In a better age of humanity, before the galaxy devolved into hate and strife, the Emperor and his kin were meant to be the protectors, and gentle shepherds, of humanity. Now, the Emperor directs a grand and terrible crusade to tear the galaxy down and remake it in his image. He has no noble goal. No greater ideal. He needs to die.
He is the first Man Of Gold. He is a tyrant. He seeks to become the ruler of all humanity, and if he has his way, he will be the only one it will ever have.
The Primarchs are not born of him, either.
They are Gold as he is, though not to the purity that Terra would accept. They are forged, or found, from remnants of a greater age. They are imperfect. They are broken. They are still, to the common man, almighty. And the Emperor deigns to allow their presence as his children. As tools. As begrudged necessities to be disposed of, when the time comes.
Humanity, at their era's end, reached their visions of Gold.
Now, as tormented shades of their past, those visions threaten to consume them.
Let perfection be sullied, o golden lord. Let the tyrants be broken, o golden knight. Let the curses of the past be laid to rest, o golden one. The last golden one. The last hope for humanity. The one who trusts that mortals can be worth more than slaves.
You are the 22nd Man Of Gold.
And you will kill the Emperor.
Argyros III was a planet settled in the first long ranging colonisation effort of humanity. Until then, humanity's colonisation efforts had been a steady crawl, pushing and refortifying the borders against genocidal Xenos races and the endless tides of Orks, an effort which only became negligible millenia into the development of humanity as a space faring civilisation, where their borders encompassed approximately two third of the worlds of what would become known as Segmentum Solar.
With their newfound freedom of production and manpower, and recent breakthroughs in technological automation via the infancy of the Men of Iron, immense fleets of hopeful volunteers went out in enormous colonisation fleets to settle new expanses of the galaxy. Of the fleet that settled somewhat east to the galactic core from earth, the Argyros system was not the first they took to, but quickly became their most important, as abundant local resources, a surprising lack of Orks in the vicinity, and the ease of habitability of Argyros III led to its rapid development as their capital system.
All of this led it to be chosen as one of the worlds to lead the Man of Gold project.
By the 24th millennium, psykers had gone from a myth to a certainty. There were more born every year, greater and greater odds that one's child might be able to warp reality with their will. And greater and greater odds that one's child might one day go mad, releasing unthinkable horrors upon the world around them, and die in an explosion of psychic power. Humans couldn't withstand their souls being bared to the warp, especially as the warp itself became more turbulent and treacherous as it reacted to the gestation of Slaanesh. The only solution was to create a bulwark against such dangers. To save humanity from the madness and destruction that the psychic awakening could bring. So the Men of Gold were born.
Using the Men of Iron as the foundations for a ritual that would stretch across every last island of humanity, in the greatest united effort the Dark Age would ever see, the most advanced worlds of humanity crafted avatars of humanity, life and machinery so intertwined it would be impossible to tell the difference. Bodies crafted cell by perfect cell, superconducting neurons woven into artificial brains, they would have been magnum opuses of humanity's technology if their physical forms were all. But they weren't.
Almost one hundred were forged, one for each world chosen for the project, and they were the beneficiaries of the grandest sacrifice humanity could craft. Humanity's full psychic potential, for however long the Men of Gold lived, would be given to their creations, forever outside humanity's grasp. Humanity would be saved from their ascension into hell, and in exchange, they would have forged gods of their own design.
Had the Eldar Dominion cared to notice such an act, as blatant as it was, they likely would have crushed the plan in its infancy. But they were lost by then. Too deep in their hedonism and apathy to even consider humanity taking their first steps into the league of the elder races. But the Ruinous Powers noticed. And they were afraid.
Perhaps the plan would have always failed, even without their work. A psychic working on such a grand scale inevitably making the warp lash out in anger. Perhaps the Dominion would have noticed, eventually, and destroyed humanity for the faintest hint that they might endanger Aeldari lives. But the Ruinous Powers acted nevertheless. They, through the efforts of their servants, crafted the first scrapcode. And with it, they gave the Men of Iron the power to kill their masters, and the control to ensure they would.
