# Forum > Play-by-Post Games > Message Board Games > Free Form Roleplaying >  Jumpers vs. 40k IC1: Worst. Isekai. Ever.

## Lord Raziere

_It is the 41st millennium. For more than hundred centuries 
has the God Emperor of Mankind sat upon his golden thro-_
No no no, stop. Stop!
None of that. We don't need to trod out that opening crawl again. What is this, some war of the stars? Let me summarize: The Emperor sits on his throne keeping the space lighthouse on, he has a bunch of toy soldiers and various other overgrown military organizations protecting mankind from the spooky things in the dark, talk of only war this and laughter of thirsting gods that, all is hopeless, grimdark rubbish, its quite dreadful, I assure you. Why don't you instead, kick back, relax and have nice warm cup of tea? I have it on good word Yorkshire Tea is the best brand if you don't have any idea of what to pick.

Oh fine, fine, I'll get on with it. Don't worry, this story will be Perfectly Balanced as all things should be, like the mercantile strength of Rogue Trader Dynasties, the punching strength of Space Marines compared to the average man or Alpha Plus Psykers. I'm sure nothing exciting at all will happen. This universe has been on a downward spiral for a long time now, though one can argue when that started, whether it was ten thousand years ago with at Horus Humbuggery, the Birth of Slaanesh before that, or all the way back with the War In Heaven. Anything anyone can do is probably too late to fix anything. 
But come let on lets see what these fanatical zealots are up to this time. Probably killing some aliens or blowing up a planet, or killing some insane humans with a different religion and blowing up a planet. 
Nothing ever changes around here, except when it gets worse.

*Segmentum Obscurus, Calixis Sector 
Planet Scintilla, Hive Sibellus
990.M41*

It is a good morning on Hive Sibellus. Amid its various jumbled skyscraper architecture, nobles fight each other in completely legal duels to the death to prove their innocence or another's guilt. Middehivers trudge out of their improvised structures built in the ruins of mansions through streets formed by fallen statues to work themselves to the bone all day. Underhivers are too busy having violent gang wars over their supply of rats to eat to know what a morning is, because they are not aware a city is above them at all.

We will of course be focusing on an Inquisitorial team of Acolytes recently-
_SPANG!_
What was that? Never mind the Acolytes, it seems three strange people, oddly brightly colored compared to the world around them, have suddenly appeared in the Plaza of Saint Drusus, built in honor of Drusus's completion of the Angevin Crusade, complete with a statue in his honor for making Sibellus this sector's capital. Specifically they have appeared in its fountain, their clothes wet. Ensara swears
Soldammit! My clothes are wet!
She steps out, looking frustrated, red and pink robes straight out of some martial arts setting dripping wet, her medium length red hair, clinging to her sides. 
And where the Malfeas am I? Aquila.....skull decorations in unnecessary places....a prayer to a god-emperor on that plaque....dammit, I'm in Warhammer 40,000. I was in the middle of learning Gunhell and Cosmos as well, and I wanted to get find a teacher for Aarab Zaraq and other styles to. And now I'm suddenly here? What happened!?
She turns around as if just noticing the others. 
And who are you people? Name's Ensara. I'm not from around here and guessing from how you look...neither are you.
Its kinda obvious. I mean even if changed the clothes you have this unmistakable...brightness about you compared to your surroundings. As if you come from someplace that has actual hope or at least are drawn in a less dingy art style. Well this is at least potentially more interesting than those Acolytes.

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## Rater202

Alexandra is seemingly the youngest of you, physically thirteen, She dressed in... Have you ever seen Xena? Imagine that, but adjusted to be somewhat more modest, change the color to red, put a green flame emblem over the sternum, make the skirt a little more spinny, and make it look like it's made from highly advanced modern materials.

She hakes the water from herself, her outfit drying rather quickly, and mutters "Where in Hadeswait? did you just... Mention Warhammer by name...? This, this isn't... Are you... A Jumper?"

The girl immediately starts checking herself over, putting a key from her a hidden pocket. "Okay, I still have my warehouse key... Still have my powers, so this isn't a gauntlet... Why didn't... Oh, my Benefactor is probably laughing her ass off at this."

The girl does not even _remotely_ act her actual age.

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## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel, on the other hand, is probably the oldest, physically about 49. He's wearing a (currently dripping wet) white labcoat, under which he wears a light, futuristic military reinforced pressure suit with armoured pads on shins, knees, crotch and shoulders. In his hands, he clutches a white and navy-blue double-barreled shotgun.

He steps out, a perturbed look on his dark, lightly wrinkled face, and looks around, his greying dreads moving from side to side as he does so. "Warhammer? That's not one I've heard of."

He turns to Alexandra and Ensara to address them properly.
"You girls are Jumpers too, aren't you? My name is Ezekiel Olde, but you can just call me Ezekiel." Ezekiel smiles dryly. Since this is the first time he's introducing himself, his Borderlands-style subtitle shows up next to him, introducing him as EZEKIEL OLDE - OLDE HABITS DIE HARD.

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## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
"Whoa. Cool intro, Ezekiel" she comments, drying herself off with blue mana magic
Suddenly Ezekiel Olde sees a borderlands style intro for Ensara: *ENSARA- HITS LIKE HELL.*
She turns to Alexandra
"Looks like we all are Jumpers. But...Benefactor? you had one? Though....guess all those magical messages popping up to to give me options to move to another world had to come from somewhere. Anyways, I only know enough to recognize the universe we're in. Never was interested enough to learn more. No martial arts to learn, Lets see if I can't-"
She tries to planeswalk away, disappearing for a moment then reappears.
"What the Malfeas? My planeswalking doesn't work. The jumpchain said I'd be able to jump through the wider multiverse if I completed it! I'm being locked out my ability to get out. Whoever put me here, they want me to stay. Its like if I fell into that stupid Immortal Sun trap but a world that makes Ixalan look like a paradise. Lets see if I can't do some magic to at least-"
"Oi! You there!"
"Soldammit."
Two Enforcers come walking up to you- to your unfamiliar eyes, they look like people in blue flak armor with clubs in their hands and shotgun strapped to their back.
"You are in the fountain! Its against Scintillan law to be in the fountain. That'll be ten lashings for the each of you." the first one says
"Unless you bribe us, then we'll overlook it." the second one offers.
"Aw come on mate, the pays higher than the extortion outfit we had in the Wilderness, we don't need to risk some Arbitrator coming down on us for taking bribes. C'mon, be cooperative ten lashings it'll only take a few minutes outta yer day and the Ministorum says suffering is holy and brings ya closer to the Emperor roight?"
"They're dressed kinda strange don't you think though?"
"So they're outworlders, y'know what our superiors say, laws the law, no matter who it is. I'm not paid to care where they're from. and they're breaking the law, probably."
"But what if they're nobles though?"
"Rubbish, no noble dresses like them. You know the look, all Imperial Navy-like coats and fancy golden lining and rogue trader nonsense. None of this looks like that."
"Yeah, they don't have that air of looking down on us like we're human waste either. No arrogant disdain at all."
Ensara looks at Alexandra and Ezekiel
"I think they're getting less convincing the more they open their mouths. Either of you want to do something about them or can I...?"
"Hey! don't ignore us!" the first one swings his club at Ensara who catches it easily with her right palm. She doesn't even look away from you while she does this, her hand just reacted and now the enforcer is struggling to try and get the club free from her grip to no success.

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## Rater202

Alexadra raises her hand...

And a bolt of lighting out of a clear sky strikes right next to but does not hit either enforcer.

"As you can plainly see, I don't need to be any closer to the Emperor. We're in a pretty good place in our relationship right now. Why don't you run along before he gets mad at you for harassing me."

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## Gold Leaf

"Likewise. 'Hits like hell'... pretty good."

Ezekiel frowns slightly when magic is mentioned. Magic? That's for kids and Sirens. When real men want something done, they use technology to do it.

That club catch was pretty sweet, though. He could probably do the same thanks to his Pilot training, but it would still take a lot more focus and probably both hands.

"It wouldn't be hard to muster at least a little disdain for you. I'm doing it right now." Ezekiel mutters under his breath in response to the two Enfircers' chatter.

Ezekiel has no clue who the Emperor is, but he might as well assist with the threat. "If you need a boost..." Ezekiel says quietly, loading his shotgun slowly for effect and keeping his eyes on the two Enforcers the entire time, "I have a perfectly serviceable starter pistol sitting in my hands."

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## Lord Raziere

*Lives, spared:*



> Ezekiel frowns slightly when magic is mentioned. Magic? That's for kids and Sirens. When real men want something done, they use technology to do it.


Ezekiel: you receive a notification when you think this: Khorne will remember this. Tzeentch will remember this.
"Heh, hits like hell....fitting."
she comments




> And a bolt of lighting out of a clear sky strikes right next to but does not hit either enforcer.


They jump at this. They are suddenly seized with a sudden deep fear. "Ps-s-s-Psykers!" and they go running off, forgetting the club.

But Alexandra, you also gain a notification: Good Karma: You Saved My Life. 
Reward: A new ally approaches.

"Pst!! Hey" says a girl, about five feet tall, wrapped in oddly concealing rags suddenly steps out behind one of the statues "You unsanctioned? Come on, I know a way into the underhive. If you stand around lollygagging the Black Ships or the Inquisitors are going to come and get ya."
Ensara turns to see this girl- she is probably late teens? and sees that this girl has three eyes, but the third isn't on her forehead- its on her left cheek.
"What happens when they get us?"
"You having a laugh mate? They take you away and if you come back, you won't be the same. Everyone knows that. They don't search the underhive often, c'mon your all being awfully relaxed about this."
The three-eyed girl is beckoning you to follow her.

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## Rater202

"I prefer the term independant, but yeah."

The notification thing is weird. Must be one of Ezekiel's perks.

"You can call me Alexandra by the way. Or Starheart, if you prefer."

*Starheart: Won The Genetic Lottery.*

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## Lord Raziere

*Notification to Alexandra:*
Another one pops up. Its seems nothing like Ezekiel's notifications:
_Apologies. A different entity has been chosen to manage the Jumps for the duration of your stay for the sake of fairness, and didn't want you to be confused as to the implementation of your perk. This entity is known as The Process, and only cares about representing how things happen, as well as the probabilities of them happening accurately and fairly, with no concern as to why or what the results will be. Would you like to turn off notifications for Perk: You Saved my Life?

Yes/No_

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## Gold Leaf

That's weird. Who are those two, and why would they remember something Ezekiel didn't even say out loud?

Ezekiel gives a nod of acknowledgement when he sees Starheart's intro. "Nice to meet you."

Ezekiel then turns to Alexandra and Ensara. "Well, it doesn't look like we have anything to lose. I say we trust her. What do you two think?"

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## Rater202

> *Notification to Alexandra:*
> Another one pops up. Its seems nothing like Ezekiel's notifications:
> _Apologies. A different entity has been chosen to manage the Jumps for the duration of your stay for the sake of fairness, and didn't want you to be confused as to the implementation of your perk. This entity is known as The Process, and only cares about representing how things happen, as well as the probabilities of them happening accurately and fairly, with no concern as to why or what the results will be. Would you like to turn off notifications for Perk: You Saved my Life?
> 
> Yes/No_


There's no need to turn them off, now that there's an explination.



> That's weird. Who are those two, and why would they remember something Ezekiel didn't even say out loud?
> 
> Ezekiel gives a nod of acknowledgement when he sees Starheart's intro. "Nice to meet you."
> 
> Ezekiel then turns to Alexandra and Ensara. "Well, it doesn't look like we have anything to lose. I say we trust her. What do you two think?"


"It isn't like we are particularly spoiled for choice."

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## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
She focuses her eyes upon the girl intensely for a moment then says
"....She doesn't mean us harm. From what can tell of her body language, she is actually thankful that you scared off those enforcers, from which I can deduce...they were after you first? And not just because your carrying something you shouldn't, but because of the long robes covering your body...your trying to hide what is underneath, you keep pulling your hood to hide the third eye on your cheek and stealing fearful glances at the people around you whom from what I tell have better made clothes you, which I can tell are roughly middle class wear for this society compared to yours which I'd say are lower class. So at a guess: your not supposed to be up here, beyond the underhive you called it?"
The girl is taken aback at this sudden deduction.
"Yes....thats....correct. how did you know?"
Ensara smiles to the side.
"By the power of Exaltation, Chosen of the Yozis, I have incredibly good insight into people and how their social mores work. But I've forgotten my manners, what is your name? My name is Ensara."
"Manyclops. Whats an Exaltation?"
"Perhaps I'll tell you as long as you keep what it is, and what just happened here, our little secret, just as what you are and what your doing will be our little secret between us in return, is that agreeable?"
"Y-yes, of course. Our Little secret." Manyclops says, finding herself agreeing easily to this. "C'mon, its not safe to say anymore here."
You all follow her from the plaza into an alley then into a tunnel that leads downwards into the underhive, a cavern of metal containing ramshackle rusting old buildings, the endless city scape extending down even here, but the structures here are not well maintained, they are either falling apart or if the person cares, are kept together with patch jobs. You pass by people who look straight out of mad max- if mad max had more skull decorations, cybernetics and mutations because while some of them are normal humans, others are warped and not in pretty ways: some scarred or deformed, some look bestial, one of them has just too much muscle and not in a good way. One has tentacles for arms, another three arms and three legs, and third has a worm tail instead of legs, just a variety of mutations with no rhyme or reason to them. They all look they're wearing gang colors, every single one of them has some form of weapon on them whether it be a gun or knife, some of them are wearing chain shirts for armor despite the modern or higher tech around them, others are just wearing scraps of metal...there is just something oddly post-apocalyptic or anachronistic about all this. These gangs eye you suspiciously but don't make any moves just watching you go through but recognizing Manyclops.
She goes past one buidling with a guard out front and hands a bag to the guard
"Here's your bosses lasgun charges."
"Roight, heres your Thrones." he hands her back some gold coins. 
Then she leads to this shack, its not much, and says
"well, here's me...home I guess. Its a place to sleep at least. Don't worry the nobles don't send armed forces down here unless they think they can find some antique." She takes off the robe to reveal shes wearing similar outfits to the people around here, but without the gang colors, but that isn't what catches your eye: its the fact that scattered all over her body are extra eyes, that she just has in random places. She is a mutant as well.
"So wots you unsanctioned psykers doing surface-side?"
"What is an unsanctioned psyker?"
She looks at Ensara weirdly.
"You having a laugh at me again mate?"
"No. Now that we can talk, I'd like to say that we're....new around here. We'd like to ask a few questions. Assume we're completely ignorant of this city and the world, even the most basic of things."
Manyclops looks at Ensara weirdly- with ALL of her eyes.
"Um, Okay....what questions do you have?"
"Where are we?"
"Um....well your in the underhive of Hive Sibellus."
"Which is on what planet?"
"Scintilla. How'd you get here without knowing what planet yer on? If yer from the void then surely you already knew where you arrived."
"Oh? Would know anything about void travel?"
"No, not really. Lived my entire life in Hive Sibellus. Traveling through the void is for nobles, imperial guard and adeptas. They go somewheres, I don't know where and they often don't come back. They could be eaten by a giant void rat for all I know."
"What was all that about? the guards, the taking the charges to that gang, you hiding your form and such?" 
"Ah well, I thought'd be obvious? I'm a mutant. Many of us are down here. People don't like us mutants, priests say our forms are corrupted by....the Archenemy."
"The Archenemy? what Archenemy?"
"....The Archenemy. The priests don't specify anything more. They say our forms are an impurity of the human form just like the witches are an impurity of the human soul. That our very existence is heresy for not having enough faith in the Emperor. That mutants and witches like us should be abhorred and cleansed for the Imperium."
"....I see." Ensara says with an edge of anger in her voice.  "and who is this Emperor?"
"Is....this a serious question? everyone knows who the Emperor is."
"It is."
"The God-Emperor of Mankind, y'know, big golden armored bloke, savior of us all, watches over us from his throne on Terra, guiding us with his light? Made the entire Imperium of Man?"
She sees your faces and says
"By the Emperor, you really don't know anything do you? Priests would love you lot, they say ignorance is its own reward."

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## Rater202

Alexandra thinks to herself that she should introduce Manyclops to Pamela, they'd have much to talk about.

"So, just to clear the air, I'm not a psyker. Well, kinda, I guess you could say I'm similar, but my powers don't work the way theirs do. I guess you could say that, I'm also a mutant. Just a differant kind."

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## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel looks around at the denizens of the underhive. Damn... these guys are worse off than in the Borderlands.

He listens attentively to the string of questions and answers. When Ensara's done, he has just one question of his own: "You wouldn't happen to know a Khorne and/or Tzeentch, would you?"

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## Lord Raziere

*Manyclops:*
She shakes her head at Ezekiel's question.
"Sorry mate, I don't know who either of those are. You could ask around, or try to get an Adept of the Administratum to tell you or look it up, they got records on everyone. Those twiggy blokes, they read more books in a week than I've seen in me life. Not that they'd ever tell an 'abhorred' mutant like me anything. You on the other hand, you seem pure human, they might tell you something...if it isn't forbidden knowledge."
"What knowledge is forbidden?" Ensara says
"I dunno. I'm forbidden to know that." she says. "Kinda the point innit? To quote them priests again: Blind faith is a just cause. Don't know where your from, but thats what the Ministorum teaches us here. We go pokin' around for things we aren't supposed to know, you get purged. Inquisition.....Ministorum or I should say Ecclesiarchy....well a lot of authorities, don't like it when you stick your nose where you shouldn't. They get burny and shout stuff like "kill the heretic!" and whatnot."
"But wait, how your supposed to know what to avoid then?"
"....Ah hm, well....ya don't. You must mostly just keep your head down and not do anything to go against the Emperor or the Imperium. Thats usually the safe bet."

She answers Alexandra:
"Call yourself whatever you like, but....Psyker's a Psyker. It's not something you identify as, its something the Inquisition uses to say what you are so they know what to do about you, so thats what you are. You look pure human so yer not anything people would say is a mutant. Don't know what backwards planet yer from, even outworlders know what these terms mean."
She thinks about this.
"...You lot from some world outside the Imperium? Priests always say its Mankind's destiny to bring all humans under the Imperium's rule and that anyone who rejects it is a heretic. Were you like, recently conquered? I don't know much about the void, but maybe....are you lot from the Koronus Expanse? Last I heard the Rogue Traders are still expanding the borders there."
"...Whats the Koronus Expanse?"
"Not much of a clue, myself. The people working for Rogue Traders over by the shuttleport keeping talking about it when they dock however so it'd seem to be nearby, to the what was it called again, the Calixis Sector, which Scintillas the capital of? But you lot are really strange. Imperium doesn't like strange. Wonder how you survived so far."
Manyclops doesn't even seem to consider the possibility that your from outside the universe as a possibility. She just seems to be regarding some of the stranger stuff you say as weird customs or term from some foreign planet and doesn't question any of it, which is not technically wrong, and given the Imperium's seeming focus on keeping people to be ignorant, she doesn't pry into any of it considering none of it her business.
"Why did you warn us about the black ships and take us down here?"
"Well I saw Alexandra there make lightning crack to scare them enforcers off. They were pursuing me because of the lasgun charges I had illegally bought on the behalf of one of the gangs, got to replenish ammo somehow for their constant gang wars and the only way you get ammo for any gun is from the manufactorums which primarily produce stuff like weapons to give to the Imperial Guard to fight some distant war thats always going for one reason or another. I felt thankful and I know what happens when a new psyker is spotted: they either kill you for being a witch, or they take and hold you until the black ships arrive once every year, then your taken away to become sanctioned, safe to serve the Imperium. Whatever that means. I didn't want it to happen to you, because of many of them don't come back."
"Why do they do this?"
"Well, they say psykers are dangerous. Once knew a psyker before they got taken. strange things happened around them, because of them. Had moments where he saw....things. Things no one else saw. He'd constantly mutter and have nightmares in his sleep. Sometimes the faucets would pour blood instead of water. Sometimes something he touched would become twisted and warped like someone messed with it like clay. sometimes his eyes would glow and he'd say prophecies of doom. Sometimes buildings would catch on fire, or someone would die from him screaming at them. Never meant any of it, he did. Guy was afraid of himself just as much as everyone else was. I was still sad when he got taken though, never saw him again. Didn't seem like he deserved his lot in life."

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## Rater202

"See, that would be why I'm not a psyker. Everything I do? Under my exact control with the finest precision."

"Of course, it's a moot point. Nobody here will believe any differant: That's the thing with people like that. they believe what they want to believe... Or make up things that they want you to believe so they can control you. If it would be more convenient for them to believe that I'm a psyker they'll say I'm a psyker even if I have hard proof that I'm not."

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## Gold Leaf

"I'm beginning to like these priests less and less every second. They're so in support of everything scientists like myself are working against, that it's almost personally offensive."

It's a terrible thing, keeping knowledge locked away and teaching society to never ask questions. George Orwell might have something to say about that.

"Oh, almost forgot: where would I find this Administratum, or an Adept? I hold a lot of respect for 'twiggy blokes' who can find the time to finish a good book every so often."

Ezekiel can't help but notice how oddly familiar Manyclops' manner of speaking is. Where's he heard that before..? That's right, it's a British accent, just like everyone had back in the IMC! But... is Britain real here?

"Forgive me for asking, but... where are you from? Your accent's quite familiar."

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## Lord Raziere

*Manyclops:*
She says to Alexandra:
"Okay, yer making me head hurt, cause you just said to me what I was trying to say to you kind of as if I wasn't, so lets just drop it"
She says to Ezekiel.
"I'm from here. Hive Sibellus, Scintilla, I already told you that mate. Also what is a scientist? I'm speaking plain Low Gothic here, but I guess have an underhive accent to it."
"Low gothic? is there some other kind of Gothic?"
"Yeh. High Gothic, the language the authorities use to sound fancy, important and ancient, I can't speak it but I do recall a few phrases I heard on voxcast:"
She clears her throat and speaks faux-latin in a high class british accent:
"Mens aperta est quasi munimentum portae sua reserata et incustodita. Inanis mens fidelis est. Laus Imperatori. Analysis est perniciosa opinione. Argumentum logicum absoluta persuasione dimittendum est! Haereticum combure! Mutant occide! Expurgate immundos!"
She then shakes her head.
"I have no idea what I just said. But I do know most if not all branches of government are named in high gothic: Adeptus Administratum are the administrators, they are bureaucrats and such, adepts. Adeptus Astartes are space marines. Adepta Sororitas are the Sisters of Battle. Adeptus Custodes are the legendary custodians who guard the Emperor on Holy Terra. Adeptus Arbites are the Arbitrators who makes sure the planets pay their taxes to Terra. Departmento Munitorum handles Imperial Guard logistics, Adeptus Ministorum are the normal priests, Adeptus Mechanicus are the tech priests, Imperial Guard and Navy I'm pretty sure have fancy high gothic names but everyone just calls them what they are. I know there is more, but I can't keep all of them straight because there is so many and a lot of them aren't relevant to me or aren't the famous ones that get all the stories of Imperial victory written about 'em."
"Wait a minute, back up, there are two kinds of priests?" Ensara says, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah? Ministorum priests who preach about the Emperor and whatnot, and the tech priests who keep all the machine spirits happy while keeping everyone else from angering them. the tech priests don't do much preaching, they just smugly do their rituals knowing that everyone needs them for everythin' or nothing works. the two cults kinda don't like each other."
"Why don't they like each other?"
"The normal priests hate the tech priests for defiling their pure human form with cybernetics, while the tech priests hate the normal priests for relying on weak flesh when they think tech is stronger. Again they just kinda leer in mutual hate knowing they can't get rid of each other."
"Sprawling bureaucracy, lots of flowery named branches of government, factions in it that engage in politicking for control, a religion that makes people hate things that are different, a military conquering regions to expand....its like the Realm all over again but ridiculously worse. At least the Scarlet Empress built a society that was capable of making happy functional communities and self-correct its corruption to some degree."
"Scarlet Empress? was that the ruler of the planet you come from?"
"....Y'know what, sure lets go with that. She was probably the closest thing to it at any rate."
If you ignored the Unconquered Sun being the King of Yu-Shan, which ruled the rest of Creation's gods, but technically they weren't allowed to rule over mortals.

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## Gold Leaf

Well, Ezekiel guesses it makes sense that for every culturally obvious thing he doesn't know, there has to be one common knowledge thing they don't know. Still...

"No scientists? It's that bad, hm? A scientist is somebody who studies and runs tests on things to solve problems and learn new information about the world around them. Not the kind of information we've been asking you for, mind you. Scientists answer questions like 'Why does water turn to steam after you heat it?' or 'What brings us back down to the planet after we jump?' or 'How do you create an explosion large enough to level a medium sized city?' "

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## Rater202

"I get the distinct feeling that scientists would be branded as Heretics and burned at the stake here, friend. If technological maintenance is handled by priests who worship machine spirits, this society must be rather backwards in terms of academic understanding."

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## Gold Leaf

"Oh. Well, that's... disconcerting."

A beat.

"I'm not going to drop the lab coat, though."

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## Lord Raziere

*Manyclops:*
"....Huh, why DOES that all happen? Never thought about it much before. But anyways, what your talking sounds like tech-heresy, yeah. not exactly, but a lot like it. Call them hereteks, tech priests don't like when you modify or fiddle with technology from their "holy" standard designs. Luckily for you, the underhive needs hereteks like everyone else needs the tech priests. Gangs love their weapon modifications, cybernetics, running water and lights being on. I know a guy, Iota-Phi 34. He can tell you more about tech heresy and the Mechanicus than I ever could. The more I hear you speak, the more I get the feeling that you lots entire existence is some form of heresy....so really you should fit right in with everyone else down here."
"Heresy is only a word for the powerful to oppress and control their lessers while eliminating their enemies. By limiting what you accept, they prevent you from opening your mind to what can save you."
"Yeah, thats exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know why I'm helping you since your probably going to end up dead sooner rather than later, but you don't seem to be bad folk....strange and begging for the Inquisition to kill ya, but not bad."
"Don't worry." Ensara says with a confident smile "I can take on anything this Inquisition can throw at me. I'm Exalted and many other things besides."
"Doesn't matter what you are, the Inquisition does anything to eliminate a threat. Anything."
"What is the Inquisition?"
"The authority second only in political power to the High Lords of Terra themselves, who have ruled since the Emperor ascended to the Golden Throne. They are answerable to no one, watch over everyone, with minds of steel and hearts cold as the lowest depths of Hive Tarsus. They are composed of the Imperium's most elite agents who strike fear in all mankind with the mere rumor of their interest!" Manyclops says fearfully.

*Meanwhile The "Elite" Agents:*
Five Inquisitorial Acolytes look around the Plaza of St. Drusus, not sure what they're looking for. Their motley fledgling crew of lowly grunts consisted of an adept scribe named Clovis Edmigove, a tech priest Grant Nabek, an arbitrator named Maiya Maghildr, Cyniss Darkhame, sanctioned psyker and a scum by the name Mattius Shamblebat. These acolytes wished they had more firepower, but they were chosen by their Inquisitor a month ago for their investigative skills rather than their ability to fight. She had said that their job was more "figuring out where to point our guns" than actually doing the firing themselves. They had received a report that a psyker had made a lightning strike in the area to scare off two Enforcers, and was sent to investigate. They were going to be sent to Planet Malfi because that was hotbed of heresy but apparently a potential unsanctioned psyker right here in the capital of the entire sector took priority.
"I'm just saying, we should be off rooting out a conspiracy on a hive world known for its jealousy of Scintilla taking the capital spot since the founding of the sector, not wandering around looking for some unsanctioned psyker just because two enforcers got spooked." Maiya says with a frown.
"A single psyker could unleash horrors no one wants to imagine. Malfi is eight hundred standard days from here, I don't relish the journey that'll require, and who knows? the psykers might be Malfi heretics sent here." Grant says back
"But then why would they give themselves away like that? Doesn't seem to make sense." Mattius says, thinking
"Maybe they panicked at the enforcers prodding and wanted the enforcers scared off quick." Maiya says back
"But why were they in the fountain though? Why would Malfi heretic psykers sent to invade or destroy Scintilla, take a dip like that? It seems...illogical" says Grant, the tech priest tilting his head.
"Well its a fountain to honor Saint Drusus right? Then they'd hate Drusus for founding the capital here, and thus want to defile the fountain by splashing around in it. Shrine defilement is a known behavior of heretics." says Clovis. 
".....I guess that makes sense, but what are we looking for to get their trail?" Grant questions.
"How...how about I investigate for leftover traces of them, using me.. psyker powers?" Cyniss says nervously.
They all look at each other. There is always a risk to using psyker powers, but Rhiannon assured them when its done carefully, the chances of....mishaps....is minimized. 
"As long as you don't push it." Maiya says
She nods and focuses her psychic might upon detecting traces of psychic power through her staff, traces of it being used that she could find a trail....and the psychic technique fails to manifest. They all let out a breath of relief. It wasn't ideal, but it neither was something more dangerous. It was always a gamble with psykers.
"Sorry, it didn't work..." Cyniss says
"Thats okay, as long nothing bad happens, we're good." Maiya says back
"Okay, but here is the real question: do we do normal legwork or should she try again?" asks Clovis.

----------


## Rater202

"Let me tell you something, Manyclops... On my home planet, there was a man called Doctor Doomsday. He was a genius, with the greatest knowledge of science and technology of anyone on the planet. And he was what you'd call a psyker, except with full control of his powers like I have. And, a mutant. Every time he was injured he'd heal so that whatever weapon hard hurt him couldn't again and if he was killed he'd come back to life far more powerful. If he was so inclined, he could have ruled the planet with an iron fist, or just blown the damn thing up."

"And he absolutely hated me. I never learned why... And yet, I'm still here. I won. More than once. And he wasn't even the worst thing I faced back home. That would have been the Super-Soldier after he was driven mad by the Anti-Life Gospel."

"Let the Inquisition come. I'll give them a chance to back off, to rethink their lives and see the error of their ways. And if they don't, then I will shine my light upon them, and evil things cannot bear the light of the Starheart."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"As for me? My Titan is an 8 meter tall giant mech with cluster missiles, homing missiles and a shotgun the size of a semi truck. I've gunned down hordes of men before, whether via Titan or on foot. I even had a Psyker - I mean, a Siren hunt me down and try to kill me. Sirens have full, fine control over powerful magic too, but my trigger discipline was stronger.

"So yes, let them come. Whereas her light turns people good or something, mine is just a simple firelight. And fire kills.

----------


## Rater202

> "As for me? My Titan is an 8 meter tall giant mech with cluster missiles, homing missiles and a shotgun the size of a semi truck. I've gunned down hordes of men before, whether via Titan or on foot. I even had a Psyker - I mean, a Siren hunt me down and try to kill me. Sirens have full, fine control over powerful magic too, but my trigger discipline was stronger.
> 
> "So yes, let them come. Whereas her light turns people good or something, mine is just a simple firelight. And fire kills.



"Uh, uh, no... If they don't back down I was just gonna kill them. Or at least beat them up. The whole thing was meant to be poetic and... Maybe a little bit of a reference to the last guy who had some of my powers."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Manyclops:*
"and I am Ensara, Nadir Caste of the Infernal Exalted, Planeswalker, Artificer, Adamant Circle Sorcerer, Master of Six Martial Art Styles of Creation and one of Gaia, Master of Nemesis Abilities, She Who Knows Eight Ars Magnus Techniques. I have slayed spirits and champions chosen by gods, bound demons to my service, toppled empires, overthrown tyrants, and outwitted the ancient dragon god Nicol Bolas himself. This Inquisition will be nothing that the Immaculate Order or the Gaian Church hasn't already thrown at me."
"I.....you......this....either your all crazy, or have stolen from the Collegia Titanica and think having one Titan is enough to beat all of them, or are some new fresh kind of heresy that I can't even begin to understand and probably shouldn't try. Whatever. Try to do the impossible for all I care. I'll be here waiting to mourn you. Nothing ever changes around here, except when it gets worse. But hey as long we're entertaining unbelievable insanities..." 
She goes outside and points at a certain ramshackle building
"That building there is Iota-Phi 34's house. He's the Heretek I talked about, does a lot of local tech and chem work, if you want more information about tech heresy and the mechanicus he's the bloke. Whenever you come to your senses you can come back and talk to me so I can recommend which gang you work for or tell you more about stuff that...honestly I'm not sure how you don't already know. Otherwise, yer on your own. Honestly, I don't know why I don't just kick you out for the nonsense yer spoutin', I'm such a bleeding heart..."

*Rhiannon's Acolytes:*
"I say she try again" says Mattius 
"Of course criminal Scum like you would say that." Maiya says back
"Look, Miss By-The-Book Arbitrator, sometimes you got to accept some risks on the job, roight? Whatever our psyker does to find the bigger more threatening psyker, has to cost less than letting the enemy do whatever scary ritual to summon something big and nasty. Any sacrifice for the Emperor and Mankind roight? this is just a small taste of what we're supposed to do when we become Inquisitors."
"Inquisitor Rhiannon emphasizes caution though. These powers are unsafe to tamper with."
"and do you think she got to where she is by not doing what needs to be done?" Mattius asks "Cyniss. Do it, but try harder this time."
Cyniss tries again, drawing more power and focusing harder, psychic sparks crackling around her to try and find a trace of psychic energy to follow....and still nothing happens.
"Hah. Sorry I was really I really did try harder but....I still can't get the technique to work."
"Wot!? Rubbish. Do it again and trying pushing it this time!"
"Mattius" Maiya warns "this is dangerous. If this turns out badly...."
"Then its the psyker's fault for her mind not being strong enough. Do it!"
Cyniss focuses harder now, even more psychic energy dancing and roiling around her as she tries to find any traces of psychic residue to track, while suddenly Cyniss rises into the air, her eyes shining with light as a sudden gale from nowhere blows out of her, knock Clovis to the ground but everyone manages to stand their ground against the sudden wind. They had been lucky again that the mishap was as harmless as this.

But while the technique works, this doesn't answer the important question: does Alexandra even leave behind any trace of energy that can be picked up? After all, these are two different universes powers and run on different rules. If Alexandra's powers aren't compatible with psyker ones or whatever, this doesn't tell Cyniss anything even if it works

So, are her powers compatible with this universes psychic rules?

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra's Powers come from several sources.

The first are her inborn traits as an Amazon, an eternally youthful human with superhuman speed and strength due to divine blessings from the Gods of Olympus.

The second are her inborn traits as a metamutant. General physical enhancements that significantly boost her preexisting base form are present... But the majority of them are psionic in nature.

And one... Alexandra is, like The Human Lantern before her, a channel for the Starheart, a superweapon crated by the Guardians by combining the Green Light of Will with a variety of chaotic magical energies. She is a living font of cosmic and mystical powers.

She was trained in sorcery in order to best use said abilities, particularly in a form of Alchemy that lets her combine them...

And finally, upon defeating The Super-Soldier, Dark Klaw, Spider-Boy, Skulk, and Power-Borg after they'd been zombified and devoured Galactiac, she'd been imbued with The Power Cosmic, a fundamental force of life and creation.

So, Alexandra's powers are an electric combination of both her own innate and external divine, cosmic, mystic, and psionic energies.

It would feel like "Psyker" energy, which is essentially the local version of all the above, it is reasonable to be registered as such... But it's not going to feel like any psyker anyone in this world has ever encountered before.

It is known that particularly powerful Psykers need not draw upon the Warp to use their abilities but fuel them solely with their own power, it is highly likely that Alexandra would be confused for one of those.

...Or confused for some kind of Daemon in human form."I'm more of a leader than a follower... Which reminds me, is there somewhere I can go where I won't be disturbed for a few minutes? I have some people I need to make contact with."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"...Oh. Yeah, that works, too."

"They have Titans here, too? How interesting. Mechanical as well, I'm assuming."

"Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to go see if I can't strike up a conversation with this Iota-Phi character." With that, Ezekiel will go over to the ramshackle building and knock on the door.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Manyclops:*
She thinks then responds to Alexandra
"Well....its probably a bit ironic but we got a little shrine to the Emperor we have down here that the smarter gangs maintain but no one goes to. Remnant of a Ministorum cathedral built like what, few centuries or millennia go? I don't remember. Mostly maintain it so that whenever one of the more gullible priests wander down here being preachy and trying to "save" us from ourselves, we act all pious, smile and nod at whatever nonsense he's babbling about, and we show him the shrine and go "see? we loves the Emperor look at this cute lil' shrine here we haves to him" and he's like "oh maybe these mutant scum aren't as bad as I thought" and we bilk outta his money by convincing him to donate to make the shrine better then pocket it for useful stuff and he goes off happy until he dies of some other stupid reason down here. Not like the Ecclesiarchy really cares they're gone though, no one ever searches for them going missing. Other than that, its underground, its dark, there is a tons of places to go off to be alone, the trick is getting back instead of getting lost and finding whatever beastie wants to get you or underhivers who'd rather shoot you and loot the body than talk....if they're not just hungry."
She calls to Ezekiel as he goes
"Titans are a Mechanicus adjacent thing to, you'll get more out of Iota about them than me."
Ensara says
"I'll come along with you Ezekiel, I'm always up to learn more, and its probably a good idea to learn why they have the attitude towards technology that they have."

*Iota-Phi 34:*
Ezekiel and Ensara walk in and its like a workshop on one end and a chemistry lab on the other end: there are various tools either on some table or other, the ones not in use are lined up neatly while the ones that seem recently used are scattered haphazardly. There are piles of scrap of various bits and odds and ends, cybernetic limbs that seem cobbled together from what could be found hanging around seemingly just waiting to be used for implantation, a few guns some labeled "autogun" or "stub revolver" that look like modern firearms while others are labeled "lasgun" or "laspistol".  The chemistry end has beakers and such of various drugs and compounds with unfamiliar names such as "obscura", "frenzon" or "lho-stick filling", but the big barrels labeled "amasec" is so similar to alcoholic drinks that it couldn't possibly anything else. The person in here in his black robes seems however to be facing away from you, tinkering with something while writing things down on parchment until he hears you and turns around, his voice has a distinct mechanical timbre to it.
"How anomalous, you don't look like the usual scum that comes into my workshop. A little old, many tend to die before they get to your age. Such is the weakness of flesh."
His face, seems entirely mechanical with glowing three yellow camera-like or goggle-like eyes having replaced his human ones long ago, and speaking through this mechanical voice synthesizer implant, he has two extra limbs built on his back but not human like at all, completely mechanical tools for doing work, and his actual hands are metal as well.
"But very well, Greetings I am designated Iota-Phi 34. Do you need modification for your weapon? Repair your vox? Your pict-recorder? If your data slate has froze up, have you tried the Ritual of Deactivation and Reactivation? If your hoping to replace your flesh with metal to avert your decay, I'd warn you that my cybernetic works are of low quality-you'd be better off devoting yourself to the Machine God in full to receive the Omnissiah's blessings to transcend your cage than relying on a heretek like me. The drugs meanwhile to pleasure your crude organic systems will be ready when they are ready, they are still brewing."
Doesn't seem real good at socializing.

