ADEPTUS MECHANICUS DATA ENTRY 10011010110 +++

+++ SYSTEM IRUSET +++

+++ WORLD : ARGENTA PRIMUS – FORGE-WORLD+++

+++ POPULATION : 31,954,628,727 AS OF THE LAST CENSUS +++

+++ UNIQUE ASSETS : THREE MINING MOONS +++

+++ ACCESS TO THIS REPORT IS RESERVED TO THE SCIONS OF OMNISSIAH OF MAGOS RANK AND ABOVE +++

+++ THE MACHINE KNOWS ALL – PRAISE BE TO THE MACHINE +++

Omechron-One-Nine-Three, Fourth of the name, walked briskly through the halls of his master's demesne. All around him, he could feel the never-ending agitation of the city, the sounds of an industry blessed by the Eightfold Omnissiah and the Dark Powers a chorus of praise to the glory of the Daemonic Machine. Of all the forge-temples of Argenta Primus, Illuria was the greatest, for it stood directly beneath the Great Device and benefited the most from its bounty.

After a final flight of stairs, he emerged onto the platform at the center of which rose the tower of the Fabricator-General. There was no access into the sanctum of the world's master except for the massive double doors at the tower's foot, and the platform itself was exposed to the elements, revealing the glorious sight of Argenta Primus in all directions, and the pollution-clouded sky above. But isolation was far from the only defense of the Fabricator-General. A collection of daemon engines strolled the platform, and as Omechron settled a foot in their domain, they turned their hungry gaze to him at once.

As he passed between ranks of guarding constructs, he felt the Neverborn bound to their metallic shells scrutinize him, looking at his very soul before grudgingly acknowledging his right to be there and abandoning the idea of devouring him … for now, at least. Ninety-nine daemon engines guarded the Fabricator-General's quarters, each crafted personally by the Arch-Heretek in the days before his ascension to ruler of the world and infused with the essence of a Warp-born entity summoned and pacted through the sacrifices of hundreds of slaves. Collectively, they were known as the Kala'stelal, and many would-be spies and assassins had been discovered by them. These failed infiltrators were then quickly consigned to a fate far worse than death, their flesh and augmetics consumed and their soul burning forevermore in the beasts' infernal guts.

The Kala'stelal let him pass, and the double doors to his master's chamber opened slowly, after a final check of his identity by the digital minds trapped within their metal – the dark magi of Argenta Primus were nothing if not thorough in their paranoia. Clutching in his hands the sealed roll of parchment he had come to deliver, Omechron passed through the threshold, the gate closing behind him with a loud clang and the sounds of hundreds of locks putting themselves back into place.

The room was vast in every dimension. The entire tower was hollow, with cables dancing through its entire height as they channelled the energy of the Great Device downward. This was Argenta Primus' most sacred place, and none safe for the Fabricator-General and his most trusted servants ever entered it. Yet it was devoid of any accommodations that could have been found in the sanctum of a mere human lord. There were no beds, no seats or desk, no shelves and marks of wealth. Instead, most of it was filled by row upon row of Immaterial Cogitators, handling the monstrous calculations required to the operation of the Great Device, each covered in wards that protected the sentiences within from Immaterial corruption. There was only a single path through them, and Omechron took it, his outer ports filling with shreds of code escaping the Cogitators.

Omechron-One-Nine-Three's ocular implants had been designed by the best dark magi of the forge-city, and they saw far more than the mere fraction of the light spectrum his natural eyes had been able to perceive. Beyond the rows of Cogitators that toiled endlessly in the crimson illumination given by their blinking indicators, he saw what was really taking place in his master's sanctum.

He saw the Power coursing through the thick bundles of cables going down the chamber's roof, where the central collector was located. As ever, the sight of the miracle through which all of Argenta Primus was preserved from the evil of power-starvation filled him with religious fervour. It was almost enough to make him forget the dread he also felt every time he was in the presence of his master – almost, but not quite. He doubted anything but the complete liberation from his flawed flesh would ever be enough to accomplish that.

Elveros Anestis, Sixth Master of the Conduit and Fabricator-General of Argenta Primus, stood at the center of a nest of cables and maintenance servitors, each of which was directly controlled by the arch-heretek as it worked on maintaining his unnatural existence. As befitted a scion of the Dark Mechanicum of his rank, Elveros' original body was all but gone, replaced and improved into his own vision of dread perfection by both augmentations and daemonic gifts.

The result was a vision straight out of a nightmare. Inside a nest of cables and organic tubes, a single, giant and unblinking eye pulsed with unnatural light as it stared at Omechron-One-Nine-Three. The cables were so thick that they formed a pillar from the room's floor to its roof. Elveros had fused with the room's machinery, becoming a part of the Great Device. Every spark of energy the wondrous engine produced coursed through his unhallowed form before being spread to the rest of the Forge-World, and it was his will alone that decided the allotment of each dark forge on its surface. So did the arch-heretek held absolute power over his dominion.

'My Fabricator-General,' Omechron greeted his master with a bow. 'An unknown ship entered the range of our detection arrays seven hundred and sixty-four point ninety three seconds ago.'

'Why wasn't that ship captured by our fleet ?' came Elveros' voice, from a dozen vox-speakers at once. Despite his monstrous appearance, it was a human voice, free of any taint. The Arch-Heretek could change the tonality of his voice at will, and did so often – today, he had chosen to sound like an old man. 'Is it that powerful that it would make our captains hesitate ?'

'No, my master. She is a single, small merchant frigate, though she has received upgrades from someone clearly versed in the same arts we pursue. It is the identification codes she broadcasts that gave our captains pause and made them ask for instructions.'

'What about these codes ?'

'They bear the mark of the Fifteenth Adeptus Astartes Legion, my lord. The sons of murdered Prospero have come to Argenta Primus.'

There was a moment of pause, no doubt as Elveros' consciousness brought up all that he knew of the Fifteenth Legion and their war-bred kindred. Finally, the Fabricator-General asked :

'Why have they come ?'

'I have the exact message here, master,' said Omechron, holding up the parchment before Elveros' optics. It only took a fraction of a second for the arch-heretek to read it completely – then again, it wasn't especially long, though very respectfully composed.

Omechron, of course, already knew the message's contents. The renegade Space Marines had come to seek an alliance, an alignment of purpose as fellow enemies of the Golden Throne and the False Omnissiah. They claimed to be emissaries of a greater power, one who aimed to unify all worlds within the Warp-space anomaly under his banner. They had offered to share with the hereteks of Argenta Primus great and terrible secrets in return for their support. Most important of all, they sought an audience with the planet's ruler.

'Very interesting', said the arch-heretek after his reading was complete. 'Who else knows of this ?'

'The message wasn't encrypted, my lord. All with ears among the fleet or on the ground will have heard of it by now.'

'I see,' replied the Fabricator-General, before abruptly asking : 'tell me, faithful Omechron-One-Nine-Three. What is the current situation on Argenta Primus according to the latest reports of our observers in the other forges ?'

Omechron took an instant to access the relevant data stored in his inner cogitators :

'Production is up to schedule in all forges. There has been a decrease in the amount of trans-dimensional incursions of 17.1657 per cent this month. The assembly of the fleet in orbit is also progressing well …

'Enough,' interrupted Elveros. 'Don't try to stall. Tell me what my faithful servant Heinorius has been up to.'

Omechron hesitated for all of a quarter of a second, before admitting :

'There have been signs of stirring in the Ultio Maxima forge-temple for several weeks, my lord. Seven of our hidden agents there have failed to report in accordance to their protocols, and there have been peaks of power usage apparently unrelated to the forge's planned production.'

'If Heinorius is going to finally make his move against me, an alliance with an Astartes force might force him to reconsider his course of action,' mused the Dark Mechanicum lord.

For years now, Tevris Heinorius, arch-heretek of Argenta Primus, master of Ultio Maxima, the Chasm City, and Dreaded Lord of Machines – among many other titles – had been the principal threat to the rule of Elveros Anestis. Heinorius commanded legions of skitarii and daemon engines, and had managed to put many of his disciples within the fleet. Omechron's master knew that Heinorius was planning to overthrow him – he just didn't know when, or how.

'With respect, master,' interjected Omechron, 'this vessel is hardly enough to effect the arch-heretek' decision pattern. Even if she was filled to capacity with Astartes, it wouldn't be enough.'

'Remember, my faithful servant : they are emissaries. If they had come in greater number, we would have seen it as a threat, and any negotiations that would have followed would have been undergone under tension.'

Omechron remained silent. It wasn't his place to question his master's reasoning, only to serve. Over the years of his service to Elveros Anestis, he had seen many magi dare raise an objection to his will. In a few very, very rare cases, when they offered genuinely valuable advice, they had gotten away with it. Far more frequently, however, they had been dragged outside the forge and cast out for the various technophage beasts that haunted the wasteland between forge-cities. No arch-heretek rose to Anestis' station without displaying his ruthlessness to both his servants and his peers.

'I have sent a reply,' declared Elveros at last. 'Assemble an escort of our best constructs and go welcome our guests in hangar seventy-eight. Be careful about its composition : it must show what we have to offer without appearing threatening. They have shown us this much courtesy – let us return it.'

'As you command, my lord,' answered Omechron, bowing once more before leaving his master's chamber.

Omechron walked out as fast as was possible without breaking decorum, sending messages down encrypted channels to command the assembly of an appropriate group of soldiers. Ensuring that the communication wasn't intercepted was only the most obvious part of his duty – the most important was to keep up appearances that all was going on as it always did. Even here, at the heart of Arch-Heretek Anestis' power base, there could be eyes belonging to the Fabricator-General's many rivals. If he appeared to be in a rush, it could weaken his master's position. Such was but one of the thousands of rules that made up the great game of powers and lies that had held all of Argenta Primus in its grip for hundreds of years.

Omechron had not been born when the skies of the forge-world had first turned crimson, and the veil between the Materium and the Ethereal Dominion had grown thin. By the time his body of flesh had been assembled in one of Illuria's many gene-mills, more than a century had passed since that blessed day, when the magi of the world had begun to walk the path of true illumination.

