#the cult mechanicus would be all over this

[same-pic-rick-roll]

This is real!

You can buy one off of amazon for 20 dollars.

after all these years…

[minweber]

" 'You know, Aristaeus-Theta, you are not like most tech-priests I've met before. Much more... free-thinking. Why is that? Are you some sort of youthful rebel among your kind?'

'Not quite, lord-captain. Age is a factor here, but it is the other way around - I am actually considerably older than most magi you'd meet today.'

'That's the first time I hear of age making anyone more open-minded.'

'And you still haven't. The march of time has only nurtured in me a conservative streak, as it tends to do. But me and many of my generation - we are the children of the last CBR, brought up in what one might call a more... liberal era of our kind.'

'The last what? I am unfamiliar with this abbreviation.'

'Cawl-Based Renaissance, my lord. How to explain...' "

So, going through the Genefather again, a bit that jumped out at me was one where Alpha Primus notes that Cawl seems to be approaching one of his "solitude phases". This manifests through him starting to divest himself of excess of followers and resources. Which I think is cool for two reasons.

Firstly, from the meta perspective, it seems like a sneaky laying of groundwork on Guy Haley's part, done so that any future Cawl stories can be written without having to constantly explain why he is having death-defying adventures on the ground somewhere with his sad psychic super son and nervous immortal not-husband, while literal legions of techpriests, skitarii and Taranis knights sit in the orbit above twiddling their thumbs.

But secondly, I love the lore implications of the idea that Cawl has these looong phases of either acting like the Archmagos Dominus and Prime Conduit of the Omnissiah, or just a lil' guy who chills in his lab doing his own thing. According to Primus, at the dawn of the 42nd millennium Cawl is in the process of switching from the former to the latter, which he does, among other ways, by slowly disbanding his court of weirdo followers which he has accumulated over the years. And Genefather specifically confirms this idea - one that seemed so natural to me but never was really validated before - that Cawl seems to act as a sort of rallying beacon for all manner of radicals, weirdos and malcontents within the cult Mechanicus. Weirdos that he, after one hot summer (or a few hundred years) of them all brewing together in this big pot of radical ideas, is in the process of releasing back into the wild...

Hey, isn't this a part of how - some would argue - the actual Renaissance started?

And with Cawl having apparently done this enough times for Primus to intuitively know the pattern, I can't help but imagine that, say, about every thousand years the galactic community of Adeptus Mechanicus get these spikes of radical and heretek activity. It causes tensions, purges, sometimes civil wars - but also a general liberalization of AdMech political climate for a time. Because if everyone is busy arguing about this particular attempt at pushing boundaries of the Lore by overly ambitious smartass of the week, a dozen less flashy projects can fly under the radar.

And with Mechanicus' love for recording of things - I also believe this pattern would be recognized! At least enough so that when Cawl emerges from another one of his "solitude phases", ready to present the galaxy with the hottest takes of M36, senior magi across the galaxy make a collective sigh and start preparing to deal with a fresh wave of bright-eyed mad science college graduates in a couple hundred years' time...

[jaal-ama-daravv]

(OC) Valerie van Hel

Name: Valerie van Hel Nickname: Valley of Hell Nickname Origin: left a notable trail of dead adeptus mechanius in the outskirts of the capitol. as she remained anonmyous for two decades, the area surrounding her hideout was dubbed the nickname, 'Valley of Hell'. As Valerie was orphaned and had no viable surname, she incorported this into her name. Occupation: Inquisition Acolyte Discipline: Divination Psyker Psyker Grading: Alpha Gender: Female Age: 34

TL;DR: Orphaned. went on a destructive killing spree for 20 years against the adeptus mechanicus and was then caught for causing a high ranking priest to kill themselves. was forcefully detained than deemed a potential asset. was recruited to Witchbreaker's retinue (@vossprime) and is considered extremely difficult and obstructive. not likely to ever break nor bend.

Physical Appearance:

blindfold: valerie is not blind, nor has extensive damage come to her eyes. worn to amplify powers and senses. will kill you if you attempt to remove it.

build: slim, sharp build. somewhat muscular.

height: 176 cm

fair skin, light freckles on cheeks

medium shoulder blade length hair. copper in colour, with a black fringe.

dresses in black, highlights of burgandy, and gold affects

cat 2 burn mark across face. damage to nose, neck, and right side of her face. flesh replaced with skull augment.

deep scar over lip

piercings in both ears

has an almost permanently snarl

speaks primarily in poetic meter, iambic pentameter

if not using abilities, she walks with her hands behind her back, quietly

aura: believes in death by a thousand cuts

HD image here

Origin: Sublevel Outcast

Homeworld: M'Pandex, Gothic Sector

Personality: darkly charismatic, machiavellian, visionary, eerily calm, obsessive, calculating, a sense of yearning, philosophical, ruthless.

Notable Personality Traits:

Darkly Charismatic – Valerie possesses a charm that lures others in, despite her twisted moral compass.

Obsessive - need for control

Detached Romantic - views love as a transcendent force that could defy even death itself. a consuming force despite spending decades alone.

Ruthless – valerie is unwavering in her pursuit of what she desires, and is willing to destroy and and all obstacles in her way.

Trivia:

"You'll gaze upon the shadow of your end, A specter birthed by folly and disdain. Each breath you draw shall whisper death’s command, And every step shall lead you to the grave." - engraved into a large tree on the perimeter of the Valley of Hell

Background:

Valerie was a child born and subsequently abandoned by defectors to the adeptus mechanicus cult. Following the birth of Valerie, she was abandoned to the forge world temple, and was held at the orphanage till she was 16. 

Valerie grew up like any other orphan - never knowing who to trust or what her purpose was.She was beaten, bruised, and tortured by the older members of the church. Tech priests.   

Valerie has a disdain for authority and thinks any authority can be crushed. For this is how she became captured and 'recruited' by the Inquisition. Valerie's powers came apparent in her teens and were kept mostly underwraps as they were powers of divination, something she learned to control well. She was trained and laboured into engineering from age 10 and therefore possessed profound knowledge of the workings of the adeptus mechanicus inner workings.

At 16 her powers began to evolve - however Valerine noticed that this was more apparent when her eyes were open. Therefore she donned a blindfold and left the orphaned, not wanting to be indentured to the cult, or killed. Valerie was a lone wolf type, kind of an anarchist. She caused havoc on the forge world due to being beaten and bruised by her found family in the temple; which almost led to her powers being discovered. 

In her 20’s and early 30s, she would disrupt the tech priests of the forge world and their machinations and cause havoc. She was known in the underground world for dismantling tech priests that strayed too far off the beaten path near her hideout. Earning that province the title of ‘Valley of Hell’. Although Valerie would dismantle them,she would return their body for funeral rites, well, most of their body anyway. She wasnt that cruel. 

She made a living off of selling their parts and secrets from showing them their eventual death, scaring them into revealing secrets and trade routes. Eventually, Valerie was cornered by Inquisition agents. A unit was sent after her due to Valerie convincing the head of the church to kill themselves after an incident where they threatened her and called her worthless. She made mistakes in covering her tracks which led them to the Valley of Hell. It took them months to track her down in the Valley of Hell as she turned them against each other for weeks on end. Eventually she tired of the onslaught. They cornered her after they displaced an attempt at teleportation. She was bound and cuffed. They had strict orders for her not to be killed; she was too powerful an asset to be killed.

Bonus:

[maggotknight]

Hi, for the OC brainrot game can I get 2, 26 and 27 for Lilith - only if you like of course. Thank you

oc brainrot asks

2) Who's your OCs best friend? How did they become best friends?

I would say Felix, her personal servo-skull familiar, is her best friend! She obtained Felix as a gift from the Cult Mechanicus for her assistance in bringing justice to the heretek Magos conducting unsanctioned experiments with genestealers during her time as a Commissar. The skull was deemed fit for a more sophisticated machine spirit and, thus, appropriate for the familiar role.