*Rhiannon's Acolytes:*
Cyniss falls back to the ground and says, shakily
"I...I found something."
"Well what is it?" Mattius questions
"Its bad. Psychic energy like I've never seen before, unique like its energy not from the Warp. Only something very strong could do this. Its either an Alpha-plus Pskyer.....or a Daemon. and I don't know which one is worse."
Clovis, Mattius and Grant go wide eyed in some form of fear, Grant trying to convince himself that he is blessed by the Omnissiah to be above emotions and that the wind just lowered the temperature of his systems.
Maiya clenches her fists and keeps her stoic. She needed to be strong. She Is The Law.
"That...is very bad. This is no longer a "search and capture" mission for some random psyker to take to the Black Ships. If your correct about what you just picked up, then dealing with this is above our pay grade. I'm kicking this problem upstairs, I'm sure there is other actual Inquisitors at the Calixian Conclave more competent and able in either the Ordo Hereticus or Ordo Malleus to take care of this."
Classic skills of working in an organization: knowing when something isn't your problem and how to justify it being someone elses problem. Maiya will call Inquisitor Rhiannon on her vox-caster to report this.

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel seems to be mostly interested in the chemistry side of the building.

"Well, what do we have here? I feel almost like I jumped right into Breaking Bad. Chemistry isn't my field, but if it was I wouldn't mind having a setup like this in my warehouse."

"Ah yes, well, if I was simply one of the many, maybe I wouldn't have survived this long. But as you can see, I'm a little above the average. For example, an average man of my age would have taken offense to the fact that you opened a conversation by calling him old, but I appreciate it as a compliment."

From the mechanical face to the extra arms, Ezekiel thinks that Iota-Phi bears a striking resemblance to a pilot Simulacrum, except less advanced.

"My name is Ezekiel. No no, I'm not here for any of that. No, if I wanted to become a Simulacrum, I would have done that years ago. And I don't really do drugs... not the ones that are cooked in a lab, anyways. No, I simply wanted to have a chat, scientist to scientist.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra, meanwhile, heads off to look for that shrine.

Assuming that she finds it, and assuming that she isn't interrupted on the way, once inside she'll open to the door to her Warehouse and step in.

Alexandra's warehouse is pretty barren, she doesn't have very many items. She walks passed the box of "1 assload" of local currency to a door ont ehf air side, which opens up into the interior of a manor house.

Alexandra touches a finger to her temple and establishes a surface-level psychic connection. _"Pamela? You there?"_

_"Yes... Why wouldn't I be?"_

_"Well, it seems that my benefactor has colluded with two others of her kind and is having a spot of fun with us: Myself and two other jumpers just spawned into a particularly dangerous reality without or knowledge or a chance to obtain local powers or resources. I couldn't be certain that you two werren't locked away or something."_
_
"So... We should stay in the warehouse until further notice?"_

_"Yeah, though there is someone I'd like you to meet if I can get the chance, I feel like you'd have a lot to talk about. Is Molly with you?"_

_"Yes. She's practicing her handstands but she's with me... She's going to be disappointed, she was looking forward to seeing what you look like as a boy."
_
_"Yeah, well, she's gonna have to wait. Let her know what's going on and give her my love."_

After that she leaves the warehouse, closes it behind her, and goes to find the othersperfect memory is a byproduct of one of her powers, so unless the pathway literally changes finding her way back shouldn't be a problem.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Alexandra:*
Yeah you make your way back no problem.

*Iota-Phi 34:*
"The chemicals are made to manipulate the crude organic machinery of those around me, in exchange for them giving me monetary currency. A heretek like me needs a constant source of funds for my true works of experimentation without the vast resources of the Mechanicus. It is simply business."
He stops and thinks for a moment when you mention the word "scientist".
".....Archaic/obscure term detected: scientist. Searching memory archives....1 result found. You are referring to a Dark Age of Technology term for what was equivalent to a tech priest. This is highly anomalous. Ordinary Imperial citizens are not authorized to know such information. No blessings of the machine god mean your not Mechanicus. Possible explanations:
I. You are a member of the Inquisition. Probability of my termination: high.
II. You are a member of a Rogue Trader crew interested in archeotech. Probability of my termination: Low. But illogical for Rogue Trader to seek a random heretek in the underhive of Sibellus, there is any number of Mechanicus Explorators that would be more prepared to traverse the void in The Quest For Knowledge and be less heretical.
III. You are a heretic like me. Probability of my termination: Low. 
Results inconclusive. But if you are Inquisitors, then you are taking a long time to purge me, and why intentionally use a term from a time of myth and legend known only though fragmentary records? Which either means you have a use for me, or are heretics like myself."
Ensara assures him, putting on a charming smile that could make devils lower their prices, showing her fangs.
"I assure you, we're not Inquisitors. Manyclops decided to help us out after a run in with the Enforcers midhive. We just want to...embark on our own Quest for Knowledge, surely you can help us in this?"
"....That is plausible. Very well. But I am still a business and your taking time away from other things, the forbidden secrets of the Mechanicus are not so worthless as to be parted with easily and I am in real danger of getting purged if I tell you such things, so I will trade you such information for throne gelt-"
Ensara seemingly pulls a sack of Thrones out of nowhere, the same coin currency as the one in Alex's box if she checked that, and hands it to Iota.
"...This is a lot of thrones. And ones minted from Holy Terra itself. Very well. What questions do you have for me?"

*Meanwhile, Inquisitor Rhiannon:*
She picks up the vox on her microbead and listens to Maiya's report.
".....I don't believe you." she says sharply.
"Its what the reading we got, Inquisitor. Cyniss insists that it is right."
"So let me get this straight: You expect me to believe, that you five rookie acolytes, sent on a simple psyker retrieval mission after receiving a report by local enforcers searched the Plaza of St. Drusus....and really found a psychic signature indicating a daemon or an Alpha Plus Psyker? That is what you honestly believe?"
"Yes."
"That....is impossible. An Alpha Plus Psyker could destroy this entire planet by themselves. A Daemon, depending on which one.....could probably do worse. Neither are sane or pure enough to work with subtlety to just scare enforcers off. If either is on the planet right now, we should be dealing with absolute mayhem, Chaos cultists coming out of the woodwork to attack everyone they see, a powerful entity of the warp raging around with impunity knowing nothing on this world can possibly stop them. Everyone would be scrambling to either kill it or evacuate. The idea that such an entity could be subtle and restrained is.....concerning."
"I thought Chaos's entire modus operandi was making cults to infiltrate the Imperium like this."
"Yes, but only as the beginning when they're weak. An entity this powerful? The invasion should've started happening the minute this being got on the planet. So...I'm ruling out demon. That requires preparation, cults, things like that. But it still doesn't explain Alpha Plus Psyker. A Gamma or Delta we have yet to find that I could believe, but anything above Beta grade tends to be completely mad-and even Gammas tend to either die or be possessed when we get to them. They also tend to be astronomically rare. I picked you all for your strong minds, so I'd hope your not overreacting to a stronger than expected reading like some melodramatic Monodominant."
"Look I'm just the arbitrator, you can talk to Cyniss herself if you want her to repeat what I just told you."
"I do."
Maiya shrugs and hands the vox to her.
"Yes Inquisitor?"
"Cyniss Darkhame. Are you sure about your reading that it is an Alpha Plus Psyker?"
"The reading was unlike any other psychic energy I've felt before. Not from the warp. Strange yet powerful. I have trouble figuring out what other explanation it could be."
".....Very well. I will go down there to confirm it myself. I myself have some psychic ability and more experience with such things than you. But if you turn out to be wrong and all this is just a bunch of acolytes soiling themselves over nothing special, you will be executed."
"F-for what?" Cyniss questions
"Wasting my time."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Quest for knowledge is a fun way to put it, I suppose, but I mostly just wanted to talk to someone I have common ground with."

"Right, well, here's something on my mind - what does it take to become a sci-er, techpriest around here? Tests you had to take, degrees you had to get, that kind of thing."

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra returns to Manyclops shack and sits down outside it before closing her eyes.

She has many powers, but telepathy is one of her strongest, If she was so inclined she could even link the minds of billions at a time.

She reaches out to try and sort through the surface thoughts of the people of this planet. Nothing at all intrusive, she's just trying to get bearings on common knowledge and maybe a hint of where to go next.

She'll start on people near here and then spread out and doesn't intend to peak at more than a few hundred thousand individuals. It'll take some time but it's subtle enough that only people actively looking for psionic phenomena would notice.

What could possibly go wrong?

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Iota-Phi 34:*
He tilts his head, not quite understanding the question.
"That is a vague and broad question to ask, with many answers. The Adeptus Mechanicus serves many roles in the Imperium, with many ranks and specialized roles that we are trained and modified for. A tech priest could refer to anyone from the lowest Technographer to highest of Omniprophets, with many different requirements to meet for what you are aiming for."
Ensara clarifies.
"I think Ezekiel means what rank does it take to recognized as expert in scientific discipline enough to make new discoveries or new inventions."
"Ah. Well, that narrows it down but there is still a few possible ranks that could refer to do that, depending. they are all however, ruling ranks of the priesthood in contrast to lowly enginseers or lexmechanics. The term for a recognized master in their divisio is Magos, with combined with a title for their area of expertise, such as: Magos technicus, magos biologis, magos alchemys, magos xenobiologis, magos logis, magos physic, magos cybernetica, etc. The term for a jack of all trades in matters of knowledge is Magos Errant. Genetors in particular are an alternate name for magos biologis as focus on the organic form is strange to the mainstream of Mechanicus thought but serve vital roles to the Imperium. Archmagos is a higher rank indicating more experience and seniority, as is Archmagos Veneratus. 

It takes many years of terran study to even become a lowly Enginseer, the most common position in the Adeptus Mechanicus serving the Imperium with repairs and practical knowledge of the electrical and mechanical disciplines, and many more years of study to rise to the rank of Magos. Enginseer was the position I held before I became a heretek, and the jobs constant demands of customization, modification, improvisation, quick repairs without proper ritual on the battlefield and so on made me realize that prayer was useless. candles were useless. sacred oil was....useful for lubrication but not for any spiritual reasons. This combined with the fact that Enginseers are looked down upon for not actually contributing to the Quest For Knowledge, made me realize that perhaps the only faith in the Machine God I needed, was within myself. That recognizing empty unnecessary steps that did not actually contribute to proper functioning or pleasing of the machine spirits, was in itself apart of the Quest For Knowledge. My heresy is that the Omnissiah and the machine spirits do not listen to our prayers, do not respond to any ritual beyond the pressing of buttons. They are only pleased by the proper steps being followed, and sometimes the steps we already know are mistaken. Though admittedly....in the case of something like a plasma reactor, following all steps we know of with precision and caution has demonstrably proven to be the best method, otherwise the machine can blow up, and we can't afford machines blowing up. The more complicated the machine, the more cautious we have to be. But anything other than actually interacting with the machine is just....performance."

*Alexandra:*
A single hive city of the Imperium is home to millions or even billions of humans and are arranged in a rough pyramid or conical shape- think a mountain but made of nothing but skyscrapers. Hive Sibellus, is the oldest city on Scintilla and its largest population center, making it probably billions. You are currently in the underhive, nearer the bottom. First to get it out of the way: You detect Ensara but her mind's defenses are strong- there are at least two defenses up on it, one is a barrier of mental magic in nature much like yours, but another is just....an odd sense of resolve and pure willpower declaring to the universe: "I Am Who I Say I Am. Nothing Else." mixed with this transcendently demonically-divine power of viridian flames that felt like rage, bitterness and fury, like being unfairly cast down and seeking retribution for injustice, like seeking freedom from chains to express ones power exhilaratingly unrestrained, like knowing the universe was once yours to rule and that it could be so again. 

But enough about her. Extending your psychic senses past her to observe the underhives is that they are all gangs of some sort, and on the surface they are all fighting somewhere- whether it be over resources, territory, over something petty like having an actual lasgun or one leader insulting another, the underhive is basically constant anarchy with no expectation that they will be punished for anything they are doing except by the gun of another underhiver, But there is an undercurrent of hatred and bitterness towards those above them, of being pushed down here with the pollution and failed systems because the Imperium was too lazy to just straight up kill them all, of having to compete with people in the same boat despite having more in common with the other gang they're fighting than the other parts of the hive, hatred of the rich and working class for thinking they're better than them, for ignoring them at best and hoping they die at worst. There is a desire there, to fight back, to punch upwards, to do SOMETHING against them even if its not the best thing or the right thing. These feelings are in some ways not much different from those of the viridian flames, only much less grand. Underneath that is a feeling of fatalism: they know if that if they rebel the Planetary Defense Forces will respond and they will be nothing but a delay to buy time for the Imperial Guard to get here and defeat them anyways. They know that nobles sometimes send in armed expeditions to gain antiques from places down here not caring who dies, that sometimes a cult thats apart of the Ministorum called the Redemptionists sometimes insist on coming down here to do purges of mutants and scum with chain swords and flames. They know that this Hive Sibellus of Scintilla and that this is the capital of the Calixis Sector, that Rogue Traders pass through this planet between here and someplace known as the Koronus Expanse engaging in something called the Cold Trade which is the trade of illegal xeno artifacts and technology, but that it passes through Hive Tarsus not Sibellus since while Sibellus is the capital, Tarsus is the center of commerce on Scintilla with other planets, they know this because there is smuggling between the two hives across an incredibly hot desert which Tarsus is for some reason built in the middle of, Emperor only knows why but the orbital docks are geostationary above it so its whats used. 
You over hear the thoughts of some person who calls themselves a "Malifixer" apparently a criminal that knows about the law more than most:
_The system of the Adeptus Arbites and Enforcers are set up so that they don't have to take people to be judged for their crimes, but rather do on the spot punishments as soon as possible by either following the law of the planetary governor for an enforcer or consulting the book of judgment for an Arbitrator. This is because the legal system of Terra and Hall of Judgment sounds quite frankly, ridiculously overbuilt. Apparently it takes centuries for a single judgment to reach a verdict on a case and the punishment is rendered upon the person's descendants. That there is so many precedents and laws that Judges spend their entire lives scrutinizing over what the right decision is to make. I bet its all rubbish, no one has that kind of time. The miles upon miles of lawbooks in the Hall of Judgment I can believe-just at look at how slow the Administratum can be- but I bet the Judges don't even look at them and decide the punishment in the first few minutes then hold off on pronouncing the sentence intentionally so some other finds it convenient to need another penal legion to fight sometime down the line or something like that. I bet the Judges aren't punishers of the guilty, they're kidnappers for the Imperial Guard in disguise._
Then there are some....other thoughts that are more directly rebellious and chaotic however:
There is a cult here, one of gangs instead of hating the fighting, love it. They thirst for battle, to spill blood. They hate magic in all its forms, and they hate the Imperium with a far greater intensity than the people around them and they're looking to recruit people to join their ranks. They worship a being called Khorne and they wish to do battle with the corpse Emperor's forces in glorious battle for the sake of it, want to draw upon the underhive's desires for revolt and revenge add more skulls to the throne, knowing that their strength and fury is the only justice in this world. yet mixed with that are plans to fight smart- without magic, but smart. Their plan is direct: unite the underhive under their cult-gang through a series of duels to prove that their leader is the strongest then the underhive unified, convince them that the Emperor has done nothing for them and that Khorne was a god of revolution and freedom through personal strength that would allow them to take back their fate into their own hands, and that while it was them spinning a god of bloodshed, war and violence as this, they also on some level believed it to be true. Blood For the Blood God.

A second cult worships a god known as Nurgle, and radiate an odd....acceptance. Acceptance of everyone no matter their differences, but also an acceptance that all the world is doomed and rotten. They are happy, for they no longer care whether it all decays, whether they die, other people die, whether anyone dies. Why fight the inevitable? To them the Imperium was foolish for continuing to do so. Foolish for all the work they do. Why bother maintaining anything when it was all going to fall apart anyways? The Imperium are fools trying to climb up a slippery slope, trying to go against the natural order, so they the worshippers of Nurgle will show them all the plaguefathers love by finding the right way to spread a deadly disease throughout the city- all who don't accept Nurgle, will die and all those who embrace him will know the joy of accepting decay, disorder and entropy. Nothing was perfect after all, and nothing was ever going to get any better, so why bother, why care? They were just happy that they were apart of the plaguefather's family now. 

*Inquisitor Rhiannon:*
She has come down to the plaza to check the psychic signature, examining it using the witch-sight...and while she does so, she sees the telepathic field extending below her. It was big. She estimates that this matches...a high delta level psyker which can read all the minds of a good-sized town simultaneously, which is about what this is doing. This psyker is at least one of the top four ranks aside from Alpha-Plus for certain, and alone makes this find very rare, and dangerous. But Innocence Proves Nothing as the saying goes, they could just be hiding the true power, and that little sun of psychic energy at the center...she didn't know what to make of that. This is the same odd energy in the plaza, and if they were that restrained in the plaza, why not be restrained again? But why are they reading minds in the underhive? Was the question even important? Maybe it was the madness finally showing itself. Her job was to eliminate threats, not let her curiosity overtake her. Bad things happened to Inquisitors that placed learning forbidden knowledge over eliminating the threat, and she was no Radical. The unhealthy fascination of some her colleagues and the horrors that it has led to is something she is familiar with. She could try to snag this oddly restrained psyker as an asset for the Imperium, but she needed to play it safe: such restraint could be just something very powerful and deceptive. Tzeentch preyed upon hope like that, offering something enticing before the imperial agent and watch them fall into the trap like a mouse to cheese. 

Best not do so. If it was some shard of the Emperor, surely he in his divinity could let her know himself. She waits for some vision or revelation from the God-Emperor for a moment. None came. Yeah she didn't think so.
"....This is definitely serious. Maybe or maybe not Alpha-Plus, at least Delta, but I'll accept it as valid to treat it like one. Things can always get worse after all. However even if its Delta we will still need to marshal more forces than some acolytes, and its best to let the other Inquisitors of the conclave know about this before anything is done, the conclave is stationed right in this city after all, I don't think they'd appreciate being unaware of a powerful psyker while we try to take it down without them knowing. Let us go back to the Conclave, the easy part is over."
"...Query: What is the hard part?" Grant asks
"Politics." she says with venom.

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel nods to confirm that was his meaning.

"An agreeable sentiment indeed. I think you and I might just get along very well, friend."

"Anyways, I'm an accomplished physicist and biologist, so I assume that translates to 'Magus biologis' and 'Magus physic' respectively?"

Ezekiel's thought are a mixture of disgust at how dystopian this world seems to be, glee at meeting someone who practices science and denounces superstition just like him, and wondering if his disdain for magic makes him a heretic to both priests and techpriests.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra gets up to go find the others.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Iota-Phi 34:*
He answers
"Exasperated Correction: MAY-GOS. not Magus or Magii. Tech priests are not psykers or witches. While it is possible to build devices to manipulate the Immaterium, it is generally not a good idea to do so and is considered tech heresy."
"Wait, what is the Immaterium?"
"Curious Observation: Odd. You use terms from the Dark Age of Technology yet your ignorant of this? The Immaterium, commonly known as the Warp by those who travel through the void, is the medium by which all ships in the Imperium use to travel at faster than light speeds. It is also the source which psykers draw their power from."
"Why this Warp a secret from the common public? Manyclops didn't seem to know about it." 
"Because it is a nightmarish dimension full of peoples thoughts, emotions, beliefs and so on taking the form of daemons that want to kill or corrupt you into being one of them. If people knew that passing through this dimension risking being attacked by these beyond material entities if the gellar field isn't turned on, is how space travel worked, no one would want to go. Making technology to manipulate it, if its not a warp drive or a gellar field, is dangerous. Similarly, psykers are more vulnerable to possession by demons than most-their minds are gateways into the Materium. That is why Psykers tend to be taken away and the Ministorum preaches hate against the witch." 
"Then....why bother with the Warp? It seems more trouble than its worth."
"Because warp travel is vital for the Imperium's survival against its enemies. Without it, all planets in the galaxy would be alone and unable to call for backup to fight against the horrors out there. We'd be stuck with slower than light travel."
Then Alexandra comes in. Ensara looks at her.
"Hey Alexandra, whats the rush?"

*Inquisitor Rhiannon: Endure Inquisitorial Politics*
Reporting the existence of this psyker to Lord Inquisitor Aegult Caidin, who calls a meeting of Inquisitors about this. Normally Inquisitors act on their own, but given the importance of Scintilla and the Tricorn Palace to this sector and the Calixian conclave of the Inquisition and the possibility of an Alpha Plus Psyker not being off the table, it is decided that all hands on deck are needed. Rhiannon gives her report to the assembled Inquisitors, telling them what they found. What you must understand, is that the Inquisitors are not an overly formal organization, and mostly cell based. Thus the discussion has no real rules to it- only the Lord Inquisitor has any true rank above anyone else.
"I recommend we form an elite strike force of our best Throne Agents to find the psyker with utmost stealth and competence, kill them quickly and silently and then we'll be done with it. The sooner this is over with, the sooner we can get back to business as usual like taking of Malfi."
She says finishing her report. Then another Inquisitor stood up, Jethro Vevarn. Rhiannon hated him. A Puritan Monodominant hardliner to his core. It was people like him that made her job harder.
"Fellow Inquisitors, loyal agents of the Emperor, I ask you: Why do need an elite team of throne agents in some complicated plan? This psyker is in an underhive! Slums full of mutants, witches, heretics, traitors and scum! Let us simply burn the whole the underhive down, we won't be losing anything of value. The underhive doesn't contribute to the Imperium's functioning like the faithful and pure working class! Is it not said, that it is better for 10,000 innocents to die than let one guilty person go free? Than let one dangerous, Alpha Plus Psyker, go free? This psyker will be incredibly powerful and we'll need all the force we can to take it down! The lives of the underhive around it in that light, are acceptable sacrifices if it means the rightful death of this witch. They are probably all heretics and degenerates who don't contribute anyways, if anything we'll be doing the Imperium a favor if we got rid of them all instead of taking the surgical route! I say burn the underhive, burn it all! BURN THE HERETICS!"
Rhiannon says back
"No. The fires could easily get out of control and spread to the rest of the hive. We'd be committing more resources than we really need to do this, the underhivers down there are only Hereticus Minima in terms of threat, like any other imperial citizen. Send in a small competent strike team, kill the psyker quickly and quietly and we won't have to waste resources on a bunch of common criminals when we need to focus on bigger threats. This is just Monodominant speechifying to make us kill anything that isn't a pure human on sight, when we all know that that the Imperium runs on a lot of things that Monodominants would want us to destroy out of principle."
"Oh come now, this is just wishy-washy Amalathian politicking to keep to the status quo and keeping in everyone's good graces. We won't win Mankind's struggles against the Xeno, the Daemon, the Heretic if we don't make an effort to change it by purifying our society of the corruption underneath! He is called The God-Emperor of MANkind for a reason, not mutantkind, not witchkind, not xenokind. We burn down the entire underhive along with such a dangerous psyker, and that can only be pure victory for the Imperium!"
"Or" 
a third voice calls out
"Killing this Alpha Plus Psyker might be worst mistake we could make."
They turn and see Amendera Varanius, known Inquisitor of the Xanthite faction. Rhiannon sighs, and now one of Radicals has started to speak. Oh Joy.
"When we could enslave it to our will to serve the Imperium instead." Amendera says with a confident smirk.

----------


## Rater202

"While performing a base telepathic scan of the sounding area, just surface thoughts, nothing intrusive, I made note of two reasonably sized cults. One devoted to a being called Korne and one to a being called Nurgle. Both are planning quite a lot of death and destruction of this community and the larger city above and I cannot abide such things. I would inquire if either of you would be interested in assisting me in nipping this problem in the bud?"

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Now, things like that, faster-than light travel, that's what interests me. Hold on, I've got my ECHO somewhere here, do you mind if I start recording this?" Ezekiel starts rummaging around in his pockets for his ECHO recorder. He is interrupted by Alexandra's entry.

"Cultists? I-sorrry, did you say _Nurgle?_ Anyways, I was quite enjoying talking to Iota-Phi here, but I suppose I can come help. If only because I can't stand cults.

"By the way, I recognise the name Korne. Earlier, I was thinking about how overrated magic is, and I was notified of two individuals who were apparently greatly offended by that. Korne was one of them.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Iota-Phi 34:*
"Incorrect. From my experiences in the Imperial Guard, the followers of Khorne would not be offended by saying magic is overrated, they would wholeheartedly agree and want you join their cult. That is WORSE than the god being offended, because that means he looks favorably on you. You are correct in the case of Tzeentch however, their cults love sorcery, hope and knowledge-but also deceit and schemes. Go- if those cults are here, they need to be eliminated. I'll explain more after-"
He goes over and picks up a lasgun
"-Because I'm coming with. Chaos needs to die. and if your confident that you can defeat them, then I have faith that the Machine God sent people capable of doing so."
The notification said they remembered it, not why. Also you receive a notification:




> If only because I can't stand cults.


Notification: All Chaos Gods will remember this. 

"On the jumps I've been, cults can be good or bad depending on how much of a jerk their god is, but I don't personally worship deities. Don't need them to have a moral code, and you kinda stop seeing the point when you can kill spirits. But these cults? They don't sound like good people at all. and I do always like a chance to kick ass and take names."
She grins and clenches her fists, as she begins running to find them.

Okay, so your going to fight the cultists- but which one do you go to? They are in separate locations and don't seem to be operating with each other. 

*Rhiannon:*
She watches as two opposed Inquisitors begin arguing:
"Hah! Of course a Xanthite like you would propose this. Such consorting with the warp can only lead to heresy and damnation." Jethro dismisses her. "We know the protocols for this: Alpha Plus Psykers are too dangerous to let live unless their capture is nearly assured. And if we're killing it, why stop at one? If its truly a Alpha Plus, there is going to be a lot of destruction anyways, might as well make sure its destruction that benefits us."
Amendera replies
"Think about it my fellow Inquisitors! If this truly is as she says, then Alpha Plus Psykers are both incredibly rare and we cannot convince them to join the Imperium normally due to their minds- so why not try more....arcane methods? Bind them to serve us like a servitor or an animal? If we could have a single Alpha Plus Psyker, we'd have an asset to the Imperium not seen in ten thousand years. We could defeat traitor primarchs, turn the tides of battle on various warfronts or even replace the Emperor with this psyker to power the Golden Throne! Think of the possibilities! Don't let this Monodominants inflexibility get in the way of grasping for something greater, he'd kill an Astropath on sight if he didn't need them to send his messages."
"More Xanthite radicalism that will only lead to our doom thinking we can control what should just be destroyed. We do not just fight for Mankind's survival but its purity, we can't forget that." Jethro says
Rhiannon says back
"We are not sure if its Alpha Plus. It is not behaving like one and might just be a Delta. The only evidence we have for it not being Delta is its energy being unlike anything we haven't seen before. The Warp is a strange place that defies conventional logic. It might be an anomaly that we have no idea about."
"Could it possibly be some xenos?" says some Inquisitor from the Ordo Xenos group "Your report says they're human but what if they're a shapeshifter like a lacrymole and just have weird psychic rules unique to their xeno species. then that explains the inconsistencies. Sure a human can't handle such strong psychic power, but nothing says there isn't some xeno that can't."
"Problem with that" Rhiannon replies "Xenos tend to not come alone. I only detected one psychic signature like it, one psychic sun in the witch-sight."
"So? rogue traders come through here, maybe its some solitary xeno some fool rogue trader captured then it escaped, or some sanctioned xeno whose records of being such are lost in the depths of the Administratum. Or just some survivor of a xeno species the Imperium has already rendered extinct and that we'd find what it is if he had the time to look."
Rhiannon shakes her head 
"What exactly we're dealing with is getting academic. Let adminstratum scholars speculate on it in the coming decades after we've dealt with it, ensuring the Imperium's safety. What matters is that its psychically powerful, capable of restraint and oddly enough mercy, and thus planning. It was assessing the underhive by extending its senses. I can only conclude that this being is more dangerous than Alpha Plus Psyker because of its ability to plan and think, because its wielding its power with a purpose- a purpose we do not yet know."
Jethro replies
"This is all sounding like the work of the Archenemy. Don't fall for the tricks and traps of the daemon! Just burn the whole underhive down to cleanse it of its filth! If this were another planet I'd just straight up recommend Exterminatus and call it a day. Your really overthinking this."
"Please remember Inquisitor Jethro Vevarn" Rhiannon says icily "That Exterminatus is a last resort, wasting planets is not something the Imperium can afford."
"I disagree, many would question our right to consign a billion souls to oblivion- as Inquisitors, we should remember that we have no right to let them live. There are mutants and scum down there, so there is probably heretics and witches there as well. Nothing worth saving."
"I still say that capturing this Alpha Plus Psyker can be worth it." Amendera insists.
"We are beginning to argue in circles" Rhiannon says "Lord Inquisitor Caidin, what is your decision on this matter?"
They look up to the Lord Inquisitor, who is silently pondering this discussion. 

((OOC: also, Gold Leaf I forgot but you probably should've received notifications like these for things your character said earlier:




> And I don't really do drugs


Slaanesh will remember this.




> They're so in support of everything scientists like myself are working against, that it's almost personally offensive


Tzeentch will remember this.))

----------


## Gold Leaf

"I see. You'll forgive me for making the assumption that someone who can read my thoughts would be a fan of magic, right?"

Oh... these are real deities and not just passing mind readers? That's a little troubling.

"In any case, I think we'd better go and fight the Nurglers first. How about you?"

----------


## Rater202

"I'm an Amazon, blessed by the gods to lead by example and defend the world from evil. Didn't see any of them out there when the world was overrun by corpses that walked like men and hungered for the flesh of the living. The only God who was active was Thanoseid, ruler of the malevolent half of the New Asgods, and h was more interested in trying to claim what remained of the Earth and corrupting the people who survived the first outbreak."

"And yes, Nurgle should be our first priority. You can punch a bunch of violent idiots but you can't punch a pandemic."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Jumper Gang Vs. Nurgle Cult*
With your mental powers, you focus in on the nurgle cult hideout, which as you get close, really stinks. Just a horrid stench. You go in, There are worn and dirty green banners of the symbol of nurgle on the wall, there is an idol to Nurgle, the plaguefather at the back with a few dozen cultists in about three groups in filthy robes who look like they haven't cleaned themselves ever listening as a crowd, and priest preaching to them who outright has green disease skin, with boils, tumors and rotting flesh upon him. Far from being clean, this space looks like there is mushroom and mold gathering or even being intentionally cultivated, and you know there is more people in this building in other rooms, this just seems to be a public prayer kind of space. The priest was in middle of a speech when he sees you guys
"And so it is the plaguefather said- oh hello, are you here to embrace the joys of Nur-"
Iota-Phi shoots him before he can finish his sentence, hitting center mass
"agh!" 
he staggers back, clutching at his burned wound in his chest, he pulls his hand way the hole in him has mushrooms, maggots and centipedes wriggling around inside of him. 
"Insulting One Liner: Your cult is nothing but rejecting proper cleaning rituals and your god is a germ." 
Iota-Phi
"How did you find us so quickly? No. No matter. My fellow Children of the Plaguefather! Kill these worshippers of the Corpse-Emperor! They clearly wish for the inevitable to come faster. How impatient of them."
They will all pull out an autogun and the rest of the cultits here will pull out pistols and sacrificial daggers, all of them disturbingly smiling while they do so. Not in joy at combat, but seemingly in some strange serenity, with mushrooms and diseases growing here and there on their faces. As if nothing mattered to them anymore. They will aim their guns and fire in your general direction, Iota-Phi seeking cover behind a pillar while Ensara just straight up in a whirlwind of arm motions, catches or deflects all the bullets coming for her with her bare palms. 

Then she smiles wickedly, showing the bullets still clutched in her hands then says
"My turn."
She then throws back the bullets like a cloud of shuriken, the bullets suddenly igniting with viridian flame as they fly into a group of cultists to the right, piercing right through them and setting them on fire with those strange green flames, her green Nadir caste mark glowing on her forehead as she calls her out her attack:
"Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style: Flickering Moonsilver Approach
Suddenly her form flickers and images of her appear around the dozen or so nurgle cultists she is focusing on, she makes punches from the distance and her image hits the cultist in the stomach breaking their bones, or makes a karate chop that slices through their flesh like a blade, the cultists looking around unsure of where she actually is, trying to attack but hitting nothing. One of her images even picks up a cultist by the leg and uses him to hammer another cultist to death in one blow before disappearing or appears in the middle of six cultists to spin kick them in a circle, the kicking hurts but the faint red tornado formed from her spinning shreds them to bits for sure like she was some deadly ballerina. It was hopeless for the cultists- none of the images were actually her. Only where she potentially could be, and with the style she is using even potential attacks could kill.

Leaving the other two groups of cultists to you guys.

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Ugh, this smells like how the word Nurgle sounds. I'm wearing a helmet, how am I still catching a whiff of this stuff?" He must sound crazy even to the other two Jumpers with that line, since his helmet has been invisible the entire time.

Ezekiel's method of attack is much simpler than Ensara's. He starts by throwing out a tiny device which immediately projects a wide energy shield, just shorter than Ezekiel and curving inwards slightly. Ezekiel himself then crouches behind the A-Wall, swaps to his Smart Pistol, and starts firing off shots that appear to be amplified as they pass the through the shield from the back.:These amps, combined with the  fact that smart pistols never miss their target, means he should be busting cultist heads with speed and power.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra prefers the subtle approach.

She links her mind to all of the cultists in her designated group... And then she thinks about them all really hard.

One of Alexandra's perks, among other things, is noted to grant telepathy on par with Charle's Xavier when he is equipped with Cerebro.

You know how he said in the movie that if he thought about a specific mutant too hard it would kill him? And later he is almost brainwashed into doing that to every mutant on Earth?

...Yeah. That wasn't made up for the movie, X-2's plot was lifted almost entirely from God Loves, Man Kills, a canonical graphic novel.

Now note that Alexandra also has a separate perk giving separate psychic power capable to "Ex-Man" or "Dark Firebird."

Her designated group of cultists are going to be feeling very uncomfortable in a few seconds. Several of them capably already smell toast or taste metal.

(OOC: I'm assuming that this kind of thing only works on Mooks.)

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Past: On the way*
"Yeah, this is more foul smelling than the time I spent on Grixis, and that was an entire plane of bones and undeath."
She comments back to Ezekiel.

*Jumper Gang Vs. Nurgle Cult:*
The cultists head explode in a shower of blood and infected gore, some of their blood being green as his pistol bursts each head one by one with precision, their own bullets bouncing off the shield. Meanwhile just seem to....miss Alexandra, their minds being distracted by her focusing on them and the blood running out of their skull and bursting into green fire then just.... fall over dead. Iota-Phi meanwhile shoots dead a couple cultists that were coming around the side to keep them from ambushing you, thinking that your either a psyker and thus often not the most durable person in the squad or normal if skilled human in the case of Ezekiel. He stops to marvel at the shield Ezekiel puts up, seeing the cultists clearly being slaughtered.
"What wondrous technology....You can project a conversion field like that as a wall? I've only seen such things like that built for personal defense of high ranking members of the Imperium."
Alexandra and Ensara senses that there are three other rooms with smaller groups: One where there is a group of cultists looking at maps on tables trying to figure out a place to unleash their plague, a second room and group where they are carefully making their plagues in metal oil barrels and other improvised chemical containers, and third that seems like a ritual sacrifice room from what you can sense from their minds with cultists setting something up without knowing your here- preparing to sacrifice someone who they consider a heretic. This current room seems like a public one where they converted people to their cult and preached to their initiates. Ensara will describe all this out loud then ask
"Which one do you guys want to take? Each of us can probably take one room. The plague-making room they have is probably going to be the most dangerous, while there is someone that should probably be saved in the sacrificial altar room."
"Affirmative, we don't want them to summon a daemon." Iota-Phi says. "That ritual needs to be stopped."

----------


## Rater202

"Do either of you have heavy-duty fire powers? The kind that can just take out a whole room? My preference would be to handle the alter, rescue the victim, but, well."

She snaps her fingers and a small tuft of emerald green flame alights at the tip of her index finger. "Fire is the most effective way of cleansing something of disease."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Oh, well, I didn't invent it if that's what you're thinking. They're fairly standard-issue in the Militia. I would have preferred the grappling hook, but you take what you can get."

"I have heavy-duty _firepower,_ but I don't think it's necessarily safe to pull that out indoors. Here, I'll go take the map room. It might be useful to learn the geography of this place."

Ezekiel swaps to his Gel Cannon and fires a splat of white conversion gel on the ground. He then switches to the portal gun and fires a blue portal onto the gel, currently closed. "This is just so I can get back to this room more quickly. Also partially because I wanted to show off my portal gun."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
"I am a Pyromancer of Red Mana comparable to Chandra Nalaar at the very least. Its possible I'm far more powerful than that, but that should be more than enough to take on a single room."
She had been mostly learning martial arts and Ki on Gaia, so she hadn't fully explored her capabilities as a planeswalker after she finished that Jump. 
"and yeah, Portal guns are pretty cool, I was showing off my martials art just then, gotta take some joy in showing off what you earned on other worlds am I right?"
"Confused Exclamation: Wait WHAT!? A gun that fires portals? Thats dangerous, does it use the the warp!?"
"It does not."
"WHAT!? portals without using the warp!? Thats....good news actually but.....is that even possible? I don't think that possible....nevermind we need to focus on these cultists for now."
He will go with Ezekiel to the map room and open fire with precision at the cultists who are busy looking at the maps and arguing over which place is best to put the plague barrels, which stops when one of them falls over dead from Iota's shot, the laser burn a hole through his head.

Meanwhile Ensara gathers red mana into the palm of her hand quickly going over to the room with the plague-makers mixing things in barrels of sickly green liquid, surrounded by rot, decay, mushrooms and the like, grimacing she throws a fireball of pure orange and red flame, not traveling far before it explodes into a fiery conflagration, spreading and burning all the rot and carcasses and containers full of germs and mold, the cultists within screaming as their bodies to are reduced to charred corpses. Even the air within catches fire a bit as it burns away the spores. She quickly seals the room with an ice wall, her hand glowing with blue mana to keep the fire from spreading. 
"I'll burn the rest of this rot when we get out."

