40k Prologues
The following are some of the prologues in a 40k play-by-post campaign. The game's premise is that the player characters are each Alpha Legionaries of a loyalist(?) cell. Each of the PC's personal channels (where they write the monologues or internal thoughts) begin with a prologue written by me and the respective player, representing the fragmentary "primarch-memory" each Legionary apparently bears.
I have made clear which segments were written by me, and which by my players.
-=-
ME:
I was there, the day Horus slew the Emperor.
The Hall of Memories is a vast sanctuary of ancient histories in the midst of the frightfully new. There is not yet the brassy faded gleam that age and wear and lack of understanding in proper materials science, necessary to upkeep the gilded surface of the Palace, that would characterise it ten millennia since. Everything glimmers, all the statues and gargoyles and satine-garbed banners. The windows are twenty primarchs tall and twinkle from refracted light like jewelled surfaces, each a mosaic depiction of a past triumph - Unification, Verronus, Ullanor.
The sky was clean in those days. Himalazia still offered something of the night sky.
All is not well in the heart of the Imperium, however. There are already some of that martial ugliness in the Imperial Palace's architecture which would overwhelm its past delicacies. I see signs of Dorn's handiwork everywhere. Emplacements of anti-air or howitzers stud the upper levels, poking through smashed clerestories, the shattered coloured-glass - each a tribute from a conquered world - swept up by unthinking servitors long since. Large green-painted crates of ammunition, grenades, water flasks and ration bricks fill the hallways, waiting to be carried to a more external strongpoint or already emptied and now in use as flimsy barricades in the vain hopes it might slow an Astartes.
In these corridors where scholars and bureaucrats paced daintily just months past, discussing high-minded galactic politics and newly billed policies being pondered over in the Senatorum, now only grim-faced soldiers of the Imperial Army run about, skittish, nervous, grey-faced with fear.
And so they should. It is no cowardice to fear the coming of the Warmaster.
I make a turn, and all the noise and hubbub for the preparation of urban combat disappears. A smaller corridor winds down for a time until I arrive at the place I knew he would be.
Amidst the ruined artefacts of an older age, he stands in silent meditation.
"Lord Sigilite," a heavily modified voice garbles out of my mask of machine. "The Emperor asks for your presence in the Throneroom."
He turns and sees a tech-priest, rather larger than the baseline human, betentacled with the mechanical arms of the Martian order. I am the very image of an upkeeper of the Golden Throne, indistinguishable by the very nature of the red priests' heterogeneity. Each tech-priest is a bespoke cyborg, the augments and techno-gadgetry he sports serving not only utilitarian roles, but testaments to his past roles and proficiencies.
It is the perfect disguise.
He limps forward, leaning on his staff. "And which one are you supposed to be?"
PLAYER:
"Adnector Tertius Amranth, Lord Sigilite," my false shell gurgles.
Primus and Secundus ranks would be too busy to be sent to give a summons, as deep in the Emperor's projects under the Palace as they are. Quartius and below would not be important enough to be sent for the Sigilite. It was the perfect rank to pose as.
Furthermore, any search of the personnel database would turn up an entire history for this Adnector, all properly redacted with successive levels of redaction peeled away based on authorization; an even deeper look into the coding behind this information would find the very runestrokes needed to create each entry at a proper remove from the dates on the file, as bureaucracy was never instantaneous. The runestrokes used to edit the time of entry of the cover runestrokes were never recorded. It was all neatly laid out in Hexarithmetic code, should a careful eye turn to it in a bout of suspicion.
Finally, and most importantly, should Malcador use his considerable psychic prowess to determine the veracity of my words, he will find the golden sheen of the truth. The Emperor did ask for him - I intercepted the order - and the Sigilite will have no choice but to go to him immediately. The Siege demands nothing less.
ME:
The old man gives one last look to the painting before him. Suspended from the rot of time upon the stasis field-generating dais, a dark-dressed woman returns his gaze from the painting, a mysterious air about her. There is something about her lips - not quite a smile, though suggestive of it.
Then he turns. "Walk with me, adnector."
We walk past icons of old. Trophies, sigils, symbols of achievement from times past, they are as diverse in form and medium as their chronographies, plucked from the river of time by stasis tech: books, scrolls, data-slates of varying provenance and technological sophistication, statues and statuettes, various pieces of pottery and other homely appliances both primitive and advanced, weapons, tortured faces of techno-barbarian warlords, Xeno specimens both living and dead, entire slabs of xenoarchitectural specimens cut off from forgotten worlds and carried wholesale.
