Search the Community

It Is The 42nd Millennium ... and once more the Galaxy has become riven with strife. This time, the harsh divide is not merely the clear-cut schism between Loyalist and Traitor, Friend and Foe, or even Humanity with Dread Xenos. Rather, a far more insurmountable barrier now lies across the former swathe of the Imperium - the Cicatrix Maledictum. And even within the still-shedding light of Mankind's fraught bastion of hope in the Imperium Sanctus, there is no unity of vision - no clarity of purpose. At the the highest levels of the Imperium, and also amidst the coiling darkness which congeals about their glittering spires - the greedy, avaricious eyes of the powerful dart in all manner of directions; their gimlet gazes locked in pursuit of petty, personal agendas as well as grand, sweeping designs several millennia in the making. Some, to be sure, are altruistic in ethos and noble in scope; others seek to take advantage of the chaos to line their own pockets - or, worse, to settle old scores and indulge in the Great Games of the truly cardinal. Yet for the countless subsectors and hundreds of systems splayed out as trinkets or trifles it matters little. Upon the far-flung fringes of the Imperium's now greatly curtailed spanse, life proceeds much as it ever has: the Crowned Heads of the ultimate inceptors of their destinies seeming as inscrutable, uncaring, and distant as the Stars - or, when angered, as roiling, unforgiving, and inescapable as the coronal flarings of the nearest Sun. Such is to be the fate of Adamantia. Once a beacon of order and a bastion of the potential future for Humanity, it was brought low some four thousand years afore. The hidden truth which girded its prosperity dooming it also to desolation at the hands of its patrons' enemies elsewhere in the vicissitudinal Imperial power structure. A chapter - and an entire stellar domain - whose loyalty to the Emperor proved to be as unbreakable as their Adamantine namesake, cast unto oblivion by the envious plots and overzealous plans of their would-be domineers and despoilers. And yet ... Memory is a curious thing. It lingers on even after that which is recalled by it may have long since crumbled to dust - or been reduced to ash via the expurgation of flame. Thus it is with the unyielding legacy of the Adamanticores. For millennia following the Fall of their formerly living Lords, the folk of the Spoil - for such Adamantia is now called - have striven to keep alive the traditions, the recollections, the faith of their forebears. This has rendered the long-term pacification of the domain, and its re-tooling into a more productively integrated demesne at the hands of this or that petty outlander lord all but an impossibility. The past refuses to pass - it cannot be placated through the transparent papering-over on offer from without. Instead, the past lives on through glinting spikes suffusing the present - seemingly pointing back toward a not-quite-forgotten future. Amidst ruins and fanes and long-forgotten refuges scattered across the systems of the Spoil, more tangible remembrances of the glory that was Adamantia are to be found - prised free via unscrupulous treasure-seekers or shadowy reconquesta teams, clawed back and returned to their memorialized pride-of-place within them by bands of loyalists, resurrectionists, revanchists who still dream the Dream of Adamantia as She once was and as She might one day be again. Or who simply cannot abide to see the ghosts, the spirits of the past disturbed by outlanders motivated by the profits and the prophets of the worlds beyond the realm. Some of these sites are watched over by vengeful eyes - piercing green orbs who still would quietly weep for the fate of their fallen dreams and comrades if mere human tears were permitted to them. Out in the Deep between worlds, the Dragons have long coiled to strike; and the Dead Stars still burn with ancient fury. The barrows and the stasis-crypt which dot the Spoil shall soon prove to have protected not only the artefacts of ancient days - but the select few of their archaic bearers as well! Living legends now risen and returned as revenants. Ghost-Lords for a nearly-dead realm, heritage, and faith. Yet they shall not be the only ones to stride out onto the planes of the present from within the depths of both myth and memory. To be a man in such times, is to behold the distant glory of ruined splendour. Not merely of the former realm of Adamantia laid low around one; but the twisting violence which reaves out across the broader Imperium. A sundering amidst the hearts of men which divides even those notionally committed to His common purpose into internecine foes that hate with the bitterness - and strike with the underhandedness - more usually reserved for direst external adversaries and truly existential peril. All across Adamantia, the last guttering embers of the Old Flame of Heritage run the risk of becoming snuffed out - taking with them, the last sparks of hope for the future. Threats from the Past loom out of the darkness to do battle with Ancient Guardians for the Soul of the Present and the incipient promise of the Glories yet to come. The Worlds of the Spoil do not stand upon the Precipice - in truth, for Adamantia this point was reached and breached long eras ago; the only serious question being whether She shall Fall or Fly in consequence. Forget the promise of Unity in Strength, and the sure premise of progress toward Mankind's assured shared destiny amidst the Stars - for much has been Remembered, that cannot now easily become forgotten. Forsake the easy and clear battle-lines drawn in the sand between "friend" and "foe", "traitor" and "loyalist", or "heretic" and "zealot" - for all these are but the convenient caricatures of meaningful designations, deployed by cunning comptrollers stationed far from the front lines in the shadows of battle. And foreswear the convenient bonds of unthinking adherence - in favour of a more critical appraisal of just where one's loyalties and sense of duty must truly lie. It is said that in the Grim Darkness of Adamantia - there is only Memory. Yet here, Memory and Heritage form an active, tangible force. The Past does not Pass simply due to the mere inconvenience of being antiquated. It lies dormant, awaiting its shadowed opportunity to spring vital and resurrected back into present life. It is, in a sense, inalienable - and on the contrary, it is the Future which must be fought for. Out upon the Steppe of Stars, a powerful myriad of Futures ride for Adamantia - Waiting to be (Re)Born.

