Aldegund will pass the time gathering tools an resources to improve his crafting abilities as well as any schematics he could get his hands own.
Draex will take some time to consider the upgrade possibilities.
Ulasht will check on his fellow Legionnaires one last time before heading to the bridge upon arrival at their first stopping point.
Draex finds himself walking onto the bridge. Seeing Ulasht he curls his lips up ready to snarl but manages to walk up to him this time without spitting at his feet.
"Although i still dont approve of your witch craft cousin or this quest your dead primarch bones. I do respect your loyalty you have shown towards your brother and commander. There may be more to you yet though i still care not to stay in your presence. You make the nails tighten and thats more than enough to bring rage and hatred bubble to the surface. Good day."
draex taps his breast plate once and walks off not wanting to hear anything ulasht has to say because the nails are wanting to talk to ulasht too
There is no artificial marker or ancient gate denoting most entrances to the webway. You took the Tlaloc to a region of space that seemed no different from the rest of the Eye’s chaotic tides, drifting through the chromosphere of a cooling, dying white sun. There, in the shadow cast by the world’s pulsing core, you sailed from the Eye into... Elsewhere.
Blackness enveloped you. The occulus showed not the black of the deep void, but the black of colourless, starless nothing.
The engines flared hot, propelling you through absolute blackness. You felt becalmed, going nowhere at all. The Anamnesis assured you the Tlaloc was sailing ahead, and with your senses shrouded and our instruments mute, it was her word against the evidence of your eyes.
The bridge crew were unsettled, with tempers flaring and blood being shed between mutants and humans over insignificant disagreements. These creatures were used to living in a nightmare where daemons might prey upon them without warning, but the Old Ones’ broken webway was too much for their senses to easily endure. The absolute nothingness of this section was sensory deprivation on a ship-wide scale. When you slept, you did not dream. You dreamed of nothing at all.
"Was it like this the last time you sailed through?" asked Telemachon. His handsome face mask, repaired by my armament priests, shone polished silver in the pale light of the command deck. He had a habit of resting his gauntleted hands on the pommels of the two swords sheathed at his hips. These he wore slung low, almost like a vain human gunslinger – a posturing fact that surprised none of you.
"Exactly the same. This is the only stretch of the webway I have ever seen that is truly, wholly empty." Khayon replied
"What’s in the others?" Telemachon asked.
"Death," Nefertari answered, from where she stood on the other side of Khayon "Things that broke free from other realms and realities. Things even the Neverborn fear."
Telemachon, who stood casually on the dais’s stairs, kept his gaze on the occulus. His voice was contemplative.
"I’ve never seen the Radiant Worlds. Are the stories true?"
"There are many stories," said Nefertari. "The truth depends on which tales you listen to."
"How foolish of me to expect a straight answer on this ship."
Nefertari’s reply was a soft laugh.
You can see Telemachon’s stare at Nefertari as if he hungered for her.
Ulasht chuckles at Draex's comments. So long as those weapons do not swing at me, I care not what the monster has to say.
"I am delighted that we have become such fast friends".
Ulasht shakes his head at the presence of Telemachon, having so dangerous a foe so close at hand was foolish.
How much joy did this wretch suffer? How much agony? To think the Emperor's Children would follow a Daemon that takes pleasure in tearing its own flesh...
Without warning reality shifts, the very essence of existence seeming to dim. His skin crawls as his soul screams into the silence enveloping him.
Gellar Field failure? Are we taken by the Warp?
"No."
His own voice cuts sharply against the darkness of the Eerie, surprising him by its diminished appearance.
"There are no warnings. No Claxons."
His feet carry him quickly as his voice protests against the nothingness. What few personnel he passes seem equally perturbed by the absence, many breaking into conflict amongst themselves.
At some point during the third month Menstras visits Aldegund, managing to catch him in one of the few moments he is alone.
"I have heard the others seek your craftsmanship, Trident. Perhaps you might lend me your skill as well."
"I take pride in my craftmanship. What can I do for you Menstras of the VIII Legion?"
