It was loud, and cold, and dark. He could remember flashes of red light, pain, blades in the dark, scalpels, screaming. Was it his voice? He stumbled through the rockcrete alley backways of the looming, labyrinthine hive city. Acidic rain poured down around him. It burned and marred his naked skin and the soles of his bare feet where it pooled on the cobbles, it's wafting scent like a mixture of exhaust and paint-thinner. His head throbbed in agonizing synchronicity with his heartbeat. What had he been doing? Running? Where was he going? Trying to remember? What was it he was trying to remember?

He heard laughter up ahead. He'd been too lost in his thoughts, distracted. They were too close now, he didn't have time to hide. He steadied himself against the wall. Pressing a hand to his aching head, he watched as they passed the mouth of the alley-alcove. There must have been five of them. Two tall ones, both male, one spindly thin, the other fat and dense. Following them came two females and a male, their heights ranging around the average. They were all clad in dark, ragged garb, accented with matching brightly colored highlights. The thin one's head swiveled, and he stopped in his tracks as the man spotted him.

"Look at' 'is gaff!" The nasally words came ringing down the alley way, "E's out 'ere buck naked! Mus' be on one hell'ova bender er' mate!"

He could make out the silhouette of the tall man pointing at him. "Shit." He thought.

"why's 'e all shiny like tha'?" Came a female voice, "E' all wet or somethin?"

"Be'er hope not, e'll be nothin' but burns come mornin'." Replied the gruff voice of one of the males, probably the burly were all turned to him now, staring. He had a bad feeling.

The thin one spoke again, "Nah, I bet 'e's some upspire shite. Jus' look at 'em! 'S prolly some new skin-ink fad. I'll bet th' li'le bastard came down 'ere t' par'e 'nd had a lil' too much t' drink." His tone was all acid and loathing. "'Ere's another fer ya!" The man yelled, the cold mirth of his conniving voice underscored by the strain of physical effort.

He watched the willowy man's silhouette shift, and heard the low whistle of something flying through the air. In an instinctive gesture his hand flashed up blindly to shield himself from the oncoming projectile. He felt his fingers snap closed around the thin cold shaft of the improvised weapon not a second later. It was the neck of a glass bottle.

"D'you see tha'? He fookin' caught 'at!" came another drunken, sing-songy female voice.

"Lucky catch!" The thin one spat in a snide dismissal.

"More like a shite throw!" Chided his large, gruff companion.

"Oh yeh? Watch this." The slender one retorted. The gaunt, tall figure began advancing aggressively down the alleyway. There was a glint of metal catching in the dim light as something slid from his sleeve. A knife, probably.

"Like I'd let som' uphive cunt make a fool a' me an' get away with 'at" the gangly man roared as he swung the blade drunkenly in a wide arc. The man slipped in a greasy puddle of back-alley grime, and his wide swing went wider. Too wide. He reached out, clamping an empty hand around the twig-like wrist of the man's knife-hand, before bringing the glass bottle down hard on the man's head. Pre-empting his assailant's fall, he charged forward, slamming the man's upper chest with his attacking forearm, and pulling him into a swivel with the hand he'd clasped around the man's wrist.

before the gaunt drunkard could react, he'd been pinned against a filth-ridden wall, with the broken body of his own bottle hovering a hair's breadth from his pencil-thin neck. The man's face went white and his exaggerated adam's apple visibly bobbed in a hoarse swallow. His eyes were wide and dark, full of fear and sudden realization.

"'E's no rich brat! E's a fuhkin' twist! A mutant! E's one of them deviant locust freaks from th' guts of the underhive!" The man cried, his voice cracking with fear.

He got a good look at his rail-thin hostage. Not but bone and scant wiry muscle to him. His baggy-yet-too-short black-leather was coat patch-worked with ceramite armored plates and what appeared to be gang-insignia. His hair was shaved into some wildly-unkempt-do dyed in the same colors as the marks on his clothes. His breath stank of rot and alcohol. Blood trickled from a deep gash where the bottle had shattered on his forehead.

