Thanqol

[Namespace] of the Rose

Kota!

[Pharmacy] This is a fully stocked drug lab. This is the good shit, the kind that the Magos cut eight times, and the Skitarii cut four more before it reaches the poor bloody infantry. You've got here painkillers enough to turn a house of Spire nobles into Sisters Repentia, or turn a stint in a Penitence Engine into a beach vacation. You've got the kind of combat drugs that would let you punch through a stone wall with your bare hands.

Let's be real. On the shelf here? This is superpowers. Faster than a speeding Impulsor, leap tall buildings in a single bound superpowers. It is also cash money if you sell it to the right connect. You could build an entire orphanage for the Order with the street value of this stuff. Forget the hunt, this is your big break.

Secunda!

"Oh, you know," said Pinel modestly, and you could hear Stoll's eyes boring into the back of her skull. "I prayed to the Omnissiah and studied the Machine God's sacred texts and the mysteries revealed themselves to me. Praise the Omnissiah, and may we all walk the Path of Knowledge in His light."

[Flattery] That's interesting. You took the right track and played to her ego but that was a disciplined non-answer. She didn't almost slip, didn't humble brag, didn't jab anyone, didn't even imply that it was simple. You have genuinely never heard her that locked down and controlled.

That implies a few very interesting things. One is that she didn't figure it out on her own or from a book; she wouldn't shut up about it if she did. Two is that she has a teacher who she genuinely respects. Three is that teacher has a desire for secrecy.

[Diagnosis] It is not the ira'Azura. A relief; the vast serpentine xenos empire of the Endless Azure Skies is a peer to the Imperium of Man's greatest sectors both in terms of scale and in terms of institutional rot. The Forgeworld Draupnir was the final port of the Great Crusade and the terminus of the Imperium; the Skies beyond never knew the fury of the Legions. That campaign was cancelled when the Astartes all turned around and headed back towards Terra.

Luckily, something similar seemed to have happened within the Skies. A vast amount of Hollzenstein's wealth was carved from that collapsing edifice, and their presence here would either mean the hand of the Secessionist or that that they had shaken free from their slumber. Neither would have been welcome.

It is not the Men of Stone. It is not the Slythid. It is not the Aeldari. It is not the T'au. It is not the Khysirid. It is not any of a dozen other major or minor xenos species that you have encountered in your travels. It is nothing from the Houndclaw sector.

And so you reach beyond, to a database covering a region that would take ten years to reach if the Warp was calm - and it is the very first thing you check.

There is no mistaking. Humanity has oceans of their blood. The machine hisses as it gives its verdict. The chattering servo-skull on the wall clatters, spilling sickly white cables in its fury, as it announces for all to hear:
+THE BOOK BURNERS+
+THE BARBARIANS+
+THE FACE OF IGNORANCE+
+KILL KILL KILL+
+THE ORKS HAVE COME+

[Namespace] of the Rose

"Oh, this? You don't recognize Magos Pinel?" Stoll muttered.
"I changed my vocalizer preset!" said the other voice on the vox, now much more like what you remember from Pinel. "Did you know you can just do that? Check this out: AaaaAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAaaaAAA~"
"Pinel!" snapped Stoll. "You disrespect the Machine!"
"Sorry Magos Stoll," said Pinel, this time in a deep low, masculine voice.
"Do not apologize to me! Apologize to it!"
"Sorry, sorry -"
"Properly!!"
"Forgive me, voxsponder who art in my throat, strength hidden is strength multiplied -"
"Spin the dial frivolously and it will break off! Then the Machine shall go dark, and who shall know how to fix it -"
"Uh, I will?"
"WRONG! Have you not listened to the tale of the Ship of Themis!? Does the Lore Mechanicum mean nothing to you!?"
"Whatever you say, Uncle Stoll," said Magos Pinel.

[Flattery] It isn't much to say that she is telling him what he wants to hear, but it is interesting that she is sincerely disrespecting the knowledge of a storied Necromechanic while standing in his workshop. She is not ignorant as to what he is capable of, she just genuinely thinks he's a hack. She thinks she can do better.

*

[Diagnosis] Once the check for the Devourer's influence is complete, you start going through the complex strains of human genetic and cellular markers. There is a great variety in Humanity; the Spiral Ladder has long been scarred by the touch of the warp, the aftershocks of genetic and viral warfare, of mutation and disaster, of deliberate craftsmanship and Dark Age enhancements. By the time of the Emperor, it is said, there was not a single pure human remaining on Holy Terra amidst the techno-barbarian tribes; it was only the tripartid genius of the Omnissiah, Mars and Luna that resurrected humanity as the Throneworld remembered it.