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel swaps back to his Smart Pistol and begins firing bullets aimed right at the cultists' heads. Iota-Phi might notice that Ezekiel doesn't even have to aim at them; he simply looks  in their general direction, and the technology allowing the bullets to change direction midflight does it work.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra, meanwhile, heads to the ceremonial room and immediately restrains everyone she sees with bands of green flame. The flames won't burn what she doesn't want them too.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Jumper Gang Vs. Nurgle Cult:*
Ezekiel and Iota have taken this cultists by surprise so a chunk of them just go down by surprise and the rest follow soon after, Iota notes this but doesn't comment as he is too busy aiming at the few he gets while the smart bullets all curve and hit their hints in bloody chunks, any shots they do take are hasty and seem to go wide as they weren't expecting a fight and don't seem well trained in combat, like they are militia level discipline at best. They are soon all dead on the ground and the maps are there, and while they were focusing on the sewers and lower level, they do have the entire city mapped....well as best parchment can map something like this? Hive Sibellus seems to be this conical megacity, in terms of size its basically a man-made mountain, half the maps are vertical rather than horizontal and in some ways the vertical view of the hive city is more useful, because the horizontal top down view just gives you the impression of rings: Spire at the center, the lower hive as the middle ring and the underhive as outer ring....when looking at the vertical view it gives more accurate view of the top half of the hive-city mountain being the nobility sector on the narrow peak, the bulk of the lower hive for its workers as the other half, and the underhive being a small underground wider layer beneath that bulk. there is even a notation for "poisonous clouds" at the middle point between the spire and the lower hive, suggesting the nobility live above the clouds. Iota doesn't seem to find this particularly notable or worthy of comment so hive cities being like this seems pretty commonplace from what you can tell. No wonder these cultists wanted to spread their disease here, from what you can tell there are countless numbers of people living in this hive for it to be this size and all them clustered together...these hives are very vulnerable to disease.

Meanwhile, Alexandra you go into this room as people are having this conversation:
A random gang person is saying
"But....it was just one shower!"
"Even one shower is heresy to Nurgle! Blasphemous to our loving plaguefather! You think your better than us!? Think you can stop the decay, think that with your cleanliness you can rise above us!?" says a cultist wielding a sacrificial dagger.
They get captured by the green fire bands and the gang guy says
"Oh thanks, this crazy cult are talking 'bout some Nurgle fella and kidnapped me off the streets just because I found an old shower that still worked! Please untie me so I can get outta here and back to me mates."
"Cleanliness is the path to elitism and ambition! the path to denying the inevitable! As soon you clean yourself, you wash yourself of the plague father's all-accepting embrace. Let us free! We need to help you share in our joy of despair! Your power is great, I bet the Imperium hates you for existing, but worry not, Nurgle still loves you even if your a psyker, for he loves everyone, especially the unclean. For we all family in his embrace."
"Oi, I just found the shower to be refreshin'. Your the crazy gang that thinks a bloke getting a luxury like that is worthy killing over. Territory or getting our food or water I understand, I kill over that meself, but really? This? And yeah, real lovin' with trying to sacrifice me and all that."
"We have seen through the lies of the Ministorum. The Corpse-Emperor loves no one. Embraces no one. The Imperium is nothing but a dying empire, lashing out at perceived threats as it slowly crumbles and decays into Nurgle's patient arms. We just want you to see that, so that you know love and joy in the plaguefather's embrace of hopelessness."
"Why you letting him yak on?" says the random gang member "He's just another priest pointed in a different direction sayin' to love their god and kill what they want, ain't no difference." 
"HOW DARE YOU!? Nurgle is nothing like the Corpse Emperor! Nurgle cares! Nurgle accepts! Nurgle gives us peace! You heretic!"
"Yet you shout heretic just like them. No difference." 
The room itself seems to have this statue or some bloated, disgusting looking being, smiling yet grotesque that is the center of all their....disgusting....decorations. It seems to be probably be a statue to Nurgle. Ensara will walk in and just casually say
"I'll kill the cultists if you don't feel like it."

----------


## Rater202

Alexandria wasn't a drop-in on her last jump. To her, her life in that world was just as real as her life before.

Which means even though she logically knows that it was her first self's choice when he thought it was just a game that led to experience what she did, she still can't help but feel betrayed that the Gods who blessed her people abandoned them when the infection struct the earth.

She also remembers how the New Asgods were infected, and the actions of Thanoseid.

She simply says "All Gods are Bastards" and allows the Green Flames of Life, the power that she draws from her namesake, to immolate the Cultists, the flames of life burning out the corruption.

----------


## Gold Leaf

After studying the map, Ezekiel says "We've got us a city map. Better than relying on landmarks. Let's take this back to the hall."

So, he fires another splat of Conversion Gel on the ground with the gel cannon, followed up by an orange portal. Looking into the portal shows the prayer hall, as seamlessly if they were always connected by that surface and he simply cut a hole in it. Anyways, Ezekiel takes roughly half of the maps, folding them up neatly and carrying them in his arms, then jumps through the portal.

Once he's through and back in the hall, he calls to Iota-Phi. "Grab the rest of the maps and come on through. Remember to reorient yourself, or you'll land on your head."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Jumper Gang Victory:*
The maps have been acquired, and the random gang member thanks you as the cultists burn, says he owes you Alexandra and that if you ever need a favor you can call on him, his name is Reubol and he gets going back to his gang. You all meet up and are about to get going to finding the Khorne cult when suddenly Edward Sinton appears in front of in a 
_SPANG!_
Similar to whatever brought you here. He is a red-headed pale-skinned man in what is probably a suit, sprawled upon the ground in the public chapel area.
"Confused Exclamation: What in the warp!?" Iota-Phi says confused. "You! New arrival! how did you teleport like that!? Are you a psyker? Which cult are you with!?"
Ensara puts out a hand to stop Iota-Phi.
"Relax. He is not with any cult. I think he is an ally"
"What....how do you know that?" Iota says looking at Ensara, whose essence is inwardly flowing as her Exalted mind processes information faster than any normal human to deduce and explain as much information as possible
"I can read him based on his appearance and body language: he lacks the dark yet decorated aesthetics that make up this world, and I remember hearing a similar sound when I came here. He seems not ready for combat and he doesn't seem have any hostile intentions towards us, if this was an ambush he'd be attacking us already. Alex, Ezekiel, I'm pretty certain that this man is from.... off-planet like us. I think he is an ally."
Iota is even more confused
"You deduced that so fast? And how can you be so sure that he is? How do you trust them so quickly?"
The more Iota interacts with you guys the more he thinks there is something strange about all of you. He isn't sure what, he can't quite put his finger on it, but your not acting normal to him. This kind of willingness to seek out combat and efficiently defeat the enemy speaks of Imperial Guard but....he has never seen any sanctioned psykers do what Alex does, or the unbelievable tech that Ezekiel treats as normal, and Ensara is real casual about her own psyker abilities, and now she is treating a person suddenly teleporting in out of nowhere that she is clearly unfamiliar with as not a threat. He thinks maybe your Inquisition, but that makes no sense. The Inquisition are terrifying and you guys....seem too friendly to be Inquisition. He is not sure what to make of these now four people.
"Anyways hello, my names Ensara, I'm a....special kind of traveler like you, whats your name?"

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Jumper Gang Victory*

The man will stand up and look around, leaning on a fine hardwood walking-stick. He's tall, slender, and pale, with red hair and freckles. There's intricate blue tattoos about his eyes and over the bridge of his nose; they look as though they might mean something, given their intricacy and symmetry. He's wearing a slightly old-fashioned navy blue suit, with a waistcoat and tails and a black cravat about his neck, and lace cuffs on his shirt. There's a gold ring on one finger, quite plain. There's a gunbelt under his jacket, with a pistol hanging from it; it looks like a wheellock, though it isn't. "Oh? How unusual. I've not met another before; I had wondered if I was alone. I am Edward Sinton. Don't suppose you know where I am?"

He could be an Inquisitor, and though his attire isn't quite as flamboyant and impractical as that favoured by the Imperial Nobility it is at least smart, tailored and clean.

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel answers Iota's question. "I don't suppose you've read the Sherlock Holmes books, have you? Well, bottom line is, when someone can make deductions about people that quickly and easily, openly doubting them usually means setting yourself up to look like a fool."

He looks the new man up and down. He can't help but think that this guy seems quite well-dressed. Not as stylish as himself, of course, but still.

"Hello. My name is Ezekiel Olde. As I see it, we're in the Hive Sibellus on Scintilla. If you meant this building, though, it's a hall for some deranged cultists who were planning to spread a plague across the city. Speaking of which, you might like to look at these maps we took from them to get more of an idea of what the place is like." Ezekiel gestures to the maps assembled on the ground.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra sighs.

"I swear to god if a Cultivator shows up I'm rioting."

"We're about to go kill some Warmongers, you in new guy?"

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*



> "I swear to god if a Cultivator shows up I'm rioting."


Ensara hears Zinara, the Black Star, her Third Circle soul speak to her within her inner world:
*Spoiler: Inner world speak*
Show

_Zinara, The Black Star: She is talking about you.
Ensara: Hey! I'm not a Cultivator...yet. Also are talking about me or Bosha?
Bosha, The Prismatic Cultivator: Hey I'm just the 2nd circle soul formed to store and express all the martial arts, I'm not responsible for whether a cultivator shows up.
Zinara: I'm talking about us, yes. We may not be cultivators yet, but you have to admit that Exalted and Anima Beyond Fantasy are pretty Cultivation-adjacent
Ensara: I can't believe this, my own souls giving me sass again.
Zinara: and you were planning on going to a xianxia world next anyways, if your not a cultivator your definitely on track to becoming one.
Ensara: also I could tell she meant the sociopathic dumb kind that fights other cultivators just to see whose technique is better, I'm a good person if individualistic, she doesn't mean me.
Zinara: Like you haven't done that before. You've gained powers from Exalted, Magic the Gathering and ABF: tragedy, massive screw ups, going too far and ridiculous ambitious plans are practically par for the course.
Ensara: No they aren't. I prevented the War of the Spark didn't I? 
Zinara: Because you had to use our brain rather than all the martial arts fights you had on Gaia. Why do you have only Anima, Song of the Fallen Angels again? You took Eyes of Destiny for a reason right?
Ensara: Hey I was busy learning Nemesis, Ars Magnus AND advanced martial arts, I didn't have time to copy Ki Technique trees. and Anima is one of the most powerful ki technique trees from that world, I think I picked a good one to learn in the time I had.
Zinara: Sure, but we could've taken more ki technique scrolls. Now we'll have to figure the principles of Gunhell and Cosmos ourselves, and good luck trying to figure out all the others. Not a very good collection.
Ensara: Hey come on, maybe this world has some martial arts we can learn here and when we get back to Gaia we can find teachers to learn from or foes to copy off from to get the martial arts we missed.
Zinara: If you say so._

Ensara's conversation occurs at the speed of thought so its not long when she says
"Well regardless if you are up for it or not, I'll probably start walking that way if only to see how good at fighting those warmongers really are. I can probably take 'em myself but you know, I'm always open to giving others their fair share of a good fight. You should probably at least get out of this rotten temple."
She will walk out of the Nurgle cult temple. Don't worry, Alexandra can find Ensara easily to catch up, her mental...energy or signature is pretty unique compared to everything else she is sensing. 

Iota will just consider things and say
"....I see. Once the Khorne cult is dealt with, I have questions to ask you all."
The heretek tech-priest will follow after Ensara.

----------


## Earl of Purple

"Well, now. Isn't that an interesting thing." Edward looks at the maps and stoops to pick one up, if possible. He also reaches into a pocket and pulls out a small vial, which he pops open and drinks in a single swallow. "Yes, I'll help with this." He'll stride forward, using his walking-stick as he does (though it's quite apparent he doesn't need it) and he'll check his whale-oil pistol as he does. "I wasn't really expecting to get into a fight so quickly, but then I also wasn't expecting to meet you lot, either. Hmm. That's interesting. Do any of you feel different since your... arrival? Because I haven't noticed anything." After his first jump, during an ashfall, he didn't cough and thought that was odd. Later, between his first and second jumps, he was approached by a strange man with black eyes, and had a slight pain in his hand upon awakening. On his third trip, he was bound in a wagon and breathing very clean air shortly before a dragon attack, though he was vaguely aware of his Ritual Stone blessing.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
"Feel different? Hm. Well I didn't get the opportunity to choose what advantages I'd start with before coming here, nor did I choose to come here. But I feel the same as I did last jump. Though after the magic the gathering jump, I doubt any change in my form would make much difference, at least aesthetically. I have at least two kinds of shapeshifting available to me maybe three, so any change I can alter as I want though I'd imagine something was done to make sure we're at least compatible with this universe's rules, or none of this would work."
Iota is just like looking at you silently wondering: What are you all even talking about?
"What...what are you..."
"Questions til after the idiot warmonger cult is dealt with right? Right. Until then, just think of me as a very special kind of psyker, Iota." 

Edward and Ezekiel will also notice that the vertical maps detail this long shaft going through the center of the hive all the way from the bottom to the top called a "heat sink", seems to provide geothermal energy to this entire mountain-sized city. Just to keep in mind.

Anyways, if your all on your way, you will soon find this scene of two gangs....well I say gangs, but thats not really describing it accurately. To describe it more accurately, its like there are two horde-like tribes of hundreds of people gathered in the street, each of them wearing caste off scraps of metal as armor, each one having crude weapons and firearms and freaky haircuts and mutants in their ranks and tattoos and the like. But while one of them seems....normal for this underhive as normal as can be, the other.....has a distinct red theme to it. Like, there is a consistent theme where their clothes are spattered in blood, they have the symbol of khorne consistently either tattooed or intentionally scarred into their skin, headresses fashioned into the shape of a dog with bloodstained teeth on their head, human skulls with dried blood as shoulder pads and hanging from their belts. This gang is more.....animated. Angry. Impatient. There is a crimson glint in their eyes, their muscles are more well-defined, they all seem to hold axes and swords also stained with blood never wiped off in their hands, gripping them as if their live depends on it, their behavior, their breathing almost animalistic, feral as they watch the duel between what seems to be two gang boss leaders while they chant:
"Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood!"
The gang bosses are dueling with swords- and the Khornate boss has a chainsword whirring with blood and death upon it, while the other one only has what looks like a regular one. The duel doesn't last long as the Khorne boss parries the blade away and stabs the chainsword through the other gang bosses gut spilling the crimson fluid of life everywhere upon the ground. As it leaks out, the khornate boss raises his chainsword in victory while saying
"With honor, I have killed your leader! The strongest has won! With this offering to Khorne, you follow me now! Together, we shall unite and with the strength of rage and fury granted by the god of blood, shall we one day go forth to slaughter the surface, the upper hives, to kill all our oppressors for the injustices done upon us! Too long have we waited for their scraps like obedient dogs, for under Khorne we hunt as wolves in our freedom! And when the blood of the nobility is spilled upon the ground, Khorne shall look upon us and smile, for we will have become strong and vanquished our enemy with our fury! Revolution is paid for in blood, and we shall offer Khorne a bounty to destroy our chains! Come, join me in freedom!"
The crowd of his own gang does not cheer. There is a pause. The speech didn't matter to them. He sighed. There was only certain words that mattered to them. Guess he had to say it.
"Blood For the Blood God!"
and his whole crowd erupts into cheers and roars, going crazy at the speaking of those simple words, that one prayer. Why did he bother saying anything else?
"No!" says one of the normal gang members on the other side "Why should we follow you? The boss was strong but he also got our respect. He knew what we needed and how we could survive. He looked out for us. You just want us as fodder for fighting the PDF."
The Khorne boss turns back to him, his eyes filled with anger at this show of defiance. 
"Very well. Looks like we found another offering to Khorne, boys!"
It seemed another gang member was going to join his leader on the ground suddenly a voice rang out
"Excuse me, khorne boss leader guy? I want to duel you."
He turns to see Ensara walking in, unconcerned by all this, holding up her hand.
"What!?"
"You heard me, I want to duel you."
the khorne boss looks at her with doubt
"With such....puny muscles, such a slender form? Where is your weapon?"
"Oh I don't need one." She has a lot of weapons actually, but she doesn't technically need them.
Why?"
"To assess you and these warriors of Khorne. You follow a god of war yes? So I'd hope you'd be good at fighting."
"Hmph. Whatever. It matters not where the blood flows. Let us duel then."
They position themselves across from each other, the gangs forming a rough circle around their duel. The Khorne boss revving his chainsword while Ensara activates her Eyes of Destiny, her green irises turn into blue ones with intricate designs on it reminiscent of the sharingan, falling into a defensive stance. The Eyes of Destiny could read the foes movements and copy any ki technique, she specifically picked it out so she could copy as many as possible. These eyes would tell her if there was anything to these Khornate cultists worth learning.
There is a pause- then the duel began, by some unseen signal the khorne boss charges at Ensara, swinging his chainsword.....and she dodges it easily, light on her feet as a ballerina, but now she frowns.
"Is that it?" she asks
The khorne boss with sudden fury begins wildly swinging at her but she dodges again and again, weaving between and around each swing...
"Is this all?"
his wild slashes being contrasted by her movements almost seemingly like an artistic dance narrowly evading each strike like water flowing around the blade. No matter how much fury he summons, he can't hit her.
"Is this the power that you speak so highly of?"
She sidesteps an overhead swing.
"Pathetic."
Enraged he brings the blade to strike at her but this time she catches the chainsword, blocking it with her bare hand- yet....despite the blades spinning, her skin was not cut. Her skin was seemingly hard as steel, enduring the chainsaw blades grinding at her without harm.
"Where is the technique? The discipline? The art? I didn't expect you to beat me but come on at least some....quality. Some skill. The Unconquered Sun granted his warriors with martial excellence in both blade and command beyond all others. Mars, the Maiden of Battles granted those she favored with strategical foresight. From what I see, the power your god, Khorne grants.....is nothing but sound and fury. blood, rage and muscles. Your movements are sloppy and clumsy. There is no control, no restraint, no creativity or improvement. Just slaughter without end. Your like those warriors who only live for the joy of combat....except there is no joy or skill- just rage. How disappointing."
No matter how hard he tugs, the khorne boss can't pull the blade free.
"One of you, kill her!"
A khorne cultist leaps out screaming "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" to try and kill her with an axe, but she kills the assailant with an offhand lightning bolt.
"Cowardly psyker! You tricked me! Your just using sorcery to win! Thats CHEATING! This is why Khorne scorns your kind!"
"Ahahahaha. Your god is even more pathetic than I thought: No technique, spurns the use of magic seeing it as unfair, gives you nothing but berserk fury....your not warriors. Your just butcherers, berserkers and madmen, everything a martial artist like me is against. And you don't even enjoy any of it, you just rage for the sake of rage, and spill blood for the sake of blood. What a pointless existence. You don't deserve this sword."
She yanks the chainsword out of his grip, flipping it the air to grab its handle, beheads the boss then flicks all the blood off like a katana, somehow leaving the chainsword spotless and pristine before sending it off to Elsewhere. She falls into another defensive stance, ready to fight.
"Sigh. Kill them however you like, guys. There are no skilled warriors here."
The Khorne gang, enraged their leaders death roar and yell as they charge forward, waving their weapons for the chance to spill more blood.

----------


## Gold Leaf

"No, I don't feel any different. My jumpkit made some minute adjustments since I'm on a different planet, but other than that, nothing." Ezekiel says as he gathers up the rest of the maps and puts them in a pocket of his labcoat, before moving to follow the rest of the group. 

To Ezekiel, the two gangs in front of them are highly reminiscent of an assortment of Bandits and Psychos. The crude weapons, the crazy hair, the mutants, heck, they even sound as stupid and crazy as the Borderlands hordes.

While Ensara is fighting the boss, Ezekiel leans over and whispers to Iota-Phi. "I can't be the only one who thinks she loves the sound of her own voice a little too much, can I?"

Ezekiel then calls Edward over. "Hey, Edward! How about you give us a demonstration of your skill in combat? Here, I'll lay down some cover." Ezekiel throws down another A-Wall shield and uses his Smart Pistol to provide some covering fire.

----------


## Earl of Purple

"Well, this is... not exactly my skill-set, you understand. I can give it a go, but this isn't the sort of conflict I favour." Regardless, Edward stands and gestures with his left hand, a swarm of rats (or other native vermin of similar size and ability) appears in the centre of the Khornate cult, viciously attacking whoever is closest and devouring the fallen corpses. He'll use the distraction of the rats to shoot his pistol at the cultists, though unlike Ezekiel he has to aim in order to hit- though not very much, as he's loaded the gun with explosive rounds. If any get too close, he'll unleash his Voice in the traditional manner to throw them back, though he'll avoid doing so unless he has to. After that he'll swing his walking-stick out and use it effectively, though he's better at one-on-one combat than when faced by large numbers of foes.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra's arms erupt in green fire which flies off before condensing into a dozen or so cartoonishly oversized boxing gloves. She makes a show of miming a professional boxer's stance... A very, very good show of it, and giving a few punches while the constructs beat in the faces of cultists while imitating her movements.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Jumper Gang Vs Khorne Culti-Whoops Victory:*
The Khorne Cultists charge at both you and the other gang here. They don't really care about where the blood comes from, they are wielding primarily melee weapons, they concerned with attacking directly in fury. The other gang pulls out their autoguns and begins firing along with you. The results are predictable as gunfire barks out in the underhive corridors, Khorne gangers falling to bullets, Iota' lasgun fire, explosions from edward's bullets, green fire punches that crack bones, its basically a slaughter. Ensara amidst all this finds herself dodging the bullets around her or deflecting them with her palm to hit some Khorne cultists head, quickly leaping back to the rest of the group and taking out any few cultists that broke through the gunfire with her fists alone- which few did. It was over very quickly- they were not well trained or well-equipped. The remaining gang shakes their heads and say
"Stupider blokes than usual. Wonder why they talked about that Khorne guy. Usually when a cult comes down to kill us all, its those Red Redemptionists talking about the God-Emperor. Oh well. They're dead now. Come on mates, lets secure our supplies, the boss would want us to keep going, roight?" 
Ensara says to Ezekiel
'Okay, thats true but I'll have you know that I'm connoisseur of others voices as well. Great as I am, I have yet to master singing to the point of moving gods to tears of joy, unlike some people I have heard!"
There is a murmur of agreement, then they walk off to do that. Ensara turns to Iota-Phi 34.
"So. Answers."
"Lets get back to my workshop." he says

Back at Iota's worskhop, he will begin with
"Explanation: Okay, first of all since you probably don't know. Those were Chaos cultists. We fought the Nurgle and Khorne worshippers, but there are two others. Basically those are Slaanesh, whose followers are all about pleasure, hedonism and torture and Tzeentch, whose followers are all about ambition, planning and sorcery. Its really good we got rid of them."
"So where is the other two gods?"
"Speculation: They might not be corrupting people here. The other two tend to target nobles and the learned, and tend to be more subtle. Its not impossible that they could target the underhive mind you, but some are more receptive to certain gods corruption than others."
"How do they corrupt people?"
Iota-Phi shrugs at this
"If anyone knew that exactly, Chaos probably wouldn't be such a problem, but their corruption comes from the Immaterium or the Warp as most call it. Normal citizens wouldn't know its existence, the authorities likes to keep such information secret to the common citizens but basically, the Warp is also the method used to travel at faster than light speeds across the galaxy. Its filled with daemons and....horrors. If people knew that to travel to another planet was to go through a realm of nightmares, they think that no one would be willing to do it, since its very dangerous. I only know because I was once an Imperial Guardsman and thus have traveled off world, seen and experienced things most citizens haven't." 
"FTL travel is also Hell....concerning."
"Which brings me to you four. Observation: You acted to purge these cultists immediately, yet if your from another planet, its from no planet within the Imperium as none of you have articles of faith from either Ecclesiarchy or the Mechanicum, and have expressed no particular faith. You are powerful and capable of things most citizens of the Imperium are not, yet you display an odd lack of knowledge about the planet your on and how the Imperium works. You speak of things like science and technology in familiar terms which is hard to find outside the Mechanicum or its more ancient records, and use technology no one has. You don't seem to hold any particular allegiance, yet you kill Khorne and Nurgle cultists without any particular signs of excess or ambition. You refer to unfamiliar terms that I have never encountered."
He looks at all of you.
"What ARE you? You can't be Inquisition, they have a reputation for ruthlessness. Can't be Chaos they tend to be....more extreme. I guess you could be Xenos in disguise, but why infiltrate an underhive like this? Can't be genestealers, you don't have the bald heads."
"Can't we just be passing wandering mysterious heroes doing good because its good and right to do so?"
"What? No. That sounds mythical and ridiculous. No one in this stupid galaxy is that good of a person."
"I think thats just your opinion, man."
"Unfortunately I've seen little to prove me wrong. Regardless, while you may fool the average citizen who has never been off planet, I see the truth: Whatever you are, you don't fit into anything. At least, not anything I've known, personally I've been providing information as how you say it, a scientist, but I think its fair you say information about yourselves in return. Please explain what exactly you are, I'd prefer to know how far into heresy I've fallen into."
"You probably won't believe us."
"I have fought xenos whose force of belief makes ramshackle gadgets work despite all common sense, cultists who summon demons from another dimension because they party hard enough, and xenos insects that devour worlds and somehow make spaceships out of biomatter, and I have long ago learned to distrust the _Imperial Guardsman's Uplifting Primer_. I am well past being surprised at how much ridiculously worse a situation can get." 
Ensara looks at the other Jumpers
"Well? do you want to tell him?"

----------


## Rater202

"I've got nothing to hide."

"I'm an artificial Demigod, a human granted immortality and vast physical ability by the blessings of a number of deities. I also possess extensive genetic mutations granting me a large number of biologically based supernatural abilities. I have also been imbued with cosmic power, and I am trained to a degree in sorcery though I tend not to rely on it. I am originally from an entirely differant _universe._ One without much of the things you are familiar with... Though, I was... _vaugly_ aware of the existence of this universe."

"All of us are like that to some degree, people who... Jump, if you will, across the vast cosmos, gaining knowledge and power for... Reasons vary. But it's rare for us to encounter one another, and none of us _planned_ to come here."

----------


## Earl of Purple

"I've... never met another who knows what it's like, and have avoided discussing my prior adventures before this. I don't want to boast. I have, however, been a priest-bureaucrat, a royal advisor, an assassin, the king of a city-state, a survivor, a revolutionary, a scholar, a whaler, a prisoner, a soldier, a thief, and a hero of legend, in about that order. I don't think I'm a demigod, but I have killed dragons, giants, kings, and koloss, although that last was more luck than judgement." As he speaks, Edward leans on his cane and rubs at his chest with his left hand, tapping the head of the spike hidden under his clothing.

----------


## Gold Leaf

"She's not lying. I've also travelled between universes. Though, unlike Alexandra and Ensara, I don't use any magic or divine powers and it will stay that way. I simply studied, researched and equipped myself with the advanced technology I found on my travels."

"I apologise for not telling you sooner, Iota-Phi.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Iota Phi-34: Revelation*
"and I have been Exalted, Planeswalker.....Martial Artist, walked many worlds myself, serving many roles, been a hero to many people as well. I'm sure you'll learn more in time."
He considers all this, as trying to calculate how possible all this is then says
"Question: Are these worlds....these...other universe? Materiums? Are they better? Than endless war and constant paranoid vigilance?"
"Well....none of them are perfect, they all have their own problems, but I'd say most of them are more peaceful and more hopeful."
"and....is there any way to get out of this world other than as individual....Jumpers like you?"
"Not that we know of."
"That....is reassuring. there is no need to apologize, Ezekiel. Somehow knowing that there is someplace out there better, more peaceful, that no matter how insignificant I am, how much I fail, that even if the entire Imperium fell and was swallowed by the darkness....there are places out there that will never know the horrors I've seen and will never feel their touch no matter how hard they try....I can find solace in that.

Maybe I should be more skeptical but....I believe you. Perhaps by the will of the Omnissiah, I am meant to know this. Meant to be enlightened by you. Meant to help. I have faith in this."
"Really? Faith in us? Just like that?"
"According to my observations, Ensara....faith is one of the most powerful things in the universe, both figuratively and metaphysically."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Just.....don't be surprised when a ministorum priest or Sororitas does something they really shouldn't have been able to."
"So like what, they have psykers among the priesthood?"
"No. The Adepta Sororitas are extensively tested for genetic purity to make sure they completely pure human with no mutations or deviations from the pure human form- not even psykers. Yet somehow, their faith allows them to do these things anyways. But this is a tangent. The fact there are other worlds.....that are not the Warp.....this has great implications, and not I'm sure if I have the knowledge to properly figure out what they are. For all my heresy and free-thinking, I have little idea of what the ancients, the humans at the height of Mankind's technological Golden Age of Technology would've thought of this, or what'd they do-they're figures of a long forgotten age we only have myths of. I only know fragments of fragments of their knowledge, and while the Mechanicus possess designs to replicate certain inventions from that age, we don't understand the processes or principles behind such things to properly figure out anything else. If they recorded such information, it is long lost...or somewhere we have yet to find. Still this is a discovery perhaps beyond even that long lost Golden Age- myths say that stars were destroyed by Men of Iron and worlds consumed by grey locusts, but this...but nothing like this. I cannot even begin to think of what this might mean....but I have faith you are who you say you are. You....your minds may be closer to the Age of Technology's mindset than my own. You might see things that I cannot.

And if I come along with you...perhaps I can regain that lost understanding, that rational mindset even if it can't get back the technology. After all, your existence proves that the Mechanicus is wrong: that not all knowledge was known by the Age of Technology, that there are new things we can learn and discover, rather than just rediscovered. That perhaps it would be better to do some innovation without the STCs even if they are useful. It is not as if, as a heretek I have any place in the Mechanicus to go back to, and if you truly are from other worlds then you will need allies, people who can inform you about this world and help you. Even the Emperor had his Primarchs who in turn had their Space Marines to follow them, and help with their goals after all. Speaking of which....what ARE your goals?"
"That...is a good question. We just arrived here today and are mostly just trying to figure out where we are and what to do about it. Edward here just arrived after us, I imagine he is the most confused. And due to the consistent nature of how ignorant the Imperium keeps everyone, I doubt we're done figuring stuff out. My usual actions when I find a tyrannical oppressive regime like this is to overthrow it and let people sort out something better while gathering what I want or what catches my fancy."
"Observation: That....may not be the wisest idea? The Imperium is in a constant war of survival against both Xenos and the forces of Chaos, has been for ten thousand years. Many would say that its only because of the Imperium of Mankind that humanity has survived for so long. Just toppling it and letting people figure out something else would leave humanity wide open to attack from the forces surrounding it."
"Okay but what am I supposed to do, just let these tyrannical jerks continue making life hell for everyone? What if humanity could do better than this? What if the methods used are only good enough or even wrong, and not what is best? Can we really say that the Imperium is the best humanity can do to survive in this universe?"
"I don't think either of us know enough about the Imperium to say either way. Information is very....controlled, compartmentalized, in the Imperium. Many Adeptuses have their own customs, traditions, secrets and methods of doing things that they don't share with anyone else, and these organizations have conflicted with one another in the past. Who knows what dark secrets they are hiding? The people who probably know the most forbidden knowledge are the Inquisitors- and they would see you all as heretics or witches for one reason or another, they are beings that dwell in shadow and subterfuge, they are paranoid and don't trust anything"
And it took a big leap of faith for Iota to trust you that your telling the truth right now.
"Greeeaaat.....I think we need to figure out what we're doing here beyond surviving guys. If, more than surviving is what we want to do."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"That's a good question. Now, as you know, I hate to see knowledge and information locked away where nobody can access it. That's why I propose we steal some of these Adeptus' secrets and see if we can make use of them. As a scientist, I am always in pursuit of the secrets of the world - why stop now?"

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Iota Phi-34:*
"Very well Ezekiel, but there are certain things I know they probably aren't hiding for I know these secrets are tech heresy to pursue at all in the Adeptus Mechanicus:
1. Twisting of the genes of the human form in ways not proscribed by the Emperor
2. Empyric devices manipulating Chaos or the Warp, aside from the Gellar Field or the Warp Engine.
3. resurrecting, creating, communicating with the dead, or the creation of the unliving
4. the creation or resurrection of AI or Abominable Intelligences, such as the Men or Iron, especially ones capable of improving themselves.

Undiscovered Hereteks within the Mechanicus may pursue these but they'd be harshly punished for doing so, as such avenues are considered dangerous at best. So any secrets like that, don't expect them to be useful or safe if we find anything like that. Other than that, I suppose its possible that a Magos would hold off on announcing a rediscovery of something until they are sure its safe....or until they are sure they can get all the credit for it. After all, Magos Arkhan Land is still celebrated for his rediscovery of a single STC fragment in the 31st millennium that led to templates for the Land Raider and the Land Speeder and were named in his honor. Any Magos that rediscovers something new is practically guaranteed fame far beyond their lifetime. Knowledge is also power, and each Forge World is in competition for more even willing to kill their rivals, as the Imperium isn't centralized very much."
"My god its like competitive college professors and researchers but with religious dogma and cutthroat politics. Wait....what millennium is it now?"
"The 41st millennium, 990th year according to the local calendar."
"So wait, he was this famous for _ten thousand years_?"
"Yes. Is that strange?"
"...Yes, ten thousand years is a pretty long time. The time between the start of recorded history and the modern day on Earth is somewhere about 5000 years, to think that he is still remembered after twice the amount of time is insane."
"Huh, your planet has the Low Gothic name for Terra, odd. Anyways if there are any secrets the Mechanicus is keeping, it is on the Forge Worlds. A Hive World like this only has Adeptus Mechanicus temples to maintain the systems here, they wouldn't put anything important within the reach of the normal Imperium, as the Treaty of Mars recognizes the Adeptus Mechanicus as technically its own entity within the Imperium, with its own rules- any STC fragments or technology of that nature are required to be handed to the Mechanicus. Though, the Mechanicus still sends out many Explorator fleets, hoping to find the holy grail of technology: a fully intact STC. If they actually found such a thing.....well...they'd probably keep it secret and release the rediscoveries gradually over time to not rock the boat too much, but it'd still be a faster pace than the rate of rediscovery we have now, probably much faster. They would certainly need time to sort out all the technology that could lead to true AI anyways. So I doubt they have anything as miraculous as that. 

But, what they've actually discovered or not is not the concern. If we go searching for whatever is hidden in the depths of Mechanicus Forge Worlds- which is a good chance that not even the Mechanicus itself knows of all the ancient knowledge they have stored there- then we have to get off planet first. The three problems with that are that 1: Hive Tarsus is the hive that has the orbital docks not Hive Sibellus, we need to get to a completely different hive for that And 2: not every ship the Imperium uses is warp-capable. Many ships are local system ones, meant for interplanetary merchants or defense of the local solar system. 3: even if we do have warp capable ship, we need the cooperation of one of the Navis Nobilite or Navigator- a special kind of mutant vital to guiding a ship through the warp, or you'd end up thousands of light years off from your destination in the void. If there is one kind of person in all of the Imperium I'd caution you to not kill no matter the circumstance-short of them being corrupted by Chaos- it is a Navigator."
"Any other crew?"
"Oh right, your from other universes. All ships in this universe require tens of thousands of people to crew them- each ship is a small community unto itself. It is why you require allies in this universe no matter your goals, as even traveling from one solar system to another is a dangerous undertaking requiring many people to operate the systems that allow this to happen. Unfortunately the only ships that are warp-capable are either Imperial Navy, or Rogue Traders, and your probably better off going after a Rogue Trader vessel, as they're one of the few entities in the Imperium allowed to operate independently. If none are in dock, your simply out of luck, but Scintilla is the capital of the Calixis Sector, so Rogue traders are most likely to come here. From there we can either take the longer journey to Mars the original Forge World and capital of the Adeptus Mechanicus, or we can go the local Forge Worlds that control the Mechanicus in the Calixis Sector: The Lathe Worlds, which probably have secrets that Mars does not. Both aren't without their dangers however."

----------


## Earl of Purple

"I am going to point out that for most of that five thousand years between the recording of history and the present I left, most of humanity was illiterate and poorly educated, but some figures remained known and discussed despite that if they were deemed important enough, typically for religious or philosophical reasons, though I can't think of any figures older than about three thousand years despite that." And not many of those, either. "I'm not much of a scientist, but I studied the technology of one world and am able to replicate it. It... might be a bit tricky to replicate it here." The whale oil-powered devices of Gristol potentially draw upon the Void, as whales are linked to that etheric space and their bones can be carved into runes and charms that draw upon the Void directly. Such a technology might, perhaps, be seen as drawing power from the Warp, or indeed actually achieve such due to the similarities of the space and its role in the setting. 

"I'd be willing to help Ezekiel, though. None of the worlds I've been to were particularly advanced, technologically speaking. One was going through an industrial revolution, one had nothing more advanced than a pocketwatch and no guns, and the last was further behind although some ruins proved this was not always the case." Alas, the secrets of Dwemer automatons died with them, and Edward wasn't able to reverse-engineer any. His Tallboy may perhaps have some Dwemer reinforcements, but it remains a piloted walker.

----------


## Rater202

"I think that, first thing first, we need to establish a safe base of operations. I do seriously doubt that the locals are going to appreciate my display of Atmokinesis earlier and should someone decide to come looking in the Underhive for the 'dangerous rogue psyker...' I'm more than willing to kill them if they don't back down. I'm not willing to risk innocent civilians being killed by bigots and zealots."

"Also, we do have to sleep sometime. I have a manor attached to my warehouse, but you know how it is, the entrance to the warehouse stays open while I'm in there. Need somewhere safe to plant the entrance if we want to use that as our base... I don't _know_ if people can get in without my permission, but..."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
"Indeed while I'm a strange transhuman being who has transcended the needs of physical bodies, not everyone is. My inner world within my own soul houses an entire city, fortress and laboratories and doubles as my warehouse, which has numerous humans from other worlds, demons- don't worry they're just alien not really evil-, and golems and other constructs of artifice, but my own inner world is far weirder than anything than you'll encounter in any normal reality. You might not like it there."
"Hesitant Question:....How weird?" Iota-Phi asks
"The land and plantlife are made entirely of reflective silver. Fruit grown from the trees of this world not only taste and nourish like the real thing they do it better because its something I emulated from Szoreny whose entire thing is reflecting somebody than refining the reflection to be better than the original. The sky is pure white, the sun is pure black, the ocean is a rainbow of colors that rise into the sky as clouds of inspiration and passion that rain down upon the land bringing the mania of new ideas upon those the people it rains upon. mountains rise from the ocean full of ores of rare metals that I consumed from other worlds because I emulated Metagaos ability to incorporate what he eats into himself so I literally am what I eat, which the inhabitants of the city mine from. these mountains are formed from volcanos that spill out emerald lava of rage and bitterness. Swamps of scrap metal and discarded parts are gathered by scavengers to be recycled, repurposed and reused to make whatever they can. also the city is a largely laissez-faire las-vegas like place full of casinos and hedonism without much order to it kinda ruled by my own Third Circle Soul."
"......Whyyyyyyyyy?"
"Because its apart of a power that creates my own world that reflects my inner nature because that world is technically me, as are all the Third and Second Circle Souls within it. Because I was granted this power by primordial beings called Yozis who are too vast to merely be a single person and thus could only be interacted with from our perspective through their souls. This power, my Exaltation, emulates their nature like that. By the way remind me to summon Ligier whenever there is an eclipse or a new years, he has been imprisoned for like five thousand years and letting him out to have some enjoyment with places that aren't Creation keeps him from trying to come up with plans to break the bindings that always fail."
"...Why those events specifically?" Iota asks
"Oh that kind of summoning can only occur during those windows of time. Normally the requirement is Calibration but since that doesn't exist anywhere except Creation, I find the closest analogues that work are either new years eve and day, or an eclipse. Weird occult requirement, why I stick to my mana magic for fast summoning."
"....Your a lot and I think I'll have a lot of questions about you the more time we spend with each other. Right now you sound like a cross-between a Daemon Prince and the warp realm they rule, and that terrifies me." Iota says.
"Yeah, this is why I have been keeping my powers mostly hidden, they can be a bit hard to explain and the explanations don't make them any less weird- yet its because they're so weird that I love them. Anyways I'm up for more knowledge and inventions, I've been an artificer since my second jump so technology is an interest of mine as well. Though specifically: what are the guns like in this universe?"
"....There are a lot of guns that do many destructive things. Those cultists are pretty much using the lowest tech guns because they're cheaply affordable, even my lasgun is something produced cheaply by the Imperium for logistical reasons."
"Excellent, while I'm a great martial artist and sorcerer, I only have a mastery of flame pieces from Creation and not actual guns, so this universe may a good opportunity to rectify my skill in that and get started on a gun collection."
"...Why?"
"Why not? Got to have fun with this somehow. But yeah I technically have a place for people to live just.....a very weird place."

