NationStates Jolt Archive

The Fourth Sphere
An endless rain of ashes, brought on by the equally endless stacks of the furnaces which cover much of the Fourth Sphere, from the changeless grey bottom of the Third Sphere. This is the only weather on the Fourth Sphere, falling ashes on the blisteringly hot metal, which glows red at the base of the furnaces.
Only the strong can survive here, or the suitably adapted. By Phyrexian standards, Gremlins are not strong. True, they could tear a standard human in half with relative ease, but they have not the will, nor the courage, to do so. In the face of an attack a Gremlin will run away or seek to evade its attacker, only fighting when cornered. And, even their impressive stregnth pales in comparison to that of the Phyrexian warriors.
Endless ranks of them, grey-skinned, with gleaming eyes which speak of nothing less than total loyalty to a single cause, and a burning desire to kill. Skin stretched tight over artificial muscles grafted onto bones of ceramic and steel, gleaming claws of treated glass and iron, and a single, almost thunderous, pulse. A million hearts beating in unison, sending a gush of glistening oil, the lifeblood of Phyrexia, rushing through the bodies of the assembled horde.
And above it all, a man. Possibly.
This man is tall, his skin is pale, his eyes are wide and he gives the impression that he was designed by an alien who once, long ago, saw a man, and years later tried to draw him. Even so, he captivates the eyes, drawing all attention to him, even if he was not present in every mind in the room already.
He has a name, but none will speak it. Those present would rather chew their own throats out, a feat which a number of them are capable of performing.
He raises his hand and the Pulse seems to pause for a moment, every eye yearns towards the man.
He speaks. Not so much in words as in Thoughts. The Thought races out like lightning, speeding from mind to mind in a blur, sparking like electricity and sending jolts of something like joy through those it touches.
GO
Many have given great speeches, some long, some short, but few are the beings which can, at a single word, summarize their desire for those present to go forth and conqour in the name of the living Machine God/Man, to cross continients and overwhelm cities like waves crashing through sandcastles. This being, who has not left his Sphere for an age or more, standing on that platform with all the pride of a million, million kings, emperors and gods, his name once struck fear into hearts and minds across many planes, on many worlds, long, long ago.
His name is Yawgmoth.
It is a name known to every Phyrexian from the moment they are Compleated, the process by which a Phyrexian becomes Phyrexian. Dragged from the endless vats of the Third Sphere and hurled into life on the First, only after these fleshy near-humans learn to bear the ordeals of living in flesh are they permitted to partake of the joys of being one with their God. Only then are they taken to the Sixth Sphere, where His priests correct their imperfections, and it is there, during their final test, that they learn His name, for He Himself enters their minds, and His name is burned into their conciousness.
And under the banner bearing that name the Phyrexian Horde bears down on a world, on the edge of space, home to a few million seeking, perhaps, a simpler life.
Perhaps their wish can be granted in Phyrexia, life in the Vats is simple.
The vast army marches in lockstep, each foot hitting the floor in cadence with ever other foot, as the Phyrexians march towards two great monoliths, built to exacting specifications some thousands of years before, each one stands a hundred feet tall, set exactly one hundred feet apart, and between them is...the World. Suspended in air as if a layer of air had been peeled back and stitched into place, held their by massive staples of air and thought.
It was, from a human perspective, a nice world. Gently rolling planes covered in something like grass (which was shimmered blue-green when the wind blew), surrounded by deep blue oceans devoid of any predators large enough to threaten humans, which where virtually filled with small fish and amphibians that where only too happy to swim into the fishermens nets.
The first row of Phyrexians steps foot on that world, crushing the grass under their feet and grinding it into a sea of mud.

