They sing as they march across alien sands. "Follow, follow, follow the Path!" The voices involved are as different as the drums are from the clarinet. Some are synthetic, some are not, some might have once been human and others are definitely alien. But this diverse group has spent a great many years singing marching songs together and, as the clarinet can learn to compliment the drums, so have their voices merged into one glorious harmony. "Follow, follow, follow the Path!" And it is glorious! It booms out, loud and unambigous, across the beaches, rising above the waves, all the way to the tropical rainforest where it spooks the parrots to silence. As the voices ring out so too do the Coherent of the Order of Hermes stand out dramatically. They do not wear the full brilliant yellow of a true magi - they wear heavy black capes, traced with lines of yellow, and they do not conceal themselves. They wear their augmentations openly, brazenly - bodies furred and smooth and scaled, armoured in black and bronze, synthesis of mechanical genius and organic perfection and as diverse as the stars themselves. Magi regard their bodies as secret, their augmentations hidden knowledge, their bodies private things - not so the martial arm of the Order! They are proud of the shapes that they have made for themselves, their bodies works of art to please themselves and the gods! "Through the storm, follow the Path!" Each Coherent drags behind her a cable, wrist-thick, leathery and slippery. They trace their ways back and up to an tripod walker the size of a main battle tank, all the more resplendent in its glorious carved beauty for the thick black smoke that pours from it - and the cleaning such a sooty construction must require. Between its three legs hangs a great banner depicting a Coherent warrior gripping a burning moon with one hand and raising her scepter above its head, like a pharaoh of ancient Egypt about to crush an enemy's skull. This machine is a mobile chemical reactor (MCR), condensed Reactor-stuff that allows the Hermetic warriors tethered to it to fire their awesome weaponry. "To the truth, follow the Path!" "Follow the Path!" the refrain roar comes from behind. Thousands of voices. These Coherent are not alone - they are merely the vanguard of a much larger force. Hundreds of tripod MCRs, each cabled to eight Coherent warriors like the tentacles of an octopus. Above the army looms three massive War Daises, the mobile operations centres for powerful Hermatic magi and their apprentices. These huge platforms swarm with yellow-cloaked figures and extend mighty robotic arms to take samples from trees, to adjust settings on the MCRs, to even tweak the crystals of the esoteric weapons carried by the Coherent warriors as they march. Atop each War Dias stands a Choirmaster, paragons in black and yellow hazard stripes, Magi of the Order who study the secrets Hermes hid within war itself. "To the end, follow the Path!" A shadow passes over the sun, for all this in all this glory is but the least fragment of the Order of Hermes. Behind the advancing column soars a great wing of disc-shaped atmospheric shuttlecraft, screaming across the heavens and leaving contrails like bars in the sky. And behind them, silhouetted in solar glory, looming as large in the sky as the gas giant that the planet Ridenki is a moon of, comes the [i]Yakanov[/i]. The Galleon Hermetic looms in the sky, engines burning bright, the ultimate expression of the Saffron God's might. [b]"To the end, follow, follow, follow the Path!"[/b] What is a mere planet in comparison?