40k: Descendant Degeneration

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Discovery

"Well I'll be damned! Did ya know this can opener fits on the end of a lasgun?"

- Anecdote of an ignorant conscript discovering his bayonet, from Colonel Juanito Diaz' equally censored and celebrated memoirs Between Battle Drills, Bedsheets and Bribes: The True Story of My Military and Amorous Career Within His Imperial Majesty's Revered Porfirixian Planetary Defence Force

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Tribute to Bill Mauldin's Willie & Joe, with a Porfirian touch. In space.
 
@twisted moon: Thank you kindly!

Joke Piece on Subversion

This fun thing emerged on Reddit.

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Into the Flames

In the grim darkness of the far future, man leaves man to burn alive for his sins.

Fire!

Listen. The warning cry will send shivers down human spines, a portent of suffocating doom and hellish tongues consuming possessions and flesh alike in an inferno.

Fire!

Hear. The dreaded cry will ring out, and suddenly loved ones are to be lost, homes are to vanish and treasures and savings are to be reduced to nought but ash. How much of human history has vanished in capricious flame through the ages? What will remain standing among the cinders afterwards? What can be saved from the blaze? Can you be saved? Your kin?

Fire!

Act. The cry will be met with shouts and wailing. Adrenaline and billowing panic race through the veins of men, women and children. Primordial fear grapples with deedful instincts and a will to fight the burning menace, to preserve kith and kin and salvage precious belongings. The human heart runs amok, as animal terror fights innate heroism in a world at once gone hot, dry and deadly amid a thousand devils' flaring autumn colours. Frightened ears listen for steady voices, for sure commands to guide them out of this roaring peril. And everywhere, as things turn to ash, dark smoke bllows out, their embrace as insidious as poison.

No matter the epoch, the sight of rampaging fire will invoke much the same spectrum of responses from mankind. The reactions may vary to some degree, depending on training and known facilities on hand, yet the heart of man inevitably fears the flame, no matter if he dwells in a hut or a spire reaching for the stars themselves.

From the time when man first discovered fire, he has also battled to control the flames. Old Earth was once home to eternal temple fires, which priests and sacred virgins never allowed to go out. During the misty past of the distant Age of Terra, myths spoke of stolen fire carried from the gods on high to mortal men below, ending in a story of horrendous punishment visited upon the thief for thus empowering mankind with such a prohibited force. Echoes of this ancient legend still exist in a myriad forms across a million worlds and countless voidholms, retold by the fireside and electric heater as clans huddle together, close to the warmth. Yet the forbidden prize itself will often arise unexpectedly to harrow man with destruction, akin to a divine punishment that continues to scourge man, in a timeless tale of inhuman woe.

Garbled sagas from all across the Milky Way galaxy contain fragments of a far away time, a better time, a blissful time. A sinful time. They tell of a golden age, when man scarcely feared fire and lightning, and when he settled the stars with bold audacity and explored the cosmos as his birthright. They tell of the Dark Age of Technology, when fountains taller than mountains flowed and nanoxtingers too small for the eye to spot would arise to douse sparks and budding flames. They tell of rainstorms and even floods and tsunamis that could be fashioned by man at the flick of a finger to extinguish flames with razorlike precision, all fanciful glimpses of man's unrivalled artificial control of his surroundings during bygone eras. For truly man ruled the universe with supreme confidence, and in his arrogance did man first challenge, and then deny divinity, and such unbelief was to be the undoing of ancient man.

If distorted memories encapsulated within these fanciful narratives are to be believed, then Man of Gold in times of yore sported suits, vehicles and buildings immune to all the ravages of fire and heat. And Man of Stone directed Man of Iron with such efficient speed to kill sprouting flames, that many humans nigh-on lost their inherent fear of fire, and rare flares became a childish curiosity to them, exotic phenomena to be witnessed if they were fast enough, before an unfailing machine system corrected the error. For at first did Man of Iron not allow Man of Gold to come to harm, yet the dutiful servant in paradise became corrupted by Abominable Intelligence, and the earthly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron was destined to shatter, as punishment for godless man's horrible sins.

And so Man of Iron rose up to betray his master, and a cataclysmic machine revolt swept the human star domains like a wildfire in the heavens, slaying all life on a million worlds while another million burnt like torches, surrounded by void installations that crashed with flaming tails. And when the machines were vanquished, there came a cursed time of witches and ravages. Thus human civilization was toppled from its absolute pinnacle of shining glory, to crash into a horrid wasteland of ash and cinders. The grand beacon of hope and progress was extinguished, and all was fell.

Bereft of the technological marvels of their forebears, the savages and scavengers that roamed the subsequent cannibal age was left to the mercy of the elements. Exposed to cold, to radiation and to starvation and thirst, these technobarbarians lit campfires with whatever fuel they could find, to stave off freezing and darkness. Surrounded on all sides by the dark and by strange screams, these primitive wretches found comfort in flames as they squatted amid the ruins of a great civilization. Yet fire brought not only warmth and light, but also danger. Accidents would see flames consume entire tent villages and vaults filled with survivors, while deliberate use of fire as a rudimentary weapon saw foes and neighbours grilled to death in their own homes.

In this cannibal freefall known as Old Night, man quickly learnt anew to fear the flame, and to fear the unknown. In this deteriorating world of warlords and devastation, man's means to fight fire had usually degraded to crude bucket brigades and strangulation with blankets, while intact relics of ancient firefighting that could be manually worked by humans were much treasured and even fought over, as were other pieces of potent archeotech. Oftentimes, larger fires that devoured entire settlements of shanty huts would run rampant, beyond any means for ignorant man to control. Then, mankind was reduced to pray for strong rains, or to ask the gods for a flood. Such was firefighting for most of miserable humanity during the Age of Strife.

This aeon of ruin was ended abruptly by the Terran Emperor's brutal conquests, as Mars and Terra reasserted their interstellar dominion in sweeping wars that allowed no one to stay outside Imperial rule. The Great Crusade brought back a modicum of civilization, order and technological restoration to most human societies brought into Compliance, and one of the services reestablished by the early Imperium of Man was that of firefighting. As towering cities of enforced hope and knowledge were erected across the Milky Way galaxy, so too did well-oiled institutions arise to keep the material trappings of this human renaissance safe from worldly disasters. Where once spreading flames had been a communal emergency to be dealt with by floundering amateurs that were as ill-prepared as they were untrained, now city fires, factorum fires and forest fires would be tackled rapidly by drilled corps of professionals and volunteers stocked up on advanced equipment to deal with any number of fickle disaster scenarios, not only limited to burning flames.

Man lived better while the Imperator walked among His chosen species, and the realm of man grew more secure and confident, as a million captured worlds and voidholms beyond counting prospered and bloomed by Imperial grace. Where once Chaos had reigned during Old Night, now law, order and safeguards against disasters rose up amid wealthy Compliant societies. Populations that had once roamed anarchic in complete distrust for other people not of close kin, would at long last cultivate civic pride and trust in both fellow humans and larger, civilian institutions. During this heyday of mounting greatness, the popular image emerged, of the heroic fireman saving humanity from little disasters at home, whom all could depend on, while all-conquering Legions saved mankind as a whole from oblivion at a thousand battlefronts. And man began to dream again under the shadow of the stern Aquila, to nurture hope once more and to think of the great works that the ancients must have been undertaking before the great fall. And so brilliant minds turned their energies to repair and recover what knowledge had been lost, for they were once again aflame with visions of unlocking the secrets of the universe, and their spirits were determined to conquer lore just as the Emperor's warriors conquered worlds.

Such were the radiant promises of the early Imperium, yet they were to bear rotten fruit.

The greatest of traitors decreed: Let the galaxy burn.

And burn it did.

Seared away in the flames of ambition and envy, the human resurgence was brought low by human failings, and man revolted against his saviour and conqueror. Brother slew brother, and sister strangled sister across a thousand thousand worlds when the Emperor of Mankind Himself was nigh-on slain in the skies above Terra. Yet from suffering this heinous crime did He ascend into supreme godhood, to judge all of our species from the Golden Throne of hallowed myth in sacred perpetuity. Man would forever do penance for his baleful sins, and flames would scorch his flesh as smoke filled his lungs.

As the Age of Imperium ground on, fire became seen as an instrument of justice and purity, burning away sin, filth and corruption. Thus heretics, witches, mutants and malcontents were heaped upon the pyre, in an ever-deepening spiral of horror and malice heading into the darkest abyss of human depravity. Yet customs and morals were not the lone subject of a downward spiral, for technology itself underwent a slow grind into atavistic barbarity, in a drawn-out process of demechanization and loss of knowledge that has seen ordinary means of firefighting degenerate from airborne skimmers and sophisticated pump systems to the manual labour of bucket brigades.

One common symptom of technological deterioration for everyday civilian appliances within the Imperium, can be seen in the shape of the hosemen of a myriad different firefighting corps. Instead of being issued independently portable respirator apparati, the hosemen are given crude and cheap rebreathing masks fitted with long hoses that they drag along wherever they go, ever at risk of stepping on each others' air hoses or getting themselves entangled inside burning buildings. As man-portable respirator systems have gone from being a given norm for all pyrovigiles with any rebreathing apparatus whatsoever, to becoming a treasured prestige item, firefighting specialists such as smokedivers have been given priority for portable respirator equipment, while lowly hosemen teams are tasked with extinguishing fires as they drag along a snake's nest of both water hoses and air hoses.

This technological primitivization of human firefighting units in the Age of Imperium mirrors a grand retardation of every area within civilian society and military alike. It is however not only a decay of tech, but also of human systems of organization. When the Emperor of Terra walked among His dutiful subjects, firefighting services that protected everything and everyone within His domain was just part of the normal patchwork of civilization, and not something many thought twice about. During the early Imperium, many firemen were part of altruistic volunteer corps, and local Governors invested in standing corps of regular pyrovigiles to go along with these heroic citizens of a healthy civil society. On top of that did private organizations fund anti-inferno units for the common good, out of a robust sense of civic service.

As the Imperium has aged, and aged badly, the very word of 'citizen' has lost all meaning within the Low Gothic language, and nowadays everyone will talk about Imperial subjects or willing thralls of the Emperor. Where it once was unthinkable for able-bodied fire-soldiers to allow houses and people to burn without lifting a finger to save them, nowadays such practices of selective firefighting have become part and parcel of the commercial profit calculations of Guilds and collegia, and most humans in the fortyfirst millennium have never even heard of the concept of a volunteer firefighting corps.

The reason for this dying away of volunteer associations such as fireman organizations is twofold. First, it is the result of ruthless firefighting companies seeking to eliminate all competition through means both violent and legalese in nature. Second, it is the fruit of a persistent governance theme, where paranoid Imperial Governors and Voidholm Overlords will suppress any civil associations such as volunteer firefighting units, since any kind of popular organizations whatsoever could be used as a platform for rebellions and coups. Both Imperial and local rulers will pose the strongest opposition to the formation of volunteer firefighting units. After all, allowing the rabble to organize themselves for any reason whatsoever is a dangerous habit that can easily provide the basis for insurrections. Better to strangle that baby in the cradle than allow the unwashed plebs to coalesce, by slaying the new volunteer firefighting corps in as public a way as possible, complete with false accusations and grisly displays of dying volunteer firemen and their mutilated bodyparts amid much pomp and circumstance, set to the tune of rabid propaganda.

This dysfunctional obsession with public order over the common good has ever been a plague upon the fulfilment of humanity's true potential, and the long-term results of it will invariably turn counter-productive even for the purposes of maintaining stability. Thus does distrust breed misery, and failure begets failure.

Indeed, most worlds and voidholms within the Emperor's cosmic domains will lack governance-run Fire Ministries, since such natural parts of human civilizations during the early Imperium has long since rotted away through fivehundred generations of corruption, cutbacks and a morass of screeching inefficiency and bureaucratic rigmarole. Thus, with the general absence of volunteer corps of firemen and functioning governatorial anti-inferno departments, the field has been left abandoned for privileged business interests to dominate, except for in underhives and the worst sorts of slums. Here, haphazard communal efforts must make do, since these lawless regions and neighbourhoods are too poor to afford better equipment and training, thus rendering any volunteer firefighters that they may occasionally manage to muster inefficient.

Nowadays there is usually little difference between commercial firefighters and those originally organized by planetary and voidholm authorities. Lack of official funds coupled with rampant corruption, graft and glad-handing means that such governance-founded pyrovigiles corps will almost inevitably adopt the practices of private firefighting organizations, and after a sufficient number of centuries they will even be recognized as such de jure as well as de facto. They got to eat, after all.

There are five overarching categories that summarize how most firefighting collegia work, although many companies will function in several overlapping categories, and other modes of operation exist outside these most usual ones. The five most common ways of commercial firefighting in the Age of Imperium can be summed up as follows: Internal, contractual, insurance-hunting, property-gobbling and enforced by decree.

First, internal firefighting is carried out by employed specialists within Guild compounds and other installations, all owned and operated by the same merchant clan or potentate. Parts of such corpus pyrovigiles branches and damage control units will often be leased out during periods of lull, though they never roam far from their assigned compounds, since lucrative opportunities abroad pale in comparison to the losses to be incurred if damage control teams are absent during any of the many breakdowns and disasters that plague Imperial industry on an everyday basis. Internal firefighting is usually assisted by ad-hoc musters of manpower, some of whom may sport rudimentary training in damage control. This is most common in vast manufactorum complexes, onboard merchant vessels and Guilder-operated astromining voidholms, as well as in any noble palaces.

Second, contractual firefighting is carried out by specialized firms regularly hired by other organizations as part of standing arrangements, usually involving a convoluted subscription service. Oathbound firefighting setups are part of this category, including fire companies who perform duties for temples, monasteries and other religious establishments as part of their traditional obligations outside the scope of profit. After all, the priests promised a better afterlife for any firemen who would assist the Ministorum without the aim of pecuniary compensation. Pyrovigiles cartels will fight fires in structures where they are obligated to do so by sealed contract, and let other buildings burn to the ground with indifference. Sometimes they can be persuaded by bribes to extend their firefighting operations to areas adjacent to their contractual territory, some bribes of which include the offering up of lewd services from desperate commoner families, or the gifting away of clansmembers as thralls.

Third, insurance-hunting firefighting is carried out by freelancing corporate entities, who seek out burning buildings wearing the metal plaques of sanctioned insurance collegia, who promise to reward whosoever saves their insured structure from the flames. When insurance-based firefighting first emerged, it was common practice for pyrovigiles companies to quench any fire in order to stop it from spreading, just as it was usual for insurance collegia to pay a partial reward for the stopping of flames on nearby non-insured buildings in order to incentivize firefighters to stop nascent great fires in their tracks. However, over the centuries such practices have decayed away across His astral realm thanks to a miasma of greyzone lawyermongering and pennypinching myopia. As such, nowadays insurance collegia will strictly only reward freelancing fireman companies for saving insured buildings, and no civic-mindedness to fight fires in non-insured property for the sake of the common weal can any longer be found among the commercial pyrovigiles units. After all, if a tender structure fire do gain traction and spread to multiple insured buildings, will there not be greater potential to claim fees? Insurance-hunting firefighting companies will often fight each other in bloody street brawls for the chance to claim the reward, resulting in such units sporting lethal weaponry and far better body armour than most military units in the Imperium can ever dream of being issued with. Ironically, the fierce rivalry between some competitors will often cause worse fires than the original cause for their showing up on the scene in the first place.

Fourth, property-gobbling firefighting is carried out by freelancing pyrophobia firms, headed by cunning entrepreneurs with an eye for amassing wealth at the expense of people in dire straits. This demented format will involve an entire brigade of firemen with equipment and vehicles showing up to the site of raging fire, without engaging in firefighting. The leading lucratores will then call upon the owner of the burning property and haggle viciously. If the negotiations are succesful, the company owner will purchase either the burning property, or buy up a large number of its hereditary indentured serfs for a pittance, and then send in his firefighters. If the property owner refuse to sell out his buildings, vehicles and minions to the ruthless slumlord, the property-gobbling crassii will usually turn on their heels and march away without lifting a finger to fight the spreading inferno, although worse practices still have emerged in recent centuries.

Fifth, firefighting enforced by decree is carried out by any privately owned firefighting brigades that can be mustered by the edicts of an autocrat. These commercial pyrovigiles will work for no reward, or under rules of non-negotiable compensation set by an Imperial Governor or other authorities. They will almost always be backed up by paramilitary organizations, Planetary Defence Forces, mobs of sectarian zealots and hastily amassed hordes of gangs, clan militias and other plebeian rabble who can form bucket brigades and perform other forms of lowly grunt labour in order to fight fires grand enough to catch the attention of administrators and military commanders.

Such are the five most common forms of firefighting within the astral domains of the Enthroned One, yet there is more to be said of the heinous methods employed by man against fellow man where fires are concerned.