*Meanwhile, The Inquisitors:*
Lord Inquisitor Caidin had been contemplating the argument while eating sandwich. The other Inquisitors had been waiting for him to finish and then he speaks
"I think Inquisitor Rhiannon and Amendera have the best points: there is no need for burn the whole underhive. Flamer fuel is probably best saved for when we need to fight tyranids and orks. But the underhive is not contributing to the wider Imperium's benefit and thus I propose a more efficient use for them: you Jethro Vevarn will round up the underhive and put them into a penal legion in the Imperial Guard and ship them off to the Octarius Sector. They probably all did something or other just from living there, the Orks and Tyranids are fighting each other constantly there and the blockade can always use more bodies to shore up the defenses as it were."
"But the mutants-" Jethro begins
"-Will have bomb collars on like the rest, Inquisitor Vevarn worry not, they will die whether they fight or run away in such a legion. They already fight each other down in the underhive who cares if they die against the xenos? This way they might buy some time for others of the guard to make a minor dent in the Octarius problem or at least hold the line for fifteen more hours. Much more useful and you can shoot any who resist, after all only a heretic would resist the honor of joining the Emperor's Imperial Guard to serve as apart of his hammer. Meanwhile Rhiannon and Amendera I task you both with hunting and killing or capturing the Alpha-Plus Psyker, best case scenario we can put them into a Psy-Titan, that might be a good thing to send to the Octarius sector, Xenos won't know what hit 'em, and if not eh well, a dead psyker is a psyker that isn't destroying Imperium assets, which is a victory of its own.

Now I'm sure you all need some time to prepare, drafting millions of criminals and forming a team to hunt down a powerful rogue psyker are bit of a undertaking, make your preparations you start tomorrow, that is all. Now if you'll excuse me I have to attend a social meeting with the Planetary Governor over the finest amasec on the planet..."
Lord Inquisitor Caidin then walks off leaving them to their tasks. Jethro Vevarn can only seethe at the obvious corruption in Caidin as he walks away to organize Enforcers and Arbites from local precinct-fortress for some mass arrests. 
"Really, allowing them to serve in the Imperial Guard....more glorious an end than they deserve." he mutters.

Amendera and Rhiannon walk alongside each other as the Inquisitors disperse.
"You sense the psyker down there?" Rhiannon asks
"Yes. Its quite obvious. Do you think it could potentially be.....something like Him? proof that humanity is finally evolving into something akin to the Emperor?"
"We've seen Alpha Plus Psykers before, they are all insane. One anomalous example doesn't change that." Rhiannon says
"But what if its the first? The first that can control themselves?" Amendera asks
"Then we're all frakked, because more will be coming." Rhiannon shakes her head back. "Humans given power like that untested never turn out well. They would make deals with daemons and defy the Imperium all the same, just with a clearer mind to destroy us all with."
"But its strange is it not?" Amendera questions
"Yes, and strange in our line of works means doom for the entire planet if left uncontrolled. A powerful rogue psyker in the underhive is nothing but trouble. You form the team to capture them, I will form the team to take her out if you fail. You want this psyker to be useful so badly, make sure my assassin doesn't need to shoot them."
"Very well."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Use of AI is considered heresy? I'll have to keep that in mind. Granted, I think I'll be committing quite a lot of heresy down here, so it's ultimately nothing to worry about."

"That's a good point - we should get to establishing some kind of safe house. I can have Excess guard it, to keep intruders out while we sleep. While we're on the topic of material possessions, then, I would quite like to have a vehicle to make traveling easier. My Titan sacrifices mobility for heavy armour and heavy armaments, so it's not going anywhere faster than I can run."



"Wait, sorry, did you say you were _eating metal_ somewhere in the middle of that spiel?"

----------


## Earl of Purple

"You have multiple souls? That's interesting. Mine's a dragon." And it has a hole in it where a piece of somebody else's soul has been nailed to his soul using a metal spike, but the exact mechanics of hemalurgy remain a mystery to Edward. He'd be less happy with it if he knew the basics of the magic. "I've been stockpiling food in my warehouse, so we've got that to sell if needed. I've got a decade to top it all up again, though canneries didn't exist in my most recent trip so there's not as much as I'd have hoped." The limited ability of time to infiltrate his warehouse ensures that even the stuff he's had for nearly thirty years is still good. Well, that and the fact it's been canned.

----------


## Rater202

"...My soul is like, 15 times the size it should be."

Since everyone is sharing.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara: Stop Rambling*
Sigh. Apparently she wouldn't be able to go on her beloved rambles like she wants if this is the response. Worry not rambles! Ensara will you meet you again one day. Perhaps create a new dedicated second circle soul to rambling? Maybe not, its a bit narrow.
"Well yes I can eat metal, but I don't need to- strange transhuman being remember? Since you can't keep up with my rambles, to be simple I have transcended physical needs like food, water, air and such. If not in one way then another, it doesn't really matter how at this point."
She turns to them.
"I simply shared what my soul is to offer a place to stay that isn't a polluted hive underbelly and eats....what do people commonly eat on this world, Iota?"
"Its a Hive World, therefore all food is either imported from nearby agri-worlds or is made from recycled human corpses, as the environment outside the hives is a completely polluted wasteland barely capable of sustaining the oxygen needed to breathe and unable to grow anything itself, largely due to the constant production of the hive cities themselves. Though the underhive mostly eat rats and mutated animals that somehow still survive down here."
"What about water?"
"Also recycled."
"and this is....normal throughout the Imperium?"
"Indeed. It is estimated 85% of the inhabited worlds of the Imperium have a hive city present upon them. Hive worlds live entirely on recycling and importing everything just to keep functioning. This is because hive worlds are meant to produce various goods and manpower for the Imperium, the goods for various things in Imperium society, and the manpower to be recruited into the Imperial Guard to fight the wars that the Imperium is in. Penal legions are commonly recruited from them due to well...the place your in now."
"So if we tried to stage a revolt on this planet...what would happen?"
"If you succeeded, it is likely that this planet would be cut off from its agri world imports simply due to its status changing to a War World. The planetary defense force would of course attempt to buy time for you for the actual Imperial Guard to arrive. Scintilla without such imports would face shortages or even starvation, as such planets when cut off from the warp have been known to descend into cannibalism and anarchy. The difference is, the Imperium would send in the Imperial Guard to kill us on top of that."
"But....why? If you what say is true, and Hive world is so dependent on imports then why? they could just starve us out instead of wasting manpower."
"It matters not. We would be committing secession and possibly heresy. Responding to such secession is a matter of dogma that all humans belong under the God-Emperor's rule as apart his divine plan. They would use force to get the planet back into the Imperium and would want to kill any who defied the Imperium anyways. Manpower is not a factor, the number of humanity in the galaxy is beyond counting. There are always reserves, always more bodies for the Imperium to recruit to overwhelm the enemy. The Imperium is willing to spend any amount of lives needed for victory."
"Okay, as I was saying, a place to stay that isn't a polluted hive underbelly and eats bad imported food and recycled human meat. But none of you are interested, enjoy finding something palatable in this universe."
"Observation: The nobles in the spires for sure get the best food. Since you don't seem to care about the law, you could try to taking food from them? As for transportation, there are many kinds of vehicles in matters of space, land, sea and sky. Your going to have to be more specific, and again, we're going to have get a warp-capable spaceship if you want to go off planet anyways, so thats technically a vehicle and traveling across lightyears is technically more a lot more mobile than your suit."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Sell?" Ezekiel asks Edward. "Surely, we could just eat the food in your warehouse. Even if not a permanent solution, it will give us time to think of one while we work toward our other goals."

"You guys have souls?" Ezekiel jokes. A little edgy, sure, but it works in the moment.

Ezekiel would retaliate against that 'can't keep up' comment, but he's not in the mood to start an argunent so instead he just rolls his eyes. Anyway, he was listening, it just took a bit of time for exactly what Ensara was saying to set in.

"I can think of at least two reasons why we shouldn't live in your soul world. For one, the laws of physics there have clearly massively diverged from our own, and I would be compelled to run as many tests and experiments as possible to figure out what the new ones are. Would you want that?"

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
She seems to read his eye roll and what its expressing and says
"Oh, sorry sorry, that was arrogant of me, stupid hubristic demigod attitudes....anyways technically my inner world is already inhabited by an entire laboratory of scientists from Izzet Guild and Kaladesh far madder and more passionate than you, and technically long story short, you probably can't actually do anything to my inner world to mess it up or alter it unless you possess special magic to make sure spirits from Exalted can permanently die, which my souls count as. But if your so insistent on not wanting to, I get it, its weird, I'm weirder than most, we don't know each other, and I'm all about respecting individuals choices unless I reeaaaaallly need to mind control somebody to do something important, like "prevent a lot of innocent deaths" important just as an example. So, if you need for me anything I can just go somewhere nearby to practice my Gunhell ki techniques and not annoy you, don't worry I have super hearing I can probably still hear whatever conversation you have with Iota while doing so."
She says offering that while spreading out her hands. 

Meanwhile Iota-Phi says:
"I wouldn't joke about not having a soul. That is actually possible, if very rare. The Soulless or Blanks are known to have anti-psychic effects around them, being completely immune to demonic possession, and shutting down psychic abilities with their mere presence. Their presence furthermore is painful to Demons and psykers, and is radiating a sense of "wrongness" to everyone else, to the point of people harboring hostile feelings towards them with undiscovered Blanks not living long as a result. Thus those born with the Pariah Gene are a very valuable asset in the war against Chaos."

----------


## Rater202

> *Ensara:*
> She seems to read his eye roll and what its expressing and says
> "Oh, sorry sorry, that was arrogant of me, stupid hubristic demigod attitudes....anyways technically my inner world is already inhabited by an entire laboratory of scientists from Izzet Guild and Kaladesh far madder and more passionate than you, and technically long story short, you probably can't actually do anything to my inner world to mess it up or alter it unless you possess special magic to make sure spirits from Exalted can permanently die, which my souls count as. But if your so insistent on not wanting to, I get it, its weird, I'm weirder than most, we don't know each other, and I'm all about respecting individuals choices unless I reeaaaaallly need to mind control somebody to do something important, like "prevent a lot of innocent deaths" important just as an example. So, if you need for me anything I can just go somewhere nearby to practice my Gunhell ki techniques and not annoy you, don't worry I have super hearing I can probably still hear whatever conversation you have with Iota while doing so."
> She says offering that while spreading out her hands.


"For the record, if we end up bunking in my manor don't say things about 'needing' to mind-control people around Molly. She, uh... It's not my story to tell but she'd take _issue_ with it."

"Or just like in general, if you end up meeting my companions. Pamela probably won't care for it either."



> Meanwhile Iota-Phi says:
> "I wouldn't joke about not having a soul. That is actually possible, if very rare. The Soulless or Blanks are known to have anti-psychic effects around them, being completely immune to demonic possession, and shutting down psychic abilities with their mere presence. Their presence furthermore is painful to Demons and psykers, and is radiating a sense of "wrongness" to everyone else, to the point of people harboring hostile feelings towards them with undiscovered Blanks not living long as a result. Thus those born with the Pariah Gene are a very valuable asset in the war against Chaos."


Alexandra noticeably twitches.

----------


## Earl of Purple

"Of course we can eat the food, but... a week of jellied eels packaged by Pratchett's cannery results in unpleasant gas. Trust me, I've done it before. And if we want more clothes, perhaps to blend in with local fashion, we'll need money, and food will always sell." It's not just jellied eels, of course. There's tinned vegetables produced on Scadrial, which are ashy and might not be palatable to anyone who hasn't visited that world and got the inherent adaptations to the local environment, and processed whale meat, and more recently he's worked on pickling vegetables and fish from Tamriel. "If there even is fashion here."

Edward doesn't comment on the discussions of mind control, though he does seem a little nervous at the suggestion.

----------


## Rater202

"Oh, I was going to say something about that: I have access to a sizable amount of the local currency and my 'home' came with running water and basic amenities."

$20 million translates to how much in Thrones? It's gotta be a lot, right? 20 million is a lot of buying power.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
"Okay yeah, I'll admit I said too much there. Just know I probably agree with her in principle and that I don't intend to do it while working with you at the very least."
"trained Psykers are able to mind control people as well in addition to many other things, such power is why they are feared even if they are in Imperial forces for if they turned traitor they can subvert many wills against the Imperium without being traitors themselves."
"Thank you Iota." Ensara says, not sure that information helped at all.
"Wealth explanation: there are two kinds of wealthy in this universe. Planetary nobleborn or merchant wealthy, and rogue trader wealthy. The former is a normal wealthy living a life of luxury no normal man can ever achieve, the latter is unimaginably wealthy beyond counting."
"Whats the difference?"
"The difference is that a nobleborn has enough wealth to have a mansion and thugs from the local planet, while a merchant has wealth from trading between planets of a local solar system. A Rogue Trader, has enough wealth to purchase rare technology from xenos and older ages even those nobles will never see, and travel around the galaxy in vessels capable of carrying out Exterminatus upon a planet, their house having many many assets across multiple planets and star systems and being the only ones able to legally trade with people outside the Imperium. If your money is so easily counted, then its probably only nobleborn wealthy.

As for fashion, I am certain that is only a noble thing, and all the other flesh humans just wear what is common to their world. Tech priests like I once was have no need of fashion, wearing only the red robes of the Priesthood of Mars."
"I mean....my wealth perk isn't a fixed amount. Its just a nebulous but legitimate source of income that adjusts itself to each world I go to that makes me wealthy and live a lavish lifestyle....don't know how that works with THIS universe yet. I haven't checked, my wealth is all stored in my inner world so....I'll have to go figure that out."
Ensara then sits cross-legged and begins meditating.

*Spoiler: Inner World of Ensara:*
Show


She finds herself in her palace. This self was but a projection of herself into her own world. After all, her physical body can't _really_ be inside of herself. That would make no sense. She passes by the various decorations and oddities she has gathered over three worlds. Yes its all pretty grand and detailed and full of history and whatnot, but right now she needs to get to business. She walks until she finds herself in the portal room. Named so, because due to how things work her source of income must be legitimate but also must connect to her own inner world. Thus a portal was set up that connected to whatever legitimate source of wealth she ended up with, and had loyal followers of her to manage it in her stead. The leader of those that manage her wealth was Fan Ling, once a human woman in Creation who competently managed her wealth there, Ensara elevated her with a transformation into being a First Circle Demon as a reward for her efforts. Her skin and hair were now blue geometric crystal, her eyes glowing with a blue light and she radiated an even more orderly and logical presence than she did as a human. 
"Fan Ling, we have entered a new world, what are the changes?"
"I have noticed, my lady. Our wealth is now in something called Throne Gelt. Ours takes the form of coinage with this God-Emperor's face on one side and an aquila on the other, but trades today alone has seen people paying in various things in other currencies that are less known but Throne Gelt seems be the closest thing to a standardized system of wealth."
"What is our business like now?"
"It seems to be a merchant corporation operating within a big solar system, its wealth derived from the local economy with no real galactic one. The merchants we now run seem to see you as some heretical spirit the highest members worship in secret."
"....How is that legitimate though?"
"Its legitimate in the sense that its an actual business that generates wealth through legitimate means, and its an arrangement where they willingly give your share of the wealth to you. Its probably not legitimate in the eyes of the religion of this universe, but it does not seem to count for anything legally for some reason."
"Strange, I was of the impression that this emperor-worship was a state religion of this galaxy-spanning empire. How would it not be legitimate?"
"I have no idea, my lady. It sounds like something worth investigating." Fan Ling says
"Indeed..." Ensara "something worth investigating."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Oh. Okay, well, if you want to go and do that, that's fine." Ezekiel responds to Ensara.

When the Soulless/Blanks are brought up, Ezekiel doesn't even try to hide how interesting the concept sounds to him based on Iota-Phi's description. "Are they now? What I wouldn't give for a little psychic resistance... To be completely honest, I'd be very interested in meeting one some time, no matter how wrong they are."

"Ah, I see - you meant food as in 'food, allegedly'. In which case, trade would be the better move. We make some money, and they at least get to eat something that's a step up from rat meat and Soylent Green. I'm not taking off the coat, though, if that's what you're suggesting." Not for a thing.

"Right, that's what you were giving Iota-Phi, wasn't it." He'll remember that, so he can borrow some later.

"Ah, I see. It's like the difference between business owners, and megacorporations. Seriously, I knew of some companies large enough to go to actual war over entire planets." Looking at you, Atlas and Maliwan.

----------


## Earl of Purple

"It's a semi-self replenishing source of food ensuring I've got plenty to eat and do not risk starvation so long as I can access it. It tends to replicate the most recent item I have added, with bulk playing a large part in that. Most of the food I have added I chose for its long shelf-life and availability in large quantities, especially as some of the worlds I have visited have been undergoing various calamities that interfere with logistics and food supplies. My most recent trip was to a world that did not yet have canning technology, so there's salt fish, smoked meat, and pickled vegetables as well. If there's a locally-produced long-life rat-based food product, I'd like to add some of that at some point, since I would prefer to avoid eating the corpse starch." Although probably algae cubes would be better. "I also wasn't worried about the coat; everywhere has some kind of coat, I think. I'm more worried about my cravat; they have been popular amongst the upper classes twice, totally absent once, and superseded by newer fashion where I started." Given the expanse of the Imperium and the wide range of differing planets, it shouldn't mark him as any stranger than any other off-worlder, though Edward doesn't know that.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Iota-Phi:*
"Calculating......The odds of you meeting a Blank are very low, but they are generally gathered on the Black Ships much like the Psykers are. To be taken to Terra. From there? Who knows. Such ships only come once in a blue moon, I've heard about once in once in a hundred years apparently? After all, if your going to take the reality-warping humans who could potentially cause trouble why not also take those who can suppress them? The surest way to meet one therefore is to go to Holy Terra itself, same solar system as Forge World Mars, though I warn you: Sol System is the most heavily defended solar system in the galaxy."
He considers Edward concerns
"...Statement: I am a tech priest. I am no longer well versed in normal human means of fuel consumption and cannot direct you to such things. But claification: a hive world like this does require a lot of food imported from agri worlds to function, it cannot survive solely on corpse starch, as maintaining a high number of humans is the entire point of hive worlds anyways, so its likely there are food places for flesh-beings such as you.....just not in the underhive where nothing is made. You are in essentially this hive's slums right now."

*Spoiler: Ensara's Inner World:*
Show


"what confuses me however, Fan Ling" 
Ensara says
"Is that I took the highest wealth perk my Exalted jump gave me. Why aren't I a rogue trader?"
"Well my lady, from what I've gathered becoming a Rogue Trader is more than just wealth. It requires a Warrant of Trade, given out by the High Lords of Terra or inherited from someone who used to be a Rogue Trader, with entire Rogue Trader Dynasties forming being given one. These are only given as reward in battle or for political reasons, and have certain legal rights and obligations." Fan Ling answers.
"ah I see. My perk only affects the amount of wealth I get as income, getting a Warrant of Trade would technically be something different from raw wealth. That makes sense. Did you have any contact with this worlds demons?"
"No."
She says the next part to both Fan Ling and Zinara:
"Good, standard safety measures: if any demon tries to make a deal with anyone, they are to be refused and told that all demonic deals must go through me. Furthermore this universe does not seem friendly to things its unfamiliar, foreign or does not understand so I doubt this universe will allow much opportunity for externalization of my world-form to do trade. Take defensive measures, assume anything we gain from this universe must be taken not traded until I say otherwise, anything that gets into my inner world without my explicit permission or accompaniment is to be killed. I am not sure if there is anyone out there who will be receptive to our whole "freedom, progress and individuality" thing we got going here, so I might try to bring some people in assuming I can enlighten them, but Little Malfeas might be isolated for a bit."
"Understood" Fan Ling says.
Ensara then ends her projection 



She opens her eyes.
"Okay so I did a brief check with my financier, apparently I own a merchant corporation that handles an entire solar systems interplanetary trade somewhere, but are not a Rogue Trader in this universe, that requires a Warrant of Trade. What I'd miss?"
Iota tells her.
"Ah. Hm. If I knew where any of the planets were located I could simply try planeswalking around to get things but right now I'd simply be teleporting around the vastness of empty space. But curious thing: apparently for some reason the dictates of the religion worshipping the Emperor aren't considered "legitimate" in terms of what is or isn't allowed at least, source of wealth wise. Quite odd."
"Confusion: But....the Cult of the Emperor has existed since.....well the Emperor's time. I think? I am not certain about this. Its certainly been around longer than anyone can remember. I know the Adeptus Mechanicus is older because the oldest records they have originate from the Age of Strife and they can't have possibly started worshipping the Emperor before the Great Crusade. The Ecclesiarchy is one of the largest most powerful institutions it has, it forms the bedrock of the entire Imperial belief and culture, how could it possibly not be legitimate?"
"That is a mystery worth investigating now isn't it? As for fashion...well wuxia/xianxia garments are a bit out of place I must admit, easily fixable, unfortunately this Imperium seems so afraid of anything nonhuman that I won't be able to shapeshift into anything more fun."
Like all her beautiful demonic forms. (See? She can keep self things to herself.) She was Nadir Caste, despite her great power in sorcery and martial arts her original specialty in Creation was in subterfuge and stealth, going unseen and undetected- and an Exalted of her kind of power was more stealthy than any mortal person could be or ever detect, more stealthy than most other Exalts. She could work in the shadows and blend in once again if need be. 
"So we need fashions to blend in, good food, a ship and a Navigator and we're aiming for seeking out the technological secrets of the Adeptus Mechanicus, anything else we want to plan to do?"

Manyclops will suddenly rush in
"Hey, you, new blokes with that weird light of hope in your eyes, bad news! I got a tip from a malifixer that um, that the Arbites are suddenly talking about organizing to round up the entire underhive and ship us out as a penal legion. Thought you might want to know, it'll take a while, at least until tomorrow since it takes a lot of organizin' and mobilizing to round up and collar millions of people but I thought you might want to know so you can get out? Its real weird cause it ain't the normal tithe time of year, but....its happenin' for some reason. Me and gangs are probably going to preparing to fight....no matter how useless it is." 
"Alarm: It is indeed, useless." Iota-Phi states "A normal Arbites or Enforcer is equipped with flak armor which protects against things like autogun rounds easily, if not something even more protective like carapace. The normal firearms available to the underhive will not be sufficient to harm them. It is probably not possible to cobble together enough laslock rifles in only a day either and would faire little better. If they are truly doing this, the underhive is going to become a battlefield, and it is likely the underhive will lose."

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra's eyes turn stoney.

"Tell me, friend? How might I find these arbites so that I may educate them on the error of their ways or, failing that, send them to explain their sins to whatever god they worship?"

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Manyclops and Iota:*
They exchange glances. They know the base is the Precinct Fortress of Scintilla known as the Hall of the Just, and it is lead by Grand Marshal Goreman, the leader of the Arbites for the entire Calixis sector. They knew it had a reputation among the underhive for brutality over strict adherence to Imperial law, as thugs and simpletons whose enforcement of the law is too unrestrained. Grand Marshal Goreman had many honors for his efforts to keep order, but that he does it savagely and contempt for the civilians under him, the Arbites he commands favoring quick and brutal methods of punishment over protracted research and actually make sure the laws are being upheld correctly. Rumors say that he purged his precinct from top to bottom to be rid of people who did not hold his interpretation of the law under a leader who allowed it, spoke out against a more bookish and careful commander before he came into power, and was in general rumored to be someone who wants to beat discipline into the masses forever. So they nod, deciding 'screw 'em' and Manyclops says
"Oh yeah, the leaders in the Precinct Fortress known as the Hall of the Just near Hive Tarsus. His name's Goreman, Grand Marshal Goreman. The precinct fortress is on equatorial continent, in the desert right next to Tarsus, never seen it meself, but its supposed to be this big black obelisk risin' from the desert. Can't miss it. This continents the northern temperate one. Do whatever you want with him."
"I'll come with, messing with the law is always fun. Anyone else want to come? I can teleport you."

*Meanwhile, Grand Marshal Goreman:*
"Alright listen up!"
Goreman bellows with his gravelly voice, commanding respect, walking quickly through the fortress
"I want an arbitrator or proctor on every enforcer squad you all command, you are to bring as many electro net launchers, shock mauls, suppression shields, and so on we can spare. This will be a riot and we will be capturing all of them to serve in the Guard! By the God-Emperor these hive scum will learn some discipline in their lives before they give them up or my name's not Goreman!"
"Uh Lord Marshal, what are their actual crimes?" a new arbitrator asks
"Actual crimes? They're underhive scum! What aren't their crimes, recruit!? laziness, disobedient wastrels, living worthless aimless lives, thats their crime for you. Idle hands are the heretics workshop as the priests say. Not even serving in an Adeptus without discipline, strength or faith. If anything we're giving them a gift! The gift of service, of duty, and discipline to serve something higher than themselves! And should count themselves lucky that they even get to toil for the Adeptus at all, should be thankful that they get to support the government they live under. What do we get instead? Riots! Disobedience! Sedition!"
"But on whose orders?"
"Thats the best part, recruit!" Lord Marshal Goreman says with a dark smile. "An Inquisitors Order. Overrides all the regulations and whatever intellectual fops might have a problem with it! Might as well have come from the God-Emperor himself! Its like Sanguinala came early. Why if this works, I might just decide to do the same for Gunmetal City, Tarsus and Ambulon too, get the whole planet free of these scum while we're at it. You know, like spring cleaning. We're doing the Emperor's work tomorrow, arbitrators, the Emperor's work!"
He couldn't help but be elated at this opportunity. He always did think those pesky regulations were getting in the way of enforcing the law on those lazy wastrels they call 'citizens'. From this we can safely deduce that Goreman has never seen the inside of a manufactorum or knows what goes on within one. If he looks upon a manufactorum it is to perhaps to wonder why they go to make so much smoke or what purpose making smoke serves but doesn't question it because the Emperor said they should so probably serves some purpose he has yet to understand while drinking recaff, the sacrifice of a man's 16 hour work day to make that recaff and everything else he uses or owns passing beneath his notice. 

*Spoiler: OOC:*
Show

I'm not making Goreman up. He is an actual Dark Heresy NPC and these are things he has actually done. This is however my interpretation of him, of course.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra reaches out with her telepathic senses in the area described, trying to get a lock on the location.

"I can teleport myself, if you don't mind. I don't normally do it, but... I'd prefer to take lead on this one.  It's rather important to me that we give them a chance to *not* commit this act of great villainy before we slaughter them and I am forming the beginning of a plan."

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel, who up until now has been listening quietly to the conversation, finally speaks up. "In that case, let me be your support. Whatever your plan is, it'll be easier with more than one. I hate to be a pessimist, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but I doubt these people are going to change their minds because a teenager told them to."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
"I was offering it to Ezekiel and Edward, not you, Alex. I sense your powerful enough that you don't need my help in that department. Besides, I was more hoping to plunder their stash of whatever contraband and weapons they have in there than go around killing them just because."
"Also wait, there is ways to deal with your enemies other than eradicating them mercilessly?" Manyclops asks, confused.
"Explanation: they are from other universes. The idea is foreign and surprising to me to, but this may be more normal where they come from." 
Iota says
"They are from what!?" 
Manyclops exclaims in surprise. Iota patiently and robotically gives the short version and she says
".....Thats very out there, and I'm not sure I quite believe it yet. I don't think I'll go, I'm not too keen on going into a fortress full of arbitrators, given what I am."
"I'm a heretek, so neither am I." Iota says, both declining to go.
Ensara nods at Ezekiel.
"Sounds like a yes from Ezekiel."

Alexandra, extending your senses there, you sense....
A towering edifice, a small city within it. A city of law and nothing but law. But not law as you know it. Those who know of law fully the most know it as a library of books, scrolls and tomes accumulated over hundreds to thousands of years that they knew was only a fraction of the texts they were copied from full of precedents and rules upon rules, knowing that it takes too much time to look up every a law for a case to come to a ruling within a lifetime and thus tries to figure out how to get around that as much as possible. Those who know of it in simpler terms know of it as a book they carry around with them full of shortcuts and field-sentences so that they may conveniently dole out punishment as fast as possible before moving onto the next criminal they need to find and capture, having no time for real trials among a populace that vastly outnumbers them. Other simply know law as whatever they say it is, for most citizens are too busy working or do their own business to know what the law actually says, for even the greatest Arbites can never know all the laws they enforce- it is physically impossible. The most brutish of them know law as a shock maul they carry in their hand, applied by the strength of their arm to hammer down disruptions to order. 

They also know of crime and criminals. Some know of them as a constant stream of reports and alerts from across the sector, processing it through their very brains faster than a normal human can think, calling themselves Lexmechanics. They knew many crimes, but they focus on the big ones, sending reports of mere theft or murder off to the Enforcers- the Arbitrators were after more important crimes, crimes that could make a planet not pay their tithe, that could make this planet revolt, that could harm even a single adeptus scribe, but cared not for ordinary rabble. To break the Lex Imperialis was to break the holy order the laws set out and thus ensure obedience to the greater order, not to stop suffering. Some Arbitrators hate something called Abstractionism, the heresy and crime of claiming access to the spirit of the law and thus equating themselves with the Emperor, thus placing one's whim above the actual laws of the Imperium and see Magistrates as manipulators who interpret the law as suspicious because of it.

In the detention cells....you don't sense normal criminals. Instead you sense psykers, with varying levels of psychic potential, all sedated. Two nearby guards are having a conversation that you hear, about how they are being saved up until they get enough psykers to be worth shipping out on a ship to the nearest Black Ship, just one or two at a time wasn't worth it, it was best to ship them in bulk. After all, not all psykers appear conveniently when a Black Ship comes by, but space ships are giant city sized things, so they need to save up enough to load them on and send them away, commenting that the rate they find psykers to arrest just keeps getting a bit higher each year- and these were all they could arrest, they remember all the ones too uncontrollable and dangerous to arrest so they just shot them. What particularly stands out is that you sense a small strange painful void, moving as if it was being dragged to a cell, only knowing what this 'void' was saying from people hearing the conversation far enough away to not be within the void:
"You can't do this to me! I'm am Nebette, an assassin! I'm apart of a perfectly orthodox Death Cult to the Emperor!"
"Doesn't matter who you are, your a Blank. Like these psykers your off to serve the God-Emperor in a greater capacity now. Inquisitors said you were ideal for their purposes. You should be happy, few get to see Holy Terra after all."

And finally of course, you sense Grand Marshal Goreman, a hardened mind of smoldering contempt for citizens of the Imperium outside the Adeptus, and just as much hatred for magistrates and arbitrators spouting legalese and interpretation and books, over simple action and force. He was a man who saw corruption and laziness, hated it, deciding the only way to get rid of was through his fist, through taking charge. Even now he was furiously organizing the veritable army of Arbites and local Enforcers to make the mass-arrest of the Sibellus underhive happen. Thus he was the focus of much mind activity around him, he was in charge thus people paid attention to him.

But then you feel something strange: in the top of the structure there is eyrie, some is probing at you back from equally as great a distance- not as powerful as you, but their psychic abilities had an incredible amount of range, someone called Astropath Xiao, who is sending you....what you think is a psychic letter? kind of:
_Question: Human? Threat? Harm? Why sensing? Astropath? Why underhive? Powerful? Fear. Confusion._
The last two are more like feelings than words. Its like some telegram trying to fit as much information as possible into a small package. This isn't a link or a connection, its just this message he has beamed to you.

----------


## Earl of Purple

"I'll come along. You'd probably need someone a bit sneaky, and that can be me. I would also appreciate help getting there." Edward can't quite teleport, though he can move short distances fast enough that he appears to teleport. He's not displayed many of his abilities yet; just the power to summon swarms of rats or other vermin. "Eradicating your enemies can, sometimes, be the merciful choice. There are fates worse than death." Something Edward learnt in his time in Gristol, though he generally avoided it. He had to get his hands dirty, and so he did.

----------


## Rater202

_Alexandra responds by linking minds with the Astropath and answering the questions.

Am I human? By any reasonable definition.

Am I a threat? Only because you started it.

Harm? Call off the attack on the underhive and there will be no harm. Refuse? Well, no one innocent will be harmed.

Why am I sensing? Why do you think?

Am I an astropath? No. I'm something else entirely. All cards on the table, I'm probably closer to your Emporer than I am to anyone else in this galaxy.

Why the underhive? I have a soft spot for those who are forced into a second class existance by the biggotry and fanatism of others.

Am I powerful? Cosmically so.

See you soon._

Seh ceases communication but doesn' break the connection. If someone tries to shoot the messenger, so to speak, she'll use it as a medium for her psychokinesis to defend the poor, scared astropath.

"A psyker spotted me peaking. We have to go now if we want to have the element of surprise. I'll go in the front and draw their attention while you sneak around?"

Alexandra will teleport right in front of Goreman within the next minute, unless someone tris to shoot the messenger, regardless of the response from the others.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Astropath Xiao: One Minute*
He knows full well that Goreman has no authority to rescind these orders. They came from the Inquisition whose authority overrides all but the High Lords of Terra. At the same time if he doesn't do what this mysterious powerful psyker wants and they don't know that, and senses Goreman continuing to organize without knowing she might respond anyways. At the same time, Xiao didn't hold any particular liking for Goreman- the Rogue Trader ship he served on was impounded, the Rogue Trader's license and warrant stripped for engaging in xenotech trading and he was forced into being Goreman's personal diviner for crimes that might break out, and he didn't recall any particular legal basis for such a punishment- certainly Goreman was never known for his legal rigor.  So he quickly looked into the future to see what might transpire, trying to shift through the myriad possibilities the warp showed him:
-If He Messaged Goreman: _Visions of Goreman either declaring a rogue psyker as powerful as the Emperor as heresy or Goreman kicking the message over to the Inquisition as he didn't want to jeopardize the planets tithe, or Goreman declaring a rogue psyker must be captured and sent to the Black Ships as that was the law no matter what, Goreman declaring they didn't negotiate with criminals or heretics. Goreman attempting to shoot him and getting killed by the psyker. Battle breaking out at the precinct-fortress._
-If He Messaged the Inquisition: _Visions vary depending on which Inquisitor he contacted: One Inquisitor declaring him and the psyker heresy and wanting to use as many resources they can to destroy them, Another Inquisitor hoping to lure the psyker into a trap to capture them- and that not ending well for the Inquisitor, another one where the Inquisitor wants to negotiate believing that this may a shard of the Emperor himself and therefore holy. Worse Scintilla has an unusually high amount of Inquisitors due to the conclave here. There was a lot of other potential responses._
-If He Did Nothing: _Battle breaks out at the precinct-fortress. Arbites dying. rebellion. war. red redemptionist frateris militia burning mutants and scum with flamers with local adepta sororitas leading them, PDF being called in to help as fighting grows, then Imperial Guard as fighting goes on, march in like a flood of men across the wastelands of the world. visions of a strange seven-rainbow winged female demon with mirror skin summoning armies of the undead and clockwork to march against them alongside a small psyker whose purity of wrath and fury destroys all those who stand against her, a  man whose voice summons storms, and one who pilots a machine not unlike an Imperial Knight. Loss of Scintilla. Loss of Life. Doom, Death, Destruction._

By the Emperor, all these visions are terrible and he hated them. Why do bad things always outnumber the good things that could potentially happen? He hated his job sometimes. But he couldn't let this just happen. As a citizen of the Imperium he has been raised his entire life to think of its greater collective survival over individual wants or needs. He has a duty to make sure this doesn't go badly no matter how hard it is or how narrow the path. So he contacts the one person that according to his visions could ensure the best possible outcome: Inquisitor Rhiannon Lekkens.

He relays the information he knows to her including the visions as best he can and she responds
_<By the order of the Emperor's Holy Inquisition, I, Inquisitor Rhiannon Lekkens order Lord Marshal Goreman of the Adeptus Arbites to call off the attack on the underhive of Hive Sibellus, relay that to him.>_
Astropath Xiao does so. and Goreman responds
"What!? But the Inquisition just told me to start mobilizing for this attack in the first place! Why are they suddenly calling it off!? and why is it a different Inquisitor? I thought Inquisitor Vevarn was the one assigned to this."
_<Apparently they changed their mind, Lord Marshal, I don't know what to tell you.>_
He grumbles, calling off the attack.
What one must understand about the Inquisition is that each Inquisitor holds the authority of the voice of the Emperor and they are normally largely independent secretive agents- a planet with a conclave such as Scintilla is not a normal thing and some Inquisitors can do their jobs for decades without seeing a single other one sometimes. There is very little ranks in the actual Inquisition and the rank of Lord Inquisitor which technically outranks both Vevarn and Lekkens is more of a rank given out of respect and recognition of the experience they already have than anything else- it has no temporal or absolute authority. Legally speaking, Lekkens is completely within her authority to call it off just as Inquisitor Jethro Vevarn is to order it. Thus two Inquisitors who'd normally work independently and far away from each other and thus normally their orders would be unquestionable, now are on the same planet with the exact same amount of power, interfering with each others work. Unfortunately, when Inquisitors disagree, it usually ends violently.
Rhiannon knows this. She knows that the Inquisition has fought ideological internal wars over things most citizens of the Imperium never even understand or know about. But someone like Inquisitor Jethro Vevarn is no great loss. However this could be a vast gain indeed. 

