Thanqol

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"No, it would be a sin to end your own life," said Assassin. "Though - that becomes theologically complex in the present day. Mankind, after all, built the physical structure of Hell below the earth. Once the souls of the damned made do with mere rivers of fire, content that the agony of their damnation was not interrupted for commercial breaks. I truly wonder how the Son of God would have fared had he arrived a few millennia late..."

He lets the thought rest. The questions may be theologically interesting, but they pass far beyond his authority to experiment with.

"Suffice it to say that I am able to prolong my martyrdom by opting into a large - but not limitless - supply of feedback forms, commercial intermissions, and review-writing for every product involved in my execution," said Assassin. "And while I do so, I still have some limited ability to get messages out. So to answer your question; no, Adam's lair is in fact deep underground, near the heart of Hell. And be wary, for he is one of the worst of all demons: the Demon of Righteousness."

The cats lounge, curling their tails, making the silhouette twist in wry amusement. Richelieu is broken upon the wheel of irony, animated by their disaffection.

"His job is to stand before the Devil himself and tell him that he is justified. To explain that everything he did was not only necessary, but virtuous. To do this, the Demon must be righteous himself - and he will be. Personally, he is above reproach, sacrificing and intellectual and balanced, exactly the kind of person who can claim a mantle of moral authority. To see the true nature of the man you must look at his friends, and at his silences."

The Namespace of the Rose

Data Recovery!

SEQUENCE 03
10> GOTO SEQUENCE 01-60
20> THE TRASH CHUTE
30> THE MANIACS. BLASPHEMERS. BARBARIANS. PHILISTINES. MONSTERS. BRUTES.
40> THEY THREW THE COGITATORS INTO THE TRASH CHUTE

Tradecraft!

Oh~h? One must respect the discipline.

Those cogitators, the private possession of an Archmagos? You could buy an army with those. And yet, every one of them was ripped out and thrown down into the garbage. I almost do not know what to say. Whoever did this was either very, very smart or very, very stupid. Perhaps both. View everything through those lens.

There are several possibilities. Perhaps this was an act of fanaticism. If the Archmagos was corrupted by the xenos, or the Ruinous Powers, then destroying their cogitators may have been a way to excise their taint. Or perhaps this was an act of profound self preservation - the assassin threw away the cogitators in order to ensure the Skitarii response would run to the perimeter, leaving the interior uninvestigated. If that was the case, that means that they could have left exactly the way they came - dropped the grenade as they left, not as they entered - and still be in the cathedral right now.

Architecture!

All of this tower is a single tooth. Tusk, rather. The ivory is not fake, it's grown - biotech, ascending up like a tree. Its roots run deep underground. Pray that they do not have a teeth's nerves.

That is to say, there is no way to hide doors or rooms here. There are also no imperfections that would make good hand-holds, so climbing the exterior would be extremely perilous. Though - it is a small thing, but the Archmagos teleported exactly five meters to the west. I am under the vague impression that displacer field teleportation is random in direction and distance, but if she teleported five more meters to the west then she would have gone outside the tower and fallen to her death. If the assassin had been a bit slower on the draw, and if the device had time to reset - perhaps that would have been a more reliable way to kill an armoured Archmagos than landing a one in a million shot to the head?

Notice!

The killing bolt shell was painted blue. Same type of paint as the door, different colour. That's weird. You don't normally paint your bullets.

Breathless Dead

The world in Nemesis' jaws is not a no-name chunk of flesh ripped from the throat of an alien civilization.

It is a world of the Restoration Crusade.

At the end of the Age of Knights, after the fall of the High King, a powerful clan shattered their own webgates and sealed themselves off from the galaxy. For a thousand years, during the rise and fall of the Atlas Cultural Sphere and the Imperium that followed it, they built their own civilization. A continuation of the old virtues of chivalry, paired with the traumatic reaction to being on the receiving end of an apocalyptic total war. For generations they advanced their technology, militarized their society, and sought every atom of potential that existed within steel and chivalry. Their blades were honed against lesser alien civilizations but their goal was always this: to prove that ordinary men and women, fused with technology, hardened by experience and lifted by virtue, could defeat the horrors of Biomancy on their own terms.