Given that she is Machine-Touched, and able to hear the voices of machine spirits, they have grown to have quite a close bond over the years. She views Felix as a pure, nonjudgmental messenger from the Machine God. And will not go anywhere without him, and him without her. While he may not respond in the most straight forward of ways (most machine spirits don't), or not respond at all, Lilith finds comfort in his ever watching eyeless gaze.

Though, this role will inevitably be shared by Heinrix. Once Lilith gets to know him. ( ⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝)

26) What flower do you associate your OC with?

For some reason, the first flower that came to mind were hydrangeas! So I will go with that.

27) What's their spirit tamagotchi? Or an animal you associate them with?

For animal, I have always associated Lilith with a fox. For a tamagotchi.. i think nyatchi.

[niseag-arts]

Artemis lore dump

I'm doing these now appearently (this one is going to be funky because there's two distinct versions of artemis. I will give you the one that most closely follows 40K canon) >Artemis B-20-A

Origin: Artemis was created by Archmagos Biologis Hieronymous XIV of forgeworld Repleator. They were vat grown based on Hieronymous' own DNA. Artemis does not know this, Hieronymous has not told them, and there is not enough flesh left on the archmagos for physical similarities to show up. Hieronymous also does not treat Artemis like his child, but rather like a promising apprentice. Hieronymous, personally, does not see artemis as his offspring either, more like a project. but that's for a hieronymous loredump if we ever get to that. Artemis is a psyker of some variety, though not in a way that the imerium really knows what to do with. They have an uncanny affinity for machinery, to the point where they can influence the machines around them with mere thought, unaided by augmentation. The leading hypothesis/belief along the techpriests around Artemis is that Artemis has absorbed (part of) the machine spirit of the vat they were grown in, changing the way the young adept has developed. History: Artemis was lab-grown and enrolled in the mechanicus from the moment they drew their first breath. Their creator (Hieronymous) did not interfere with their early life, instead handing Artemis over to a vat-priest to be raised among vat-born skitarii. Thus that is how they were raised until they were 6, and could officially become an acolyte of the cult mechanicus. They started their training by following around low-ranking techpriests and helping them out in whatever way a 6-year-old can, spending free time wandering Repleator's bio-forges... and nicking fruits from the machines, to relish in how much better they tasted than the Skitarii rations they were brought up with. The forgemaster was aware of this, and would occasionally scold the little thief, but other times he would pretend not to see the small child nestled in between the processing machines, and the sticky handprints all around the forge. At night they would still be with the vatpriest and whichever of their skitarii brethren had not been deployed yet. I should probably point out that the relationship between artemis and the skitarii has always been strained, due to the undeniable differences between them. As Artemis grew up more and more, Hieronymous became more and more present in their life as well, acting as a teacher and officially agreeing to tutoring the "promising young adept" around the time Artemis turned 12. This is also around the time artemis recieved their first augmentation, a mechadendrite, after begging for it excessively. From there, Artemis has been Hieronymous' loyal student, alert and devoted to the cause. they have also moved into Hieronymous quarters, where they live and sleep most of the time. Their unique abilities being helpful, but not in a way that stands out to the others. After a few years, however, artemis requested a private sanctum, which was granted. This request came from how overwhelming it was for Artemis to be surrounded by machines at all times, while artemis loves to hear what they describe as "the omnissiah's song", and to sense the machine spirits around, sometimes a human wants some peace and quiet. On orders of Hieronymous, a small room was furnished with an altar and prayer mats, as well as a simple bed, for Artemis to use. It is far away from the main forges, tucked into a corner near some rooms mostly used for meetings and consultation, but it is perfect for Artemis' needs. A note on personality: Artemis is extremely devoted to the Omnissiah, which is only strengthened by their affinity for machinery. However, they are not as inclined to "righteous violence" as one might expect. Rather, Artemis considers themself to be a scholar first and foremost, in all matters, and is likely approach situations with curiosity rather than outright judgement. That said, xenos and chaos are very scary and artemis does not want to be caught at the wrong end of someone else's gun, so when these things come up they might mask their distrust and fear with snide remarks and rudeness. as always, feel free to ask things if you wanna!

[lockhartandlych]

ARG-05

I traced him from @tenebris-metallum's wonderful work with his skitarii OC; and even with that, it took a long fucking time. My hand hurts :\

Still, I'm happy with how it turned out, and will probably use this as a reference! Problem is I always planned on their palm-eye being in their left hand, and the face-eye on the right. Oh well... if anything, both being on the right makes it more interesting. It might also change over time and depending on their incarnation.

With that being said... maybe it's time I properly introduce the little guy! I realize I've never actually talked about him here on Tumblr, just in the Discord.

---

This is ARG-05, short for Advanced Reconnaissance Guard, version 05. Even in the grim darkness of the 42nd Millenium, awful acronyms exist.

They were once Arestor Phasian III, heir to hiveworld nobility and wannabe commissar (and Cain fanboy) who ultimately had to settle for being a captain. Their cocky, devil-may-care attitude lead to them failing spectacularly as a strategist, and losing their own hiveworld of Patinae, and the neighboring forgeworld moon of Verdigris, to a tyranid onslaught. They only survived because they saw it fit to flee. An Arbiter looked over their case and took mercy, and decided on a punishment deemed more just than execution: they would be inducted into the Cult Mechanicus, apprenticing under one of the survivors of Verdigris. His family's (former) personal tech-priest: Magos Panoptes.

Suffice it to say Panoptes was not happy about the sudden loss of his own forgeworld, his home, and being stuck with the very man responsible for it only fanned the flames of his hatred. Under him Arestor endured acts of cruelty like no other, and was torn apart and rebuilt time and time again. They "died" four times in total, each death eating away at his mind more and more. Finally, he was rebuilt not as an apprentice, but as a skitarius. Panoptes' masterwork: ARG-05. Built, in a way, to fail. To scout ahead of forces and deliberately fall onto enemy hands, for the purposes of inside surveillance. To be found when the fighting was done and rebuilt, and sent back in. Over and over and over again.

All the while, Panoptes' bitterness began to fester. No matter what, he couldn't seem to get rid of Arestor, nor ARG-05, no matter how many times he sabotaged him and killed him and left him for dead. He fell into a putrid pit of his own bitterness, and sought to make a pact with Nurgle. ARG-05 seemed a fitting sacrifice, and was cast onto the altar. But at the last minute the god of fate, Tzeentch, thought to claim ARG-05 as his own, and wrestled control away from the plague god. ARG-05 was possessed, and killed Panoptes in a daemonic frenzy. (Or was it perhaps their own spite that drove them to do it?) Then they were forced to flee yet again, this time from the Mechanicus and the Inquisition. A heretic, an abomination, they wander from hiveworld to hiveworld, attempting to find redemption. Or is it purpose they search for?

Being under the control of not one, but two Chaos Gods, they have a plethora of cursed powers. The Eyes occasionally cast beams of pure Warp energy in fits of delirium, and can change color for... seemingly no reason? The most important aspect, however, is the fact that ARG-05 cannot seem to die. Ripped apart, burnt, dismembered, disintegrated... they always seem to wake up sometime after, in a body just barely repaired enough to keep them alive, and a mind even more fragmented than before.

In other words, his name is Shithead and he is a single-celled organism.

[radwolf76]

My Hero Forge 2.0 Creations — Inspired by Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition ... Edition

So, I'm only on the edges of Warhammer 40,000 as a hobby. The last time I actually played, was an era when you might have to break out a foot-shaped cardboard template to see who got stepped on. I have a small collection of the minis, nearly all of them unpainted (and the ones that aren't haven't gotten past the primer stage). Still, I'm a fan of the lore, and have been refining details on my own homebrew Space Marine Chapter since, oh say, the Clinton Administration.

One detail about the Chapter I've created, the Stormwolves, is that they're often deployed alongside various other Imperial Agents, and WH40K's newest edition's relaxed rules for Army Building make this a lot easier than it has been in the past. This prompted me to turn to Hero Forge to see if I couldn't make some custom miniatures that'd really fit the backstory I've come up with over the decades.

So I started with a unit of Imperial Navy Breachers, lead by a Sergeant-at-Arms with a Bolt Pistol and Power Sword:

The rest is going under a "Keep Reading", because this'll be a long post.