A few years before...
Alexander Smith (From a long line of Smiths, who had smith'd quite well back in the days when people named Smith actually did smith.), relaxed at his desk. He was happy, because this was his first anniversary as Hemisphere Head, taking over from his dear departed father (suicide, jumped off a cliff and then beat himself to death when he found he wasnt quite dead), and his policies had proven quite successful thus far. For him.
Nobody had noticed the few thousand SDollars (local slang for Universal Standard Dollars) vanishing from the vaults every now and then, and he was able to suppliment his salary quite nicely.
He, however, failed to notice what was going on behind him in his own office.
A skittering noise made him start to turn around.
Then there was a THUNK.
His chair refused to turn. And something warm was dripping down his shirt onto his pants.
Great he thought, I spilled my recaff...stuff takes ages to get out.
Then he looked down at the foot or so of claw protruding from his stomach.
Now...who put that there?
Slightly delerious, he turned his head and glanced at the Negator.
Unlike warriors, Negators bore no resemblance to the beings they once were. This one was about five feet tall and possessed of a number of wickedly curved blades, impressivly long talons, and viciously sharp spikes.
Presently, Alexander and his chair were both lifted off the floor and carried through the portal.
His secretary, who was kept for her looks more than her intelligence, peeked in a few hours later. Alex was gone, so she assumed he was on one of his 'business trips' downtown. He was quite good at escaping.

Alexander Smith, former Hemisphere Govonor, groaned and tried to sit up. This proved challenging as he was secured to a table. He looked to his right, where a cuff held his hand to the table. Beyond that was a flat, grey, room. The walls appeared to curve inwards to form a hemisphere, totaly featureless.
A series of ratcheting clicks and piercing whistles made him look to his left, where a...thing was standing.
Almost eight feet tall, its long fingers grasping an oversized needle, the Priest tilted its head very slightly as it bent over him.
Alexander Smith screamed for dear life.
The Priest was not taken aback, or even startled. It calmly jammed the needle into his neck as another Priest approached. Alexander's screams grew weaker as his vocal chords gave out.
"Is the meat ready? More screeches and whistles.
"A few minutes. Let it stop screaming first."
The Priests watched Alexander with something like interest until he gave up and lay back on the table, panting slightly. He felt very weak...
One of the priests stood up, produced a scalple and drew a vertical slash across his abdomen. Alexander jerked and tried to scream again, but his throat wouldnt work correctly, and the muscles in his back rebelled against any further commands to move. His eyes rolled in terror as he tried to move his neck to see what was going on.
With the various layers of tissue laid back and noted, the priests carefully moved onward, noting each organ and its assumed purpose, cutting only where it was needed, taking a few tissue samples here and there. Noting what made their patient twitch and try to scream. Phyrexians were good at noting things.
Eventually, they stopped. Alexander found himself alone, strapped to a table, the skin of his torso and abdomen stripped back and pinned to the table and the needle still pumping whatever it was pumping.
After some time, hours, minutes, it was hard to tell in this place, another Priest entered and did something with the pump behind his head. Almost immidiatly the cool sensation of the needle was replaced with burning, intense, pain. Alexander did not know it, but flowstone nanites flooded his system, chewing away at the soft flesh in his neck and graduallly moving over his body, although he was dead by the time they got out of his neck in any case.
Soon all that was left was bone, everything else had been liquified and drained away.
The skeleton was measured very carefully, each nick and tiny imperfection or old childhood break was carefully recorded, then the bones were ground up and, like the other meat, recycled for the use of the uncompleated ones on the first sphere.
Nothing was wasted on Phyrexia.
Many thousands of miles above, in the Fourth Sphere, one of the special factories set to work. Each bone was fabricated to exacting standards, every recorded detail was inserted. Then, with equal care, artificial tissues were attached to the bones, and Phyrexian organs secured inside the ribcage and stomach cavity.

Later that day, Alexander Smith woke up in his office. He had a headache and a burning desire never to visit his favorite section of downtown again. He would have to get some cream for that.
He picked up the newspaper and read about the wave of dissapearances which was plauging the colonial government.
Gosh, he thought, Im glad IM not one of them.

(Forgot to turn on mah subscriptions.
Self-Tag, etc.)

