Golden Record

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Jade Citadel, Northeastern Flank

The databurst was unencrypted, a pattern of tones known only to those it was meant for and complete nonsense to any that intercepted it, easy as it was over open airwaves.

Captain Carmen was crouched low in a pool of industrial waste, her armored form pressed against the crumbling wall of the Jade Citadel’s abhuman ghetto. Her slate grey armor had been painted black, and a cameleoline cloak was draped over her bulk, the lower edges floating gently in the toxic sludge at her chest. She started a chronometer in her helmet, time ticking up from the moment of the unencrypted transmission as she awaited the opening moves of the siege.

“They’re taking their sweet time,” Sergeant Isabel Santos whispered over the vox as if the enemy would somehow hear her words.

“They’re slow,” Carmen agreed, frustration building in her chest as the timer ticked past five seconds, “it is what we get for trusting the opening move to the abhumans.”

A series of explosions rippled on the opposite side of the wall, and Carmen watched curiously as debris rained down into the sludge around her.

Nine and a half seconds, she clocked the response by the felinids, “Execute.”

Five hundred black-clad Astartes rose together from their positions in the toxic pools, grappling lines soaring to find purchase atop the wall as they scrambled to begin their assault.

Outside the walls, the frontmost lines of the Meallans rose from their concealed positions in the swamp, ghillies revealing heavy weapons and anti-personnel rifles suddenly within the minimum range of the heaviest defenses on the walls–their reason for the delay.

Missiles and heavy las-weapons mingled with volkite as they systematically dismantled the anti-armour defenses atop the wall from only a few dozen metres from its base.

Though they were well under the angle of the heavy ordnance, they were not under the angle of small arms, and while most of the fighters had taken positions in good cover, the simple reality was that the enemy had the high ground and there were only so many safe paths through the toxic marshlands their local guides could show them–many of the Felinids fell to withering return fire before the last of the big guns were silenced.

At which point the deafening roar of hovercraft engines made themselves known as a set of superheavy hovercraft landing ships roared across the toxic sludge fields, spraying gunk behind them as volkite cannons and heavy anti-personnel guns raked the top of the wall.

At the same time as the bloodbath on the walls, the embedded infiltrators rose up alongside their power-armoured comrades, leading sudden companies of hastily-armed abhuman rebels in bloody scourings of local security posts, trading fire with defenders in shantytown alleyways and foetid slums.

As the Meallan tanks rolled off their hovercraft and began blowing gaping holes in the north wall, the ghillie-equipped anti-tank units fell back, their mission done as they boarded the same hovercraft currently relieving them, passing blue-uniformed infantry on their way to reinforce the locals.

Though the Meallans were genuine in their offer to free the enslaved Abhuman locals, the unspoken caveat of that arrangement was that freedom would extend to those that survived–and hastily-trained infantry with old-model lasguns and stubbers and whatever basic combat armour had been scrounged from ambushed security forces or local mercenaries, simply wasn’t a good comparison for professional Pacifican soldiery–for every Pacifican that fell, at least three of the rebels were killed or badly injured.

An exchange rate that became almost reversed in the face of heavy armour, Meallan infantry, and their Power Armoured comrades in black.

“Push forward! Don’t give them a chance to regroup!” Captain mac Cormac was leading infantry this time, rather than the infiltrators, and leapt over the body of a fallen Pacifican officer to slam the butt of his rifle into an NCO still working out a jam. “Come on! Let’s show the Imperium what we’re made of!”

Captain Carmen sighted her long rifle with expert ease, each movement a deft flow of her armor and musculature to land the crosshair perfectly atop the next Pacifican to die. A junior officer 27 meters away, pointing hastily at the grappling hooks, lost his face in the explosion of a mass reactive shell. A second man, a Major by rank boards, slumped over in the command cupola of his troop transport as viscera coated the roof. A third officer’s head tumbled from his shoulders as he attempted to sprint for cover with his troopers. Carmen let each shot loose between her twin heartbeats, each shot a guaranteed kill.

“Abhumans rising, two hundred meters distant beneath the wall--” a massive explosion to Carmen’s left signaled another of the pacifican anti-armor guns reduced to ash by the Meallan assault beyond the walls, “they are pinned by armored carriers.” Sergeant Santos voxed from her position atop a crenelated watch tower.

Carmen blink-clicked her response, and a number of her closest battle sisters took off with her down the length of the ghetto wall.

They covered the distance in mere moments. A spring of such speed that Carmen simply barreled through Pacifican troopers too slow or stupid to get out of her way. She slid to a stop just above the armored personnel carriers, her rifle sighted before she had come to a standstill as mass reactive bolts found their way through driver optics and gunner ports. She heard the screams from within the machines and smiled despite not witnessing her handiwork as she would have preferred. She slung the rifle over her back, a comforting click signifying the maglock mechanism had taken as expected, and she stepped off the edge of the wall.

