It sounds like Mortarion had a knack for finding and following paths through treacherous terrain. E. g., managing to lead a force into the mountain citadels of the Overlords, as he did in the opening post of this quest.
If that's a psychic power, I have to wonder if he could learn to apply it to metaphorical treacherous terrain.
Interesting quest but one thing I think it's important to talk about the emperor in this version compared to HH version is that the age of Strife and Unification wars are the only things he has ever known.He doesn't know a earth with a nice ecosystem and somewhat reasonable governance but grew up on a war torn planet where tyranny,ecological collapse and playing god was the norm not the exception.This version of emps never saw the galaxy before it got fucked by Slaanesh so it wouldn't make much sense to judge him as if hew was familiar to the standards of past golden ages.
That numerology is going to come up later, I swear on my soul it is, it's just too convient for a culture to be obsessed with "the underlying pattern of the universe" and not be tempted by one of the four. (Nurgle especially in this case with 1,3,7…)
Its most likely something that trickled down via exposure to the Overlords and their workings. They evidently used Warp rituals for more than is healthy, used what passes for baseline humans on Barbarus for all sorts of purposes, and... apparently interbred with us on occasion. Typhon had an Overlord grandpa or something on that order, his ancestor being 'that one guy' who goes out there and fucks the livestock.
We had lots of chances to pick it up from them and knowing it would have helped in our survival. If the Overlords used it consistently enough observing it would have helped the rabble guess what they are doing, how to avoid and endure their works.
Its pretty much the most basic and primitive foundation block of sorcery but, thankfully, there is too much of a taboo for the locals to really develop much out of it within the next couple of centuries. The next step would be various types of omen reading, if I had to guess. Those who have some talent as psykers, eh, they have a hell of a lot of other things to pull them to damnation that would probably get them first.
Any arguments against having Lackland Thorn help set up the foundations for an... I don't know... Ministry of Records and Evaluation? We're going to be moving through this Crusade fast and hard and leaving a million projects other people will have to complete in our wake. Even as a Primarch with an administration focus we will need absurd amounts of information consolidated and at our fingertips for us to work through while we are in Warp transit. It would help us choreograph the dance of a thousand worlds and it would help Mister Thorn become the most influential historian the galaxy will see in the next ten thousand years.
Any arguments against having Lackland Thorn help set up the foundations for an... I don't know... Ministry of Records and Evaluation? We're going to be moving through this Crusade fast and hard and leaving a million projects other people will have to complete in our wake. Even as a Primarch with an administration focus we will need absurd amounts of information consolidated and at our fingertips for us to work through while we are in Warp transit. It would help us choreograph the dance of a thousand worlds and it would help Mister Thorn become the most influential historian the galaxy will see in the next ten thousand years.
We had the option to focus on mathematics earlier on turn 4, so anything we while I think we could do it we wouldn't be following the interests that we've chosen for our Morty.
If anything it'll probably be tagged on to whatever we do to the terraforming org.
Edit: also Guilliman should be around by now so he's probably got it already.
We had the option to focus on mathematics earlier on turn 4, so anything we while I think we could do it we wouldn't be following the interests that we've chosen for our Morty.
If anything it'll probably be tagged on to whatever we do to the terraforming org.
Edit: also Guilliman should be around by now so he's probably got it already.
One of the options we picked was a study of "The Adepts of the Imperial Administration". That means we took a deep, personal interest in the logistics behind the Crusade. Which, in my mind, dovetails excellently with our terraforming focus because that is a thing of grand works in the name of the proliferation and entelechy of mankind. Our knowing the processes by which a planet might be tailored is a tiny part of actually getting it done and then putting said planet into use in the aftermath.
We'll be redesigning already inhabited worlds too, don't forget. So many populated worlds are ravaged ruins and hellscapes left by war, excess, invasive life, and things just going horribly wrong. I'm entirely serious when I say that we will probably be re-terraforming hive worlds before we are done. My ultimate aspiration is to find a way to re-green Terra itself.