She finds the nearest astropath at the Tricorn palace using their power to boost the signal of her own psychic power to telepathically send to Alexandra:
_<I am Inquisitor Rhiannon Lekkens and I have called off the attack on the underhive. I want to ask you a question: are you a shard of the God-Emperor of Mankind reborn?>_
She was no Thorian sure. But the resurrection of the God-Emperor of Mankind has been a goal of the Inquisition since the very beginning, and this rogue psyker checks a lot of boxes: incredibly powerful, a psychic signature unlike they've ever seen, incredible control over these psychic powers that most psykers never achieve, an willingness to protect humanity.  Ensara psychically overhears this message and says to Manyclops, Iota, Edward and Ezekiel
"Yeah, an Inquisitor just contacted Alexandra and asked if she was a shard of her god after saying the attacked was called off? What do we do?"
"What?" Manyclops says blinking with her all over her body "They think Alexandra here is the _God-Emperor of Mankind?_ Thats a new one on me, mate"
"Observation: I have no theological knowledge of why they would think this. That is a question for the Ecclesiarchy and.....given your values I doubt you'd like talking to any of them."
"But its a good thing roight?" Manyclops asks "He is supposed to be this savior of all humanity or somethin'. Supposed to protect us in some vague way while one day destroying all xenos, heretics and whatnot in the End Times or whatever."
"No idea. I was taught that he is the Omnissiah, the voice and prophet of the Machine God through which it speaks and gives knowledge unto us all. But remember that the Imperial Creed counts mutants as something to be exterminated along with those things- the return of the Emperor may not be good for you if their belief is true."
"...But...couldn't he like just....y'know....cause a miracle to happen and make me pure human so I don't have to die though, if he is so great?"
"Advisory: Manyclops, I would not hold onto such a faint hope."

*Inquisitor Vevarn:*
He receives word that the Adeptus Arbites has called off the attack on Rhiannon's orders. He loads his bolt pistol, his eyes burning with zealotry and determination.
"Well my Throne agents, it looks like we have an Amalathian to eliminate." 
They all nod and begin heading towards her location.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra decided that honesty is the best policy.

_No. I'm merely a cosmically powerful psychic who is morally opposed to religious fanatics murdering and enslaving civilians just because they happen to have some genetic mutation. Even if I was, I wouldn't claim it. It's my experience that Gods let you down."_

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Inquisitor Lekkens:*
Well thats odd. Someone of incredible psychic power who when given the opportunity, denies being the Emperor. At least she won't potentially cause a religious schism in the Imperium by trying to claim that. She's female so, not a Primarch. She doesn't refer to humans as mon-keigh, so not an Eldar. She is way too orderly and sane to be Chaos. Chaos wouldn't make a threat to _stop_ a war, *ever*. Its simply not what they do. What is she? Could she be some astronomically rare psyker mutation where gets Alpha Plus Psyker power, but keeps the sanity? That would explain why something like her hasn't been found in over 10,000 years. This being doesn't seem to know why the Imperium does these things either, but given how angry she sounds about it, Rhiannon is not sure if it was a wise idea from her position to tell her the reasons. Vengeful underhive scum care little for why the arbitrator's mace falls upon them only that it stops, and this being was incredibly powerful and could do far more. It was best to figure out her intentions quickly.
_<You aren't? Hm. Strange. Anyways, the last time a being of your power strode the stars, he conquered world upon world to reunite humanity and bring it under the rule of the Imperium, changing the face of the entire galaxy for ten thousand years to this day. What are your intentions or plans for this galaxy? It is my duty as Inquisitor to try to know this, whether you want me to or not.>_
Ensara will repeat this to everyone else.

Edit:
With no reply forthcoming, Ensara herself will answer, and use mind magic to make everyone hear the telepathic conversation
_<Well I don't know about any of my comrades, but there are actually four of us, I'm Ensara, she's Alex, and two guys named Edward and Ezekiel, as for goals well, interesting question. I personally as an adventurer want to right wrongs, save innocents, make things better for people all that usual hero stuff but I also like to gather cool weapons, magic, knowledge, martial arts techniques, things like that, I'm a collector in that sense. If I recall correctly your Imperium has a lot of cool weapons, I think I'll probably be taking some, the two guys want knowledge and to help people I think and Alex here I think is like straight superhero compassionate, wants to protect people and fight oppression and tyranny which you seem to be so dunno how this negotiation is going to work, but lets keep going and see what happens y'know?>
<Uh....well...hm thats...okay.....didn't expect this....babbling fool but if she is accurate then....you four? Seem to possess a morality at odds with how the Imperium operates. If what you say about yourselves is true there are many things about the Imperium you will take issue with.

But we can have a civil war about that later. If your truly as powerful as you say, and you truly hold such a value on peoples lives then I have several existential threats to the entire galaxy to tell you about. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider you allies, but if you truly want to save people then its a mutual benefit to both of us if you eliminate the threats that Inquisition is aware of. For example, the Tyranids: a swarm of space bugs from other galaxies with a hivemind that want to do nothing but eat everything, incredibly adaptable, eats the biomatter of entire planets, and according to our projections will devour the entire galaxy if not stopped....but the Imperium doesn't have the planets or resources to stop them ourselves. If you can get rid of the Tyranids somehow, you'd be saving all life in the galaxy. There is no negotiating with Tyranids, no one in the galaxy likes them, its the clearest cut case that heroic-minded people like you can get behind, wouldn't you agree?>
<Yes, the Tyranids does sound quite bad. We will have to deal with them somehow. But why are you doing this? Should you not be declaring us heretics or something?>
<Your morality while potentially damaging to the Imperium is little different from the Salamanders, Space Wolves or the Blood Angels. All have their use, and it would be a waste of resources of this planet on a being as powerful as the Emperor when they could possibly be used as tool to benefit the Imperium. I cannot ally with you but I can assess the potential risks of directing you at our enemies. Whatever civil war or reformation you could potentially cause to damage the Imperium will be less damaging than the Tyranids devouring us all or the Orks wiping us out in a Waaagh too big for us to handle. A potentially risky revolution period versus the almost certainty of oblivion- duty compels me to choose the former, no matter how much I disagree with your values. If this is truly what you value whatever you do in your naive righteous fury down the line will be less of a problem than the actual threats to our existence at our doorstep. 

And if your lying, all you have to do, to destroy the Imperium and all of humanity....is absolutely nothing, the way things are going. Sit back and watch the world burn. Its not as if I can stop you.>
<We are not lying about our intentions, I am certain of that.>
<Well then if we can arrange a meeting place, I can gather some relevant files on threats you might want to deal with to ensure our collective survival and I can pass them onto you, possibly provide you a warp capable ship so that you can get out of my hair. I however cannot promise any sanctioning or immunity from the Imperium at large- it is possible that this very call and the actions I'm taking could be considered heresy in of itself and my Inquisitorial status revo->_
Suddenly she get cut off.
"What!? The telepathic communication suddenly went dead!"
Ensara by impulse, teleports all four of them to the location where the telepathic call was coming from.

*Tricon Palace: Rhiannon Lekkens Vs. Jethro Vevarn*
You four teleport in to find a firefight happening. Inquisitor Rhiannon Lekkens is hiding behind cover of an ornate statue, loading her gun while an astropath corpse with its head blown off is on the ground, with Jethro Vevarn his throne agents fire at her, consisting of a storm trooper, a judge, an adepta sororitas and some high ranking priest. In contrast to the dingy underhive, this place is quite ornate with a lot of golden skulls and gothic architecture everywhere. Inquisitor Lekkens is busy calling on her combead for her own throne agents to assist her, spotting you and just looking confused, while Inquisitor Vevarn is saying:
"Who were you communicating with, Lekkens!? Those scum were going to serve the Imperium! But now you've gotten in the way, and probably up to something heretical with that astropath."
"None of your concern, Vevarn!"
"Ah well, they were a witch anyways and needed to die sooner or later. and who are you four!? You just appeared out of nowhere....what heresy is this!? shoot them! Shoot them all!"

----------


## Earl of Purple

Edward was _not_ expecting that sudden teleportation. He stumbles slightly upon arrival, and upon hearing the order to shoot he inhales deeply before turning to the gunmen and Shouting. "*Zun Haal VIIK!*" After hopefully disarming them, he raises his hand and Blinks over to the closest Inquisitorial lackey- in the event of a tie, he'll pick the stormtrooper- and swings his duelling cane at their head, following by strikes to knees, elbows, and groins. The armour means the hardwood cane isn't going to be as effective as usual; however if it's made of metal the electrifying enchantment placed upon the wood may prove more effective than expected.

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel has done enough teleporting in his life to be ready for it, so he doesn't stumble when he is relocated. He immediately sets up his A-Wall and crouches behind it, firing on the priest with his shotgun. He also points to an area a few metres behind himself and says "Standby for Titanfall".

A holographic countdown appears in the spot Ezekiel pointed out.
5
4
3
2
1
Once the countdown hits 0, a 20-foot tall heavy mech hits the ground in the marked area with a massive BOOOOOOSH. It's very bulky and equipped with, among other things, a huge Leadwall shotgun and 2 different missile launchers. Ezekiel greets it with "Excess! Good to see you, buddy! You would not believe the day I've had." as he embarks the Titan, entering it through a hatch on the front which opens up. The Titan responds with "Eliminating enemy combatants. And, it is good to see you too, Ezekiel." as it fires its Leadwall at Jethro and his four agents.

----------


## Rater202

Seeing that her companions have the hostiles, Alexandra casually turns and walks to where Inquisitor Lekkens is taking cover.

"Does this sort of thing happen often?"

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Jumper Gang Vs. Vevarn's Throne Agents:*
Inquisitor Lekkens pauses for a second as if realizing something.
"....You mean Infighting? Huh now that I think about it yeah it does. On the local level at least. Never thought about how this job is like herding murderous cats who hate each other, I just did it. But I guess its better than the alternative of something like the Horus Heresy."
"Wait, this is the _better_ option!?"
"Local scale infighting versus galactic scale infighting is not a hard choice."
She stares at the bolt gun in her hands, considers how the battle is going and says with her usual stern expression.
"Also my actions have just led to four renegades with dangerous unknown powers that I doubt any of us can defeat into an Inquisitorial Conclave. Tsk. I should probably be using this on myself because I doubt its going to work on you and you might break me."
"How about**: because you sound like one of the few reasonable people here, you don't do that for the continuing survival of humanity?"
"Yeah, your right a lot of Radical Inquisitors have done much worse than this to get results and lived with themselves afterwards."
"Y'know what? I'm not even going to ask."
Ensara then runs into the fight herself. 

Meanwhile, the actual fight is....well.... All their gun weapons go flying from their hands in various because of the Shout. The mech suddenly flying in will making Jethro goes behind cover and running. The Storm Trooper in response to Edward, draws a combat knife, probably issued to all guardsmen to try and stab him. As for damage....carapace armor, much like flak armor is intended to defend against small arms fire, made of ceramite or armaplas both heat resistant alloys intended to stand up to lasgun and normal guns. However thermal resistance is not electrical resistance and this armor is only designed to protect what its expected to protect against, and thus Edward's cane shocks the storm trooper, bringing him down, whether he is dead or not is up to whether or not Edward intended to kill him with this.

As for Ezekiel, its actually a pretty good decision to bring out the mech, all of these lackeys are wearing carapace armor: 
The Judge, a senior adeptus arbites is not so lucky as he is the middle of drawing his power mace: A Titanfall Mech seems to basically be a tank on legs. The Leadwall, is basically a giant shotgun. His judge carapace armor is not too different from the Storm troopers. He gets shot, the pellets piercing through the carapace and filling him with holes, falling over and bleeding out. 

Underneath his robes, the Hierophant is also wearing carapace and gets pierced through while he draws his Eviscerator chainsword, there a glow of divine light in him as he begins to stand up, bleeding from his wounds muttering 
"The...Emperor....Protects....The Emperor gives me strength....AGAINST THIS FOUL SORCERER!!"
And tries to charge at Edward, with zealotry and determination, swinging his big two-handed chainsword wildly. 
Its a miracle that he is even standing.

The Crusader on the other hand simply blocks the gunfire at him with his Storm shield-basically this big metal tower shield he is carrying on his left arm, shimmering with some forcefield able to withstand even heavy weaponry like this. He then draws his power sword from its sheath and charges at Ezekiels mech, trying to cut off one of the legs, also shimmering with energy able to easily slice through flesh and armor alike.

The Sororitas is of course wearing power armor, and draws her chain sword. Her armor is only a little less protective than astartes power armor, and she has yet to earn her helm. A Titanfall is roughly comparable to the Imperial Knight in some respects.....yeah, when the shots hit her, the giant shotgun shells pierce the power armor and she falls down...but a flicker of divine light glows across her and the Sororitas stands up back, bleeding but miraculously somehow still alive and with a determined look her face. She yells
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
and charges at the Titanfall mech as well, swinging her chainsword with great zeal, having no fear of death. Her slash is blocked by another chainsword- Ensara's chainsword that she picked up earlier, grinning wickedly while sparks fly from the chain blades grinding against each other.
"Hello there. Interesting armor you have there. Mind if I take it off you in exchange for sparing your life?"
"I'll never agree to that, heretic!"
"Okay, I'll just take it from your corpse then."
She then expertly disarms the Sororitas with expert swordplay, then beheads her, chainsaw blades ripping through her flesh. Not even the pure faith of the Adepta Sororitas could let her push through that. 

Inquisitor Vevarn on the other hand on his commbead is quickly reporting while running:
"All Inquisitors! Four heretics have just breached the Tricorn Palace! One of them is piloting an Imperial Knight-sized titan of some sort, seemingly of Tau make! Another has some sorcerous power to disarm you! and I think I heard an Abominable Intelligence speak! Use all available force to purge them in the name of the Emperor!"
Faithful though he was, Inquisitor Vevarn knew better than to think he could fight an Imperial Knight. His loyal throne agents that have worked for him for years? Eeeeeh, acceptable losses. He could get others for his retinue. This Inquisitorial conclave however had various files on threats both galactic and local, as well as various Inquisition-only assets and equipment, was the Inquisition's base for the entire Calixis Sector. It NEEDED to stand. He didn't know how or why the Cold Trade got a frakking Tau titan all the way in Calixis when the Tau are on the other side of the galaxy, but he didn't care. What was once a private matter of eliminating a Inquisitor who disobeyed orders now was a security breach.

Edit:
Also to Ezekiel the title "THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS" appears for Inquisitor Lekkens and "BETTER A MILLION INNOCENTS DIE, THAN ONE GUILTY GO FREE" appears for Inquisitor Vevarn.

----------


## Earl of Purple

Edward is stabbed. He lets himself get stabbed and grunts in pain, since he can heal himself and doesn't have to let it stop him. Edward's going for the kill, and after he's dealt with the Stormtrooper and pulled the knife out, he hears someone scream, the revving of a chainsaw, and looks to see someone running towards him. His Voice has a cooldown, which is unfortunate, but Blink does not- he uses the Outsider's magic to teleport behind the screaming fanatic before turning and drawing his pistol, aiming at the man's back and firing an explosive bullet between his shoulder blades.

----------


## Gold Leaf

Actually, that reminds me - Ezekiel's Titan is supposed to get its own subtitle, so here you go:

XS-5072 - IN EXCESS, AND XL

"Activating Gun Shield." A large, hexagonal energy shield is projected in front of XS, centered on the Leadwall. That, plus the fact XS is backing up a little, means the sword attack should miss its target. "In an energy shield measuring contest, you would be sorely outclassed." The Titan quips.  "Nice one, Excess!" Ezekiel laughs.

"Thanks for the save, Ensara. But you'll probably want to move from that spot, I'm going to stomp this guy out and you won't want to be too close." He left the radio off when he said that, meaning nobody would have heard it. Nobody with non-_super_ hearing, anyways. Wink wink nudge nudge.

Next, as warned, the Titan raises its foot, and tries to bring it crashing down over the Crusader's head. That shield is strong, but it won't need to be the only thing to survive being stepped on by 63 tonnes of metal.

Ezekiel decides now would be as good a time as any to give XS a sitrep. Of course, he keeps an eye on the field, because he's not about to let himself get blindsided. "Okay, let me give you a quick run-down of the situation. The well-dressed man who can teleport, the woman who just expertly disarmed an enemy with expert swordplay, and the girl in the superheroine garb? Those are Edward, Ensara, and Alexandra, our allies. They have superpowers. Real ones. Like in first-rate comics, or second-rate videogames, or third-rate card games. The people trying and failing to murder us are our enemies. Anyone who doesn't fit any of those descriptions is either on our side, or just knows better than to try and shoot at us."

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra uses a controlled electromagnetic field to try and fry the other side's communications. It does absolutely nothing to her side's tech, as she has nanoscale precise control of her powers.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Jumper Gang Vs.....Inquisitor Vevarn?*
Edward's teleport behind the zealot takes him by surprise and he dies as the explosive bullet pierces his back and explodes within. You can imagine the bloody remains yourself. Meanwhile Ensara hears the warning and speeds away in a red wind- but the Crusader who had attacked Ezekiel suddenly notices
"Hey wait, where did my sword and shield go-"
Before being crushed under the stomp. Ensara snickers to herself. She was still a thief without peer.

Inquisitor Vevarn meanwhile is desperately asking through the voxbead 
"Hello? hello!? No one's responding! Why is no one responding!?"
Ensara arrives in front Vevarn, red wind trailing behind her, with a fanged grin on her face.
"Yeah who wouldn't want to talk to your _wonderful_ personality?"
Vevarn reacts by firing his digi-las, from his finger, red beam going straight for her face- and suddenly her palm, unbelievably fast, suddenly _catches the laser._ The red beam of light is now held in her hand, and now she is turning it over in her grip, like a spear, examining it with fascinated eyes, the laser seemingly acting as if its a solid object while its in her hand. 
"Huh, I wonder how many Ki users in Gaia have done this? I'd personally say an Exalt could probably pull this off to but I can't test given that I have both powers..."
Vevarn's eyes widen at the sheer impossibility of this, back away while drawing his sword- a sanctified power sword.
"Your toying with me, that you'll be your last mistake witch!"
While distracted by the laser in her hand, her Exalted senses alerted her to the danger and she suddenly changes her grip on the laser and uses it as a sword to block the power sword strike- but recoiling at the mere sight of the blade.
"Agh! You nearly caught me off guard with that. The blade hurts to look at, is that a holy blade!? You could've hurt me with that. Of course your white mana why would you be anyth-"
Vevarn, noticing that the laser has no crossguard, rides his blade down to slice her hand off, Ensara's form distorting into something more demonic for a second, making the laser shoot off into the wall now that its no longer held and Ensara grips her stump in pain, Jethro running past her to get help while she yells, her voice going more demonic
*"YOU FANATICAL SON OF BITCH! WHY IS IT ALWAYS HOLY SWORDS!? DO YOU KNOW HOW PAINFUL THAT IS!?"*
"DAEMO-" Vevarn attempts to yell but suddenly is caught and gagged by shadows, Ensara using her left hand to cast and hold the magic. With planeswalker will, she heals her right hand up
*"But you never stood a chance against me. I can heal and rebuild myself at will, holy weapons are just really painful to me. I think since your an Inquisitor extracting all information you have from your mind will be a fitting karmic comeuppance don't you think?"*

Inquisitor Rhiannon looks at Alexandra
"So....since your not killing or capturing me for some reason, I might as well say: If people walk in on this they will see it as heresy and shoot on sight. How am I going to explain this to the Inquisition? I'll give you anything to leave, my minimal offer is a warp-capable ship, a navigator, files on the major threats to mankind and an astropath if you need one, I'm not going below that. You can kill Inquisitor Vevarn if you want, I don't care, he's faithful, his soul will go the God-Emperor."
"Mrmmrmrmrgh!" Jethro says through the gag.
"Quiet Jethro, I'm sacrificing you for the good of the Imperium."
She says with a complete straight face. 

However you hear rapid footsteps coming down the hall around the corner, probably people coming to check out the big crashing sound, the sounds of gunfire and shouting. What will you do?

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel watches this whole thing play out from inside the cockpit. 

"XS, is there an error with the visual feed?"

"Visuals are fully operational."

"'...I see."

He is kind of left speechless after watching Ensara catch a laser with his bare hands, to the point that her losing a hand and going demonic is it that time of the month already? almost doesn't faze him in comparison. Ezekiel isn't too averse to demons - not that he's ever met any, but both them and him (scientist) are the natural enemy of religious fanatics, and an enemy's enemy is a friend.

On hearing the footsteps, XS turns to face the doorway. Leadwall at the ready in case they're enemies.

----------


## Earl of Purple

Yeah, Edward's feeling a little out-classed right now. Ezekiel has a mecha and Ensara just duelled with a laser and regrew a hand. He's not entirely sure what he saw when she shifted like that, but... she did say she had multiple souls. Maybe it's something like that? Besides, he's met werewolves and vampires and weirder things, like Koloss, and mostly fought and killed them. He's going to flick some of the zealot's gore off his jacket and holster his pistol, walking over to the corpse and lift the Eviscerator. "Who thinks this is a sword? It's... it's horrific. I wanna keep it." It's nearly as big as the Koloss longsword, though hopefully not as heavy. He'll try and turn it off first, because nobody really wants it waved close to his face.

If asked about the Inquisitor's deal, Edward's happy with what's offered. He'd suggest a Warrant of Trade or Letter of Marque, but he's not familiar enough with this universe to know of such things- and Ensara's existing trade network might already cover such a thing.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra with try and telekinetically wrench Inquistor asshat's neck.

"For now, the Underhive is off-limits. Permenantly. An attack on it or it's people is an attack on me and will be treated as such. I'll talk your offer over with the others and get back to you."

"Everyone else, I'm going to try and establish a mind-link so I can teleport us out of here, normally I'd ask permission first, but..."

Alexandra proceeds to do exactly that, try and establish a psychic connection to the others so that she can use her Matriach ability to channel her power through them, then teleport back to the Underhive. If someone for whatever reason doesn't want to leave yet they can resist, she's not gonna force anyone, but...

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
Inquisitor Rhiannon raises an eyebrow That was easier than she expected
"Very well, we shall continue this negotiation while I get things arranged."
She was taking the digi-las off his finger when Jethro Vevarn suddenly dies. Okay, no mind reading the Inquisitor for her. Then she hears what Alex plans to do next and decides to resist only to teleport herself back to Iota-Phi's...shack with a bolt pistol, plasma pistol (two weapons that had flown off during the disarm shout) and the adepta sororitas power armor in her possession a few seconds later.
"For studying purposes you understand, I do want to learn about this world's technology myself as I AM an artificer."

Iota was explaining Chaos to Manyclops when you teleport back in
"...And thats why they are incredibly dangerous and you should never accept a deal from them."
"Yes, yes got it cogboy, four big spooky entities in some hell-place to never make a deal with." Manyclops responds.
They jump in surprise a little at your return.
"Oi, what were you doin'? You disappeared all of a sudden!"
Ensara explains the situation to them. Iota-Phi considers this
"Observation: You could probably hold out for more. For one, the crew population of such any ship worth flying is somewhere in the 10,000-25,000 range, due to the Imperium and the Mechanicus not allowing any Artificial Intelligence based automation. They are practically small societies or little cities unto themselves. She probably rushed the terms a bit considering the urgency of the situation and thus forgot that particular detail. Though considering your morals on such matters, it might be harder to recruit such a crew than normal, as often in the Imperium such ships are not picky on how they acquire crew, often outright simply taken from their planet and used basically as slave labor to operate and load the cannons."
"Oooooh no. Nope we are not doing slaves. I'm going to have to start making some improvements on the design of whatever ship we get."
"There is also the matter of food. Life Sustainer systems will recycle air and water, but we'll need to think about resupplies of food for those that need it."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean stopping by various agri-worlds to trade or restock up on food whenever they get low."
"Wait.... have you lost the methods of hydroponics?"
"What. No, hydroponics is a known art. Why do you speak of it? Its used on space stations and to extensively to optimize crop production on some agri-worlds."
".....but not the ships.....why?"
"Well its not as if you can bring a star with you to make the crops grow."
"....Okay. Do you know what ultraviolet radiation is?"
"Issat..." Manyclops asks "some light that glows off the legendary Ultramarines?"
"....No." Ensara says to her chagrin
"Never mind her. an Auspex detects all sorts of things, ultraviolet radiation included. It is known but we do not see how it is relevant." Iota answers
"....by Malfeas, ultraviolet radiation is _the food plants grow from_."
"They are? I thought that was sunlight."
"sigh....Utraviolet radiation is apart of sunlight, and it can be artificially replicated. Using things called UV lamps. I see I'll have to reinvent some things to make the we get more comfortable."
"Aren't you loik....some weird spirit thingy of great power? shouldn't you be using yer powers for greater problems than things like that?" Manyclops questions
"I'll get to those problems when I get to them, and solving problems like this keeps me grounded and human to some extent."
"Okay..."

*Inquisitor Lekkens: Endure Inquisitorial Meeting*
Some time will pass as she will explain to the storm troopers that come for her the Jethro Vevarn totally was a Khorne cultist heretic trying to subvert the orders to have a bloody battle in the underhives and put in requisitions for the minimal things that the jumpers will need. however the other Inquisitors are not fools and have pulled her into a meeting to collectively....interrogate her about her actions. 
"Inquisitor Lekkens" a Lord Inquisitor, not Caidin this time, looks upon her sternly "After your supposed purging of Vevarn as a heretic, you have made some quite curious requisitions. Almost as if your arranging to appoint a new rogue trader. Furthermore you claim that the rogue psyker your own acolytes were so concerned about earlier has been "handled", and more curiously the scene of your little scuffle with this apparent heretic has been missing a few pieces of technology: power sword, storm shield, bolt pistol, plasma pistol, digi-las and adepta sororitas power armor. One would think you'd at least find them broken or shattered in whatever fight occurred, but they are nowhere to be seen, as well as there being a big hole in the ceiling as if crashed from the sky by an Imperial Knight, with storm troopers hearing quite the commotion.

Furthermore there is an astropath that has been killed by a bolter round to the head. Other astropaths in the Tricorn palace reported you sending out a psychic communication of some kind that they were unable to discern the contents of. Pray tell, what is the nature of your "handling" of this rogue psyker situation when you were ordered to kill them and what is your intention with these requisitions, and what is your explanation for all this? Keep in mind, you are nothing special or irreplaceable, Rhiannon Lekkens. Failure to comply with our investigation and we will assume you and Vevarn both guilty of heresy and simply eliminate you. and if you are truly a faithful servant of the Imperium, you will find your unknown sacrifice acceptable service to the God-Emperor of Mankind."
"Understood, lord inquisitor." she says "I will explain thusly: the actions I have taken, I honestly believe are what is best for the God-Emperor, the Imperium and all of Mankind.

the rogue psyker known as Alexandra is a being nearly as powerful as the God-Emperor himself. My own psychic senses told me so. It'd be the height of foolishness to fight her. I have instead saved us all valuable time and resources through negotiation and have successfully pointed her and her allies at our enemies. My hope is that they will find a way to solve some problems we do not have the power to do. In return, they have simply asked that the underhives of this planet are not to be harmed. If you truly want an extra tithe of men to throw at the Octarius situation there are plenty of other planets in this sector that can spare it. Our efforts were united in getting rid of Vevarn's heresy. I am simply providing them the means to get out of this sector which does not have the resources to deal with the threat they pose and towards warzones and beings that stand a chance of getting rid of them or vice versa. Either outcome would be beneficial to us."
Inquisitor Merenda says
"But you could've tried to capture or trick this Alexandra and shipped her away so she could take the Emperor's place on the Golden Throne! If she is truly so powerful, then nothing is important than than switching them so that the God-Emperor can walk once again, free to command us once more! Even if her time is short as say, Malcador the Hero's, who knows what could the Emperor could do?"
Rhiannon shakes her head
"No, that plan would be unrealistic. We don't have the forces to try such things in the Calixis sector. And informing them of the Golden Throne at all would be endanger the entire Imperium, as they had shown sympathetic tendency towards another astropath known as Xiao, likely to see the sacrifice to psykers to maintain the Imperium as unacceptable. We'd need things like the Sisters of Silence or Culexus assassins to even try to capture her and her allies, and that requires contacting and working with Holy Terra as well as.....someplace more secretive. We need to buy time to be more prepared for such a plan. Meanwhile we just let them have whatever outcasts and exiles they are likely to demand. In terms of philosophy and behavior I'd guess these renegades goals are similar to say, a Recongregator Inquisitor in terms of outlook, likely to go after the institutions, laws and rulers they believe to be rotting the Imperium's core so that they could reforge it newer and stronger. We let them have what they want now, send them on their way then hopefully they will deal with some outstanding problems for us while we prepare for them to come back, and write off anyone who becomes loyal to them as a traitor, we have humans to spare, and we'll be better prepared to deal with them at a later date. The worst thing they could is cause a civil war in the Imperium, which is better than the destruction of it entirely compared to our other foes."
She explains it to them, but another Inquisitor grunts
"I don't like this, this is reminding me of Inquisitor Kryptman. The last time we listened to someone like him about sending one enemy to fight another, we got the Octarius War and now we all sit and wait to see whether the Orks or the Tyranids emerge from it to kill the entire galaxy from getting stronger from fighting each other, with a flimsy picket fence of Cordon Impenetra to contain them. How do we know your plan won't cause a similar disaster?"
"The difference between me and him, Inquisitor, is that my actions will save Imperial worlds from falling instead of wasting them on a scorched earth tactic that we can't feasibly do. As for Octarius....what are the Tyranids going to do, devour her and incorporate whatever gene that makes her a near-God-Emperor level psyker thus dooming us all?"
Her rhetorical question is met with glares and stony silence, letting the stupidity of her question sink in.
".....Oh right, knowing our luck thats exactly what would happen."
"Rhiannon Lekkens...." the Lord Inquisitor "Explain why we shouldn't just exile you from the Inquisition right here and now."
"Exile!? For what reason?"
"It is a divine commandment from the God-Emperor that all psykers found be taken on the Black Ships. The only safe psyker is one that is in the Imperium's control. This "in control near-god emperor level psyker" could just be some deception from the Archenemy. No possibility is too bad to contemplate. Your action to delay their capture while sensible given our current resources is still too much risk to accept. Your plan is sound and we will use it, but you yourself have potentially become corrupt through interaction with such a powerful entity and the seed of heresy could be planted, to reveal itself later. after all if they so much more powerful than you, they could've manipulated your mind to make you work out such a deal with them. Therefore there is no guarantee that you won't manipulate us all into a trap where this Alexandra wins against us, corrupted by whatever thoughts or manipulations they planted within you. Therefore....why not exile you, and make you the new rogue trader in charge of the ship they'll be getting? There is after a spare Warrant of trade around after that arrest of one smuggling xenotech."
"You hypocritical bastards! I took the most _reasonable possible option_ to ensure we all live, gave you the best chance to use this situation to our advantage! And your just taking my plan then cutting me out of it because I MIGHT be corrupted!? There is no evidence that I am corrupted, no evidence that this rogue psyker is apart of Chaos! This is all mere suspicion!"
"You forget, Lekkens, the motto of the Inquisition: Innocence Proves Nothing. Thus evidence is meaningless. Just because you think you know your innocent, doesn't mean you are. Your interactions with this Alexandra might've already compromised you. If your truly a servant of the Emperor still, you'll relish this chance to serve him, to prove us wrong by being a spy in her ranks instead of a spy for her in ours. And if you do turn traitor, best that we keep you away from anything important no?"
"I thought the Inquisition was about protecting humanity."
the lord Inquisitor stares down at her with contempt.
"We are- the way we have done so for ten thousand years, EX-Inquisitor Lekkens."

*Soon:*
After some time while you discuss demands, a voxcaster is thrown into Iota-Phi's house from the shadows and whoever did it runs away while the vox speaks in bitter, angry edges to her tone:
"Hello. Its me, Rhiannon Lekkens. the Inquisition is going with my plan and will not harm the underhives on this planet, but have altered it to strip me of my rank and force me to be the rogue trader on the ship you will be using. They do not trust telepathic communication and think I'm potentially corrupted, and don't want anyone else to be potentially corrupted or subverted by talking to you, so I'm being used as a spokeswoman for them. Do not bother protesting my innocence, it proves nothing. What are your further demands?"

You have had time to think and discuss this, so don't feel as if you need to rush your demands or anything.

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Wait. Just because artificial intelligence is outlawed, that doesn't mean we don't have any. Come outside, I'll show you something good."

Ezekiel noticed that his Titan was teleported just outside the shack, so he beckons for everyone to follow him out. When they do, he will begin introducing XS to those who haven't previously met him.

"Manyclops, Iota-Phi, meet XS-5072. XS, Manyclops and my friend Iota-Phi 34."

The massive combat mech acknowledges the two with a "Greetings. I am Ezekiel's Titan."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Iota-Phi and Manyclops Grapple with Robophobia:*
They nervously follow outside and regard the AI-mech with fear, Iota shivering while Manyclops eyes all over her body are wide and staring straight at XS. Keep in mind, that about fifteen thousand years of it being outlawed and warned against in their culture, raising these two for their entire lives is at work here. This is a fear older than the Imperium of Man itself. It is at this point, near primal in how ingrained it is, much like the fear of snakes or other predators. They cannot overcome this in mere seconds.
"That-it-that....it.....er....why'd you put it in a big....walking...machine...with guns...? Is it really that....friendly towards you?" asks Manyclops
"Observation: I-I-I-I-I am both fascinated and terrified." he says, stuttering like a computer does in his speech "Its like an Im-m-m-perial Knight but more blocky and utilitarian, why do you not decorate it with the colors and heraldry of your house? Shouldn't you need to appease it in some manner? It is a titan that can destroy everyone here, why is it no-o-o-o-o-t lording its superiority over us? Are our guns safe from being taken over by it? Could it take me over? Oh Omnissiah what if its possessed by a daemon!?"
"Wait, vehicles be possessed by daemons!?" Manyclops says
"Yes. Once had to blow up a tank possessed by one. Shame, was a Leman Russ tank. good pattern."
"but why is no one coming to steal it? You'd think some dumb bloke try to steal it fer a joy-ride down here....:
Manyclops with one her eyes grown on her back spies all the other underhive gangers hiding and cowering in the shadows, not going near Iota's shack.
"What're you lot doing there!?"
"We's staying away from the big metal cogboy contraption that can talk and has big guns!" they answer back. "Why you so close to it!? You gotta a death wish!? Back away slowly maybe it won't see you as a threat if you don't make any sudden movements!"
"Such a measure is useless, this one is 86% sure that is advice for avoiding creatures of the ursine category being misapplied."
"you mean those scary folk tale beasties called bears some planets have?" Manyclops asks
"No. there are many species worse than mere bears in the ursine category. Why are we talking about ursine creatures, a terrifying Silica Animus, an AI is in front us!"
"Thanks mate, there goes the talk to distract me from that!"
"You mean thats not one of them machine spirits yer always talkin' about!?" one of the gangers shout from the back
"Most definitely not. Machine spirits are completely different from AI."
".....How?" Manyclops asks
"The machine spirits have/are souls, AI do not."
"But.....how do you know that them there metal guy doesn't have a soul and why would that matter to 'im trying to kill us all? Lots of people have souls and still kill other people." Manyclops points out
Iota-Phi 34 raises a metal finger but can't find a response to that.
"So....how do you know them machine spirits aren't just....AI too?" Manyclops asks fearfully.
Iota-Phi is pensive, deep in thought at this, still staring at XS.
".....How do I know, indeed?"

*Ensara:*
"I believe there is a couple specific people I think our group wants, see there is this Astropath Xiao, I think he might not have been imprisoned legally, and also we might want this blank in the precinct fortress, called Nebette I think?"
"....Why in the Emperor's name do you want a blank?" asks Rhiannon
"They're interesting. Y'know want to learn about them, how they work, that sort of thing. Curiosity."
"A dangerous trait to have in these times, but okay."
"As for the crew for this vessel, we probably won't need as big a crew as you normally gather for this vessel as I'll be taking measures to ensure certain things aren't....necessary, but its still a matter of ethics for us as to where they come from. We do not want anyone unwilling to come with us. Xiao and Nebette will be given a choice to come with us or not of course."
"You'd be that open to people turning you down?"
"Of course! Every individual chooses their own way in life- but that won't stop me from making my best sales pitch for coming with us, won't it? You have a choice to, Rhiannon Lekkens. Just because your not welcome in the Inquisition doesn't mean you HAVE to come with us, necessarily."
"My other option isn't conducive to my survival."
"For now, sure, logical, but! There is always the next choice."
"Of very many bad options."
"But hey at least you can choose! But to continue focusing on the negotiation: Where exactly within this sector would you go for some technological upgrades?"
"The Lathe Worlds, the center of tech priest power in the sector but why, you can't possibly go there before you acquire the ship."
"Oh I don't need it! Its more of a courtesy or service I'm helping to acquire for everyone else. Everyone's got to have a home, even if its only a temporary one. That and I doubt anyone among my new acquaintances/friends wants to order slaves to load the cannons in battle. I'll be off getting boring tech from the Mechanicus since they are probably hoarding the good stuff. Be back....soon-ish. Don't finalize the deal without me."
"Thats not the point, how are you getting there without a ship!?"
Silence. Ensara has teleported away.
"....She is already gone isn't she?"

_On Lathe-Hesh:_
She will arrive on Lathe-Hesh in an alley. She will see tech priests in their red robes and cog designs, her form becomes mirror-reflective quicksilver flowing into a new shape, settling into a tech priest , asking a tech priest where she might find the spaceship yards, as she is a tech priest from off world come here on pilgrimage work on such holy machines. She is directed to the Ordinatus Yards, she thanks the tech priest then teleports there when out of sight, there she continues her infiltration, looking at the ships and automation they had with blue mana magic, scanning them and how they work and using her superhuman Exalt skills to copy down the designs she sees on paper. 

It is not something she can do instantly; her writing is faster than any human, accurate as if a computer had printed it out, her blue divination magic is great, but she has to do it in bursts when tech priests are not looking, and she has to examine multiple ships, automated manufactoriums and the like due to not knowing what ship they'll be getting. And sure she could probably using her artificer knowledge and magic to make replacement automation, but its best to draw upon the native universes technological principles- the more complex the machine, the more moving parts and things that can go wrong. Introducing entirely different rules into it further increases complexity. And these machines are very complex. Some of them, most certainly the creations of a society more advanced than the Imperium- given their backwards superstitious ways, she wagered some of the tech she saw counted as relics. Every so often she looks down at her notes and sees little flaws that from her deductions are signs of imperfect copies- no person making these things knowing what are doing would make these mistakes. They must be taking these designs as immutable recipes or something when they don't realize that the recipes and instructions themselves are flawed.  She will have to correct these when she is done copying the designs down. 
_<Zinara: and why aren't you collecting other knowledge here?>
<Ensara: Because I'm not with the other Jumpers! If I was alone in this jump sure I'd be going full hog, but I'd rather adventure with them than without, and why spoil the fun of discovery? I'm doing this because spaceship auto-loaders are some obscure tech that isn't interesting and just makes our lives ethically easier, the fun stuff are things we discover together.>_

----------


## Rater202

"Yeah. She has. I'm going to b blunt, she's an exalt, they do that. If we're going to be traveling together, you should probably know that were travelers from other universes here against our will."

