NationStates Jolt Archive

((This thread is pretty much designed to hold posts to do with my nation, ongoing programmes for example, not worthy of their own threads.))

A hush descended over the lecture theatre, borrowed from one of the main universities of Tephet-Sheta as the man responsible for this meeting ascended the platform, placing a greenish crystalline plate onto it, about the size of a floppy disk. It was widely rumoured that he was one of the elusive gentlemen from the ‘Office of the Emperor,’ and the secrecy with which this meeting had been called agreed with that assessment.

The theatre was crowded with humans, elves, necrontyr and AI avatars. Though it could easily be argued that the numerous artificial intelligences could do all of this without any help, they tended to keep including the organics in their efforts, as it not only gave the organics something to do, a feeling of purpose, but it also maintained certain appearances that were useful in international affairs.

The man on the podium smiled, “Ladies, Gentlemen, Others. I’m sure you’re all wondering why you’ve been asked here today,” he said, looking around at the several hundred gathered people, “and so I’ll answer you. You are all no doubt aware of the impending population crisis in several centuries time.”

((This is of course, the hoary old one RL day = one NS year chestnut.))

He looked around. The empire typically thought in such long-terms.

“At present Duat has an approximate population of something below three point zero nine four billion, of which we have the following divisions,” he hit a button and the large holographic display changed to show, at several angles, a population breakdown, showing the populations of The C’tan Empire itself, the former ‘Um Lizaan’ province of ‘Star C’tan’ as well as the numbers of Menelmacari on the planet. “We have also been informed to expect colonisation from several other nations, which is likely to bring us, that is to say, the planet as a whole, above the five billion mark in the next century.

“We have therefore been drafted into the working group for solving this impending overpopulation, and so far, several solutions have been postulated. The first is a strictly short-term answer to the problem. It proposes that we set up extensive colonies on both moons,” the display changed again to show the world and its moons, orbiting serenely, though at an accelerated pace.

“We estimate that, at most, we can place up to a billion people onto the two moons while retaining a comfort level, and as such this is a stopgap measure at most.”

The display changed again, to show another planet, “our next option is of course, Garm. With a diameter of fourteen thousand nine hundred and seventy four kilometres in diameter and a surface gravity of one point one two gravities, Garm is quite habitable. The major problem is the lack of oxygen or carbon dioxide, meaning we’d have to do quite a bit to terraform Garm, but in the end it could be rewarding.

“Finally, we come to the most large scale of the proposals. I’m sure you’re largely familiar with the Orbital concept, and the one around Saturn, so I won’t elaborate, other than to say that this idea, because of its inherent vulnerabilities, will ideally be used for largely recreational purposes, and most of the population will remain on planets, which are structurally safe in comparison.”

The presentation and discussion stretched long into the night, covering many aspects of the proposed plans...

Set amongst rolling hills, the Southern Duat Helicon Institute was a new structure, gleaming white, it was technically owned by the C’tan government. Most of the population however, were Menelmacari elves. The gleaming white building shone in the bright light of midday just south of the equator. There was a small village to support these initial students on the seven year course, several hundred of them, selected from those who would have gone to domestic Noldorin universities this year.

The education here, in science and technology at least, was of a vastly higher calibre than could be found in the many prodigious learning institutions of Menelmacar, themselves world leading. Instead, these elves, young by the standards of their species, about fifty on the whole, had been recruited as a test group for the initial stages of the project to begin educating the foreign Quendi, or at least some of them, in the advanced sciences inherited from the original Necrontyr.

On the first day of the course, the initial lecturer, one of them at least, looked around at the ten fresh-faced students – though Quendi tended to be fresh-faced anyway – before him, glad of the small class sizes, and smiled. He began to introduce the course, “Hello and welcome to our first Menelmacari intake to the ‘advanced sciences and technology’ course. First things first, this course has been very successful in the past, so don’t feel like you’re all test subjects, the only reason we’re being so cautious here is due to the fact that all our previous graduates have been through an educational system cleverly designed to work with this, and we’re therefore taking this slow.

“Needless to say, you’re all welcome to draw a fairly hefty salary throughout the course, and though we’re fairly isolated out here, we have good transit links with various cities both in the C’tan empire and Menelmacari Duat, and in any case, this’ll all be explained later.

“I’m going to pass some books, paper books, around generally giving a board overview of science as you know it.”

“Good, now, take your books and tear them to bits,” he paused, “go on, that’s the right idea. Hence the books, far more satisfying to do this. The only things you’ll really need to remember are basic laws and precepts, scientific method and a little relativity. In any case, I think I can now begin handing out the real course materials…”

CNNN: The Imperial Archive of Xenoarcheology and Culture

Today, in a surprise announcement, the Empire has made a vast archive of previously unknown material available. Currently the archive consists of a vast collection of literature, which is to be made freely available throughout the empire, and available for download from government licensed holo networks. The material has a wide base, and is believed to be drawn from largely extinct civilisations, and the exact sources of the material is unknown.

So far, over one million works of literature, translated into Necrontyr and English, as well as two hundred thousand assorted still artworks have been made available. Reactions have been mixed overall, and forming a uniform reaction to this amount of material, apparently a fraction of what is available, is almost certainly impossible, though numerous groups, including the media and intellectuals, have been generally supportive.

And in other news, the controversial proposal on reduced taxes for…

In the depths of deep space, a great shape banked, turning its engines and firing, accelerating away in a new direction compared to its previous one, heading off at an acceleration of several thousand gravities. It was crescent moon shaped, an extrapolation from the ancient necrontyr symbol of race, of manifest destiny, and of state, semicircle above a circle, radiating lines from it. A crescent moon above a sun, representing worlds and stars, a planet - or a moon, bathed in the radiant light of its star.

Symbols of the stellar ambitions - and later history - of the necrontyr, and the C'tan, their derivative, and now, in what was quietly called the second age of the C'tan - the first was not known to many, but to the few to whom it was known , it was considered a time of, of great mistakes.

The ship itself was a warship, or rather, a harvest ship, one of around two hundred now, and it was on a routine patrol. Taeonash was a remote installation, a naval base and shipyard, not more than two hundred light years from sol, based around a rogue object in the Hyades Star Cluster. Here lurked one hundred thousand troops, but most of the fleet were away.

The ship was one of the few remaining here, in this hidden base, but soon it would have the company of the hundred ships who belonged here again, including the shroud flotilla, the elite of the fleet, ten cruisers, and two battleships, equipped with the new shadow fields, reverse engineered from designs obtained from the Dark Eldar.

The military build-up was over, and now, the empire prepared for peace, not war.

Jane Sanders gazed out of the darkness.

Specifically, she gazed out of the darkness of the darkened observation lounge of the liner. It was darkened habitually, to allow for the stunning views of the planetary nebula beyond to show through. She herself was not especially rich, but she was more than able to afford the occasional tour. She was in fact, one of the empire’s ‘industrial workers,’ a post that required surprisingly little physical ability, given the stereotypical perception of such jobs. It didn’t require much of anything in fact, her job was basically to fill a desk now and then in a large factory and ‘supervise’ the automated machineries. It was perhaps in-efficient to employ her like that, but the government made sure that it was far more efficient to create jobs like that than it was for a company to try and do without sully-sentient - or rather conscious, sentient was a clichéd word that few really contemplated, and took to mean the same thing as a conscious entity. One of the perplexing mysteries of the multiverse it was, why that term had sprung into popular usage – workers.

As such, she actually had ample holidays, and surprisingly good pay. Job satisfaction was perhaps, minimal, but most people engaged in assorted hobbies while ‘at work’ to occupy their time, even the multitudinous holographic-vision channels, many of them foreign imports, became boring eventually. That was part of why this particular business and form of tourism thrived, many people had very long holidays. Indecently so, compared to many other places in the multiverse, or so most of the others aware of this thought.

She leaned back in the sofa, and smiled at her latest companions, similarly booked for the two month cruise out through this planetary nebula and beyond, to see some of the other more interesting sights of the general area. Throughout that time they’d be slowly making their way inward, toward Sol, and then back, out to Wolf 1841 and through the gate there, returning from whence they came.

She pondered doing some shopping in one of the nations of Earth if they bothered to stop over – she’d always wanted to see any number of states, and the prices of all Solarian things, cultural at least, the eccentric, the strange, or the high class, from the teeming metropolis world, fractured schismed and spatially distorted though it was, was usually quite high in the empire, as these things generally had to go to Mars or even Wolf first, incurring significant shipping costs. In any case, that was months away yet. She turned a little, and gave an inviting smile to the man next to her.

[Many Years Ago – Shortly after The One Ring conflict.]

Lady Luinehtelë nos Ancalimë was dying. She’d been saved from a death in the camps of The One Ring, but there was no chance of her living much longer, the bleeding had been stopped. She’d been methodically humiliated by the guards. It had been horrific and degrading. At least she wouldn’t have to die there, and had the satisfaction of seeing the various guards killed.

As she lay there, thankful that at least her pain had been eased now, though the internal injuries they’d meted out had been far too extensive to be healed. The Killing Time was a hive of activity, but there was still enough space for them to get her a private cabin. She smiled gently as the door opened, not much caring who came through it. She didn’t want to die alone, that much was clear to her.

A human man, tall, for one of them, with dark brown hair, closely cropped, but somewhat stylish – she would have preferred it long though – and dressed in a very smart – again not to her taste, but she could appreciate it nonetheless – suit. She smiled a little more as he sat down on a chair by her bed, “Hello,” she said, in English.

He replied with a little smile of his own, replying in her native tongue, “Hello, I’m Senator Karl Kopinski.” She was a little surprised by this, but managed not to show it.

“Lady Luinehtelë nos Ancalimë,” she replied, extending her hand. He took it gently, and kissed it. She then took her hand back, laying it across her abdomen, again glad of the painkillers, “so, senator, what brings you here?”

He smiled a little at the elf, “I wanted to ask you something,”
“Yes,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“Do you have any family?” he said, a strange tenderness in his voice.

“No,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes for a moment, “I wanted children though, and my brother is in the halls of Mandos already. I’m the last of my line here.”
The senator nodded sadly, “I thought as much,” he said, “This is why I have an offer for you, but first I must explain a little about myself, something I’ve not told anyone else in the world, not yet at least.” Luinehtelë smiled, and nodded for him to continue, “I’m not quite what I seem to be,” he said, “I’m a little like an Ainu in some respects,” her eyes widened, she didn’t quite believe him, but she was prepared to entertain the idea, “not least in that I can change shape,” he said.

A moment later, his features shifted to a different face, and then back. Luinehtelë’s eyes widened again at this, but after a moment she smiled a little, knowing at least that he was being truthful with her. “And, well, I’m going to need to take a Quendi form soon, in about fifty years, on a regular basis,” he said, and she began to see where he was going with this, “And I was wondering if you would give me permission to consider that form your child.”

She raised her eyebrows a little, “You want me to give my name to you?” she said, quite astonished by this request. He nodded, “Yes, if you’ll just hear me out,” he said, “They will become important, rich, powerful, remembered by all as a shining, a most-bright if you will,” she smiled a little, “example of Quendi. I intend to use this identity to prevent anything like this horror, being unleashed upon your people again.”

She smiled a bit, she would her family to be remembered like that, not just as poor defenceless victims, but still it was too much to permit anyone to impersonate her child.

Unless…

She thought for a moment longer, “Tell me, Mr Kopinski, do you have family?”

He frowned, “No, I never have.”

Luinehtelë smiled, “Good, then I shall adopt you,” she said, “as far as I know it’s never happened before, but in this case, I’m sure the Valar would permit it in this case, if what you say is true.” he nodded, he didn’t truly mean it, but eventually he would take it to heart with a passion, “but one request,” she said, “can you make the child a daughter? I always wanted a daughter…”

He nodded, “What would you like to name her?”

“Fëaelen, yes, Fëaelen nos Ancalimë, a beautiful name,” she said, “May I see her?” she said, “As a child and as an adult,”

He nodded, and changed, starting young, ten, and growing before her mother’s eyes into an adult, a refined, dark haired noldorin elf, beautiful hair and keen, sparkling blue eyes. On impulse, she leaned forward and kissed her mother, gently, platonically, and whispered, her voice now feminine and refined, “I wish I could save you, but the doctors here have done all they can, and I, I am not as powerful as once I was, and hope to be again, and my resources could not be summoned in time…”

Luinehtelë smiled a little, “I am content to die now,” she said, “I’m going to a better place.”

Fëaelen nodded, not quite believing that, though eventually that too she would come to believe, but perfectly willing to allow Luinethelë this precious religious illusion, she shifted back to his accustomed form, and smiled a little, “It is night,” he said, “Would you like me to take you up on deck, to see the stars?” he asked, adding, “mother.”

She smiled once more, “Please do,” quietly taking a ring from her finger, something she had hidden all the time in the camps, a precious heirloom that she had hoped to pass onto a child, but never truly expecting to actually succeed in doing that until now.

And so Lady Luinehtelë nos Ancalimë passed over gazing at the serene sky from the deck of the Confederate Sea Ship Killing Time, contented at last. Given Quendi reincarnation, perhaps she would even return some day, to see how her child had changed.

TAG

The Present

Lady Luinehtelë nos Ancalimë smiled a little as she walked the streets of Tephet-Sheta. Her smiled was one of great happiness, she’d only recently come to remember her past life, one of great sadness, but one that had ended joyously, or joyously enough. She had also remembered her daughter Fëaelen/Kopinski.

She stopped outside a vast, stunning building, the imperial palace. It took the form of a massive gold and white pyramid with soaring, tapering towers emerging from its top to stab at the sky like needles. She smoothed out her dark hair for a moment, anxious to look good, if not attractive, then at least respectable – she felt a little out of place against all that grandeur, but she forced it down ,this was all the property pf her child, Mephet’ran. She didn’t mind the name, Mephet’ran nos Ancalimë, but she preferred the name she’d given, Fëaelen, it was sindarin, and much more likeable, in her opinion

She quietly approached a guard, sighing a little and resigning herself to going through what was likely to be a time consuming process, she addressed him, “I’ve been told I have an audience with the Emperor,” she said the last word with more than a hint of pride, “I think you might find me on the list,” she gave her name, the new one, from her new childhood, and was eventually shown up.

She was a little nervous as she stepped into the office, she didn’t really know her child, she just had an idealised image based on his-her words when they had last been together, and the many public speeches and so on that he had made.

What if… questions ran through her mind at a frightening pace, but
she squashed them down inside her, she had enough faith to go on trust. There he was, the human form, but the more attractive version he sported now, with long shining hair and bright eyes, he was sitting behind a large desk, his head bowed and he used an antique pen to scratch his signature across a piece of ornamented, watermarked paper.

He looked up at her after a moment, putting what he had been working on aside for a moment. He recognised her, and was astonished, and overjoyed, to see her once more.

He practically vaulted over the desk, his footfalls inhumanly light as he hurdled over a large couch too, and embraced his mother happily, smiling and hugging. He held her by the waist after a moment, lifting her and spinning her through the air happily, as her laughter rang out through the room. After a moment, he nodded at the guard, “you may leave now,” he said, and set her on the couch.

He bowed a little, and left, closing the large double doors, one of several sets. He smiled a little more, and promptly changed shape, which earned an even larger smile from her, and said, “Hello mother.”
“Hello,” she replied, hugging her adoptive daughter a little, “how have you been?”

“Wonderful,” Fëaelen replied, honestly, “though I can’t quite believe you’re… alive again, I’ve heard of that Theallas,” her eyes narrowed, “popping up after death, but I never thought that you would.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised what they allow,” she said, “now, who is this Theallas?”

“It’s a long story,” said Fëaelen.

“Good,” the other Ancalimë smiled a little, “tell me everything.”

“Well…”

The fall of New Provinces, Part One.

The intellectual, if he could be called that, stood at the street corner, smoking. Well, perhaps not smoking, but ingesting drugs orally in much the same manner. Specifically, it was a cocktail of assorted sedatives that would calm his nerves. He needed them – another thing the government here restricted (Bastard oppressors) – in order to calm him down for this deal.

“Are you Kev?”

‘Shady Kev’ stopped, and looked around furtively, and skulked into the shadows by the doorway, not just to get out of sight, but also the torrential rain tonight. Mercifully enough, this had put a dampener on the activities of the populace of the city, and even the police had no intention of going out unless they had to.

“I am,” he said, his voice was low, hushed tones speaking volumes of just how illegal this was, “you got the money?”

“Yes,” said the intellectual, just wanting this farcicality over with, “here,” he said, proffering a slab of metal about two inches square, by one fifth of an inch high, the roughness of it telling of poor quality manufacture or a rather troubled existence. Probably both thought Kev, taking the currency unit and loading it into a sleeve, draining it of its valuable cash. After a moment a whisper from his ear implant, also of questionable manufacture, told him that the payment had cleared.

“Good,” Kev said, “Your stuff.”

He passed a suitcase, black leather, to the intellectual, and scarpered as fast as his little legs would carry him. The scruffy brown haired man, with his mousy features, examined his purchase, opening the case after looking around, scanning through the pouring rain, for anyone who might be watching. Inside sat several objects, pistol or submachine gun sized, glassy black. He didn’t care about them, they were legal, he could have bought those in a shop with no problem. What caught his attention were the five pieces of tubing, wrapped up in blue cloth. A Warscythe. This would be good.

He also fished out a largish ring from the case. The man had been as good as his word, a digital weapon, cut price. He extended his hand and pointed at the corner of the building, a little dart leapt from it, and a strange shimmer appeared where the dart hit. ‘This will be amusing,’ he thought, ‘very amusing.’

Ten hours later, he watched the penultimate group of colonists ascend on a disc of metal held in a blue coloured beam, ascending into the relatively bright light of the underside of the vast super-heavy transport. This was one of several outsystem colonies. This would be interesting… His own chance for a little dictatorship – stupid socialist rejects.

The keeping of eyes and ears in the land of C'tan.

Ish’tar’c’tan, Naogeddon.

Asirnoth was having something of a crisis of conscience. He had numerous plots for the unseating of the emperor in motion, most of these the emperor had foreseen, but one or two, one or two could bear fruit. Just.

