- Esau
The journey to the lab was preceded by a detour where Esau and his father put Kov to sleep. It wouldn't do for him to sleep in the workshop after all. Esau lifted him up, supporting his neck with one of his hands and they walked to the bunkroom where Esau gently deposited Kov into one of the beds they had. They were walking to the laboratories when his father spoke.
"He really looks up to you, you know?"
"He is annoying." Esau answered honestly. "He lacks basic motor skills, yet he insists on assisting me in the workshop."
"He is a child, Esau. All children lack motor skills, especially at his age."
I am a child, Esau wanted to say, but he knew that it was different. No other child possessed his talents. From what he had seen, very few adults possessed even a fraction of his talents. Perhaps that was why he had agreed for his father to take a scan of his DNA. It was part curiosity at what he was and part a need for someone he could truly match wits against. His father was adequately intelligent, now that the Forge had enhanced his intellect, but he was still too slow.
Even a moderate increase in processing speed would be welcome.
"Yes, Esau. I realize that you're one too." Esau's face had evidently betrayed him. "But you're different. Come now, there should be some quality he possesses that you can admire?"
Esau couldn't help but scoff.
"I heard that. There's no need for that kind of attitude. Think, Esau. There has to be something." His father said, stern. A part of him wanted to protest. His father was wrong to insist upon him and Kov's friendship, but then another part of him squirmed at the idea of his father being disappointed. The idea of his father being disappointed by him was unfathomable.
So Esau thought about Kov. The boy was malnourished and dehydrated, and yet persistently tried to assist him. He often failed dismally, but he tried. That had to count for something, right?
He thought about himself in the same position. Would he have the same persistence under the same conditions? It was likely that he would. Esau had yet to meet a challenge he could not match.
Persistence, then. Through persistence Kov had learned how Esau constructed his drones. He learned when Esau needed a certain tool and when he did not, despite not being told or taught directly. He still jittered and hesitated, but in time that hesitation would turn to confidence as his health improved and his motions became memory.
"He…is persistent. This annoys me, but I can respect it." Esau said. His father motioned for him to go on.
"He often drops my tools, or gets so excited that he hinders me but through sheer persistence he has learnt how some of my drones have been built." Esau could almost feel his father's surprise. Before his father had his intelligence enhanced, he had trouble following Esau's actions when he made drones, yet Kov had somehow followed his process.
"Really?"
"Yes. He likely cannot build them, but he knows how they are built." His father scratched his chin.
"That's…interesting. I'm glad that you're willing to at least try to find common ground with him. Doing more of that in future will do nothing but help you." Esau preened at the praise. Esau was many things, but he was not a disappointment.
"Thank you, Father."
They had just reached the entrance to the labs when his father spoke again.
"How good would you say Kov's memory is?" he said. Esau thought through his interactions with the boy.
"I would say that his memory is perfect." Esau said, surprised despite himself. How had he not noticed sooner?
"I see. It looks like Kov is an autodidact, like you. At the very least, it looks like he either has a photographic or eidetic memory. He's not nearly as intelligent as you and doesn't possess your physical gifts but he seems to have more intelligence than the baseline human being." His father said. Esau was stunned. He should have noticed. If he had, he would have invested in teaching Kov directly. If Kov was even a fraction as talented as he was, he would have learnt the process of assembly, effectively increasing production time.
That he hadn't noticed despite the signs being right in front of him told him that he wasn't paying attention. He would be better in future.
"In hindsight, it makes sense." His father continued. "The elves had a lot of medical equipment on their ship. They seemed to have specifically been collecting humans with extraordinary features or abilities, likely for experiments or torture. Likely both."
"Drukhari." Esau said, automatically. "The species are known as the Drukhari. It means 'Dark Ones'."
"I see." His father said, turning on the lights in the lab.
The lab was composed of a number of seats facing a workbench where a computer was coming to life. Spaced out though the room, were a series of cabinets that would later be filled with chemical reagents, samples and equipment. Now most of them were empty. The computer was attached to a molecular analysis machine which in itself took up a quarter of the room, its various scanners showing the progress of the various scans that were currently underway.
Esau had discovered, during his analysis of the data generated, that for some reason, all molecular analysis machines shared computational power and that each analysis was conducted in series, not in parallel. This meant that unless projects were prioritised, the MAM would analyse things in the order in which items were fed into the machine. This was displeasing, it was increasingly inefficient.
