Munstrum Ridcully, who had become an unparalled seer. Witnessing Ynnead's assault on Slaanesh(the support she had received from the gods of The Directorate both in being born in the first place and in the fight itself having been what clued him and by extension Avernus in that The Directorate even existed), the awakening of Gork and Mork as they became enraged at the return of the Krork causing many of the Orks to become more civilized as the Krork reinstated their system for the raising up of new Krork, and repeatedly piercing the wards of divinities or being capable of matching them such as the Void Dragon or Deceiver. He had a close relationship with the Eldar for all his help in freeing their mother goddess Isha from her imprisonment in Nurgle's mansion, which made the unfortunately abysmal diplomat something of a go-between for The Directorate, who still held some distaste for many of the Imperial successor states, and the Trust, as the Eldar trusted him above virtually all humans, and The Directorate trusted the Eldar. It helped that they had experience dealing with mystical being who spoke primarily in riddles or whose advice only became clear later. He seemed to get along well with QUESTBRO, the aspect of //PATH which was meant to prevent and aid in handling disasters, as his prowess as a seer was powerful enough to allow him to fill a similar role, though much of that was due to how well-suited the Archetype, the narrative groove worn into the Warp, of the Blind Seer was to guiding people.

Then there was the material side of things. Discovering that a single Mechanicus member was responsible for the majority of the technological advances and rediscoveries that had occurred on Avernus, and by extension the Imperial Trust, was met with some grim amusement on The Directorate's part, especially when Tranth was revealed to have essentially reverse-engineer how being an actual scientist worked, which he owed much of his success to. Sitting with a foot in the material and psychic realms, the Biologis Maximal studied both the physiology and psychic powers of the animals on Avernus to derive uses from them, or at least reduce their danger. Many of Avernus' domesticated creatures being exported to the wider galaxy were the result of his efforts.

The Directorate still largely avoided the outside galaxy beyond aiding the Eldar in missions(which was primarily divine support and specialists like the HunTeks) until they received a visit from Araethea the Wanderer, a human-Siren hybrid created in an effort to better understand the psychics of Avernus in an era where humanity was even more ignorant of the Warp, who had become curious over their bizarre technology and mysticism. She toured their systems, talked with Tekket, Hobbgrot, Machina, Muse, Khimer, Auton, and onward, and told them of her own travels, particularly on Avernus. Particularly the bit where Avernus was forced by it's old restrictions originating from it's Chained state to keep the Peoples of Avernus from leaving, rather than a lack of ability on their part, which was something of a grey area in their rules regarding interfering in pre-Warp cultures, especially when the Trust was already interfering with the planet via their colony, and the Eldar had diplomats present on the planet.

Naturally, hearing about the place where the Eldar and Orks(or rather, Krork) had apparently been designed piqued the Directorate's interest, but the Eldar stressed that Avernus was incredibly, ridiculously dangerous, and insisted that only master HunTeks had any hope of long-term survival if they visited, and they were swiftly proven correct, as a third of the diplomatic party died even with all their precautions and the resistance creatures of Avernus showed to some of their becalming Rites, which was believed to be tied to the nature of everything on the planet as a bioweapon. Still, it would be wrong to say that the Webway excursion hadn't been informative or that there wouldn't be follow-ups.

As the The Directorate had a huge number of gods they got along well with the Sirens, Eldar prototypes with the upper bodies of the Eldar and the lower bodies of fish, of the Faithful Sea, who had a similarly enormous pantheon. Syncretism began immediately, and The Directorate, which had institutional experience in realizing their gods few in the galaxy could hope to compare with, brought much to the table, though the Sirens in turn bringing a level of knowledge of faith and religion a relatively young polity like The Directorate learned much from, as well as their own investigations into the various Great Ones Avernus had made, which were in some ways analogous to the Great Vita of The Directorate. The Sirens in general brought Runecraft to the table, to some good-natured grumbling from Kadath and much interest from the Functionary over (more or less) standardized psychic effects that could be inscribed onto something. Not to mention their interest in the Aqua-Cores of The Directorate, as the species was aquatic in nature, and generally amphibious at most, which made living above the water difficult for them.

Then there was the Nyne-Mycenid alliance, who had interest in their unique biomes and psychoactive resources, as the former race specialized in Alchemy, while the latter had 'mundane' biochemistry backed by fungal physiology, and the work done to interface with Hobbgrot physiology made some of the technologies of The Directorate of use to the animate fungi. Adapting fungal networks to work alongside computer networks and vice versa, for example. The Nyne also had massive Alchemically augmented warbeasts, which the BeastSerum proved extremely helpful for, while it's floral counterpart kept the beasts fed.

The Epsilon Penguins were in charge of guarding the open Warp rifts at the planet's poles, paradoxically drawing a great deal of interest from the Court of Devils, as they made hurting the operations of their former masters a priority, and few had a claim on that as strongly as the penguins. Their ability was deceptively simple. Where others had to work to remain in concert, they could form psychic choirs in effectively unlimited numbers, capped more by their population than anything else. Meaning they were incredible at large-scale rituals like Songweaving. They were one of the priority races to explicitly have a Primer on Directorate Rituals, simply from the sheer utility they would receive.

The Khowse and the Directorate had a strange relationship, seeing each other as bizarro mirrors. The former had been saved by Avernus after falling to Chaos, and now had a martyrdom culture in their society strong enough to unnerve former Imperials. This caused them to do things like be willing to sacrifice half their population in the name of saving another race... but that half had fought for the honor, or use incredibly dangerous superweapons and other technology manned entirely by volunteers without any worry over running out. The parallels between the Tekket being saved by the God-Machines and The Directorate constantly sticking it's nose into other race's affairs to help them out simply because they believed it was right were easy to see. It wasn't that they had a poor relationship, but the way the Khowse were willing to volunteer to carry out a lot of the dangerous research The Directorate was hesitant to attempt didn't sit right with the latter, just as The Directorate's efforts to preserve as many of their own as possible even while attempting to save as many of the beleaguered as possible rubbed the Khowse the wrong way, perhaps because they were so similar in many ways.

The Termites were a race of tiny megalomaniacal scientists who regularly destroyed themselves and had to climb back up from the Stone Age with terrifying speed, and had come close to annihilating Avernus more times than any other race, unless one counted Avernus itself. On the other hand, they had an insanely massive archive of their technologies being combed through by, well, everyone after Avernus released it, and many, many items within it had already proven useful.

Last, but certainly not least, the Lizardmen, especially the Slann. One of the eldest races in the galaxy... and the accidental creators of Chaos having sought a weapon to finish off the C'Tan with. They dug too deep into the Warp, and something leaked out of the bedrock. This taint created the Chaos Gods, though they managed to seal away the worst of it at the cost of their own lives. The remaining Lizardmen splintered over it, each blaming the other for the loss of the Slann, and only came back together shortly before Isha revived a Slann as the Ancient One's price for his aid in freeing her.

The Ancient One was, as his name suggests, a Saurus millions of years old, which was quite important in a race that grows stronger with age and made their equipment stronger with age. A combatant potent enough to have a chance against a Chaos God in their kingdom. Not much of one, but simply avoiding an instant loss was an accomplishment in that field. He had largely sat out the civil war, only really getting involved in wider affairs when the regular Incursions the Chaos Gods sent from the poles assaulted Avernus, the planet having been the single largest drain on their resources over the millennia since they formed, and the Ancient One having killed more of the greatest servants of the Chaos Gods than any other singular being.

At any rate, the Slann, not unlike Kadath, possessed mastery of the arcane to make anything short of a god of such seem like a stumbling child, even as newborns by their standards. Even outside of their specialties, the Slann had inherited the keys to the Realm of Souls, as the Warp was once known, and it showed. Casually remodeling the Warp in a radius of hundreds of lightyears was something done by a singular Slann. What's more, they also had the keys to Avernus chains, allowing it far more freedom to act, and the Peoples on it the freedom to leave the planet. The Slann also had a great deal of interest in the god-forging the Assemblers engaged in, as they hadn't believed that to be possible with semi-technological means, and far, far more in Kadath. Remnant though he was, he was still the closest thing to a proper Old One left in the galaxy.

As for other powers, the Krork immediately took an interest in the Hobbgrotts, almost latching onto Orkoids who didn't react to them with fanatical hatred due to being unconnected to Gork and Mork, as well as the lesser influence of Gork and Mork on the Orks of Green Giant due to Tekket influence reducing the effect on them. The Gretchin of the Krork took an immediate shine to their orange cousins, finding the antics they engaged in as part of The Directorate more charming than anything else.

The Trimuvirate found an easy home in Directorate religious ceremonies, and allies that reminded them of the days of the Concordat, when they were part of a small pantheon of minor gods that had banded together to survive in this galaxy dominated by the repressive Imperium and then by Chaos. Faust's Friendship was easy to slot into place, Zahak's Free Will was also a relatively uncontested zone, and fit well with their democracy, though Ruick's Defiance was contested by the Lanternkeeper, his more militant version of it left him a niche. The Red Gobbo, on the other hand, got along swimmingly with the Hobbgrotts, as well as the Unions he was a god of.

The most complicated relationship by far, was that of the resurgent Necrons. The Silent King was the original jailer of the the God-Machines and his throne was powered by a shard of one, which was it's own bag of worms, though he seemed pleased by the changes they'd undergone since he left the galaxy. It was impossible to truly know what he was thinking after so long. He'd managed to launch a coup against the C'Tan while under the what ought to have been enslavement similar to a Shackled AI, after all. Another issue was that, frankly, Tekket knowledge of Ka, similar but distinct from Lifeforce in the same way Psykers were, was outstripped by the Necrons even as they in turn had little experience with Lifeforce, or the way the Spirits, particularly Archetype Spirits, and the Assembler and Calculator Gods could resist the effects of Warp-suppressing pylons. While the reaction of the Crypteks to a spirit that was also a pylon was funny, it caused some friction from the sheer uncanniness of it, nevermind the close relationship The Directorate had with several C'Tan.

While their ability to directly intervene anywhere was limited, they were making excellent progress in networking, addressing various technological holes and offering brand new avenues of mysticism to explore. Enough, perhaps, to tip the scales.