In the Age of Imperium, empathy toward anyone who is not close kin has largely died out among His chosen species. As such, liveried firefighting companies will often refuse to rescue people inside burning buildings unless the client pay extra. Some fireman cartels will even decline to bring ladders, since their business is strictly the saving of property, not life. Such abominable calculations used to stand as the pinnacle of ruthless firefighting practices within the Imperium of Man, yet they have long since been superseded by even more monstrous deeds driven by twisted logic.

After all, is it not a baleful sin to refuse to pay for saving home and loved ones from the flame? Is it not the ultimate condemnation of spiritual failure to stand empty-handed, with empty purse and no lucre to reward the stalwart soldiers against fire? Not only do such worthless house-owners endanger themselves, but their neighbours and larger community also. Such accursed deviancy! Clearly, the God-Emperor has weighed their souls, and found them wanting. These misers and paupers have already been judged by Him on Terra, and damnation is to be their lot. Should not such scum and wretches burn, and burn justly? Let the flames of purgation engulf them! Aye, cast them bodily into the very fires that they cannot afford to quench, to set a warning example for others to heed!

Indeed such culling of the rabble will serve a virtuously eugenic purpose in Imperial modes of thinking. Should not the weak be purged for the betterment of mankind as a whole? Thus the cruel circus of civilian life inside the Imperium of Holy Terra goes on, spawning ever more parodic forms of human malevolence and dysfunctional systems of self-harm, all rationally argued by minds indoctrinated with a thousand lies and a hundred fallacies in a fanatic cacophony amounting to nothing short of collective insanity. And the Dark Gods beyond the Empyrean will smile at this, for how could the emotions of a galaxy-spanning civilization characterized by such rotting stagnation, scheming greed and unrelenting bloodshed fail to feed the forbidden forces of Chaos?

Aside from classical means of urban and rural firefighting, we must touch briefly on common ways in which great fires within hive cities, voidholms and starships may be countered across the Imperium. Firefighting in many hive cities pose a considerable challenge, aside from overlapping jurisdictions and territorially aggressive fireman cartels. Treated water is often precious, strictly rationed and usually owned by a monopolistic Water Guild that is as infamous as it is draconic. As such, untreated water will often be resorted to by crafty firesoldier collegia, thus spraying flames with filthy liquid from cesspools and sewers, with blatant disregard for the spreading of cholera and still worse diseases that will result from such disgusting methods.

Many low-value hive city quarters will often be allowed to burn out in containment behind closed bulkheads, although some midhive regions will be structurally saved by their callous overlords by the pumping out of all air, thus asphyxiating the people inside. Essential industries and infrastructure will often see a concerted effort at firefighting, much of it primitive or alchemically toxic for the handlers that try to smother the fire. Foam, water, halon and sand will be taken out of stockpiles collected for such crises by commercial firefighting organizations. Sometimes, guards may be placed around the disaster area to catch any escaping people without sealed and approved official parchments, threatening to either throw them back into the blazes or make them sign away themselves and their descendants through hereditary servitude contracts, followed by branding the wretches before hauling them away in shackles or putting them into chaingang bucket brigades. It goes without saying that conflicts of interest between former and newer owners of slave manpower may thus erupt with violent force after a great fire, but that is just a natural part of life within the tumultuous Imperium of Man, as obvious as the air we breathe.

In the starspangled void, ships and voidholms will employ a number of means to fight fires. Few shipboard dangers are more devastating and frightening than fire that burns uncontrolled through a voidship's corridors and decks. Even seasoned crew may be sent into panic by a small blaze, trampling each other in a frenzy to escape through narrow corridors before bulkheads are sealed in an attempt to halt the fire from spreading. During a conflagration, the ship's Infernus Master is charged with keeping order and minimizing the damage caused to equipment, personnel and morale. An Infernus Master will organize aqueduct technicians and huge bucket brigades, oversee evacuations and command damage control crews bold or foolhardy enough to combat even the deadliest of plasma flares.

Often, an out-of-control fire will see a ship's masters seal off the ravaged sections and then open the blazing decks to the void, killing the crew and fire in one stroke. Decompression into the void will often be the best way to solve a shipboard fire, and the same goes for many smaller voidholms across the Imperium. Still, other tools available on some vessels and stations will be to flood corridors and chambers with halon gas, fire-inhibiting foam and water. On some of the most anicent and intact vessels and voidholm sections there will even be machine spirits capable of unleashing its suffocating forces upon the lethal flames, and such mechanical systems will often be used as a distrupting countermeasure against boarding enemy troops.

No matter the location, fire brigades will not only respond to and fight fires that they are compensated for or ordered to attack, but they will also patrol streets and corridors with sanctioned authority to carry out harsh corporal punishment upon those who violate fire prevention codes, and anyone lowborn whom they do not like the look of. Their paid services include many tasks which strictly speaking has nothing to do with firefighting, such as search-and-rescue operations in collapsed buildings, wrecks and tube crashes after hivequakes and great junkslides, provided that Guilds, collegia and clans pay them for it up front. Pyrovigiles on unfortunate agri-worlds who perform firefighting or search-and-rescue missions may sometime run into feral Orks, which they will seek to exterminate to then claim bounty if the xenos' numbers are low enough. After all, most anti-fire corps are for all intents and purposes yet another armed gang, or paramilitary force.

Many firefighters also do double duty as watchmen and support personnel for the Officio Medicae during medical emergency operations. Needless to say, such medical emergency services only exist for Adepts and upper castes, and sometimes also for important specialists and valuable Imperial servants who constitute important human production units, as long as they do not live in too much of a backwater area. Ordinary hoi polloi among Imperial subjects will have to fend for themselves when accidents and sickness strike, counting on neighbours and clan to care for them, and possibly even scrape together savings to pay a slum doctor or downbeaten Medicae station. If they are lucky they might be treated by their compound's medical personnel, should their liege lords and employers deem them worth the expenditure of resources, all costs of which will be added to the serfs' hereditary bondage debts.

During epidemics, pyrovigiles corps across the Imperium will often be one of many kinds of organizations tasked with enforcing quarantines with crippling force and lethal violence. They may likewise find themselves drafted for riot control duty, should tumult threaten to overwhelm various policiary forces, gendarmes and both regular and irregular military units. As Chief Pyrophant Herostratus expressed, when his firemen lined up to assist the Adeptus Arbites during the Milo revolt:

"The embers of heresy, of rebellion, and of hope shall all meet the same fate - stamped out beneath a nomex-clad boot."

Alternatively, as one widespread Imperial proverb has it: A horse never deserves to die, but sometimes a man does.

Speaking of riot control, a great many firefighting companies within the Imperium will carry flamers as part of their standard equipment. Officially, these flamers can be used to burn any unsanctioned writings that are discovered, or indeed torch miscreants and heretics on the spot, for the thin red line of warriors against fire may act as enforcers of law and order during patrols. These flamers are also handy tools for staging training exercises, or controlling the fire-security of newly constructed buildings that are supposed to be flame-proof. Unofficially, some unscrupulous firemen of commercial calling will occasionally use these flamers to create profitable work for themselves by secretly igniting flammable buildings, thus necessitating the call for them in an emergency. Alternatively, underhanded payments to orphans and crims may occur, akin to guttersnipes stoning windows to pocket bribes from windowsellers. Nonetheless, even amid all the dysfunctional depravity that characterize mankind in the Age of Imperium, most firefighters are still essentially heroic characters, fulfilling a direly needed security service for their decrepit communities, guarding them against the constant hazard of devouring flame and suffocating smoke.

Cutting firebreaks remain a popular method of hindering the spread of conflagrations all across the God-Emperor's sacred domains. Some may question your right to tear down a row of hovels. The wise understand you have no right to let them stand. Hooks and chains will be used to make firebreaks by pulling down walls of burning buildings to keep the fire from spreading, while swabs may be used to extinguish embers on roofs. One ordinary way for crassii to stop great fires consist of blasting firebreaks straight through slum favelas, holesteads, filthy huts and mutie hideouts by means of explosive charges. Collateral casualties are always acceptable in such urban dens of overpopulation, wretchedness and disease. Expunge the blasphemy of flame unbound!

As mankind's Age of Imperium has unfolded in sclerotic agony, electrical fires have multiplied drastically. Increasingly, insulation layers fail, and lay techmen make ever more numerous and worse mistakes as their grasp of handed-down lore shrinks into worsening superstition. Likewise, Imperial industry is churning out ever more shoddy electronics, especially so for consumer commodities, many of which are fire hazards straight off the production line. No wonder trusty old relics are so highly treasured when newer products fail so often. Not only will faulty lumens and clumsy pict-screens seem to spontaneously combust by inept design, for in the sea of ignorance and foolish house-tricks that characterize technical proficiency among Imperial subjects will be found a myriad manifestations of idiocy. One such common little phenomenon, out of fifty thousand other suicidal ploys, is to slot scrip coins into fuse holders, thereby bypassing the safety device and granting more juice until the whole place bursts into flame.

Such mundane fires are part of everyday life in Imperial settlements from end to end in the Milky Way galaxy. Yet the increasingly flammable nature of human hab nests and industries provide some advantages for Imperial overlords. Great fires, as a rule, will often attract a large audience of spectators, for truly it is a public attraction to see dwellings, infrastructure and unlucky humans go up in smoke. Loss of work hours is offset by the entertainment thus provided, which has a positive effect on public order and functions as a safety valve. Thus, Imperial governance has long since learnt to let the multitude flock to witness conflagrations, and not interfere unduly when vendors of cheap refreshments conduct a roaring trade while much joy and excitement is had off the tragedies of others. Indeed, some drunks, sadists or sectarian fanatics with a particularly unforgiving creed on misfortunes being the Celestial Imperator's rightful punishment upon the wicked, may even add to the spectacle by throwing back escaping men, women and children into the blazes, to the laughter, chanting and din of applause and catcalls from the crowd of onlookers.

Such scenes of horror are no random accidents, for they stand as a testament to how thoroughly the Imperium of the High Lords have managed to permeate countless human cultures across the galaxy. Basically, it all stems from a fundamental embrace of hardship and suffering. The Imperium has long chosen to acknowledge the cruelty of this universe, and advocates becoming one with it in order for mankind as a whole to survive and thrive in this vale of tears. Strength allows for no mercy.

Our being so hard. Our willingness to torture and throw you in labour camp. Our willingness to invade and slaughter. Whatever we are doing, is a sign that we understand how hard the world and life is, and that we embrace that. Tyrannical regimes are wrapped up in the idea that prosperous and loose regimes make for soft, weak people. We, the faithful worshippers of the God-Emperor of Holy Terra, have embraced the harshness of life, and the truth of what it means to be alive. Evil is just what is possible. Thus the Imperium of Man is overtly horrible, and proud of it. It has a narrow view of what humanity should be, and has proven itself so incompetently evil as to become repulsive to anyone willing to view the Imperium without blinkers.

To serve as a fireman in the Age of Imperium is to be subject to an incomprehensible structure of collegiate departments and regulations, all working through a bewildering array of agreements, contracts and bonds of hereditary vassalage. One constant trouble tend to be contracts with the local Water Guild. Add to this a confusing variety of specialist teams, overseeing commissions and organizational bodies that you are usually better off ignoring, for the sake of your sanity. On top of that there is an inflammatory degree of factionalism and rivalries between both competing companies and units within the same corporation. Ambushes and assassinations are not unheard of. Sometimes the heated intraservice rivalry will draw the terrible attention of the Adeptus Arbites or even His Divine Majesty's Holy Inquisition, yet such traditional animosities can never truly be stamped out. Such friction will sometimes smooth out on scene, since fire does not care. Yet many other times, the conflagration will provide a backdrop for a street brawl or corridor shootout when wills collide and prestige is on the line in a showcase of human pettiness in power.

Pyrovigiles all across the Imperium are notoriously prone to stick to old formulas and adopt temporary solutions as the new standard operating procedure. Thus brief deviations from former procedures due to lack of personnel or malfunctioning equipment will ossify, until soon it is the only way that anyone knows how to do anything.

Such rigidity of thought and action when impromptu stopgap solutions are introduced is mirrored in the firefighters' homebrew maintenance and repair of equipment. Vehicles and pumps alike turn into patches and bypasses atop patches and bypasses, their machine spirits developing grumpy personalities and requiring elaborate, complex rituals to start, to the point of sometimes only working for that one crusty old fireman who has worked the thing since he was twelve. Indeed, many fire engines in the Imperium will be driven by old servicefolk who have been hardwired into the vehicle akin to a servitor, yet usually without the lobotomy, since their particular sentient knowledge of their specific engine is what keeps their value as a human asset maintained high enough to keep them employed even at such high age.

Firefighting corps across His astral dominion likewise tend to be dynastic in nature, with leading positions and assistant roles being filled by husbands and wives, fathers and sons, and so on. It goes without saying that strategic marriage, and in some cultures adoption as an adult, remains the best career path for any ambitious ladderman or engineman. In many ways, organizations of crassii and pyrovigiles represent microcosms of parochial and nepotistic human cultures under Imperial rule.

Likewise, tamers of inferno are inherently superstitious. Pyrovigiles will never complain about a lack of missions, and many organizations sport arcane beliefs, which will result in corporal punishment for merely saying the words 'quiet' or 'silence.' Yet the physical penalties and loss of rations will pale in comparison to the social ostracism and tongue-lashing harangues from their kinsfolk and comrades. Such verbal abuse may in rare cases stray into outright human sacrifice, as overworked and undermanned brigades turn to the Changer of Ways in unholy rituals of bloodletting, in order to ask the Dark God to bend probabilities for them to gain just a few hours to restore their gear and finally get some sleep.

In some human cultures, firefighters will carry thickly quilted coats to protect against the flames, whose insides are decorated with elaborate scenes of strength and heroism drawn from local legends and Imperial mythology alike. After a conflagration has been succesfully defeated, these daring warriors against fire will turn their coats inside-out and display the magical symbols they so identify with, and that protected them in mortal danger. Such peculiar firemen's coats are known by many names, such as the hikeshi banten of Ashigaru Secundus, or the tunica pyrobella of the Pannonian voidholm cluster.

Akin to many storied organizations under Imperial rule, fireman corps tend to sport elaborate rituals surrounding the death of celebrated members. Crania will often be pulled from deceased firefighters of note, to enable these respected veterans to continue their duties as honoured servo-skulls. Even in death they still spray.

One common aspect of Imperial firefighting is the fierce pride found amongst fireman companies. The vast majority of all anti-fire collegia eventually develops a mindset where the people that you were originally supposed to protect, instead seems like impediments to your work. This disdain for people is only fuelled by emergency calls caused by trivial stupidity, such as bush fires and public witch pyre spectacles during burn bans in dry periods. As a pyrovigiles, you will get exposed to unfathomable depths of human foolishnes and weakness, and you will see a lot of people at the worst moments of their lives. No wonder so many fireman cartels across Imperial space has decided to abandon the saving of lower caste life in order to focus solely on the saving of property from hungry flames.

A widespread tradition found among pyrovigiles corporations is that of the recurring settlement parade, where each of the local firefighting corps will march down the main street or central plaza. During such festive occasions, the crassii will don lavish helmets and uniforms, carry fancy fire axes and all manner of symbolic equipment and trinkets, decorated by artists and brigade members alike. Their chief officers will often lead the procession with engraved speaking trumpets or vox-amplifiers made out of precious metals, shouting insults at rival units and chanting fireman litanies together with their subordinates.

Such public celebrations help to cement a strong esprit de corps among firefighters. Most pyrovigiles companies will display a sense of shared brotherhood to rival that of any military unit. How could it be otherwise, when they depend on each other to keep their backs safe as they rush into the gates of hell on earth? How could these enemies of the flame not feel like a part of something greater than themselves, when they bounce around the backs of trucks for hours on end during night or lightsout, guided by the lumens of a dozen other vehicles?

Their experiences are certainly often akin to those of adventurers. For instance, most crustbound crassii prefer to fight fire on hot summer days rather than in the dead of winter, where such seasonal variations rule the roost. Freezing temperatures are brutal on both equipment and bodies, and some missions will require the firefighters to stay exposed to the elements on scene for half a Terran day or more. Most firemen learn to bring cold weather bags with a dry change of clothes, warmers for gloves and boots, and a plastic sack to stuff away wet garb inside. In cold regions it is common for pyrovigiles to have a layer of ice built up on them, which has the beneficient effect of being windproof. Wise pyrovigiles will avoid thawing out such ice covers until they are ready to head back to their base-station. Naturally, a great many freezing firesoldiers across the Imperium of Man will inhale poisonous fumes when they stand at engine exhausts to keep warm, but such vile toxification is a given universal fact of life in His blessed domains, and not something Imperial subjects take much notice of.