The fragments of fallen empires. I remember thinking that the Imperium would soon join their ranks.
A ground-shaking rumble. Something massive falls on Terra's wounded surface - a battleship or a defence platform, I cannot tell which.
"The Imperium is not finished yet, adnector." The old man speaks diffidently. "Not as long as He lives."
The Emperor of Mankind.
"There are still loyal sons left. Legions running to answer His call. Time. All we need is time. Do we have time? What do you think?"
I think of the so-called loyal sons who are not here. Haughty Lionel, too proud to ever bend the knee to anyone but the Emperor, and that with the greatest reluctance. Roboute, so full of dreams for an empire of his own. Russ, cleverer than others give him credit, but unwise all the same and prone to misdirection. Corax, still licking the wounds from Istvaan and occupied with rebuilding his legion.
Ferrus. Dead.
Of these absences, the only surprise is Sanguinius. The Perfect Child. Horus always said the Emperor loved him the most, but I have always wondered.
Only dour Dorn and the Khan fight on Terra at their father's side. Two legions and their primarchs is a force to be reckoned with in any metric. But they fight against Horus.
Horus, the Warmaster. Horus, the Firstborn. Horus, primus inter pares.
They are outmatched. Surely the old man knows this.
PLAYER:
And that he knows this means he is probing for something. Probably checking for doubts, despair, and other forebears of treason. An Adnector is well-placed to ruin a great deal of important things in a bid to curry favor with the Warmaster, after all, and the Sigilite's caution hewed closer to mine than most. Thankfully, my chosen disguise offers a neat bypass to this question.
"The Omnissiah is inviolable, his victory inevitable," my form warbles. "That my calculations say we shall be overwhelmed simply means one of two things: one, that there are data and variables I am uninformed of sufficient to see us through, or two, none of us live to see him seize victory. He will survive where all others would fall, after all."
ME:
"Ah, yes. The Machine Cult." He coughs. Old lungs rattling. "Religion... the ancient opium. We tried to wipe it out, as you know. Uproot the servile instinct so prevalent in our race with the Imperial Truth."
He coughs again. Phlegm in his lungs. Faint scent of blood. I realise that the old man is overworked, perhaps more than he has ever been since the Unification. Back bent and shuffling, he makes slow progress through the hall of ruined images past, the very personification of defeat.
"But we failed. Akhemenides. Olympus Mons. Terra Nova. Monarchia. Always - these cults, springing up like the Ullanor plague. Because we long to be special, do we not, adnector? It is the god-instinct, this desire to become sacred - sanctified - segregated from the vulgar... the common. We must have a destiny. Fate. A grand narrative woven with our name on it. God-Emperor. Omnissiah. The Grand Plan."
He falters, almost loses his footing, steadies himself. The golden aquila staff seems so heavy in his grey, frail hands, each lifting of it an act of labour.
"But there is no mystery. No grand plan. Only the decisions we make and random chance... and the Chaos that follows. That's why we made two of you. So that you would be unpredictable, even to ourselves."
Then he turns to me.
"Have you come to kill me?"
PLAYER:
Bastard.
This should be expected though; my Blood Games on Terra only ever really worked if I maintained some distance from the Emperor and Malcador. More surprising is him knowing of Omegon, but that flash of concern dies immediately. Of course Malcador was there for our creation.
"In such a hypothetical scenario," my vox-cover blurts as I face the Sigilite, "I would not try to do so up close. The chances of success with such a strategy would be exceptionally low." [18:36]Ad Mech Velocireaper [WAR], : Even now I keep to the mask. Just in case this Adnector was assembled as a paired unit and my cover is actually intact, doubtful as that may be.
ME:
The old man smiles. "But that very irrationality - the reduced chance of success - now that could itself be a reason to attempt it. Because it is so unexpected. Or are you lulling me to a false sense of security, now?"
He enters the lift down, and so do I. It is large enough to host a full company of palace security, powerful enough to hold the weight of two Warlords. There are no railings in this slant-sliding escalator, allowing me to see down the long tunnel-like emptiness below. It would be such an easy thing to reach out and break his neck. Watch his body tumble down the depth toward the planet's core.
Plans within plans. The vulnerability itself, I know, is a facade. An old man's physique. Unassuming monk's robes. The visible frailty of it all. A sham, just like the Emperor's golden image.
