NationStates Jolt Archive

The Star-ship Eurydice, Polyphilos Star System, Uncounted Years Ago:

“Treachery! Treason!” Omega cried, the sword in his hand, an anachronism, but Omega was nothing if not a master of anachronism and drama, flaring as the telepathic circuits in its hilt made its blade, forged from the living metal validium tremor with life, and excitement. The metal was forged exclusively for war, the ultimate, in its time, in physical armour; it had a thirst for destruction that could even influence minds of inferior will toward violence.

Vandekirian backed off from the infuriated time lord, the bridge of the Eurydice suddenly seeming to be more enclosed than it already was. The transparent canopy showed the grey hole in the distance, It was strange to look upon, fires of incandescent light twisting and writhing in perpetually flexuous arcs of fire in the grey hole’s gravitational tumult.

The stump of Vandekirian’s arm coiled with black smoke, from where he had already struck off one hand from his body in maddened remorse for his betrayal of Omega’s movement, a democratic underground intended at deposing the rapidly degenerating tyranny of Rassilon. Rassilon’s forces were already purging Omega’s conspirators at home while he was here, Omega had planned to strike after the destruction of Polyphilos, an act that would bring their home world to a new age of power, was complete, but thanks to the Treason of Vandekirian, Rassilon was getting his blow in first.

Omega stabbed the sword forwards, its unreal material cutting through the traitor’s chest. Vandekirian burst into a dazzling golden-white flare of light, his features changing, and Omega kept the weapon where it was, killing each of the traitor’s reincarnations as they passed by like windblown leaves. Finally, Vandekirian, dead at last, dropped from the Sword of Omega, lifeless, with two hands, his corpse entirely different in appearance from the man that had struck off his own hand mere minutes ago.

Omega sighed deeply, and dropped the sword, living metal clattering to the floor, dull and lifeless now that it had been given its fill. “I’m sorry, my friend,” he said, “I should…” he broke off.

“I shall give you an honour in death,” he said, stooping to pick up the severed hand, and rising, silver robes rustling as he did so, holding the ghastly, bloodied appendage before his eyes. “So that you shall have a hand in my Greatest Work, even in death.”

He laughed, a hollow, mirthless sound, at his unintentional joke, and walked over to the ornate brass casket holding the Stellar Manipulator. “Open,” he commanded, and its lid raised like that of the coffin it so resembled, revealing a shining white radiance and billowing white carbon-dioxide smoke. He cast the hand into its depths, “Be now the Hand of Vandekirian,” Omega said, “and go…”


The Stellar Manipulator worked of course, in a few instants turning Polyphilos into a super-nova, and then collapsing it to something else for which there was only one term, ‘the Eye of Harmony’ a conceit of Rassilon’s in naming it. It would become the power source that would drive Gallifrey on to chart the Web of Time. But Omega had misjudged the ruthlessness of Rassilon.

The shielding of the Eurydice was disabled with a simple button push, and leaving nothing but the Hand, which to memorialise the ‘fallen hero’ Omega, Rassilon christened the ‘Hand of Omega.’ But the fate of its creator was quite different from that envisioned by his murderer.

The release of titanic energies by the destruction of Polyphilos had effects even the architect of its re-sculpting had never imagined, even though it preformed beyond the hopes of Omega, it did something else too. Another universe – universe in the sense of discrete ‘dimension’ rather than Universe, in the sense of all creation, of course – was created, A universe of anti-matter, where the vanished Eurydice appeared. Of course, that was quite inimical to the matter of the Eurydice, but fortunately, the interstellar medium was too diffuse to seriously harm the vessel – especially after its shields were restored, and Omega created a living metal armour of trans-dimensional material that could interact with both real matter and anti-matter safely, and convert the requirements of life from one to another to serve as a barrier for him to exist in exile.

