Family Reunion [Closed]

[The Ctan]

‘NOTHING THAT SAFEGUARDS HUMANITY CAN BE EVIL, NOT EVEN THE MOST STRENUOUS INHUMANITY. IF THE HUMAN RACE FAILS, IT HAS FAILED FOREVER.’

Maybe Jaq was too young by hundreds, by thousands of years, and his intellect too puny to comprehend the multiplex mind of the master who was forever on overview, whose thoughts battered in his mind. Or maybe the master’s mind had become chaotic. Not warped by the Ruinous Powers it surveyed, oh no, but divided amongst itself as its heroic grasp on existence ever so slowly weakened...

'WHEN WE CONFRONTED THE CORRUPTED, HOMICIDAL HORUS WHO ONCE USED TO SHINE LIKE THE BRIGHTEST STAR, WHO USED TO BE OUR BELOVED FAVOURITE – WHEN THE FATE OF THE GALAXY HUNG BY A THREAD – WERE WE NOT COMPELLED TO EXPEL ALL COMPASSION? ALL LOVE? ALL JOY? THOSE WENT AWAY. HOW ELSE COULD WE HAVE ARMOURED OURSELVES? EXISTENCE IS TORMENT, A TORMENT THAT MUST NOURISH US. EVIDENTLY WE MUST STRIVE TO BE THE FIERCE REDEEMER OF MAN, YET WHAT WILL REDEEM US?’

Attr. The God-Emperor of Mankind
The Liber Secretorum of Jaq Draco
Bi-Millennial Commemorative Edition, All-Civilization Press

Ytusa and Halia sat close by one another in the open area that made up the school-room, the space was wide and pastel-hued with a sky that the children could adjust, while the sides of the room were lined with shelves of selected books and creative tools.

The pair were half-sisters, with the same father, and different mothers, not unusual though it was rare as Halia was fully human and Ytusa a beastling of a rare feline type. They were not adopted, for they had the same brown eyes that gleamed with intelligence.

Socialization was the chief goal of education of young minds in the Great Civilization. Knowledge could be obtained by any means of course, but it was not inculcated in the way of formal classrooms; instead, each group of children in the Zorane Vulo school were encouraged to plan and design their own lessons. Today the group had chosen to learn more of history.

“The Ancestral Universe,” Ytusa said. “How far in the future is that?”

“Thirty-seven or thirty-eight thousand years from our departure point,” Mentor Auril said. “One day we will merge it with our new timeline, and be reunited.”

Ytusa spun her hand through trails of vapour projected by her Aura-Locus, projecting an image of the Imperium of Man, dated at the year 40,392 CE.

An image of the prototypical living standard appeared before her, the hive-sprawls that pressed down into poverty.

“It’s horrid,” Halia said, instant value judgement at the size of the thing displayed before her. Both young women had the seriousness of their age, though Ytusa’s emotions were betrayed by the tapping of her tails, mild agitation that Auril recognized, at their age they tended toward expressing their disapproval or approval more openly, sounding out the social rules of adult life.

“It is,” he said. “Life in the forty-first millennium is hard. My father came from the old Ancestral Protectorate, and my grandfather remembered the Starchange. Sometimes there are still the odd world or ship that appears in this plane, pulled down by the undertow of your Father’s work perhaps.”

Halia, always excited to ask questions leaned forward, her hands finding the table and leaning forward. “It’s so messy,” she said, “can it be fixed?”

“Good question,” he said, “let’s look at something smaller, why don’t you look up what a Hive City is, and tell me how you’d go about making it worth living in? Let’s map out all the things that we need to live well…”

“Ul-Tarath,” the greeting was one with a gesture of pointed courtesy, the sign of greeting that was a shared mudra-gesture of the Necrontyr and the Yldari.

“Mel’nais,” the seer said. Above them, the dome of the crystal seers gleamed with the shimmer of a lens over all they did. The piscine ships of the craftworld’s defence fleet and a crescent-shaped vessel of a visiting necrontyr vessel hung overhead. The ancient and venerable craftworld of Yvresse was one of the oldest parts of the Great Civilization, and here the seers of old remained fossilized in place, rooted to the spot where they had given up their mortal frames, integrated with the bare wraithbone of the domefloor.

Pyramids and viewing platforms decorated the space, and the Guardians of the craftworld mounted an honour guard for the occasion, it was a rare occasion now when the Seer Council gathered in extraordinary session.

Their work still continued, of course. Although the dangers that the Yldari had once faced had been greatly mitigated after the confrontation of the Jackal God and She Who Thirsts that had cut the bond that bound the Yldari of Yvresse to the chaos god, and their martial defences had been enhanced greatly in this galaxy where threats were far less common, the Eldar did not pursue the Path system for their fellows benefit, but for the self-development, it brought with it.

They were still bonded to the Othersea, if not the god that had devoured their pantheon, and still intensely emotional, the disciplines of old were not cast aside so easily.

Mel’nais was one of those who had first argued for the rapprochement with the Necrontyr and her foresight had been most praised for it. She was first among the council of the living, but they were attended by many spirits, whose collective might thrummed in the air.

There were many ways of foreseeing the future, some scientific, some mystic, some both. But the Seer Council here was amongst the best means of untangling the skein of fate that the Great Civilization could call upon.

“We meet for a single purpose,” the convening Seer Ul-Tarath said, as the last of the green-and-orange robed seers stepped into the concentric circles, “we will reveal Morai-Heg’s doom upon the flotsam worlds of the Teletsini.”

All knew this already, for they had heard the call to assemble in the shimmering psychic circuits of the world-ship. Mel’nais waved her hand upward, a set of stones levitating before her, the runes of fate.

The Yldari existed a hair’s breadth from destruction at all times. Their people had been remade by the Ur-Folk in the Elder War in Heaven, their natural abilities in magic amplified manyfold; childhood for the Eldar was the matter of learning the control required not to be consumed in the fires of chaos. Even with the cleaving of the Jackal God and the Deathsword, the perils of drawing on the Empyrean were all too close and all too real. The seers and other psychic paths of the monastic Asuryani used their complex psychic engineering to craft devices such as the runes before them that rose in complex interlacing flight-paths as the seers entangled their casting one to another. The stones served as fuses, that would blacken and burn, absorbing the overload caused by the predations of daemons and other beings of the Othersea, providing a measure of safety that enabled the Eldar to exist in these tumultuous ages of the stirred warp.

She plunged herself into the skien, the tangled threads of fate that opened before her. She could feel the minds of her fellows, searching deep with her, exploring the moment the sector of the Ancestral Universe had first become one with their plane, the froth in the warp and dangerous stirring of predators that strained at the underside of reality where it had been knitted providing a barrier as imposing as razor-rocks for an ancient marine ship of wood.

They plunged through moments and in snatches she saw the lines of fate that would lead to unnumbered atrocities, the blaze of weapons that burned planets to their cores, the fall of the sector to the Primordial Annihilator of Chaos, and a thousand other fates; this was part of a reading, and she moved from these fates, sorting them like harvesters winnowing grain.

There were many ways for people to die or to thrive, many futures to explore. The humans of the Ancestral Universe were closer to Yldari than other humans, their growth as a people a prefiguration of other humans here in this one, or one possible destiny. The closeness of the Psychic Awakening of their kind made them a different breed in a spiritual way - a people on the edge of ascendance and mastering chaos or being forever mastered by it. For most it was small things; a low-level thing.

On the scale used by the Imperium, far more linear and less accurate than the one Nais and her people did, the average human of the Ancestral Universe was Rho or Pi, while the average human of the second millennium was Sigma or Tau, this greater psychic sensitivity manifested itself in luck, exceptional ability or exceptional cruelty, and many other ways, the birth-contractions of a new humanity.

This had been tens of thousands of years in the making, the product of travel through and exposure to the Othersea, a more random and less directed process than that which had made the Yldari, but one that gave the people of the forty-first millennium capacity so achingly close to triumph or damnation.

Even if there were no ethical reasons to be interested in the human cultures derived from their home-cosmos and no material profit in cultural exchange with them, that alone was enough to make them of paramount importance when they appeared.

It was not just the Ancestral Universe, of course. Much of the Great Civilization’s energies had been taken up exploring magic in all its forms, and part of that was the consequence of rapprochement with the Yvressi. Ultimately, while there were great vistas of knowledge that time would reveal to the cold science of the materium yet unknown, the spirit was more mysterious to most of the Great Civilization, and if they ever intended to achieve their lofty goals, unravelling its mysteries was required.

The eternal war against chaos, the management of the nightmare collective of the creative subconscious of all but a few living things, required all manner of skills.

There were so many paths to ruin, so many threads that ended in fire before her. Nais saw one of the more positive futures, and followed it, moving from her goal back, exploring the countless branches that tethered it to the present, and she could feel Ul-Tarath and others catch onto her vision, checking, exploring those angles that she missed.

It was impossible to be certain of anything in such a complex reading - Nais could pick the numbers of a gambling lottery or manipulate the trade markets of lesser civilization, the mere act of her observation freezing them in place, but always the Changer of Ways sought to undo such things, to restore chaos to order.

To be a seer was to accept that all things existed in a continuum between ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps.’

And still, she knew, she had one possibly beneficial route. She set it aside and continued. They would read for days, sustaining themselves with the biomancy of the warp until at last exhaustion would call her from the divination.

And then perhaps they could debate their recommendations. Maybe they would continue to another Seeing.

Ever since the Telstein sector had been identified as originating in the Ancestral Universe, it had been watched by the void-black scout-vessels of the Great Civilization and their complex monitoring systems. They had taken care not to be seen, however, until now.

The system they had chosen was one on the borders of the Sectatus Imperialis Telstein, chosen for its proximity to nothing too frightening, but with one useful asset. It was the kind of system that one would explore. Rich in metals and minerals, but more than that, it was home to a developing species, one that was perhaps at the borderline of tool use.

The ethics of intercession, uplift and guidance, independence and interdependence were complex, and fought-over daily. But no one felt the classical Imperial approach remained relevant.

The system was classified by a catalogue number - a long one - not because it was unimportant but because the C’tani had no desire to put a name to it; that would be the birthright of its natives, in time. Its inner cauldron was marked by radiation bursts and asteroid belts, gravity riptides of a turbulent, disrupted star, and its outer reaches were home to a titanic gas giant with startling planetary rings.

The fourth moon boasted a biosphere, a rare and precious thing, and a people stronger than humans despite their moon’s tenuous gravity. They had dealt with off-world beings an enclave whose remnants still showed traces of a recent conflict and whose intrusion would last in the myth of their early agricultural culture.

Their world had not been scarred by the battle in the sky either, perhaps that would one day be a War in Heaven of its own, more than half dozen ships of the Krork had been there until two days ago, some still sparking with crackling remnants of the exotic energy weapons of the ships that had destroyed them.

The Orks had, being Orks, enthusiastically consented to the brief battle that had led to their near-annihilation, and indeed two ships had fled when it had become clear that their enemies were present in force. But they made an easy demonstration of the military power available without needing to risk the loss of Telsteini lives to display such force.

This first approach relied on the nature of the explorers of the Old Imperium; the Rogue Traders, pioneers, adventurers, exploiters, smugglers, rogues, and more, Rogue Traders were the concession of ideology to reality made manifest, empowered by ancient and inherited warrants that exempted them from proscriptions on dealing with aliens and non-imperial cultures, they had been incepted as a cross between explorers, traders and spies, and attained great fortune in some cases (and ignominious death in many more).

Imperial ships traditionally made the transition from warp to real space in the far reaches of a star system, beyond the gravipause, the point where the system’s gravity no longer posed a risk to the smooth function of their drives; within that volume, they could withdraw only with a degree of greater or lesser peril.

By leaving such a battle-scene for the picking (even though orkoid technology was generally not worth much), and with an intriguingly silent but clearly inhabitable planet on display below, the C’tani sent an invitation for investigation.

Their war vessels had departed, however, for as effective as the crescent-shaped ships of the necrons were, there was a good chance someone on the other side may have heard tales of their inimical hostility.

But they had left one of the ships. The ship was ancient and unmistakably human, a rare thing for the C’tani, an original, Gothic Light Crusier (not to be confused with the larger cruiser of the same name whose provenance was newer) in the Jovian Pattern, her blade-like shape adorned with a basilica and palatial accommodations. Of the few imperial vessels that had come with the Starchange this was the most beautiful by far.