And yet, what was causing his trouble wasn’t the possibility of most, even all of these plans failing. It was the possibility of them succeeding. After the, incident with the so called ‘Kristatatans’ insects to his mind, but infuriating ones whose deaths he had taken satisfaction in replaying, Mephet'ran had made a point of finding him and restoring him to some sort of health, without which, he would still be there, slowly dying.

This troubled him. He moved, the feelings of the material world, not that they often went to others, but still, the phrase was quite appropriate, comforting as he walked across the hand cut stone floor of Mephet’ran’s ancient sanctuary, out onto a great balcony. As usual on this world, he was assailed by the winds the moment he stepped through the field over the doorway. There was yet another sandstorm up, and the Void Dragon didn’t care, such rant-ings of nature quite soothed him.

It bothered him, because he would never have done the same. He might have come by to have a gloat at his brother, but that’s about it. It nagged at him, and as his immaculate necrontyr form, one of the two he wore regularly, walked, windblown sand scouring at its every surface, from the light blue-grey skin and the long dark hair to the even the black robes that seemed to move with a life of their own, exaggerating his every movement in a regal manner.

He couldn’t believe it was merely some sort of reward for helping that elf nation hat Mephet’ran seemed to have fallen in love with, something else he didn’t quite comprehend. Similarly, Mephet’ran had no true use for him remaining, that left… Kindness. He knew of that, but it never stuck him as an error that his own species, or rather, type, would succumb to, no, never one of his own.

And if it was?

Was Mephet'ran loosing his mind?

He’d seen the ‘star-gods’ go mad before. It was absolutely not a pleasant thing to be around. He remembered the time the ‘Outsider’ had used his forces to attack the C’tan Union’s own staging post to destroy a small furry animal he was convinced was a leading Old One known as ‘The Harlequin.’ Now that he remembered it, it was pretty amusing, but at the time it had been a rather terrifying show of insanity, and the loss of the forces on the ringworld when he melted the surface had been infuriating.

And yet, he felt that insanity in Mephet’ran would manifest itself in a different way, so that left the possibility that this kindness was deliberate. He looked over the shattered city ruins beyond the Sanctuary of the Star Gods. He felt the urge to reciprocate in some way, this was new, the thought crossed his mind that he may have been altered by Mephet’ran, but he dismissed it as irrelevant, he was who he was.

He walked back inside and sat down at the table, and activated a communicator. He sped his thoughts up a few thousand times, and began the long process of contacting all his agents, and ordering them to stand down. Permanently.

A little loyalty was perhaps worthy repayment.

Samara Neja sighed a little, looking at the endless reports and other such things that littered her desk. As the director of the rather small Martian trading post of Sentinel Two, she did have a worryingly monotonous job. Certainly there was a good reason to find it interesting, S2 was currently in the grip of a major crime-wave, causing quite a lot of harm to the local economy.

She sighed, and threw down the documents, storming out of her office and through several corridors until she reached the ‘marble room’ as she called it. It was a rough function room, several feet across, in a Greco-roman style, with pillars at the edges, the gardens beyond. Several arcane systems prevented someone entering between them without first leaving from them.

She sighed, and sat down at the side of the room, a selection of drinks in reach, she took a particularly good Menelmacari wine from a little circle on the table that indicated it was chilled, and poured it out into midair, watching as it stopped and filled an invisible container, eventually becoming a sphere, or near enough. A little toy this thing, though it was mildly amusing to watch people try and drink from it. She took a glass and splashed it around the sphere, scooping it up. The novelty of that little gadget had worn off.

She relaxed a little more, muscles, infiltrated by thousands of little living metal fibres, ‘unknoting’ as she did so, she closed her eyes and took a sip, wondering about these constant parties people seemed to be having. She also wondered if she could host one…

The eyelids turn up, revealing the eyeballs, which stick upon the news of Ctan... #tag

The fortress-town of the Internal Security Agency had been designed to be depressing, intimidating and archaic looking, and it managed quite well, or so thought Klaus de Vere, the director, as he approached it. Only one route ran to the isolated island in the far north, frigid and covered in permafrost, isolated by the sea and mountains all around, and he didn’t feel like taking it for this inspection, as it ran underground. Thus he’d abused his authority and flouted the no-fly zone that usually surrounded the place.

Normally he spent most of his time in the Tephet-Sheta offices, which were far more glamorous, but he regularly visited the fortress, the true heart of the agency. It was amazing to thing that, for all the frightful things that happened here, and the huge size of the agency he commanded, there were less than ten thousand prisoners here at any one time, and far less torture actually went on in the depths of the fortresses lower levels. Still, it was rightfully feared by those who would disturb the order of the Empire, it was even the only place in the Empire that possessed such a rustic charm, if one liked the literally perpetual torrential rain that hammered away at the building and drenched anyone outside.

He walked through the doors approvingly, already dripping wet from the short trip from the transport to the doorway, landing out on one of the turreted towers, one of only two that didn’t mount an anti-aircraft weapon of some sort. He quickly embraced the dark haired woman who waited for him, flanked by a dozen enforcement agents in glossy black carapace armour, their heads covered by beetle-like helmets incorporating all kinds of sensors and communications equipment, the arms that mounted their weapons, some strange device he didn’t even know the name of that fired a blinding flurry of red bolts of light. He knew well enough to use of course, but as far as he was concerned weapons were mere tools, barring his antique colt pistol.

Shannon Vesil, the woman with him, smiled, “Good to see you sir.” He nodded back at her, he’d chosen her to personally command the fortress and take over in the event of his unfortunate death, as he didn’t care to be backed up. He’d also done it because she was a relative liberal, and she’d certainly shaken things up around here. Half a dozen guards had been fired for lack of professionalism in the first few weeks of her command.

He’d approved. “Hello Shannon, where shall we start?”

“Cells, Parade, lunch, Training areas, then maybe an interrogation,” she said. A typical day, but interesting nonetheless, he felt in that moment once again that he’d never leave this job every day was a challenge.

Mephet’ran waked silently into the deepest vault of his sanctuary, here below the crust and into the, thankfully dead, core of Naogeddon, beyond even the reach of the mightiest exterminatus weapons of the Eldar, he stood before an artifice that took up almost the entirety of the room.

Often he came here when he felt that he’d had enough, this was the route to quitting, and probably to his own death. All he had to do was reach out and lay his hand on the glassy surface in front of him, and it would happen.

He’d been contemplating it on and off for a few years now. It seemed deeply wrong to keep the necrontyr, the originals, like that when he claimed to have repented. He’d made this to undo what he regarded as his greatest crime, all those thousands of millennia ago. He reached out, haltingly, knowing what he stood to loose by this, possibly his ‘life’ and ability to interact with others. Well, he knew how to get around that at least, but still, this was going to change everything when it happened.

But it was the ‘right’ thing to do, of that he had no doubt, but it would vastly reduce his power in doing so, he’d be controlled, well perhaps not. It was akin to giving up his political and military power, but in doing so, at least he’d change things for the better.

No, not today. Perhaps one day, but that was not this day.

The interior of the Taeonash shipyards, in the Hyades cluster, was quite something to behold, tier after tier of materials moving through railings and supports driven by unseen forces. The solitary office of the one man - he barely remembered his own name now, he was just the man - assigned to oversee all this had an all round excellent view of this desolate asteroid base beyond the frontiers of known space, all alone in the night, deserted but for the ships, long since returned home, it had created, circling it slowly, appearing, to all outside observers, to be as dead as the asteroid. Some had even accumulated layers of rock to disguise the true shape of their inert mechanical bodies, though these could of course, be removed in an instant by simply discharging the weapons under them.

It wasn't that he was especially smart, or that he had any real responsibility for the sleeping ships. It was rather that he was there as a sign of openness, a human to watch over machines, symbolically. He'd been offered this due to the strange social disorder that made him a hermit among his own species. When the ships did decide to speak with him, often to teach him something of trivial import because they thought it would be interesting, he didn't mind that nearly as much. It was just humans he disliked. From the vantage point, great windows looking out over the construction yards, he could see the Arnstoan class ship finish powering up for the first time, errant bolts of azure lightning stabbing out to be grounded by the endless arcane machineries of the yards. In the darkness he whispered, "And so, the second Solar Patrol Group is done." The man took another sip of the steaming coffee, and watched for a while longer, before going back to his latest hobby - watching whole piles of two dimensional sci-fi films from ages past, just to see how close they got it...

Meanwhile, at much the same time, far away, deep below the ground of Sentinel Two, the lands claimed by the C'tan on Venus, Asirnoth was looking out of the great balcony with interest. Burnished gold and red figures moved by ranks far below on the floor of the colossal assembly chamber. He turned and regarded the avatar of the plant's AI, "Good. Very good," he said watching the, well, parade, though the figures moved with precision that any drill instructor would have been impressed by.

The Artificial Intellect's body smiled, bowing a little. "How many are there?" the yngir asked. "five hundred thousand so far My Lord," the genderless form said, "And we are at full capacity."

"Excellent," the Yngir replied a slight sibilant hiss under his voice as he leaned on the balcony and watched them march, "Most excellent."

Lössë-Elen owned Imperial Civilian Research Vessel Loaded Dice (Duat Registered)

The interior of the research vessel was abuzz with activity, excitement filled the air of the laboratories and canteens and corridors. The numerous talented researchers, organic and artificial (while trans-humanists would say that the organics had no place here it was definitely considered useful to have them here, by the machines themselves; there were times when it had to be acknowledged the organic perspective was more useful than those early trans-humanists thought) working on one of the numerous projects aboard this isolated vessel, this one was probably the most important – though woe betide anyone telling the geo-analysis workgroup that – of all those aboard.

“No no, we need the anti-freeze generating to be a discrete tissue set,” said one man, debating with an Ai avatar and a short woman, “That way the upgrade pack will work better.” The AI nodded upon hearing the word ‘upgrade.’
“Yes” it said, “of course,” it flew through a sequence of alteration on their work as it stood.

Coming out of the vast Imperial Black Budget Project Serenity was ordered by the Emperor himself in order to redress certain civil concerns that had been an annoying factor for many decades. In a nation with significant elven and necrontyr minorities, it was considered by a worryingly large portion of the populace a misfortune to be born a human, despite subtle genetic modification that had yielded an average life expectancy of over three hundred years. Hence this project was to be a substantial change both to the human, or formerly human, populace of the nation, but also to the other races in some aspects.

The sources for ideas had come from a multitude of places; a “goa’uld” parasite captured long ago by the Menelmacari had provided some useful ideas, as of course, had Quendi and indeed, other elf species genetics. More mundane sources had also been used in the form of the Mexican Salamander, Arctic cod and other earth-derived life-forms. These sources had been used with varying degrees of success as they were analysed for desirable traits that could be implemented into the human genome, both proactively, and retro-actively. Of course, the project’s research was expensive, and the price was only going to get worse, but it had the unanimous approval of the Senatorial Permanent Committee for Legislation and Management, so money wasn’t really an issue.

“And this, ma’am, is the control room.”

Princeps Senatus Laudrina Frost looked around, an eyebrow raised, at the sheer utilitarian nature of the room, quite unlike what she was used to. She ducked a little to avoid a low hanging tier of consoles, and glanced at her guide, a young engineer in his thirties, perhaps. The necrontyr woman with her, a relatively junior minister, had to duck even lower to avoid the consoles, such was the price of height.

“Ah yes,” she said, meandering with false lack of purpose over to the captain’s chair, “nice.” She sat down and looked at their guide, “so, this is the Striker we’ve heard so much about?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, “It’s a small size attack craft with long range capacity, and limited intellect. Sub-sentient.”

“I see,” Arshaw said, “eight long range slug or missile launchers accelerated by the gravdrive, yes?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said.

“But far less combat effective than even our smallest escort?”

“Yes Ma’am, but very cheap. We estimate that for every escort we produce that we could knock out four of these gunships…”

A quick mental calculation yielded that dedicating the next production cycle of the Duat yards to these things would give them a total of one hundred and sixty. That was actually quite an intimidating number, and they’d be useful to have around. Arshaw and Laudrina exchanged glances, and the latter said, “I’ll see what I can do about putting a run of one hundred into production.”

Meanwhile, the necrontyr woman patted the armrest. She’d see about buying herself one of these – ministerial salaries in the C’tan were shockingly lucrative – as she definitely liked it, and it would come in useful…

For those who like pics, the Striker. (http://www.necrontyr.plus.com/images/striker.jpg)

Surprise Sale

Iluvauromeni ITC sells Fëanor Holdings Group stock to Carnëlónan

In a surprise move the Iluvauromeni Commonality of Everlasting Light 'Imperial Trade Conglomerate' has recently sold a massive fifteen percent of the well known Menelmacari Conglomorate to an unnamed Vinyandorin citizen. There has been widespread speculation that this may indeed be Lady Fëael...

-Vinyadorin Financial Times

Imperial Necrontyr Diplomatic Ship Sataissatar (On secondment to the Imperial Environmental Development Agency)

Elareth Harazin looked at the twenty large crates in the centre of the Striker's bay. "So," she asked, "just what are these things?"

"Simply put, darkness generators," replied a tall male elf leaning on a rail at the side of the room. "They project a thin disk of artificial darkness, like the thing used by necrons - five hundred kilometres radius, but about two centimetres thick, and partly translucent. No real tactical use in the same way, but it'll basically reflect a large portion of the energy directed at it."

"So, a first step in making Garm inhabitable?" she said.

"Precisely. We did consider a solar sail we bought a while back, but we'd need to fit engines to it, which would actually prove more expensive in terms of maintenance and cost. Plus it'd be a navigational hazard par excellence."

"Right, so we launch these into a 500 kilometre orbit of Garm, and the other forty nine ships do likewise."

"Yes, that would give us one hundred ten percent coverage, and allow for seeding Garm with oxygen producing bacteria."

Elakar Shatanah was not an ordinary necrontyr by any means. He carried himself in a way that was more fluid than any normal necrontyr could ever manage, his body was even more alien-in its grace than the movement of all but the finest elven dancers. And he was tall, even by necrontyr standards. His face was more angular, less human than that of his kindred, and his hair golden, not blonde, but metallic golden. This was all because Elakar was not a necrontyr.

He was a necron.

No necrontyr would be foolish enough to be doing what he was. Ten dead human cultists lay behind him, ten more barred his way. They did not, rightly, deserve that title any more. Whatever they had once been, captive slave or willing cultist, what they were now was so much less. The necron's staff of light sang as it cut the air, leaving a glittering line of fire in the air as it did so. Now only nine stood before him in the dark place he had entered, unlike any of his kind before him, of his own free will. A spear passed through his body, flickering, as the flesh and metallic skeleton seemed to become intangible. The creature, its intellect gone, did not comprehend that this did not mean victory for it, and howled in glee.

The howl was quickly cut short by a stiff blow to its midsection from the staff.

The Eldar designed hallways of the pirate lair reminded Elakar of a debased version of the Vaul Talisman on which he had last walked the path the creature he hunted and its kind had forced his race on to. Years ago now - in some parts of the varying time flow of the fractal universe, centuries even. It had given him back his self-awareness, awareness he had at first cursed, the memories of countless atrocities and murders, brutalities and perversions indelibly etched into his spirit had long been more than he could handle. It had taken years, but he had in time learnt to suppress those memories, and to reconcile the remembrances of body and even parts of his mind of things done without his consent.

But now it was different. Now Elakar Shatanah once more fought for a cause he himself had chosen, after sixty five thousand millennia. And now, using as little lethal force as he dared, he was more deadly than ever. The fluid speed of the necron lord he had been was his to command. But his will was his own, and his will drove him on now, vaulting in a manner no necron would bother with. The debased creatures before him had turned to run, and he came down in front of them in the narrow-but-high corridor.

He didn't care that they turned, and ran back the way he had come. They no longer barred his way, and could perish or live as best they saw fit. A hail of purple crystal fragments, almost too small to see, smattered against him like the shot of a crude hunting weapon. He paid the lethal toxins they released into his artificial bloodstream no heed and looked about for the source of this attack. A Dark Eldar warrior, dark green, purple and black armour glistening in the low lights of the compound, sheltered behind a rock of slick dark stone. One of the servants of this weakest of C'tan.

A necrontyr would not have been able to use the staff of light in the manner Elakar chose to do so. Targeting data fed from his mind through his quasi-organic skin and into the staff, and it blazed, a beam of white light immolating a neat hole in the guard. Elakar strode past practically ignoring the collapse of his enemy.

To his mind, the age of the necrontyr had been an age of heroes, desperate heroism against an opponent that had seemed unbeatable, an opponent he now realised had done nothing to deserve the enmity of the necrontyr, nor their final fate. To his mind he was the last of that age, and he would carry out that inheritance against the adversary he knew to deserve far more suffering than was within his power to give.

From up ahead, he could hear sounds that reminded him of the agonies that he had seen, inflicted, on a thousand worlds over ten thousand lifetimes, but he dimmed those memories once more, and walked past. There would be time to deal with whatever that creature had been guarding later, if he survived. Ahead, four guardians in statuesque armour, trim, holding weapons that he knew to be capable of harming even his unnatural form, guarded a great door. This was what he had come for.

Unfortunately for the Dark Eldar servants of Khailis-Ra, with his will had returned Elakar's cunning - something generally lacking from his kind. Two egg shaped objects of ultramarine and silver landed among the guards, and they turned toward them, too late, as the gauss grenades began their operation. Surprise was an asset the necrons often squandered in favour of intimidation. It was one that Elakar had used wisely on this occasion, as the dissolving bodies of the guards showed. The necron lord waited for the effect to subside, vapour backwash in the corridor blistering his skin to no effect, it was after all, easily replaced.

The obsidian doors of the Nightbringer's chambers would not open from the outside, and so he placed the blades of his staff against the sliver of light that fell through it. The door shattered into a thousand sharpened slivers of stone, devastated by a lightning like pulse, and he strode into the domain of the Lord of Death.

The creature beyond was simply a shadow, the chamber it occupied indescribable in its filth and decay, but Elakar did not dwell on the remains of the creature's most recent victims. "How the mighty have fallen," he said, in necrontyr with an accent unspoken since the age of the dinosaurs, "I remember your 'glory' and now I see that the rumours of the depths to which you have descended are indeed true."