"You were meant to watch from the sidelines, ever the observer," Malcador the Sigilite says as the lift begins its descent. Heavy machinery grind metal against metal, the massive lift trembling with wasted power as it carries two minute individuals into the depth of Himalazia, the very roots of the mountains it is built on. "Your gifts are not the pronounced subtlety of the Crow."
Pronounced subtlety. An oxymoron if there ever was.
"Why?" I ask. The question itself left unsaid, but he understands. Why the overlap in our gifts, and mine so markedly inferior?
I have seen Corvus in action, or the aftermath of it, rather. He is true invisibility. There is no catching him in the act, the whirlwind of bodies he leaves behind. Only by the path of destruction he scatters in his wake might one surmise his passage, like the coriolis storms of ancient Higara.
Whereas I am not invisible, not in the literal sense. Many are the times I have wondered at the half-baked nature of my gift, as vague and illusory as my detractors paint me as.
"His is the active camouflage," the Sigilite replies. "Yours is the passive. Have you ever seen his ships?"
"The reversed void shields," I reply. "Complete invisibility, like their primarch."
"Not complete," the old man says. "Things hidden by the Veil may be seen by Eyes that pierce it. There are certain individuals of the Guild - that is to say, the Navigator mutants, who can point their fingers at the shrouded vessels."
"Rare enough that it is not a concern."
"True," he concedes. "But it is not the third eye of the mutant that we must fear, but the reason they are able to do it."
Active camouflage. Some alternate emissions sensible only to those with particular sights? Whatever the case, there may be limits to his gift, after all.
"That which uses the Warp is a thing forever of the Warp," he says ruefully. "Your Father realised that too late. Or was an optimist, believing He might be able to... segregate the wheat and the chaff. But it was clear we might need to hedge our bets. That is why He made you differently."
"The lack of gifts is a gift?" I ask.
"He gave you independence," the old man says. "You cannot be predicted. Your actions leave no echoes in the realm of dreams. Whatever you do, it is of your own volition. No auspices, prophecies, or doom by warp-wizards and daemons can foresee and bind your actions, as it does the rest of your brotherhood. Even now I wonder if it was a mistake for Him to create such a one as you. Individuals who cannot be accounted for on the Golden Path, leaving no footprints in the Warp."
The lift nears its destination. Stabilisation fields keep us on our feet as it decelerates from fantastic speeds, sparks flying in contained energy bubbles where metal must meet metal, sonic dampeners muting the sound of friction from the lethal to the merely irritating.
"Your stealth is just a by-product," the old man says.
"That is why it is incomplete."
"Incomplete? No. Just misused." He steps off the now-stalled lift. I follow suit. "You were meant to watch from the sidelines," he says again. "Ever the observer."
"A face among the crowd." Blending with the background, not separate from it. That is why the Sigilite discovered me, I realise. I had left the audience's seat.
"Ah," he smiles up at me, a paternal kindness wrinkling through the age. "Now you understand."
I smile despite myself as we walk through the deathly silent hall, satisfied at an old question that had nagged at me being laid to rest. We are nearing the great golden gate, where there would have been two titans standing guard under ordinary circumstances. The sound of battle within assures me that the situation remains volatile, the fight ongoing. All the gilded custodians, the witches of silence, even the titans have been drawn to the Breach, leaving this hallway emptied of any who might interfere.
Now, I may kill him.
PLAYER:
It would be surprisingly easy, even. In this false shell lie an array of micro-fabricators pre-set to flash-scribe ontological anchors upon hidden blades, to circumvent empyric healing or fleeing. Scavenged xeno-tech repulsive to the warp waits for but a thought to activate, protecting me from its baleful energies. He would crumble like old rockcrete before an assault ram. I would carve my name into the history of the Heresy beyond almost all of my brothers.
But that is not my mission.
If I had simply wanted the Imperium to fall, I would never have struck ahead of the Warmaster's fleet, revealing the weaknesses in the system's defenses to Dorn so that he could bolster them; I would have just given the information to Horus, to overwhelm it swiftly and completely. If only Rogal had not been so dense, I would not need this charade. I would have one more capable son. And perhaps the Palace would have been the site of the Heresy's second Great Betrayal, a fitting mirror to Istvaan. Now I need Malcador to get me past these doors, for a far less grandiose measure. Thankfully, I've just been extended an invitation.
