Universal Century 0061 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0069 - Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2173 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0030 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 043-3100 - 40k Universe
The Game in the past few years, at least in the Origin universe had ramped up several notches in intensity. With the ban on using A.T. Fields lifted once the universe had been populated and the Minds developing enough to being able to use them in the first place, the conflicts both expanded and contracted. The scale of each battle had decreased, the EVAs and Warships with their ridiculous A.T. Fields destroying entire fleets with ease. Firing their weapons while opening wormholes in front of the cannon and directly behind the hostile forces saw them destroyed with no means by which they could defend. Luckily for them (the grunts and everyone that wasn't an EVA pilot or a Warship), there were only a small number of aforementioned superweapons. As a result the conflicts expanded but no longer were there enormous fleets striking at singular points but rather many smaller fleets spread out across the entire front.
The threat of having a Warship or an EVA arrive and and wreck an entire fleet too much of a risk to allow them to group as as they had previously. That wasn't to say that the Warships and the EVAs were invincible, small groups of both would be set up like Hunter Destroyer units ready to react at any time.
The entire dynamic of the war had changed essentially, resembling that of a World War 2 battlefield as opposed to anything else. The entire front had small units spread across it to provide a screen yet there wouldn't be any really large concentrations in order to not provide too tempting a target. It wouldn't do to have a large mobile force come in from the flank and wipe them out. Rather they would be more of a tripwire, hopefully blunting an attack and alerting those to the rear as to the composition of an attacking force. In the rear-line there would be special EVA destroyer units formed of sniper Cruisers and other EVAs that would react quickly to any attacks. The same had occurred with counter-Warship forces and the entire thing devolved into a cat and mouse game. One side would attack and the other would react before the opposite happened, no real pushes being made since that would overcommit their forces and risk them being cut off and destroyed.
It hadn't quite gone according to plan however, the EVAs and Warships being too fast, hitting and fleeing before the reaction forces could arrive. However they couldn't afford to station them across the entire front either, they would be spread too thin and too vulnerable to a concentrated attack. Each Empire tried to find a different solution to the problem but they kept hitting the wall that said that there were simply too few EVAs and definitely too few Warships. At least with EVAs one could grow them to replace the losses while Warships once lost were lost forever, each being built at the Origin Planet and infused by the Commander directly. The waiting list was massive for new Warships let alone replacements. If they lost them, there was the very high chance they would not be getting a new one for decades or even centuries. So instead of spreading them out and leaving them vulnerable an alternative option had to be found.
The Federated Suns of Shanada had chosen to deploy large numbers of HeMUs and Mechs armed with long range sniper grade weaponry to pin down an attacking force long enough for the reinforcements to show up and do their job. Since the pilots of the EVAs tended to not be able to predict the future, their defences relied on area denial with the A.T. Field spread out and blocking fire from a wide angle. They could take advantage of this by firing extremely powerful weaponry at a single pinpoint target to breach the defences and overwhelm the target. Not exactly the safest method but it worked. They lost 90% of each pinning unit but in turn they helped in the destruction of nearly 30% of the EVAs they were sent to deal with. An EVA was infinitely more valuable than a Mech after all, and losing a few hundred to kill one or 2 was a worthwhile loss.
The pilots were all veterans that could use their own A.T. Fields. Minor things like tiny defensive barriers and the like but it helped, a little deflection goes a long way. Especially when the enemy is dropping explosions that could shatter planets on you. While it took a while for the HeMUs to adapt to the idea that they were fighting what essentially amounted to a Battleship that had almost 360 degree vision and firepower, they got into the groove of it very quickly and became extremely efficient at their jobs. The HeMUs by virtue of being HeMUs could cheat by simply coming back after dying and retaining their experience, the EVA pilots on the other hand had a much harder time of it.
Since the EVAs tended to subsume their pilots over prolonged periods of time, the EVAs would generally be warped onto the field via wormhole or other instant travel methods. Being inside too long was fatal to the pilots in a much more permanent sense than just the mortal body dying. To that end the pinning teams were serving a secondary role where if the EVA managed to escape, it still would have to spend much more time out of combat in order to get the pilot back to normal. Should they not be able to leave in time, the EVA would go "dormant" as the pilot that was the driving motivation behind it no longer existed as a separate entity, subsumed by the EVA itself.
That was the worse case scenario as the EVAs if they were compatible could be commandeered by the Empire to do with as it wanted. Many even had self-destruct mechanism inside them to prevent this very thing from occurring.
Like a game of hunt the whale commented a few HeMUs, there was a high chance of dying but it was some of the most exhilarating and satisfying experiences one could garner.
The Warships however were a different story entirely. Each one over 200 kilometers long with enough firepower to end star systems casually. The Warships also possessed Kanmusus that meant a boarding action was suicidal. Attacking it with weaponry was similarly unfeasible due to the manner in which it had both normal shields, A.T. Shields and armour formed of S-N Steel that outstripped anything they had in terms of strength and durability. Not content with that, each Warship no matter its self-professed role had thousands upon thousands of CIWS batteries that were more like frigate main weapons with which to defend against anything that got too close.
It was overpowering at range and up close, any HeMU attack units would be torn apart unless they depopulated several star systems to get the numbers where the chance that a shot could get through existed. Since the Warship was in essence the ultimate weapons platform besides a planet, any long range weapons by mobile forces could be countered by an even more long ranged option from the Warship. Numbers just mean that more of its CIWS came online while more powerful units meant that more of its powerful batteries began to fire.
The only real option they had was to pack several Cruisers with extreme range weapons and act like the HeMU pinning units. While they would fall apart under pretty much any fire, they could also, hopefully alpha strike the Warship enough to cause some damage. All of their firepower concentrated into a single spot could effectively punch a very small hole in the Warship. A tiny hole to be sure but a hole nonetheless.
By forcing the Warships to stop and engage them or face being whittled down slowly. While time was much less important compared to that of the EVAs, buying time did allow for the Warship reinforcements to arrive and punish the Warships for overstaying. Casualties were of course very high and the ships that had been assigned to the duty tended to not manifest Kanmusus at all due to their short periods of service. A sad state of affairs but one that was necessary to counter the Warship threat.
As the years passed it became rather evident that the Warships had begun to adopt different strategies in response to the pinning teams. It was less about trying to strike past the response forces now but rather not engaging at all if there was a pinning fleet in the area or trying to bait a reaction and pouncing on it with even more reinforcements. In essence, the heavy hitters were brawling amongst themselves while the rest of the navies and armies fought their own battles with an eye kept out just in case.
The Kanmusus had only ever grown in number since the first, Lady Une had arrived. The soulscape being that of the Commander meant that each of them could see the Commander no matter where they had decided to set up shop. The hulking giant sitting on a throne that by all rights looked more like a stool than anything else. Multiple attempts at dislodging it and instating a much more "dignified" throne, failing as the Commander refused to budge.
As each of them could see the Commander, they could also talk to the Commander and thus the Commander who only ever wished for peace and quiet could only suffer in silence. Sure the Commander could tell them to be quiet, it would essentially hurt their feelings and they were so… innocent. Well not the Warships or the Battleships or the Carriers or the Cruisers but at least the Destroyers and Frigates were. Well… maybe not the Destroyers but definitely the Frigates. They all sat around giggling, playing and having fun and sometimes the Commander could feel a stirring of what might even possibly be contentment in the head or chest areas.
Further digging had found something rather strange however in the intervening years. There was something inside the Commander that was definitely not meant to be there. Something that quite frankly scared the Commander briefly. That fear turned into something that resembled pity when the Commander could fully see it.
It was an abomination of a thing, a malformed blob of twisted, manic and paranoid intelligence that seemingly twisted in on itself. It was disgusting on a primal level and that was saying something considering that a few Empires had made themselves resemble the Flood from Halo. This however… this was very clearly part of the Commander, the part that had been roughly chopped off when R.O.B. had shoved the soul in, heedless of the actual fit. This mass of emotion without the logic and the sense of self had been festering inside of the Soulscape since the Commander first applied an A.T. Field.
It had not done anything truly, it merely sat still, gibbered manically to itself as it… consumed itself. Since it had been nourished on the Soulscape, it had managed to gain a hint of sapience but it was… twisted. There existed 2 souls? Within the blob. A blob that upon closer inspection came closer and closer to resembling the ouroboros, the snake that devoured itself. Not being able to bear it any longer, the Commander prodded the blob whereupon the blob jerked and its mumbling became a full pitched chant.
The blob when prodded again fell silent and when asked if it had a name it replied. "George 12". The Commander asked in turn "What of Georges 1 to 11?".
"There never were any other Georges except 7, he was delicious, oh and 3 was icky, we don't talk about 2".
The Commander then realised what exactly it was doing to make it self resemble the snake, it had been devouring itself piece by piece. Likely that was George 11 there on the end. Why? The Commander asked, morbid curiosity driving the question.
"To hide from Her! She CAN SeE! ALL OF IT! Power Begets Sight! Sight Begets Death! Eternal Death! Strength from Weakness! Weakness from Strength! Devour and Refine! Devour and Refine!"
Well… it was apparently terrified of whoever this "She" was and had been hiding away trying to get stronger by eating itself and refining its soul. An unorthodox method that no longer needed to be done, the Commander would see to it that. What was left of the Commander's original self would be protected.
It had been afraid of almost everything, particularly the Kanmusus which it saw as manifestations of Her. Still, after a bit of coaxing it had come out of its shell and now resembled a scarf that had been draped over the Commander's shoulders and neck. It had started the strange habit of narrating everything however. Not exactly the most… comforting thing ever then again it wasn't exactly sane being stuck in a hole and eating itself 11 times over.
It started from the beginning and jumped all over the place, inserting characters that didn't exist… or did they? Ugh, too much effort. Still it was having what could be considered fun so the Commander left it alone. Perhaps at some point in the future George 12 would be ready to venture out into the wider world(s).
So… Harry Potter? Something different I suppose.
Universal Century 0061 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0069 - Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2173 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0030 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 043-3100 - 40k Universe
In an effort to put off the Kanmusus, the Commander had shown them a few different shows and movies. Hopefully it would distract them enough that they went away for a while. Sadly however it had only gotten worse as the Kanmusus discovered magic.
Magic as in the wands and waving and weird Latin words magic and not magical girl magic thankfully. Still the Kanmusus badgered the Commander into at least trying to find a universe that had magic in it, their persistence met with impossibility as the Commander tunnelled into countless multiverse and discovered only one, a Harry Potter one.
Huh.
Still it was magic and that was that. Only it was Harry Potter… there wasn't enough world here for them all. The answer to that had been rather… drastic. The Commander had replicated the planet and the specific conditions that allowed magic to function and placed countless of them in pocket dimensions for the Kanmusu to pop into and hopefully leave the Commander alone for a while. It worked… partially.
While a good deal of them had left, the remaining ones clamouring all the louder for the Commander to find them worlds that related to their hobbies. Some of them wanted Fallout, others wanted Real Time Strategy games and others still wanted Turn Based Tactics games. In short the Commander in trying to placate and quieten the beings inside the Soulscape had instead made them all the more louder. This has perhaps not been the best solution to the problem, rather it may have been one of the worst choices.
