#wh20k

The Golden Age of Technology.

It is a time of wonder.

It is the 26th Millennium, the age of colonization. For centuries, humanity had been crawling towards the stars, expanding out throughout space. Now, countless thousands of worlds played host to mankind, each a precious fragment of Earth’s civilizations and culture. Aliens observe this expansion with curiosity, disdain, and patronizing indulgence, waiting for these settlers to live or die according to the whims of uncaring gods.

Humanity has a precious gift, however, the Standard Template Construct system, a complex artificial intelligence replicated across countless colony fleets and settled worlds, proving everything humans need from earthmovers to tanks, from agridomes to parliament buildings, all seated at the very fingertips of those who need them most. Sadly, these systems have also brought about the Men of Iron, cyborgs controlled by malicious, corrupted AIs who attempted to wipe out humanity before being put down, leaving humans warier and more jaded about technology.

At the same time, the gift of psychic power began to bloom more predominantly amongst humans, creating a sub-caste of people who are revered and feared in equal measure, controlled carefully by handlers, lest their raw might rage out of control and destroy those around them. They are viewed with suspicion, with contempt, and with awe. Their numbers rise year by year, heralding something new and potentially sinister for the human race.

In the distant reaches of the galaxy, trouble stirs as Eldar civilization begins to crack and crumble, the waves of exodus providing the prelude to the reality-breaking events on the horizon. Storms gather in an area of space distant from Earth, yet none will be out of reach of the consequences of this event, two centuries of hedonism, depravity, and short-sightedness, leading up to a storm that threatens to wrack the galaxy and leave it forever changed, all the while a pair of individuals scour humanity for champions against the inclimate tempest.

Ten years of research. Ten worlds housing those of great destiny. Twenty beacons of hope.

“It’s absolutely true,” Surya said evenly. “Don’t tell me you haven’t done similar in the name of your queen, or her father before her. I’m aware that none of you have seen the depth and breadth of what this galaxy has to offer, but there are beings that worship those Warp creatures, giving them power, giving them strength due to the low, collective psychic power of humankind. That’s nothing to say of the alien creatures who consider them to be gods.”

Is he insane? Marissa wondered. A megalomaniacal genius? Someone powerful and dangerous? Should we stop him now? Can we stop him?

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Surya said dryly. “There is one other factor that you should be aware of: these storms will last for millennia. No world will remain untouched by them. You can be as angry with me as you like, but the truth of the matter is that this will happen long after you’re dead.”

“How long do you predict this storm will last?” Susanne asked, her voice calm, seemingly unconcerned by all she had heard.

“Anywhere from three to five thousand years,” Malcador said. “None of us have ever experienced this level of Warp storm anomaly before. I wouldn’t wait up for it.”

Marissa blanched, and Harra’s expression twisted with confusion and anger. Hector coughed harshly, sputtering with disbelief. Even Bilaraat looked wide-eyed, and only Susanne looked unmoved. The span of time stretching before them seemed ludicrously long. Civilizations had risen and fallen in such a period of time, though humanity had managed to stabilize, enduring for millennia, and might for many more.

Battered and broken, crumpled marred by death.

“You should go,” Surya said. “Rest, consider. There’s going to be a great deal of work to do. There’s no time to sit around, contemplating the future when the present still has so much to do.”

So dismissed, Harra turned her back first, leaving the room swiftly, as helpless as she was furious. Hector followed, then Bilaraat, then Susanne, with a look towards Malcador, and finally, Marissa departed, leaving Surya alone, illuminated by the light of the galaxy.

No. Not quite alone.

Malcador approached him quietly. “Well, we’ve done it. There’s nothing to be done now except for riding out the storm.”

Surya nodded, and touched a button on the console. From the galaxy, twenty star-groupings, some twisted and distant from one another, others very close, or a single star. Polaris and Canis, Corvus and Cassiopeia. Auriga and Orion, Aquila and Ophiuchus. Aquarius and Capricorn, Scorpio and Libra. Leo and Cancer, Aries and Taurus, Gemini and Pisces. Virgo… and Sagittarius.