It was also one of the few to not be a museum ship in the current epoch, instead, she was home to thousands still, the descendants of her original crew. Her lines had changed somewhat, grown leaner, and her iconography altered a little, her engines been restructured, she had been the template for many imitators, but still, she bore the eagles of the Imperium, though no longer the sacred Aquila on her flanks.

Her name was adorned in high gothic runes on her side, ancient and storied.

Ignis Aurum Probat

Her name was often shortened of course, and her provenance was real, a relic-vessel whose history stretched back into the mists of time and whose crew had lived aboard her in days of privation and days of plenty. Ignis’ ‘machine-spirit’ had been born in the unremembered days of the Nova Terra Interregnum, when she had been built and in whose ancient wars she had fought.

Her class was a ship used on long-range patrols, but long replaced in that role by the ubiquitous Dauntless-class, and when she had become truculent and hard to maintain she had lingered for two millennia in the dock-yards of the Segmentum Naval Reserve before she had been bought by the Rogue Trader Kristyn Damstadter, whose family had later come to love the swift ship, and whose crews had grown to regard her as home.

Four kilometres in length from her bank of flat engines to her stiletto prow, the Ignis sat at the central point of the debris field, with the wordless smugness of a fox sat among a large pile of feathers.

Praetia Astraeus sat on the wide couch that made up the Ignis’ command bridge having descended from the navigator’s minaret at the aft of the ship’s basilica decks before the battle had been joined She stroked the head of her psyber-eagle, whispering hushed words to him, the familiar fluttered his wings, feeling what she did through the link they shared.

“They are coming soon?” the woman next to her, Philomena Damstadter, a distant descendant of the woman who had bought the Ignis so many years ago, asked.

“I sense them, yes,” Praetia said, “they will pass the Mandeville point within the next half hour if all is well.”

“Well then,” Philomena said, looking to the woman beside her. “Do you think that they’ll recognize us?” Philomena asked, looking to their left.

“It’s possible,” the flaming golden holographic avatar of Ignis said; the ship’s network of cogitators had been joined together some fifty years ago to awaken her. She remembered much of the universe before the Starchange, and if it had not been ceremonial by then, the Damstadter family’s claim to own the vessel had been surrendered then. Ignis retained the information that had been in her older cogitator systems and had backed it up for historical interest, even though her architecture was much more advanced today. “I’ll let you know if I recognize their vessel,” she said, “I think it’s about one in five,” she said, “the Imperium was vast, but Rogue Traders were never that numerous, I have a record of some quarter-million ships from one quarter as many dynasties known to be active at the time of the star change.”

“Will we contact them, or will they contact us?” Philomena was the descendant of the Rogue Trader dynasty, and certainly their living claimant, but she did not have the diplomatic training of the esteemed navigator who had joined them on this journey and flown them through the warp, and deferred to her.

“I would let them contact us, they will be excited if nothing else, I suspect,” she said.

“Good,” Philomena said, a smile lighting her features, as she adjusted her cravat. When they were joined by their cousins, there would be a substantial time delay between communications, but still, she had made a point to dress for the occasion, not too shocking. She was a Rogue Trader after all, and she played with the unaccustomed hat that sat on her knee. “I’d rather see what I’m dealing with before anything else.”

[Ky-telstein]

S A L U S : I M P E R I A L I S : S U P R E M A : E S T
+ + + The Good of the Imperium is the Supreme Law + + +

The Night of a Thousand Rebellions claimed innumerable worlds, voidcraft and distant sensor posts from across the Segmentum Pacificus at the whim of chaotic tricksters and agents of dark lords and darker-still gods they served. None were to be more curious, and few were to be scrutinised more heavily than the case of the Telstein Sector, even if it had escaped notice until near a century into the Dark Imperium.

Productive, populous, and typical of Imperial Sectors across the galaxy, the hands of The Enemy had barely touched its people; meanwhile fleets and armies prepared to divert from the myriad concerns within its borders to visit the supremacy of the Imperial Truth unto the traitors.

Volumes to fill a building would eventually be written on the Cessation of Telstein, and it would eventually come to pass that Judges, Prefects, Admirals and Explorators would spend a century investigating the events of 992999.M41 within that area of space. First came the questions, then came the trials and executions - of course more questions followed once it proved impossible to divine the truth of the matter from the death of a hundred Adepts. By the time a scroll reluctantly concluding the matter to be "unknowable" had passed through the same room as one of the High Lords of Terra, there had been even a Vicious Curator-War between two rival historiography clans over whether the recorded existence of the Sectatus had simply been a mistake never corrected.

None of this would come to be known by any Telsteinian from the lowest sumpdweller to the Dominus Sectatus himself. For reasons, and by mechanisms unknown to any, the entire area of space and everything within it had ceased to exist within the Ancestral Universe and found itself transported to a new one. The citizens of the Sectatus Imperialis took decades, centuries even to adapt to their newfound independence. Civil Wars became a staple of the age as every aspect of the Adeptus Terra found itself trying to assert dominance without the support of the Segmentum. Such intercenine conflicts in equal measure went on to douse and fan the flames of battle against aliens, heretics, mutants and worse within the Sector - for in the grim dark future there is only war.

Today, many years since that fateful time, peace reigned across the Sectatus Imperialis insofar as that word could ever apply to the eternity of carnage and slaughter that was the backdrop to the laughter of thirsting gods. The number of revolts, invasions, plagues and famines had dwindled to a more manageable number – figures recorded and absentmindedly considered by the Lords of the Senatorum Sectatus over crystal flutes of amasec that were worth more than the lives of whole cities – to say nothing of the drink within.

Still, it was believed and decreed by the Imperial Commander – The Sectatus Dominus, the Lord Telstein, that the time had come to turn the efforts of the Sector’s citizens abroad. Three Warrants of Trade, and another two Letters of Marque had been swept from the Ancestral Universe with the Sector, and now the Rogue Traders bearing them found their numbers bolstered by nigh-on a hundred upstart and newly-minted Chartists-Errant. In the absence of the highest Imperial Authority on Terra to issue the unlimited authority of the Warrants of Trade, a mostly band of Chartist Captains with a thirst for adventure, warp-capable ships and new-found freedom found themselves pitted against Rogue Traders of wealth and of power, and most importantly of territorial mind-set.

And so it was that the wheels of conflict and in-fighting turned again, with each man and his crew dedicated to staking and protecting claims on profit across Imperial Space and beyond no matter who might stand in their way. In fact, the bearer of one Letter of Marque had already been declared Excommunicate Traitoris with half of their dynasty for going against the interests of the Imperium: ‘Salus Imperia Suprema Est’ indeed.

Punishment needed to be meted out, and of course half the Rogue Trader Dynasty did penance in blood, but there was yet a stain that needed to be washed out and a Letter of Marque from the Priesthood of Earth couldn’t simply be handed back out to any old random Nobleman. The seventh son of the seventh son of a Rogue Trader condemned to Damnatio Memoriae – as well as servitorisation – now found himself on a course he had never been in line for.

Gildas Rowena, now head of his house, found himself now tasked with their final forfeit: exploring and surveying the new systems named on a scroll within the most opulent quarters of the new flagship of their much-diminished fleet. Like the ancient Ignis, the first vessel to boil forth from the immaterium dated to the earliest days of the Imperium. The Sword-class Frigate Death of Renown was millennia older than its fellows, and it had showed when Gildas toured them. Brighter and lighter, though more cramped and efficient in their use of space, had the shipwrights who had designed the Carracks had a hand in the Renown then he suspected the firepower have doubled. As it was, the Renown had already been dissected and had many weapons removed to replace them with room for cargo bays. Indeed, had the Necrontyr vessels not already destroyed the Orkish flotilla then the four Imperial vessels would have struggled to do much more than beat a hasty retreat as soon as their Navigators were ready.

For a former adept of the Administratum, the bridge of the Renown was reassuringly familiar even if it was now void and not smog that stood on the other side of the windows. The Bridge was rather alike the chambers on Telstein from which he and his junior prefects had managed grain distribution – that is to say grandiose and immense in its construction, and gilded and immoderate in its decoration. The Bridge itself had a stained armourglass design three stories tall across its main view port, and the walls were replete with authentic bronze, livewood, and even candelabrum sconces that filled the vaulted ceiling with smoke.

Stood next to the ship’s captain at the head of a raised walkway that jutted out into the grand chamber, Gildas could cast his eye not only over the bewilderingly complicated displays of various ships’ systems, but across every member of the bridge crew for his flagship. Many of them were servitors mindlessly actioning the input of their human masters, but here and there live crew bowed their heads over their interfaces, spurred on in their productivity by the pair of chattering servoskulls that conveyed the whispered commands of the Captain to them.

“How long, Captain?” Gildas asked her without moving his gaze from the field of activity below him. He was certain that the time until they returned from the immaterium was going to be on one of the screens, but he would be damned if he was going to lower himself to manipulating the data displays himself. Beside him, the frail, aged and augmented figure of the vessel’s master replied similarly without altering her gaze.

“Ten minutes, Lord.” She replied with a feeble croak from the ironwork vox-emitter embedded in her throat. Despite the honorific that was his due, Gildas could tell that she held the barest minimum of respect for him. He was after all a master of numbers and statistics – one of the calculating wardens of regulation from the Adeptus Terra. He had been so far down the list of candidates for pater familias that he hadn’t even been considered worth grooming for a ship’s captaincy within the Trading Dynasty. Better instead to farm him off to a great Imperial institution a century ago and hope that down the line he could scrape together some illicit corn to cut the overheads on feeding crew and colonists without needing to resort to corpsestarch like some Hiveworlder.

Now of course, Gildas was stood in command of not one but four flying cathedrals crewed by tens of thousands of Imperial Citizens and wielding the power to disintegrate cities with a volley. And with this privilege and responsibility he was tasked with expanding the borders of the Imperium and bringing back wealth in knowledge, goods, and currency. He sighed, and lazily opened the synthcrystal tureen-like container that sat at his interfaces. Temperature controlled, the delicate box kept pre-sliced apple-peach at the perfect temperature to avoid their rapid decomposition and retain the exquisite flavour.

As he enjoyed the authentic, organic juices of the fruit he couldn’t help but wonder how much longer he would need to crew these vessels before he received the respect he was sure was due of him as the head of the dynasty. He might not be able to glance momentarily at an auspex and divine the best route through some warp-tainted debris field, but he was hardly a fool. Every man, woman, and child in this flotilla was eating better than they had ever done before in their lives, he warranted. There were more and better supplies than any of his Trader brethren would waste on the indentured members of the crew, to speak nothing for the delectable spread his officers dined on. The engines and guns both found themselves fed equally well, and the itinerary of the voyage was planned down to the hour from the moment they transited back to realspace. Gildas smirked to himself, as much as expression could move across his face given his augmetic eye and other advancements.

Before long, the great bell nestled in amongst the synthcrystal chandelier in the vaults of the ceiling tolled out a warning that the transition to realspace was imminent. Having waited for this moment, Gildas’ Arch-Militant and two armsmen stalked onto the bridge to stand just behind their liege. All brandished beautifully wrought and immaculately maintained weapons, ready to take action should the Gellar field flicker and the transition become less than pleasant.

“Five,” the Navigator called from her raised sanctum up high to one side of the chamber, overlooking the window and the rest of the bridge. So the final countdown began.

“Four,” she continued, her voice calling out clear and strong above the skeletal clacking of the servitors – the only sound that still filled the now-still room.

“Three,” the count-down continued, adding to the foreboding that Gildas felt grow with every second.

“Two,” the Navigator intoned – this time joined by the faint sound of klaxons playing from vox-casters across the ship. The Carracks likely joined them in this count-down, but for the moment the Rogue Trader knew it was still a possibility that his crew and cargoes were being devoured and destroyed by fiends in the service of The Enemy.

“One,” came the final count, and Gildas clutched for the railing. He knew there wasn’t any momentum so there was no chance of an ungainly tumble, but even so he couldn’t help but reach for the reassuring feel of cold metal. Behind him, and the only person to notice the movement, Captain Moden shook her head in despair at the landwalker who she now answered to.