The creature looked at him with confusion, "The same could be said of you. Necron," the shadow said, gliding over the uneven floor.

The synthetic flesh that clad Elakar's face twisted into a smile, "By fools," he replied.

The shadow seized its opportunity and darted forward with frightful speed. “You are rather articulate,” it said, dozens of blows with the scythe it carried raining down on Elakar, “for one of your kind.”

“I am a necrontyr,” he said, the staff making a crackling sound like the blaze of a burning forest as it smashed into the death god’s weapon, “and I have come to kill you.”

“You can not defeat me,” the Yngir replied, “slave being.”

The Necron’s parries continued unabated. “Once that would have been true,” he said, blue skin, white robes and silver metal a whirl of motion under the overbearing shadow of the carrion lord of the Yngir. The conversation continued as if the fight was nothing. Unlike in ages past, the Nightbringer was now no more able than the machine being it fought. “However, I know that to sustain your form now, takes great effort after what the Deceiver did to you.”

A hiss. The Yngir was enraged at the very thought of its emasculation. It finally landed a clean blow, taking its opponent’s arm off. Elakar’s spinning blade stopped, held off balance by his remaining arm, and the shadow drew itself up in triumph, the pits of sulphur that passed for its eyes blazing intensely.

“So… An energy drain would be pretty awful for you these days,” he laughed. The billions of years long life of the Yngir ended with a single moment of understanding. It had inflicted endless terror, but only once had it truly felt that terror, as the staff’s blades punched into it, energy cells warping space as they imploded into a miniature black hole, the energy that was its sentience passing through the super conductive fractal edged blades, and into the power cells.

Then nothing.

The ancient consciousness that had ruled countless stars and slaughtered races purely for its own depraved amusement died in absolute terror, its understanding complete.

Even the powerful energy reserves of the Staff of light could not consume the reserves of the Nightbringer, and in a conflagration of light, the staff blew itself apart. Its shadow gone, the black onyx figure that remained of the Nightbringer’s necrodermis collapsed forward onto the Necron Lord, the last of the first necrontyr, victorious at last.

Days Later

The spire of the Imperial Palace on Duat was unoriginal enough to cause Elakar to drum his fingers on the sides of the elevator as it ascended the central spire. Technically, this elevator’s access was restricted, but as a necron, he had access to information that most couldn’t get hold of, including, for example, access codes to the palace’s security systems.

“Well, this is nice,” he said as the burnished steel and silver doors, engraved with the great seal of the necrontyr slid apart silently, revealing a wood panelled corridor, leading to two large oak doors, with the same symbol in an even more elaborate form rendered upon it.

He threw the doors open with one hand and strode into the office beyond. A wide panoramic window looking out over the coastline of the city north of the palace dominated one wall, and the ‘Emperor’ sat near to it, behind a desk under a small mountain of papers, talking to a necrontyr woman who Elakar actually considered rather beautiful. She looked at him in surprise and confusion, as he made his delivery.

Mephet’ran looked at the head of the Nightbringer with surprise, and no small amount of pleasure. Then he looked up, at what appeared to be a disguised necron, and, in one of the many mannerisms he used without thinking, raised an eyebrow, “Well,” he said, “this is a surprise.”

Elakar glared down at the dark haired elf form, and watched as he asked the necrontyr woman to leave. Were Elakar still an organic, he would probably be unable to control a deep trembling in his extremities. One of anger and resentment, terrible anger.

As Elash left, closing the doors behind her, Mephet’ran stood, and looked into Elakar’s eyes, “Are you alive?” he asked, leaning forward, looking up into the necrontyr’s eyes.

“I am,” Elakar replied, “As, alas, are you.”

“A great surprise, and a far from unwelcome one,” Mephet’ran said, ignoring the insult, “doubtless you will not believe anything I can say to you.”

“Doubtless,” Elakar said, “most definitely doubtless.”

“And with good cause,” the C’tan said, “with excellent cause,” he sighed, “I do not deserve or expect your trust.”

“That,” Elakar said, “is true.”

“I know it won’t make you feel any less betrayed, but for what it is worth, I am truly sorry for what I did to your people.”

Elakar stood watching the C’tan, practically dumbfounded, he gathered himself, “You think that matters?” he asked.

Mephet’ran seemed to deflate, millennia of age appearing in his manner and movement, “I wish it did,” he whispered, “I wish I could go back and change it all. Do it all over again.”

“But you can’t.” Elakar said.

“No,” the other replied, slowly walking from the desk, looking out of the window, “and I have considered, tried, to undo what I did to your people. I have never found a process that works perfectly. And even then, I fear what would happen if I did.”

He laughed, for the first time in an exceedingly long time, Elakar laughed. “You are afraid of recrimination? Blame?”

The ‘Star God’ looked haunted as he turned to look at the Necrontyr, gazing at him from eyes that seemed suddenly dull, “Yes,” he said.

“And of what we will do to you?” he demanded, stepping up to the Yngir.

“Yes. Of that as well,” said the Emperor, sighing.

“You are a coward,” Elakar said, suddenly unsurprised, “wanting to live without fear.”

“That comes easily,” he said, “But it is not just that. If it were, I would have killed myself long ago.”

“Then why didn’t you?” sneered Elakar, suddenly, leaning forward.

“I can’t forget what I have done,” Mephet’ran replied, “But I can at least try to counter it,” he said, gesturing out of the window.

Rage and indignity seemed to ebb from Elakar’s limbs, “so that’s what all this is about?”

“Yes.”

“And what of the necrontyr? The old ones?” he said, “do they – we – not get our role in this?”

Mephet’ran nodded sadly, “When I can guarantee a safe process for restoration of sentience and organic form I will do so,” he said, not seeing that as likely in the immediate future.

“Which part of that is the problem?” asked Elakar suddenly, casting an involuntary glance after the doors the necrontyr woman had left through.

The C’tan seemed to become fresh and young again, “The former part.”

“And the latter?”

“That works fine.”

Elakar twitched, “You are certain?”

“Are you volunteering?” asked the C’tan softly.

“I shouldn’t trust you, but I do. Yes.”

----

Elakar opened his eyes, blinking slightly. There were still some augmetics, almost necessary. It would be a tremendous shock to him to loose infrared sight, and other such features, so he found himself ensuring that such augmetics had been used in his new body. Even so, he hadn’t been quite ready for the shock of normal necrontyr vision.

He looked to the bottom of the bed, and could see that this elf form of the Deceiver’s was actually rather handsome. He looked beyond, and saw that the same applied to himself now. Sitting bolt upright, the former necron stretched muscles that had been technically dead until the morning, closing his hands and leaning his head back.

“Now,” he said, or at least tried to. Reaching for a glass of water conveniently placed on the bed’s sideboard, downing it slowly, his unused throat screaming protests as he did. Breathing deeply, Elakar looked at Mephet’ran again, getting out of the bed, trying to ignore the fact that he felt as if he had just sprained both ankles, “Now I take my leave.”

He’d almost got to the door when Mephet’ran replied. “You might want to get your clothes first,” he said, “I took the liberty of having them taken in.” Elakar’s hand clenched on the doorknob, and he ground his teeth slightly at the potential embarrassment.

Several minutes later, he found himself looking into the ‘Star God’s’ eyes once again, and before turning to leave, whispered, “I may find it in my heart, now that I have one, to forgive you some day. But that day is not today For now, I’ll simply try to forget…”

The Imperial Department of Immigration, Tephet-Sheta, Duat

Sever Tandor was quite a senior civil servant, in the grand scheme of things. But even so, he was not totally removed from the daily work of the Department. And so, it was with considerable surprise that he sat down and loaded the daily list of first stage applications. It was always interesting to read through them before breakfast, something he frequently neglected on his way to work.

“This can’t be right,” he muttered. Normally, there were a few thousand applications per day.

Today, it was actually lagging. He didn’t believe it, but his terminal was actually suffering from lag as it downloaded the day’s list. He tapped a button as it finally finished the list. A few more keystrokes turned the lists about and ordered them by nation-of-application.

“Holy…” he muttered…

Millions after millions of fresh applications had been filed from Bajon in the past twenty-four hours. It appeared that there was quite an exodus going on. There were, in total, four point seven billion Bajoni, and he had the feeling that this mass immigration was only going to grow in scope. There had recently been much news about the ceding of Bajon into Menelmacar, and the Royal Family of Bajon being given estates in Menelmacar-proper.

He reached over to his communications unit, he punched a quickdial number “I’m going to need…” he said, “some extra help in this department in the near future…”

He sighed, “Everlasting Realm indeed,” he said, “Oh well, the more the merrier.”

----

OOC: As one of my, and many other people’s allies has recently died out, and the player said the nation would cede into Menelmcar, until further notice, all C’tani national growth is Bajoni immigrants moving in. I imagine I might get up to 700 billion all told.

EDIT: The same is true, with Siri's OOC approval but with a higher number, maybe a billion, for Menelmacar.

Processor Five, (http://www.necrontyr.plus.com/images/processor.jpg) Garm

Simar McCarthy pulled on a heavy pair of gloves over his work uniform. Garm’s atmosphere was not the nicest place to be, though one could go outside without suffering skin damage, one could barely breathe, and temperatures varied wildly. The airlock door ground slowly open, and he strapped a heavy backpack on. Dust in the whirlwinds of the privately-funded atmosphere-processing centre howled viciously as he stepped outside onto the vertigo inducing walkway.

Securing his belt to the rail beside him, he started off in the howling grit-storm. Visibility in the processor’s shadowy pit was low, but the hundreds of meter wide pipes the walkway nestled to were easily visible. Even looking at them gave one a giddy sense of scale.

One of several atmosphere processors that had been constructed on Garm, Processor Five pulled in vast quantities of air through four massive compressor fans, and turned a portion of the carbon dioxide that had been brought into the atmosphere from rock-conversion into oxygen, and some of that into water, using the hydrogen released by massive terraforming-industrial formers spread across the planet. It was a massive endeavour, and processor five was a key component of it.

Once the air was pulled in through the compressors, it was circulated through mile after mile of tubing until it reached the massive trunk cables he found himself next to, where the carbon was extracted from the air using vast amounts of processing sponges, containing machines that operated on the principle of photosynthesis, but using power from the processor’s power node.

Simar’s unglamorous job was to locate and repair the occasional fracture or crack in one of these translucent green tubes. Someone had suggested they design a drone for that job, but as the pipes were only damaged once or twice a day, it turned out that simply employing Simar was more economical.

He looked up at the distant lights of the monitoring suite kilometres above him, and found himself smiling. It was an interesting enough and well-paid job, for all its lack of glamour, after all.

“Ah,” he said, finding the problem, a small crater in the tube’s side that released the pressure inside in a hissing column of gas, “there you are.” Crouching, he took the backpack off, and began work, making sure that by the time there would be six billion C’tani citizens, there’d be an entirely new world waiting for the overflow.

The lights of the metropolis of Tephet-Sheta easily banished the darkness of night from the window with contempt. As often was his habit the Elenaran gazed out across the city from the panoramic window of the pressroom he sometimes used. He had of course seen greater, more famous and even more beautiful cities, but none of them held quite the same place in his heart as this one.

“Something,” he said as he sensed the approach of the other remaining one of his kind, “disturbs you.”

Asirnoth, the other, showed no outward sign of such, it was not natural to their kind, and his ‘brother’ had no need of vision to know his feelings. “Much,” he replied softly, walking up to the window.

Mephet’ran turned, his magnificently rich voice even against his will conveying surprise, “So, you finally feel as I do?”

“How did we manage it all?” Asirnoth asked, not seeing the need to answer the question directly.

“Ah,” the ‘Deceiver’ replied, “The questions I had. I can only imagine that it was what could be called being intoxicated by the richness of this scale. Unfortunately, we didn’t pause to learn about it properly. I certainly felt others worth nothing beyond myself with my power, immortality and abilities. What is one life, one world, when you can conceive the true vastness of the universe?”

“I understand that,” Asirnoth added, the remorse a human would express left out of his voice.

“And others fell over themselves in praising us for it. It was all too easy. We were, I suppose, like human children, cruel because of ignorance. We have no reason to develop empathy naturally.”

“Excuses?” asked the other.

“Explanations. Nothing can excuse our crimes.”

“No, nothing. I think of them and wonder why you continue to exist.”

“In all honesty, we shouldn’t. I did consider destroying myself,” Mephet’ran confessed, “but that would leave you in control of what was once mine. At first I decided to wait for you and the death-bringer to come around to my way of thinking.

“Then I decided that destroying myself would solve nothing, a simple escape from guilt is not repayment. Nor is it redemption.”

“Redeption?”

“For all our sins, we are immortal. Five million years of evil cannot yet be undone, but they may be balanced by fifty million years of good.”

“I see…” the ‘Void-Dragon’ replied.

“What grieves me the most is that our servants, blameless for all their millennia of loyalty, must continue to remain slaves of their own inventions.”

Asirnoth, had he been human, would have started, “That is not entirely accurate.”

“It’s not? Wait… what part?”


The workshop Asirnoth had set up in the depths of the rock of Venus was beyond compare as a working area for all kinds of computational and physical experimentation. Animated now, the pair of C’tan spoke not in the language of words but of thought.

“Sure, it looks like an unsolveable problem, but it isn’t. There’s a reverse of the process but it’s not stored in anything but me. We just need to counteract the cognitive limitation algorithms.”

“Easier said than done,” Mephet’ran replied, “I’ve been trying, remember.”

“Yes, well, you’re not the expert,” Asirnoth responded surprisingly playfully, “I designed this stuff, remember.”

To any sane definition, what followed was unfathomably complex. In twenty first century computing parlance, it required a full understanding of the compiled language of a necrontyr mind, and how it was affected by behaviour limiting ‘software.’ Needless to say, this feat would be exceptional for an organic being, but it didn’t take long, mere seconds, for both C’tan to comprehend. Much like computers and artificial intelligences, the C’tan could speed up or slow down their thought processes as they desired. For such work they could often rival the reaction and thinking times of machines.

“Has it occurred to you,” Asirnoth sent, “that even though we can get this working, we have a slight problem with regards to what we’ll say?”

“We’ll have to block some memories for their sanity, and we’ll probably have to explain what’s happened truthfully.”

“Agreed.”

“Also, I hate to point it out, but the forms of necrons aren’t likely to be accepted.”

“I recall a good portion of the necrontyr being aware of them beforehand.”

“Yes, but still, being prepared to undergo it to kill the enemy, and truly living in it are different stories.

“I suppose you’ve got a point, what about the infiltrators we made?”

“Right, what I was thinking. Except we should probably work on offering repatriation to organic form too, some percentage won’t like the idea of staying as necrons if they know that modern necrontyr are immortal too.”

“We still have the old genetic records, don’t we?”

“I think we have them on Naogeddon somewhere.”

“Right, so we use null-thought cloning if they want it, and infiltrator style models, cut down a little for practicality, if they don’t. What about lifestyle… Without consciousness you can stack them like cordwood, but it’s hardly fun.”

“I’ve already solved that, haven’t you wondered where all that ‘military pay’ money went?”

“Eighty percent of six point six four trillion for two decades, so, you’ve got one thirty two trillion stashed somewhere? Let’s see, how many minds do we have currently active… eight hundred forty two thousand – One hundred fifty seven million credits per person… Is that a lot?””

Mephet’ran blinked, having forgotten that the other C’tan’s interest in economics was negligible, “Even here, the average person earns about twenty thousand credits per year.”

“So it’s a lot.”

“Probably not as much as they deserve, but it’s certainly enough to manage a damned rich life.”

“Right. So, if we’ve got that done, what are we going to do for ground troops?”

“Well,” Mephet’ran sent, “if we step back and think about it, ninety percent of the necrontyr were eager for the transformation in order to fight the old ones. I think a good portion of them, maybe forty percent, would stay in the ‘military’ with free will. As it is, we don’t have enough active minds to run all our units anyway, and it’s unlikely they’ll ever all be in combat at the same time…”

“Well,” Asirnoth sent, “you know their minds best. If you think it’ll work out that way, let’s get to it…”

The first thing I felt was an intense pressure between my ears, a headache from the depths of the darkness. Imagine if you have a large mammal living inside your skull, which someone has recently fed a lit firecracker to… You’re almost there. Opening my eyes, which for the moment seemed normal, I could perceive a ceiling of interwoven sculpted wooden branches, how I knew what those were I didn’t consider at the time, which false-natural light flickering through them. Jarring with this a little was the way high technology devices melded into the ornate walls.

I raised a hand to look at it. I could be sure I never manicured my nails that well before. However, it suggested that it hadn’t worked, driving a nail of disappointment through my heart. Turning it over to examine the back I noticed with quite a bit of surprise that the path of black corruption that had been nagging me to be removed and replaced – for all our problems, we necrontyr had some wonderful medicines -was gone.

Well, that had been a benefit at least. I slowly pushed myself up straight. It was rather a surprise to be looking at two of the errant star-gods themselves, sitting, both ‘clad’ in familiarly statuesque necrontyr forms. “Hello,” Mephet’ran said, smiling a little.

The following explanation was to be succinct, mind blowing and when I already had an ear-splitting headache – one that Asirnoth identified as ‘the self getting used to the mind’ and claimed would subside shortly – this wasn’t particularly pleasant. Still, it was at least gratifying to know that the self-styled Old Ones were either extinct or shattered beyond hope of ever becoming a threat to anyone ever again.

Of course, the knowledge of what had happened since, which I found that I knew, was rather more distressing. Sixty five million years is a long time, and much can change in all that time. However, the major cause for grief you might anticipate, the loss of family and friends, was not a cause for concern.

They too, after all, were now as immortal and eternal as me. I would see them again in time as this reawakening progressed.

I knew much, much more than I had ever known before. As an experiment, I decided to see if the supposedly superior thinking abilities existed. It was quite easy to generate a proof of several complex problems, so I assumed that it had worked quite well. I could recall a lot of other knowledge I had never learnt at will too. Biology of thousands, tens of thousands of species, cultures and languages I had never experienced.

