40K - Session 17

A House Divided





Act 3 - The Soul of the Abyss





Chapter 1 - The Synod





After receiving the urgent summons from Marius to return to Port Wander the party spent the four days of travel through the Warp back to the Maw recuperating from their nightmarish ordeal on Cyrix. Wu-10, suffering severe migraines from his affliction, was quarantined to the med bay by Grim. The Tech-Priest induced a coma and relegated all of his biological functions to the minimal levels, but the auspex scans of Wu-10’s brain were showing troubling progression of the radiation damage. Vadik prayed continuously in his quarters, what little was seen of the gloomy man was glimpses from the doorway of him on his knees with his copy of the Lectitio Divinatus in one hand and the other grasping his double-headed eagle medallion. Manus meditated in his chamber, trying to weld shut the cracks and seams in his soul that his exertions in the Adeptus Mechanicus facility had wrought. Despite his reconditioning he knew that it would take careful stewardship of his powers to keep from being consumed by it. Merrick and Cassius found an odd comradeship when they both tried to find a quiet place to drink in the shuttle bay, they swapped spirits and stories for long hours in an attempt to erase the fear and pain of their travails. On the last day of their passage through the Maw Aurora, who had been studiously poring over her notes, books, and datapads concerning the mysterious box, called them to the briefing chamber.


Her work had been exhaustive, but the results were limited as the main stock of her academic resources was not available to her aboard the Gypsy. The box itself was made of wraithbone, a psycho-reactive substance that could be willed into existence by sufficiently skilled Eldar, called wraithsingers, and then shaped to suit the maker’s need through mental visualization. Practically everything from furniture to ship hulls was made from wraithbone in Eldar society. And while Aurora had no idea what the symbol on the lid of the box was, it was similar in form to others she had seen used to denote a particular Craftworld (the behemoth ships that functioned as home to the transient species). And the elegant calligraphy around the sides, once translated, wove a complicated and poetic tale of loss and sorrow. It was something similar in prose and structure to Eldar funerary poems. As to the actual contents of the box, however, she could not say. Only opening it would yield them that answer. And while Marius had provided them a null rod in case an emergency arose where the had to dispose of the box but take the contents with them, he had also told them to avoid opening it if at all possible. They elected to wait, as their escort vessel was just clearing the Maw and they would be able to speak with Marius shortly.





As the Koba slid through the last of the turbulent space marred by the warp storms surrounding the Maw, the ship’s captain urgently called the party to his command deck. When they arrived, he had a worried expression and waved his hand to indicate the sensor panels. He and the other captains in Mahaka’s fleet had specifically chosen for their aptitude at covert operations. He had a healthy paranoia, and had entered the space near Port Wander well beyond their auspex scanning range, but close enough that he was able to tap into their systems by jumping the signal of the defense satellites and navigation buoys. Once he had accessed the station’s logs he had found no evidence that any other part of the fleet was currently docked. More troubling, he had attempted to contact the ground team Marius had stationed there, and received no answer to his coded messages after several hours. The party agreed that this was a disturbing turn of events, and decided to have the captain keep the Koba at the fringe of the system as they approached in the Gypsy. It was an older ship, but it’s very nature made it unlikely that it had yet been definitively attached to Mahaka’s fleet. It would get them aboard to investigate, but it was a risk.


As the Gypsy cut silently through space towards the glimmering lights of Port Wander they prepared for their deception. Cassius, naturally, would play the ship’s owner. His comrades would be his entourage, but once aboard they would have to head to the operations center that Marius established in the bowels on the station. Vadik and Merrick both knew that the dockmasters on these stations were well acquainted with bribery, they could use the remains of the cargo they had brought to the auction on the Hermitage to pay for their vessel to obtain a private berth. As Cassius dropped the stealth field and the Gypsy appeared on the docking scanners for the station a rushed and anxious voice cut across the comm line, a naval auspex technician demanding that the Gypsy identify itself. Cassius cut him off, snidely remarking that he had neither the time nor inclination to deconflict why the technicians had failed to properly log his vessel entering the station’s vicinity. He warned the technician to guide him to a docking berth befitting his station, lest he make note of the man’s incompetence to his superiors. Years of practice in such rhetoric served him well, and the chastened technician made no further protests and sent him the requisite coordinates.


The Gypsy slid into a massive, single-ship docking berth richly adorned with stained glass, carpeting, and statues lining its docking ramp. As they stepped off the ship a hunched little man with long brown robes bustled towards them, flanked by two rows of naval security specialist in crisp and formal uniforms. As he approached he adjusted a pair of glasses and unflooded a massive book from under his arm, nodding in recognition of Cassius and demanding to know why his vessel had not registered formally with any port in over a hundred years. Cassius laughed in contempt, and wove a complicated tale of his exploits as a racer on Terra. He had earned the right to a little privacy, and he paid well to have it maintained. With a gesture of his arm Muffin pushed forward a massive crate, and as the man looked into it his eyes grew wide in amazement. It contained fragments from an STC! The surprise was not his alone, either, as Grim stared in stunned disbelief that such a prize had been aboard their vessel all along and no one had told him. It was only with a supreme force of will, understanding the importance of their mission, that he was able to stand aside as the man keyed a navigation route into the hoverlift holding the crate and set it whirring on its way down the docking ramp. The dockmaster bowed deeply to Cassius, begging forgiveness for his impertinence and assuring him that his presence would be treated with the utmost discretion.


As the man turned and bustled away Grim, seething in frustration, noticed something. One of the junior members of the naval security detachment was staring in boredom out of the windows, and a service indicator light on the side of his rifle was clearly visible. The Tech-Priest, with an eerie grace for a man so heavily augmented, slid across the carpet to stand before him and snatched the rifle from his hands as he blinked in surprise. In a flurry of dendrites, hands, and whispered prayers he disassembled the rifle in less than three seconds. It was a serviceable weapon, but the unfortunate man had not bothered to clean its internal components for too long. Grim demanded to speak to the man’s superior, curtly informing him on his approach that such negligence was sure to offend the rifle’s machine spirit should he be called on to use it. The sergeant, darkly, assured Grim that he would see to the matter personally. Grim leaned forward, and insisted that a meaningful way to express his remorse would be informing the Tech-Priest directly should any inquisitive visitors come asking after their ship. The soldier nodded dutifully, and assigned his team to all points of access in and out of the docking bay. The dockmaster could be bought, but the pride of a soldier would buy them greater peace of mind as they went about the station.


