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[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]

So awhile ago, Umbral and I started doing some Adeptus Mechanicus bits and pieces for my Adamanticores project. We'd pretty much filled out a surprisingly diverse complement of tech-priests, various armed laity [the Data-Recovery team], and even some hulking brute 'praetorian'-alikes; and then put all this to the side as other projects of more pressing immediacy came once more to the fore. And then part-way through last week, we both kinda wound up - completely independently of each other - playing around to do a few more, of evidently rather *different* feel to what'd come before. So with that in mind ... behold, our latest exercise in Hobby ADHD. Not quite sure what we're going to do with them - or which of our various projects they'll fit into as yet. So they'll no doubt continue to expland slooooowly as one or more warbands of more 'traditional' AdMech flavouring than the stuff we've done thus far. The three chaps in the back are quite likely heavily armoured and hulking 'elite' Skitarii - with an obvious Warlord in the person of the middle chap with the axe and skull, and two escorts for him. These're largely [but not entirely] Umbral's handiwork - we had a few spare Sigmarines and had been wondering what to do with them... The two in front are all my own. I decided I wanted to try and put the "priest" back in "Tech-Priest" and assemble a pretty standard [if low-ranking] member of the Clergy that really brought back that 'classic' 3rd ed AdMech kinda vibe [don't get me wrong, I've loved the 'offbeat' ones we've done for the Adamanticores, and the modern GW AM range is pretty cool ... but I want to see more Medieval sometiimes!]. Hence the chap on the left, who's evidently been captured mid-rite - what with the swinging incense censer, and the illuminating torch. Also quite a contrast [and a welcome one, I feel] for him to be comparatively unarmed [with hte exception of the pistol at his side - this *is* the 41st millennium, after all!]. That's kinda what i meant by bringing it back to "Priests" rather than militants. [Partsmix is a Bretonnian Men-At-Arms body, Skitarii head, Censer from the Scions' servo-skull plus a miscellaneous bit of sprue, arms also from the Scions kit, and hte torch is made out of the lower half of a Scions banner with the staff-topper from the Empire Wizard kit, and a pistol from the Cadian Command] The chap on the right , the Machine Cultist, i didn't really set out ot make *at all*. He just kinda came together spontaneously when i was looking at some Skitarii arms and a flagellant body that I happened to have sitting around. From there, a large bald head to possibly suggest some vat-grown or otherwise not-entirely-organic-human [kinda like the Hitmen iwth hte red ties and abominable movie franchise you may have seen around], and some long dangling cables were all that was needed to 'complete' the look - a data-tether that runs directly into his spine, and a more 'generic' cable into his side [which'll hopefully hep to convey a sense of 'motion']. The bionic arm won't be out of place, either! [Partsmix is Flagellant body, Cadian Command head, Skitarii arms & weapon, cabling from a Cadian Command servo-skull and a Skitarii backpack] Now as for the three warriors, from left to right ... On the left we have a mixed close-assault and ranged warrior - a heavily modded chain-fist and lightning claw for the former, with a hellpistol and MIU grenade launcher for the latter. [Partsmix: left hand fist is from Tyberos [plus a servo-thing from a scyllax and a pistol from the Scions kit], head from Sicarans, Sigmarine body, and Marine lightning claw. The backpack .. which was my contribution to proceedings, is a Cadian Command vox-caster, parts from a Marine arm, a Guard grenade launcher and magnoculars, Grey Knights purity seal, Guard HQ gas-mask and banner topper, and I thnk the cabling might be from a Skitarii special weapon? hard to remember. The grenade-launcher WAS aligned with his ocular unit - but after a breakage and reattachment, haven't been able to get it back *quite* to the same positioning. Oh well. Close enough. ] Middle is the Skitarii Warlord. He gets across vibe of a battle-hungry, highly experienced, and heavily modded mortal frame in immortal armoured shell quite nicely, I reckon. [Partsmix: Head and surrounding area from a Scyllax, axe-head from a Tech-priest Enginseer; Volkite [*CHOOM!* *CHOOM!*] from the Magos Dominus with a resin barrel [umbral has a thing about actually having barrels that have space in 'em, you see]; and Sigmarine body] On the right, a much more exclusively close-assault oriented warrior - twin lightning claws, but also a servo-arm that may indicate this particular soldier has been pursuing with some success an ordination and greater technical competency. [Partsmix: Marine lghtning-claws, Sicaran head, Enginseer backpack, and Sicaran taser-goad thing].