Sailing majestically through the warp. A quintet of titanic void fairing vessels are making their way through the chaotic space of the empyrean. The largest vessel, leading the way for the lesser ships, is a grand cruiser of ancient make, dwarfing every other vessel in the fleet. The Argent Drake stands 7.9 Kilometers in length with an average width abeam of 1.35 kilometers with the maximum width abeam of 1.65 kilometers at the fins. Dotted along the hull is a mix of Imperial Noble and Mechanicus heraldry and iconography. Flanking and trailing behind is a fleet of smaller support vessels each a mobile city worth a fortune in their own right. A Goliath Factory Ship: Adamant Hammer, the Firestorm-class Frigate: Hunter's Lady, the Havoc-class Merchant Raider: Cry Foul, the Carrack-class Transport: Thunderous Burden all trail behind in formation through the Imperian. The Argent Drake acts as a bulwark and icebreaker for the chaotic eddies of the warp as the fleet remains close enough to overlap their individual Gellar field bubbles with the larger stronger bubble radiating out from the Drake. Deep within the Drake sitting on the command throne is a grizzled man bedecked in finery that is a mix of form and function. His eyes are locked on the hololithic display in front of him monitoring the ship and displaying the formation of the fleet. "Navigator, What is our current status?" The captain queries, his voice is deep, commanding, with just a hint of the gravely tones that comes with increased age. "According to my charts we are nearly out of the Gothic Sector sir, however the warp currents are particularly unsettled today. Something untold is happening behind us near the eye." A soft feminine voice replies over the vox. "Keep me apprised, you're not just leading us out of here." "Of course, Lord Admiral," She replies with a faint hint of amusement. "Still awake helmsman?" "Of course sir, Lady Nostromo's directions are being followed to the letter." The voidsman stationed at the front of the bridge, locked into his chair by several thick cables connecting him directly to the controls through his MIU. "How about our escort?" He turns to his Vox master. "Statuses are green. They're following in our wake. The Burden is lagging a bit; they're having trouble maintaining full speed. The Hammer has been sticking close, while Hunter's Lady has been following abeam with them but the Cry Foul has been particularly diverse in their positioning. They have kept the ideal distance, but I think they were teasing The Hunter's Lady sir. Communications are functioning between us however Burden is cutting in and out complaining of power fluctuations." The officer paused and listened intently. Their expression souring rapidly. "Lord Drakios! The navigators on the other vessels are also reporting a disturbance and feeling unsettled. One of their younger navigators can't stop screaming." "Navigator? Navigator! Lilly!" Drakios shouts. "What… What is that?! Where!? Emergency! Emergency! It's gone!" came the panicked familiar voice of their warp guide. "What's gone!?" Drakios yelled. "The Astronomicon! It's fucking GONE I can't see it!" She screamed. The captain's blood ran cold. "Lily! I need you to focus. We need a reroute immediately." The captain tightly gripped the arms of his command throne "Sound general quarters!" The Argent Drake was an ancient ship in possession of numerous rare archeotech components, several which aided in warp navigation. Lily was the most experienced and talented of all their navigators. If she could not see the Astronomicon with the aid of the Warp Antenna, while submerged in the suspension chamber of the Warp Sextant then the other vessels in the fleet had no chance. "What in the… Is that a Warp Storm? By the Emperor…" "I… I see… a great rift, the very gates of hell lie open before us, to cast us into the abyss." Lily said her voice soft as it was transmitted across the bridge. "It's coming for us…" "Lilly! Look away! Damn it! Lilly, the nearest egress! Where is it?" All at once the alarms began screaming throughout the bridge. Several displays began showing abnormal readings, the eyes of the veteran crew going wide as the readouts kept rising. The largest holoithic display in the middle of the bridge flickered and then zoomed out. It showed a veritable tsunami of warp energy racing towards them from behind the fleet. At the rate it was traveling they had scant few minutes to prepare. "Doll!" The captain yelled, sparing a look behind his throne across the ancient room of the bridge. "I need you in the Gellar Field now!" A titanic individual, more machine than man, was already turning, his red robes billowing as he sprinted out of the room on a sled of metal legs. Screeching angrily at anyone who got in his way. The Magos heading for the most important part of the ship at that moment. The Gellar Field generator that kept them from being subsumed by the chaotic maelstrom of energies outside. "All