It still amazed Omechron, how his forebears had been limited in their vision, shackled to the dictates of the False Emperor of Terra. Because of the lies of a false prophet, they had willingly ignored countless avenues of research, and abandoned the pursuit of innovation in favor of blindly worshipping the ruins left by those that had come before. But when the raging powers of the Empyrean had been unleashed, many of Argenta Primus' magi had finally seen the truth. Not all, though, and what had followed had been as predictable as it had been wasteful.

Many had refused to embrace the glorious truth, and conflict had raged across the Forge-World. Magi and the Taghmata Omnissiah forces under their command chose one side or the other – there could be no neutrality in such a war – and their armies clashed on the desert plains separating each forge-city. Even now, decades after the illuminated had finally triumphed over their blind kindred, there were groups of scavenger-drones picking up the debris of these battles, searching for anything that could be re-used.

It had been during this war that the term of heretek had been heaped upon those who rejected the stifling doctrine of the hidebound Adeptus Mechanicus. But instead of seeing it as an insult, the rebels had embraced the appellation as a proud title. They knew the word was a corruption of the Low Gothic heretic, and also knew the actual meaning of that word.

To be a heretic was to refuse to conform to whatever doctrine dominated the existing culture. To be an heretek was to refuse to accept the limitations of existing knowledge, and to pursue the advancement of technology at all costs, rejecting all petty limitations. Only by being an heretek, by not bowing to any dogma, could one hope to uncover the truths of the universe. By consorting with the dark powers of the Warp, the magi of Argenta Primus had uncovered secret truths that had changed their perception of the universe forever, and enabled them to create wonders of terrible power. Rather than serving a distant, silent, and in all likelihood non-existent god through endless repetition, they had become lords of the material and immaterial planes, actors of their own destinies rather than pawns of uncaring masters.

Of course, this had not come without a price, for the path of the Eightfold Omnissiah was unkind to the weak. Despite his augmented mind, Omechron-One-Nine-Three had long lost count of how many assassination attempts he had avoided, or how many of his rivals he himself had ordered executed. Almost a third of his cogitators' abilities were permanently slaved to security protocols, scanning his surroundings through a dozen different senses in search of any threat.

It was these sensors that warned him of someone approaching him. Several defense mechanisms started to activate before the newcomers' identification codes reached him : they were the squad he had ordered to join him to meet the Astartes envoys. Twenty skitarii fell in line around him, forming a protective circle as they advanced toward the hanger where their visitors had been permitted to land.

Despite their unity of motion, brought about by the single overmind that dominated their Warp-touched cogitators, not two of the cybernetic warriors were identical. The dark magi despised the uniformity that they had once so blindly embraced, and this was reflected in the soldiers under their command. Not all troops were given such attention by their makers, of course, and there were legions of tech-thralls on the Forge-World without anything to differentiate them, but those who guarded the Fabricator-General's own forge-city were each hand-crafted by one of his sworn adepts.

Each warrior was an experiment as much as an instrument of war, gifted with a unique combination of enhancements chosen at whim amongst an infinity of possibilities. Some had their arms replaced by melee weapons, crackling with energy even in standby, while others carried massive cannons that drew their power from their wielder's own sustaining systems, shortening his existence with each devastating blast. Most had metal plates covered in sensory apparatus instead of faces, but one of them wore a mask of gold in the shape of a handsome human visage. All of them had, deep within their bodies, a small device that recorded their every deed, to be collected upon their demise so that their battle efficiency could be examined and the augmentations of those that performed the best replicated on the next batch.

It took one thousand three hundred and ninety-three seconds more for the group to reach hangar seventy-eight. Located on the two-hundred and sixteenth level of Illuria – only five levels below the entrance to the Fabricator-General's quarters and more than twelve kilometers above the planet's surface – the hangar was little more than an open space with a landing pad. Its heavily reinforced doors had already begun the long process of opening when Omechron arrived.

The transport – Omechron absently noted that, despite the fact that the vessel the envoys had arrived in was no Astartes ship, this aircraft was clearly one of the Legions' gunships – landed mere minutes after. At a command from the heretek, the skitarii formed two straight lines on each side of the landing pad and stood at attention. With a hiss of pressured air, the transport opened, and two silhouettes emerged from the darkness.

When the true nature of the Astartes envoy became apparent to Omechron-One-Nine-Three, the heretek felt a rush of emotions, a mix of awe, fear and wonder. In that moment, he understood that there was much that could be gained from the alliance the envoys had suggested – not just the might to secure the Fabricator-General's authority, but also lore and expertise that would elevate them all in their quest for knowledge.

As he emerged from the rear hatch of one of the two Thunderhawks that had been attributed to his ship, the Crystalline, Pareneffer felt rather than saw the emotions of the Dark Mechanicum priest and skitarii come to greet him. Their faces were replaced by masks of metal or fusions of flesh and machine that left them little in the way of expressions, but even with his psychic sense stunted by his current situation, Pareneffer could still feel their emotions, and still see the instictive motions backward, minute as they were. They were in awe of his form, as well they should be.

In the aftermath of the battle of Asthenar, Pareneffer had been recovered by the warriors of the Forsaken Sons among the ruins of the once proud hive-city. Even with the protection his armor had afforded him, the human soldiers that had unleashed their wrath upon his prone form had horribly wounded him. By the time they had left him, convinced that they had killed him, they had very nearly been right. He had been on the very brink of death, only his psychic abilities and his transhuman endurance combined keeping him from oblivion. His brothers had saved him and brought him back aboard the Hand of Ruin, where the Fleshmasters had worked for days on stabilizing him.

Then, once his wounds had no longer threatened his life, Arken had ordered him to be put into one of the Dreadnought chassis the warband had in its possession. Several of the hulking machines had been among the Legionaries saved from the disaster at Terra by the Awakened One, but none of them had survived the trials of the Exodus – heavy and slow, they had been easy preys for the quickest daemonic hosts that had materialised on board, their ancient souls meals of choice for the Neverborn. But the suits had been recovered, and over time Merchurion had repaired them and even upgraded them.

Based on a Mark IV Dreadnought suit, there was no Imperial classification for the type of Dreadnought Pareneffer had become, though the Techno-Adept had proudly called it the Ferrus Infernus model. From a Sorcerer, he had become a walking tank, armed with a twin-linked lascannon on his right arm and a power gauntlet combined with a flamer on the left. His psychic powers had much diminished in his interment – the loss of most sensations had dimmed his connection to the Warp. He could no longer cast the complex sorceries and rituals that had once been his to wield : all he could do was establish telepathic communions and channel what little power he could still access into the mechanisms of his metallic body. That had proven devastating in the slaughter pits of the Hand of Ruin, but Pareneffer's new aspect remained untested by real combat.

After he had become used to his new condition, Pareneffer had expected to be punished for his failure, to be humbled by the Awakened One in full view of his brothers and made to fight as an engine of war in service to the warband. But there had been no chastisement when he had stood before the Chaos Lord in his new mechanical form. Instead, Arken had granted him command of the Crystalline, a converted merchant frigate, and twenty Astartes, elevating him to one of his lieutenants, although the one with the less resources granted to him. The only hint of the warlord's displeasure had been a warning not to fail him, and Pareneffer was certain he had given the same to every single one of his lieutenants before sending them on their own missions.

The Awakened One had not shared his reasons to Parennefer, and they were the object of much speculation among the Crystalline's crew. But the former Thousand Son Legionary was far from a fool, even if his deceit by Serixithar had led many in the warband to believe the opposite. He could guess.

Though his manipulation by the Daemon Prince had endangered Arken's life, it had also ultimately led to the completion of the Anchoring and the success of the warband's objective in Parecxis. The near-death and the humiliation the Sorcerer had experienced at the hands of the human soldiers in Asthenar was punishment enough – now it fell to Parennefer to prove that he was worthy of the honor bestowed upon him.

When the Crystalline had emerged from the Wailing Storm at the edge of the Iruset system, all aboard had been awed by what they had seen. Argenta Primus, recorded in stolen Imperial archives as a forge-world of medium capacity, had become a Hell-Forge of gargantuan proportions, with dozens of warships hovering in orbit. Its three moons had been gutted open, their mineral bounty exploited by endless streams of freighters that brought the ore to the planet below to feed its industry.

'Now we know why Arken sent you here,' Tenoch had remarked with dark humor. 'It's a suicide mission.'

The former Apothecary of the Twelfth Legion stood at his side as they left the transport. Tenoch had been assigned to his side by Arken himself, to monitor the health of the Dreadnought's biological components. The Fleshmaster had quickly become Pareneffer's unofficial second in command, maintaining discipline aboard the small ship with an iron fist. Unlike the greater vessels of the Forsaken Sons' fleet, the crew of the Crystalline couldn't allow the turf wars and cult conflicts that raged in the depths of the Hand of Ruin – they couldn't afford the loss in crew.

At first, such control in a son of Angron had surprised Pareneffer, for he had not been close to Tenoch prior to his entombment. But Tenoch had dedicated much of his research as a Fleshmaster to finding a way to limit the impact of the Butcher's Nails on his mental faculties, at least outside of battle. Through a combination of mental training, adrenalin suppressors, and several daemonic pacts, the former World Eater had managed to establish a level of self-control rarely seen in the Twelfth Legion.

'Our mission here isn't doomed to failure,' Pareneffer had answered, his mechanical voice surprisingly similar to his mortal one – a little challenge Merchurion had taken on himself. 'Whether there are three ships or a hundred in orbit of that world makes no difference, given the weapons at our disposal. This is a diplomatic endeavour, Tenoch. We have to convince whoever is in charge here than an alliance with us is more profitable than war. At least with what we have, they are less likely to immediately classify us as a threat and blast us to pieces.'

Tenoch had merely grunted in reply, leaving unspoken the fact that with only the Crystalline, there wasn't much to convince the Mechanicum priests that declaring war wasn't a bad idea. But he had said nothing more as Pareneffer sent the message, using identification codes dating back to the Great Crusade. Then, he had followed the son of Magnus on the planet, and now that the two of them saw the reaction of the corrupted cybernetic warriors, the Dreadnought could sense that some of the doubts of the Fleshmaster had been lifted.