Carmen and four black-clad Astartes fell like rocks into the formation of Pacificans beneath them, currently engaged with the Felinid freedom fighters.

An armored figure fell atop the closest Pacifican armor and crumpled the roof beneath their armored form. The battle sister did not wait to see what damage she had inflicted with her arrival, instead, she caved in a hatch on the roof with a heavy stomp and dropped a grenade into the new entrance before jumping from the vehicle.

A second Astartes landed atop a Pacifican trooper, the resulting mess coating the nearest walls and mortals in red even before Carmen’s battle sister began to land point-blank shots with her bolter.

Carmen herself landed amid a squad of Pacificans taking cover behind a low wall. Whether it was cowardice or simply negligence that they all had to reload at the same time, it didn’t matter to her. She gutted the nearest with swings of her matte black combat blade, kicked out and crumpled the chest of a Sergeant of some kind, and brought her bolt pistol to bear on the final troopers attempting to run to her side.

“Captain mac Cormac, we are prosecuting targets as we deem fit. If your troops meet resistance you can not handle or contain, we will be available.” Carmen voxed over the shared net between the two forces. She took a bounding leap over a group of abhuman fighters that she found to be doing a fine job of keeping a Pacifican squad’s heads down and threw a grenade toward the enemy position. A pair of her sisters stormed the position just a heartbeat after the grenade thumped inside the building.

“Copy that,” Cormac replied, flinching as an explosion took out a nearby wall, then beckoning his forces forward as he remained unscathed. The Meallans were advancing militia-first, not because they believed in their prowess but because ambushes were easier to ferret out if the ones still standing when the smoke cleared had tanks and volkite weapons.

A hab-block had been putting up particularly stiff resistance; some enterprising officer had jammed an anti-materiel weapon in one of the upper storey landings and was using it to take out Meallan armoured vehicles. So far it was only their smaller support vehicles, but one of their heavy tanks had been detracked in sight of the thing and the order had come down to level the entire structure if the gun could not be disabled in time.

“As a matter of fact,” he voxxed, “We have a gun we’d like your people to deal with…”

Carmen received a rune response from her command squad signalling their readiness to prosecute the new target. She holstered her bolt pistol and sheathed her combat blade as she turned to make her best speed in the direction of Cormac’s position on her auspex.

“Inbound,” she voxed in reply to the abhuman Captain. Her squad bypassed a Pacifican strongpoint ahead by simply barreling through the adjacent habblock walls, and found themselves smack in the center of a roadway. The report of an anti-material weapon sounded from down the road, and Sister Emilia went down in a spray of blood. Carmen didn’t stop to assess her fallen sister, instead sighting her long rifle down the road. She flipped through vision modes and settled on a thermal imaging option. She sighted on the hottest thing in the building at the end of the block, and let loose a single bolt round that traveled straight down the hot barrel of the anti-material gun and connected with the freshly loaded shell at the end of the breach.

The first detonation was underwhelming, and though it signalled the removal of the threat it held no candle to the secondary explosion that followed just a few seconds later as hot shrapnel tore into the guns ammo supplies a room over. The entire face of the habblock fell away in fire and flame, several floors collapsing on each other in a vicious cycle consisting of several tons of rebar and rockrete.

“You are free to press the attack, Captain.” Carmen voxed as she turned to follow her Medicae dragging Sister Emilia to cover.

The Felinids didn’t waste time—as soon as the gun was out of commission the tanks were rolling forward again, the troopers liberating slaves as they went; blood for freedom. Most all took the offer, and they had a buffer against ambushes and flanking attacks the entire advance forwards.

Their objective was the heavily-fortified gates leading into the city proper, to break through and link up with the main body of their Imperial allies; the only problem was that the Pacificans had realised that and pulled their armour back into a cordon, forcing a brutal metal-on-metal engagement only slightly aided by the massive power of the Meallan armour and the presence of the Imperial Marines. Casualties were heavy, but when the fighting was done, it was the Pacificans footing the bulk of the butcher’s bill, and the Meallans had broken through–the abhuman ghetto was theirs, and all its valuable souls with it.

The smell of spent plasma cells, blood, and offal hung heavy in the air as General nic Lir’s tank rolled into the aftermath. She hadn’t wanted to hold back, but urban warfare was a bad place for a frontline general, and her lip curled in distaste as she saw the evidence to why.

A nearby Meallan tank had been gutted by a direct hit to their munition stowage, and the twisted metal and vaguely-humanoid slurry barely registered as having been a vehicle crewed by living people. She pulled her eyes away from the sight, ears flat against her skull as she raised the vox to her mouth. “Magh Meall to the Empire; we are through in our sector, over.”

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Magh Meall

Faction Name: Magh Meall

Faction Overview/Concept: A sanctuary for Felinid Abhumans carved out by a bloody slave uprising a generation ago. The Pan-Pacific Empire treated Felinids as a slave caste; visibly different, it was near-impossible to hide their status, and this made enforcement drastically easier. During a war with the Yndonesian Bloc, rations ran dangerously low, and the slaves were the first to have theirs cut--during a bread riot in the capitol, a spark ignited that threatened to cripple the economy of the Pan-Pacific.