The bulk of the squad are armed with Shotguns:

This one will probably get her Shotgun swapped out for a Meltagun as a post-printing conversion, as Hero Forge doesn't have anything that comes close:

One Breacher has been upgraded with a Demolition Charge and Grenade Belt (I also put extra armor on the shoulders and reinforced her helmet):

This one gets to wield an Auto-Pistol and Power Axe (there's also an option for Auto-Pistol & Chainfist, but that would have to be another conversion opportunity):

And finishing out the Unit is a Breacher with a Heavy Shotgun and Shield:

These Breachers are actually the Bodyguard unit for some characters who figure prominently in the backstory I've made for my Space Marines, a Rogue Trader, and a Mechanicus Tech Priest Genator. I've posted an earlier iteration of my Rogue Trader mini in the past, but I've been able to make improvements as Hero Forge adds new options and I learn new tricks:

In past editions, there's been rules for taking a Rogue Trader and Rejuvent Adept together as a single slot on the Force Organization Chart, so I would just have the Rejuvent Adept "count as" the Tech Priest, who instead of doing in Hero Forge, I had decided to use a mini of Kristiana from the Warforge Miniatures line (mine isn't painted yet, but she looks like this):

However while 40K 10E has done away with the Force Organization Chart entirely, they also made it that if you want to field a Rogue Trader in your Army List, you're stuck with the full entourage of specialists that were boxed with the Rogue Trader in the Kill Team release, you could no longer pick and choose which ones you wanted. So I turned to Hero Forge to round out the retinue. I took an existing mini I had and modified it to fit the role of Lectro-Maester armed with Voltaic Pistol. As for her Close Combat Weapon, I may have gone a little fancy, giving her a knife made from what I'm calling "Nebula Obsidian":

… But it's not nearly as much Obsidian as on the other character I had to make, a Death Cult Assassin. Starting with a pose resource for a Macuahuitl that was made by redditor /u/Obvious-Gate9046 aka Windthin to represent the Death Cult Power Blade, I then came up with my own interpretation of this character's other weapon from their statline, a Dartmask. And because the backstory of my Marine Chapter already included gene-engineered abhumans as a plot element, this Death Cultist is also an anthro bunny:

Some day I might get around to having all these designs printed (although 3D Printing might just be more expensive than WH40K itself). One that I've already had printed was my Chapter's other associated character, a Ordo Sicarius Inquisitor embedded in the Officio Assassinorum's Vanus Temple as a Deep Cover Operative. For Army List building purposes, I just use the vanilla Inquisitor unit with bolt pistol and Inquisitorial Melee Weapon. I don't have any good photos of the printed mini, so here's the Hero Forge Render:

[aethersquid]

At the same time though you can also point to the fact that even though all of the imperium’s fascistic anxieties are all true they are objectively making all of them worse by being fascist. The imperium goes “see, the genestealers are everywhere, that’s why we have to violently kill everyone who expresses dissatisfaction with their 18 hour workday” and then the poor, poor naive Tau who give their workers rights and don’t turn union organizers into lobotomized automata are completely blindsided and… oh, wait, what’s that? The alien bug cult actually has a really hard time taking over when it doesn’t have a state-enforced monopoly on hope? Well surely that’s a fluke and everyone else has problems with them. I mean, those space dwarfs don’t even seem to think of the tyranids as a threat, they must be getting bodied! Nevermind, they’re hunting hive fleets for sport. Maybe it’s different for chaos and the warp! Let’s look at the eldar, those pretentious bastards are always respecting psykers and informing the populace about chaos instead of organizing witch hunts and censoring everything outside of the state religion! Oh, looks like they don’t even have chaos cults, huh.

To be clear I don’t think that GW as a whole actually put anywhere near this amount of thought into it, since yeah, they just care about making it marketable. But the individual authors absolutely do. Just off the top of my head, Fall of Cadia points out that the hyper-militaristic Cadian culture makes it really easy for chaos to win people over, and Day of Ascension kinda states that a lot of people really would rather be eaten by space bugs than keep working under the mechanicus.

warhammer 40k loves to call itself a satire of fascism and then depicts a universe in which all of the great fascistic anxieties and beliefs of its imperium (the enemy is everywhere, it is both weak and strong, we are eternal, any violence we commit is justified, our leader is our genetic superior, degeneracy will lead to the collapse of our society) are all objectively true, completely blunting any satirical edge it could have, but giving it just enough plausible deniability that games workshop can market to anyone of any ideology

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

My most hypothetical yet probable guess for what changes could come in the future for 40k factions is that we will experience a rebranding of the Genestealer Cults within the next years.

As of right now they might just simply being a gimmic-y part of a Tyrranid army, because the Cults have zero impact on their own outside of "being a bug lure". It makes sense for them to be seperate armies because they are build on VASTLY different aesthetics. The 'Nids are running on the "tides of monstrous flesh and lots of teeth" sorta vibe, while the Genestealer Cults are firmly in the "industrial gear and mutants saboteurs" camp. The problem is however: there is no point of a faction existing when all it does is being the elongated arm of another with no agency of its own. For reference: the Imperial Guard is not "part" of the imperium, it essentially IS the Imperium. The Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, and Inquisitorial Agents are all smaller allied yet indepedent actors who occasionally borrow resources like their logistic network, but often work to their own goals.

Meanwhile the Genestealer Cults got nothing of it. They exist as the start of a 'Nid-Invasion and then get eaten afterwards. As of right now there is nothing they do that warrants them being their own faction in the universe of 40k. But the thing is, people LIKE them. They got an aesthetic unique to them that you can barely find anywhere else, and GW sure will not give up the customer base attracted to that aesthetic.

So here is what we will see: they will become the "Mutant Revolution Cults" in the future, mosty to showcase how horrible the Imperium is. Generally its weird that humanity lives in a facist hellscape in this future and there not being an armed resistance given the living conditions. Generally such resistance cells would be very local and irrelevant to the story whatsoever, but now imagine if several of these uprisings were spearheaded by a Genestealer/Mutant Cult going rogue on the Hivemind. So for such a Cult to become a galaxy-impacting subfaction they'd have to

1.) Survive fighting the Imperium

and

2.) Survive the Tyrranid Invasion that follows right after

You can bet that any faction that survives both of these can be called "absolutely badass", while at the same time there is enough room for sub-factions with different stories. For example:

The Cult takes over than turns the planet into an absoute fortress that repells the Tyrranids, most likely trying to eat the bugs before the bugs eat them. Planet and system are so foritified now that the Imperium can't just come back and take back control.

The Hivefeet comes, eats all the loyal imperials, but THEN gets beaten back by the Cult who gambled it all on that. System gets taken over with zero resistance whatsoever while deemed "lost" to the 'Nids

The Cult takes over but the Hive Fleet never comes. Maybe it got stuck on traffic, maybe it crashed into a tombworld by accident, who knows? Meanwhile the Cult has a lot of time to think and research and realizes themselves for what they are, essentially deciding to sever ties with their "old masters". However, they still are revoutionaries that fight the imperium, so now it's time for expansion to nearby systems!

The Cult manages to ally itself with another faction that can be convinced to doublecross th "regular" imperium for personal gain, such as the Adeptus Mechanicus. After taking over and repellling the Hive Feet the truce is shaky, but its still there.

The Cult initially realizes it stands no chance against the Hive Fleet, gives up on the planet and scatters into the Four Winds, while maintaining contact with each other. The goal becomes to take over spaceships and essentially become a "revolutionary fleet".

You see, there's plenty of opportunity for different stories, while at the same time we can finaly call them a faction in their own right.

Oh, and they are still bug-lures tho. The ultimate grimdark fate: imagine fighting a revolution against impossible odds for a good cause, and in the end you are STILL in trouble of getting eaten as a reward.

[reddus-sideblog]

Dark Heresy Narrative Writing

I wrote out a sort of “ending scene” to the end of the last Dark Heresy session I GMed, on a whim.