Without any further ado from the Navigator’s station the vessel passed from the immaterium and into realspace. “Shields up!” Captain Moden rasped – her reedy voice carried from the command throne to the crew responsible by one of the swooping skulls. She needn’t have bothered, however, for the great Plasteel shutters were already grinding their way across the window to reveal the grand vista of the void. With that, the spell was broken and the bridge became once more a hive of activity.

“Report!” Gildas barked after a minute spent stood there, again expecting the information he desired was somewhere on the screen in front of him but certainly not in a fashion he could readily read.

“On what, Lord?” The Captain asked sharply as she gazed down at a holographic projection on her other side.

“On the situation, of course.” Gildas snapped back, finally turning to case his eye on the decrepit woman next to him. Fully a century older than him, and missing more than just the parts needed to fit her augmetics, she certainly looked the failed Fleet Captain he knew she was. Damaged in body during battle with xenos, the flash of wrath in her eyes as she pulled herself away from the interfaces to acknowledge him at least showed her mind was there.

“We have transited the warp, only twenty minutes later than predicted.” She began, hardly expecting the landwalker Rogue Trader to understand how impressive that was. “Fyre Tusk, and Lord Vail have also transited with minimal damage reported to the Vail. Our own systems report no interference from denizens of the warp or their craft. All systems are operational, and both shields and weapons are powering up now – which we will need.”

“We will need the ships to come to quarters?” Gildas enquired, a note of concern entering his voice. “So soon? What do the auspex arrays pick up within the system?”

“Nothing so far, My Lord.” Captain Moden said, “But it never hurts to be too careful.”

=][=

At full speed, it was not long before the sensorium on the Renown managed to distinguish the debris from the Orks’ destruction from the world behind them and other void-debris. The chance to scavenge through the remains of their ramshackle fleet had caused a stir of excitement but, as the C’tani had predicted, this was nothing compared to the confusion and delight caused by the Ignis’ identification. Not that they knew it to be the Ignis Aurum Probat of course, but it had been identified as an Imperial Vessel that was not on the register of Telsteinian ships.

Immediately of course given the relative strength of the Ignis compared to the Renown, the shields had been brought to full forward power and weapons made ready, but now Gildas stood again on the Bridge in what passed for rather more splendour for someone of his tempered Administratum sensibilities. Whether another rogue trader like himself, a Fleet Captain, or maybe one of a hundred other vaunted figures that might command such a majestic vessel, they were to be afforded the respect and the ceremony that protocol demanded.

“Open a holographic link with them, if their Captain accepts it.” Gildas said excitedly to Captain Moden. “I would desire to speak with our fellows and hear tell of the wider Imperium.”

As soon as the transmission was accepted from one vessel to the other, the voice and even flickering image of the robed and hooded Rogue Trader Gildas Rowena passed across the void. “Greetings, in the name of His Imperial Holiness the Master of Mankind, Greetings to you.” He began, attempting to infuse every word with as much seriousness and importance as possible. “I am Lord Gildas Rowena – charged by Letter of Marque to ply this void as a Rogue Trader in service of the Imperium of which I do not doubt you know well. To whom do I address?”

+ + + +

+ + + + =][= + + + +

+ + + +

[The Ctan]

For the Ignis there was no recognition of the other ships as they crossed the Mandeville point and pulled themselves into real-space. She processed them and knew their classes, but these specific vessels were quite unknown to her.

She’d not been quite sure what vessels would arrive, and she maintained her defensive fields at a state of readiness. The Sword-class was older even than Ignis, a mainstay of the Old Imperium and one that she knew the capabilities of very well. She could not be certain that she could out-fight the other vessel and its transports at once, but she could out-run them if the need arose, and her munitions were stronger.

If the need arose, of course, the Ignis could cut in her own inertialess drive to run rings around them. She had made the journey through the warp here, but she rarely made such transitions. Some did not understand why ships like her even had the capacity still. The warp vane on the ship’s underside was not decorative, but she did not always carry a navigator or the void-dreamers necessary to sustain a psy-shield in the warp.

Still, today she did, and there were some on board who had simply been aboard her to be able to get their warp-legs, it was a rite of passage, and many void-born would not consider themselves truly teenagers without making a successful warp journey.

Without the light of the Astronomican, the great psychic pyre of the Imperium, journey through the warp was difficult, limited to only short jumps of a few light-years at a time; this was something that the Ignis accepted, just as she accepted the precautions required.

Still, she enjoyed the experience, the closeness with the navigator and dreamers, it was like jumping into ice-cold (and shark-infested) waters, but it reminded her of what she was and what her people and silicate ancestors had built.

She watched the Swords approach and the exchange of prayer-laden data as they emerged from the Empyrean, siphoning their data and curiously watching to see if everyone had made it, it seemed the Telsteinian flotilla had all made it successfully.

Praetia was by far the most senior of the delegation at least in terms of diplomatic experience. She was not merely a navigator, but the Heir-Apparent of her house, whose importance was considerable despite the alternative inertialess drive to warp travel. Her people were of ancient lineage and renown, they had held a stranglehold on the economic life of the Old Imperium, and they had been tolerated despite their mutation because of it. The House Astraeus was not a house of those times, kin-bonded, but rather it was a house of the dispossessed flotsam navigators who had survived the Starchange. Lost nobles and starving children they had been at first. She had been born to and still treasured another name, but she was chiefly known as one of the emissaries of her house.

Without their control of spacing, the Astraeus Navigators had little but ancestral wealth. But her people were survivors when the Old Imperium had been founded they had leveraged it. Some said darker things had happened at its birth. The Great Civilization was a different state, but it had been Praetia’s life-long mission since the Starchange to influence its leaders to favour her house.

She could not and would never claim responsibility for making the Great Civilization accept magic and warpcraft as readily as it did, there had been other contributors, but she was one of those who had done so.

There were ideological arguments that simmered beneath the surface of C’tani culture, many of the Necrontyr still favoured the Great Warding, the project to aroint all magic across the universe. The Great Warding was, without doubt, a genocidal plan, and while Praetia could accept the personhood of pariahs she could not accept that altering the universe on such a fundamental level could be enriching. She had seen the effects of long-term suppression of the soul, the deadening of imagination and the loss of the primal vivacity of life.

In some ways, it was the same as the folly of the Emperor, who had sought to suppress users of magic in every guise. The Great Warding was an engineering solution distinct from the widespread tera-murder the Emperor had pursued but it would be little better (and far worse for some).

The Navis Nobilitae had long understood that it was easier to steer a ship from inside it. They had no desire to see the Great Warding become policy and Praetia had worked tirelessly to bring about a more enlightened policy, by ensuring that her people were as integrated into the Great Civilization’s mechanisms as possible.

Steering ships was the most famous talent of a navigator, but not the only one. Foresight, and even confronting The Enemy, were among them, and so too was diplomacy.

Praetia had been instrumental in steering the policies of the nascent Civilization toward integration with more magical cultures, she had been there to whisper in favour of alliances with Menelmacar, Mystria, and others.

She was here, too, for the same reasons.

Unlike Philomena, Praetia remembered the Imperium, she had been born to it. Unlike Ignis, whose memories were from a pre-sapient time where they carried little emotional weight, the Telsteinian ships brought back another memory to her.

The Navigators’ Quarter, Holy Terra, Ancestral Universe
959.m41 (Old Reckoning)

The Navigators’ Quarter was opulent beyond the imaginings of avarice, towering megastructure-palaces clamoured to the skies, and sub-orbital plates hung in glory above them. The wealth of the entire galaxy ran through the streets like water and more than a few areas of the cityscape were literally paved with gold.

Praetia Oleya rode within a heavily curtained litter, surrounded by fanbearers and censer-waving attendants, her footmen, brightly attired in Oleyan livery of scarlet went before her. The world-city’s groaning immensity was oppressive and without shutting herself off between a privacy field, the outdoor babble and cry of the city beneath her was endless.

She was young, and one would never know her for a navigator, clean-limbed and unaltered, she was even something approaching beautiful, certainly, her cosmetician and her body-slaves laboured to ensure that she was as close to that state as could be.

As her sweating bearers placed her litter down she rose, adjusting her skirts but waiting for an awning to be brought to keep her pale skin from the blazing southern sky, long denuded of much of its natural protections, where aged Sol broke through the clouds she burned her children; Terra could no longer protect her children, they had to protect her.

Praetia’s watchful bodyguards paid mercenaries of the infamous Gelt-Sworn Brotherhood, stood watchfully prepared as her foot made contact with the velveteen carpet prepared for her arrival, purple, bearing the sigil of House Gareyon, a rampant tyger - an animal as mythic as a dragon or a unicorn. Praetia knew that none of these had ever existed.

The house steward bowed before her, “Lady Praetia, welcome to the Gareyon Estate,” he droned, his voice was perfectly polite, perfectly honest and honourable, and utterly devoid of emotion. “The Honourable Ignatius Gareyon is pleased that you have chosen to accept his invitation to dine with him today, he awaits you within.”

Snapping a fan to her face, she waved forward, she wanted to breathe the open air as little as possible, it made her choke. Terra was home to quadrillions of souls, toiling beneath them, in the foundries and counting houses, auto-tanneries and tally-spires, and even without the churn of such industries as the administrative world had there was no sense lingering outside but for the ceremony of it all. “Lead on,” she said.

A fantastic atrium concealing the finest of filtration technology and noise-stumming devices cut the Gareyon estate off from the rest of the world, and she walked past its statuary without looking up, paintings adorned the hall beyond but they did not draw a second glance from her.

Her gaze was reserved for Ignatius Gareyon; her fiancé. He wore the uniform of his service, an affectation that struck her as a little absurd. Perhaps he thought that she would be impressed? Women loved a uniform, they said, but she knew well that he had served with the Imperial Navy. She also knew that naval navigators were under no obligation to dress as mundane officers did. The high starched collar with its gold piping and the epaulettes and lanyards that twitched with every movement smacked of the absurd to her.

Still, he was trying at least. That counted for something even if it wasn’t the best first impression. They were stuck with one another after all and at least he wasn’t lolling about drunk, high or otherwise utterly incapable.

“My Lady Praetia!” he said, hazarding a bow, one foot forward unsure. Whatever impression he’d hoped to make wasn’t visible on her features it seemed. It was charming, sadly in the way a puppy was charming, not in a gallant or arousing way. She already considered the best time to see her cicisbeo after this if she wanted to cleanse the pallet, but she had reluctantly decided that meeting her contracted husband would be simply appropriate; she was half-minded to do what her sister Carlita had done and demanded a regular supply of genetic-samples for the business of the marriage.

The dinner was opulent but the conversation made it crawl along, and Praetia eventually realized as she let Ignatius talk about himself, that he was actually proud of his ship and the trite navy duties it brought. A Sword-class, the most pedestrian of vessels, a little errand chaser that went around the galaxy haring after pirates and smugglers.

He’s not wearing that get-up because he thinks it will impress me; he’s wearing it because he’s proud of it, she realized with a slight jump at the start of the third course. Will my children be imbeciles too?

The Present

The familiar shape of the Death of Renown brought a smile to Praetia’s features, as she remembered Ignatius’ descriptions of the class and its missions. She had never come to find him companionable in those days, she had never gone so far as to marry in the end, before the Starchange, but the youthful earnestness brought her a smile now in the preserved amber of memory.

Perhaps, if she lived long enough, she might one day see him again, if she interred herself in stasis at least.

Philomena looked at her as the message came in, and she said nothing for a moment, one of her four hands rose, she had changed as she had matured, “After you,” she said.

Philomena rose, and she smiled as she stepped into the ring projected on the floor for the pict-capture field.

“My name is Philomena Damstadter, Holder of the Imperial Warrant of Trade of the Damstadter-Keeler family,” she said, “Honorary-Captain of the Ignis Aurum Probat.” She spoke in the ancient hieratic tongue of High Gothic, which she had learned as a child, and which had changed little. “I am pleased to meet you, Lord Gildas,” she said, “I had never expected to live to make contact with those of the Imperium.”

A pause, she did not like even lying due to omission. There was a degree of dishonesty in this.

She glanced to Praetia, and then spoke again. She would clear the air a little.