At the height of the riots, a faction organised by Daira nic Leir snuck into their midst and inflamed the rioters to violent action; with much of the Empire's security forces pacifying occupied territories behind the front, the local defenses were quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers and violent desperation. That the Pan-Pacific forces were routed was less remarkable than that Daira nic Leir was able to organise a rapid looting campaign of the capitol's stores and guide countless survivors out of the city and into the wilds, where they were brought to the 'promised land'--Magh Meall.

In truth, Daira's ancestors had found the secluded grove with their fellow escapees entirely by accident; a verdant plot of fertile land in the midst of an archipelago near the edge of the Pan-Pacific Empire's territory. Originally, the small commune was a haven for escaped slaves, kept safe by being kept secret, but Daira and her co-conspirators were born there, and, hale and healthy by comparison, felt they had an obligation to create a home for their people. They planned their intervention for years--the bread riots were their chance, and they seized on them eagerly. Preparations had been in place for some time, and the mythical 'promised land' was an easy way to convince the survivors to make the trek into the unknown.

In time, Magh Meall's reputation grew, and it both became a haven for escaped slaves and a target for reprisals. A militia formed, which later became an army--and when the ancient military bunker was found beneath the mountain, Archaeotech tanks made that army unstoppable on their home territory. Raids were launched to free more slaves, and before long the thorn in their side was more like a blade.

But with success came greater danger, and more than once, Magh Meall's existence seemed to hang on the edge of a knife; their enemies were vastly more numerous, and only their qualitative superiority allowed them to survive and thrive.

Eventually, Daira nic Leir passed, and her daughter, Ainne Anirsech, inherited the title of nic Leir. A soldier through-and-through, she is keenly aware of the suffering her people are only a generation removed from, and of the necessity of a powerful and skilled military to maintain that separation. She continues the trend of raids to keep the army sharp, but she hears rumblings of a force from beyond the Empire's borders--one that might end her people's trials once and for all.

Faction Assets: Controls an unusually-fertile archipelago near the edge of the Great Ocean, bordered on all sides by high cliffs that make conventional assault almost impossible; retractable medieval-style bridges span between the islands, with winches and cranes providing dockyard access for fishing. Population is remarkably high for the geographical area(which is roughly comparable to, say, Ireland or Scotland) due to migration, with a high urban/rural split to maximise farmland. Military consists of comparatively small conventional forces equipped with domestically-manufactured flak-style armour and lasguns, with limited CBRN survival capability(for traversing hazardous zones) via masks and similar. Most valuable conventional assets are domestic artillery production, with the most valuable assets in general being a number of heavy archaeotech tanks that are closely-shepherded and reserved for local defense or particularly dire situations where the risk of their loss is considered worthwhile. Raids are largely carried out by smaller 'buggy'-style vehicles produced domestically. Small but skilled conventional archaeotech air force, and significant locally-produced anti-air defenses for fending off the primary method by which the Pan-Pacific could theoretically attack.

Key Characters:

Ainne Anirsech nic Leir

Ainne Anirsech nic Leir

Character Name: Ainne Anirsech nic Leir

Rank/Role: The Nic Leir / Ruler of Magh Meall

Appearance: Red hair, pale skin, green eyes, and freckles; a Felinid, with furry tufted ears, a long furred tail, sharp teeth, and wide-irised slit-pupilled eyes. She often wears martial attire; even when not in combat, her appearance tends to resemble a celtic warlord from the iron age more than anything else. She's slight and not particularly tall, like most of her species, though she's ludicrously agile and has good resilience to make up for it.

Biography: Daughter of a hero to her people, Ainne was born with a lot to live up to. Raised somewhere between a noblewoman and a soldier, she took much of the best of both worlds, with a strong sense of noblesse oblige; her mother had left paradise to bring others back into it, after all. As an adult, she became an officer in the Meallan military, developing skills as a general and leader-of-men that would come in handy later. At the same time, she was witness to the creation of an upper class of pseudo-nobility in her mother's lifetime, as the original members of the commune felt they had been there first and deserved certain preferential treatments--a quasi-feudal caste system emerged, which Daira was either unable or unwilling to prevent.

When her mother died, she came into a nation that had relatively little land but outsized power, ability, and resources; even still, projection beyond their borders except to free slaves was functionally impossible, and the inability to meaningfully topple the Empire that had enslaved her people vexed her. With the rise of the Imperium, however, she sees an opportunity to throw her lot in with a faction that will not only help her to achieve that, but, perhaps, give her and her people an even greater purpose.

