The numbness in your mind subsides, the dried tears staining your goggles... all must wear eye-protection upon Mars for the air, as thin as it is, can blind you in a few days. You collect yourself, still dazed at the sheer spectacle that lays before you. Suddenly the ground shakes, all the adepts and menials around you make way. A knight walks past you, its armour plates painted red with beautiful gold carvings of the symbolic gear and cryptic heraldry etched on them. Its optical ports scanning all as it slowly treads past you. Some of the pilgrims, in their devout excitement, try to touch its legs. One of them is trampled underfoot but none mourn, for pilgrims are but hindrances to Holy Mars's workings. You move on, into the crowds around the forge's titanic gate. Many vehicles stand here, some tracked, some wheeled, all carrying minerals, replacement parts and food for the billions that live within and the industry they are cogs to. Tech Priests walk by these mile long queues of uncountable vehicles, carried atop armed transports that float above the ground; their optics flicker as they cross each vehicle. And there are people too! So many! You had underestimated the number of people here, for there are millions if not tens of millions, and these are the forge outskirts. Gun servitors march through large encampments of slaves sitting on the red sands clad only in respirators and rags, thousands of them in each of these blobs of human flesh and tattered tents. You can tell that they have been here for quite some time, awaiting entry to the hive. Probably to be converted into some form of servitor or to work the lines...
Omnissiah be praised!
The gates open! You can see it open and hear its gigantic gears cranking even five hundred metres out. A deafening siren sounds out as the Warlord titans blaze their war-horns and many of your fellow travellers who have no ear protection collapse and shriek in pain. The slaves must already be deaf for they merely bow down in reverence and their binary chant grows more feverish. The knight that crossed you enters the gate along with thousands of the trucks parked outside and uncountable slaves. The camp through which you now pass is packing up and moving up the eternal queue. All of them look ecstatic... it all seems so very mind numbing...