ships full ahead! Get as close as you can to the Drake! Raise the alarm! Prepare for incursions! Put us on full Lockdown!" The bridge went from silent to cacophonous in a matter of moments as everyone leapt to work. Officers struggled and suddenly the ship was slammed from the side sending their vessel reeling. The ship's superstructure groaned ominously as it suddenly accelerated. "Sir! The Burden is just gone! The Foul reports their navigator spontaneously detonated and their Gellar Field is failing!" The ship let out another groan and the lights flickered briefly. "The Gellar Field just flickered! Emergency Safeties fired!" "I can't keep her steady sir!" The master helmsman, Lucius, snarled as the ship lurched again. "We've lost control! We're being pushed!" "Steer into it! We're caught in some kind of warp current!" The captain replied. Another more violent shudder ran down the spine vessel, this one different and a whole new set of alarms went off. "We've been rammed and fired upon!" "What!? By whom!?" He demanded. "It's the Lady! Her fore batteries knocked down our voids and a lance strike hit us amidships. Their captain is hailing us. The Foul rammed our port side! They're drifting dead. No response to hail!" "Lady is reporting mass possession on the gunnery decks! Their Gellar field is barely holding, parts of their ship are uncovered. They've had to vent the entire deck and pull alongside us for our field to overlap. They are reporting they have depowered all weapons!" "Sir, the Hammer is reporting that their astropathic contingent just started screaming and convulsing, one spontaneously detonated, another burned to ash, and the third was showing signs of possession and had to be put down." "Someone sedate our astropaths now! Toss them in the Null Bay if you have to!" He yelled. "Lilly! Please! We need a way out!" The Gellar Field flickered again but luckily Magos Doll had reached the generator in time to reset several of the blown breakers, a fury of mechanical limbs emerging from under his robes as he began scurrying all over the compartment holding the vital component. All as he began to chant cants for the stressed machine spirit within. A variable swarm of red robed tech priests rushed in to assist him as they caught up and began following orders. Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by novel※fire.net However, those few moments where its protective bubble was down was enough to sow panic and discord across the ship. Only the warp bane wards carved into the hull itself kept the ship from being summarily overwhelmed. "I don't know where we are! This storm is everywhere! It crushed the Burden! Crushed it like a tin can!" Navigator Nostromo howled, bleeding from her eyes into the water surrounding her. However, her position as head Navigator the fleet and of this esteemed vessel had been well earned despite her slightly mutated and youthful appearance. Despite the pain she focused on gritting her teeth even as they started to itch and ache, hissing into the vox. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. "We are the lost, trapped between hell and the damned. I can't… I can… I… I see. We're off course. I don't know. I've never seen a storm ." She took another hissing breath "Such strong currents. Like the empyrean itself wishes to engulf us whole and drown us in the depths." The line is silent for a long moment "There! I think I see a weakness… a harbor in the storm! If we can get there we can risk a blind retransition!" "Get us there Lilly!" He yelled "We need to go! Now!" The helmsman uttered a string of foul curses as he got his orders from Lilly. The ship rumbling in protest as it slowly adjusted its bearing. "The Lady's Navigator is dead, they have regained control but they're blind! The Hammer is saying their navigator is unconscious!" Shouted another officer. Lord Dracios gripped the arms of his command throne viciously "Relay to them that they are to as best they can! If they fall behind they're as good as dead without eyes and the Lady's Gellar won't last long without us taking most of the strain." He growled out. Turning his head to continue yelling orders. "Get damage control out, I want the troops roused and combing the ship. If something, ANYTHING got in despite the wards we can't let it get to anything vital!" "Doll! What's the status of the Gellar Field?" The reply came a moment later, the slightly raspy digitized voice coming through clearly "I have enacted repairs. The Field is operational. Strain is heavy. We have a few days at best under the current strain Captain. The Omnissiah protects us." "And our field is far more robust than that of the Hammer's and the Lady's isn't it?" "Correct." Doll replied their tone heavily robotic. "They have hours, a day at most. Two retrofit cycles previous we upgraded the Hammer and Lady to Belecane 90.r Fields, weaker than the ancient device sported by the Argent Drake but superior to the Foul and Burden. They