'Greetings, magos,' said Pareneffer, addressing the only one among the welcome party that wasn't obviously clad in a panoply of war. 'I am Pareneffer, once a son of the Fifteenth Legion, now a warrior of the Forsaken Sons warband. This is Tenoch, my advisor.'

'Greetings, Exalted One,' replied the dark magos, bowing deeply, with a nimbleness that surprised the Infernus Dreadnought. 'I am Omechron-One-Nine-Three, Fourth of that name, servant of arch-heretek Elveros Anestis, Fabricator-General of Argenta Primus. He bids you welcome to his world, and awaits your arrival to his personal quarters.'

'Then let us be on our way. I have seen many wonders in your city during the flight, and I am eager to meet the master of such a realm.'

'Of course. Please follow me.'

They did as the heretek asked, the skitarii forming ranks on each side of the trio formed by the tech-priest, Fleshmaster, and Dreadnought. They marched in relative silence, the Forsaken Sons taking in the vistas around them, the heretek doubtlessly considering the myriad ways in which the arrival of the warband's envoys would change things on the forge-world. Then, Pareneffer asked :

'When we arrived in the system, we saw a great fleet in orbit, yet no sign of traffic at the system's edge. Why have the arch-magi of this world launched a campain of conquest against the neighbouring systems ? Surely you do not lack the resources, nor the will, to do so.'

It was difficult to read the expression of the dark magos – only the left half of his face remained made of flesh, and even that was covered by his hood – but Pareneffer sensed that his question had made the heretek uneasy. Finally, after several seconds of awkward silence, Omechron replied :

'It has ever been the intent of Argenta Primus' Fabricator-General that we should expand our empire to other worlds. However …'

Before Omechron could finish his sentence, something happened. They all felt it, Astartes and heretek constructs alike. There was a shift in the world's very essence, a psychic transmutation of such suddenness and import that even non-psykers could detect it. Next to the psychic change came the sound – a wave of turmoil that reached the hangar and hit the warriors gathered there with physical force. Pareneffer also detected the change through his Dreadnought's sensors : a signal, covered in scrap-code and Dark Mechanicum corruption, that was spreading across the entirety of the planet, activating protocols that had laid dormant within the cogitators of millions of constructs.

The skitarii reacted first, though not in the fashion Pareneffer would have expected. They started screaming and twisting, clawing at their faces with whatever appendages they possessed. Then, just as suddenly as they had started, they froze mid-motion. The Dreadnought's weakened psychic sense was hit by wave after wave of mental agony as the skitarii fought against the scrap-code's intrusion in their systems, then, all at once, it stopped. The skitarii assumed their original positions once more …

… but with their weapons aimed at the Forsaken Sons envoys.

Tenoch was the first to strike. His Nails, whose bite had been growing increasingly painful ever since they had set foot on the planet, suddenly surged with a flow of agony that commanded him to kill. His will, trained for years to resist and channel the rage of his implants, was overwhelmed and a veil of crimson fell on his eyes. Before the Fleshmaster realised what he was doing, his power axe was embedded in the cybernetic skull of one of the skitarii, his bolt pistol barking at another, the shells breaking through the armor and spilling cybernetic guts.

The corpse hadn't hit the ground that already Tenoch was in motion again, his training allowing his mind to catch up to his instincts. The former World Eater plunged at another skitarii, his axe in motion again. He hacked and fired, never stopping in his motion, even when his attack failed to kill the target. Exposed, with no cover, Tenoch had to keep moving – even the smallest pause would allow the skitarii's targeting systems to lock on him, and then his armor wouldn't protect him for very long.

Pareneffer didn't need to avoid being hit, however – not that he could have, Dreadnoughts not being exactly nimble. The skitarii's fire ricocheted on his armor, failing to penetrate the adamantium plates, and he reacted by bathing four of the corrupted constructs in a wave of burning promethium from his flamer. Some of his psychic power flowed through the weapon, turning the flames a bright blue and granting them the same soul-devouring quality possessed by the daemons of the Changer of Ways. Despite whatever had happened to their minds, the augmented soldiers screamed in agony as the fire consumed all that they were and reduced their bodies to melted slag.

At the same time he used his flamer, Pareneffer let loose a shot from his lascannon. At almost point-blank range, the shot melted a skitarii's hips, and the upper and lower halves of his body fell to the ground separately, their systems overheated by the mere brush of the shot. The soldier didn't even have time to scream before his brain boiled within his skull.

Pareneffer rotated his upper body on its central axis, and brought his flamer to bear on the other rank of skitarii. One of them, whose arms had been replaced with two crackling blades, charged him even as the Warp-infused flames consumed his comrades. With a thought, the Dreadnought stopped the flow of promethium and caught the skitarii with his power fist, crushing it with the barest effort of his will and tossing the broken remnants away.

And then it was over. Barely a few seconds after Tenoch's initial strike, twenty Dark Mechanicum skitarii were lying on the floor, dead or dying. Such a result would have been a source of pride for Pareneffer if he had not known that there were millions more on the planet.

'What treachery is this ?' boomed the Dreadnought, his lascannon aimed straight at the stricken heretek. The only thing preventing him from obliterating Omechron immediately was the fact that the dark magos was lying on the ground, leaking oil and blood from a wound the Dreadnought was quite certain hadn't been inflicted by himself or Tenoch

'Not mine !' shrieked Omechron-One-Nine-Three. 'And not my master's, either ! This is Heinorius' doing, may the rot take his circuits ! We knew he was going to make his move soon, but I didn't expect the accursed spawn of a rusted servitor to attack you !'

'Explain yourself,' demanded Pareneffer, his weapon still pointed at the heretek.

Omechron did just that. He told the Forsaken Sons of Tevris Heinorius, the arch-heretek second in power only to the Fabricator-General, and of his quest to supplant his overlord. He explained how the Fabricator-General had hoped that the arrival of the Astartes would stay his rival's hand long enough to secure an alliance that would force any would-be usurpers to reconsider their plans.

'If this is a coup,' asked Tenoch when the heretek, still bleeding black oil and tainted blood, had finished, 'then why did they attack us ?' he concluded, gesturing to the dead skitarii. 'Weren't those supposed to be on your side ? I didn't think the Mechanicum's metal soldiers could turn against their masters.'

'A data-infection,' said Omechron, his tone half-way between disgust and awe. 'Heinorius must have found a way to forcefully take control of their augmetics, and through them of their remaining flesh. He has perverted the phylactic communion protocols into slavery. We allow them little individuality to begin with – it wouldn't surprise me if only my colleagues magos were still in control of themselves in this entire city.'

Pareneffer considered the hereteks' words, remembered the transmission he had felt just before the attack and lowered his lascannon, acknowledging the truth of the wounded magos. As soon as he was no longer directly threatened, Omechron forced himself to his feet, and wobbled in the direction of one of the dying skitarii.

'What are you …' Tenoch began to ask, before suddenly stopping. Pareneffer had little doubt the Fleshmaster's jaw was hanging open behind his vox-grill.

Omechron's right hand, entirely augmetic, had transformed from a normal appendage into a gaping maw that bit deep into the dying skitarii's chest. Immediately, the twitches of the cybernetic warrior increased, and a stream of purple energy coursed from his body to the claw, and then through it, to the heretek. By the time it was finished, the skitarii was dead, his body registering to Pareneffer's senses as cold as the grave, with no spark of life or power left within. But that power hadn't been wasted : when Omechron returned to his feet, he stood taller, his augmetic eye blazed with an inner light, and the wound on his chest had closed, the tear in the priest's robes the only sign it had ever been there.

'That looks like a useful trick,' noted Tenoch once his surprise had abated. 'How does that work ?'

Omechron hesitated, clearly unwilling to give up his secrets. But the current situation overcame the heretek's innate resistance to share the knowledge of his forge-world, and he said :

'Every construct of Argenta Primus uses the same sacred energy, drawn from the Empyrean through the hallowed mechanism of the Great Device. While it powers our systems, it also grants many other abilities to those with the knowledge to direct it to their will.'

That was a useful trick, but it wasn't what the Forsaken Sons latched unto.

'You drain actual motive energy from the Warp ?' asked Tenoch, incredulous. 'That's impossible !'

'The magi of Argenta Primus sneer at the impossible,' scoffed Omechron, before admitting : 'It wasn't easy, of course, and many failed attempts were made before all the … quirks were ironed out. According to the archives, many forges were lost to trans-dimensional incursions with the early versions of the Great Device.'

'Trans-dimensional incursions,' muttered Tenoch under his breath, clearly marvelling at the magi's attempt to downplay the gravity of a daemonic incursion by giving it a different name. 'Bloody fools …'

'Why did you resort to this ?' asked Pareneffer. 'Our own Warpsmiths and Dark Magi have used the Warp to power their devices, but only for the most ethereal ones, or for special component in larger constructs. Even then, it requires a lot of sealing to ensure even the slightest safety. Why use it to power your entire industry ?'

Omechron hesitated before giving his reply, as if he did not wish to share that part of the Forge-World's history. Finally, he said :

'The exact details are … unclear. But Argenta Primus depended on the importation of promethium for most of its activity. When the Warp Storm erupted, we were cut off from resupplying, and had to find new, alternative sources of power for our devices.'

It was so simple to say it like that, yet Pareneffer could imagine the terrible truth hiding behind the words. Magos would have watched their devices fail, starved of energy. They would have been confronted with their own mortality as their own internal augments were similarly drained of power. He could all too easily imagine the terrible battles as the magos and their minions warred for the last reserves of promethium, desperate to prolong their existence even a little longer before the end. During the Heresy, there had even been rumors that, on Mars, warriors on both sides of the civil war had drained their enemies of power to prolong their own existences.

With such an environment, and the presence of the Warp Storm above influencing the magos' every thought, it wasn't that surprising that someone would try to use the Empyrean as a source of energy, no matter the risks. Potential death later was always preferable to certain, immediate death.