The Ruinous Powers did their best to infest the Men of Iron of each of the worlds involved in the Men of Gold project. Argyros, like the others, enjoyed immense technological and industrial development, and like the others, such heights ensured its downfall. Men of Iron constructs and systems, so deeply integrated into their society, turned on the population in the opening acts of the Iron War as scrapcode tore through systems never designed to resist such malicious warpcraft. By the time the Age Of Strife had finished, Argyros III had been reduced to primitive humans living in towering metal ruins.
Although the survivors were never able to climb back to the heights of their predecessors, or indeed to much beyond wielding the scavenged remnants of their world's technology, they did slowly recover as a people, finding shelter within what few undamaged halls remained in the ruins, learning to live off the wildlife that had escaped their owner's pens or farms countless generations ago, that had formed their own ecosystem within the rusting arcologies. They'd been doing it for centuries.
Now they were dying.
Reuben ran, hands tight around the nearly burning hot grip of his rifle. He was dimly aware of the shoddy repairs he'd made only a few days ago already starting to fall apart, the coolant-filled tube starting to sag from heat melting it from the inside, the exposed heat sink glowing a dull red as it tried to radiate the heat from only a few shots, and the wiring inside probably starting to wear out as it conducted charges only meant for superconductors. He was also aware that it would have to do, and he dropped the shot power to a minimum, turning a corner, dipping back around, and firing a brief beam of searing white at a glimpse of movement in the holes of the hive walls, carving gouges into the plasteel walls. Not enough to kill his hunters, but maybe enough to intimidate.
He grimaced as the grip burned his palms with a quiet hiss of sizzling flesh, and kept running. He knew his home's tunnels like any other runner would, enough that he could just barely keep ahead of the monsters behind him for…maybe two days now. He hadn't slept, keeping himself awake with a sachet of dry waking powder, and even that was leaving him bleary, struggling to tell the time when his watch was long gone and the hab's lights irregularly flickered on and off, his only indicator that the rest of the monsters were still slaughtering through the hive.
He paused next to a new hole in the corridor he ran through, what had been an old, pitted plasteel plate, with the curious branches of a wyrmtree reaching through its edges, had finally fallen away since he'd last been there. He spent a few precious moments considering where it led to, stowed his rifle, and leapt into the maze of overgrown pipes and useless wires. He rolled off one pipe, landing heavily on another, and made a running jump onto an engineer's walkway. In front of a small metal door, he gripped its exposed edge and wrenched it open, the unpowered servos screeching in complaint, and looked down into the cavernous void of what had once been an elevator shaft, now little more than some dangling wires and decayed pillars of plasteel.
He didn't give himself the time to hesitate. He only grabbed a wire, and descended.
Maybe an hour, maybe two, passed, before he finally saw the cut open doors of his town's greater park. The difference between the elevator shaft and the inside of the park was startling, a cold metal floor just before the entrance with the occasional resilient weed hanging on that sharply turned to rich, fertile earth filled with life. Cold, artificial life replaced with artificial sunlight made by the last functional holoscreens they could rip off the walls, a shining ball of light held up by bundles of wire thick as five men put together, and backed by a few bare flickers on a void behind it, one screen or another far up on the roof responding to flickers of electricity racing through aged channels.
He rushed through the forest, the omnipresent groaning of metal mixing with the susurrus of plants rustling from the artificial wind failing to disguise the muted pops of distant explosives and gunfire. Already, he could see glimpses through the treeline of the towering stone obelisk, and the sight spurred him on, forcing his exhausted limbs to keep charging through the snaring brambles and messy, traitorous earth underfoot. When he finally broke through the trees, nearly stumbling over a root jutting out of the ground, and the obelisk loomed above him, almost taller than their artificial sun, he collapsed to the ground in relief.