“We represent an alliance of cultures, hailing from both the Ancestral Universe of the Imperium and this one where we find ourselves. I would like to make formal contact with your people on their behalf.

“I would like to invite you and your officers to dine aboard this ship, where we can get to know you and trade news.”

[Ky-telstein]

Technological failing was one of the defining traits of the Imperium of Man and today was certainly no different. The chill of the dolorous bell toll that now sounded across the ships of the Trader flotilla was diminished greatly by the poor, tinny quality of the speakers that adminsitered its warning. "Alarum, Alarum:" the emotionless voice of a long-dead Techpriest followed from a pre-recorded audex-screed, "Ship's Men to Stations, Bosses to Secure Menials; Action Statons Control Secundus et Void Ultra." From the first toll of the bell the newly reestablished calm on the vessels froze and died; instead the tension that had built nigh to bursting as the Death of Renown made its transition returned and redoubled in the minds of its crews.

The bringing forward of the ships's voidshields and activation of armaments were the only noticeable aspects of this readiness for, unlike the submersible boats of Old Earth the sound of fifty thousand boots tramping on ironwork stairs and plates could not carry through the void to either the Ignis or its silent watchers. The flares of energy would register on the sensor arrays of every warcraft in the system, even if too far away for the training of the dorsal guns to be visible - or a matter of concern. Of course, the bringing of the ships to Action Stations was fully expected under the circumstances, and was followed a short matter of time later by Lord Rowena’s missive – carried across the light-minutes of void by its long range communications arrays. Being previously equipped to patrol the cold reaches of space between distant stations and sensor beacons leant the ship well to exploration and diplomacy – on a budget.

Still stood on the command promontory of the Renown’s bridge, Gildas couldn’t help but feel concern about the disparity between his craft and the vessel before him. A light cruiser of such antiquity would either be a mouldering wreck inside or was, given the destruction of the Orkish flotilla, more likely to have access to some archaeotech that was far ahead of what the newer and smaller ships could muster. This was where he would much more have preferred to stand on the bridge of something considerably more solid like the Retribution-class that had been berthed within sight of the Renown over Calcaria.

Still, he had to present as the master of this domain as much as he had done while stalking the archives and scriptoria of the Ultra-Prefectoria on Telstein. In the short time between his hail first crossing to the Ignis, and their response loading for viewing on the hololith beside him, Gildas dismissed his Arch-Militant and recalled the two Armsmen from the servitors and cogitators below to stand beside him as uniformed and armed demonstrations of his personal might – crass as their sudden appearance may be. Soon he found himself standing there, the frozen holographic image of Lord Damstadter flickering before his face and leaving a number of questions unanswered.

After some time spent staring into nothingness, the shipmaster swung her head toward Gildas, speaking in a gratingly mechanical whisper “Your will… Lord?”

That outside intervention seemed to shake the rogue trader from his distinctly unpleasant reverie. “How long before we are in a position for a shuttle to make such a meeting possible?” He asked distractedly.

“Our transit is at just shy of twelve million leagues every solar hour,” Captain Moden replied, “and we are currently two solar light-minutes away from the Ignis Aurum Probat as they call their vessel.” Without affording the Rogue Trader any more attention, she leaned over the arm of her command throne and rasped some orders to a hovering servo-skull before stopping and turning back to cast a contemptuous eye over Gildas.

Disconcertingly the bleached, empty eye-sockets of the levitating skull followed her gaze and seemed to offer just as much judgement, even without a face.

“And with this I should do what?” Gildas said with a sigh. “I am tiring, Captain, of this mockery you make of my command by giving me half answers and impudence. How long before a shuttle journey will be possible?”

“As you command, so shall it be.” The Captain said, waving one pallid and skeletal hand. Without a word from her mouth, the cogitator screens before Gildas changed to display a crude representation of the Renown following a curved flight plan toward the Ignis. As the Rogue Trader looked down at the various symbols and numbers surrounding the hypothetical flight plan, Moden continued. “At our current pace there are fifteen solar minutes before we will be in a position to deploy smallcraft for you to travel to their vessel. This places us with sufficient a tactical bound between us and their weapon systems for some manner of reaction if they should open fire without warning.

“Your journey will take between fifty-one and fifty-seven-point-five minutes within the embarked Aquila shuttle, Lord, and if that will be all then I shall continue to direct the ship and request the engineseers and pilots ready themselves to carry you there?” The Captain held his gaze for another few seconds as he glared wordlessly at her before she turned back to the armourcrys window and dismissed the servo-skull with a wave.

“That will be all, Captain.” Gildas replied before dragging his attention from her and back to the hololith to prepare his reply. “And summon my Officers to the starboard docking bay, for much needs discussion with them before we visit our hosts-to-be.”

On the bridge of the Ignis, in just under two minutes, would appear the second transmission. Limited more in its quality by the scanner on the Renown than by the machines which displayed Gildas’ form for Philomena, his flickering and monochromatic image was wont to dance about and jump as he spoke – moving just slightly out of sync with the feed of audio unless the C’tani vessel’s computer corrected it. The hooded trader this time was of course joined now by two helmeted and armoured

“Lady Damstadter, sister of mine in tradewrighting and in the esteem of His Divine Majesty, I thank you for this invitation and accept posthaste. I expect to join you in a little over an hour if He favours our meeting.” With that, he inclined his head and palmed the aquila before the transmission ended.

+ + + +

+ + + + =][= + + + +

+ + + +

Gildas stepped down from the pneumatic tramway that brought him from the command chapel of the Renown to the cavernous loading chamber bay of the frigate. Filled with boxy, standardised containers, the room contained all the necessaries to construct the beginnings of a colony or to trade with whoever was found at the far end and it was less than half of what was stored on each of the Carracks. Dangling bat-like from roof racks were several lighters and cargo landers with a conspicuous gap where the Rogue Trader’s personal shuttle had hung until recently. Like the bridge, everything was a dull wrought steel or burnished bronze, with flickering Lectreon lights ensconced in barred embrasures made to look not dissimilar to funerary candles in the alcoves of a chapel’s wall.

As soon as the doors opened, the small group of smartly dressed figures waiting before it turned in acknowledgement of their Lord’s presence – most inclining their heads in greeting but none offering any further sign of deference. None except the smartly garbed figure at their front and centre, who snapped his heels together with a parade-ground click, and swept his hands up like an eagle’s wings outstretched across the front of his golden cuirass. With a helm, armour and tunic that matched the two armsmen that followed Gildas – in style even if certainly not in intricacy or opulence – he was clearly the commander of the Rogue Trader’s household company.

“My Lord, what news from the bridge?” He asked. With a clear voice that, even unaugmented, cut through the commotion of the cargo chamber and muttered gossips of his contemporaries, it was clear that he had a strength of body uncommon to most in the Imperium.

‘Deferential and professional - I was right to put trust in my grandfather’s Master-At-Arms,’ Gildas found himself thinking as he approached them. ‘The others… Some could yet go the way of the Captain if not kept pampered and satisfied they sit on the most successful team.

“The news is good, Master Iarom.” Gildas replied as he came to stop before them - straining to make himself heard over the whirrs and crashes filling the chamber. “My shuttle is being prepared to convey a small party across to a light cruiser that we encountered in orbit around our quarry.

“It is of ancient design,” Gildas continued, noting the way in which the Techpriest Senioris of the vessel appeared to straighten up at the words – the glow of his various pulsing diodes shining brighter. “And it is a sanctified design. Their greeting raises questions – many – and I suspect they may yet have turned from His light in part, if not in full. However, at this time we have encountered the first outside vessel of blessed humans since we were rent from our rightful place in the Imperium, and I do look forward to meeting them as equals with some of my staff.”

He smiled, casting his eye over his group of worthies and enjoying the way they waited hungrily for another morsel of information. “Master Iarom, I desire your presence with me for this meeting.” He said finally, taking satisfaction from the slight concern in the faces of the rest of them as they realised the number of open spaces for this sojourn had shrunk.

“Do you fear treachery then, my Lord?” The Master-At-Arms replied, cocking his head slightly to one side.

“No, I do not. Or rather, not more than normal.” Gildas said.

“What would you have me do?”

“I need someone with me who is able to assess their arms and armour, the tightness of their guards and the security of their premises.” Gildas said. “I do not mean to take them for fools, but I have no one here I would expect to be better placed to assess what they see for archeotech, heretech, or xenotech. While their vessel may be san-”

Before he could finish, the engineseer spoke up. “Lord Rowena,” he said with a voice more like the grinding of a gearbox than any noise a human should make. “If I may protest, I am the only one on this vessel so versed in the blessings of the omnissiah to be able to identify forbidden technologies and so categorise them.”

“You may.” Gildas said, “However you are no Techsorcist so there is little you can do if you identify corruptions to the machine spirits abroad on their vessel. At this stage, for this first meeting, I do not need complete and detailed classifications, I need merely a summary. And I need you to continue to monitor the enginarium and ensure that this vessel is in top condition.

“Whether these newcomers are devout citizens and servants of the Emperor, lapsed wayward souls, or unrepentant heretics, we will be able to do little more today than grit our teeth and greet them as equals. We stand to learn much, and to do so without jeopardising the colonisation effort or imperilling my fleet is of paramount concern to me.”

“Understood.” The Engineseer replied, as sullenly as such an inhuman voice could.

“As I say, Master Iarom you will accompany me, as will these armsmen to secure the shuttle within their hangar. Steward Krymer you will travel also, as will you Jarvik.” He settled his gaze on the first officer of the Renown. “And, finally, Mari.” Gildas looked over at the robed adept who had been sent with the ship to oversee whatever manner of colony it might be able to establish. “I expect you to accompany us as well to discuss matters of import relating to the colony with them.”

“The rest of you,” Gildas said, “May return to your chambers or your posts until our return. This will be a momentous day for the Sector, and the way we shape the outcome will see us enshrined as heroes for centuries to come.”

With that, he turned aside and stalked toward the starboard hanger bay’s immense doorway, gesturing for those few he had selected to follow. Minutes later the compact shuttle followed the puff of decompressed atmosphere from the side of the frigate and, using the warship’s momentum as it turned aside from the Ignis to speed its journey, began its lonely journey through the void.

[The Ctan]

Philomena was not, by the laws of the Old Imperium, the holder of the Damsdatter Warrant of Trade. That would have passed by the articles of the warrant to the first child of Nathaniel Damsdatter, who had borne it at the time of the Starchange, presently her cousin, Erica Damsdatter.

Philomena was, however, the most qualified of the descendants of the old Trader, and so she had taken the job by unanimous consent. She was not a professional, but she was rated for high-level diplomatic contact and had completed the certifications of the Introduction Instrumentality.

Money existed in the Great Civilization, but it meant less.

That did not mean that vocation meant less, but still, under most circumstances, she was aware that someone more qualified than her would be acting as the initial contact. When the Diplomatic Service had approached her she had suffered six weeks of constant sleepless nights and had been by this point glanding tranqa almost to the limit without medical intervention being required to increase the gland dose.

The simulations hadn’t helped. She’d seen the ways this could go wrong. An incautious word from Philomena and thousands of people on the other ships could die even if the Ignis won an engagement handily. The sensation made her tremble inwardly as she watched the Aquila shuttle approach.

She had Praetia, she had the Ignis and she had specialists elsewhere to advise her, but for now, at least, her lineage meant something. Perhaps, horribly, more now than they ever had in the Old Imperium, for though their lineage was thousands of years long, and they had founded worlds, they had not had the capacity to truly uplift those worlds, nor to plunge them into total ruin.

She walked between statues of the ancient lords and ladies Damsdatter, whose ancestry made her wince at times, smile at others, and wondered for a time what they would make of her.

They would be horrified, of course, they would.

By their standards, she was baseborn, had a dubious claim, a xenophile beyond reason and a traitor.

But then, further back, their own ancestors would think little better of them.

When the Starchange had lofted the worlds of the Ancestral Protectorate into the current plane they had been adrift, the Damsdatters had prospered under the rule of Nathaniel, but had bent the knee, in the quaint parlance, to the Emisrarkhs of the fledgeling Necron Empire.