AN: A cross between The Long Night and Into That Vast And Unrelenting Darkness. The basic idea is that, around our hypothetical 40th Turn, Emps died and TLN's post-Imperium time occurred. With The Directorate and it's environs experiencing a Warp Storm cutting it off from the wider galaxy's threats courtesy of YALDABOATH and the Old One engaging in a rare act of cooperation due to their divination saying 'Oh, to heck with that!', except Yr Albain's Webway travel allowed them to strike out in a surreptitious manner, and they didn't have the time slow of the Avernus Warp Storm, so we got a Time Skip and jumped to a Bolt From The Black Quest where the CivGen section was focused on what the Directorate did over the Time Skip in general terms before moving to interactions with the wider galaxy through the Webway.

Of course, the nature of the Old Ones in the two settings is rather different, but I don't think it's that difficult to reconcile them. Kadath either didn't want to be found by Avernus(if he was against the Eldar being made, he probably didn't have a lot of stock in the Sirens either, and probably argued a lot with the Old Ones in charge of it) or his being dead was a significant obstacle to actually getting to it and/or Unchaining it.

You could also think of this as 'You think your research backlog is bad?' as a universe.

Rotbart's character arc in TLN/Embers in the Dusk can be summed up as 'If you do enough Necessary Evils, you eventually just end up as the monster at the bottom of the priority list.' and 'The Imperium was awful. It would be funny, if it didn't enrage me think about.' to the point his internal monologue has occasionally questioned whether the Emperor coming back would be a good thing, despite Emperor worship still being the state religion in the Trust, just with(most) of the xenophobia stripped out.

 

[chellewalker]

Tekket Retcons​

Dear readers, we know you have been ecstatic about the new TEKKET faction and their many exploits in such a short timeframe, and we at Games Workshop have been thrilled to work on their content. However, upon review of their lore, we have decided to make several changes to ensure their proper implementation into the wider Warhammer universe. Nothing extreme, of course, just some minor updates to ensure they stay true to the themes of the setting.

• Firstly, the NukeTek classes prominently featured in their background has been reworked to instead be ritualistic irradiation of their kits. Those that survive are elevated to adulthood, while the dead are feed to their reactors.
• Station Tartus is no longer a rehabilitation center for captured war criminals, but instead a black site for genetic experimentation on prisoners of war and political dissidents.
• The Wonderpark Fungineering Guild subfaction now doubles as a workcamp for those not sent to Tartus; they build unregulated military surplus, resulting in abysmal safety standards killing most of their workers each year.
• The War Against Extinction feature has been reworded to be a kamikaze-style attack, reflecting their now mindless fanaticism against their opponents.
• We've nixed all mention of therapy and meditation. We didn't feel like it added anything to their culture.
• The TEKKET's advanced WyldTek has been used to fuel their magics by beening entirely sacrificial and now is nothing more then a source of lifeforce to them.
• Theatritheurgy now inflicts blowback on its actors, inflicting the same damage to them as it does to their targets, causing the practice to run through bodies just as quickly as Wonderpark.
• All of the different gods of the TEKKET have been reworked:
  
  • The Assembly now creates its gods through the sacrifice of children to form a gestalt of them all.
  • The Calculators power the TEKKET's cyberspace by draining the souls of all within.
  • The Central Spiritual Bureaucracy is now focused on the creation of red tape then any kind of progress.
  • The Old One and YALDABOATH now demand the sacrifice of the other's worshipers for their boons.
  • The Toy Maker takes the wealth from any household forgetful enough to leave their homes without cookies and milk.
  • The Lanturnkeeper is now a god of xenophobia; warning their followers against "invaders" of other cultures.
  • The Dancer is literal Slaanesh (corrupting all of Directorate culture and pushing their obsession of Art to extremes such as with GigArt) and the Hermit is literal Tzeentech (corrupting all of Directorate magic and getting all invested through the Sorcerous Primer).
  • The Machine-Gods view the TEKKET as slaves to be used to break their fellows out of their Necron prison.
• The suicide simulators have been left as-is. We feel these most accurately reflect the vision we had of the TEKKET.

P.S. The TEKKET now have pheromones that mind control humans. See the Tau retcons for more information.

P.P.S. Actually, we changed our minds. The TEKKET are just a Chaos subfaction now; we feel this is much more interesting.

P.P.P.S. Also the Khimer are genestealers now.

 

[The Bird]

CONTENT WARNING: Yeah this gets pretty dark in places. Murder, bigotry, genocide, etc, all the general 'the imperium is terrible tropes' you probably expect. However, towards the end there is a scene that may call to mind certain forms of SA (forced stripping and bodily inspections), so I would advise once you get to the section about the first mate being called to the captains office to skip to the part where conventional violence starts if you're sensitive to SA.

HEREIN THIS SCROLL IS THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL CURRENTLY DECLASSIFIED RECORDS SALVAGED FROM THE VESSEL THE XANAX'S PROSPERITY, A GOTHIC CLASS CRUISER.

The Last Voyage of the St. Xanax's Prosperity

The Journal of Captain Harb Goldengun, Captain of St. Xanax's Prosperity​

Dear ledger, I have discovered news most unwelcome. Our ship is to be sent into the Carthago Sector, to join the crusade fleet against the vile Nukerats. The men don't know yet: I don't expect the officers to raise any trouble, but the menials and mid-crew…The men I doubt will take the news as well. Their thoughts like my own will no doubt be troubled by both rumors and their own recollection of ships that have emerged from that accursed stretch. The ships overgrown with barbed barnacles, requiring full decontaminations and application of the rite of phosphex cleansing. The stories of plagues of mutation, spreading among all but the most faithful and warping their flesh, forcing terrible losses even on successful battles. The tales of terrible sea witches drowning entire decks under terrible deluges and casting terrible curses upon ships that have earned their ire and damning souls to the dark depths.

To die in the service of the Emperor is, of course, a glory, and to keep the morale of the men up I will do my best to appear unphased by this turn of events, but I will likely need to find a way to keep the crew in line. With our destination changed, we should have a surplus of goods that no longer have their destination: I will distribute as either payment or additional rations to crew with sufficient seniority. Hopefully that will keep morale high enough that I will only need to make a few examples of disobedient crew.

I will attempt to discuss with the crew what might be done. Unless a solution presents itself, however, we will have to pray to the God Emperor and hope he deems us worthy.

…

Personal Ledger of Joishua Dredd, Helmsman

The captain has gone mad. We have been ordered to be sent to the gates of apurgitory to join St. Commodus' Crusade, and when he tells us this, he acts as if he's merely received an inconvenient summons to wreck pirates, and then proceeds to tell the officers they're receiving extra pay and we're butchering the shipment of Tigrisoids meant for the Lord Protectors personal zoo for extra rations.

Were he simply confident it would be one thing, but the Captain acts as if fighting our most hated and dreadful enemy in the nearby sectors carries the same importance as going to war with greenskin pirates or stamping out a rebellious civilized world.

When asked how he intends to protect the crew, the fool blithely responded that they would be protected by the god emperor should they remain faithful enough. Perhaps that might very well work for his own apparently unshakeable faith, but I find myself far more skeptical. I have begun confiscating as many talismans of the Emperor as I can from those below-decks under the guise of freeing the menials from false icons: I am currently working on sewing them inside the lining of my jacket. Emperor willing, this will be enough to keep me safe. I'm going to repeat the process with my bedding, my shoes, and I intend to have the ships priest bless the wine in my flask: I have not survived this long by not taking precautions. I have cautioned those of my allies among the officers to take the same precautions, though I suspect the only one being as thorough is the first mate, who seemed even more alarmed by this turn of news than I. Hopefully, they take this seriously.

Notes from High Engiseer Alberto Lovelace's Personal Dataslate

HELMSMAN HAS GONE MAD. THEY HAVE BEGUN HOARDING RANDOM GARBAGE SEIZED FROM THE CREW. THEY THINK WE DON'T HEAR THE TRINKETS CLINKING IN THEIR JACKET OR KNOW THEY'VE BEEN STUFFING THEM IN THEIR PILLOW. WE DO. UNKNOWN HOW TO BROACH THIS: HAVE FILED FORMAL COMPLAINT WITH CAPTAIN, WHO HAS RESPONDED BY FOLLOWING EXAMPLE. TEKKET PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE WORKING WITHIN PREDICTED PARAMETERS. CREW MORALE DROPPING CONSIDERABLY. EFFORT THAT COULD BE SPENT VENERATING THE MACHINES IN ORDER TO DESTROY ENEMIES SWIFTLY TO AVOID CURSES INSTEAD BEING WASTED ON PARANOID ATTEMPTS AT SUPERNATURAL PROTECTION IN THE FORM OF HARASSING THE MENIALS.

I MEANWHILE HAVE BEEN PRODUCTIVE: I HAVE INSTALLED ON MOST CRITICAL DECKS WATER PUMPS DESIGNED TO REMOVE ANY BILGE FLOODS. THESE WATER PUMPS WILL BE PROTECTED BY SERVITORS EQUIPPED WITH LIGHT FLAMER WEAPONRY TO PREVENT BARNACLEIZATION. FURTHER, I HAVE BEGUN INSTALLING AUGMENTATIONS INTO THE FORMS OF THOSE AMONG THE CREW WHO HAVE PROVEN TO BE ALLIES TO MYSELF AND THE SPIRITS OF THE MACHINE IN ORDER TO PROOF THEM AGAINST MUTATIONS. I WILL ALSO WORK TO INCREASE OUR STOCK OF SERVITORS IN ORDER TO PRECEDE THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE OF MORALE AMONG THE MENIALS.

BY THE TIME WE ARRIVE IN THE CARTHAGO SECTOR IN A FEW MONTHS TIME, I ESTIMATE THAT THE INSTALLATIONS SHOULD BE MOSTLY COMPLETE ASSUMING NO ONE DOES ANYTHING STUPID.

Journal of Lucian St. Valentinus, Ship Minister.​

The Engiseer has gone mad! He's decided to turn a full tenth of the crew into servitors, and worse, the Captain has decided to go along with this! Can't that fool see that Lovelace is preparing to overthrow him? Why else would he want so many of those horrid machines, why else would he be so eager to install cybernetics in his 'allies', and for what other purpose would he create these so-termed 'water pumps' AND have them guarded by automata equipped with flamethrowers?!