But the most astounding mystery of that universe was yet to reveal itself. The Hand had inadvertently created it, and in so doing, it had been imprinted with etherised echoes of the telepathic circuits of the Stellar Manipulator. It was responsive to the will of the authorised users of the Hand, Rassilon, the other, and most notably, Omega himself, and to lesser extents, the rest of their race.

His Will was the only concrete Physical Law. Within his universe, Omega was seemingly Omnipotent. There were of course, many delights in playing around with this newfound power, defying momentum, or unravelling entire nebulae, but before long, omega sought to return to the material universe, as power in itself, it was meaningless and empty.

For a time that Omega quickly lost count of, he worked to perfect his knowledge, creating strange beings and tampering with portals. He brought a planet into existence to serve as a base for experiments into the weak barrier, but Omega soon found that the gateway he had assembled, although he could move its focus, projecting matter wherever he willed, he could not go through himself, as the apparatus he had willed into existence required his presence to continue existing.

Therefore, to effect his escape, he brought another Time Lord into his universe to replace him in exile. But this turned out to be futile, as his physical body had long since decayed to nothing inside his armour, with only his will, encoded like a ghost into the very fabric of existence, remaining. His resulting madness had, not been pleasant, though he eventually succeeded in escaping his prison, Though, perhaps unsurprisingly, after a brief dalliance in Amsterdam, he soon wanted to return, and eventually succeeded.

After many centuries of rebuilding, he bent his mind to the problem of solitude once more, and it occurred to him that there was a delightfully simple solution to his dilemma, to stave off the insanity that had previously afflicted him.

If he could not return to civilisation, then he would make one. OF course, Omega had no desire to create intelligent creatures, for they would ultimately be dependant on his will to live, and he could foresee that he might be forced to leave, causing them all to be destroyed. This was of course, unacceptable. Instead, considering the options and abilities he had, Omega looked outwards.

Outwards, he saw a Universe ultimately filled with chaos and strife. That was as it should be of course, for there was a degree of change and evil that was necessary for good to exist. But to Omega’s mind, the balance was a little more shifted than he would like. He could see several groups that operated by taking slaves to hidden, unassailable bases and torturing them. He would do the opposite.

Looking outwards still, he prepared his creations, hunting for somewhere in the Universe worthy of his ‘attentions.’

It didn’t take long to find one…

Chaos Sorcerer Champion Issachar Zult of the Thousand Sons exhulted in the screaming. While not a worshipper of Slaanesh (definitely not a worshipper of Slaanesh), he did enjoy the destruction of innocents by his hand and the hands of his master. "This was ordained by Chaos!" He shouted over the screams to the other marine. "Why not exhult in it?"

The Iron Warrior simply spat and walked off. They were temporarily working together to take this world and its people. That did not mean that they were allies. Only Horus and Abaddon had ever compelled the Nine Legions to act together perfectly, and both were long gone.

Zult pressed his hands together, then reached up to scratch the back of his neck. He was growing feathers, and they were becoming scratchy. Then he walked off to inform the Demon Prince that all was as it should be.


DemonPrince Despan's eyes saw everything that was happening on the planet. Try as it could not to. Its wings beat aimlessly as it hovered over the surface, glancing around semi-madly. "My lord." It heard a voice, but it couldn't focus on that voice.

"Yes, Brother?" It turned its head on its long sinewy neck emptily, finally finding Zult in the shadows of the warp. Its voice was a mixture between a snakelike hiss and a birdlike squawk.

"Our battlebrothers have returned to the ship. And the Warriors of Iron accompany them." Zult's eyes flashed with the desire to strike this own down and claim its power and knowledge for his own. However, he knew that his 'master' could see what hid in his mind, and so remained still.

"And the cultists? Have those worthy of...joining our two legions... come with us? Squawk! And the others...dealt with?"

"Yes, my lord. Let us away."

"Hiss...let us away."

The Imperials were shunted into a large storage hold on the Chaos Space Marine Ship. Originally designed to hold titans and thunderhawk gunships, the countless numbers of them fit easily enough. The Chaos Space Marines jumped into the immaterium after he standard two days, two days which passed in near-panic that the seven 'Loyalist Chapters' that the Black Legion had said were in the area might suddenly show up.