“What about everyone else?” Harra asked. “You’ve said there’s a storm coming, and you had the means to get word to plenty of people. Why not warn more people of what’s to come? How many people are going to die while we sit underground and wait?”

Surya fixed his gaze on the tall, muscular woman, who did her best not to flinch. “There is no possible way to prepare for what’s to come and to warn so many people. Each of the missions that Hershel and I engaged in were short-term, clandestine operations meant to find our chosen targets, take samples, and extract ourselves. In some cases, like yours, we weren’t even there.”

“How far did you go?” Harra insisted. “How much effort did you put in? Why not see how many people you can warn. If the Eldar had known--”

“The Eldar refer to us as monkeys,” Malcador said mildly. “Literal animals, inferior in intellect, culture, technology, and evolution. They wouldn’t believe us, even if we appeared out of their Webway and declared that we were here from the future and had seen the mess they make of the galaxy through their careless hedonism.”

“So, you weren’t even going to try?”

“As I said, we could fortify our position here, or we could waste time trying to convince millions, if not billions, of people of a future that they could not conceive of,” Surya said, shaking his head once. “Your compassion is commendable, but it’s impractical. We’re doing the most that we can, here and now.”

“It still seems so cold,” Harra said, and Marissa touched her arm. “Billions are going to die to this, and not immediately, but over time, if children lose their parents, or the sick lose their caregivers. People traveling in ships being knocked off course and potentially dying because of what’s to come. All the people living on the worlds that are close to where this storm will break first.”

“Millions of people die every day without any intervention whatsoever,” Surya reminded her. “Sickness, accident, age, violence. I’ll mourn the loss of those who die, but rejoice in the lives of the trillions more that will live thanks to our hard work.”

“You have the knowledge, you just don’t want to use it,” Harra snapped. “You’re deciding who lives or dies. You’re playing God and then complaining when us mere mortals have something to say about it.”

“Not a god,” Surya said thinly. “An Emperor.”

“So what you’re saying is that if the Necrontyr had won, we would have had a galaxy stripped of life and the Warp, if the beings of the Warp win, we’ll have a galaxy full of life, but life that’s yoked to an existence of endless pain and suffering, and if you win, we have an existence that is safe, but sterile?” Marissa asked. “That is what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

“Sterile is a harsh word to use,” Surya said. “The galaxy would be safe from predators originating from the Warp, and from aliens. Even the so-called beneficent ones like the Eldar have failed us utterly. The only way to find true security is to remove the Warp as a factor altogether.”

“What about the Necrontyr?” asked Bilaraat. “Did you not say that your best weapon against them are psychic powers?”

“The Necrontyr are asleep in their tombs, and it will be simple enough to kill them while they slumber,” Surya said, dismissively. “Though not by normal humans. The Necrontyr are dangerous, self-healing, hope flensing monsters, and there will be plenty of other aliens to deal with in due course. None of this will be completed in one or two battles. It will take a mighty effort to deal with them all.”

“A great crusade, one might say,” Malcador said, and his lips quirked. “The work of decades, if not centuries, both before the fighting and during it.”

“Which brings us back to the conclusion of my most recent project,” Surya said. “The Primogenitor Project.”

“I feel like it needs something a little snappier, personally,” Malcador said, conversationally. “Archwarriors or Prime Generals, something like that. Something momentous.”

“What would these primogenitors be, exactly?” Harra asked, looking uncomfortable. “What would they be the start of?”

“I have many different projects,” Surya said, gesturing. “Many moving parts. I’ve managed to obtain an intact, untainted complete standard template construction computer to create as many of the early-stage tools that I’ll need. Weapons, armour, vehicles, buildings, ships. I also have teams of geneticists working with the various samples I’ve taken from the wealth of species of Earth along with those from a select set of very special humans. The humans I had identified as special and exceptional.”

“With some exceptions,” Malcador reminded him. “There were some recalculations, some unforeseen events.”

“Every experiment needs a margin for error,” Surya said, dismissive. “When my scientists have finished working, we’ll have a set of twenty primogenitors, the genetic core for a vast, galactic army of superhuman soldiers. Equipped with the best arms and armaments we’ll have on offer, we’ll take back Earth first, then the solar system, then the galaxy itself. Countless thousands will go out to conquer the stars in the name of humanity.”