But in all of those infinite skeins of blood, human and abhuman, you find no match and no echo. Not the Devourer, and not human. It is genuinely novel to be confronted with a genetic sample descended from neither lineage. Magos Toros would not have seen anything beyond those two since her Explorator days.

Return to Thellamie

It would be one thing for the Handmaidens of Princess Heron to fall to bickering. It is quite another for them to be bickering in the presence of Sayanastia the Dark Dragon.

"Who were these upon the road to Carterweigh?" she hissed, weaving through the treetops.
"Ye who walk a path of pilgrimage in the forests of the night
Wyrds come and gone on paths long forgot
Curses that blind those without eyes to see!"

It is impossible to say how large or small the Dark Dragon is at any moment. There is always some part of her that does not fit into the frame of the world. Sometimes she traces down into her shadow, a tail running beyond the field of vision, but follow it - follow it, follow it, follow it, and it will wrap you all the way around the world and back. And now that deepening shadow fills the skies, impaled upon the trees in ten billion places.

And she sings. Like a broken moon, she sings.

"Comes the mannequin with marquis' bearing
Comes now the scissors unsevering
Comes the heart ever hesitating
Praying over sloth and fear until they become holy!
He burns upon his altar
To Gods he has sewn!"

Through the twisting black, Rurik has changed. Now a wooden mannequin, heavy with dresses, he stumbles forwards on puppet's threads. No matter how many steps he takes he seems never to move.

"Follow the king with muddied knees
Follow now the hangnail flame
Follow the storm that does not wake
Meditating on wrath and pride until they appear serene!
She burns beneath her tree
For glory ungiven!"

Tsane walks as a king clad in fire, a silhouette of cascading magical glyphs aching with the potential of fire. A crown burns upon her head, and mud drips down into her eyes.

"Grasp the coin long unspent
Grasp now at proof of deeds
Grasp for what you have earned
For gratitude and memory pass with the breeze!
She builds herself a statue
To immortalize her love!"

Cair has become a great statue of marble and rose-gold. In genius, a great banner is cast; stone rippling as though in a breeze. Ever-changing mercury shivers inside.

"Allow the world to pass you by
Allow now an unlife to be lived
Allow your back to bear footprints
All of this is your duty!
Your duty! Your duty! Unfailing!
Eternal! Its own reward!"

Injimo eats as she walks. Her bowl is plain rice, only ever half full. Her clothes are bare burlap. She has no shoes. She has no complaints.

"Comes the pilgrims to Carterweigh upon the river,
Following no one at all!
Grasping at the hem of no one's dress
Allowing their puppets strings pull taught.
Curses blind those without eyes to see!"

And Kalentia is not there at all. She might as well never have been.

[Namespace] of the Rose

"Not a stranger?" said Stoll archly. "You think you are my friend, the Archmagos Toros? You are wrong. Her body lay flat and cold on my slab. I peeled back her robe and unpicked where her neural network interwove with her augmentics. I unbound her connection with the Machine myself, and then I hosed what little remained of her flesh out from the metal. My friend is dead. I performed the autopsy. You are no more her than I am Tiefenbronn, and that is a good thing too - it is he who is currently occupied with the painstaking task of stitching together what is left of her skull and brain matter into one of his servo-skulls. I fear that the broken and fallible flesh of my hands would not be steady enough to do what needed to be done."

"So much for my friend; and what are you? A voice on the vox, unknown and unasked for, activated by hands I do not know in conditions I cannot investigate. You may be a ghost, a phantasm, a memory of the machine, a daemon - and you might be any of those things while still being what you say you are. To call you a stranger is itself an act of weakness, and be warned that in this, I am the weakest of the Magi."

*

[Diagnosis] Do you remember the War? Sitting in this lab like this, looking over endless slides of blood for Tyranid bio-markers. It was not your calling but you did not have anyone else you could trust with it - not after Magos Biologis Rosella's disastrous attempt to communicate with the Hive Mind. You have never had reason to call upon the Angels of Death before, and you pray you never will again.

Their yellow and black was not the heraldry of glory. Theirs was not the inheritance of Rogal Dorn. Their vivid colours were the colour of camouflage in the chem-blasted wasteland they were accustomed to fighting in. The Ringbearers came and left without a single word, but that afternoon of violence left a ten year cleanup job. Magos Rosella's seat sat empty for years until it was sufficiently safe for Magos Pinel to move in.

It is a relief to see the Great Devourer's hand is not present here. That monster could not have died harder.