"Son of Magnus, I am not so foolish as to a think a daemon can be controlled. They are slivers of infinity, and chaos cannot be denied. I would like to do something to assist them, but you are right. I would still appreciate to chance to study under you as we make this passage."
He will join in the neverborn hunt, crushing the malformed beasts dispassionately, purging slaves as necessary, and incessantly preaching to the slave castes to encourage them to obey their masters and deal with conditions that help spawn or attract daemons.
Deathraven uses the hunts as an opportunity to observe the fighting styles of the participants in a life-or-death situation as opposed to the relaxed situation of the training cages.
When on the bridge, he observes quietly. He ignores Telemachon unless approached by him, but he never fails to mark his location or stance. As Khayon has unfortunately demonstrated in the past, his hold on his pets can be broken. If necessary, he would put down another pet that became unruly.
"Please do not refer to me as the Son of Magnus. I do not idealize my father as you may. My legion is all but dead due to him and Ahrimans actions."
##############
Over the course of the few months communication has been sporatic with the possessed sons of horus. They no longer responded to vox communication and looking for them aboard the ship has provided not much luck either if you were to try. You do see the change in the section they were designated. The walls and objects become malformed due to the daemonic essences.
###############
Radiant Worlds
When you emerged from the nothingness of the Avernus Breach, you sailed straight into a sky full of fire. One moment there was stillness and empty darkness, the next we were gliding through Eyespace as the void burned with golden light. Brightness scored itself across your retinas in a blur of pain. Mutants and humans alike recoiled from the sudden acidic light. You have plunged back out of the webway into a region of the Eye scorched by the Emperor’s Astronomican.
"Close the occulus!" Ashur-Kai called down from his observation platform. The layered armour plating spiralled closed over the viewscreen before any of the crew could obey.
"Occulus sealed," said the Anamnesis across the bridge vox. You had several seconds of respite, before the ship lurched beneath you, brutally enough to hurl half of the strategium’s crew to the deck.
Athletics
Athletics
Deathraven rides the jerking deck plate so smoothly that anyone observing him wondered if he knew it was coming.
Menstras latches onto a nearby station long enough to engage his magnetic soles.
"Are you familiar with haywire grenades?"
Menstras hesitates.
"They have proven themselves quite effective against our cousins in the past and I would be honored to aid you in their fabrication."
v Tech Use 38 to assist.
vs 60
Draex stumbles a few steps nearly being thrown but remains on his feet
Menstras
"I know of them, but I must check if there are the required components to build such thing and schematics from scratch as I do not possess them. Your aid would be much appreciated Night Lord" as he rubs his chin [b["Not very usual for most legionnaires to care about such things, I can teach you if you wish"[/b]
Athletics
Aldegund is caught unaware and tossed like a rag doll of his feet.
Athletics TN 60:
Akkad drops his body weight and activates his mag boots, looking as if he stands steady and immovable while the vessel is shaken.
Lheor, Ulasht and Aldegund crashed down the central dais’s stairs, smashing into a pack of helpless servitors and breaking the Gods alone knew how many of the slaves’ bones.
Telemachon had drawn both blades, keeping his balance only by plunging them into the floor to grip and keep steady.
Khayon and Ashur-Kai fall to the ground from their stations.
Collision, crackled the Anamnesis in a spurt of corrupt vox. "Hull temperature increasing."
"Shields!" Khayon yelled. "Shields!"
"Void shields somnolent. Hull temperature increasing." the Anamnesis replied.
The Tlaloc gave another savage heave, throwing more of us from our feet in a tide of ceramite and flesh against the durasteel deck. Thunder echoed through the ship.
"Collision," the Anamnesis said again, still utterly calm. "Hull temperature increasing."
The ship started to roll, sending bodies skidding along the deck as the gravitic stabilisers fought to keep up.
The Tlaloc groaned in an unwelcome singsong of straining metal bones.
"The Astronomican is tearing us apart!" Ashur-Kai’s yell was desperate.