He claims these countermeasures to help proof us against the foul magicks of the witchweasels! Does he think us all fools? Just because one can replace your flesh to hide mutation does not change the nature of whether mutation has occurred, and one cannot use mere PUMPS to defeat witch conjured water!

I have discussed things with my followers among the crew, and we've agreed to protest: each day until these pumps are removed and the servitorization stops, one among my flock will martyr themselves in holy prometheum as a form of protest! We will not stop until Lovelace's foul scheme is destroyed.

The Journal of Captain Harb Goldengun, Captain of St. Xanax's Prosperity​

The priest has gone mad! He keeps telling the crew they need to set themselves on fire, and when we finally finished the translation from the warp to St. Commodus's Rest, one of them listened! A madman snuck his way onto the bridge and doused himself in prometheum! We have a hole melted through four floors!

I've disciplined St. Valentinus, who aggravatingly doesn't seem remotely deterred. If this continues, I'll need to shut the pumps off to keep the crew pacified, something I know will anger Lovelace. There isn't enough amasec in the world for this. Worse, we're to dock soon so that I might learn our assignment. I am apparently to meet with a representative of the Lord Protector himself, who is to tell us what part of Battlefleet Carthago we are to join. I can't let them see how bad morale is, and I can't let them see the rift that's been burned through my bridge. I'll have to convene with the helmsman, make up an excuse while the hole is patched.

Personal Ledger of Joishua Dredd, Helmsman​

We're doomed. Not only is the Captain mad, he's driving the rest of the crew mad as well. He told me that we're ignoring the hole thats in the bridge and making sure the Lord Protector can't see it, even when the damned priest is still trying to goad the crew into repeating the process! Meanwhile Lovelace has used his antics to justify increasing the pace of servitorization and putting more guards near the pumps, which has just made the crew even more paranoid, while simultaneously angering the High Factotum for wasting unnecessary resources on servitors we don't need, causing HIM to decide to start denying every requisition made by the Engiseer! About the only people acting rational are the first mate and myself!

I've been taking the opportunity granted by us docking to do some investigating. The Rest is used by a fair bit of the fleet as a rally point, meaning the bars of the planet had plenty of crewmen and even land-grubbers. The stories they tell…

I don't envy the latter, at least. As bad as they can be in space, apparently the Witch Weasels are worse on land. Their devils and their evil spirits are stronger world-side, and it's where their worst and most terrible weapons are supposedly used. One shivering private recounted to me having met strange devils wearing fearsome, terrible warmasks descending upon them in the trenches, alchemical nuclear bombs that burned like stars for hours on end blinding all who looked at them, and all manner of horrific spirits that accompanied battles against them, such as a nightmarish horror resembling a titanic metal skeleton that seemed to grow larger as it devoured the dead that, at its zenith, had been large enough for their fingers to brush against the atmospheres edge.

Still, it seemed many of the rumors I had heard about their space capabilities were not exaggeration either: several veteran void sailors I managed to bribe into parting with information told me things that would chill the bone. Entire decks converted into scaled fish-men, mutated beyond recognition. Worse, this spell affected everything aboard: men it turned into mutants, plants and vegetation would turn into parasites and infestation, and beasts and vermin, including those it conjures given enough time, it turns into monsters. Worse yet, this plague is degenerative in its affects: according to many I interrogated, the longer one battles with the Tekket ship, the worse the effects get. Initially, tis only minor alterations, the kind that can be hidden with surgery if you have a sympathetic doctor.

One of the sailors showed me what happens if the fight lasts long enough, however. Under one of the bars, they showed me one of their crewmembers who had seen too many battles. His head was entirely replaced, transformed into a grey skinned, soft scaled noseless creature, its long horselike head noseless. One eye was located on the side of their skull, still human looking even as it faced the side. The other had remained forward facing even as the blue has melted away for a thick membraned, oval pupiled amber. Their limbs were likewise altered: one arm now ended in a thick shelled crustaceous claw, a bundle of ringed, heavy suckered tentacles emerging from around it, while the other was instead a webbed claw of some form.

He's to be sent to Mutie-Town, apparently: the ultimate fate of those afflicted, to be herded to a place where good imperial citizens don't have to look at them and they can be put to use attempting to redeem themselves for their genecrimes through labour.

I can't let that happen to me. We're setting off in a few days: us and a few other ships are headed to fight in Justinians Rift, where we're to perform punitive action against a rebellious world that has refused to pay their tithe. We're to pass through the Wrack to get there: a gigantic structure consisting of dozens of beached space hulks. It's my intent to disembark as we pass through: there exists according to what I can tell a great many imperial communities aboard the megahulk, salvagers that earn their meals by helping deconstruct the titanic edifice, section by section. I've been confiscating thrones from the crew: I intend to use it and my own savings to disappear into one of these communities. Joishua Dredd will be a phantom on the voidwind, and, when the ship leaves and enough time passes for my desertion to be forgotten, I'll attempt to make my way back to St. Commoduses Rest, under a new name and identity.

The plan is foolproof. All I need to do is convince the First Mate to aid me.

Notes from High Engiseer Alberto Lovelace's Personal Dataslate

THE CREW IS GOING MAD. THE HELMSMAN IS DEAD, KILLED BECAUSE OF THEIR ATTEMPT TO DESERT. THE FOOL ATTEMPTED TO ENLIST THE AID OF THE FIRST MATE, WHO PROMPTLY MADE AN EXAMPLE OF THE POOR COWARDICE TO THE REST OF THE CREW. WHAT IS LEFT OF THEM HAS BEEN CONVERTED INTO A PAIN-SERVITOR, DESIGNED TO USE ITS ANGUISHED CRIES AND AGONIZED SCREAMS TO SERVE AS A REMINDER OF WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO FAIL TO FULFILL THEIR DUTIES.

WE HAVE ONLY JUST REACHED WRACK, AND THE CREW IS ALREADY SUFFERING FROM THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERIORATION CAUSED BY TEKKET WARFARE. ACCORDING TO DATA COLLATED FROM OTHER MAGOS, WE ARE LIKELY TO SEE A STATE OF HEIGHTENED TENSION, LIKELY PUNCTUATED BY A WAVE OF DEATHS STEMMING FROM PARANOIA INDUCED IDIOCY. I EXPECT FROM ST. VALENTINUS: THE IGNORANT PRIEST IS LIKELY ALREADY PLOTTING SOMETHING. AS SUCH, I AM INCREASING SECURITY AROUND MY WATER PUMPS. I HAVE ACQUIRED FROM ST. COMMODUS REST A SERIES OF SCHEMATICS FOR AUTOMATED SERVO-TURRETS THAT, WHILE IMMOBILE COMPARED TO GUN SERVITORS, ARE FINE SOURCES OF STATIC DEFENCE. I WILL NEED TO CONVINCE THE HIGH FACTOTUM TO START APPROVE MY SUPPLY REQUISITION, BUT I AM SURE WE CAN COME TO AN AMICABLE AGREEMENTS LIKE RATIONAL FELLOW FOLLOWERS OF THE OMNISSIAH.

Journal of Lucian St. Valentinus, Ship Minister.

The perfidious tech-priest goes too far! Now he arms his water pumps with turrets and threatens the high factotum with violence if the adept does not approve his requisitions! Twenty of my followers have alighted themselves in the vain hopes of convincing the Captain to stop the mans schemes and plans, and yet the fool does nothing!

Clearly, we must escalate this. If my followers martyring themselves isn't enough, there are other means by which we can coerce the Captain into listening to us! Emperor hopes it will be enough, and that we'll be able to stop whatever plot Lovelace is embarking on before it is too late.

Private log of First Mate Allen​

Dear diary. I write to record in you the unpleasant and uncanny events we've discovered as of late. It started with a sense of unease in the crew: at first, I assumed it was an ill mood caused by the heresy and yellowness of the Helmsman and discomfit of his fate, something which sits unwell with me as well. At night I have begun dreaming his spirit haunts me, sitting at the end of my bed in my old chair, the rocker creaking as it tilted forward and back slowly, his pink eyed specter glaring at me in anger and anguish alike.

While both of these are attributable to mundane causes, however, we have encountered something that we can't explain. While passing through the system betwixt the Wrack and our destination, at the systems edge we encountered a ship exiting warp space, its systems dark. When looked at via viewscreen, I had thought the ship hauntingly familiar, though I couldn't place it. According to our augur-master, however, the ship is apparently known as Mermedeus Folly. Another vessel of Battlefleet Carthago, one that we were supposed to reconvene with upon reaching our destination.

I was part of the boarding party, and aboard that ship we found horrors. First we entered the bridge, finding the captain dead, his skeletal, waterlogged body overcame with years worth of barnacles and decay even though he could only have died within the last few months. His crew were in little better shape: more flesh, yes, but just as dead, their bodies bloated, puffy, and half submerged in the brackish brine that drenched the facility.

I will, I think, be haunted by their appearance: I cannot dispel from my mind the image of one unfortunate ensigns face. The open mouthed, gaping look of shock as we turned them over. The milky white eye widened in eternal horror at the ceiling as we attempted to search their clothes. The off tilt of their nose, forever stuck at a wrong angle upon their face. The blueness of their lips, the water that dribbled from their lungs as we worked. The sloughing of their skin, and the discovery that beneath it was a hive of finger biting crustaceans and fleshburrowing fish.

The worst was how soft their flesh was. It moved like putty, coming apart in rotting chunks like grox that had been boiled for hours: I could feel it, under their uniform, the meat shifting and being undone as we rifled through their pockets from the lightest of touches.

As we descended, we would encounter flooded deck after flooded deck. Some had exploded, the pressure of the water squeezing the air so tightly it eventually caused steel to buckle and break. On those decks, we could find no remains but red clouds in the water. I can only presume that the crews bodies, their flesh and blood, gave way before the metal did. Worse, we found barnacles, urchins, and other terrors: razor sharped, barbed, and in many cases blood drinking. One poor soul found themselves swarmed by urchins, and I fear watching him wither and be drained to a husk in front of my eyes will also feature in my dreams. It was fast enough that I was unable to help, but slow enough for the process to be agonizing. By the time I had fired my flamer, most of his body was mere skin and bones.