“You will need far more than just soldiers,” Bilaraat said. “The logistics alone--”

“Is why I’m sponsoring your servitor project, adept,” Surya said. “And is why I’m going to be forming great institutions of humans to support these super-humans. I’m giving humanity a whole galaxy to occupy and rule. Once the aliens are gone, of course.”

“Won’t the primogenitors and the super-soldiers derived from their genetics be a part of it?” Marissa asked. “You don’t think that will create a tiered caste system based on genetics rather than wealth, merit, or skill?”

“The primogenitors won’t survive the separation of the Warp,” Surya said, and the words chilled Marissa to her very core. “To get the results I want, I’m going to need to rely heavily on power from the Warp. It will make them very powerful, but potentially volatile and dangerous without a specifically preordained purpose. They won’t be able to survive the war. As for their progeny, warriors rarely, if ever, survive the war they are created to fight.”

“That seems terribly cold of you,” Harra said, and let her hand rest over Marissa’s. “They’ll be your children, in many ways. Your kin.”

“My creations,” Surya corrected. “I don’t intend on getting attached.”

“Then why bother to go and find specific people you wanted samples from?” Susanne wondered, and he shot her a glare. “You could have picked anyone.”

“It’s a matter of compatibility, and genetics,” Surya said. “Not sentimentality. No more and no less.”

“If you say so,” Susanne said. “So, what do all of us do, now that we’ve survived?”

“Guarded by what, exactly?” Bilaraat asked, curious. Surya turned his steely gaze to him, eyes flickering with light.

“Everything,” Surya said flatly. “The beings of the Warp no more want to be destroyed than we do, but the Necrontyr are no longer a threat to them. We are. We’re beings of flesh and blood, beings being infected by psychic power.”

“Aren’t… aren’t you psychic?” Marissa asked. “You don’t consider that to be hypocritical?”

“I’m more than prepared to give up my psychic power if I can destroy the Warp,” Surya said flatly. “Which isn’t true of most other psychics. They treat it like a gift instead of cracks in a reality that will crumble if the beings in the Warp gain true power. Right now, they’re firing their opening shot.”

“The storms?” Susanne said, glancing at Malcador. “Is that what you mean?”

“Yes,” the robed man said. “The storm in question is, as Surya said, being born out of the folly of the Eldar. In the years since their victory, they have grown idle and decadent, and then, dangerously vulnerable to corruption.”

“Corruption from the Warp?” Harra asked. “How?”

Surya and Malcador exchanged long, measured looks. “We have a... disagreement as to exactly how they became corrupted and this event has been precipitated. I believe that, owing to the raw power of the entity that is being created by these storms. From my observations and research, the first devotees of this being existed before the storms began, and are the reason why their object of devotion exists in the first place. The Warp bends and changes all things, including the natural flow of time.”

“Whereas I believe in cause and effect, even within a realm as strange as the Empyrean, and I think that the Eldar are entirely responsible for their own downfall, because they’re all idiots,” Surya said. “Despite being immortal and incredibly powerful. It doesn’t really matter because the end result is the same, that tonight, She Who Thirsts be birthed into creation.”

“Which is why we’re hiding down here instead of being anywhere else,” Marissa observed, shivering. “Does this thing have a name?”

“It will, but we won’t speak it, not tonight,” Surya said. “Once She is born, there will be a wound on reality, a place where the Warp infects reality, allowing people to actually live there, though they’ll become infected too. No one can avoid being damaged somehow by it. That’s what the Warp does, it contaminates reality without truly wanting to kill it.”

“Then, why do it at all?” Hector asked, looking for all the world fascinated by it all.

Bilaraat stared at Surya, his fingers tapping out a sudden, jerky beat against the table, but said nothing, the picture of a man with something to hide.