While Esau could work with the hardware of the machines, altering the software of the machine proved to be more of a problem. The primers on the omni-tool didn't cover programming so everything he knew about it was through personal experience and experimentation. He could look at the code that the MAM was running but experimenting on the system while it was actively scanning was a bad idea. The machines would run as they did, for now. They both sat down at the bench in front of the MAM. His father, looking at the computer, while Esau hooked up to the MAM through the use of his omni-tool.
Despite the inefficiency of the MAMs methods, Esau could barely argue with the results. They now had access to schematics as drawn up by the MAM of a variety of equipment, belonging to both the Orks and the Drukkhari. Occasionally, the MAM would encounter components it had difficulty understanding. Here, the schematics would be highlighted and stored for later analysis.
This tended to happen more for the Orks than it did the Drukkhari as Ork technology seemed to have the startling tendency to not make any logical sense. There were areas of open space stuffed with machinery that was not plugged into anything in particular that somehow still worked, as the dead Drukkhari could attest to. Not all their technology was built this way, but a good sixty percent of it was. The mystery of how these eclectic parts would work together was something that stumped both Esau and his father.
That would be something that would need some looking at later.
"Esau, could you go into the scanner please?" His father said, having reviewed the changes in the objects analysed by the MAM. Esau stood in one of the scan areas, a ceramic and glass tube surrounded by a metal ring that would travel up and down, scanning an object.
The machine activated, beginning its scan. The metal ring was shooting a variety of particles at him and recording the results of how the particles interacted with his body as they either bounced off or passed through him. This information would then be processed and then iterated on until a full picture is generated by the MAM.
Esau stood still for thirty minutes, by his count, while the MAM worked. After it was done, he exited the machine and found his father with his head in his hands. Had the machine not worked? He stood there, unsure of how to comfort his father before he spoke.
"Son? Come take a look at this." He said, pointing to a screen in front of him.
Esau walked over to the screen and saw his physiology laid out in front of him.
He had a whole series of organs that didn't exist in normal human physiology, including a second heart, a third lung, an additional kidney and a variety of glands and organs of indeterminable use. By his count, he had twenty additions in total. If he had a more solid foundation of biological knowledge besides first aid, he would have been able to pinpoint the functions of the organs. As of now, however, he could only guess. There were multiple glands that controlled muscle development and a series of membranes that seemed to protect him against physical trauma.
The machine had worked. Then what caused this change in his father's mood?
"I underestimated the task ahead of me." His father said, as if answering his question. "There are a lot of systems in your body, working together, with complex interplays between organs, nerves and glands."
He hit a few keys on the keyboard bringing up a scan of his own body with an accompanying visual of his DNA versus Esau's.
"Your genetic code is human. A double stranded helix with the ordinary nucleotides. Except," He put his index finger up. "Your genetic code is obviously altered, somehow. Despite being one hundred percent human, elements of your DNA seem to change when I try to look at them. They twist and turn and move. It feels like your DNA actively doesn't want to be deciphered."
He stood up.
"That's not all. There seems to be a clearly supernatural element to you. I would have doubts about that but-"
"We already encountered the supernatural." Esau finished for him.
"Yeah." His father agreed. "Even with all these modifications, you should not be as strong as you are or as smart as you are. Your grey matter shouldn't be able to accommodate the speed at which I saw your neurons fire and your muscles are too small to exert the power that you so clearly can." He said before he exhaled, deflating visibly.
"I just don't know where to begin or how I should begin." He said as he sat down. Esau sat down as well, his mood turning sour. He was disappointed. His father had not promised him that he would succeed, there was no guarantee he would; but giving up when they were the closest they ever were, when he was the closest he ever was to having an equal was infuriating.
The silence in the room was deafening. Esau had never been the most eloquent of speakers, but finding the words to describe the low that his opinion of his father had gone was difficult. He leaned on the table that held the computer. They sat there in silence, for a few minutes before his father stood up suddenly, as if lightning struck.
"What was that you were saying earlier, Esau? About persistence? I'm about to show you what persistence can really do." He said, before stopping suddenly. "How far have the drones gone in incinerating the bodies?"
Esau checked his omni-tool. The drones had done their work. "All the bodies in the battlefield were incinerated, following MAM scanning."
"What happened to the machinery?"
"The machinery was removed from the battlefield where it awaits further analysis, following scanning."
"Even machinery like implants and artificial limbs?"
"Yes. I thought that disassembling them for reverse engineering would provide valuable information in the future."