Much to the Acolyte’s dismay the maimed Masquerader’s body suddenly went limp, joining the state of his erstwhile comrades. Tyr released a bassy, static-infused sigh while Octavius cursed under his breath. Asher, for his part, continued kneeling beside the heretic’s body, his outstretched hand faltering, then falling limp by his side.

“Damnation, boy”, growled Octavius, “you couldn’t have checked him for suicide pills?”

Asher was a bit at a loss for words, he had been psychically plumbing the more surface levels of the Scarlet Masquerader’s mind, before diving deeper in to reveal concealed information about the cult. While the panic of guildsmen and other civilians faded away as he focused his efforts had been contested and blocked by the extreme pain the cultist was in. These distractions had done little to dissuade the psyker’s mental probe, and as he pried at the latches of his target’s mind they had burst open, just momentarily. But just as suddenly, however, Asher was ejected from cultist’s depraved mind as his consciousness suddenly stopped existing, shunting the mental intruder back to the physical plane.

“Well what was I supposed to do?”, asked Asher, frustratedly. The other cultists had either escaped or else were far more dead, much of their forms reduced to ash by Tyr’s marksmanship. The psyber creature that had assaulted them was now little more than debris under the mag-rail that had pulled into the transport station but moments ago, it’s current location also being the handiwork of Asher’s psionic ability. They were surrounded by frightened citizens, the dead, and dead ends.

Octavius glared at the young mutant from under his helmet, Asher’s midnight black complexion made his eyes, and thus his look of indignation, stand out all the more. The ritualist’s glare abated momentarily, as it was transferred to the masses about them. This confrontation had been unfortunately public, and after his brief stint as “The Arch-Heretic of Londinium” Octavius was not eager to be in the public eye any more than utterly necessary.

The elder’s reveries was broken with a whip-crack of physical reality being torn asunder as Asher was already working on their exit. While all of the Acolytes had their misgivings about such a dramatic use of psychic powers in public the alternative of escaping via more conventional methods was less enticing, as the Arbites would be showing up all to soon. The first indistinct, then much more focused image of the Inquisitorial Facility came into view through the Warp portal Asher was manifesting, before it became wholly stable. The actinic reek of Warp energy flooded the mag-rail platform and the masses recoiled at the obvious and powerful witchcraft, while Asher stood up and sullenly plodded through the portal he had created, the winds of the other world whipping at his hood and mostly covered stark white bangs.

Tyr made to go through the temporary gateway before being waylaid by Octavius. “Help me with this, would you?”, the occultist asked, as he attempted to lift the now quite dead Masquerader that Asher had been mind probing. The arachnine techpriest aided his ally with ease, and the two walked through the portal none too soon before it closed and made their way through the Facility’s halls, a funeral procession for a none too deserving deceased.

They deposited the corpse of the cultist onto one of Tyr’s dissection tables, and both of the present Acolytes took a moment to gather themselves. Once they caught their breath the two venerable men began to complain about their more youthful companion’s impertinence and impetuousness, along with his lack of foresight, at some length. After this all-too-common verbal exercise had run it’s length Tyr and Octavius sat in silence for some time, before the techpriest addressed the grox in the room.

“So...did you bring him to be rendered down for ritual components? Surely he’s well beyond any other use to us...”, said Tyr, trailing off in uncertainty. He was never quite sure of the extent or breadth of Octavius’ eldritch abilities, so his ability to foresee much of his compatriot’s further moves was often obscured by this mystery.

“You’ll see soon enough.” said Octavius, dispelling none of the mystery surrounding his actions. “Keep the body preserved, we will have further use for it.” Having said this Octavius took off with a confident, slow saunter.

Tyr contemplated the occultist’s words as he prepared the body for storage in the Facility’s mausoleum section, indexing it’s location in his mental vaults and seeing it off as orderly servitors propelled the slab to it’s cryo-crypt. If his previous experiences in the Inquisition over the past 2 years, most especially those around Octavius, were anything to go by, he was sure that the plan would involve all manner of dark sorceries and things contravene to the doctrine of the Imperial Cult, the Cult Mechanicus, and general morality. Tyr was, for his part, intrigued.

[ask-mortarion-the-death-lord]

some continuation i guess

this time with the emperor

we get the basic rundown, born to human parents, massively gifted, immortal, hidden among humanity and all that. It’s here where his motivation to shepherd humanities psychic awakening is really first brought up [something thats given overall more prominence in the book as well]. a much more interesting note however

now, this probably seems inconspicuous enough at first glance. Indeed even in modern canon 40k’s imperium is first actually created over ten millennia ago. However, take into consideration this little bit earlier in the lore section that i didn’t think to much off at the time

now, taking this into consideration, the implication here is that the age of strife, something that is typically thought to end right before the unification wars in modern 40k lore, is only considered to have ended after the emperor’s internment upon the golden throne, and that further the imperium seems to only officially be a thing upon the that internment. Now this suggests some things to me, two large ones possibly being

a) the unification wars and the great crusade were more so part of the same wider war, ie that the wars ‘only the emperor remembers’ were a large conflict between various warlords to determine who got the rightful rulership of the crumbling pre age of strife human civilization. or

b) the emperor started the age of strife in order to dominate humanity to control and shepherd the psychic awakening he saw humanity stumbling into.

take your pick i guess. food for thought and all that. also

in my earlier post i jumped the gun, the 1st edition emperor is still a punk who needs human souls to survive. Though in this case its not some vague need to bind his soul to the chair or anything, no, its just that he apparently cant eat or drink anything else and hes really god damn hungry and thirsty all the time. Which is hilarious and i almost feel is just a better explanation in general.

to be fair he does look like this 10 millenia later

makes sense he would need to eat unconventionally.

as well, as opposed to specifying 1000 psyker souls a day it just mentions a vague ‘hundreds dying every day’ which is still a lot but also likely less then modern emps eats everyday.

some explanation/emperor wank on why the emperor needs to be fed everyday. not much to say, just that i feel like the implications here atleast lean a bit more towards the emperor being pitiable in his own right as someone so dedicated to this vague future ideal of humanity that hes forsaken most of his own physically and mentally. 

apparently humanity underwent no genetic changes over 38,000 years that werent the direct result of mutation from environmental hazards.

@ lordsofmedrengard  early dark angels lore, here we can see where they got stuck with the moniker of “first legion” from in 30k modern lore, and its cause here in the first 40k book they’re noted as being ‘honored as the first marine chapter’. Guess it was something they felt needed to carry over... I like the copious more amounts of wine in the old dark angels chapter, and they seem a lot more aristocratic here then in modern 40k. Which makes an interesting contrast compared to the barbarian stocks of soldiers mentioned earlier in the book as being preferred for “legiones astartes”

we get some rundowns on the branches of the adeptus terra next, not much particularly new to note outside of them all being part of this larger governmental priesthood. some highlights though

the old school custodes uniforms are in fact the traditional uniform of the custodes in 1st edition. 

custodes wielded ‘lasers built to resemble the traditional and symbolic guardian spear’ whatever the fuck that means

tech priests and the adeptus mechanicus were monastic monks who primarily lived on earth and didn’t stick metal parts into and all over their bodies. they were consequently much more boring as the echlissiarchies IT department.

arbites basically doubled in the sisters of battle’s role as the militant branch of the state religion.

arbites fashion choices and the arbites acting in a similar manner of chaplains as well really.

the more voluntary nature of the astronomican in the first edition, the trainees learn how to safely let the battery drain them but it still seems to be a demanding job with a high fatality rate

they also share monastic tendencies and a uniform with the mechanicus, though theres is a fashionable blue.

included the entire bit on the administratum cause honestly, i find it incredibly fascinating. The parallels are certainly there between modern and 1st edition administratum, but i feel how its presented here just has more teeth and intrest to it. That is to say, its not just the ‘oh what fate, administration has become even more horrid, tedious and soul draining in this grim dark future, woe be us!’ that tends to get tossed around when mocking administration. Instead its a literal organization of religious monks dedicated to tax filings, school administration, rezoning and what have you. Blessed be the regulations and all that. Is there small cults dedicated to paper clip gods? what holy rites are involved when faxing documents compared to when faxing fourms? This is shit i want to know more about.