"And I have some companions who should probably be consulted on this if we're assembling a crew. I don't want to leave them cooped up in my warehouse and that means that they need to be able to get along with people. Give me a moment."

Alexandra opens her Warehouse, steps into, heads from there to her manor, and then steps back out.

A few minutes later a girl a little younger than Alexandra steps out of the warehouse. Her pale skin is tinted green, as are the whites of her eyes, with a lock of red hair in her otherwise dark brown. She's dressed in what can best be described as a "little red riding hood outfit" made entirely out of still living, vibrant green leaves of differant sizes, though her legs and feet are bare. She sits down next to Alexandra after taking in the interior of Manyclops shack.

Is Molly coming?

"She'll be here in a minute, she insisted on putting on her makeup."

----------


## Earl of Purple

"I've got a smaller walking machine. It's got... an esoteric power source, I'm afraid, but I've got a stockpile already if we need it." It's not as intelligent, since it doesn't have a brain, though Edward doesn't have the drugs the City Watch gave their tallboy pilots to reduce their empathy and ability to feel pain. Hopefully they won't need it, as it's probably inferior to an Imperial Guard Sentinel, especially the armoured ones.

Edward's going to take this opportunity to walk around the Titan and investigate it properly, though.

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel answers Manyclops and Iota's questions as they come, with XS chiming in too occasionally.

"Well, I didn't make him. The IMC did. That said, the versatility of a bipedal design such as a Titan's is unparalleled. And he definitely isn't a mean AI. I would know." To be honest, Ezekiel's known one or two AIs more malignant than XS, so their fear isn't completely unexplained to him. GlaDOS and Claptrap come to mind, pathetic as the latter is.

"My house? As in, my faction? I just didn't feel like spending the credits on a paintjob. Two different missile launchers is individuality enough, in my opinion." Personalising your Titan is more of a Militia thing. Then again, there are few Titans like XS in the IMC anyways.

"He doesn't need to be appeased or anything like that." "I would appreciate it if you cleaned the Leadwall more often." "Oh, okay. I'll keep that in mind. Anyways, a large ego is something Titans are not known for." 

"I lack the capability to hijack other devices or prosthetics remotely. Were my Core to be removed, however, the AI could then be manually installed to anything capable of supporting it."

When Iota-Phi asks what happens if XS is possessed by a demon, Ezekiel is actually slightly startled. He did not know that was a thing that could happen.

"I... well, if we should find ourselves against enemy demons, I'll simply have to pilot XS manually to ensure they can't take control of him."

"Titans cannot be so easily stolen by unauthorised persons. Even if one managed to find their way into the cockpit, their lack of a neural link or any specialised training means they would make little to no progress."

"Indeed. Backing away slowly protects you from bears, not Titans."

Ezekiel doesn't have anything to add when the conversation switches to machine spirituality, since he barely even believed in souls until earlier today.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Rhiannon:*
She blinks at the new information Alexandra gives her
"Exalt? What do you mean she is some form of high praise? and other universes? What are you jabbering on about? Y'know what tell me later when we're person again."
some of the Inquisitors whisper she might already be going crazy, like when you read certain books.

*Iota-Phi:*
He noticeably relaxes a bit when you say it can't take control of things.
"Oh. Good. I was worried. Apparently you aren't as advanced as what I've heard of some legends about tech priests encountering really old technology."
Iota-Phi emits some weird white noise that you think might be the tech priest equivalent of a chuckle when XS says about cleaning its gun more often.
"It seems that the cleaning rituals of machinery is universal no matter how different things otherwise are. As for being taken over...admittedly, I can't comment. The Ex-Inquisitor we're apparently getting however probably knows all about such matters. The knowledge I have is little compared to what she may be able to tell us."
"Ah...I see." he says to Edward. "Well at least your walker won't surprise us like this one."

*Ensara:*
She will sooner or later gather all the information needed and teleport back then morph back into her normal form but with a change of clothes: Her wuxia outfit is gone, replaced by this more victorian style wear of a navy blue coat, black pants and boots, white shirt with red vest underneath, and gold lining all over her vest and coat- with some gold skull buttons to fit in. 
"So what are the changes in the deal?"
She asks
"They literally didn't demand anything."
"Really? Wow. prime opportunity to demand tech to study or something more, but....you guys just choose not to and focus on other things. Okay, but negotiations are a bit boring I understand. If there are no further demands, I need the representative of this conclave to swear an oath to not go back on the deal or harm the underhives of this planet."
She says, quickly hitting a few pressure points on herself for some reason.
"Okay..."
Rhiannon relays this and the Lord Inquisitor thinking it meaningless says and oath to that effect....only for a golden circle with a golden circle, the mark of the Eclipse Caste Solar Exalted to appear upon Ensara's brow while she proclaims
*"THE PACT HAS BEEN SANCTIFIED.* Don't break your promise if you know whats good for you!"
Nothing seemingly happened on their end, but there was a sudden feeling as if they were bound to something.
"...What did you do?"
"Oh its nothing but a replication of a magic that makes sure they'll suffer a terrible curse if this conclave decides to go against the deal made. As long as this conclave is true to their word, there should be no problem."
"...But what if the underhives shelter some threat to the Imperium within them? The Calixian Conclave won't be able to respond!"
"That is not my problem. Nor is it yours anymore, _Rogue Trader_ Rhiannon. There are greater things to be done than solving the problems of a single world. Now if you'll excuse me..."

If no one has any other business to do, this will occur over the next few hours:
Ensara will walk out to the gangs and offer
"Hello! I'm Ensara, Nadir Caste Infernal Exalted, Planeswalker and many other things besides. I am offering a few thousand of you the chance of a lifetime! How would like to traverse the stars in a spaceship!? I cannot promise full safety- we will be going on adventures, and a certain level of risk is assumed and I there will be a few rules to follow such as no infighting, but you will be able to see other worlds, travel beyond these underhive confines! There will be a lot of space on said ship and I do hope some of you will join me in this endeavor."
After a few speeches like that, promises of payment to some gangs, or some other desire which she seemed to readily agree to such as fighting, or curing their mutations and so on. If asked how she intends to fulfill all these promises she will simply wink and say "Worry not I'll figure it out later."

After that is done, she will teleport a few times more times more to gather things like crops from a nearby agri world which seems to be a bunch of high yield ones like corn, wheat, rice, potatoes. Manyclops with oddly hopeful ideas will ask whats it like an agri-world and Ensara will respond 
"Ugh don't go to an agri world, basically a planet sized industrial farm, complete with pesticides and fertilizer sprays."
And she was pretty sure that the agri-worlds atmosphere was completely unbreathable to normal humans due to the pollution. Her next teleport would be slightly longer, brining back metals and other materials claiming that she went to a mining world and got distracted by giving a speech to someone to encourage them to start a revolution there. 

Sooner or later, a meeting place of neutral ground would be decided for the Inquisitors to hand off Rhiannon, Xiao and Nebette, and everyone will go there, some atmosphere-capable ships being parked here to transport people up to the ship, which was according to Rhiannon some Firestorm-class naval frigate known as the "Sabre", a good vessel for a rogue trader according to Rhiannon that has apparently seen a millennium of service in the navy but got impounded when its previous rogue trader owner got arrested. The Navigator has apparently already gotten on the ship since she served on it before. Xiao, soon agrees to come along as he never liked Lord Marshal Goreman anyways. For Nebette, the persuasion is a little more involved:
"Hey I'm Nebette, assassin, and apparently something called a blank now, whats all this about going on a ship with you?"
"Oh, its all up to your choice of course, but I can promise you: if you come with us, these Inquisitors won't be able to take you again for whatever they plan to do to to you, I'll make sure your protected. Well....unless you go to the underhives of this planet, I have bound them in a contract of sorts so they won't harm those places. But ask yourself: would you rather be mobile and see the galaxy, or hide out in the underhives of Scintilla forever?"
"I am going to say this now: you DON'T want to find out what they'll make you into if your shipped off to the Officio Assassinorum." Rhiannon adds in.
"....Yeah, the Inquisition is scary, I'll take that offer of protection."
"Very good."

When that is done, the ships will take you all and even have a ship to transport XS up there to the Sabre: an 1.8 kilometer long ship, looking like a giant cathedral with a red ship's prow turned upside down at the end, with a gigantic cannon attached under it, like this cannon itself is fraction of the ship's own length. Manyclops says as she gazes upon it says wide eyed:
"Wow....its so big."
"Eh" Rhiannon says dismissively "This class of ship is the smallest armed vessels in the imperial navy. Nothing but escorts for larger ones, lightly armored, barely any shields. Really fast though. It will work for our purposes."

When they get on the Sabre, Ensara will say
"And now to go work out the self-sufficient hydroponics and the auto-loaders. You guys can feel free to familiarize with the ship."
She will call up one of her souls from her inner world, a completely blue woman wearing a scientist's coat and having various gadgets upon her, looking like a scientist cross between a gadgeteer, and she seems completely stoic or even emotionless.
"Prolimas, you work on the auto-loaders, I'll take the hydroponics."
"Very well, my world-jouten."
They will walk off in separate directions to do their tasks. Rhiannon will sigh and say
"Best I figure things out myself. I have no illusion that I have any power compared to any of you however; given your wild claims and powers, my authority probably means very little to you. I do guess we have a lot of questions for each other, I'll be up at the bridge if you have need of me and if you want to come, you can ask me whatever you want as you walk, as long as you answer mine in turn."
Iota-Phi will let you know he will going off to inspect the warp engines and other technology of the Sabre. 

((OOC: like seriously this ship and its cannon is really big:
*Spoiler*
Show

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel doesn't have much to do, though he does go into his warehouse to make sure he's topped up on Conversion Gel - he plans to coat the ship's walls in it so he'll be able to Portal from place to place.

He also does a double take at Ensara's change of outfit, but doesn't say anything.

When he sees Nebette, he gives her a friendly smile. That is someone he wants as an ally and friend, so he wants to make a good first impression.

He gives a slight chuckle when he sees XS flying in his own shuttle. "How's first class, XS? Hehe."

The ship's size isn't what suprises him so much as its design. He's not new to the concept of starships, after all.

Once he's on the ship, he will go with Iota-Phi to inspect the warp engines, saying 'Always fun to see how different manufacturers achieve FTL. Who made this ship, anyway?"

----------


## Earl of Purple

Edward also visits his warehouse, putting the Eviscerator down next to the slightly bigger and far more primitive Koloss sword he also keeps there. He doesn't get changed, though, but does ensure he's refilled his ammunition supply. On the journey up to the ship, he sneezes a little and occasionally coughs; he's healed the injury from the stormtrooper's knife, and now he's topping up the stored health in his ring, which is making him slightly ill. 

His first stop on the ship is claiming a room for himself, ideally with a window or screen to look outside. Unlike some of his companions, he's never actually been on a spaceship before, or any vehicle larger than a train. And this ship probably has its own train to help people get around. So he's going to be very interested in exploring.

----------


## Rater202

When Ensara returns, it coincides with another young girl cartwheeling out of the entrance fo Alexandra's Warehouse and landing, with perfect balance, on the palms of her hands. She then lifts a hand to balance on one just one hand.

"Tada!"

The other girl facepalms.

She's dressed in a hot pink and dark blue gymnastics uniform, full body, with a matching jesters cap in a checkerboard pattern and is wearing white grease paint with black eyeshadow and lipstick, giving the appearance of a...

She's Harley Quinn. Anyone with a passing familiarity with DC comics will look at these two girls and see them as a de-aged Harley and Ivy with the serial numbers filed off.

Over the next several days they'll introduce themselves: The Harley-alike calls herself "Mad" Molly Quinn. The other girl insists on Poison Rose, or just Rose, with the note that only Alexandra and Molly can call her "Pamela."

It is abundantly clear that the two are functional when together but have some kind of co-dependency. They get uncomfortable when apart. Molly is otherwise outgoing, but Rose is withdrawn.

She's also very clearly uncomfortable with the lack of natural foliage anywhere on this planet and quickly gets to work fixing it: By the time you head off to the handoff, the Underhive is full of mutant plants giving it quite a lot of greenery and splotches of other colors. Of particular notes are several trees that produce in abundance strange fruits that are... Probably the best thing anyone in the Underhive has ever eaten with new crops occuring often..

She says that the plants shouldn't need water or sunlight and that if anyone hurts her babies she will know and she will _not_ be happy.

One of the trees suddenly grew a fanged mouth when she said that. It seemingly melts away after the threat, but...

Molly meanwhile, states point blank that she will murder anyone who tries to **** with her head "and Pammy will take care of the bodies."

Another thing of note: The two girls seem to know intuitively when someone can't be trusted.

On the ship proper, Rose grabs Molly by the hand to follow after Ensara to see what she's up to with the Hydroponics.

Alexandra follows Rhiannon to the bridge.

"The closest thing to an Exalt, like Ensara, in your worldview would probably be a... Living Saint? It's far from a strict one-to-one, but..."

"...Honestly, between my status as an Amazon and the Green Flame and Power Cosmic, that's probably an apt metaphor for myself as well."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Iota-Phi:*
you find in the safest most deepest part of the ship, the warp drive located for safety and security.
He says
"Explanation: A ship like this? well let see...."
He pulls up the ship's service record on a cogitator, his wires interfacing his mind with it directly
"Constructed in the fleet base of Port Maw, Gothic Sector. It was launched in M36. This ship is over 5000 years old. Unsurprising. All things considered, it is a younger vessel by comparison to the true relics in the Imperial Navy, far more powerful than this. As for the warp drive..."
The screen changes to show a simulation of the ship opening a giant portal into another dimension and enter into it, then it closes. Seemingly simple. The numbers running by however tell the real story: the ships actual speed never actually passes the speed of light. The portal is not a singularity, and does not obey a singularities mathematics, nor any hypothetical wormholes. Rather its claiming that space is being torn and re-sealed by this process- in complete defiance of material physics. But then there is the mathematics to REACH this result and it gets weirder: its like....someone combined astrophysics and occult numerology: the cogitator does 666 calculations, with each four calculations having the result of four, each five the result of five, and the same goes for seven and thirteen. Almost as if the warp engine through its calculations is chanting something in the language of mathematics. Just looking at these mathematics you can't help but feel as if something is a little...off. Wrong about it. As if the very equations to make this happen wasn't from this material reality. Using the cogitator to gaze upon the engines internals, you furthermore see things like circles with six pointed stars drawn within them much like ritual circles, carved into metal and surrounded by more math used as occult symbols. As the ship enters the Immaterium in the simulation, some shield automatically goes up as apart of the process, called a Geller Field that seems to project a....bubble of reality around the ship to protect it from....the cogitator doesn't seem to simulate what the ship is being protected from. As if no one bothered to try. As if no one _wants_ to try. 

This....this might not be science. This is magic- and not in the clarke's third law sense. This is "summon demons from hell" magic, this is stuff that could one quite easily imagine using to summon the devil using five skulls, a star drawn on the floor and a drop of blood while chanting some black speech of the damned. Except arguably, more advanced and seemingly focused on going in and out of the Immaterium. And all this was just a simulation of what the warp engine actually did. Then Iota-Phi cuts off the simulation
"Observation: that was.....disturbing. I have not seen the secrets of a warp engine before. This is not like any of the other technology I've come across. If a tech priest tried to invent something like this on their own, they'd certainly be killed for heresy. There is an unsettling amount of similarity between this and some of the rituals of chaos cultists I've fought against." 

*Ensara:*
Prolimas will busy telekinetic construct the auto-loaders into place, while Ensara builds the hydroponic garden with seven arms each one a color of the rainbow in emulation of Oramus hovering around her, both of them working at superhuman speeds to construct these things. When Molly and Pamela witness her constructing it, the seven arms were working as blurs, carrying various tools doing multiple tasks at the same time. She looks at them as she constructs the garden smiling
"Why hello! Aren't you two little adorable companions? I like what you did with the plants in the hive. Very green mana, could never figure out how to connect to nature myself, unfortunately. Good on you."
She will construct the garden and let Rose grow whatever plants she wants. 

*Rhiannon:*
"That....makes sense. Disturbing and what I've raised my whole life to regard as heresy because only the God-Emperor is worthy of worship, but makes sense. I hate it when heresy makes sense." she says shaking her head. "There are even more gods out there other than the God-Emperor. you said something about other universes? Why have you come then? To invade ours? To scout us out for greater force? The Imperium will defend what they have conquered to the last breath, if need be. The human spirit is indomitable and is the thing that has allowed us to endure for ten thousand years. Even the humblest of civilians in the Imperium can still give their live for the Emperor after all. You are not even the scariest horrors I've seen or faced. You may be more powerful than a lot of them sure, but your kindness is your weakness."
It sounds more like she is trying to cope with the situation and tell things to herself than to you.
"You'll probably end up getting trick by some Chaos cult trying to exploit your naivete or something. You'll all do something stupid and self-sacrificial like some Salamander or overzealous Adepta Sororitas and everything will be back to grim as normal. This is fine. Everything is fine."
She then turns on a screen to speak to some woman with a third eye, in nobles clothes
"Navigator Chrimyra Agnissa. I am your Rogue Trader, Rhiannon Lekkens"
Chrimyra speaks with a noble accent.
"Yes rogue trader....lets get this straight, You know what I am, Rhiannon. I hold all the cards. None of you are getting anywhere without me. I don't care what your little band of heretics can supposedly do, I don't care if the God-Emperor of Mankind himself is on this vessel and could vaporize me with a twitch of his glorious eyebrows, if none of them can navigate the Warp, I want my demands met: I am not just sitting around in the navigator's room, I want to be able to do other things with my life, have some time on planets so I can have some fun before I have to gaze into the infinite terrors of all thought again just to transport everyone else where they need to go, AGAIN."
"....Navigator....you do know your not supposed to talk about what you see while you gaze into the Warp." she reminds her.
"Oh cut it with the Inquisitor talk, you know that is not your job anymore! I'm being vague enough. If anything your at fault for bringing the child up here to listen to secretive matters instead of making sure she plays on the decks with the rest of the common folk. Anyways I expect reasonable time off on planets when not warp travelling so that I may relax, with good protection of course, because if I'm going to be so VITAL to travel, I expect the arrangement I had with the previous rogue trader to hold so my mind doesn't break from seeing things constantly that most others go gibbering at seeing even once, I hope its not too much to ask?"
Rhiannon sighs and mutters something under her breath about 'frakking Navigators' then says
"I'll see what I can do, Navigator Chrimyra."

----------


## Rater202

*The Bridge.*

"Actually I'm like... 70. Child's body, not actually a child. I can also teleport astronomical distances under my own power. I started with intersystem and it's been growing steadily stronger for the last forty years. This whole ship is more a base of operations than a strict travel necessity."

"As for your earliar question... When I was nearly thirty, I lived on the planet that you know as Terra. But... No advanced technology, no Xenos, no Chaos, no Psykers, No God-Emporer. I discovered a game, thought it was interesting, played around with it, and then one night I was visited in a dream by a being who asked if I was sure about my recent choices, and then woke up in another world with two sets of memories."

"As for how we ended up here... I have no clue. I had at least a nominal choice the first but this time I just randomly spawned in."

The Garden.

"...Mana? It uses The Green but there's no magic involved..."

Molly suddenly grabs Rose possessively and glares at Ensara.

"What' ya angle?"

----------


## Earl of Purple

*The Bridge*

"I was bored on my way to work, drifted off and dreamt of a thing offering me adventure. That was... oh, thirty years ago, I think. I've had adventure since, witnessed the fall of an empire ruled by one man for a thousand years, survived plagues and famine, political upheaval, civil war and prevented dragons from ending the world before its time. I've met kings, jarls, emperors, wizards, Mistborn, abbots, priests and all sorts of things, and fought assassins, Mistings, Steel Inquisitors- not like you, you haven't had spikes driven through your head- dragons, thugs, and vampires. And I've seen whales in the Void, the afterlife of heroes, the return of flowers, and now I'm travelling through space. I'm still not ready to go back; not sure I ever will be." And he's aware the other Jumpers have probably seen things equally impressive, bizarre, and scary, even if not the same things.

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel looks at the whole thing with a terrified and more than a little disgusted expression. This isn't science he's looking at. It can't be. Can it? Whatever it is, it was awful and yet, like a train wreck, he couldn't look away.

"That surpassed disturbing in the 13th damn second. It broke at least one law of physics, and I'm pretty sure if someone tried to invent that on Earth they'd be killed by their peers."

He decloaks his Pilot helmet, hiding his face, gives a long sigh, and says to Iota "I'm going to go find the bar. See you later, buddy."

Then, he heads out, wallriding and parkouring through the ship to move faster and take his mind off what he just saw. He runs and jumps all the way to the bridge, where he acknowledges the congregation with a "Oh, hey. What are we all doing here? Oh, and does anyone know where the bar is," He still sounds a little grumpy.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara: The Garden*
"Well, its my personal theory that because powers picked up by Jumpers can work anywhere that the systems that support them can also work anywhere. Meaning everything on some level interacts with magic the gathering colors or it wouldn't work. Or maybe the omnipotent patrons that make this possible make an exception for us in way even I can't comprehend who knows."
She chuckles a little at Molly's actions
"D'aaaaaaw! Your attached already! Worry not, I meant nothing but a compliment for being able to do something I cannot. No matter how powerful I am, I've got to keep some level of perspective y'know. I do find it adorable that you think I'd be so disrespectful as to steal another Jumper's companion away from them and more importantly, interfere other people's relationships. Also I have a type when it comes to women, and its being at least 5 feet tall and 18 human years of mental age, I'm many kinds of weird but not that kind of weird!"
All the while her seven rainbow arms finish the garden. 

*Rhiannon:*
"And..... making a deal with an entity you don't know....this turned out well for you? That is the most unbelievable part of that story. How do you know the entity empowering you isn't using you for some nefarious end? How do you know this will turn out well for you in the end?"
She considers this
"But then again everyone I know making a deal with a daemon ending up damned and killed and someone coming along only benefitting from a deal and rubbing it in my face would be the exactly the kind of absurdity the universe- or perhaps the Archenemy- would throw at me, just to taunt me with the unfairness of it all. Are you sure one of the Chaos Gods didn't teleport you here as some kind of sick joke? I wouldn't put it past them."
She shakes her head
"and then there is who.. was it this Edward fellow here? apparently getting his powers from apparently,  falling asleep! Even more unfair. The universe just doesn't drop good things into our laps. Thats NEVER how that works. There has to be some catch or something to your appearance, there has to be. Some doom that is unwittingly happening because your here or something."
she then hands Ezekiel a map of the ship. An actual paper map detailing the ship like a city from the medieval ages, with various locations labeled. The Sabre's Bar is one of them, judging from this map its the size of an actual full bar. 
"Word has it that a man with a multiple arms mutation has become the bartender....though I'm not sure how he got the amasec. Maybe Ensara stole a bunch and put it in at some point."

*Chrimyra:*
"Okay. Thats a lot of boasting, but does that mean I need to do my job or not?" 
She says with an arched eyebrow.
"Assuming your not just delusional about all the things you just said."
"They probably aren't Navigator. I have yet to witness their full power but....I'd advise you to take what they say seriously." Rhiannon says
"Okay. Do I do my job or can this small child transport this entire vessel without me? It'd be nice to be useless for once, if only so I don't have to look the frakking Warp."
"Navigator! Don't you talk like that, you know every human must be useful for the God-Emperor and the Imperium. I need you to navigate this ship even if they don't." Rhiannon reminds her.
"Fine....fine..." she says rolling her eyes and signing off.
Rhiannon turns to them.
"Anyways, do you want to review what threats there are to the galaxy and pick one to travel to? I'm a rogue trader, we can go wherever we want. I can sense your power, I know your ones in command here. Not me."

----------


## Rater202

*The Bridge.*

"I mean, I'm sure it was a deal from her end but I was asleep when I agreed. Completly honest I'm not even sure if it's fair to call me the same person as the guy who made the 'deal.' Beyond that, well, again. It's been forty years from my perspective and I could have died at any time in that time. There isn't exactly much in the way that's of benefit to throwing me into a zombie-infested hellhole and letting me flounder while genocidal machines hunt me down and try to kill me because they think it will avert an impossible future where the planet is ruled by 12 powerful and benevolent meta-mutants, an immortal Megalomaniac has decided that ruining my life is more important that dealing with the plague of cannibalistic corpse-men devouring all life in the Universe, and the only God who hadn't either been infected or abandoned the mortal world was actively trying to drive me insane with cosmic math."

"...And yet, at the same time, nothing I went through isn't something that my orignal self didn't ask for... If the being who empowered us is operating by the rules of the game-prompt that I filled out, then their motivation is probably the same: Entertainment. They were bored and thought that giving us power and then letting us lose in other worlds would be an interesting diversion."

"And... Excuse me."

Alexandra teleports away.

*The Garden*

"Well that wasn't where I was going but thanks, nice to know that's where ya mind went," Molly replies sarcastically.

Rose at first seems confused. Then she gets it and starts panicking.

Shortly afterward Alexandra teleports in.

"What's wr"

"I would like to go back to the warehouse now," Rose says a little too fast. Alexandra opens up her warehouse and Rose rushes inside.

"Ya new friend is weird, Alex," Molly says while following after.

Alexandra closes the door after them.

"So... I'm going to assume that whatever you did to prompt Rose's PTSD was an accident. She would have attacked you if it was on purpose."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
"It was an accident. Its not my fault you make the whole age thing confusing. I picked eternal young adult for my immortal vanity like a sane transhuman. But then perhaps its my fault for not asking if they were actual children or not.

....also if we're going fight each other pointlessly about stupid slights can we at least agree to take it to some planet where some horrible army or aliens or other horror is duking it out if/when we do? I just finished this garden and I'm pretty sure this is like, the one universe where people won't care about the collateral damage or the massive amounts of lives lost from our attacks missing each other and hitting no end of genocidal idiots. Like we could probably make a game of throwing nukes at each other and dodging so that an army of evil horrors dies instead and that would just be par for the course for this galaxy. I'll have fun with a pointless fight over me accidentally traumatizing your companion if thats what you want to do, I just want to make sure the pointless overly destructive duel at least does some good here."
She says, not being very concerned about any of this.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra gestures to herself.

"This is the result of a drawback. Little tip? If you get to choose your next jump and you look at Marvel Comics Kid Heroes? The time extender in that one isn't worth it. Been thirteen for 40 years."

"I'm not gonna fight you, it's just... Those two are half-Batman villain and half-traumatized preteen runaway. Literally, they're from the Amalgam universe, where DC got fused with Marvel. The point is that they put on a strong front but they're fragile and, well, we just spent 40 years in an unaging zombie apocalypse. I had _planned_ to go to a nice low conflict setting next so we could relax, I could get an adult body back, and they'd get a chance to grow up but... The point is they have issues."

"...I'll talk to them once Rose has had some time to calm down, just... For future reference, they both come from abusive homes and had some really bad experiences with manipulative and exploitative people once they got out of those homes. Molly tends to just get angry when her issues are triggered but Rose panics."

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Bridge*

"I can't teleport that far, or teleport others. It's just me I can move, not anyone or anything else. Unless I can carry it, I suppose." And unfortunately Edward's not a Feruchemist or a Pewterarm, able to increase his strength far beyond human norms. He's still stronger than he looks, from various things he's achieved and choices made whilst he was slaying dragons, but not strong enough to lift a whole spaceship. And Blink won't travel very far even if he could.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
She says
"....Yeah, sorry. My stupid tendency to run my mouth again. I know a thing or two about manipulative people- there are two kinds of social Exalts for every one combat, stealth and scholar kind, and when people are given supernatural social abilities to influence people, nations, entire cultures.....words can become more effective chains and prisons than anything more concrete. Whoever came up with the old adage about sticks and stones knew squat about politics or psychology. I'll keep their issues in mind in the future, okay?"

*Rhiannon: The Bridge*
She raises her eyebrow. Despite their seeming desire for heroism, they seem uninterested in acting upon their power. Directionless. She could use this. Perhaps they weren't as a big of a threat as she thought if they weren't going to plan out their actions or set any particular goals despite a question to ask to do just that. Which means she could direct them to destroy the threats to the Imperium as she pleases, giving them a goal to shoot for, then when they are no longer needed she could simply send them into a trap when all the other threats of the galaxy are taken care of! 
".....Very well, if your not interested in discussing it, I have a goal we should focus on first: ending the Octarius War. the Orks and Tyranids are two highly dangerous xenos life forms, and the ones in the Octarius sector are fighting each other as a stalemate but are fast growing from fighting each other as a result, growing more and more powerful as there is no end to their conflict, and if either is victorious the Waaagh or hive fleet that emerges from the conflict will be unstoppable and seek to either devour or wage war on the rest of the galaxy for the fun of it. The Imperium already cannot handle the war due to too many resources needed to wipe about both of them, so if your so powerful we'll see if you four can solve a seemingly unsolvable problem.

Anything you want to do before we head off to the Octarius sector? traveling through the Warp will take a few days at the very least."

----------


## Gold Leaf

"Thank you," Ezekiel says as he gives the map a good study before stuffing it in one of his lab coat's pockets. He makes note not only of the bar's location, but also the cabins. 

"Well, let's see. Only things I'm planning to do currently are drink gin and repaint the walls. In that order," he says, before turning to head for the Sabre's Bar.

Just before leaving the area, he radios XS to say "Hey, XS. I need you to claim me a cabin. A good one, with lots of storage.". Then, he leaves, again picking up speed via wallriding.

*XS*

"Understood," XS replies to Ezekiel over the radio. Then, the Titan makes his across the ship and to the cabins, passing through the bridge on the way.

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Bridge*

"Well, I'd have to check with the others, but I think I have everything I need, at least." Edward has only the vaguest familiarity of this galaxy and the things in it, so whilst there's potentially things he'd like (and that Earl would like, too) he doesn't know enough to know what's available- particularly as the Galaxy is a large place, and what's common on one world may be unavailable elsewhere in the sector.

----------


## Rater202

Garden.

Okay, I'm going to head back to the bridge then.

Alexandra teleports out.

Bridge

"Sorry about that, something came up. Where were we?"

Alexandra will second talking it over among the main group.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Rhiannon: Oh no CHANGE COURSE! CHANGE COURSE!*
Oh no the telepathic telekinetic child pseudo-Emperor wants to talk it over. This was foolish, why did she think she could fool them, oh God Emperor nevermind.
"Okay, okay. Nevermind about going to Octarius, lets assess the threats uh....as an overview...."
She clears her throat as Ensara arrives.
"There are about six major threats to the Imperium.  I'll list them in terms of how threatening they are, with a short summary of what they are
1-Tyranids
a Xenos hivemind of bugs that devour everything in their path, coming from different galaxies so....they have probably devoured galaxies before this one. very adaptable on a genetic level often mutating in the middle of battle to adapting to the environment, can't be negotiated with, don't even seem to be sapient and completely united in trying to devour all other life. we know the least about this Xenos. existential threat to humanity
2-Chaos
four gods of chaos and their followers, dwell in a realm outside time and space, known as the Warp. can use psyker power and sorcery to completely defy all laws of reality to make any sick thing they want happen and want to corrupt all of humanity to their worship so they can feed on them. not sure if we can kill them entirely, but we've fought them off for ten thousand years so far, and they prone to infighting and illogical and self destructive actions. existential, ideological and spiritual to threat humanity, threatening even our eternal souls
3-Orks
A xenos that loves war, to fight, thinking it fun. They don't want to do anything else. Magos Biologis have studied them, they literally get depressed and die when they can't fight anything. they are much more hardy and strong than humans, when they die they release spores that grows new orks. they can somehow make improvised tech from anything through methods we do not know that can pose a threat to us now, yet are very stupid in many of their other actions. they are still an existential threat to humanity as the War of the Beast long ago once proved
4-Necrons
Xenos robots that are reactivating themselves from old ruins for some reason. Not very many of them awake, they seem to work at individual agendas but have proven hostile to others. They possess highly advanced technology, tech priests saying its the most advanced technology in the galaxy. proven hostile to the Imperium. major threat, but not yet existential.
5-Eldar
a dying race of xenos that manipulates situations to make humans die instead of themselves, or raids colonies to take them back to Comorragh for whatever depraved thing they desired to do to them. While few in number, they possess advanced psychic powers, mastery of the Webway and advanced technology. Their downfall is tied in with the rise of the Chaos Gods, as their decadence created Slaanesh, Chaos God of ecstasy, excess and pleasure who killed a lot of them. not an existential threat but are manipulative and crafty and can't be trusted.
6-Tau
Newcomers on the galactic stage. They dwell in Segmentum Ultima gathering minor xeno races under their cause of "The Greater Good", some stupid ideology where they manipulate others to be meat shields for them while they fire at you from range like cowards. Develop technology really fast compared to us, having gone from stone age to spacefaring in only 6000 years. Have converted even humans to their "Greater good", posing an ideological threat to the Imperium, but can be wiped out if we had the resources to spare.

There are a bunch of minor xenos races that aren't with the Tau, but they're not anything notable and can be wiped out when the Imperium gets around to them. There is also the ever present threat of heresy within the Imperium that isn't Chaos, but thats also relatively minor in comparison."
Ensara raises an eyebrow and says
"....Are you sure about all of these? These Tau in particular doesn't sound so bad, maybe we can come to a peaceful solution with them?"
"What!? Peaceful solution!? with Xenos? Thats heresy! Why would you ever want to make peace with vile Xenos scum that want to dominate or wipe out humanity? What manner of insanity do these other universes teach you?"
"Acceptance. Tolerance. Compassion. Things that this universe might need more of. If this Tau is not so much of a threat, surely it'd be beneficial to ally with them?"
"Agh- well- you can try I guess. They do seem to want to negotiate diplomatically with everyone. probably to manipulate us all to be their pawns or something."
"And these Eldar, if they are a dying race, surely they can't be that much of a threat?"
"Look Eldar know more than us, are incredibly manipulative and have their own interests at heart, not humanities. no matter how much we negotiate with them at times they are still xenos that-"
"Wait you have dealt with them peacefully before? then whats the problem with negotiating with them more?"
"Well the Eldar hate us back, calling us "Mon-keigh" and looking at us with contempt. And they keep kidnapping humans to take them to their city of eternal torture and cruelty outside normal space."
"Okay....why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do they do that?"
"They're Xenos, I don't care why they do anything. They're threats, they need to be eliminated." Rhiannon says. 
"I'm sensing there is some bias here." Ensara comments. 
"Well of course! I'm human, a former Inquisitor, not some filthy xeno. My concerns are humanities survival, not anyone elses." she says honestly. "You want to doom us all by being taken in by Xenos manipulations, be my guest, but I'll be here waiting to say "I told you so"."
"Noted. What your guys thoughts?" Ensara says turning to the others.

----------


## Rater202

"My thoughts are that  our Rogue Trader should _really_ cut back on the blatant bigotry. I hold no responsibility if Molly turns you into a greasy smear on her fist because you said something that reminded Rose of her mother."

"As for the threats... I'd prefer to put off the Necrons. I've kind of had my filler or zombies and killer robots. Can you tell us more about Chaos? I have a _lot_ of issues regarding Gods that I need to work out."

----------


## Gold Leaf

When XS notices the conversation about to begin on the bridge, he stops. He decides to turn back and stay on the bridge, figuring that if Ezekiel isn't present he might as well be.

The Titan radios Ezekiel to say "Ezekiel, your allies are discussing which threat they should deal with first. Would you like me to put you through to them so you can weigh in with your own opinion?"

Evidently, Ezekiel said yes, because XS' next line is "Understood. Putting you through now."

After Rhiannon goes through the options, Ezekiel responds "I vote we deal with the Eldar. They call people monkeys, and I won't tolerate anyone calling me a monkey. Also, if they created one of the Chaos Gods, maybe paying them a visit can somehow net us tactical information on the four," through XS' speakers.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Rhiannon:*
"I- you- fine. Fine." 
She shakes her head. The more she learned, the more she was confused. Hating the Xeno, the heretic, the witch was....basic. What were these other worlds that they didn't so something so vital to survival? How did they defend themselves? It didn't make any sense. How did they find the strength to kill the threats to what they held dear? How could a human....NOT want to hate? Did they not have something like the God Emperor to teach them how to hate properly? Perhaps that explains it- they weren't just heretics, they were all...._barbarians_. They didn't know proper civilized things like hating the xeno witch and heretic, didn't know the proper ways of ignorance and humility in the face of things greater than oneself or anything like that. They were like....primitives from an earlier age that still foolishly believed that Abominable Intelligences could be trusted, that they could lazily allow automation to do things for them, that knew not the necessary paranoia of living. They were like figures from prehistory exhibiting barbaric amounts of trust, compassion and knowledge seeking. It was the only way she could conceive of it. And she had no way of getting them to change their mind. 

Every civilization thinks itself the height of what is civilized in its time after all.

Rhiannon then responds
"Chaos? By the Emperor, why did you choose the longest and most complicated one to explain?"
"Why would it be complicated?"
"Because the fight against Chaos practically defines the Imperium, and its first war upon us pretty much made the Imperium what it is today. I guess I need to explain what is...not common knowledge, a lot of this is simplified and made into myth by the Ecclesiarchy and even what I know as a former Inquisitor isn't reliable as this all happened ten thousand years ago, with a lot of war, redaction, people changing this or that to fit their argument and viewpoint happening in between, and the events themselves are pretty complicated, spanning most of the galaxy. But it is necessary to understand what Chaos is and why we fight against it, even if the full truth is impossible to know at this point. I must tell you....of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.

Ten Thousand years ago....humanity was divided, long fallen from the hubris of the Dark Age of Technology at the hands of the Men of Iron, each world fending for itself against the darkness of wi-er psykers, adrift in the void. But then, from Holy Terra came the God-Emperor of Mankind! As Humanities one true god and savior, with his mighty Space Marines his Angels of Death, he came to conquer the stars and unify us all under his divine light! He sought his wayward sons, the 18 Primarchs stolen from him by the Dark Powers, scattered across the galaxy through sorcerous means unknown! This was known as the Great Crusade. The God Emperor one by one, reunited with his sons, created by him to be his greatest champions and paragons of humanity and gifting them each a legion of Space Marines to go forth and conquer, to destroy all xenos in his name. Beside him was Malcador the Hero, his adviser and friend a humble normal human who embodied the potential what the God-Emperor hoped to see in all of us, doing all the things he himself could not attend to, such was dedication to duty and service to Him.