"Did the MAM take scans of Elf and Ork biology?" His father was getting visibly excited.
"Yes, they did."
"Good. I need you to bring the scans up and I need you to take a look at the machinery of these creatures. I have a feeling that they are exactly what I need." His father said as he scrolled through multiple scans before pointing out a creature in black, on a stilt-like apparatus and another that looked more like a large bulky drone than a living creature. The creature on stilts had its hands, and most of its lower body removed and replaced with tentacle-like metal tubes while the bulky creature was large, perhaps multiple times the size of a normal man with multiple tubes sticking out of it. "Please make sure they are thoroughly cleaned and sterilised before you take a look at them."
"Yes, Father." Esau said as he stood up to go take a look at the machinery. He signalled a few drones to bring the machines into the workshop. They arrived after he did, taking some time to travel the distance between the crash site and the workshop. After they dropped off the machinery, he ordered the drones to partially disassemble the Ork and Drukkhari ships. He had hit a bottleneck on what he could do to decrypt the Drukkhari systems.
If he could not access the information directly, he would have the MAMs force their way through the encryption.
He disassembled both the machines and felt their stories reveal themselves to him. His brain made connections between components and their functions as soon as he saw them. The speed at which he understood the components was unparalleled, even by his earlier efforts. Was his intelligence increasing? It was possible; his body was still developing and his brain with it. Still, the rate at which revelations came to him was mind boggling.
Then it hit him. There was something about him, which made it easier for him to understand technology of inhuman origin. The secrets of the machinery were almost jumping into his mind without effort.
The same effect had made it simple for him to access Drukkhari systems despite it being his first time coming into contact with them. But why had this effect not manifested when he was looking at Drukkhari and Ork technology on the MAM? Did he need to physically access the technology in question?
Almost a full hour passed. Some of the functions of the machines were difficult and sometimes impossible to decipher without direct access to the biology of the creatures they belonged to. They were cybernetic components built to attach to Drukkhari physiology. Though by his reckoning, Esau could modify them to work with human physiology.
The components had a variety of functions, they would 'sample' any biology that they came into contact with, in what looked to be the most painful way possible before processing the information and turning it into transferable data. The two Drukkhari creations were basically biological MAMs.
The methods in which they did, differed slightly and there were components that seemed to be capable of absorbing and transferring emotions along with a nebulous form of energy, somehow. He felt a torturous fear when he touched some components and he felt unbound joy when handling others. In some components he felt pain like he had never felt before. In most, he corrected himself.
This did not dissuade him. Esau insisted upon nothing less than perfection in his work. Not because he wanted perfection for its own sake, but rather because perfection was efficient. And efficiency was beautiful. Pain would not keep him from it. He was too strong for that.
Soon he was done. He carefully catalogued each component and its function before returning to the laboratory, machinery in hand.
There he found his father deep in research, where he was furiously looking through data from the omni-tool and the MAM. Next to him, was a moving cabinet adorned with a variety of carefully labelled chemical samples and equipment.
"I see you're done, son. Good job." He said, taking a few moments to look away from the monitor and acknowledge Esau's presence. "It looks like we'll need to get me enhanced as soon as possible."
"How so?" Esau asked. His father beckoned him closer and drew up an image of a DNA strand.
"This is an image of Orkoid DNA. That's a double helix, like a human, though the nucleotides are different." He said, pointing to a highlighted section.
"And this is a third strand." He said pointing to a different portion of the DNA strand. "It doesn't belong to the Ork. At least not in the same way your DNA or mine belongs to us. It's the DNA of a symbiont – an algae or fungus that the cells of an Ork somehow use as instructions for cellular replication."
"That's not all." He chuckled, a grim, humourless thing. "This fungus allows for the Orks to produce spores."
It didn't take a genius to realise what that meant.
"We're not done facing the Orks." Esau said.
"No, we are not." His father confirmed. "As it turns out, Orks are genderless and they reproduce via spores that they periodically shed. Each spore contains enough genetic information to build a new Ork, which would then produce a whole community of Orks."
"And there were dozens of Orks at the crash site."
"At the very least." His father hung his head low. "We're looking at an infestation of maybe thousands of Orks depending on how fast they sporulate. The more I learn about this planet, the more it seems that were are beset by enemies on all sides."
Then he picked his head up. "So we have to be ready."
"I agree." Esau commiserated.
"So first things first, did you take a look at the cybernetic interfaces?"
"I did."
"What do you think?"