Imagine, for a while, what travails and sights will greet the brave conquerors of runaway sparks. Put yourselves in the boots of the scrawny juve who crawls into his first structure fire, seeing flames billowing over his head. Envision how steam and smoke must irritate and obscure your eyes as a fire starts to get away from you, because you had to get to that particular blazing scene immediately and could not spare even a moment to grab your helmet and equipment. Envisage how reflective livery vests will melt on you because you sit too close to the truck's pump exhaust, since the vehicle had too many people riding on it as per usual. See before your mind's eye how rural pyrovigiles will become surrounded by trees and other large flora bursting into flames like giant torches during drought-fuelled grass fire. And think of how urban or shipbound smokedivers must often balance on catwalks without railings, and squeeze their way through claustrophobic ducts during dangerous rescuing operations, since so many structures across the Imperium are built like veritable rats' nests, as if future man does not value himself more than lowly vermin.

Picture the tense atmosphere around an armed pyrovigiles being called upon to assist the local phylakitai law enforcement corps with traffic control guard duty around a crime scene, shortly after an unknown gunman shot a PDF trooper dead, while the firewoman hopes that the killer does not come charging out from cover to shoot her too. Conceive of the hellish conflagrations that can spread quickly through closely packed wharves loaded with flammable goods. Or more infuriatingly, ideate the catastrophic fire consuming a whole row of warehouses, because the plasteel fire doors which separated many of the storage rooms had been lazily left open, since almost everywhere in the Imperium is plagued by lousy fire prevention practices, even when means exist to do better. Imagine, if you will, being a firecombatant in the Phoenix Brigade on Songhai Ultima, being called out to stomp around a field at night because it was too soft to carry your unit's wheel-borne vehicles, grinding embers into the mud with all the grim ruthlessness of an Inquisitor stomping out heresy.

Heresy, indeed, ought to be punished by cleansing flames, the better to burn away sin and deviancy. On that point most Imperial subjects would agree, and none more so than pyrophiliac sects such as the Cult of Redemption. Redemptionists and similar extreme fanatics are by their very nature frequent firestarters, a fact which inevitably has led to persistent conflict between firefighting companes and these passionate zealots devoted to absolution. Many organizations of firemen will have deeply rooted traditional beliefs of their own, and a fair number will deploy brigade priests or bring along holy men akin to sacred mascots and lucky charms. The creed of the fervent pyrovigiles does not suffer the arsonist to live, for the igniter and the pyromaniac shall be extinguished in holy water.

And so a never-ending feud continues to play itself out across hundreds of thousands of planets and uncountable voidholms. For the most widespread traditional crassii means to deal with captured Redemptionist asonists, is to ritually drown them, and then string up their corpses for public display. Conversely, Redemptionists will repay the favour whenever they capture meddling firefighters who disrupt their righteous cleansing and just pogroms, by burning them alive to the accompaniment of much chanting. Embrace the flames of our doom! After all, to these cultists, the fires have been sent by the wroth God-Emperor in order to purify wayward sinners, and thus whosoever seeks to douse this instrument of His divine justice must himself burn for his unforgivable crime against the Golden Throne of hallowed myth.

Crass business methods aside, pyrovigiles will often act as saviours, whether they come in the form of the bucket brigade or flying corpsmen with the most marvellous equipment that antique technoarcana can summon. These heroes with grimy faces will cut into their work with glowing energy, dragging hoses and raising axes. Fear denies faith, they will shout, as they stride into the flames in a halo of spray and steam. There, at the edge of hell, they will drag out half lifeless bodies of humans crushed under burning rubble, and step over the corpses of people suffocated by the dark breathe of fire. These brave men, women and juves will wade through the cinders of scorched ruins in a blaze of glory, protecting His physical realm from rampant fire.

Yet such stalwart protection is not free. Firemen in the Age of Imperium are well known to save lives and to rob owners of their property via legal contracts signed under maximum duress. Thus we see that a garbled echo of that ancient myth play out again and again, in a tale of theft and flames. No smoke without fire. From a greater point of view, the retardation of firefighting forces into little more but disjointed organizations for profit constitute a development of human interstellar civilization about as wise as pouring a bucket of water on an electrical fire. It may be painful to watch, but know that the Imperial Creed does teach us that pain is weakness leaving the body.

The Imperium of Man is stuck in a tangle of pathologies, as dysfunctional as they come, causing man to forsake mercy, volunteer benevolence and civic obligations for an infernal morass of suspicions and self-serving cruelty. Corruption has rotted out major parts of the Emperor's vast realm, under a swarm of mediocre sovereigns who continues to undermine human power in the Milky Way galaxy for the sake of shortsighted paranoia. It is all nightmare fuel.

And so, countless subjects of His Divine Majesty will include a line in their daily prayers, for the God-Emperor of Holy Terra to preserve them and their kinsfolk from the hidden embers, the hungry flame, the flare of plasma and the sudden fire. They have all seen too many neighbours and relatives fall for flame and smoke, and many of them bear burn marks that will never fully heal. All souls call out for salvation, for the blazes of the material world is but a foretaste of the roaring hellfire that awaits all sinners. Thus we must all prove our penitence by lashes and fasting. Repent of your thought of self! Repent of your wicked sins! Repent! Repent or burn!

Such are the pious mantras on a hundred billion lips, across a million worlds and voidholms beyond number. Such are the guiding words of the far future, spoken by the true fanatic. This flagellating zealot, known as man, was once the master of the cosmos, mortal and supreme in his craft and knowledge. Secrets he knew, the lore of science uncovering the very fabric of creation itself, while arcologies rose like towers of paradise on millions of worlds. Technology he fashioned, with machines making machines in ever more cunning ways, as man surfed the stars and explored the cosmos with bold curiosity. This edenic idyll was once everyday life for humanity during a bygone era of gold and splendour, when man bestrode the universe like a titan.

The very same man is now reduced to a hunkered wretch, as parochial and ignorant as he is myopically aggressive. Underfed and ravaged by disease and alien parasites, man has built for himself shanties and huts, in a grand edifice amounting to nothing short of hell on earth, and all the glorious promises of his mind has he forsaken, as his hands lose ever more grasp of the salvaged relics that remain from former times. From better times. Ultimately, this is all a dead end for human development across the Milky Way galaxy. Such is the Age of Imperium.

For all is decay in this decrepit galactic civilization, as our species has wasted ten thousand precious years by treading water just to keep its head above the surface, gulping for air in desperation. Thus all is well in the cosmic domains of the God-Emperor of Mankind.

Such is the depraved state of humanity, in a time beyond hope.

Such is our species, at the brink of doom.

Such is the fate that awaits us all.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only madness.

- - -

Drawn and written for CrusaderApe.
 
Lovely stuff, as usual. Odd as this may seem, I particularly like the aircraft in the background. There's always something particularly neat about details emerging into view gradually; about seeing details emerge that you didn't notice at first. The baby. The water halo. This is a particularly nice piece. It tells a strong story and I enjoy the look of the thing. Nicely done!
 
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Signpost

In the grim darkness of the far future, man finds himself damned for missing a sign.

It is said that the road to golden paradise is well signposted, but it is badly lit at night.

Amid the soulcrushing misery that characterizes life for most people in the dour Age of Imperium, humour still infests the blessed star realm of the celestial Imperator like weeds in a regimented agridome. In a great many local cultures across the Milky Way galaxy, humans in the Age of Imperium have developed a taste for dark humour. After all, if one cannot laugh at the misery, then all one is left with, is to cry over it.

Outside the officious signs put up by Imperial and local authorities, there may be found a great many witty and clever warning signs put up in human societies across hundreds of thousands of worlds and uncountable voidholms. Many signs consists of simple pictures, not only for the sake of clarity, but also because illiteracy is rife across vast swathes of the Holy Terran domains.

An ancient proverb from the misty Age of Terra has it, that a regular path has no signpost.

Due to a massive population and far too few law enforcers, many Imperial worlds and voidholms have developed a culture of intimidating warning signs. Warning people without being stiff is much easier for people to accept, and engages thinking in a way that stale warning signs cannot do. In many cultures, such signs are not standard fare, but they make up a persistent minority of signs, and tend to turn heads when spotted. In other human cultures, such signs have become the prevailing standard, with wits competing to bring out the most memorable warning signs. The worse ones are blunt, without much in the way of thought-provoking humour, such as "Intruders will be brutally eaten by dogs" or "Stay off the grass or you will be beaten." Yet the best of these warning signs have a touch of class, humour and intellectual grit, all rolled together.

Here are some few of these written signs of the fortyfirst millennium.

- - -

"No fights in the elevator. The wires are close to snapping."

Sign outside an Administratum building: "No parking at the gate. Violating tires will be deflated along with the driver."

Construction site sign: "My dear workers: When you are out working, pay attention to safety. If you have an accident, some other man will sleep with your wife, beat your kids, and spend your widow's death grant! Work safely, for your own sake."

Neighbourhood militia sign: "Attention all thieves! Once captured, you will be beaten bloody all the way from the front-alley to the back-alley. This alley is 786 meters long."

No smoking sign at promethium station: "We fully understand that your life is worthless, but fuel is really expensive."

"Do not step inside. The dog is psyched like a warchild."

"Grass: Today you step on my head, next year I will grow on your grave."

"Do not defecate here. Offenders shall be beaten into their own waste by a mob."

Road sign: "Please drive safely, there is no medicae nearby."

"Do not stand about here. Even if you are not hit someone else will be."

"Stand in line. Do not revolt against vapid conformity enforced by fear."

"Do not fight: Winner goes to prison, loser goes to medicae ward."

"Warning: If found here by night you will be found here in the morning."

Sign at the foot of a canyon infamous for being dangerous to drive through: "Many truckloads of families have passed here on their way to their seasonal labour. Few came back."

"Bribe attempts lower than 17 Crowns will be reported to the Urban Enforcers."

"Do not speed. Corpse Guilders have returned to their homedistricts."

"No railings. Fear denies faith."

"Do not try it. You are a lot more bluff than you are tough."

"Due to recent errors at the manufactorum, our las-packs no longer have the required charge for warning shots."

Warning sign for a suicide spot: "Have you wiped your cogitator memory banks?"

"Please do not throw garbage. Avoid a serious flogging."

"It is far better to listen to the bowstring that broke than to never string a bow. Trespass here and we will enjoy listening to the breaking of you."

"Do not watch out for falling objects. The corpse pay is worth the trouble of carrying your remains out the back gate."

"Drive safe or die alone."

"Attention ledge jumpers: We will fine the clan of every corpse found on this property. Electroshock collars for kin-groups unable to pay have been stockpiled. Will they look good on your spouse, kids and parents?"

"Unlike many others, the above sign does not lie."

"Step carefully, noble one, or your attendant thralls will have to scoop up your remains."

"Here sits a relic of our immortal Emperor. Aspiring thieves will meet the God Himself."

"Please break in. We do not feed the crocohounds."

"Mr Credit is dead so do not ask for him."

"Step silently in the corridor. The gun servitor has no mercy inhibitors."

"Gangleader Krzychustach Throatbiter was here. He disappeared. Will you?"
 
^You always have a wealth of detail hidden in your drawings. And it's lovely when the prose makes reference. Maybe even better when it does not. I love the bas relief icons on the wall in this one. Amid all the much and gloom. Lovely stuff! Do you sell any of these anywhere? Or prints of them?
 
@symphonicpoet: Thank you most kindly, sir! Much appreciated. No, I've never thought about selling prints or suchlike, but I have plans to cobble together a PDF compilation down the line.

Few drawings are larger than 12x15cm, so it never occurred to me they could be made into prints. But I'm open for ideas and suggestions, so fire away if you have anything in mind. :)


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Scrip In Fuse Box

In the grim darkness of the far future, man is scorched by his own captive lightning.

Most forms of mundane technological hardware during the Dark Age of Technology was characterized by multilayered safety features. Long experience with the unexpected cascade effects of natural disasters and human blunders had taught the tinkering minds of that shining aeon how best to build away lurking dangers in machinery, and how best to counteract bloody-minded stupidity by material design and education alike. Mankind as a whole during that age was greedy for knowledge and willing to watch and learn, and the best and the brightest of our species reached out for the stars and inifinity itself in toiling displays of ingenuity. Man crafted great wonders and colonized more than twain million worlds in his unbounded spirit of enterprise, and as man excelled on a grand scale, so he likewise proved brilliant with tiny details.

Thus the earthly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron would not only venture boldly into the unknown and explore the cosmos with unmatched daring and cunning, for ancient man would also fashion his humble everyday surroundings into elegant vistas of marvellous artifice and an idyllic level of safety in life that stood at odds with the unlocked forces of nature which man had tamed. Risk is inherent to everything in creation, yet ancient man in his hubris sought to turn the world of mortals into a godless paradise bereft of death, aging and suffering, and ever more did man do away with slices of travail, for man swore by the limitless potential of his own wit and masterful hands. And at the peak of arrogance did ancient man deny divinity itself, and he concluded that if any gods existed, then man's worldly might was far superior.

For the sake of such heinous sins was ancient man punished and nigh-on scoured from the stars in heaven. And Dark Ones of Hell arose from beyond the fabric of reality, and they lashed the golden realm of man with barbed whips of machine revolt, Warp storms and a plague of witches, mutants and Daemons that tore the era of greatness and hubris asunder. Rogue machine crushed its unbelieving master underheel as Abominable Intelligence ran amok, and brother slew brother while sister ate sister in a frenzied freefall into the stark pits of depravity. Cannibalism, loss of knowledge and the collapse of civilization reigned supreme as the false promises of the Dark Age of Technology were swept away by Old Night, and for millennia upon millennia of horror and hunger was man reduced to an ignorant wretch who scavenged and fought his own kin among the ruins of ancient titans. Raw desperation drove man to abominable acts amid the hardship, and the descendants of gifted ancients tore their mute inheritance apart in a carnival of wanton destruction and Chaos. Alien preyed upon man in his epoch of weakness, and all was fell.

Then, a saviour arose from the cradle of mankind, and His strong Legions conquered first the homeworld of our species, and then much of the galaxy in a furor of bloodshed. The banner of lightning was raised on planet and voidholm alike, and the promises of restoration of human intergalactic civilization echoed from end to end of the Milky Way galaxy with energetic hope. Yet as the Emperor fell to base human treachery in the skies above Terra, the dream of a better future died, and man was forever cursed to wander this vale of woe in torment and humilitation. For his unforgivable sins, man would face suffering aplenty, and hardship neverending.

And should not thorns prick man's skin for his abominable betrayal of the celestial Imperator? Should not serpents bite man's heels for his baleful deeds? Should not hunger and thirst claw at man's insides for his inherited crime? Should not sparks incinerate man's flesh for his ancestral hubris? Is it not right that man should buckle under his burdens? Is it not proper that man's bones should break under his loads? Is it not just that man's body shall be harrowed and scourged in every way imaginable?

Aye. The God-Emperor wills it! Our mortal coil is nothing but a trial to be overcome, the outcome of which shall decide the fate of our eternal souls. Reject selfish thoughts of comfort and safety! Only through renunciation of the self can our spiritual essence remain pure.

And so the slow demechanization and retardation of human technology during the Age of Imperium has ground on without much alarm among the masses, and indeed even most of the leaders of the Imperium do not ken the spiralling primitivization of human tech as a grave threat. The ongoing shrinking utility of everyday technology can be witnessed by anyone on a million worlds and innumerable voidholms, where olden systems will invariably prove superior to the increasing shoddiness and cheapness of newly crafted things. And yet the irrefutable slide into atavistic regression on every level does not terribly bother the degenerate descendants of the brilliant ancients, for the ongoing loss of knowledge means that they have already nigh-on lost everything, and they do not even know what it is that they have lost.

One such little phenomenon of technological etiolation and dysfunctional use can be glimpsed in the extremely widespread trick most commonly known as slotting scrip into the fuse box.

The simple fuse, preventor of flames, is a rudimentary invention dating back to the misty past of the Age of Terra. Long since replaced by better wares and more clever designs during those bygone aeons when man proved creative with tech, the sacrificial design of the fuse has nonetheless lingered as part of the collective corpus of human knowledge. Most fuse designs found throughout the Imperium of Man can be dated back to crude Standard Template Construct patterns, designed to be cheap and simple to make in times of great need. As with so many temporary stopgap measures and primitive emergency craft, the fuse has long since become a permanently employed, and increasingly common component in electrical systems throughout the Imperium of Holy Terra.

A sinspeech whisper joke found across the Agripinaa Sector makes fun of the stopping ability of this overcurrent protector:

Q: Why is a fuse better than a vizier?
A: It speaks truth to power.

The fuse provides automatic removal of power from a circuit by passing it through a thin internal conductor. When the current flow grows too strong, the heat generated by the electricity will melt the conductor and cut power in the system. This prevents fire, and necessitates replacement of the burntout fuse. A plethora of other tech-items can carry out the same passive function as the fuse does, but in a more practical manner, yet over the span of fivehundred generations of gradual deterioration of human knowledge and production capability, even such simple safety devices as circuit breakers have started to grow rare across the decrepit Imperium of Man. As such, the fuse nowadays predominate on most Imperial worlds and voidholms for household systems, and it will likewise be common for more important systems than those made for filthy consumers, including in electrical systems of Imperial industry and Astra Militarum hardware.