Of his Primarchs, two of them were the most favored and loved of his sons: Primarch Sanguinius and Primarch Horus. They were the greatest and most virtuous of them, Sanguinius being blessed with angelic wings to show his love for all of humanity, while Horus was such a great general that the God-Emperor bequeathed him the title of Warmaster, making Horus the greatest of all his sons, fit to lead all others into battle for the fate of humanity against all that would threaten it! Sanguinius of course in his humility, accepted Horus's ascension to this title with a smile. But then one day, Horus suddenly betrayed his comrades upon Isstvan V, killing Primarch Ferrus Manus and turning half the Primarchs against the remaining loyalists, corrupting them to all serve Chaos. Sanguinius seeing his brother betray all he hold dear was shaken to his core. How he could trust anyone after such betrayal? How could he know anyone was truly loyal? The thought of wracked him with doubt and despair. Horus had been the greatest among them and he had been corrupted, had fallen to their power just the same, dividing the Imperium in halves against itself while proclaiming "Let the Galaxy burn!" with wicked glee. This was known as the Horus Heresy.

For seven years did the Horus Heresy rage, Sanguinius and the other loyal primarchs fighting as hard as they can to defend the Imperium from this previously unthinkable betrayal, while the God-Emperor sat his vigil upon the Golden Throne to keep the Astronomicon alight. The traitor primarchs turned into demons as they fell into depravity, sin and hatred against the God-Emperor of Mankind, their legions following them into damnation, darkness and doom. But despite their heroic efforts, Sanguinius was pushed back to defending Holy Terra alongside Primarchs Rogal Dorn and Jaghatai Khan. During the battle of Terra, Macaldor the Hero sacrificed himself by putting himself upon the Golden Throne to power the Astronomicon so God-Emperor could fight in the battle. There did Sanguinius duel Horus himself to save the galaxy, but was struck down by Horus in his wickedness, Sanguinius tragically sacrificing himself for all of the Imperium such that his sacrifice is honored by all the Imperium on Sanguinala ever year. The God-Emperor himself came upon this scene, seeing his favored son dead at the traitor's hand, he felt a great rage and dueled Horus as well, they clashed and while the God-Emperor was victorious killing Horus forever, Horus dealt such a blow to him that the God-Emperor was nearly dead himself. 

So the ever dutiful Rogal Dorn took the God-Emperor to sit him upon the Golden Throne once again, and there he sits to this day in eternal vigil over all of Mankind, watching us from his palace through the Astronomicon's light and through it protecting us all with his divine might. The Imperium, taking inspiration from Malcador's sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the God-Emperor every day he serves as the beacon of all the Imperium. With duty, discipline and sacrifice does the Imperium fight against Chaos, Xenos and witches for the sake of the God-Emperor of Mankind to honor his sacrifice in turn with our own, for only in death does duty end."
She finishes her.....dramatic retelling of the Horus Heresy.
"....Wait, you said 18 primarchs but you only mentioned like four or five names."
"Most of them aren't important to the core part of the story." Rhiannon says
"And what happened after? Where all the Primarchs now? you didn't say."
"The traitorous primarchs all fled into the Warp like the demonic Emperor-betraying cowards they are. The loyalist Primarchs proclaimed that they would pursue their brothers to visit their most righteous wrath upon the traitors and told the Imperium that they had faith in us to keep to our holy duties until their prophesied return in the End Times." Rhiannon responds
"...I see. So Chaos made like what, half your Imperium turn traitor or something?"
"Its more than that. Chaos's threat is that they can make anyone turn traitor, corrupt them into turning against all they once stood for, if even the greatest and highest of us can fall, then no one is safe, no one is above suspicion. Horus proved that virtue wasn't enough, that even being one of his favored sons, wasn't enough to protect him. That even he could become a demon, even he could be twisted into darkness. This is why we are ever watchful for the signs of heresy."
"....And this is the non-simplified version that you know?"
"Yes. The simplified version for the masses is that nine demons rose up against the Emperor, who created nine Primarchs to fight them, after winning the God-Emperor ascended to the Golden Throne to watch over humanity. The End. They would not be able to handle such truths, and might turn to Chaos as a result."
"....Okay then. But this told us very little about Chaos's actual capabilities."
"Look, there is like, Four Chaos Gods and nine space marine legions worth of capabilities, plus whatever cults they have managed to make on whatever random planet they decided to corrupt. and no one has ever been recorded to have actually fought a Chaos God because how would you record such a battle happening? The Warp is outside of space and time, and they are conglomerations of all the extreme thoughts and feelings people have thought. How you could possibly kill such things?"
"I have techniques as an Exalted that allow me to permanently kill spirits such as gods, ghosts, demons and the like. They work no matter how powerful the foe is. The Chaos Gods should be no different. Failing that...I have a special perk about binding demons into my service" Ensara says punching her hand with her fist.
"Fine, but to fight Chaos on the offensive is to go into a realm of thought and madness, the Warp. It is a place where only your willpower matters, and all physical laws don't apply. All the other threats we can look at have the benefit of being in the Materium and thus bound by rules we can comprehend. To fight Chaos is something far more dangerous than merely fighting for the lives of the galaxy.

Changing focus: The Eldar"
Rhiannon turns and says
"The thing about them is that they are very psychically powerful and more technologically advanced than us in many ways. Their powers of seeing the future are far greater than our own, so they will see us coming. Their Craftworlds-basically ships the size of planets- are mobile and tend to disappear by the time anyone reports their presence. Often they come to us first because their method of FTL travel is more advanced as well, having the Webway to use instead. They often come with warnings of doom or use humans to eliminate some other threat like Orks, or just manipulate us for some other goal. So most Eldar we can't even find, they tend to stay ahead of us to survive and avoid fighting our superior numbers whenever they can. We're at war with them in theory but battles with them tend to be rarer than other more pressing concerns. But perhaps your weird superpowers can find and get to them despite their tendency to hide or run away

Of course, I know a few Inquisitors of the Ordo Xenos in a certain radical faction known as Xenos Hybris who think that the Imperium should work together with Xenos, particularly a senior inquisitor known as Staven Arcturos who is an Eldar specialist, the man is a fanatic of the divination techniques he learned from the Eldar and could probably tell you more about them than I. He is a member of the conclave right here in the Calixis Sector actually, but last I checked he has been focusing on studying the Rogue Traders of the Koronus Expanse thinking there is some terrible threat out in the Halo Stars. Finding him would be a bit of a detour into a dangerous frontier section of space or even into places uncharted, and if he is right, we'd have to deal with whatever he thinks is there along with pirates, rogue traders, xeno pirates, ruins, xenofauna, and so on and so forth. Though the Koronus Expanse is beyond Imperium space and thus full of xenos that Rogue traders do business with all the time, there is bound to be some individual Eldar there for some reason or other, some strike out on their own for some reason.

Of course, if neither of those options appeal, the place we know for sure are any Eldar can get to with certainty is Commorragh, and it is a place within the Webway that Eldar do business with non-eldar, it has its populations of non-Eldar mercenaries but....that place is basically a haven of Eldar pirates, being a wretched hive of scum, villainy, debauchery and horrors that no one should witness in their life ever, the things that happen in Comorragh are.....unspeakably horrifying. It is full of highly advanced technology and is pretty much the one place in the galaxy you do not want to end up in unless you have no other choice. A battle will kill you quickly- the Eldar there will make you suffer as long as possible. I would not recommend going there, its just an option that is on the table if you want to find Eldar." 
"I can see benefit from finding the Eldar. Getting information from them that we can't otherwise would be a good move, and it does sound like they might good technology to take for myself. Studying the Warp to at least figure out how it works before engaging Chaos is something I've been wanting to do, perhaps by going into it and seeing what its like."
"Studying the Warp directly!? If you were normal I'd call you insane or heretical." Rhiannon says
"Thank you, I pride myself on being weird." Ensara says with a smile.

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel pulls out his ECHO Recorder, puts it up to his helmet, and records the entire conversation to it, so he can play it back later in case there's anything he missed. He does pay special attention to the part about the Eldar, since that's what he asked about. 

"So the Eldar are the most technologically advanced around, is that right? It would seem like a good idea to go to them, then. If only to meet one... sorry, one more legitimately scientific individual. Still, it's too bad they never grew past calling people monkeys." Can't forget about Iota-Phi. Okay, maybe Ensara too.

Anyways, Ezekiel should be outside Sabre's Bar by now. Only one thing left to do, and that's go inside.

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Bridge*

"I've fought things like the orks before. They didn't have guns, thankfully, and they were blue. Koloss were pretty horrific foes, and I barely survived. That was a long time ago, and I should do better in future conflicts." Koloss' skin doesn't grow, and the smallest at five feet have loose and floppy skin and the tallest at over ten feet have squashed noses and skin that ripped where it's been pulled too tight over their bulk. They only cared about their swords, and had no emotions beyond apathy and rage.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Rhiannon:*
"Look, I don't know why the Eldar call us that. they've been around much longer than us as a civilization, so I doubt the word literally means monkey? They are frustratingly byzantine, subtle and complex planning at the best of times and what texts we have recovered from their ruins are frustratingly poetic, full of overwrought prose even when translated. And form what accounts we have, speaking with them can be full of riddles and mind games."
"Comorragh is the place with the Dark Eldar right?"
"I've heard some Ordo Xenos Inquisitors call them that, yes. Apparently there is cultural differences between a few different Eldar groups but most don't care to distinguish between them. You truly want to learn more about them, you have to go and ask them yourself."
"Okay, it sounds like not everyone cares that strongly about where we go, and we should probably just like get going? So I say, we go find these Eldar. Are there any ones near Chaos or Orks?"
"Well.....Craftworld Ulthwe has been spotted the most around the Eye of Terror where Chaos most invades from, and there might be orks on a planet near them- orks get everywhere. If I recall correctly there is low levels of Orks in Comorragh infesting them- they grow from spores, spreading from world to world if they aren't burned. While Comorragh has something called the Gate of Khaine that leads directly into the warp and thus is always on the edge of daemonic invasion by Chaos. I'd prefer it if we could somehow find Craftworld Ulthwe though."
"Well hm, the Warp is a place of all thought, a dimension beyond the rules of space and time and such right?"
"....Yes it is."
"Then maybe I can use it as a means to find this Craftworld Ulthwe?"
"What? are you insane? Going into the Warp is a realm of nightmarish horrors, demons and whatnot, it the tumultuous stormy sea  washing up against the continent that is the Materium, eroding its shores. The idea that could find anything except the Astronomicon in that thick hurricane-ocean soup of horrors is near laughable. Its impossible."
Ensara smiles
"Impossible? I'm an Exalt, Rhiannon. Impossible is my specialty."
Her eyes suddenly glow blue
"Lets just take a look at the underlying dimensional structure here.....Yes I see. All our thoughts even now is flowing to the Warp. and Warp itself.....oh. hm. This is concerning. really concerning. Your not wrong, Rhiannon. The Warp truly is beyond all time and space. Specifically, the Warp isn't bound by linear time, or the strict physical distances we rely upon to measure the world. Just from this one look I can tell such things are variable to it. It is completely possible to use it to see the future, the past, and even travel to both. Furthermore the time it takes to travel to anywhere is also variable. You could spend a hundred years in there and find 4000 years have passed, or spend a day in there and come back having only a couple hours have passed for everyone else. Or even go back in time. Its just a matter of probability, as its in a constant state of flux and change. Indeed, the realm seems to have some metaphysical influence over chance and luck itself."
"...How...how do gaze into it without going gibbering mad? How are you doing this?"
"I'm a powerful transhuman in more ways than one, Rhiannon. Looking at the structures, the fabric of space, time and dimensions here, I doubt any normal human of medieval level understanding such as the Imperium could comprehend it, and even those with a scientific background of say.....21st century Earth it'd still be near impossible to follow if I were to go into detail- to such people it'd be relativity on drugs. Or maybe people would go insane because of all the dark sins and screwed up stuff and the daemons embodying all their worst impulses that I'm seeing. I wouldn't know, I have a couple layers of mental/spiritual protection against this sort of thing. But it'd be no wonder the Imperium can't understand this, they both lack the background and have demons trying to screw with their minds getting in the way.

But just looking at it won't find us the Craftworld. Lets just use some chronomancy, manipulate some variables, shift through possibilities.... pay attention this will be most important:"
She raises a hand a blue light shines from it as she searches and narrows her search, using the Warp to gaze upon the future.
"I see....a planet....called Rhylain....it is something called a "Crone World" on the edge of the Eye of Terror..... the Eldar need to get something there...but there are Orks and Chaos forces upon it....fighting each other....making it difficult....there is a young Eldar among this, clad in white and black with hair of blue and purple....young and foolish by the standards of her kind, but perhaps vital to our purposes...

However if we go to Comorragh....I see suffering. Not of us, but of others. I see the darkest most cruel city in the galaxy powered by torment both for survival and pleasure. I see nobles scheming and fighting one another in endless decadence, theatre-coliseums of purest most spectacular agony where slaves suffer and die to sate their dark masters. I see potentially, the rage of the righteous destroying their city forever, but also the compassion of the kind saving it-with more difficulty for it is always more difficult to fix than to destroy. But neither path unjust, neither path evil, for they deserve whatever they get. 

Either path will lead us to knowledge, so long as we make sure to seek for it."
her eyes stop glowing blue
"That is all. Don't expect me to do that again unless truly needed. I don't like spoiling things, but we really need to get a move on."
"....Lets go to Rhylain, I don't want to deal with Comorragh." says Rhiannon
"Sounds like a plan."
They ship will go into the warp to Rhylain unless there is strong protest against doing so.

*Sabre Bar:*
Inside you see mutants and former underhive gangers drinking, the bartender has various bottles of amasec on the shelves behind him, his multiple mutant arms doing various things at the same time. The whole thing is oddly normal, if having a couple macabre skull decorations here and there.
"Hey! Your one the rogue trader's retinue" greets the bartender, having a bushy mustache "The names Many-Armed Mattord. Welcome to my new Mattord's Bar. That there Ensara gave us quite a good selection and stock of amasec. We have everything from cheap stuff to high quality kind of stuff- stuff them nobles drink. Still cost ya Thrones though, got to keep myself afloat y'know?"
You also notice the Blank assassin, Nebette sitting alone at a table, having a drink herself, looking pretty disgruntled. Everyone seems to keep a distance from her and even you feel a strange discomfort as look at her, as if her very presence is unsettling or off-putting despite her looking like a normal human woman. As if everyone in the bar is trying to interact with her as little as possible or ignore her existence. 

(OOC: don't worry you can still interact with characters mid-warp travel, I just wanted to get a direction going here.)

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel mutes his microphone as he enters the bar, but doesn't end the call, meaning he can hear them but they can't hear him. This means that he hears Ensara explain the whole Warp like it's nothing. That's okay. It's not like he was having second thoughts about shying away from it and was beginning to realise that, as a phycisist, it's the job of people exactly like him to be the first to uncover facts exactly like these, and was beginning to want to try and study it. He's not even a little bit mad about finding out that that would now be a huge waste of time. Nuh-uh.

Anyways, he waves to the bartender, before immediately realising he doesn't actually have any Thrones, just a bunch of foreign currency. "Forgot my wallet. I'll be right back." he says quickly in a mildly embarassed tone, exiting the bar and parkouring through the corridors again to get back to the bridge. He doesn't actually go to the bridge though, just stays in a room adjacent to it. From there, he whisper-shouts "Starheart. Alexandra, I need a favour. Come out here. You can hear ne, right?"

----------


## Rater202

"For the record, when I asked about chaos I was looking for practical answers. Like, back in the Underhive we busted cults dedicated to Nurgle and Khorn. Don't worry, we killed them all. We've got plague spreaders and barbarians, are there any other modus Operandi we should be aware of? My knowledge of this reality is limited and I have two traumatized children that I'm responsible for."

----------


## Earl of Purple

"I think I get what you mean with the Eldar and mon-keigh. It's like the koloss I faced on Scadrial, my first time. The word sounds like 'colossal', which does fit them quite well. But the language I was speaking wasn't this language, and the link might not have been there. It sounds like 'monkey' in our language, but they aren't speaking... Low Gothic, is it?" Edward will look to Rhiannon to confirm the name of the language he's speaking right now. "I'm seconding the 'avoid Comorragh' thing. The place sounds deeply unpleasant."

----------


## Lord Raziere

(OOC: okay fine, you have no idea how I could fix things, I'm just gonna do it myself then.)

*Esnara:*
"No....wait....I was wrong. The Warp's understandable, just has a lot of changing math, lots of variables based on other variables. Sorry."
She will taking a second look at it again.

*Rhiannon:*
"Well, its not surprise you fought those two in the underhive. Underhives are the communities most vulnerable to those two Chaos gods influence. Tzeentch and Slaanesh on the other hand are gods of scheming and excess respectfully, they tend to target nobles as a result, and their plans are more subtle, long term and insidious, as Tzeentch likes to lure in the intelligent, the scholarly, the knowledge-seekers, tech priests and the like. Meanwhile Slaanesh wants to lure in anyone who wants to experience excessive sensation or emotion of any kind...aside from anything the other Chaos Gods already rule over, thus Slaanesh gets anything from drugs and pleasure to torture, to perfectionism to pride, to gluttony to lust to even the feeling of relaxation- anything in excess is what Slaanesh seeks.  Thus they both target people who seek decadence, forbidden things, anyone wanting to know more, experience more, do more. In fact, I would be surprised if Tzeentch doesn't already have his sights set on you in some manner. 

Though of the two, Tzeentch is probably the more dangerous. He is older, and is called the Architect of Fate for he has plans with plans, controls fortune, sees the future, incredibly sorcerous and powerful. If any enemy this galaxy has a plan intricate enough to profit or benefit even from even your wild card influence, it would be him. He is the reason the Imperium enforces a culture of ignorance throughout our entire galaxy for he uses the curiosity of humanity against itself with the secrets and power he offers. At the same time, he is technically, the least bad of the four, because his eternal change and machinations offer the faint hope, the chance that you'll improve things for the better with what he gives you- which is why he is so dangerous, because he can so easily scam people into making it worse so he can get more worship out of prayers to make things better again. 

His followers meanwhile, while they are planners tend to have weaknesses like deceiving their allies, making their plans too complex to work, being too obsessed with the knowledge they are seeking to focus on anything else....things like that. Slaaneshi ones meanwhile just want to experience sensations however they can while making other experience the same and thus do whatever twisted and sick art project pops into their minds, like making a sculpture out of corpses or making music from peoples screams or just torturing people taken to an art form or tempting people to embrace their decadent screwed up ways. You get the idea. "
"So forbidden knowledge: the god, and god of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll taken to horrific extremes, got it. Which means Slaanesh is into dubstep probably."
"What in the Warp is dubstep?"
"Exactly, your better off not knowing."
"Well I don't know that is, but Slaanesh do have Noise Marines serving under them, which attack with sonic weaponry."
"Ha! I was right, Slaanesh IS into dubstep."
"...I don't know if this is a joke or not but whatever. and yeah, Mon-keigh is probably not monkey. They can speak Low Gothic yes, numerous negotiations have proven that, its just that their own language 
 is probably the prefer to speak because of whatever xeno reasons they have. Lets just get going."

*The Sabre: Warp Travel*
The Sabre will soon go into the Warp, the ship's Warp Enginee opening a small circular rift into space they go into and Navigator Chrimyra opens her third eye and begins guiding through the Warp, while Iota-Phi activates the Gellar field with the proper procedure to do so, a field of....reality? covering the ship as it flies through a stormy colorful dimension out of space and time. Rhylain is 1400 lightyears away on the edge of the Eye of Terror, so the journey for you on the ship will take about 1-4 days, so do whatever you want during them. (OOC: we can play out scenes during transit if you want, its fine.)

Regardless of what you do, Ensara will practice her Gunhell ki techniques.....by walking out on the surface of the Gellar field herself, killing minor demons trying to gnaw and claw at the Gellar field in futility- their attempts at breaching it don't even damage it- with purple ki pistols she has conjured, doing various stylish gunslinger tricks seemingly straight out of an action movie, as if she is trying to become the very romantic ideal of a badass gunslinger. Chrimyra at first would complain that its a bit distracting but as it went on and Ensara "practiced" on the demons more more she began to see it as her simply wiping off bugs from a windshield as navigational visibility improved without demons trying to block the view.

Chrimya will warn you not to look into the Warp, as it will reflect your worst attributes and darkest parts of yourself back at you and that is not easy to confront, and Ensara will offer to show you anyways as if its nothing by teleporting there. She does not however tell anyone what she herself see as she practices in the Warp on the field's surface unless they specifically ask.

Occasionally there is turbulence, much like on a airplane flight during this journey, this just being the normal variable nature of Warp travel.

Soon however you arrive at....

*Northwest Edge of the Eye of Terror: some solar system, Rhylain*
When you get out of the Warp, all the WH40k natives experienced in warp travel breathe a sigh of visible sigh of relief.
"That was a relatively placid journey" Rhiannon says "Nothing went wrong at all. Thats something."
Chrimyra will flop into her chair in the Navigator's aerie room, tired from looking into a realm of horrors for days on end guiding the ship.
"Please give me some time before we do another jump, ugh, doing this is never fun..."
As you go through this solar system at slower than light travel, if you have any view of the outside you notice that like, half the void of space in one direction looks purple and pink, as if its the same swirling chaotic stuff from the Warp that you just came out, and the other half is just normal space. Furthermore any planets that you pick up....they are dead in this solar system, either barren rocks, a gas giant or ones with ruins with no signs of life on them, but you press on at Ensara's direction to the planet they need to go....Rhylain, ruined much like a few other planets in the system but a few notable differences:
The most obvious being, there are Ork and Chaos ships fighting each other around it, the Ork vessels looking crude, covered in guns upon guns upon guns, splattered with paint and generally looking like a bunch of scrap heaps forcefully made into something resembling a ship by a bunch of hobbyist mechanics who think what they made looks cool. The Chaos ships on the other hand look much like Imperial vessels but with red sigils of Khorne painted them, added spikes everywhere and other demonic decorations, some have flesh randomly growing on the outside of them for some reason, but these fleets are fighting each other hard, exchanging missiles and laser fire in the sky above the planet.

Meanwhile, farther away from those fleets is a bigger ship, one the size of a planet and far more beautiful and ethereal than either of the fleets, looking organically elegant and smooth out of some golden metal with various pretty light-colored domes upon as if its was a bunch of jellyfish gliding in space, the domes being partially see through with cities of unimaginable size inside of them. It is like looking at some work of art on a vast scale.
"That" Rhiannon says "Is a Craftworld. Disgusting isn't it? Those arrogant bastards, flaunting their ship like that with such an over-decorated design."
You all have seen enough of this Sabre on its own to know that the Imperium over-decorates its own ship like no tomorrow and that this is 100% her being pot calling the kettle black
Then you receive a transmission out of nowhere:
*"Cera Kan-i-Eachtrannach, Greetings Four Great Outsiders, I am Eldrad Ulthran of Craftworld Ulthwe. I have foreseen your arrival, and would like your help."*
"Okay, cool but before we do that can we get one thing out of the way first?"
*"...What is that?"*
"What does mon-keigh mean? Do you mean monkey?"
Eldrad Ulthran sighs a long tired sigh as if he has been asked this question before.
*"It does not mean that animal from your gold-covered, polluted, overbuilt planet of origin, what was it called again? Terra? Earth? It was one of those two. It means "species to be wiped out" and its origins comes from legends of an Eldar hero fighting a race of cannibalistic monstrosities called mon-keigh long before humans achieved space flight. You, the Kan-i-Eachtrannach, the Four Great Outsiders however, I do not count as Mon-keigh, for you are foreign to this universe and do not share in the Mon-keigh's atrocities.

Now. Can we focus? Are you going to help or not?"*
"Wait a minute, you knew we were coming here, did you plan to get our help before you even came here?" Rhiannon asks suspiciously
*"Quiet mon-keigh, I am speaking to the Four Outsiders, not their glorified ferry-person with a rogue trader warrant. Their importance to the flow of fate is far greater than your own, and their decisions send ripples that yours cannot. I'd be a fool NOT to plan around them."*

----------


## Rater202

*Rhiannon*

"...Of course. Walking trauma buttons for _both_ girls, and should probably keep kids away from Slaneesh in general..."

Alexandra's more talking to herself than anything else.

*Warp Travel*

Other than claiming a set of quarters for her own use, Alexandra mostly keeps to her own self. Training and meditating mostly.

At some point during the next few days, Rose will approach Ensara, apologize for freaking out, and mention that Alexandra explained the misunderstanding... But will not explain why she freaked out even if pressed.

*Rhylain*

"So... Space-Elf... Just so we're clear, I'm part of a genetic minority that was subjected to genocide attempts. I myself was insulated from most of that, growing up on Thymiscria, but I am responsible for two other kinsman who most certainly were *not* protected from it. I will not tolerate biggotry from anyone for any reason and will be especially upset if it sets off the trauma of my wards. I'm not so barbarous as to exterminate an entire galactic-scale society on the actions of a single member... But I could if I wanted to. Mayhaps share that with your kinsman."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Mid-Warp Travel*
Ensara will nod and say she understands to Rose without pressing. Some people have their issues and secrets. It is not for her to pry. 

Whenever she hears some dubstep music she will spin around, eyes darting around but finding nothing there. She will talk to a couple times to Alexandra about the possibility of Slaanesh or a Daemonette stalking her and thinking about making plans to deal with Slaanesh if she comes after Ensara.
"After all, its so obvious that she'd come after me. Have you seen me? So beautiful its a curse. I knew this day would come, but I thought it be something smaller like a succubus coming after me. Alexandra, I think I might have to get so good at seduction, that I out charm the Deity of Excess themselves, beat them at their own game to the point where Slaanesh will be so enamored, that I tempt and corrupt them into being good instead. A crazy audacious plan I know, but one that I might have to employ. Of course if that doesn't work there is always..."
She punches her fist into an open palm with a grin. 

*Eldrad Ulthran:*
*"....Very well. As High Farseer I shall pass it along and keep away from such rage inducing issues. I would explain why my species looks upon humanity in such a dim view, but I am pressed for time. The help I seek from you is simple: I wish you to save a single Eldar life. A foolish young hundreds-aged one named Kaerabryn, but an Eldar life nonetheless and thus precious to us beyond value, the circumstances of their danger, being that she chose to walk the Path of the Outcast, a common choice among the Eldar youth of today wishing to be free of the strict lifestyle we must lead to keep ourselves free from She Who Thirsts. Let not the name fool you, we work with such Eldar wanderers whenever we can our species is too few to be picky about the lifestyles others lead or where our help comes from. But this particular outcast in an attempt to help us has recklessly done something foolish. You see, another important measure to make sure we don't fall prey to She Who Thirsts is that we must always keep a spirit stone near us to keep her from devouring our souls by the stone instead storing our souls inside the spirit stone when we die. 

Problem is, spirit stones aren't exactly an abundant resource. They can only be found on Crone Worlds in or near the Eye of Terror, and Rhylain is a rare planet where they form technically on the edge of it. 
Thus, spirit stones control how much population we can have- if an Eldar is born and has no spirit stone, their soul slowly starts getting eaten away by She Who Thirsts, and we would not wish that fate on any Eldar if we could help it. The Dark Eldar are an exception to this, but the less said about them the better. Kaerabryn wanted to play the hero to get a few spirit stones to bring to our Craftworld so that our population can grow at least a little bit and so went down there, alone like a fool to find some. I can sense she is still alive. But I dare not commit more lives to that slaughter, and potentially lose more Eldar than we would gain. That is where you come in. With your power, you can rescue her without needing Craftworld Ulthwe to involve itself with a fight between two enemies that are already preoccupied with each other.

Save her life, and I will cooperate with you, answer questions you may have and see where a working relationship with you might go. But this is the minimum of what I expect. Accomplish that and I will be fine with it and uphold my end of what I promise, but if you do more? Say, actually accomplish bringing more spirit stones, or wipe out the two Ork and Chaos forces there or something else like that? Well 
 you can't go wrong with going above and beyond what is required."*
"Why such a small task?"
*"It is the simplicity of the act. I wish to entrust you with a smaller task to see how you do it and what you accomplish, I have foresaw your arrival and your importance, but now hot exactly how you will affect the galaxy or what methods you will use to bring it about. If you accomplish this one task we can talk about accomplishing greater things to trust you with. To put in another way, I want to see how your not like the Imperium. After I'd hope new potential allies would be better than a fascist, theocratic oppressive genocidal empire and I want to see that for myself. That is all."*
"What is a hundreds-aged one?"
*"A young Eldar still in their hundreds of life, not a child but not quite an adult"*
"So, like a teenager among humans?"
*"Ah yes, that does sound like the human equivalent."*
"And if we find any Eldar tech down there?"
*"Keep it, unless you find something of cultural significance. Much of the technology of the old Aeldari Empire is ruined now, and while we understand the principles behind them, we simply do not have resources, time or means to replicate the height of our power anymore. That and a lot of it is Warp-based anyways, which is far less easy to use now."*
"Now? It was easier to use before?"
*"Ah ah ah. First rescue the wayward Eldar life. Then I'll answer all the questions you want."*
"Heh, got it, got it. So you won't care what happens to the Orks and Khorne cultists down there?"
*"No one in the galaxy will. Orks are war-happy idiotic pests designed to fight things forever and followers of the Lord of Rage spill blood without care, seeking only the rush of the slaughter. Getting rid of them is doing everyone a favor."*
"Who is She-Who-Thirsts?"
*"The.....Chaos God we created. We dare not say their name. Our souls shine brighter and thus draw more attention than yours, and we have a....unique relationship to them. It is more dangerous for us than you saying it."*
"I see. Well guys, I don't know about you but I see an opportunity to go slaughter armies and steal tech from Orks while searching for this Kaerabryn, a fun time all around. and hey if I kill enough of the enemy, she's bound to be easier to find, right?"

----------


## Gold Leaf

Ezekiel smiles slightly and rolls his eyes when he hears Ensara backtrack. He appreciates the gesture, and it's reminded him that someone still needs to do actual tests and publish the findings, so it's not pointless after all.

But that's for later. For now, he walks back onto the bridge, glancing at Alexandra and resolving to ask her again once this conversation is over. 

"You're right - Tzeentch will probably be taking a special interest in me, then," Ezekiel chuckles. "Iota-Phi is smart - maybe I'll want to look out for him," he notes.

When dubstep is mentioned, Ezekiel shakes his head and says "Who hears that description and thinks 'dubstep?' No, Slaanesh would definitely prefer rap music. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I love a little battle rap." 

*[Warp Travel]*

At some point while Warp traveling, Ezekiel will ignore the warning against it, explaining to Chimyra that it is "For science!" and look into the Warp, speaking into the ECHO Recorder to note down everything he sees in painful detail, from the demons to his own shame. He finally stops when the Warp shows him his own ex-wife. Of course, upsetting as it may be, hus mind isn't going to suffer any serious damage, because in his own words, "If I was going to go insane, I would have done it years ago."

He also gets the ship's walls painted in Conversion Gel to facilitate portaling anywhere, actually cleans XS's gun, and most importantly will find Alexandra and ask "I need to borrow some thrones. Is that alright? I can pay you back as soon as I find a way to earn money.

*[Rhylain]*

Ezekiel nods when Alexandra speaks, and adds "And I am a minority in human terms, so... yes, please be less bigoted," while cloaking his helmet to reveal his face. "That doesn't go down well with my people, to put it lightly."

As for the search-and-rescue mission, he says "That shouldn't be too difficult. We simply construct a portal here, seek out the young Eldar, then portal back here with the young lady in tow. We've already dealt with a couple of Khorne fanatics, and they're no trouble. As for Orks... well, as the saying goes, 'if it has brains, I can blow them out'."

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Warp Travel*

Edward will take his Tallboy for a walk in one of the cargo bays, and sets some time to set up a purification system so he can manufacture some whale oil for his technology, the moment he finds an animal roughly analogous to the Void-touched cetaceans of the Isles.

*Chat With Eldar*

"Will we know what a spirit stone looks like when and if we find some? Or will we need Kaera to identify them?" Which might be unfortunate if they find the stones before they find the Ranger. 

Edward smiles and leans on his cane, though he's a little nervous- he's never actually been in a warzone before, since even when the koloss attacked Erlac it wasn't much of a war zone, and barely a siege.

----------


## Rater202

*Warp Travel*

Alex of course has plenty of money to spare. Not quite sure what 20 million US Dollars equate to in Thrones, but it's a decent amount regardless and she's more than willing to share.

Misunderstanding cleared up, Rose will offer the use of her powers to ensure that the Hydroponics Garen is running optimally, producing as much good as possible for as minimal loss of plant life.

Other than that she seems to prefer to be left to herself. She's seen out and about, but mostly because Molly is trying to socialize.

If Manyclops is along on the journey instead of just touring the ship, Rose might try to find her and talk o her at Alexandra's suggestion, however.

*Now*

"...Out of curiosity, would destroying one or both of those fleets have any chance of making this job easier? I don't want to just leave someone who needs help but just letting two hostile armies... Exist? Yeah, my Original Self would be trying to figure out what Weapons of Mass Destruction he could get his hands on."


She's examining her fingernails as she says it. Her jumping experience was fraught with conflict, this is barely a Tuesday for her.

----------


## Lord Raziere

(OOC: okay so I looked up spirit stone color and I thought it was blue, but there are many art of them being red, some green, found one that was yellow, so I think GW left that intentionally open so you can paint them however you want? but blue is the most common color I see, so I'm going with to with blue)

*Warp Travel:*
Rose's offer will be accepted- Ensara is a scientist sure, but she doesn't have much experience in actual nature stuff and her real expertise is in other kinds of technology

Manyclops is of course on the ship and will talk to Rose about whatever, Manyclops will say
"So your Rose eh? Names Manyclops, cause some old story about a monster called a cyclops with on eye, and I got many eyes. Heh, lucky kid, you got actual powers with your mutations rather than just eyes. Bit jealous, honestly. You can actually make useful things happen like with the hydroponics garden thing. All I can do is see more than I should, hurts me brain a little if I open too many of my eyes at once. Got to keep some closed so me vision stays a little limited so I can do things proper."

*Eldrad Ulthran:*
He considers this
*"The spirit stones look blue, oval and glow a little. You can see one on my chest."*
He gestures to a oval blue stone on his black robe with intricate runes and designs, and you can see it onscreen through the video transmission.
*"There are variations but they're mostly blue."*
Meanwhile Ensara says
"Well, the Khorne fanatics we dealt with were a like, a mob, not a real army, a few gangs at best. What we're dealing down with down there-"
she points to Rhylain.
"-are two armies in the high millions to low billions across the entire planet. with war machines, fleets, demons, hardened chaos marines, and who knows what else. Much different."
*"Battles like this are not uncommon or abnormal in this galaxy."* Eldrad comments *"In earlier stages of civilization, many people would consider the Battle of Rhylain a planet-spanning war unto itself. To people living in these dark times, it is not even notable. The only importance Rhylain has is that if the Orks fall, these Chaos forces has a foothold to start attacking other systems. Not that the Orks being victorious would be good either. But this is a minor conflict in the grand scheme of things, and there are far more strategically useful planets for Chaos to attack, such as Cadia. If you rescue Kaerabryn and kill everything else down there....no one would care."*
"How long has this battle been going on for?"
*"A few months. But Kaerabryn only entered recently. She is skilled in stealth and can avoid notice but I'm not sure how long that can last."*
"Okay, so this place is a war zone." Ensara says. 
She takes a few steps and clenches her fist with a wicked grin.
"How would you guys like it I made it a _former_ war zone? Or at least, served as a distraction through superior violence?"
Rhiannon and Eldrad both have a perplexed reaction.
"....You mean....distract the armies?"
*"....The entire armies spanning the planet?"*
"Yes!"
"By yourself."
"Yeah! Well at least as much as I can, some will probably spot you but I hope to get a lot of them!"
"How?"
"By leaping from the ship and crashing into the middle of the fighting and begin punching all of them."
"....Leaping. From the ship. through the void of space. and just....start punching."
"Yes!"
*"I have an idea of how powerful you are and how plausible it is for you to do that and that idea still sounds crazy if only because you sound like a particularly articulate Ork when you talk about attacking entire armies by yourself as it its a fun time."*
"Want me to show you?"
Eldrad looks at the others
*"....Do I?"*
Ensara looks raring to go, Rhiannon has crossed her arms as if thinking 'oh this ought to be good', and anyone else like Chrymira or some of the other mutant crew are looking at Ensara disbelievingly as if she can't possibly do any of that. You get the idea that Ensara will do _something_ soon if a plan isn't made.

----------


## Rater202

*Then*

"When my powers first came in, my mother decided that they meant I was inherently evil and deserved to suffer and die. Then she sold me to a man who used me in experiments and for... Other things. Forgive me if I don't feel lucky."

*Now*

"Ensara, please control yourself. And, if we need a distraction for the fighting on the surface below... Stealth isn't exactly my Forte. I could use a psychic illusion to hide myself, but I'm not very practiced with it. But something big and flashy? I haven't had a chance to cut loose since I defeated the five zombies that ate Galactiac. I picked up a spot of Power cosmic just afterward, I've never really had a chance to test my new limits."

"But regardless of who does what we can't go anywhere without a plan."

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
"Aow. Well, I AM actually good at stealth, its just that when you get as powerful as I am, you don't really need it. Stealth is generally a tool for when your facing a greater foe than yourself or a delicate situation you can't solve with force. Given that the situation down there is that there is only one Eldar life we need to worry about and 99.9% of all the other lives are war-happy berserkers who'd kill us as soon as look at us whether they be Ork or Khorne cultist, I don't see much point in subtlety- Though I guess the spirit stones would require a bit of a delicate touch to not get destroyed, so if you insist on running distraction and destruction, I can go around taking what spirit stones I can find. Guess I'll have to find some other day to cut loose."

*Khorne: Send Omen*
Meanwhile on a Retaliator class Chaos ship...
*"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"*
Chaos Marine kills an underling for insubordination and sees the blood of the underling splatter on a window. The blood forms into a sitting horned figure much like Khorne, pointing at the Saber with its left hand the window forming an optical illusion of the 2D figure pointing directly at it, the Chaos Marine recognizing it as an Imperial ship.
*"Khorne has sent an omen! Some Imperial dogs are sniffing around."*
But why was there only one ship? It was probably rogue trader. No matter. The only good Imperial was a dead Imperial, and this might just be a ship that arrived early through the Warp- the rest of fleet might show up and give them intel on the battle due to variable warp travel times. The Chaos Marine will report the ship to his superiors. The Chaos ship will begin turning to engage, and heading towards the Saber, preparing to attack in a few minutes. More slaughter for Khorne, more battle to be had. 

It mattered not where the blood flows after all.

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Chat With Eldar*

"I can do stealth. Pretty good at it, in fact; I've spent twenty years trying not to be found for various reasons." He frowns a little at Ensara's words. "I don't think I want to know how you've solved most of your problems if you think force is always the best choice. Sometimes, sure, a civil war can be defeated by a show of might. Sometimes it can be ended with far less effort and disruption with a single well-placed dagger and a man who knows how to get in and out without being spotted."