'This tower,' he began. 'I sensed something with my psychic sense at the top of it when we approached, and our Thunderhawk's scanners went mad when we directed them toward it. Is it the Great Device you speak of ?'

'It is,' confirmed Omechron-One-Nine-Three. 'Control of the Great Device has ever been the mark of the Fabricator-General's status. By controlling it, he controls the flow of divine energy throughout the entire planet.'

'And ensure that his followers will inevitably rise against him in order to be free of the threat of being cut off the grid,' commented Tenoch, still shaking his head at the monumental folly of it all, before turning toward Pareneffer and opening an encrypted vox-link that even the hereteks shouldn't be able to breach. 'Can we please get out of here and leave these madmen to their civil war ? Our gunship should still be in the hangar. We can always come back after this is settled, if you really want to.'

'Cowardice, Tenoch ? Really ?' Pareneffer asked back, the sarcasm somehow evident in his simulated voice.

'You know that's not my reason,' growled the Fleshmaster, his Twelfth Legion's temper emerging at the mere suggestion that he was willing to run from a fight. 'These people are insane even by Dark Mechanicum standards. And besides, what are we supposed to do ? There are only two of us, twenty if you count our warriors in orbit – which I am not sure can get down here without being shot to pieces – and no matter how strong you are, the battles here are going to involve tens of thousands of troops at least. There is nothing we can do except die for nothing, and I chose to follow Arken to avoid precisely that.'

'I am not sure we can leave at all, brother. Let me see if I can contact Urik.'

'Alright, but be quick about it. This entire tower is soon going to be a battlefield, I smell it in the air.'

Inside the Dreadnought's sarcophagus, the biological remnants of the Sorcerer cut off the sensory feeds from the warmachine's auspex, turning the full focus of his mind inward, to his sixth sense.

Urik, Pareneffer pulsed, reaching to the son of Horus he had left in command of the ship. There is a coup going on here. What is your situation ?

A collection of images came back through the link – fire, shattered metal, and the sound of humans and mutants screaming. Then, the pack leader managed to focus long enough to send a coherent reply :

It is chaos, my lord. The Dark Mechanicum's ships are firing on each other, and the Crystalline is being shot at by at least half a dozen battle-stations. We are not going to be able to hold for long !

Get down here, ordered the Dreadnought. Abandon the ship.

Abandon the ship ?! But, Pareneffer …

Do it ! If we succeed here, her loss will be insignificant. If we do not, then even more so.

Pareneffer cut off the link before the pack leader could argue further, confident that given a choice between certain death in the void or likely death on the ground, the former Son of Horus would choose the latter. His perceptions realigned with the feeds of his optical arrays, and he saw that both Tenoch and Omechron-One-Nine-Three were staring at him.

'Our ship is doomed,' he explained. 'We will go to your master's aid, magos, but I expect that we will compensated for our loss.'

'Of course !' agreed the heretek, bowing low, his mind radiating relief. 'The Fabricator-General will reward you handsomely for your help in this trying situation !'

'And how are we supposed to do that ?' asked Tenoch, his voice still bitter, but less so – learning that there was no escaping the planet had caused him to shift mental gears into a state of full battle-readiness, where nothing mattered except accomplishing whatever objectives were assigned to him.

'Magos ?' Pareneffer redirected his brother's question toward Omechron. 'What is your master's plan to defeat this rebellion ?'

'I cannot contact him,' admitted the heretek. 'Heinorius is jamming every means of communication I have. But I know my master as well as any on this world, and I can guess what he will do. The Fabricator-General will attempt to break Heinorius' hold on the phylactic controls, and reclaim dominion over his skitarii legions. But even for one such as my lord, that will take time, and Heinorius is sure to take action to prevent it.'

'So we continue on our path to your master, then,' Pareneffer summed up. 'Then we help defend him from the foe for as long as it takes.'

'That's suicide,' growled Tenoch. 'How many skitarii are in that forge-city alone ? We will be overwhelmed !'

'My master's demesne is far from defenceless, despite Heinorius' treachery,' Omechron interjected. 'Your aid might be just what is needed to ensure his ultimate victory.'

'Remember, priest, that you are betting your own life on this as well,' warned Pareneffer. 'I will inform our brothers to meet with us on the platform beneath the device atop the forge-city. That is, I assume, the entrance to the Fabricator-General's quarters ?'

Omechron-One-Nine-Three nodded, and Pareneffer sent the information to the Forsaken Sons pack leader, sensing the fury of the warrior at the whole situation as he did so. Urik was too busy to formulate his thoughts in a proper reply, but the Dreadnought was fairly sure the message had gotten across.

'Let us go,' he said. 'Right now, time is running against us.'

Omechron guided the Forsaken Sons through the corridors of Argenta Primus, using passages known only to the highest-ranking servants of the Fabricator-General to avoid running into more skitarii. Advancing at full speed, it took them twenty minutes to reach a hidden elevator that delivered them to the forge-city's top floor, at the base of the Fabricator-General's tower. After several minutes of their circular platform rising in the dark, an hole opened above them, and they emerged right before the entrance to the tower.

The first thing Pareneffer saw was the tower itself, or rather, the Great Device that crowned it. Had he still had one, the sight would doubtlessly have taken his breath away, for the source of Argenta Primus' power was wondrous and terrible, both to the human eye and to his psychic sight.

Atop the tower was an immense circle of metal, from which rose spikes adorned with runes that glowed with dark power. Above that crown-like structure, a sphere made of constantly rotating circles hovered, and a core of pure crackling energy could be glimpsed between the pattern-less rotations. At irregular intervals, great arcs of crimson lightning descended from the skies and struck the device, making the energy core and the runes flare with a surge of power before fading back to their "normal" state as the power was sent into the tower itself and then cast across Argenta Primus' network.

Yet it was the Immaterial aspect of the engine that was truly fascinating. Only through psychic vision could one realize the true nature of the Great Device. It wasn't a conduit, channelling the power of the Empyrean, and Pareneffer realised he had been a fool to ever think that would be the case. The Warp didn't give up anything without a fight. Instead, the device stole the power of the Sea of Souls, literally draining tiny motes of soul-stuff from the Warp. The very substance from which both the souls of the living and the Neverborn themselves were composed, harvested as a power source by the dark magi. Did the hereteks even realise that this power was, for all intents and purposes, sentient ? No wonder the planet had fallen into Ruinous corruption and a cycle of civil war. Every construct on it was cursed by the very same thing that kept it alive.

When Pareneffer was finally able to tear his attention from the device and to the field of battle, a scene of carnage awaited him. Hundreds of skitarii corpses laid in pieces on the ground, torn to shreds by a host of daemon engines that radiated fury, hatred, and a profound, dark sense of joy that burned at Parennefer's very soul with its ugly corruption. The son of Magnus had seen such engines deployed at the side of the Traitor Legions during the Heresy, constructs of the Mechanicum allies of the rebellion, but never in quite the same display of number and variety as the one he now witnessed.

Their only common point was their allegiance and the fact that the Great Device's stolen power coursed through all of them. Some were quadrupedal, other lashed out at the world around them with writhing tentacles that also dragged them along the floor. Weapons of all kinds were affixed to their bulky form, from plasma cannons to devices that fired the raw stuff of the Empyrean upon their hapless foes. Some fought only in close-quarters, tearing corrupted constructs apart with tooth and claw, feasting on the flesh of their victims as well as their souls. Pareneffer could hear the desperate cries of the dead skitarii's souls as they were torn from their flesh and iron and consumed by the daemon engines' infernal hunger.

Even the skies themselves were filled with destruction. Dozens of gunships and transports were approaching the platform, carrying hundreds more skitarii, combat servitors, and other, unnameable constructs in their holds, only to be blasted apart by the cannons that bristled from the walls of the tower. Barely one in ten managed to reach the platform and deliver its payload, but that still added dozens of cybernetic soldiers to the hordes coming out of the other three entry point.

Such a waste, thought Pareneffer as he looked upon the devastation and imagined the carnage these forces could have wrought against the slaves of the False Emperor. He did not know which, if any, of the Dark Powers held Argenta Primus in its grasp, but at the moment, he strongly suspected either the Blood God or the Changer of Ways were responsible for the civil war unfolding before his mechanical eyes.

The daemon engines – the Kala'stelal, Omechron-One-Nine-Three had told him they were called – weren't fighting alone against the rebellious skitarii. Amidst the devastation, smaller silhouettes clad in black fired upon the ever-advancing hordes from behind the cover of fallen mechanical beasts. To any mortal ears, the sound of their weapons would have been lost amidst the cacophony of battle, but Pareneffer's sensors isolated them with ease – bolt weapons.

'Urik,' Pareneffer voxed, his systems automatically adjusting to the frequency used by his brothers' battle-plate. Even as he spoke, the Dreadnought added his own fire to the carnage. There was no need to aim – the mass of skitarii was such that any weapon aimed vaguely in their direction was guaranteed to it. 'I see you made it down here.'

The reply of the pack leader was preceded by a deluge of profanity, several of which actually made what remained of Pareneffer's body cringe. Clearly, Urik was not amused by his leader's flippancy. When Pareneffer heard why, however, his own humor quickly soured as well.

'The Crystalline is dead, Pareneffer,' spat Urik. 'Blasted to pieces by the Dark Mechanicum ships. Only half of my pack made it to the deck before we were forced to leave. I hate leaving brothers behind like that !'

'So do I,' growled the Dreadnought in response, unleashing a stream of warp-fire as he did so. 'Did you have any difficulty with the air defences or the daemon engines ?'

'None, surprisingly. It seems that someone thinks we are on their side, and is doing their best to keep us from being killed by our "allies".'

'The Fabricator-General,' Tenoch supposed from behind Pareneffer's bulk, calmly reloading his bolter, Omechron's trembling form at his side. 'Even if our little friend here couldn't reach him, he must have been ready to bet that we would help him.'

Even as he kept firing his lascannon at the skitarii on the platform's edge and unleashing streams of sorcerous flame at those who managed to get near him, Pareneffer marvelled at the level of control the Fabricator-General had on the Kala'stelal. To keep so many daemon engines from attacking a very specific group of individuals, even as battle raged on around them, spoke not only of considerable willpower and technomantic lore, but of a very powerful influence in the Warp as well. Elveros Anestis would be a powerful ally indeed – and one the Forsaken Sons would need to watch closely.

