At their first council after the victory parade, PWD-40 objected that the casualty count methodology should be recalibrated. Prometheologist, with some unusual passion, claimed that even those who managed to remain technically alive may have been so irreparably damaged, that their spirit, their soul, the person that they were supposed to be, was gone forever. Toros prayed for the strength to think that was not true. But if it was, then no one on Isohedron had survived this war.

Everyone got uniquely marked, and yet she could not help figuring out the patterns - theorists and theologians stepping aside for militants and experimenters, oversight loosened, violence rates increased, brute force started being common, mercy started being a luxury... Desperate measures tend to overstay the desperate times that once called for them, with people justifying their normalization through gilding them with the sparkles of victories long past. The fragging Draupnir problem was simmering for millennia, but just some arrogance of being THE Hive defeaters and they started thinking themselves to be at least a second Mars, the best thing since servitors were invented. 

She almost avoided mourning the death of their more gentle, civilian selves - there have always been greater wonders hidden in people than the ones lost. She would just prefer if people made it a bit easier to see those potential greater wonders, which was positively harder when the apex decision-making of one of her court favourites defaulted to "[i]Me has bigger stick, so me bonk[/i]". For Cog's sake, even the ogryns of Malpais V [i]tried[/i] to keep the pretenses with elder councils, ritual judgement, and honour duels. And those had to limit the council number to four elders due to a lack of mental capacity to count to five.

Secunda kicked down the door of the premium lodge with a bit more force than was necessarily required and caught herself ready to execute any poor soul who decided to occupy her reserved spot in the arena less than a month after her death. The war spoke to her through her reflexes and learned patterns. She silenced that voice inside of her. She sighed and went vocal on the private channel, since she needed to silence it in ZRK-333 as well.

[i]"I approve your choice of words - 'Not a fight but an execution'.
Never had I wished for a better executioner than you. Still need a judge. Still need some jury.
I admire your Motive Force cutting a path through. Still need God-Machine. Still need Omnissiah.
Kneeling to one of them out of expedience is making your right through might. 
This would mean ignoring the rituals of judgment. To break with ritual is to break with faith.
If you spark this light, the coolant condensate splash of my legitimization shall not save either of us from the pyre.
Do not grace the traitors with martyrdom by allowing their corporeal component to go out with a bang.
Disgrace of the formal judgement would put their ill ideas out of everyone's options with some long, satisfactory whimper.
This is not a request for mercy. This is how Creed dictates we handle traitors.
Stepping back from the Creed to punish a traitor leaves the world with the same number of traitors.
We are better than that. You are better than that.
Never had I wished for a better executioner than you. Never have I given you grounds to think me an unfair judge.
No execution has been ordered.
Yet."[/i]

Ultimately, the war has wounded their ideals, degraded them to militant barbarism. Motive Force adepts were better than most at adapting to this new paradigm in a noble way, perhaps even too proficient in this shift for their own good. Archmagos was here to mend the wounds, to restore faith in proper order and ensure that Isohedron remains an example of things working out by the fragging book. It was her sole responsibility to drag the dogs of war back into the kennel, no matter how they bark, bite or look at her with puppy eyes.

She was of the firm opinion that overriding someone's decision solely through pulling rank was the thing you do before removing said someone from their position. Secunda prayed that nobody would force her to pull rank right now.