Changing into more subdued clothing as Grim downloaded a schematic of the station they decided on their approach to the safe house. It was deep in the bowels of the station, where the cast-offs and lower class called home. Merrick would take lead, given his familiarity with such environs, with Merrick trailing them from behind to watch for any unwanted attention. As they departed the bay and began the slow process of navigating the elevators and halls that led them deeper into the station their suspicion began to deepen. The well maintained hallways full of light and decorum gave way to flickering sodium lamps that only partially illuminated the dirt and detritus that was strewn along the tunnels. Flesh dens and bars were the only signs of commerce, and people hurried from light to light in fear of what may be awaiting them in the shadows. Cassius and Aurora were particularly uncomfortable in the stifling recycled air, but Merrick found himself oddly at ease. There was a rhythm to these places which he understood, and he found himself gliding naturally back into it like an old familiar jacket. Finally, they approached the final elevator which would take them to the floor where the safe house had been established. Oddly, it was marked out of service with thick lines of sloppy spray paint. To one side a vagrant slept next to an empty bottle of booze, and under the light of a streetlamp a pair of men in matching colors played dice.


Merrick knew this game from his days in the Hive, waving his companions back he walked forward and nudged the sleeping vagrant with his boot. The man looked at him groggily, and he asked how much with a thumb pointing to the elevator. The man shrugged and looked sideways at the bottle of liquor beside him. Merrick nodded, walked back past his friends into the nearest liquor joint, and purchased the best bottle of stuff they had for a handful of bullets. When he dropped it in the man’s lap, enough to keep him and his two watchdogs sauced for the rest of the night, the vagrant chuckled and rapped his knuckles on the metal door of the elevator. A second later the doors slid slowly open, and the vagrant wished Merrick safe travels as he uncorked the bottle with his teeth. The party hustled inside, except for Vadik. He could not risk giving up his concealed position to join them, opting instead to keep a close watch on the gangers at the entrance until he saw a chance to take the access lift down himself. As it descended, however, the hair on the back of his neck rose. After the doors had closed the vagrant held a single hand and flashed a complex series of hand signs to one of the gangers playing dice, at which point the man dropped his dice and took off down the hall at a jog.


When the lift opened the party was stunned, for a second they almost thought they were back on war-torn Orion 9. The streets were deserted, with hasty barricades lying in piles along the halls. Bullet holes and scorch marks from flamers were everywhere, and you could count the numbers of windows and doors not broken or shattered on one hand. Graffiti covered everything, lurid and brightly colored gang signs painted on atop the other. Merrick knew it for what it was immediately. This was a “no man’s land,” the burned out husks of tenements and shops clearly marking the border between two different gang territories. There had been a fight here not long ago, and the victors had left their mark overlaying their vanquished foes as a reminder that they would pay in blood to keep what they considered theirs. The husk of a Rhino APC sat forlorn in a street junction ahead of them, a reminder that even station security paid a price to walk these halls. Was this why the ground team had gone silent? They were not far from the safe house, they would know soon. Though the gangers had scrubbed the numbers off the doors and turned all the signs backwards, an affectation meant to disorient security when they came calling, Merrick cautiously guided them forward out of the elevator.


While his friends pushed forward in the dark below, Vadik was stalking towards the vagrant. As he approached the man waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and told him that the elevator was not running today. Vadik lunged forward, grabbing the man’s collar in one hand and his neck in the other. The ganger playing dice pulled a knife and began to advance, but Vadik whispered to the man he held to warn his friend off. Oddly, he did as he was commanded. He saw something in Vadik’s eyes, and a strange unwilling compulsion had overcome him. Vadik demanded to know where he had sent the other dice player, and the man stammered that he had been sent to warn the “suits” that someone had come calling. When pressed further, the man could only say that they had been paid to watch the elevator and inform as certain person if anyone out of place came snooping around. When Vadik asked what they were supposed to do it about it, the man said that his gang had been paid handsomely by station security to hold them here until they arrived. Some sort of Imperial force had come to the gang, paid them handsomely to take out a group of men hiding in the area, and then left them with these instructions. Vadik chirped over the comm for his friends to get out, they were walking into an ambush. He told the man to bring the lift up, and though he struggled against his desire to do so he rapped the complex series of commands onto the metal grate once again.


No sooner had the Arbites finished warning them then Merrick saw them. Shadows flitting behind boarded windows, the scuff of a boot on a dirty floor, the crack of a stray glass shard brushed loose by a shoulder. They were less than fifteen meters from the elevator, and cautiously backed towards it. Whispers began to emerge from darkness as the gangers encircling them puzzled over this turn of events. Their boss had sent word that their quarry was here, but now he was saying that they were to be let back up. As the doors slid closed, a single shouted out in frustration to get back in position. When they lurched to halt back at their original floor they exited the elevator to find Vadik hunched over the vagrant, and the ganger from the light standing behind him with a knife drawn. Merrick did not need an explanation to know that something was wrong, and he casually fired two rounds through the ganger’s knees from the draw, walked over, and pushed the muzzle of his pistol towards the man’s head. Vadik slapped it away, a little blood and humiliation was something the gang could live with. If they started dropping bodies here they would have to fight their way out, and that would attract unwanted attention. Before releasing the vagrant Vadik swore that they would kill every last one of them if they followed, and Manus flared his eyes with azure psychic fire to drive the point home. The ganger nodded dumbly, and the party hastily wove their way back out towards the docking bay.


Safe again in the well lit and patrolled halls of the station’s upper reaches, they took stock of the situation. The safe house has compromised, and if the ganger was to be believed the ground team Marius had left here was dead. Was that why Marius had summoned them so urgently? Given that the ganger had described the events in the lower levels being the machinations of some sort of Imperial official, a dark suspicion began to take root. Cassius thought their best option lay with the House of Krin, he had maintained cordial ties with Lucretia since the incident aboard the Hermitage and felt he could depend on her for support. Grim figured he could search the databanks of cogitators in the Adeptus Mechanicus temple aboard the station. Grim and Wu-10 set off in that direction, while Cassius led the rest of his comrades towards the noble quarter of Port Wander.