“Of course it is,” Surya said. “As I’ve mentioned before, the Aeldari and the Krork were powerful psychics, but the key is to remember where the source of that power is. There are two realms, the realm of the physical, the weft, and that of the empyrean, the warp. They’re intertwined, and those with sufficient will can shape it, or draw the power of the Warp into reality. Strong emotions, like anger, hate, and bloodlust can shape the power within the Warp, which creates… creatures.”

“Gods?” Hector suggested. “Angels and devils, demons and seraphim? Ghouls and ghosts and things that go bump in the night?”

Marissa stared at him, politely disbelieving and disgusted. “Really?”

“He’s less far off than you think,” Surya said. “Many of the supernatural creatures that were prevalent in myths exist because of the power of people’s terrified imaginings combined with the psychic ability to see those creatures into existence. Psychic powers are dangerous and need to be limited severely except by those who are smart enough to know better.”

“That may be totally beyond our ability to stopper back into its bottle,” Malcador cautioned. “The best we can do is carefully and tightly control those who use those psychic powers, limiting their capacity for chaos.”

“Like that overbearing, condescending little witch who came to my facility,” Bilaraat snarled. “If the world weren’t ending she would have ruined my career.”

“You probably had that covered already,” Harra snorted. “So psychic powers create monsters and the two main forces behind fighting back evil were psychic. So what?”

“So the Necrontyr weren’t psychic,” Surya said. “In fact, they were particularly vulnerable to psychic powers owing to their innate inertness. The C’tan knew that the best way to win the war was to prevent them from using their psychic powers at all, and there was one, certain way to do that.”

“Was it… kill all the psychics?” Susanne asked, her mildly curious expression underlit by the floating galaxy. Marissa couldn’t help but shiver. “It would have solved their problem.”

“They couldn’t kill all of them,” Surya noted. “Not without just winning the war anyway. The plan was to sever their connection to the source of their powers… the warp of reality. They built a series of pillars located in different locations, meant to push apart reality and the empyrean. The Necrontyr were intended to activate them when they could, but then the civil war happened.”

“...there’s no possible way that went unnoticed,” Marissa breathed as the words sunk in. “So, what happened to the pillars?”

“Welcome,” said Surya, not drawing his gaze from the projections. “You will form the core of a new order. The tech-adepts of Mars, the assassins of Vindicare, the nobility of these words, after all national identities and royal lines have been swept away, the clerks and the architects who will build this world anew after it is ripped asunder.”

As each one of those addressed -- obliquely or otherwise -- stepped forward, Marissa glanced between them. “What’s happening outside?” she asked, concerned and curious.

“A tragedy two hundred years in the making,” Surya said, and gestured to the glowing projection. When she concentrated, she could see that it was a three-dimensional star map, composed of the whole of the Milky Way galaxy, one of hundreds reported from interstellar observation of an ever-expanding universe. If Marissa looked too closely at it, it made her dizzy, so she looked away and back to Surya.

Harra cleared her throat. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”

“A long time ago, before humans were in the nascence of their existence, there was a war in the heavens. One group called themselves the Elder Gods, a race of advanced aliens who, through genetic manipulation, created lesser alien races, the two most well known are the Krork and the Aeldari. We know them as the Orks and the Eldar. They went to war with another advanced alien race called the C’tan, and they claimed themselves to be the Star Gods.”

“Keep in mind, many beings have in the past claimed to be gods,” Malcador said, his voice calm in the face of incredulity. “They’re usually lying.”

“There is a saying that a being that is sufficiently powerful is indistinguishable from a god,” pointed out Hector. “One doesn’t need to be a literal deity to command your life and death.”

“True enough,” Malcador chuckled. “In any case, we are speaking of aliens.”

“We are,” Surya said. “The C’tan manipulated a race of beings called the Necrontyr, who were dying as a result of their sun’s extinction, into accepting a blessing from them that turned them into insensate, unfeeling monsters made of metal. The Necrontyr went to war with the Aeldari and the Krorks, and their conflict devastated the heavens. It destroyed countless other races, who begged for solace, for an end to their suffering, and in return, they received nothing.”

“No kindness,” Malcador murmured. “No pity, no relief from suffering. It wasn’t that they went unheard, however.”