Within one of the reception rooms of the Ignis was a mezzopict depicting the moment the Triarch Praetorian Talzan had accepted the allegiance of the old Rogue Trader. They had been lucky, all the people on board the Ignis in those days. Some of their peers who had endured the Starchange had chosen to resist such emissaries.

These things had happened before the days of the Great Civilization before the uneasy and ever-changing cosmopolitan accords that created its current political make-up had settled. They had been destroyed.

Lineage was something that Philomena did not think of often even though it went to who she was, she did not see the difference between herself and the other inhabitants of the Old Imperial ship in the caste system that had existed in her grandfather’s time. She had been raised with them and attended the same schools as many of them. Perhaps four hundred people called the Ignis home on a regular basis now, with many more of her children as far afield as Vyasastan or Tephet-Sheta, and she was well aware that each of them had as much say in the ship’s fate as she did though less perhaps than the ship’s own mind did.

To her mind, her ancestors had been raised to believe an impression of their own worth that made their command of others bearable. She had heard all sorts of tales and folk tales of Rogue Traders, from her own linage, or the famous Winterscales, Haarlocks, Excelsiors, Rugolos and Angarrins. Self examination wasn’t a common trait.

Sacred Numen don’t let me screw this up, Philomena thought as she let the elevator carry her down toward the hangar on the dorsal side of the ship.

The lander had a fine view of the ship’s gilded surface, void black picked out with gold across its bow and the wide domes that crested its aft as it approached. The ship’s warp keel sat behind a ventral hangar bay a full four hundred kilometres long and more than a hundred meters wide, with its aft protected by two vast shield generators. Wide wings for heat radiation sat on either side of the clean, smooth drive section, and the forward part of the ship was clean.

Many Imperial ships were crusted in ad-hoc repairs or scars, the Ignis had shaken them all loose to reveal the fine lines that it had been built with, and its docking bay was a model of efficiency, forward and aft landing bays within the hangar could house the huge torpedoes that might be brought on board or the components required to repair and upgrade her engines - though a pair of huge service doors closer to the engines themselves showed alternatives planned by the original shipwrights for such servicing.

Most of the flight deck doors leading off the main space-open docking bay were closed. This was not the high-capacity of a combat-carrier such as a Dictator-class cruiser, instead, it was the simplicity of an extensive logistics bay.

The Lander came to rest in a bay at the side of the main docking area, smaller than most.

The household guard of the ship was garbed in an armour that seemed outlandish, sea-green in places, and made of segments that seemed like bands of metal or leaves, with something that looked not unlike a feral worlder’s chain-maille or Eldar mesh armour, the armour was strange, and its face-plates mirrored, something around carapace armour perhaps, but stranger and lighter looking.

Compact weapons, of unidentifiable design, were carried by these guardians as they presented arms in greeting to the Imperial ship.

Philomena herself cut a regal figure by any standard, and certainly, she seemed to be more familiar than her guardians. She was tall, and dark-haired, her features framed by a widow’s peak, her hair gathered up into a gauzy cling-tight headscarf while her features were framed by a wide crown that did not fully surround her head but curved down onto her cheeks.

Her gown was worn with wide straps over its shoulders, adorned with a cloak of the same gauze, black as though she were in mourning, pinned with a row of golden skulls.

Skulls were everywhere, a reminder of death, a reminder of gravitas and a reminder of duty. Her corset, golden metal that had been made precisely for her figure, was adorned with another on a low chain.

Skulls were ever-present in Imperial culture, the Emperor’s face, the human form without its exigencies. It was not so different here.

Her voice carried, “Welcome aboard the Ignis, Lord Gildas,” she said, her bow was a half bow, one of equal dignity, “I trust that your journey finds you safe,” she said.

[Ky-telstein]

In truth, the transit across the void had been something approaching ‘middling’ for all concerned. As much as one could fill such a craft with real leather seating and more livewood than could grow upon the surfaces of many worlds, it was still a compact little voidboat that lacked sufficient mass to avoid the vibrations and buffeting of its overlarge and primitive pulse drives. Perhaps unusually for the importance of its mission, the little shuttle came unescorted from the Renown to the Ignis after Lord Rowena decreed it be so. He was not, after all, a flourishing rogue in need of impressing those he treated with. Nor was he, with a cruiser to his front, negotiating from any position of strength. Indeed, as the Telsteinian Rogue Trader viewed it, it was a simple case of faith.

Faith was not entirely alien to him as it could never be something fully apart of the life of any Imperial Citizen, but he had previously been a Praefectus Secundus of the Adeptus Administratum: the bureaucratic core of the Priesthood of Earth. His domain was neither the rapture-inducing and soul-scourging of the Ecclesiarchy, nor the tumult and war of the Astra Militarum. His was that of numbers and records – listings of ships ten thousand strong, each miles in length and carrying cargoes more numerous than any man could ever hope to learn. Still, in delegating responsibility to his sub-ordinates Gildas Rowena put his faith that no miscalculation would result in the deaths of millions of souls from starvation or pestilence – nor, more importantly, result in his own personal sanction by the Master of the Planetary Adepti.

In travelling to their ship relatively unprotected, Gildas Rowena made a great show of the faith he held both in the protection granted to his loyal servants by Him On Earth and also the hospitality of his hosts. As unlikely as they were to agree, it would have been well within his rights to refuse the offer and request they attend to him aboard the Renown. Of course that would have put them at a bit of an impasse – but at least were their goals unaligned to his own it would have put meters of armour plating and voidshielding between them and him. This was to say nothing of the complete ineffectiveness of any manner of escort screen in protecting his shuttle from the guns of the cruiser they approached.

The journey over was serene and quiet, at least compared to the standards of anyone familiar with Imperial engineering. Heavily insulated from both the sound and the physical vibrations of the twin rocket engines, the craft’s bay was significantly smaller than was to be expected, and a space that could have readily carried a troop of Armsmen was now reduced to a cosy withdrawing room. Heavy drapes of expensive live fabrics in rich deep red and brown hung from walls and the ceiling. Concealing all manner of interfaces for the craft’s systems from the eyes of its occupants, the curtains and portieres gave very much the effect of a plush tent. Sat at the head of the table with a drink in hand, the Rogue Trader had spent much of the approach to the Ignis pontificating on the wider implications of the meeting with another Imperial vessel.

These wider implications had, predictably, been further ennoblement and the whitewashing of his grandfather’s heresy.

The four who accompanied Gildas sat and listened to his thoughts on the matter with expressions varying from Steward Krymer’s rapt attention to the way Iarom and Jarvik’s eyes spent most of their time on the hololith display above their table. Without the sensory array available on the immense warpship they left, the picture lacked any detail or clarity. It was hard to make out anything more distinct than a general shape until their journey was almost done and the pilot’s voice had announced from concealed speakers that they were exchanging docking protocols with the Ignis’ Spacecraft Handling Officer.

As the flickering view of the ancient Imperial cruiser continued to grow it was all Jarvik could do to keep himself from shaking with excitement. The ship was less the blocky, cathedral-like structure of the Renown and its fellows, looking more like a thin, delicate trident. Smooth of line, and possessed of near-unblemished armour plate, no one would ever look at her and think she was made by the same hands – metaphorically speaking – that built the Renown. As the picture cleared and every detail of the immense cruiser’s hull passed before their gaze, the conversation dropped away and all’s attention turned to a silent wonderment at the skill of humanity’s shipbuilders those ten thousand years past.

Minutes passed again, and soon the ornately decorated scarlet lander settled on its skids in the Ignis’ landing bay with jets of steam and coolant. Groaning like a watership’s timbers in the cool of night, the hull plates of the small voidcraft swelled infinitesimally as the warmth of the landing bay’s atmosphere embraced it. Soon the lander was still enough for the greeting party to approach, led by the one Lord Gildas Rowena was here to treat with. Fortunately perhaps, the greeters could not see within the shuttle craft, sparing them a view of the improper and unprofessional excitement and worry that had consumed the Rogue Trader as they passed within the cruiser; first he stood before the boarding ramp, then his guards, then he alone again. A suitable review of the relevant protocol during the journey had revealed that either was an appropriate order of precedence when treating with an equal. However, the two processional orders came from entirely different schools of etiquette and to use one on an adherent to the other would undoubtedly be an unforgiveable insult. Such was life in a land where even the riveters at a tractor manufactory would have centuries-old traditions and rituals…

As the hydraulics plunged the ramp down to meet the deck below a matter of seconds later, it became obvious that the significant question mark over the Ignis’ presence had given Gildas a reason to put discretion before grandeur. Even as the ramp dropped, the two armoured Armsmen advanced with their weapons presented upright as if ready for inspection. Just as the ramp touched the floor, the two men’s reinforced and bulled boots hit the Ignis’ deck in unison as, without a glance aside, they took one step to their left and right and allowed their master to part between them, followed as he was by those masters of the fleet that accompanied him.

Like Philomena, Gildas Rowena’s outfit was opulent and clearly marked him out as a member of the upper echelons of Imperial Nobility – though for his attire it was only fully apparent for one who knew where to look. At first glance the Rogue Trader’s monastic appearance was not far off of the robed adept, Mari. Looking deeper, though, the affections of rank and distinction that were afforded to him by his station shone through. Where the Administratum Prefect wore simple pale grey wool, synthetic at that, Lord Rowena’s garb was significantly more colourful. Brown leather calf boots met white hosen mid-way up his legs, only visible through the leading thigh slit of the rich brown watered silk tunic that swept to near enough his ankles. Being decorated at the hem with silver thread embroidery of heraldry, incantations, and great deeds of his house upon alternating green and red backings; the tunic was for the average Imperial citizen a work of art they could barely hope to glance upon, let alone touch. With the tunic’s belled sleeves ending at the elbows, the tight silken sleeves of the undergarment were comparatively neat and unadorned, serving to highlight the grand sweeping gesture of friendship and welcome as Gildas’ flung his arms out as if greeting a long-unmet child. Continuing the theme of purity from whiteness as driven snow, the baldrick that swept across his breast found it and the tunic beneath it cinched at the waist by a wide white sash that draped down counter to the tunic’s slit before ending affrayed in line with the embroidered hem. Of course, the reinforced leather baldrick supported the weight of a filled holster and the magna-frog for the cane in his hand upon his right hip, but being as both were of a similar hue to the tunic the outfit tastefully drew the eye away from their presence. Finally coming into view as he had descended from within the lander, about his shoulders was a short mantle of his dynasty’s red and green interwoven in a herringbone fashion and decorated on each breast with silver thread heraldic supporters. Open at the front and trimmed and lined again in purest white, it clearly left visible a hefty pectoral silver Aquila clutching a skull carved of bone. Finally, draped over the cape at his back was the hood of his tunic – brown and decorated at its opening as the tunic was with its sleeves.

“Lord Damsdatter, my fellow!” Gildas began jovially as if welcoming the lady before him to his own wondrous chocolate factory rather than being her own guest on a ship of war. “I cannot overstate how glad I and my loyal officers are to be able to accept this invitation from yourself.” He stepped aside and gestured back with the thick blackthorn and silver cane as the motley party of Adepts and officers passed between the brown, red and green Armsmen.

As they came to a stop beside but respectfully behind him, Gildas mirrored the shallow bow of his host before continuing. “Our journey was quite smooth and uneventful, covered under your guns as it were and fully assured of their efficacy by what remains of the flotilla you seem to have seen off.

“Coming here as we do, with fellowship in our hearts, I hope I am not acting out of turn in possessing a small token of this to present to you in more…suitable environs?”

[The Ctan]

“The history of the universe is a history of atrocity. The universe is not designed for your comfort, nor even mine. We are flawed beings, exploring what the universe can be.”

- Mephet’ran The Deceiver
The Firelight Conversations
Third Edition, All-Civilization Press

Philomena Damsdatter embraced her long lost cousin, her arms wrapped around him, a courtesy that was extended but which she had to doubt and wonder at before she recovered her smile.

“Of course,” she said, “we have set aside a suite for us to confer,” she said, and turned about on her heel, walking toward the inward side of the landing bay.

The ship’s interior was a wonder, the air that filtered through the vessel was pure as a sweet spring morning on a verdant archipelago of Ancient Terra, while its corridors were thickly dressed, deck-plates giving way to thick carpets.