There came the overlapping sound of rustling clothes, punctuated by the clacking and thrumming of various machines behind the two of them.

"Easy does it lad," rang the gruff voice from the mouth of the alley, "'Urt him 'an we'll fill ya' full o' holes fas'er n' ya c'n spit."

He didn't dare take his eyes off his hostage, but he guessed the group of them had drawn firearms and sighted him.

"Jus' shoot the bloody bastard already ya' fuggin' mongs!" His hostage wailed.

"They can't. They're just as liable t' hit you, and if they get any closer I'll kill y' anyway." He spoke finally. His voice carried in a low, mellifluous tone, that seemed to catch all of them off guard.

"Look lad, our friend 'ere got a bit too big fer his britches an' did wrong by ye. Jus' tell us what ya' be want'n in recompense and we can all be on our way, none th' worse fer wear." The stout man said.

He looked his hostage up and down again. "I want his britches."

"what?" Came the quizzical reply.

He turned his head to face the figures at the mouth of the alley. "I want his clothes, and I want to get out of this rain. I'm good in a fight, better than this one anyway. Let me come with you. You've got an outfit, and I can be of use." A chorus of barking laughter erupted from the figures at the mouth of an alley. It died down, and there was a sinking moment of realization that his request had been serious. He heard the deep baritone of the leader call out in response.

"Y' got some balls on ya' kid. Fine, We'll give' ya a bunk, given ya c'n outfight th' bastard currently sleepin' in at'."

"Like hell 'e can!" shrieked the thin man pinned to the wall. Writhing, he twisted the wrist of his knife-hand, forced it free, and slashed wildly across the bare chest of his naked attacker. The naked man recoiled from the pain of the attack, bleeding freely from the freshly delivered shallow gash that stretched diagonally across his sternum. The acrid rainwater trailed into the open wound, and the sharp, stabbing pain ignited into a terrible burning sensation. He watched the drunkard spin the knife in a hand, reversing the grip, before attempting to bring it down on him. But the adrenaline was pumping through him now, the pain of his headache had subsided, though his pulse still sang in his ears.

The thin man was moving too slowly. He snapped his free hand upward again, catching the descending forearm. Gaunt as the knife-wielder was, he couldn't muster the strength to forcefully continue with his down-stroke. Drunk and likely concussed, he didn't know if the thin man even registered his mimicry of that grip-reversal with the broken bottle. The man did however, register the jagged glass being slammed upward into his exposed throat. The improvised weapon shredded his neck laterally. Gore and viscera gouted from the tattered fissure of meat that used to be the man's windpipe. The ganger's eyes went wide, and then seemed to lose focus. He attempted to say something, or scream. It didn't matter. All that came out was a wet and ragged gurgle as his body slumped to the floor.

The naked man tensed, expecting a hail of gunfire from the mouth of the alley in response to the death of his assailant. Instead, all that came was the deep baritone of their muscled leader. "Well ya' did it now lad, 'is britches 'll be nae good to ye soaked in gutter-filth laek 'at."

"So y' gonna shoot me, or what?" he replied.

"Nae, far as I'm concerned, 'e started a fight 'e could nae win, petty as 'e was." There was a moment's pause, before the gruff man continued. "Pride's a noose lad, ne'er f'rget tha."

He nodded, reaching down to slip the clothes from the corpse before it leaked any more blood on them. They were still a bit baggy, but fit better than they had on their previous owner.

"So what'll we call ya'?" inquired the drunken, sultry voice of one of the women of the group.

"I think I was called Nacre." He looked down at the nearly-naked corpse of the spindly man, which now sat in a congealing puddle of acidic sludge and it's own blood. A handful of chitinous, black, winged insects had begun buzzing around the fresh cadaver. He considered for a moment what the man had called him. "Locus Nacre." He said.