Jay Goldfinch

(note; this character won't be introduced until the Great Crusade, I'm just apping her now so it's done)

Character Name: Lygeia 'Jay' Goldfinch

Rank/Role: Navis Imperialis Commander, Second in Command of the Heavy Cruiser Scattered Grace

Appearance: Blonde-haired, freckle-faced, thin but well-built, Lygeia is a broadly unmodified Human from Iapetus, a moon of Saturn, she wears the blue-and-white of the Navis Imperialis, with a single golden pauldron as homage to her roots as a Voidsman-at-Arms.

Biography: Born on the Saturnyne moon of Iapetus, Jay was enamoured with the void from a young age. Raised by a family of Saturnyne Sailors, she enlisted as a Voidsman-at-Arms as soon as she was old enough, skipping the lengthier process of officerhood for a chance to get into the stars now. Quickly seeing action against first the Ringers and later Xenos, she gained significant combat experience--and a reputation for uncanny luck, surviving explosions and even decompression remarkably unscathed, and often being found in the midst of scenes of carnage unharmed. When she did take an injury fighting a Xenos raid on Titan, she was awarded a battlefield commission as a Lieutenant and given training in weapons systems; by the time she was thirty, she was a Lieutenant Commander in command of her own picket ship, and at fifty she is the second-in-command of the Heavy Cruiser Intruder, a Commander and the presumed next-in-line for the Captain's chair when her superior, Captain Thomas, retires.

Lygeia, however, craves more than a Captain's chair--one day she means to become an Admiral, and then...well. The stars are the limit.

Leanna de Vries

Name: Leanna de Vries

Legion: XII

Homeworld: Verakracht

A feudal world originally occupied by Xenos, the young Primarch rapidly became identified as a divine figure by the locals, having quite literally fallen from the heavens; raised by guerillas in the forests and wilds outside of civilisation, she was groomed as a leader by her foster parents, themselves nobles deposed when the Xenos came from the stars. When the time came and the support of the people grew strong enough, Leanna was chosen to lead the rebellion--for it was the abduction and public executions of her parents that had galvanised the population. Leading a military revolt against the occupiers, she achieved military success, crowned empress of a new Empire--an Empire now tasked with the multiple responsibilities of defending against a returning invasion, squashing internal discontent, and conquering the rest of the world.

The only assistance came in the form of a decrepit space hulk, which crashed into the southern continent, flattened three villages with debris, and unleashed an archaeotech cache into the hands of Leanna's Empire--which they have put to very good use.

Psyker Grade: Iota

Skills/Abilities: A skilled orator with a supernatural aura of charismatic gravitas, Leanna is also a talented administrator, politico, artist, and warrior, though unlike many of her siblings, she prefers to fight in 'light' armour, trusting on superhuman speed and grace to carry her, rather than inhibiting heavy armour; that said, she remains a Primarch, and 'light' for her standards is still enough to take most smallarms and indirect impacts. In combat, she is primarily a fencer, favouring a 'small' Volkite pistol as a sidearm, and otherwise prioritising command and control over personal glory; she is a strategist and tactician before a warrior, though she is skilled with both.

Appearance: Tall and imposing like her siblings, Leanna is slimmer of frame than they. Hardly fragile by mortal standards, she remains less physically imposing than her peers, with a narrow face and almond-shaped eyes. Typically wearing a black headwrap with a jewelled tiara as a badge of office, she carries a thin, wickedly-curved power-sword and a volkite pistol with golden detailing. Her armour is golden and unsubtly ornamented, though she has a more subdued variant when the situation requires. With her veil down, her hair is raven-black, shoulder-length, and typically tied into a bun, plait, or tail, to keep it out of her eyes.

More notably, her time in the warp mutated her--her teeth are razor-sharp, her eyes slitted, with black sclera and pink pupils, and a lion-like tail with a black tuft lashes behind her.

Concept: Lady Fulgrim. Also; 'Light Primarch'. Duellist and Strategist instead of Warrior

Legio XII

Legion Name: Celestial Lions

Associated Primach: Leanna de Vries

Concept: 'Light' Legion, intended as scouts, special forces, probing attacks, assassinations, and, slightly anachronistically, melee duellists. Their unit culture and combat doctrine is distinctly that of a medieval force given firearms, with a higher priority on individual prowess and chivalric honour-codes than military professionalism and unit cohesion. An army of Gallants, they embody the platonic ideal of an Arthurian-style knight--emotional to the point of mania, fiercely passionate, skilled with blade and volkite alike, and with a unit-wide notion of noblesse oblige, they are determined that their geneseed gives them an obligation to care for the mortals of the Emperor's realm, and to shepherd them to eternal glory through camaraderie and force of arms. Often caught singing aloud when battle is joined, the Knights prize skills like art, music, and good management as much or more than skill at arms, giving them a reputation as somewhat decadent, and perhaps slightly mad, if lethally skilled. They prefer modified Astartes Scout-pattern armour, which allows greater mobility and agility in combat, with volkite pistols or rifles paired with power weapons for close-quarters combat. Most visually distinctive besides their equipment are their mutations; geneseed producing sympathetic changes to their lost Primarch, typically manifesting in sharpened teeth, black sclera and irises with colourful slitted pupils, and leonine tails, though not all members of the Legion receive every mutation--and some receive others entirely.