Make no mistake: This is a monumental undertaking, almost another front in the war, and we will be having to choreograph like a boss if we don't want it to end in tears. We'll have to gather the resources from our many conquests and then make our projects pay for themselves before they compromise the Crusade itself.
Guilliman... we'll steal his notes once we learn about him. Our interests overlap and we are not so prideful as to make ourselves reinvent the wheel.
[X] Confront the Emperor. The song was real, brief though it was, and you will not demean yourself by pretending otherwise. You will have answers.
-[X] No, there was a song, but then you did something and blocked it out. If it prevents this, Immaterium, from reaching you and I in this space, could that technique be used to deny w- psykers their connection needed to use their powers? Such a tool would be useful against any other Overlords out there that need to be killed.
You're no fool. You can see the dynamic forming here, feel the silent expectation that verges on a demand to say nothing, to accept the Emperor's word and let it go. There will be a price for pursuing this course, you can feel it in the air, but you have paid such things before. Necare cursed you for a traitor when you defied his commands and ventured into the valleys below the clouds, and the stars themselves will burn black and cold before you regret the decision you made on that day.
"No," you say flatly, rejecting the denial and the implicit demand behind it, "no, there was a song. A melody, or just a rhythm I do not know, but you blocked it."
"Listen to me, my son. There was no song," the Emperor says, and his voice carries a note of warning with it when he looks at you, but you have no time for such games.
"No, you listen to me," you retort, dragging your hand across your chest to swat the entreaty aside, "you have a way to shut down witchery. Do you have any idea how many lives might have been saved, had I such tools when battling the Overlords?"
The Emperor is silent there, studying you with a strange light in his eyes. You've never been skilled at reading such things, the secrets of a man's heart hidden from your otherwise peerless sight, but even the scant clues you know to look for are gone here. The Emperor is an enigma, no trace of thought or feeling visible upon his handsome features, until at last he allows himself a slight nod.
"Knight-Commander? Enter, if you would."
The door opens with a faint hiss, and at the Emperor's command a woman enters. She is garbed for battle, her lithe form plated in armour of bronze and a heavy two-handed sword slung across her back, but you have already learned that the ways of Barbarus are not those of the stars and so you do not let this distract you. Rather, what draws your attention is the cold focus in her eyes, and the way your skin crawls when she draws within range. You have not felt such things since last you left the halls of your wretched father, but – no, even then the feeling was different. There is something about this woman that sets your very soul on edge, and though you eye her intently from bald head to pointed foot you cannot tell what it is.
"There are many techniques to counter the basic forms of witchery," the Emperor says calmly, and there is a grim note to his voice now that you find strikingly familiar, "yet to engage with the most advanced and sophisticated forms requires more than mere learning. It requires the gift itself, or some close approximation of it, and an intimate understanding of the techniques at play. Enough, in most cases, to be capable of performing them yourself."
Your hand tightens slowly into a fist and your eyes narrow. Again you look over this 'Knight-Commander', picking out the strange fur mantle she wears, the odd looking symbols on her metal armour. If there are similarities to the Overlords in her you cannot see it, but why else would the Emperor invite her in before taking the conversation down this road?
"I know such secrets myself, for as Emperor I must be willing to shoulder all such responsibility, but who else might I entrust with such dark truths and ruinous potential?" Your father lays his hands gently against the controls of the hololithic display, ready to shape a galaxy in miniature above your head. "The Knight-Commander is born of a strain of humanity incapable of wielding psychic powers in any measure, and as leader of my Anathema Psykana has taken vows of silence that prevent her from passing on what she learns to any not also sworn to the order."
Ah, that makes sense. Is it the knowledge itself that makes you feel so uncomfortable, as once did the presence of the Overlords and all their works? Perhaps it is some other countermeasure or insurance used to secure her knowledge, for you doubt the vow of silence is all that they employ. That she possesses the knowledge of such monsters as you once hunted is a disquieting thought, but if it is truly necessary – and you have no reason to doubt the logic at work – then you suppose limiting oneself to such exceptional agents makes sense. The real issue is what that implies about the course of this conversation.
"You know what is causing the song, what it means," you say, just so the words are out there, that there is no chance of misunderstanding, "but you will not tell me."