"We have almost arrived at the Gate, Honored Sigilite," I crackle out without audible venom. "I ask merely to hold audience to this meeting."
ME:
He examines me for a moment. What centuries must lie in those eyes? It is not the gaze of a psyker trying to read a man's soul, but an old man looking into the new.
"Come and see," he says. He waves a hand, and the gigantic gates fling open without a sound.
They are the dead. Mangled custodians and silenced witches lie in ignominious heaps, mindles servitors separating the living among the dead. Tech-priests and tech-clansmen bonded to the Throne on Terra work furiously on makeshift repairs on arms and armour at ad-hoc workstations, salvaging parts from whatever they can lay their hands on. Servitors haul pillars and columns cannibalised from other parts of the Palace, preparing for construction - of what, I cannot say. The scale and scope of the impromptu work is dizzying, so much of the Palace cut up and butchered for this unknown creation.
The war, too, goes on. Cargo haulers rumble across the floor carrying crates of munitions from alcoved doorways, accessing hidden storehouses that must have been stocked for precisely such an emergency as this. Soldiers mortal and divine rush to and fro, screaming for medics, reinforcements, shouting status reports in unfamiliar coordinates - Lucifer Blacks, green-clad Salamanders, golden custodians.
And in the midst of it all, the portal.
Magnus, oh Magnus. What have you done?
Then He strides out from the breach, two heads taller than the custodians who flank Him as He exits the empyrean beyond to reappear in the real. Even in the more practical battle regalia, he is an imposing character. Perhaps he always needed to be, for as we know now the Empyrean is the realm of dreams and images. What we imagine, they weave as real.
"Malcador," he says. "He has come." He smiles radiantly, and in that moment, I realise why Horus is Warmaster. These two are so alike, not in appearance but in essence. "My son has come home."
The old man bows. "Sanguinius is preparing a boarding team."
"I am going."
The old man looks at the Emperor, and He at him. An eternity passes between their eyes, I think. I cannot be sure. I consider myself an expert in reading men, but in that moment I am dwarfed by the sheer scale of time between these two men, if men they could be called. Whatever the debate that might have raged on between them unseen and unheard by outsiders, it concludes with the Sigilite's nod.
"Adnector Tertius Amranth," the Emperor says, turning his attention to me for the first time. "You have completed your mission well. Now I have another, should you choose to accept it."
PLAYER:
"Of course, oh Omnissiah," the vox blurts automatically, deception instinctual even as my thoughts lie with Malcador's words: that the Angel has returned to bring deliverance to a world plagued by daemons. How poetic. He should never have reached here, blocked by conjured warpstorms, his navigators led astray by the whispers of daemons.
Had Lorgar not attempted a pitiful coup. If Magnus was not monomaniacally focused on raiding the Palace's Librariums.
His fleet should be torn asunder in a nigh-perfectly coordinated grid of macrocannon shells and void lances, expertly set to slaughter any spoiling attacks from the rear.
Had Perturabo not left in a fit of pique. If Fulgrim was not entirely absorbed in pointless debauchery.
Curze was not the first choice for command over Void elements, and this news shows why. It seems my latest choice of allegiance is wise.
ME:
For the moment.
I know the dangers of stalling. Horus has decreed the death of the Sigilite, and with each second I extend my stay I test his patience. The Palace is besieged. Its outer walls are fallen. Terra is thronged with the strange creatures so alike to demons of ancient Terran myths, horned and hooved and bestial and madness-inducing. They climb the battlements, slaughter entire companies of still-loyal footsoldiers, raise mountains and conjure storms on a whim. Giant horned things the size of titans and more stalk the outer limits of the Himalazian fortress-palace, destroying statues of the Emperor and toppling hive-spires. Choirs of witch-singers make their marks in the minds of Terran citizenry, now totally enslaved to their will, hurling themselves unarmed against the adamantine gates to create climbing ramps of flesh for spike-symboled tanks and infantrymen to trod on.
And yet here I stand.
Mars stands with the Warmaster. The entire Solar System crawls with Horus' ships, repaired and supplied and refitted from the Rings of Iron with the newest implements of void-war. Xeno-etheric storms begotten of what remains of Lorgar's cultists cuts the system off from whatever reinforcements might be limping back to Terra. The Jovian battlefleet is broken, hiding behind the shadows of Saturn, nursing its wounds and gathering the pitiful few remnant-fleets that survived the cordon to rally around Dorn's favourite toy. With but a word, a pre-set telegraphed message wired to the Vengeful Spirit, I could inform Horus of this. I could destroy them all.