"They were incredibly advanced, if purposely limited to ensure that the user was beset by crippling bouts of pain."
"I see. Were you able to reverse engineer their data transfer methods?"
"Yes I was. I catalogued my work." Esau said as he showed his father his omni-tool. His father browsed through before he saw something that made him pause.
"What is this?" He asked, pointing to an image taken of the components Esau had identified to have contained emotions somehow.
"These are tubes that contain emotions. The mechanism that allows this escapes me, however."
"Do you have access to any of the machines used to transfer the emotions?"
"Yes I do."
"Excellent, because these aren't emotions. This is the essence of a person's life, crystalized and they may be what could allow me to decipher your physiology."
"Do you understand their mechanisms?" Esau asked, surprised.
"Yes, Esau." His father said. "I think I do."
The plan was simple. Esau had to construct an interface that would allow both him and his Father to transfer data between each of their brains. This had a two-fold purpose. One, it would allow speed-of-thought communication between the two and it would also allow for his Father to transfer to him his deep scientific knowledge. That done, Esau would assimilate the knowledge while his Father consumed an concoction that was reverse engineered from a MAM analysed Drukhari design which would make his body more mutable and respond better to change.
The Forge had granted him a body that would accept enhancements but unwanted side effects such as cancer in the future. The serum would help with this. That done, with Esau's new knowledge, they would work together to craft a simulacrum of some of the organs Esau possessed, with some additions taken from Ork and Drukhari physiology. The crystalized essence would help with this last portion of the work. His Father had posited that the essence would count as the supernatural portion of the organs which would increase their abilities to match his.
They had used the very sensors from the Drukhari machines to determine which essences would be viable, removing every bit of essence that had an emotion that could be construed as negative and destroying it via incineration, very far from their homes – at his Father's insistence. His father had posited that the essence they had kept had come from the very Orks that they had incinerated. This was because the Orks seemed to only care about violence and thus would be the only ones that had come in recent contact with the Drukhari and not had any negative emotions – as far as they both could tell, the thought of violence was a happy one for an Ork.
The construction of the interface was relatively simple, now that Esau had personally worked on Drukhari technology, with only the fabrication of some specialty parts a concern of theirs. Within an hour of construction, he was done. He would later work on miniaturising the interface to work as a cranial implant, but for their current purposes, it was enough.
Both he and his father sat in the interface, and after a few moments of pain as the interface drove cathodes into their heads and calibrated itself, they were linked. The transfer of information began. The information transferred slowly at first, in small bursts, as his father's brain adjusted. When his brain fully adjusted, it was like a dam rupturing as hundreds of years' worth of scientific knowledge transferred itself to him. Esau's mind drank it up eagerly, each new piece of knowledge filling gaps that Esau didn't know existed.
Even with the advanced apparatus of the interface, Esau's brain worked faster than his father's and soon it was obvious that his father was the limiting factor in the equation. They had to stop after the minimum information needed for the upcoming organ crafting and implantation was transferred as it became clear that his father's brain just couldn't handle the sheer speed of information transferred.
That done, they relocated to the med-bay where his father laid on a bed. Esau affixed an intravenous nutrient drip to his arm. The upcoming transformation would demand much of his body. Fuel in the form of nutrients would be welcome.
His father drank the mutability formula. Immediately, alerts sounded from the omni-tool Esau was using to monitor his Father's health. The chemicals were killing him and healing him at the same time. Blood vessels collapsed before being rebuilt. He watched, in horror as his father's face sagged as bones deconstructed themselves before being reconstructed. Neither of them had thought the method of increasing mutability in his body would be this intense. There was nothing Esau could do. Any antidote he could think to create would only be done after this process was completed so Esau sat next to his father, as he thrashed in pain.
Then his vocal cords were reconstructed by the serum and he began to scream.
Two hours later, after Esau had replaced his IV a total of 5 times, his father stopped screaming. His vital signs were normal. He was alright. In fact, he was healthier with less cholesterol in his body, along with saturated fats which were replaced with unsaturated fats, a better than average blood pressure level and hardened cartilage at points being replaced by soft cartilage.
Esau felt relief beyond belief. For the first time in his life he felt doubt, truly confidence shaking doubt. Should they go forward with their plan? They had thought that the mutability serum would have no side effects, or if they did – that they would be mitigated by the modifications the Forge had made to his body. Apparently this had not covered pain, and if it had not covered pain, what else didn't the ability cover?
It took ten hours before his father woke up.