It was the day of the Phyrexian invasion. In retrospect of those few survivors, it was an almost appaulingly nice day. The local birdlike lifeforms were signing, the grass was particularly blue-green, and not a cloud was to be seen in the sky. A gentle breeze rippled the tops of the caffa-nut trees in a fashion which might inspire a goodly number of poets to write long and interesting poems.
Perhaps less pleasing to the eye was the fashion in which a section of sky seemed to roll back in on itself in such an eye-blearing fashion, defying a number of generally accepted universal laws and turning a square mile of sky into a vash, grey-black pit, from which a rain of searing ashes started to fall, scorching the grass beneath. Soon after the grass vanished, immolated and added to the whirlwind of ash and dust kicked up by the Phryexian ships passing through the portal, firey exhaust beating the planets topsoil into submission before the first Phyrexian even set foot on the surface.
Soon after the portals opened on the ground, disgourging thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of Phyrexians, spreading outward like boils on a plauge victim, slaughtering any who resisted and a good portion of those who didnt.
The planets defence forces put up a valient, but ultimatly futile fight. Most of their commanders went insane shortly before the invasion and started executing officers, the planetary government was in dissaray and the civilian emergency centers were almost totaly inoperable after a series of well executed hacks, not to mention several staff members going quite mad.
Perhaps if a connection had been made, things might have gone better for this planet, but it was difficult to connect with your neigbhors when the local comms station has been smashed to pieces.
So, the planet was left in darkness, its people confused, some rioting, some trying to band together to stay secure, but, in the end, all for naught.
Because at some point, every major population center on the planet felt the simultanious tramp of an approaching Phyrexian army, and heard that horrible, single, pulse beating its way towards them, both a threat and a promise, death and salvation, at the same moment.
There were, of course, many heroic last stands. Here a church or temple, there a post office, homes and businesses, normal, everyday places which became bunkers. None of them, however, were really suited to standing up to the concentrated malice of the Phyrexians. The ones who stood, died. The cities were burned, the farms destroyed, a number of forests were leveled, and anything larger than a dog was rendered 'non-combatant', in Phyrexian terms. The 'occupation' lasted a few days, after that there were few left on the world who were not Phyrexians, and they would perish soon after, even if they were not discovered by the Phyrexians, it is difficult to sustain oneself in an environment where food is as scarce as the survivors.
The few survivors, perhaps a hundred thousand out of the millions who once inhabited the world, were herded back through the portals, their fate lay withen the Vats, to sleep until called by the Ineffable, to rise to the First Sphere, and then Descend, to be made Compleat.
It was another few weeks before the first Phyrexian cities sprang up. Huge, black stone and metal assemblies, seemingly defying gravity with their tall, thin, spires. One could almost, perhaps, ignore the piles of corpses, carefully dragged from the construction area and stacked by the meticulous Phyrexians in neat piles, then counted and prepared for shipping back to Phyrexia.
The smell would, to most humans, be appauling. The Phyrexians didnt seem to mind, those that had noses, that is.