And yet I remain silent.
When the last gates are breached and the victory total, they will demand answers of me. If I survive the chaos of the massacre.
The Emperor has lost. His defeat is total.
Why then do I accept His command?
Valdor fights.
He speaks in the mind's tongue. Behind the words I hear the murmured background of a thousand other conversations to a thousand other souls, words directed to individuals near and far - custodians and tech-priests and preachers and captains of men that keep up the fight against the enemy wherever they stand in whatever manner they are able, breathing in words of encouragement, directions, construct-instructions, tactical commands.
Then the background noise fall silent as though He has withdrawn from them all, and His words flood into my mind. They come as an onrush of thoughts - feelings - sentiments, wordless abstract things that bear more meaning than voiced words and written texts ever can hold.
Valdor fights. Vulkan builds. My custodians defend the repair-work within the empyrean, but my absence is keenly felt. They are dying. The enemy is without number and they know no death. My custodians are dying. My companions are dying.
You have been taught the signs of the Machine and of War. Join them. Aid your brother's work. Destroy the enemy. Until its mirrored twin in the Sanctum is finished. So that the breach may be contained. Protect Vulkan. Help his repairs. Destroy the enemy. They are dying.
I give unto you the title Belisarius, the last general. My final weapon against the oncoming horde, and my last trap against the Fates that have conspired against our race. Walk the way of shadows and tricks. The dagger in the dark. Prince with a thousand names. The false enemy to train against the real. All the galaxy will be your enemy. None shall know of your true plans, your true nature.
My son. My Alpharius.
And He is gone.
PLAYER:
A small, insane part of me laments missing the greatest chance I ever had to win a Blood Game. The more sane part of me activates the first emitter in a long chain of vox-relays I had been placing as I had infiltrated the Palace, leading to a number of suborned communications towers, which themselves will encrypt and transmit my words on a frequency attuned to a similar set of relays on a ship whose name I know not. "Serpens Supremum," I subvocalise.
I had to contact my Twin.
-=-
ME:
"I have been reading the reports from my liaisons in your fleet over the action on Tesstra Prime."
The office boasts an ostentatious decor common to Gloriana-class battleships. All of them are beautiful in their own way, each according to the manner of its owner. This one has an austerity to it that speaks of colonnades and statues of unpainted Grecian marble.
"They tell me that you destroyed fifteen major staging grounds with just as many marines in the first day, three of them the moment the initial talks were called off."
They were not always so understated, my father once told me. There was a time when they were vibrant with colour, painted in mineral dyes of ground up gemstones. The reserved ideal of pristine white marbles, unclouded by such gaudy things as colour, are an unintended product of time. An unearned dignity.
"All but two of the major aerodromes made unusable by chemical attacks. Two hundred forty-nine high officers of the Tesstrian Armed Forces dead in their beds. No less than two major uprisings and coup d'etat attempts across the week of the campaign, all of them by indigenous Tesstrians."
Why do you keep these artifices of lies around, then? I asked. Even in those days I knew enough not to address him as father.
Because they are a reminder that all things, even lies, may attain a certain superficial dignity. He looked at me then. Beware the instinct to revere the traditional and the ancient. On that path lies decay.
"Five million Tesstrians dead over the resultant internecine wars and power-grabs. Three hive-grade cities made uninhabitable. Ninety per cent of the Armed Forces destroyed or otherwise made combat ineffective before their eventual surrender."
Order and honour has its uses, father mused, but at the end of the day, even they are merely tools.
The stentorian primarch from Macragge puts down the datascroll and rubs his eyes. An unusually human affectation of vulnerability. I have seen only Horus use such, and him only in the presence of mortal officers of the Army and the Navy. Here, there are only the two of us.
I wonder sometimes if being raised by a maternal figure has made our brother in blue more well-adjusted than most of our stark-mad kindred.
"Explain yourself, brother."
Then again, perhaps not.
PLAYER:
Were I more impetuous, I might have told the lord of ultramar that he is not my Emperor nor my Warmaster, and that my methods are mine own, but I am not, and he will have an answer. Of course, the outrage is no surprise. Guilliman is ultimately a diplomat and logistician, a ruler, not a conqueror, his endless negotiations would have seen our fleets halted for weeks if not months, perhaps only to result in the deaths of millions anyway.