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Jay Goldfinch

(note; this character won't be introduced until the Great Crusade, I'm just apping her now so it's done)

Character Name: Lygeia 'Jay' Goldfinch

Rank/Role: Navis Imperialis Commander, Second in Command of the Heavy Cruiser Intruder

Appearance: Blonde-haired, freckle-faced, thin but well-built, Lygeia is a broadly unmodified Human from Iapetus, a moon of Saturn, she wears the blue-and-white of the Navis Imperialis, with a single golden pauldron as homage to her roots as a Voidsman-at-Arms.

Biography: Born on the Saturnyne moon of Iapetus, Jay was enamoured with the void from a young age. Raised by a family of Saturnyne Sailors, she enlisted as a Voidsman-at-Arms as soon as she was old enough, skipping the lengthier process of officerhood for a chance to get into the stars now. Quickly seeing action against first the Ringers and later Xenos, she gained significant combat experience--and a reputation for uncanny luck, surviving explosions and even decompression remarkably unscathed, and often being found in the midst of scenes of carnage unharmed. When she did take an injury fighting a Xenos raid on Titan, she was awarded a battlefield commission as a Lieutenant and given training in weapons systems; by the time she was thirty, she was a Lieutenant Commander in command of her own picket ship, and at fifty she is the second-in-command of the Heavy Cruiser Intruder, a Commander and the presumed next-in-line for the Captain's chair when her superior, Captain Thomas, retires.

Lygeia, however, craves more than a Captain's chair--one day she means to become an Admiral, and then...well. The stars are the limit.

Leanna de Vries

Name: Leanna de Vries

Legion: XII

Homeworld: Verakracht

A feudal world originally occupied by Xenos, the young Primarch rapidly became identified as a divine figure by the locals, having quite literally fallen from the heavens; raised by guerillas in the forests and wilds outside of civilisation, she was groomed as a leader by her foster parents, themselves nobles deposed when the Xenos came from the stars. When the time came and the support of the people grew strong enough, Leanna was chosen to lead the rebellion--for it was the abduction and public executions of her parents that had galvanised the population. Leading a military revolt against the occupiers, she achieved military success, crowned empress of a new Empire--an Empire now tasked with the multiple responsibilities of defending against a returning invasion, squashing internal discontent, and conquering the rest of the world.

The only assistance came in the form of a decrepit space hulk, which crashed into the southern continent, flattened three villages with debris, and unleashed an archaeotech cache into the hands of Leanna's Empire--which they have put to very good use.

Psyker Grade: Iota

Skills/Abilities: A skilled orator with a supernatural aura of charismatic gravitas, Leanna is also a talented administrator, politico, artist, and warrior, though unlike many of her siblings, she prefers to fight in 'light' armour, trusting on superhuman speed and grace to carry her, rather than inhibiting heavy armour; that said, she remains a Primarch, and 'light' for her standards is still enough to take most smallarms and indirect impacts. In combat, she is primarily a fencer, favouring a 'small' Volkite pistol as a sidearm, and otherwise prioritising command and control over personal glory; she is a strategist and tactician before a warrior, though she is skilled with both.

Appearance: Tall and imposing like her siblings, Leanna is slimmer of frame than they. Hardly fragile by mortal standards, she remains less physically imposing than her peers, with a narrow face and almond-shaped eyes. Typically wearing a black headwrap with a jewelled tiara as a badge of office, she carries a thin, wickedly-curved power-sword and a volkite pistol with golden detailing. Her armour is golden and unsubtly ornamented, though she has a more subdued variant when the situation requires. With her veil down, her hair is raven-black, shoulder-length, and typically tied into a bun, plait, or tail, to keep it out of her eyes.

More notably, her time in the warp mutated her--her teeth are razor-sharp, her eyes slitted, with black sclera and pink pupils, and a lion-like tail with a black tuft lashes behind her.

Concept: Lady Fulgrim. Also; 'Light Primarch'. Duellist and Strategist instead of Warrior

Legio XII

Legion Name: Starlight Knights

Associated Primach: Leanna de Vries

Concept: 'Light' Legion, intended as scouts, special forces, probing attacks, assassinations, and, slightly anachronistically, melee duellists. Their unit culture and combat doctrine is distinctly that of a medieval force given firearms, with a higher priority on individual prowess and chivalric honour-codes than military professionalism and unit cohesion. An army of Gallants, they embody the platonic ideal of an Arthurian-style knight--emotional to the point of mania, fiercely passionate, skilled with blade and volkite alike, and with a unit-wide notion of noblesse oblige, they are determined that their geneseed gives them an obligation to care for the mortals of the Emperor's realm, and to shepherd them to eternal glory through camaraderie and force of arms. Often caught singing aloud when battle is joined, the Knights prize skills like art, music, and good management as much or more than skill at arms, giving them a reputation as somewhat decadent, and perhaps slightly mad, if lethally skilled. They prefer modified Astartes Scout-pattern armour, which allows greater mobility and agility in combat, with volkite pistols or rifles paired with power weapons for close-quarters combat. Most visually distinctive besides their equipment are their mutations; geneseed producing sympathetic changes to their lost Primarch, typically manifesting in sharpened teeth, black sclera and irises with colourful slitted pupils, and leonine tails, though not all members of the Legion receive every mutation--and some receive others entirely.