They crossed a transept corridor leading into a tangle of chambers that had built up over the centuries between landing bays and hangars, fuel lines and transfer chutes, their journey was circuitous and it was clear that Lady Damsdatter’s delegation wished their visitors to see something of the ship.

There was something unnerving about the ship, in fact, there were a great many unnerving things about it, the first was that everything looked distressingly new, even though the ship had a clear lineage and some areas had clearly been purposed and changed, there was no sign of the accretion of machinery that built up around Imperial vessels, instead the ship seemed to be a ghost-ship. Damsdatter and her escorts had fallen in with the group, but nowhere did they pass a single crewman, though they passed the mausoleums of many hidden here and there, companionway-catacombs snaking off to the sides, epolite and marble coffins gleaming in niches.

There were tales of ships such as that, horrors below decks that their masters would not allow to be seen, or rare ships that were largely servitor-crewed, but there was something equally strange here.

The group saw more than a few passengers, who seemed to be idle or at liberty, it wasn’t unusual for a ship to carry passengers, of course, but they were usually ensconced in their own bubbles of servants, not so here.

There were Xenos, too. Or at least one Xeno.

“Oh frak no.” Philomena could be heard saying, as one of the few people on board the ship not descended from the original crew wandered into view. It was impossible, she knew that, but she was somehow aware that their Necron backup, in whatever interstitial spaces between the reality they were lurking in right now, was ready to act.

Praetia was better, making sure to step in front of any aggressive action, waving one of her hands.

There was something brutal about many species from one another’s point of view, the Principle of Xenomorphological Dissonance, it was called, or ‘Eeek, We’re All Aliens’ in the most popular books in C’tani infants’ schools. Most species evolved to fit an ecological niche and were base-wired to recognize their own species and things that were too near it rattled the sense of disorder or order many tool-using sapients had, while other species that. There was a zone of total comfort, the infamous uncanny valley, and then an island of comfort. Most aliens were so beyond that unless they had been shaped by such things as the Old Ones’ Empyreal Looms to have broadly similar anatomy, as Yldari and Humans did, for instance, that they triggered an immediate horror impulse.

A Hrud was terrifying, a Vardine was terrifying.

What had appeared was an exception to that particular creed, specifically, he looked like a brightly coloured puffball. Ironically this was something that was, Philomena had to admit as the alien in question approached the group waving one arm toward them, was probably stranger to the Imperials; an alien-like a Vardine, whose sulfur breath could kill a human at twenty paces and whose body generated enough heat to turn steel cherry red on contact, was likely more comprehensible.

“I see you have the Telestinians!” he said, “Greetings Nufriends! Pleased to meet you!” He said, making a beeline for Gildas, “My name is Verlo’prada’torea’neep, Verlo to my friends, which I’m sure will be you!” he said, “I’ve heard your people need all kinds of help, let me know if you need anything at all, sometimes a friend is all you need to understand what you’re doing. Let me introduce myself, I am a historian here to study the occasion,”

Perhaps Verlo was violently toxic and his fur was a warning to predators?

Verlo was not terrifying, Verlo was distressingly huggable, about three feet of fluff with six arms and two legs, the creature was absolutely baffling.

“Excuse me,” Praetia said, stepping forward, “Emissary Verlo, I am sure that Lord Gildas and his escort would be delighted to discuss the historic occasion, but we have only just arrived, and it would be very helpful,” she stressed that, “to make sure to keep to the planned discussion topics, at least at first.”

“Ah!” Verlo said, “Right, little steps,” he said, and then cheerily burst out with “Have fun, Nufriends, you have a lot to see! I’ll see you later!” Verlo said, and ambled away again, his tone speaking as though he knew the punchline to a joke no one had yet told.

Philomena gave a distressed look to Praetia, and then a mirthless smile, “This way, please, Lord Gildas,” she said.

She wanted to talk verbally to Ignis, she knew the AI would have tried to stage-manage the occasion, but Verlo was an anarchic creature, and she imagined that the situation had come down to whether or not Ignis was prepared to stun him.

“Yes, he is real,” Philomena said, “but we’ll come back to the local alien cultures if we can,” she said, pressing her hands together, fingertips downward, as though directing some manner of wordless prayer outward to whoever would hear.

The meeting room commanded a view of the curving upper planes of the cruiser, at the base of the built-up area that ascended to its dorsal domes, it had been furnished with a number of ancient weapons, and mezzopicts of the Damsdatter armsmen in pre-Starchange times.

“If I may,” she said, “I would like to present my gift first,” she said, approaching a broad conference table where a gift sat in its presentation box.

The box was slender, made with clear love, the wood held a strange gleam, pearlescent amber-gold in its sheen, glimmering with a lustre that few other kinds of wood had ever possessed. It was obvious what it must contain, from its size, a slender sword.

Opening the gold-clasped box would reveal that though there was a sword, it was incomplete, the blade, but not the hilt had been laid on a box, along with a slender scabbard of the same shimmering wooden material as the box that held it.

The blade was a little over a hundred centimetres in length, and barely tapered, its tang was a full-length affair and it shimmered with smoke within the blade, here and there in the blade there were flashes of gold, the smallest glimmers of light that shone against the burgundy padding that held it. The blade showed more of these elusive glimmers of light than the tang, while the smoke within the metal seemed to move through the whole of it, as though the shadow confined something bright within the metal that wished to linger around the killing edge of the weapon.

It was very likely that even the most studious xenologists would not recognize the weapon, but it was one that was certainly used by the Old Imperium. This was the sword from which all of the transphase swords and warscythes used by the Great Civilization descended, although for the few who knew of it in the Old Imperium it was better known as an assassin’s weapon; a C’tan Phase Sword.

Philomena sat down, “Would you like a drink?” she asked. “I think I need one.”

[Ky-telstein]

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Gildas accepted his cousin's embrace with a certain degree of stiffness, though his face retained its cheery beam of friendship. As excited as he was by this rediscovery of the possibility of Imperium, it was more an excitement on an acaedmic level - aligned heavily with his future fortunes - than it was on a personal, emotional level. Still, the touch of another, his equal, was to be tolerated in the name of tradition and good manners.

"Of course." He echoed Philomena as she turned, before joining the noblewoman on the stroll through her ship. At a suitably respectful distance, the four officers of his party followed the two Rogue Traders - three of his crew while Mari the Adept was of the Administratum. This set her apart from the others in more ways than one. They stood tall and thrust their chests out and broad shoulders back with the confident stride of men who followed a leader. She, on the other hand, walked with short, frequent steps and such a feeling of narrowness about her stride that she must have laboured hard to be so inoffensive. Mari might not have shared in the extreme decrepitude of junior Adepts, but she nonetheless bore some of the pallor of face and angularity of form that were hallmarks of her order. Had she not held enough seniority to merit meals of some substance then her ill-fitting black habit would have hung off of her like pluderhosen on a skeleton like the scores of near-emaciated menials she oversaw.

The armour, dress uniform, and robes respectively of Gildas Rowena's Master-At-Arms, Executive Officer, and Steward were all rich forest green and burgundy red, accented with gold and finery to match their Lord's, though of course never to dream of outshining him. Mari's was austere and monastic in style and cut. Loose fitting and without embellishment, it was coloured only in grey. Slate synthweaves and a steely aquila hanging aorund her neck - both mass produced by the million in Hiveworks across the Imperium and calculated over generations to detract least from the sacred organisation her order performed.

Despite the difference in their styles, all of them shared common themes that the Ignis had begun to deviate from. Their attire was severe and uncompromising in its purpose, their augmetics were distinct and near-brutal in their application, and upon the Renown everything radiated verticality and austerely skeletality - often with exposed ironwork and bronze mmachinery bared to visitors no matter their exaltedness. Here there was a distinct cleanliness and, perhaps best phrased a softness to everything. Insofar as Master Iarom could detect through his synthetic leather boots, the carpets they now strode across were thick, plush and expensive - even before taking into account the dearth of visual indicators of common manufactorum-produced fibres. If not natural fabric, they were an expensive, exquisite synthesis: and the cross-corridors clad in them stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction.

The Master-At-Arms was only half aware of conversation in the group, so engaged was his brain on the matter of the ship itself. As if from afar, Lieutenant Jarvik's voice rumbled a compliment to their hosts about the scrupulousness of their petty officers in preparing the decks for visitors, though Iarom didn't pay enough attention to heed any response. All he could think of was to reflect on the clear disparity between the Renown and the Ignis. Though Lord Rowena's flotilla was of three full voidships and thousands made each of their crews, the stranger ship should have likely matched them all man-for-man in terms of complement, given the age of its design. But none were to be seen.

True, the ship might be crewed by gangs of the mindless flesh automata that were servators, but that required an extortionate tithe to the Mechanicum and he had not seen a single adherent of the Machine Cult since stepping aboard. This new vessel radiated power, wealth and status in a way that no other voidship Iarom had encountered did. Not the Grand Cruiser Domain of Telstein's foremost Rogue Trader Lord, not the mile-long leisure barge of the Dominus Sectatus, and not even the vastness of the Basilikon Astra coreship anchored far beneath the hollow Forge World Voryn-Simplex.

Instead it was as if he had stepped into a child's naive imagination of voidtravel.

Nowhere to be seen was the inherent dirtiness of a self-isolated industrial cathedral of the void, uncleanable in its vastness. Nowhere to be smelled were the faint scents of industrial pollutants or purifying chemsmoke traces that clung to the breeze in every voidship he'd ever boarded - itself a tolerated feature, not a defect of the aeons-old environmental scrubbing systems that sustained life in the void. Nowhere to be felt were the tell-tale vibrations of a hard-at-work Enginarium, mastered by a Engineseer Majoris of the Machine Cult who - had he enough skin on his scalp left to do it - would spend every waking hour pulling his hair out over its inexorable decline.

In defiance of its provenance, the Ignis was clean, maintained, and tranquil. But it shouldn't have been and, unless the rest of Lord Rowena's party were excellent at dissembling, it seemed they simply took it for granted that this synergy of power was possible.

Before the Master-At-Arms could continue that train of thought though, the quiet 'frak' from Philomena and the concern and fear that dripped from it brought him to the present in a way that conversational tones could never have hoped to. Iarom's attention immediately fixed on the small purple fluff-ball before his mind quickly rifled through a number of possibilities as a surge of combat chems was instinctively thrust into his system by his glandular augmetics.

Xenos? Yes, no, maybe a beast: a pet. No, it was clothed in ornate scarlet garb and spoke Low Gothic as did they all. Definitely a xenos.
Verlo’prada’torea’neep' was not a name a true human would ever give to something. Lord Rowena was, to his credit, not actively shying away from the wittering fluff or trying to hit it. Though he had stopped in his tracks and now faced it side-on with a mixed expression on his face, his right hand altogether closer to his cane than normal.

Stepping past the Renown's executive officer, Iarom stretched out and clenched the fingers of his gloved right hand in the particular way that was forever engrained into muscle memory as he interposed himself between the Rogue Trader and the Alien. Even as his body reacted full-throtle to the threat, his chem-enhanced cognition rapidly stripped everything but the bare minimum assessment of danger from his brain and, surprisingly hit the brakes hard. None of the hosts seemed slightly afeared. The alien's words, though accented and of course perfidious, as every Emperor-fearing human knew, were amicable and entirely divorced from any thought of threat. 'Crew Member' was the Master-At-Arms' first assumption, though Philomena's words would soon disabuse himof that notion. Seeking to protect his charge from not just the Xenos but also the possibility of being vented into the harsh void for stabbing another guest of their host, Iarom reached over Gildas' chest to allow his hand to rest on the Rogue Trader's forearm. His master shielded bodily from the creature should it spring forth in a flurry of claws and venom, the Master-At-Arms breathed in and out deeply, suppressing the tide of synthetic combat drugs that were now swimming around his bloodstream to mask pain, boost strength and speed up reflexes that were no longer needed.

Moments passed and, with its jolly goodbye, the little alien was gone. As soon as that happened, Lord Rowenea shook Iarom's hand from his wrist and brushed past him as if the event had never happened. "We can visit such things if you wish," he said off-handedly as if trying to pretend nothing had happened, "But I think matters of importance should always come first!