The simplicity of the humble fuse for overcurrent protection is also its main drawback. When a fuse blows in a faulty system, the power goes out. The dark lack of juice will send people racing to the distribution panel to replace the burnt fuse. If they can find no new fuses of the right kind on hand, many humans will tend to cheat if possible just to get the electricity back up and running. Especially if the barking of taskmasters and slavedrivers calls for a speedy fix. As such, all manner of hack work can be found where people have sought to bypass the fuse. History teaches us that many humans are clever enough to bypass safety features, but not wise enough to understand their function. And a surprising number of people will prove dumb enough to cheat with electrical current rather than taking the trouble and expense of acquiring a new fuse of the right rating, even when desperation does not factor into the broken equation. As knowledge and understanding of technology among humans has worn thin across His Divine Majesty's astral domains, even lay techmen such as Guild electricians with some practical schooling will often resort to quick hacks for the sake of laziness, stress or bottomless ignorance.

The most common handyman's trick is to replace the blown fuse with any kind of metal bits that happen to fit, with no thought given to the risk of fire thus incurred, since the current will no longer be limited by the thin conductor of the fuse. One of the most common materials resorted to when replacement fuses are lacking happen to be scrip tokens minted or cast out of metal. Scrip is local token coinage, paid to employees and worthless outside of the stores of company compounds. If various Guild scrip coins and collegia chits can be exchanged at all for other currencies, then it will only be possible at a steeply unfavourable exchange rate, since scrip is part of a cunning trap for making employed people into indentured servants and debt-ridden serfs bound to their compound for generations to come. This bonded trickster wage can be paid in all manner of tokens, including digital numbers on a cogitator, seashells, plastic chips, bone knuckles, paper notes or metallic pieces of scrip. In locations where metallic scrip coins exist, low denominations of scrip can always be found slotted into fuse boxes, where they do not belong.

A popular tale told around the fireside or heater across hundreds of thousands of planets and voidholms goes roughly as follows, although the details and names will differ from locality to locality: A cunning home-fixer runs into ever worse trouble with machinery on his workplace, which he solves by ignoring the rites of maintenance and coming up with a series of ever more fantastical hack solutions, some of which involves electricity. Soon, the machinery seems to perform better than ever before, and his colleagues hail him as touched by the very Machine God that rules all technology. Yet at last the seeming miracle proved a bag of empty promises, and a cascade of machine failures sees the home-fixer spectacularly beheaded, minced and burned along with not only the machinery he tended to, but the entire manufactorum he was working in. Such is the vengeance of wronged machine spirits. Take heed, and skip not the proper rites and litanies!

Even so, the warning in the saga will often fall on deaf ears, for surely such issues only befall others and not oneself? Such is the folly of man. Those who would offend against the machine spirit via the bypassing of safety measures are legion, and the record of human history is in part a list of unheeded warning tales. Pennypinching stupidity will often make people throw safety out the window and bypass all safeguards by harebrained fixes. Cheer for the fool who saves the hour by putting a scrip coin into the fuse box, and cheer for the resultant fires as claustrophobic buildings burn down and turn living, breathing people into charred husks. How many loved ones have perished for the sake of a juice homefix? Their numbers surely climb into the billions across the vast Imperium of Man. Ultimately, you can make something proof against mundane stupidity, but not against bloody stupidity.

And so, in countless settlements across His cosmic dominion, lowly Imperial subjects will include a line in their daily prayers, asking the Enthroned One to preserve them from the juice fire, and to protect them against the melted wire, the hidden lightning and the sudden arc of death. Such fervent prayers will they mouth, yet in their ignorance they will nevertheless contribute to the festering perils of their everyday surroundings, as copper scrip and other small objects that will conduct electricity are slotted into fuse holders all across the Imperium of Man, in defiance of flame. This is but one suicidal ploy out of thousands of others in the morass of ineptitude that man has become mired in, on top of which should be mentioned ever worsening electronics, where consumer commodities in particular increasingly prove to be blatant fire hazards straight off the production line.

Thus man has degenerated to a wretched scavenger in the Age of Imperium, living off the vanishing gifts of a lost golden age, using tools which he has no understanding of.

Such is the proficiency of man, in a forsaken time.

Such is the bliss of ignorance, at the edge of doom.

Such is the state of our species, in the darkest of futures.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only idiocy.
 
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Warning Sign

Take heed! What follows is a short collection of varied warning signs found throughout the cosmic domains of Our Lord the God-Emperor Himself.

In each their own way, these mute objects stand as witnesses to the internal rot evident in the Imperium of Man, last strong shield of our species and insane gravedigger of human intergalactic civilization.

In each their own way, these everyday signs speak of the morass of misery and despair that awaits us all, at the precipice of doom.

In each their own way, these humble things are a testament to the depths of depravity that man has plunged into, in the darkest of futures.

- - -

Traffic sign at a sharp curve: "Brake or be broken."

"If you can read this you are in range."

"The wage of negligence is utter destruction! Slapdash wastrels fit to be purged: Beware that your offspring, spouses, parents and first-cousins will be shipped to the workhouse."

"The Imperium will not cover your failings by using railings."

"Trespasser: You have come here to stay."

"Your finger in the roller and a slinger with your molar."

"Do not listen to the lies of your body. A heart about to give up is nought but false sinthought. If a job is worth doing it is worth dying for!"

"No falling into vats! Your flesh would foul the chym."

"Anyone making an imprint into the wet rockrete will be tossed into the next load as filler."

"Faulty goggles. Fear not: Obedience is blind."

"Work earns salvation. Want to know how to damn your immortal soul?"

"Our gun servitors are top of the line, intrude here to verify."

"Know your duty or know your end."

"If the ration queue extends this far, you will die from starvation before you get yours."

"Minefield ahead! Also: Minefield behind you."

"Remember to pray! Medicae ward permanently closed."

"Heresy grows from idleness. Thus, idlers will be burnt for heretics."

"What is in the food? Do not ask questions you do not want to know the answer of."

Sign outside a PDF elite training compound: "For a warrior the only crime is cowardice. Shooting vagabonds for sport is no crime."

"Reject thoughts of self! Climb with your burdens without hesitation. The punishment for falling is worse than the crippling crash itself."

"Please anoint the machine as per regulation. Lack of sacred oil will be substituted with you."

"Those who demand safety regulations fail to understand their own insignificance."

"Ask the Imperator to bless the ration bar! It might be kinsfolk."

Sign outside a Mechanicus shrine: "Warning, to avoid injury do not tell us how to do our job."

"No protective gear in stock. Faith is your shield."

"Failed suicide attemptors will be tortured and abacinated, then servitorized."

"Urinators will be captured by pict and displayed on public screens."

"Duty prevails. Meet your quotas. Or else."

"Endure! Question not."

"Complaints forbidden: He who breaks his back in toil best serves the Emperor."

"Your call: Labour long or live short."

Sign outside historitor section: "Our presence remakes the past. The entire clan of trespassers will be censored."

"Fear not the touch of acid. Pain is an illusion."

"Perseverance and silence are the highest of virtues. Chatterboxes and slackers will be aided to attain them through servitorization."

Sign outside a highly toxic manufactorum hall: "Serve the Emperor today. Tomorrow you will be dead."

"It is a greater sin to keep silent toward authority than to report on your own kinsfolk. It is a greater loss to lose one clanmember than it is to lose your entire clan."

Sign in a corpse starch factory: "Saftey first or first meal."

"Do not recoil. You are standing with your back to a precipice."

"Slackers will be thrown into the corpse grinder. Only the industrious may escape death."

"Are you there yet?"

"Safety is the refuge of cowards. Dangerous working conditions keep the wit of serfs sharp and weed out those unfit for work."

Sign outside a latifundia plantation: "Intruders will find our servitors can harvest more than grain."

Space Wolf Outpost sign: "Trespassers will be forced into a drinking contest with the nearest Space Wolf. Their kin will be forced to cover the cleaning fine."

Sign before a mountain road: "Slow down, to fly in a land vehicle is witchcraft. Witchcraft is heresy."

Sign outside a corpse starch factory: "Intruders will discover our secret recipe."

Manufactorum warning sign: "If you are taller than this line, you won't be."

Sign outside Planetary Defence Force training ground: "Defence force in need of new targets! Jump this fence to volunteer."

"No railings. The Emperor shall be the judge of who falls."

A notice posted above the door of an Adeptus Ministorum almshouse in the Mercy district of Hive Ravachol: "To any would-be rioters who think of complaining in line about the unusually low quality and quantity of our discount soylens viridians rations, we lay brothers of the Ecclesiarchy bid ye sinners remember what punishment Saint Sanguinus decreed to the captured men of the MCMV Potemkin Regiment of Imperialis Auxilia during the First Maggoty-Grox Mutiny of the First Pacificus Campaign of the Great Crusade:
'Because ye multiplied more than the mutineers of the regiments that are round about you, and have not walked in my statutes, neither have you kept to my orders, neither have you done according to the judgments of the discipline masters and iterators that are round about you;
Therefore thus saith the Primarch; Behold, I, even I, am against thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the Blood Angels.
And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.
Therefore Manus' Iron Fathers shall eat thy sons in the midst of thee, and the Emperor's Sons shall eat their fathers.'"

Cadian steet sign: "Unattended children will be drafted and taught to shoot.

Sign on grox cages: "Mating season. Enter at your own peril."

Sign hung around the neck of nuclear techman: "If you see me running, then it is already too late."

"Please break in and admire our servitors, for you may soon join them."

Voidsmen safety poster: "Check your helmets or you will get your breath taken away."

Sign outside a ganger den: "Beat it or we will beat you."

- - -

Nearly half the signpost texts above were written by the following witty enthusiasts on various websites: JAB, CommissarCardsharp, SE-Roger, Jbressel1, Uxion, GlassesGuy95, CrusaderApe, jediben001, WREN_PL & killjoySG. Thanks for a good community response to the previous Signpost piece.
 
Oh, the Greek is a nice touch! I need to figure out how to transliterate that to have a hope in heck of getting the joke. :) Lovely stuff, as always!
 
@symphonicpoet: Thanks a lot! It's a duolingual inscription, meaning the Greek is the same as the English text. Or rather, it's the English text fed into Google Translate, which apparently yielded the result: "The Emperor is the judge who is falling." ;)

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Skyhigh

In the grim darkness of the far future, man is cast into heaven.

One of the most fanciful dreams of primeval man was the ability to fly. Myths told around sparkling firesides spoke of winged deities, of gods riding chariots across the skyvault and of mortal men building fragile wings for themselves, only to succumb to hubris and crash as they flew too close to the sun. Such were the winged tales from the misty past of ancient Terra, when man looked up on gracious birds in free flight and imagined that divinity itself must have similar wings.

In the fullness of time, cunning minds, able hands and brave hearts granted man his wish to fly. Thus the Age of Terra saw pioneers, saviours and warriors alike zoom through the atmosphere, even as their cousins broke through the confines of Earth's skyvault and broke through into nothingness to explore and settle the vast cosmos. Eventually, the stars came within reach, and the Milky Way was man's oyster.

The Dark Age of Technology saw the marvels of the Age of Terra surpassed a thousandfold, as the earthly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron strode across the galaxy like titans. In those days, man was bold and brilliant, and machine assisted him in his discoveries and great labours, and Abominable Intelligence brought his wildest dreams to life. As ancient man erected paradise for himself, the skies of twain million planets were filled with swift iron eagles as vehicles rejected gravity itself and took to the sky as if it was the most mundane thing in the world.

And the confidence of man soared in tandem with his works, for he erected spires of arrogance on haughty wings. And ancient man built a golden nest upon a pinnacle of hubris, from which he denied divinity itself and swore his own power and knowledge to be far superior to any gods and devils that could ever be harboured by creation. Such godless abominations could not be allowed to stand, and so Dark Ones of Hell punished deviant man by tearing him down from his pedestal, and throwing him into the flames of machine revolt, Warp storms and a scourge of witches and Daemons that burnt the achievements of man to a crisp. And nought but ash remained, blowing in the ruins of toppled paradise.

Old Night followed, as wretched man paid for the sins of the ancients in a living purgatory. The Age of Strife was marked by the collapse of civilization, the loss of knowledge and the complete degeneration of man into internecine wars between inbred cannibal clans who scavenged among the rubble left by their humbled forefathers. And the everyday phenomenon of engine flight shrank to a rarity and wonder, at which the feral rabble could only gape in awe as winged warlords yoked the people and clashed mightily in fury, destroying ever more remnants of ancient works and ingenious lore amid rivers of blood. Thus was landlocked man reduced to running prey, for flying predators to hunt for sport.

The savage horror that rightfully scourged sinful man was brought to an end by brutal Legions of all-conquering warriors, raising the banners of united Mars and Terra high to blow in the wind. A million worlds and voidholms beyond counting were seized in the cruel talons of a double-headed eagle, as the Emperor walked in the flesh and led His golden hosts to legendary victories. The Great Crusade swept across the galaxy and brought many surviving human colonies into the clutches of the early Imperium, and for a time all was well.

For a time, swathes of lost knowledge was recovered. For a time, forgotten ancient marvels were built anew. For a time, man dared to dream and think and create once again, his curious mind soaring like the grav-vehicles that flew between his shining edifices on worlds brought into Compliance. For a time, the clever spark of the brilliant ancients awoke in the crushed soul of man, and a renaissance of hope spurted forth like a fountain as eighteen Legions crushed all alternative sources of human regrowth and bound all of mankind's destiny to that of the Terran Imperium.

One species. One Imperium. One Imperator.

Yet the strength and prosperity achieved by man during the early Imperium would soon ring hollow, as brother slew brother in a civil war that rent the skies asunder. The galaxy burned. As winged Sanguinius fell and the Emperor was crippled beyond healing, humanity descended into a hellish aeon of suffering and insanity. A slow and ever-worsening death spiral of demechanization and loss of knowledge, hardware and advanced production facilities ensued, as the seeds planted during in the fertile ground of the early Imperium sprouted and bore rotten fruit.

In the demented time known as the Age of Imperium, fivehundred generations of humans wasted their efforts in a grinding horror of their own making. Fundamentally and on a biological level, there was nothing wrong with the human species compared to its succesful forebears of yore. The innate potential still lurked inside the hearts and minds of maidens and menfolk, yet the plethora of human cultures ruled by the tyrannical Adeptus Terra had become thoroughly traumatized by so many millennia of vicious brother wars, baleful misery and the most cruel oppression imaginable. Genetically, man was still capable of rising to his potential stature as a titan of the cosmos, knower and builder of wonders. Yet culturally, man had shrunk to become a hunkered wreck, his mind mired in parochial ignorance and a fanaticism so myopically aggressive that it slayed curiosity itself.

This etiolation of human galactic civilization made itself manifest on all levels, in a cavalcade of suffering, starvation, disease, parasitic infection, communal violence and stark horror. Yet most visibly, for those with knowing eyes to see, was the neverending decay of human technology. Each century, more and more knowledge slipped from the grasp of humanity's brightest minds. Each century, more and more advanced pieces of hardware could no longer be produced, at best only maintained. And each century, the quality of newly produced pieces of tech sunk further into the abysmal depths of dysfunctionality.

This primitivization of human scientific knowledge and technology saw a myriad of wilted expressions; from beasts of burden and human porters taking over work which once strong machines carried out on man's behest; to once-commonplace hardware produce turning into treasured relics, given due veneration, prayers and incense in the hope that these technotheological marvels of the ancients would not stop working. As the mundane tech that surrounded man turned ever more crude and atavistic, old gemstones of secure achievements began to rattle in the crown of the ancients, for degenerate descendants failed in ever more ways to reproduce the olden templates perfectly. Ever more features turned out dead on arrival, or poorly functioning, and ever more features were dropped in a miserly hunt for cheapness and simplicity, as His star dominion geared itself for total war without end.

One example of this sclerotic state of Imperial industry can be found among those anti-gravitic vehicles that are most commonly known as skimmers. Grav-vehicles generate an anti-gravitational field, allowing them to hover a distance over the ground. Anti-gravitic technology known to man stand as true wonders of the ancients, yet the refined security and workings that once characterized human grav-vehicles have long since been replaced by malfunctions and removal of safety features due to cutbacks and inept technological regression.

The actual lists of dysfunctionalities and debasement of skimmers would cover thick volumes of accumulating issues, for which sacred oil and mechanistic mantras tend to be the favoured solutions. Let us instead turn to a couple of the most eye-catching problems found in Imperial grav-vehicles, which can be described as suddenly sending the skimmer skyhigh beyond the control of its driver.

