Halo Devices

"I have looked into the expanse of soulless darkness that waits beyond the gates that man should not dare to pass. I have seen the death light in the eyes of those who walk that forbidden land."
–from the personal reflections Inquisitor Hastur Whitlock
On some ancient and forgotten worlds, the ashes
and echoes of races and civilizations long dead
still linger. The galaxy is far older than human
experience can comprehend, and in its dark history many
races both great and insignificant have risen up and returned
to nothingness, all long before mankind even evolved. Of
most nothing remains but dust and silence, but for some their
works endure.
Products of inhuman knowledge and unknown purpose,
some are enigmatic and inscrutable whilst others are perilous---seeds of corruption that can twist the soul, befoul
the mind, and profane the sacred human form. One such
genus of artefacts, spoken of in Inquisitorial record and Rogue Trader tales as the “Halo Devices,” has long been known and
forbidden to mankind, for these objects are truly dangerous.
Yet there are those who would seek out and possess a Halo
Device for all its dark renown and use it for the false gift it
promises. The reason is simple. Mankind has always feared
death, and a Halo Device offers immortality... for a price.
==Origins and Nature==
Halo Devices are so named because they come from worlds
within the volume of space known as the Halo Stars---a
dangerous and ill-omened region that is bordered by several
barbarous voids of space as well as a number of Imperial sectors
including Scarus and Calixis. The worlds from which Halo
Devices come are truly ancient and utterly lifeless, orbiting
dead stars which must have burned their brightest many
thousands of millennia ago. That such worlds once were part
of some antediluvian and now long dead civilization is a fact
generally agreed upon by Xeno-Arcanists and Rogue Traders,
but just what the creatures from this civilization were or how
they passed into extinction is a question that has never been
answered.
All that may be surmised about these creatures comes from
the one legacy they left behind---the artefacts referred to as
Halo Devices. From these, it can be surmised that the makers of
the Halo Devices had highly developed technology and a great
understanding of physical matter and biological processes far in
advance of perhaps any other known race or science. Whether
the effects of these devices on human tissue is deliberate or not
is unclear; if they were deliberate, it would indicate a callous
genius as well as a farsighted malignancy. If the effects of the
devices are accidental, it speaks of a terrifying power that could
cause such a by-product unrelated to their true purpose.
Usually found buried in the decayed basalt biers and
shattered cyclopean ruins of their maker’s civilization---long
rendered into anonymity by the erosion of ages---the Halo
Devices themselves are always inexplicably untouched by
the effects of time. Halo Devices come in many forms, from
smooth carbuncular talismans to strange miniature trilobite-like
fossil curios and sinister orbs with fluid and glossy surfaces. Some are irregular spheres, some
segmented ovoids a handbreadth wide, still others small
scarab-like objects.
All are clearly xenos in origin and their texture and
surface patterning calls to mind the shells of insects or skins
of lizards. All share a strange metallic feel, defy analysis by auspexs or
scanners, and are nearly imperious to harm. Indeed any force
sufficient to breach one will also destroy it, making any such
act worthless. All that is known of their effects are half-truths
and stories passed down across the millennia. In fact, there are
as many strange and unreliable fragments of lore surrounding
them as there are different forms to the devices themselves.
Given the proscribed nature of Halo Devices, it is
unsurprising that rumor and supposition persist as to their
powers and use. The truth, however, is that the devices will
indeed grant their possessor what he seeks---youth, vigor,
and undying power, but in such a manner only the most
deranged would choose. Over time, the devices become part
of their possessor’s body and mind, changing him according
to alien inclinations and subjugating him to strange thirsts.
The life of a possessor of a Halo Device becomes less his own
and more that of the device itself.
==Within Calixis==
As far as can be ascertained, the first discovery of a Halo
Device on the edges of what would one day be called the
Calixis Sector was made by the Explorator Archmagos
Khronus in the late years of the 36th Millennium, although
apocryphal tales of dangerous and accursed xenos artefacts of
a similar vein originated in the area millennia before. Despite
analysis, the terrible properties of the seemingly mundane
relics discovered by Khronus remained undiscovered. For these horrors to emerge, a Halo Device would have to fall
into less scrupulous hands.