===

The two legions settled into their normal routine in the warp. The Thousand Sons Sorcerers retreated to their studies and council chambers, while the battlebrothers simply chose convenient corners or rooms to stand in and do nothing for a while.

Meanwhile, the Iron Warriors contingent made their own plans for the slaves in the hold. There were plans under foot to steal the controls of the ship and send it to Medrendgard, where the terms of their 'contract' with the Thousand Sons would easily be ...renegotiated.

After an hour of careful and repeated planning, the Iron Warriors moved. Only to learn that the Thousand Sons had predicted such an eventuality and stood ready for the event. The resulting battle across the corridors of the bridge forced the ship back into the material world, over an empty planet.

Omega rather regretted the fact that his army didn’t need motivation or speeches, because like most of his race, he had a love of giving them. However, they were a rather dangerous collection of creatures, if repulsive in form (to humans at least). They were made of an exotic form of matter, neither normal, nor its opposite – the raw stuff of matter, Omega had termed it once. Composed of ‘cells’ of this material in a gel like form, they were capable of changing the very properties of matter, from one form to another.

But they were not the only creation at his disposal. The first tools of Omega to be seen were different from his army. They were formless, like any creature of the warp in its pure state, simply made of ever changing colour and energy that seemed to come from nothing. Simple, animalistic intelligences drove them to fulfil the mission objective that their master gave them.

Each of these ‘explorers’ would materialise within a few kilometres of the desired target area, and do as their name suggested, explore, finding things and taking samples of materials and beings in evidence in the area, and returning them to the desert-like wastelands in the south of Omega’s world, where he could study it at his leisure.

They slithered into the flaring column of light that served as the gateway and focus of Omega’s domain, Each one could compress itself down to any size, or balloon out to the size of a large vehicle, and each served as the gateway for an entire company of the humanoid ‘gel creatures’ that would themselves serve as gateways for captives to be transported to the northern hemisphere of Omega’s world.

Emerging onto the two ships of the chaos marines, the Explorers were spread out fairly evenly, though they could not be precisely directed, the shotgun effect of displacing hundreds into massive vessels meant they were mostly spread out evenly.

They immediately set about the task of taking samples of their environments, deck plates, crew-cultists, and so on disappearing into their porous-reality makeup. Moments later, the armies of gel creatures began disappearing from Omega’s world, appearing in what their minds deemed the best positions, some of the creatures, appearing not dissimilar from ‘chaos spawn’ though larger, appeared in the midst of the fighting, still more, thousands, flooded towards the cathedral like bridges of the vessels. All of this was intended to cripple the command structure aboard the ships, and disorient them, bring maximum shock to bear, and distract the commanders of the vessel from the main thrust of Omega’s army.

The majority materialised in the cramped and filthy cargo holds of the vessels, using their weapons to destroy – violently – the cultists guarding the holds and then proceeding to turn their attentions upon the slave population, wading in amongst the ‘human herd’ of the chaos forces, and where they touched people, causing them to disappear in bright flashes.

Their properties of transmutation they possessed, which allowed them to simultaneously project captives into the anti-matter universe and convert them to the material of that realm, allowed them to convert tiny traces of the air molecules from their environment to anti-matter within their bodies, and project it, nano or micrograms at a time, inside protective force fields, as ‘bullets’ that burst inside the bodies of cultists, unleashing showers of lethal energies from within, enough to melt them entirely.

Iron Warriors took up positions along the main corridors of the vessel. "Champion Nicademus!" One of them shouted back down the channel to . "The Thousand Sons have taken control of the bridge and those areas leading, and they have brought us back to the territory of the false emperor!"