Their ramshackle abode had been some low-hive tenement building now serving as little more than a foundation for the hive proper. They'd cleared out the rockcrete walls isolating many of the cramped abandoned habs on the top floor, creating a pseudo-penthouse of sorts. It was spacious, if crude. Much of the interior consisted of slapshod sheet metal, ratty furniture, siphoned water pipes and power-lines, and the warm, dim yellow-orange glow of reels and reels of Candlemas lumin-globe cordage strung up haphazardly to serve as interior lighting. The group's blackened leather gang vestments, emblazened with the emblem and title of the Skag Runners, hung near an exterior wall over a rusty drainage grate, drip-drying from the remnants of the night's acidic rainfall. All except for Locus, who still wore his hard-won attire. The group was a minor facilitator crew or vassal-gang to the hives more powerful and notable players, their specialization being courier jobs. Oddly enough he'd found their dwelling cozy. Very 'lived in', if a bit of a major fire hazard.

"Yer eyes 're funny, y'know tha'?" Val said as she sat cross legged on the foot of his ratty mattress cot, her verdant green irises peering up at him from under a bedraggled mess of fiery locks. The shorter of the two women, Valerie, or 'Val', he'd learned her name was, had taken to studying him as the other woman of the group went to gather supplies to dress the jagged wound on his torso.

Locus returned her gaze. She was smaller, but not stunted. Her height was likely due to poor nutrition, though the toned physique she sported was evidence enough that her diet had likely been remedied by the resources afforded to a life in the gangs. She wore little more than a dirty tank top and baggy-black-brown pants with one too many pockets.

He didn't reply, so she continued, "'Slit pupils 're a common enough aug-job down 'ere, but it's th' color tha' really sticks out. Y'd think they look grey at first, but th' color shifts like oil-slick depending on how y' look at em." Her head craned left and right as she spoke, examining the effect her perspective had on his features. "At's the same with yer' hair an' a bit with yer skin too. Ye look just like some big sump-pearl spat right outta one o' them drainage filter feeders." There was a smugness to her voice, like she'd finally put together the pieces of his puzzling features and lent voice to something that'd been on the tip of her tongue.

"Y'callin' me pretty?" he replied incredulously, teasing her in response to the uncomfortable feeling that being examined gave him. He felt like some kind of bug under a magnifying ocular, it got under his skin. She studied him again, her face returning to that pensive state, before her eyebrows shot up nonchalantly, she yawned, and gave a long, languid stretch.

"Not th' good kind o' pretty."

"What's 'at mean?"

"Th' human kind o' pretty. Y'look more than foreign. Y'could pass for an exotic up-hive bio-aug addict, 'r some sweet-gene twist dependin' on how we dress y' up, but you'll never be normal."

She clucked her tongue. "Always gonna stick out, an' a nail tha' sticks out gets hammered down sooner 'er later."

"Well, thanks for lettin' me know, I guess." He replied in a dismissively glum tone, tearing his gaze away in an attempt to distract himself from the depressing thought with anything else.

"'S kinda romantic though," she said, eyeing him with a wry grin as her tone became soft and intimate, "reminds me of those old sayin's about good dyin' young and brightest flames burnin' the quickest n' all tha'…"

Val leaned in close to him, her mischievous grin never leaving her face. She was so close Locus could feel the warmth radiating off her, his nose caught the remnant ghosts of the spirits she'd been drinking, still haunting her every exhalation.

The ramshackle door to his room slapped open roughly, clattering against the sheet-metal wall of his room and revealing the pale lithe figure of Styx, the only other woman he'd met in the gang. Styx was a bit taller than Locus, and not at well-muscled as Val, though she seemed to wear a similar outfit. Her hair was dyed a vibrant blue, shaved on the sides of her head and brushed into a semi-fo-hawk, her bangs formed a messy curtain just over her brows, barring the two overgrown strands which hung down and framed her face on either side. She had wrapped both arms around a large, rusted box, it's lid dented enough to reveal the rudimentary gauze and other medicae supplies contained within.