[Part 1: The Gathering Of The Clans] [Prologue: There was a high-pitched whistling sound beyond the door. Vaish muttered an inaudiable blasphemy. If he'd told the serving-boy once, he'd told him a thousand times - *don't* over-heat the samovar on the way up from the kitchens. Burning the milk would ruin the brew. Perhaps he needed to *remind* the lad of the lesson, by immersing his wretched hand in it. The scalding hopefully providing an instruction he'd not soon forget. Get lazy, cut corners, lose vigilance, lose focus upon what was important,- suffer pain, as the result. And as with all the *best* lessons, one delivered with more than a hint of directly configured irony. "Contrapasso", the ancients had called it. Two muffled bangs further increased Vaish's choler. The serving-boy must've run the trolley into the walls on his way down the corridor - no doubt besmirching the priceless antique Adamantine oak and gold furnishings in the process. Vaish scowled, and reached for the barbed quirt he kept under his desk for disciplinary matters. If the boy had scarred his irreplaceable hallway paneling, he'd do much the same right back at him. Force. Contrapasso. It was the only way they'd *learn*. The high-pitched whistling began again, louder and far closer this time. Somehow more immediate. That was odd, thought Vaish - even a truly incompetent thrall shouldn't be able to scald the milk *twice*. But there was something different about the high-pitched squealing noise this time; now that he could hear it more properly, it seemed ... off, wrong. As if the metal of the samovar was being heated *well* beyond its tolerance, like the tea-vessel were about to make ready to explode. And that was the other thing - it sounded like it was happening *inside the room with him*. Vaish's nose wrinkled. That wasn't right. The door hadn't even opened yet. He looked up, making ready to barrage the serving-boy with a fusillade of full-force rhetorical fury. Preparing the words of his tongue-lashing to serve as the prelude to the beating and burning that was about to ensue. His jaw dropped, went slack. His mind followed. There was a red-orange-yellow circle forming on the facing of his door, about the size of his hammish fist. His expensive, auric-plated security door. Right roughly where the security mechanism was located. Which should have engaged automatically if there had been a breach to the manor or its grounds. Vaish barely had time to begin to curse a .. very, very long list of people, when the transition of the heart of the spot in his door to an incandescent white caused instinct to take over. He flung himself down behind his desk, eyes squinted shut like boarded up windows against a hurricane; one arm over his head while the other hand still tightly gripped the quirt, with all the desperation one would expect if that were the only solid thing left in his universe. The hissing had reached a crescendo. And then, abruptly, stopped; replaced by the wailing noise of a recalcitrant door swinging torturously upon its hinges. Vaish opened one eye. The world hadn't (yet) fallen in, nor faded to black around him. He took this as a hopeful step upward. He got to one knee, and arched himself up - daring to set half his head above the parapet of his desk's edge. Had he not been suddenly overcome by *further* fear, he would have felt the stinging pangs of disappointment. Standing a short distance beyond the desk, looking down toward him with a sneer, as the smoke from the hallway billowed about him, was a coldly implacable man; with a face like the front-end of a glacier - ancient, icy, jagged, scarred, and surrounded by all the gravel it had ground down from mountain-spur-walls to dust just to be there. Vaish's fear turned to fury. This must be the work of a rival merkant house, attempting to usurp their privileged position as tithe-lords of the Adamantine Spoil. And, to add insult to injury ... that smoke - that *smoke* ! The bastards must have *set his walls on fire* on their way in! The paneling was nigh irreplaceable! Such an outrage demanded retribution! When the Palatinate were informed, *worlds would burn* in compensatory consequence, he'd swear to it! "WHO ARE YOU", he screeched - not so much a question, as an assertion as to their insignificance. The 'glacier man' did not answer. Vaish drew himself up to his full height, making ready to extirpate his intruders further, while his House Guards presumably converged upon his location. They should be thundering down the corridor, any second- Vaish stalled mid-thought. During a gap in the smoke, he'd caught sight of the scene beyond his door. The art was ruined, of course; canvas and framing that had previously adorned his hallways, hanging raggedly and limply down towards the floor. Yet