A/N - There is now a character sheet on the front page, accessible under the "Informational" threadmark.
Ah, of course. You are being foolish.
People have criticised the Blood of God Sect for many things over the years. They say you are arrogant beyond measure, that you care nothing for the destruction inflicted by the collateral damage of your battles, that you are headstrong and needlessly belligerent. Of those, only the last can be fairly said to be true. It is not arrogance to take pride in being second only to Mars, nor is it careless to glorify in the manifest power of the sun when brought to bear, but even the most twisted of minds could not fail to acknowledge that your brothers and sisters in arms are, perhaps, a little too eager to resort to violence. Even by the standards of the Adeptus.
A Young Mistress must be better than the rabble in every way. Her will must be stronger, her techniques more potent, her beauty without comparison, but she must also exercise the judgement and wisdom that mere belligerent weapons cannot bring themselves to master. How else is she fit to lead? It is that judgement that you call upon now, that wisdom to see through the veil of the false dichotomy. You do not wish to leave these menials to be devoured by whatever approaches along the hidden passage, but nor would it be advantageous to reveal your strength by fighting here. Instead, you must simply remove the conditions by which violence might come to pass.
Exhaling softly, you curl your right hand into a fist, thinking back to the lessons you learned at your gene-father's knee. How, once upon a time, a shambling ape reached to the sky and sought to take the sun in hand. An act of foolish ignorance, the sort of thing only the basest and most primitive of minds would even imagine is possible. And yet, aeons later, the descendents of that very same ape learned to do just that. To take the essence of the sun in their hand. To compress space itself within their grasp until the elements of air began to fuse, until the strands of energy bled out between their fingers, until their fist was surrounded by the same shining halo as the star at the heart of every system. Until even that tiny, ragged piece of wasted energy was enough to do what the children of apes demanded of their bare hands.
[Open Palm of the Sun Goddess - Coronal Blow]
You strike the wall twice, corroded iron melting into slag before your fist even touches the surface, and each time wrench out the hidden mechanisms that power the tunnel gate. With a hissing shriek the grate slides shut once more, and just to be sure you run your glowing finger along the seam and melt the two halves of the gateway into one. Nodding in satisfaction, you stand back just in time.
The spirit beast hits the grate like a sledgehammer, forcing its pointed snout through the gaps in the bars and snapping hungrily for your flesh. In form it resembles an overgrown wolf stitched awkwardly together with an equine skull, but by far the most striking property is the complete lack of skin. No, you misspoke. What skin it does have is translucent to the point of near-invisibility, leaving wet muscle and pulsing veins clearly visible, baring yellow-white bone to the world. The creature has no eyes, yet it can clearly still tell that you are there, for its long skull tilts in your direction and opens to reveal a maw filled with at least a dozen concentric rings of translucent fangs that ripple like fronds in the foetid air.
Someone screams. Glancing back over your shoulder, you see that one of the menials has awoken from his induced slumber just in time to witness the arrival of something right out of a nightmare. He's pushing himself back across the sand with hands made weak and flailing by whatever drug was used to keep him under, and his eyes are so wide you feel for a second they might fall out of their sockets.
"Hush," you say, frowning at him. "Wake the others and prepare them to move."
For a moment the man just freezes in place, his expression torn as though he remains unsure whether to look at you or the foul beast that would eat him alive, but in the end the ingrained obedience of all imperial citizens compels him to nod and start crawling towards the ragged pile of fellow mortals. Good. That gives you more time to properly examine the spirit beast.
You don't recognise the phenotype, but in itself that tells you nothing. The galaxy is a vast and wondrous place, and any natural animal on any one of a million worlds might give rise to a spiritual lineage if permitted to flourish in a land where the flow of akasha is bright and unimpeded. No, what truly concerns you is the aggression the thing displays. Even now, barred and obstructed though it is, it continues to snap and snarl and force itself against the bars in hopes of devouring your flesh. Despite this fevered aggression, it makes no move to back up and hurl itself against the metal, nor do the silhouettes of its brethren you can see in the darkness beyond attempt to claw their way to the front. Their aggression has been stoked to a fever pitch, their instinct honed into that of a weapon of focused aggression - these beasts have been trained by a master of the craft, or else fed on a diet you scarcely even have the background to contemplate.
"Bravo!"