had Mezoa Integrant fields. When their void shields were overwhelmed their Gellar Field protections went with it." "May the Emperor have mercy on us." The captain muttered, taking a moment to offer prayers for the lost vessels and making the sign of the aquila. The next few hours harried and tested the crew harder than they had been in years. They struggled, they fought, and even so they barely made it to the point Navigator Lilly indicated. The transition to realspace was one of the roughest the crew had ever experienced. The Hammer and the Lady had managed barely to keep pace. Their survival was heavily reliant on the much larger ship serving as their guide through the writhing mess of the warp, deflecting the chaotic destructive waves of energy away from them in the calmer wake of the Argent Drake. The trio of ships transitioned together into the empty void of real space. It was a rough transition nauseating most of the crew and knocking a large portion unconscious. Those that remained awake were assaulted by brief horrific visions and intense nausea. The bridge was dead silent, the entire ship reeling from the transition but they were all feeling immense relief under the terror and exhaustion. In a long forgotten corner of the bridge an ancient time keeping device suddenly rang out with a echoing chime. Half the bridge crew jumped or startled at the deep resounding notes. The entire bridge turned to watch as the device began releasing a series of strange hauntingly melodic tones. The mechanical display clicked loudly and began to rewind 999…. 998…faster and faster it spun becoming a blur of numbers. The mechanical ticking echoing in the chamber until It abruptly stopped at 000 and the adjacent panel flicked over a new display. Where 41 became 42. "Happy new millennium sir." One of the crew remarked "Hell of a start." The comment helped jolt everyone out of their transitional fugue state and they jumped back to work. "Celebrations will have to wait. I want a full damage report and sweep of the ship. Relay that command to the Hammer and the Lady as well." He called out, rousing the bridge crew back to themselves. "Can someone check on Navigator Nostromo?" "Sir! According to her support staff she passed out the moment we reverted. She is being extracted from her suspension chamber now. Her life signs are stable but she will likely require some time in medical before she can resume her duties." "Good, and our Astropaths?" The captain asked. "Sedated. Heavily. One of the neophytes was possessed and given the Emperor's mercy by one of your storm troopers." "Several of the psykers in the barracks also had to be sedated. A small handful were put down. We had some minor incursions that were expelled from the hangar bays." another officer stated. "The lance strike skimmed the lower crew and cryo decks, passed through some superstructure. One lift is knocked out but thankfully damage appears to be minor sir." "I want a full sweep and repairs underway. I need to know how many crew we lost." The losses on the other two ships were much higher but he was less concerned with their crew losses than the loss of their navigators and astropaths. The crew quality was decent aboard the Hunter's Lady but couldn't compare to the veterans that he and his family had spent lifetimes cultivating aboard the Argent Drake. They had steadily adopted a quality over quantity approach to the entire vessel from parts to crew ever since it was wrestled from a hulk. Working on the Drake was a privilege. Due to the amenities and opportunities it provided, skilled and talented crew would be given from the other vessels in the fleet. It had slowly accumulated and now the ship sported a hundred and forty thousand crew that Lord Drakios could be proud of. The Hammer utilized a servitor crew for the majority of the vessel which meant their overall losses were more in material and time than able bodies. "What an absolute mess." He whispered, praying that the Emperor would see them through this trial. "Get our Deep Void Auger going. I want as much data as we can to provide Navigator Nostromo when she wakes up. If there are any systems, or stellar objects nearby I want to know. Get the others scanning as well so we can compare and compile the data. Break out the star charts gentlemen." He ordered knowing it would take some time to get a full read on whatever they had exited into. —------------------------------------------------------------------------- The formation of the Cicatrix Maledictum was a chaotic process of immense energy that caused reality itself to ripple. However, within such wide spread unbridled chaos rare unique cosmological events could occur. This was one such case, that resulted in several foreign souls getting yanked through the dimensional membrane into this universe from another. The souls were disoriented by the sudden transition and surrounded by the roiling hostile chaos of the empyrean. When a lost soul needs