Nicademus's enhanced mind considered the situation, but at a distance. Unlike the Thousand Sons, Nicademus and his Iron Warriors held no specific loyalty to any of the Chaos Gods. In a way, their relationship to the Gods was similar to that between the Loyalists and the Emperor. Though neither would appreciate the situation. Therefore, Nicademus's ability to understand the intentions and plans of the Thousand Sons sorcerers was limited. Not that he wouldn't try.

Unfortunately, his attempt to consider pkans and possibilities was interrupted by the sudden appearance of the orange 'spawn'. The Iron Warriors did what every Iron Warrior would do in this situation. Withdraw to a discreet position in the corridors, then unloaded every weapon they had from behind their hastily constructed barricade. And a message travelled back to the others. "The bloody Magnus-Worshippers have pulled in spawn! Get the obliterators up here!"

~~

The Thousand Sons had also decided to withdraw to positions after the first couple of confused minutes. Empty battlesuits stood in position while behind the bridge's sealed entryway the Chaos Sorcerers consulted with each other. One of them looked up at an image-port at the thousands of orange 'spawn' that had appeared. "Who summoned those?" Zult asked those assembled. He wasn't concerned, they had all the hallmarks of being his Lord's. Though the colouring was a bit off.

THe other sorcerors all shook their heads. Zult frowned. "Hum..."

Nicademus

The gel creatures were without intellect or tactical skill, but they were overseen by a mind that was quite simply genius on an astounding level. Omega’s thoughts as he watched the withdrawal of the Iron Warriors was simple. Their tactical sense was acute, but they did not quite grasp the enemy they faced. The Gel soldiery withdrew, slowly, under fire, returning suppressive fire of their own, invisible projectiles shooting out to intersect roof arches and beams, bursting into sprays of hard radiation inside the material they impacted.

Where bolter fire hit the gel creatures, the diamond tipped shells pierced fairly easily, with staccato barks, exploding inside the celled bodies of their foes and blasting several of the fist-sized compartments. The gel creatures were like ships – they were designed around a complex compartmentalisation system that allowed the effects of damage to be contained within one area. Some bolts didn’t even do that much, being transported through the gateways inside the creatures, and skittering to a stop harmlessly in the antimatter realm of Omega when their fuel was exhausted. Not to say that there weren’t casualties – two or three marines focussing their fire on one could quickly reduce it to a ruin by eliminating too many compartments for it to remain fully functional. When that happened, they exploded quite spectacularly.

Omega debated putting a few kilotons worth of antimatter into one of the Iron Warriors heads and slaughtering the entire unit, but it hardly seemed sporting. He had little desire to kill, after all, merely to distract. Instead he sent more of his creatures in probing attacks into adjacent compartments, and then had them ‘dial up’ their weapons power.

In a single moment, as though timed by an overseeing mind far away, the walls exploded - As did the ceiling - And even the floor. More of the creatures could be seen, carefully dialling their weapons power down to a level that would ‘only’ crack power armour open and flash-fry the juicy contents inside.

Omega turned his mind away from the plight of Champion Nicademus and his men, leaving his creations with their orders, he focussed his will on…

The Bridge

A thousand son’s ornate yellow-and-lapis helm exploded, blasted to a thousand fragments. Omega was slightly bemused at the lack of flesh within, but dismissed the thing as a simple automaton. As it remained on its feet, returning fire, the Time Lord issued a command to the bridge assault force, directing them to increase the power of their ‘weapons’ by several orders of magnitude, and the guards began disappearing as if struck by half a dozen lascannons at once, simple disappearing in bright flashes – that would give anyone unfortunate enough to be unshielded and nearby, such as the ship’s cultists, a horrific dose of radiation sickness that would be, to all intents, instantly lethal. All that remained of the Thousand Sons encountered by the advancing tide of enemies were occasional smears of molten ceramite on the walls.

Throughout the rest of the ship, cultist guards were quite simply slaughtered, and the ‘rescue operation’ continued apace.