"It cannot be. We are past the Firetide." Khayon replied.
The ship gave another heave, sending yet more crew to the deck. Alarms howled across the bridge as hololithic damage reports streamed across my retinal display. It wasn’t just hull strain now – whole sections of the spinal battlements were being broken away. Whatever was out there, it was breaking the Tlaloc’s back.
"Something has us in its grip," Khayon said to the Anamnesis. "Kill it!"
That’s when the thing roared. If its grip had shaken the ship, its roar sent violent shudders coursing through every iota of the Tlaloc’s bones, bursting the crew’s eardrums across the lower decks where the creature’s cry echoed loudest.
A more familiar tremor buried itself in the shaking as the Anamnesis fired the broadsides on both sides of the hull. Entire weapon decks spat their anger into the golden void. Fresh pain flavoured the creature’s silent screams, and its draconic roar rang out again, loud enough to shatter several console monitors.
"Hull temperature increasing," the Anamnesis said with infuriating calm.
"Kill it, Itzara!" Khayon yelled
"Second cannonade already priming. Firing now." the Anamnesis replied.
The occulus resolved into an image of burning, dissolving flesh wrapping the battlements in a living shroud. Pinkish skin melting in golden fire, millions of holes opening like pits of stretching sludge as the bright fire ate it alive.
The thing outside the ship burst across the Tlaloc’s shattered battlements, blasting the ship with hissing gobbets of viscera, which still dissolved in the gold-drenched void. One final shiver rocked the Tlaloc. Then all was still.
The sudden silence was almost deafening. Slowly, the ship righted itself. The crew regained their feet in the aftermath. It took several seconds for the omnipresent thrum of the engines to filter back into your senses.
Awareness
Infamy Point re-roll
"I fear I lack the mind for such things though I welcome the distraction."
v 51(41 +10)
"What was that!"
Awareness
Telemachon sheathed his swords, turning his serene gaze on the occulus. Outside in the gold-misted void, all seemed calm. You had emerged in the Radiant Worlds, past the Firetide where the Astronomican burned strongest and brightest.
"Anamnesis, damage report." asked Khayon
"Extensive," the Anamnesis replied at once. "Processing." Automated ink styluses on several consoles began to scratch out the specifics of the Tlaloc’s injuries on reams of dirty parchment. The machine-spirit’s mind at work. Lheor, who was overseeing several slaves at the auspex console, began to study the printed lore.
Men, women and mutants shuffled back to their posts.
Menstras and Ulasht you see something sitting in placid spendour on Khayons throne, the ghost of a murdered god.
"Khayon, what the hell is that sitting behind you?"
The god’s face was covered by a mask of shining gold, its features wrenched into a rictus of crying torment. The expression – eyes open, mouth wide, even the parted teeth showing in detailed gold – was a man’s death-scream immortalised in holy metal. Bladed sunrays flared from the edges of the metal face, forming a crest of golden knives.
The rest of his manifestation existed in contrast to the dark ostentation of his sacred helm. He was thin, cadaverously so, and wearing a plain toga of imperial white. His skin didn’t commit to paleness or duskiness – it seemed a caramel blend of both, perhaps born from genetics, perhaps stained by the light of a natural sun.
Some of you have seen carvings of him on cave walls, scrawled by primitive men and women awaiting the coming of the Emperor. The Master of Mankind in his skeletal, ritual form as the Sun God, the Solar Priest.
"Men of flesh and blood and bone, sailing where fire and madness meet."
When he spoke, condescension laced the words, burning beneath the gentility. Yet for all its strength, it was a hesitant voice. The spirit regarded you all, and its gaze fell last of all upon Akkad. "A stain lies upon your soul. A blight that corrupts your being. I will remove its touch if you desire."
2 DoS
He brandishes his crozius, topped with an elaborate Star of Chaos, as if it will keep evil at bay.
"Spare me your lies, pretender. Mankind does not need you, and neither do I. We walk the path of the gods, the path of apotheosis, not the path of failure and extinction your hubris would take."
vs 38
You are just barely able to keep the daemon under control as you feel it trying to rise to the surface. You gain 1 corruption.