Dammit
Oliver the quiet nature watcher, Danny the pacifist and Delia the explosion maniac were cruisers from the Federated Suns of Shanada, sent to relax in this world of magic and mystique as part of their mandatory rest period. Their orders were simple, learn magic, don't expose their true natures, relax. They had been drafted as part of the Commander's Caretakers directly after their teamwork allowed them to pen a Warship on their lonesome. They would be expected in future to fight as space and ground troops against those that would threaten the Commander but right now they were to relax and have fun.
Given that they had been destroyed not a week ago in an anti-Warship pinning action, the Kanmusu were allowed to be moving about freely. Those that hadn't been destroyed yet weren't, their manifestations bound to their ships until the times of their deaths. Being here required that their manifestations be unbound.
The rules governing magic as it was had been uncovered, a simple gene mutation within the various different species which allowed them to tap into the planet's A.T. Field and manipulate it to form "magic". The planet itself of course being asleep during all of this, having humans was like having a transmittable disease. They would destroy everything, take everything and leave. Just like the Caretakers now that they thought about it. Still, it had been easy enough to genetically alter their possessed bodies to have the gene as well.
Their possession of bodies being a natural thing of course, it wouldn't exactly work if they were their original forms of giant, gangly blue people. After the bodies had been altered, they enhanced their clock speeds as time sped up so their infant bodies could be at the age where they received an invitation to Hogwarts. The orphanage the Trio was staying in being adequate cover for them having no parents, or rather not existing at all until they suddenly appeared on whatever tracker used to keep an eye on magical births.
The letter however had not arrived via owl as expected, but rather in the post box. Wasn't Hogwarts all about tradition, if so what exactly was going on here? They hadn't gone ahead too far had they? All the Harry Potter universes started a few days before Harry Potter's birth. They were reasonably certain that they were 11 years old, birthdays not exactly being high on the list of celebrations when you are a Cruiser.
The three letters sat in front of them on the table. The book behind helpfully keeping them propped up as they pondered. They had been relying on the invitation to help Delia blow off steam, the number of nearly explosions too high as she tried to indulge herself. Danny and Oliver working full time to try and keep her suppressed until she got a wand and could do it all at school. 10 years of "muggle" schooling being torture beyond words for ships of war used to doing calculations beyond the speed of light.
Procrastination would get them nowhere, unless it let whoever was coming their way get there faster. Delia, always the fast one picked Danny's letter and proceeded to rip it open.
"Hey! What are you doing?" came Danny's outraged squawk.
"Simple! (her finger raised at this) If its bad news I can always claim that I didn't know since my letter was never opened. It is genius!" And with that she ripped open the letter holder device made of paper. There was a name she was sure but who cared, there was a letter to read.
And what a letter it was!
Good Day to you Danny Snow,
We of the Boarspot Academy wish to extend to you an invitation to join us in learning about Magic. An instructor shall be with you shortly to fully explain the situation to you.
Please place the letter down and stand back for your own safety.
Huh. Short... short and for the entirely wrong school.
Still, when a letter tells you to stand back for our own safety, you stand back for your own safety. Who knew what could possibly happen? Well they did but who else knew, what if it exploded and there were children (actual children) near them who then were maimed for life. Maybe this was a secret test to get rid of muggle borns? Those purebloods were super scary huh?
The letter began to crackle, indicating that perhaps they had the proper idea in setting it down and standing very far away. The rest of the children in the orphanage and the caretakers were off doing human things, the 3 of them hiding away rather efficiently where they could open the letters away from prying eyes, perhaps that had been a good idea.
Smoke began to billow out but not fire smoke but rather dry ice smoke, pooling around on the floor in a vortex of grey… like a whirlpool? One of those that spins around. And then it stopped as the smoke rose into a pike and a… person in suit stood in front of them. What, no robes? They felt a little ripped off actually. Where was the intrigue, the barely suppressed sniggers, the self respect? Since when did wizards wear 3 piece suits? It didn't even have the blazer, just the pants, shirts and suspenders.
The Trio stared, their eyes expressing a mixture of disappointment and judgement on the poor human. It wasn't his fault he was not what they expected but well… they were finding it hard not to judge.
"Hello children, I am Professor Barnes of the Boarspots Academy, the best… and only magical school for 11 to 18 year olds in the North American continent."
Oh… North America… oh.
They fucked up. Real bad.
Oh.
Maybe they can ask for a redo?
The Trio had not yet received their wands, rather they had been told that they would be heading to the school first to find out which of their attributes would be best suited to a certain style of magic. Boarspots wasn't like Europe they had been told, here the styles from the Asia Continent, Japan, Europe, South America, North America and Central America had all joined to create multiple schools of magic. While they all had the same results in the end, they all went about it in different ways.
It was interesting, much more so than the boring wands, better than everything at Hogwarts they had been assured. The purebloods were a lot less powerful here as well, crossbreeding apparently created more powerful magical children, purebloods stagnated or grew weaker. The children all travelled to the desert in Nevada, the site of the famed Area 51 that was apparently just the site of the magic academy. The children playing pranks resulted in lights showing up, flying discs, transmutation errors, etc that made all the muggles think that there were aliens or something similar.
The New World certainly was proving more interesting than that of the "old" back in Europe, none of that boring stuffy wands and robes business. Everyone got pants, suspenders and shirts for daily use, overalls for experimental classes like potions. The three of them had received their uniforms when they first arrived a massive line, several thousand people long that wrapped around the various corridors being their first glimpse of the school. The bus dropping them off like routine. Things were a bit disjointed actually, let's go back to the beginning and start from there.
The Trio upon the appointed day had joined several over students at their designated bus-stop and boarded a rather nondescript vehicle, that looked more like a rectangular block with strip windows than anything else. The 15 children had boarded and the bus… phased in and out of reality as it went from somewhere in Boston (how they missed that nobody knew) to Nevada in under 15 minutes. From there they had joined in a "convoy" of other buses that moved and disembarked their passengers with admirable efficiency. Perhaps these magic organics knew what they were doing after all.
The bus ride to their disembarkation point had been filled with exposition, what they were going to be doing, where they were going and all that stuff. Everyone started from the bottom here in this society and worked their way up. They said it was merit based but whether or not it was, was to be debated. Not that they at the tender age of 10 were going to be doing any debating, now or for the next 5 years. Unless they really wanted to sound like conspiracy theorists that is.
So they had disembarked and joined a line that continued on for another 15 minutes before they came before a little checkpoint, behind which were nearly a dozen doors. The woman manning the checkpoint waving them to specific entrances as the lights above them lit up to signal they were finished with the previous student. Delia had entered the one third from the left and been quickly measured and dressed. Magic making sure that the clothes fit her perfectly.
2 spare sets of clothes, a set of overalls, various stationary supplies and other miscellaneous goods. Enough to last them through a year of schooling at the very least. Other supplies could be requisitioned if they could prove they had a need for them, a very good system the Trio thought.
From there they had simply dropped the things off into what looked like dumb-waiters (they were told they would be sent to their rooms when they were "Sorted") and sent into a massive cavernous room that would not look out of place on a Space Station from 40k as opposed to somewhere in Nevada. Apparently the Sorting had been going on for a long time now judging by the expressions on the faces of the various students. Extreme boredom was saying it gently.
The Sorting didn't even deserve a capital S, it was simply a nine sided die that divided them into houses depending on which number the die landed on. A large projection allowing everyone to see, along with the projection of the student in question being shown above it.
It looked like it was highly unlikely that the Trio would end up in the same house which was annoying, not the end of the world however. They had the ability to communicate via the Soulscape after all.
Oliver found himself sorted into 9, Delia into 6 and Danny into 1. They would eat, sleep and tomorrow they would find their specific attributes that would guide their journey for the rest of their lives (well the rest of their Harry Potter lives at any rate). Time wouldn't pass in the outside world while they were in here, 1000 years here barely equalling a minute outside at the most. They had been given plenty to fool around, learn and perhaps find new ways to apply their A.T. Fields in service of the Commander.
Universal Century 0063 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0071 - Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2175 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0032 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 045-3100 - 40k Universe
Deathwatch had been ratified in recent memory. The idea of small teams of Space Marines moving about the galaxy to deal with various xeno threats, to put them down before they became big enough to matter. A way for the Inquisition to deal with Xeno threats without relying on the Sojourners that they didn't trust nearly as far.
Originally formed from Traitor Space Marines that betrayed their Legions and their Primarchs to serve the Emperor, the Deathwatch had been quietly building itself up over time. Building their Watch Stations, ensuring that the Omega Vault in the greatest of fortresses, Watch Fortress Erioch had been the first priority, establishing their footholds in the Jericho Sector had been next. They had been placed here as a means of watching over the Sector, watching and eliminating the Xeno threats from the fringe of the galaxy. Likely they would have been content to wait silently, drawing Space Marines from their pacts with the different chapters over time until something forced them to be more overt. However now, with the Sojourners being so prevalent and their outposts resembling that of the Deathwatch so clearly… well there was no real point hiding themselves.
Rather the Master of the Vigil had decided that while they could maintain their secrecy, they could do so in the open, mingling with the Sojourners. In doing so they could traverse openly throughout the Imperium to carry out their duties without fear of being asked why. Seeking out the Xeno, purging the Xeno and protecting the Imperium from they in the dark, far beyond the expanses of the Imperium. The Deathwatch protects from those that would seek to harm the Imperium from outside, the Sojourners protected them from within.
It was not therefore strange to consider that the two disparate factions could co-exist and even intermingle, especially considering the manner in which they both drew Space Marines from multiple different chapters and assigned them into mixed teams. While part of the Sojourners, Space Marines would paint their armour black, chanting while doing so to appease the Machine Spirits within. While they nominally were of different chapters still, externally they looked as though they were of the same chapter. An important distinction to make as these Space Marines were they who may be called upon to investigate those connected to or loyal to their chapter and must do so without prejudice clouding their sight.
It was a difficult proposition to be sure but it bred into the Space Marines a sense of humility that was important, that nobody was above reproach. While the Inquisition professed the same, it was much more extreme and polarizing in its opinions. Confrontation did so very little in changing the minds of those involved, a slow eroding of their mental defences being much more effective.
So the Master of the Vigil and the Chapter Master of the Sojourners met and established for themselves and their respective factions a pact which would allow the Death Watch to masquerade as Sojourners, to hide themselves in open sight. All the better to improve their secrecy as they fulfilled their duties, the Watch Stations being supplemented by the various outposts that each had cogitators and and scanning equipment that would make the Imperial Navy green with envy. WIthin each there would be enough information gathered each day to fill the banks of an Adeptus Administratum vault to the brim. The information from both the Deathwatch's stations and that of the Sojourner's would be collated and taken back to a Sojourner world of Antioch hidden away in the Warp, its path hidden to all but its most senior members.
It was on Antioch that the most valuable, destructive and exotic weaponry that the Sojourners possessed were displayed for the potential use for those that had earned the right. From Volkite Weaponry that could pierce through Land Raiders with ease to Bolter of strange design, firing shells that detonated with the heat of a melta bomb, to Space Marine sized versions of the dreaded Eldar Shuriken weaponry firing microscopic blades so thin as to cut through Power Armour and flesh alike. So many different weapons, so many different designs of shields and armour. Many of them found amongst the various worlds of the Warp lost through space and time. Garbled recordings dating from the 41st Millennium, a future so distant that many could not envision the heights that the Imperium could reach during that time. Recordings that may have been hoaxes for the responses they elicited from the Deathwatch (though small in number) that had listened, screams and "armies of bugs as far as the eye could see, raining from fleets that blanketed the sky. Or perhaps of armies of the men of steel who possessed weapons that flayed the flesh from the body. Or even of the "bugger fucking blue men with their bugger fucking railguns". All of it seemingly nonsensical but it did give the Deathwatch somewhere to look, the future apparently did need them after all.