Were I like him, raised at the bossom of a loving mother and father, perhaps I might have even rolled my eyes, "I acted in accordance with the best interests of the campaign. Tesstria fell into Imperial hands without the necessity of a drawn out negotiation, nor a costly landing by army assets or Astartes."
I look into my gene-brothers tired eyes, remaining uncowed by his assumed superiority, "The diplomats were not confident in a quick resolution, and nor was I. No Imperial Army or Navy assets were lost, potentially volitile actors were disabled, and Tesstria no longer has the military capacity for rebellion, nor the figures to lead it. Logistics assets will be rebuilt, and the campaign will continue."
I pause, allowing the words to hang in the air for a moment. I wonder what he hopes to gain from this scolding?
"The Tesstrians assumed equality in negotiation and doomed themselves, I simply ensured they would not burden the crusade with their hubris."
ME:
"My men leave the worst to the last. They say that it would have been simpler - with war assets saved - to make a focused assault on the planet's capital in a beheading operation to force total surrender. Given the cultural and political structure of Tesstria Prime, such an overwhelming display of force would have resulted in the acceptance of the Emperor's Lex... without the loss of so much manpower that could have been conscripted for the continuing war effort."
The primarch puts the report aside. "You vain, glory-hounding child," he says. Controlled rage seething through his perfect teeth. The Lord of Ultramar has such cold eyes. "Tesstria Prime was not just a showcase for the display of your legion's might. It was an entire world, with a wholly human population that might have been captured unharmed. Their technology base, their traditional wisdoms, their culture, their manpower. You tossed any concern for the long view for what - to show off how quickly you could take the world?
"You are no fool, brother. By the Truth, I sometimes suspect it of some of our brothers. Mayhap their brains were damaged in their scattering - or upbringing, as is the case with that mad warhound. But you are no fool. You knew we could have used those assets. You knew that a simpler strategy would have led to more optimal results. Why?" He gestures at the open datascroll. "Why go through so much... skullduggery?"
PLAYER:
"Because, brother, it would have been too easy. The Alpha Legion is not a hammer to be dropped on the uncompliant. It is a scalpel that cuts from the inside out."
A strange sort of smile tugging at the corners of my mouth before I suppress it. It was true, Tesstria could have been decapitated, it could have been cracked open like an egg. I however, am not Dorn, and the Alpha Legion does not use its Astartes like bludgeoning tools.
"The crusade will survive with a wounded Tesstria Prime, it will suffer far more with a dulled scalpel."
ME:
"Too easy. Too easy? Too easy..." The primarch mulls over the word. "I did not know what to make of you, Alpharius. You were the last of us to return to the fold of civilisation. The concept of the Great Crusade may be... foreign to you.
"Know that this is nothing like the skirmishes and wars of merely planetary scale. But you would not know about even that, would you? Each of our brothers was a conqueror, a king, a lord of a world or worlds when they were found. But you?" He snorts. "Nothing. They say you were found a prisoner in some Xeno empire, and that our father had to rescue you. The scars on his personal ship can still be seen when it is in orbit, so great was the damage taken.
"Most of us learned to do more than flail our units to achieve victories. Conquest, little brother, was guaranteed. There was no possible way for Tesstria Prime to retain independence. The question then becomes not if, but how cheaply it would be taken. You say you have lost no Imperial assets, and that was true... until the world came into our fold, and what was theirs became ours. The damages are staggering. The institutional distrust you have sown among its populace with all these unorthodox methods will make integration more difficult than otherwise.
"Your tactics are a waste of the Emperor's bolt shells," he declares with finality. "And I loath wastefulness in a man."
PLAYER:
I weather my brothers abuses in silence, a part of me wanting to laugh at just how wrong he was. He did not understand, none of them did, the decades I had stood by the emperors side, before even the Cthonian, and he would never understand.
"Sometimes Roboute, I envy you, so utterly self assured as to think you have not only solved warfare, but can commit it to a book."
The smirk curls once more at the edges of my lips, it cannot be restrained,
"I will admit brother, you are an excellent tactician, but you are predictable. Give an enemy any knowledge on your way of war and he will know your patterns, of course, this may not save him, but you are predictable nonetheless. One day, however, your legion, pale imitations of you that they are, may face an enemy that they cannot predict without you, and what will they do then? Will they adapt? Will their spirit break without their fathers guiding hand? Regardless they will learn through blood."