It was, a few months later, that the first Phyrexian Evincar stepped onto the planet, and its name was Khrrik. Once before he had come to this plane, more as a preacher than a commander, but this time he had been granted a more...pleasing assignment.
This would be the first Phyrexian world, one of many, in this plane, the first to fall and the first world to be granted to a Daemon of the Inner Circle, one who would shape this world to the Will of the Ineffable and prepare it for His eventual arrival.
This was the product of centuries of spying, decades of infiltration and, now, months lf hard labour. And, in honour of this, the Ineffable had granted a name to this world, one which tugged at the hearstrings of every Phyrexian, perhaps almost as much as the name of the Ineffable himself.
Halcyon.
It conjured, in the minds of those who had been granted the vision of it, a city in the clouds, on top of an inverted mountain, glowing white in the sun, full of what could only be described as angels, beings so perfect, unblemished by time or care, that they had naturally risen above their surroundings. And amoung them the most perfect angel of all, none knew her name, but the Ineffable had loved her, her beyond all else. Even beyond his own Godhood, he had reached out and tried to make her His.
But...she had betrayed him, and struck at His very heart, locking Him away from that place, even has He stood on the other side of the portal, beckoning her to join Him. For ages, the Ineffable had withdrawn into his Sphere, mourning the loss of that true perfection, that one sliver of light in the whole Multiverse of darkness.
And this was the result.
The New Halcyon, the fresh start, from which would rise an entire universe, an entire plane, nay, a multiverse of perfection, spreading like the cleansing rays of dawn to strike away the darkness and ignorance which permeated and infested every corner of this place.
It was the Dream, the Great Dream perhaps, no Phyrexian was unaware of it, in the back of their mind, the goal which was always, always, out of reach...until now. Until a scout had returned from a portal bearing news, that a Plane existed with pathways to virtually every other, and that this plane was vast beyond imagining, perhaps even infinite, inhabited by uncounted flesh creatures who could be brought to Phyrexia and used to great benifit.
And thus, the Dream became, in some small part, Reality. And Phyrexia rejoiced, signing the praises of the scout, and the Ineffable, and all the worlds which would join them.
And that brings us to the Now, when Halcyon is devoid of so-called life, filled to the brim with Phyrexians, waiting to spread, to speak the World of the Ineffable in every ear they can reach, and to free the meat beings from their prisons of flesh and blood.

(OOC:
...k...apparently I didnt get a bump from that last post >_>

Anyway, contact is welcomed, provided you dont bring in a GIANT UBAR FLEETZ to wipe out everything on the planet :P)

((...
Did I miss something?
>_>))

(OOC:
Well, it appears that one of the mods is in a bad mood today, so I guess I'll just have to settle for bumping this topic again in the hope that, maybe, somebody can type a reply in the space of time that the server is actually working.)

OOC: Not a bad start over all. Lemme get something in after dinner, perhaps--the Fleet Mechanicus needs action, they will send a small expeditionary unit.

(OOC:
Works for me, my response may take a while depending on when you post, since I have class tommorow.)

Somewhere outside the Phyrexian space--

The sounds of whirring machinery, the thunderous song of servitors moving about and maintaining equipment, and the humming of logic-engines processing astrometric data kept Magos Exporator Leon Nguyen from being totally bored. Then again, when managing all these techpriests, servitors that could break at any moment, and ensuring proper ritual was made to the Machine God and the Emperor, it was never boring.

Something else was interesting enough to keep him occupied. This was the mass movement of forces of some kind. Enough to warrant his attention. Snooping on Xenos was his speciality, and he was not above moving the Fleet closer for a lookie-loo.

As they approached the system where the activity was and had scans begin of the local spatial bodies, Nguyen was filled with dread, something even his implants went cold upon feeling. What was here?

The Phyrexians, of course, noticed the intruder. In fact, they made sure to redirect an outbound shipment past the new arrival, a large and excessivly spiked cargo ship on its run-up to one of the out-system gates. Otherwise though, the newcomers were ignored, aside from, perhaps, a slight increase in the activity of areas they happened to be close to.
Considering they had only been in system for a matter of months, the Phyrexians had made impressive progress in converting the system to suit their needs. Halcyon was much as it had been prior to the Phyrexian occupation, save that the human cities were either replaced with the gleaming black spires that the Phyrexians favored or abandoned. Since industry took place on Phyrexia, the only environmental 'damage' inflicted by the Phyrexians was in mining operations, which seemed to be relativly small-scale in any case.
As the alien ship drew past the systems sixth planet, something finally seemed to take notice of them.
A channel somewhere slammed open and a wide variety of electronic noise promptly flooded across Nguyen's comms system, followed by a mix if languages, all of which were foriegn not only to this sector of space, but to this particular universe as well. The tone of the messages, however, seemed to indicate, however, that they were interrogative in nature.
Each message began and ended with a variety of machine sounds, rather like the sound produced by a person attempting to shift from first gear directly into fourth while sawing through their cars hood.