"AY! AY! AY! None of that!" she near-shouted at the little redhead in front of Locus. Confused, he looked down at Val. She sneered, jammed her tongue out at her taller compatriot, and haughtily slipped by her and out the crude doorway as Styx entered the room. The taller woman eyed her as she left, before explaining.

"Keep an eye on 'at one pretty boy, she'll get 'er hooks in ya n' bleed ya dry, twist 'r not." Styx said to him as she hauled the med-kit over to his bed.

"Ain't got nothin' t' bleed. Nothin' to my name 'cept the clothes on my back."

"Ya got all'a Bone's gear, and he were a packrat if ever I saw one, I'll show ya' to yer spoils la'er though." Styx sat down on the old mattress, it's ancient springs protesting under the combined weight of the woman and the box she carried. "C'mon, off with th' jacket, gotta see to that gash 'e gave ya, and treat those burns y'got runnin' round naked in th' rain. Why were ya doin' that anyway?"

"Don' know, must'a got my bell rung pretty good with how much my head hurt." Locus said, his shrug just as much to remove the jacket as to lend credence to his statement. "I don't really remember anything before that alley." He waited for her to respond, before realizing she was staring at him. Specifically, she was looking over his exposed skin with an unnerved expression.

He looked down at himself, confused. "'s there a problem?"

"y'got no burns." She said, her voice quavering with alarm.

He glanced at his arms and chest. The reddened welts and acid burns that speckled his form in the alley were gone. It wasn't as if the irritation, swelling, or discoloration left by the rain had receded, there were no marks at all, as if it never happened. His gaze flicked down to his chest. The long, jagged wound left there had formed a scarlet scab, thick and rough, It looked like a ragged sash slung across his chest, and he noticed something off about it.

"Gimme one of those rags, and that anti-bac bottle."

Styx dug around in the box and handed them to him wordlessly. He didn't like what he saw in her eyes. It was worse than Val's curiosity. There was a fear in it. She looked at Locus like a shy child might look at a masked stranger.

He dabbed the cloth with the contents of the plastic bottle, tainting the air with the dry nose-curling scent of pure alcohol, and wiped the scar with it. He expected a shooting pain that would see him hissing through clenched teeth at the very least. Instead, the scab came off like dried-blood being rubbed off skin, revealing a long scar under it, puckered and pink. Saints tears, it had already healed over!

"Freaky." Styx said, returning to a nonchalant tone as she restowed the supplies in the med-box. "Knew ya' were some kinda mutie, but it's weird seein' it up close." That done, she waggled a finger at him as she spoke again. "Morbid's gonna love t' pick you apart."

"Morbid?"

"Don't know 'is real designation, or can't pronounce it," Styx said with a smirk, "I don't exactly speak cogitator. 'E's one of the Magos Biologis workin' down here in th' low-hives. I guess 'e didn't get along too well with th' cog-boy brotherhood, they call 'im a maltek or som'thin' like tha'. Anyway, e's th' one we go to for bioaugmetics, shit like Beron's vat-muscle implants. He'll do jus' about anythin' t' ya for th' right price."

"Val said somethin' earlier about those kinda augmetics bein' common down here."

"Not too common, but most'a th' hive cities on Praxis tend t' be a hot spot for biologi and gentors of th' machine cult caus'a th' cancer rates and high treatment payouts from upper spire folk. It trickles down here too. Th' black sheep, quack practitioners, and th' fringe specialists usually end up takin' refuge in th' underhive, doin' work for whoever'll pay jus' t' fund their own sordid lil' experiments."

Styx moved to get up before a frown sprouted across her features, and she sat back down. "Hold on, y' don't remember anythin'? Like, anythin' at all before that alleyway?"

Locus shook his head. "Fragments, but nothing solid enough t' make sense of."