a vessel, there are a plethora of qualities to look for. Compatibility, suitability and stability. In most universes the first two are more prevalent, however in a scant few others stability can be the deciding factor. Thrust into the warp as they were, the cluster of souls were immediately overwhelmed by the chaotic maelstrom of energies within. Time and Distance became meaningless and transient in the strange and terrible place that is The Warp. The souls scatter in all directions fleeing from corruption, hungry daemons, ancient horrors and start searching for suitable stable vessels to anchor themselves before they are devoured, corrupted or dispersed. One such soul gets lucky. Unknowingly its path has taken it into that of a trio of vessels sailing the Immaterium. The protective field around the main ship flickers just as the soul gets close enough to the vessel. The soul is drawn in, briefly sensing deep within is a suitable vessel that seems to call out to it, one that has been long without its original resident soul. Buried deep within the winding labyrinth of steel. The soul flickers as the barrier reforms and attempts to push it away, the vessel is surrounded by protections of its own. It barely manages to slip back into the living but empty vessel before it can be expunged back into the roiling Aether. The soul settles into its new body. Smaller than its previous one and currently suspended in dreamless stasis but it has found a new anchor for its existence, nonetheless. --------------------------------------------------------------- Deep within the bowels of the ancient Grand Cruiser. A sealed chamber previously hidden away in a warded section of the Cold Storage Cryo Bays. Lost and forgotten from a time well before the ship was hulked and then wrested free by the ambitious Drakios family has been revealed by the recent lance strike. The large swatch of metal once covering the main egress to the chamber had turned to molten slag. The lucky strike had threaded the needle, avoiding any other critical systems, and limiting most of the damage to the substructure and deck plating. The pods within the chamber still function though roughly half the forgotten souls in the chamber no longer live despite the best efforts of the ancient technology. A set of six pods sit in the center of the chamber in prominence. The pods there are larger and more elaborate, ancient archeotech designs that inspire a sense of awe. As the work crews scour the ship for damage it is not long before someone finally stumbles across the newly exposed access point. For the individuals within the long awaited awakening has come. The menial who made the initial discovery was quickly replaced by a small cadre of the ship's Tech priests who were individually scanning and cataloging each pod. "Five hundred of the Gamma type. Fifty of the Beta type and Six Alpha type. Three hundred survivors in Gamma, Forty for Beta and five for Alpha." Technomancer Cleon Theta was rapidly feeling out of his depth when they went to wake up the first Gamma pod. The individual was extremely disoriented and took some time to wake up as the Pod brought them out of suspended animation. Long term Cryo-stasis is fairly well known for causing memory loss so when the first crewmen was roused cold, naked and showed signs of near total amnesia Cleon just noted it down in his data slate. The individual was otherwise in great health, no signs of mutation, though they would do in depth blood and genetic testing to ensure no mutations were forthcoming. Then the next individual was thawed, examined, and sent to the medical bay with total amnesia. The people didn't even remember their own names and likely might have not recalled them at all if it wasn't for the name tags on the jumpsuits they discovered under each pod. After fifteen individuals were thawed they were all diagnosed with full amnesia Theon messaged his superior, Chief Chirurgeon Magos Biologis Gertrude Frigora, to inform her of the situation. Cleon paused with the unsealing of the live individuals while awaiting further orders and chose to instead collect the dead within each of the pods before continuing awakening any further individuals. This led to the discovery that while the Gamma pods just had a small bin with the work suit, the beta Pods had small trunks packed with gear all of which was high end military grade that opened when the pod did. When the deceased individual inside the Alpha pod was exposed it was immediately apparent to Cleon that the individual was heavily augmented, likely a former Magos. Another surprise, when the Alpha pod was opened a massive Void Coffer vault was released adjacent to the pod, which was gene locked to the deceased. Cleon didn't hesitate with sending a report to the other Magos present on the ship due to the nature of the deceased individual in the Alpha type pod. This was a matter for the high ranking Mechanicus individuals and well above his pay grade.