Nicademus and some of the other marines had started running just before the explosion, their chaos-heightened senses allowing them a clear view of the next five minutes into the future. Many of their slower brethren were obliterated with the passageway. "...this is no sorcerer spawn. Fall back!" The Champion shouted. "Fall back!"

The Iron Warriors did fall back, meeting the rushing obliterators. Nicademus hit upon an idea. It had no guarantee of success, but his options were limited. "...Brothers," he addressed the obliterators, "seal off this passageway. Let nothing pass. Except you, Brothers Bernard and Lorien. We shall meet up with the other champions in our command area and plan our retreat."

"Yes champion." The Iron Warriors strategically retreated behind the bulk of the 4 remaining obliterators.

Nicademus scowled within his helmet. 'Hopefully they'll buy us enough time to formulate a method of escape."


The Thousand Sons were not having a pleasant time of it. While their infantry was certainly versatile, its quantities were not unlimited. The Sorcerer Champions and picked battle brothers had already retreated into the control deck, which the commanding Sorcerers had already sealed and bound with every invocation to Tzeentch they could devise. "We must do something!" One squawked, his bird-like beak portruding awkwardly from his helmet.

Zult's expression grew more and more melancholy. "...did anyone prepare any invocations to call upon the Changers of Ways?" The Sorcerer demanded. "Anyone at all?"

There was a moment's mumbling, through which the door shuddered tremulously. Finally a sorcerer raised a power-gloved hand. "Aye."

"Well. Why don't the rest of you go and set up the neccessary apparati...whilst I go and scout." Zult rose to his feet and swept his robes back. Then accidentally fell forward, his sword of change slicing through Despan's wing. "Forgiveness, my lord." He saluted hurriedly, then grabbed his escort and two of the champions and left through the other door. Which sealed behind him. There was the sound of a lot of rocks falling down on the other side. Then the door melted into the frame.

The others didn't notice, as they were too engaged in watching their master turn into a chaos spawn, which he did with much screaming and shouting and raging. Once the transformation was complete, they had two of the battlebrothers shepherd the chaos spawn out into the fray, and concentrated on performing the rituals.

After a minute or two, the air around the ship was filled with glistening portals of coruscating warp energy, from which the demons of tzeentch spread. Horrors and discs all charged into the fray, cutting aside cultists to get to grips with these strange intruders.

And above it all, one of the cultists suddenly shrieked in agony and began the agonising transformation into a greater demon, his pitiful will overpowered by the Sorcerer's combined mental strength. The speed of the casting had not been without its cost, though, as two of the sorcerers collapsed and faded away, their essence devoured by Tzeentch as payment.

The battle raged, as battles are wont to do. Missiles of anti-matter slashed through the air, surrounded by glowing fields and propelled by the hyper-science of Gallifrey’s greatest genius. Roaring rocket-bolts and incandescent lasgun blasts sought through the smoke, punching holes in and blasting chunks from the arcane matter of the attacking invaders. Bullets of stubbers and autoguns punched into the invaders and dug out holes, burying themselves inside the victims.

On the bridge, pieces of blasted Thousand Son armour skittered around and the forces of Omega begin entering the cathedral-like space. They took heavy losses as they poured through the choke point, boltguns and foul sorceries punishing them as they entered. But they weren’t much affected. Narrow bolts of contained antimatter lashed out, and the chamber was turned into an inferno as huge craters were punched into bulkheads.

Vast balls of expanding plasma and hard radiation buffeted sorcerers and their minions, though most of the latter would barely affect them even if all the protection they had was their armour.

Foul demons of chaos assailed the creatures of Omega, with great success. The Spawn and chaos demons, all sorts of ever changing horrors, all cut into their enemies, rending their complex matter bodies apart. Omega’s forces deemed that the battle for the bridge was lost.


From the outside of the ship, one could see an explosion near the top of the vessel where the bridge wall was ripped apart. Demons and omega’s spawn alike were thrust into the outer darkness by the escaping air…

OOC: More to come. I just felt I should post... something.