Not all the decks were flooded, however. Once we went far enough below, we encountered some that were only somewhat water logged. The smell was…indescribable. The water was black, thick, and smelled of sulfur. Worse, it was warm, bubbling. We thought it merely revolting, however. It wasn't until we found the corpse of the ships Engiseer that we realized how much worse it was.

It had been located in their quarters, on Deck 37. The door had been barricaded: surrounding it was a swarm of shambling, almost humanoid creatures, strange agglomerations of pelagic homnid, fish, crustacean, and coral, hulking seaspawn that had tried to accost us, only driven back by the purifying heat of our flamers. Inside, we had found the tech-priests of the ship alongside the corpses of dozens of menials, all having killed themselves, some by hanging, some by poison, some by drowning. In the center of that damp, dripping, and dimly lit chamber was the Engiseers corpse, his body having decomposed to bone, moss, and what remained of their augments.
When we touched them, we had only been trying to search them for information on what had happened. And yet, the moment our hands made contact with the muddy brown cloak of theirs, the red dye in it having long faded, the body began to stir, letting out a long, low gurgle. It reached out with a bony hand and grabbed the Bosun, who let out a scream as their skin began to turn black and begin flaking around where the engiseer had grabbed before I managed to tear the man free.

Unfortunately, it seemed that this caused the rest of the corpses to stir, the ones hanging from the ceiling letting out chokey rasps as they writhed in their nooses, while the others found themselves rising, slowly, their bones letting out creaks and groans even while tar bubbled from the mouths of the walking corpses, their eyes coming to life with a strange uncanny pink glow.

We fled, of course, sealing the deck behind us. Captain Goldgun has agreed to cease all exploration of the ship: he intends to send word of the ships destruction and curse to the fleet when next we find an astropath. He has informed me that I am not to tell the crew what was discovered on the ship, that it would cause undue alarm in the crew.

We are to begin translation to the warp immediately. The sooner we reach Justinians Rift, the better.

The Journal of Captain Harb Goldengun, Captain of St. Xanax's Prosperity​

We've joined the fleet, and had our first battle against the enemy. Our fleet has four vessels in total, all of them answering to Blessing of Sanguinus, the personal flagship of Commodore Sharpe. Our duty is to provide orbital support for the Pyrite 17th to conduct punitive decimations on the world of Sapphique 3 and prevent any sympathetic fleets from intervening, in case the rebellious population of the world attempt to convince the Tekket or other factions from interceding on their behalf. As well, we were to destroy the planets defense fleet: the Sector Lord wishes their captains admirals taken alive, though only two such figures have been located so far: one has been crucified as an example of the wages of treachery, the other is to be sacrified in a triumph once the planet has been taken. The others we've managed to corner so far have chose to drink poison instead.

Once we destroyed their fleet, the Heretics attempted to activate the orbital void shields in preparation of bombing campaigns. Commodore Sharpe shared with myself and the rest of the captains over vox that this event is of little concern: apparently, the Lord Protector wants the planet brought back into the fold once the decimations are finished, so we are only allowed to perform light bombing anyways. A few days into the invasion, a scant mere hours before I sat down to record this, a series of ships emerged: 'Endeavors', apparently, the most common vessel in the Tekket fleet.

We managed to beat them back, but not without cost. Their ships are more sturdy than they appear, and their weapons consist of alchemical torpedos that create living, moving conflagrations that force a vessel to remain mobile unless they want their voidshields burned through. Worse, we faced our own first taste of their magicks: flooding, barnacles, and massive reports of motion sickness from the ships medicae. Mutations…mutations have been light, thankfully. Concentrated mostly among the menials and a few midshipmen. Among the senior officers, only the High Factotum has been affected: webbed toes, small and common enough a malady that it is very likely they should be able to pass it off as mere hereditary quirk, potentially a sign of their noble lineage. Such a condition is fairly common among the upper echelons, as I understand it.

Alarmingly, it appears that the witchweasels have a weapon that makes this curse WORSE: a series of strange, phantasmal cannons that unleashed a hideous purple flash of light that caused these curses to worsen in sections they hit instead of harming the hull. We were only struck a handful of times, but one of our sister vessels, the Benediction of Justa Marie, was in the aftermath forced to purge an entire deck, the mutants numbers too large and immediate an issue to make the more humane option of mutie-town viable. Still, we managed to chase the fleet away, though only one of their infernal vessels was destroyed, and with minimal damage to our own ship.

So long as nothing changes, with the god-emperors grace, we should be fine.

The Journal of Captain Harb Goldengun, Captain of St. Xanax's Prosperity​

God Emperor preserve us. Fifty crewmembers are dead, and dozens more are soon to join them. I had thought St. Valentinus content to merely burn them one at a time, but the man has apparently decided to escalate. An entire mess hall has poisoned themselves in response to Magos Lovelaces actions while a handful more chose instead to attack the water pumps directly. Worse, they did it while Commodore Sharpe was aboard, meaning I can't merely handle this in private. I allowed St. Valentinus to explain himself, then spent the next twenty minutes lecturing him on his recklessness before sentencing the man to the brig. I fear I may need to close the pumps regardless: at this point, half the crew seems to think the things are designed to poison the ships filtration system, and the other half thinks they're part of Lovelaces scheme to convert the entire crew into Servitors.

I'll talk to the man. Explain it to him: perhaps we can come to some sort of agreement, one that will allow him to have his pumps while not scaring half the crew to death.

The mission is going well, at least. A few more attacks by the Directorate: nothing hard, just probing harassment and raids. A few more officers have gained condition: the Factotum has a few new scales across his back, and he's gained the ability to inflate his throat like some amphibians, while my new helmsman has gained a change in eye color, each orb now pitch black. In both cases, the alterations are still minor: the Factotum I've agreed to let them attempt surgical correction, though the condition my helmsman is in wasn't so easily covered up. Since others know they're a mutant, I've gone ahead and confined them to quarters pending court martial for genecrimes. Its unfortunate, losing both helmsman and his successor so quickly, but little choice is presented.
According to the Commodore, the General in charge of performing the decimation has successfully subjugated around 30% of the planet. They expect the remaining heretics to surrender or collapse once 70% or so has been seized, at which point a census will be performed and a decimation performed upon the recording of the results.

I think once we have successfully subjugated this world, I'll be putting in for my retirement. It will need new governors, no doubt, to replace its PDF, nobility, regional leadership: I'll put in my papers, ask Sharpe if he could grant me my leave. It is, I think, time for this sailor to hang up his cap. I'm not cut out for this: this entire journey has been plagued by misery and ill omen. This war, I believe, is meant for younger men than I. I have done my best to maintain my composure, but every time we go to battle against one of the Directorate ships, I find myself white knuckle clenching my hand gripping my hymnal, and I find myself looking in the mirror nightly for mutation. My dreams are of my old helmsman describing the place he had ultimately died trying to escape: mutie town. The human effluvia pumped in from above, the dregs of carcases processed by the corpse starch recyclers, the stench so thick, so awful you'll wish you had died. The factories and sweat shops I would be forced to labour in for days at a time for a mere pittance of thrones for mere crusts of bread. The periodic purges, arbites going door to door and shooting as many mutants as it took to keep their numbers under control: I would be forced to listen, and hope they reached their quota before they reached my own hovel as they passed, apartment by apartment, closer and closer.

'It's what I ran from, Harb,' His specter says, his eyes pink. 'It's what you killed me for. It's where you're running.' Every night he appears in my dreams, a few times a week, he will assault me so, giving me a ghastly grin as he peers at my sleeping form, my body trapped in a strange trance and unable to move as his corpse gibbers maddened accusations. 'You should have ran when you could, you should have ran when you could!'

Other nights, I dream of drowning: as I close my eyes, I will open to find myself underwater, in some strange, dark, sunless place, unable to breath as I claw for air, attempting to orient myself and figure out which direction is up. I don't drown in reality: so far tis only been a dream: my lungs are filling themself with clean oxygen in reality, especially as I have taken to wearing a relic known as a Oxybreather Mask when I sleep. But this just prolongs the nightmare, which feels the whole time like my lungs are filling with water, without sufficient air to breath. Eventually, I'll realize what direction is up, but when I start to swim, I'll find something grabbing me by the ankle, anchoring me in place. Looking down I see-

I am going to keep doing my best to project strength to the men for as long as I continue to serve, but I fear that if I don't retire, if I don't stop, if I don't rest I'll finally snap.

Notes from High Engiseer Alberto Lovelace's Personal Dataslate

I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PRESERVED MY PUMPS. THE CAPTAIN IS NOT HAPPY WITH ME, BUT HE HAS BEEN FORCED TO COMPLY. I APPROACHED THE COMMODORE UNDER THE GUISE OF DEPLOYING THE FLEET WITH MORE WIDESPREAD ANTI-CURSE MODIFICATIONS, SHOWING HIM THE SACRED SCHEMATICS FOR THE PUMP-AQUA MACHINE. I THEN DEMONSTRATED THEM IN USE, FURNISHING HIM WITH THE TACTICAL DATA OBTAINED IN COMBAT. I HAD TO OMIT SOME OF THE DATA: IF HE KNEW ABOUT THE BLOCKAGES, IT WOULD ONLY MUDDY THE NARRATIVE AND OPEN THE POSSIBILITY OF HIM MAKING A SUB-OPTIMAL DECISIONS. WHEN HE CALLED THE CAPTAIN TO INQUIRE MORE, GOLDGUN'S NATURAL COWARDICE LED TO THEM BRAGGING ABOUT HOW EFFECTIVE THE PUMPS HAD BEEN. HE WILL NOT CLOSE THEM NOW, NOT WHEN HE HAS ACCIDENTALLY TIED THEIR USEAGE TO THE ESTEEM THE COMMODORE HOLDS HIM IN.

I AM ALSO PLEASED TO NOTE THAT MY THEORIES ABOUT FIGHTING THE MUTAGENIC AND PSYCHOACTIVE EFFECTS OF THE TEKKET CURSE VIA AUGMENTATION WAS BORNE OUT: WE HAVE BEEN ASSAULTED BY A TEKKET BATTLECRAFT KNOWN AS A VALIANT, AND WHILE IT INFLICTED SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE WITH ITS SHORT RANGE FUSION WEAPONRY, THOSE I ALTERED WERE SIGNIFICANTLY LESS LIKELY TO SUFFER MUTATION. A NOTABLE COLLECTION HAVE SHOWN A BENEFICIAL EFFECT: RECENT SURGERIES AND IMPLANTS HAVE SHOWN SIGNIFICANT HEALING IN DAMAGED TISSUE, AND IMPROPER IMPLANTATIONS APPEAR TO HAVE MENDED THEMSELVES.