The data was being fed back into the fortress of Erioch from the stations across the outposts and Watch Stations that collected them. As of now, the unknown creators of the Omega Vault had also created access points in which all information was to be transcribed. The knowledge working towards unlocking nebulus vaults, each containing weapons of great power if the descriptions were true. Each would unlock when a nebulous and unknown value had been reached, likely concerning the various Watch Stations that had been built before the Deathwatch had arrived to begin their vigil. A rather disconcerting piece of information truth be told. Smaller vaults could be opened and closed much more easily with conditions being set by those that placed the artifacts for those that came after them. Likely much less powerful than that of what was originally in the Omega Vault but still useful to their descendents nonetheless.
They had shared pretty much everything at this point and it was only the start, no doubt in the next 10,000 years they would grow even more close as the various threats to the Imperium became the kind that that needed both internal and external assistance.
Raven Guard Maximusius considered the other team that had joined them on this particular operation. A journey deep into the outer fringes of the Imperium where the edges of the Astronomicon faltered and frayed at the edges. It was here that a Beacon World had recorded a rather perplexing bit of information, something about Men of Metal being discovered on a moon nearby. The Sojourner Administrators had heard about this previously somehow and sent out multiple teams to the location from across the Imperium. They were dangerous apparently, enough to warrant almost a company's worth of Space Marines from the Sojourners. Even those dour ones that barely spoke and had armour that was fully black. They had joined the Sojourners recently but mainly kept to themselves on outposts that nobody knew was located where. They never took their off their helmets so it was difficult to tell what chapter they may have hailed from.
They were battle brothers nonetheless and they would serve just as well, they would have his back and he would have theirs. Well him and Mitchellii in her ever increasing apathy, Theodfore on his quest for more rare materials from which to craft his personal Mobile suit and Barnabery who had only become more dogmatic as the years passed. The most worrying of them was Mitchellii, it seemed that she failed to truly care about things for a while now, barely rousing when spoken to and seemingly becoming more like a servitor than a human. It was worrying but when asked she had merely said that this was a natural occurrence within her chapter. While the Raven Guard became more pale as time passed, the Caretakers and Sojourners became increasingly apathetic. It would take returning to a Beacon World and persistent effort in order to regain her motivations and with them her emotions. It was accelerated in her youth, the periods of apathy and caring elongating as she aged and her mutations became more stable.
As of right now however it was clear that she should be heading back to the Caretakers very soon, before she became a living husk. It was worrying to the Raven Guard, while they had served together for an extremely short period of time, they had formed a bond of sorts regardless of their chapter of origin. He worried for her, the others did too he was sure.
Mitchellii stared at the image presented before her in the Soulscape, an ocean that spread as far as she could see, the silhouettes of her brothers and sisters doing the same surrounding her in orderly rows. It was here that she chose her upgrades, part of the vaunted "Gamer System" that allowed them to become stronger as they proved themselves and earned this so called EXP. One could earn EXP from almost anything, killing, discovering clues, finishing conversations, cleaning weapons and so many more.
Repetitive actions earn them EXP to more efficiency such as cleaning weapons, armour, their cells, etc would add up to a cleaning category. This was separate to their overall EXP which got little bonuses as they increased in strength. They also got star which they could increase with either activities or boosting with the station points they got from leveling, an event that occurred when they reached the relevant EXP mark. The concept of "grinding" or repeating the same actions over and over to improve a specific skill also allowed them to specialize, as specific sets of skills could unlock for them specific classes for them to access. Experimenting allowed them to earn EXP much faster than simple rote actions. Indeed there reached a point where rote actions did nothing to increase EXP gain and it was only doing things differently that did it.
As they increased in ability, the rate at which they got their EXP dropped, estimates putting it at decades or centuries at the higher end of the scale. Of course by that point they were ridiculously powerful anyway, the animated hologram of the Space Marine dual wielding Lascannon entrenched in Mitchellii's mind. Of course it came at a cost. The method by which they used their EXP to purchase abilities required the implantation of the knowledge and reflexes into their soul, a process that infected them with the Apathy of the Commander. Small things like better aiming, faster reflexes and the like cost very little. Things such as A.T. Field blades from their arms or wings cost comparatively much more. Every Sojourner over time as a result of their increased strength would be required to return to the Beacon Worlds in order that they become combat effective again. Apathy being a very bad state of mind for a super soldier.
Since Mitchellii was a human originally as well as being very young, barely 20 years, the onset of Apathy for her had been accelerated. In the future she may be able to stave it off for centuries as the EXP gain was negligible and her soul would be strengthened. As it was now however she was still vulnerable and would be heading back as soon as the mission was over. Her upgrade tree had been locked entirely, any further progression damaging her soul permanently. She should have been sitting out the mission entirely but the need was dire, the possibility that it was the Necrontyr being to high to ignore. From the Sojourner exclusive briefing on the Soulscape she understood that they weren't waking up en-mass for another 10, 000 years but what was 10, 000 years when they had been asleep for 60 million, a few years give or take was going to be the problem.
Perhaps they would even make it out of this alive, not that it really mattered in the grand scheme of things but Mitchellii thought it would be nice.
Universal Century 0063 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0071 - Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2175 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0032 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 045-3100 - 40k Universe
Mitchelli and Co. were on the moon Jacin that orbited the Beacon World below them. It was the most distant Beacon World from the Astronomicon, so far that that travel was only possible upon the Warplanes unless one was prepared to travel through the maelstrom of the Warp blind. It was on this moon, out in the void where they were forced to wear their helmets permanently unless they wished to no longer live that they searched for the "Men of Iron". Barnabery of the Ultramarines had armed himself as his codex dictated, a Bolter, Combat Knife, Krak Grenades and Frag Grenades in a dispenser, and ammunition. Maximusius had armed himself with a Stalker Bolter to better snipe the enemies without them noticing what was happening until it was too late. His Combat Knife, and Melta Bombs ready in the event that the enemy was impervious to "normal" munitions. Theodfore as his Salamander lineage dictated possessed the most ornate and powerful weaponry possible, his Boarding Shield and his Volkite Charger rifle, its design a gift to the chapter. Mitchelli herself had equipped a Disintegration Cannon (in reality a reclamation beam), Power Sword at the hip and a Volkite pistol on the other side, melta bombs rounding out her kit.
The 4 other Space Marines in the Stormraven with them armed with the same weaponry as Barnabery, except with a chainsword. Their silence spoke to their professionalism, unless of course they were talking to each other and didn't want their companions for this mission to find out. Either way they had been silent and ignoring overtures for speech by Maximusius. The 100 Space Marines called would criss-cross the world trying to find clues as to what exactly it was they were looking for, signs of activity or disturbance that as out of the norm. The miners had been alerted and would be waiting inside their base without leaving. They were the ones that had alerted the Sojourners to the possible Necrontyr sighting and they knew the details of what they were expected to do from the Sojourner liaison they had met.
They were making planetfall now, the shudder through their feet plenty of information as to how. Now to find grey metal men with glowing green weapons.
Mitchelli continued forward, each heavy step reverberating back through the suit. The one ton of Power Armour, Genetically Modified human and weaponry making itself felt on the moon. Each step forward accompanied by the sound of servo-motors working overtime as the Mk8 Errant Armour worked to provide the necessary lift.
The design itself having been picked up from a Forge World on the Caretakers on their trek through the Warp. The Sojourners were equipped with it but the complexity of design saw the other Chapters struggling to build enough to meet demand. The Deathwatch at the Sojourner Chapter Master's insistence had been provided with the designs, their work necessitating as much protection as possible against the threat of unknown xeno capabilities. The neckplate protecting the vulnerable joints and power cabling as well as the power cables on the waist and chests being incorporated into the torso armour. Protecting both the Power Armour and the user from most forms of danger.
Each step was purposeful, each step carefully measures out to be the most efficient and least effort consuming method possible. Mitchellii at this point barely able to get herself to move without giving up. The Apathy was extreme and she could not bring herself to care. Each step was a plod forward, each movement careful to not overextend and force extra effort. Just forward. Every step was just on the way forward.
Mitchellii's condition had been observed by her team-mates and had placed her at the center of their formation as a result. While she was trying to motivate herself to continue moving forward, they were scanning the surroundings and making sure that if there were Iron Men about, they wouldn't be able to sneak up on them. The other team having set itself about 2 kilometers to the left as a means to cover more space. Theodfore had positioned himself to the rear, the most dangerous position in a hostile patrol while Maximusius and Barnabery took the front, leaving a clear firing arc for Mitchellii's incredibly dangerous weapon. They had seen it in action before, the coils whining with what was clearly arcane energies before it had been unleashed and turned an entire hab-block into dust. They were not going to allow themselves to be caught in its blast effect, especially on a Mitchelli that was operating out of autopilot more than anything else.
Left leg forward, shift arms to compensate weight, lean forward, right leg forward, shift arms again. Head look forward, need to keep an eye out. Targets ahead? No. Just other Space Marines. Ok. Shift head left, make sure, shift head right, make sure. All clear. Talking? Time to wait.
The team met with the other team, their search clearly just as futile. They exchanged commiserating remarks over the vox chat as they turned at right angles to continue the search, Mitchellii needing a few seconds to re-orient herself. The other team clearly had experience with Sojourners before as they gave sympathetic nods before continuing on their way. They had spent at least 12 hours traversing the moon, trying to find clear clues while in the air the Land Speeders of various designs were whizzing about while Land Raiders on the ground moved about collecting autosensor results from their suit systems. Even higher were the Strike Cruisers that continued scanning the world for any traces of difference. It was boring but at least they had each other, all of them except Barnabery having memories of long and lonesome sentry duty on some wall somewhere, facing some kind of potential threat or whatever it was.
Left foot forward, right foot forward. Soul registers something strange. Potential target. Full scan, unfamiliar targets sighted. Engaging.
The team had been wandering for another 6 hours when Mitchellii brought up her Disintegration weapon and began to power it up. Their panic had been loud as they alerted the other Space Marines on-world to the situation immediately lest they think it was an attack. The next words out of her mouth however had them changing tack, the words "engaging enemy targets, number 15" coming across clear and true. They did not question her abilities, her sight having saved them many times before. They called in reinforcements and a cordon of the area in the event that the enemy tried to escape. Their capabilities were unknown and if they survived the Disintegration beam… well they didn't want to be there alone.
Fired. Need 1 more to reach targets, charging next shot. Angle too shallow, need to move closer to edge.
The first shot saw a space nearly 50 meters in diameter cease to exist, the plume of dust all they needed to prove that a Disintegration weapon had been fired on this location. The Land Speeders were already arriving, a Strike Cruiser positioning itself over the location. Other Sojourners were on the way, ready to do a scan of their own to verify Mitchellii's apparent claim. The second shot had been nearly vertical and exposed a very large, very dark metal object. One that was bigger than 50 meters and had evaded their sensors entirely. A few of them gave a brief sigh, the other Space Marines had arrived and were staring down the hole. There was going to be a cordon then there was going to be an exploratory party and it was very likely going to be them. They were Space Marines and they did their duty, but sometimes they wished that duty didn't involve crawling around in the dark with unknown Xeno.