Slightly overwhelmed, I chose not to bother choosing if I wanted to become a necrontyr again. It was interesting to wander this Fëanor palace (why it had been chosen I couldn’t guess) and listen to and comprehend conversations in languages I’d never heard before.

I recalled information about myself at this time. I was a ‘Necron Lord’ known as the Overseer, one of the most known of my kind, apparently. It was comforting to know that at least, in this setup, regardless of the decision I made, I’d be particularly rich - understanding of the economic climate, again, was easily accessible.

Still, there was much information to absorb, and I found myself wandering the corridors. If I remained as a necron I would be expected to manage part of the armies of the necrontyr. This was a dizzying prospect, in its way, it came with great respect and many other advantages.

The ‘palace’ itself was a little alien in its design. I actually found myself paying far more attention to the environment than to where I was going, which of course, resulted in a collision with one of the red-blooded residents. She was a tall and attractive woman, even if she was an ‘alien’ and I soon found myself exchanging apologies with her.

Much later, she told me with some surprise that she’d once felt a strange premonition when watching my alter-form at work. Idhrindiel, her name, Idhrindiel nos Fithnurin, later proved to be a magnificent guide around the city…

- The journal of Arnran Selvaran

Idhrindiel idly brushed some of her hair, an auburn cut to the regulation, which was to say short, length away from her eye as she lounged against Arnran in a wide couch. The great room of his recently-constructed house in Menelmacar was currently occupied by the pair of them, and several servants.

These servants were actually humans, part of a large non-citizen underclass in Menelmacar. It wasn’t a particularly disadvantaged underclass, to be fair. These particular servants were, in actuality, from the so-called Divine Imperium of Roania. Though their pay was by Menelmacari standards, poor, in their home country they could expect to have, after the costs of bed and board, around twenty Menelmacari credits per year. A thousand credits per year was a considerable step up. For that matter, Roanians were highly popular in such jobs due to their willingness to tolerate outrageously unfair treatment from their employers, because, when they were raised from birth in mortal terror of being shot for bowing insufficiently deeply to a passing aristocrat, the minor possibility of abuse from the usually-kind elves was simply not considered worth objecting to.

Idhrindiel snapped her fingers at one of the maids, and dispatched her to fetch a drink, then returned her attention to the work both she and her lover were busy with. The pair of them had been working for the last few weeks on securing additional investment for the development of a business proposal they’d formulated, using the necron phasing technology to provide rapid courier and commercial delivery services.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been put in charge of redefining the role of vehicles in the necron forces,” he switched the holographic display they had been watching to display a squat green object capped with a glowing green gem. It looked like a monolith that had been trodden on, because it lacked the portal generator, it required vastly less internal space.

Idhrindiel nodded, “Nice,” she said, “You know what I’m thinking?”

He grinned, “That we should aim to be contractors for adding phasing capacity to the new monoliths?” The maid, very lightly dressed in black cotton and white silk, exposing much of her legs and her midriff, as well as stiletto heels, returned. This outfit was of course, alluring, but it wasn’t solely designed with that in mind. The heels were something of a necessity to bring a human woman near to eye level with her Quendi mistress, and the minimalist outfit was dictated in part by the warmth that Arnran preferred, though he was a necron, and thus comfortable at almost any organically inhabitable temperature he preferred warmth, as he had when he was a necrontyr.

Even Idhrindiel wore a light outfit of black silk that exposed her abdomen, occasionally adorned with green leaves on its light yet tight fitting sleeves and collar, and jagged white lightning, in imitation of the Menelmacari Imperial Defence Force’s colours used on parade beautified her breasts and waist. She reached up and took the fluted crystal glass of a transparent drink, non-alcoholic as it was quite early in the day, and returned her attention to the discussion.

She smiled at the perfectly-organic looking necron, “Superb idea, and we should try and persuade the MIDF to adopt phasing in some of its tanks too…”

She carefully swapped hands as another servant carefully tended a slight sprain in her wrists from her physical training earlier during the day, and the pair of them began working on ideas for selling the devices to their respective militaries…

“Oscar Charlie seven two, eight thirty nine ayy-emm,” Tirad Javad sighed a little, brushing the sleep from his eyes as he looked through a pair of binoculars, “attempting to get my lousy first shift partner to get himself out of bed,” he clicked the transcription device off, and shouted, stamping on the metal hatch that lead, on a ladder to the lower section of the outpost.

“Get up you lazy, bone idle reject!” he yelled, before turning back to the narrow slit of the bunker’s window. It had, as ever, been an interesting night. This particular part of the outback of Duat was essentially wild, and provided all kinds of opportunities to study wildlife. He raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes again, and grumbled a bit. Sometimes, though, the dawn chorus of a thousand wild birds was no match for being able to see them. Having had no luck, he looked down from the slit, and examined the table behind him – a sculpted relief map of the general area, which changed colour to indicate the general activity of the wildlife – and citizens, for that matter – in the area.

Sometimes it was amazing, he reflected bitterly, letting the binoculars dangle from the collar of his heavy coat, that despite all the technological resources available, the C’tani Environmental and Climatological Authority found no room in its barely-existent budget for heating. Still, despite the low pay and typically poor conditions, he didn’t think for a moment of leaving. Tirad was one of a rare breed of people who never considered monetary advancement to be a match for sheer job satisfaction.

Everything ticking over nicely, he thought to himself, examining the table, crest of the mountainous rise of their area at one side, coastline at the other. Taking a marker, he drew a circle around the bit of dense forest developing nearby, muscling out the intended grasslands. A little change might be best administered to the soil to discourage that. Terraformed though Duat and its sister world were, their environments did require a little maintenance now and then to keep them as intended…

The Fortress-City of Tleixolotl, Seventy-Five million years ago.

Mephet’ran stood on the rocky spur that overlooked the city, its high, rune encrusted mystical walls rising from the plain that had been artificially levelled around it in all directions, with no cover. An aeonic orb hammered bolts of energy at one point in the distance, where the runes on the wall flared and the shimmering dome of a warp-spawned blasphemy of a shield bubble shuddered and flexed under each blow from the necron artefact. Thousands of columns of rainbow incandescence retaliated from weapons emplacements on the walls. The ground was broken by deep cracks and gashes that bubbled with lava from the planet’s mantle, as the terrible momentums unleashed in the battle were released into the ground. Eratan, another of the C’tan, stood beside the Jackal God – though it would be millions of years before he acquired that name. The old ones had yet to implant their perverse seed and curse in the Eldar and their generation of slave-races.

Eratan was more powerful than the Jackal God, of course, but it had not yet been conceived that one C’tan should kill another. What possible reason could there be for such a thing? Eratan was as close as the Jackal God had to a friend, in truth, another of its kind that it undertook schemes with. They watched the lithe figures of necrons jumping across rips in the stony ground. These necrons were not like those of later ages – they were built for war, not for harvest.

Eratan reached out and tore at the wall, not with the hands of his avatar, which merely twitched in parody, but with his will and with forces that defied explanation. Great claw marks tore through the wall’s runes and potent magics, the very stones upon which they were written exploding from within and erasing them. The orbs fired once more, three bolts that would – and did – blind mortal organic beings smashing into the wall and sending it high into the air, vaporising rock and shivering spells to nothing but empty mysticism they should have been, casting the energies of the immaterial realm back where they belonged, at the behest of higher science.

The great wall of Tleixolotl was breached, but it still had potent defences. Within dwelt millions of mortal servants of the Old Ones, beings that they had taken from a million worlds and changed to fit a niche within their own society. Pre-eminent amongst these were the Slaan, a race they had changed with infernal power to become both like them, their closest servants. Yet there were others, great dragons, titans – not the mechanical effigies of later ages, but true giants girded in sorcery and mystic protection – and armies of lizard-like creatures that lived, now, only to worship the Old Ones.

It was this religiosity that had, in truth, earned much of the enmity of the necrontyr; a certain disgust of the Old Ones treatment of ‘lesser races’ which, though those races which had been ‘nurtured’ from their home worlds to become nothing more than slaves, forever trapped in whatever role the Old Ones decided ‘in their wisdom’ should be theirs forever.

It was an irony, of course, that the Necrontyr had fallen into worship of the C’tan, in the end their thirst for victory had eclipsed their true, original reasons for making war on the Old Ones; not just the destruction of Necrontyr life, in itself a grave offence that demanded its pound of flesh, but the callous, self-centred view of the foe that all life should live to serve them, even the Necrontyr, they felt, and the Necrontyr feared, should be changed and twisted to harbour the seed of the warp, to serve the Old Ones masterpiece society in some way. The Old Ones were the enemies of free will and liberty.

So too the C’tan were, now. So too had the Necrontyr become. Now, the Necrontyr, after so long thirsting for victory, seemed to have given everything they had been away to become the antithesis of the Old Ones. Where the Old Ones drew on the warp, the Necrons drew on other understanding, the clear and clean comprehension of scientific method, against the philosophy-mysticism that powered the works of the Old Ones.

The empire of the Old Ones was being overrun, world-by-world, city-by-city, they were falling to the necrons and their new masters. Nothing could stand against the might of the C’tan, nor the understanding of the Necrons. No spell was potent enough, no place of power a sufficient redoubt to hold back the advance of the Necrons.

The first necrons advanced into the city, and they met stiff resistance. In Tleixolotl dwelt billions ready to take up arms for their deities, and a ‘mere’ million necrons assaulted them. But it was enough, for even in the first days of the war, when the Old Ones had dominated the Necrontyr through use of their warp portals and superior resources, the science of the Necrontyr had made them a match for many times their number. Now, as necrons, they were far in a way beyond such reproach. Even looking at them caused many of the lesser slaves of the Old Ones to have fits and seizures as their minds tried and failed to process the gilded sculpting of the incomprehensible geometries that covered the necrons’ bodies. Others fled in irrational fear caused by the higher technologies that made each necron swath itself in the manifested fears of the viewer. Still more fell before the lightning that crackled and shimmered around the necrons, lashing out at any unfortunate enough to be caught by them.

The killing was brutal. Aeonic orbs, great spheres of Q-Star material mounted and controlled by strong dimensional forces that defied the explanation of lesser science, sent bolts of grey matter at the titans, where it impacted, slashing through the multi-coloured armour of the giants, great gouts of steam burst forth as huge portions of titan’s bodies were turned to vapour. Dragons sent streams of pure unreality into the ranks of the necrons, their powerful and ordered minds bringing forth the energies of the warp and destroying dozens of necron bodies with every blast from their mouths, but they too were fighting a losing battle, sallying forth from their great mountain-sized ziggurat roosts to destroy invaders. But even the mighty dragons of the Ur-folk were slain as the concentrated fire of obelisks and monoliths – themselves covered in the same seizure inducing patterns that adorned their necrons, and themselves more powerful than those of later ages – lashed at them, flaying scales and muscles from avian bones. Great magic was unleashed by the bloody deaths of thousands of flower-sacrifices on the steps of the temples of the Old Ones, but countered, blow for blow, by the might of the C’tan.

Brave Slaan Priests came forth from the temples at the cities heart, and fought the necrons, one against another, for hours on end, mighty sorceries and scientific horrors being unleashed at one another, lightning in blue green and gold sloughing off shields that surrounded each warrior. The power of the Mage-Priests of that age was awesome to behold, the equal of a necron soldier, but the necrons in the end had one advantage. They were relentless and remorseless. To the last the Mage-Priests and their masters fought on levitating palanquins of gold and jade, but they were each laid low in turn as their sorceries failed, and the infinite repeatability of science triumphed.

Elemental creatures of chaos were drawn from the warp and harnessed in the fighting, but even they could not turn the tide, for where they slew the necrons, they rose rejuvenated by the power of the sciences that powered them.

In the end, the city’s fate was sealed. The might of the necrons and their gods destroyed its walls and toppled its towers. The C’tan masters of the assault consumed its ruling council, and their effort to implode the city into the warp thwarted by the machinations of the Jackal God, aided by a company of traitors in the midst of the city. He kept his word with the betrayers of Tleixolotl, and did not kill them, nor order them slain, instead simply handing them over to Eratan, who consumed them with mocking laughter at their despair. It was a tragedy in an age of tragedies, and the necrons looted the great philosophical and metaphysical libraries of Tleixolotl, famed throughout the galactic empire of the old ones as storing great wealth of lore and wisdom.

It was from this knowledge that the C’tan forged many great artifices of their own power, extending their dominion over the warp and learning the secrets of its destruction that would one day be harnessed to create armies of humans whose very existence countered the blasphemy of warp-sorcery and creatures.

The populace of Tleixolotl, those that had been captured, had been fed into the living temples the Eldar so poetically called ‘soulforges’ and consumed, then the city, and indeed, the planet it rested upon, symbolically crushed, until the planet was half of its original diameter, and cast into its sun, sending the twenty planets of the system, exactingly arranged into a by the Old Ones, harnessing potent sorceries, to provide habitats for future generations of the slave-creatures they cared for, off into descending orbits or into the cold loneliness of space.

Eratan, meanwhile, was one of the few of Mephet’ran’s brothers he never thought to destroy. Loyalty was rare amongst their kind, but Eratan was one of those who worked with him in full trust, the steward of Mepeht’ran’s vast realm and ally of the Deceiver. Eventually he was consumed by the ‘Outsider’ under the influence of the warp-spawned offence known to the Eldar as Cegorach. Mephet’ran of course, had never felt anything resembling human grief over the matter it had merely been… inconvenient.

“And so, the Terascope will provide a perfect way of studying the past, for any number of reasons, including study of past battles, apprehension of criminals, direct observation of a few environmental mysteries, study of historical population migration trends,” the Elenaran and several companions, one, the avatar of a recently ‘rescued’ AI named Ayu – whose new ‘body’ a future exploration ship, was undergoing the first phase of its unusual construction – hanging onto his arm while others, such as Luinthelë nos Ancalimë and assorted minor government underlings followed.

The hall of the terascope was really a maintenance mechanism, consisting of an area just wide enough to accommodate a modest tram-like affair on tracks, running all the way around the six hundred and twenty eight kilometre inner circumference of the Terascope. The device took the form of a ring, fifty meters across, two hundred kilometres wide, and twenty kilometres high. Its inside accommodated the low corridor, the inside wall of which was made with a transparent metal, providing for a superb view of the inside of the ring, even though its far side was barely visible to Luinthelë.

Above and below the corridor were several thousand gravitic generators, which produced the central lens effect of the terascope, and created a perfect vacuum bubble hundreds of kilometres across around it. One could see black spaces in the sky were the Terascope’s light-absorbing mirror-fields were adjusted to absorb as much light as possible.

They were among the finest ever built, far beyond even the quality used to protect warships. These were a baffling array of perfect mirrors that seemed either to show reflected parts of the star-field or simply appear as great black areas on the starfield.

“I’m curious,” Luinthelë asked, “how do you gather enough light and radiations to make it worth your time?”

“Well, the equipment itself is quite astoundingly sensitive…”

“Ah yes, but what about diffraction and shadows?”

“Well,” the guide, some doctor of astrophysics whose name she hadn’t caught, “part of the diffraction compensation is done by photon ether-skein alignment…” he went off into a string of technobabble that she couldn’t understand half of.

“So, basically, it’s magic.”

“Well, there are only some overtly magical components in the entire apparatus, but they are key workarounds for some problems incurred by the interstellar medium and internal resolution. There are also changes to local space made by the FTL drives when we observe…”

“And shadows?”

“Well, if there’s a problem with something being in the way – a large molecule or even a macro-scale object, we can jump a few light minutes out of the way and try again. The Terascope isn’t flawless by a long way…”

“Ah, of course,” she said, feeling abashed as the party turned off into one of the alcoves which led to an observer terminal.

“Of course, this terascope is merely the first full scale prototype. We’re already planning a bigger, better one…”

Mephet’ran sighed, “There goes another slice of next year’s budget then…”

“Well, we wouldn’t presume to dictate what the government should spend the populace’s money, but we’re confident that this terascope will more than justify building another.”

The observation room was surprisingly large, with room for about twenty people in comfort, built into one of the bulges on the outside of the terascope, one of many built around one of the terascope’s thirty FTL generators.

The doctor sat down, and tossed a small, transparent flask of ashes to the Elenaran, “Hold that please,” he said, and carefully tapped at a few glowing keyboards, resulting in a large circular disk set up on the wall producing a hologram with a little depth to it. It showed a red blur, “Now,” he said, “let’s see if we can’t bring the test card into focus,” he added, and turned a set of knobs carefully, bringing the card into resolution, The white letters on it read ‘you’re holding me’

A spray of oxygen was directed onto the card, and it caught fire from something – probably a laser – directed at it from behind. The card burnt in the oxygen stream as though it had been doused with alcohol, and soon there were only black ashes on the black background of space to be seen.

The Elenaran held up the flask, and the demonstration of past viewing got a polite round of applause. As this demonstration went on, the terascope jumping a few light years and showing the various guests leaving their homes – a discomfiture to some, and a proposition, one the Elenaran found that he approved of, was soon put forwards that it be made a misdemeanour to use the terascope to spy on Citizens, or allied Citizens, without observing the same regulatory procedures being employed by the government when using other forms of surveillance equipment.

He quietly pulled Luinthelë aside, and began discussing the matter of his planned Peregrination…

The Old Ones were gone, driven out into what refuges they had in the hinterlands of the universe, the Milky Way galaxy and its neighbours had been taken by the star gods and their armies. It was an age of C’tan dominance. A dark age ruled by sun-gods. The games and sports that were played in that time decided the fate of trillions, vast and expansive games similar to the stunningly prevalent chess-type games were set up with living pieces on checked boards that covered entire planets, as an example of the more mundane foolishness involved in that time.

Of around a thousand C’tan, there were a few truly exceptional specimens. One such C’tan was Asine’rin, meaning ‘Greatly Beloved Lady.’ She was exceptional in that she had never taken much interest in the necrontyr. Instead she had been far more interested in less intelligent forms of life that the galaxy had to offer. In powers and abilities she was closest to Mephet’ran of the other C’tan, though slightly greater.

While she’d shared the love of worship and obedience that the other C’tan had, Asine’rin had been mostly concerned with nurturing her own creatures on faraway worlds, only taking part in the war against the Old Ones when aroused to wrath by their previous tampering in ecospheres she would have preferred to see in a pristine condition, or when under duress from her own kind.