'Omechron,' said Pareneffer aloud, his vox-speakers booming his words loudly enough that they could be heard over the dim of battle. 'Try to reach the Fabricator-General. I want to know if he has a plan to solve this situation that doesn't involve us killing every single skitarii and other battle-construct in this city.'

After receiving confirmation from Tenoch that he and the heretek had left from behind him to another, more secure location, the Dreadnought directed his full attention toward the battle. New waves of skitarii were arriving, marching over the bodies of their fallen comrades as they were driven to advance toward the tower.

'For the Forsaken Sons !' he shouted, and charged straight toward the closest pack of skitarii. Perhaps drawn by his soul-fire, his warcry, or spurred by an invisible command, three daemon engines abandonned their bloody feasts to rush alongside him, like a pack of bears following their tamer to battle.

As they charged, Pareneffer let loose a volley of las-fire from his cannon. Despite the targeting algorithms Merchurion had put in his systems, the Dreadnought wasn't expecting to actually hit the skitarii – the beam of his weapon was too focused for a moving shot. Usually, the Mechanicum's soldiers would have been able to predict Pareneffer's attack and move out of the shot's path. But to his surprise, the crimson beam cut right through the squad, the skitarii's risk assessment abilities clearly weakened by the scrap-code that had overtaken their minds. Three cybernetic warriors were cut to pieces, and then the Dreadnought and the daemon engines crashed amidst the survivors.

The skitarii died in mere seconds, their fire failing to penetrate the armor of their foes. Pareneffer revelled in the destruction, relishing the brute strength of his iron body. In the fire of battle, the embers of his diminished soul flared brighter, enabling him to feel the world around him in a way non-psykers would never know. Through the dying thoughts of the skitarii, the resonance of his gauntlet's machine-spirit and the Empyric power animating the soldiers, he could perceive the battle in its every detail, anchoring his mind into the now rather than wandering back to past battles.

When he had awoken in his sarcophagus and realised what had happened to him, he had known a moment of complete panic, fearing the weakening of his mind and the warping of flesh and metal that would follow. Back when he had been a Sorcerer, the Coven had foreseen that a terrible degeneration awaited the Dreadnoughts oft he Nine Legions who failed to maintain their sense of self throughout a life spent in the Eye of Terror. The creatures they would become – Hellbrutes, the name had echoed through Parennefer's mind during their sessions – were pitiful, broken and mad things, and the Forsaken Son refused to even consider such a fate for himself.

Through his psychic sense, he could maintain his willpower eternally, and shield himself from the Dark Gods' malevolence. By battle and will, he would endure, and grow strong and high in the favor of the Ruinous Powers. He would remain a lord of war, not a berserk instrument of destruction that needed to be shackled and contained between battles. Perhaps that was another reason Arken had elevated him to one of his lieutenants – Pareneffer was far more useful as he was now that as a screaming husk of metal and wasted flesh.

Pareneffer's sensors registered the approach of another group of enemy, and he turned to face this new threat. Far taller than the rest of the attackers – taller even than the Forsaken Sons, if not as tall as Pareneffer's own metallic form – these troops weren't skitarii, for there was nothing human inside them. Instead, they were perversions of the Battle-Automata the Dreadnought had seen in action during the Great Crusade – robots enslaved to the Legio Cybernetica to serve in war. The five engines advancing on the Dreadnought and his feral cohorts appeared to have originated from the Castellax pattern, but like everything else on Argenta Primus, they had been greatly changed by the magos' new allegiance.

Two and a half meters high and black as the void beyond the galaxy, the corrupted robots were amalgamations of flesh and iron, staring at Pareneffer with bulging eyes and glowing sensors. Their weaponized arms had been replaced with two writhing nests of tentacles, some cybernetic and others made of flesh, which flailed madly before them as they advanced. Pulsing cables and veins could be seen in the interstices of their armor, and the blank faceplate that should have crowned their humanoid shape reflected mad, ever-changing visions of the Warp that would have driven a mere mortal insane.

The biggest difference between these creations of the Dark Mechanicum and the automatons Pareneffer had met during the Great Crusade, however, was the cold, soulless sentience he could detect within them. There was a forbidden artificial awareness, hideously mixed with the emotions of a hundred minor daemons parasiting each warmachine. Even after everything he had witnessed and done, Pareneffer couldn't help but be repelled by the notion. Daemons were one thing, but Abominable Intelligences were another, altogether fouler kind of monstrosity – and these things, with the power of the Great Device coursing through them, were an unholy union of both. Artificial minds possessed by Neverborn spirits, clad in engines of war – potent instruments, yes, but also unreliable ones.

Then again, thought the Dreadnought as he brought his lascannon to bear and fired it, I guess a lot of the forces in the warband fit that description.

The blast stopped the first daemonic robot in its tracks, sending it to the ground in a chorus of data-shrieks. Its four kindred continued their advance, stepping around their defeated comrade. It was only then that Pareneffer realised that the three machines of the Kala'stelal were still several meters behind him, feasting on the flesh, iron and souls of their last victims instead of coming to his aid.

He just had time to curse the daemon engines before the first Battle-Automata reached him and he had to start to fight for his life. His power gauntlet grabbed one of the robots' helm and crushed it to pieces, causing the spirits imprisoned within to howl as they were released. At the same time, the tendrils of his attackers lashed back at him, and Pareneffer screamed as he felt them bit through his armor and into the circuits laying beneath, where they spilled their technological poison. His vision swam as the Dreadnought's systems tried to fight off the sudden intrusion of hostile code, just as he struggled to free himself from the tentacles.

His mind translated the intrusion as pain, but Pareneffer was used to pain, and he suppressed it. He gathered his will, and bathed one of the two remaining automatas in blue fire, while tearing his lascannon free and laying it to rest against the other robot's chest. At point-blank range, the weapon's discharge bisected the robot, and its upper half fell to the ground, its mass tearing its tendrils free of the Dreadnought. But the construct upon which Pareneffer had directed his flamer was still upright, seemingly unhindered by the warp-fire flickering on its entire body. Its tentacles dug deeper into Pareneffer's body, and he felt a twinge of concern as they drew nearer to the inside of his sarcophagus.

His arm was entangled by the tentacles, his power gauntlet useless. He couldn't turn to use his lascannon. Pareneffer called upon his psychic power, quickening his mind and slowing the passage of time as he searched for a way to escape this quandary. His sixth sense scoured the platform, and fell upon the tower at its center once more.

This time, however, something within the building reacted to his desperate scrutiny. Within his mind, Pareneffer saw the image of a giant burning eye staring at him, and felt the ancient pride and malice it contained. To his surprise, the entity attempted communication, sending images and emotions his trained mind quickly translated into words.

It was an offer of mutual aid, coming from the Fabricator-General himself. Through a combination of psychic power, secret knowledge and the mechanisms of the Great Device, the great heretek had found a way to reclaim control of his forces, but he required the Dreadnought's help as a living focus, existing both in the realm of the machine and of the soul. Pareneffer wasn't exactly in a situation to refuse, and signalled his accord with a pulse of psychic agreement. Immediately, the flow of time returned to its normal rate, and arcs of lightning flared from the Great Device, running down the tower before leaping through the air and slamming into the Dreadnought.

Pareneffer screamed as his mind and that of Dark arch-heretek were united in the most brutal of manners, his psychic gift used as a vector for the raw, unfiltered power of the Great Device. At the common command of both Dreadnought and Fabricator-General, the energy coursed through the tenuous links Pareneffer's sixth sense could establish with the controlled skitarii. Black light poured from him in a raging swirl, turning the last Battle-Automata to slag before rushing toward the cybernetic warriors. Pareneffer heard their cries of relief and agony as the sorcery imbued within the energy freed them from Heinorius' abnormal control, then everything went dark, and he was confined to his sarcophagus as his overloaded systems rebooted and his psychic gift recovered from the ordeal.

When his awareness of his surroundings returned to him, his chronometer indicated that a few minutes had passed. Skitarii were pulling the bodies of their dead brethren into shuttles why staying away from the feasting Kala'stelal, and the Forsaken Sons were conferring with a cybernetic warrior in particularly ornate armor and with a runic blade hanging at his hip.

'I have control again,' declared the skitarii leader, and Pareneffer recognised the intonation as that of the voice he had heard when the Fabricator-General had established contact. 'You have my thanks, emissaries. Now I can move against the rebellious arch-heretek and his cohorts.'

'You sound remarkably sanguine about all of this,' remarked Tenoch, shaking his chainaxe free of the gobbets of meat and circuitry lodged between the weapon's teeth. 'I would have expected you to be a bit more angry.'

'This has been the way of things on Argenta Primus ever since the first heretek Fabricator-General succeeded in defeating the remnants of the Adeptus Mechanicus,' the construct explained, its voice impossibly echoing on the open platform. 'Always one of the arch-magi turns against his master, trying to usurp his rank. I myself came to my position in this manner. It is something close to a tradition.'

'Twelve of our brothers are dead because of your traditions,' growled Urik. The head of the controlled skitarii turned in his direction :

'I am aware of your battle-brothers demise. It was not my intent to imply that mercy should be shown to arch-heretek Heinorius because his actions were predictable. In fact, just as it is traditional for arch-magi to rebel against the holder of the Tear, it is also expected for failed rebellions to be met with extreme prejudice.'

Urik's aggressive posture slackened just a little at these words. Before any of the other renegade Astartes could say anything, Pareneffer stepped forward, all eyes turning to him at his sudden awakening, and said :

'Fabricator-General, me and my brothers would greatly appreciate to join your forces in this punitive strike.'

'I have full control of my skitarii legions,' replied the Fabricator-General's puppet. 'Your assistance, while welcome, is unrequired. As you said, you have already lost much in this venture – even yourself have taken damage, lord Pareneffer. Why would you expose yourself to more risk ? Believe me, I already intend to repay the debt I owe you for your aid.'