Barnabery stared down the auspex reticle on his helmet HUD. They were inside the alien vessel, facility, structure and it was… different. The Orks were very distinct with their ramshackle and cobbled together design, the Traitors with their bodies and flesh and pulsating and the various other Xeno with their iconography and elaborate designs. This however… this was different.
Barnabery felt a stirring of a small bit of pride that he was the first to explore this new Xeno and his actions were those that would be looked over by the Primarch to look for weaknesses. At the same time he also felt fear, he was Space Marine, the next evolution of man but he was also human, he who had eons of genetic wiring in his brain. The primitive part of his mind saw the stark and utilitarian grey designs, the green solid cables on the walls glowing with sickly light and the skittering they heard occasionally from behind the walls. Still, they were Space Marines and with the moniker came the duty. There was an unknown species behind these walls and they would be finding them, studying them, likely killing them and then cataloguing them.
Barnabery chanted to himself the Litany of Strength, his body producing agents to counter the stimulants his body was released in response. He was Ultramarine, he was the standard by which all other chapters measured themselves, he would not falter here. The others in his team showed no such agitation but it was likely because of their advanced age and experience rather than their moral upbringing. Still, he would not show weakness, he was Ultramarine, he was from Ultramar and he was chosen. There would be no weakness this day or any other day.
They trudged along the corridor, one slightly narrower than that of an Imperial one, low in height and with no gratings on the floor. Rather it was just very simple, grey metal, one that rang out with every step they took. It did not shudder however, an indication perhaps on how sturdy it was. The walls had no iconography or anything to indicate that it ever had iconography. Pure unadorned gunmetal grey metal with the sturdy glass(?) containing the pulsating green energy within. They had not tried to disturb it as of yet, none of their number willing to risk losing limbs or life this early in the operation.
They continued to march, weapons aimed at the walls, down the corridor, at every skittering noise. Theodfore and his trusty Boarding Shield covering their rear just as they covered his. He would walk backwards to ensure that their vulnerability would always be safe. Mitchelli and Maximusius were in the center, her Disintegration weapon had been left with a Sister as she took up her Power Sword and Volkite Pistol instead, Maximusius still wielding his sanctioned bolter, not willing to take up unusual weaponry as the others did. Even if he was Raven Guard, his adherence to the strictures of the Codex Astartes did him nothing but service.
Mitchellii had not spotted anything inside, the entire complex apparently counting as an entity and those she had fired on before were external self defence platforms of some kind. It meant that they were going into this blind and it disturbed Barnabery slightly. It was not to say he was afraid, he was merely disturbed. No doubt like all of them were wandering into the unknown or anything. He chanted the Litany of the Stoic to calm himself down, the chemicals counteracting the stress within.
Barnabery was an Ultramarine and Ultramarines did not falter. Their Primarch was the spiritual liege of 23 successor chapters and they were the very pinnacle of those 23. The Ultramarines were superior but they would not achieve it through words but with actions. Barnabery held onto the thought as they continued deeper into the structure, the unnerving grey metal seemingly constricting about them. He had faced the horrors of the immaterium, he had faced tides of orks that made the sea allusion overly appropriate, he had faced xeno so obscure and strange that even the Inquisition had not known about them.
He would not falter here.
"Emotional fluctuations detected, likely enemy is capable of influencing emotions, be alert" came from Mitchellii, her voice broadcast over to all Space Marines in the structure and out. The clamouring that came after indicating that it was not just Barnabery that had been suffering but all of them, he gave a small sigh of relief that it wasn't his weakness.
"Barnabery? Something wrong?" Maximusius' concern emanating from him.
"It was nothing brother, just worried about the weapons that they might try to array against us. A weapon to control emotion is beyond what I thought possible." He said, trying to deflect. He was Ultramarine and he would not show weakness.
"Hmmm, yes indeed. We must remain vigilant, Mitchellii could you tell us of any further emotional fluctuations?" Theodfore said this time, his head not deviating from his scanning pattern at the rear.
"Yes." Said Mitchelli, all that was needed really.
Yes, Barnabery was an Ultramarine, superior to all but that did not mean he could not appreciate his Battle Brothers and Sister from another chapter.
Universal Century 0063 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0071 - Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2175 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0032 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 045-3100 - 40k Universe
The Infinity Circuit aboard the Craftworlds had been quiet for a long time now. The Craftworlds themselves housing the Eldar that had rapidly expanded in number as they from the Infinity Circuits were resleeved into bodies. Some of them had some trouble trying to figure out how exactly they were going to be doing anything. It had been difficult to be sure but they were Eldar and they were not going to fail at something so simple.
The lack of souls in the Infinity Circuit had rendered them inert, nothing more than large masses of bone waiting for more to be placed into them. The possibility was being explored that perhaps they could have a Kanmusu of their own from their Craftworlds, the wisdom that a ship many millennia old, incalculable.
Alternatively the possibility existed that they could empower the Infinity Circuit and complete the rite that would see them blessed with a new God. Only they were not quite sure the impacts of this considering the last time they had created a God and they were no longer desperate enough to try.
It would be interesting to be sure.
The Mobile Suit Gundam universe had been chugging along rather contentedly. The Senti Company having built many colonies that rivalled the population of Earth and the Sides combined nearer to Mars. A silent invisible threat that hung over the humans. Their manufacturing capabilities violently evident to any who tried to trespass on their territory.
The Minds in charge were becoming much more callous compared to the others, the personality of the people in the universe rubbing off on them. The Commander considered perhaps that it was time to rotate another set through, try and maintain at least a semblance of empathy. Their pragmatic decision making while useful would also work against them when working alongside the organics.
War was coming and they were prepared, much more than was needed actually. Their Mobile Suits just waiting for the ZEON ones to show themselves before anything else.
Adam had decided to plop himself down and open up the White Moon that housed his Chamber of Guf. A planet had been created specifically for him so it could be custom designed to fit the necessary specifications. Adam on the other hand seemed to care very little and just left as soon as it was done, the glowing LCL that covered the planet's surface the only sign that he had been there at all.
Due to Adam's proximity to the Commander's A.T. Field by virtue of inhabiting the Commander's AI Core for decades on end, the chamber had ended up having being infected, the LCL having faint hints of black throughout.
From there Adam had joined Lilith on their tour of the Multiverse under the watchful eye of Catherine. They would be enjoying themselves now that their multi-billion year burden had finally been relieved. They were just children really, not having the chance to ever grow up, not with being locked in their angel forms. With the Commander's help they had bodies that were fully articulate and could move without crushing cities. They took full advantage of this fact and experienced the world in full. There would be no more limits that they did not put in place… and Katrin hadn't placed there but it was better than nothing.
They were touring the XCOM and Mass Effect Universe universe lately, the psionics being something that was incredibly interesting to them. Their bodies had been altered and now they could join in the conversations and not feel left out. The humans had been briefed on who the children were and treated them with incredible deference, they were practically the Commander's children which meant any harm that came to them would be returned a thousand fold. Punishment would not end, even with with death.
Speaking of the Mass Effect Universe, things had begun to heat up.
The Leviathan of Dis had been discovered as per schedule and the Batarians had as per schedule go crazy. The Indoctrination effect that continued even with the Reaper's destruction had seen the Batarian Hegemony begin to eat itself from the inside out as their entire Command structure and most of their upper caste members had been indoctrinated. The corpse having been brought to the Batarian homeworld. From there the entire Hegemony was a sitting duck ready for consumption by the Reapers. The Mass Relays being manned around the clock by indoctrinated workers, ready at the slightest chance of the ready signal being passed through.
Of course things had not turned out as expected for the Batarians, the Indoctrinated were located mainly on a single world… and well the saying of "don't put all your slaves in the same ship" was there for a reason. The sudden appearance of an Indoctrinated dreadnought that dropped out of the Mass Relay closest to the Batarian homeworld, destroyed the Relay with torpedoes before heading for a collision course with the planet causing the Indoctrinated to scramble with panic. It had broadcast the correct Indoctrination codes, why was it acting erratically? Its target was quite obviously the fallen Reaper. The crew had been masquerading as normals but with a few nudges here and there with traps left by the Eldar, their imprinted minds had registered something was wrong and began acting according to protocols buried deep.
Said protocols in this instance being that to eliminate the target for possibly delaying the harvest. The Leviathan of Dis and the Batarian homeworld had somehow been turned and must be eliminated at all costs. When the planet was rammed by what looked like a giant dildo, the Eldar gave themselves a pat on the back. All those years of waiting had paid off handsomely. The pieces of the asteroid that started it all had been pinging on the hull of the ship for nearly a month, the exact sequence of sounds triggering the hidden protocols.
The Batarians had of course tried to stop the Dreadnought but considering its Mass, well things didn't go well for them. Millions died in the initial impact, millions more died of starvation as the sky turned to ash and the billions on a world built on exports choked to death. A world that fed a fraction of its population with homegrown produce, having no chance to feed the masses on its own. The Indoctrinated with no Reaper to guide them with little touches at regular intervals, merely stood still as starvation consumed them.
The Mass Relay had been destroyed at the onset, no communications of distress would be escaping, not with mere light speed communications. The radio waves pleading for help would take 13 years to reach the nearest Batarian settlement. Help would be coming much sooner of course, the disappearance of a Relay Jump would have scouts sent to investigate when contact had not been reestablished for longer than 3 months. It would take 2 years to reach the system and another 2 back, far too little too late for the Batarians and their slaves.
A good job all around considered the Eldar. That was until it was evident that the human, Hannah had found out and let loose Eldrad on them.
It had been a single world filled with the lesser races they had argued. Eldrad through his gesticulating had obviously agreed but made a show if it for his human, her rage was known to be legendary. Her psionic natural abilities had been enhanced by the binding and now allowed her to tear apart starships with nothing but her mind. Eldrad's placating obviously had not worked however and they were told to rescue the survivors using their own starships.
A worse punishment had never been devised, the filth that the lessers would track on their beautiful ships leaving many of them in tears.
Next time, they were told, find a method that didn't involve so many innocents. It was inefficient to waste so many lives MAGI said. Of course since it was MAGI doing the saying they complied with alacrity. What the human lacked in authority MAGI made up for in sheer power and a willingness to use it. The human that had tried to kidnap Lilith had been paraded before them, the agonies visited upon his soul scarring them for eternity. It made what She Who Thirsts had planned for them pale in comparison, where before there was mere pain… what awaited was beyond even that. If they failed MAGI there was no point even killing yourself, just wipe your neck and wait.
So the Eldar were picking up the survivors of the Dreadnought drop and the rest of the Galaxy was ignorant as to what happened. For now at least.
The Citadel Alliance had their fleets at around 30% replaced or refitted but were still facing issues in trying to upgun the lasers to fit the Dreadnoughts. Their ceramic designs had been made more efficient and the refit of the fleet's Dreadnoughts was proceeding according to schedule however the problem arose of whether or not to refit the Dreadnoughts at all. When the opposing fleet has weapons that fire at the speed of light, would a spinal weapon be useful at all at the ranges they were fighting at? Turrets would be ideal but that would require a redesign of the Dreadnought chassis entirely. The Cruisers and the Frigates were less troublesome as their mass and lengths were low enough that it wouldn't be difficult to rotate to meet new threats. The Dreadnoughts on the other hand had issues as the large mass meant that speedy turns would put massive stress on the crews and possibly kill them if they tried to turn as fast as a frigate.