As Grim and Wu-10 approached the massive doors to the sanctum of the Omnissiah aboard the station they were confronted by a pair of massive gun servitora. A quick blurt of binary set the servitors into standby, and they proceeded within. It did not take long for Grim to find an access point within the complex from which he could begin to filter and review the station logs which the Mechanicus kept for the Administratum. Disturbingly, he found that several records immediately preceding the time of the safe house’s compromise had been redacted or expunged from the system with an authorization code originating from an Arch-Magos. Such actions bordered on heresy for a cult that worshipped data itself as a divine construct, only to be undertaken in dire circumstances of need or threat. Confused and aggravated, he devoted multiple logic circuits from his subroutines and logi implants toward finding an alternative answer. And then, it struck him. The gun servitors!


Grim backtracked to the stoic guardians at the doors, knowing they had internal databases that stored all the data their video and audio filters perceived. Those files, however, were usually only downloaded at monthly intervals when the cogitators running the servitor was connected to the mainframe. This mysterious magos may have scrubbed the cogitator, but they did not remember to scrub the sentries! Downloading directly from the pair via dendrite as his guardian stood watch he reviewed weeks of data in seconds. What he saw troubled him. Three days before the safe house was destroyed a figure in a hooded black bodysuit, over which lay an ornate and engraved silver breastplate with a matching silver mask, had arrived with an entourage of tech-priests. With all identifying marks, save their Ordo symbols, concealed accessed the temple. They came back again four days later, the date when the station’s records had been altered. Whoever had seen to the data purge possessed impressive levels of authority.they had proceeded into the complex moments before the wipe had occurred. No sooner had he gleaned this vital information than a chirp in his comms line roused him from his binary meditation. The commander of the security team had just turned away a man who had been asking suspicious and pointed questions concerning the ship inside the docking bay. He had told the man nothing, but had promised Grim he would notify him immediately of any such occurrences. The Tech-Priest fired of a quick automated message to his comrades to rendezvous with him at the Gyspsy and departed the temple. Someone with immense power was looking for them, and they were getting closer.


Cass and the remainder of the party, in the meanwhile, had finally arrived at the opulent palace of the most powerful family on the station (arguably the the sub-sector as well). The house of Krin had made its fortune as one of the first Rogue Trader dynasties to venture into the Expanse. Unlike many others, though, they chose to redirect their profits towards building a commercial empire on the Imperial side of the Maw, controlling and throttling the legitimate trade that entered or left the Koronus Expanse. Their position of influence and power was on full display, as a clear plasteel dome of immense size encapsulated a manor with sprawling gardens and streams of clear water that ran on concealed water recyclers. Smartly, Cassius had guided them to the grounds via a service access route used primarily by servants and technicians. At the checkpoint into the ground two sharp-eyed guards in crisp uniforms demanded their identification. The group had dressed down and armed themselves for their foray into the station interior, and they looked sorely out of place. Cassius calmly removed his glove and presented his gene-coded signet ring. Politely he asked that word be sent, in as discreet a manner as possible, that he had business with the Lady Lucretia Krin. The guards exchanged a suspicious glance, but the senior of the two stepped back from the doors and spoke briefly on his comm line. A moment later, the doors slid apart and a familiar face greeted them.


The man was tall, imposing, muscular, and scarred. He wore an immaculate and tailored uniform, but still moved with the determined gait and purpose of a man who expects violence at any moment. Captain Sejanus, the head of the security detail that accompanied Lucretia aboard the auction on the Hermitage, guided the group inside. When Cassius began to speak the man politely, but pointedly, waved him silent. He guided them through a twisting series of passages beneath the man, and he asked that Cassius’ companions wait in a deserted security staging room, and that the nobleman accompany him to see Lucretia. He promised that the need for such discretion would be made apparent soon enough. Their suspicion deepening, they obliged the man and Cassius followed him onward as he wound deeper and deeper into the complex, pausing now and again and tilting his ear as he listened to his sub-vocal comm implant. In a hushed tone he commented that Cassius and his friends must enter and leave unseen, and that they were lucky that the guards at the gate they first approached were among those who had accompanied him to the Hermitage. They could be trusted to keep their mouths shut.


Finally, one last elevator opened wide and Cassius found himself on a wide balcony that overlooked the manicured gardens of the front of the manor. From an adjacent door the Lady Lucretia hurried in, bowing politely despite her haste as she approached. She had a troubled expression, and quite unexpectedly asked Cassius if he was safe. She pressed him, insistent on her need to know that he was not being coerced or forced along with his employer. She promised him the support and protection of her House if he asked for it, but he insisted that he had chosen to pledge his services to Mahaka. Confused, he asked her what was bothering her. She gestured for him to stand beside her at the balcony rail, but placed herself between him and the rail at the last moment. She whispered that there were two separate guests aboard the station, powerful ones, who had made a point of asking after him. Gesturing with her eyes he looked past her shoulder and down. Upon the wide manor lawn a massive table had been erected and lavished with the finest dishes and consumables available as a throng of richly dressed patrons milled about and clustered in small groups.


Representatives from every faction and authority of note were present, and Cassius recognized one of them. Tanis, the head of his father’s security forces and “fixer.” His family had tracked him all the way to the Expanse! Speaking with Tanis was an even stranger sight. A man in a hooded black bodysuit with a silver breastplate and mask. His hands were firmly clasped behind his back, and he partook of none of the fare presented. Cassius had been to countless such events, and the person for whom they were thrown would always attract a certain amount of discreet attention. A sideways glance here, or the way that groups would spontaneously form and enjoin mindless conversation within earshot of the guest. And the focus of this feast was the hooded man. Lucretia trusted that Cassius had his reasons, and that they were just, to associate himself with someone who had attracted the undesirable attention of her family’s guest. The service he had done her in warning of the coming violence on the Hermitage, and then committing himself to investigating the murder of her uncle, had indebted her to him. However, she could offer him no further assistance than this. Whatever Mahaka had embroiled him in, he needed to tread carefully. Port Wander was no longer safe, and they needed to rejoin the fleet in the Expanse as soon as possible. As Sejanus guided him back to his friends, and then to the service tunnel they entered the facility from, he was grim and silent. He wished Cassius and his friends luck, but warned him that coming back to the House of Krin again before concluding his affairs in the Expanse would be unwise.