It is believed that one did after Khronus’s fleet returned
many decades later to its base on the Forge World of Stragos
where an incident occurred whose details have been long
suppressed by the Mechanicus. Whatever events transpired on
Stragos resulted in the devices being identified and condemned
by both the Ordo Xenos and the Machine Cult, and the lives
off all those involved with Halo Devices remain forfeit within
the Imperium.
The threat posed by Halo Devices was known when Angevin
began his crusade and members and servants of the Ordo Xenos
travelled in his wake seeking signs of their corrupting presence.
It is even thought that some amongst the crusade’s greatest
enemies used Halo Devices. That some of these enemies may
yet live in secret, preserved by this blasphemous technology, is
a terrible prospect that troubles the Holy Ordos to this day.
The Inquisition, for its part, has watched the sectors around
the Halo Stars for signs of this trade and the artefacts’ malign
influence for centuries, hunting for those who traffic in the
Halo Devices and mercilessly destroying those who have come
into contact with them. Dedicated cells of Acolytes have spent
their entire careers researching and hunting out Halo Devices.
Congregations of Inquisitors have been created and have died
in the war against these malign gifts from the Halo Stars’ past.
==The Sinophian Prosecution==
Concrete evidence of the effects of the Halo Devices is
frustratingly rare, but the earliest confirmed instance of conflict
with the artefacts came on what was then the frontier world
of Sinophia, some hundred years before Angevin’s
crusade. During what is named in official Ordos sources as
the Sinophian Prosecution, Lord Inquisitor Ozymandias
Ruthven destroyed the heretic scion of a great and wealthy
mercantile house of Sinophia. The heretic’s name was judged
to be so reviled that it has been expunged from all records.
The arch-heretic, whose influence ran through the Segmentum Obscurus even to the borders of Segmentum Solar itself, was
said to be possessed of unnatural powers and could not die.
The Inquisition, of course, begged to differ...
The crimes and secret atrocities committed by this foe of
mankind and his kin were so grievous as to merit execution not
only for himself and his close associates but also for all of his
house and its vassals. It became clear during this prosecution
that the heretic was not, as first suspected, a daemon-worshiper,
warped mutant, or witch. Rather, the heretic’s body was a
hideous fusion of polluted human flesh and a xenological
artefact that had become so much a part of him that the heretic
and artefact were indivisible. It is recorded in one apocryphal
source that Ozymandias hurled his bound enemy into the
heart of Sinophia’s sun, destroying him utterly.
==Illicit Trade==
Since the sector’s founding, no more than a few score Halo
Devices are believed to have been clandestinely traded within
its bounds, each changing hands for an exorbitant price. This
trade is not only utterly illegal, but a heresy and crime so
severe that any involvement with it will draw the harshest
retribution under Imperial law. Accordingly, the illegal xenoexcavators
who obtain Halo Devices, the smugglers who
transport them, and the black market merchants who trade
in them are amongst the most secretive and dangerous of
recidivists. Such is the vast price for immortality peddled
by these scum that those who are willing and able to pay it
are among the most wealthy, powerful, and well connected
individuals. This alone keeps the Halo Device’s legend alive
in circles criminal, merchant, and noble alike.
==The Temptation of Immortality==
Those few who covet Halo Devices have a simple but
terrible motivation for their desire---the youth and eternal
vigor bestowed by them. Rejuvenat treatments, sanguinary
cleansing, and other techno-biological rituals can only
preserve life so far. Even extreme solutions to extreme age
such as full augmetic conversion and life support offer at best
a poisoned chalice for those that take them up.
Rather than undergo the indignities of infirmity and the
ultimate truth of their own demise, some who desire freedom
from the cruel touch of time seek other, more desperate
measures. For some, the Ruinous Powers await with their own
lies and empty promises. However, this path is as uncertain as
it is filled with caprice and danger to body and soul. Others,
rich, ruthless, and sufficiently well connected, may seek other
means, turning to the half-rumored mysteries of ancient
human science and the works of the alien for salvation.
Fortunately, concrete knowledge of the existence of Halo
Devices is rare and the means to obtain one even rarer yet.