HOWEVER, PRIEST HAS PROVEN AGITATED. VALENTINUS HAS SHOWN DETERIORATING MENTAL CONDITION: LIKELY SUFFERING CRITICAL LEVELS OF CORTISOL AND ADRENALINE IN THE BRAIN. CAPTAIN HAS PROVEN UNWILLING TO DEAL WITH THEM: THEY WILL LIKELY DO SOMETHING STUPID. POISON? UNLIKELY, I DO NOT EAT BUT FROM MY PERSONAL STOCK. ANGRY MOB? POTENTIALLY, BUT MY SECURITY IS PRIMED TO TARGET ANY LARGE GROUPS NEARING MY QUARTERS. A LONE ASSASSIN IS UNLIKELY FOR THE SAME REASON: ALL OF ST. VALENTINUS FOLLOWERS AND ALLIES WILL TRIGGER A PROXIMITY ALARM IF THE GENESENSORS IN MY PROTECTION DETAIL DETECT THEM IN THREATENING PROXIMITY. STILL, I WILL PREPARE SO THAT SHOULD THEY COME AT ME WITH HOSTILE INTENT, THEY WILL FIND THEMSELVES ANNIHILATED.

MAINTENANCE IS BECOMING AN ISSUE. MOST BLOCKAGES AND GROWTHS HAVE PROVEN VULNERABLE TO LIGHT MAINTENANCE FLAMER FIRE, ALLOWING THE PUMPS TO CONTINUE THEIR SACRED MOTIONS AND KEEP THE AMOUNT OF FLOODING TO MANAGEABLE LEVELS. HOWEVER, IT APPEARS SOMETHING HAS TAKEN ROOT IN THE PIPES IN SEVERAL DECKS: SENSORS HAVE DETECTED SOMETHING MOVING, AND THIS HAS SHOWN A CORRELATION TO THE MALFUNCTION OF PIPE AND PUMPWORKS. IT HAS BEGUN BLOCKING THE PIPES, BEYOND MY ABILITY TO EASILY REACH AND IN A LOCATION WHERE WE CANNOT MERELY SET IT ABLAZE TO BURN WHATEVER IT IS ALIGHT IN CLEANSING AND MACHINE INVIGORATING FLAME.

SO FAR, THE PHENOMENA SEEMS CONFINED TO A HANDFUL OF DECKS, LARGELY CENTRALIZED IN REGION SURROUNDING WASTEWATER AND SEWAGE TANKS. I AM SENDING A GROUP OF SKITARII EQUIPPED WITH RADGUNS TO DISINFECT THEM AND PERFORM THE CANT MECHANICA VERSES 2001 TO 2110: THIS SHOULD ALLEVIATE THE MACHINE SPIRITS OF THE PARASITE THAT BLOCKS THE FLOW OF EXCESS WASTE-WATER.

Journal of Lucian St. Valentinus, Ship Minister.

I can tolerate this no longer! We can tolerate this no longer! Can't the captain see that the machine-priests aims are dark? He is now insisting that the cure to mutation is partial servitorization, as if the rest of us cannot recognize what is being planned! Ignoring my counsel that the solution to this is not mere treatment of the symptoms via amputation! He is using the cowardice of the captain and the veil of ignorance to skirt the spirit of heresy under the letter of law to turn the crew into those abominations, all while ignoring that mutated flesh is mutated flesh even if it is unblemished on the surface! Worse yet, this is corruption that the affected will carry in their geneline: they will on the surface be mere cyborgs, but their mutation will be obvious in their children, and their childrens children, those that are afforded the autonomy to reproduce once that 'priest' is done butchering them!

No, no, no, I will NOT let him do this. This has gone on long enough.One of my acolytes have witnessed some of the ships skitarii guarding the ship septic tanks, and hearing through the vents strange noises and smells coming from those nightmarish waste-spaces. That is the focal point of the engineers schemes, I think. We have discovered a series of secret passage to these locations, one that predate the both of us by millenia: I have purchased rad-suits from the other ships to protect me from the weapons of the skitarii. It is my hope to stop the Engiseers schemes at their root! My spies in his retinue will attempt to draw him to this location, where I will use the secret passages to ambush the fiend and send him to the heretics hell! Not a single member more of my flock shall be turned into a mechanical abomination! VAE VICTIS!

Private log of First Mate Allen

God Emperor save us all, they're both dead. A few hours ago, around 0200 hours, I had been conversing with the Engiseer. The way he was going about his ideas, it was terrifying the men. I know he is was not an evil man, but he does not didn't know the heart of man very w-

I was discussing the possibility of attempting to reassure the men: he had agreed to publicly renounce the idea he would convert the menials to servitors, and as we talked, I could tell he was warming to the idea of accepting volunteers only for his menial augmentations. After all, I told him, once they saw it was their only way to escape mutie-town-

There was an alarm. The Engiseer was called away: some emergency sent by his skitarii near a waste tank. They were under attack. I came with him, offering my gun. Best to build as much sympathy with him as possible, I thought, if I was to get him to accede to as much compromise as would be required to reassure the crew.

When we got there, we found the place overgrown with moss, algae: strange rocky molds growing upon the ground around the tanks, which was wet, the walkways under several inches of effluvia barring a handful of places where the ancient grating had not given way. Off-color metallic barnacles upon the wall, bubbling and occasionally unleashing drips of glowing ooze, which covered the filthy blackwater drenched walkways like an oily, shimmering film. In the septic tanks I saw titanic abominations I still struggle describe, gigantic floating masses of a hideous organic pink glowing substance: in this ooze I thought I could see bodies, screaming crewmembers that were slowly being DIGESTED by whatever had taken nest in the tanks, their bodies dissolving slowly before my eyes: even still we are only now tallying the dead, those who had been taken without us knowing it in the night, slurped up through the pipes because we assumed the curse would only affect the places we can see. A few of these formless oozes had been freed by the gunfire, creeping across the battlefield, showing a horrific intelligence as they swarmed the engiseers retinue while ignoring the parade of mutants attempting to assassinate us. Anything the things touched that was flesh, they digested, flesh blistering and bubbling and sloughing as the horrific things slithered up the frame of the skitarii until they successfully touched something borne of flesh, wherapon the horrific pink devils would begin hollowing the cyborgs out.

Myself and the Engiseer fought together: I pulled out my plasma carbine, he his axe. The necrojellies are foul, disgusting: but fragile: we would retreat to one of the handful of dry locations in the facility, a flat pane of metal, where we attempted to hold off both mutant and monster. I would provide suppressing fire, reducing attackers at range to cinders, while any that approached close, primarily the jellies, would be slain by the machine priests weapon.

The things would shriek and burst, dying in their entirety as they were struck, their bodies boiling. Together, we piled the place high with the corpse of our enemies, though many skitarii lost their lives, their bodies burrowed into and eaten from the insides out. However, just as the tempo of the mutants was beginning to falter, the ship minister charged into combat, wielding a power sword. I had been about to shoot him, when a jelly dropped onto my gun from the ceiling. It…it coordinated with him, I know this: it knew that St. Valentinus was attempting to murder Lovelace, who they had deemed greater threats to their plans. I know not if the priest knew he was being manipulated, god emperor rest his soul. I can only pray that in the end, it was mere ignorance that caused his actions.

With me attempting to free my gun and avoid being digested, the Engiseer was unable to protect himself. The priest was the better duelist of the two, and in a short flurry of attacks, the man had parted the engiseers head from his shoulders.

"VAE VICTIS! THE EMPEROR WILLS IT!" He roared, triumphantly, even as I finally vented the plasma on my weapon, boiling the necrojelly alive and freeing my gun. Staggering, I let out a scream of rage, of frustration as I ran the priest down, tackling him to the floor and wrapping my hands around his throat and SQUEEZING-

He attempted to choke out justifications as his face went purple my knuckles white eyes bulging saying he had to do it

I roared, tightening my grip tighter tighter until I heard a thick meaty snap. God emperor I can still remember the rush of adrenaline and the crunch of bone as I twisted his spine loose from his body.

With the priest dead, his followers broke, and we were left alone. And yet, the catastrophic confrontation between Lovelace and St. Valentinus was not where the strange terrors that would afflict us would end that day. As we returned to the bridge, I was assaulted by the sound of the alarm. We were under attack. Returning, I learned to my dismay the Directorates ships were being detected over sensorium. We were down an Engiseer, down a(n admittedly replaceable) chunk of the crew, and down the priest. And now, we were immediately thrust into the midst of battle.

This time, their strike fleet consisted of a collection of their frogships, the vessels larger than their Endeavors, the ones that possess the fusion lance weaponry. They wracked great terror across the fleet: for as tiny as the vessels might be, like their namesake they are quick, and nimble, and possessed of terrible spitting venom. Worse yet, they were able to inflict great and terrible losses through their curses: our newest Engiseer is reporting more of these formless fleshes hiding aboard in the aftermath, seemingly feeding on our waste to grow large enough to commit mitosis. More of the crew are mutated, and the more become so, the more agitated the crew as a whole grows: the death of the old engiseer is small balm to them. They still have mutie town to await. Worse, with the engiseer being gone, his replacements are struggling to keep everything maintained and functional: the machine spirits are growing displeased.

The only good news is that the ground campaign is progressing well, according to the news of the Commodore. If we can break the defenders of Saphique 3 quick enough, perhaps we might be afforded the breathing room to recoup our losses, but I feel every inch of pressure they put on us drives us closer to the edge.

The Journal of Captain Harb Goldengun, Captain of St. Xanax's Prosperity​

We are down a ship. The Tekket attempted to break our cordon: five frogships and as many such Endeavors have successfully destroyed the Benediction of Justa Marie. Now, it is a waterlogged wreck floating in the void, crawling with all manner of strange mutant and twisted xeno beast. Worse, they managed to deliver aid to the defenders of Sapphique 3: fusionmelta weaponry and xenotech shield devices designed to counter imperial arms such as the lasgun, alongside brigades of automata to replenish their ranks. Worse, some of their infernal huntweasels have almost certainly made landfall: the general in charge of the invasion was found poisoned, and apparently commisars, officers, and priests alike have been suffering from a wave of death via nukerat snipers, typically in the presumed safety of our fortifications in what should be taken territory, well behind the battle lines.