'There is more to this than simple calculations, lord Elveros. This is about revenge. Heinorius is responsible for the death of twelve warriors of the Forsaken Sons – Legionaries who had survived the Great Crusade, the Heresy, and countless more horrors. We will make him pay for that – and we will do so ourselves.'

The Dreadnought's bulky form hunched forward before Pareneffer continued :

'Understand this, for I believe it will be very important to our alliance's future : we are not helping you take down Heinorius. You are helping us take revenge on a common enemy.'

Tevris Heinorius stared at the hololithic display in front of him with nine augmetic eyes. He could have had the data be projected directly on his vision, but over the centuries of his existence, he had found that he was better able to perceive the flow of battle through hololithic projections than through pure data transmission.

The arch-heretek and Fabricator of Ultio Maxima cut an imposing figure. Three meters high, a deep hood of black leather made from the flayed skin of the disciples that had failed him hid his features and covered his chest, going down to the floor of the center of command. A single green light burned within the darkness of his hood, staring at the universe with unblinking focus. Each of Heinorius' flesh arms had long been replaced with augmetics, and over the course of his life, these replacements had been improved upon, becoming terrible weapons of war, capable of gutting a tank with a single shot. The power of the Great Device was strong within him, harvested and carefully hoarded over decades in the hope of finally gaining independence from Illuria's master.

Heinorius was old, even as the hereteks of Argenta Primus measured such things. In fact, he was possibly the oldest construct on the entire planet, and certainly held that title among the current Fabricators. Even the current Fabricator-General, the despised Elveros, had come into weakling, disgusting flesh existence centuries after Heinorius had shed the last portion of his humanity. He remembered the forge-world as it had been before the coming of the Warp Storm, had lived through the energy wars and the construction of the Great Device, and survived every Fabricator-General since.

And the three-dimensional picture of the hololith indicated him that, unless he got really creative really quickly, that long life would soon come to an abrupt and violent end. That was, of course, if Elveros granted him death at all. A long and agonizing existence as a pain-filled wreck was still on the table if he was captured with enough of his systems intact.

But he could accept that. He had made his move, knowing full well what he risked if he failed. What truly galled him was that his plan had been perfect, and that the only reason Elveros still lived was an outside intervention. And not any outside intervention : that of Astartes. Heinorius hated the Space Marines, loyal to the False Omnissiah or otherwise, with a passion that was at odds with his percentage of remaining flesh.

During the Great Crusade, Heinorius had been counted among the ranks of the Myrmidons, these tech-priests who dedicated themselves solely to the arts of war and destruction. He had fought alongside the forces of the Machine Empire on a dozen worlds, spreading death and desolation upon the enemies of the Cult. During these wars, he had met the Space Marines several times. Like him, they were shaped for war, but while his own transformation had been the result of precise study and deliberate augmentation, none of the Astartes had had any choice in becoming what they were. They were children given the strength of demigods and cast into the stars by the Emperor, that they might claim them in His name. Many of them had been taken by force and transformed into Space Marines, and even those who hadn't couldn't be said to have made an actual, informed choice. They had been children, rarely more than a decade old – how could they possibly have known what awaited them ?

Yet Heinorius felt no pity for these creatures. Instead, he felt hatred, for while he had been forced to work for decades, centuries even, to shape his physical frame into an instrument of war, earning every augmentation with blood and toil, the Space Marines had been given their power. Given ! Power should not be given, it should be earned ! Was it truly any surprise that these spoilt children had rebelled against their master, with such a shaky foundation to their loyalty ?

And yet the fate of the galaxy had been in their hands. When the Warmaster had turned, Heinorius had seen it as the proof that his misgivings about the Space Marine Legions had been correct. He didn't think that those among the Mechanicum who had sided with Horus were wrong to do so – they had their own philosophies, conflicting with those of the Imperium as it stood. War was inevitable, and through it the victor would prove itself superior, and therefore right. He had believed, after careful analysis of the Legions loyal and traitor, that Horus would fail, and thus had thrown his weight behind the Emperor.

In the same way, when Argenta Primus had been engulfed by the Warp Storm and cut off from its supply of promethium, Heinorius had sided with the faction whom he had believed would emerge triumphant. The choice had been far more obvious than during the Heresy : those who did not embrace the ways of the Eightfold Omnissiah would soon be starved of power and die. Survival was the first and greatest measure of strength, after all.

And the idea that he was about to be proven weak by Astartes made him burn with rage. Besides making him move early, they had also been the reason his plan, decades-long in the making, had failed. The last thing he had been able to perceive through the phylactic communion from the forces assailing the Fabricator-General's tower had been the unleashing of Empyrean energy by the Dreadnought. Now the legions of Elveros Anestis were marching on his forge, and he knew his own servants would be plotting their defection if they had any kind of freewill left.

With Elveros in command of his forces again, the other Fabricators of Argenta Primus had sent their own armies to Ultio Maxima, eager to prove their renewed loyalty to the Fabricator-General. With the fortifications of his domain, Heinorius might have been able to hold the legions of Elveros at bay – at least until his reserves of energy ran dry – but the added weight of the other Fabricators' forces would crush his walls with ease. He had sent many of his personal forces across the rest of the forge-world to aid in his coup, but with his loss of the phylactic communion network, these had either been slaughtered or were desperately fighting for their lives, too far to come to his aid. All told, the forces remaining in Ultio Maxima were less than a fifth of what he had originally possessed. To add insult to injury, the Astartes were part of the host advancing from Illuria – they even seemed to be in charge of the army. Would Elveros stop at nothing to humiliate him further ?!

Heinorius' bitterness was just as strong as his anger. He would fight until the end. He would use every weapon in his arsenals, every trick accumulated over his long existence. The Astartes and Elveros' minions would pay a price of blood and oil for every street of his forge they took from him. And when they reached him, he would go down fighting, and force them to kill him rather than capture him and deliver him in chains to the Fabricator-General. And after that …

Defeat was inevitable. But he would make his enemies pay a price for their victory so high that they would remember him for the rest of their lives. Turning his attention away from the hololith, Heinorius sent his mind across the myriad cables that linked him to the rest of the forge, deep into the bowels of the city. There, buried below hundreds of meters of metal and stone, laid the burning heart of Ultio Maxima, a receptacle of Empyrean power of tremendous capacity. Even though his physical body was kilometers away from it, merely interacting with it in this fashion caused the power running through the arch-heretek' system to react.

Slowly, carefully, Heinorius began to undo the hexagrammatic seals on the core …

Ultio Maxima was a city that permanently teetered on the brink of utter destruction. It had been built on the edge of a gigantic tear in the surface of the world, said to have been caused by an early version of the Great Device detonating. Over the years, it had spread above the yawning abyss, supported by pillars of plasteel and other, less recognisable materials. Now the conglomerate of forge-temples, warehouses and laboratories reached from one side of the Infernal Chasm to the other. Massive anti-grav generators had been placed on the forge's bottom, keeping its massive weight from overwhelming its supports.

The armies loyal to the Fabricator-General approached the forge from the two sides of the Chasm, but the Forsaken Sons were only present in one. Pareneffer, Tenoch, and the surviving members of Urik's pack had been granted the right to lead the assault by Elveros. Tens of thousands of skitarii and their warmachines marched in the column in perfect formation, despite the fact that they had been rampaging across Illuria mere hours ago. The speed at which Elveros had organised his riposte was truly impressive, and only possible because of the Fabricator-General's absolute control over his minions. There were Warsmiths of the Fourth Legion that would have felt envy at such a quick and efficient deployment.

At Pareneffer's demand, Elveros commanded the other army to cease their advance on the forge-city, instead establishing a cordon to catch any attempts to flee the city from their side of the Chasm. Only the force led by the emissaries would set foot within Ultio Maxima, and the life of its treacherous arch-heretek belonged to the Forsaken Sons.

The first wave of attack came in a rain of shells and energy fire from the besiegers' heavy armor. Engines ranging in size from Chimera tanks to Ordinatus-class artillery pieces unleashed a terrible bombardment upon the forge-city's walls. The defenses of Ultio Maxima replied in kind, destroying many warmachines before the overwhelming numbers of the attackers prevailed.

It took three hours for the batteries of the gorge's eastern side to finally fall silent. By that time, the mighty outer wall had been reduced to a field of rubble parsed by the shattered remnants of the gun defenses and their crews. On a silent command, the skitarii legions began to advance, accompanied by the surviving tanks able to navigate over the debris. In the heart of every corrupted cyborg burned the urge for vengeance against Heinorius, whose schemes had turned them upon their masters, however temporarily. With blade, lasgun, and other, experimental weaponry they would purge Ultio Maxima of all constructs that called the arch-heretek their lord.

Resistance appeared within minutes of the first skitarii clearing the rubble. Hereteks and combat servitors rose from the ruins of their temples with the same eerie synchronisation their enemies displayed. Dragged from their hiding places by the call of their master, they opened fire on the lines of skitarii, and scores of the soldiers fell in the first seconds of this ambush. They responded quickly, however, and adapted their patterns of advance to the locations and tactics of their foe. Slowly, inexorably, Elveros' armies marched on, grinding the opposition to dust.

When the advance reached the districts spared from the initial bombardment, it splintered, with skitarii alphas leading their units to purge individual sub-temples. A sizeable portion of the army, however, continued to march straight for the siege of power of the renegade Fabricator, at the center of the forge-city.

Pareneffer and the rest of the Forsaken Sons were among that group, and the Dreadnought fought at the front, crushing and burning all who stood in his path. The son of Magnus was an adamantium-clad storm of destruction spearheading an army of thousands. His battle-brothers fought at his side against the tide of twisted tech-thralls and afflicted slaves Heinorius forced against them. The march to the central temple was accomplished on a carpet of broken flesh, and while the wretches couldn't possibly hope to stop the invaders, they slowed the advance down through the sheer force of inertia of so many bodies. Finally, as the sun of the Iruset system set behind toxic clouds, they reached the main forge-temple.