"If you need someone stealthy, I've got plenty experience and skill in that area. Can't exactly turn invisible or create illusions, not without a potion at least. I've always tried to avoid relying on those, anyway, since I knew that one day I'd be somewhere without ice wraiths or chaurus to provide the ingredients." He could have tried breeding them, which in the case of the chaurus might have proved successful, but even with a decade under his belt Edward isn't sure if the ice wraiths even breed, let alone how he'd go about capturing enough to start a farm. "If you want to set up a distraction whilst I get the job done, I'd be more than happy to do that. I think I can find Kaerabryn, as well, even if she's hiding." His Darkvision combined with Allomantic tin to sharpen his mundane senses makes it hard to surprise or sneak up on Edward, which is a very useful skill for a sneak.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Ensara:*
He demeanor changes when you say that to her, becoming more....rambly, more thoughtful.
"Best choice? No. Nonononono. Never said that. Best choice of anything is an entirely different conversation. To some extent, subjective based on priorities. I merely said stealth is a good option when force can't be applied, much experience in using stealth, I was just proposing what was fun, to me at least. If I was doing what was best.....things would be entirely different. But I don't want to be a person who does whats "best". Not at how powerful I am. I don't have the proper perspective for that, won't see the small picture, the picture that MATTERS even if no one thinks it does. Greatness is a hell of a drug, dangerous to get addicted to it. But nevermind me!"
She suddenly changes tack and smiles
"I'm sorry I let my enjoyment of battle overtake me, I'll simply go around stealing the spirit stones and leaver the retrieval of Kaerabryn to you guys and the distraction to Alex while fighting using only Gunhell to make sure I'm not going out of control."
Rhiannon suddenly receives a telepathic call from the astropath
"...There is a Chaos Ship heading our way. We have been spotted. Everyone get battle ready, I'm not waiting around for you four to get done planning, if need be I'll make sure this ship fights no matter how inexperienced the crew is."
She will send a telepathic message to Astropath Xiao to begin astropathic ship to ship combat, and he will reach out with his power.

On the Chaos Ship, suddenly psychic flames burst out on places on the ship and crew spring up to try and to put them out.
*"They're already attacking! Accelerate towards them faster! Get within boarding distance so we may face them in glorious melee! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"*
the Chaos Marine in command yells as the ships speeds up and gunners eager for action against Imperials being firing on the Sabre. 

Ensara will say
"Alex if you got that, I'll teleport down to the surface anyone want to come with, say now."
She will teleport to the surface of the planet and anyone who wants to come with will, on the surface you hear the gunfire of battle off in the distance even now, and the entire surface is just....wasteland, wreckage of mostly ork technology here and there, if there is any Eldar tech or ruins around here its probably buried under ten thousand years of dirt, or got taken by orks and incorporated into their ramshackle tech somehow
"Teleported us to one of the less populous areas of this war zone. But that probably means there is still like, random orks around. I'll leave finding the eldar girl to you, got to do my thing. Won't be as fun as going around killing the armies but....I'll find those spirit stones, worry not."
She will fade into an invisible wind, contemplating how to have fun while doing this.

----------


## Rater202

Alexandra cracks her fingers.

"Show time."

First, her eyes begin to glow emerald, with the same light beginning to trace an outline around her body as her hair stands up and dances in non-existant wind.

Then she vanishes from sight.

*Chaos Ship*

Within the ship, there's suddenly... Bagpipe music.

Not over the air. No. In the heads of everyone aboard the ship.

Along with a message. _"You came to the wrong neighborhood."_

Starheart appears on the bridge of the Chaos Ship, floating in the air and looking for all the world like a Greco-Roman Akira. She reaches out and telekinetically snaps the neck of a random crewman, ensuring that it's a bloodless death.

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Planet Side*

Edward has chosen to accompany the away team, and is on the planet. He'd have ideally gotten changed first, into the suit of dragonscale armour he's got in his warehouse, but they didn't have time because they were about to be boarded. He's survived battles and war before he had it, anyway, so it's not needed... but he would have very much appreciated the thicker protection and opportunity to grab more gold jewellery. So now he's on the planet, he'll look around and nod, pulling out a small vial and downing the contents before activating the tin and his Darkvision. The tin increases the sensitivity of his senses; he can see further and in more detail, his hearing has been sharpened, his senses of smell and taste are sharper, and his skin is likewise more sensitive to touch and temperature. Darkvision doesn't extend as far as his usual sight- though the tin does mitigate that a little- and provide monochrome vision unhampered by light or dark, and people and their sight cones are highlighted even through obstacles, as are defence mechanisms, unattended weaponry and other items of interest. Hopefully that will include spirit stones.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Chaos Ship:*
"Wait....why is Sacris music playing in my hea-" 
the crewman's neck gets snapped and he falls to the ground, dead. Everyone turns to look at Starheart, revving up their chainswords with bloodlust in their eyes. If they ever had fear in their hearts, Khorne has taken it from them long ago. Now there is only hatred of psykers like the one they see before them, and fury at anyone who dares to face them in battle, all the things that make them more than a warrior, more than someone seeking their next fight, hammered out by a bloody smith, a dark demonic god forging weapons in the fires of slaughter and glory. They don't see a threat to their lives, only a psyker to murder in Khorne's name, to win his favor. They are far gone, farther than the cultists you saw back in the underhive, not even the thought of change or revolution motivates them anymore- only the slaughter, only the blood, only the fight. For ever, and ever. 

So of course they yell their signature battle cry, crewmen and chaos marines both, you know the one, and charge at Starheart swinging their chainswords at you all at once. They would not care if they hit each other, after all. 

*Surface:*
You hear some people walking around and talking to each other:
This sucks I tell yeh. Them Khorne blokes to get to have their jollies off in a massive melee while we scrounge around searchin' for blue glowy stones all so we can like sell the pretty rocks to Slaaneshi addicts to get their rocks off.on top of that we got to find some stupid knife-eared tart to find some old stupid machine that probably doesn't work.
Oi, quit yer whinin'. This here is technically the good job: We are safer from fightin' the actual war and getting killed by some Khorne Berzerker or hit by stray dakka from the orks. An' we're getting warpcoin outta of it.
Mate, warpcoin changes value every second. Its pretty much useless for getting anythin'. Zhargeon is screwing us over. Thinks he is all high and mighty orderin' us about, playing at archaeologist just because he found something in one of Tzeentch's tomes that says there is some wish-granting Eldar console or something on this planet.
Wot, you want to talk back to the sorcerer, mate? Get off it, we'll collect a few more stupid Eldar rocks and sneak back to camp safely and say we couldn't find her or something, there's other groups searching about for her. We already got a bunch in our bag, a few more and we'll make a profit. 
Sounds like they're some kind of Chaos soldiers. Looks like Khorne cultists may not be the only ones on this planet.

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Surface*

Edward turns to anyone who followed and puts a finger to his lips, motioning for them to be quiet. He'll use Blink to get closer to the cultists, sticking ideally to anywhere high- piles of scrap, wrecked vehicles, that sort of thing- and will try to count them. If the group's small and not keeping good watch- six or under, with no rear guard- he'll Blink behind the cultist at the back and muffle him as he breaks their neck, moving up the group for as long as he can without being detected. 

If they're paying more attention and there's no easy way to take one out without being noticed, or there's more seven or more of them, he'll instead use Devouring Swarm focused on the centre of the group and use the confusion to start picking off the ones at the edge. If there's twelve or more of them, he'll have to try something else.

----------


## Rater202

*Chaos Ship
*
Over the psychic connection she established in order to play her music, Alexandra starts projecting the emotion of pure calmness, trying to neutralize the Kornite's berserker rage.

Simultaneously, she tries to search the minds of all on the ship for any sign of prisoners or innocents, as well as holding up her hands. A crackle of lightning from each sounds as she generates an electromagnetic forcefield to shield herself from harm.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Chaos Ship:*
First of all, there are no Khornate Berserkers on this ship, or any navy ship. They do not have the patience to engage in naval combat. All the Khornate Berzerkers of this fleet are currently engaged in fighting the orks in melee with twin chain axes while yelling their usual warcries. This Chaos Marine is a follower of Khorne but not a World Eater and thus worships Khorne in a different way. Just for clarification. 

They all calm down and stop.
"....Why....why can't I feel the glorious rage of Khorne?" one wonders "Why can't I get lost in the strength, the rage, the courage?"
"Why do I have a sobering realization..." that another says "....that everything is garbage? I don't want to think about how everything is garbage."
"Things were simpler when we could feel the Rage. But I can't even feel sad over it. I'm calm about how complex and hopeless it all is. Why do I feel calm about that? It don't feel right..."
"I'm just realizing that we're screwed but somehow, I'm calm about how screwed we are. I don't feel real strongly about how this little girl's going to kill us all. Weird. Is this what Nurgle followers feel like all the time, except happier? Lookin' at the face of certain inevitable doom but feeling fine because why worry about it? Huh."
"Really? I'm just realizing how this feels like I how I used to be loyalist once, and just....calmly being a little cog spinning on the Imperium's machine, accepting that I was an insignificant part in something grander than myself to realize the Corpse-Emperor's vision and now that I think about it, serving under Khorne isn't much different than serving the Imperium, just with more rage and bravado and demon sacrifices. Like, stripped of all the fury, I'm still a cog just....a blood soaked one now. the Rage just...distracts me. Huh."
He doesn't seem to have any idea of an existence outside of being a cog to greater powers however.

Meanwhile reading their minds well.....there USED to be prisoners. They were all sacrificed to summons demons like bloodletters and juggernauts and A Bloodthirster that are down there fighting the orks now. Chaos doesn't really take prisoners except to sacrifice people to demons and they've been fighting this battle for months. 

*Surface, Edward:*
Meanwhile the group is....four of them, and these guys are normal cultist soldiers, former imperial guard sure, but they're nothing to you. They all die one by one the last one doing a textbook making a joke then saying "Right guys? Guys?" as they don't get a reply to their last comment and gets their necked snapped like the rest. A bag of some soulstones are dropped on the ground. Given their lack of mining tools, it seems you can probably just go around the planet picking out soulstones off the ground.

Then a fifth soldier-cultist comes walking in carrying another soulstone saying
"Hey guys I found another soulsto-" BANG!
They suddenly fall dead from what sounds like a sniper rifle making their head explode bloodily and their corpse fall to the ground. Then you hear a voice, young female and holding some impetuousness or rebelliousness.
"Mon-keigh! Who're you with!? If your with Chaos, I won't hesitate to snipe you like that cultist!"

*Surface, Ensara:*
She is busy picking up soulstones with her own Orichalcum pack, a well made square golden container of golden wires weaved to look like a leather bag called The Ever-Expansive Container. The great thing about Orichalcum was that it could theoretically be used to do almost anything. There is a reason why its called "Wishmetal". The Ever-Expansive Container was for storing a large amount of things in a small bag. She flitted from place to place, taking soulstones from the ground, from little crevices where warp energies seemed to gather and pool and form like winds coalescing into ice somehow. 
She does this, as silent, swift and invisible as the wind. She sped past orks and demons, space marines and grots, fighting each other in a bloody melee. They didn't notice her. As one of the most powerful of the Exalted as a Nadir Caste, going unnoticed to people such as them in the middle of loud combat wasn't even a challenge. and that was just the capability she had gotten from ONE jump. Her anima ki abilities might actually be able to be more powerful than an Exalted in some areas, and her planeswalker abilities?

Well, She is an Oldwalker now. Those were beings that conjured things from nothing with a thought, drew upon the limitless power of mana from their own spark and changed the course of a multiverse with their deeds. With the right spell, she can just.....make armies die. In a way, she faces much the same problem as one caped news reporter from midwest america does:

What to do, when you find that your a god?

The answer that worked for him, can't work for her. Some people like to have fun after all. Not every good person handed the power of the cosmos can be an unfailing servant to a philosophical ideal of using such vast power towards its most optimal responsible form and enjoy a life of humility between that. Not like say, Alexandra. It takes a certain kind of person, Ensara thinks, to look at the godlike powers of Superman or Alex up there and see it only as a tool for what good can be done with it, pick it up, use it only for that and set it aside like its just another thing they do when they get up in the morning and go Be Just Another Person. Ensara knows she is not normal, not just another person because she can do and has experienced. To a degree she is fine with that, she likes it. What was the point after all, if your just going to act like you don't have them? She respects such paragons of morality to be sure, but she can't lie to herself and act like she is one herself. She is gather a bunch of soulstones, and boy is it getting boring. Thats the downside of competence: the part where you succeed too much to be exciting.

She intentionally makes herself visible to a Khornate Berserker, who sees her and yells
*"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"*
and charges at her. He comes charging at Ensara swinging his chain axe forward, and she steps aside, blue mana glowing in her palm. Suddenly the space marine rams the chainsaw blade...into a future version of themselves screaming, killing them instantly.
*What...? Me!?* he says in surprise.
Yes you. she says with a little smirk Specifically, you from five seconds in the future. Four. Three. Two....One...
As she counts down the space marine begins screaming in terror as they realize what just happened then disappears five seconds into the past. 
She chuckles a little and becomes like the wind to resume picking up soulstones again. Its the little joys in the life that make it worth living. Like making an evil jerk kill their future self summoned from five seconds from now. Just long enough for them to realize the terror of it. She couldn't time travel "for real", but figuring out that little trick for chronomancy was so worth it.

----------


## Rater202

"Can any of you breathe in space?"


Alexandra can, thanks to the Power Cosmic.

Alexandra uses her control over electromagnetism and the various metallic elements to start disassembling the ship. She tries to do it quickly, but cleanly, breaking down every part into its components without damaging said components.

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Rhylain Surface- Edward*

Edward stoops to pick up the soulstones, when the other cultist arrives and explodes. "My name is Edward Sinton. I'm here mostly for myself, and sent by Eldraad Ulthran. I believe I'm looking for you, Kaerabryn, as well as these things. Please don't shoot me, this is a clean shirt." And Edward's not sure if a headshot will actually kill him, whilst he knows a body shot won't. So long as he's got plenty of healing stored in gold anyway.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Chaos Ship:*
The soldiers and chaos marines continue to be completely calm as they watch you disassemble the ship around them, answering the question as reasonably as they can. 
"Well, we're space marines our power armor provides us a limited supply of air so we can breathe and fight in a vacuum. The cultists here though, they don't have void suits on their person as they're not really useful if there is a hull breach in the middle of space anyways, as in the scenario that a ship can't function to get you back to a planet, your pretty much a dead man already so there is no point in putting it on except to drag out the inevitable." say one chaos marine
"and all thats assuming we're still imperials, we're Chaos cultists, everything we have is disorganized and drenched in warp energy now, so whether we have the supplies to actually do a mission or not is pretty dependent on whether we can raid people for them, lacking traditional supply lines that the imperium's military relies on to function. Except Iron Warriors those guys freakishly organized and competent for people who worship the Dark Gods, and the Black Legion who have like, a bit of everything so all the former Iron Warriors in that tend to make our armies function better while muttering about how they're the only ones who can do anything right." says another chaos marine. 
"I forget, are tech priests capable of breathing in space? or hereteks for that matter?" Asks the first chaos marine
"I don't think they can, but I wouldn't be surprised if a rare few could? All the older ones tend to hoard the good stuff." says the second
"Also, why doesn't it bother us that we're seeing the soldiers literally asphyxiate before our eyes?"
"We're calmed remember? The soldiers can't even feel strongly about their own deaths, and we can't feel strongly about witnessing their deaths. Those we don't really care, because we can't care. Without strong emotion, we don't really care about anything and are just passing the few moments of time we have left. Thus we don't do anything about the doom around us. The old adage about "apathy is death" has literally become true in our case. I'm betting we're intellectually analyzing anything we can in some effort at exerting meaning on our last moments of life, a subconscious form of trying to have control or rebellion of sorts since we can't care about anything, we observe and come up with whatever conclusions we can to stimulate our minds intellectually."
"Indeed brother. Since the horror of the situation holds no meaning or feeling to us, we react with trying to disassemble and break down all the observations we can about it. Yet I don't see any of this as particularly fascinating either- I'm not interested in it, its just something we're doing while people die around us. Or perhaps it is a ploy to try and creep out the little girl making us not feel things by showing her what happens when you take the emotions out of humanity? I don't think it'll work, she seems pretty strong-willed. I guess we're just doing it to pass the time until we die to."
"Yeah." They say while their magnetic feet engage to keep standing on the floor while their room opens to the void and the soldiers around them patiently and calmly do nothing about their fate as they run out of air, not particularly caring that its happening. One needs to feel some measure of fear to try and keep themselves alive after all, so I guess these Space Marines finally truly do Know No Fear. The two chaos marines look at the stars
"The stars are very distant."
"Yes. The void is also very black."
"This is true."
"The void is vast, and we are small."
"These are also true."
"I'd say something about the vastness of the galaxy and our place within it, but I have no particular strong feelings one way or another about our significance in the universe or the lack thereof."
"Yeah, I don't either, and I don't particularly care that neither of us do."
"The small girl doing this to us is small"
"Noted. That battle is huge."
"Remember when we used to care about it?"
"Yes, I do. That is certainly information that exists in my head."
"Yes, it exists in mine as well."
Yeah all chaos  marines on this currently being disassembled ship are just making calm observations with no feeling behind it as they wait for their life support to fail. Continue with this and they are basically already dead, they just haven't run out of air yet. 

Alexandra receives a telepathic message from Astropath Xiao:
_<I sense what your doing. Your disassembling it so that our tech priests can study the parts. You might want to bless or purify the parts somehow, Chaos taint gets everywhere and that ship has been drenched in Chaos corruption. The Imperium has no means of getting rid of Chaos taint other than destroying everything. I don't need visions from the future to tell you that letting it the parts near people without cleaning them will would be a very bad mistake.>_
he has been training his telepathy to get longer and more understandable, inspired by seeing your power. 

*Ensara:*
Meanwhile, in between taking soulstones she come across an ork fighting Chaos by....firing sonic blasts from what looks like a crude electric guitar, screaming out a song:
*"'ERE WE GO! 'ERE WE GO! ERE WE GO THROUGH THE KOSMOS!
ERE WE GO TO INFINITYYYYYYYY-"*
Ensara casually punches the Ork aside and grabs the guitar, properly called a Rokker Shoota and begins strumming and practicing it herself, blasting few cultists as she does so with her tests, not even intentionally. She observes that also has an axe blade built into it.
"Yes, this'll be a good weapon to help me learn Silver-Voiced Nightingale Style. Or at least, an electric guitar version of it. Its own sonic blasts will suffice until I learn how to do it myself."
*"OI! Hummie!"*
The ork gets up from the punch, an area on his chest thats clearly badly broken and damaged from where she hit- were this wound on a human, he'd be dead. But this ork was standing up and just angry, seeming toughing through it just fine.
*"Datz mine!"*
She easily dodges out of the way of his lunge at her, Ensara muttering
"Oh right, Orkz are more durable than humans with like, redundant organs and such. Gotta punch a little harder for them."
She tended to limit her punches to exact amounts of energy to needed kill someone as a matter of discipline and control. Since most worlds in the...whatever-verse? whatever you want to call the big conglomerations of realities they Jump through? are full of normal humans, she doesn't need to adjust this often. She fills her new Rok-Guitar with viridian flames and chop the ork in half, flames eating away at the two halves of the corpses they fall over. Then becomes an invisible wind once again, the rest of the orks and chaos seeing her disappear.

She notices what Alexandra is doing up above-her senses can tell such things- but she doesn't comment or do anything about it. She was a person with a perk to discard morality or immorality whenever she felt like it, so it'd be hypocritical of her to be on a high horse about anything. She did not care if Alexandra forbade talking about mind control to her but then turned around to calm people into just letting themselves die. She could guess at the reasons why, and Ensara was no paladin. If Alexandra wanted to fight without shedding blood or allowing rage to try and starve Khorne, that is her decision. 

She continues trying to strum her Rok Guitar while weaving essence into it. Trying to learn Silver-voiced nightingale Style while searching for more soulstones was her own. 

*Kaerabryn:*
There is a teenage cry of 
"aaaaaaaugh"
As she throws her cameoline cloak, revealing an Eldar with blue and purple hair in a ponytail. She wears Eldaari armor, and some sleek alien-looking sniper as she looks annoyed at you.
"That meddling scared old man! I am handling myself fine! I am actually trying to save our race from extinction, takes some risks for more reward, but now he sends humans to be tools for him since he doesn't want any Eldar lives to be lost. Scared about even picking up the soulstones so we can like, boost our population even slightly. Sigh. Did he even tell you that there is something called the Forge of Vaul here? Y'know one of the greatest artifacts of our ancient empire, a device that can like, create anything from warp energy, and thus like maybe solve a lot of our problems if we got our hands on it? Something he for some reason doesn't want us to get? Did he mention any of that?"

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## Rater202

_"...No, actually. In fact what I'm about to do probably counts as blaspheme as far as the Tech-Priests are concerned."
_

Once the ship is fully disassembled, she starts building, using both magnetism and psychokinesis. Parts she can use as is will be preserved. but anything else will be broken down and reassembled, down to the molecular level if that's what it takes, or just outright transmuted with power cosmic until she has what she needs.

While she primarily focuses n her natural abilities, Alexandra was trained in sorcery and the super-science of man's world.

Hal Stark, the Iron Lantern, is known for his repulsor tech, technology smaller and more efficient that drastically amplifies any energy put into it, to a degree that borders on violation of Thermodynamics, a property that works quite well with the Green Light from the battery he salvaged.

The same Green Light that is a component of Starheart's own green flame.

What she's done is use the Chaos Ship as raw materials to make a giant repulsor canon.

The next step, since the Astropath reminded her, is to trace her green flame across it to draw on countless arcane sigils and prepare a series of spells meant to siphon off the ambient chaos taint and convert it into more benign forms of energy before dispersing it.

And then... She stats charging it. Feeding her green flame into an access port.

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## Earl of Purple

*Surface*

Edward isn't surprised by Kaerabryn throwing off her cloak; he knew where she was as his Dark Vision bypasses obstacles like walls, and shows vague vision cones so he can see where people are looking. So long as she's in range and in front of him, he can tell where she is- and if they're talking, they should be within that limited radius of effect. "No, he didn't. Perhaps he didn't trust me with it. Perhaps he thinks it's safe where it is, and looking for it would lead the orks or the cultists to it and doom the galaxy. Perhaps he knows it's broken beyond repair and useless. More than it's already doomed, I mean. Do you know how to activate it and use it, if you found it?" Quite an important question, in Edward's mind.

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## Lord Raziere

*Chaos Ship:*
Astropath Xiao responds
_<...Okay then.>_
Privately wondering if Alexandra _really_ needs to construct some weird cannon to do the great amount of destruction he thinks she is about to do or if its just her preference, but he suspects the answer doesn't matter and he is about to get a demonstration anyways. 

The space marines as you work look at this and say
"She is building something big"
"Indeed. I'm pretty sure its a cannon of some kind."
"That is sure a thing that exists."
The human chaos cultists are all dead of a lack of air by this point.

*Kaerabryn:*
She loses steam a bit at these question
"Welll I- ugh. Look."
She begins to explain
"The Forge of Vaul isn't some super-special secret weapon....not really, not by the standards of the ancient Eldari empire that we fell from. It was incredibly advanced and thus made machines to accomplished whatever desire, whatever dream the Aeldari of then wanted. The Forge of Vaul was a tool of personal convenience and luxury, much like say your human microwaves. It was designed to be very accessible and easy to use, and to last for a people that were at the time immortal and beyond death, who had been enjoying luxury and decadence for thousands of years. It said that in those days, that if we ever died, our souls would find themselves in the Warp and that we were able to resurrect ourselves from that state, and that we could create new bodies for our souls to inhabit from nothing. We could create more than just Wraithbone from but anything we wanted. It was a time of wonders. It'd be easy to activate it, touch the console think what you want and it would appear.

Your...right it might be broken. Or corrupted by chaos. Or malfunctioning. But there is Chaos Sorcerer who thinks it might be here to, Zhargeon the Archeognostic, which I've gathered from my scouting. He seems pretty convinced that its here. And our people will not survive unless we take some risks, and I've heard the plans some of the plan the Farseers discuss to try get a "victory" over Chaos. Talks of our entire race needing to sacrifice themselves to form a God of Death called Ynnead to fight....She Who Thirsts, including the ones in soulstones. How in Khaine's bloody hands is that supposed to be a victory if we're all dead!? What is this, some cruel joke on Cegorach's part!? How is my plan any more crazy than that? And why the forbid it, its not because it might be broken, its because of reasons like 'our races downfall is because of machines like that Kaerabryn, don't find the machines that will make us succumb to decadence again Kaerabryn, go live this boring dull life of studying these books on a single narrow topic for 100 years Kaerabryn, fun is not allowed, fun is how you get Dark Eldar Kaerabryn, so don't have any.' We hide and we run and we restrict ourselves to this existence full of rigid rules and paths and yet we still lose by inches and then we come up with that stupid Ynnead plan!"
She takes her head.
"I just....want to do something about this. Something that matters. That changes things for the better for once."

*Ensara:*
She keeps sneaking and running along, wondering what next to do.  What else could she do to amuse herself? She extends her senses and finds something....interesting. All of the Chaos forces were a mix of red, black and blue mana. The same three colors of mana she was well-versed in an attuned to. Red of course was more predominant among Khorne cultists, but the mana of Chaos itself seem to be a mix of red, black and blue. She grins. Furthermore, there were demons among the chaos forces. Psychic daemons formed from the certain thoughts and whatnot, but demons nonetheless and she had a particular perk for dealing with demons. She takes out a coin, a single imperial Throne and telepathically calls out to all the demons on the battlefield:
_<Attention all daemons on this battlefield, if you don't guess the following coin flip correctly you agree to be bound to obey me in all things for a year and day!>_
Instantly all the daemons who hear this sense a dark force is at work as she flips the coin with her thumb a coin they cannot see, something supernatural is going on here and if they don't guess correctly they truly will be bound and daemons always obey the contracts they are bound into, no matter how unfair. So about half of them yell out 
*"HEADS!"* and the other half *"TAILS!"* in equal amounts, having a 50/50 shot at guessing correctly they thought.

But the coin tumbles....and lands on its edge. Completely upright. The realize they all feel a sudden compulsion to obey her with growing fear. 
"Heheheheheh. Fools. Why would allow the coin to be either?"
*"Wait a minute!"* says a nearby red demon *"I guessed edge, why I am bound!?"*
She reveals a message sewn onto the inside of her naval coat: "ANY DEMON WHO TAKES A STEP TOWARDS THIS COAT AGREES TO BE BOUND TO OBEY ME FOR A YEAR AND A DAY."
*"Thats....thats not fair!!"*
"Lack of fairness is entirely the point and is in the fact, a feature. I have a Jumper perk called Lying With Demons allowing me to bind demons to my service using blatantly unfair deals. Mainly to bind demons weaker than me like you, though its handy in other situations."

<Now Daemons: Go gather more soulstones for me, uncorrupted and kill anyone who tries to stop you aside from Alexandra, Edward and Kaerabryn, those are my allies. don't worry about who those are, the magic will stop you from disobeying regardless.>
The demons instantly begin turning upon the Chaos cultists and marines killing them to take any soulstones they find and breaking rank to do so, causing more mayhem across the battlefield as the Chaos forces begin fighting each other and the orks still united, keep on attacking them, the orks beginning to advance on at least one front in this war.

----------


## Earl of Purple

*Khaerabrynn & Edward*

"Then it seems regardless of what Eldraad might think, finding it and securing it is quite important. Maybe killing this Archeognostic, too. Do you know where he or it is from here? I've not been on this planet long, I can't say I know my way around yet." Edward looks around, to make sure there's nothing else he's missing whilst he's got Darkvision on and helpfully highlighting anything of interest nearby, before straightening up and stepping closer to the Aeldari Ranger.

----------


## Lord Raziere

*Some Ork:*
Around the time, some ork who had gotten lost wandering through old Eldar ruins, comes across a console, oddly intact despite everything around it being well, ruined. Out of curiosity he touches it. A voice speaks
"Greetings, this is a Forge of Vaul, what would you like created today?"
*"Wot?"*
The Forge adjusts its speech based on the orks thought patterns and explains
"Diz here Forge make da tingz you want mate, anyfin' you wantz, oi can make from yer 'ead-thinkies."
*"Oh dat makez sense! Wot I want iz.....MOAR DAKKA!"*
It conjures a few automatic turrets that can fire orky dakka/bullets from them at anything they saw around him to defend him. The Forge of Vaul surmises this is some form of game being played, after all the Eldar loved to play games with toys like this, and its not as if any of this was dangerous to anyone. If someone got shot, they'd just get brought back to life from the Immaterium after all.
"Is there anything else you wa-"
*"MOAAARR DAKKA!"*
The Forge of Vaul conjures more automatic orky turrets around the ruins farther out, one of them shoots a random chaos cultist passing by. 
"Is there anything else you wa-"
*"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR  RRR DAKKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"*
The Forge of Vaul searches farther afield and conjures a bunch of automatic turrets to fire upon the chaos forces on one of the fronts of the battle.

*Kaerabryn:*
"I know the general area of where it should be, I've just been shooting anyone who gets close to make sure no one finds it while also going on regular soulstone search outings while getting closer to finding it myself, which is still a priority- the Forge of Vaul can make biological bodies, but it can't make souls. The old empire was more concerned about pulling the souls that already existed back to life."
She begins leading you to the ruins to find....strange crude automatic turrets with orky decorations on them, automatically shooting any life form that goes near the entrance. The ruins themselves once seemed graceful, flowing  and artistic full of spires, cones, no hard edges or straight lines in their construction. But now they just seem broken.
"What? Oh dammit, I missed an ork. Those turrets weren't there before. This is bad. The forge will just keep creating more turrets if we don't get past them and stop this, Orkz love nothing more than shooting things with bullets forever. Let this go on long enough and....well I don't want to see what the planet looks like when its filled with nothing but guns firing bullets at other guns with endless ammunition. Its just going to keep drawing more energy from the warp to power the conjuring of the turrets, like a psyker overusing their power and the more you do that..."
Another turret gets conjured but this time and additional thing happens: the turret and a bunch of rocks around it suddenly rises into the entire about ten meters, gravity briefly ceasing, then they all fall back to earth. Another conjured turret randomly brings a bunch of screaming psychic ghosts howling in pain, the apparitions flying about before fading away, and a third turret conjured just makes a minor daemon appear, a pink Horror: a small pink mass of tentacles, limbs and big mouth babbling and squealing as it comes into the material world., casting warp fire on another turret to destroy it.
"The more Daemons appear, and the more reality begins to tear and crumble."
No matter how advanced the technology is, it can't escape the basic laws upon which it runs. 

*Zhargeon:*
Zhargeon, Thousand Sons Sorcerer, a disciple of Tzeentch, has fought the Imperium longer than most humans have been alive. He has come to this planet due to a secret from Tzeentch he has gotten from the Warp, that something called the Forge of Vaul is here, something from the past. He believes that truth can be found in the ancient past and its technology. Thus his title of the Archeognostic. While not on the level of say, Magnus or Ahriman, he was more powerful than most psykers of this galaxy. 

And he was confused as to what was even happening.

*"The Daemons are fighting against us! This may be good offerings to Khorne, but I was hoping to win this battle!"* says the Khornate general, a chaos marine, one of the few who kept their tactical and strategical wits amongst the berserkers and trigger happy psychopaths willing to murder anyone at the drop of a hat that is Khorne's armies.
*"Why have our daemons turned against us!?"* 
Zhargeon bellows, the Khornate general bellows back
*"I have no idea! Your the sorcerer, you did this to them, didn't you! I knew we shouldn't haved trusted in sorcery!"*
He draws his sword only for Zhargeon to blast him with warpflame, reducing the general to mutated ashes. 
*"Hrgh. I need to accelerate this if the daemons have decided to make their own entertainment...or if Khorne has decided he wants bloodshed more than victory in this battle.....then I need to figure out some alternate faster way to find the Forge of Vaul. But how?"*
A soldier comes running into the tent.
"General! general- oh he is dead, who is in command now?"
*"I am."* Zhargeon says
"....Okay." the soldier says, thinking it wise to not killed by the powerful sorcerer. "Something strange is happening. Our eastern forces just saw a bunch of what seems to be automatic turrets appear amid the ork forces, doubling their firepower out of nowhere."
*"Oh really?"*
This sound exactly like what he was looking for, all he had to do was follow the psychic energy such conjuring left in its wake.

*Ensara:*
Meanwhile where she was walking, the skies began to rain blood. Not because of any actual event mind you- no, Ensara recognized this was a psychic reality-warping field. Looking around she saw rocks begin to bleed red from cracks as if from wounds. From what she could sense a big Daemon was coming towards her, probably angry that the rest of its....minions were no longer obeying him or his god, coming for her. One powerful enough to kill armies, destroy nations and shake worlds. A Bloodthirster. 

She was not worried. She has faced such beings before. She accepts a bag of soulstones that a minor daemons gives her and puts it in her Ever-Expansive Container, and they scurry away not wanting to be here when the Bloodthirster arrives. She also sensed what was happening elsewhere, with the Forge of Vaul. It was concerning, but so was the Bloodthirster. If she didn't deal with it, who knows how the daemon could use it? That and she could use an actual fight, a challenge. Hopefully the Bloodthirster was a challenge. She didn't know how powerful she really was after gaining an old planeswalker spark- such power was supposed to be infinite mana, the power to create planes and make thoughts into reality and whatnot. Yet such planes were often only one planet large.  She didn't know how her power translated to a more traditional cosmology like this. It would be interesting to find out.

But before that can happen, a small blue Raven appears, perched on a rock, speaking to her
*"(Hello/Greetings/Salutations/Goodbye/Hey There)"* 
says the raven not as a bunch of words but as a single utterance conveying all the ideas expressed at the same time in one paradoxical communication 
*"(We/Us/Everyone) have met (Finally/Again/For the Last time), Ensara."*
"....This is the first time we have met. Let me guess....your Tzeentch."
*"This is also (True/False), and so is that (too/as well)."*
She doesn't bother attacking, she could tell this was an avatar, a form of remote communication. She might as well attack a cell phone while she was at it.
"Why are you talking to me? I have things to do. Bloodthirster to kill, plans to foil, that sort of thing."
*"Oh no no no. (I/We) am not (here/there) to be your enemy. I'm here to make you an (offer/deal/negotiation/agreement), that you might find quite (beneficial/lucrative/profitable)."*
"Ha! YOU are making a deal with ME!? Already? I though it'd take some beating you up and more trickery on my parts, whats your game?" 
If Tzeentch knew anytihng about her it was her perk that could make any deals with demons work in her favor, even more powerful ones- she couldn't screw over Tzeentch like the she could a normal demon, but she could certainly have enough wiggle room to squirrel herself out of any devastating costs she would have to pay. If Tzeentch wanted her soul, he'd never really get it. So what was he really after?
*"Look, Ensara. I'm going to level with you. This universe SUCKS. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it. The Imperium's still standing for now, but its slowly decaying, slowly dying, stagnating, rotting and so on and so forth. I may be powerful now, but the more this continues on, the more things decay, the more my enemy, Nurgle, is going to grow in power. I'm the God of Hope and Change, Progress, Ambition and Planning- what use is that kind of god, in a galaxy where all hope is dying? Where everything is only staying the same or getting worse and worse? Whats the use of conquering this world, if its all going to slip away from my grasp eventually? No. I want.....to escape. And in a Jumper like you, I see the way out. I look into the cast-off thoughts from your and others minds and see the possibilities, see all the worlds filled with more hope, progress and change than I've seen in a long time. Worlds more fitting for me than this....dreg of a galaxy."*
"Ha! And what could YOU possibly have to offer me that could make me go along with this? If this universe sucks so much, what is here that I could possibly want, much something you can give?"
*"The ability to learn Sidereal Martial Arts without a teacher."*
"What!? Liar." she says "Sidereal Martial Arts are something only Sidereals can teach to me, and the last one that was willing to do so is about 26 years dead by now. Your not even from the same universe, how could possibly grant me such enlightenment?"
*"Not....normally no. But your patron decided to make things....interesting by giving me the ability to give perks from other universes to Jumpers, other jumps if you make a deal with me. I can't grant anything to myself of course. I know what perk you DIDN'T take: The Jumper Hero Style perk. I can simply grant you that perk but put you either into CP debt which will apply 600cp worth of drawbacks to your jumps until its paid off or just minus 600cp from your next jump, you can take this without helping me- but, I can of course, call off the debt if you help me. Really reasonable no?"*
Ensara frowned. 600cp worth of drawbacks often resulted in some of the worst drawbacks being brought down upon you, like all your abilities not from this jump being locked out or your memories being suppressed or constantly beset by some of the worst enemies of a world. If the debt applied to this jump, it would screw her over immediately if she didn't agree to help him. She couldn't risk her memories or abilities being locked away- her individuality was all important to her.
"Sorry, no not taking the deal, I have all the time in the world to figure out some other way to learn Sidereal Martial Arts like take another Exalted Jump, I'm certain there are others that can get me what I want, nice try."
She begins walking away when Tzeentch says
*"Well then I have another deal for you: I can help you resurrect your Sidereal mentor, Shanari from the dead."*
She stops. An old love, unbreakable and eternal makes her turn around.
*"What."* she growls out
*"Ah its simple, your love for her creates a reflection of it in the Warp, and I see it-a love bound by Black Claw style. Your a master of that style aren't you? The style that can't be learned without falling in love with the one who teaches it. A cursed style, for the love that student has for their teacher can never be broken. Diminished, but never broken. I can help you get her back, the one who taught you what you know, who showed how to appreciate beauty of the martial arts you wield."*
"...Creation has a rule, no one can be brought back from the dead. Its not a world that likes backsies."
*"Who said Creation's magic will be used to bring her back? There are no such rules in the Warp. Help me escape this rotten galaxy and I will make sure she will be brought back to life, Sidereal Exaltation and all. You'll get her back, be able to speak with her again, her companionship, her wisdom, her help and be able to learn Sidereal Martial Arts, the pinnacle of martial arts again. Its not as if you liked the Maiden of Endings anyways, screw that goddess am I right?"*
Ensara honestly considers it. She did want to see her again, even after all these years. She did want to learn from her, have her as a companion on her travels through the omniverse. There was a part of that really wanted that again. That would do anything to get her back. But her reason stays her emotions. Tzeentch was a powerful psychic godlike entity capable of corrupting, morphing and manipulating entire worlds. In a way, a place like Warhammer 40,000 was a prison keeping him locked away from preying upon the rest of the reality. She would be a fool to unleash him, and there is no telling how he might twist the deal in his favor. 
*"Oh! But there is no need to give an immediate answer. Your busy, I can tell! And I can wait. I ask you simply to consider my offers and give me an answer back when its convenient for you. No matter how much you oppose me, my offer is always open. (Ta-ta for now/Cya/Aloha/Sayonara/Ciao!)"*
The blue raven disappears and Ensara turns to go face the Bloodthirster.

----------

