"DIOMEDES! MATTHIAS!"
The two Techmarines, following in the wake of their energetic Forgemaster, froze in their steps when Osiron snapped to them in an instant.
"We are here."
The Master of the Forge throws the great stone doors open, and reveals the treasure trove within.
A vast library, filled with shelves upon shelves of books, tomes, scrolls and slates, tended to tirelessly by the scribes and the Servitors. This is not the Librarius, but it looks almost like it in grandeur. All that is missing is the psychic lore, replaced with techno-tradition, ancient lore, procedure, schematics, and mathematics.
And when the doors open, all the Serfs and Servitors within file out.
"Now!" Rather roughly, Osiron pushes his two proteges inside the vast cavernous chamber. "Within you will find all you need on mathematics and engineering, basic and advanced! Somewhere within this place, I have hidden your Scrolls of Assessment! Twenty five of them for each of you!" His expression suddenly turns grim. "You have twenty years. Find those Scrolls, complete the challenges I have set out for you, brave the dangers hidden within these halls and return to me within that time. I expect great things from both of you!"
The two Techmarines look at each other, then their mentor. "Do we have weapons?"
"No, but you may find the MEANS to MAKE weapons within!"
"Sustenance?"
"You are Space Marines. You can make do."
"Writing supplies?"
"Everything you may or may not need will be within! Omnissiah bless your cogs, younglings!"
And without so much as a second glance, Osiron slams the doors close. And then bars it.
"Now! Onward to THE FORGE!"
------------------
"Matthias, I have found one of our scrolls!"
"Excellent. Hopefully this is one that we can do without being assailed by -- what was that?"
"UNIDENTIFIED ASSAILANTS DETECTED. FOR THE EMPEROR, PERISH."
"Oh when we are out of here I am going to --"
"Well, they appear to be doing rather well!" Osiron deactivated the pict-feeds into the Library and chuckled quietly to himself. Such exuberant lads! They will become fine Senior Techmarines. Once their mission completes, anyway!
Well then! Back to the Forges! it is time that additional suits of Tactical Dreadnought plate were made!
------------------
The ceiling rumbles lightly, raining a thick plume of dust down onto the floors of the Library. Scrolls upon scrolls are strewn on the ground dripping with quill ink and blood, whenever they ran out of ink and had not the time to find additional stockpiles.
"Matthias."
The Techmarine looks up, wild-eyed, two mechadendrites aiming a bolter and a lascannon in the general direction of that voice. A Hunter-Servitor had attempted to deceive him by pretending to be Lysander, and nearly ripped out his throat. It took a welding torch and an empty inkwell to deal with that, and he had no intention on being caught off-guard again.
Techmarine Lysander Diomedes raises his hands and Mechadendrites, and whispers the password in lingua technis. Axe-Duel.
It was the little things to remind them of what they were doing with their Forgemaster when they emerged.
Matthias lowered the Lascannon, but kept the bolter oriented in that direction as Lysander arrived with a bunch of scrolls and scrap in his grasp. More than once has a group of Cyber-diles followed one of them back to their many, many bases, and nearly ate them. Though those attacks certainly did lighten the strain on their food supplies at an opportune moment.
"I found some reference parchments on the Rites of Lexmechanicus XXVII," Lysander said, his voice even and flat. Somewhere at eight years in, Lysander decided to stop injecting emotion into his words. He was saving all of that for when he emerged. "That should help us with decoding the remaining test scrolls."
They had already amassed a collection of forty nine of them, total. All that remained was the last one, believed to be some sort of esoteric quest their insane Forgemaster would come up with. They made sure to keep the scrolls safe, too; Cyber-diles had eaten a bunch, three years into their quest. It took quite a lot of murder to get them back. "Excellent work, Lysander. I have managed to solve an additional scroll."
"Good, good, that should help out efforts." The ceiling rumbles again. "What do you suppose that is about?"
"If Karanda is under attack I doubt Osiron would leave us dow--" Matthias blinks. "Well, he might. But I severely doubt Lord Asterion would allow it."
Lysander nods, even as his eyes pour over the newfound parchment and his mechadendrites got to work arranging the ink supplies. "Yes, Lord Asterion. Truly, he is the most sane of our Chapter's leadership. And that says a great deal about our Chapter's leadership."
"Indeed."
A moment passes, and Matthias frowns. Two more heartbeats pass in absolute silence, save for the occasional rumbling of the ceiling and the dust that rains down.
"Lysander…"
"I feel it as well."
They glance behind them, grabbing hold of their chainblades by practiced reflex.
Sitting there, atop a collapsed bookshelf, is a Praetorian Servitor, clad in Mk-VIII Power Armor and wielding an Assault Cannon on one arm and a Power Sword in the other.