"I do," the Emperor nods, "and I will not."
You nod slowly at that. It should feel outrageous, insulting even, but part of you is almost glad that he is being so stubborn. If his will had broken at the first sign of disobedience he would have never been worthy of trust or high regard. You still aren't entirely sure that he is… but he is closer than he was yesterday.
"As a Primarch," you say, speaking as the thought occurs, "could I not simply order one of your women to tell me?"
"No," the Emperor replies, and for a moment you think he might even be amused. The Knight-Commander makes no reaction to your words, which is itself an answer in kind. "As my son your rights are many and your authority second only to my own, but the right of command for the Anathema Psykana is mine alone, as is that of the Adeptus Custodes. You may, perhaps, request the Knight-Commander's aid."
Hm. You look at the warrior woman, measuring the strength of her arm and the gleam in her eyes. The lower half of her face is covered by a high gorget, but you don't need to see her smile or hear her speak to understand what she thinks of that suggestion. You will have her aid and that of her order when you prove yourself both in need and deserving of it, and not a second sooner. Well, fine. You can work with that.
-/-
It takes you three weeks to reach Terra, a timeframe you only understand because the crew make a point of informing you when your destination draws near. The Bucephalus slips from the immaterium with silken grace, the solitary tremble barely perceptible even to your transhuman senses, and shortly thereafter you join your companions on the observation deck to marvel at what the records call humanity's cradle. From here it looks rather like the skies over Barbarus, a hard and absolute black studded with a billion gleaming points of light, but you expect that there will be something more exceptional soon enough. Not more beautiful, though. You aren't sure that is possible.
"Typically, one cannot transition in-system outside of a Manderville Point," Lackland Thorn says, folding his meaty fingers across his belly as the armoured screens covering the windows slowly retract, "a relatively small patch of space where the gravity tides of the local stellar bodies reach a kind of equilibrium. To exit elsewhere risks catastrophic damage as the translation process destabilises, forcing ships that do not control the point to instead drop out far beyond the system limits and add weeks of travel to their journey. The Elysian Gate defies these normal rules, for reasons that would require a far greater understanding of ethero-temporal mechanics than I possess to explain."
"Choke points, then," Mhorgax grunts, rubbing his stubbled jaw in thought. You think he is attempting to grow a beard, but three weeks of trying have yet to grant him anything particularly impressive. "Must see some vicious fighting when the valley is contested. Star system. Whatever."
"The histories are full of such battles," Thorn nods in confirmation, seeming pleasantly surprised by your comrade's input. He'll learn better sooner or later. Mhorgax cares nothing for what men might call the intellectual arts, but he has a fine enough grasp of the principles of war and bloodshed. "Rich systems, or those blessed with a relative handful of viable Manderville points, will often choose to garrison their threshold with star-bases and local defence fleets. Others have too many to be effectively secured, or see little point in doing so when even such accelerated entry leaves an attacker days away from anything they consider important."
"So, one can calculate the points at which real and unreal draw close, perhaps even where they join," Murnau murmurs thoughtfully, already drumming his fingers against the opposite bicep as he retreats into thought, "Yet the relation to terrestrial maths may be as distant as that of any relative, rigid or tenuous…"
You nod in approval, making a note to check in with him later to see if he has gleaned any workable insights. Knowledge of such patterns and their significance plays a key role in battlefield victories, and if you are to lead armies for the Emperor then you will need to be aware of every pertinent variable. He presumably has sages of his own working on the problem, but you trust Murnau far above those academics who you have never met and may never have trusted their own lives to the outcome of their calculations.
Then the stars begin to move.
"What…" the word slips between your lips unheeded, and without thought you step close to the reinforced window and rest a hand against the transparent metal. "What is this?"
The screens track the direction of your eyes, flickering and dancing as they magnify each point of light in turn, constellations uncounted leaping to the foreground and fading away just as swiftly. Ballista bolts of corrugated metal dance between floating islands that know no top or base, while great bulwarks of rock encrusted with light drift in orbit around an eye of pale blue that drowns the stars in its shadow.
