When a player character is woken up:
Once, there was an Empire
I am Juka Keyam Deskar , and I am honoured to be twenty-third Archon of the Divine. Flesh of Her flesh, my cybernetics are light compared to my daughters and sons whose distance from Her renders them weak.
I lead them now, my forty Children armed as the Empire's finest, into the decrepit belly of a Magus Temple on a distant vertical orbit of our star.
It must be millennia old, and yet the traces of their might are impossible to ignore. Though their arcane machines smoulder and crackle behind the walls, or spin madly without purpose in the echoing halls, even now a few function like they day they were made. The hull has been breached nowhere and the life support systems remain intact, and my scientists tell me more mechanisms within show signs of operation even though they appear dormant.
We still do not know how to combat the genetic decay of our people. The cloning cycles barely maintain our current stability, and our numbers cannot grow. It is my hope some secret in this place will cure us, and if not, might at least open the way to other hidden temples.
My Children and I have descended into the depths of this facility, and fortuitously it seems to be a medical centre. Multisurgeons sleep like vast, spiny insects in the sterile darkness. Empty stasis pods hum along the walls like vacant tombs. The language of the Magi is stamped on surfaces everywhere. I cannot decipher more than two morphemes of any string.
"Archon."
My third-favoured son, Deska Hun. Speaking through comms from two rooms away.
"We have found a sealed stasis pod."
I do not hesitate.
The pod sits alone in an unadorned, circular room. I can see defunct security systems everywhere - in an emergency, this room was to be sealed completely, flooded with... something, and then jettisoned into space. What could be contained here? Could it be a living Magus?
For a moment, I consider instructing my Children to enact those protocols and destroy this thing, but perhaps...
Our records clearly show that some Magi had power over life, creating living machines and altering themselves to better suit their needs. If there is a chance that one lives, might be compelled to save us, it must be worth the risk.
I have spent too long in contemplation; the seal is hissing. The sleeper is waking up.
I issue a command to ready weapons, and draw my sword; forged by my own hand from the core of a comet, anointed in my sacred blood. Magi were powerful, but they could still be killed. I am confident this one will be no match for me if it chooses violence.
What emerges from the pod is humanoid in shape, but it is clad in sleek armour that moves almost like flesh. Ivory and gold, with a full helmet. I see my reflection in that mirrored faceplate, and then I am blind. My optics struggle to compensate, but my biological eyes are overwhelmed. I hear gunfire and roll for cover, and when my vision clears ten of my children lie dead, broken. One is incinerated beyond recognition. I allow my rage to consume me, to strengthen me, and charge this murderous ghost where it stands among the corpses casually examining a rifle taken from the dead.
It doesn't look at me, doesn't react except to raise one long-fingered hand in my direction, and I realize I have made a mistake.
I awaken four AUs coreward and carry the fear of death into my new body. In two-hundred years, I have not been killed and forced to reinstantiate in a fresh clone. In an instant, that elder thing destroyed me.
As I wait for the meditechs to clear me for decanting, I pull up the facility database on fast new cortical inlays. I trawl archival recordings and redacted archaeological reports with mounting desperation.
Where I had felt a righteous hatred growing, now there is creeping dread. We had believed the Bandi to be a myth, exagerrations of a lost golden age. Now, I had awoken one.
I am Juka Keyam Deskar , and I am honoured to be twenty-third Archon of the Divine. Flesh of Her flesh, my cybernetics are light compared to my daughters and sons whose distance from Her renders them weak.
I lead them now, my forty Children armed as the Empire's finest, into the decrepit belly of a Magus Temple on a distant vertical orbit of our star.
It must be millennia old, and yet the traces of their might are impossible to ignore. Though their arcane machines smoulder and crackle behind the walls, or spin madly without purpose in the echoing halls, even now a few function like they day they were made. The hull has been breached nowhere and the life support systems remain intact, and my scientists tell me more mechanisms within show signs of operation even though they appear dormant.
We still do not know how to combat the genetic decay of our people. The cloning cycles barely maintain our current stability, and our numbers cannot grow. It is my hope some secret in this place will cure us, and if not, might at least open the way to other hidden temples.
My Children and I have descended into the depths of this facility, and fortuitously it seems to be a medical centre. Multisurgeons sleep like vast, spiny insects in the sterile darkness. Empty stasis pods hum along the walls like vacant tombs. The language of the Magi is stamped on surfaces everywhere. I cannot decipher more than two morphemes of any string.
"Archon."
My third-favoured son, Deska Hun. Speaking through comms from two rooms away.
"We have found a sealed stasis pod."
I do not hesitate.
The pod sits alone in an unadorned, circular room. I can see defunct security systems everywhere - in an emergency, this room was to be sealed completely, flooded with... something, and then jettisoned into space. What could be contained here? Could it be a living Magus?
For a moment, I consider instructing my Children to enact those protocols and destroy this thing, but perhaps...
Our records clearly show that some Magi had power over life, creating living machines and altering themselves to better suit their needs. If there is a chance that one lives, might be compelled to save us, it must be worth the risk.
I have spent too long in contemplation; the seal is hissing. The sleeper is waking up.
I issue a command to ready weapons, and draw my sword; forged by my own hand from the core of a comet, anointed in my sacred blood. Magi were powerful, but they could still be killed. I am confident this one will be no match for me if it chooses violence.
What emerges from the pod is humanoid in shape, but it is clad in sleek armour that moves almost like flesh. Ivory and gold, with a full helmet. I see my reflection in that mirrored faceplate, and then I am blind. My optics struggle to compensate, but my biological eyes are overwhelmed. I hear gunfire and roll for cover, and when my vision clears ten of my children lie dead, broken. One is incinerated beyond recognition. I allow my rage to consume me, to strengthen me, and charge this murderous ghost where it stands among the corpses casually examining a rifle taken from the dead.
It doesn't look at me, doesn't react except to raise one long-fingered hand in my direction, and I realize I have made a mistake.
I awaken four AUs coreward and carry the fear of death into my new body. In two-hundred years, I have not been killed and forced to reinstantiate in a fresh clone. In an instant, that elder thing destroyed me.
As I wait for the meditechs to clear me for decanting, I pull up the facility database on fast new cortical inlays. I trawl archival recordings and redacted archaeological reports with mounting desperation.
Where I had felt a righteous hatred growing, now there is creeping dread. We had believed the Bandi to be a myth, exagerrations of a lost golden age. Now, I had awoken one.
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