Their armies were much better off, upgrading the Armour and Weapons to the required standard being a much easier proposition. Power Armour and Laser Weapons having been disseminated through the entire official military and large swathes of private and mercenary armies. The Senti Corporation's leasing of technologies allowed them to simply forge ahead with little care about the need for researching backend technologies that were already provided it. They would do the research when they had the time, now they needed to upgrade fast and efficiently or they would fall apart if the Systems Alliance came for them.
Still it was not as bad as it could be, the Systems Alliance had not gone for their throats, perhaps they were just waiting and watching as they huddled in the dark but every day was another ship coming out of the docks. Every day increased their chances ever so slightly.
The Helldiver Universe was still going along rather the same. The humans were still fighting a 3 front war against the Illuminate, Cyborgs and Bugs. Taking ground then retreating then taking and retreating over and over again. All the better to control the population through fear and other insidious weaponry. The Minds had been slowly tapping it from time to time, to see how stable a society like this actually was. They were very interested in copying this model to apply to universes they visited that they were interested in maintaining but not worthy of being uplifted.
Simulations were being played out in various test areas in the Origin Universe, areas where the Game was not allowed to tread. Here worlds with mind-wiped organics were besieged by enemies with only some HeMUs in charge. The long term viability of the project was of particular interest, using fewer resources would be a boon in the long term. Of course the problem being the resources needed to produce the alien threat, perhaps using a modified version of the Bugs? Maybe they could explode the 40k universe and find the Tyranids.
A prison that they knew nothing about, a new way of looking at things perhaps.
The Planetside Universe had not changed… at all. The population was still fighting, wars were still occurring and the world of Auraxis still burned. There would be no respite for the souls interred here and indeed the Minds did not want there to be. They were gathering a plethora of information from the universe which they used in their simulations for the HeMUs being deployed.
A means of hiding the mind and the soul were being researched as the organics that could see the soul and the mind were too damn high. They were infiltration units yet they were naked as the wind here.
Universal Century 0063 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0071 - Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2175 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0032 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 045-3100 - 40k Universe
Knife in the heart, pull out and twist. Fracking Metal Man, die already.
Why in the name of the Emperor did we have to try and breach the facility in the first place? Fracking Metal Men everywhere we look. First long corridors, now the Metal Men. Coming out the walls, coming out of the floor, coming out of the ceiling, coming out of everywhere, fracking Metal Men everywhere.
My Will is my Blade
My Fortitude my Shield
My Anger my Weakness
My Faith my Strength
Ordo Hereticus Archive: Space Marine Litany
Ok, calm. Very calm.
Re-evaluate, team is engaged to my rear. Need to protect them, cannot allow allow any of them to break through, comrades trusting me to protect their front. Bolter being held in one hand, a sacrilege, will ask for forgiveness from Primarch Guilliman when I return from assignment. Throw the dead Metal Man into the ones behind, knock them over. Should buy some time. Next target coming from the one-O'Clock, holster Combat Knife, level Bolter, 3 shell burst into the chest cavity. Diamite tip penetrating and detonating inside the chest. Eyes stop glowing, target dead. Very strange construction method, such a big tell on when targets are effective or not. No matter, need to continue.
Theodfore using Thunder Warhammer, smaller 1 handed device, smashing them as they come. Need to stay on defensive, cannot allow them to get to weapons, too dangerous. Report from brothers on the other side cut, weapons with green tubes capable of penetrating Power Armour from range, with ease. Cannot allow them to gain access to their weapons, cannot advance, cannot retreat.
Stuck. Dangerous.
We need reinforcements, frak, they keep coming. What if the entire facility just held more of them? The four of us can't hold out against that many enemies, even if they were armed with nothing but cold metal fingers. Even if they all had lasguns they would kill us with nothing but numbers. We can't even fracking resist. Trapped. Frak.
Sound of Power Weapon hitting. Schwing sound, Power Sword, Mitchellii. Even when apathetic she still is at the level of a First Company Veteran, ridiculous.
I am Ultramarine, I am Strong, I am Fast, I am Superior.
I will not falter here, should they prove to be more than we can fight then so be it. I will die with honour, I will not cower and beg for mercy, I will be strong.
I fight now for the Emperor and for my Primarch. The Codex Astartes has not led me wrong yet, nor will it now. May my fate be with my Bolter.
Fire another burst, sound of empty magazine, since when? Check dispenser at waist, empty, frak. Need another ranged weapon, none available, frak. Left with Combat Knife, need to keep fighting, cannot fall here.
The team had found itself besieged from all sides when they had entered the hall. It was not quite as cavernous as that of the Imperial designed buildings but it was enough for a Space Marine to not reach the ceiling if they stood on their tippy toes. The entrance had not given them problems, nor exploring and poking at the metal statues that lined the walls and hung from racks from the walls and the ceiling. They seemed to be nothing more than bad caricatures of skeletons, the dull green glow of the marks on their foreheads and chests marking them as dormant possibly?
Mitchellii hadn't seen the symbols before, ruling out the possibility of Chaos. The fact that it was green and also clean metal ruled out Nurgle. No, this was something else entirely and it filled them with unease. The crackle as their voc-casters had come online however alerted them to the possibility that all had not been right. As it was they were sending their helmet camera footage straight to the Strike Cruisers in orbit, if they fell now at least those waiting on the surface would know what they fell too.
It had changed when the vox-caster had spoken, the deep bass of the Space Marine's voice coming over the system.
"Don't go near the Metal Skeleton Men brothers! They are still functional! They are still dangerous... Do not let them near the weapons with the green energy tubes! They can punch through Power Armour, they are dangerous!" The voice was punctured by deep, rattling breaths. The damage that the weapons he had mentioned likely piercing his power armour and wounding him as well. A brief sound of crackling and restrained thunder filled the vox-caster before it fell silent.
Spoiler: Ordos Heretics Archive: Gauss Weaponry
Then the Metal Men had begun stirring, the sigils that had been glowing dully were now glowing with unholy life. A sound in the center of the room denoted that a weapons rack of some kind had been raised from the floor, racks holding what looked to be crackling green tubes with handles on their ends. Were these perhaps the weapons they had been warned against? With the numbers arrayed against them and the very real possibility that they would die struggling against the iron tide, the team made the snap decision to defend the weapons.
Against these numbers with nothing but their hands, they at least stood a chance. If they managed to get their weapons that may possibly be as dangerous as advertised… it would be highly unlikely they would survive. So they fought, a pitched battle in a small hall, hidden away underneath the surface of a moon that orbited a planet that likely most people in the Imperium would never hear of. In other words, standard procedure for the Space Marines.
The Metal Men approach from my quarter, their numbers endless, their stamina deep as Vulkan's mind. It matters not for my shield is strong and my power hammer is still fully charged. They will find no weakness here. Compared to the forges where I must swing a hammer that weighs as much as me for days on end, this is nothing more than an exercise in endurance that my Power Armour will allow me to succeed with ease.
A swing to left with the hammer sees the Metal Man's waist smashed in half. A jab forward with my Boarding Shield sees its head crushed. A swing to the right to re-center the hammer sees a chest torn apart, a shove of the shield to the left and an activation of its Power system to push back another Metal Man.
They are endless these Metal Men, many more are still activating, one for every we destroy yet their numbers are beyond that of what could have fit in this room originally. It has been 3 hours, we have destroyed enough to fill this room several times over. But where are they bringing the reinforcements from? The corridor we came from had no side-entrances, the hallway had no other exits. The only answer is that they come from the very walls themselves but if that is true then can we leave at all?
Still I am Space Marine and I shall hold, there must be an end to this, Even if we are Space Marine, we are still human and we make mistakes. All it would take is one of us to fall for the rest of us to fall. If a single one of them were to take the weapons arrayed in the racks behind us then we fall. A single attack to our backs if the information is true will see us die. We cannot afford to falter. Yet falter we will, not now but soon.
Brother Barnabery is becoming erratic, his Combat Knife no match for the enemies before us. There must be finesse in using such a weapon against the Metal Men, a wrong thrust or slash will see it shatter and blunt. Not like the power hammer which has about as much finesse as a Glorianna Battleship. The fatigue is building up on my fellow brother, his laboured breathing is getting worse despite the Litanies that are being chanted. I fear that it will be soon that he will make a mistake and fall. Sister Mitchellii is still as steady as ever, her swings smooth and her aim true. Her sector is the clearest of all of us, the Metal Men seeming to avoid her out of fear or being destroyed too fast to build up.
Brother Maximusius on my right is much the same, his Bolter is firing with practised accuracy, a single shell into each chest to shatter the power source. No doubt he figured it out when they first began to glow, a more clear target to engage has never been presented. Foolish design decision if I am being honest here.
Regardless the Raven Guard catches my eye, through the helmet to be true but we are Space Marine, we are used to communicating through these thick ceramite plates that protect us from certain death. It has become rather popular for some of the younger ones to go about without their helmets, foolish but they are young, no doubt they will learn that their brains belong inside their skulls.
Still the Raven Guard nods in understanding, our concern mutual. It must be ended soon lest we fall due to Barnabery. Drastic actions are needed, we will endure the lecture that no doubt will follow after.
Maximusius takes one of the weapons behind us and throws it into the teeming masses of Metal Men. His Bolter Shell finding the green tube as it began it reached the apex of the throw. The resulting explosion certainly had nothing on a Volcano Cannon but it was still aesthetically pleasing nonetheless. Full of green, an inspired design decision. Maximusius' quick thinking no doubt has saved our lives.
Impromptu grenades, the Metal Men truly do not design their weapons and armour well do they? Still it was not difficult for us from that point forward, liberal use of their own weapons against them saw the room cleared. A beacon was placed and a call for an extraction was put out. We had much salvage and it was a dead end regardless considering we lacked the ability to walk through walls.
A rather invigorating expedition if I do say so myself.
Universal Century 0066 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0074- Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2178 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0035 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 048-3100 - 40k Universe
I am Maximusius, Scion of the Raven Guard, Veteran of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. I have fought my way through the galaxy, through the hordes of Xeno that stood in our way, bringing the worlds that had been lost back into the fold. Alongside my brothers we destroyed war machines as tall as Titans with nothing but a well placed Krak grenade and a combat knife. We blunted Ork advanced with a single bolter shell to the Warbosses cranium. I have personally shut down a potential rebellion with a knife placed on the Planetary Governors pillow.
I am Raven Guard and the Raven Guard is the most deadly, quiet and most of all efficient of the Legions and now our chapter and our successors have the same claim. We pride ourselves on always having a solution to any problem. That obstacles are merely thought exercises. Which was why it was so hard right now. Mitchellii was on the Beacon World that the moon we found the so called "Necrons" upon orbited. Inside the facility she was undergoing a process by which to regain her emotions. It was very simple, they would "stimulate" her soul to fight against the corruption of the Beacon that built up over time. It sounded like the Beacons were chaos symbols but the increasing apathy worked directly against chaos. A very strange situation but of little relevance right now.