Like so much else of the golden fruits of humanity's ingenious ancient era, human anti-gravitic technology has rusted and wilted during the Age of Imperium. Poorly understood and barely mimicked in a decreasing number of production facilities, almost all Imperial skimmers and grav-vehicles sport a hidden defect which may reveal itself upon accidental collision or upon taking a hit from martial firepower. One common trouble, which would once have been countered by several layers of redundant safety features, can be described as the skimmer going out of control. It will not only speed ahead in a capricious direction at the same altitude as before, but may also swoop down and crash into the ground. Even more eye-catching, the out of control skimmer may zoom straight up, only to stall and then crash to the ground.

Even so, grav-vehicles running out of control pale in comparison to the exotic spectacle offered by damage suffered to the running gear of skimmers. Here, the damage may fracture the main gravitic vacuum chamber and send the motor into an uncontrollable anti-gravitic reaction. Grav-vehicles suffering such a gravitic motor malfunction will usually continue forward at the same speed and in the same direction, but constantly rise skyhigh until they are lost in the heavens, and often outer space.

How many Adeptus Astartes Land Speeders and Imperial Jetbikes have not taken a survivable hit to their grav plates, only for the hover system to go haywire and make the vehicles climb to the skies and disappear from the battlefield? How many precious Grav-Attack Tanks have not gone missing on high while nearly all critical systems and crew were still intact and alive? How many wealthy nobles and potentates have not had their skimmer cruise end in disaster as their gilded ride suddenly rush into the stratosphere when the driver happened to bump into a rock or girder during a refreshing slalom swoosh?

Civilian possessors of hover vehicles who have both riches and an understanding of this acute problem will sometimes install respirators, void seals and other systems to improve their chances of survival, should their prestigious grav-vehicle suddenly make a leap for outer space upon taking a modicum of damage or suffering an internal malfunction.

The sounds of a gravitic motor malfunction will vary based on materials used in the grav plates, exact tech patterns involved and the exact tech-issue or damage in question, but many times the noise of crashing skyhigh will be a bass throbb turning into a shrill staccato before ending in a fading whistle. Some Imperial Guardsmen who witnessed a revered skimmer manned by the divine Imperator's own Angels of Death dive up into the cosmos have described the tragedy as comical, a description which cost them their lives in a most gruesome and tortuous public fashion.

During the Dark Age of Technology, various safeguard mechanisms existed so as to make this disaster rare in the extreme, yet under Imperial safekeeping, grav tech has grown ever more volatile, unreliable and unusual. How could it be otherwise, among so many psychotic, manslaying pyromaniacs?

Man of Gold once set out to build his crafts in defiance of gravity itself, and his might and cunning soared like the winged vessels that bore him across worlds as an everyday occurrence. Now, as the winds taste like smoke and the skies of human worlds have turned rusty red, such anti-gravitic vehicles dwindle ever more in number, and the quality of their make also turn ever more retrograde and crude. Thus, in the deadend of human interstellar civilization known as the Imperium of Man, skimmers and jetbikes may not only smash into the ground, but may shoot straight up and crash skyhigh. Various superstitions surround the sighting of such heinous accidents, including tribesmen wishing for something secret, as if upon a shooting star.

Such is the state of human hover tech in the Age of Imperium. Ken that the God-Emperor Himself bears witness to this degradation of man's ancient lore and craft, and doubt not that He can sense the endless deprivation, blinkered senility and mounting savagery that has slowly rusted away the grand promise of mankind.

Thus malfunctioning and poorly produced grav tech may turn horizontal drift to sharp vertical lift, as damaged skimmers shoot skyhigh, almost in the manner of rockets, carrying their crew with them into the dark heavens. Thus perish all too many trained personnel with their precious grav-vehicles in the astral domains of Holy Terra, in that fortified madhouse that straddles the stars.

On the Imperium's watch, human power across the Milky Way galaxy has steadily withered away, shrinking like a desiccated husk. The increasing rarity and shoddiness of anti-gravitic vehicles is but one of many symptoms of a sick interstellar civilization. And its deterioration of sophisticated technology and loss of knowledge march in lockstep with the ever more depraved hardship and brutality that plague the short lives of trillions of Imperial subjects across a million worlds and innumerable voidholms. Here, you will find enough horror to make a heart of stone bleed.

And so the shriek of malfunctioning skimmers scream as one with the hoarse victims of mass torture in public autodafés. Thus the grumbling of lay tech-men unable to repair a treasured relic of technology grind as one with the moaning of parents and orphans starving to death in the gutter, their skin and bones about to be loaded into the ever-hungry corpse grinder. This is the true face of the Age of Imperium, and not its knights in shining armour.

Such is the vale of tears, in which our species is but a sacrificial lamb of sorrow.

Such is the decrepit state of mankind, in a time beyond hope.

Such is the darkness that awaits us all.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only rot.

- - -

Thanks to Mad Doc Grotsnik on Dakkadakka for finding the relevant vehicle mishap results from Rogue Trader.
 
twisted.moon: Thanks a lot!

StaevintheAeldari has written an interesting piece of interest, The social classes of an Inquisitiorial Acolyte - a schizophrenic cross cut of imperial society, stitched together into an ill fitting rag of an Acolyte Cell. Check it out!

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Grav-Jack

In a forsaken aeon of decay and suffering, man finds himself mired.

Marshes and sucking mud has been a scourge of travellers ever since the primal ancestors of man climbed out of trees on Old Earth. Loose and treacherous surfaces have pulled down feet, cartwheels and wholesale beasts, humans and vehicles since before man's forefathers invented metalworking. No wonder primitive man dwelling in cold climes preferred to travel and conduct trade by sleigh during winter, so as to avoid rough terrain and mud season.

Throughout the distant past of the Age of Terra, nomads, traders, settlers and explorers all endured hardship and stuck wagons out in the field. Yet the starkest examples of the hopeless drudgery of mired vehicles may always be found among armies on campaign. Here, misery and fruitless toil will be on full display among masses of men and draft animals, as wheels cut deep ruts and then grind to a halt in the wet landscape. Among such marching hosts may be glimpsed raw despair as hundreds of people haul and toil to drag along stuck wagons or machines. Spades will dig into mud and ropes will be stretched taut to rescue wains of wood or steel , and sometimes horses and engine crafts assisting in the recovery will themselves run aground, in a parade of filth to drain all hope.

The humble earth beneath man's feet hold the power to sprout a cornucopia of food, or destroy his dreams and sink the mightiest of warhosts in an uncaring morass. Great wars have swung from triumph to defeat in the muddy bosom of the soil as weather shifts and the wet season of the land eats giant warmachines with a ravenous appetite. What a tragic toolmaker is man! No ingenuity has ever allowed him to craft an iron steed truly immune to betrayal by the ground itself. No fantastic wain wrought by human hand can ever be safe from drowning in the earthen gullet, swallowed like a god's unwanted offspring.

Thus the bloodied field itself may vanquish undefeated conquerors, for mud has been the bane of the tank since its first primitive debut during the misty past of the Age of Terra. The wet ground presents a challenge to those cunning minds and able hands that propelled man into the era of engines, and engineers and inventors alike have never stopped grappling with this quest against the mired vehicle. Yet the clever solutions of the Age of Terra paled in comparison to the brilliant inventions of the Dark Age of Technology, for in that blooming time ancient man became the mortal master of creation. His genius climbed to its dazzling peak, and his power and seed spread to twain million worlds and innumerable void installations, as man peopled the Milky Way galaxy with unfettered boldness.

Thus the earthly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron built a galactic paradise, before Dark Ones of Hell toppled man from his lofty pedestal for the sake of heinous hubris and godless sin. Machine revolt, witches and the horrors of the Age of Strife swept away the great works of the ancients in blood and fire, and Old Night descended upon mankind like a cruel predator. Only crumbs left over from the ancient feast of knowledge could be salvaged from the ashes by those inbred cannibal tribes and superstitious savages that scavenged among the blackened ruins, their minds reduced to desperation for mere survival.

Since then, garbled legends handed down through untold generations speak of wains the size of mountains zooming across the landscape in defiance of gravity, carrying titanic loads while themselves skimming on the wind, light as a feather. Other tales speak of cartwheeling skywagons and soaring trains without magrails. Fragments of the glorious anti-gravitic technology of Man of Gold still lingers among his degenerate descendants during the rotting Age of Imperium, as evidenced by crudely copied repulsor crafts, jetbikes and grav-tanks. One increasingly unusual piece of surviving anti-gravitic technology is that of the grav-jack, an archaic relic prized among Imperial armoured forces for bringing salvation to tanks from running stuck in the ground.

The grav-jack is an almost forgotten piece of technology that was once commonplace among Imperial forces from worlds and large voidholms with an advanced level of tech. The most common use of grav-jacks will see four units, akin to box modules, placed in each corner of an armoured vehicle. Grav-jacks are designed not to make a heavy land vehicle soar into the air, but to lift it out of fields of sucking mud and more alien kinds of morasses that remains the bane of tracked tanks everywhere. Ideally, a light thrust from grav-jacks will lighten the vehicle's ground pressure enough to prevent it from running stuck on treacherous soil.

Fanciful stories exist of more advanced forms of grav-jacks allowing ground-bound vehicles to leap over walls and trenches akin to certain archeotech pieces hoarded by upper caste noble houses, but such ostentatious models have never been seen in mass produced Imperial military service. Instead, the grav-jack is a humble form of skimmer technology able to raise mired vehicles out of mud and marshes, its melody of a deep bass thrum. Certain variant patterns of the grav-jack is more akin to a jet exhaust than unmoving grav plates, their turbines' hot lift boiling mud, slinging stones and clapping quicksand about in noisy and violent fashion. The anti-gravitic suspensors of grav-jacks have a limited lifting time, and they usually need to be recharged via the vehicle's batteries over a long period following use. On lengthy campaigns in the field with supply difficulties, the suspensor fields alone will have to suffice, without the boosted lifting power of auxiliary jets drinking fuel.

Tech-adepts of the Adeptus Mechanicus believe the various grav-jack variants found by Explorators in Standard Template Construct hardprints to have originally been designed for the automatic self-lifting of logistical containers on and off means of transport. Yet whatever the forgotten purpose of this peculiar tech of the ancients, its employment within the Imperium of Man has primarily been that of forcing mired tanks out of seas of mud, crystalline sand seas and exotic swamps. Here, it has allowed heavily armoured vehicles to extract themselves from the morass of their own power, ideally without the need for tractors, horses, teams of men pulling at ropes, groxen haulers or recovery vehicles.

The first grav-jacks were used sporadically among the eclectic Imperial forces of the Great Crusade, yet the systematic production and deployment in the field of grav-jacks occurred first three millennia after the Archtraitor nigh-on slew the God-Emperor in the skies above Holy Terra. Let us examine the rise and decline of this dutiful machine spirit.

The self-propelled mud extraction system of the grav-jack saw its heyday in the Imperium's golden age of the thirtyfourth millennium, as a reasonable compromise between the high costs and technical difficulties of manufacturing grav-tanks, and the enabling upswell of Imperial fortunes at the time. While entire ordinary armoured units of Imperial Guard equipped with grav-vehicles was an unachievable goal even at the zenith of Imperial civilization during the Forging, the flourishing of this silver age of the Imperium still allowed for many regiments to equip their armoured vehicles with grav-jacks. Thus, some terrain-ignoring advantages of skimmer technology were bestowed upon land vehicles in a luxurious investment that saw Imperial armour able to overcome horrid mud seasons, quicksand and more exotic forms of mires on alien worlds.

For a while, Imperial recovery following the Scouring seemed destined to last, and the increasingly commonplace procurement of sophisticated kit such as grav-jacks for Astra Militarum vehicle parks was a testament to the robust state of His Divine Majesty's astral domains. Yet such advanced production and issuance of equipment could not stand the test of time, as the Imperium aged, and aged badly. As Imperial fortunes worsened, technological knowhow and sophisticated production facilities were lost to a maelstrom of regression, warfare, cutbacks and ever cruder redesigns to meet the voracious demands of unending total war.

Grav-jacks may represent a technological regression from the ordinary heavy grav vehicles of the Dark Age of Technology, yet the ordinariness of grav-jacks in Imperial armies during the thirtyfourth millennium was nevertheless a mark of success, both in terms of economic health, industrial capacity and technological grasp. Grav-jacks are ultimately a practical luxury item, only sporadically seen during the Great Crusade, becoming a commonplace sight at the height of the Forging, and dwindling ever more rare in the long decay since the Age of Apostasy.

Nowadays, many grav-jacks that remain in service are prized relics of the better past, festooned with precious metals and holy liturgy, their activation requiring meticulous ceremonial rites and propitiation of the venerated machine spirit inside. As with many STC pieces of tech, the grav-jack is rugged and capable of impressive longevity if properly maintained. These ancient pieces of tech are usually reserved for command vehicles or similarly revered rides with a storied combat record, and more than a few dubious personal escapes from the battlefield have been pulled off by the leaders of armoured units who got hopelessly mired in mud or worse. The rare grav-jack is nowadays more commonly found in the armouries of Adeptus Astartes chapter and in the armies from forgeworlds of the Adeptus Mechanicus, or even in noble garages stuffed with the best that money can buy, yet the employment of newly made grav-jacks within the Astra Militarum has not yet gone fully extinct.

By the grace of our Lord and Saviour, some few production lines for grav-jacks still remain active throughout the vast breadth of the Holy Terran Imperium, yet the increasing difficulty of processing raw materials for making grav-plates, and the rot in the understanding of building grav-engines mean that the output of production lines is destined to continue to wane. As with everything in the Imperium of Man, demechanization and loss of technological hardware and scientific knowledge grinds ever worse, in a downward spiral that is destined to drag the human species with it into oblivion.

Some strange patterns of grav-jacks have been observed on heavy vehicles belonging to the Leagues of Votann, which is unsurprising given the shared technological heritage, yet retained higher tech level of the reclusive Leagues compared to the Imperium of Man. Such League grav-jacks tend to sport crash bar cages and are advanced enough to act as grav-chutes for large vehicles making landfall from starships, dampening their entire descent through atmosphere drastically enough for the vehicles to make it to the ground without damage. Nothing of the kind has ever been recorded among Imperial patterns of grav-jacks, and the few tech-priests who have ever witnessed such a spectacle of smooth planetary deployment can only wring their mechadendrites out of marvel and envy.

Turning back to the shambolic wreck of human interstellar civilization that is the Imperium of Man, we may note that wheeled armoured vehicles are more easy to maintain than tracked ones, and thus better suited for expeditionary forces with limited shipping capacity. A most recent trend within parts of Imperial industry is that of calls for major replacement of tracked vehicles with wheeled vehicle models, in yet another potential cutback and retardation of Imperial military technology. It remains to be seen if such an etiolated adaptation will take place, since fivehundred generations of proud tracked tankist traditions is a formidable obstacle to overcome in such a parochial realm as that of the Golden Throne.

Come what may, grav-jacks are dwindling relics, reverently maintained and newly produced in small numbers by a scarce few production lines across the galaxy. Grav-jacks are usually earmarked for prestigious elite formations such as Tempestus Scions, Astartes, Sororitas and Inquisition, with some production rate being hoarded by forgeworlds for tracked, wheeled and legged Mechanicus vehicles. The original designs for grav-jacks from the Dark Age of Technology were relatively simple affairs, primarily meant for moving freight containers, yet even such rugged anti-gravitic tech is slipping from the stiff fingers of Imperial possession.

The grav-jack is in truth a humble piece of equipment, made to repulse gravity and defy the mud season. It could be described as a halfway house between a landbound tank and a skimmer grav-tank, yet even so it has proved to be an overengineered luxury item among Imperial forces, and it has shrunk from an ordinary sight among better armoured regiments, to a rare treasure. Ever shrinking in number, the grav-jack is a precious artefact from better times. How many hundreds of thousands of Imperial tanks and armoured vehicles would not have been saved from the hungry landscape of uncounted battlefronts, had they carried grav-jacks? How many crude battlebeasts of steel would not have been operational, rather than abandoned mired in the field, had this rotting star realm not hunkered low in abominable ignorance?

This deteriorating state of affairs can be met with prayer alone. And so millions upon millions of Imperial vehicle crews will include an old tankist prayer to relevant Imperial saints for salvation from the quagmire, the trapping ground, the quicksand, the crystafields and the sucking clay. Justus Extremis. Armouricum Mortis. Imperius Metallus.

Some rare few of the more clear-eyed yet traumatized armoured vehicle crewmen will even include a sorrowful line to this effect in their prayers, even as they beg for impossible forgiveness from the Master of Mankind for the deviant words escaping their malcontent lips: We created nothing of our own, and everything we took from the ancients we distorted.

Thus the Imperium exists to be a terrible lesson to others, an edifice of counterproductive terror, sclerotic bureaucracy and demented grasp of science and technology. Instead of effectivization and better machine systems, the Imperium will have machine breakdowns and replacement with ever cruder machinery and human muscle power. For when output flags and the products degrade century by century, the callous masters of the Imperium know that they must increase input by throwing more bodies at the problem. Thus man has been reduced from an affluent, adventuresome and leisurely master of knowledge, to a hollowed-out wretch doomed to manual drudgery.