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

It was a shitty day to be on sentry duty, Corporal Li thought as she lit a cigarette and checked the acidproof seals on her shelter’s tarpaulin. She lit up a cigarette and checked her chrono with a grimace. She’d need to make another round soon, which meant rebreathers and a treated poncho, because whatever the elders said about their ancestors’ ancestors having once known untainted rain and clean air, nothing resembling that had stuck around for her generation to enjoy.

She’d heard about the Imperium, of course. Everyone had. Even with the censors and thought-police, you couldn’t bury every refugee and combat veteran cycling back from the front line, every rumour and ‘my cousin’s cousin’ in the Empire.

But she wasn’t worried. Not yet. The Imperium was a long way from here, and–

Li froze, dropping her cigarette and mashing it under her foot as she reached for her rifle. Whatever she’d just heard, it was definitely her job to check it out, and she wasn’t about to get her unit decimated because she didn’t want to poke her nose into the rain.

Unfortunately, by the time she had her hood up and her rebreather mask on, whatever had made the sound was MIA. She looked around, switching on her infrareds. Nada.

She lowered her autogun, frowning. She swept the perimetre again, and a moment later, a rad-deer bolted from the treeline. Cursing under her breath, she fired two shots into its flank, but only the second pierced its armoured hide, and it loped into the forest, braying.

Shaking her head, she tapped her comms to call in to explain the shots, “Just a fuckin’ animal boss. No contact.”

“Watch your goddamned fire from now on, Corporal. The next shots are coming out of your pay!”

The line went dead, and she shook her head, lowering her hand and wondering if her cig was still any good. Probably not.

Then she felt a pressure against her shoulder, and before she could turn to see what it was, a fresh line of pressure slid across her neck. There was a confused moment where she worked her throat, wondering why she couldn’t swallow, when her legs buckled, a sense of cold creeping up her extremities as she faceplanted in the mud a few feet from her tent. She tried to look up, to speak, to do anything, but her vision darkened. A figure in a camouflage cloak leapt into the tench in front of her, a pair of felinid ears twitching as glowing red eyes turned in her direction, but instead of bewilderment at the notion of a slave-race carrying a rifle, her last thought was Am I dying?

And then she died.

–

Music

“Sector four, cleared.”

“Sector six, cleared.”

“Seven, all clear.”

“Two, clear.”

The reports came in from the infiltration units, squads of hand-picked stealth and sabotage experts under the commands of some of her best operators. Legate Ainne nic Leir sat in the cupola of her enormous tank, its engine dormant as she sipped a cup of recaf. The rain was further off, in the distance–a localised weather event that would likely dissipate by the time they advanced–though if it didn’t, it wouldn’t make enough mud to trap a Deamhan Lincs.

When all twenty-six sectors had reported cleared, she tossed back the last of her caf, chucked the dregs to the side, and slid down to close the hatch. “All engines on. Squadron ready check.”

She didn’t listen as the confirmations came in and the sweet rumble of the enormous engines shook her hard enough to rattle her teeth. She was looking through the periscope at the formidable defenses of the Manufactorum-complex. Not the most impressive quarry, perhaps, but she couldn’t attack a hive-city with an armoured column unless she wanted to lose her tanks. And she did not want to do that.

Her concern here wasn’t the defenders, who wouldn’t be able to stand up to the firepower of a Lincs, nor penetrate her armour, but their heavy anti-materiel emplacements, the enormous twin-barrelled guns that dotted the complex’s walls. Any one of those could potentially take out her tanks, so before they’d even turned on their engines, she’d sent every infiltration team she could spare to capture or disable those guns, as well as punching holes in the infantry perimetre.

This would still be a hard nut to crack. Even with sixty-eight Lincs, the complex was a city of itself, and she expected to lose vehicles–though hopefully all recoverable once she’d won the day.

She saw faint trails of smoke, small fires on the guns. Nothing too noticeable from the ground, but enough that secrecy wouldn’t last.

“All vehicles report ready, Legate.”

The smell of promethium reached her nose, mixing with sweat and the tang of metal, and she nodded, “Driver advance. All vehicles, advance to your objectives. Gods go with you.”

The Lincs’ engines roared to life around them, the behemoths charging out of the treeline across open ground, blue-and-black-clad infantry forming up behind them as scattered stubber and las rounds lanced out from the trenches–but even through a scope she could see that her sabotage had done its bloody work, entire sections remaining dark–and the only direction the cannon on the walls turned was inward.