The thing spoke again in its unpleasantly inhuman tones. "A parasite suckling at the shadows of your soul. Blight. Taint. Sacrilege."
The wraithly priest extended bone-thin fingers, gesturing to the others gathering around Khayons throne. "So be it. Why are you here, men of flesh and blood and bone?"
"You are not the Emperor, though you wear one of his forms. Who are you?"
Deathraven chided himself mentally for nearly believing (Nay, hoping) that he could indeed treat with the Emperor one last time.
"I am what remains of the Song of Salvation." The spirit was breathing, which was a rare and false gesture of life among incarnated creatures.
"Get off our ship," Lheor said, "whatever you are." His heavy bolter was back in his arming chamber, but he had his axe ready in his hands.
The Solar Priest linked his thin fingers in his lap. "Once you were His will, rendered in iron and flesh, sent forth to bring the galaxy to heel. I am His will rendered in silent light, sent forth to guide a billion vessels home. I am what remains of the Emperor now that His body is dead and His mind is dying. It is a death that may take an eternity, but it will come. And then I will fall silent with His final thought."
Menstras
Aldegun is still shaky after the fall trying to regain his footing and stabilize himself
"I have no idea, let's go to the bridge"
[/b]
Awareness 42
"Save your rage, Lheor. This is no daemon that you can simply carve out of existence."
Deathraven steps closer to the throne.
"You are the Astronomicon?"
The golden mask tilted in a nod. "I stare into eternity and witness the dance of daemons. I sing forever into the endless night, adding my melody to the Great Game. I am Imperious, the Avatar of the Astronomican. I have come to ask you to turn back."
"I'm sorry."
Deathraven removes his helmet, to look upon Imperious with his own eyes. Before anyone can ask, he continues.
"I'm sorry that I was not with you on the walls at Terra. That I failed you and what you stood for. But we cannot turn back. We are all that stands between the Emperor's Children and a Horus re-awakened in their image. We must recover the Vengeful Spirit. We must destroy the Canticle Citadel, or your dream of a mankind that is ascendant is truly lost. Can you free Falkus Kibre and the other Justaerin of their taints?"
"Yes, the Emperor's hubris given life beyond his dying body. Traveling the universe to gather your wayward children back to worship you as a "God". Have you not enough sycophants falling at your feet? Have we here not heard enough of your deceptions? You struck down the idol of a thousand worlds to ascend alone as the God of Mankind!"
Ulasht removes his helm and spits at the images feet.
"You are here again to deny us honor and praise, to convince us to be your meat grinder and work-horse, just to be spat down and assigned garrison work while we carried your crusade in our backs! You who gave our honors to the other legions, those f&*&^ Imperial Fist!! Yes, little did they knew of true siege warfare, for we honed that aspect for you to bring worlds into the fold of the Imperium of man." as his fury is brought to bear "I will never return to the fold until the last Imperial Fists bows down and accepts our superiority, we did it once in the cage, I was there to see them die a pathetic death for all they could really do was steal our glory, yet you praised them, while we were left unnoticed! Even the other legions" as he looks at those around him "They thought of us the same way when the war was fought, wondering why we weren't digging trenches and garrisoning worlds for them as they advanced to Terra."
Aldegund breaths for a moment "It matters not to the Iron Warriors now, we exert our freedom and most of us don't worship anyone, but worry not, we will continue doing our job as "Corpse Grinders" and grind the corrupted corpse the Imperium of man has become and anyone else that stands in our way."
Menstras freezes, the darkness of his very soul repulsed in the Emperor's light. Eyes on the throne, his body and mind locked in revolt against one another.
His foe, his enemy, the traitor he swore to destroy finally within reach. Yet still his limbs won't move.
Night encroached by dawn.
Slowly the words come, reluctant to exist.
"You...dare? You dare to ask a favor of us? Of those you have betrayed time and again?"
He gestures to Khayon and Ulasht.