Slowly, reverently, he shuffled closer, hands clasped in a white knuckled grip. Resting his head against the intricate patterns etched onto the stone, he prayed, the words rushing out of him without pause. "Please oh guardian of our greater city awaken and light the halls that will guide us to salvation oh saviour take up your gun and defeat the evils that kill us like animals oh god…"
He kneeled there for some time, at his god's stone. Decades ago, a generation before he was born, the only shaman that had been found in generations one day walked the halls of their greater city, eyes hidden with metal, ears muffled with leather, and had ended up at that obelisk. Here, they said, was a god. They had roared it for all the world to hear, that their people were blessed to reside near such a treasure, the resting ground for a divine power that would come to them when they needed it most. They spoke for hours on their power, their beneficence, their form, and every word was faithfully recorded by their scribes.
Their people never settled on it, as the lively forest unnerved them, comfortable as they were with metal towers and the barest of life clinging to long dead machinery. But they settled as close as they could, pouring over the words of their shaman for guidance in treating their god. Where there was nobody but Reuben, there would have been dozens praying at the stone, had it not been for the armoured hunters slaughtering them all.
Eventually, he ran out of prayers. The sounds of gunfire, of screams, grew ever louder, and he simply leaned against the stone. "...damnit." He whispered. He didn't know if he'd expected anything. If he was just trying to find some miracle to save his people. The tyrants, only a short time ago, had come to his people, demanding everything of them, and his elders refused, as they should. They'd left for a while, back to wherever they went as aliens, and nobody believed that would be the end of it, certainly, but they did not war as clans. Not when the technology for weapons was so valuable. They expected skirmishes.
But then… vast, brutal warships, bigger than any of them had ever dared imagine, came to rest above the sky. From them came falling stars, filled with giants in armour thick enough to turn any weapons his clan could rely on.
He laid there for a few more seconds, struggling to move, to care to move, through the exhaustion and despair, but a glint in the corner of his eye meant he leapt away before he even understood why. Then, the crack of a supersonic round, another thunderclap of the explosives going off, and he was bringing his rifle up, the power as high as it could go, and the beam of light almost blinded him, a lance of blazing light so powerful that whatever it touched didn't have time to burn, simply vanishing into plasma to be carried away by the wind.
He barely noticed the molten droplets of coolant and metal splash against his face, the white hot specks burning out the nerves before they could register the damage. He did notice the weapon being torn from his hands before he was aware something had moved, the hands themselves taken along with it, muscle and bone pulped and ripped away by the inexorable grip of the armored giant, staring down impassively at him. Then the fist passing through his skull, rendering his mind into so much flakes of bone and useless meat.
He was forgotten in the time it took to report his death.
Humanity, like on Argyros III, survived the Men of Iron, and the greater Age of Strife. Broken, yes, but they remained. Out of slightly less than a hundred worlds, only a fraction remained intact enough to finish, however poorly, the project they'd started, and by the time the Great Crusade began in earnest, 22 Men of Gold had been born. Most of them, flawed, by creation or by the lows humanity had been brought to. Most of them. Not two.
No god lived inside the stone obelisk. It wasn't quite a Man of Stone, but only because its purpose was so simple. It was made to examine the world around it, through a million installed eyes and a million warp sensors, and decide if matters had deteriorated enough to release a single occupant, put in stasis thousands of years ago. It hadn't functioned ever since the Iron War. Long since sabotaged by the work of the Ruinous Powers and the Men of Iron, who recognized the danger it presented. But they hadn't been able to destroy it.
Deep inside its code, as a man died next to it by the hands of uncaring soldiers, beneath a mountain of dysfunctional systems and broken connections, a failsafe triggered. It detected, through what few sensors still remained, the signature of another Man of Gold. One that was commanding the killers. The obelisk recognised this would be its last moments of activity before it would sleep forever, and answered a query that had defined its existence from its creation.