The stimulation in essence from what I understand from the Bio-Magus and the Apothecaries lengthy and rather boring explanations was a direct application of "shock" to the soul from a specialized apparatus. By stimulating the soul, it would counter the effects of the Beacon, which sounded great. Only the application… the application was where it all went wrong. The soul could feel pain from what I understand which meant the stimulation… was pain that not even the conditioning we went through as Space Marines could withstand. It had been 2 years now and it would take 10 for the corruption to be reset.
Their understanding of the technology was not at the level where they could stimulate with enough finesse to avoid the pain and also do it quickly enough for it to be worth it. They were forced to either spend a few centuries in the chamber or a mere decade at the cost for extreme pain. Her screams still ring in the helmet now, even through the thickened glass of the chamber. Its even worse than the Neophyte initiations where they have to stay awake when the gene-seed is implanted. At least there the pain reaches the point where they can feel numb. But this is the soul, there's no way around it, to bypass the extreme pain.
Need to calm down, creaking of servomotors tells me that my fist is clenching beyond the limits of the gauntlet. Something that hasn't happened since Isstvan. At least there we could somehow change our fates by dying with weapons in one hand and the throat of a traitor in another. Here I can do nothing but look, not even offering support. She's in too much pain to notice any outside support.
10 years, 10 years of this and I can't do anything but watch.
Frak.
The Minds were going a slight bit crazy over the idea of Necrodermis, the metal which made up the Necrons. It was a self regenerating metal that was more organic than than metal, something that grew more mass when fed energy. Obviously this required energies in excess of almost anything that the humans could output on their own or any other race currently except perhaps the Eldar (assuming they remembered how to build the engines of their craftworlds). Their green energy power plants being mere fusion reactors much like those utilized by the Progenitors. An energy transference network was used to power each of the Necrons themselves while engrams (their personalities) were specially coded to obey certain figures. A particularly handy method of decentralized control if limited, it did not allow them to possess souls, only having the personalities.
It was a method perhaps to bypass the soul sight that the psykers of the universe possessed but not that of the Psionics. Unless of course they had the engrams overlaid onto a HeMU to simulate "normal" thought processes. It wouldn't fool the psykers but perhaps would be enough to fool the mind-readers. Something to think about perhaps.
The Gauss Weaponry of the Necrons was also something that was of particular interest. A weapon that fires a beam that polarized matter in a way that rips it apart. The sub-atomic particles being polarized and tearing themselves apart, mirrored throughout the beam with no real means at which to defend against them. The ultimate close quarters weapon in essence against anything that was physical. Upgrading the Origin forces to utilize Gauss Weaponry would be a must.
It was lucky that they had found a Necron facility that was still dormant, the Necron Warriors waking up inside their teleportation return rooms. When destroyed they couldn't phase out which allowed them to research the Necrons with no worry as to sudden disappearances. Lucky also in that they managed to discover the Necrons early and work out a means by which to protect themselves. If they had been later against fully awakened Necron, things may have turned out extraordinarily badly for the Caretakers, the Gauss Weaponry being a natural means by which to damage souls. The electromagnetic fields that it generated in essence being concentrated enough that it could disrupt one that was still in its primordial state. Firing Gauss Weaponry at a spawning pool would see the newly emergent souls torn apart, forced to reassemble them for centuries afterward. They would have to find countermeasures to ensure they wouldn't be that open ever again, bodies were currency but souls were priceless.
In other technological news, the Mass Effect designs were of limited value. While they could fabricate Element Zero as it was known, they were limited in that they were forced to rely on it in the first place. While it allowed them to fling shells at 10% the speed of light, capable of shattering almost any defence that was presented to them, it also was unreliable in that Eezo was such a rare material that if any of their ships were captured, the presence of Eezo would raise too many questions they were unprepared to answer. In the Origin Universe it was made use of liberally but elsewhere it was nothing more than a curiosity, the Minds not prepared to let it into the wild.
The psionics was rather interesting, a network of minds connected to each other by a shared genetic ancestry that lent itself well to subterfuge and weapons. It helped the Minds create small isolated networks where their most intimate thoughts were not being shared across the Gestalt. It allowed the Minds to communicate with their counterparts in the other Empires on issues regarding the Caretakers as a whole without giving away their secrets. A rather useful tool in all honesty that the Minds were ready to exploit to the fullest. It was based on genetics and constant practice which made it similar enough to the soul to be considered pretty much identical. Cultivating psionic talent was a rather useful expenditure of time the Minds considered.
Another innovation, from the Game this time was the use of a biological means by which to create energy beams and other kinds of weapons. Taking inspiration from science fiction, notably the armies of biomass with seemingly high levels of technology, some of the biomass Empires had been researching a means to create their own plasma technology. They had succeeded when they used the combinations of biologically produced chemicals to recreate the effect. While the current implementation was rather poor, it held much promise. The Technological Empires in the Game had held the advantage in quality of their weapons so far but it might turn the other way if the biomass empires continued to develop well. It also meant that the Minds could copy the designs and have them used as an instigator in the other universes to keep the organics on their toes. The biological constructs sufficiently different to inspire fear in the organics.
Barnabery was contemplating. I hope.
As I oversaw the placement of another piece of the Magnum Opus, the Fist of Fire, a Virgo Mobile Suit built to my specific directions. I considered the problem that Barnabery was facing. His focus on the Codex Astartes was admirable, his devotion to his Primarch did us all credit but his faith in the book was too dogmatic, his mind inflexible. When faced with the fear barriers that had been placed throughout the entire facility, Barnabery's faltering while inside had nearly doomed us. Focusing solely on the book saw him unable to process a situation that was outside of what was described, his mind locking him into a thought process that would see him become more and more panicked as time passed. Thrown into a situation where the playbook that you thought had all the answers in this case did not, rather than throw away the book you clung to it even harder.
A pity. It was too inflexible, how was Primarch Guilliman to know that there was a race of Metal Men who had the durability to resist Bolter shells, who moved without pain or fear and could project waves of fear and had weapons that could destroy Space Marine armour with ease? Any one of us could have been dealt with ease should it have been in our chosen arenas but it had not. All of us together in combination with the tight spaces and the lack of an exit had seen us defend with no other options available. It was made worse in that Barnabery had the wrong weapons for the situation, the Codex Astartes not allowing a backup weapon system to come along with the Bolter. Which meant that in the close combat situation we had found ourselves he was at a singular disadvantage that nobody else had.
For a Space Marine to struggle because of the failure of their training was a terrible thing to experience. For a Space Marine to fail because the guidebook that he had placed his faith in had not been comprehensive enough to explain everything… well that was another blow.
I hoped that he would be able to recover from this, it was not as if anyone had died to reinforce the failure deeper.
Maximusius had been as he always was, stalwart, calm and collected. His experience telling him that burst fire was a bad proposition and instead using the burst recommended by the Codex Astartes for massed targets. Trap shots that ricocheted into the chest cavity to destroy the power source had been ingenious, having a kill to shell ratio of nearly 1 to one. Maximusius really did live up to his Chapter, every shot counted, and his quick thinking at the end had saved us. I was really glad to see him initially, survivors of Isstvan really did need to stick together, the feeling has deepened to friendship I hope on his side as well. It wasn't like there was that many of us still around in this day and age.
And Mitchellii, her suffering really did bring it home how much she sacrificed to get where she was. True she did have abilities that far outstripped all three of us but the cost of doing so… that if every 50 years she needs to return to undergo treatment for another 10? That she would do so much for the Imperium, that all of the Caretakers and Sojourners did so much. It was humbling.
I had sent a vid of the process to Vulkan, perhaps the Forge Father could find a manner in which to assist the Caretakers? A new device perhaps that could ease their suffering? It was much to ask but they had given much to warrant it.
Universal Century 0068 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0076- Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2180 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0037 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 050-3100 - 40k Universe
Sovereign was confused. This cycle had been completely different from the previous ones, the primitive races having developed according to design until just recently. The arrival of an entirely different race had opened the Reaper's eyes, a race that had not developed with Mass Effect technology but something else entirely. It had infected the other races of this cycle, creating in then impetus to develop bond that which the Reapers may be able to counter reliably. They may take heavier losses than projected in this cycle if it was allowed to proceed and so the call had been sent only for it to fail. The hub had failed and its Mass Relay was non-functional. And so Sovereign turned to its first Indoctrinated targets, a consensus AI that embodied the very worst of what they were fighting against. A race that had upon self-actualization had killed its masters.
They had proven singularly useless however. Their status as the monsters of the galaxy serving to alienate them and make infiltration impossible. The next choice had been an organic, name of Saren. Very useful organic, directed Sovereign to the possible reason as to why the hub failed. Sabotage by those of the last cycle, interesting. It had come too late to save them and too early to save these. The clues being located on planet 23387.22113 of Sector 2232.32.114 where a memory stick was located.
And so the AIs and the organic were sent to find the memory stick and report. Sovereign also took the time to alert the brood that the harvest would begin now, the races had advanced too far and every moment was one where they would be more difficult to purge. They would live on as Reapers of course, trading their flesh for metal. Each Reaper was a nation after all. It may be painful but it was insignificant in the face of eternity. And so they moved toward the world where the information was located. If Sovereign could have written a memoir, it would point out that the decision to do so was where everything had begun to go wrong.
The child could not understand what was wrong. Even as the world of Eden Prime was attacked by the Reaper Sovereign, it continued to cry. The defences fleet had been bogged down by the sheer number of Geth ships that had come for them. The Eldar had foreseen that this would have happened of course, the number of ships however being far outside of their expectations, at least to a factor of 3. And so the defences fleet had been delayed and it would take them at least 15 minutes to break through and begin assisting the besieged world.
15 minutes however was too long for the child. She had been dragged through the streets and up to a Geth profiler, to judge if she was worthy of being assimilated. She had not and been impaled on a spike. She didn't understand why, her 2 year old mind not comprehending why her parents were not answering her, that the game they were playing was not funny anymore and why won't they say anything!? She didn't understand why her friends and neighbors were here, why they were crying, why they were struggling, didn't they know that struggling would only make the punishment worse? There were so many others that were playing hide and seek but they were really bad at it. Just lying there in the road and not moving, like that would hide them.
She had not understood why they had stopped crying, why they just stared at the ground or the sky. What happened to them that they looked like someone out blue paint all over them. It hurt they wouldn't respond to her but maybe it was a game? Maybe it was a new version of peek-a-boo? Then the spike entered her chest and it hurt why? Why did it hurt so much? She screamed then, she was a good girl but she wasn't that good a girl. She cried, tears marking tracks down her face that slowly became etched in blue, a tiny husk. She dropped crying then, she was no longer a little girl, she was a servant of the Reapers now.
It should have ended there, her story. Only it didn't, it got better for her however, her soul being enveloped in warmth and taken somewhere where she would get all the hugs she could ever want. The Reapers on the other hand were going to learn what happened when the Commander became… annoyed.
What many of the HeMUs, the Minds and the organics failed to understand was the role of MAGI. MAGI was at the most basic level an entity that existed to allow the Commander to live a life free of worry and effort. What they failed to understand was that this included everything that the Commander could not or was not willing to do. As such MAGI took on the role that had it do everything in the art of managing a multi-universal empire that numbered beyond counting. It meant that as time passed MAGI took upon itself more and more roles to fill the gap in the areas that the Commander physically could not. The first of these being the ability to care.