Lo, how the mighty have fallen!

Behold the teeming masses of mankind, in all their hunger, their disease and their parasitic infections. Their lives are nothing but vast numbers in a broken equation to feed the meatgrinder. This travesty of human destiny is lorded over by a monstrous tyranny headed by the High Lords of Terra, who themselves are uncomfortably aware that this colossus on feet of clay cannot last, yet reform is more likely to kill the Imperium than to cure it. And so the astral dominion of the Imperator remains hidebound and fanatic, more devoted to its own paroxysms of aggressive myopia than to its sacred duty of preserving the human species.

This, the last strong shield of mankind, is also its demented jailor and hostage-taker. This, the final bulwark of humanity, is also its doomed dead-end, bereft of answers. This, the defender against the outer terror, is also the savage perpetrator of inner terror. This, the fanatical upholder of man's legacy technology, is also the rotting grave of its knowledge and hardware, the squanderer of all human potential on a million worlds and uncountable voidholms scattered across the Milky Way galaxy.

And so we see that mankind during the Age of Imperium has not only lost everything, but it does not even remember what it has lost.

Such is the state of the human species, in a time beyond hope.

Such is the baleful fate that awaits us all.

Such is the death of a dream.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only dementia.

- - -

For sculpted examples of Squattish grav-jacks, see here.
 
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Dress Code

Everyone is a barbarian to someone else.

Quisque est barbarus alio.

Thus reads a High Gothic proverb known to the well educated castes in the Imperium of Man, that dilapidated cosmic domain formally belonging to the Celestial Imperator of Holy Terra, a realm stretching across the starspangled void, straddling a million worlds and voidholms beyond counting.

This saying describes the everlasting fact of cultural differences between humans, and indeed its meaning has been extended to describe not only the seed of Terra, but also abhorrent xenos by Rogue Traders roaming the murky corners of the Milky Way galaxy.

Out of all the caleidoscopic clashes of custom where insular tribes and congregations collide, let us briefly examine a peculiar phenomenon evident across vast swathes of several thousand Imperial colony worlds and voidholms. It is not dependant on the high culture of Holy Terra, but sprung from a plethora of local cultures sprinkled across planets and void dwellings alike. It is a source of friction on planets and larger voidholms that house populations settled across multiple climes. Is is likewise a cause of strife where ethnos and tribes with visually distinct culture come into contact, as traditional garb and markers of belonging turn into hotly contested points of pride by parochial and myopically aggressive people. Let us thus examine the myriad of dispersed human cultures, who for whatever climatological and historical reasons of their own has grown to despise the barbarian filth known as trouser-bearers.

The human custom of wearing britches date back to the misty past of the Age of Terra. Some of the first trousers were worn by steppe nomads to bring comfort during extended periods on horseback, in a way that kilts, tunics and bared nether regions could not. This rider's garb spread to become commonplace across Old Earth, and variations of this item of clothing remained popular throughout the entire stretch of the Dark Age of Technology, no matter the shifts in fashion and technology and the demands of alien living spaces. This simple garment survived among primitive survivors during the Age of Strife in a great many locales, and the all-conquering forces of Imperial Compliance would often slaughter foes in trousers, although a great many other tribes of cannibals and scavengers knew not of such an article of clothing, if they kenned any clothing whatsoever.

The early Imperium during the Great Crusade saw an eclectic mix of garb among the regiments of the Imperial Army, from strict uniforms, cunning camouflage and armoured voidsuits, to fighters donning mere loinclothes or fighting naked, protected only by tattoos or patterns of body paint. Drawn from hundreds of thousands of freshly conquered worlds, these human warriors brought their own styles of fighting and fashion with them, and often they would adopt favourite ways from others during lengthy service far away from their homeworlds.

To some extent, the trend-setting high culture of Imperial Terra would spread through encouragement, eager imitation and a limited degree of centralized issuance of equipment, yet the Emperor knew better than to try and impose a template of garb and aesthetics on his suddenly sprawling dominion. That way, unnecessary discontent and opposition lay. Better instead to let the hordes of provincials wear much what they liked, and place the Terran example of finery on a pedestal for voluntary imitation. It is after all easier to attract bees with nectar than with vinegar.

For all the visionary plans and insights that were burnt away to ash and drowned in blood following the epoch-shattering calamity of the Horus Heresy, the surviving Imperium nevertheless managed to retain an understanding that the simple Imperial modus operandi, to largely leave native customs be and avoid meddling overly much in local affairs, was for the most part the wisest path to tread. Occasional hiccups of Imperial history have seen some misguided decrees issued from the Throneworld that attempted to ban and dictate such mundane matters as clothing or alcoholic consumption, yet the perverse and unintended consequences of those culture-shaping campaigns that were actively executed on the ground inevitably saw the masters and mistresses of the Adeptus Terra shy away from prodding such explosive nests of hornets.

At the end of the day, who on high wants the trouble of riots and rebellions over superficial trifles, when all that the Imperium of Man really cares about is extracting Tithe, feeding the ravenous demands of total war and maintaining control over His Divine Majesty's scattered holdings? And was the drastic fall in Tithe grades following the Argamon Genocides of M37 really worth implementing a hated Sector-wide edict to enforce the wearing of monastic garments among the civilian population, on the pain of public abacination and quartering between four bull groxen?

Thus, Imperial authorities seldom attempt the imposition of sweeping dress codes outside the ranks of the God-Emperor's own elevated Adepts. Whatever is the local equivalent of respectable garb is expected for Ecclesiarchal Temple services, whether they be sombre robes or feathered loinclothes. Local authorities of planets and voidholms will dabble more frequently in sumptuary laws than will Imperial Adeptus, though the extent to which local administrations and policiary forces are able to enforce such laws restricting caste clothing, food and luxury expenditures is usually dubious. Amid the sclerotic and hollowed-out state of mankind during the Age of Imperium, even the most eager tyrants will tend to find that the penetration of their power into wider society has decayed from the totalitarian ideals which their dynastic ancestors better lived up to.

In parts of worlds and voidholms sporting warmer climes, such sumptuary laws will include a ban on the wearing of trousers. Sometimes, as in the case of the planet Macragge or the voidholm Felix Pulceris, the laws are dead and inert, a relic of past centuries before fashion or climate changed the way people dress. Other times, the legalities may be stringently followed by innumerable upholders of mores among the population, especially by older women whose watchful eyes and admonishing voice do much to keep a community in check. In such locales, much the same people who participate in pogroms will trot out to beat and berate straying members of the community as they drag the contemptuous deviants bloody through the streets or corridors for harsh punishment at the hands of governatorial law enforcers.

Naturally, such warmer climes where the wearing of pants is seen as a taboo broken only by barbarians and obscene infidels, the existence of sumptuary laws is only an additional obstacle to trousered folks. Even where there are no sumptuary laws against the wearing of britches, insular communities can manage perfectly fine with the instruments of public scorn, violence and social ostracism to punish filthy trouser-wearers. Here, foreigners and locals breaking their ancestral custom of clothing will find themselves heckled by children through the streets. Doors will shut close in their faces, and those desperately seeking employment will be told in no uncertain way that people in pants need not apply. Indeed, rabid and malnourished crowds with a need to kick someone can easily be worked up into a frenzy, and more than a few Imperial subjects have went under the omnibus of lynchmobs chanting that trousers equals heresy.

In such parochial cultures, where the garment on your legs have become an infested question to fight over, all proud bearers of kilts, tunic and virile togas must know that pants are the true enemy. Be gone, tube-legs!

The sprawling fauna of Imperial saints approved by the Adeptus Ministorum even includes an obscure martyr for the despisers of trouser-bearers to rally around. His name is that of Saint Oxymandias the Leper, and churchly lore says that he first snapped his finger, and then tore off his entire arm as he tried to pull up his bewitched trousers following a visit to the communal outhouse. And on the asteroid mining voidholm of Utica Extremalis, a local legend sevenhundred years old is still told vividly around electro-heaters, about how the devout Emperor-worshipper Jacques the Butcher was strangled with his own pants by a revolting mob of traitors and malcontents who dragged him out of a shed in the slums. Ever since, the denizens of Utica Extremalis has worn nothing but kilts, robes and skirts inside the station's air seals, so as to avoid suffering the baleful fate of this righteous Imperial martyr.

Speaking of trousered infamy, voidsmen in three subsectors will tell you wild story variations about Captain Zedek Mascadolce, a downbeaten Rogue Trader renowned for his ill fortune with the rearguard durability of his tight and costly trousers. Even more fell rumours claim that the splendid Captain of the Debt Collector himself repairs his ripped pants instead of ordering underlings to carry out the task. Speculations as to why range from fear of assassination, through fear of subordinate incompetence, to sheer embarrasment over such a faux pas occuring to this refined socialite. Indeed, any self-respecting Rogue Trader caught with such damaged garb on his derriere would have to hide his face in odious shame.

The cultural phenomenon of aversion to britches in some human cultures in warmer climes will undoubtedly have hygienic origins related to ventilation. Upstanding bearers of kilt and tunic swear by the advantages to health of avoiding trousers, and they curse the strange ways of self-degrading barbarians who would have their legs and nobler parts trapped inside tubes of textile or hide. Do these fools pursue eczema and itchy ratches? Do they not know that both virility and fertility is dampened by the constraints of pants? God-Emperor judge their foul garb unworthy!

Conversely, some of the worst wounds from alchemical combat gasses can be found among kilt-wearing Astra Militarum regiments, whose suffering afterward beggars belief. Any member of the Officio Medicae with relevant experience can attest this fact, while making warding gestures and spreading their fingers across their chest in the sign of the Aquila to keep away Daemons drawn to the mere words of such horrendous hardship. Yet such sacrifices of self is nothing compared to the virtue of fighting and dying for the Terran Emperor, seated on the Golden Throne of hallowed myth.

O Terra, verti est sua aeterni!

Coincidentally, a great empire during the distant past of the Age of Terra went to hell in a hand basket around the same time it widely adopted pants. Similar examples of a much later date will sometimes be bandied about by jurists and governocrats across the Imperium, as they point to a decline in planetary fortunes and a wilting of military arms following the adoption of heinous luxuries of one sort or another. Yet for the plebeian mob, such matters mostly come down to drunken violence and red-blooded herd mentality. For them, the sight of strangers being dressed in pants whereas they are not, is reason enough to cook up a fight and have some malevolent fun at the expense of another.

And so we see that human cultures always tend to fall back on cycles of petty violence and frothing outrage over trivial matters, in a circumlocution that leads nowhere. In the Age of Imperium, such movement into a dead-end is all that humanity has proven itself capable of, as mankind under the rule of the High Lords of Terra flagellates itself in abject misery and ignorance, even as its grasp on knowledge and technology rots away in a slow death spiral of demechanization.

In such a depraved interstellar civilization stuck in a rut, is it any wonder that man has been reduced to a resentful wretch, his demented hate fuelled by trauma and dogma alike? Where man has fallen so low from the golden pinnacles of his ancestors, is it any wonder that he is so prone to spontaneous outbreaks of communal violence? What else can one expect from a humanity sunk into the abyss of senility?

Such is the waywardness of mankind, after it went down the wrong trouser leg of history.

Such is the decrepit state of our species, in a time beyond hope.

Such is the raging nonsense that awaits us all.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only bile.
 
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Pushover

"It was in that moment, of trying to push up the small rontree with the roots, when menial garden serf Tammuz Tsivkmlap realized that he had the spiked iron fence right under his throat."

- Excerpt from Carolus Wrång the Elder's travelling journal Anecdotes of [Redacted] Stubbornness, Being A Sketch of Rural Life On Sala Majoris In the Emperor's Year 346.M41, literary work approved by voidholm censors after purging obscene swearwords and published in Low Gothic on Skintaxmountain Station IV by Printing House Draconus of Hab-District Six
 
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Smoke Cover

In the grim darkness of the far future, man hides from the gaze of heaven.

Ever since the primordial forebears of man saw birds soaring above, man has dreamt of flying. That dream was realized by brilliant and brave pioneers during the misty past of the Age of Terra, and ever since has the skyvault been a domain of man. That windblown sphere of flight has ever been dangerous, for gravity will undo the best and the brightest should the winged wains of man crash. To mitigate these perils on high, ancient man invented ever more ingenious instruments and systems to keep him flying no matter the obstacles.

The technology invested in aircraft and aerodromes was already refined beyond belief by the end of the Age of Terra, yet the stellar exodus and accelerated spree of invention fuelled by Man of Stone during the Dark Age of Technology would surpass all that had come before and by comparison make it look like ungainly paper planes bereft of sight and rudder. Truly, the sky alone was the limit in that golden epoch when the earthly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron bestrode the cosmos like titans.

As man built for himself a worldly paradise betwixt the stars, so did man's hubris soar. As man banished suffering and hardship from his life, so did his arrogance take flight. On godless wings did man raise himself up on a pedestal as he laboured to uncover the innermost secrets of creation itself, yet those wings of genius melted like wax brought too close to the sun. Machine revolt, Warp storms and a plague of witches and Daemons rent the galactic realm of ancient man asunder, and twain million worlds and uncountable void dwellings were thrown into the meatgrinder of the Age of Strife.

Man fell, and fell hard. He landed bloodily with crippling impact in a desolation where cannibals ate their own kin and where ignorant savages rummaged around the ruins of ancient giants for pitiful scraps. Most of the masterful knowledge and craft of the ancients was destroyed in that crash into Old Night, and man suffered mightily amid the ravages of Xenos and Chaos. To this day, it is a cardinal truth of the Imperium that only the God-Emperor and His victorious arms saved humanity from the brink of doom, yet like so many fundamental humans beliefs in the Age of Imperium, it is a blatant lie wrapped in a semblance of truthfulness. The truth of the matter is that the Imperator, for all His brilliant vision and beneficial toil for our species, ruthlessly eliminated all other sources of human regrowth after the Age of Strife ended. Thus, only His Imperial renaissance of Mars and Terra in union would be allowed to flourish, under His rule alone.

This turned out to be a catastrophic mistake for mankind, as the shining promises of the early Imperium were scorched to cinders during the greatest betrayal in human history. Suddenly, the monopoly on human development in Imperial hands turned out to be a black curse upon man, as the cosmic domains of the transcendent Deity of Gold crawled out of the civil war, battered and beaten to a pulp, yet still capable of maintaining its grip on power over a million worlds and voidholms without number.

And so the Emperor's servants proceeded to rule in His name. For a time, the traumatized star realm of man saw a silver age under tyrannical oversight, and some of the grievous damage done to human interstellar civilization was briefly repaired. Yet this false rebirth and stabilization was soon replaced by unyielding rot. For fivehundred generations has man been ruled by the High Lords of Terra, and this Age of Imperium is nothing but a cavalcade of bloodsoaked stagnation and decline of human fortunes across the board, in a slowly worsening death spiral of demechanization and loss of knowledge and technological hardware.

One such expression of dilapidation may be glimpsed in the state of aircraft, as human power continues to wane across the Milky Way galaxy on the Imperium's watch. As with so much of technology still produced and maintained by Imperial subjects, human aeroplanes are rugged affairs, originally designed by the Abominable Intelligence of long-lost Standard Template Constructors to be functional in the most diverse atmospheric environs of alien worlds. The most advanced forms of winged wains known to Explorators are well beyond the reach of Imperial production capacity, for so much has been lost, never to be regained. As such, man makes do with simpler kinds of aircrafts and hover vessels, which were often designed as rudimentary emegency measures, grown permanent by stifling ineptitude in the Imperium of Man.

The excellent design of even the most basic and crude pieces of technology inherited from ancient man is witnessed in the fact that his deranged heirs are still alive and kicking against all the odds. Without the scrapings of masterful tech from the legendary Men of Stone, Imperial man would long since have gone extinct, for he has created nothing of his own, and everything he took from the ancients he distorted.

One such obvious distortion can be seen in Imperial aerocraft, where an etiolating process of cutbacks, loss of know-how and deterioration of production facilities has seen ever more sensitive instruments disappear from newly produced airplanes. The most experienced and knowledgable of Imperial pilots and lay mechanics will be confounded whenever they encounter older planes with strange instrument panels. So many helpful systems have been removed for the sake of all-consuming ignorance or due to the ravenous demands of total war. Ultimately, the Imperium needs the ability to fly and shoot, and creature comforts, pilot survivability and sophisticated systems can always be done away with, no matter how much less combat effective this renders the battleplane. Fiery faith will have to pick up the slack. Likewise, an increased input of men and machines thrown into the meatgrinder will feed this broken equation of a colossus on feet of clay, as the monstrous Imperium continues to gear itself for ever more atavistic forms of warfare and industrial production.