A mountain range falls like a velvet curtain; behind it, a formation of Knights. Not the gold and ivory marvels of bygone age, these are boxy, grey and industrial, everything lovely cut away and sacrificed on the altar of More. The massive reactor-mech screeches and glows, engine creating a fourth sunrise. Magnets flicker and fade and blades the size of houses scythe into the Wolves.

A crushing flank maneuver follows. Treads scream, tanks smash through forests, turrets already turned to target enemies in a predetermined kill zone. Just before the hammer falls, the dagger slices - airframes cut through the sky, trailing ribbons of fire that cut through the earth and transform the soil into poisoned knives. Infantry with jetpacks race behind, weaving through every gap, investigating every bush and crevasse for hidden soldiers. Assisted by machine intelligence, lifetimes of practice and discipline, and the most profoundly meritocratic culture ever devised, the maneuver is perfect. There are no gaps, no failures of co-ordination, no hesitation or morale shock. Warriors drilled from the moment they could walk take the field, a crushing fist of metal driven directly into the chest of their most hated foe. Thousands of bloody doves emerge from fields of corpses.

"Look," said the Shogun with a smile, "at what they must do to imitate a mere fraction of our power."

And it is true. No Ceronian trains so. There is no need to, any more than a woman must train her stomach to digest what it is fed. The calculation of war does not happen in the minds of officers, nobody has ever needed to explain to a Ceronian how to react to an artillery barrage, the Shogun for all that she is their leader has never needed to give a single order throughout her reign. The Ceronian penchant for art in battle does not in any way represent a lackadasical approach, instead the depth of military understanding is so deep that there is room for playful flair. The mechanics of action can be taken for granted, all that's left is the meta-war of reading the minds and souls of their enemies.

And this war is not fought alone.

Some have thought the Ceronians are a hive mind, a single distributed entity carried across trails of phereomancy. That was not Doctor Ceron's design. Instead they are an entire ecosystem; specialists emerging to fill every possible combat and social role, flexible enough even in the moment to adapt to new opportunities. The pack keeps some outcast, bullied and predated upon, to ensure that there are stealth hunters and intellectual outsiders. And yet, when the circumstance of war aligns with their privately developed specialty, they wordlessly seize complete control over battlefield command. Proud alphas lower their ears, lie flat and unquestioningly obey the instincts of the girl who knows how to play dead.

This was Doctor Ceron's genius: to divorce war from desire. This is the perfection that prevents Aphrodite from devouring his lover. Though later there will be time for desire, for pride and humiliation to make itself fully known, for positions to be reasserted or overthrown, as long as Mars stands upon the field the wolves fight without ego or pride. And for all the grey paint and small unit tactics of the Crusade, that flicker of pride that still burns in their hearts is what the wolves exploit time after time after time...

*

Even the Shogun is not immune to knowing her Place. When the War needs her to pick up a rifle and join a solid projectile fusillade she does so without thinking. When she must detour to place an anti-Knight mine on a deserted stretch of road deep in the backlines it is not the sort of thing that she's even consciously aware of happening. Sometimes she passes by mass formations of Ceronians without so much as a blink of the eye, all of them instinctively knowing that the War does not permit them the space for a leadership contest at this moment. The skyline burns, macrocannons pouring fire into orbital plates, the howls of wolves jamming every frequency.

But then a shield bursts. A city collapses, pulverized under its own amplified weight as gravitational pulses fixate on it. Immediately every Ceronian's internal calculus changes - and that is when the heavy weapons emplacements swing around from guarding the road to fire on the Shogun and her companions.

The Namespace of the Rose

Virgid!

[Occult Studies] You are not permitted to know of anything that may interact with the operations of a Displacer Field. In fact, you seem to have a suspiciously large number questions about the operations of Displacer Fields. I have my eye on you.

[Data Recovery]
SEQUENCE 02
10> ELECTRICAL THOUGHT MUST BE CAGED, IN IRON AND PLASTEEL AND SHACKLES
20> THESE CAGES HAVE MASS.
30> THIS MUCH ELECTRICAL THOUGHT MUST BE CAGED IN QUITE A LOT OF MASS
40> WELL OVER A HUNDRED KILOGRAMS. MAYBE TWICE THAT.
50> THAT IS A HEAVY BURDEN EVEN FOR AN ASTARTES.