A channel somewhere slammed open and a wide variety of electronic noise promptly flooded across Nguyen's comms system, followed by a mix if languages, all of which were foriegn not only to this sector of space, but to this particular universe as well. The tone of the messages, however, seemed to indicate, however, that they were interrogative in nature.
Each message began and ended with a variety of machine sounds, rather like the sound produced by a person attempting to shift from first gear directly into fourth while sawing through their cars hood.

The screeching forced Nguyen to cover his ears, and the Servitors weren't doing much better. Omnissiah protect him, these fellows didn't sound too happy to host them.

He cried out, "Magos! What are they saying!?"

One of the officers got up and said, "Sir.....speech...unk-GAARGH!--nown."

He then grabbed the man, and said, "I want a message sent back on wide band signals. Tell them in High Gothic, Low Gothic, and Lingua Technis we mean them no harm, and we are explorers!"

The officer did as told, wandering to a console and broadcasting the following message:

"We are the Explorator Ship Land's Glory. We mean you no harm. We are explorers, seeking new life and new worlds in the name of the Omnissiah and the Emperor.....we mean you no harm!"

There was a pause, as of consideration, and then the return came.

0100110101100001011010110110010100100000011110010110111101110101011100100010000001110111011000010111 1001001000000111010001101111001000000111010001101000011001010010000001110100011010000110100101110010 0110010000100000011100000110110001100001011011100110010101110100001011100010000000100000010000010010 0000011000110110111101110101011100100111001101100101001000000111011101101001011011000110110000100000 0110001001100101001000000110110101100001011100100110101101100101011001000010000001100110011011110111 0010001000000111100101101111011101010010111000100000001000000100010001101111001000000110111001101111 0111010000100000011001000110010101110110011010010110000101110100011001010010000001100110011100100110 1111011011010010000001110100011010000110010100100000011011010110000101110010011010110110010101100100 0010000001100011011011110111010101110010011100110110010100101110010001100110000101101001011011000111 0101011100100110010100100000011101000110111100100000011011110110001001100101011110010010000001101001 0110111001110011011101000111001001110101011000110111010001101001011011110110111001110011001000000111 0111011010010110110001101100001000000111001001100101011100110111010101101100011101000010000001101001 0110111000100000011101000110100001100101001000000110010001100101011100110111010001110010011101010110 0011011101000110100101101111011011100010000001101111011001100010000001111001011011110111010101110010 0010000001110110011001010111001101110011011001010110110000101110010100000111001001100001011010010111 0011011001010010000001110100011011110010000001110100011010000110010100100000010011010110000101100011 011010000110100101101110011001010010000001000111011011110110010000101110

Phyrexian authorities had, perhaps fourtunatly, encountered several machine races prior to their arrival on this plane, and the Lingua Techis was somewhat similar to several. Minor modifications had to be made of course, to account for grammar, wording and so forth, but the resulting message would be fairly clear.
Meanwhile, a row of lights marking a course to the third planet promptly flashed into existance, each borne on the back of what might be approximated as a fighter. The ships outlined a virtual 'road' in space, a few kilometers wide, giving a path to the third planet.

Make your way to the third planet. A course will be marked for you. Do not deviate from the marked course.Failure to obey instructions will result in the destruction of your vessel.Praise to the Machine God.

OOC: Sorry if I am late....work and all.

IC:

Nguyen replied back in LT: "Affirmative."

He instructed the crews of his unit to begin following the designated course. The path was relatively small in width, and the Fleet Mechanicus soon moved in single file, moving paitently and quietly like ducklings.

All the while, Nguyen mulled over the message. These people knew of the Machine God? How odd....the Adeptus must have been here before. He could only hope that the Omnissiah had made these people somewhat more receptive in person than they were right now.