#mariana the cleaning serf

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squad of my "ultramarine" successor chapter The Imperial Lares (they're 100% gmans. probably. don't worry about it.)

they have recently come into possession of an incredibly rare thing for space marines: a mother! (an old cleaning serf tasked with explaining baseline shit to them for a mission. they got attached.)

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ok because it will be a bit before this can go in The Updated Codex and because I love them very much here's The Emperor's Silliest in action

Mariana Cassiona was a largely unimportant serf, as most serfs tended to be. She knew this, and was unbothered by it. As one of the thousands of cleaning-serfs on the great Herald of Stultitia, she had worked the barrack floors for as long as she could remember. She had spent nearly every waking moment between here and the laundry downstairs since she'd been assigned as an aide to the matre at the age of eight. She had lived her life here, raised her children whilst she worked here, knew every door and wall and scratched railing better than the lines that creased her husband's face.

Even such experience as hers did not suppress the transhuman dread her astartes masters inspired.

The Imperials Lares used the Stultitia as a sort of long-term outpost. Nobody had ever told Mariana this, but she had guessed it because their marines were never deployed for long, if at all, they had not in her lifetime received new astartes (neither did they have aspirants in training, as far as she could tell), and while her grandmother had told her passed-down stories of horrible, dangerous journeys through turbulent stars that her ancestors had survived by sheer luck, the ship, as far as Mariana's memory went, had only ever rumbled along evenly. All of this was largely unimportant to Mariana, except, she supposed, she should be thankful she had lived much of her life in relative uneventfullness.

She had, at least, until one day, while she was sweeping dirt from the metal of the third floor barrack hallway, that one of the marines called to her.

At first she did not respond. The marines talked the same way they walked around and, on occasion, over the serfs; that was to say, she had learned to tune out their conversations of contextless military-speak, and had failed to realize they were addressing her at the time. It wasn't until they called again ("No, hey, you! Serf! Yeah, you.") that she straightened with a jolt, and looked up.

Four adeptus astartes, clad in their polished blue armor and their perfect white detailing, were staring at her.

She stared back at them, long enough to register that their helmets were off, and then she remembered herself and cast her gaze to the floor.

"Come here for a second," one of them ordered.

Her heart pounded in her chest but she steeled herself, and took a shuffling few steps towards them. "M-my lords?" She tried desperately to think of anything that might clear the situation. This group had been talking loudly for the past several minutes, an argumentative discussion that Mariana had not been following. It didn't help that she could not recognize a single marine. Mariana could not really say she knew the name of any one Lord Angel on the ship, except perhaps for the Chapter Master, Lord Martrisvian…whom she had never met, and almost certainly could not identify by herself of course.

The biggest marine cleared his throat authoritatively. "Serf," he said in his unerring baritone, "you have experience."

Mariana couldn't tell if that had been a question. She felt sweat form on her brow. "In…in what? My lords."

"Babies!" chirped another marine with such enthusiasm Mariana jumped a little, glancing at him.

"Yes, my lords," Mariana confirmed hesitantly. She had raised three children on the Stultitia. What could they want with that? Had one of her little ones- no. She had seen no Inquisition, but still. Did they think- had something happened? The bolters hanging at the marines' sides stared her in the face.

"See, I told you," said the enthusiastic marine, with the air of someone rather pleased with himself. "I remember she used to walk around with them under her cloak-" Mariana briefly tuned him out. She had, indeed, carried her children with her in a sling, mostly while they'd been nursing, so she could continue to serve her purpose in the meantime. Her youngest was fourteen now, her eldest almost thirty; they hadn't been with her for a long, long time. These marines had to be…well, there was no real way for her to guess their ages. They were here long before Mariana, was the point.

"Right," the big one (a commander of some kind? He seemed the sort) said. "So. The Ultramarines are coming."

Mariana had heard of this in the vaguest terms, yes.

"And Lord Guilliman," the marine continued, "is bringing his daughter."

"The xeno one," drawled one of the other marines, as though Lord Guilliman had other daughters.

Mariana had also heard about the Lord Primarch's Holy Daughter, and her apparently unusual parentage. She kept her mouth shut, though, because she wasn't sure if repeating rumors heard bandied about the barracks counted as heresy. Probably. She wasn't keen to push her luck.

The big marine huffed disapprovingly at his brother. Mariana tensed, but he only returned to squinting at his dataslate. "They say she is…'Equivalent to a two-year-old baseline,'" he read. "And they have asked us to 'plan accordingly.'"

Mariana absorbed this information. That did seem like a big deal, yes, but she was unsure still of what the marines wished for her to do about it.