that wasn't what drew his eye. Instead, it was the serving-boy. Crumpled backward into his broken trolley, a cheese-knife still held raised in one hand in an evidently futile gesture of defiance. Vaish felt a small pang. He'd died defending his master. "We are Old Men, who were Young Men, Once," came the reply. But it hadn't been delivered by the mouth of the glacier. Instead, the voice had come from his left. A slightly frail-faced - and, indeed, older - man in armoured robes; grey-and-white hair which seemed akin to snow on a mountain-top, cresting a face in which the ravages of time had left little that was unnecessary. No fat, no fear, and certainly no sympathy - only the jaggedness of an uncut diamond. Vaish had not noticed him come in. In fact, it was almost as if he'd appeared directly there *through* the wall, no door required. Not that these uninvited apparitions seemed much slowed by whether it was a wall or a door or one of the finest security systems in the subsector which sought to bar their way. Vaish made ready to shout again. Considerably uneasy now, and hoping it wouldn't show through his false-fronting of loudly-forced bravado. Because he needed to provide a distraction. Keep them engaged as his hand moved under the side of the desk to the silent alarum which would summons any surviving security; and the other which would record whatever happened next in front of him. If he were to die this day, he could at least take *some* solace in the fact that there would be an investigation. His House would find who had did this. Their Patrons in the Palatinate and the higher echelons of the wider Imperium would follow up. Would track the culprits, back to whatever serpent-pit they'd spawned from, and do to them what might be just about to be done to him. There would be JUSTICE! There HAD to be! "'Old Men'? You mean you're in the twilight hours of your lives; looking for a way to make them meaningful." Vaish drew in breath, prepared to take a gamble: "If it's money you want, material comforts - this can be arranged. We are a wealthy House!" "We know." "So what is it that you desire. Speak! I'll make it happen!" "To rewrite history." Vaish sneered, issuing a soft snort of derision. Idealists. People aaallways wanted to *matter*. That probably meant they weren't rational enough to reason with, then. "History? Carry this out, to its culmination, and you may as well be *erased* from history. Nobody will know who you were. Your sons will die unremarked upon and unremembered. Your legacy shall be papered over as if it had never even existed!-" The Glacier cut in. Vaish's flow of vitriol cut off, mid-tirade. "We already *have* been." Vaish sensed it wasn't just his shouting that had come to an end. He resolved to at least get some shred of meaning for his efforts. His seething anguish over what they'd done to his Adamantine oak-and-gold paneling demanded it! It hadn't been filched from *one* Final Fire only to be dashed up into kindling like this! "Then what *possible* reason could you have for this ... this vandalism!" The Glacier turned his head, slightly, and looked at the concealed pict-recorder hidden behind the eyepiece of one of the many artistic representations of Vaish's forebears painted into the friezework beneath the ceiling. Looked directly at it. Nodded an acknowledgement, one eye steely wide and lower lip pared back with a tooth bared in defiance. Vaish stared, shocked; mirroring in some ways, the expression of his ancestor. How had the intruder known it was there? "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?! ANSWER ME!" There was an aching silence. It felt about the span of half an hour. Although it must have been more towards the space of half a second. The jagged-faced wizened-mountain figure in the robes spoke up again. It was a softer voice than the one he'd used previously. A little honeyed. Creaky, with a hint of age that hadn't been there when he was directly addressing this. It seemed the tone one would use to give a moral lesson to a wayward grandchild. "Because Dead Stars ..." - a purringly brief burst of bullets erased Vaish's anguished face of confusion - "... Still Burn." [flash=250,210]