Of course, in the end, she like most of her kind was consumed by others. In her case, however, her retiring nature made her last, out of the way of her kindred C’tan, until the time when the Old Ones struck back. She was one of those who was consumed later by the ‘Outsider’ in his ‘madness.’


Seventy million light years from the Milky Way, and just as far away from the past, Mephet’ran sank a little further into the comfortable skin of space-time, an object at rest, and began listening once more to ancient radio transmissions, waiting to pick up another name he remembered…


Kenan. A surprisingly human sounding name, simply meaning sphere, but denoting the definitive article, it was one of the few C’tan Mepeht’ran had personally consumed. Kenan had been perhaps the least human of the Star Gods, a creature that habitually appeared as a miniature sun, about a meter across, it had never been too popular with anyone, nor was it particularly talented.

It was ‘purer’ than the others, one might say, self-interested, certainly, but not interested in the same kind of thing. Kenan had been one of the C’tan most able to conceive of the abstract things that powered technology, though it was a distant second to Asirnoth in that regard.

The orb had never been known to take any interest in mortal affairs, instead seeming closer to a one-task Artificial Intellect like a monolith teleport unit. A strange creature, Kenan had proven.


Mephet’ran had travelled to many strange and exotic places since leaving the terascope. He had visited desolate worlds with inhabitants of an age almost comparable to his own where the glittering philosophies of the past lay open for perusal yet were ignored by the inhabitants, and young worlds where life would not develop for a thousand years, but finally he had come here, to listen to and watch the past.

It was depressing thinking of all those he’d known and knew no more.

The truth of the matter is, you can return them to Reality if you want. You merely don’t know it.

The ‘voice’ was within him of course, but he had not commanded it. He wondered if he was reaching the path of insanity that the Outsider had trodden, at last.

Who am I? It answered his thoughts, I won’t say. Perhaps I’m The One, perhaps I’m the collective voice of those minds you’ve ingested, perhaps I’m another C’tan beyond you In power, perhaps you’ve acquired a warp-soul, and I’m chaos, or perhaps I’m a part of yourself – a subconscious. Take your pick

A wise choice; you could have done worse there.

It’s quite simple, when you think about it, anyway, you’re A C’tan, you have the memories of the deaths you’ve inflicted, and by extension, the mind-states of those you’ve killed.

I know you planned to ‘bring them back’ when you have the resources to support them… But you can do better than that. You’ve yet to think about it. What’s Reality but a tale? Free will is, in its way, an illusion; for all things are fixed from the ‘outside’ of time, even in a multiple realities model. It’s a precious illusion that gives hope to every living thing that can appreciate it, but it is still not truly divinable.

Yes. In the same way, even the briefest life of a protein creature in a primordial world is eternal, for it is part of time, it has a life-line that exists as part of Reality.

No.

Yes, now you’re getting it, silly star-god. Oh, don’t react like that, it’s merely little me, after all. Ah, you don’t have the energy… You’ve not quite thought it through yet… Let me show you.

The ‘voice’ sent information straight to the mind of its captive audience, and seemed pleased by the results.

Good. Energy in one universe is not the same as it is in another. What stops one joule being ten in another? Conservation is a fact, the fact, yes, but the laws around it can be altered. If you’re going to go for the true divinity, then you’d best think about altering them just like you do to outrun light and causality – of course I know about that trick, don’t look so surprised, I know all that you do, remember.

Precisely, and what’s more, you’ll be able to see a glimpse of your own future because you’re outside that timeline. A bit worrying, but if you’re going to do it, you may as well do it right.

And so the ‘voice’ guided the Star-God through things that he thought he already knew. The art of taking his own memories, perfect captures of the minds of those he’d killed, and recreating them, not in reality, where they could come to harm, but elsewhere. A sub-reality no less grand in scope than the ‘original’ fractal-reality-dumping-ground he rested in.

In a single moment of apotheosis, Mephet’ran put his entire mind and self into the creation of his own ‘heaven.’ And died.

There were others there that he’d not destroyed himself. He realised – that is to say the knowledge was a part of him - that they were all those killed by necron gauss weapons. From Lanthrilaq the Swift to thousands upon thousands of Imperial Guardsmen, to Osages and Old Ones and things he would not remember in the future.

All knowledge was a part of him. Or at least, all the knowledge of his side-universe his mind was its memory-field, his limbs its unfathomable guardians, and. For he was it, broken up and dispersed, it was him. Over billions of years it grew, before contracting once more.

Its creator was reborn in the time and place of his death when that side-track ended itself once more. For it was him, in diffuse form, and condensed once more. He knew the future, his own future, for as the side-universe that he was would exist with its own time it was reachable from any time. But the burden of such knowledge was truly awesome.

The ‘Voice’ had been correct, of course, free will was a precious illusion, and the deity that he had been had seen his own future entirely. He had also seen that he would destroy that knowledge, and so he purged the knowledge, leaving only glimpses and intuitions of things to come.

This done, the entity that had once been called the messenger once more had a present, and a blissful ignorance, for the most part, of things to come.

He was not what he once was, either. Entropy was something even he could not sidestep entirely, and he was deteriorated greatly, for though no time had passed relative to his associates friends and lovers, and even his higher self, billions of years had passed for his body. A tiny nucleus of his knowledge forced this damaged, aged other C’tan away from it in an explosive pulse of energy that would eclipse, if only momentarily, the greatest supernova.

It was new, and at a speed its predecessor would have considered a dawdle, the new C’tan that had once been Mephet’ran headed for a lifeless dwarf galaxy to feed and rebuild, calling out through millions of light years to the ship of the nightbringer. It would need to gain strength quickly for its future to happen as it was destined to…


As the young creature that was yet older than time itself fed, it mused on its identity.

It had been Mephet’ran. But Mephet’ran had been something other than it. An evil deceiver, and then a repentant sinner. But it was now something else, its knowledge enhanced in ways it couldn’t recall, it was able to feel the existence of all life – according to its own definition, of course – as a continuous pulse at the edge of his consciousness.


Weeks passed as it mulled on its identity. Its sheer newness.

It was a new experience to the ageless entity. Youth.

It was young.

It thought of an English word; ‘Splendid’ that summed up so much of that, but decided it was a word it would use less frequently now. ‘Superb’ seemed more appropriate.


It was different from its predecessor. That much it decided. Though it was Mephet’ran, it was fundamentally new and different to that C’tan. Therefore a new name was needed, for names have an iconic power.

It contemplated thousands, millions, even, in the necrontyr tongue, and eventually settled on Ranisath. It would have gone with Rath, which meant the same much abbreviated in the modern grammar, but it didn’t particularly desire to share its name with the other ruler called Rath in the known universe.

So, Ranisath he was. Lord of Life.

It wasn’t a humble name, but it was quite accurate for what the Eldar thought of him; a soulless entity that yet had life. He would embrace that title, for the irony of it pleased him. And his new self had strange… attachments he could not yet understand fully but ones which seemed appropriate.

Ranisath Cuilahîr Cuilévaher (for he did like various languages) left after weeks of feeding; he’d been careful to leave his affairs in order that would keep for a year if necessary, so it wasn’t that much, and proceeded to The Sphere. The place where the records of quadrillions of records of those who had perished under necron gauss flayers were preserved: He neared death a second time as he processed the data, taking a simultaneous yet later part in the creation of his ‘paradise’ – where those who had perished by his doing had the chance to live free of the interference of Star Gods, for though he had personally killed several, they were not there. They were yet as dead as they ever had been.

A mere fraction of the work he had yet to do, but a brief return to his ‘home’ would be in order, Ranisath felt, before he went to his next destination. The ancient Necrontyr fastness of Seneschal.

The ship was, to Luinthelë’s not inconsiderable knowledge, the largest ship at sea in existence. Of course, it wasn’t actually a wet ship, but it was patterned after one. Eight point five kilometres in length, and three wide, Élmbar had the armament of a ‘Scythe’ or ‘Sickle’ class cruiser, but it was much longer, using that space for a wide number of other uses.

The elf wandered past the tip of the vessel’s massive prow, on which was a complex lattice of stasis and compressor fields, holding a wreath of evergreen leaves. On either side of the prow were massive intakes large enough to swallow a destroyer, in the fashion of anchor-holes on a sea ship.

Élmbar, despite having the firepower of one, was more than just another warship. It was the logical extension of the shift in principles that had been demonstrated so successfully in recent years by the illustrious vessel Erisavenus, which had famously preformed several high profile missions of mercy and meddling with the aide of a cadre of recruits to its cause.

Erisavenus had in fact, given Luinthelë the idea behind the Élmbar, a vessel to serve as a full-time headquarters for the organisation it had informally set up. The necron ship had trawled through historical records for something appropriate, and found something associated with one of Luinthelë’s distant ancestors, Tar-Aldarion of Númenórë, who had established what was then called the Guild of Venturers.

It didn’t hurt to have something of a familial backing when intending to stimulate the eleemosynary of the rich, and so the Erisavenus had suggested that the organisation that was to be based on such a ship be called the Venturers, and the ship named after their ancient floating headquarters – though with its name changed from sea-home to star-home.

She had been quite delighted to patronise the vessel, and lean on her rivals to donate in a similar manner – when launched, Élmbar would never require further support from an external source, which pleased its munificent backers greatly, as it would never, in theory, trouble them for money again.

Élmbar was a complete slice of the Necrontyr Empire. Its knowledge was sufficient to do anything – given time – that the Necrontyr could do as a civilisation. It could even reproduce itself, or other similar sized ships, though the largest vessel it could manufacture internally was a kilometre long Valarauka Battleship. It was a flying hospital ship, evacuatation vessel, training centre and starcraft-carrier capable of holding dozens of nightingale frigates.

Luinthelë strode through the boarding-lock and into the ship’s forwards section, a mass of tangled fabricators sheathed in one hundred and thirty of armour – the journey through the boarding portal was, in itself, quite a walk.

Through it, the Erisavenus’ avatar, presently in the form of a 1:100,000 model itself, talked to her.

“I think,” the tiny crescent shaped starship was saying, “that we should see about drawing up some rules of activity. This little operation just jumped up a few orders of magnitude in prestige and ability to do damage.

“I agree,” the eight centimeter long ship-model representing the Élmbar itself said. The Élmbar’s mind had been designed to have a love of organising things – for it was after all to be the headquarters and effective chief (even though Luinthelë herself officially held the post of Great-Captain) of a large organisation.

“They’d better be light restrictions,” Luinthelë said, as they boarded a lift that lead aft, a display showing the lift zipping through the length of the ship, and up to the exposed eagle-shaped ceremonial bridge, a room that was part of an ornate gold-plated stylistic eagle that formed the observation decks of the vast ship, itself fully one thousand one hundred and fifty meters long.

“We need to start off with a firm statement of what our principles are.” The ship said.

“A statement against genocide perhaps?”

“We’re also against imperialism…” Erisavenus said.

“Humm?”

“Imperialism done by outsiders, anyway.” It chuckled.

“I don’t think,” Luin said, “that we would look too good with ‘military might is for us, not you!’” as our motto.

Several onlookers chuckled.

“How about,” a tall elf lounging in the captain’s chair said, “To learn of and duly ennoble all peoples in the manner to which they aspire and to revere all that lives?” The chair turned, and he was revealed to be around seven feet in height, with blackest hair that was streaked with silver strands of which reflected light of a purity that even hallowed mithril mirrors couldn’t match. However, aside from this, he was most certainly, however, Mephet’ran. The face was similar. Identical, to any rational measure. Butterflies and other small creatures fluttered about him, invigorated somehow by his presence, but they did not – with one cheeky exception currently perched irreverently on the tip of his nose – interfere with the view others had of him.

Luinthelë smiled thinly at this changed, enhanced star-god. “Well,” she said, “That’s my job done… I need a new one.” She looked at the tiny ship avatars, “And it seems I’ve been provided with perfectly provident timing, too…”

The Outsider’s chamber was a vast construction in a depression, a hollow big enough to swallow an ocean, big enough to satisfy the monstrous ego of a monster. Vast statuary supported the roof of the chamber, so large that it enclosed the entire Poseidonic space with murals of translucent rocks depicting the great deeds of the Outsider.

The vastness and spectacle of it was beyond even C’tani norms, instead, it was, Ranisath, the product of a delusional mind. Floating serenely through the roof, he paused to view the mineral-tapestries depicting the Outsider’s triumph over his enemies. Here, Cegorach laid low, there, Asirnoth, and Asyuran and even Mephe’tran. All lies, of course, falsehoods among the truths, so that they would be taken for true. Here, the lie that had convinced the Eldar that there were only four C’tan.

For they had been here. They were here now, he knew. Harlequins at the edge of his consciousness, lurking in this place to watch, alien journalists there to see first hand the events that their seers knew were about to transpire. And who could blame them?

The destiny of their entire race hung on this. That was An exhilarating feeling; the feeling of being needed. Not wanted, nor desired, but needed. Ranisath opened up his senses to the infinitely alien minds of the eldar, and felt their thoughts. Beyond, he allowed his mind to roam and realized that he was far better at that than his predecessor.

Perhaps it was his hallucination but he could feel the minds of those he knew even across this vast distance, he knew it to be in part the learning he’d acquired from those strange and forgotten libraries that allowed him to sense things that he had no right to using only the lore of the C’tan. Or perhaps it was some subconscious manifestation, or even a subconscious aspect of his own self. He did not know some things about himself, in his way, he supposed, he was human, for that self-ignorance was certainly no C’tan trait, a certain uncertainty of the mind that allowed for different emotional flavors to be experienced.

What did these things matter in the grand scheme of things?
They let him not know. A subtle sliver of ignorance, he supposed it could lead him to know doubt. As he imagined the feeling, he brought it into vivid life; for if he was capable of doubt, was he any better than his previous self?

Ranisath was weaker than Mephet’ran had been, he knew that, an inevitable tradeoff that would only be nullified with time and feeding upon the pure wholesomeness of those fusion furnaces of space that were his home and respite.

But was his mind also less resolute and able? How did he know that he knew all that Mephet’ran had known? Was he truly as wise as he thought he was? Could he be making a mistake?

Mistakes happened often to Mephet’ran, he remembered, but the trivial kind. In the end the only mistake he could truly think of that was his own predecessors’ error was the greatest one.

And what an error that had been. A mistake that had consumed entire galaxies, a mistake that had fuelled the worst and most terrible war in history, so horrendous that other conflicts paled into insignificance beside it, their atrocities becoming so petty that they seemed no worse than playground cruelties, their death tolls seeming as though they were nothing. It was one of the things that he supposed made him a god, to fully understand the enormity of the universe, and the people in it.

One of those petty nothings of people, a dictator who he’d first learnt of far in the future of his past, had decreed that one death was a tragedy and a million were a mere statistic. Not to his kind. He fully understood scale.

One death was a tragedy. A million deaths were a TRAGEDY! A tragic horror so great that it there was no way to fully lament it, writing it in the stars and shouting it across the entire universe – a feat he was quite capable of, if only in radio signals – would not do it justice. There was no justice in the universe.

But that which its inhabitants made for it, and forced on it, stamping justice and fairness on the very stars themselves, he supposed was his ultimate goal. His grail, his meaning was to do so.

He could never do it. He would never manage to eliminate it all.

There was no free will Ranisath knew that - it was the precious illusion of those swept down the river of time. They saw the banks of the river sweep past and thought that they could change what would be down the river, but they could not. They could only experience it. And yet the greatest gift any being could have was the precious illusion of free will.

Born into the river, no being – no being but those such as himself who had experienced the awfulness of time travel, of messages in bottles from the future – could truly appreciate in the depths of their beings that the universe was changeless. A painting, an artwork of God: his wife claimed to have spoken with those who had spoken with such an entity, and he believed her. The tale of the universe, the artwork, viewed from the vantage point of such a being must surely be pleasing, but what could please such a thing? He did not and could not know and thus did not and would not care.

No, he would instead move down the river, dancing to the tune of time, playing out his own life and bending the future – hah! A manifestation of that same illusion – to his will and desire.

He turned his head to regard the harlequins, oh how cleverly they felt themselves hidden, and contemplated their race. The illusion was their defining hope. On the river, they looked forwards, glanced downriver into the flows of the countless other time-streams that branched away in the delta that they flowed through, thinking to chose which they would follow.

The illusion was their hope, for they hoped to bend the river to flow solely down one tiny forking branch of the delta. He knew of other universes, where things were different, be they the laws of physics, or the route of the river. He – his predecessor - had even moved to one, through a Herculean effort, prized himself out of the river for a moment – how he too was a slave of the river, thinking in such terms when considering the flow-less, timeless desolation of ‘dry land’ the void, where time itself did not exist, nor dimensions. No up, no down, no existence. Nothing to move through, emptiness in every conceivable way – yet he had moved through it, his future past self would had become his past self, even though the journey itself could not and had not been perceived, for it was anathema to perception.

No more than true success could exist. No goal could ultimately be achieved, for somewhere, another branch of the river was opposite. Some branches yet to be traveled would reveal his consumption, soon at the hands of the Outsider, and its continuation of its rampage across the universe once more.

It was a thought that should have been depressing. Morose. Horrific. Success, any success, had its antithesis, always. There was no true triumph.

And that awful truth leads to its own antithesis. There is no true failure. No endeavor could truly, ultimately fail in the vastness of the universe – Erisa, in the clear tongue of the necrontyr, the-universe-all-that-is - existence itself, all of the branches of the river, all of the waters, all goals that could be achieved would be achieved. Somewhere, the least fortunate was exalted. Somewhere the most deserving downtrodden and obliterated being was raised on high above all others and fulfilled utterly. All that could happen: would happen, had happened, happen – what were tenses when discussing the river? All that is possible; happen.

That Truth leads to recidivism and moral torpor. What matters anything when all that’s possible happen? Ranisath had his answer. Gifted with the illusion of the river, he would journey down it and think as an immortal mortal captive of the current, for he enjoyed doing so. It fulfilled him to be one of the forces that on an innumerable fraction of the infinite branches ahead would change things for the better, uplift the deserving and lay low the wicked. It was who he was to do so. As he was about to.