all adeptus terra adepts carry a knife and are likely legally allowed to shiv you here as well incidentally. 

the inquisitors are mostly the same, though with no mention of chaos whatsoever. less sub divisions from the looks of it too. this bit did catch my attention though.

psychic powers seemed to be a hell of a lot more common among inquisitors back then as well.

quirky inquisitors, who’d have thunk it. [its not that surprising, i just like that they took the time to mention it is all]

don’t know wtf is going on here though, especially as to whats going on with dudes armour on the left. looks like a knight crossed with an oven.

we get the usual spiel of psyker background, but then we get some interesting differences in opinions here on psykers compared to modern 40k imperium. How justified or not it is, is up to you but its definitely a shift in tone i would say.

possibly the proto servitor narrative wise? As said, 1st edition 40k readily uses robots, so servitors would be unnecessary. technomats on the other hand fall between that as menials who likely operate these things but dont full on replace them like servitors eventually will.

astropaths are basically the same, though the 90% statistic im not sure if it holds over to modern 40k. im thinkin likely but i could be wrong.

navigators outside of not ubiquitously having the third eye mutation also seem to have much more personal freedom and respect in imperial society in 1st edition. probably pretty comfy to be a navigator back then really. Aside from that, navigator families are still a thing.

space marine time!

well we get the same ‘feral world recruits as warrior god soldiers’ sortta stuff, it is mentioned and stressed that hive world criminals apparently make better stock in terms of raw aggression. Entire gangs will even be rounded up for the purpose of making new space marines.

the early process to create a space marine. no special organs, but bio-chem and the black [plastic?] carapace were there from the start, and hypno indoctrination is alluded to. Apparently this is still barely controlled chaos though. [and on a personal note, nothing that indicates it was male exclusive either, outside of general attitudes of the 1980′s]

early organization graph of a space marine chapter.

chapter markings and armour

AND THE POSSIBLITY OF SPACE MARINE BAGPIPES, WHERE ARE THEY GW WHERES MY SPACE MARINE BAGPIPERS!

iron hands apparently only had the one iron hand?

list of chapter symbols with names and colours, these keep appearing in the book. seems i was wrong on only the imperial fist symbol, its actually the crimson fists chapter symbol so thats 3 of the modern big 9 that didn’t exist back then.

we get a break down on the typical structure of a fortress monastery for space marines next, using the space wolves funnily enough who were far more normal as it were in 1st edition [and also their home world was lucan isntead]. and its got a lot, and well its all fairly interesting ill just shotgun blast some highlights

that the space wolves had an entire fuckin ship hanging in their great hall i find endlessly amusing, so thats why its there. the rest are interesting in terms of the domestic situation of space marines.

[primarchstory]

cult-of-embers​:

“I come on behalf of the Mechanicus to speak to the Machine Spirits of your automated defenses, my lord.”

Aldus Trazyrae spoke from a kneeling position before the Primarch, head down. The Thousand Son was clad in standard war plate, but had added the robes of the sons of Mars over them.

“This will be done with all due respect, of course. No one doubts your genius, but if the spirits are not placated, it may all be for naught.”

Utter stupidity.

But he would allow it, only because if not the machine spirit would not be the one placated but this one in front of him will be. So long as they were useful, Dorn whose only attraction right now is to be a dutiful son, would allow.

 “And how long, will the extent of your stay be to placate?”

Calculations....

@cult-of-embers

"Out with it.' Rogal Dorn, if ever is one who gets straight to the point. After all there was a lot going on in his mind right now, literally. Diplomats were coming in two weeks, the preperations to make sure they were welcomed, something like peace. He rather be building than peace talking but he is nearest primarch available.

[captainblacklobster2]

Timeline of the 42nd Millennium: 001-025.M42

The Vigilus Campaign part 2

In 210.33 pevio in the new Imperial dating system a clutch of Genestealers was sent from Chancer's Vale by the Genestealer Cult known as the Pauper Princes. Only one managed to make it to Vigilus, but it was able to secrete itself in the caverns beneath Megaborealis and spread its influence. Over the ensuing years it became a Genestealer Patriarch known as Grandsire Wurm as its cult grew in size and strength.

Centuries later when the Orks began to ravage Vigilus it triggered the Genestealer Cult into a premature uprising. The Cultists refused to see their years of subterfuge and infiltration wasted due to the reckless greenskins. They staged insurrections within every Hivesprawl of Vigilus and thanks to the coordination of Grandsire Wurm were able to conduct synchronized ambushes across the planet. In Dirkden's Hivesprawl, the Pauper Princes base of power, the Cultists outnumbered the faithful and had little problem establishing a power base and having their subverted PDF regiments gain access to Mechanicus controls that allowed them to shut down the sprawl's force field. The Imperium thought this to be a mere glitch, but panic nonetheless ensued and the Orks took opportunity to attack Dirkden.

Using their pet officers and Guardsmen the Cult then manipulated 4,000 soldiers into marching into the wastes before some 15,000 Orks, assuring them they would be withdrawn once the force fields were back up. Simultaneously, the Cultists staged an uprising in Dirksden's primary Hive and defenseless the government easily fell. They subsequently raised the force fields suddenly, trapping the Guardsmen outside to meet their end at the hands of the Orks. Many of the untainted managed to flee Dirksden as it fell, unwittingly bringing many hidden Genestealer Cultists with them to nearby Hivesprawls. Meanwhile, at Oteck Hivesprawl, the Pauper Princes struck hard as the Cult desired its plentiful water. Despite bitter fighting, the Pauper Princes were able to seize control of Oteck's water supply and corrupted it with their genetic taint.

The response of the Imperial government on Vigilus to the Genestealer Uprising was slow, and they simply dismissed the attacks as the acts of criminals that would soon be dealt with by the Adeptus Arbites. Instead, they focused their attention on shoring up their defenses and reinforcing their own positions. This allowed Vigilus' industry to effectively grind to a halt due to the cessation of export and resource convoys, a problem compounded by constant Ork raids in the wastelands. During the Battle for the Seeping Delta a force of Mechanicus Skitarii battled in rivers of industrial runoff, with both sides inflicting millions of casualties on the other. The Mechanicum only won the battle when Fabricator Vosch set the delta alight with a 600-strong Kataphron Breachers attack, burning both sides.

It was then that the first Space Marines arrived on Vigilus in the form of the Iron Hands and their Successor Chapter the Brazen Claws. Originally en route to the Stygius Crusade, they redirected their efforts after learning the crisis for their Mechanicum allies. The Iron Hands and Brazen Claws were led by Kardan Stronos, the de facto Chapter Master of the Iron Hands, who launched a Drop Pod landing in the fringe metropolitan zones of every remaining Imperial Hivesprawl but quickly making towards Megaborealis. Expecting to find Orks, instead they encountered mostly Genestealers. The Imperial Guard and Sister of Battle forces that had attempted to counter these incursions usually had their convoys swallowed by massive sinkholes before being torn apart by the Genestealer monstrosities below. With much of Vigilus' air support focused on the Orks, the Genestealers were able to gain a substantial foothold within many Hivesprawls.

By this point, the Space Wolves under also Haldor Icepelt arrived on Vigilus several months after the Iron Hands and set about cleansing Oteck Hivesprawl of xenos infestation. The Wolves hardly communicated with the Iron Hands at all, and like the rest of the Space Marines didn't even bother to send representatives to speak with Vigilus' ruling council.

[minweber]

No Immaterium AU

Warhammer AU where everything is almost the same, but there is no warp-spaghetti. Like, no immaterium, no gods, no demons, no psykers.