I'll keep it brief. This is a bit of a spin-off from my Thorians, and the ongoing series of linked efforts that Umbral and I have been putting together. The basic idea is a force of Combat-Archaeologists, scouring tombs, abandoned facilities and buried labs for their Inquisitorial[ish] masters. , Chronologically, it'll be set after the Adamantia / Adamanticores efforts by at least several centuries (so maybe M.39?); perhaps roughly contemporaneous with the Worlds Wide Webway [although time flows .. differently there, so who knows]. From right to left, an entry team leader, a young devotee, and a servitor equipped with a mining laser. The entry team are, as the name implies, the first personnel into unexplored environments. Hence the pressure-suits more usually found amongst mining crews. Of course, given the nature of the sites being explored, it's occasionally wise to come 'prepared' for 'residents' or rivals. Hence the bolt pistol and chainsword. Not that it's pictured here, but he's also carrying a reliquae on his belt - as i wanted to tie him back to the overall religiosity of the Thorians i've done thus far. [Also, a brief note on heads: good *grief* I hadn't realized how hard it was to find regular human heads that fit into the neophyte hybrid neck aperatures. Rather annoying, as they're very cool torsos otherwise. But I digress] The young looking chap standing next to him, is a pious crusader-y type ; undecided as yet as to whether the arms are rather advanced bionics, or rather tight-hugging plated sleevery. Not pictured in this shot [but definitely tehre on the miniature] are a few other bits and pieces, including a boot-knife and ammunition bandolier. The servitor, meanwhile, should have been a far simpler conversion - a mining laser from the neophyte hybrids minus its extra hands, and then with an arm mounting handconstructed, plus cabling running from it to another neophyte hybrid heavy weapons backpack. I figured that it would be a logical way to get a piece of heavy equipment around the place which would be very useful for the kind of work this crew's engaged in; while also being a much more characterful heavy weapon for a servitor than the usual military-grade weapons. He'll probably need a controller ... which may come in the form of a tech-priest i'm working on. We'll see. Next up, another two 'entry team' members. One on the right's a team-leader, possibly under the one already pictured. Combi-Melta's there both for entry/breaching, and for dealing with whatever's encountered once in. Map's handy for suggesting localized "in charge", although X definitely doesn't mark the spot [to quote another professional in the field]. Delaque head partially because at least it fits in the neck-aperature, partially because the ocular augmetics and other such enhancements, and partially because, given my previous efforts with my Thorians featuring rather a lot of genehanced specialized operatives - it made potential sense for these to be likewise. Perhaps i'll go down the route of generally having the higher-tier leadership as actual humans, and their men as the altered strains. The one on the left's carrying a briefcase; possibly with something in it - possibly to leave *with* something in it. I've also , i guess, wound up utilizing Imperialis winged skulls from the Scions kit for the purposes of covering the genestealer cult icon removals on the base miniatures. Handily, they may also be signifying rank [ the overall team leader's got three on his chain, the team leader above has two, and the courier, one]. That Delaque autopistol's also rather legit - although even allowing for the size of the silencer, it's *still* huge for a pistol! We'll count it as sme sort of machine-pistol or SMG, i think. Lastly, for this round of uploads ... these four are still very much a work in progress. Ever since , i suppose, watching Prometheus [which, for obvious reasons, must have been going around my head with this project], i've had a thought about doing a recon-drone operator. Except with servo-skulls. Because *of course*. I've still got a few things to do to the operator himself - whether a slung rifle over the shoulder/back, or a skitarii backpack with antenna for range-boosted control of his skulls; and further alterations to some o the skulls themselves - a manipulator arm on at least one of the ones that lacks one, potentially something like a laspistol on another, and further specialized scanning/augury equipment. The concept's in-progress, anyway. They'll also come in rather handy with the style of game we've got in mind for this project. Which will have some 'dungeon-crawl' elements. And in the grandest tradition of sending the halfling [with or without the ten foot pole ... which they may or may not be at the *other end* of from the main-party, without much choice in the matter, so to speak] ahead to check for traps ... yeah, servo-skulls with scanners hovering forward and detecting the tripwires and pressure-plates and such. There's several other miniatures in partial stages of assembly atm - including a rhino with attached crane , a tech-priest, and a 'surveyor', to name a few [as well as, potentially, a *heavier* servitor built out of a centurion]; so we'll see how this shapes up going forward. Umbral also appears to be putting together some tomb-raiders/counter-raiders, which may turn up here shortly.