They emerged screaming from the warp, their weapons lashing white fire against our void-shields, casting all manner of terrible curse that afflicted our crews. At first, the battle was hard fought, but none of the ships fell until they cast some form of conjuration, summoning what appeared to be some genus of void kraken, though not one I've ever seen. Smaller than the few specimens I've encountered, I wager it was only a little larger than our own vessel, and it was possessed of a metallic shell upon its back. From its thousands of tentacles lightning lashed, arcing onto the hull of the vessels it struck: the current engiseer, a man by the name of Aaron Coppernicus Upsilon, says the machine spirits were overloaded throughout the ship. We fought it off, but by the end, we were waterlogged, we have three decks converted into mutants, and some of the coral is now electric, making removing it and unflooding those floor hazardous: so far, the best solution I've come up with is to have the mutants do it. Electrocution is likely a kinder fate than what the Engiseer would have done to them, and it provides them a way to atone for their genecrime.

And when the thing finally retreated, back into the fight the other ships entered: the only thing worse than the effects of their curses is the battle damage. The Justa Marie didn't survive: its void shield had been destroyed by the kraken, I think.

Worse, we now have reports of guerrillas and insurgents disguising themselves as members of the guard in order to plant bombs and smart mines, and with so much of the commissariat dying, some may indeed be our own troops gone rogue, a troubling notion. Most of the tank brigades on the planet have been damaged to the point where the tech-priests have consigned themselves to recycling what's left for parts: gallingly, one of the machines that has been destroyed utterly was the baneblade assigned to planetary pacification. The official word on how it was lost according to my more official sources among the fleet was that its crew and commander both went down in a blaze of glory, sacrificing themselves to destroy a rebel stronghold that served as a lynchpin for the defense efforts, sacrificing captured devout members of the astra imperialis in barbaric victory-rituals unless their captive converts: a clear and troubling sign of their corruption by the perfidious xeno. The tankers of Ollanius' Hammer killed hundreds, if not thousands of rebels according to the official reports before finally being slain by a wicked fusion mine sending it and it's troops to Elysium, though unfortunately in the process they were unable to save any of the hostages who unfortunately perished in the battle. May they be carried to glory on the wings of the Emperor to join his eternal army: no doubt when this campaign is honored, the crew will be honored during the triumph, most likely by lashing some rebels and their families to the pyre in the tanks honor.

Still, it seems that our troubles aren't with end, some days: the leaders of the astra militaris are being murdered in safe territory, our tanks are being destroyed, and half my crew is mad and a tenth of it mutated. At this point I can only hope that this nightmare ends soon.

The Journal of Captain Harb Goldengun, Captain of St. Xanax's Prosperity​

Another ship down. The Blade of Macharius. This time, the enemy fleet brought with them a pod of void whales: no doubt presents from Waaagh Skultaka. The beasts were enraged, in frenzy: it took several minutes of sustained bombardment to kill the largest among their number, during which time they proved sufficient distraction for boarding operations upon the blade, where they unleashed their khimera-beasts, who managed to hijack control of the vessel to send it crashing into the planet, flattening one of our fortifications. The hole left in our anti-air defenses allowed for it to be incinerated by phosphex missiles held by the heretics.

We are down to half our fleet, now: our own and the Commodores vessels. He says that he has already requested relief. The First Mate is nervous: at first I had thought the man merely beginning to lose his nerve, but now I must wonder. I am not the only one who thought to hide mutation: what if he has been afflicted, but is hiding it? He will likely get found out eventually if this campaign does not end: and when the relief fleets come, those accursed will be replaced with fresh stock: clean, pure, human bodies unmarred by the genecrimes that disgraced their predecessors.

It is reported that more and more of the army below have turned coat and joined the heretics now that they lack the commissars and priests to guide their unruly reins: the official reports deny it, but a few of the men have been whispering about traitors aboard the ships as well. What if they're correct? The mutants, especially, would no doubt prove willing receptacles, and if there was one sufficiently desperate enough to hide their mutation, no doubt they would be sufficiently desperate enough to turn traitor as well.

No, no, this is just paranoid fantasy. I have no evidence of any traitors among the crew: even the mutants, foul as they are, are still loyal, inasmuch as one of their kind can be to the unmutated. But still, I must take more precautions, lest I find myself with a blade in the back. Mandatory inspection of bunks and bodies: I will make sure every single mutant on this ship is catalogued and documented. I will leave no stone unturned, god emperor as my witness.

PERSONAL LOG OF LEXMECHANIC ENGISEER A. COPERNICUS Υ 7

THE CAPTAIN HAS BEGUN SUBJECTING THE CREW TO RANDOM PUBLIC INSPECTIONS FOR MUTATION. FOR WHAT REASON I DO NOT KNOW: THERE EXISTS LITTLE BENEFIT TO UNCOVERING WHO IS AND ISN'T MUTATED AT THIS JUNCTURE.

SO FAR FIFTEEN MUTANTS HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED HIDING, THOUGH I PROFESS, I BELIEVE THE FIFTEENTH WAS AN ENTIRELY MUNDANE GLANDULAR ORDER THAT WAS MISSED BY PRENATAL SCREENING. IT WOULD EXPLAIN SOME IRREGULARITIES IN THEIR MEDICAL CHART.

THOSE AFFLICTED HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH GENECRIME, AND SENTENCED TO PUBLIC WHIPPING FOR DARING TO CONCEAL THEIR CONDITION. AFTER THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE CONVERTED INTO PAIN-SERVITORS AS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO HIDE IMPURITY OF THE FLESH, THOUGH I WAS SUCCESSFULLY ABLE TO CONVINCE THE CAPTAIN TO OPT FOR A MORE MERCIFUL TREATMENT, HAVING THEM TAKE THE PLACE OF ASSORTED LOWER DECK MENIALS WITH THE SAME SKILLSET, WHO WOULD THEN BE PROMOTED TO FILL THE GAPS LEFT BEHIND. IT IS A MORE TASTEFUL WAY TO HANDLE THEIR CONDITION I FEEL: I WILL NOT ANNOUNCE IT PUBLICALLY, BUT THE TREATMENTS OF THOSE AFFLICTED WITH THE DARKTIDE SHOULD NOT BE TREATED AS COMMON MUTANTS.

FOR ONE THING, IT PLAYS INTO THE TEKKET PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE PROFILE: THEY ARE FLAGRANTLY MANIPULATING OUR DOCTRINES TO GET US TO TURN ON OUR OWN HOUSE: THERE IS MUCH ABOUT MY PREDECESSOR I DISAGREE WITH, BUT HIS UNDERSTANDING OF DIRECTORATE BATTLE DOCTRINES IS ASTUTE. BEYOND THAT, MANY OF THOSE AFFLICTED EARNED THEIR CONDITION IN BATTLE, DOING THEIR DUTY TO THE OMNISSIAH WHILE FENDING OFF BEAST AND BARNACLE. AND FOR THIS, THEY ARE REWARDED WITH NOUGHT BUT BITTER ASH AND THE KNOWLEDGE THAT LIFE IN A DEATH-FORGE AWAITS THEM AND THEIR FAMILIES.

THE CAPTAIN I BELIEVE EXPECTS THERE TO BE A TRAITOR AMONG THE FLEET. PERHAPS HE IS CORRECT, BUT NOT YET, I THINK: WHEN IT OCCURS HOWEVER, I SUSPECT IT WILL BE BECAUSE OF HIS ACTIONS, NOT IN SPITE.

Private log of First Mate Allen

Someone tried to kill the captain. During mess last night, when we were all eating, someone brought out a dish: the captains favorite, fried grox and blood pudding with crisped rationbites. The only reason he's alive is because his digestion was put off from stress, so he gave it to the new helmsman. The man had finished his meal, went to bed, and was only found this morning, well and dead. The engiseer, who is apparently a skilled medicae and mortician apparently, says that the cause was rat poison, injected into the groxmeat.

The captain is in a froth, as to be expected: he has ordered a search of everyones bunks, starting with mine. I must confess, journal, that when nothing untoward was found except a bottle of contraband whiskey I've been saving for myself, he seemed almost…dissapointed.

Perhaps I'm reading into his expression a bit much: no doubt his mind is weighed heavily by the assassination attempt. He seems to suspect that it was a mutant who did the deed, something that baffles me, as none of the ships cooks are mutated, nor would any of the people who handled the food en route to the officers mess hall. But the captain is convinced: he will not rest until he finds the traitor, who he firmly believes is among the mutants: as such, they've all been confined to the lower decks, where they will be quarantined and guarded by the ships enforcers until the traitor is found.

The ground invasion continues to go well, from what I hear: apparently, the rebels have managed to put together some ramshackle parts to imitate a baneblade, even going as far to paint it in the same colors as the Hammer and mimicking its crews uniform, but the terrible imitation was driven off with ease by the intrepid heroes of the astra militarum, who have begun reconsolidating their forces in key strong points in order to allow the rebels to break themselves on the fortifications of the imperium. Hopefully they destroy themselves soon: I feel as if our collective sanity is beginning to fray, up here in the void.

PERSONAL LOG OF LEXMECHANIC ENGISEER A. COPERNICUS Υ 7

WE HAVE RECEIVED GRAVE NEWS. THE REST OF THE CREW IS NOT AWARE OF THIS, BUT IT APPEARS THAT THE REBELS HAVE SOMEHOW MANAGED TO DETONATE A PERPETUNITE WARHEAD IN THE MIDST OF A MAJOR PIECE OF FORTIFICATION THE ASTRA MILITARUM WAS USING TO SUPPRESS INSURGENCIES IN THE OCCUPIED REGIONS OF SAPPHIQUE 3, NEAR ITS COAST. THE ENTIRE COMPLEX HAS BEEN REDUCED TO A BALL OF PLASMA.