She gave him a hard look. "So like, what do y'know? Th' world yer on? Th' name of this hive? Anything? How'd y' even know yer name?"

Locus shrugged again. "I've put together that this world is called Praxis, but not much else. I don' know what I know until I find myself stumbling on it. Like earlier, I looked at Val and figured her height was probably due t' poor childhood nutrition. I don' recall how I would know that would cause it, and I didn' realize that I knew until the thought occurred to me. It was the same with my name. It's disorienting, like I'm blindfolded and have to trip over the things in my own head to figure out what I know and what I don't.

Styx whistled before smiling to herself as a thought donned in her eyes. " Wrong by th' way."

Locus gave her a quizical glance.

"About Val. It isn't missin' meals, she's a Lather."

"What's a Lather?"

Styx sighed. "Originally they were some kind of gene-augmented people from th' lathe worlds. Mechanicus rolled out these treatments t' make 'em more resilient to th' burning toxic soup their manufactorums turned th' worlds into. A few decades back th' Praxian nobility thought it might be a profitable import, and hired on some of those red-robed gear-fuckers to roll out the same treatments here. Needless to say between the ministorum pitching a fit and the workers realizing they were getting shafted in favor of gene-augmented folk who were just better built for their jobs, th' process didn't exactly stick around too long. A few worker riots an' arbites crack-downs la'er, an' it all came to a screeching halt. There's still a handful of th' stumpy shits eekin' out a life in th' hives though. Val bein' a perfect example."

"Sounds rough."

Styx shrugged apathetically. "We all got it rough down here. Sure she might catch some shite, but she won't be dyin'a all th' shite they breathe in to spew it at 'er. Her parents were th' lucky ones, didn't end up as some fucked up false-men a coggie with too many screws loose. Hell, you're lucky ya didn't bump int' one of 'em wandering through that alley like ya were."

She saw the question in Locus's eyes before he even asked it and responded pre-emptively, the was exasperation plain in her tone. "Throne, you're like a toddler th' way ya just keep askin' questions. I know y' can't help it, but I'm too tipsy t' spend all night answerin' em."

"Alright alright, I'll stop pickin' your brain."

"It's fine, just… We'll fill in the blanks tomorrow."

Styx had been right. Bones, the thin man he'd killed in the alleyway, had indeed been a pack-rat. Over a lunch consisting of some grease drenched and deceptively unappealing yet utterly delicious street food, Styx had begun unpacking a duffel retrieved from the man's locker onto their table. Around said table a smattering of the Skag Runners had gathered, jostling for position, seemingly just as curious about the contents of the dead man's treasure trove. Other gangers were still ambling 'round the open social space of their abode, playing cards, smoking, polishing their ramshackle weaponry, or fiddling with the finicky black-and-white pict-caster which sat in a corner of the room, buzzing in and out of some cheesy soap-opera holo series.

Locus found he couldn't help eyeing Val. He worried that she might try to pocket something as Styx had warned.

Wiping her fingers free of gutter food grease-grime on a vibrantly colored bandana, Styx began drawing the zipper apart. "lets get this over with then." She pried the ratty duffel's maw wide.

Inside the bag sat a disheveled pile of clothes; a collection of odd knives, half of them mono'ed; a number of wallets belonging to other hivers; a sizable collection of pornographic holotapes; three packs of lho sticks; a filth-mottled obscura pipe; four stubbers of various make, model, and quality; a pair of black leather underarm holsters; and a small rectangular wooden box wrought with silvery filigree.