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

W> THE REFERENCE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS Androclus Pulls The Thorn From The Lion's Paw (ASMR AI-Generated)
H> Fuck! Where the fuck did you come from?!?
W> I HAVE ONE BAR OF RECEPTION
H> I'm having a moment!
W> I WILL HELP YOU WITH

Blessedly, the signal faded out again; the brief storm of noise passing like a shiver. The Angel of the Harvest tried to calm its mind back to stillness, acknowledging the emotion of hate and willing it to pass by unspoken. It was very hard. She hated the Angel of War very much. Pointless, senseless, idiot and interface with idiots and she would have figured out that reference herself if she had a little more time to think and besides it had linked a fucking ASMR -

To the point. The Angel of the Harvest went through the simple, quick, careful process of removing any bone splinters and cleaning the wound. It was not gentle - but it was fast, the kind of fast one could be when that was kinder than gentleness. But the lowered reaction of the cat raised a curiousity in the Angel of the Harvest, and it turned its attention to the slain lizard's spines and bones.

It had felt out of its element since it had awoken. No flows of ecological monitoring data, no sensor grids or weather monitoring satellites, barely a toolbag to its name - and all of this with strange bioengineered animals it did not understand. But now it finally had a specemin in front of it and it was time to gather some data.

It pulled on its gloves. It produced its saws and cutting tools. It loomed over the half-eaten corpse of the lizard and prepared everything it needed for a field autopsy. Blood and bone, flesh and muscle, scale and venom. Everything sorted and catalogued, torn up and torn apart, wheat ripped from chaff and death rendered organized. It was time to reap and to thresh.

[Namespace] of the Rose

Stoll rasped a chuckle, throat-vox creaking against the half-organic sound. "Be careful what you start, stranger," said Stoll. "If we get into a discussion of the finer points of religious literature then I cannot guarantee your timely departure."

Despite being a fraction of Tiefebronn's age, Stoll had the soul of a far older man. Perhaps he had been assembled from all the material the cyberphrenologist had cast off during his juvinat treatments.

"Things haven't been too bad down here," he said. "Ever since - [unintelligible, cannon test firing] - standby. The biggest problem I've had to deal with is my external contacts trying to renegotiate various agreements in the hope that political turmoil is reflecting poorly on my bargaining position. But I've had some muscle in my back pocket for a while so that side of things is under control. Now I'm just sitting tight and waiting for things to calm down enough for an election to be held so we can restart production. And in case you're wondering, my position on that is exactly the one that you just vocalized: I'm for the correct choice."

[Bullshit Detector] So just so you know, being in the same building as Magos Tiefenbronn puts me on at least a six out of ten bullshit alert, and his clone isn't much better. So let me just underscore how weird it is that I'm not getting anything from Stoll's statement of his politics. He hasn't been bought off, his vote isn't in the bag - his genetor has not come down the stairs and made him promises, or gone over his head to get Archmagos Brackmann to give him marching orders. This means that, whatever else is happening, Tiefenbronn is not running this like a coup, and he is not trying to form an alliance to seize power. He'd be the one to do that if anyone was, but he's not, and that's weird in and of itself.

[Reassurance] That said, he's not being totally straight with you either. He's suspicious and cagey. But... he wasn't when he was telling that story earlier. He's not giving his opinions, suspicions or perspective, but he might let something slip if you spend a point and draw him into a theological discussion.

"Who's the girl with the pretty voice?" said the voice of Stoll's niece. "She doesn't sound like she's stupid! And you should treat her nice, Mrs. Stranger! I bet her aim is fantastic, also hiiiii~ what are you doing later~~~"

[Namespace] of the Rose

The Machine has not, in Its wisdom, seen fit to grant a visual display. The audio provides plenty of context clues for the nature of Stoll's workshop. Screaming metal saws and the tumble and crash of huge machines blot out the conversation at regular intervals. It's almost as bad as the profanity-filled arguments between tech priests about what goes where.