“Do you just say leading, sinister things in the hopes that someone will ask you about them?” asked Harra, crossing her muscular arms over her broad chest. Malcador shrugged, unrepentant. “So, what happened?”

“Both the Krork and the Aeldari were highly psychic races, though each expressed this in a different way. For the Krork, they had a pair of powerful war-leaders that whipped the Krork into a frenzy, building them up to new heights of danger. The Aeldari had powerful champions that became their deities, as they were seen as more reachable and comprehensible than the Elder Gods.”

“It did not save them,” Malcador added quietly. “The Krork, despite Gork and Mork, were pushed back to the far reaches of the galaxy, barely clinging to their existence. The Aeldari retreated to the pathway they had created through reality called the Webway, and tried to remain out of sight while the Necrontyr ravaged all of creation.”

“In the end, one of the Necrontyr warlords turned on the C’tan, and there was a civil war. They shattered one of them into fragments, and the others were forced into dormancy.” Surya gestured at the projection, and several of the points began to glow a sickly green. “After the end of the civil war, the Necrontyr went into a state of dormancy, having essentially killed their way into starvation, since they required the living essences of sentient beings to survive.”

“...and then, the Aeldari emerged as victors because they won a devastating, genocidal war by hiding?” asked Hector, intrigued despite of himself. Bilaraat looked interested too, though more so by the Necrontyr than the Aeldari.

“Exactly,” Surya said. “The Aeldari began to retake lost worlds and build up their populace, placing the heroes and deities they venerated into the heavens as gods, albeit with less power than the Elder Gods, who were themselves wiped out by the C’tan. The initial war took place not quite forty million years ago, and one day, they will wake. If you’re unlucky enough to stumble across one that is half-slumbering on your planet and you beat it back into submission, they wake a little sooner.:”

“I hardly think sniping is a valuable service,” said a coppery-dark skinned man dressed in long, red robes. “Bilaraat, a devotee of Mars.”

“And which valuable service do you offer?” Susanne asked, rounding on him. “Other than apparently creating soulless, cloned abominations?”

“I’m shaping the future,” Bilaraat sniffed. “The future is mechanical, not this weak, organic nonsense.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” asked another man, and the pair of women looked at him. He wore what he would surely believe was finery, but to their sense of aesthetics, he wore gaudy, primitive rags. “Don’t you recall what happened with the Iron Men?”

“Oh, please,” Bilaraat snorted. “As though you would know anything about the promulgation of artificial intelligences. You probably think advanced technology is the wheel.”

“I’ll have you know that my name is Hector Meredith and I was once the majordomo to a queen,” Hector said, looking down his nose at them. “I was one of the most powerful people on Nuceria.”

“So was she,” Harra said, thumbing at Marissa. “The Executives aren’t exactly small potatoes either.”

“None of us are as powerful as our hosts,” Susanne pointed out. “And there aren’t very many of us, considering how many samples were supposed to have been taken. I expected at least ten.”

“There wasn’t as much luck in some of our earlier ventures,” Hershel Malcador said, announcing his presence. All eyes turned to an elderly, frail-seeming man wearing long, hooded robes and bearing a staff. He smiled, and drew his hood back, revealing thin, greying hair and a pronounced nose. “Welcome, ladies. You are the last, I believe.”

“We brought your sample,” Marissa said. “One sample, one ticket. There were two, so--”

“We’re aware, don’t worry,” Malcador said, raising one hand. “You’re both welcome here. Surya is ready to see you now, so if you would, please come with me.”

Harra and Marissa exchanged long looks before nodding, and falling into step behind the robed man. Hector sniffed again, and Susanne looked grimly amused, for all the world appearing with the air of a woman who knew far more than she was saying.

Malcador led the group out of the room and back into the hallway. Marissa glanced back towards where she had exited the lift, but found the corridor past the others was utterly empty. She returned her attention to the path ahead.

Hershel Malcador did not tell them exactly where they were going, and Marissa didn’t ask. She simply followed behind him and wait.

It was a fifteen minute walk through featureless corridors before Malcador paused, and knocked on a door. There was silence as they waited to be acknowledged by their host.