As they began to make their way back to the Gypsy their comm line buzzed, and asn automated message from Grim warned them that someone was interested in their ship. Doubling their pace, they arrived back at the docking bay to find that Grim and Wu-10 had already worked with Hannibal to prepare the ship for departure. Cassius guided the Gypsy out into open space, hiding beneath the superstructure of the station itself as the stealth systems came on-line that would allow them to depart the complex defense network of satellites and picket ships and rejoin the Koba near the Maw. They all gathered in the briefing room while Hannibal guided the ship, and related the events of their separate investigations. While no name had been mentioned, they all agreed that the only possible explanation for the hooded figure was the Inquisition. Most likely it was Baylor, the Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos that had investigated and prosecuted the Lord Aranea and kick in motion the chain of events that had brought them all here to the fringe of space and heresy. If the Inquisition was formally involved and looking for them, they were balancing on a line as fine a mono-filament wire. They decided they must look into the contents of the Eldar box, opting to wait until they were at the last Station of Passage through the Maw before doing so. For now, they reunited with the Koba and informed him of the compromise of their force of Port Wander. As the ship fired towards the swirling mouth of the Maw, a sense of inevitability and drewad began to take hold in the dark recesses of their hearts.


The time finally came, and they gathered in the locked cargo hold of the Gypsy. They held their breath as Muffin removed the null rod and lumbered out of range with hit, and Aurora slowly slide open the lid of the box, her breath stuck suddenly in her chest as she caught sight of what lay within. Small stones, over a hundred and each the size of a fingertip, lay in the box. They were perfectly identical in shape and size, oval and smooth to the touch. Aurora knew what they were. Eldar Soulstones! The psychic repository in which an Eldar’s soul would lie after death, safe from the devouring hunger of Slaanesh, until it could be incorporated into the crystalline matrix of their Craftworlds. Yet, these stones seemed different from those she had seen before. Usually they possessed an inherent color and warmth, but of all the stones in the box only three were anything except for dull and cold. And those stones were a riot of shifting colors, something she had only heard of in the rarest and most subjective texts on the arcane devices. Such Soulstones were usually worn only by Harlequins, those Eldar who had committed themselves to serving the Black Library. Why did Aranea have Soulstones? Was this why Baylor had pursued him? And what would he have done with them? Opening the box seemed to have opened as many doors as it had closed. Regardless, they did know one thing for certain now. They had become involved in the trafficking of xenos artifacts, a heresy punishable by death, or worse, under the heavy-handed laws of the Imperium. Mahaka and Aranera owed them answers.


The last place that they had known Mahaka’s fleet to be, when they departed for Cyrix, was hidden within the swirling wreckage of the Station called the Maelstrom. Sliding out of Warp and signalling in code they were relieved to find that the fleet was still safely hidden there, and they were guided to rendezvous with the ship Mahaka was aboard by a complex route through the slowly spinning debris of a thousand ships. Once aboard she met them in person, demanding to know where they had been, and why they had not immediately returned to her fleet after their mission on Cyrix. They explained the emergency message from MArius, and briefly summarized their discoveries aboard Port Wander. The woman’s eyes were dark and sad behind her bone mask she listened. Marius, she explained, had been sent back to Port Wander for supplies and to check on the ground team she had left behind there. Obviously, he had been compromised. Merrick, tired of the circular nature of their operations, pointedly demanded answers as to why they were flying around with Eldar technology. Mahaka shrugged, they had proven themselves trustworthy and she was willing to oblige their curiosity if Lady Aranea consented. She led them to a secure briefing room, where the elder noblewoman joined them several moments later.


The Lady Aranea sighed when the party finished relating the disturbing information they had obtained on Port Wander, not quite sure where to begin. Instead of more talk, she had decided it would be easier to show them what their endeavours in the Expanse concerned. She stepped forward into the center of the room and set the tip of her cane down. To the party’s amazement, when she let go it stood perfectly upright on its own. She ran her fingers in a quick and precise pattern over the smooth surface of the orb atop it. The rod of the cane telescoped down to knee height, and the orb began to glow a light blue. A projected hologram of a strangely dressed man appeared above the orb, clad in some sort of formal scientific uniform unrecognizable to the party. In an archaic dialect of High Gothic the apparition greeted them all and introduced itself as Azran Alkazem, the lead designer and first member of something called the “Synod.” Albina gestured to the orb, telling them that the Synod was the reason why her family had been pursued by Inquisitor Baylor. Grim, intrigued, demanded to know what the Synod was, and what its origin was.


Azran answered him, the blue hologram’s face twisting into a congenial smile as it explained that the Synod was the first prototype of a memory database developed to act as a repository of knowledge and skill as mankind spread among the stars. It was capable of scanning. Copying, and storing every neural connection, chemical process, and acquired memory in a person’s mind. Then, when the need arose, the Synod could replicate the brain function of anyone who had imprinted themselves upon it by artificially reconstructing their entire personality and memories. This way, though separated by millions of light years or hundreds of years, a scientist could access the most brilliant minds humanity had to offer directly. Grim’s mind, and those of everyone present, swam with the possibility. Aurora asked when it had been constructed the hologram answered that it’s first activation and imprinting, that of Alkazam himself, had occurred approximately 14,000 years ago inside of his laboratory in the Tycho crater on Earth’s moon, and that there were currently 1, 736 separate minds stored inside of it. This was an artifact from the Dark Age of Technology! Grim asked Mahaka pointedly if Arch-Magos Thul had been informed of this. A view screen on the wall activated, and Thul’s cold voice streamed across the speakers. He had been remotely observing the meeting from his vessel, and asserted that he had been aware of the Synod’s existence from the start. Access to studying it was his primary motivation for participating in Mahaka’s venture into the Expanse.