"...Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant."
The Praetorian roars, and a pair of Multilasers unfurl from its back.
Lysander dodges left, Matthias dives right, and the corpse in Power Armor slams into the desk they were using just a moment ago.
----
"Forgemaster, we are ready to begin construction of the Rhino!"
Osiron waves the other Techmarines off, more interested in the pict-feed linking to his helmet. Laughs, hale and heartily, and indulges in the nostalgia.
Power Conduits can wait. This? This is amazing.
-----------------------
"Forgemaster, what are you doing?"
Osiron Orthos stands before two great engines of extinction. One is whole, bustling with guns, covered with plates of Adamantium and Ceramite, painted crimson, and emblazoned with the Alatus Cadere. The other is still being made, but even its mere husk is a glory to behold that few men will ever enjoy. Both are fantastic marines, their designs discovered by the legendary Archmagos Arkhan Land, and will be the crown princes of the Crimson Crusaders vehicle pool, though neither was the first. Both are Land Raiders, and both are the pinnacle of Imperial vehicle design.
At least, as Forgemaster Osiron would say. And few would disagree.
"This one is the Alae Tempestatem," he says, voice low and his tone reverential, a mechadendrite waving over the completed Phobos-Pattern. "And this one shall be the Alae Ardens. And both of them shall be glorious."
"You speak as if you wish to build more, Forgemaster," the Techmarine says, disbelieving. It would be madness. The Chapter has so much else that it could be using that forge capacity for. Like guns. And Terminator Armor.
"Of course, lad! We are of the Blood Angels! And we Blood Angels have more Land Raiders than Predators!"
That it was highly irregular even amongst the Sons of Sanguinius went unsaid, as it always was. No one enjoyed interrupting the Forgemaster during a tirade. The earful they got lasted weeks. Actual weeks.
"...Of course, silly me." The Techmarine clears his throat loudly. "What Pattern shall it be, Forgemaster?"
"I do not know! The Pattern is not important at the moment, we have other matters to concern ourselves with."
The Techmarines nearly ask what their eccentric Forgemaster means, but a look at their internal chronometer confirms the first of their suspicions.
"Arm the Alae Tempestatem!" He roars, laughing merrily. "Mount the weapons! I have students to welcome home!"
---
Deep within the bowels of the earth, within the heart of the mountain, there is a great wealth of knowledge to be tapped. Design schematics, techno-arcane intellect and bio-cybernetic constructs, all for the enterprising adventurer to find - if they dare. Such a journey would be long, arduous, difficult, and borderline heresy. Mostly because this wealth is right under the Home of the Sky Warriors, the Crusaders in Crimson Clad, the mighty Space Marines that call Karanda home.
And few are more aware of this fact than the two disciples of Forgemaster Osiron Orthos, the mad maestro of mechanised murder. For twenty years, they have spent their lives in the depths of the mountain, surrounded by lore and stone and murderous cybernetic monstrosities concocted by the mad mindscape of the Chosen of the Rhinos.
How fitting, then, that they escape by riding Rhinos.
The doors blow open in a hail of stone and splinters, a group of servitors crushed under the hail. A metal box bursts from the cloud of smoke, ramshackle and looking more like the crude work of an ork mek than the elegant robust engineering of an Astartes Techmarine, but functional nonetheless. One has a lascannon mounted on the top, much like a Predator without the turret housing; instead, a Techmarine - his armor covered in patchwork repairs and covered in additional mechadendrites - is manning the weapon, his upper body visible and uncovered by the chassis.
"EXCELLENT!" The Forgemaster booms, his arms crossed. "You have completed my tests! Truly, a commendable effort! I am proud to be your master!"
Lysander Diomedes smirks, and trains the lascannon onto Osiron. "The final scroll said 'Rhino Fight', Forgemaster. It did not say with whom."
He nods, understanding the man's intent. He did throw him in a highly lethal hole in the ground for twenty years with the barest of necessities. "Verily, it did not! BUT, MY STUDENTS! Let me ASK you!"
His form collapses through the ground suddenly, and the floor shakes and splits apart. The titanic form of a Land Raider emerges, pristine crimson plating shining under the glare of the searchlights.
And from the amplivoxes of the Alae Tempestatem, the boisterous tone of Osiron Orthos bursts forth.
"DO YOU THINK I WAS NOT PREPARED?!"
Abruptly, the Rhino explodes.
Soaring through the sky are Lysander Diomedes and Matthias Taldris, their Power Axes raised high.
Osiron bursts from the top hatch of the Alae Tempestatem, his own Omnissian Axe brandished, the Harness of Anacletus whirring.
They land, and the battle is joined.
Gained:
- Senior Techmarine Lysander Diomedes
- Senior Techmarine Matthias Taldris