"Our crews all have their own idiosyncrasies." He added by way of an explanation, half-turning to his companions and chuckling. They, of course, laughed as well. Iarom didn't. His gaze indecipherable behind the smoky reflective visor of his green half-helm, he only stared at the disappearing back of the small purple fuzzball that had left their company.

'Emissary' was not a word one used to refer to one indentured to servitude or even employed as an auxiliary crewmember. It was a word used for the title of ambassadors and envoys, exalted and influential people who were apparently treated with by a Rogue Trader of the Imperium of Mankind as equals.

It was a troubling word.

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The rest of the stroll had passed without incident, though with no-less unnatural an impression of life on this vessel than Iarom had already gleaned. Mari the Adept was silent, and had not said a word since boarding Lord Rowena's shuttle, but Jarvik and Krymer seemed to be vying the both of them for either their master's attention or the most inanely servile comment one could make in front of such esteemed figures as another Rogue Trader. Had the Steward not clasped Lord Rowena's gift in his hands, Iarom might have been tempted to find some way of upsetting his step and instilling some sense and decorum into the man with an embarrassing fall. As it was, today the part of the dutiful Master-At-Arms just as much included tuning out lackwits words as it did tuning into the oft-masked body language of both their esteemed hosts and their similarly faceless guardians.

“Oh, delightful, wonderful!” Gildas exclaimed as he approached the vast armourglass window and cast his eye out over the ship and the starscape beyond.

“Made all the more beautiful by your fleet’s presence.” The Rogue Trader’s Steward added as if on cue. Not that the ships were anything more than ‘brighter than normal pinpricks of light’ at this range, but that didn’t stop the flattery.

“Of course, of course.” Gildas said distractedly while waving Krymer’s words away. Instead, his attention had swept to Philomena and the honeyed presentation box she had laid on the table. “I thank you greatly for your beneficence.” He added as he approached the case. Of course, the words were part of the charade that any Rogue Trader worth their salt didn’t have vaults full of trinkets of varying value, ready to stroke the egos of anyone of worth they needed to treat with.

Lord Rowena didn’t need to say a word or make a movement for his staff to step close to the case with – literally – rehearsed precision. As the Rogue Trader stood enough of a step back that he had the chance to evade a sudden treacherous spray of toxin from the case, Iarom and Jarvik reached out and unhinged the catches at each end and swung the lid open.

“Oh…” Lord Rowena managed, as he stepped in to drink up the sight of the blade, heedless as to the possibility of any delayed traps. “Exquisite, purely exquisite that is!” He exclaimed, as a very real beam spread across his face. Iarom likewise cast his eye down at the gift, only to find it just as unrecognisable as his master did.

“This has a very real authenticity about it, unpowered though it may be.” Gildas said. “I have a delightful piece of authentic ancient oakenwood from a tree replanted a thousand times over across the galaxy that would make a suitable grip for it.” He reached out for the blade, as if to touch it before snatching his hand away. “I’m sure it has a storied history, but before I become too enamoured with it, I should like to present you with my own gift.” He turned and waved his steward forward to the other side of the table, a small wooden chest in his hands.

As Krymer approached Philomena, Lord Rowena took his seat and nodded in agreement to his opposite as he waved for the Lieutenant to move the gift away from betwixt the Rogue Traders. “A drink would be delightful, thank you.”

“I’m afraid my gift is not, as yours is, one to celebrate strength so much.” He added. “though I hope you will find them to be of equal merit and value.”

Seeking to emulate the presentation of the shimmering blade, Krymer placed the wooden box on the table near to Philomena before bowing and withdrawing. Unlike the beautiful honeyed wood of the Damsdatter present, this was almost entirely its opposite. Barely bigger than a shoe-box, but with a rounded lid, the case was reinforced with beaten ironwork nailed in place. The box itself was plain in the extreme – sealed with a small lock upon the front, from which a single heavy key extruded. Every panel of wood on the box was warped and grooved with millennia of life breathed into every strand of its being. Had the interior not been lined with velvet and a decidedly more modern securitek fabric layer, it should have been possible even to peek inside and see the five small golden filigree orbs nestled within.

Like the phase sword, these devices were the rare work of an alien species that had been put to tawdry everyday usage by Humans across the galaxy. Crafted by a species that, to all intents and purposes appeared to be old Earth orangutangs until they revealed their intuitive and remarkable skill at engineering. Whether they travel the galaxy on space ships of their own devising or join their services to the purpose of various independent lords and ladies of the Imperium – Inquisitors, Rogue Traders and others with the ability to provide them with suitable entertainment.

Five Defence Orbs which, when suitably activated would swarm around that which they were set to guard and which would swoop to deflect gunfire or swordblows even to their own destruction. Whether the learned Lady Damsdatter would know their purpose or origin was entirely uncertain, but not something that Gildas was overly concerned with. Ultimately this was only half of such orbs in his family’s possession and it was one of a multitude of possible gifts selected as soon as this engagement was arranged.

“Now, Lady Damsdatter,” He said with a smile. “I don’t know if you are made aware of the situation from whence I have come, but the warp has conspired for centuries now to keep us from our brothers and sisters across the Imperium. You are - and as much as it seems an exaggeration, it is not – the first people from without the Sector to have been met in all that time. I hope you might be able to give us some tidings of the rest of humanity?”

[The Ctan]

“You say you cannot be judged by those not privy to your order’s secrets. Know now that no secret is withheld from my order. Today is your reckoning.”

Arrest of Inquisitor Castian by the Triarch Praetorian Talzan

Mandragora the Golden, Sautekh Crownworld, Eastern Fringe

Vɑrsɛl ita Oruscar had come to one of the final rites of the journey to claiming the prize of citizenship in the Great Civilization. The most secret of their rites, the most contentious, and the thing that all parents feared most.

The Rite of Sanctioning.

There were many variations, in some places one would journey into the warp and stare into the deeps protected only by void dreaming magi that protected warp vessels, in others, one would stare at the ruins of the ancient enemies’ worlds. The most famous site of this ritual was the Catastrofane, in the Naogeddon System, once one of the homeworlds of the Necrontyr that had been destroyed by the weapons of the Old Ones in ancient times, others still made pilgrimages with military expeditions into the ravening wounded worlds of the fringe of the galaxy.

Vɑrsɛl had chosen something far less grand, a gathering for the Rite in the public gardens of Atelier, on the fringe-world of Kauth. Neither of his foster parents was permitted to attend, the presence of either would disrupt the focus of the aspirants simply by dint of celebrity.

It was his moment.

Very few went mad, the statistics said; fewer still lost their souls, yet it was not something done casually or lightly. For some, the journey to this moment took years, for some, decades, though for some, it took far less time, and if there was one thing that Vɑrsɛl had it was mental fortitude.

He doubted that he would be so confident if he had been raised by his birth father. The tests of citizenship in the great civilization were intended to produce a people who could resist what he would soon see firsthand. This had not been the case before they had taken the name of “Great Civilization” even a hundred years ago, but it had become more and more common. Where once there had been one set of tests, there were now three.

At first, there had been requirements of merely civics knowledge, understanding of the future that they hoped to build, and the other cultures that made up the Great Civilization, and with it the political processes if not opinions, this was known as the Rite of Understanding, and this he had undertaken in school.

This learning was proven in debates and model governance, in essays and tests of factual knowledge and of historical consideration and chronicle-knowledge. Although the sharp memory and dogmatic recitation that had once been his was no longer part of him, Vɑrsɛl had little trouble learning here. Few did, with care and diligence.

Such a concept, of learning and testing, was established for two generations before crimes and misdeeds and penitence at least had caused the public to demand the addition the Rite of Compassion, which was as varied as any other, where aspirants were tested on their ability to feel for others or to act in the common interest.

Preparation for this involved studying the ancient cruelties of a thousand cultures, the Necrontyr and their leaders chief amongst them, and he had little need to learn these, he had been able to write at length for this of his birth father, and those who had kept him as a slave, but he had chosen not to, and focussed instead on the misdeeds of his foster father, whose crimes had eclipsed those of Syrian Martel or Kɑrvɑn Rɛgɑrberl as a great supergiant star eclipsed a matchstick, and not all such crimes had been ancient deeds.

In the Rite of Compassion, the truly difficult questions had to be asked and one had to learn how to answer them. What the role and form of leadership should be, what love and family could be. The questions of philosophy were endless; how could a Good Man live? What was Virtue? When did obligation to those around one’s self exceed one’s obligation to one’s self? Even the Great Civilization had no sure answers for these questions, indeed its predecessor showed most clearly that failure to consider these questions could only lead to disaster, especially for those who held the reins of a state as powerful as theirs.

The Rite of Sanctioning was the last to be added to these requirements, a stricture that was harder to achieve than the others. It was a test of mental fortitude and metaphysical grounding.

The Preceptor was a Yldari, a Yvressi, whose own rites had long been similar. The Eldar had long prepared their children to face the reality of knowing that they were soul-lost, and though their souls were fire broken from their ancient destroyer, their minds were still open to the warp - not for the Yldari the option to live the quiet life of a lotus-eater: they remembered the consequence of indolence too well.

The machine of the rite was of Yldari and Necrontyr construction, cracked spars of noctilith held in a wide curve of yellow-bone marked with green sigils.

Gathered around it, the aspirants sat in meditation. Preparation for the rite was not as lengthy as the others, in truth it was easier to prepare one’s self to resist the threat of chaos than it was to master one’s own inner impulses to the basic degree required by the Rite of Compassion, for chaos was but the outgrowth of mortal failings, it thrived when cruelty abounded and seeped into the hearts of those who sought to dominate others without compassion.

But it was last because without looking inwards one could not survive contact with chaos. Still, it happened, a steady stream of aspirants whose spirits were compromised, who fled or turned against those around them, who sometimes suffered long term mental maladies grown from the dark recesses of their minds, and rarely, so rarely that it was news, an aspirant was twisted by the Rite, and had to be confined or slain.

Vɑrsɛl’s sister had never come to this point, she had compassion enough, but it had never been her desire, she still kept their family name. Vɑrsɛl was a man grown now, however, and he had chosen to face the Othersea.

There was no need, of course, he could live in comfort all of his days, and he was a Phoenix beastling, he did not know what he would be when he aged and perished if he had the same soul, could he stand this test time and time again? Perhaps he would imperil himself in future lives; perhaps he would seek Oblivion or Eversleep at some painful future date. But for now, he would prove himself anyone’s equal; to complete the Rite of Sanctioning was to enter a brotherhood and family greater than any other.

Reception Rooms, Ignis Aurum Probat

The Jokaero were ancient enemies of the Necrontyr, and their species had been given its gifts explicitly to defend against them, it was, Philomena thought, unwise to activate the devices now, even if it seemed untrusting, for there was a remote chance that they might detect the Necrons hidden in the interstices adjacent to this room, and Philomena nodded, “Many thanks,” she said, but she did not dare try to activate the things here.

“This is a universe that the Imperium has not yet reached,” she said, “and that has yet to reach the Imperium. We are, by mortal if not cosmological standards, substantially earlier than the Dark Millennium, but also before the Dark Age of Technology, depending which measure you use, this is either, M3, or M4 at most, or even M0 if you use the Gagarin-Chronicle,” she said, “the early Age of Terra.”

“Much of the human population of Terra lives in societies with primitive spaceflight,” she said, “while the rest of the galaxy, and beyond, is crowded with humans displaced by one form of alien activity or another, or early adopters of the secrets of technology.”

“Some are brought here from other branes,” the term was not unknown to Imperial science, though it was a mystery of the Adeptus Mechanicus, she had little doubt that the Rogue Trader’s retinue would be noting down what she said, “others are merely native.”

“The Archenemy,” she said, with a gesture of two fingers outward toward the ground, a loathing and arointing gesture, “is not here in force, it has been at times, at one point in the form of a culture that called itself Chronosia, though at present you will find only pale imitators, the Gods of Chaos are here, though much weaker than once they were, for we,” who that was she did not yet say, “sealed the local echo of the Womb of Destruction, ah, the Eye of Terror, down to a minimal, guarded fissure.”

“For now,” she said, “the galaxy is relatively speaking, at peace.”