A mocking call from above sees you spin on your heel, the slow ring of three deliberate claps causes your brow to furrow in an angry scowl. There is a man standing on the lip of the pit, swathed in shadow as he peers down at you from on high. You can see the edges of a long coat of treated leather, perceive the armoured plates of what might be carapace underneath, but despite the flickering light it is no natural darkness that hides the details from your sight. Everything else about the man is hidden and concealed, buried beneath a cloying shadow that blinds your eyes and your more refined senses alike. You cannot even see his eyes, only two dark pits behind his avian mask of polished bone.
"The quick thinking and decisive action of the Igvita Sect is proven once more," the masked man says with a laugh, metallic feathers rustling as he shakes his head back and forth. You think he must be attempting to mimic the appearance of a Heron, a famously patient hunter. "But oh, is this as far as you go? You can block the Spindle-Maws from attacking, but do you have the means to escape your prison entirely?"
"Perhaps I could melt handholds in the walls, and climb them like a ladder," you say flatly, disliking the implied superiority of the interloper's elevated position. You can feel the akasha surging in the room, but contrary to all expectations it avoids the other man entirely. Not even menials produce such a reaction - it is not passing through him unacknowledged, his very presence repels what you had thought to be a universal constant. Fascinating, if a little disconcerting. "Did you truly believe that a simple pit would hold one such as I?"
"No, and I told our host so, but he is a very stubborn man," the Heron Mask says with a languorous shrug. "Seeing as you have convinced me you will escape regardless, allow me to at least provide a means that limits the destruction to his facility."
He flicks his wrist, and from the rim of the pit unfolds a rickety looking ladder that judders to a halt at shoulder height above the filth-stained sand. The menials, all conscious now and visibly terrified of the spindle-maw still trying to gnaw its way through the grate, rush for the ladder in a living tide. One of them, an older male with soft hands and a paunch, imperiously elbows the others out of the way in order to start awkwardly hauling himself up first. You let them go, never once removing your gaze from the man in the heron mask. To allow a potentially hostile Adept to escape your sight might well be the last mistake you ever make.
"Am I to take this as a gesture of good faith, then, a reason to trust you?" You call up, careful to keep the coronal glow in place around your fists, just in case. "You do not give me your name, you hide your face behind a mask, and you dress the same as the men who captured us. Do you imagine a token gesture such as this sufficient counterbalance?"
"You should trust no one in this place, Young Mistress, least of all this poor lost servant," the Heron Mask replies in a melancholic tone, though the way he holds himself suggests trembles of barely suppressed laughter. "That said, if the Widower has his way we will all drown in black hells uncounted, so perhaps that might serve as a basis for our pact. Certainly I have heard of worse ones!"
The first menial has reached the top of the ladder now, stepping out onto the gantry that apparently runs all the way around the pit, and to your mild surprise he is not instantly slain by some manner of trap or ambush. Seeing this, the remainder of the group begin scurrying up in his wake, some stumbling and cursing, others keeping silent as they shoot frightened glances in your direction. You pay them little mind.
"You speak in riddles to appear wise," you call up to the masked man, putting all necessary scorn and doubt into your tone. The Widower, black hells - evocative words, but utterly meaningless without context, and you are not going to be baited into overlooking the man's own warning against trusting him. There are villains in this world that delight in warning their victims and then making them forget their caution regardless, and you have no intention of playing the role of the fool in whatever morality play this man seeks to write. "If you truly desired a pact against a common enemy, you would offer more than half-truths and implications."
"You grasp for answers you have not earned," the Heron Mask retorts, and there is an edge of irritation in his voice now, a note of frustration swiftly suppressed. "Prove yourself more than a pawn and maybe I shall share more than the gifts I have given already. Until then, may you get only what you deserve."
He steps back out of sight, disappearing behind the rim of the pit, and judging from the startled oaths you hear the menials shout you imagine he has hidden himself from their sight as well. A troublesome ability for a troublesome man, but you have better things to worry about today. The last of the menials is currently ascending the ladder, and you elect to spend a few moments contemplating the corpse of the one who did not live through the unconsciousness before following. It is a slightly morbid sight, but better than staring up at all that flabby, imperfect flesh as you climb. You consider taking the corpse with you or searing it to ash, but no, the beasts don't deserve to go hungry just because they were first unleashed on you. Shaking your head, you ascend the ladder and leave the pit behind.