I allow myself a sigh, "My legion will not suffer thusly. They do not commit themselves to dogmatic efficiency, they are unpredictable, an unbroken chain, capable of warfare covert and overt. Yes, I could have conquered Tesstria Prime with simple decapitation, but that is predictable, and that is too easy, we are capable of both because we practice both."
ME:
"You speak as a captain of a warband, when our father made us to be warlords over legions!" He slams his fist on the table, leaving slight imprint. "Have you no idea how much chaos you have caused on the supply lines due to your operations? Your tactics certainly are unpredictable - for the enemy and us both! Such wildness might suit in a small-scale skirmish led in some tribal backwater whence you hail, but wars, wars, Alpharius, are run not by some individual feats of brilliance but logistics. Predictability is reliability. Where would we be if we all outran our supply ships like the Chogorian?"
The primarch visibly attempts to regather his calm. What he speaks next comes out like a rehearsed recitation, consciously excised of emotion. "Your unsuitability for command will be made note of for our father's perusal. The XIIIth will take over the absorption of Tesstria Prime. Now get out of my sight before I decide to add a tendency for insubordination to the report."
PLAYER:
"Insubordination? Brother, I fail to remember you being my superior."
Guillimans biggest problem, aside from his dogmatism is that he assumes to speak from a place of power and control, even to his supposed equals.
"As for Tesstria, you are welcome to it. Enjoy the statues they build in your honor, for I know they tickle your ego so."
I remain for a moment, watching my brothers tired eyes.
ME:
He mulls over that. Suspending his emotions, his pride.
Stars as my witness, we are a prideful lot. Whatever superhuman faculties of reason were afforded us by our enhanced physiology - and other more arcane workings that provide the motive-source of our anima - were sidelined every now and then by the justifiable hubris that recognition of one's superiority brings. But Roboute was among those less consciously afflicted by it, even if he could be self-assured to the point of arrogance at times. He made the effort to extricate himself from such a failing.
That is more than I can say for most of my other brothers.
"I spoke too forwardly," the Lord of Ultramar says, more restrained now, the anger he feels at my tactics compartmentalised away in some corner room of his vast mind's palace. Later in the day or in the coming weeks he would chew the cud, process that emotional reaction in his own time. For now, he was capable of dialogue. "Sometimes I forget that we all had different upbringings. One must learn to... sympathise, make the effort to understand differences. My only wish, brother, my sole desire, is to see you reach your full potential. Not as a skulking assassin or saboteur, picking off some high-value target like one of the Sigillite's pet monsters. To rule - to command. Be the general that you are meant to be - that we all are meant to be."
I did not know you capable of lying, Captain-General. Hmm? When you told the High Lords, that you knew of no new generals being made in the likeness of the Thunder Warriors' legion-lords. You knew of me. I knew of you, the chief custodian agrees. But you are no general.
"I hate to see wasted potential," Roboute says. "Tools misused by application outside of their intended roles. By Terra, you ought to know this as well as the others - you do not have the madness of some of our brothers.
"I do not wish to take control of your legion. They are your gene-sons, after all. It is a terrible thing to be orphaned from one's father."
Paternal absence - a commonality among our brotherhood.
"You and your legion are young. The last to be found, the last to be raised to full strength. I understand that you might feel a certain impatience, a desire to make your mark in the galactic conquest the likes of which there never was nor shall be again. But you must be more circumspect. Wars cost lives, brother. Real human lives. Living, feeling, breathing beings, each with hopes and dreams and aspirations all - of a better future, of a desirable meal, of a happy mating procedure later in the night. This Imperium was made for such as they. Not for us. Care must be taken to minimise casualties, eliminate risks."
I once thought to build great fences to fend off humanity from the stars. He rarely spoke by then, out loud. His words had a way of echoing overloud in these golden halls, causing entire legions of scribes and sycophants to scurry over so that they might record His words in perpetuity. So the most secret thoughts involving the most ancient of memories were communicated strictly through the mind's speech. Cut off access to the Enemies, without and beyond. I would take care of those within. For centuries, we had peace.
Was peace not good, lord?
It was. And as a race, we degenerated.
Order stifles, Alpharius. Order cages. It prevents evolution, denies the primordial life's command - to spread, to mutate, to scatter to the Seven Winds. Kept in a sterile cube of safety and convenience, the mind withers to prepubescence. A meat-thing content to breath and defecate and die. Nothing remains of the survival instinct, the fight-or-flight mechanism. Teeth fall off. Claws soften. The skin becomes sensitive to the most inoffensive of environmental factors. A laboratory rat unfit for a life outside.