"When the Bucephalus passes through, all traffic both ingoing and outward bound is temporarily put on hold," Lackland Thorn explains, facial muscles twitching as he struggles to subdue a smile. "Truthfully I think the security concerns are somewhat overblown, but one does not challenge the Adeptus Custodes."
"So many of them – you could fit every soul on Barbarus into a single tithe of those ships," Lhorgath murmurs in quiet wonder, yet there is a shadowed edge to his voice that only those of you who have known him for so long could hope to hear. "What does it say of a man, that he could command such hosts and yet hunger for more?"
"I spoke to some of the sailors," Caipha interjects here, marking himself as perhaps the only one of your companions save Typhon to make such friendly contact during the trip, "they said trueborn Terrans are rare these days. Most come here from elsewhere."
"Truly? I suppose it could be so – I've not seen the latest census reports," Lackland replies in a strangely tactful kind of way, folding his fingers before him for a moment before crossing to one of the main control panels, "I imagine most were invited to colonise the reclaimed sectors. Terra itself has always been richer in old ruins and abandoned habitats than living souls, though the reclamation efforts have been making considerable progress, to say nothing of the other stellar bodies."
A few strokes of the keys and he has control of the display, focusing it a moment later on what seems almost a wall of red and white and orange. It takes you a heartbeat or two to realise you are looking at a planet, one so massive you lack all context to properly appreciate it, and a heartbeat more to realise that the accompanying readouts of windspeed and atmospheric pressure are not mere academic hypotheticals.
"The Jovian subsystem was a peer to the nascent Imperium in the early days, an industrial juggernaut and potential rival for dominance of the solar system," Lackland explains, highlighting a series of smaller planetoids and glittering station-moons in shining green light, "yet they were not made so by choice. Nonhuman masters once held the populace of the moons in thrall to their inscrutable whims, and it was by aiding in their destruction and the Jovian Liberation that the Emperor was able to convince the people to willingly incorporate into the new Imperium. A strikingly similar story to that of Barbarus, one might observe."
"No, the Overlords were human," Vioss puts in, tapping one long and slender finger against his bottom teeth in a contemplative sort of way. You never actually did get around to tasking if he went through with those plans to eat one of them, largely because he made them while drunk. "Vile things to be sure, twisted by their magics, but human at the core."
"A matter of debate, in some areas," Typhon says wryly, raising his hands in surrender when you shoot him a glare, "Some people might say that those who walk such a path cease being human along the way."
The mention of that old argument draws the others in like dogs worrying at an old and broken bone, but you are content to leave them to it in the end, keeping your eyes fixed on the display screens and the myriad marvels beyond. Wonder after wonder creeps past, a thousand miracles in a hundred spiralling patterns as minutes become hours and the imperial flagship passes further in, and all the while you watch and feel your sense of the universe expanding. You are unmoored and ungrounded, adrift in a world that no longer conforms to sense, and the sooner you can find something real to hold on to the better. A man could drown in this potential without such an anchor to hold him down.
And then, at last, Terra. A rusted orb of grey and brown, speckled with patches of pale green and yellow like moss upon a boulder, girded with the skeletal remains of old void stations lit from within by flickering sparks, strung with jewels of fire and light. It looks no different to the pictures you saw in the old textbooks, but now that you are here, standing above it, something about the whole place feels strangely and irrepressibly familiar.
"The stories say that you and your brothers were created here, prior to the disaster that saw you scattered and lost," Lackland Thorn comments, and you realise that you spoke your last observation aloud, that your hand is pressed against the viewscreen as though it might somehow wrap tightly around that speckled egg of a world for purposes you do not care to know. "Perhaps some lingering sense of familiarity remains? I'm afraid you would need to ask the Emperor for the details."
"A story for another time, perhaps," says the man himself, arriving behind you with a full coterie of those golden bodyguards of his marching in lockstep at his back. He's clad in armour himself for this visit, some hideous abomination of gold and jewels and sculpted wings that barely hides a thing of blood and iron beneath it all, and you wonder why he wears such a thing here but never bothered when walking upon Barbarus. "Better to save the story of Terra and your origins until we land there in truth. For now, we make for Luna."