The upper level is one long ring of gantries and walkways surrounding the feeding pit, studded with heavy airlock doors at regular intervals. Only one of them is open, but you're more interested in the small monitoring station you could not see from the ground, and the dead body of the guard slumped over the broken controls there. He too wears a mask, but it is a far cruder thing than that of the Jackal or the Heron - a simple sack with gleaming eyepieces sewn crudely in place, made out of the same material as the stained set of overalls he is wearing. The vid-screens hiss at you with sullen anger as you approach, leaking oily blood onto the ground from great rents torn in the surface of their podium, and with a thoughtful hum you pluck the knife from the dead man's back and hold it up against the damage. Yes, despite its humble nature, the dimensions match exactly. A mono-edged blade, perhaps one even blessed with some manner of akashic enhancement given the faint twinge you feel when you pick it up… not the sort of thing one would generally waste on killing a menial. Another of the Heron's supposed gifts, perhaps?
"Ah… young mistress," one of the menials speaks up hesitantly from behind you, taking some comfort in the huddled mass of her fellows as they eye you nervously and wait for directions, "should you… ah, should we not take the clothing?"
You raise an eyebrow, looking back down at the corpse. The overalls are crude and mass produced, doubtlessly itchy and uncomfortable even before they were soaked in all manner of gore and the sweat of their wearer. And, of course, the man has died wearing them, which means you can probably expect them to reek of shit in short order. To wear such a thing… it is a joke, surely.
"They are filthy," you point out, "Would you have me disgrace myself by wearing such rags?"
The menials cough and shuffle awkwardly, turning pale or looking away, but they do not murmur agreement as you might have expected. Why… ah, of course. They are ashamed of their own bodies, aware of how your own glorious form brings their imperfections into sharp contrast. They want to cover up, but they dare not take what you might lay claim to. Sighing, you flip the knife over in your hand and offer it hilt-first to the nearest.
"Cut yourself something to preserve your modesty, if you must," you say dryly, "but do remember to wrap your feet as well. It would not do to be crippled by an errant chip of iron."
The menial takes the knife with a certain hesitation, but when you step out of the way and make an encouraging gesture he manages to find the wit to start his work. You just sigh and wait patiently, scanning the remainder of the door with your divine eyes. There is only one of the airlock-doors that hangs open, an obvious path to take, and while it might be a trap you cannot see anything about the other options that would justify taking the time to crack them open. Well, aside from spite, which is not to be discarded.
Thoughtfully, you consider the matter of your own nakedness. The dangers posed by a lack of protection are minimal and you certainly have nothing to be ashamed of, but you suppose it might be useful if you took at least some measures to alleviate the issue. You are no sultry temptress who wields lust as a weapon, after all, and you suppose it does not befit the dignity of a Young Mistress to allow any to look upon her without permission, so… ah, of course. With a nod and a brief focus of power, you set the air around your torso to shimmering, obscuring your form from a casual view. To use the Aegis of Untouchable Glory in such a way would doubtless cause some of your old teachers to spit blood in outrage, but it is not they who are the future of the Sect. Besides, the mortals look suitably impressed and grateful for your generosity, and that is what matters here.
With the mortals at least vaguely clothed in rags and tatters, and no great horde of furious spirit beasts or angry guards having ambushed you in the interim, you force open the airlock door and lead the way into the wider facility. Well, no, facility is the wrong word. It takes you mere minutes to confirm that this is a lair, a temporary home for your captors nestled in the guts of something too mad and decrepit for anyone to ever fully tame. Winding tunnels and passageways cross each other like snarls of old cable, inky shadows illuminated only by distant shades of light and the flicker-flash of broken electrics. Hot air brushes against your skin like the breath of some giant beast, chased away a few paces later by the septic cold wind of the few working recyclers, and in the distance you can hear the struggling thrum of old machines left to fend for themselves forever. There's an impossible stench to everything, a choking miasma that carries with it the taste of spice and blood.
Your captors do not control this place, not even slightly. The discovery of a half-eaten corpse hanging from a stanchion is enough to confirm that, as is the presence of dim shapes in the shadowed halls and the muffled growls of prowling beasts. They stay clear of your group, repelled by the burning scent of your power, and you in turn steer clear of the few narrow passages that the slavers yet control. To most such a thing would be impossible, an open invitation for the winding labyrinth of passages to swallow you whole, but you are an Adept of the Mechanicus. No hall of machines and metal will ever be able to fool or mislead you, no matter how twisted or feral.
You have to be on a planet. There are certainly voidships that would boast such a twisted interior, you have even taken passage upon a few of them, but no lord of the void would be nearly so empty. You would have encountered lurking mutants or isolated enclaves of crew-tribes in even the most infrequently visited of chambers, and the hurrying gaggle of menials at your back would have been doubtless joined by a hundred more desperate to receive the wisdom of a Young Mistress such as yourself, but instead all is quiet and isolated. You are on a planet, which suggests that this place was built for a purpose, even if it has been long forgotten and neglected… but what?