Albina spoke again, emphasizing that the Synod was the source of her family’s forutne and power. Rediscovered on the Luna colony by explorers sent after the fall of mankind’s first stellar empire, they had leveraged its knowledge to carve their own fiefdom of technological superiority on Terra. Later, when they learned how to imprint themselves upon it, they began to leverage a different power altogether. Information. Every dirty secret, alliance, trade negotiation, or rumor ever heard by any member of her House had been imprinted into one of the minds in the Synod. She had information that bring about the utter ruin of countless Houses (including Cassius’ own), they leveraged this knowledge from the shadows to safeguard their House and ensure their survival. Vadik, concerned and suspicious, asked what bringing everyone to the Expanse had to do with the Synod. Albina shrugged, and a sad look came across her face. The Synod was a miraculous device, but only a prototype that never entered full production for unknown reasons. It was never intended to host as many minds as it currently did. Those within it were beginning to degrade, memories of one life bleeding into the next. Azran spoke up again, stating that less than 38% of the minds housed within the Synod were still considered reliable due to the decaying state of the Synod’s storage. Internal safeguards had been emplaced to wall of and protect the data that was still known to be reliable, but every time the Synod was activated the decay was accelerating at an alarming rate.


This, Albina explained, was why they were in the Expanse. To pursue the means to repair the Synod. For generations her family had been aware of the problem. Fourteen times in the last seven hundred years they had attempted to repair it. Each time was a failure, more than one of which actually damaged the Synod further. Their last hope lay in finding an artifact the Eldar referred to as the Shantar Ar’Kanum,which translated to “Mobius Forge” in Low Gothic. An Eldar corsair in the Expanse claimed to have known its location, but had demanded that Hastur Aranea retrieve something for him in exchange. The contents of the box had been the promised payment, and thanks to the favor owed to her by the Serrated Query after the party rescued their agent aboard the Hermitage they knew where to find him. In the Serpentis system of Winterscale’s Domain. Grim protested, allowing the Eldar to tamper with the Synod was sacrilege. His protest was noted by Thul, but unwarranted. The Synod, in fact, had been built upon Eldar designs recovered by Alkazam. That revelation floored everyone in the room. Eldar and humans were known to have interacted during the Dark Age of Technology, but it was blasphemy to think that human technology was ever built or inspired by the manipulative xenos. In answer, Albina asked Azran to bring up the consciousness of the first Hastur Aranea. The man for whom her husband had been named.


The hologram shifted and an imposing man with menacing eyes and a defiant stance apparated before them. He scanned the room, his eyes catching on Albina’s signet ring. He asked her what she wished to know, and she told him that the assembled group needed assurance that the Synod’s mixed origin of Eldar and human technology was not a consequential matter. He laughed darkly, and related a tale of how the Emperor had found out his House’s secret during his war to dominate Terra. The house of Aranea had been able to avoid his attention for some time, largely through deft political maneuvering and a keen sense of which way the wind was blowing when his inevitable victory became apparent. However, in time the Emperor had come for them and forced his way into their fortress through the brute force of his Thunder Warriors. The Emperor had discovered rumors of technological databanks in Aranea’s possession that he required for his ultimate plans. To spare himself and his family he presented a deal to the Emperor. He would freely give the Emperor and his agents access to the technology he sought, if he would spare his house and leave the Synod with them. The Emperor, surprisingly, agreed. He forced Hastur to swear his allegiance in a complicated and grueling psychic ritual which bound the man in mind and body not to betray the Emperor’s vision for humanity. And the plans that the Emperor desired of Hastur? They were prototype schematics for a method of constructing stable, even habitable, wormholes through space-time. They were the collected notes of dozens of researchers from inside the Synod on the construction and operation of the Eldar webway. While the designs they detailed were of human origin, they were still predicated upon models developed by the hated Eldar. The Emperor himself had utilized Eldar technology for the good of mankind, how could they say it was now blasphemy?


Silence stretched for long moments in the room after the blue image of Hastur faded away. They were ground-shaking revelations for those born under Imperial doctrine, and they struggled to comprehend the ramifications of what they had learned. This was why Baylor hunted them, Albina insisted. He knew that the House of Aranea had a device they used to access information that could shake the Imperium to its core, though she did not know if he was sure what it was. Baylor wanted it for the Inquisition, or for himself. Her House, however, had upheld its oath to the Emperor. They had strived to keep the peace and maneuver the best possible candidates to ensure the Emperor’s vision was realized. Even after the Heresy, and the Emperor’s ascension to godhood, they had kept their word. Now, they had finally found a way to restore the Synod. The Imperium was fracturing, but with the knowledge inside of the Synod they could seal the cracks and unify mankind behind the right leaders. All that remained was the journey to the Serpentis system to find Il’Ishanti and the Mobius Forge.

40K - Session 16

A House Divided




Act 2 - The Shadow of the Abyss




Chapter 3 - What Sleeps Below




Part 3 - Things That Should Not Be...


As Hauk's commandos took up firing positions atop the ruined Imperial Knights from which they could dominate and hold the Grand Hall, the party crept towards the shattered door separating them from the security processing station.  Between the gaps in the rent steel shadows flickered in the dim sodium lamps, but nothing came into the hall.  Cassius, relying on the speed and maneuverability of his jetpack, flew into the room and quickly scanned for targets.  The shadows appeared to be the products of the ceiling lamps flickering in and out of function, for he saw none of the monstrosities waiting for them within the station itself.  He signaled to his comrades that it was safe to enter, hovering aloft in the cavernous space to maintain an advantageous view by which he could cover their movement.  With a moment to spare, he took stock of the station's layout.

The hexagonal space was made of of charred concrete and thick plasteel, and dominated by three features.  A massive grate of interlaced steel formed the floor, with a gigantic fan above it.  According to Grim's schematic analysis this was actually the tail end of a rocket booster the Adeptus Mechanicus had mounted INTO the floor so that it's engine output fired vertically upwards.  As specimens were brought from containment by rail line into the substation they would be screened, and the booster existed as a failsafe for containment whereby specimens flagged for disposal or at escape risk would be incinerated almost instantly.  Overlooking this grate was the room's second feature, a sealed and heat-resistant command bunker for the room which protruded from the wall like a blister.  It was accessed primarily from a hallway connecting to the laboratories, but since that route was not available to them they would be forced to use the narrow steel staircase thayt wound up the sides of the room and accessed a sealed door set into the bunker's side.  Finally, the massive opening which led to the Tyranid housing unit and stood adjacent to the entrance to the Grand Hall.  Luckily, it was closed for the moment.