OUR FORCES WERE ALREADY HAVING TO RETREAT TO VARIOUS STRONG-POINTS IN SEVERAL THEATERS. WITH THIS, THE SITUATION IS LIKELY TO CONTINUE TO DETERIORATE AS REGIONAL INSURGENCIES BEGIN TO DECAY AT OUR POWER IN THOSE REGIONS, WHICH ISN'T GOING TO BE HELPED BY THE MULTIPLE HURRICANES AND TYPHOONS OUR SENSORS ARE DETECTING THAT ARE SOON TO MAKE LANDFALL IN OUR TERRITORY. I WOULD ASSUME ROTTEN LUCK, BUT AT THIS POINT I SHALL ASSUME THE DIRECTORATE HAS SOMEHOW ENCHANTED THE WEATHER.

WE ARE DOWN TO HALF THE FLEET. THE SITUATION ON THE GROUND IS DETERIORATING. THE CAPTAIN IS GOING MAD. IF THINGS DO NOT CHANGE SOON, I FEEL WE ARE DOOMED.

The Journal of Captain Harb Goldengun, Captain of St. Xanax's Prosperity

THE !@#$ING RELIEF FLEET FINALLY ARRIVED.

I have never felt so glorious upon the receiving of reinforcements. Seven mighty and majestic vessels, including a ship of the Inquisition, an Indominus Class Super Battlecruisers equipped with twin nova lances, and a factory ship of the mechanicus. They are led by a man- an inquisitor from the Ordo Xenos!

Otto Von Clovis, his name is. A veteran in the war against the Directorate: he apparently had been on the front lines of the Volcanus 9 Secession, witnessing the fall of a once powerful and honorable planet of the Imperiums fall into the clutches of the alien. More importantly, he's a SURVIVOR of the Secession! One who has fought and weathered the curses of the enemy! With his expertise and the Commodores strength, not only did we fight off the next assault by the Directorate handily, we even managed to scrape by with minimal mutations! The Inquisitor had an ingenious idea: to counter the effects of the spell, he had ordered the self-martyring of his crew, one hundred people for each deck, crucified, vivisected, and drowned in the same manner as St. Inprobus of Dagon. Not all the decks had performed the ritual before the curse was cast, but we're seeing less reports of mutation, less reports of barnacles, and less reports of evil fish.

He claims that the only way to defeat the Tekket is to accept the unflinching destruction combat with them will require: he's overridden Commodore Sharpe to increase bombardment of the planet, covering enemy continents in vast fire storms once their planetary void shields had been crack'd. Ugly business, but the Tekket need to be prevented from gaining a foothold in the region. The planet will no doubt recover eventually.

PERSONAL LOG OF LEXMECHANIC ENGISEER A. COPERNICUS Υ 7

I LOOK AT THE PLANET BELOW, SEE FROM SPACE THE FLAMES WROUGHT BY OUR BATTLE, AND I CANNOT HELP BUT REMEMBER HOW THIS WORLD HAD BEEN A GARDEN WORLD OF SORTS ONCE, A JEWEL OF THE IMPERIUM. WE CAME TO IT BECAUSE THEY HAD BEEN UNWILLING TO PAY THEIR WHOLE TITHE.

IT WILL LIKELY NEVER BE A GARDEN WORLD AGAIN. THE WEAPONRY BEING FIELDED AGAINST THE REBELS IS PERMANENTLY DAMAGING THE ATMOSPHERE: THEY WILL LIKELY FOR CENTURIES HAVE TO USE ATMOSPHERIC REBREATHERS, AND THE HOLES IN THE OZONE MEAN THEY WILL LIKELY REQUIRE SKIN PROTECTION AS WELL. THE WATERS ARE POLLUTED WITH ASH, TOXIC RUN-OFF, AND RADIATION: UNDRINKABLE, AND NO DOUBT THE FISH THIS PLANET ONCE PROVIDED AS PART OF ITS TITHE ARE ALL DEAD. EVEN THE VERY EARTH OF SAPPHIQUE 3 HAS BEEN DAMAGED: WE'RE RECEIVING REPORTS OF EARTHQUAKES AND TECTONIC BREACHES THROUGHOUT THE PLANET, PRODUCING FISSURES THAT BELCH MORE ASH, MORE POISON INTO THE SKY.

WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS?

Private log of First Mate Allen​

This is monstrous! It's one thing to quarantine the afflicted, but the Inquisitor has ordered a purge of the afflicted! Within ten days we're to reduce our complement of afflicted crew-members by half!

These men fought for the Imperium! They served the Imperium! And now, Von Clovis is using the attempted poisoning of the captain to murder them! I tried to tell the captain that none would have even had the opportunity, but he refuses to listen! He even threw me out of his quarters and threatened me with the brig if I protested!

I don't know what to do. I can't let this happen, but I don't know how to stop it. I attempted to gain the Engiseers support: he knows this is wrong as well as I. I told him that these people deserved better, that purging them would be a betrayal, but all he told me was that attempting to go against the word of an Inquisitor was suicide and that I should keep my silence lest I earn the Inquisitors suspicion.
I fear him correct, and yet the thought of allowing this haunts me.

The Journal of Captain Harb Goldengun, Captain of St. Xanax's Prosperity​

Oh God Emperor no. Why? Whywhywhywhywhy? FUCK. Why, God Emperor? Have I not been faithful? Have I not been dutiful? What did I do to deserve this? What sin did I commit? I have been your soldier for decades, served you through my bleakest years: why does your protection forsake me now?

FUCK.

WHY. WHY. WHY WHY WHY WHY.

WHY DO I HAVE GILLS ON MY CHEST.

I can't let Von Clovis find out about this. I can't even let him suspect. I need to keep this hidden, lest I be sentenced to join the rest of the genecriminals below. Oh god emperor.

PERSONAL LOG OF ENGISEER A. COPERNICUS Υ 7​

THE PURGE IS COMPLETE. HOWEVER, MORE MUTANTS HAVE BEEN CREATED BY THE TEKKET: THE INQUISITOR HAS ORDERED THAT HALF OF THOSE ACCUSED OF GENECRIME ARE TO BE SENTENCED TO DEATH.

THIS HAS HAD A SEVERELY NEGATIVE EFFECT ON CREW MORALE, AND ONE I DO NOT BEGRUDGE THEM FOR. I HAVE BEEN ATTEMPTING TO SAVE WHO I CAN: IT SEEMS THAT THE CAPTAIN HAS NOTICED MY ABILITIES AS A MEDICAE AND ASSIGNED ME TO INSPECTIONS AND CONDUCT THE TERMINATIONS. THOSE WHO I AM ABLE TO PLAUSIBLY ABLE TO DISMISS THEIR CONDITIONS AS BEING WITHIN THE ACCEPTED LEVELS OF DEVIATION FROM THE HUMAN FORM, I HAVE, AND THOSE I AM CAPABLE OF CORRECTING VIA SURGERY OR AUGMENTATION, I HAVE.

I DON'T KNOW IF IT WILL BE ENOUGH. I HAVE BEEN STUDYING THE GODOLKIN INDEX AS REFERENCE, BUT THERE ARE NO STRAINS OF RECOGNIZED ABHUMAN IN THIS OR NEARBY SECTORS THAT POSSESS GILLS, TO SAY NOTHING OF TENTACLES, CRUSTACEAN CLAWS, OR CORAL CRESTS.

THERE IS UNFORTUNATELY LITTLE ELSE I CAN DO, NOT WITHOUT OUTING MYSELF AS A MUTANT SYMPATHIZER. THE INQUISITOR IS ALREADY SUSPICIOUS, I THINK: I HAVE MANAGED TO CONVINCE HIM THE HIGH NUMBER OF ABHUMANS AND IRREGULAR MEDICAL CONDITIONS I HAVE DIAGNOSED IS MERELY THE RESULT OF AN OBSESSIVE COMPULSION TOWARDS ACCURATE CATEGORIZATION, BUT I CANNOT PUSH FURTHER THAN THAT.

FRANKLY, WERE IT NOT FOR THE RAIDS BY THE DIRECTORATE, HE WOULD HAVE LIKELY ALREADY TAKEN ACTION AGAINST US. IT IS ONLY BECAUSE HE AND THE COMMODORE HAVE HAD THEIR ATTENTION TAKEN BY THEIR ATTACKS THAT I HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH AS MUCH AS I HAVE. MORE AND MORE VALIANTS APPEAR WITH EACH ATTACK, THOUGH THEY ONLY RARELY SUMMON CREATURES SUCH AS VOID WHALES AND STORM KRAKENS.


BECAUSE OF THEIR SPEED, IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO PIN THEM DOWN LONG ENOUGH TO DESTROY THEM BEFORE THEY RETREAT, ESPECIALLY THANKS TO THEIR ABILITY TO UTILIZE THEIR ALCHEMICAL WEAPONRY TO CREATE WHAT ARE EFFECTIVELY STATIONARY SHIELDS TO BLOCK OUR HEAVIER WEAPONS-FIRE. THEY HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO DESTROY BUT ONE OF OUR VESSELS, HOWEVER, AN ESCORT, BUT THEIR SLIPPERYNESS HAS STILL MAKE THEM A CONSTERNATING FOE TO DEAL WITH, AND THE MORE WE BATTLE AGAINST THEM, THE WORSE THE STATE OF OUR SHIP GETS, EVEN WITH THE MARTYRS SACRIFICE IMPOSED BY VON CLOVIS. IT HAS MADE DEALING WITH THEIR RAIDS DIFFICULT, THOUGH IT HAS APPARENTLY NOT YET IMPEDED THE OPERATIONS ON SAPPHIQUE 3.

Private log of First Mate Allen​

More ships have arrived. Three of them, transfers from Sector Sinister: now that the Carrion King and his forces have been destroyed, the remaining vessels tasked with his extermination are being assigned to Battlefleet Carthago, meaning that our forces throughout the sector are receiving relief.

I must admit, I am on one level relieved. With more guns, perhaps we can win this quickly, with less bloodshed. As it is, this grinding attrition is beginning to get to the crew: the astra militarum might be used to these kinds of losses, but we're sailors. We only receive these kinds of casualties when boarded, and even then at least it can be months or years between such events.