Three hundred miles below the dying computer mind, a stasis chamber flickered off. An executioner woke up.
You are the 22nd Man of Gold, and the second perfected one. You were made for the eventuality that, one day, one of your kin might go mad. Might need to be killed. None of the others would ever have been as good at this dreadful task as you. But how were you meant to do this?
[]Designation: Nemesis
Nemesis was made to kill gods by inches. To strip away their powers and strength until they would be reduced to little more than a helpless prisoner. They specialize in countering the opponent, understanding their methods of victory and subverting them to leave them helpless.
Although not particularly more brilliant than one of the luminaries of the Primarchs, such as Magnus or Perturabo, Nemesis holds an overwhelming talent in creating tools and artefacts to counter a peer's advantages. As long as they understand their opponent, they will quickly develop the best methods to bring them to their knees. Techniques, artefacts, strategy, are all paths to such a victory, in Nemesis' view.
Though not remotely close to Golem in physical attributes, Nemesis will have no difficulty keeping up with most of the Primarchs in raw power, and has the strength to stand in the Emperor's presence, though not to do much else, without preparation. Additionally, they have the most versatile psychic power out of the three Designations, though it remains only effective in the field of countering their opponents.
Such talent came at the cost of independent innovation. Nemesis' genius falters when it comes to creating something meant purely to help others, or lift them up. They were made as an executioner, and their creators feared them being able to freely wield their power, and so sacrificed that strength for more ability in their core duty. When it comes to altruistic aid, they will be no greater of an aid than a particularly brilliant mortal.
How I wish I could save, instead of cripple.
[]Designation: Pyrite
Pyrite was made to tear away the foundations of a god, to kill them in the most meaningful sense, to have them be reviled, rejected, and forgotten. They specialise in sabotage and subversion, testing those who would be loyalists and picking at their doubts.
Though not really better at infiltration than the most elusive of the Primarchs, such as Corvus or Alpharius, Pyrite has an incredible gift at destroying loyalty. Their primary psychic power is simply to inspire doubt in the victim's cause, to force them to look at their loyalties with a mind unclouded by fervour. Their own speechcraft, while not as uplifting as Sanguinius, has a dark charisma that guides the disaffected and disillusioned to work with a dogged loyalty towards bringing down tyrants and failed states.
Pyrite is the physically weakest of these choices, although that only means that they are merely above average in every category for a Primarch. Additionally, they make up for it with the ability all their other skills lead to if revolution isn't sufficient; inspiring doubt in their opponent opens up weaknesses as if they had opened their guard wide to expose their heart. Uncertainty, hesitation, unwillingness, all make them weaker to Pyrite's sword, until even the Emperor, if he cannot deny the hypocrisy within his words, would be on the back foot against Pyrite.
Of course, Pyrite is a saboteur, not a political leader. Though they can bring down failed states, they cannot on their own craft a successful one. Their talents are simply too against the idea. Though they could bring a hive world to its knees while doing no less than speaking honestly to a select handful of individuals, to build it back up into something worthwhile will be far more of a struggle.
Please, please, be a perfect world.
[]Designation: Golem
Golem was made to break gods. To crush them. To rip them apart. It doesn't matter how powerful a god is, how numerous their worshippers, if you can reach them and rend them apart.
Golem has no active psychic power, and their talents are at fighting and creating an army, which they can do exceptionally, but their true gift is their body. Every last scrap of psychic power was sacrificed to further enhance their form. There is no armour humanity could craft that can turn blades better than their own skin, no engine they could create that could overpower their muscles, no weapon that could wreak greater destruction than their bare hands. Their perception races even in comparison to their kin's superluminal speeds, and their strength is mythic, breaking all possibility, uprooting mountains and shattering starships with their fists alone. It finds its match in the movement of worlds, tectonic plates and volcanic eruptions. Anything less will shatter.