“All vehicles, this is Vanguard; Monarch. Say again, Monarch.” She grinned, switching off the vox. Monarch–total surprise. “All gunners, pick your targets and fire at will!”

The heavy main cannon barked, a volkite lance ripping its way into the curtain wall and sending superheated debris raining down on the trenchline before it; the sponson guns ripped their way across the trenches and vaporised entire infantry sections as the Lincs roared across the field, the main gun barking again with enough force that it measurably slowed the tank’s forward progress with its recoil, the remaining layers of the wall melting away into slag–by the time they were crossing the trench, a third shot had cleared the path into the factorumplex, and the Lincs was moving into the broad causeways designed to accomodate thousands of workers and heavy machinery. Civilians scattered before her vehicle’s treads as an explosion sounded from deeper in, the turret of a Chimera flying high into the air, trailing flame and smoke as one of her captured guns obliterated it with the definition of overkill.

Her people knew what the objective was–minimise damage to the industrial capacity of the ‘plex, to be restored and used for their new allies–and later for themselves. Not only to remove the nexus of industrial might outside of the Hive-Cities of the Empire, but to then add it to their forces’ own strength.

But that didn’t mean no damage, and if it was a choice between the Lincs and the Factorums, she’d told them which was more irreplaceable.

“Main cannon, traverse right! Driver…halt!” The enormous vehicle stopped at the corner of a factorumplex as she turned her gun ahead of her advance, eyes narrowed. A pair of Chimeras turned onto the main thoroughfare, and she barked a laugh, “Driver proceed to objective. All gunners, fire at will!”

The first Chimera didn’t have a chance to react as the enormous tank turned the corner into the thoroughfare, exploding in a shower of promethium and propellant, incinerating the occupants before they knew they were dead. The second turned, trying frantically to get off the causeway, when two of her sponson-mounted volkite cannons hit it in rapid succession, causing it to grind to a halt, smoking. The rear hatch opened, Pacifican troops stumbling out, at which point lasfire from supporting infantry laid into them. On the other side of the causeway, two more of her tanks emerged, and she could almost see their commanders’ ferocious grins.

This engagement had gone off perfectly, and at this point it was a turkeyshoot.

“All forces, engage at discretion! Let’s give the Sigilite a Queenly gift!”

–

She stood on her Tank’s hull with the data-slate reporting the results in one hand and another cup of recaf in the other. The smell of burned flesh, charred metal, spent promethium, and chemical propellant sat heavy in the air, but Ainne nic Leir was no stranger to war. In many ways, the fair-skinned red-head had been raised by it, given a commission as an officer in the Meallan army when she was young–a Captain, only–and expected to raise herself through the ranks as her mother’s heir. Two sisters and a brother she had, but her elder brother had died, and both sisters were younger than she.

Six tanks disabled. Two would be field-repairable, four would need time in a factorum…after they hosed out their crews.

She grimaced, a furred ear twitching and her tail joining it in a display of her displeasure. She didn’t enjoy hearing that her soldiers had perished, but such was war, and if she allowed it to turn her stomach overmuch she’d be a poor officer.

Just over two-hundred killed and a thousand more wounded. For urban warfare, that was remarkably low. It almost tempted her to try her luck at a Hive. Almost. Then the madness passed, and she returned to the data-slate.

The Factorumplex had been taken sixty percent intact. Initially, damage had been limited to the curtain wall, but street-fighting had a way of taking its toll, and her orders that the factorumplex was a lower priority than her tanks had resulted in several units firing through buildings to disable ambushes of towed anti-tank guns that might have disabled them, or ploughing through walls to turn the tables outright. And added to that, several units of Pacificans had withdrawn to factorums, betting that she wanted them intact more than she wanted her troops preserved, and had the gall to issue demands. That might have worked–except that she had the AM cannons, and she’d simply had the buildings reduced to rubble, to be rebuilt later.

The biggest coup was the workers themselves. Thousands of Felinid slaves who were eager to join their liberators, either as workers or, even better, as soldiers. She’d sent the latter back east with a small detail, along with the four tanks that needed intensive repair. They’d be trained, equipped, and brought back as reinforcements when they were ready.

All-in-all, a triumphant victory. And the largest engagement she’d led to date. Her ear twitched again, then pinned back slightly. Her instincts had been honed in raids–she was tempted to withdraw now that she’d achieved what she wanted, but she knew she had to retain momentum. To keep pushing west. But she’d leave a garrison here, and request the Sigilite to assign some troops as well. They needed to link their forces.

But her gut said this wouldn’t be so easy. She’d been fighting an uphill battle against the Pacificans all her life–she’d gotten lucky, this time, but what about the next? And the next after that?

She sipped her recaf and grimaced. Such was war.

And war, as always, was her business.