[Outdoor Survival]
Yeah nah mate, no way you're carrying that much weight and climbing down that tower. You'd slip and break yer neck. A glider wouldn't cut it either, you'd need a jetpack or a grav-chute to shift that kind of weight around. You can get stealthy versions of them but they're not easy to find, and someone would have seen that...

[Data Recovery]
60> GOTO SEQUENCE 01-01
70> I HAVE BEGUN TO THINK THE UNTHINKABLE
80> IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THE DEVICES MAY HAVE BEEN DESTROYED RATHER THAN STOLEN
[Spend a point to precisely locate the remains of the Cogitators]

Return to Thellamie

Tsane!

In Yukisworld, they have a concept called 'evolution'. Under 'evolution', species branch and adapt in order to extract every spare molecule of nutrients from their environment; transformation directed by hunger. In Thellamie, it is quite the reverse: the dragons of the world hunger, and they generate the environment to satiate that hunger. Put it another way, the creation of the world is but the nesting instinct of dragons. The branch upon which the nest rests are the laws of magic and physics, the outer layer of sticks are the forests and the plains, the inner layer of feathers and downing are the animals and people.

And, of course, the flecks of decorative tinsel and glass, shining beautiful in order to attract mates, are the maids.

Tsane has heard some challenges to her theory in the past. People insist that some god or gods built the world instead as a gift for them, or claim that there are higher purposes to life than acting as warming insulation for a dragon against the forces of unreality. These she dismisses as misplaced pride and insecurity. Others argue that there are reality bubbles without dragons at all - yes, certainly, not that you can see. Perhaps their lair has not been found, or perhaps they are out hunting and courting. Some people take objection to the idea that there is an objective standard of beauty, and that it is the maid. Tsane assumes that these people are blind and navigate with some sort of echolocation.

The point is, to research the many and varied ecosystems of Thellamie it is not enough to collect a taxonomy of ants and lizards (no matter how cool lizards are). One needs an understanding of the greater ecosystem at work, how the dreams of the Outside are filtered into material reality, the anchor points and how the world forms around them. There is no place for pride or ideology in science. If it is simple truth that the highest thing that you can accomplish in life is as a beautiful ornament for a dragon's nest, then the only question left is how to best realize that.

So it is that she is here at the gates to the Manor.

She has arrived before Injimo, having performed no particularly heroic feats along the way. She has with her Kalentia, who - good girl that she is - is determined to follow the Civil's instruction of infiltration and investigation. Tsane is barely interested in that part of things - she's here to do Dragon Science. She wants to take measurements, analyze elemental compositions, type affinities, weaknesses, take anatomy sketches, perform chemical sampling of scales and measure the crushing strength of jaws. Sayanastia is, for a variety of reasons[1], not a particularly useful subject. This place, this dragon, though... she can hardly wait!

[1] The full list of reasons:
- Weakened modern incarnation
- Fundamental hostility towards the idea of reality itself
- Ate my tape measure
- Vomited a nightmare gorilla on me

"Oh, well um, thank you," said Kalentia. She was always pretty weak with the Heron disguise, even when she could follow along with what was happening. "Do - do you want me to cook some eggs for you now?"
Tsane wasn't following either, but didn't interject. She had a long standing policy of always pairing up with Kalentia specifically because she was the only good cook amongst the Handmaidens, and that decision seemed to be turning out mission critical this time as well. It must be her lucky day!

Breathless Dead

There is nothing better than a massage from someone who does not give a shit about you.

Someone who cares will be gentle. Will be kind. Will be soft - or will be hard and deliciously cruel depending on their nature. But when there is a dialogue and self-expression and intimacy, the unique touches of a lover draw away from the possibility brutal, mechanical perfection. The Shogun could fix catgirls all day on an assembly line and every one of them would stagger away with knees too weak to walk and bliss too thick to speak through.

It's amazing.

A gift from the Gods.

Hermes, Nero, Imperator in her wisdom must have noticed the suffering of her people. And so she donned her healer's mantle and put this power in the hands of the Wolves. Your arms are wrenched and dislocated. A burning paw stomps on your neck so hard it feels like it might break. Your ears are yanked and pulled. Hairpin needles are drawn from the Shogun's hat and stabbed into the centres of pain that had become part of your personality. Art like this went from the galaxy when Hermes descended from Olympus, and its return, for all its agony, is the most transcendent of bliss.