It was a strange word to describe the galaxy, for most would look at the Great Wheel with the thousands of atrocities, from the Welded incursions to the brutal trench warfare that somehow kept happening on a hundred benighted worlds, and call it ‘peaceful.’ But to the ancestral humans of the Great Civilization, those who drew their identity from the bleakness of the Dark Millennium, it was so.

“Although I am descended from the Imperium,” she said, “I never had the opportunity to live in it, though any Rogue Trader Dynasty has a long memory,” she said. “It is not the Imperium on whose behalf we are here. Instead, we represent a culture whose origins lie in the Ancestral Universe. Have you ever heard of the Necrontyr, the Necrons, or the C’tan?”

Numen, do me a favour, and let them say no, Philomena said, quite obliviously.

Rather more pragmatically, the Ignis diligently re-checked her displacement contingency for everyone in the room.

[Ky-telstein]

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As Philomena spoke, Gildas’ features remained an impassive professional mask that did little to disclose his thoughts and feelings on her disclosures. Seated as he was at the conference table, he had adopted a lounging position that was calculated to express how at ease he felt in their hosts’ company. Unfortunately, as with most of those who serve Him as Administratum Adepts, calculation was never a strong point and at least a few of his retinue cringed inwardly at their master’s slovenly post. Iarom, the master-at-arms, Jarvik, the Lieutenant, and Krymer, the Steward had all adopted positions stood behind their master. Adept Mari was to his right, seated in recognition of her station within the Adeptus Terra, though of course slightly behind him. Ramrod straight in pose and solemn in expression, she was ironically not quite as adept as Lord Rowena at concealing her emotions. As Philomena spoke Mari’s hand unconsciously worried at the point of her iron necklet Aquila in a gesture the Great Civilisation’s emissaries couldn’t fail to notice.

For his part, Master Iarom felt his lord and master was handling the news well. As befitted Iarom’s station as a master at arms, localised numbing drugs to the area of his face stopped any twitches revealing his thoughts on things. Of course, being the personable face of the Imperial party meant that he could hardly afford to limit how expressive his face could be. Considering the revelations Philomena was piling onto them, it was impressive that he managed not to react to them without the help of chemical augmentation.

Every traveller of the void in the Imperium of Man knew of the dangers of the Warp. It was well known that time passed as differently in the empyrean as did distance. Without the specialised mutations of a navigator it was impossible to keep a course through the Warp, let alone work out how far one was travelling based on any outside measurement. Of course, there was a distinct extreme to that characteristic of the Warp though none present could claim to have any direct knowledge of it. Rumours were abound though of vessels which had rematerialised into realspace half a millennia off-target, or even arriving before they set off. Such events were studied carefully by the Ordo Chronos of The Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition though neither the Rogue Trader nor any on his side of the table could be aware of such an organisation. If warp-travel could bring about such random and unpredictable events, could a warp-storm of sufficient magnitude translate the entire Sectatus?

That was the question in the minds of all present, for that was the reality Philomena asked them to accept. Could an area of space that was near enough 200 light-years across in every dimension, with the thousands of celestial bodies, trillions upon trillions of beings, and truly inconceivable amount of unadulterated emptiness really travel back to before the dawn of civilisation? And not merely to before the blessed light of the God-Emperor had dawned on the galaxy, but Gildas felt comfortable inferring that the passage of history in this reality was irreconcilable with the journey it had taken to reach the 41st Millennium for he and his fellows.

“I cannot say that I have, Lady Damsdatter.” Gildas replied eventually after a pregnant pause. He turned to the Adept beside him meeting her momentarily raised gaze for some unspoken communication, before he faced Philomena again. “I will keep my fortunately open mind as it is, and hope you will be able to tell me who these folk are that they might turn you and your fellow dynasts from the Aquila?”

[The Ctan]

Reception Rooms, Ignis Aurum Probat

This was a relief, at least, the conniptions were not likely to occur, and she smiled slightly, “Then I shall begin at the start. They came with us from the Ancestral Universe, some say that they were the architects of the Starchange that brought us here, and perhaps you as well.

As she spoke, her hands rose and the surface of the table glowed faintly from lines of bronze inlaid across the marble, no optical lenses or other focusing apparatus was present but this was clearly a hologram. Not a hololith of imperial design. Light coalesced to a point before them on the table.

“Before time was time, the C’tan existed, debate exists between those who say they were born in the bursting of the first cosmic singularity,” the point exploded in fire, and the hologram somehow had wind that plucked at those around the table, a few touches of Philomena’s hair straying from her coiffure, the charms on Praetia’s robes swaying, a hard light hologram. “Others say they formed as the first stars coalesced out of the void,” the formless explosion of light and rainbow colours became a starfield that played out in the miniature above the three-meter table.

“The C’tan are energy beings, stellar parasites might be a good way to describe them,” and the table zoomed in until it was focussed on a single star, the blazing surface even gave off heat, like standing before an open oven, though it was not so bright as to be impossible to look upon, within the layers of the star there was a shadow the size of worlds, a knot of strange darkness and scintillating light.

“Long ago, a species called the Necrontyr desired a weapon in their war against the Old Kind, whom you may know under the name of the Old Ones, or the Old Slaan, though the Slaan were but one part of their confederation of species. They discovered the C’tan, and made a bargain with them that brought ruin on both parties.”

In the hard light hologram, flickering worlds-long bridges of energy drew the C’tan creature from its native environment to a space station that was itself vast beyond all but the largest Imperial star forts and built with a strange aesthetic of plunging towers.

“The Necrontyr, desperate in their war, took a gift from the C’tan, one they should not have done, perhaps, but this is not their story, but our own,” she said, though images of beings that were not too far from humans becoming machines played out in miniature what she had elided over.

“Between them they destroyed the Old Kind, scattering them to the far stars, though not before the Old Kind built the Krork, the Aeldari, and others of our home universe,” images of warfare and war-machines greater than any titan filled the table, and all were driven before the Necrons.

“Accounts, perhaps even timelines, differ after this, but the Necrons and the C’tan slept, waiting out millions of years,” images of tombs appeared before them, “in one tale, the necrons turned upon the C’tan at their moment of triumph and were weakened by the deed, in another, the C’tan and Necrons harvested entire civilizations like wheat in the fields, until nothing remained except the creatures of the Warp, and they retired to their tombs to wait out the ages.”

The hologram showed sands moving like seas to bury an ancient citadel, and plants and beasts rose and fell, then explorers, settlers, humans their bulb-helmets and with them, robots with bulbous heads that panned back and forth a glowing eye.

They raised their cities that fell to ruin and were rebuilt in the gothic crowded style of the Imperium.

“The most manipulative of the C’tan was known as Mephet’ran the Messenger, and he arose again in the age of the Imperium,” the soligrams changed to a golden figure, cast in olympian proportions, it showed his crimes, some tiny fraction of them as Philomena knew them, of people consumed with a touch. They saw him walking in imperial guise on Gothic Worlds, as a tech-priest and a planetary potentate.

“It explored the galaxy and was no friend to mankind or the Aeldari. But it was least of all an ally of the Formless Horror, the Ruinous Powers. In time it came to believe that it was inevitable the galaxy and even the entire cosmos would be drowned in the Formless Horror. A creature of this nature cannot have faith, after all, and so it believed.”

Philomena spoke and the image changed once more, depicting the creature in its golden form again, with a machine before it. “It began the Starchange, burrowing for a reality where chaos would be weaker among the macrocosmic all, and it came to this place, taking all the Necrons with it, and many humans too, some that wielded Necron weapons or tools, and others that were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and other species too, there are Krork and Kroot here, Rak’gol and Demiurg.

“It is likely that it felt it might need people to populate this universe for its own entertainment, for it was a being devoid of compassion, the incarnation of the pitilessness of the Xenos in the Ancestral Universe, predatory and cruel, much of the wrongs in the cosmos are attributable to the C’tan, and the Necrons.

“This is where my own family’s tale begins to divide from that of the Old Imperium, and it is where you are now,” she said.

The holograms changed to show the Ignis Aurum Probat, its exterior design was actually a little less elegant in this ancient time, compromises in design that had been scraped off when the ship had been overhauled, battle damage that could not be healed.

“This is the better part of a thousand years before the present date,” she said, “Nathaniel Damsdatter, my ancestor,” the lifespans of Imperial nobles had always been long, this was not too remarkable but still it said something, “ruled then, and we were mercifully better positioned than many. You will find that for all that this galaxy has braggadocio of the native powers, many are in the first flush of power, and in this time they were few and scattered, little interrupted our people’s life. A voidship can be a nation in itself, and the Ignis was alone in this part of the void, her people prospered and grew, giving thanks to the Emperor, but slowly realizing that we were truly alone. Nathaniel made a point to conceal this, but there is no shortage of voidfarers aboard a ship who can deduce the truth of the stars.

“It seemed at first that we had travelled in time, and many believed this, and sought to journey to Terra to find and warn the Emperor, while others rightly believed that this was another place, and believed that there was no cause to abandon our ways, and sought to put down roots to ensure that our starship-nation would prosper,” the images displayed showed argument, debate, and even war in the companionways.

The view changed to show ships and shuttles, standard template construct colonies, and cathedrals raised on new worlds, “In time we charted new warp-ways, settled colonies, and at last, came to the attention of the Necrons.”

“We thought ourselves alone, having journeyed through the depths of the warp, it was a shock to us, as this is to you, but peace was not yet expected, and the Necrons who we first encountered were those of the Threshing Wars,” the history of the Ignis dissolved before their eyes, and again the golden figure showed, with the mechanical monstrosities that had been its servants, three of them, tall and lordly, clad in grave-garments that hung from them, one was built almost like a spider, another, gilded, and the third with four arms, each carried a bladed staff.

“The Threshing Wars were the last of the great acts of old Necrons, also known at the Tilling Wars. Mephet’ran sent out its most formidable captains, Arnran, Elakar and Alastrasan, to subdue every remnant of the Imperium that had been drawn by the Starchange. We were fortunate, a single ship was not high on the list, even with the colonies that we had laid down, but less so than others, as the last of the Ignis’ astropaths picked up a broadcast for help from the great Cardinal Vandron.”

She looked at Gildas with a wistful expression, “The Cardinal’s Army of Faith was perhaps the greatest assemblage of scattered ships and peoples of the Old Imperium in this universe, close to a true crusade and drawn from far more regions, the journeys of the disparate elements together would mark the climax of the Threshing.

“It was fortunate for us that they fought Arnran, Alastrasan was more ruthless as a commander, while Elakar imprisoned whole systems in stasis-halos where they remain still, like flies trapped in amber,” she said, “Arnran’s army fell upon the Cardinal’s forces, and in a single dreadful hour, all who fought were crippled or killed. It is the Ignis’ pride that she was only ravaged, not destroyed.”

The ship’s last stand played out in the hololith, its warp keel cleaved off and its gun-decks dissolved to nothing.

“We were trapped for decades in the devastated ruins of the Notrus system until at last we learned how much had changed. By this time all but a few old astrotelepaths had died, for they have always been a fragile breed, and only a few survivors of that time could steer ships between the stars,” she looked to Praetia, sat to her left, “Far across the galaxy, closer to the Telestien sector than the Notrus system, things had changed greatly. The Deceiver Mephet’ran had been changed, or so it says at any rate,” she acknowledged the dubiousness of this claim with a slight incline of her head, “and named itself Ranisath, from the Reformed Necrontyr for Lord of Life, and it had restored the Necrons to their original organic form, made whole again.

“It was a changed group who approached us in the Notrus system,” as she spoke the image of an aged Nathaniel meeting with a golden necron appeared, with Nathaniel taking staff from her. “They offered much more, a far fuller participation in government and endless industrial resources.

“The Imperium would not have approved, but the Emperor may have I think. The Emperor’s teachings were based on the time and place he revealed himself - he did not reveal himself and demand that mankind war upon alien before the Old Night of the Age of Strife. Generations have passed since that time, and every promise made by the Great Civilization, as it calls itself, has been upheld. The ship you see around you is not the near-hulk that sat at Notrus, because of this.

“House Damsdatter retains its loyalty to the Emperor, and to the Spirit of the Emperor,” she said, “but the Imperium was built for conditions much removed from those of this universe, and the teachings the Emperor handed down to the Imperium were not for other universes, if his commands were timeless, then he never would have hidden among men,” she said.