"That you ordered destroyed. No. We will stop the Emperor's Children and then-"
Finally his limbs move, his feet bearing him forward as he draws his blades.
"Then you shall watch as we destroy your precious empire. Just as you destroyed ours."
Draex stands around looking at everyone spilling their feelings towards this specter. Draex turns his face in disgust.
"Calm yourselves cousins your are all getting worked up and emotional by this spook. The imperium is all but dead! Turned in on its false emperor's head. May he sit on the throne forever"
Draex says mockingly with a slight bow to the ghost.
"We of the world eaters never cared much for the man who sits the golden throne."
Draex announces staring at the emperor's will. "And we care even less for your dark deities word bearer" turning to akkad " the legions are all but scattered war bands doing what we do best. Wage wars where ever we go. Spilling blood for what suits our purpose. We will never return to the light of the emperor and even if we did we are way past redemption, and shall not be shallowed by darkness unless you want to. So stay calm. "
Draex spits by the Phantom to ward off magic
Was he the only one who listened to what Imperious said? He didn't ask for a favor, a common boon. He was delivering a warning, one that they could not heed if the Emperor's Children were to be stopped. All of the reasons that the others hated the Emperor were irrelevant. He hoped they felt better, because unless this was dealt with in the right way, they would all die right there. He looked to Ulasht and Anshur-Kai, hoping for voices of reason.
I'm surprised that you do not worship the god of blood, war and carnage many of your brothers do" as Aldegund looks at the obvious signs of his intended or unintended worship of the darkgod of war.
Now Aldegund just stares at the image before him.
Khayon stares at Deathraven and then turns to the others.
"Calm yourself brothers, this is not the emperor but a shard of his power manifested as the Astronomicon's avatar."
Imperius does not react in any way at the accusations and curses toward him.
"Why have you come?" the creature asked. "Why sail in the winds of the Emperor’s chorus? There is nothing for you here. Your souls feed on conquest and thirst for blood. There is nothing to conquer within these tides. There is nothing that can bleed."
Across the strategium, the mutants and human crew were recoiling, cowering, crying out in the wake of the avatar’s words their antiquated lasrifles aimed at the ghost upon my throne. You see blood running from their ears.
"You are harming my crew," said Khayon to the Solar Priest. "These mortals cannot understand your words, and your power wounds them."
"I have come as the Voice, not as the Warlord. Harm is not my intent. What brings you into the Emperor’s light, here on the shores of Hell?" said Imperius.
"I have already told you. We seek the Vengeful Spirit to use it to stop the Emperor's Children from bringing back Horus."
Imperious stroked its fingers across Khayons throne armrests, watching you with a tormented metal face. The thing’s voice grew soft and reverent.
"My place is to ask you to turn back, and so I ask it once more."
"Why?" asked Telemachon. His face mask was a visage of serenity opposing the Solar Priest’s image of wracking pain. "What threat are we to you?"
"You are no threat to me, for I am simply a bridge in the Song. You are a threat to the Singer." Imperius replied.
"And if we don’t turn back?" Lheor asked.
"Then the Song’s next verse will be fire and fury, not wisdom and mercy. It will come – not now, not soon, but in time and in force. The Fate you seek to engineer cannot be allowed to come to pass." the dead god replied.
"Ha! I do not worship the blood God I make things Bleed and I do it well. If the blood of my enemies please him then so be it. We have something in common. I enjoy the simplistic nature of war and I will use all of my savagery to break my enemies with unrelenting fury. The pain i will wrought shall please all the dark ones, hell even the emperor himself will be please at the might i bring down."
Draex falls back and listen to the corpse thing
Akkad pointedly turns his back on the yapping World Eater. "What wisdom could the broken shadow of a depraved charlatan offer? You seek to protect the broken, shattered husk of a Singer? Ha! Imagine how the perverted catamites of the Prince of Excess will have their fun on what remains of the Emperor if they conquer Terra. If you seek to dissuade us from seeking the vessel of the sacrificed king, then what power shall you offer us to destroy their schemes?"