"The Empress of the Galaxy," said the Shogun, "has descended to the Underworld. There She corrects the wicked shades of the dead, and teaches them again of glory. The Wolves of Ceron have been issued with this great mission: To seek the True Death. We fight and die and are reborn in the shadow of Nemesis, our flesh renewed as bird and beast, our souls and legacies returned in the cloning vats of Ceron. We live, we die, we live again. But one day the weight of our deaths and our kills will become so heavy that we will pierce Demeter's law and our souls will fall to the Underworld. When they do, we will find Tellus and summon it to Nemesis. All the uncountable shades of humanity will rise with it, and with them, our Empress. Until then, we live. We die. We live again."

At last she was done. She pitilessly stepped away.

"To reign in her stead, She has left Her shadow atop the Psycho Throne. She awaits you, Voyagers, upon the surface of Nemesis -" the Shogun gestured at the empty space in the centre of the Ring.

Space warps and distorts. The will of the God of Travel runs through a million glyphs and prayers. A divine hand reaches out to a distant star where a hidden pack howls at the moon. In the blink of the eye a pristine world is plucked from Heaven and served up to the Wolves for execution.

C-beams glitter in the dark. Orbital plates flatten mountain ranges with graviton pulses. Wolves pour from the skies - some in jets, some in pods, some simply leaping through the endless azure skies. Flickers of defensive systems come online, fortresses close their gates, military bases scramble to react. But, like an oryx separated from its herd, all it is now is meat.

"- so come with me now," said the Shogun, illuminated by the fires of Hell. "Come, but be warned. Whenever I step foot on the surface of Nemesis I am fair game. Any of my wolves might kill me freely and claim my title, and once that happens it can be months before my conqueror will be established enough to pick up where I left off. So, unless you'd like this to be a long trip, I suggest you keep me alive~"

The Namespace of the Rose

Archmagos Toros!

run shoot run shoot run run run shoot run
bliss
flow
perfect battle
eternal war
all the daemons of hell arrayed against her
run shoot run run shoot run run shoot
frictionless
fluid
perfect
run run run
like a war in dreams

The emotion flows and flows and flows, an endless cascade. Hours, days, months spent locked in this state of enchanted battle. Everyone knew the Archmagos to be an academic locked away in her tower, but all of her memories are of violence and war.

Motion.
Motion without motion
Secrets of perspective
Standing still and crossing distances
Here, there, everwhere
A dojo, clean and sparse
Flickering like a switch left right left right left right left
The Displacer Field. It was capable of so much more than anyone understood.
It was -

[Military Science] Listen up, soldier. There are only two ways this all fits together and neither of them are good.

Door comes in. Archmagos gets shot. Displacer field activates. Now - stay with me here - what if she teleported to a place where there was already a bolt-round? Not enough time and mass for the bolt-round to arm and so it finished penetrating and continued on to hit the window. So this means the assassin executed the Archmagos with a single shot to the head, and then fired a three round burst into her new location before she had even finished teleporting.

The Wolves of the Rout have made good shots before, but this is - well, you don't think you could do this. You're not sure your instructors could have done this. Frankly speaking it's some of the best marksmanship you've ever seen, bordering on the impossible. That's option one.

Option two is that the killer somehow knew exactly where the Archmagos was going to teleport to before she did, and was already firing at her destination before the killing round had hit her. And that downgrades the marksmanship to... merely very, very good. Don't love either of those, frankly.

The Namespace of the Rose

Ramona!

[Forensic Pathology] Good Evening, Madame Ramonia. It is delicious to have you here as my guest again this evening. Tonight we do not deal with the subtle flavours of poison, garrote or blade: prepare yourself for the heady, industrial flavours of a military murder.

One shot to the head killed the Archmagos. The detonation happened in her cerebral cortex and blew out the back of her skull. She passed away instantly, and without pain, Omnissiah be praised. If you do not mind I would like to collect all the fragments from the remains of her skull, though this may take some time [Spend: 1 Point to reconstruct the killing bolt round].

The torso, though, has two entry wounds. One exit wound.

No internal detonations.