Even I could not prevent race-wide atrophy.
This was not the Golden Path.
No. It was not. It cost me precious centuries to understand that.
"You are still young," the Lord of Ultramar repeats, and in his eyes, his words, I see a mingling of pity now, mixed with regret. Pity for me, the last orphan to be picked up. Regret that he had lost his patience with such a pitiable thing.
"You are intelligent. I can see that. That means you are capable of learning. And there is much for you to learn."
A man learns until the day he dies.
"Come, brother." He extends a hand. Regal, imposing, paternal. Almost kindly. At times, he reminds me the most of my father. "Stay with my legion for now. There are things I would teach you - of conquest, yes, but the thereafter as well."
Nor a ruler, the chief custodian continues. No. You are... something else. I am Alpharius. The chief custodian cocks his head, the most human gesture I have seen him make. So the Emperor wills.
Roboute attempts a smile. "We shall make a ruler out of you yet."
PLAYER:
The man simply does not understand. He is a genius, admirable in his capacities as a conqueror, a war leader, and more importantly, a ruler of billions. Yet despite his genius, he simply does not understand what I have known to be true since my birth. I was not made to be a conqueror in the vain of Roboute Guilliman or Horus Lupercal, nor a siege master, or a diplomat, or a humanitarian or even an executioner.
Guilliman was bred to rule billions, and his realm of ultramar showed that it was a gift well used. I on the other hand, was bred to ensure the Imperium from the shadows, to act as the unseen hand that kills and lies and watches so that others may rule billions without having to turn their eyes to such dark places.
Perhaps it is simply because it is my nature, and my design by the Emperors own hand, but I do not envy Guilliman in this. No, I revel in my place as the master of lies, who has been there forever and yet who is seen as nothing but a baby brother. The lord of ultramars pity is misplaced, though I suppose its only natural, a position such as his breeds arrogance, just as mine does I suppose.
I sigh once more, my face taking on a pale of sadness, both at my brothers close mindedness and perhaps at his attempt at kindness as well. "I am sorry Brother, but I cannot. You limit your view of His designs, you see us as rulers and conquerors, but we are not brother, we are tools. You know well the function you serve, and you serve well, your failing is in your assumption that all were intended to match your intent."
I shake my head, "Angron was never built to be anything but a nail for the Emperors hammer, Curze is a weapon to make rebels fear things worse then death, and Horus is a general without peer. I, brother, am simply Alpharius."
ME:
"And what is that?" The primarch counters.
He plays at being puzzled at the idea of a brother of his who might play the saboteur, the assassin. The knife in the dark. Is he truly confounded? Or does he unconsciously block himself from considering the unthinkable possibility - that brother might one day fight against brother, and that the Emperor would have a contingency against the coming of that day?
What might I say to make him understand? That I had fought on Mount Ararat? That I witnessed the last gasp of the first primarchs who we lured into the Palace for a clean elimination, away from prying eyes? That his father is nothing like his mother, and would order the destruction of his tools when they have ceased to be of use?
I wonder at times if the memory locks involving the IInd and XIth do my brothers more evil than good. The only thing that can put down a legion of Astartes is another legion. My father has crossed that line a long time ago.
PLAYER:
"Necessary." I reply simply, remaining cryptic.
If nothing else, knowledge of those the Emperor had eradicated from existence would have at least given my brothers a healthy sense of paranoia. The naivete of those so gifted is truly remarkable at times.
Even Guilliman's own see more then he does at times, one of his sons, a sergeant, wrote of the necessary doctrines to utilize against astartes. Instead of heeding the warriors wisdom he was imprisoned, I wonder when they will see him as a hero instead?
ME:
The lord of Ultramar does not appreciate the finer points of laconic humour.
What happens afterward is a matter of public record. Two primarchs in the fullness of their fury are not easily disguised, not when the points of contention are so core to their respective identities, and their pride so fundamentally wounded. Had we been on the Alpha, perhaps our disagreements might not have been broadcasted so. Alas, ever the bureaucrat, Roboute enjoys the company of our father's wretched remembrancers. It is their endless scrivening that makes our fight so public an affair. The marines attendant do not think it proper to halt their record-making, given my father's decree that instated them into the fleets.
That is the last day the two primarchs share words until the fateful day at Istvaan. As far as my brother is aware.