In that time, Esau made food for Kha and Kov as his father had done.
He didn't eat. He didn't have much of an appetite.
He thought about lying to them about what he and his father had been working on, but he reconsidered it. They all lived under the same roof. Anything that affected one of them, affected all of them. Both of them were astounded and perhaps unsurprisingly, both Kha and Kov were against them using Drukhari relics, even if they were re-engineered by Esau. Surprisingly, both of them wished to assist with the project.
Esau had half a mind to deny them; they didn't have the skills needed for the coming steps of the process but they used his logic against him. Anything that affected one of them, affected all of them.
So he let them into the labs.
"May I have access to the cogitator, sachem?" Kov asked. Cogitator was the term for a computer in Kov's home language.
Again, Esau thought about denying him, but his father had shown that he had underestimated Kov. He would not do so again. A ten minute span spent in the cybernetic interface, and Kov could now read and understand English. That done, Esau gave him access to the computer as he had requested.
Quickly, it was apparent that Kov was some kind of programming genius as he, in a few quick strokes, was able to streamline the analysis processes that the MAM was cycling through as it tried to iteratively fill in gaps in technology it encountered. The MAM was still not capable of parallel processing but it had stopped iterating after a certain point and simply stored the designs. It was overall more efficient. Esau approved.
Kha had asked to access the tools they had planned to use. Esau had doubts, but he allowed it. It took her fifteen minutes to go over the various components of the technology before she returned with a single vial of crystalized life essence.
"This is the only one that does not cause turbulence in the Great Ocean, Great One." She said. The vial glowed a sickly green. "Everything else will expose the energies of the Great Ocean to the crafted flesh if they were to come into contact with it. This energy would be unregulated and that would be devastating for your father if the flesh was to be implanted in him."
"Thank you, Miss Kha." Esau said, inclining his head slightly as was the custom of Tectum. He has seen her do it when thanking his father for his help. Her help had been invaluable. If they had used the life essence that she had destroyed, there would be no telling what would have happened. Her own condition was a testament to the unpredictability of the Ocean. Kha was clearly surprised as she bowed back.
Without ceremony, his father walked into the lab as it was abuzz with movement. Esau was constructing a chamber which would be used to print organs wholesale from the MAM scans. Kov, was removing any Ocean active components from the Drukhari technology that she had identified as potentially hostile. It was annoying for so many options to be removed, but Esau understood the need.
It took a few moments before his father's presence in the lab was recognised. The moment he was, Esau took it upon himself to chastise him before scanning his body with the omni-tool. After verification on his condition, his father was allowed back into the labs.
It took ten days before the first viable organs were produced. The 'day' of course, was metaphorical. It seemed that because the planet they were on was orbiting two suns, there was no day-night cycle. They had, at the suggestion of his Father, arbitrarily divided their time into 24 hour cycles where they worked, ate, rested and slept as they pleased. There was even some time where Esau's father fabricated a set of playing cards and showed them how to play a few games. 'Crazy Eights' was Esau's favourite, though he was soon banned from playing card games as his ability to keep track of cards made him impossible to beat.
Ten days of skill transfer between him and his Father, which he used to reinforce his knowledge of Medicine, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Programming and dozens of other scientific fields, further increasing the knowledge he could draw from as his brain made connections between multiple points of information.
Ten days of organ crafting, using a mixture of chemical washes, genetic modification procedures to modify and replicate cells taken from both Esau and his father, which were then used to form organs. A bioscaffold was created using designs taken from Drukhari technology and grown in a Drukhari designed biological growth chamber. It took countless tries over the days as they encountered problem after problem until they had success with the implants.
The first organ to be implanted was an organ that would do the job of two organs in Esau's chest cavity. It was based on a mixture of Esau's body and the general Ork physique. The organ was a fist sized and it would function in controlling skeletal and muscle growth, with a focus on allowing the body to survive external trauma. It would be the first organ implanted because it would passively increase regeneration which would greatly help the other organs integrate. It was named 'The Regenerator'. This organ was implanted above the stomach and below the heart, underneath the ribcage and then left to heal as the body acclimated to the organ.
Through a mix of forge-granted physique, alterations performed by the mutability formula and the regenerator, Esau's father had recovered within hours instead of days or weeks. After a check with the omni-tool and Kha's abilities, the second organ was implanted. This one was a thumb sized organ designed from Esau's genetics and would control hormone secretion, helping the body grow while also flushing the body with stimulants, in the case of a fight or depressants when in need of rest. It was named 'The Regulator', It was implanted near the thyroid.