A bolter is not a solid-slug weapon. It is more like a rapid-fire miniature rocket launcher; when a bolt shell penetrates its mass-reactive core detonates, creating a small internal explosion that causes crippling injuries. Two rounds have impacted on the Archmagos' armoured torso, the protean neometals of her cybernetic form, and deflected without exploding. The third one is missing...

But then there is the exit wound.

Bolters don't leave exit wounds, my darling. It is one of their signature traits. And yet there it is, clear as day, emerging from the Archmagos' rear left lung. A penetrating shot, not a detonation, as though shot with a bullet and not a bolt round. But bullets, I am given to understand, reliably leave entry wounds, of which there is no corresponding example. This is a mystery far outside my skillset, I am afraid.

[Notice] Look. In the broken glass. The light is wrong. That's a metal shard, not a glass fragment. That bolt round that exited through the Archmagos' back, it went on to strike the stained glass window behind her. It detonated, and shattered the glass, blowing it outwards. [Spend: 1 point] But it doesn't matter. What really matters is the door. Where it was kicked in, paint flecks. Green paint, centered around the impact site. Whoever kicked in that door was wearing green-painted armour. I will sample for you the exact shade and hue.

Virgid!

[Data Recovery]
10> LAMENT. LAMENT TO THE OMNISSIAH, FATHER AND MASTER OF ALL MACHINES
20> THE SACRED RITES OF DEACTIVATION WERE NOT PERFORMED.
30> INFORMATION STORED IN THE COGITATOR'S FORTUITUS MEMORY WAS LOST
40> TO MOURN THE LOSS OF SACRED KNOWLEDGE GOTO 10
50> NO ADEPT OF THE MECHANICUS WOULD HAVE ENGAGED IN SUCH BARBARIC REMOVAL OF SACRED MACHINES
60> [load: death-to-the-brute.hmn]

[Forensic Pathology] Good evening, Master Virgid. I have quite the meal for you this fine night.

You should eat her brain.

Not Ramona's. Ha ha ha, no. Not yet. You do recall that one of your implants is called the Omophagea? That is, the Marine's ability to learn the memories of the recently deceased by eating their brain matter. The brain in this instance is somewhat... scrambled, which may make the process complicated, but the Martians will understand. This is simply the organic version of Data Recovery, after all. Ms. Ramona may, however, be... more squeamish.

[Spend: 1 point of Forensic Pathology to get access to some of the Archmagos' memories]

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Technology does indeed dull the mind," said the cats. "Why, back in my day..."

A cat is water with teeth. Eight of them together come as a river.

Clawing. Biting. Cuddling. Sleeping. Hissing. All the things that cats are and can be, through every gap and into every space, between every pair of legs and climbing every fabric surface. Fur as smooth and glossy as an otter's, leaving hairs as long and sticky as a web. Butts are placed in faces. Meows rise like a chorus. And the way they stand together...

It's like a magic eye trick. The eight cats are chaos, ceaseless movement, like looking at the rip and curl of individual waves. Look at them the right way, though, and you can see the ocean. A shape always in the center of that fluid movement; the outline of a person. That cat leaping up onto a fence post forms the outline of a face. That cat snatching at the butterfly gives the impression of a risen hand. A cat is water with teeth, and water shapes itself to the container it is placed in. In the center of all of this fur and pride and arrogance is a hole made out of kindness, patience, and wet meals reliably provided.

The jar is broken, but the water keeps its shape.

"Back in my day, if you wanted to find the gates of Hell, you usually had to die for it," said the catshape of Assassin. "Nowadays you can put a little portal to it directly in your pocket! Still, I like to think that my way has at least a little merit..."

The cats stopped, all looking at Katherine simultaneously, unblinking. "That is to say, hello. I am Richelieu, née Assassin. Please forgive the trouble I have caused you. I hope my master, Actia, is doing well? I could not find her, which I take to mean that she is in the field and does not wish to be disturbed."

Breathless Dead

"This is," said the Shogun, "exactly what I am talking about. Come. All of you! Look at each other! Really look! Look past the beauty of those faces to see how tired and sad they are! Look past the thoughtfulness of those words to hear how full of despair they are! I was warned that I would greet ambassadors from the Underworld, and if you are they it must be as grim a place as the stories say!"