You find your answer after less than an hour of walking, when your attempts to shadow the paths taken by your captors lead you to a grand chamber dominated by a dozen massive crucibles. Grinding gears and flensing blades rotate slowly in the base of each, tended to by servitors with long hooks in place of hands, and beneath the mesh on the floor long channels connect to each crucible to carry the final product away. As you watch, the half-eaten corpse of a grox comes thundering down the maw of an old vent high above your head and lands in the nearest of the crucibles, filling the air with wet cracks and the groan of protesting gears as it is slowly rendered down into slurry.
"Well," says one of the menials in a vaguely sickened voice, "I suppose it is better than just leaving the corpses out to rot…"
Frowning, you shake your head, studying the machinery in front of you. One of the servitors approaches at a stiff walk, doubtless assuming you are escaped livestock that need to be herded back into the crucibles, but a simple binary command sends it back to its position. This, it seems, is among the only parts of the complex still functioning, and while the slavers and beastmasters who took you do not own this place they are clearly benefiting from it in some fashion, so what purpose does it serve? You follow the slow, halting flow of the visceral gruel with your eyes, study the strangely familiar shapes of the other machines beneath the floor that it is fed into, and…
The next body that falls is human. A man of middle age, you think, his body stripped of all clothing and equipment and dumped down the vent shaft, leaving nothing to hide the ragged bullet wounds across his chest. Nothing to excuse the twinge of akasha still clinging to his body - an aspirant, perhaps, or even just a mortal who happened to spend time in the right environments. The corpse falls into another of the great crucibles, and even you have to look away as the great grinding gears set to work.
It's a pill factory.
Akasha exists in everything, in varying amounts and aspects, but there comes a point in every Adept's path where mere natural environments cannot provide them with sufficient reserves to advance any further. That is when they turn to tools, to pills and spirits and meditation chambers, to keep their momentum and continue ascending the path to true Imperium. The drugs you know of draw from herbs and crystals and specially cultivated species of lichen, but if one was willing to expend vast quantities of resources or walked a Path that favoured it, virtually any form of life would provide at least some akasha if suitably rendered down. That is what this place does. Corpses fall from above and are ground down into slurry, which is then fed into some manner of alchemical contraption beneath the floor, and the products of that machine go… where? Back up to the surface, to the hands and mouths of those who own this place, you suspect. Or perhaps further down, to the kennels and pens of the spirit beasts akin to those which tried to devour you earlier, allowing them to grow strong and bloated and used to the taste of human blood and enlightened souls. Perhaps the beastmasters even harvest their own charges after a time, taking spirit cores bloated with stolen power and using them as the ingredient is some other, later stage.
It is unprecedented. Grisly.
Brilliant.
The pills created by this machine would not be the strongest, nor would they be of use to students of every path, but that is more than balanced by the ease and efficiency of use. The Adepts that built this place, or the ones who benefit from it now, need no great supply chains or elite expeditionary crews to supply them with the rare reagents that they require. They need only blood and meat and death, the lives of men and beasts which the Imperium holds in abundance, and a willingness to tip the corpses down a vent once life has fled. Perhaps even before, if they are feeling particularly ruthless or sadistic. Then they could sit back and feast on the fruits of their labours, stoking their souls to new heights, feeling their bodies grow ever stronger. Bloated on the flesh and souls of their lessers.
And you, Young Mistress of the Omnissiah Igvita, young woman with a thousand rivals at her door and a desperate need for strength and accomplishments wherever it may be found… how do you feel about this?
Select as many options as you wish; the option with the most votes overall will guide Miraxa's response to this discovery, but any option with significant support will be reflected in her thoughts on some level.
[ ] Curious. You did not think such a thing was possible, but it clearly is. How is this done, and why do more Sects not do it?
[ ] Disdainful. Such shameless scavenging, seeking to compensate for mediocre talent with wholescale butchery. It is worthy of contempt.
[ ] Fearful. You had never imagined that there were monsters capable of such things in this world. Now you know, and you wish you did not.
[ ] Furious. This is a violation of all that is good and right, and you will see the architects burn for their transgressions.
[ ] Greedy. The power that such a technique represents… it must be yours. Failing that, it must be destroyed so no other can use it against you.
[ ] Intrigued. What kind of mind could conceive of such a thing, and see it to fruition? You rather want to find out.
[ ] Sickened. A purely visceral response, unworthy of a dignified Young Mistress, yet you cannot deny how your gut roils at this sight.
[ ] Write in
