NationStates Jolt Archive

Deep within the hellish depths of Warp space, the Imperius Dominae, a dreadnought of the fleet cruised towards the Sol system, engines running beyond maximum. However, it was never to reach its destination, the battle it fled bringing about the great ship's doom. It was burning badly, flame and dying men pouring from hull breaches along the length of the devastated vessel. The bright arcs of shields that held back the swirling maelstrom of nether energies were failing, as one by one the generator towers collapsed in horrific explosions. With a blinding flash, the shields inverted, wreathing the ship in burning electrical flame and opening it to the demons of the Warp. And so it was that the Imperius Dominae was condemned to drift the darkness of this damned realm.
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Ten thousand years later...

In the cold expanse of interplanetary space, the heavens parted and the grim form of the thirty-kilometer dreadnought was made manifest upon the physical world. The lights of ship had long since grown dark, power source burned out millennia ago. Where once the blinding plasma infernos of the engines had burned, now only shadow remained. It was in silence that the ship drifted forwards, a fitting memorial to the thousands of souls entombed within.

The Cathedral of the Machine God rose above the charred land of Akaton's northern ash wastes. Its gothic spires towered kilometers into the smog choked sky, their peaks lost amidst the dark clouds. Smoke belched from open furnaces as the followers of the Deus Mechanicus exalted in the glory of the victory of machines over nature. It was from this place that the appearance of the Imperius Dominae first became known.

The etheric scopes on the tallest of the towers constantly searched the heavens for relics of the Ancients. So much had been lost over the millennia, since the Fall of the empire that once ruled the galaxy. The technical marvels of this civilization were such that they escaped the understanding of even the greatest artificers. To the machine priests, even the smallest of artifacts, a quantum crystalline power cell, for instance, was a holy relic. The sudden discovery of a full Imperial Dreadnought, thirty kilometers of pure technology, was almost beyond imagining. In any other place, the appearance of a massive ghost ship, drifting through nether space for ten millennia, would have been considered a thing of terror. Such a vessel could contain horrors beyond mortal reckoning, a harbinger of doom and despair. However, to the tech priests it was a blessing beyond all others.

Through the dark halls of the Cathedral, prayers were chanted, environmentalists sacrificed, and all manner of other arcane rituals performed. However, in the midst of this chaos, the thoughts of those with more practical minds turned to the task before them. The Imperius Dominae must be salvaged at all costs.