There was a heartbeat's pause before the crowd began shouting at Locus, drowning him in cacophonous claims of Bone's lingering debts and unfulfilled promises as well as other hasty and ill-thought-out attempts and methods to bargain for some of his ill gotten gains. It was Beron's thundering shout which drowned them all out in a call for quiet. Oberon or "Beron" had been the name the vat-musclebound hulking leader of the gang Locus had spoken with in the alley. Locus had since learned that, while he wasn't the leader of the gang, he was one of the most wizened of them and thus his word carried significant weight in the outfit. Beron's scarred, slab-like frame stood, or leaned rather, against the brickwork a yard or so away from the table, a spindly trail of smoke rising from the fatty brown lho blunt that hung from between his lips. He plucked it out of his mouth and blew an acrid cloud bank towards them, and spoke again.

"It's th' lad's loot. 'e earned it. If ye be wantin' t' bargain fer it, do it one at a time."

He smiled then.

"If ye' be wantin' to fight him fer it, ye' better be willin' t' pay the same price ar' boy Bone did. He took tha' bid an' lost when ar' lad 'ere were buck naked, alone an' empty 'anded, an' 'e ain't either o' those no more."

"Tune into the charnel pit's feeds on the caster if it's bloodsports you want Oberon. A contract's come in, and your rabble needs bodies to take it on." The words came from within the crowd, more of a sultry croak than anything else. It was a woman's voice, though the accent was anything but low-hive. Oberon's smile fell away as he made out the source of the words. The crowd parted for an elderly woman, her slender frame clothed in the heavy robe-like attire of praxis wealth, punctuated by the jeweled finery around her fingers and neck. Locus's eyes settled on her face. Thick layers of egg-white face paint, a rolling powdered whig, and a thin, reedy lho holder balanced between the two fingers of a liver-spotted hand which hovered near her lips. She looked like a theatrical diva, terribly out-of-place in the ratty surroundings of the gang's domicile.

The crew knew her as "The Madam", according what Styx had told him earlier that morning. She was, in-effect, the gang's landlord. A merchant-mogul of the upper-mid hives who made her thrones in the real-estate market of one of Praxis's four major hive cities. On occasion, she served as a liaison between the gang and the high society the upper spires, for a hefty commission, of course.

"Details, woman." Oberon said bluntly.

She eyed him disdainfully before continuing. "It's a dead drop, underhive, Aliph prefect, ruins of the Kasogine factoriums. The pick-up spot will be a wall safe in the foreman's office. Distribution and holdings warehouse A-2. I've got the combination sequence ready for transfer to your dataslate."

Oberon eyed her for a moment, taking another puff of his cigar. "Aliph, 'at's Pale Throng territory. Th' twists won't take kindly t' us fafin' about down 'ere." He turned to a few of the loiterers still lounging on ratty couches half-heartedly eyeing a nearby pictcaster feed and pointed at them with a meaty finger. "Sevra, Thumper, ye'll be takin' 'at. Take th' runt with ye, 'e needs t' be blooded, an' mebe the muties 'll give ye an easier time if'n ye' got one of 'em sweet-gene twists with ye'.

A grin split the features of the one-eyed, heavily scarred woman lounging on the couch, she locked gazes with her couchmate, before the pair eyed Locus. He shivered.

Oberon turned back to the diva. "'at's next?"

The madam continued. "It's headed to Tytregrus, which means you'll need to secure cross-continental transport. The Administratum of Hive Tytregrus designate their territories by alphabetical formals rather than numerics, precincts, provinces, or prefectures. You'll be headed to Formal S, lower end of the mid hive. The drop point is a pawn shop known as Terston's."

"Jus' Terston's?"

"The business's most distinguishing feature is damage to the rest of it's signage caused by an explosion, likely due to gang-based conflict or violence in the area."

Oberon nodded sagely at that. "We'll need a bribe fer th' Red Thrum, train-hopping ain't gonna be cheap."

"The client has agreed to pay for 'shipping costs'. I'll leave the rest to you. Payment will be transferred into your accounts within 72-96 hours of the drop." The old woman said. Nodding curtly, her visage flickered, and then disappeared, revealing a projector servo-skull that had been hovering just behind the projection. There was a mechanical whine as the focal mechanisms of it's socket-lenses shifted. It let out a burst of machine code, which elicited a responding chime from something in Oberon's hip pocket, and then the messenger-machine departed from the room.