It was not who he had been before, but it was who he was now, and somewhere on other branches of the river, it was who he had always been, on other branches, he had started with that purpose and was now becoming the evil creature he had once been. A depressing thought, that ultimately, no success or failure could be complete, in all. And just as ultimately, it was one that didn’t matter. If nothing mattered, then that truth mattered less. Being true to one’s own self, that was ultimate success.

He approached the nation-sized seal that formed the center of the endless floor of the cavern. All around, the statuary and pillars of the awakening chamber of the outsider looked at him. Billions of them resembled humans and necrontyr, trillions, maybe, he cared insufficiently to count nor do the arithmetic – it would take him so little time… - to estimate the number.

He could feel the thoughts of the quiescent Outsider, and realized at last the true depth of insanity. While he and his brethren had waited for millions of years in a sleeping state, the thing below him was, while introspected as they had been, awake. For sixty millions of years it had been there. Aeons. Doing what?

What could it do in that time, consuming no more energy, yet spending it (simply through inefficiency) fixed and immobile, unchanging as a necron in stasis yet still fully conscious? Ranisath extended his perception, and he saw the terrible truth of the existence of the Outsider.

It was torturing itself. It had been torturing itself for a procession of ages.

If it were human, the creature that was the gestalt mind of the outsider would have been tearing at its flesh spasmodically, scraping away skin and fat and muscle and sinew, destroying itself. It would have been throwing itself against walls and assaulting itself with weapons. Breaking its digits off, attacking its eyes and tearing at its genitals, Crucifying itself and starving and depriving and flagellating itself so terribly that the sufferings it had inflicted on others were as nothing. Every torment imaginable was inflicted on it.

Its self-loathing, the enmity of the minds it had absorbed, had long ago subsumed and outstripped its will. Mortal and C’tan minds had set about tormenting the self that encapsulated them all. No petty sense-relish-torment of the Slaaneshi was this. This was purest hatred, directed inwards, so that it only stoked the blazing sun of hate that generated it – like a black hole consuming matter and becoming more massive and consuming yet more, or a computer stuck in a perpetual loop, the creature hated itself more the more it tormented itself, and because it hated itself, it tormented itself.

If it had been human, it would have perished long ago, but it was no frail flesh! It was the star-stuff of the C’tan, ageless and nigh-imperishable! The hatred and self-loathing that had consumed its psyche were ageless too, transmuted into a will totally bent upon self-torment. And that same agelessness prevented rest, for tiredness and unconscious adjustment to sensation were also alien to the star-gods, for they were things of the flesh, gifts! Gifts! Ranisath had never thought he would envy the gift that was mortality, until he had come into contact with this monster.

Ranisath knew now why the Outsider had never emerged to trouble the universe. It didn’t want to. Its mind was doing hat it wanted to do. Forging its own personal hell and devising every torture that could be experienced for its own being was all it desired.

What could mortal religions and hate-mongers that wanted this form of nightmare inflicted upon their enemies truly know of it? He was, he supposed, in direct mental contact with the purest manifestation of a hell that could exist, and it terrified him.

Ranisath wondered of the possibility of himself becoming an Obscenity such as this. And then he knew, even as he wondered upon it, that somewhere there was a version of his own mind like this Obscenity, a Mephet’ran that had succumbed to this final peril of the consumption of other mind-states. The final horrific nightmare that could come of the soul-greed of the C’tan, without appreciable end; for the automated systems of the Outsider’s resting place would bring it food to keep it alive until the final ending of the universe in heat death or implosion or one of the wilder theories held by the morbid sages and dreamers who ruminated upon it.

It existed. An effectively infinite number of such entities existed. He could yet turn into one. Or be sucked into this one – his mind-probe snapped back into his own mind at the very idea, and he floated fixed beneath the vast dome prepared before the final madness of the Outsider had consumed it, for many long hours.

Now Ranisath knew he had capacity for doubt, and even fear – fear not of destruction, or mere transitory pain, but of this. This primal horror so repulsive he would not believe it could exist if he had not felt it.

He wondered if there was anything of his brethren there left to save, and realized with trepidation – another new emotion, he relished it even as he feared it – that he would have to probe the Obscenity beneath him again. It took him time to pluck up the courage, and steel himself for the contact, before he did so.

Yes, there was something of a structure. Quintillions of minds in there, most of them chaff, long since blurred into one miasmic horror. Were he human, he would have wept, for he knew that it was beyond his ability – beyond possibility – to save those minds. Nothing of them remained, they had been rendered down into a semi-forgotten sea of hatred for their murder. Not like his own victims, preserved as part of the C’tan that had slain them, these had been integrated with it, and let to let loose their hate. They had lived, mortals, living with no sensory input except their interaction with the core mind of the Obscenity, for… how long would it be in their time? Real time, sixty million years – but far longer for those on the inside, for the perception of time for a C’tan was a fluid thing, they could match computer-form minds in speed, if they had the patience, and the Obscenity did, patience because it wanted to maximize its self torment. Turn billions of years into quadrillions or more so that it had more time to be its awful self.

No, nothing there, no salvation would, could come to those forgotten people. Not merely killed, but reduced to scales on the back of the serpent the bit its own tail. Destroyed utterly and then given life again only to be turned into a mockery of themselves, and they felt the torment of the whole.

He disengaged again. He could not take too much of that at once. Revulsion, loathing, fear – no, absolute and complete intellectual terror so complete…

And yet, Ranisath knew, he needed to know more of that terrible abyssal mind. How many of his long begotten brethren were there? What kind of a state where they in? Could they be saved?

They were C’tan, made of sterner stuff than mortals. Perhaps some traumatized echos of their once brilliant minds existed.

He reached down, down, down again, down into the nightmare realm of perpetual self-torment that was the Obscenity. There and here, like cherries on a pie – how innocuous a thought! - were splotches of order, minds that had endured, though their hate had been the instigators of this hell, some parts of them had remained untainted – if anything trapped in such a quagmire of torment could possibly be said to be untainted. Oh let it happen that it was so!

He realized with a wrenching dread that he would have to confirm that before even attempting to help. He would have to contact one of those parts of the mind on a conscious level. He sent his mind into a union with it.

The memories of Mephet’ran let Ranisath know instantly ‘who’ he was in contact with. Eratan. A friend. It took time for Eratan to become aware of him, so intent was the other, subsumed C’tan upon harming its captor-slave-victim for enmeshing him in its own torment.

Eratan wondered, groggily, if he was hallucinating. Thoughts not directed at or from those within itself were like a long forgotten sound, something that had not been experienced for so long.

Ranisath recoiled a way, but eventually braced himself and sent an answer that his ancient friend was not, before withdrawing fully.

Again, the young god doubted. If he could not do as he intended, would he not just have added false hope to the torment of his, his progenitor’s friend? But doubt ceded into resolve – he would simply ensure that he did not fail.

One other thing he needed to know, too. The Outsider, the part of the Obscenity that was the focus, nexus – no, heart of the hate, he hadn’t come here to help that being, and yet it had surely suffered enough that it was blameless now. How many billions of relative years had it undergone this endless shriving? Yes, if it could be saved, then he would save it too, for the Outsider had more than suffered for its evils. Every victim it had, had vented themselves upon it with maddened intensity for an eternity.

A lance of thought at the core of the Obscenity. Yes, something left. Not much, so small. He doubted that the once sparkling mind of the Outsider had any conception of anything but a longing to be free of pain, but it was there. It sensed him, returned the curiosity, clutching at his ‘hand’ feverishly.

The Obscenity reacted as one. The contact with its ultimate sufferer hadn’t gone unnoticed. It, the appalling collective intelligence, knew from the contact that Ranisath sought to end the torment. Intolerable!

To stop the torture…

Absolutely intolerable

It didn’t know why it did so any more, but it knew that its purpose was the eternal torment of the Self, and especially the deep self. To provide escape for that…

INTOLERABLE!


Ranisath’s mind was assailed by the thrust of the collective intelligence, battering angrily, furiously, its hate turned outwards, against him. And for a moment, he couldn’t stop it. He could feel a fraction of the pain that the Outsider experienced. A miniscule fraction of that most excruciating of all torments pierced him like a spear, and it was all that he could do to fend off the following, unfocussed attacks. The seal broke – hundreds of kilometers of metal beneath him shivered into fragments the size of most domiciles, blasted high into the air.

Ranisath’s body was carried along with them, blasted into the air by the furious monstrosity beneath. A sun blazed there in miniature, ravening against and ravishing itself. Even its physical form reflected its inner turmoil, Ranisath thought. From it a figure, not unlike his own, shot.

A ghost, he supposed, arms, shoulders, head, but nothing below the waist but billowing whiteness. How appropriate it was, for contained within that beast were the resurrected and tormented minds of the dead; hell, the true injustice of mortal conceptions of hell, was beneath him. Infinite punishment for finite wrong - insanity itself!

Within it were dozens of capering, faces, one moment screaming with the hate of the whole, another, almost independent, begging and striving for release. The head was abyssal, its mouth containing the form that the Obscenity had worn a moment before.

The thing should have known that physical combat was not the way to fight another C’tan, yet it seized him regardless. Ranisath felt his own mind becoming more centered by the moment as the lance of god-pain fast became a memory. Claws seized his slender elfin form, and he let them. Watched uncaringly as long claws wrapped around his head and snapped it back ninety degrees, then around.

It squeezed, and Ranisath’s metallic avatar shattered into a billion pieces, still possessed, at the last moment, he had them become gaseous, flow around the insane opponent, and re-condense beside it. It would not make the same mistake again, for it realized fully what he was now.

They were still traveling upwards faster than bullets, and Ranisath piled on a little extra speed, turning the air to plasma around him as he did so, trailing fire before – too distracted to phase shift, he burst through the dome – a gigantic pimple on the planet, he supposed.

It was following him, claws outstretched. His retreat had made its broken collective mind follow, even though there was no need, instinct and malice guided it.

It lashed out with its mind, but this time he was ready. Focused and phased electromagnetism intended to pierce his mind, phased a little way from his body, shot out, like a more direct form of the pain-lance earlier. He turned it aside, taking it, and converting it to light, shattering it off its original course. A flash appeared in the sky, whiteness so intense that it would burn out any optical instrument but a terascope parked many light years away pointed at it. It sent the air rushing around the world in destructive hurricanes, lifted a little of the atmosphere away, and melted the exposed surfaces of many of the great monuments of Seneschal.

They traveled upwards, as the Obscenity tried a less direct tactic, millions of tiny thrusts meant to shred the links between its opponent’s mind and wings. Ranisath didn’t counter them all, but enough that it was no great wound. Sparks and bursts of gamma rays appeared over the entire hemisphere as the god and the hell fought above it.

Ranisath realized with a start that he wouldn’t be able to win this easily. In the past, the C’tan he had fought had been possessed of self-preservation of normal beings, here, the creature facing him was determined to destroy him: no issue, normally, he could obliterate it easily enough – a single attack should do, he was powerful enough still – but that was not his desire. He wanted to reach into its mind and pull bits away. That was a problem, it had him at a severe disadvantage if he wanted to succeed, and he wanted it.

Drastic action was needed. He stopped, not turning, but coming to a stop and then reversing, plunging down at the miasmic planet-sized opponent, phasing to match its offset – to become physical to it. It countered, he countered, thousands of different combinations as the gap closed.

Almost unconsciously, Ranisath’s avatar had turned about too, plunging towards its own miniature opponent. The Obscenity de-phased, blooming into existence as a vast cloud of golden red light below. Ranisath followed, above, gold and silver light.

C’tan had no natural sense of pain, no original need to develop response to pain, instead having a hunger that dominated their existence. That was the only thing that allowed Ranisath to conceive of such a reckless plan. At worst, he’d destroy the Obscenity utterly, and himself, but more likely, both would be disabled for a long while.

He was betting on being in better ‘shape’ than the Obscenity. As he ploughed into it, he was painfully aware that his memories, his mind was in precarious danger. He focused his thoughts on the one thing, person, he didn’t want to forget, at the last moment, too late for second thoughts.

They collided, the plasma-energy clouds ploughed into one another like two vast hands clapping, but then passed through. Both lost pieces, and Ranisath slammed into the planet below, an entire hemisphere’s flammables – such as they were on the dead tomb-world, burned. The oceanic dome over the Obscenity’s resting place crumbled in an instant, raining down rocks on those beneath. One of the harlequins unfortunate enough to be on the surface was cremated in the beat of a gnat’s wing and rock ran like water as the C’tan bled his life energy into the atmosphere.

The planet revolved beneath him, and though he couldn’t truly feel pain, Ranisath knew he was being damaged, fought to heal the wounds he’d done himself and strove to summon the energy to free himself from the planet’s gravity field.

The avatar, and the broken avatar of his opponent, lay in the crater that had once been the domed resting place of the Obscenity. He seemed paralyzed for an age.

Suddenly, he was able to move again. Weeks had passed – his opponent was several light days away, but it was clear that it was just as crippled as he, or more. Drifting on the course it had been on when they had collided.

No pain, except the burning knowledge that the damage would not heal for years, and the terrifying thought that he’d forgotten things. That he knew less than he had a few scant weeks ago. And of course, the terror of having failed regardless, he rose from the ravaged planet – content, at least, that its irreplaceable necrontyr jewel graves weren’t destroyed, buried deep in its frozen mantle as they were.

He began to limp after the crippled C’tan at a few times the speed of light, aware that he was limited to a few million times that sluglike speed for now.

At last, he came upon the Obscenity. Broken, immobile, it had returned its energies to self-torment. It was shocking to realize that it probably could have been fully healed by now if it had spent more thought on healing instead of flagellation. Helpless.

A few choice snips disabled its ability to harm him, and he began. Incongruously, it reminded him of the open medical surgery he’d seen occasionally in his time. He pictured himself as a surgeon removing gallstones. But these were not mere stones, but pearls! The last of his kin, once so numerous, were before him.

Eratan first, of course

It was a delicate operation, probing into the alien mind and letting part of it escape, pulling and stopping the malice of the Obscenity tainting the connection.

One by one, he removed them, Asine’rin, Kenan, others, until at last, only the Outsider remained in the sea of the dead. He felt their wonder, and yes, fear – uncomprehending fear - as the first flickers of thought began to re-emerge.

‘Be calm’ he sent them wordlessly, and in such wordless purity that it couldn’t be doubted, ‘relax, I will protect you.’

One more, the Outsider itself, worst of all, and totally uncommunicative, he found that it didn’t know what to do without the torment. It needed to be prized away, as though he were a thief and it were a jewel in a crown to heavy to be taken!

Already, the sea of hatred that had gathered in the mind of the Outsider, the Obscenity, as he called it, was beginning to dissolve into formlessness. Lobotomized, the focus of its entire being taken, it was listless. Countless minds that had once been individuals and then forced together in a terrible fusion, were now directionless, falling into oblivion.

He expedited the broken Obscenity’s departure, with what would be the equivalent of a human brushing dust off a table.

Speaking to the listless minds within his pregnant self, he felt like smiling. ‘Let’s come away now, there’s much to do.’

Ranisath was pregnant, he supposed. How curious it was to have the mind-kernels of those that were not him nor derived from him, as a conscious part of himself. Salarin was the name of the most conscious of the C’tan in him. Peace-lady, literally translated, she’d also gone by the name of Selarin – flame-lady. That was part of her ancient personality, he supposed, she’d always been known for a certain flighty, demanding attitude, an inhuman (of course) changeability to her temperament.

In the part of his mind where the seed that was hers resided, he felt questions, not just relief. A light touch and he brought them into contact.

‘Where am I?’ was the first question.

‘You are in me. I have rescued you,’ the concepts she was no longer familiar with were given along with the thoughts themselves.

‘Who am I? Where from?’

‘Your name is Salarin’ – the translation flowed of course – ‘and also Selarin. They’re pretty descriptive,’ he mused ‘simultaneous. You’ve always been both passionate and placid in equal measure. You’re one of my own kind. You were consumed, badly, that’s what you remember.’

C’tan weren’t quite able to shudder, and Salarin less so, but chill was a perfect analogy for such creatures of stars – heat was life, cold was death.

A chill seemed to run through Salarin at the mention of it.

‘What about the others?’ she asked.

‘You’re the best off out of them at the moment. They’re not ready to communicate in the same way you are,’ he sent, ‘but I’m confident that they all will be, in the end.’

‘I see,’ she sent, learning what sight was – in the many spectra and ways available to C’tan – even as she sent it. ‘What do you plan to do with me?’ she asked.

‘I plan to heal you, and the others, and eventually return you to independence. Though I’ll have to heal myself first.’

‘Nasty,’ she sent, learning as the thoughts came, of how injured Ranisath was.

‘Indeed, I think the necrontyr equivalent,’ she re-learnt what a necrontyr was in that instant, ‘would be having four broken limbs and pulling one’s self along by the chin.’

‘A comical image,’ Salarin agreed.

‘Yes indeed,’ Ranisath sent.

‘So, what now?’ Salarin asked, ‘I mean, I hate to say it, but I feel…’

‘Impatient?’

‘Impatient, yes,’ she sent, rolling the word – the concept – around and playing with it.

‘Well, dear flame lady,’ he sent, ‘I think we ought to see about showing you around the universe… There’s much to rediscover, and much more to know.’

Arnatirios, Taurenor

Every screen in the nation carried the message, it was one of the most important ever transmitted in Taurenor. The queen – the Tauretári was speaking. Taurevanimë Umáriel Nossë Ereinion ie Ancalimë was sitting with her husband, looking regal and dignified in a dress of emerald green and lovely russets and browns in evocatively leaf-like patterns, corseted beneath, it seemed, though perhaps it was simply her slender elven build. She wore a Mithril crown on her head and a tight fitting high collar of the same metal holding a radiant diamond, above her bare shoulders and constrained bust.

“My beloved people,

“I have two great joys to reveal to you today, one that is a joy to me, and which I wish you to be joyful over on my behalf, and one that will be a joy to many of you, and which I am joyful on your behalf.