Among all this mounting savagery and fanaticism, Imperial subjects have devised a plethora of primitive tricks to deal with enemy air superiority. One common ploy, when fuel is plentiful, is to dig wells, pour promethium into the pits and then lit them on fire. The black smoke thus billowing up will then hopefully create visual distractions for the pilots of the air force of the hated foe. Many such promethium covers have been devised by men and women possessed with cunning, but who have also been ignorant of such matters as satellite guidance and other forms of sophisticated technology that substitutes sight for aircraft. Oftentimes the entire effort will be nothing but wasted sweat and fuel for all the lack of impact it had on enemy air power.

One campaign example of burning promethium covers can be found on the civilized world of Uruk Sigma. Here, local separatists clashed with the Astra Militarum and the Planetary Defence Force in the promethium-producing region of Dadghab. After succeeding in infiltrating the Imperial rear and conquering a massive supply depot through covert means, the deviant separatists raised the flag of offensive, and threw themselves against the Imperial lines with this new influx of heavy equipment. As the rebel assault swept across the promethium fields, the Imperial commander General Agathea von Niessuh suppressed panic and suspicion of her own incompetence by a vigorous purge of subordinate commanders accompanied by a scaremongering propaganda campaign aimed to sow paranoia among Imperial ranks. Scapegoating and terror thus accomplished, the Imperial commander proceeded to meet the lightning advances of the nefarious enemy.

As traitor flags were raised over ever more drill towers, Agathea von Niessuh ordered the bulk of her forces to pull back to Nippur Regia, the regional capital city of Dadghab. Largely abandoning a wide front, Agathea had her forces dig in around the city in concentric circles of trenches and prefabricated pillboxes, all the while using fresh reinforcements to fortify the main supply route in an arrangement called the Long Walls of Nippur Regia. Accepting that Imperial forces for the present were outmatched and overwhelmed by the separatists, Agathea calculated that her soldiers would fight ferociously once cornered in an urban center turned into a fortress, as long as the supply lines held.

This uncharacteristic burst of original thinking saved the Imperial grip on Nippur Regia. The Long Walls were defended by a line of outpost forts, by husbanded missiles launched out of the hive city, and by rapid dune patrols of armoured cars and Sentinels who again and again managed to take separatist attackers by surprise. Thus convoys protected by heavy armour and Hydra flak tanks managed to keep the defenders of Nippur Regia fed and supplied, even if a seventh of the hive city's population of two billion had to be exterminated and fed into the corpse grinders in order to feed the rest of His Divine Majesty's starving subjects and loyal labourers.

With the aerial fortunes of local Planetary Defence Force aerofleets and Imperial Navy air wings at a crucial ebb, the invigorated Dadghabi separatists built new aerodromes and fuel depots, and concentrated all their air forces to strike the Long Walls in tandem with ground assaults. This renewed attempt to cut off Nippur Regia from outside supplies was met by Field Order Nr. 2137. Agathea von Niessuh ordered tens of thousands of workers and hundreds of civilian vehicles out into the battlezone, equipped with drills, dozer blades, spades and pickaxes. This ant-like column of humanity milled about along the stretch of the Long Walls, ever under horrible raids from enemy fighters, ever the victims of hostile artillery and air power. Many drafted thralls fled, only to be shot dead by blocking lines of Guardsmen and PDF troopers tasked with keeping the rabble in line. While overseers barked and taskmasters whipped bared backs, the men, women and children of Nippur Regia were herded out into the wasteland to dig pits and fill them with crude promethium.

When enemy assaults on this antediluvian engineering work intensified, General von Niessuh negotiated the cooperation of Nippur Regia's local Securitate forces and Adeptus Arbites precinct fortress. With harsh oversight provided by these brutal policiary organizations of the hive, Agathea increased input by throwing sixhundredthousand more Nippurites into the operation. Ever more machines broke down or went up in flames, and ever more work and transport had to be carried out by human hands and on human backs, assisted with requisitioned beasts of burden of xenoid origin. This mobilization of unwilling civilian manpower went on to the drumbeat of a massive conscription campaign, which saw three million Nippur Militiamen and Oathsworn Loyalist zealots in sackcloth hastily assembled. These men, women and juves were given the crudest practice imaginable in how to shoot and reload their lasguns or stubbers before being sent untrained to plug gaps in the frontlines of the the Long Walls.

Thus Imperial commander Agathea von Niessuh traded bodies for time, in a gamble she ultimately won at a cost in human lives best measured in hillocks of corpses.

Partway through the frantic scramble to shore up the Long Walls of Nippur Regia, Imperial forces began torching some of the first finished promethium wells, in a desperate attempt to gain some cover from hostile air power and unrelenting separatist ground assaults. Lo! The sky went black over Dadghab, and the city populace with windows facing the outside world woke up to darkness at dawn. Oily smoke billowed out of pits in the ground, masking the Long Walls and the people toiling and fighting and dying along its entire length. As more promethium wells were completed and lit up, ever more greasy columns of smoke darkened the sky, pulling a black veil over the heavens and throwing the efforts of enemy air power into confusion.

Where half the sky is flame and half the sky is smoke, Imperial might won out under a Promethian Shield, covering Imperial convoys and route defences for long enough. Eventually, enemy combat potential had ruined itself against the stalwart defenders with their lines of blocking troops ready to fire anyone surrendering or fleeing. Imperial officers and Commissars in the field brandished grim smiles on their gaunt faces as the rebel offensive petered out. And as the treacherous separatists licked their wounds, the artery of Imperial logistics known as the Long Walls pumped men and materiel frantically into Nippur Regia. Hundreds of long convoys of vehicles, men and pack animals travelled along blackened roads where horrible smoke and burnt-out corpses littered the landscape.

After three months of buildup, Imperial preparations were completed, and General Agathea von Niessuh launched the offensive Operation Pius, crushing enemy defenses again and again in a drumroll of artillery and small thrusts of armoured spearheads and human wave assaults that ground every rebel attempt to regroup and dig fortifications into dust and ash. Finally, after five years of total warfare and seventeen years of gruelling insurgency oppression, the entire region of Dadghab had returned under full Imperial control, including its precious promethium fields. The death toll exceeded three billion all in all, and much of the region was left largely depopulated after Imperial revenge purges saw any tribes and clans with suspected rebel members wiped out to extinguish all traitorous bloodlines. Thus was the Pax Imperialis restored to the planet of Uruk Sigma, and all was well in the celestial domains of the God-Emperor of Holy Terra.

The promethium smoke cover of the Long Walls of Nippur Regia is an example of a succesful use of fuel to shield ground fighters from sky fighters. These smoke covers are however often ineffectual, as the complete impotence of promethium covers against Tau, Eldar and Kin planes bear witness to. Burning promethium to blacken the sky can on the other hand cause great havoc among Ork pilots, for whom sight is the primary means of navigation and manoeuvre.

More worryingly, Imperial pilots and aircraft from worlds rebelling against the Imperium also seem to be vulnerable to this crude ploy. For instance, during the biannual Grand Exercises of Saint Hodrerum on the arid world of Tallarn in 884.M41, the Fourth Aerofleet of the Planetary Defence Force was thrown into utter chaos when the High Command sprang a Promethian Shield as a surprise twist in the unfolding live wargames. The resultant tumble as bewildered squadrons flew into each other and crashed into the ground amid thick layers of smoke was not only a peacetime training fiasco, but a glimpse of actual air combat reality as recorded on so many battlefronts across so many worlds and giant voidholms where aircraft can contend inside the domes.

To think that man, the master of the skies, has been reduced to such a rudimentary state that he must steer his winged wain by sight alone. During the human and machine heyday of the Dark Age of Technology, man flew sleek silver vessels with superb instruments that could slalom and somersault nimbly through the most dense and busy urban cityscape, no matter the obscuration of smoke, radiation, blinding light or electromagnetic pulse disruptions. Such blindfolded aerial acrobatics are now far beyond the reach of even the most skilled Imperial pilots among the degenerate descendants of Man of Gold. Not for the lack of breathtaking expertise, but for the horrendous degradation of knowledge and technology during the Age of Imperium.

Indeed, the contrast with Imperial fliers during the Great Crusade or the Forging will alone suffice to demonstrate the abject impoverishment of human aircraft under the reign of the High Lords of Terra.

Such is the state of human air power in a forsaken aeon.

Such is the decay that awaits us all, in a time beyond hope.

Such is the crumbling of the works of our hands.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only blindness.
 
@twisted.moon: Thanks a lot! Found some time at long last. I've been itching to draw more all year.

@JonAtron: Thank you most kindly, that is warmly appreciated!

Lessons For Imperial Operatives, by StaevinTheAeldari

Do not miss the above linked stellar piece of writing by StaevinTheAeldari over on DakkaDakka. In it, he outlines crucial lessons which all Inquisitorial acolytes and Imperial operatives ought to learn if they wish to survive their perilous occupation. In it you will find The two headed chief, the forgotten page, the struggling hands or the frail ground, and That Which We Do Not Speak Of. Check it out!

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Man Is the Measure of All Things

"Esteemed reader, let us now turn to a peculiar anecdote which evented in 974.M41, best retold aloud late in the dayturn in good company, following reinforcement by fine liquor. As Head Lady of the Ibolyka sept of our Noble House Erba-Batthyany, I had sponsored an Explorator Magos of the revered Adeptus Mechanicus to carry out a technoarchaeological dig on our domains, following a series of chance artefact finds by my diligent agri-serfs in District Alfa-79.

Three weeks into the excavation, I took the gilded sky blue grav-sled to visit the dig site in person, along with my Emperor-blessed fifteen surviving progeny and a retinue of eightysix attendants and bodyguards. By the grace of the Saints, we arrived just as the dig team hit upon an interesting discovery. A humble menial climbed out of the wellstair, bowed with eyes averted and tenderly handed my highborn self a crystalline rectangle with retracted corners, tinted teal with trace remains of yellow ochre dust in the engravings where cleaning efforts had not utterly succeeded. A shard of the rectangular plate was broken off in a corner, but otherwise it seemed intact. I held it up to bask in the light of the twin suns. The little crystalline find was covered in exquisite lines and diagrams of scratchings, with strange miniature illustrations etched into it.

For five minutes straight did I turn it around this way and that, and I studied its appearance on both front and back. I even peered closely on the thin edges, which bore microscopic markings which resembled long jumbles of numbers, akin the code-names of file-spirits. At last, I handed the artefact to the patient Explorator, Magos Ameerah-Kiran, and uttered these words:

'Ever since I was a small girl have I taken hieratic pride in my grasp of High Gothic. Yet the shape of letters and other figures is so unfamiliar from our Imperial fonts, and the twists of wordings so different, that I cannot make head or tail of its content. It is nothing like the histories and classics that I have consumed by the lumen, nor anything like the plays and poems that my late husband so treasured. Please tell me what ancient wisdom is contained within this relic, o Magos.'

The Tech-Priestess tenderly received the crystalline rectangle in her mechadendrites, shifting it over with extreme care to a strong bionic arm of many joints. Anointed ocular implants flared with light as they scanned its pristine surface, and the servant of the Omnissiah hummed with binary code-prayers while making the sign of the cogwheel with her other metal hands. At last the Explorator struck a bell and started to repeatedly swing a fragrant censer back and forth. Having thus established a solemn silence around herself, Magos Ameerah-Kiran at last proclaimed:

'Praise the divine knowledge! Your excellence, this is a plasteocrete hard copy of a digital file, printed in the twentythird millennium. Within its writ we find remnants of lost Biologis lore, describing a segment of characteristics of the wise ancients themselves. Truly it is said, that man is the measure of all things.'

'What does it say, o Magos?' I asked.

'On the shallow surface, it is nought but a superficial recording of anatomical survey findings among a population numbering fiftythousandthreehundredsix, all golden ancestors peopling a long-lost colony dome. As we might expect, their health indicators are overall robust, with tall average height speaking of excellent nourishment growing up. And not a single instance of lifelong parasitic infection.'

'And beneath those plain numbers, o Magos?'

'Peering deeper into the data, we realize that this is in fact a trail, and we must redouble our dig efforts, your excellence. We are clearly on the track of ancient Genetors, and we must toil slavishly to uncover every iota of remnant knowledge that these grounds of yours may contain.'

'Genetors you say? Do you expect to find a laboratorium of sorts? Pray tell, o Magos.'

'If the Omnissiah so wills it. Aye, your excellence. By electron and proton, these simple measurements contain proof of genetic engineering!'

Whether wittingly or not, the Tech-Priestess was pulling the leg of my curiosity. I confess that excitement burst forth in my heart, fed by many fantastic fables and cryptic mysteries speaking of the strange things of yore, before He Who Dwells On the Face of Terra revealed Himself as the Saviour and Lord of our predestined human species. Thus, I said with some eagerness, on the limits of protocol:

'Please do us the courtesy to not keep us on a leash any longer, reverend Explorator. Tell us what it is! What hint have you uncovered, pray tell? Are there unnatural freaks bred by gene-kings? Monstrosities and witches grown in vats? Are there horrors which man was never meant to see, bred by godless ancestors in heinous sin?'

The Explorator straightened and held up the hardprint in her mechanical claws, before uttering a blurt of binary code:

'01001000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101101 01100101 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 00100000 01101100 01100001 01110010 01100111 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000100 01100001 01110010 01101011 00100000 01000001 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01010100 01100101 01100011 01101000 01101110 01101111 01101100 01101111 01100111 01111001'

'And in Low Gothic, o Magos?'

Magos Ameerah-Kiran replied in that scratchy voice through the vox-emitter: 'Your excellence. The key is hidden in the survey measurements for the entire masculine half of the dome population. Comparing to contemporary and historical data at the disposal of our noospheric memory coils, we may draw the conclusion that the wise ancients practiced their Genetor craft on a massive scale, effectively shaping the flesh of an entire population like clay to fulfil some of mankind's oldest wishful dreams.'

'How so? Did these mortals play god, o Magos?'

'Elementary! The crux lies in the phallic measurements, your excellence. Clearly proof of genetic engineering.' The Explorator paused theatrically and gazed on the male diggers on the site. Undoubtedly, the Magos' cultic indoctrination and surgical bionic shunning of the flesh had not extinguished every spark of humour within her cerebral processors and grey cells. For the briefest of moments, there was the shutting off and on of a glowing bionic eye in the Tech-Priestess' abominable metal face, as if mimicking a human wink. 'Oh, those poor, Imperial women. How short man has fallen of the heights of his ancestors!'"

- Anecdote from A Biography Betwixt Blushes and Banquets, an autobiographical work by Gyöngyi Erba-Batthyany, literary work approved by planetary censors in 989.M41 and published in High Gothic on Dunantul Majoris by Printing House Endre of Capitolina Sarolt
 
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Crowning Glory

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only toil for the sake of toil.

In the distant past of the misty Age of Terra, myths spoke of gods fashioning men and women out of clay to toil for their makers. To the eternal question of from where does we come, these stories replied that man is but mud, created to be a slave for celestial overlords. Skeptics during later phases of that bygone aeon would snarkily comment that such a cosmic order must be terribly convenient for mortal royals ruling over cowed masses. What a coincidence! As above, so below. Yet such leisurely talk of unbelief failed to grasp the heavily-laden omen for the future of man that lay hidden in these ancient tales told around campfires in fields of clay.

Behold man, the seed of Old Earth, the builder of wonders and the depraved destroyer of all. Behold man, the active worker and the lazy wastrel, the obedient servant and the clamorous rebel. Behold man in his totality, sprung from the meandering paths of breeding forebear-creatures, his blood forever marked by idiosyncracies and flaws born out of inbreeding and random mutations of genes. The king of animals, ancient man emerged out of the orgy and bloodbath of uncaring evolution as a sentient being able to fundamentally remake his surroundings, yet unable to fundamentally remake himself.

Thus human history for untold millennia played out in endless cycles of youthful rise and degenerate decay. The human past is a litany of tribes massacring their hated enemies, of people's minds led astray by ever more false creeds, and of greatness slowly built up over generations of toil only to be crashed by horrible heirs or greedy conquerors. Human civilization was for the longest time perpetually scourged by such ailings as poverty and corruption, theft and lethargy, ingratitude and history forgotten. The flaws of natural man under civilization are innumerable and to be observed everywhere he settles down and lives out his time. At the end of the day, man is but a product of nature, and all his neurotics, anxieties, dysfunctionalities, diseases, self-destructiveness and shortcomings ultimately stem from the random makeup of his being that was formed in long forgotten eras of bestial survival and procreation.

For a time, the Dark Age of Technology changed all of that. Ascending the heavens, the earthly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron straddled the Milky Way galaxy like a colossus, and over twain million worlds were colonized in a brilliant spree of human expansion that took man to the stars and beyond. With science and technology as his lodestar, ancient man built a worldly paradise for himself, meticulously tailored to bring out the best of natural man, while artificially curing many of the worst defects of human nature. While clever systems were put in place to bring out the full potential of mankind, genetors worked relentlessly to improve on the human genome. The innermost secrets of human flesh became but clay under their able hands, to shape at will for the betterment of humanity as a whole. Inherited faults were hunted down and eliminated in order to shape a better man, and glorious creations such as Navigators saw the light of day, which still enable man to maintain an interstellar empire despite the frothing turmoil of the Empyrean.