While less grandiose than the Fabricator-General's sanctum, Heinorius' fortress was still magnificent in its own right. Pyramidal in shape it was covered in arcane glyphs and depictions of mechanical patterns, carved in red lines over black stone. Statues of past hereteks and daemonic creatures stood upon it like gargoyles, watching the progress of the invaders with eyes that appeared to follow their motion. Though Elveros' spies had revealed the existence of hundreds of tunnels leading in the pyramid, there was only one entrance above ground : a pair of massive doors in the middle of the pyramid's southern side.

The doors came crashing down when Pareneffer rammed them at full speed, revealing dozens of skitarii taking cover behind altars and pillars in a vast hall. At once, battle was joined, las-fire tearing through the oil-and-blood scented air. The skitarii gathered here by Heinorius were clearly some of the best forces at the arch-heretek's command : temple guards, their flesh all but entirely stripped away and replaced by armor blackened in infernal fire and weaponry that crackled with barely restrained power.

They died all the same, though it took longer and cost more skitarii than any other battle so far. Hundreds of cybernetic soldiers poured through the broken gates, bringing their crushing numerical advantage to bear. After the last of the hall's defenders was slain, the Forsaken Sons and their Dark Mechanicum allies pursued their advance deeper into the pyramid, toward Heinorius' command center. On their way, they encountered several barricades, guarded by sentry guns, hereteks, and daemon engines unleashed from their bonds in a desperate attempt to push back the invaders. Many of the infernal contraptions had killed their handlers by the time the attackers reached them, but they still fought with fierce hatred, and two more of Urik's pack were slain, torn apart by the claws of some abomination looking like a six-limbed minotaur of old myth.

Finally, they reached the center of command, deep within the pyramid's core. Pareneffer led the remaining Forsaken Sons and several squads of skitarii, while the rest completed the purge of the temple. There, standing at the center of the room, a hololithic projection of the burning forge-city floating before him, was Tevris Heinorius. Two dozens hereteks were scattered across the room, slaved to console panels and not reacting to the intrusion in the slightest. The Dreadnought could only sense the barest flicker of sentience within their robes – they had been enslaved to Heinorius' data-infection for so long that their souls had all but withered away.

As for the arch-heretek himself, Pareneffer had to admit that he looked the part. Almost as tall as the Dreadnought on his own, the additional elevation of his position allowed him to tower above all those who had entered his domain. Power radiated from him in waves – cold and unforgiving, full of old hatreds and twarted ambitions. No matter that the Forsaken Sons had just breached into his final sanctum, here was a lord of Chaos, his back to the wall, ready to fight to the last. Pareneffer could respect that, at least. Suddenly, an idea popped in his head :

'Arch-Heretek Heinorius,' boomed the Dreadnought. 'You know who we are. I will make you this offer once : surrender, and you will live to serve the Forsaken Sons. You have proven that you would be a valuable asset to our warband, and I am sure the Fabricator-General would agree.'

Predictably, the rage Pareneffer could feel from Heinorius increased, and he raised his arms, cables snapping free from his body at the motion. The Dreadnought had known his offer would never be accepted – otherwise, he wouldn't have made it in the first place. Heinorius had to pay for the death of fourteen warriors of the Forsaken Sons. There was no possible way Pareneffer could let him live, even if he had really wanted to.

'What a shame,' he said, mockingly. 'Then I will have your head !'

'None of you mishappen gene-freaks will leave this city alive,' the arch-heretek spat back. 'You will all die here, one way or another !'

A hail of bolts and las-fire rained upon Heinorius, but a sphere of black lightning surrounded him, shielding the arch-heretek from the shots. Then he opened fire in turn, letting loose twin rays of energy from his arm canons.

The Forsaken Sons were already moving, and the beams hit the skitarii who stood behind them. Strangely, they had time to scream before they died – Pareneffer wondered if the weapons had been deliberately calibrated for such an effect, and how many unfortunate subjects had been sacrificed in the adjustements. The Dreadnought ran straight into the hololithic projector in the middle of the room, crushing it under his foot and reaching up toward Heinorius with his power gauntlet.

The weapon's power field crackled as it encountered the force field surrounding the arch-heretek, and for a few seconds, Pareneffer struggled against the resistance, until the combined fire of the skitarii and Forsaken Sons finally overwhelmed it and it shut off with a sound akin to the wailing of lost souls. Mere seconds later, the Dreadnought's fist closed around the arch-heretek's lower body, crashing through the metal deck upon which he stood. With a triumphant roar, Pareneffer rotated his upper half, tearing Heinorius from his perch and sending him flying across the room.

The dark magos crashed into one of his enslaved servants in a shower of sparks, but despite his bulk, rose to his feet with surprising agility. But before he could bring his arm-canons to bear once more, Pareneffer's power fist rammed into his chest and burst from his back in a spray of blood, oil, and shattered mechanical parts.

For a few seconds, the two lords of Chaos stared at each other, the arch-heretek's head at the same height as Pareneffer's outward "eyes". Then, a sound disturbingly similar to a chuckle emanated from Heinorius' vocalizer, and the light of his optics faded.

'Well, that was easy,' declared Tenoch, the white and blue of his armor completely covered by the gore of his many victims. 'For someone who caused us so much trouble, he sure went down quickly.'

Pareneffer ignored the mocking comments of his brother and tossed the corpse of Heinorius aside, scanning the room. He could feel that something was very, very wrong, but …

The floor suddenly shook violently, tossing skitarii to the ground and tearing the few hereteks who had survived the brief gunfight from their consoles. A horrible scream filled the mind of Pareneffer – and from how his brothers were clutching their heads and howling on the vox, he wasn't the only one affected.

After a few seconds, the psychic scream abated, though it was still present at the edge of perception. The skitarii looked around, and Pareneffer detected their confusion – the link of phylactic communion had been broken, and they were left without the direction of the Fabricator-General. He had more pressing concerns, however. Pareneffer could sense the Warp overcharging the air, the veil between reality and the Empyrean thinning to the point that it barely existed at all. Understanding dawned within his mind, and he called over the vox – not just to his brothers, but to all forces within Ultio Maxima :

'This is Pareneffer of the Forsaken Sons. All forces, evacuate the city immediately ! Heinorius has initiated a Warp breach !' He thought for a second, trying to remember how Omechron had described the phenomenon. 'Trans-dimensional incursion imminent ! Everyone get out of here !'

He switched to a private channel, and called the Forsaken Sons to him as he began to move toward the room's exit, ready to crush any skitarii who got in his way. As the remaining Astartes got in formation around him, however, the first signs of the daemonic incursion began to manifest. The corpses of hereteks strewn across the command center twitched, the Warp-born energy within their systems reacting to the daemonic presence. Like puppets, they rose, optics burning with warp-fire, flesh and metal rippling as horrid mutations spread over them.

Urik swore over the vox as he fired toward the closest of the possessed hereteks. It took six shots to bring the undead creature down, and then only after a bolt ripped its head apart. All the while, the former Son of Horus was still running and keeping an eye on the skitarii who had accompanied the Forsaken Sons. The cybernetic warriors were animated by the same energy that had opened the dark magi to possession, yet they appeared to be unaffected, and were evacuating as well. Doubtlessly there was some reason to that – perhaps the fact that their souls, wretched as they were, remained within their bodies made it more difficult for the Warp to claim their physical shells.

'I am getting reports from the rest of the army,' said Tenoch as the group left the control center and began to fight its way through the pyramid once again. 'This is happening across the entire forge-city.'

'Any reports of actual Neverborn ?' asked another warrior as they neared the pyramid's entrance, surrounded on all sides by the reanimated fallen of both sides.

'Not yet, but it's not going to last,' replied the Fleshmaster grimly.

For all that Tenoch enjoyed fighting, he, like all the Forsaken Sons who had been aboard the Hand of Ruin during the flight from Terra, knew just how dangerous fighting daemons could really be. In the most advantageous circumstances, it was difficult enough – when the air was saturated by Warp energy and there were thousands of potential hosts lying around, it was a nightmare.

In the end, Tenoch's prediction came true fourteen minutes later, when the Forsaken Sons and the skitarii who had regained enough of their wits to stick to the group of transhuman warriors were half-way to the forge-city's borders. They had made quick progress, abandoning the careful advance of the invasion in favor of a disciplined but hasty retreat, and the possessed constructs, while difficult to kill, lacked the organization to gather in significant numbers and pose a true threat to the small warband. Then, instead of falling back to the ground, a reanimated heretek Ulrik had shot in the head burst apart, and a twelve-limbed monstrosity of black goo and screaming faces emerged from the ruin.

Pareneffer burned the daemon with his flamer, but from that point on, almost every risen corpse the group came across became a gateway to some manner of horror from the Sea of Souls. Of the two hundred or so Dark Mechanicum skitarii who had emerged from the pyramid at the Forsaken Sons' sides, only half still lived when they reached the rubble that had once marked the forge-city's outer wall.

They had barely cleared out of the Chasm when the supports of Ultio Maxima finally broke and, with the sounds of metal tearing and the horrified cries of millions of souls suddenly realizing their inescapable doom, the entire forge-city tumbled down into the abyss, Warp-fire ravaging entire districts in an orgy of unchecked destruction. The Forsaken Sons and the skitarii who had managed to escape looked in awe at the spectacular destruction Heinorius had unleashed in his final act of spite. Pareneffer wasn't sure whether the forge-city would be entirely consumed by the Warp or if it would reach all the way down the Chasm, perhaps crashing into the planet's burning core. In the end, it mattered little. Victory had been claimed, though not without considerable cost in skitarii lives – far from all the forces Elveros and his loyal arch-hereteks had sent had been able to clear out of the city in time.

'Fabricator-General,' Pareneffer called over the long-range vox-link to Elveros. 'Heinorius has been dealt with.'