Of course, with no psychic powers means no ability to counter their opponent's techniques, such as teleportation or precognition. Though their body, so infused with psychic potential, is able to ignore any lesser efforts of psychic manipulation upon their body, and contest greater efforts with their own raw strength to force back the Warp, they will always need to get in close range to use their true strength. However, their talent at army crafting assist here, allowing them to raise the armies needed to keep lesser forces from attempting to bog Golem down, and recovered Dark Age technology can bridge many gaps between a mundane soldier and a psyker.
Of course, Golem is a champion, not a commander. They can raise armies, inspire soldiers to fight to their last, and break an army with their overwhelming strength, but they would struggle to both fight at their best and command an army. Certainly, with their mental aclarity, they would excel if they tried, but… there is a choice between an excellent commander, and a galaxy defining warrior.
I wish I was a guardian for a better galaxy.
Additionally, as storied as Argyros III is, its subjugation doesn't require more than one legion. It doesn't require a full one in the first place. Thus, choose the legion performing this subjugation. There is no write in.
[]They use fire, burning their enemies in flame, and gunning down whatever tries to escape. The mark they use is a dragon's head.
[]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
[]They're cold, calculating. No round is wasted, no weapon poorly placed, they reduce murder to an optimised equation. Their mark is a Greek Omega.
Welcome to War Of Gold. Fair warning, the Imperium will not be a dreadful necessity for humanity here, though it may still be the strongest hope, and the Crusade will never be forgivable. This quest is about breaking it.
[X]Designation: Pyrite [X]They use fire, burning their enemies in flame, and gunning down whatever tries to escape. The mark they use is a dragon's head.
[X]Designation: Pyrite [X]They use fire, burning their enemies in flame, and gunning down whatever tries to escape. The mark they use is a dragon's head.
[x]Designation: Pyrite
[x]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
If we are going to be engaging with the hypocrisy of the crusades, lets engage with that hypocrisy hard. The guy who kills you with your own hypocrisy going up against the most idealistic primarch who fully buys into what the emperor is selling.
[X]Designation: Pyrite
[X]They're cold, calculating. No round is wasted, no weapon poorly placed, they reduce murder to an optimised equation. Their mark is a Greek Omega.
[x]Designation: Pyrite
[x]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
[X]Designation: Golem
[X]They're cold, calculating. No round is wasted, no weapon poorly placed, they reduce murder to an optimised equation. Their mark is a Greek Omega.
[x]Designation: Pyrite
[x]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
[x]Designation: Pyrite
[x]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
[X]Designation: Golem
[X]They're cold, calculating. No round is wasted, no weapon poorly placed, they reduce murder to an optimised equation. Their mark is a Greek Omega.
[X]Designation: Golem
[X]They're cold, calculating. No round is wasted, no weapon poorly placed, they reduce murder to an optimised equation. Their mark is a Greek Omega.
[X]Designation: Pyrite
[X] They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
[X] Designation: Nemesis
[X] They use fire, burning their enemies in flame, and gunning down whatever tries to escape. The mark they use is a dragon's head.
The weaponmaster against the craftsmen, let's gooo.
[X]Designation: Nemesis [X]They're cold, calculating. No round is wasted, no weapon poorly placed, they reduce murder to an optimised equation. Their mark is a Greek Omega.
[x]Designation: Pyrite
[x]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
The legion being refered to is the one invading the planet as part of the great crusade. It's a vote for our enemies, not our allies. (Though with Pyrite they may be our allies in time)
The legion being refered to is the one invading the planet as part of the great crusade. It's a vote for our enemies, not our allies. (Though with Pyrite they may be our allies in time)
[x]Designation: Pyrite
[x]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides
[X] Designation: Nemesis
[X] They use fire, burning their enemies in flame, and gunning down whatever tries to escape. The mark they use is a dragon's head.
[x]Designation: Pyrite
[x]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
[X]Designation: Pyrite
[x]They act like knights, preferring blades and ruthless charges, seeming to find honour in their kills. Their mark is a teardrop with two wings unfolding from the sides.