Eldar Empire fell much like all Empires do - to overextension, inefficency and younger competitors, with final blows perhaps dealt by rising humans. Craftworlders then are much like necrons in that their technology is so advanced its indistinguishable from magic. Age of Strife is brought on by infrastructural collapse in the wake of rebellion of Men of Iron. Emperor is a mortal man who genetically enhanced himself into immortality. Primarchs were stolen and intentionally deposited on different worlds by Erda and her co-conspirators. Horus grows to fear his father’s decent into tyranny all on his own, and traitor legions rebel without turning cartoonishly evil in the process. Instead of running into the eye of terror, the defeated legions run to the edges of the galaxy, and for 10000 years make war on the Imperium from their mini-empires there. Over time, much like the Imperium, they all descend each into their own colorful dystopia, based on their Primarchs’ ideas of what society do we live in. Imperial cult still happens, Cult Mechanicus is still a thing, maybe cults of Chaos gods eventually rise in those fringe realms - but that’s just what they all are - incredibly powerful and influential religions. Imperial saints happen much like Joan of Arc did and so on and on.

I find it interesting that it is possible to actually change so little about the setting, while completely cutting out something that is so integral to it. And also I think it’s just a neat AU - for example, untangling the fate of humanity from the fate of the Imperium and making every religion in the setting immediately more complex, and, in my opinion, more interesting (theological debates are way more interesting when they can’t be resolved by an R-rated pokemon battle). And a lot of little moments too - like how would resurrected Guilliman interact with his traitor brothers if they were still mortal? How would them ruling their own domains in defiance of Imperium interact with his whole Realm of Ultramar deal? He is clearly not a fan of the Emperor even in current setting - so what if there was no Chaos threat to counterbalance it? Would there eventually be Guilliman’s Heresy? Would that make tau absolutely the same as younger humanity? Would tau themself recognize this similarity? Would humans?

I can’t say it would be an overall improvement, of course - Warhammer lives and breathes by its mythic nature, and taking it away, while not changing the facts of the setting much, would still make it into something different. But still - a neat AU to play around with, I think.

[ask-jaghatai-khan]

Upsilon-28

A fanfic showing off my character, the Lord-Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28, from my Sect of the Revelation Mechanism.

Read below the cut, or on my other blog.

Image of Quartermaster Rho by TomisJB

“Are you assured of this procedure’s safety, my Lord-Archmagos?” the adept asked, his half-modulated voice subdued yet still retaining but a hint of mortal apprehension.

Archmagos Chertovsky did not respond. Not at once. Like an inert golem of tangled metal, he stood with his inhuman eyes fixed on the suspension tank in front of him. Within the amniotic fluid of that arcane structure floated a figure in stark contrast to the elder tech-priest’s own. Whereas Chertovsky Upsilon-28 was a hunched being with an ill-defined silhouette broken by so many layers of intricate augmetics, the being within the tank was an unadorned human. More than human, even – perfection. They stood a head taller than any typical mortal, with a muscled physique somewhere between the lithe form of a trained assassin and the unstoppable power of one of the Emperor’s own Angels of Death. A dormant face like the visage of a masterwork statue, pale with fresh tissue and possessing a bone structure more fearsome than any living man or woman lulled atop the divine form.

Not one of the myriad trusted adepts within the operating room would comprehend the thoughts going through the Archmagos’ mind. Beyond the simple fact that the processors supplementing their more “youthful” brains were insubstantial compared to Chertovsky’s own databanks, they couldn’t know the depth of emotion felt by that otherwise cold and impassive tech-priest.

It was him. The figure in the tank, for how much it resembled no human who had ever lived, was him. Within the enhanced and perfected features of that vegetative husk hid the subtle markers of what the Archmagos had once been. He could remember, however dim those memories were – the shape of his nose, of his brows, the fine details of bone structure in those areas which had seen the least amount of modification. It was like those depictions of Imperial saints crafted by artists long after their subjects had passed into legend, idealizing the forms of men and women who had been but scarred wretches in their true lives.

The strange feelings that Chertovsky wrestled with in silent contemplation were made all the more powerful by the knowledge of his own current degradation. He had not been as diligent of late with the upkeep of his augmetics. Chertovsky Upsilon-28 was a being who preferred careful symmetry, efficiency, and greater thought given over to the aesthetics of his bionic enhancements than some more utilitarian members of the Martian cult. Yet in recent months, at the leadup to this procedure, he had focused on nothing more than ensuring he had the right tools for whatever task was at hand, his cyberized form lapsing more and more into an ill-defined morass of mechadendrites and layered servos. Not even of the highest quality, either, just simple factory-standards. This was his sacrifice – he’d waited for so long, he’d saved up so much, in resources and knowledge and all that was needed to perfect this great transformation.

What a shame, Chertovsky thought then as he pushed such mortal sentiments from his mind for the time being, fixated on the task at hand. You shall not be whole for long, creature. He spoke to his own un-twin. However fine that flesh was, it was still but a foundation for far greater enhancements.

—

Looking like a diminutive pest, a waylaid rat, the youth stood in the corner of the whitewashed room. They were an adolescent, almost an adult, but the with way they seemed so out of place, so fearful of their surroundings – they could not have looked more like a child if they’d tried. Robes of Martian red covered their wastrel form, but they were not the holy vestments of a tech-priest.

This place was so much different from anywhere that young boy had ever seen. Far removed from the brutal, industrial maze that dominated any civilized tract of Mars, this room was clean, sterile, almost comforting in its soft and bare décor. The youth had seen medical rooms before, but a handful of times, yet the quality of the Mechanicus’ own facilities was astounding. A simple waiting room in a surgical center was as a cathedral to the boy.

Sunken, flitting eyes darted to the steel door at one end of the room, as a prominent beep announced the arrival of the individual he’d been waiting for.

“Chertovsky – Germani—” the figure spoke as they entered, in a voice that was near musical in its synthesized smoothness, “You are the last one today. It is good that you made it.”

Compared to the wiry young human known as Germani Chertovsky, the being which now dominated the waiting room held little to reflect that it had once been human itself. This was Ben-Sheva Stith, though the use of his full name was reserved as an honor for those aspirants who managed to gain acceptance into the Mechanicus. To all others, he was Stith-E200, Magos Biologis and Ordinator to those myriad souls who sought to find purpose within the Machine God’s holy embrace.

Stith was a monstrous being, made all the more freakish by what parts of him were still in facsimile of humanity. Yet his charges did not fear him. Rather, they envied him. Stith had assembled his body in a bulky form that almost evoked the might of one of the Emperor’s great power-armored warriors, looking like a bronze statue come to life. From his back sprouted a mantle of servo-arms like the branches of a metallic tree, and his unmoving face was a mask of polished marble-hued stone with eyes like gleaming aquamarines. Yet where the tech-priest might have had normal legs, instead between the gaps in his crimson robes could be seen glimpses of his almost insectoid lower half. Stith’s centaur-like form, both majestic and intimidating, was a testament to what any mere mortal could become through the grace of the Omnissiah.

“Ave Deus Mechanicus.” Germani bowed, looking even smaller next to the grand form of the Ordinator.

“Against all odds you have completed your training as a novice and shall soon be inducted as a Rassophore within the holy order of Mars. This is a time for rejoicing, if ever such mortal emotions are to be indulged, Chertovsky!” Stith counseled the boy, “You shall soon be free of the frailties of your crude flesh and brought into the mechadendrites of the Machine God.”

The boy just kept his gaze lowered, though he gave a vigorous nod of understanding. Truth was, he felt as if he were about to throw up. It wasn’t all fear – the knowledge that his long transformation from a being of flesh to a being of iron would soon start proper via the most direct means was daunting, for sure, but he was still enthusiastic. Beneath simple red robes there was the form of a human who had seen ails beyond their years, and Germani longed to be free of the limitations of his base tissue.

“So tell me, Chertovsky, what will you give up?” the Ordinator asked then, instruments whirling about his head on their hydraulic stalks, funneling myriad unknown data-readouts into Stith’s processors, analyzing the charge in front of him.

“What?” the novice asked, somewhat dumb in his tone.

“Come, mortal, you know,” Stith waved his brassy hand, “Upon your ordination you shall receive your first core bionics. Spinal enhancements and neuro-ports and those basics which shall see your path towards enlightenment eased in these initial steps. But this is not fully standardized. You must choose something else to give up. A sacrifice of flesh to the Machine God.”

