[b]Redana![/b]

For a little moment there it had almost felt like you'd gotten used to galaxy outside Tellus. You'd seen the clouds and nebulae of Zeus, you'd seen starships, you'd even seen a whole new planet - just as built up and developed as Tellus, but covered in a faint sheen of fine ash and dust and entrapped beneath thick and obscuring pollution haze. You'd seen a garden jungle inside the interior of the Eater of Worlds and that had been amazing. You've seen marvels and been traveling for over a month now, but you were starting to see the patterns.

You have, however, never seen the blue sky.

You have never seen clouds.

You have never even [i]dreamed[/i] of the ocean. 

It's the most total sense of vertigo you have ever felt. You've seen space, but space is [i]full[/i] - wherever you look there are colours and lights and storms and debris. This narrow band of atmosphere creates an optical illusion of greater vastness than you have ever comprehended, with enormous flying castles of spectacular white ice cream towering up on a scale that rivals the great Imperial battleships. 

For the first time in your life you feel the breeze on your face. It is salty, carrying with it the faint flavour and coolness of the ocean. There is water in inconceivable quantities, advancing steadily upon the shore as though it is alive. The crashing, rolling breath of it seems to drown out all other sounds. Water was meant to move with the rattle and groan of pipes, air was meant to be the steady roar of air conditioning megastations. Basic facts of the elements.

But this, it seems, is what happens when the wind and water are unchained to do as they please.

[b]Alexa![/b]

You fought here once.

Ridenki was a critical world in the path of Director Nero's Rebellion. This was the world that supplied the food, water and logistics base for the rebels to strike Baradissar. The Alced were a servitor species placed here by the Emperor to defend this world and you fought alongside them as the sky darkened with the fiery rain of Ceronian drop pods. 

You remember the great Alcedi surface ships - enormous naval flotillas that projected vast fleets of atmospheric fighter craft and carried enough anti-aircraft guns to ignite the skies. You remember the oceans erupting into vast columns of steam as reactors melted down on dying battleships. You remember as enormous starships dropped from the heavens in columns of fire, victims of the space battle or destroyed by planetary defense lasers. The jungles had burned. The volcanoes had erupted. And by the end, Ares triumphed. You remember seeing the war god arise, massive and bloody, covering horizon to horizon with ships - star and sail - crammed into his mouth as the evacuation sirens howled.

You had thought this planet had been destroyed, to be a ruin as total as Baradissar. 

Instead it's a tropical paradise. The planet is greener than it ever was, the oceans a shining teal scattered with emeralds. Even with the buzzing flow of gold-striped ships rising and falling from the surface the planet is healthier now than perhaps it was even under Molech. You sense Empress Nero's hand here, though you have no idea why she would have taken the time to fix this planet.

[b]Vasilia![/b]

The worst thing about being in a room full of Hermetics is that you have no idea of their hierarchy. They have one - an exceedingly complicated and binding one - but it is deliberately kept obscure from outsiders. The corridors bustle with figures of incredible shapes and sizes swathed in identical saffron robes that cover their features from head to toe, darklight generators inside their hoods keeping their faces hidden. Look closer, though, and those robes have dozens of minor variations. Different sashes, stripes, hats, external robes, cuts of shape and colour. Academic robes have carried encoded information about rank and specialty since ancient times and the Hermetics have embraced that whole-heartedly. You're surrounded by information and have no idea what any of it [i]means[/i].

Say what you will about the Empire, at least they leave you in absolutely no confusion about who is in charge.

On that note, Galnius and their hoplites are doing incredible work. Their deeply ingrained Imperial arrogance let them cut through every single layer of protocol and paperwork on the way through here, somehow instinctively knowing who they could brush aside and who they had to take seriously. They've navigated you here to some sort of promenade - a large walkway with an expansive view of the planet. Sandstone tiles, grand statues of abstract shapes engraved with dedications in secret Hermetic script, and rivers of ever-burning fire running in channels for warmth and illumination. It's darker than an Imperial ship - not quite as dark as the Plousios, but where your ship is dark because it is broken and unmanned these lights are dim because secrecy is valued by the Hermetics.

"Captain Vasilia, and retinue," said a Hermetic - without face or body language to go on you're only able to figure out which one by the fact that it was standing still and nearby. "I am Pilate Borin, and in the name of Zeus we humble pilgrims of the [i]Yakanov[/i] grant you welcome and hospitality. What wind has bought you to us this day?"

Galnius glanced at you sidelong, and nodded. This is someone worth talking to.

[b]Bella![/b]

For a moment you might have worried. For just the barest fragment of a second you might have been aware that you were a long way away from Tellus, and your assault frigate - tiny in the shadow of the Yakanov - would leave you at the mercy of the Order of Hermes. Perhaps the galaxy had forgotten what was meant by Empire?

Not so the Order of Hermes.

Some barbarians might have greeted you in force, with a full military parade demonstrating their order and discipline as well as their respect. The Order of Hermes greets you with vulnerability. You stand alongside Mynx on the top of the docking ramp - the Yakanov is a mobile spaceport large enough to dock the entire Anemoi without the need for transit shuttles - and look down upon a field of treasures.

Latinum and quadranix and hyperium and hydronix, stacked high in enormous engraved shipping containers. Silks by the bale, enormous crates of prayer weaves, wheeled bookshelves full of charts, archives and records. Relic devices from the deepest vaults laid out on woolen blankets and dozens of the Order's senior priests with their foreheads pressed into the ground in kowtow. In the back, silhouetted in the shadows of the distant loading bay, is one of the Order's legendary god-engines. It's a fortune, the plunder of a dozen worlds, and it fills every spare inch of the docking bay. Even if you packed the Anemoi's corridors you would not fit it all. Your Auspex does not give you precise numbers, exact tonnage reports - instead it gives you a feeling deep satisfaction and control. It [i]hurts[/i] them to offer this much. The Empire's - and by extension, [i]your[/i] - good will matters to them more than all this fortune.

(Though - perhaps that is not accurate? Perhaps this show of wealth and vulnerability is not mere loyalty. Perhaps it is fear. Perhaps it is [i]distraction[/i].)

"Imperial Praetor," said the lead Hermetician - a Pilate, your Auspex picks out from the patterning of her robes, lieutenant to the Magos. "The Order of Hermes is at the Empire's disposal."