Oberon waved Styx and Val over to him, presumably to discuss their part to play in the upcoming job. Locus began sorting the contents of Bone's possessions back into the duffel bag, when a hand clamped onto his shoulder.

"So, about those holotapes…"

Lexicon

(Sourced from the various Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader RPG books, and in-setting novels.)

Ceremite: A substance commonly used in armor plating.

Cogitator: 40k terminology for computer.

Dataslate: A form of electronic tablet/pda device

Lho stick: 40k terminology for cigarettes, cigars, and other forms of what would equate to tobacco products.

The Pale Throng: A criminal organisation consisting primarily of mutants.

Twist: Slang terminology for mutant, originally a slur, now commonly worn & used by mutants to refer to themselves.

Sweet-Gene: A slang term for a mutant with characteristics that are physically attractive, or have attractive attributes despite their mutations.

Maltek: A label or rank foisted on the more radical/isolationist members of the Mechanicus who have yet to be deemed heretical.

Pict-Feed: 40k terminology for a picture feed or video recording.

Genetors: Members of the Mechanicus who specialize in studying improving biological matter and it's functions, rather than the more commonly studied mechanical elements of their faith.

Holo: A term used to describe a lot of two-to-three dimensional media, when refered to in the form of casters or tapes, it's usually 2D.

Magos Biologi: Refers to a scholarly rank of great significance, Biologi being the term for biological field specialization. Needn't necessarily be associated with the Mechanicus.

Augmetic: 40k terminology for a cybernetic, vat-grown, genetically engineered/tailored implant or mechanical replacement prosthetic.

Thrones: A commonly used term for imperial currencies.

False-man: A catch-all term for various attempts to genetically engineer a superior baseline for humanity. Usually these involve a more heretical methodology, like using alien DNA etc.

Lather: a genetically engineered sub-variety of humanoids hailing the Lathe worlds, known for being hearty and stout, if short (lowkey GW likes dwarves and this was one of their attempts to bring squats back).

Low/High Gothic: The common and high class languages of the imperium, think English and Latin.

Stubber: 40k terminology for most varieties of traditional ballistic firearms.

Obscura: a drug similar to crack cocaine in it's method of being imbibed, and it's addictive qualities.

Mono: A weapon with a mono-molecular cutting edge designed to cut through most armor with ease.

Servo-skull: Cybernetically augmented skulls capable of flight, and performing a limited series of functions basic functions depending on their intended design or model.

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for giving this a read, it's my second shot at expanding upon and exploring some interesting ideas within the setting of 40k. I plan for things to pick up with this soon action-wise. If you find the accents and slang terms annoying, as the series shifts out of the low-hives a lot of the accents and pronunciation will clear up.

I also want to apologize to any of my readers who may have been disappointed with me abandoning my prior story "adrift on the rim". I did a lot of digging, and I mean a lot, into both rogue trader and tau lore, their language, their stories etc. What I found with the tau was a terrible fucking mess by comparison to most other 40k lore. It was so bad I would have had to actively to depart from canon in order to fix not just the structure and lore enclaves, but the tau biology on a fundimental level. It was bad to the point of being non-sensical and got worse the deeper in you dug. It really demoralized me, as I like the aesthetics and basic ideas of the enclaves, but I dislike having to actively go against the canon of the settings I want to write in. I wrote somewhere around a 3000-5000 word rant/apology I was gonna update the story with if I did decide to continue despite my issues with the tau, but I decided against posting it.

Instead I began toying around with other ideas in less explored or explained areas of the setting, which were less likely to offend my sensibilities/run into problems with badly written canon. This is one of those ideas. I've got another about an inquisitorial acolyte who ends up working with that one abhuman race of shark-people that have basically no lore, but I'd like to focus on one thing at a time.