Germani looked about the room as if the answer might be written on the wall somewhere. He had indeed thought long about this choice, though now just as it was to be made, his mind had been flushed clear of all thoughts.

“M-maybe – maybe my legs,” the novice gestured down, “Like the Skitarii.”

He spoke of the Tech-Guard, the line warriors of the Mechanicus. To a soul they replaced their lower legs with durable augmetics, to honor those first nomads of Mars whose flesh and bones had been scoured on their long treks through the red sands. Germani himself just thought about the acute pain in his own legs. He was often in pain, though to the point where he had long since adjusted to the constant aches within his body, dulling them into one subconscious sense of weakness. Beneath his sturdy work-boots was skin afflicted with sores and callouses, bones compressed and tendons strained from an upbringing within a Martian landscape which was holy to the tech-priests but near unlivable to any normal lifeforms.

“A noble choice, and a popular one,” Stith might have grinned were his face not set in stone, “The prerequisite enhancements to your spinal column shall ensure you will not be hindered by these replacements, and they shall be only of benefit to you. But can you think of nothing else?” he asked then, trying to beckon some zeal out of the timid boy.

Germani thought again and considered how even now the world seemed lopsided. His left eye, which had been singed by a plume of sparks when he’d been but a child, and even now gave him little more than vague shadows in place of genuine sight.

“My left eye?” the novice offered, “So that my sight might be more pure?”

“Also good, and also common,” the Ordinator approved, “We may do both surgeries, if that is the offering you are willing to make?”

But Germani’s mind was racing now, and he was so aware of all the acute pains and ills which he had put up with his whole life, brought about by his growth on a world of poison, ash, sand, and steel.

“My hands, maybe?” he suggested, “Or my lungs? Maybe my stomach so I’ll no longer be a slave to hunger?”

Stith raised his hand, and the boy stopped at once. Yet when the Magos spoke, his synthesized voice was absent anything but pride.

“There will be time for such things later on in your journey. This is but one offering, one ascension which you shall make today. Though your ardor is laudable. Nurture that feeling. Couple it to your lust for knowledge, and one day you might find unity with the divinity of the Omnissiah.”

With that, the tech-priest beckoned for the youth to follow him to the next room. Though he had not yet been given his new name, Germani thought many times after, as all of his order did, that his rebirth as Chertovsky Upsilon-28 began not when he donned his clergy robes, but when he laid down upon that operating table.

—

The Lord-Archmagos oversaw the dissection of his own homunculus with exacting rigor. Half the time, it was not the ministrations of his trusted adepts or the automated algorithms of the surgical servitors that progressed the operation, but his own sterilized mechadendrites. These younger tech-priests were some of the best available, to say nothing of their loyalty – Chertovsky had contracted their services from Set-E299, apprentice to his old Ordinator and one of the few individuals on Mars the Archmagos could count as a true “ally” – yet still their skills paled when put up to some of Chertovsky’s most ironclad specifications.

Layer by layer the unneeded tissue of the grandiose clone-body was stripped away in preparation for its encasement in divine metal. Like any experienced Magos Biologis would confirm, not all flesh was so impure or antithetical to the Machine God’s designs. It was but one aspect of the myriad systems through which that holy Order expressed itself, though prone to failure and degradation. As such, but a handful of organs and the like would be kept from this corpse – the simplistic efficiency of such structures as marrow, certain neurons, and hormonal regulators. In time they would be upgraded by supplements of steel and copper and glass, but they would be left intact. The rest – the muscle, the unneeded bones, the vestigial tracts – would be recycled.

Cloning was in itself not a difficult task if one was not looking to create life. To grow a shell was simple, and drew upon long traditions of Imperial science dating back to the Emperor himself. Still, the procedure that Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28 intended to undergo was not so standard. Radical, some might say. Yet it was necessary. All of his progress as a tech-priest had led to this moment. Some on Mars thought him dead, for how long he had been absorbed in his own calculations, cut off from the greater machinations of the Cult. It was time for his second rebirth. Like the emergence of the Omnissiah, and the crafting of the ancient warriors of Terra – Custodian, Space Marine, and the like – Chertovsky was preparing for a metamorphosis. Decades worth of valuable resources had gone into the gene-crafting and augmetic specs for this new body. It almost seemed like a waste, even to the Archmagos, but what was one masterwork body compared to all the industry of the Imperium? This was a form suitable to the ongoing work of someone as ambitious as Chertovsky Upsilon.

Flesh disappeared, replaced or covered by layers of technological augmentation. The corpse became a skeleton of metal and wire, before the outer plating was affixed. For how much the Archmagos had dwelled on this design, it was rather simple. At its core it kept a humanoid form, yet that was but the chassis for the true ingenuity of the shell. Numerous ports and mechadendrite-mountings would allow for all the adaptability and modularity a senior Magos would expect and demand, while the central unit retained a degree of strength, of majesty. This was enhanced further by the final addition – the Abeyant. Like the shell of an isopod, the outer casing loomed about the skull-like visage of the husk’s face, before arcing back in broad segmentae down to the waist. Not just a mechanism for locomotion and adaptation alone, equipped as it was with repulsor-stabilizers and even more servo-ports – it was the main housing of Chertovsky’s primary obsession…

A wise soul once said that the most key step along the Quest for Knowledge was in fact learning how to learn, and the Lord-Archmagos had taken that concept into his synthetic heart. Where other tech-priests might become enamored by more “impressive” technologies, Chertovsky’s earliest training had been as an augmeticist. Risking his very life, he had delved into the ways one could enhance their own brain, expanding databanks and supplementing processing power. From thereon, all other tasks had seemed simple by comparison. Once one could manipulate the very core of their being – their means of accruing knowledge – no further obstacles were ever so insurmountable.

As such, the Abeyant of Chertovsky’s awaiting shell was the home of its multi-brain. Not just a single casing with neuro-uplinks, but a chain of multiple wetware cogitators assembled with painstaking precision by the Archmagos himself. In a moment of rather base lust, Chertovsky wondered what that high would feel like – to leave behind this venerable but utilitarian body and jack-in to the computational power of that hardware.

It might kill him, but that was of little concern.

A great many hours later, and at least one changing-out of the assistant adepts, the work was at last complete. Or rather, everything but the final step.

The body had been crafted. From a being of cloned flesh had been forged a suitable masterwork of steel. Its core was almost reminiscent of a Skitarii warrior in its semi-skeletal armored form, though additional layers of plating in several sections gave the suit a more martial appearance. From a harness about the waist emerged the stumps of numerous ports that would soon be host to whatever tangle of mechadendrites the Archmagos might require, though still the body retained its arms and legs in honor of what it had once been. The face was like a hybrid between a skull and a gas mask, its goggle-like eyes unlit and dormant, flanked by several lenses to allow for an impressive range of enhanced sight. Despite being laid on its back within the operation-scaffold, the body was almost sat up due to the size of the Abeyant on its back, like an upended turtle. Coupled with the broad mantle of the form’s shoulders, the metallic hood of the mounted processor provided an impressive silhouette, while the port-studded and armored carapace gave the whole figure impressive size and solidity. It looked somewhat ungainly, but that would be fixed once all the needed mechadendrites were attached.

“It is time.” The Archmagos said, more to himself than the nearby assistants.

“A triumph of artifice, m’lord!” the lead adept lauded. His own form was reminiscent of a Sicarian guard, and far better assembled than the mess Chertovsky had allowed himself to become in his single-minded focus of late, yet even that younger tech-priest’s impressive shell could not hold a lumen to the creation that sat just behind a layer of sealed glass.

“Engage the final routines. I take my leave.” Chertovsky said, shambling over to the airlock.

“Are you assured of your safety, m’lord?” the adept pressed, though he did not stop his superior, “What are we to do in case of complications?”

“Irrelevant details. I have composed the final algorithms myself,” the Archmagos replied, stepping into the first hall of the sterilization chamber and turning to meet the glass eyes of his assistant, “The commendations for you and your associates have already been sent to Magos Set. If this operation results in my expiration, it shall not impact your rewards.”