With no threats immediately presenting in the substation itself the party quickly entered the room.  Wu-10, and Aurora headed up the stairs to try and reach the command center as the others took up positions near the Grand Hall entrance to beat a hasty retreat if necessary.  Utilizing the codes he had obtained from the corpse of Aurelian-913, Grim engaged the access door's override and allowed his cyborg companion to make first entry.  As the sodium lights flickered into life a pang of sorrow flickered through what little remianed of the human inside of Wu-10.  The command center was full of bodies, long dead.  Some clung to each other, others curled into balls against the walls with the remains on ration containers still grasped in skeletal fingers.  They had sealed the door to the laboratories and then slowly starved or succumbed to dehydration.  The body of a single Tech-Priest still stood, remarkably, over the engine controls, his augmetics providing just enough support after his life functions had ceased to keep him upright.  As Wu-10 laid a hand on the deceased priests should to mutter a binary prayer it crumbled into a pile of steel and dust at his feet.  Aurora, focused on the task at hand, tapped into the cogitator and linked it to Grim in the hope that he could use the command center's systems to engage the purge systems they knew existed in the housing structure.

Grim, who had been anxiously awaiting access to the remote cogitator access the command center's systems would allow him, patched into the system.  The prmoethium charges set into the main housing hall, and all of the individual housing unit adjacent to it, appeared to be functional.  However, as he attempted to trigger them, he was met with something quite unexpected.  A sudden wave of white noise fed back so suddenly into his systems that he was forced to manually sever the connection.  He had wondered why the promethium had never been activated in the housing units, and know he knew why.  Somehow, by some contrivance of the animalistic xenos that was unconscionable to the devotee of Mars, there was a presence inside of the remote system that had blocked his access to the charges.  Reconnecting hesitantly, and devoting additional subroutines to insulating his own systems from possible intrusion, he probed the system again.  Each time he came close to the command nodes for the charges, or life support systems, the presence again blocked out his access through the generation of hateful waves of scrap code.  He had some limited control over the door function that accessed the housing unit, however, but when he tried to shift the door sequence he found his commands reversed.  Bringing up an intenral display of the main door's function he was astounded at the levels of redundancy his deceased brethren had put into the facility's security.

The door itself was actually a solid ring of steel over half a mile in diameter, three stories high, and over ten meters thick.  It only had one opening in it, cut to line up in size with the entrance into the security subtation and each of the housing units.  Once activated it would glide under magentic propulsion on a series oftitanium bearings the size of a human torso until the opening aligned and allowed access.  This way, only a single housing unit OR the security station could be accessible to the main housing dome at any one time.  And now, inexplicably, the door was somehow moving back towards the security station.  Grim, sensing that whatever had blocked his access was also controlling the door, hurried to the command center and ordered his friends to retreat back to the safety of the Grand Hall.  As he took his place beside Wu-10 in the command center the door slide open and a wave of chitinous teeth and rage began to flood in.  With his friends pulled back to safety, and the command center sealed against the intense heat, Grim activated the purge system.  Less than a second later, as the horde crossed the center of the room, a whie-hot pillar of fire erupted upwards through the grate in the floor.  After three seconds he shut it off, and the only evidence that the Tyranids had been there were small specks of ash drifting aimlessly in the waves of heat roiling off of the glowing steel of the grate.  He noted, darkly, that the door was already sealed again as the massive ring spun at the behest of the...thing...inside the system to another of the housing units.  As soon as the metal had cooled sufficiently to allow them to enter, the party regrouped at the base of the stairs to the command center.

They knew time would be of critical importance.  Once they were inside of the housing unit they would be at the mercy of the door's rotation sequence to escape.  Grim noted that the only hard-wired command node for the cogitator system which controlled the housing unit was mounted into the ceiling of the main housing dome, ten stories in the air.  Cassius and Grim would attempt to access it and set off the charges.  After the housing units were purged they would access the utility service shaft at the center of the dome which could reach the generator powering the sonic impulse units that kept the planet's worms at bay.  The rest of the group prepared to engage the Tyranids as they came out of the housing units, loading weapons and ensuring their armor was fitted tightly.  The thought that only a few dozen of the ravenous monstrosities could be unleashed on them at any one time due to the door's unique construction was scant comfort to them as the ring slid back into place by the security station and the inner blast doors parted.

Immediately a rush of Temragaunts attempted to force their way through the widening gap, clawing over, and even through, each other in their desperate bid to be the first to sate their unending hunger.  A withering torrent of focused weapon's fire made short work of them, but for all the bodies it seemed there were fewer than the lasdt wave which had rushed into the station.  Cassius fired his thrusters, arcing into the housing dome and twisting quickly to survey the space beside the doors.  To either side of the door Termagaunts hunched, hissing at the noble.  Warned of the ambush, the party quickly broke down the corners and cut down the beasts.  Only one even made it close to them, but fell beneath a rapid succession of precision shots from the dual pistols of Merrick.  The ground shook as the ring began to turn again towards one of the housing units, and the party scanned the massive dome.  Their jaws dropped with their hopes as they finally saw it.  Hung from the ceiling like some twisted marionette of alien flesh and steel was a massive and horrid amalgamation of wiring , bone, teeth, and flesh.  It twisted in its bondage to roar at them, and Aurora finally realized what it was.  A Swarmlord.  The Adeptus Mechanicus had captured and experimented on one of the most diabolical and ingenious threats the Tyranid had brought to the Milky Waty from the dark corners of some other doomed galaxy.