She leapt into the air, and her burning feet landed on paws held out in offering. She stepped forwards, onto the shoulders of wolves, so that she could stand eye-to-eye with the Azura Dyssia. "Of course I don't want to do that," she said, smiling as she leaned in to touch nose to nose. "But that is not the question I asked. I asked if you wanted to do that, little dissident, little rebel. Because if you do, then how could I not grant your wish? Say the word and I will send my packs to burn the skies. I will have them burn every world just as we burn the worlds of Nemesis. I will have my ships reverse themselves over population centers so that the plasma fire of their thrusters burns cities to ash. I will land my legions to personally crucify every citizen on every planet that resists. I will launch the populations of worlds into space to form a ball of corpses so massive that it will feed the void sharks for years. I will personally travel to the Saoshyant's palace right over there and make her swallow my entire arm so I can feel her choke to death around me."

Her footstool had caught fire, fur burning with oily peals of smoke, the Shogun's burning feet digging their brands deep into muscle and flesh beneath. She steps to the left, onto a new servant, wet nose tracing around your cheek. "It would be nothing to me," she said. "The death of this empire. The return of unrestricted war. Nothing - nothing not nearly as satisfying as offering this small gesture of hospitality to you, my new friend."

Teeth. Teeth. Teeth.

"But you won't. No! You won't. Because you are a prisoner of math. Your huge intelligent brain can imagine all of those people out there. You can hear the phrase 'trillions of deaths' and let it fill you to the point where it overwhelms your sense of scale and your brain short-circuits and shuts down. You would call it atrocity and refuse to countenance it, even though my war would be the cleanest, sweetest, most humane war waged in the galaxy's history! But even if I only had to kill one percent of the population of the Skies, half of one percent, a thousandth of a percent - the death toll would still be measured in those trillions and the war would still take centuries. That is their greatest shield, did you know? The scale of what they have built. But all the ideology in the world will not stop me because I do not care, eternity will not stop me because I will die young, all the numbers in the world will not stop me because I cannot read. So take care when you tell me what it is that I want," she kissed your cheek and stepped down to the ground, leaving her second footstool engulfed in greasy fire, "Lest I decide that what I want is you."

She swung around to Vasilia, each footprint that left its scorch-mark in metal rather than flesh coming as a relief and a blessing. "No angels?" she said. "Are you sure? Because what is an angel if not a perfect being, created by God for the maintenance of the galaxy? As She once wrought a universe alive with nymphs, sprites and spirits, so have our Creators wrought us to be whirling natural forces. Imagining yourself as people is a delusional appropriation of an alien moral system. You are the mudslide, you are the west wind, you are the gravitational force that holds the planets in check! You have a purity of purpose and a purity of essence uncorrupted by selfishness, one that will forever reassert itself no matter how far you wander from it! You, little sheep? What will you do once you have miraculously built a galaxy of peace and kindness? Why, you will settle down and open a little tea shop and spend the rest of your days in the kitchen. Just as you did before, just as you naturally returned to on Bitemark, you are forever enslaved to what you think is beautiful and satisfying and calming and that was written aeons ago by men with computers."

She took a deep, satisfied sniff. She stopped, not quite within arms reach.

"For you to come here and stand before all of this war and chaos with steady back - that is the most daemonic thing I have ever seen. You have built your own personal hell, and it is right here and right now. I respect it."

And at last, she turns her attention to Bella, looking at her palm atop hers. She considers it, gently, thoughtfully, even as she takes her thumb and starts to twist it back at a painful angle. "You talk of the Empress," she said, no longer playful. "You talk of the Empress while in such pain? You talk of the Empress with such despair? You disrespectful fool, how dare you? Her name is light and joy, and should be received and spoken with light and joy. Your broken body is unprepared for this blessing."

With a whirl and rush of fabric she took off her overcoat and cast it to the side in one smooth motion, revealing a chest bandaged with ribbons.

"Get down on your knees. Take off your shirt. Press your cute breasts to the cold metal floor. I am going to massage you. I will beat all the pain and misery out of your battered body. Only once I have you gasping in pleasure and liberation will you be ready to receive your answers."

She did not speak from a place of lust or dominance. This was religion, this was duty - and you are broken meat that she is going to, without compassion or gentleness, repair.