There was a pause then, and so Chertovsky concluded that their exchange was over, and yet – quite against all etiquette of the Mechanicus – the adept asked a final question. A base question, but one that almost managed to halt the Archmagos in its sincerity.

“M’lord – are you afraid?”

Chertovsky paused for but half a second before he pushed the button to seal the airlock. Beneath a hooded miter of Martian red, a static face of wires and lenses could do nothing to convey emotion. Yet within the modulated voice of the Archmagos there was a timbre of something great. An almost human emotion.

“Not anymore.”

Lord-Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28 pressed the button, and was alone. Within the next room, an operating mounting awaited him. Bending to his neural inputs, Chertovsky saw his various supplemental readouts go dead as he detached the case that contained what remained of his brain from all ports but his locomotive motors. He proceeded into the surgery theater and entrusted his mind to the pre-programmed hands of his servitors.

—

It was an uncommon thing for a tech-priest to dream. Periods of dormancy might occur, but to dream required that the core cogitator – the brain – should slip into an unconscious state. If they so wished, a cyborg of the Mechanicus might “sleep” and awake an indefinite amount of time later as if no time had passed at all.

With this sacrifice are you brought into the fold of the Machine God. With this augmentation of your body is your soul made more pure.

But Chertovsky indulged himself. There was no real way to regulate his sensory inputs as his brain itself was handled, and so a quick injection of some anesthetic helped to ease the process along. His mind swam within currents that had been long forgotten to him – as if he could dip for but a moment into the cerebral waters of the Immaterium itself.

How long until I am like you?

Are there any limits to the Omnissiah’s path? You say I must keep some of my flesh – but when is flesh superior to iron?

To have one’s very grey matter manipulated, even while under sedative, was a surreal experience. One did not “feel” anything, and yet they felt even the slightest disturbance as if it touched at their very soul.

Are you afraid?

This is but one offering – one ascension – which you shall make today.

Man and Machine. This union between our two empires. For from humanity are our souls born, and through the godlike Machine are they made strong.

You do not understand. I see the true potential of this crude matter. This was my first step. I have learned how to learn.

There was a change. A switch. Something connected, something came online. Chertovsky could not know yet how long the surgery had taken, but it was as if his mind had forgotten its own senses. Bare inklings of readouts – felt more than seen – were like breaths of pure air to a forgotten prisoner.

Are you afraid?

The flesh is weak. It is pain.

By the Omnissiah you are anointed. By the Omnissiah are you reborn.

Are you dreaming?

Awake.

Beyond the glass of the surgical theater, the assisting adepts watched the servitor arms retreat from their charge. Hissing and clanging sounded as stabilizers and therapeutic regulators detached.

[CONNECTIONS ONLINE]

The monitor readout was confirmed by one of the adepts.

[CORE REACTOR EQUALIZED. NEURAL SIGNATURE STABLE.]

“Finalize.” The lead adept gave the one order needed, and his compatriot entered the code to end the automated routines and release the Archmagos’ shell from its bonds.

Within the sockets of Chertovsky’s silver, skull-like face, electric blue lights flickered to life.

[askmalal]

Magos Krend frowned. He frowned with what remained of the human part of his face. Somehow, he managed to frown in binary. Watch-Captain Matthias was relatively young by the standards of the Legio Custodes; perhaps this was why he was still somewhat fascinated by these eccentricities.

He’d been traveling aboard the Ark Mechanicus “Dyson’s Sphere” for six months now. Working alongside the members of the Cult Mechanicus and a detachment of the Rainbow Warriors... reinforced by a single friend who owed him a favor. For six months they’d been tracking what little information had come from the bodies of a small handful of Renegades. Six months and it had come to this. Matthias made it a personal policy never to overlook even the slightest shred of hope - but he understood the Magos’ frustration. Shared it in some ways.

“They...have...” Ancient Bellerophon’s voice echoed from his vox unit, “...all been killed using mass reactive rounds. That is... blatantly obvious. What are you... hoping to find, Custodian?”

Matthias shrugged at the Death Watch Contemptor. “I realize that most of this is nothing new, Brother. But this...” he narrowed his lips, “there is something disquieting about this. Why here?”

Magos Krend waddled toward them, swaying slightly on his mechadendrites. “Yes. Precisely/Accurate/True Assertion, Ancient One. Why? Why all of this? This world is dead. It has been utterly scoured of intelligent life. The ruins are devoid of any useful/utilitarian technology. The biomass here would barely feed a frigate full of Genestealers. It is....”

The landscape was a ruin of crumbling ferrocrete and cracked paving stone punctuated here and there by struggling blue-brown tendrils of primitive grass. Across the cracked stone, anemic plant life, and ruined structures, the bodies of roughly two dozen Heretic Astartes in blue trimmed with red were strewn, recently felled in battle. Probably within the last two days or so, given their state.

“Imminently...forgettable.” Agreed the Ancient.

“You might want to have a look at this, then...” it was the short range vox feed of Scout-Sergeant Amadeo, fourth company, Rainbow Warriors.

Matthias strode forward. The clanking Contemptor followed. Magos Krend stayed behind, examining a piece of cracked ceramite retrieved by one of his skitarii.

“Sergeant?” Matthias queried. The Rainbow Warrior was standing over a pair of bodies. Their helmets had been removed, and he was examining the corpses. They’d been preserved fairly well in the anaerobic environments of their mostly intact power armor.

“What do you think of this, Watch Captain?” He pointed an armored finger at the back of a head, the smaller of the two Astartes.

“That’s odd. Lasgun? Too small to be a lascannon.” A hole had been scored just above the shoulder blades, burning a perfect tunnel through to the other side. The interior was clean: the weapon had carved through in a way that only an energy weapon could. The Ancient strode forward and looked.

“He isn’t the only one,” Amadeo said, “that one,” he pointed to the other corpse, “at least six or seven more. “

“Execution style killings. I thought these were all combat fatalities,” Matthias sighed, “how did we miss this?”

“We were....meant... to believe that these Astartes were slain in action.” The Ancient kicked over a Mark VII helmet. Beneath the defaced markings of The Scourged, the helmet was more or less intact.

“They went to the trouble of killing them this way and then masking the execution. They killed these men in a very personal way, but didn’t feel it was our business to know,” Amadeo frowned to himself, “I know the Sons of Malice are... unusual. But...”

“Just feel fortunate they didn’t take a bite out of each of them,” Lieutenant Uxtil muttered, striding by, “We’ve got more. Eleven in all. Will confirm and get back to you.” Matthias nodded at the passing Rainbow Warrior.

“That is...curious.”

“What’s that, brother?”

“The Scourged...have the mark. They have...the mark of the Witch-God This man...does not...have the mark.”

“They only defected a century or so ago, right?” Amadeo frowned again. “Don’t mutations take time?”

Matthias shook his head, “No. Not really. Even then, this particular entity. It... it always changes them. It is what you might call a sort of ritual brand, Sergeant.”

“The other... has no mark.” Bellerophon wheezed, “...there is no mistake. Not this one.”

“Sergeant, have a look at the remaining nine,” Matthias drew in a deep breath. “Best to check. I don’t like where this is going. Magos Krend,” he flipped to the Magos’ internal receiver, “I’m going to need a gene-seed analysis here.”

“Noted/Registered/Understood,” came the reply. “I will dispatch the necessary equerry. Keep in mind that the data may be corrupted/damaged/violated even beyond the touch of the Warp. Two days dead is not two weeks. But it is still two days.”

“Understood. Thank you.” Matthias paused. He’d very much have liked to unseal the helmet, get a breath of fresh air. He’d hoped for it. But this was not a safe place to breathe, even for one of the ten thousand. The air was full of death.

The Sergeant stood and moved toward more of his comrades, executing the Custodian’s orders without hesitation “Short ranged las-fire execution. That’s... unique...” he muttered.

Bellerophon watched him go. “Not...las fire.” The statement was made with some finality.

“No?” Matthias looked down at the bodies.

“Volkite.” The Ancient’s voice carried across the ruined plaza as a whisper of stale air passed Matthias’ rebreather, “Volkite.”