“The first is that I am at last with the child of my husband. As such, I will soon have my first child, who will be a son. Because of this, I have decided to abdicate in favour of my husband, who has recently been responsible for many of the successes of my administration. As such, from this time forwards, Elendan nos Fëaelenion is the sole Arantaurë of Taurenor, your liege, and for that matter, mine. I have absolute confidence that he will prove a far better leader than I have or ever could be. Despite this, he has decided to allow a referendum on this move, and will abide by any decision made by the people, and though you may if you wish, vote against the change, and so restore the crown to me, I have faith that you will not.

“The second matter is that with this change in monarch, it has been decided that Taurenor’s interests now lie, as well as in being a part of Veritas, in being closer to our cousins in Menelmacar, in what is referred to as ‘Greater Menelmacar’ a decision which the Arantaurë has also decided to put to a referendum. If and when this passes, we will have extensive reorganisation of our existing political arrangements and voting methodology to bring them more into line with the C’tani system.”

It went on, covering the intricacies of the arrangement. And billions of Taurenori watched, many surprised, though not as surprised as they could have been – there’d been much working up to this, especially the latter, for many years, and few hadn’t entertained considerations on such topic.

The considerations were essentially, given the nature of Taurenor’s military (which consisted of a larger enlistment rate than was ‘decent’ due to the terrain of Taurenor, infantry – most useful for both woodlands and arcologies alike, some one hundred and eighty million in all, despite a moderate navy, the lack of armour beyond indirect fire ordinance, meant the national budget went much further for the army’s recruitment), whether to make it available for support in operations conducted by those allies, beyond current commitments. Beyond that, there were economic issues, and sovereignty issues (which remained, in theory at least) and also re-organisation of the budget. All in all very boring.


Shortly after, the promised referendum came, went, and passed. Indeed, it passed with over ninety percent approval…

(OOC: Despite appearances, most of the changes here are internal. The only real difference is that the closer military ties give me an excuse to get more involved externally, with Menelmacari/C'tan... things...)

It wasn’t completely a surprise. But for the most part, it was. The Taurenori, until now, had been notoriously stand-offish. The most surprising aspect was a closer adoption of the C’tani political system than even Menelmacar had taken to. There was much questioning of the motives of the move, although it was cautiously accepted in most circles.

The truth of it was, that half the reason for the change in rulership had been to make it more easily accepted. While the reason given was also legitimate, the truth of it was; with a leader more to be more friendly to his ‘home nation,’

Meanwhile, other operations continued; another orbital was being constructed in the outer fringe of the galaxy, off the plane, in orbit of a modest star that had been named Meldas, in addition to those built for “the purps” and numerous guest-workers. A few more cities were built.

Worlds turned and suns blazed. And military types nursed the growing headache of such integration.

Luis Ruiz walked along the open walkway that hung over the vast chamber of assembly on the tombworld of Doton. The walkway was nearer to the roof than to the floor, a mile below, and grooves in it glistened with the fluid movement of black and silver material.

His segway moved along the rattling walkway, and he tutted to himself, watching a dozen ‘tomb-spyders’ polishing the top of a black stone monolith the best part of a kilometre in height and a third as wide as it was long.

They wouldn’t bother to repair the walkway though. Admittedly, it would take him the best part of a minute to fall to the ground, even if he never reached terminal velocity, so low was Doton’s gravity, and by then they’d have rescued him. But he might cut himself on the edge of the railings or something!

The chamber was vast; it went around the entire equator, buried miles deep, of the moon, three times. Monoliths were brought into being in one point, and then backed up, winding around the worldlet three times like a crazy bottlecap. Here, where the work was done, the pylons could be moved this way and that, into the chamber that stretched around the world to store them, or directly into the portals that could deploy them across the galaxy.

The foundry chamber was bigger, molecular synthesisers and glowing energy conduits and vast tanks of liquid psycurium and living metal surrounded it. A silver lattice frame defined the outer perimeter of where the next monolith would be created, and tomb spyders buzzed about impatiently.

Fluid crystalline stone laced equally with living metal flowed, forming a solid block over the course of most of a minute, as Luis entered the glassy sphere of the control room.

“We dispatching them?” he asked the necron sitting there, slipper-clad feet up on the controls. Marash seemed to take delight in disturbing him, today it was a standard immortal shell, wearing a dressing gown and slippers.

It fixed its green emotionless eyes on him, “Yep,” it said jauntily, “they’re going off to somewhere called Charybdis,” it added, “I’m replacing them with unspecialised ones as they go. Want to see where it is…” The pylons had to be adjusted to a specific point relative to one another, and the world they would protect world. Mind-bending maths that was dictated by their nature, straddling the borders of reality and the warp like a cage, each one had to form a net to cover a world, and as each world was subtly different, each needed to be adjusted to fit the shape of continents and plates where they would stand. This wasn’t a problem on orbitals, and every C’tani orbital was dotted with them on its outer surface, but worlds needed adjusting. Some pylons could be underground, others underwater – tempting fish and their equivalents to swim into the pipes delved into them, never to return; an entire population of eels had almost been wiped out like that once, being… dissipated.

“No thanks,” Ruiz said, “I trust you got it right…”

Nais lay nude before the Elenaran, as he lightly massaged scented alien oils into the smooth muscles of her back. It was considerably more enjoyable than it was for humans, as the Eldar had an aesthetically arranged muscular system that included considerably more nerves on the back – generally a blind spot in humans, but because Eldar were designed to be considerably more athletic, their backs were, along with their spines, designed differently. The downside to this is that back pain, for their species, could be… truly strange, and multi-layered.

She looked up at him from behind long golden hair, “I’ve always meant to ask… Why are you interested in… this sort of thing? Not that I’m ungrateful, of course…”

He laughed, “I suppose that’s a bit of a question, you’ve got Sirithil to thank for it, initially at least,” he said, “Even to my bizarre aesthetics of the mind, she was beautiful when I met her, so I decided I’d spend time around her. And that pretty much dictated culturing a common interest.

“But now, it’s far beyond that,” he said, humming softly to her, “I also savour being with people in a way that’s far more fulfilling than mere physical pleasure – which took me quite a lot of work to get right, mind. One of the nice things about being my kind is that one can actually change one’s self with the right effort. Of course, it’s rather complex, but anyway, you, and my other lovers, give meaning and definition to my existence in a fundamental way. In the same way you’d not know who you were if there were no others of your kind, we don’t.

“We’re asocial creatures by nature. That’s why we lack empathy, as a rule. No evolutionary reason for it. There is, as a rule, no more mercy in us than in sharks. That’s why I am so keen to love, aside from having a lot of lost time to catch up on,” she laughed musically, “I also make a point of making as many friends and other relationships as possible. I answer ten billion letters every night, give or take, and the time I spend with you and my other lovers is the same kind of thing. You keep me stable.

“It’s been said I just do this for fun,” he said, moving on to the Eldar woman’s shoulders, “Which is quite untrue. I love all my lovers deeply, if not necessarily all equally. Simply because, as I experience time, there’s more than enough for dozens and dozens – in fact, as I experience time, it’s many years or decades between speaking to you every day…”

“I’ve also been meaning to ask, do you consider yourself a god of Law?” she purred softly.

“No,” Ranisath decided after a moment, “nor of chaos – though I speak philosophically here, rather than in the context of what you understand. I’m a god of Reason. Your own gods might perhaps be of law, or of order, the Old Ones certainly were, but that’d not necessarily the same as being a god of Good…”

Even as he continued to expound, he sent his approval to the governmental proposal of increasing the numbers of active necrons by forty percent of their current total and bringing the fleet’s operational strength up to a full three hundred ‘warships.’

┌───────┐
├──one──┤
└───────┘

Ranisath frowned a little, considering the sword, and what was to be done with it. The flagship was part of a sizable force in proximity to the Tor Yvresse craftworld, a massive tapering city-ship of sails and spires and great crystal domes. Nonetheless, the sword troubled him; he had confidence that it would work for what he wanted it to, and that he could wield it easily enough.

It was what would happen after that which troubled the C’tan, for after that, he would need to steal it. The logic that had led him to that acquisition-al decision was obvious enough, and he could pull it off easily enough, he was sure. But the morality of it was troubling. A little petty evil, and a necessary one, he knew, and was resigned to.

A slim ring of living metal merged with one of the pieces of the grip. A teleport homer; at the right moment, the ship would teleport the sword away from his hand, replace it with a duplicate that Ranisath could see being made by molecular synthesisers.

A shame.

┌───────┐
├──two──┤
└───────┘

On another ship in the fleet, the Void Dragon stared at detailed lists of the Yvressi ships and their readiness. He had never anticipated actually fighting with such a pronounced force of Eldar on such a mission. He remembered when he had decided that their entire species must die. He’d had his reasons; spite and contempt were among them, he had to admit. But other than that, they were one of the most dangerous creations of the Old Ones because they had just enough self-analysis to develop a serious technological culture and to move beyond their designed role. They’d not really done it in the way he’d feared, yet.

And now, it seemed that if they did, they would be doing so on the terms of the C’tan, an idea that he supposed was ironic and pleasing.

Which of course, meant he just had to fight a serious battle. He would enjoy that. Beyond being a technologist, the Void Dragon had, of the four last C’tan, the greatest genius for war. The Nightbringer would have disputed that claim, but it was essentially a brute, nothing more. The Machine God had always defeated the Nightbringer when they’d fought, for a million years; the others’ tactics were dedicated to causing and savouring distress; the Dragon destroyed wantonly, but never without purpose.

He would enjoy this challenge particularly.

┌────────┐
├──three──┤
└────────┘

On Naogeddon, in a great mansion, in the Copper-Expanse Desert in the northern hemisphere, where green oxidised sands blew emerald storms high into the air, shimmering in the cancerous sun’s rays, Salarin smiled. It was generally termed the awaking room, and it was, to Necrontyr eyes, distinctly a reassuring building; with a shaded balcony at one end and a slanting roof that was made of diamond-shod stone several meters thick surfaced in reflective materials above a hand-span of lead.

Unnecessary, today but it called to mind truly ancient necrontyr buildings. The programme that was run here would not be complete for well over a hundred thousand years; because the awakening of ancient necrontyr minds, as the pattern was being followed to avoid over-population and ensure that space and funding (even if it wasn’t strictly necessary) was available for any necron being awakened.

There were hundreds of trillions of necrontyr minds in storage.

Despite this the point had arrived when comparatively large families were being ‘re-born.’ Salarin reached out and touched the next necron body.

These were civilian ones, of course, currently covered in flesh, albeit distinctly advanced and modified flesh. Eyes flicked open.

“Ouch… Headache…” the necron said. Shnista, his name was, he’d been one of the necrontyr whose habits had led him more towards her… sect. Not quite a religion in a conventional sense; while the popular opinion was that the necrontyr had worshipped the C’tan, that wasn’t quite the case. A blend of what humans might call ‘fandoms’ or fan clubs and semi-religious devotions would be a more accurate way to describe it. Most of the necrontyr had, eventually, come to hold the C’tan among them in a certain kind of awe as archetypical geniuses and personalities, but not gods in a conventional, mystical sense.

The C’tan extant today generally managed the awakenings of their own ‘devotees’ as a matter of course. It was a disturbing form of penance. As Ranisath – who continued to handle Mephet’ran’s extensive sect – and Asirnoth were busy with other concerns, it was Salarin’s shift, as it were.

“Yes,” she said, “it often does that…”

“Humm,” Shnista said, “I can’t help but notice I’m rather fleshy…”

“Don’t worry, it’s skin-deep and replacable.”

“Oh? Cybernetics. Not quite what I expected…”

“We’ve the rest, too,” Salarin said.

“So, seventy million years… Quite a bit. But we won, at any rate…” he’d clearly found the base historical knowledge he’d acquired, “and… then you guys went nuts. Good job…”

“Yes,” Salarin smiled, “Though I wasn’t around for much of that…”

“So you weren’t…”

“Anyway,” the C’tan said, “I think it’s time I gave you a decent apology, then we can see what’s going on. And then I’ll let your sister in.”

“Which one?” he said, suddenly looking… leery. Salarin couldn’t help but laugh.

┌─────────┐
├───four───┤
└─────────┘

Kenan, perhaps the purest and most alien C’tan, sat in the dust cloud of a forming planet, which was orbited by a number of sensor satellites to keep anyone who might want to pry on its doings away. It worked on a new and improved frame switcher, a device similar to a chronometron, but far bigger –about twenty foot across – composed of material from the forming planet altered by Kenan’s inner sphere of molecular fabrication units.

The device was intended to allow an object to simultaneously exist in different relativistic frames of reference in different ways. It was essentially a time drive, in that respect. It would allow a vehicle or object to project itself into what most observers would regard as the past.

There was an old fashioned way to do the same thing, of course. But this one would free many of the limits of timing and positioning required. Not that it worked, yet…

Just one of many ongoing projects that might one-day bear fruit.

┌─────────┐
├───five───┤
└─────────┘

Meh’lindi-i-Rakel frowned a little, as she listened to Samara. It was the red sands of mars, so different and yet so similar to those of Naogeddon, a world to which she’d never seen, that towered above the window. It was her first trip to Mars, a world that in her youth she’d only heard of in legend. Irony, that she’d come long before her own youth, by some measures.

Irony defined her lives, she supposed. She’d once pretended to be defecting to an alien culture. Later, she had, albeit unknowingly at first, and with a certain resignation later. She had no loyalty to Ranisath or the C’tan as a whole, but rather, went along with their orders and missions as much as she felt it benefited humanity. And her.

But that was another concern. Here she had come to Mars to verify some suspicions held by others. Samara, the Vicereigne of Mars, was a former officer of the Elenaran – she still was, of course, there was no retiring from such a post, but she didn’t work in that way any more.

She looked, at last, at high-resolution photography in infrared.

And cursed ferally and quietly under her breath. “Yes.” She was a woman of few words.

It would take a few days to set everything up, before she would need to find some soldiers that had the right… cunning… application.

Her other self needed some time, anyway… Cohabiting by time-share was so troublesome.

Her other self, the second part of her name, had been the one who’d mostly arranged her current position, one of comparative safety and comfort. However, working for the C’tan, she knew, was about to become very unpleasant. Ghosts of the future-past would haunt her.

There were days when the sun was so cruel…

Still, there were other rewards to consider that made it more worthwhile.

┌────────┐
├───six───┤
└────────┘

Marchioness Asaid Virenus missed having Meh’Lindi around today. They didn’t quite stay together, but they were pretty much neighbours under most circumstances. The attitude between them was one of mixed enmity and camaraderie. They were working together, they shared a somewhat similar background and skills; but almost entirely different natures, motives and characters.

Nonetheless, this wasn’t really Asaid’s lesson to teach. It was about discipline, and if anything was really her weak point, that was it. She wasn’t an ideologue like her opposite number or the other members of the Office of the Elenaran. She could conceivably sell out on the C’tan at any time, if the reward was good enough.

Of course, the reward required inducing her to leave all her current circle of friends who largely accepted her as she was and approved, as well as a respected public title, fulfilling, challenging and interesting job, and immense power. And it’d require convincing her that a rampant, furious star-god wouldn’t be after her blood.

The lesson she was stuck with administering today involved the ten pupils she currently had. They’d actually been bought, from a feminist nation’s military organisation that had been selling off its ‘surplus.’ The ten that were here were the ones who’d been so inured by a duty-complex raised form childhood that the standard ex-slave battery of counselling, citizenship and acclimatisation hadn’t really dissuaded them from immediately coming back and looking for some way to ‘serve.’

“So, do any of you know what this is?” she asked of the ten women kneeling on low panels before tables in a semi-circle around her.

“Polymorphine, mistress?” one asked.

“Right,” Asaid said, “It’s unlikely you’ll ever actually use this stuff, but we wish to train you with it anyway; if for no other reason than that it will train your minds for a discipline we find useful, overcoming pain. There will be minute doses initially, but we’ll work up…” the group before her were largely learning to be assassins – or at least, ‘agents’ – of a certain type. Almost a pet-project of hers.

She was still looking into getting some Roanians…

“No one try and put points on your ears with this stuff. It’ll look… wrong.”

┌───────┐
├─seven─┤
└───────┘

Luis Ruiz was the gentleman in charge of troubleshooting infrastructure in the C’tan empire. At the moment, that largely consisted of writing letters about the proposed re-orientation of assigned orbits for transport craft.

Even in the ‘mighty C’tan Empire’ some people didn’t get the fun jobs.

╒═════╤═════╕
Eight
╘═════╧═════╛

Sirithil smiled a little as she turned the page in the freshly printed book. She found it relaxing to read up on ‘magic’ researches. This one wasn’t actually Menelmacari, but foreign, however, the Elentári generally spared no expense acquiring the best in everything.

She glanced up over her side-desk, a curious construction that resembled a table that wrapped around a high backed white leather ‘executive’ chair (and they didn’t come much more executive than this one) in something between a miniature copy of her office built into the balcony overlooking the parliamentary meeting chamber of the Artaoron.

It appeared that most of the representatives were filing back in after lunch.

Of course, not every day contained much time for reading. She often had to make the time quite literally…

╒═════╤═════╕
Nine
╘═════╧═════╛

Serendis wasn’t far away, the Prefecture of Defence had its headquarters, along with every other traditional prefecture of Menelmacar, upon the Artaoron, and each strove to represent something of their character in their buildings, consequently the Defence Prefecture was delved deeply, both existing on the surface as buildings with a vaguely fortified look, and merging with the many bunkers under the Artaoron.

Here, she was looking at a holographic map of the local group of galaxies, from which side-maps showed the activities of Menelmacar. Thousands of various dots showing defence deployments, ranging from single long-range gunship light craft with scattered resource gathering stations to the vast stars of major fleet-groupings.

She was still contemplating how to manage the increase of the fleet deployment to the Triumvirate of Yut without weakening anything protecting Menelmacari civilians directly. She had a good number of ways to do it, but that wasn’t the problem for her at the moment.

Choosing which one was the best, now that was the problem for her.

She shrugged, and began reading through the reports of starship-updates. The old fleet of Maglor-type frigates and Gilthoniel-class destroyers was being replaced, a task, the report said, that was now almost forty percent completed. The old ships were to be sold off, some to corporations, some to the Environment Prefecture, who had a surprising number of ex-military vessels, largely fully-armed still: they were actually commissioned, in Menelmacar, although Serendis’ authority over them was only in times of war, and even, perhaps, to foreign governments.