It's limbs had been amputated, save for the twenty meter long scythes it swung about in the air around it.  Cables and cogitator nodes had been forcibly drilled into each of its vertebrae, connecting the beast to the housing units main cogitator, and tubing ran into its neck and eye sockets.  This was the source of the malicious signal inside of the remote cogitator access that had denied Grim, the progenitor of Manus' dark visions, the hateful master which had drvien the Tyrnaids forward in an organized fashion, and the architect of the station's undoing so long ago.  And they were trapped with it, over two miles below the planet's surface.  With a supreme effort they willed themsleves forward and began to revise their plan while firing upwards at the dangling behemoth.  Grim knew that he reaching the cogitator was suicide since the Swarmlord was physically wired into it, and he shouted for Manus to follow him as he cut a line for the generator access his schematics promised was in the center of the chamber.  Vadik, swearing at his luck, fired round after round to little effect into the Swarlord's chitin.  Then, to add insult to injury, the gate locked into place in front of one of the housing units and a fresh wave of Termagaunts flooded into the chamber.

Aurora screamed over the comm line that the beast functioned as a nerve center for the Tyranids, someone had to find a way to distract it before it could lend its significant mental prowess to empower the more animalistic sub-species it had unleashed.  Manus focused himself and, with only a second of hesitation, reached out into the Immaterium to lash at the Swarmlord with a powerful wave of energy meant to disrupt its autonomic functions.  He willed blood vessels to rupture, nerves to set alight in pain, and muscles to contort spastically.  To his surprise, it worked.  A Swarmlord usually had such a significant presence in the Warp that it was immune the powers of human psykers.  This one, however, had been subjected to batteries of conversion, torture, and experimentation that had left it weakened.  It writhed in agony, and its contortions were mirrored suddenly by the Termagaunts below who slowed their coordinated advance to a stumble.  That gap was enough for Manus to stop, focus his mind further, and call into being a wall of azure fire that erupted between the forward advance of the Tyranids and the access hatch Grim was sprinting for.  The blazing conflagration consumed almost half of the beasts as they staggered in a drunken stupor, too dazed from the psychic howling of their master to know better.

Grim set to work prying open the access hatch to the sonic generator room beneath the housing unit, leveraging his utility dendrite to hoist the 100 kilogram lid up, as his comrades picked off what few Tyranids had managed to shake off the psychic reverberations of the Swarmlord's agony.  Manus, however, was stumbling like he was drunk.  Tapping the Warp in such quick succession had taxed him, and it was only with a supreme effort of will that he was capable of summoning the focus to stagger towards the open hatch the Tech-Priest was clambering through.  The Swarmlord, however, had regained sufficient control of itself to lash out at the prey that had dared to harm it so.  A blazing conflagration, this one of the Tyranid's design, erupted in a pillar of focused psychic rage that engulfed the center of the room, directly on top of the psyker as he reached for the ladder.  It was only by throwing himself bodily down the access hole that Manus had even survived, his smoking armor and blistered skin testament to how narrowly he had averted a grisly fate.

Grim could not spare the time to check on the psyker, he knew that he had a holy duty to deactivate the sonic emitters.  Even if they all perished to the slavering jaws of their enemy, he would ensure that they would be the abomination's final meal.  He flew into the generator control room and set about the complicated series of commands at the console to silence the system forever.  Above, his compatriots began to edge backwards towards the security control room doorway, despairing for the fate of their comrades.  It wasn't until Manus managed a wheezing update over the vox that they dared to breath a sigh of relief, and he told them to be ready to withdraw into the security room when the door opened.  He had an alternative plan for extracting himself and Grim, but had no time to explain.  Then, as the door slid into place and the Tyranids began again to unite under the control of their centemptuous master, the emitters went dead.  A stark silence settled over the room, as the sub-sonic nosie polluting the entire complex died away.  The odd sensation laste donly a moment however, for the Swarmlord began to buck and thrash in a frenzy against its restraints as a horrific shaking replaced the ominous sound.

Bursting through almost impossibly thick walls of steel and ceramite a horrific worm, composed seemingly from rings of bones and sinew, burst into the chamber.  Its maw was wide enough to devour an armored transport whole, and as it spread it's mouth a superheated spray of lava vomited across the floor and incinerated a dozen of the Termagaunts.  The rumbling intensified, and a second worm burst in beside the first as its partner reared back and opened its gullet towards the Swarmlord.  The Tyranid synapse creature raged against the behemoth threat, bathing it in psychic fire and lashing it with pincers that could have torn a Baneblade open.  The worm seemed barely fazed.  Cassius, defiant in the face of the risk and enraged at the possible death of his friends, flew within range of the beasts talons and declared that the creatures final judgment had come for all its sins against the Imperium of Man.  He fired all of the thrusters of his jump pack in unison, and they formed a visage akin to the flaming wings of seraphim as he propelled himself backwards.  The Tyranid, for the first time in its long existence, knew despair as the titanic worm lunged forward.  It clamped its mouth upon the Swarmlord's upper torso, and then began to wrap itself in massive coils around its prey.  The supports which had affixed the Swarmlord in place ruptured under their combined weight and the pair came crashing down to the floor.  The second worm, eager itself for the feast so long denied it, reared above the pair and vomited another stream of lava across the writhing mass.  As a third worm burst into the chamber the party took flight into the security control room, if Manus and Grim were to escape they certainly would not be getting out through the hatch anymore.

As the worms devoured the Tyranid lord above them, Manuis and Grim caught their breath beneath the flickering lights of the generator room.  The structural supports were buckling under the clash above them, and very soon the room would likely collapse.  Manus placed a hand on Grim's shoulder, breaking the Tech Priest from the reverie of binaric chanting he had begun in preparation for his ultimate union with the Omnissiah.  He asked the devotee of Mars to close his eyes, and hold on to him no matter what he saw or heard.  Grim was not sure what the psyker intended, but the tortured soul had seen them this far.  As he deactived the visual feeds from his optical array and pulled his hood low across his face the temperature in the room suddenly plummeted so rapidly that crimson environmental hazard icons blazed across his internal displays.  He felt an odd sense of vertigo, as if his physical body was being pulled in all directions at once as Manus burrowed a hole between their reality and the Warp, forging a tunnel of will alone through which he could guide the blinded priest.  Though the journey lasted only a fraction of a second they both felt invisble fingers of bone-chilling cold clawing and dragging at them, desperate to pull them into the space between dimensions where their souls could feed the insatiable thirst of gibbering entities whose very existence was anathema to the sane.