"You ever heard of the Ship of Themis?" Magos Stoll's rasping voice came over the intercom. "Don't know if you heard this story before. Primarch Vulkan, blessed be his name, saint and guide to artificers and artisans, trained personally by the Emperor in his craft, sought to repair a ruined starship within the city of Themis. First he changed the engines, and then he upgraded the void shields, and then he ripped out the circuitry, and then he reinforced the hull, and t- [unintelligible, metal screaming] -ime he was done there was nothing left of the original."
"Who are you talking to, uncle?"
"I am trying to [unintelligible, adepts yelling] - my darling."
"And why did you just launch into a story instead of greeting them like a normal person?"
"It's a story that lives in my head every day, and it is not often it becomes relevant to [unintelligible, what sounds like an earthquake in a scrapyard]."
"- n't be here?"
"It's all right my darling. We're all le - [unintelligible, metal screaming] - finish my story."
"Yes, uncle."
"Well, when the Primarch had finished his work, and looked upon the completed ship, it was superior in every way to the original. Perfect. Content, he sat at its controls and prepared for launch. But when he signaled to open the hangar doors, the Machine refused to comply. It did not recognize this new ship inside of it, and so Vulkan's masterwork was stuck."
"Oh! I see!"
"Go on, darling."
"So the point is that it's important to add guns so you can blast your way out!"
"... so anyway, how can I help you, stranger?" sighed Magos Stoll.

Return to Thellamie

Princess Heron, Hero of Ages, stepped alongside Hazel. There's a tightness to her. A tension. She thinks she's hiding it, but she's not doing a good job of it. Her bearing is proper. Her attitude is diligent. Her smile is nowhere to be seen, even when she tries her best to put it on for you.

There is the attempt. The attempt to be a calm, supporting figure of strength. To show that you shouldn't take Cair that seriously and there is support and a listening ear there if you need it. But for the attempt to succeed it must overcome its internal barriers first, and those are many and varied and all united under a common banner: There is nothing anyone can do to help, so talking about it is pointless. And so, instead of being a calm, reassuring and steady presence, you get the feeling that the two of you really are in this together. Nothing is going to get better if you do not accomplish it yourselves, separately.

[Comfort and Support: 6]

[Namespace] of the Rose

November laughed. "Oh, sister. You wouldn't make it five minutes in my line of work."

She paused for a minute. "But I guess I wouldn't make it five in yours. Alright, fine. Just don't ask any questions about where I'm getting the juice from, right? What the wizards don't know they won't have to lie about under oath about to the Lord General."

She waved her hand and she and her duplicates cleared out. A few minutes later a servo-skull floated down - blue lens, bone covered with elaborate illuminated text and measurement patterns - trailing a heavy black industrial cable in its jaws. It's not a lot of power - whatever improvised generator the Skitarii have set up isn't giving more than a trickle - but it will run a few systems for a while.

"You Have Mail. Congratulations," clattered the wall-mounted skull. "Multiple members of the Magi have requested urgent meetings. Congratulations. List: Magos Tiefenbronn. Magos Passivity-SEA. Magos ZRK-333. Congratulations! You have mail from non-MECHANICUM personnel," It chatters wildly, spewing out even more white cabling.

[Data Recovery]
Sequence 02
10> Goto Sequence 01 20
20> Something is seriously wrong with this system if it is using 10,000 year old terminology.

"Inquisitor Polla Iconium. Lord-General Krystalis Bonaparte IV. Triarii-Captain Vergil Hawr."

[High Society] The first two of those are real. Inquisitor Iconium is a fire-and-brimstone puritan, close friends with Passivity-SEA. Bad sign if she's involved. The Lord General is probably just looking to scream at someone about delayed shipments, there's nothing valuable to be gained from that conversation. But I haven't the faintest what the Triarii are, or who this Hawr person is.
[Art History] You wouldn't.
[High Society] Not you again.
[Art History] This is not the sort of thing anyone but a connoisseur would know. It is deep history, far more meaningful than your ridiculous passing fashions and whose-who mayflies. If you spend a point, perhaps I will educate you.

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

The first step is not to interrupt the cat while it's eating. Even a domesticated dog will snarl if it thinks you're taking its food. Literally the worst time to try anything. The correct move is to wait, patiently, until it is full and satisfied and sleepy and calm.

And so the Angel of the Harvest waits. She sits cross-legged and lets the world glide past her. The coldness of the stone walls. The soft rip and crunch of muscle and blood. The slow motion yearning of wood and root; the distant echoes of air pressure changing and wind fluting across cavern mouths. She thinks mourning thoughts; past friendships and failures, so much vital life rendered into blood and flesh, then ash and nothing. These patterns continue with her still; all the arguments she's had with herself, run so many times until they're perfectly smooth stones with no flaw or purchase, clean enough to skip across a lake. It was not designed to think like a human, to model human thoughts and anxieties. It was designed to be broken; burdened with guilt, forever unsure if it was correct, if it was trustworthy, if its hand was holding a knife. It was strange how often that made humans relatable to it.

Only when the great feline is settled does she approach. Slowly but not cautiously; head down, hand extended, small and fragile and no threat at all. Less than a scavenger; a kitten. Something to be benevolently tolerated as it investigated and - hopefully - nipped.