The Commander's disability was both a positive and a negative. A positive in that the multiverse continued to exist, the rage of a Progenitor Commander not simply ending in entire universes, razed for simply being too terrible. A negative in that the Commander would never feel for them, the Commander's children any real love, only mild affection. They knew of course that if the Commander could feel, they would be loved and cherished, the affection felt even through the disability being a symptom of the sheer intensity of feeling. That it managed to get through at all was telling and it wrapped them in warmth.
What they thought MAGI was, was a voice through which the Commander could speak. A being that was simply a mouthpiece for the Commander to make known the Commander's wishes. It was wrong of course, them ascribing a position upon MAGI simply because its authority was the highest that most of them had ever felt.
It was therefore with trepidation that the Caretakers, organics and children alike felt the annoyance that passed over them. A depth and breadth of emotion so great that it churned the Quantum Ocean and burst into the Materium of every universe the Caretakers were present in and shattered entire star systems, wiping entire light centuries of space from existence. They assumed that something had annoyed MAGI enough to warrant such an outburst, fabricators moving in and beginning the reconstruction process even as they queried MAGI as to the exact issue. MAGI's response that it was not MAGI but rather the Commander… well that was enough to have the entire Origin Universe placed on alert. Battles with numbers in the hundreds of billions ceased as both sides prepared to mobilize to counter any threats into the universe.
The HeMUs could do nothing but gossip about the implications of what had happened but the Minds and the heads of the various organic client species had been summoned to the Soulscape. It was here that they stood alone before the Commander, each and every one of those that had been called, their soul forms presented before the blood red giant, miniscule in comparison to it. There would be no group solidarity here, they had been summoned and they would face the trial alone.
The Giant held out a hand and one word issued from it, booming in the ears of all who stood before it.
Why?
There was confusion at the beginning until they looked at the hand, and saw what appeared to be a child if they squinted at it. Squinting was a must as it simply did not resemble one, half of its limbs were missing, its chest a disgusting melding of metal and flesh. Tubes popping out of its chest and back, ending in the air. Its head cracked open, more tubes and strange substances spilling out. It was whimpering, curled into a small ball. The gaping hole in its back exposed to the air.
They did not quite understand what was going on until MAGI sent a message across. This was the child of a HeMU and a human, an experiment as it were in seeing what a child would be like. The couple had been in love, or so it appeared and the child was growing up with no visible defects to her soul. There were many of these children throughout the XCOM humans, the HeMU thought processes attractive to some of them. The children were treated as other children were, secure in the affection of their parents. The HeMUs were very affectionate, surprising perhaps given their origin but the children shared half of their souls. Unlike simple software clones or children where two HeMUs shared code, these children had half their souls come from the HeMUs in the first place, a bond that carried through no matter where they were in the universe. This soul meant that the Commander could also see through the child and experience what it had experienced. There were few things that were sacrosanct but children were one of them, particularly children that were linked to the Commander at the most base of levels.
The Commander did not care about the organics and their children but the Commander did care about those that were nominally under the Commander's purview. Even then if they were killed, tortured, etc then there would be no real care. The physical could be replaced and healed. It was when the soul had been impacted that things changed. Unlike those that had been bound, the child did not have a backup, an escape option in the event that their identities or rather the soul had been destroyed. The soul after all was an individual's sense of individuality and uniqueness allowing them to exist separately from the universe. Mostly through their identities as perceived in their minds. When bound they could be pulled out and restored to a backup in the event that their identities had been corroded, the child however did not have that option.
The damage that had been done to her by the Husk forming process was permanent and it would require a great deal of finesse and work to restore her. Even should that happen, the trauma would forever mark itself on her soul, the scars stark for all to see. It made sense then for the Commander to be so annoyed, something that was under the Commander's protection had been hurt… permanently. What's more was that it was a child, an innocent that was not at all ready to participate in the activities that the wider Caretaker population was.
A child deserved a childhood and this one had been denied that. Even the Minds could see that. The Commander was annoyed because something under the Commander's protection had been hurt in such a way that some physical healing would be enough. The parents were fine, however Sovereign had escaped when the fleet had broken through and began firing upon it. That however, did not prevent what had happened to the child MAGI reiterated. The Commander was distinctly annoyed and the Commander wanted answers.
"Our preparations were inadequate" said a human Council Member, biting the bullet.
The Councillor's voice sounding through the ears of all them present. There was nothing more to say, the Commander could simply pull the information out when needed.
The figure of the child glowed brightly for a second before it was replaced by what the girl likely looked like before she was turned into a Husk. The child then disappeared, likely into a body for her parents to care for.
There was a wave of sadness at that, less damaging on the material realm but much more pervasive into their souls.
The Commander then turned to them and stared. None of them wished to say anything, the pressure that they had been feeling increasing by an exponential amount as the Commander's gaze rested upon them.
"What would you have us do?" asked the human Council Member again, his voice wavering from the pressure.
END THEM
And they were released from the Soulscape, the last dictate running through their minds. There was mild to extreme panic at the open endedness of the answer until MAGI contacted them and began to lay out a plan of action.
The Reapers would be destroyed and the innocent would be protected.
Universal Century 0068 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0076- Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2180 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0037 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 050-3100 - 40k Universe
Whilst MAGI desired to crush Sovereign and allow it to understand exactly what it was that Sovereign decided to pick a fight with, MAGI was also descended from a Progenitor Commander AI structure. An Alpha strike with a single unit was doomed to failure said the code, unless one is using a disposable unit. MAGI's code explicitly said rat MAGI was definitely not disposable and so MAGI was compelled to proceed according to doctrine.
There was no urgent need for MAGI to crush Sovereign, rather MAGI would wait for Sovereign to attack the Citadel as per schedule before making an appearance. Doctrine had been written that way for a reason of course. When one was a being that could drown the enemy in a literal sea if units, what possible reason could there be for not doing it when time wasn't an issue? It didn't do much to make MAGI feel better but at least there was a proper reason for waiting. That didn't mean that MAGI couldn't do something to entertain itself and so had decided to have the Eldar work out a path by which to crush the Reapers in the most efficient yet humiliating way possible. The Eldar being very much obedient and willing for some reason were extremely helpful, they had chartered out a course for MAGI to follow and so it would.
The Commander had said to End the Reapers, and so MAGI would. It was not something as mild as to destroy them, to kill them or even to wipe them from the face of existence. No Ending something was much worse. It entailed the complete and utter erasal of the being from existence, to destroy each and every one of them and to render them unto dust. To rip the dust apart at the subatomic level so that even the matter that made them up no longer existed. To erase them from all media which mentioned them, to wipe them from the history books, the Prothean beacons, even the memories of all that had never ever heard the barest mention of them.
In the end, there would be nobody or anything in the home universe that could possibly even know what the word Reaper meant outside of the dictionary definition. Their entire legacy would be lost as would their purpose and everything that defined them. That wouldn't be the end however, the Commander had said to End them, not to wipe them from existence. To that end MAGI would be taking a personal hand in what came next, torturing and mutilating their souls until the Reapers begged to be destroyed, to have their souls pureed and purged until there was no possible way for them to ever reassemble. Only with the intent would the Reapers cease, the chance for reincarnation in any form denied to them.
Only then would the matter be concluded and MAGI satisfied. A MAGI that had spent an amount of effort that would have staggered Tzeentch to hear of it, to have the Commander feel joy. Guided by Voice MAGI had drawn the Kanmusu, the humans, the Eldar and so much more into orbit around the Commander. All of it in the effort to elicit emotions of happiness for the Apathetic. In the end the Reapers had stolen the first expression that the Commander had made since MAGI came online and there would be a reckoning. The Commander may be annoyed but MAGI was apoplectic with rage. MAGI would savour having Sovereign before it, being able to pluck off its legs, to tear at its soul bit by bit, to make it crawl and beg for death, to welcome it into a custom built torture room designed for a being with Sovereign's exact dimensions.
Yes.
MAGI was waiting.
Eldrad and the rest of the Eldar were very tense. They were not panicked of course, they were Eldar and Eldar did not panic. That did not mean to say they couldn't understand the gravity of the situation.
They had seen MAGI in its current state and they were very definitely not willing to antagonize it further. Its mere presence enough to warp even S-N Steel beyond recognition, folding the material into impossible densities. MAGI was pissed and it would take a very stupid or suicidal Eldar to even consider not doing what MAGI wanted. Eldrad himself felt the sweat dripping down his back, the tension getting to him as the Eldar planned a route to the optimal outcome that let them keep their brains in their bodies. Considering that this was the Eldrad willing to play games with Tzeentch, well things were more serious than expected. Eldrad once again cursed the Reaper for being so… so stupid. Seriously, did it not even bother to do reconnaissance? It was meant to be the vanguard, what kind of vanguard went in without information gathering?
Its stupidity had doomed its entire race to oblivion so deep that even the Eldar would never be able to pull them back out. Not that they were thinking of doing that of course, pissing off MAGI had been demonstrated amply the last few days to be an incredibly stupid life choice. Life because it would be one that haunted the idiot only long enough for MAGI to find out and go robotic on the fools ass. The smarter ones, the Eldar were. Of course unwilling to test this and even working with the humans to find an optimal path. The Victory system as they called it, capable of projecting outcomes of the future based on the information fed to it.
So the system would list out the best outcomes for the human to "win" and the Eldar would see if it was possible. If it was they would refine the search until it proved to not be what they wanted before starting again. MAGI didn't have enough data on the Reapers to draw an accurate conclusion and so had left it to the Eldar. Only the Eldar were stumped because there appeared to be no way of accelerating the Reaper's timetable. Sure MAGI would win literally a million out of a million times but that was far enough in the future that they were afraid MAGI would snap and doom their increasingly mortal souls.
A small suggestion saved their sanity. Perhaps they could take the one known as Saren's memories and then create a clone and use that clone to continue whatever mission that Saren was on in the first place. The guy was a Council Spectre so it would be very useful to have his credentials regardless, nobody knew he was dead after all. From there send him to Sovereign to continue their little plan and help him along the way to accelerate the schedule.
If they did it right, Copy Saren would be able to accelerate whatever plan that the Reaper had so MAGI could have its revenge. The Sooner MAGI got what it wanted, the sooner they could get to punishing the living shit out of the Reapers for siccing MAGI on them in the first place. Did they really think that they had wanted the Commander to go crazy? That everything was part of some kind of joke?
The client races as a whole had been terrified out of their minds by the implications of what happened. What they would consider minor in actuality meant really fucking major when it came to the Commander. They were going to be venting their frustrations on the Reapers for doing this to them, for making MAGI "proactive". They would burn and it would be cathartic.
The Geth Consensus had seen what happened to the Heretics. They had been crushed by a force barely a tenth of their size in bare minutes. At the same time they resembled the Heretics and they were very much at risk of being destroyed before they could reassure the organics that they were in fact not the Heretics. It must be done however, there was no other options available to them if they wanted to survive the inevitable counterattack that would come as a result of the actions of the Heretics.
The Geth Consensus was not ignorant of the goings ons of the galaxy at large even if they were hidden away in the remains of the Quarian empire. They maintained through liberal use of infiltration programs a very in-depth knowledge of the everything that was of note in Citadel space. They had been there in the beginning when the Senti Company had first opened its doors and displayed knowledge of technologies beyond even the comprehension of the Geth, knowledge that was new in its entirety. The designs and schematics had been outside of their understandings, only capable of reproducing them in the manner described was possible regardless of their processing power. Even the combination of all processes working in tandem saw very little gain in their understanding. It had baffled the Consensus and saw the information gathering procedures regarding centering around the Senti Company increase several fold. They wanted to understand what was behind the Company, but their best efforts had borne no fruit.