The third organ was an organ the size of four thumbnails. This was based on an organ that existed in Esau's cerebral cortex. This organ would enhance the other implanted organs and allow growth matching Esau's, both in brain power and physical strength. Some of the organ in Esau's cortex was indecipherable, but those portions were replaced with a mix of Orkoid and Drukhari based grey matter, which would greatly enhance the corpus callosum and the hypothalamus. This would allow Esau's father to match him in motor function and brain processing capacity. It was named 'The Polymath Gland'.
Due to the fact that it was to be implanted in the brain, it was implanted last. Again, he healed and the scans off of the omni-tool were in the green. Still, the results of the implants were below expectation. After taking an hour to check the progress of the implants, Esau's father was placed in a chamber and the green life essence was released into the chamber after some last minute checks.
The chamber filled with green light, and a sound like thunder filled the Esau's home. The chamber shook violently as the green light faded and was replaced with smoke. The smell of ozone hit Esau, as time slowed. Both Kha and Kov were in the room. Kov was nearest. He picked him up and ran into Kha, pushing her and Kov out of the door, as green lightning began to arc.
Esau found that he was starting to hate lightning. A stray bolt hit him, filling his vision with GREEN-
His name was Warboss Gritzz Earripper, and he was having a good time. He watched one of the boyz jump at one of 'em pointy ear gits, holding a stickbomb. The stickbomb killed both the boy and the pointy ear. He felt his grin widening. Scratch a good day. 'Dis day was perfect.
He and his boyz had found one of 'em Craftworld fings and seeing as it was out in open space lookin' shiny, they attacked. The pointy ears panicked, real stupid if you asked Gritzz. If you had your ship just sitting in space, ready for a fight, why were you surprised when a fight came to you? He shook his head. The pointy ears always had a strange, twisted logic. Maybe that wuz why he liked krumpin' 'em so much.
He ran through the halls of the Craftworld, not deining to duck out of the way of their puny weapons. He let his mek suit take care of them as he got close and ripped them in half. The pointy eared gits had weapons that were distinctly not Orky. There was no spectacle to 'em. No power. The pointy ears didn't use propa dakka in dere shootas', instead they had sharp bits of metal. That would never be getting fru his armour.
He felt an impact as the ship shook, somefing was explodin' somewhere. Somewhere where he wasn't. That wouldnt do. Gritzz ran towards the sound of the exploshuns, occasionally stopping to chop some pointy ears down with his choppa.
He found that the expolshuns were comin' from where he and the ladz had landed with his ship. One of the boyz called out to him.
"Boss! Boss! Dem gits are ejecting dis portion of da ship!" Gritzz smacked the lad for disturbing him before ordering the boyz back into their ship. Gritzz was a cunning Ork. He realized that if the pointy ears were willing to abandon this portion of the ship, it meant that all tha good loot was in the part that was going with 'em! Some of da boyz didn't make it as the Ork ship disengaged. No matter, Gritzz would get 'em later. If he remembered.
The portion of the craftworld that they were just on exploded. Well, there was no need to remember anymore. The explosion rocked the Ork ship, sending it spiralling out into space and into a warp storm.
The warp was confusin'. Up was sometimes down, and left was sometimes right. The colours were strange and there was nofing green in it. The warp wasn't really an Orky place, but da daemons always gave out a propa fight. Gritzz and the boys krumped the daemons that appeared on the ship good before one of the mekboys fixed their warp drive, allowing them out back into real space and crashing into one of 'em spiky spikey pointy eared gits.
The ships crashed onto a desert world, filled with good scrap for da boyz. Problem was, the crash krumped a good number of da boyz. He stood up, shook his head and punted one of the surviving grots for luck before he rallied the boyz and attacked the spikey gits. Exploshuns and the sound of dakka in the air gave him a good feeling. He ran into the spiky gits and as he wet his choppa with their blood, he couldn't help but smile.
What a lovely day!
Esau woke up, groggy from the vision he had just witnessed. The vial had contained the essence of the Ork warboss, and that was what had been infused into his father. He felt some vertigo as the floor disappeared. He was being pulled up. His faculties returned to him as he stared at his Father.
He was much taller, at almost 2 metres, with thick corded muscle visible through his skin. He smiled. His canines were sharper, more pronounced and his eyes had a faint green glow just behind the pupils.
"We did it, son. We did it."
7.1. Perk(s) earned this chapter:None.