╒═════╤═════╕
Ten
╘═════╧═════╛

Túrelio, meanwhile, was relaxing. The garden was a little tangled, overgrown, but for a stone table he’d carved by himself, and a similar bench of elm wood. He often went there to relax, he found the dereliction of it. The bench sat on flags of limestone tangled and broken by ages of growth. Trees grew haphazardly in the small garden forming a canopy of leaves that was just thin enough to permit extensive undergrowth of bushes and shrubberies, though it was in some places occupied by various mushrooms in the shade.

The dappled green and blue ceiling of the leaves above rustled in the wind, and Túrelio frowned a little, brushing a centipede from his arm. He closed his eyes, and went back to something between a nap and meditation, which elves generally used in lieu of sleep.

╒═════╤═════╕
Eleven
╘═════╧═════╛

Serindë tapped on the pillar. It was one of the strange sub-departments of the Artaoron that was rarely used, and she’d only found it by chance. She wasn’t sure quite what was in the place, some of the time. Unlike Túrelio, Serendis or Sirithil, she hadn’t been around when it was first built, she was younger by far than those others. Rumour had it that Sirithil had once used a labyrinthine dungeon-fortress under the existing bunkers of the Artaoron as a magical laboratory.

She didn’t know when people had last actually lived in the Artaoron, as, now, aside from a hotel-like guest facility, it had no permanent residences, yet here this suite was, of empty, dusty, cobwebbed rooms. She frowned, looking at a steel chest In the middle of the floor. She brushed her hand over it, and raised an eyebrow. It was stamped with several rectangular indents. It must be old indeed, the Menelmacari government had been using its current colour-coding storage notation for well over a thousand years, and yet, as she brushed a thick layer of dust from the markings, they revealed an older system she remembered vaguely from her childhood. She couldn’t recall what the chest’s marking represented, and she looked about for the catch.

“Milady…” a voice in her ear asked. Serindë was quite rare among the Menelmacari prefects in actually using an implant for communications. They were very common, but they were mostly there to avoid ever being lost for too long, rather than being devices used by most elves.

“Yes?” she asked, recognising one of her assistants.

“Where are you? Lunch is over… Your presentation should be up soon…”

Serindë swore and sneezed. Even elves could sneeze when they inhaled too much dust. “I’m coming…” she said, and broke into a run.

╒═════╤═════╕
Twelve
╘═════╧═════╛

Maglor, meanwhile, was holding the fort in Fëanor palace. Well. Not quite holding it, so much as, being the only one aside from the staff who seemed to be in the personal quarters. The personal quarters of the palace occupied the top six levels of one of the main spires, and included their own separate staff of servants, mainly employed by Ranisath and Sirithil, and generally fitting the description of a harem. As well as this, there was a level for guests, and a level of smaller Vinyatírion apartments included for Maglor, Serendis, Túrelio, and several others.

Not that he was actually doing much. His own department was currently quite quiet, and he had them working with an exceptional efficiency; they liased with charities, organised escorts for some refugee groups, and bankrolled large supply storehouses that were occasionally emptied in a hurry to some disaster zone.

Other than that, he was busy with a sheet that looked like graph paper, marked out in ambient-sound -notation, a musical notation that was infamously hard to learn, but provided an efficient way of recording a number of obscure factors, such as the acoustics of the performance area, and so on.

He tapped a pencil to a taut drum, and hummed to himself quietly, before using the pencil to erase a previous mark on the page.

╒═════╤═════╕
Thirteen
╘═════╧═════╛

Glorfindel frowned, looking through an ocular enhancer that let his already impressive eyesight easily observe actions a hundred miles spinward. The orbital reminded him of the Saturn ring, though it was somewhat less sturdy, a free-standing structure without the great mass of a planet to anchor it, requiring substantially more effort to keep it in balance. He checked the gravbolter’s systems again, braced it carefully, and squeezed the trigger.

The gravitic projectile fired, and, if the programme worked right, would impact the target on the next of the two barren plates. Glorfindel liked to ‘keep his hand in’ testing of new toys. This was an improved long-range program for hand-held weapons to target over range on orbitals such as this one. There was an existing version, but the relative motion of the atmosphere clinging to the interior by centrifugal force had been a problem for previous models.

╒═════╤═════╕
Fourteen
╘═════╧═════╛

Culdalot also frowned, and yanked the wood away from the wall again, looking deep in thought. She moved it a touch, and hammered a nail back into the wall. Young elves ‘teenage’ equivalents, were prone to frequent re-decoration as they generally took to developing their own ‘style’ from both past styles, foreign ones, and their own invention, which was largely how Menelmacari fashions changed over time; as children stopped being children, fashions that they still held to would eventually percolate among the adult population.

Of course, it did have the unfortunate effect, for Culdalot at the moment, that she couldn’t decide quite what she wanted decorating her sitting room, or where.

┌┌┌───┴─┴─┴───┐┐┐
Fifteen
└└└───┬─┬─┬───┘┘┘

Arshaw Mîraglariel sat in a high backed white chair and watched the battle. Old style necron warriors fought a somewhat less numerous force of aliens, relying largely on large suits of ‘dreadnought armour’ hefty things that enclosed the aliens in coffin-seat like spaces and sense-linked devices. The aliens were called the Tau, and she was sitting with them.

They weren’t enemies, and the battle – she saw a missile flash with an eye-searing contrail that spiralled around, impacting a laser-designated necron warrior, which exploded into fragments and disappeared – was an exercise the aliens had asked for. They were firing real weapons, the necrons were using distinctly less effective weapons, that would merely inflict simulated damage.

The world was a warm one, and at night, its skies were a bright burnt purple from the nebula that covered most of the sky, in the day, they were much less visible, but still created a dappled carpet-effect in the serene blue sky. It was quite beautiful.

Of course, at the moment, it was flickering with beams and missiles. She saw a green-orange beam swish through a Tau tank, and it cut into a controlled glide to the ground as a heavy necron destroyer cut into a sideways dive to shake another, light vehicle, which Arshaw recognised a piranha scout-craft pursuing it with a fusion gun blazing causing the air to roil between the two. Part of the destroyer melted, its tail-section falling away before they both disappeared.

Arshaw was sitting with some of the semi-civilian dignitaries of the encampment. It was one of a almost a hundred such village-sized bases on four planets, each around one thousand in population, spread out in widespread areas like this one, where defensive terrain was good. She sat with the military governor, ‘earth caste’ ‘air caste’ and ‘water caste’ chiefs of the settlement, along with various others. These colonies were a splinter sect of a larger group, which had been ruled by a fifth caste, biologically adapted to use a form of pheromone control.

That was part of Arshaw’s concerns with regard to this race – she glanced up again, to watch the battle-suits hovering over a low rise, opening fire with plasma casters and ion-rifles that scattered rapid-fire beams that melted the torsos of necrons that were hit. The first squad, looking somewhat beat up, although a portion of its slain were already rising again,

Necrontyr generally approved of Tau, at least to some degree. They were both species with a haemocyanin-based high pressure mammalian-style respiratory system, ruminant ancestry, a stronger than normal herd instinct, two stomachs (though Arshaw’s secondary stomach was functional; necrontyr had a system where they could use a smaller, near-vestigial branch of the digestive tract to taste – well, not quite, but similar – select parts of their food after they’d eaten it, a wonderfully sensual experience). There were differences, of course, Necrontyr had a much more human looking appearance; Tau had substantially different faces to accommodate their olfactory senses, a less pronounced and powerful jaw, and hoofed feet that were the legacy of an artificial advancement that bypassed the tree-faction process primate-like life forms usually underwent to attain a humanoid form.

A battle-suit squad leapt on screaming engines from behind a rock, and Arshaw took another bite from a yellow-orange star-fish shaped and sized fruit, which was an orgy of sweet-sugary flavour, and watched as the suits were engulfed by a small group of scarab-constructs, which flashed signals indicating that they had ‘detonated’ causing the leader of the battle-suits to trip over humiliatingly and roll down the sandy hill.

A pulse-rifle round hit one of the necron warriors in the eye, blasting a sizeable crater in the front of its head, and staggering it to one side. Though, turning its head as more material flashed into the gap, returning bursts of harmless green fire.

“Thank you Maria,” Arshaw said, taking a glass from a tray presented by one of her servants, who lived on the ship she generally travelled on. Arshaw had a townhouse in Vinyatírion, and in Tephet-Sheta, but she mostly used them as glorified warehouses, dwelling on a semi-sapient Striker-class patrol-boat she’d managed to persuade the navy to part with. “The thing about the station’s orbit, is that by moving it to the fifth planet, you’re talking about moving it where it’s equally distant from everyone, and useful to no one,” this was a large orbital colony, a mushroom-shaped space station on which most of the ‘air caste’ dwelt and the small Tau-enclave navy of light craft and a cruiser or two roosted. “I’d think it would be best to keep it on the third planet, where at least it’s accessible by sub-light space travel, as well as by portal.”

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Sixteen
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Dr. Edwin Provost ran over the rooves of Mumbai. And that was a difficult proposition, as for the most part, the tall spires of the city were sloped quite drastically. It was, like most of the province of United Indiastan, a dense city rebuilt over almost completely since its re-annexation after the chaos that had been the hallmark of the independent period.

Provost was wishing he’d worn gloves, as his hands slipped down the smooth white panels of the roof. “Big thick ones,” he muttered. It didn’t help that he only had one hand free, the other holding the functional handle of a Menelmacari plasma pistol, especially made to work with his, and only his, genetic code.

He took a vague aim at the target, and made a point to miss-high, rather than knock a hole in the roof; who knew what damage that might do. A searing flash burnt a line onto the retina as the bolt shot up through the clouds, and his suspect ducked, turning and firing a laser pistol down at him, which flashed and cracked in the air, but didn’t have nearly the same pyrotechnic effect.

Without cover, Provost kicked his feet out from under him and slid a few feet down to the gutters, snapping off another shot in return.

This was turning into such fun! He’d only been in town for the kind of hum-drum activities that were necessary to maintain the Office’s cover as the Elenaran’s widespread representatives for ceremonial occasions, when he’d found a lead on one of the sundry war-criminals still wanted by the C’tani government in the province.

What his suspect hadn’t considered yet, was that he was best off running. The plasma-gun served quite adequately as a flare, and the mundane police weren’t likely to take long.

Indiastan had a moderate number of well-equipped police, after all.

Of course, he had to not get killed before he could pull rank on those same police. Another few shots to push the suspect back towards the doorway-balcony at the top of the roof he’d evidently been aiming for.

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Seventeen
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The ship Élmbar, home of the Ventuerers, was a place for rest, repatriation, and relaxation. It almost never saw the light of anything close enough to be called a sun, but sailed among perpetual starlight and through diffuse clouds. Miles long, it was a lair of those who had had enough.

It was the place from which a great number of operations to strike blows – generally illegal, if not so under C’tani law, shadow blows against oppression and genocide.

The Ventuerers were careful to never call themselves terrorists within the hearing of outsiders, but that was what they were. A heavily sponsored C’tani terrorist group that might well called freedom fighters by any compassionate person.

Luinthelë nos Ancalimë was one of its founders, and honorary head, even though she exercised only a little policy control and less operational control.

The organisation didn’t need much of a budget, at least, not while Élmbar itself remained a member; the ship was designed to be self-sufficient and capable of supporting millions if need be. Nonetheless, sometimes, rare components, information, and primarily re-locating refugees (not every action of the Venturers was violent, and they had yet to, deliberately or otherwise, harm civilians) as well as other expenses, caused the organisation to need funds. Here and there it operated as an investor to support itself, using its vast resources to play markets, with the same eye to ethics as it had in everything else it did.

Which was what Luinthelë, as one of the largest initial donators to the organisation, was examining. “Not,” she said, “that one…” and she wiped a prospective company from the list, “it’s going to have a very poor year…”

Luinthelë was bursting with compassion; but in this particular role, it would have been a liability. She’d have to keep an eye on the company that gave her a negative bout of intuition; buying it might prove both moral and profitable…

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Eighteen
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A thousand years away, a small flotilla of craft drifted toward a new planet. The flagship, battleship displacement, was the Gastaph Hedriatix, a battleship with a square prow festooned with deep-range probes. On its data analysis deck, beneath a vast vertical tower, Archmagos ultima Santiso frowned, not that he was really very capable of expression, making it more of a thought than a gesture.

He brought up an image of the planet ahead, one briefly surveyed as having no indigenous life remaining. But that didn’t mean much.

There were many exploratory agencies in the C’tan-Menelmacari empire. The state run programme of Elrandir, for example, or the ongoing necron programme of seeding the galaxy with Cultural Survey Drones, military and diplomatic first-contact committees, and there were also private or charitable organisations that acted somewhat under the generalised instruction of these groups.

The Adeptus Mechanicus, for example, was the religion of Asirnoth, on a sacred Quest for Knowledge. At the moment, that meant that the second Mechanicus fleet was engaged in dropping off an archaeological team to an apparently dead world.

The thing that troubled Santiso was that the world in question had no apparent reason for the demise of its population. Not even the ubiquitous ‘Genocide’ answer.

Puzzling.

Which was why they were depositing a long-term investigator group. The Quest was never ending…

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Nineteen
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The Chapter banners of the Silver Dragons hung from the great hall’s lofty and dust-less heights, each banner slung between two pillars set with gargoyles that breathed preservatives out and dust in. Each one had seen many battles, save the newest, and many depicted either the dragon’s talon insignia, dragons themselves, the primarch of the Chapter, or great heroes long dead.

Maturin Ralei – as he tended to name himself – looked up at the banners, and the most recent one, a stark silver claw against a bronze background with gold and crimson flames roaring up at it. The chamber made an excellent waiting room, it had to be said, when waiting to meet with the ‘Lord High Executioner,’ the Silver Dragons’ version of a ‘normal’ chief chaplain.

The station had originally been a Ramilies class ‘starfort’ ringed with minefields and deadfall torpedoes, built into an asteroid, which had slowly engulfed most of the structure as successive Chapter Masters over the four millennia of the chapter’s history had allowed the station to be engulfed in camouflaging rock, with extended interior docking naves being cut into the rock, sufficient to house the considerable fleet of twenty one ships, ranging to miles long battle barges, commanded by the Silver Dragons and largely provided by the Void Dragon, from whom their name was taken. This wasn’t actually that unusual for an organisation of their size, but Ralei, not only being a necron, but an Officer of the Elenaran, was aware of their full strength. They had gravitic attack bikes, bullock jetcycles, gravitic tanks enough to hold the chapter, and hundreds of suits of heavy ‘Terminator’ armour, in their armouries. The Machine God was beneficent, in his way, and of course, the Silver Dragons’ own armourers were no slouches.

There was a reason for all this provision; the Silver Dragons were entrusted with many tasks, capturing samples of psyker populations from chaos-tainted forces, and other tasks that the necrons didn’t want to be seen doing themselves.

He stood before the ominous-dog headed form of terminator armour, and contemplated what precisely had turned the black suit before him from a battle-worthy piece of equipment to a relic. He could see the answer easily enough; the whole suit had been crushed, sufficient to send spider-webbing cracks all across its breast plate and deform its shoulders slightly. A large crack had torn its waist in twain.

Ralei expected it had been crushed between two heavy objects; perhaps the claws of a close combat equipped titan. He’d have to ask. He reached down, and leafed through the dusty volume of the Codex Astartes laid out before him. Ralei, like many of those in the Necrontyr empire, owned his own copy of this seminal book, one compiled from the three ‘original’ texts, with a few companion volumes, but this was the first time he’d seen a permanent hard copy of the book. He leaved through it slowly, “Companies of the Van,” he murmured, taking note of the somewhat rare variation used.

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Twenty
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Erisavefana was spectacular in the dawn, if one liked that sort of thing. Jena Orchiel was indifferent to the doings of the place. It was rusticated, and rather nice, she supposed, but she was an urban creature, and had seen just enough of the countryside over the years to decide that it was a nice place to visit, but she wouldn’t want to live there.

The building she was looking at was a comparatively large one, a convent. These buildings dotted the landscape of the continent she was on. Generally they clung to low hills and rocky scree, sitting atop smooth, raised foundations. This one was a little different, built in rolling countryside, where the population density was somewhat lower. It sat on a fortified bunker, like its hill cousins, but this was only visible due to the vehicle ramp that one large set of doors concealed.

The average Erisavefana convent consisted of fifty sisters drawn from one of six military orders, which provided the police and defence forces of the country. They were foreigners originally, and, for that matter, not actual Necrontyr citizens, but rather, colonists of a somewhat religious bent.

Unlike many other semi-official forces, the Sisters of Liberty, the Venuatana-Efana, did not possess any notable space assets, beyond a few small transport craft. It was not expected that they should ever need to assault targets on their own, in the same way, say, the Silver Dragons, did. They didn’t really operate independently in the same way.

Jena focussed her amplified vision on the iconography of the convent. It was one belonging to the sub-group of The ‘Order of The Crimson Star’ a group that venerated, yes, that would be the word, rather than worshipped per se, the Menelmacari Defence Prefect. They were a C’tan worshipping religious group, but diversifying their cast of characters made for more proliferate naming and iconography, after all.

As well as that, two wings of the convent, which formed a plus sign in plan view, contained attached facilities from other, civilian orders, including one that doubled as the main hospital for the surrounding area, run by the ‘Order of Our Lady’s Succor’ which held one of Ranisath’s best known lovers, Kestrel Amea, as its patron.

Jena nodded slightly at the watchful routine visible in the convent. They’d need it. Another was about to mount a drill-raid on them; a regular training exercise that Jena was supposed to report on.

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Twenty One
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Arnran Selvaran sighed, feet up on a plush footstool, smiling, his gold-haired head back against a pillow on his chair, looking out of the window at the rain that rippled lightly over the country beyond in one of the northern islands of Menelmacar. A roaring open fire crackled nearby, and he smiled, simply letting himself enjoy the domestic bliss of it all. He’d have enough to do soon, after all.