You turn when he gestures, seeing the satellite in question a moment later. A vast pearly orb of grey and black, it stands out above all else for the simple fact of the great ring of light and metal that girds it from pole to pole. The sheer effort required to construct such a thing baffles you, the potential benefits that must surely be required to deserve the work beyond anything you have context to understand, and oh are you beginning to hate that sensation.
"The Selenar gene-labs are one of relatively few places fitted to augment your army to the standard of the Astartes, and more relevantly are the only such facility not currently occupied with priority projects," the Emperor continues after a moment, gesturing to the Unbroken, "I will oversee the work on these seven personally. The others will be entrusted to my most competent gene-smiths."
"Then I will accompany them," you say without taking a step from your current position, for you know what is coming next before the Emperor even opens his mouth.
"No, Mortarion. You would only get underfoot," your father says, and some part of you almost admires the man for speaking the unwelcome truth so plainly. "Nor will it benefit you to sit and worry about their chances until the work is done. Instead, perhaps you might meet some of your brothers. There are two Primarchs presently upon Luna, and I suspect they would welcome your company."
You nod grimly, turning to face your brethren, seeing in their faces all the unspoken words that have existed between you for the span of years. Caipha's hard admiration, Murnau's quiet belief in salvation, even Typhon's awkward camaraderie… some part of you thinks that you should say something profound now, that you ought to speak words of truth and meaning that acknowledge all they have given and all that they mean to you. Some of them might very well not be coming back from those operating tables, after all, and even if they do, they will not be unchanged by the process in body or in mind. Yet you have not the wit for words nor the learning to master rhetoric, so after a long and solemn moment you simply nod to them once.
"Don't die," you say, and that is enough. They salute you and depart, following a beckoning Custodian through the nearest door, and you wait for a long moment to see the last of them fade from view before you turn back to the Emperor. "My brothers. Which ones?"
"Ferrus Manus was among the first to join my cause. He has fought at my side for thirty years or more, adjusting for temporal drift, and you will not find a clearer view of the mechanics of conquest or the politics of contest than the one he can provide," the Emperor says, smiling fondly at some private memory. "Your brother Perturabo by contrast was recovered but recently, and has yet to take command of his Legion. I think perhaps in speaking with him you will gain a fairer understanding of what awaits you on Terra and beyond, and it is my hope that perhaps the two of you shall become friends. He could sorely use one."
You consider that for a moment, then frown. You've never been one for friends, and even the vaguest understanding of who you are and how your life has progressed would have told the Emperor that much. You suppose you can consent to existing in Perturabo's vicinity until he tries to kill you or accepts you as a friend, but surely you cannot be the best choice for such a measure. Surely.
Article:
Mortarion is about to meet two of his brothers for the first time. What interest are they pursuing when he arrives?
[ ] Prowess Perturabo is demonstrating the pankration techniques of his homeworld, while Ferrus Manus offers commentary and advice regarding non-humanoid foes. With Mortarion's arrival, conversation naturally turns to armed combat and testing the limits of their transhuman flesh, the latter field in which the Son of Death excels.
[ ] Honour Mortarion finds his brothers studying records of the First Pacification of Luna, when the Luna Wolves first earned their name, comparing the Legions involved to those born of their own gene-stock. Conversation turns to the achievements of the Iron Hands, and then how one might measure the Dusk Raiders and Iron Warriors against that standard.
[ ] Unity The nascent Imperium is divided and varied, thousands of individual banners and factions grinding against each other even as they turn their attention outwards. Ferrus Manus believes this diversity and competition to be a source of strength, while Perturabo is raging about the need for true unity and cooperation. Naturally, Mortarion has no sooner arrived than he is being drawn into the argument.
[X ] Unity
This one sounds interesting considering how Ferrus seems to be interested in keeping the imperium cosmopolitan is a way while Perturabo wants more centralization.
The Brothers of Iron being the first to meet Mortarion is a interesting choice, I choose this one because i feel like this is a matter of philsophy that could use an imput. Both ideas have merit but it'd be interesting to read them in more detail.