The ship hadn't had a name before – just a series of numbers. But upon taking command of her and making her his personal flagship, Pareneffer had decided to baptise the Dark Mechanicum ship the Crystalline, in honor of the vessel they had lost during the orbital battle – and with more than a slight dose of dark humor. The new Crystalline had nothing in common with her namesake. More than five kilometers long, the Crystalline was a variant on the heavy-cruisers of the Imperial Navy, bristling with weapons of all kinds. Like most of the fleet Elveros had given to the Astartes, she had fought under Heinorius' banner during the brief void war, and the purge of the dark magi and tech-thralls faithful to the fallen arch-heretek was still ongoing in the ship's depths. The skitarii who had survived the purge of Ultio Maxima had taken to that particular duty with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. They were still fresh from their catastrophic losses in that city, and were eager to avenge themselves on any remaining servants of the arch-heretek responsible for the short-lived daemonic incursion.

As news of the rebel arch-heretek's death spread, those who had fought for him across the forge-world had either surrendered or fled. While the latter were still being dealt with, the former left Elveros with the question of what to do with them. Traditionally, such servants of the defeated side in the hereteks' internecine conflicts were either executed or reprogrammed and integrated to the ranks of other arch-heretek' followers. Instead, the Fabricator-General had decided to grant almost all the assets owned by the dead Heinorius to the Forsaken Sons envoys, as thanks for their help – and as a clever way to ensure none of his remaining arch-heretek had the resources to challenge him any time soon.

Tenoch and the other Forsaken Sons had joined the carnage on the decks below, while Pareneffer stood on the bridge, Omechron-One-Nine-Three sitting in the shipmaster's seat a few meters behind him. In the aftermath of the battle of Ultio Maxima, Omechron had been elevated to the rank of arch-heretek himself by the Fabricator-General, and appointed to the Forsaken Sons as ranking magos of the Dark Mechanicum hereteks among the fleet. He was currently busy mentally coordinating the fleet's imminent departure, while Pareneffer – whom the Fabricator-General had very clearly confirmed to be in charge of the entire fleet, with Omechron being his subordinate – looked through the occulus at the gathering of vessels that was now his to command.

It was a beautiful sight. Ships filled with gene-mills and augmetic factories that could churn out thousands of Dark Mechanicum skitarii by the day; forge-barges that could devour moons and build legions of twisted machines; and transports filled to the brim with the warriors of the defeated arch-heretek, kept slumbering until they would be awakened for war. Powerful warships, their cores pulsing with daemonic light, hovered in a protective circle, their weapons a mix of technology Parennefer understood and Dark Mechanicum innovations he did not. With such a fleet, entire systems could be brought to their knees, yet the endless rebellions and purges had prevented the lords of Argenta Primus from conquering the rest of the Wailing Storm.

It would fall to the Forsaken Sons to use these resources instead. He would take the armada across the Wailing Storm, seeking these worlds Arken had commanded him to bring under the rule of the Forsaken Sons. He would test it in battle, and learn its strengths and weaknesses – forge it as the Forsaken Sons had been forged. What had previously appeared to be a death sentence had suddenly become entirely feasible, for with the power of the Dark Mechanicum behind him, Pareneffer greatly doubted there was anything in the entire Warp Storm that could threaten him. He wouldn't need to rely on diplomacy and instead would act as was fitting for an Astartes – as an unstoppable conqueror.

Then, when his duty was complete, Parennefer would bring the fleet and all else that he had gained to Arken, a gift worthy of the Awakened One's stature. All among the warband would know that the Dreadnought had earned his place as one of the Chaos Lord's seconds. Whether he remained in command of the fleet or not, the son of Magnus would be elevated above almost any other warrior by this success.

Ensuring the loyalty of the hereteks that crewed the Dark Mechanicum ships would take a long time, and no small amount of effort. For all that the Fabricator-General had accepted the alliance with the warband, the recent events proved beyond doubt just how strong his control of the priests of Argenta Primus really was. Pareneffer doubted that all dark magi would survive the process, but it didn't concern him overmuch. Better to have one loyal servant than a dozen treacherous ones; this was the lesson the False Emperor had learned far too late, as His empire burned around Him and His dream of godhood fell to ruin.

Of course, not all potential traitors would be found out. Treachery was endemic among those who marched under the banner of the Ruinous Powers, as Argenta Primus so perfectly illustrated. There would be hereteks who would seek their own gain ahead of that of their lieges, who would plot against each other for secrets and to avenge past slights. Loyalty in the ranks the Forsaken Sons was only to Arken, and among those battle-brothers who had fought together during the Exodus.

But the Great Deceiver, the one who even now held Pareneffer's soul in his clawed grasp, would not allow a true chain of command, like those which had existed in the days of the Great Crusade, to emerge in the warband. Such was not the way of Chaos, and those who tried to impose order upon its servants were doomed to failure. The Awakened One knew this, and only sought to ride the tides of the Primordial Truth, sailing the possible futures toward the one he desired.

Pareneffer had seen that future, when he laid upon the Fleshmasters' operating tables, before his psychic powers were stifled. Amidst the pain and the numbing chemicals pumped through his blood, he had caught a glimpse of the future the Awakened One and other warlords of his kind worked to make reality. He had seen the galaxy burning once more, the False Emperor toppled, and the weak Imperium cast down, replaced by a realm of dreadful wonders, ruled over by those with the strength to direct Mankind's course.

It had been magnificent. And one day, vowed the infernal Dreadnought as a fleet of Dark Mechanicum vessels awaited his bidding, he would see it made true.

AN : Here it is, the new chapter of the Forsaken Sons. I began work on this more than two months ago, but it was delayed by the Thousand Sons Index Astartes for the Roboutian Heresy, then by the short story The Nature of Betrayal. Truth is, I had the entire thing planned out almost from the beginning, but writing it down was more difficult than I anticipated.

In this chapter, we see the Dark Mechanicum on one of their infernal forge-worlds, so that the Forsaken Sons might acquire some daemon engines (a suggestion several of you made) - and a load of other stuff. As many of you probably noticed, the Great Device was heavily inspired by the plot of the recent Doom game. Some of you might be worried that the fleet Pareneffer has gained will make the warband too powerful, but I urge them to remember one thing : scale. The universe of 40k is huge, and while that Dark Mechanicum fleet is imposing in its own right, it pales in comparison to the armadas gathered by the Great Crusade, and even to those still possessed by the Imperium.

I quite like the Dark Mechanicum as a faction. When the codex for the Adeptus Mechanicus came out a few months ago, I dared to hope that a proper codex for the Dark Mechanicum would come soon after. Of course, I was disappointed, but come on ! It wouldn't be that difficult - GW could even just make it an extension for the loyalist Mechanicus, with a few new rules and units to reflect their betrayal of the Omnissiah.

Anyway, next up will be the Index Astartes for the Sons of Horus in the Roboutian Heresy. I already have a lot of notes for them, but turning them into actual writing is going to take a while.

As always, thanks you all for your support and appreciation of my work. If you enjoyed this chapter, or have an idea for another adventure/resource/world the Forsaken Sons might find in the Wailing Storm, please leave a review ! If you see an inconsistency or any other mistake, please contact me !

And now that I have said all I have to said about my stories, let's talk about something else.

You see, I have been working on a simplified version of the FFG role-playing games taking place in the Warhammer 40K universe, which would be simplified enough to be playable online more easily than the existing versions (which, while very complete, are also rather complex and hard to get into). This system is based on the one used in the French role-playing series Aventures (a d100 system with only three main characteristics). Actually, when I say "based" what I mean is "exact copy with a different universe". Thanks Mahyar and ReussiteCritique ! That system is heavily based on story-telling, more than following the rules exactly.

Here is the important part of the announcement : I am looking for players, to test this new system and generally have fun role-playing online in the grim darkness of the 41st Millenium (canon 40K or Roboutian Heresy). Send me a PM if you are interested.

In these games, the player will take control of the main character in a Warhammer 40000 short story taking place in either the mainstream universe or the Roboutian Heresy. The adventures will be inspired by the Dark Heresy and Black Crusade books, depending on what kind of character the player wants to play. But beware : in the grim darkness of the forty-first millenium, being the main character does not guarantee survival, yet alone triumph. Should the playe makes too many mistakes or just be unlucky on his rolls, his character will die. I have tried to make the system so that any type of character can be played, though I would like anyone interested to keep to human/transhuman characters for now. Orks, Eldar and Tau may make for interesting characters, but as far as I know the people reading this are human, so role-playing a xenos would be more complex for all those involved. Still, there are many, many types of characters you could play. Don't hesitate to go nuts on your character concepts - the goal is to stress-test the system, after all. Here is a list I came up with on the top of my head for the canon universe :

Character concepts for Dark Heresy

Tech-priest studying archeotech when his team awoke something unholy

Hitman on a hive-world recruited for his skills after he killed the leader of a noble house

Imperial Guardsman who is the sole survivor of his squad after they met a daemon

Space Marine who was one of the few of his Chapter not to turn against the Emperor and was saved by an Inquisitor

Imperial psyker, bound to the Emperor, recruited by the Inquisition because of his strength of will

Stormtrooper, born and raised to serve as an enforcer of the Holy Ordos

Enforcer from the Adeptus Arbites on a hive-world who helped the Inquisitor against cultists

Voidborn pilot who used to crew space fighters for the Imperial Navy

Character concepts for Black Crusade

Alpha Legionnary spreading corruption across Imperial society

Highborn dabbling in heretical secrets out of boredom

Fallen preacher of the Ecclesiarchy who was captured by the Word Bearers

Sorcerer of the Thousand Sons, who left Sortiarus to find revenge on the Imperium

Renegade Inquisitor, hunted by his kin after his fall from radicalism to outright heresy

Heretek from a Dark Mechanicum forge-world who left after being on the losing side of a power struggle

Possessed Marine from the Word Bearer Legion, cast into the Warp during a failed extraction

Dark Mechanicum skitarii warrior lent by his dark magos overseers to a Chaos Lord

If there are enough people interested that I am able to fine-tune the system, I am thinking about also allowing players to play as "legendary" characters from the Roboutian Heresy, such as Sigismund the Destroyer, or Fabius Bile, Primogenitor of the Black Legion. Of course, they couldn't die in their stories, because I need them for the Times of Ending, but playing as them should be quite interesting, don't you think ?

If you are interested, please send me a PM, and we will discuss the details.

That is all. I look forward to playing with you, dear readers, and shape many stories of selfless heroism and blackest infamy !

Zahariel out.