And, as suddenly as the transition began, it ended with an nauseating lurch.  They stood in the center of the grate of the security control room, shaking from a cold which had had seeped far deeper than their bones.  The others, stunned at their sudden appearance, were still running in throught the doorway to the housing unit.  Wu-10 and Aurora were beset by what few Termagaunts surviving, but they made short work of the beasts now that the unifying force that compelled them was rotting in the stomach of this planet's true apex predator.  They stumbled, rushed, and pushed their way across the rocking ground and back through the broken door into the Grand Hall.  Atop the Knights Hauk's strike team was rapidly engaging waves of Termagaunts as they poured in from the main generator complex and the laboratories.  As the party began to cross the Grand Hall to link up with them another of the horrific worms burst in, its head weaving from side to side as it searched through some arcane biologic means to find prey.  One by one the party sprinted, rolled, and leaped across the hall across piles of bones and sizzling puddles of the incendiary vomit that the worm spweded across the floor.

The Tyranids wave into the Grand Hall lessened as more and more of the worms fell upon the besieged research outpost, drawn from miles around as they were with the collapse of the sonic field that had kept them at bay.  Wtih Hauk's team linked up to them they pressed to the exit as Grim voxed Muffin to unblock the doorway.  Cassius, knowing he would need time to fire up the ship's engines, launched through the narrow passage and took off at the maximum speed he felt he could safely maneuver ahead of the party.  Only at the end of their single file procession through the narrow hole in the outer blast doors did they come under serious threat.  A worm burrowed up into the Grand Hall from the main generator room immediately adjacent to their exit.  The party made it through, but Diesel, the heavy gunner of Hauk's strike team, sacrificed himself to draw the worm's attention in order to give the others time to escape.  Exhausted, bloody, and stumbling from the tectonic aftershocks of the worm's passage into, and through, the Ad Mech facility.  Thankfully, nothing pursued them beyond the heavy blast doors and they made their way back to the cavern they had stowed their ship in.

Cassius had the ramp down and the engines ready by the time the party piled back out of the access drill hole.  They fell limply into the seats, or held themselves to the rigging on the walls as best they could, as he quickly brought his faithful racer out of the cavern and docked with the Gypsy, which still waited for them in the canyon adjacent to the cave's opening.  Hannibal had a dozen questions, not the least of which was why his geo-auspex was going insane, but Cassius was too focused to answer any of them.  With only moments to spare he took the helm, fired the engines into a hard ascent, and made his way up the narrow eye of Cyrix's storm and into the cold, welcoming embrace of low orbit.  He collapsed behind the controls, caught somewhere between sleep and paralysis as his body finally dumped the last of the adrenaline which had kept him moving, and alive, over the chaotic last few hours.  The rest of the party patched their wounds before gathering in the ship's cabin to stare at each other in stunned, silent amazement that they were all still living.  And then they realized that, for all they had undergone in that damned research station, they STILL had not retrieved the box they had been sent to Cyrix to retrieve in the first place.

With the interference from the Ad Mech facility's broadcast finally silenced, Grim had a much easier time locating a final position of the torpedo containing the myserious box.  It had punched through the porous surface of the planet and come to rest in a large cavern less than two hundred meters beneath the planet's surface, less than ten miles from the Ad Mech facility they had just escaped.  The storm's eye would soon be passing over it, but they debated waiting longer to allow themsevles time to recuperate befor eonce again daring the hazards of Cyrix.  In the end, they chose to proceed immediately.  Hopefully the voracious worms would still be occupied with the research station, and they could retrieve their prize while the giant beasts were distracted.  Slapping his face to ward off fatigue, Cassius again took the helm of the Queen as his comrades climbed aboard, dropped the nose of his ship towards the narrow window through the chlorine storm, and gunned the engines.  The descent was swift, but uneventful.  With their environmental suits sealed tightly against the atmosphere, they stepped out onto the scoured surface of Cyrix next to a jagged hole through the yellow stone.  It burrowed for over a hundred meters before breaking into the roof of the cavern that Grim's scans had shown the torpedo to be resting in.

Time was of the essence, to rappel the entire party onto the planet's surface would risk wasting their brief window in the storm.  Cassius, being the only member of the team equipped with a jet pack, glided across the cavern in advance and found the torpedo, crumpled and heavily damaged, lying at the far end of the cavern.  Following Aurora and Grim's instructions over the vox he careuflly detached the plate which shielded the trigger housing for the torpedo's main charge.  They had been warned by Hix Carera that there had not been time to remove the explosive charges themselves, so the utmost care had to be taken to remove the content of the comparment, even though the trigger itself was absent.  The surface impact of the torpedo would render the explosives highly sensitive to any disturbance.  Nestled in a mess of wires and circuits was the strange box, roughly the size of a briefcase and seemingly made of some sort of bone.  Its surface was etched with odd xenos symbols which flowed together like water.  Wiping sweat from his eyes, Cassius followed his friend's careful instructions and sequentially cut a number of wires which prevented him from withdrawing the box.  Whispering a prayer to the God-Emperor he stoically snipped the final wire, retrieved the box, and flew back to his waiting comrades.

Though it caused Manus intense discomfort, Grim quickly placed the null rod they had been issue atop the case and sealed inside of a carrier crate held by Muffin.  He gave his faithful servitor explicit instructions not to allow anyone except himself access to the crate, and they all reboarded the Queen as the chlorine storm crept dangerously close.  Their ascent back to orbit was more harrowing, Cassius had not planned on the time he would have had to take to detach the mass of wiring in the torpedo and now he was forced to deal with far more turbulent conditions.  Though they were badly shaken by the experience, in body AND mind, they all breathed a sigh of relief as they finally left Cyrix behind them, docked with the Gypsy, and then coordinated a link-up with the Cobra destroyer still patrolling the system's exterior.  Via astropathic communication the captain of Mahaka's prized ship informed them that they had been ordered back to Port Wander.  Something had happened, and Marius demanded their presence there as soon as possible.  As the ship slipped between realities and began the long trip back to the Imperial port, the dazed team wondered what fresh horrors this dark corner of the galaxy possibly had waiting for them next.