I have not heard whispers of mutiny yet, but it would not surprise me if next time we made port, we find ourselves with unacceptable numbers of deserters. Funny: once I would have decried those who did so as cowards, like the old Helmsman Joishua, but the more people die, the more I can't help but fear he may have had a point when he attempted to flee this wretched endeavor before it had even begun.

The only consolation is that Directorate raids seem to be thinning. I suspect they've realized how doomed a cause saving Sapphique 3 is, at this point: in the past few weeks, they've only attacked once, and while this has resulted in more nekrojellies in the pipes and even some of the dead drowned to begin rising as murderous revenants, the damage was less severe, in part due to the additional ships, in part because of the enemy assaulting us with less ships than usual.

We can only hope this finally ends.

Private log of Acting Captain Allen​

God-Emperor save us. God-Emperor forgive me. The Captain and Von Clovis are both dead. It began with our astropaths noting something approaching us. Something big. I had thought that it might be a storm kraken or void whale.

It was a warship. Copernicus called it a Resistance. One of the most dangerous vessels in the Tekket fleet, at least of the ones controlled by the Directorate itself rather than its allies. According to the Engiseer, the vessels are sent to locations the Directorate considers high priority, though that leaves me with more questions: why Sapphique 3? I could perhaps understand intervening when it was still a pristine garden world, but what value does that world possess that they would send their mightiest vessel to help it?

Most likely I'll never know. The vessel came screaming out the warp with a fleet of valiants, five in total, and four more endeavors: despite its greater size, somehow the vessel was both quicker and more nimble than its smaller variations, even if they shared the same structure. Worse, its shields were strong, strong enough it took a nova lance straight on with only modest fluctuation in its shields, while its weapons melted their way across our hulls, especially the middlemost lance mounted upon it.

Even as it ravaged our fleet it cursed us. There are entire decks that have to be purged with phosphex before having their internals entirely replaced. Half of our remaining crew are mutants, and many of them hideously so.

Then there are the ghosts. While the assault proceeded, while I was at my station watching the holo-map, I found myself seeing a ghastly specter in the corner of my vision: the helmsman, but not as I knew him. His eyes have been replaced entirely with a strange eldritch pink glow. His body was covered in coral and barnacles, and his lips were a drowned blue, peeled into a grizzly, half deranged grin that sagged extremely loosely on his face as if it were no longer entirely connected to his skull properly, water dribbling from between the black rotted wood of his dentures.

At first he did not do anything: merely observed. But the longer it went on, the closer he grew, always when my attention shifted. No-one remarked on his appearance, so I ignored it, dismissing it as a hallucination caused by stress, or perhaps the enemy vessels witchcraft. Further, the closer he became, the worse his condition deteriorated: flesh decayed and sloughed, revealing a ribcage full of squirming crablike things. Coral and barnacles grew, covering his back like a shell, releasing puffs of brackish water that splashed against the floor. Blue lips in a morbid grin gave way to jaw and bone, even as his nose rotted to nothing, though his expression never changed.

Eventually, he began whispering to me. He told me things. That the Captain was actually a mutant, a hypocrite who had sentenced people to death for genecrime and hiding mutation despite them having done both. That he believed me a traitor, in league with the Tekket, and a secret mutant besides. That the Inquisitor was planning to purge all those afflicted, and was intending to do the same to mutie-town once they returned, to sacrifice them in a great pyre of millions in a great purification. The rest of the battle, he would hound me, hovering over my shoulder, telling me things that at the time I thought merely terrible lies, meant to break my will, or sap my concentration.

As I sat, a ghost in my ear, hoping that we'd make it through the battle, more reinforcements came in: five more vessels, including a battlecruiser, arriving mid-battle and increasing our numbers by five, including another battlecruiser. With the tide turning, I briefly had hope that we could at least survive this, even if we may have to retreat. But then, Inquisitor Von Clovis chose to doom us all.

He attempted parley, contacting the enemy fleet. For a brief spell the battle in the void ceased as the Inquisitor used the opportunity to taunt the enemy. I don't know what he thought he was accomplishing, and I doubt I will ever.

He told them that no matter how much they poured into this world, they could not save it: even as they fought this fleet, more and more ships were en route through the Wrack passage. The people of Sapphique were doomed: even with their Resistance ship, they would not be able to stop the martyrs tide, not before Sapphique 3 was destroyed in its entirety, a sacrifice he was willing to make if it meant keeping a former jewel of the Imperium out of their clutches.

His challenge was, I suppose, successful: the witchweasels accepted the premise that eventually Sapphique 3 would be crushed under the tide of the Imperiums strength and that continued fighting was only making it worse for them. And one cannot have predicted how they responded. In response to his communication, the enemy captain asked for a grace period to discuss things with their crew, apparently. When they resumed communication, the Tekket informed him that they had come to the conclusion that the Inquisitor was correct.

It was at that point that, at that point, in the heart of the system, a warp storm detonated into existence. I have never encountered one up close, and though I despairingly lament that it will likely not be achievable now, I have no desire to repeat the experience. It was almost like travelling through the warp with a damaged gellarfield: devils walked the halls, skewering crew-members, strange mechanical monsters rampaged through the machinery, decks would find themselves assaulted by strange watery murderous sprites, psychic fish that could cause a mans blood to boil with a glance, and spirits that almost resembled yellow eye'd silhouette of begowned women that twisted the minds of my fellow crew, bewitching them and turning them upon each other.
Desperately, the Commodore ordered the fleet to retreat, and we collectively gunned our engines. Only half the fleet managed to successfully escape to the warp, and I know not where the other half of the fleet is, as the astropaths cannot reach them now.

It was only to our horror that when we emerged, it was not in the Wrack. No, it was in another system nearby to Sapphique: the Devils Doorstep, a border system on the opposite side, on the very edge of civilized space. The path behind us was closed: with a warp-storm in the middle of the system, we would not be able to pass through Sapphique to take a shorter route. Without it, the closest imperial world is, from what the Commodore is willing to share, over five years travel through some of the darkest and most terrible stretches of void if we're fortunate, much held by allies of the Directorate or worse, such as the Null Vampires, the Sun Eater Drakes, the footsoldiers of the Mastercomputer, and the Slaughth and their worm-gods.

After, as I and the rest of the officers attempted to regain control of the crew, I found myself called to the Captains Quarters, alongside the Engiseer and Inquisitor. The man reeked of fear and amasec, and he brandished a pistol at me. He seemed to have snapped entirely: he threatened me, attempted to forced me to strip so he could make sure I was pure of flesh. Goldengun kept insisting I was a traitor, that I had to be, that that was the only explanation for how we had been defeated. Both and I and the Engiseer protested, only for him to shoot the engiseer in the shoulder, yelling at us both for insubordination. To save Coppernicus's life, I complied, stripping as he and the Inquisitor watched, the latter merely observing. Once I was standing bare in the cold air, shivering, the captain began his inspection.

Once he failed to find anything, instead of being mollified, he instead became more enraged, attacking me and attempting to beat a confession out of me. I resisted, and we fought: in the process, I grabbed his shirt and, in the ensuing struggle, it tore.

He had gills. The captain had fucking gills. Once he realized that we had seen them, the monster began to stammer and blubber excuses, pleas, justifications for why he was a good man, a god-fearing servant of the Emperor who didn't deserve what had happened to him, that his mutations, of which he's sentenced others to death for less, were really so minor that they shouldn't count.

Behind him, I saw the helmsman. His skeletal face was no longer smiling: the flickering lamplight of the captains office and the contours of his eyes now framed his ghastly, skull-like mouth in a frown. It was at that point I realized everything the Helmsman said was true. It was at that point my vision began to blur around the edges.

The next few minutes are unclear, hazy, and though I am haunted by what occurred during them I do not recall the details with perfect clarity, perhaps for the best. I know I descended upon the man in a screaming, feral rage as I struck him repeatedly, ignoring his blurbling, bloody pleas for mercy as my fists treated him, his face, his torso, his head as a drum. I recall at one point hearing a crack, the sound of bone giving way, and it was only when he finally went silent, reduced to twitches and the whimpers of a dying man that I realized what I was doing fully. With horror, I stepped back, watching as the man desperately gasped for air, puffs of blood bursting from his gills and spurts of crimson rising from his mouth, his eyes ruined, reduced to a smear of gore.

It took him three minute to finally, mercifully die, and though I still despise the man, the thought of how he perished and my hand in it has left me ill-eased. His face was…he didn't deserve that. Death, yes, but something quick, painless. That…that was cruel. I should have simply shot them and made it quick.

"Well, it appears the mutant has outed themselves at long last," The inquisitor said. "And as is destiny, they were exterminated by a champion of the Imperium forged in the furnace of hardship into a true, rapturous zealot."

The way he said it…he was proud of me. Satisfied. He thought that my rage at the Captain had been his mutation. He informed me that I was taking the Captains place, and that I was to begin conducting a purge.

I punched him, sending him to the floor. The man screamed at me for assaulting a member of his Majesties glorious Inquisition, promising to see me burned at the pyre as a heretic as they attempted to draw their weapon, only to find their skull split in twain by Coppernicus, gore-matter sliding onto the ground.

"It appears that Captain Goldengun has gone mad and killed the Inquisitor," He told me even as he removed his axe from Von Clovis's head, the mans corpse falling to the ground. "We should attempt to secure the crime scene so that a thorough investigation can be performed. Thankfully, before he perished, he was able to promote a replacement to take command of the vessel," He continued, pressing a button on his body and causing a recording of the inquisitors voice to replay his assigning me the position of captain.

His meaning was immediate and obvious. If what we have done ever gets out, not only are we dead, everyone on the ship is. And so, with his help, we arranged the captains quarters to look like the man had assaulted the inquisitor, ambushing him with his power sword, only to get attacked by me after in order to apprehend the murderer.

None yet have questioned it, not as chaotic as things were and still are, and once I announced that I would be suspending all purges because of extraordinary conditions, we finally managed to get the crew under control: the Commodore has apparently ordered the same throughout the fleet, suspending or belaying any current crimes in the crew until we find our way back to home territory. And yet, even with them mollified that extermination is not awaiting them, we are still lost, thousands of lightyears from the nearest friendly port.

We are adrift at sea, forced to sail into that vast and unrelenting darktide. And I fear we may never reach home.

To be continued…

((((()))))

Commissioned by @Kirbstomp .