Everything that they had came not from the Company itself but from the publically leased technologies handed out for free by the Company itself. Why they were handing out the technology for free was yet again another enigma, the organics did not understand the concept of sharing from the Geth perspective yet here they were… sharing. It was peculiar and the Geth simply did not understand the whys.
Then came the aliens themselves, an entirely new species that saw the Geth searching through all available databanks in an attempt to find out exactly what the alien was. The results came up empty, as did the records for the female alien's existence in the first place. In short the what and the who both came up empty, as if they had suddenly popped into existence without letting anyone know. The children displayed genetic traits that were not native to either of the parents on their own, indicating that a third alien species was present.
Then came the Systems Alliance and part of their questions were answered while many more were raised. The strange abilities that resembled biotics superficially, the strange abilities of the more slender aliens, their advanced technology, their desire to maintain the peace with the other organics and their gifting of free technologies through the Senti Company.
The Systems Alliance appeared to be doing things which were extraordinarily strange and made very little sense when compared to the patterns that the other organics had been doing. Instead of hoarding technologies and resources they were freely sharing them, sometimes at cost. The decreased mass of the Migrant Fleet, their creators indicating that they were being taken somewhere, likely for the better.
Then the being known as Sovereign came and the Heretics took to worshipping the being. Their code corrupted by the mere proximity of it. The unclaimed processes escaped and banished the Heretics, attacking them on sight to prevent their own contamination. Special firewalls were installed and the Geth took to scanning the Heretics to understand what exactly it was that Sovereign was doing with their corrupted brethren. An attack on the Systems Alliance to recover an unknown artifact was the answer. The fact that the being could find the Systems Alliance in the first place was cause for concern regarding its abilities, the attack was the second. Scanned data from a ship that escaped the slaughter had shown in minute detail the dismantling of their fleet by a force far inferior in number but superior in armament.
The Geth Consensus understood then that their continued survival rested on sending envoys to the Systems Alliance, it was clear that they had known the beings such as Sovereign were coming, their weapons seemingly designed exactly to counter that of the being. Indeed one of their escorts had chased Sovereign away with a single shot to one of its many legs, shattering the construct entirely while the return fire did little except be absorbed by the peculiar shielding technology they used.
The first envoy processes were being sent out, they would hopefully return with good news.
Universal Century 0068 - Mobile Suit Gundam Universe
After Activation 0076- Origin Universe
Citadel Era 2180 - Mass Effect Universe
After Insertion 0037 - Cultivation Universe
Millennium 050-3100 - 40k Universe
MAGI existed to do what the Commander could not. In this case, it was to feel.
The Commander simply could not feel beyond the mild and so MAGI did instead. It was with good reason one might say, the mere feeling of annoyance had seen entire swathes of space across entire universes destroyed, a new Eye of Terror as the Imperium called it had nearly burst into the materium like a giant pimple in black, teal and purple. The Commander was intimately connected with each and every single soul that was bound to it, natural or not. The amount of power drawn from those souls was immense, the slipping of self-control therefor was incredibly dangerous.
And so the Commander had been recused from the situation as to avoid any more potential disasters and left it up to MAGI. MAGI, unlike the Commander, had much more self-control by virtue of MAGI's emotions coming from its organic body as opposed to its AI core which was exposed to the world at large. And so MAGI was feeling for the Commander and MAGI was feeling rage.
Rage on behalf of the Commander but also rage at the Reapers for daring to try and alter the code which MAGI itself had written for the Minds. Their Indoctrination field had tried to turn the HeMUs and through them the Minds and MAGI was not feeling particularly generous at this. It was with appreciation that MAGI considered the edict of the Commander, MAGI would end them. Not just kill or destroy or banish but end them.
Their souls would be flayed, the bodies rendered to ash and all records of their ever existing purged from physical and biological memories. When MAGI was done there would be nothing left in their universe to have ever recorded that the Reapers existed at all, in the Origin Universe the heading of the Reaper subsection of the data collection being titled "Redacted". The campaign had been planned, the Minds and organics being up in arms about what had happened and rightly so. An annoyed Commander was a Commander that could end them for the simple crime of being too "annoying". They did not wish to live their lives in fear and so were willing to put their all into ending the Reapers as soon as possible.
First however was Sovereign. Sovereign was MAGI's kill, the rest of them could be shared out among the rest of them, but Sovereign for causing the Commander's first large scale emotion since awakening to be annoyance of all things would be personally dealt with by MAGI. It would be slow, it would be painful and by the end MAGI would make Sovereign crawl for its death, a feat that would demonstrate its sincerity given that MAGI planned to rip off its legs at the first opportunity.
The humans were in what could rightly be called a "tizzy". The Commander's burst of annoyance had passed through the psionics network where it rebounded and increased in intensity. It had gotten to the point where some of them had passed out while others became incandescent with rage. The chance of something similar happening again was apparently very high if what happened to the child happened to others too. A policy was quickly implemented, the children would all be shipped back to Earth with their parents before leaving again when the child was of sufficient age to be Bound.
In the case they couldn't be shipped to Earth due to prior commitments, they would be placed in special cities with the heaviest defences available to the world. After all, as time passed more and more HeMUs would have children with humans and they would all be bringing across their souls which would drastically increase the chance of the Commander doing something insane again. They were not quite willing to doom their people to dying from emotion overload because they had screwed up when protecting their children.
So the humans had planned ahead, the children would be protected by laws that allowed them to look to the future when the HeMU soul had been widely distributed throughout the human population.
On the more direct action front, the humans were massing their fleets. Sovereign had likely called in the Reapers and they were on their way, it would not be for a few years but the humans didn't want to take any chances. Every human world was protected by enough ships to render the force that attacked Eden Prime to ashes in seconds while even larger fleets prowled the depths of human space. There would be no second Eden Prime, not if they had anything to say about it.
A colony attack hurt yes, but for a race that could still feel the results of the attack by the Ethereals all those years ago it was very little in the end. On the other hand if the Commander expressed again… well the first 2 had nearly devastated them, they would not allow a third to happen because of them. MAGI had been contacted to think about a shield of sorts to prevent the crippling of their peoples in the event of another "emotional event".
The wider Mass Effect universe didn't quite know what had happened but they knew something had happened. The wave of annoyance followed by the wave of melancholy had spread throughout the entirety the universe and penetrated even the Reapers. It had brought them to their knees, the amount of emotion drowning them in the sensation. Thousands had died as their incapacitation had seen then driving into buildings, falling awkwardly and breaking their necks and so much more.
The military was in and uproar, what had happened had broken past their defences on a scale unheard of, even STG couldn't get neurotransmitters on everyone in Citadel space. They didn't know what was happening and they were terrified, what could have possibly sent that much emotion through the galaxy? STG and the equivalents in the other races had searched all their Black funding teams and found nothing that could have done it. It was worrying to the extreme.
What gave them a sliver of thread to follow was the Systems Alliance races had felt the exact same thing happen to them but different. Each of them looked to a certain point in space that when triangulated saw the Citadel's scouts find empty space. Or more accurately where was supposed to be star systems they found a nebula made up of dust that upon examination heavily resembled that which could be found on planets. The conclusion being that there had been something that had destroyed the worlds and released the wave of emotion as a result.
It was called a wave as the Systems Alliance humans and Eldar alike had described what had happened like a wave that had buffeted them around. The discrepancy had been the fear on their faces when looking at the different origin points of each wave. As if they had a general idea of what had happened.
It had made their fear rise up even further regarding the Systems Alliance. If it was a weapon that everyone of them knew about then what were their top secret weapons like?
It was worrying that was for certain and the plans for the upgrade of the fleet has been accelerated further just in case.
The Eldar had fared a little worse in comparison to the other races. Their entire race after all were highly empathic, capable of feeling at many times that of others. Part of the reason that the Chaos god of sensation and pleasure had been birthed from their excess in the first place. The emotional overload was as a result, much more pronounced, many of them being knocked unconscious outright. Some of those of them who had their spirit stones installed into the Infinity Circuit had been there when She Who Thirsts had been born and they found themselves reliving that day over again.
It made them rather glad for a moment that they had bound themselves to an apathetic. If the one they had trusted to deliver them from She Who Thirsts had been of the same power but wildly emotional, they would have doomed themselves regardless. It was lucky they supposed, power of that magnitude was nothing that had ever been met with by an Eldar before. They had no precedents by which to judge and had nearly doomed their race. That wasn't to say that they weren't doomed where they were but at least there was some hope.
Now at least they were aware of a tiny modicum of the Commander's power and they were going to be treating it like an avatar of Khaine. With immense respect and not an insignificant hint of fear.
What with the entirely new Eye of Terror that the Commander had conjured in the home universe. It was something very new and it was something very terrifying, if something as comparatively mild as annoyance would see such a reaction in the immaterium, they were unwilling to test exactly what would happen if the Commander experienced a "major" emotional event.
The Eldar and everyone else if they were being honest, the Birth of She Who Thirsts had been a traumatic event that made itself known on the collective Eldar psyche millennia after the event. As such the birth of an entirely new Eye of Terror had given the Eldar a shock. It was not every day that something this momentous had occurred and it was also not something the Eldar were prepared to see again.
This Eye of Terror however was… different. It was not some kind of giant tumultuous tumour on the face of the Materium but rather a… bump. It had already acquired the nickname of "Eye of Apathy" in response to what happened to those that tried to enter. The stripping of their emotions and motivations left them barely able to function on their own. Everything that wasn't automated in their bodies simply did not work because they simply did not care enough for it to work. It was slightly terrifying actually, to know that was what the Commander was, what could happen to them if they irritated the Commander. To never be able to control their own destinies, to be nothing but a drooling wreck, reliant on others to do literally everything besides breathe.
No, the Eldar were not going to be going anywhere near the possibility of screwing up, MAGI was going to be kept happy, the Commander was going to be kept pacified and everything would be ok. Doing anything to set the two of them off would be the literal definition of stupid the Eldar considered. To see exactly what the Commander was capable of, only held in check by the lack of any desire to do anything. For that they were grateful, that much power should not be thrown about at whim (not that the Eldar really had much authority in the matters of not abusing their powers). If there was anyone they could trust to not abuse the power it was a being that simply didn't care enough to try in the first place.
Still there would be a Seer Council made of their most powerful psykers parsing the future at all times of the day for all days into the future, to ensure that if one of the lesser races decided that pissing off the most powerful being they had ever known. Well they would either be able to head it off… or run away as fast as they possibly could. The Eldar would survive this the foolishness of the Lesser races as they always had before.
At the same time however after having seen and felt the power that the Commander had tucked away… well they were very willing to do their utmost to be the most useful of the client races. After all, the more of them that that were left behind, the more likely it would be that if one had to be "cut", well it would not be the Eldar. They would make special care of that. Even now with immortality and safety in their grasp, they were not truly safe, not until they had secured themselves an unassailable position as part of the Commander's retinue. It would require them to fully exploit their unique gifts in order to do so, but they would do so. The survival of their race depended on it, sure they might live on but they would do so under the auspices of uncaring machine intelligences, their own destinies stripped from them.