Only the wealthiest and most powerful seekers of eternal life
in the sectors that border the Halo Stars are able to pursue
these forbidden devices. Once they have obtained such a
thing, they soon find that they have a new purposes to occupy
them---first, concealing the crime that they have committed
simply by possessing one, and, over time, concealing the
side effects of the device’s gifts. The price they pay for their
immortality is ultimately everything they have and everything
they are as they spiral slowly down a path of contamination,
corruption, and madness. Over time, most will be forced
into the life of the recluse in order to survive, attended by a
few loyal or terrified servants, and ultimately must pass the
millennia hunted and shunned by their fellow man and at the
mercy of alien thirsts and ancient nightmares.
==The Stuff that the Darkest Dreams are Made Of==
Halo Devices come in many forms, but most are small and
easily confused with odd jeweler, small pieces of armor,
and curious miniature statuary. The form a Halo Device
takes has no influence over its powers. Some commonly
encountered forms are spheres (also called “halo oculus” for
their resemblance to eyes), flat ovoids the width of a human
palm, broad hoops varying in size, or small scarab or fossil-like
objects. Once one begins to bond with a person, the form
of the devices often changes as it melds with the user’s flesh.
A true Halo Device might change hands in trade once in
a hundred years and command prices of tens of millions of
Thrones, or things of equal or more specific value such as
trade route maps, noble titles, certain dark secrets, and other
hugely valuable assets.
Halo Devices can only be obtained through the most
unscrupulous and well connected traders who peddle in the
heretical and profane. They therefore have no Availability
value, as obtaining them should never be a matter of simply
rolling dice.
A character with a Dark Pact, who is possessed, or who is
a psyker (or the like) cannot bond with a Halo Device---the
device will accept no master or influence but itself.
Though it is only necessary that someone have close
contact with a Halo Device for it to cause its effect, there are
numerous stories and superstitions that accompany the use of
Halo Devices. Such practices include surgical implantation of
the device beneath the skin, replacing an eye with the device
(called a “halo oculi” in this case), swallowing the device, or
even bathing in alchemical preparations of blood during the
bonding.
==Transfiguration==
Halo Devices will begin to bond with and change any person
who has prolonged contact (over several days or weeks) with
them; this contact may be as simple as wearing the device
as a piece of jeweler or keeping it in a pocket. However,
embedding the device in an open wound may well speed up
this process dramatically. Once the device bonds with the
user, it begins to alter them. This process of change moves
through three phases: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Once a
person is into the primary phase there is no turning back, and
they will eventually pass to the secondary and tertiary phases
unless they are destroyed.
Halo Devices require the flesh of a host, and if kept in
contact with flesh, they will bond with it and, over time,
change that flesh to suit their purposes. Halo Devices do
have a purpose, corrupted by eons as it might be, and it is
to transform the mind and body of those they bond with
towards some dark and terrible configuration.
As a person bonded to a Halo Device moves through each
phase, various Traits and other effects are applied to him as
detailed below.
Primary Phase (Once Bonded to the device)
Within a short span of time, ranging from a few weeks to a
matter of hours in rare instances, the device becomes fully
physically bonded with the user’s flesh. The user rejuvenates
so that he is in the peak of youth and health. Any physical
diseases, deformities, minor mutations, or other long-term
medical conditions that he was suffering from are negated.
Any part of the user’s body that has been lost re-grows during
this phase (albeit slowly and painfully), his senses become
superbly attuned, he moves with an unnatural grace, and he
shrugs off all but the most grievous wounds. Even as his body
changes, the user’s mind begins to break; he increasingly
discovers that he finds no pleasure in normal sensory stimuli
(food will taste ashen, etc.) and he suffers from violent mood
swings. As time progresses, he learns that he no longer
requires sleep—except for a few comatose hours every few
days during which he suffers fierce phantasmagorical dreams
of alien vistas and strange cities beneath mysterious stars.
The following modifications apply at this stage.
*Gain +10 Wounds.
*The user no longer suffers the effects of Fatigue.
*The user regains the peak of his physical prime and ceases to age.
*Gain 2d10 Insanity Points.
*Gain Heightened Senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, Touch), Unnatural Agility (×2) and Unnatural Toughness (×2).