Seeming to realize she had nothing to add, the big marine asked: "So, what kind of weapon training does one do at that age?"

Mariana blinked. "I…My lord?"

"We intend to have the cages prepared should she wish to train," the leader explained.

"Bolters are out," said the enthusiastic one, "even I know that, I'd imagine they'd start with a practice sword?"

The one who had yet to speak, who'd had his nose buried in a dataslate of his own until this moment, shook his head. "That's still too heavy. They'd start with hand to hand," he argued, and oh, this was what they had been discussing earlier. "That's where we all start, and they'd move up later-"

Mariana looked between the marines, again discussing over her head, and found in the face of their ignorance a surge of courage for herself. "Ah," she began. All four of them shut up and turned, owlishly, to look at her. "Um," she swallowed, "my lords, a two-year-old…is probably not in combat training."

All of them blinked at her.

She blinked back.

"What?"

Mariana flinched, but she had come this far she supposed. Casting her gaze to the metal floor again, she continued. "I mean, my lords, a norma-a baseline child," she corrected herself, "would not be in any kind of combat training at that age." She wondered then if they remembered being children themselves once. Perhaps they were too old to recall such details. Best not to voice such a thought, but the marines about her were quiet. Listening. So she forged on. "She is probably only just learning to read."

The quiet one hummed. "Perhaps she would like to see reports then?"

"Ah. Simple. Simple books," Mariana hastily clarified. "Perhaps with pictures?"

"Oh," he said, "Combat maps then. I see." He typed a hasty note on his dataslate.

Mariana winced, but decided it was quite beyond her to correct a Lord Angel further. Her fear was abating, though, and she chanced a glance up. The Lares were old, the lines of their faces interrupted by the glint of service studs.

Most of them seemed to be absorbing this new knowledge neutrally, but the leader (?) did not look particularly happy. "So," he said gruffly, "what do they mean by 'prepare?'"

"Um," Mariana cast a look about the mostly-empty barrack hallway. "Probably like, the stairs and such, sir?"

"The stairs?" His brow pressed together in a great frown, but Mariana could see this was an expression of confusion, not anger.

But how to explain something these demigods clearly had no frame of reference for? Perhaps drastic measures were in order. "My lords," Mariana began, "indulge me for a moment. Imagine you are perhaps…yae high," she indicated her own knee. All of them, already bent over to peer at her, leaned in a little further. "Your motor function is impaired, and your balance is not the best."

"Ahhh, like a concussion!" The enthusiastic one nodded wisely. "Yeah, that carnifex on Sercis II really did me in."

"Now," Mariana said, turning her back to them and gesturing at the space before them, "imagine you are unaware of any danger. And you have a dear wish to investigate anything that you might see, or touch, or climb to."

The soldiers around her nodded, faces set in as they followed diligently with her fiction and looked down the corridor.

"And?" said the one who had made the sly comment earlier.

"And," Mariana said pointedly. She gestured to the nearby balcony. It overlooked a four story drop to the ground level of the barracks, and was guarded by rails built conveniently at leaning-height for astartes. The lowest rung was just above her own shoulder.

The marine laughed. "That's only seven meters to the next balcony," he dismissed, "I make that jump all the time."

Ah, Mariana did know this one then. He had a husband (boyfriend perhaps? Do Adeptus Astartes get married?) whose quarters were on the floor below; he was very fond of jumping the railing as a shortcut down, to the consistent terror to the cleaning serfs there.

"My lord," Mariana said dryly, "do you think a baby could survive a seven meter drop?"

"Yyyyyyyeeee-no, no." The marine quickly corrected himself as he registered Mariana's now-thunderous expression. Seeming to realize how out of his depth he was, he spoke seriously to her for the first time. "How. How far can babies fall?"

"Without injuries?" Mariana thought for a moment. "Not far. Less than a meter." She did drop Mateus once. Accidentally. He turned out alright, though.

Behind her, there was a startled noise. The other marines had finally caught on.

"Less than a meter???" It was the enthusiastic one, sounding rather alarmed.

Mariana shrugged. "Maybe." She was not eager to be taken as an authority on anything lest she be wrong. "And certainly not on their heads. Babies are quite fragile, you see-"

"The stairs," the big one said faintly, with growing horror. "Throne, the stairs!"

"Yes, my lords," Mariana agreed, grim as death. "The stairs."

squad of my "ultramarine" successor chapter The Imperial Lares (they're 100% gmans. probably. don't worry about it.)

they have recently come into possession of an incredibly rare thing for space marines: a mother! (an old cleaning serf tasked with explaining baseline shit to them for a mission. they got attached.)