Natural man was treated with the best cures of ills and given longevity such as he could only have dreamt of, yet the cunning minds of the Golden Age of Technology could do better than that. They could make man anew. They could create a better man.

Many untold and forgotten grand experiments were carried out, and many bore shining fruit. We will now focus our attention on one of the larger genetic projects of this bygone epoch of discovery, one whose seed has managed to perpetuate itself with brilliant success long after sister seeds long since wilted and died. The genetor project in question was not the most daring and groundbreaking one concocted during the Dark Age of Technology, nor was it driven by the loftiest of ideals. Instead, it is a testament to the stubborn and rugged qualities that always made natural man a survivor, amplified and purged of impurities that make for instability and failure. Let us turn to the murky origins of the Kin.

Man's drive to make the starspangled void his domain has always been driven by ambitions of expansion and greed. Only failed schools of thought would discount the allure of material gain as a pivotal force at the core of human history. And so ancient man in splendid times of yore set out to mine the galactic core. And the earthly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron toiled wisely to create a new human being fit for this task. This new man would be exquisitely fit for astral and terrestrial mining in the harshest environs, because he would have been designed for it from the ground up. The new man would not only be tough and resistant to cosmic radiation, he would also be diligent, clever, hard-working and a born perfectionist in all his endeavours. Not only that: The new man would be rid of human weaknesses and characteristics that bring instability, doubt and lapse in toil, and he would be designed to find meaning in his labours and enjoy his toil and mission in life.

In short, the new man would be the perfect slave, self-perpetuating and content with his monumental task for all eternity. The makers of ancestral Kin gave life to all those ancient myths of gods fashioning man out of clay to serve at the behest of distant deities, to work the lands and offer up the fruits of their labour in sacrifice. And just like any wise creator god of archaic mythology, the makers of the Kin fashioned their creations to revere and obey their creators, yet the results of these laboratory creations far exceeded anything ever claimed by old sagas.

The new man thus created by shadowy genetors was the abhuman race known as Homo Sapiens Rotundus, and it set about its grand task with unrelenting vigour. These willing thralls built up untold mining operations in the galactic core, and shipped back enormous amounts of material to their makers and owners. For they were made to be both willing and able labourers. The rapid expansion of the human species during the Stellar Exodus was greatly accelerated by the astral mining conducted by gene-bred abhumans in the galactic core, as were the building of megastructures in space and soaring wonders on planetary crust wherever large human colonies sprang up.

As ancient man built edenic idylls on twain million worlds and voidholms without number, the miners toiled in the core. As the best and the brightest minds of ancient man began cracking the secrets of creation and time itself, they toiled. As gene-kings and monstrosities rose out of heinous sin and godless hubris, they toiled. As aberrant Man of Iron rebelled against his master, they toiled. As the galaxy burned in machine revolt and titanic technological civil war beyond anything seen later, they toiled. As Abominable Intelligence ran amok and machine creations swallowed stars and pulverized worlds, they toiled. As witches and Warp storms tore the ravaged galactic civilization of ancient man asunder, they toiled.

Scarcely anything is known about the Ancestors of the Kin during the last stages of the crumbling Dark Age of Technology. Clearly, they were not untouched by all the calamities that beset the star realm of ancient man during this time. They must have fought, and fought succesfully. Clearly, they survived, and their grasp of ancient man's legacy technology and scientific knowledge remained strong.

The horrible aeon of devastation known as the Age of Strife saw many remnant human enclaves with some degree of preserved high technology and knowledge make it through Old Night, only to be crushed ruthlessly by the Emperor's all-conquering Legions as the early Imperium took the Milky Way galaxy with storm. Clearly, some peripheral states of Homo Sapiens Rotundus fell to the Imperial war machine during the Great Crusade, yet the work of completely subjugating every nook and cranny of the galaxy was left unfinished when the Horus Heresy rent the Emperor's dream to pieces, and then proceeded to nigh-on slay Him on Terra in a civil war that destroyed Imperial mankind's hopes of ever rekindling the golden lights of their ancestors. And so the vast majority of the human species was swept down a maelstrom of ever-worsening demechanization and fanatical depravity, and man grew ever more senile and irrationally aggressive as fivehundred generations of descendant degeneration played themselves out in a baleful theatre of the absurd.

Yet the counter-productive tyranny of the monstrous Imperium of Man was not the only strong entity remaining of the heirs of ancient man. Hidden in the galactic core, there remained a great and powerful remnant that will toil until the end of time, if nothing manages to destroy them first. This remnant was the willing slave race, tailored for their worksome task by unknown makers seeking profit. These mining thralls had long since ceased to send shipments of ore and processed raw materials to the domains of wider humanity, for the Age of Strife had ended that part of their original purpose. Instead, the stout race of abhumans turned their acquisitions into ever more fantastic creations of their own, and invested it all in expanding their Holds and astral domains, in a never-ending search for more celestial bodies to extract resources from.

Where others fell to the flame and fell to infighting and cannibal savagery, they endured. Where others lost knowledge and craft and even forgot where they had sprung from, they endured. Where others lost their grasp of interstellar travel and astral mining in the havoc of the Age of Strife, they endured, and endured with excellence. Their makers had fashioned them to be the perfect workers and miners, the best survivalists and the most thorough artisans. Made to be solid and reliable, made to be free of natural man's most damning weaknesses, this clone race endured and thrived amid hardships that brought so many others to oblivion. Their decentralized interstellar civilization stayed true to its original mission, and thus the Leagues of Votann bloomed in the galactic core.

Children of many names, these abhumans are derogatorily known to the Imperium of Man as Squats. They are also known as Demiurg to Tau and Humans alike, as Heliosi Ancients to the Eldar, and likewise are they known to other Xenos as the Gnostari, Grome or Kreg, among many other names. Yet they themselves know their folk simply as Kin, for they are a race of few words, each laden with meaning.

Bestowed with a very demanding biological constitution, the Kin breeds but slowly the natural way, for such is the drawback of approaching perfection in the flesh. Thus, the creators of the Kin saw fit to vastly accelerate their reproduction while at the same time ensuring stability of the desired genome through the use of cloneskeins. The vast majority of Kin are thus birthed from machines at the heart of their Holds, in Crucibles endowed with genomic cloning technologies. While some exotic variations of genes and phenotypes have arisen among the dispersed populations of Kin throughout the millennia, the cloneskeins help ensure that their essential nature remains that desired by their long-dead makers, without significant aberrations.

Unintentionally, and through historical accident, the Kin has proven to be the truest and best enduring achievement among the creations of humanity during the Dark Age of Technology. The astral civilization of the Leagues of Votann have proven neither too brittle and corruptible to easily splinter and decay, nor too advanced so as to fall prey to revolts against creators or breakdowns of overly sophisticated systems.

In their middling way of Dark Age of Technology refinement, the Kin has proven the golden mean, a system installed long ago by forgotten makers that is still going incredibly strong. Among all the shattered remnants of mankind's golden age of science and technology, so much has fallen. The legacy technology and scientific understanding inherited by the wilted Imperium is rotting away with every passing century. The few shards of still operational and independent-minded Men of Stone and Men of Iron endures in the shadows without being able to mount any kind of large-scale recovery of ancient man's higher civilization, or else they have fallen to the corrupting influence of Chaos. Yet the Kin remains.

The Kin has managed their scientific and technological inheritance from the Golden Age of Technology better than any other seeds of Old Earth. Not only is their grasp of tech and material lore supreme in comparison to the shamanistic rituals of the senile Imperium; the Kin has employed both their technological elevation and themselves to forge teeming clusters of lively mining empires and industrial bastions in the galactic core, known as the Leagues of Votann. Theirs is not a tale of woe, and neither is it a saga of slow decline nor bleak dwindling in the face of overwhelming odds. For theirs is a success story against all the odds, of hardy expansion and wonders crafted in the harsh environs that lies at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.

During the time of their creation, the Kin were never the spearhead of technology and science, never the best fruit from the tree of man. They were exquisitely tailored for their grand task at hand, and made to thrive at it with the focus of perfectionists and the order of a perfect slave race, happy with their lot and finding fulfilment in their neverending work. They were equipped with an adequately advanced level of technology and scientific knowledge, yet their wisdom and craft were never the highest spires of the ancients.

Nevertheless those tall spires of legendary breakthroughs and tampering with reality itself fell to pieces in the wasteland of the Age of Strife, and all the most advanced creations of man either revolted, were destroyed or slowly eroded in forgotten abandonment. And so the Kin endures, designed to be stolid and tough, bred to be crafty and loyal. Theirs is a stout civilization, that has endured where brighter lights of the Dark Age of Technology have long since been snuffed out. Worksome and ingenious, the Grome are the perfect tool, and they continue to willingly wield themselves with excellence many millennia after their mysterious makers turned to dust.

Slaves bred for toil and carefully designed for order and stability so as to never rebel, the ancestral origins of the Demiurg remain a secret unknown even to themselves. Some would say that it is wrong to play god and create a slave race to work for your benefit. Yet we must turn this steak around, and bear witness to the enduring success of the Kin, for therein lies a testament to the brilliance of man during the Dark Age of Technology.

Consider their dark origins, and marvel at the skill with which the Squats were wrought: Is it not wrong to put slaves to tasks which they ultimately are unhappy with? Why not design the slaves to be happy with their tasks and find fulfilment in their toil? What could be more beautiful than perfection of function?

Nay, pity the unrefined, raw, longshanking manlings instead! Their flesh and essence is but a random hodgepodge of contradictory neurotics, falsehoods and selfish desires, spat out by the rutting chance of evolution. They are nought but apes arisen. How much suffering and bloodshed and destruction does not result from man’s imperfect being? Why not make a better man, and do away with all the evils of life? Why not design a better being from the ground up, stable and dependable, clever and strong? Why not forge the perfect tool?

To the Kin, there is nothing sinister about their origins. They were designed to be pragmatic, and so they will focus on what matters, true to the design of their makers. There is no space for doubt, just as there may not be cracks within the best of tools.

Look upon the toil of the Kin, and behold the genius of their work. Man may be a toolmaker, yet they are a sublime toolmaker. Ken the perfection of function that plays out in their civilization, across vistas of asteroid mining and salvage operations of spacewrecks, across nebulae trawling and the harvesting of black holes. The degenerate descendants of mankind in the Holy Terran Imperium know only of such wonders as particle excavators as garbled scenes for heroes and monsters jostling with lances of flame during a forgotten time, when starstriders walked the skies and discovered the perilous galaxy. Such wonders are but the stuff of legend to retrograde man, yet they are a lived reality of working projects for the Squats in the galactic core. And the sagas to be sung of those wonders would far surpass the tales of void-dragons and starknights.

Listen to tales told by Kin of their enormous struggles against Greenskins, which saw strong Leagues grind giant Waaaghs! to dust through gruelling total wars that lasted for hundreds of years, until the unrelenting power of the Squats crushed Orks underheel. Listen to the lamentations over lost Holds and Votanns gone mad amid death and desolation. Listen to the coming of the Bane and the vicious battles against Chaos. Listen to the Grudges and the works.

The Kin are sterling prospectors, miners, and void-dredgers, and a spirit of enterprising adventure is in their blood. Kreg mercenaries and pioneers may be found far away from the dominions of the Leagues, gathering knowledge and experience to offer up to their Ancestor Cores, the mysterious Votann of whom the Kin will never speak in the presence of aliens and lesser men. The lives of the Kin revolve around kinship, Ancestors and perfectionist work to mine and forge marvels across the stars. Their lives are likewise filled with lethal combat, for where there is peril there is opportunity.

It has been said in jest about their warriors that they are every inch the soldier, but there are not many inches. As any Kin worth their salt knows, a rotund sphere is the ideal body shape. The ugly longshanking of manlings just prove that knees are overrated. Yet the greatness of the Kin cannot be perceived from measly length of body, but in their endurance and their ability to work long and hard without becoming unhappy and broken. Most of all, the greatness of the Kin may be witnessed in their gigantic works, which will dwarf any undertakings of the ignorant Adeptus Mechanicus.

Certainly, the Ancestors of the Kin were never meant for utter ruthless exploitation for all eternity. Their purpose was never to extract all minerals from planets with native populations still on the crust, nor was it to salvage the infrastructure and cities of alien and human civilizations as so much junk to be recycled. The indifferent worksomeness with which the Leagues of Votann conduct their most shocking mining operations upon the worlds of unwilling inhabitants may be stark insanity to some, yet to the Kin themselves it is merely fulfilling the perfection of function for which they were created, honed to a new degree of sharpness. Their makers may never have envisioned this outcome, yet these atrocious extraction wars are also as true as rock itself.

Luck has. Need keeps. Toil earns.

Thus the Kin will carry out their tasks without any regard to whom it would have been of gain. No one else can rival their rapacious astral and terrestrial mining operations. All there is, to these extraordinary space miners, is exploitation and work unto the grave, so that future generations will be able to toil just as hard unto their own graves. The ancient promise of a better tomorrow for man is gone. The labour which should have led to a future without hardship and suffering where people can live in abundance and happiness is long since forgotten and buried. All there is, is work for the sake of work. And the Kin revel in it. Had they been a religious lot, they could not have asked for a better afterlife than the mortail coil of toil which they live out so hardily and heartily in the heart of the galaxy. Rock and stone!

And so we see that the Heliosi Ancients pursue their mining mission with greater focus than ever before, in unquestioning obedience to the Votann, their secret Ancestor Cores. The entire civilization of the Leagues is one of relentless work, and of war to enable more toil. Their most frequent foe is that of Orkoids, the green menace that has cast so many others on the trash heap of history. It is no surprise that engineers who mine asteroids for minerals end up the hateful enemy of lunatics who strap giant engines to the asteroids in order to crash Roks into unsuspecting planets in search of a good fun scrap. And so we may witness industrial conglomerates muster fantastic resources and hurl immense mechanized forces of Kin on savage foes, in order to grind down all resistance to their mining claims.

The Leagues of Votann believe that nothing is worth doing unless it is done well, and they wage war as methodically as they undertake any other pursuit. The selfsame attitude to life means that even the most isolated Squat enclaves are superb toolmakers, with a flair for overengineered maximalist designs. Anything they make will be sturdy and dependable, reliable just like they themselves are. This ever-present facet of Homo Sapiens Rotundus civilization is captured in the Kin Truth: Rock holds.

The pragmatic nature of Kin is not a conscious choice, but a racial temperament made by careful design in aeons past. Certain options will not even occur to Kin, for they are not made to occur to them, and the cloneskeins will ensure that it remains so on a fundamental level. Originally such a practical nature and focus on material tasks was meant to ensure that the Kin would never rebel, yet the long-term consequences of this artificial design of life has created something far greater than willing thralls meant to mine the galactic core for distant overlords. It has created an interstellar civilization immune to decadence and decay, free from the lowly cycles of human history, such as continue to play out miserably on Terra and across all her daughter worlds. The Gnostari embodies stability, and they are not able to fall into the societal traps of high technology, for such weakness has been bred out of them.

Do the Kin possess free will, compared to sentient species that are the result of natural evolution? The horrifying answer matters not. Never forget the foremost of all Kin Truths: The ancestors are watching.

For the Kin endure and they expand where so much else has been lost for all time, where so many treasures beyond imagination has been forgotten, never to be rediscovered. The enduring success of what became the Leagues of Votann could not have been foreseen in ancient times of glory, when so much else wonder was created that seemed to surpass the solid Kin.

Yet the worksome stability and striving for perfection of the Kin has outperformed all the other fruits of the Golden Age of Mankind. For where are the Men of Stone now? And where are the Men of Iron and the feared machine minds of Abominable Intelligence? Where are the brilliant minds that laboured to unlock the very secrets of creation itself? All have fallen into oblivion or obscurity, yet the less advanced sideshow that was the Squat slave race in the galactic core remains, and remains with a vengeance. For where the rest of humanity has ceased to create marvels of science and technology, the Leagues of Votann has continued the great legacy of the Dark Age of Technology. They alone among the spawn of Terra have continued to build pragmatic megastructures to harvest stars and planets alike, and they alone have continued to engineer material wonders of such a scale and a brilliant fashion as did once mankind's gifted ancients.

Thus the Kin are the crowning glory of the Dark Age of Technology.

All else is rot and ruination among the fruits of ancient man, in the Age of Imperium.

Listen!

Listen to the song of this benighted age.

A song rising out of the souls of mortals that must live through its hell.

Its song nought but the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

For all that can be heard is woe.

And the laughter of thirsting gods.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only war.
 
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