Secondary Phase (After several Years of contact)
Over time, the device insinuates itself completely in the user’s
body and becomes partially absorbed in the cellular makeup of
the body itself, with the initial contact covered over by skin and
scar tissue. The area where the device bonded to the flesh begins
to change, becoming mottled and tough like the exoskeleton of an
insect or becoming desiccated and cold like that of an embalmed
corpse. The body of the user heals almost any Damage (given
time) and is inhumanly fast, strong, and resilient. He no longer
sleeps, eats, or drinks normal food, but as he slips further into
madness, he develops strange addictions and insatiable hungers
that he must regularly indulge or grow increasingly unstable and
sickly. These addictions often include spending long periods in
total darkness or immersion in solar radiation, and the hungers
are often for substances like human tissue---such as blood, flesh,
and cranial fluid. The user also finds that he has memories of
strange alien civilizations, languages, and scripts meshing with his
own and may lose large chunks of his own memories.
The following modifications apply at this stage in addition to those from the primary stage.
*Gain +10 Wounds.
*Gain 3d10 Insanity Points.
*Gain Dark Sight, Regeneration, Unnatural Agility (×3), Unnatural Strength (×2), and Unnatural Toughness (×2).
*Gain Forbidden Lore (Xenos) or add +10 to the existing Skill.
Tertiary Phase (After decades of contact or resurrection)
There is no longer any separation between the user and
the Halo Device whatsoever; his body becomes perceptibly
altered, remaining humanoid but no longer human. Instances
of burning, radiant eyes, corpse-like flesh, distorted gaunt
features, mottled or armored hide-like skin, and even a fine
beetle-like carapace are all recorded, and almost invariably
the fingers of the hands transform into long talons of exposed
bone. The thing that was once human is now so strong it can
rip a man’s head from his shoulders with casual ease, survive
the touch of the void, and, it is said, may even return from
death. The mind that once spiraled towards madness is gone
and in its place is something else. It is something formed from
an unholy union of intellects, something that can speak in
long dead tongues and brood on all too human desires with
inhuman patience.
The following special rules apply at this stage in addition
to those from the primary and secondary stages.
*Gain +10 Wounds.
*Reduce Fellowship by –15 (05 minimum), increase Willpower by +10.
*The user is now driven irrevocably insane and is removed from play if a Player Character.
*Gain Fear 2 (Frightening), From Beyond, Natural Weapons (Claws;1d10 + SB I or R), Natural Armor (All 2d5), Strange Physiology, Stuff of Nightmares, Sonar Sense, and Unnatural Strength (×3) traits.
*Gain Forbidden Lore (Xenos) +20.
*Resurrection (Trait): A human in the tertiary phase of bonding to a Halo Device can return from death. If the user is killed but his body is not destroyed, he reanimates in a matter of days and is very, very hungry. Even if he is rendered down to mangled bones or burned to ash, should the remains be immersed in human blood and flesh and exposed to high electrical current or radiation, there is a chance he will be resurrected, his body reforming in minutes from a maelstrom of blood and unnatural energies. Note: the Inquisition has no concrete knowledge of this capability at present. Its only knowledge of this ability is from ancient tales, and many within the Ordo Xenos dismiss it as fanciful invention.
==The Risk and the Reward==
A Rogue Trader might win a fortune to dwarf his noble
inheritance in the trade of a single Halo Device won from
a dead world of the Koronus Expanse, but he risks both life
and legacy to be burned alive, for that is the fate of all who
are discovered by the Ordo Xenos to have touched such vile
corruption. Or worse, the Device might call to him, merge
with him, and drag him down into an eternity of corruption,
the nightmare legacy of xenos creators long vanished to dark
aeons.
Every Rogue Trader of note knows the bloody
consequences that fell upon the Lord-Captains Balastus Irem,
Rafe Longinus, and Eduard Majessus in the fifth century of
the 41st millennium as a result of their suspected dealings in
Halo Devices. Wealth beyond measure exists in a hundred
other forms in the Koronus Expanse: crux-gems, precious
ores, xenos beasts for the circuses, and worlds brimming with
heathen riches. Yet dead stars and eldritch biers upon lifeless
xenos worlds sing their siren song, and there are always some
who will listen.