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Magh Meall

Faction Name: Magh Meall

Faction Overview/Concept: A sanctuary for Felinid Abhumans carved out by a bloody slave uprising a generation ago. The Pan-Pacific Empire treated Felinids as a slave caste; visibly different, it was near-impossible to hide their status, and this made enforcement drastically easier. During a war with the Yndonesian Bloc, rations ran dangerously low, and the slaves were the first to have theirs cut--during a bread riot in the capitol, a spark ignited that threatened to cripple the economy of the Pan-Pacific.

At the height of the riots, a faction organised by Daira nic Leir snuck into their midst and inflamed the rioters to violent action; with much of the Empire's security forces pacifying occupied territories behind the front, the local defenses were quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers and violent desperation. That the Pan-Pacific forces were routed was less remarkable than that Daira nic Leir was able to organise a rapid looting campaign of the capitol's stores and guide countless survivors out of the city and into the wilds, where they were brought to the 'promised land'--Magh Meall.

In truth, Daira's ancestors had found the secluded grove with their fellow escapees entirely by accident; a verdant plot of fertile land in the midst of an archipelago near the edge of the Pan-Pacific Empire's territory. Originally, the small commune was a haven for escaped slaves, kept safe by being kept secret, but Daira and her co-conspirators were born there, and, hale and healthy by comparison, felt they had an obligation to create a home for their people. They planned their intervention for years--the bread riots were their chance, and they seized on them eagerly. Preparations had been in place for some time, and the mythical 'promised land' was an easy way to convince the survivors to make the trek into the unknown.

In time, Magh Meall's reputation grew, and it both became a haven for escaped slaves and a target for reprisals. A militia formed, which later became an army--and when the ancient military bunker was found beneath the mountain, Archaeotech tanks made that army unstoppable on their home territory. Raids were launched to free more slaves, and before long the thorn in their side was more like a blade.

But with success came greater danger, and more than once, Magh Meall's existence seemed to hang on the edge of a knife; their enemies were vastly more numerous, and only their qualitative superiority allowed them to survive and thrive.

Eventually, Daira nic Leir passed, and her daughter, Ainne Anirsech, inherited the title of nic Leir. A soldier through-and-through, she is keenly aware of the suffering her people are only a generation removed from, and of the necessity of a powerful and skilled military to maintain that separation. She continues the trend of raids to keep the army sharp, but she hears rumblings of a force from beyond the Empire's borders--one that might end her people's trials once and for all.

Faction Assets: Controls an unusually-fertile archipelago near the edge of the Great Ocean, bordered on all sides by high cliffs that make conventional assault almost impossible; retractable medieval-style bridges span between the islands, with winches and cranes providing dockyard access for fishing. Population is remarkably high for the geographical area(which is roughly comparable to, say, Ireland or Scotland) due to migration, with a high urban/rural split to maximise farmland. Military consists of comparatively small conventional forces equipped with domestically-manufactured flak-style armour and lasguns, with limited CBRN survival capability(for traversing hazardous zones) via masks and similar. Most valuable conventional assets are domestic artillery production, with the most valuable assets in general being a number of heavy archaeotech tanks that are closely-shepherded and reserved for local defense or particularly dire situations where the risk of their loss is considered worthwhile. Raids are largely carried out by smaller 'buggy'-style vehicles produced domestically. Small but skilled conventional archaeotech air force, and significant locally-produced anti-air defenses for fending off the primary method by which the Pan-Pacific could theoretically attack.

Key Characters:

Ainne Anirsech nic Leir

Ainne Anirsech nic Leir

Character Name: Ainne Anirsech nic Leir

Rank/Role: The Nic Leir / Ruler of Magh Meall

Appearance: Red hair, pale skin, green eyes, and freckles; a Felinid, with furry tufted ears, a long furred tail, sharp teeth, and wide-irised slit-pupilled eyes. She often wears martial attire; even when not in combat, her appearance tends to resemble a celtic warlord from the iron age more than anything else. She's slight and not particularly tall, like most of her species, though she's ludicrously agile and has good resilience to make up for it.

Biography: Daughter of a hero to her people, Ainne was born with a lot to live up to. Raised somewhere between a noblewoman and a soldier, she took much of the best of both worlds, with a strong sense of noblesse oblige; her mother had left paradise to bring others back into it, after all. As an adult, she became an officer in the Meallan military, developing skills as a general and leader-of-men that would come in handy later. At the same time, she was witness to the creation of an upper class of pseudo-nobility in her mother's lifetime, as the original members of the commune felt they had been there first and deserved certain preferential treatments--a quasi-feudal caste system emerged, which Daira was either unable or unwilling to prevent.

When her mother died, she came into a nation that had relatively little land but outsized power, ability, and resources; even still, projection beyond their borders except to free slaves was functionally impossible, and the inability to meaningfully topple the Empire that had enslaved her people vexed her. With the rise of the Imperium, however, she sees an opportunity to throw her lot in with a faction that will not only help her to achieve that, but, perhaps, give her and her people an even greater purpose.