recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Crusade Impressions 037

*662.982.M41*

Darkness swallowed the silent witnesses and watchers too close to the Thetys Rift when unspeakable forces crossed its spectral shores from the uncharted regions to the Imperial realm.

It was an unnatural wave, rippling space and time, terrible vortexes and eddies in the wake of the Pale Blue Light. Washing over the Limes Gondwana in its entire length, the light of the Nova sent the lone scouts to their doom and the vanguard fleets into disarray, as hundreds of vessels were lost to spontaneous systems failure, code corruption or madness consuming the minds of machine and crew.
The indomitable defensive line of his holy Emperor's devout servants and warriors weathered this storm, standing strong despite initial losses, undeterred by even the most unfathomable force. But lesser forces would falter and fall.
Shaken by the unknowable force that had come in the Pale Blue Light's wake, nests of heathens and Xenos vermin stirred. All seditious elements, abhuman scum, and insurgent groups were hit in their hideouts by the same terrible force. While many were decimated, killed to the saint's delight, others took the deadly phenomena as a sign for the coming of the judgment days. So, emboldened by false prophets and their witnessing of a force so much greater than them, these lesser factions took up arms for a fight and threw themselves at the Imperial defense, the first, least wave of enemies to rise from the Rift in the coming era of war.
Respect (Episode)

3 - Mrs. Caldwell

Frank Fontana

Corky Sherwood

Miles Silverberg

Respect (Episode) was the first episode of the first season Murphy Brown, which aired on November 14, 1988. It was written by creator and showrunner Diane English, and directed by Barnet Kellman.

## Summary

Murphy Brown returns from a one month stay at the Betty Ford Center, to find that her longtime secretary has quit, the executive producer of FYI has retired and been replaced by the youthful and inexperienced Miles Silverberg, and the winner of the 1983 Miss America Pageant, the perky and effervescent Corky Sherwood, was asked by Miles to join the news team full time. Murphy interviews controversial figure Bobby Powell (Played by guest star Tony Goldwyn) who was accused of having an affair with married mother and vice presidential candidate of indeterminate political party, Gwen Lansing.

## References

1. ↑ "**Jim~, we are talking a month at the Betty Ford Center!" (Frank, Respect 1:16)**
2. ↑ "**What happened to my old secretary?" (Murphy, Respect 4:46)**
3. ↑ "**Look- I can understand this reaction. I know how much you loved and admired Arvid. But the man retired! He did!" (Miles, Respect 4:1-2)**
4. ↑ "**I said, I’m the new executive producer-" (Miles, Respect 3:10)**
5. ↑ "**Think back- Atlantic City 1982- the talent competition? Corky Sherwood walks out on stage and coordinates a closet?" (Murphy, Respect 4:7, et al., see also: Respect 1:7, 1:13, 4:4)** **[Miss America pageants are held the year before the given title, therefore the pageant in 1982 would have been called the 1983 pageant]**
6. ↑ "**Oh no, definitely not. I’m the one who decided she should join you, Frank and Jim on a permanent basis." (Miles, Respect 4:5)**
7. ↑ "**Okay. How ‘bout this? I have landed you maybe the biggest interview of the year."****"Unless you’re talking about Bobby Powell, I’m not impressed." (Miles, Murphy, Respect 4:21-22, et al., see also: Respect 5:22, 6:49, 8:40)**
8. ↑ "**Look, you got yourself involved with Gwen Lansing, who happens to be married with two kids, and may end up running this country one day."** (Murphy, Respect 6:33)
9. ↑ "**You promised Bobby Powell I wouldn’t ask him if he had an affair with a married woman who happens to be running for VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?!" (Murphy, Respect 4:38, et al., see also: Respect 6:37, 8:44)**
Crusade Impressions 052

*984.M41*

The fate of the whole Imperium rests in the hands of a precious few, those rare individuals imbued with the knowledge and power to shift the course of history. But those individuals are rarely the grandiose heroes of which legends tell, grand warriors or masters of governance, scholarly geniuses or artists enjoying divine inspiration. Their actions occur rather, by design or inadvertently, beyond the scope of common chroniclers, unseen and unheard by most of civilization. Minuscule shifts to the balance of power, the right information at the right time, a single letter, a word, the faith of one soul change the fate of all humankind.
Among those rare, most influential individuals, count themselves the agents of the Emperor's Holy Inquisition, instruments of the Golden Throne, defending the Imperium through sword and quill were no other force of the Imperium could.

Their extraordinary force was called upon when the greater part of an entire Xenos species seemed to amass its collective space-borne capability before the fortified frontier of the Imperium without any indication of an attack. Inquisitors of the Ordo Xenos' lodge upon Mogontiacum were to be sent to break the silence, to either turn the Xenos back or ignite the war. Five of their number were chosen to lead the effort, to offer each their unique perspective on the most concerning situation.
With the blessing of Gondwana's Triumvirate, the five inquisitorial vessels departed for the forlorn shores of the Thetys Rift in 984.M41.
Crusade Impressions 012

321.944.M41
In all harbors of the hallowed ring, the Forge World Cambria mustered billions of souls to man the great fleets to be sent forth against a foe yet unknown. Workers of manufactorum hives, engineseers of the Forges, machine priests and their entire orders – all had to follow the call of the Omnissiah, to join one another in the grand cause of the crusade. All had seen the Pale Blue Light, all had felt the destruction it wrought in their very minds.

Berthed along the jetties and spires of every port lay vessels, old and new. Ancient behemoths awoken from millennia of slumber rose side by side with entire escort squadrons fresh off the assembly lines. To the new recruits of the Classis Cambria presented itself the power of arcane technology, combined with the prowess of a military industry ten-thousand years in the making. The raw might of technology made for war lay before them, waiting to unleash the wrath of the Machine God upon the galaxy.

Before long, many such fleets would be seen ascending from the Ringworld’s mighty spires, venturing forth into the darkness to perform vast maneuvers and exercises. Voidsmen and traders along many routes would bear witness to those young forces measuring their strength against one another, all in devout preparation of the coming war.
Crusade Impressions 061

*885.984.M41*

The impossible beast stretched out, writhing, shrouding shadows clinging to its immaterial form. Fire, purple and blue, licked from its skinned limbs into space, celestial flesh blistering in the light of living stars. Where it touched the world, the universe recoiled, space receding from the rift and leaving coils of unreality behind.

Vessels of the Xenos came apart, their motherships bursting into clouds of debris and rubble, shoals of escorts fleeing the impossible wrath of the thing coming forth from another dimension. They knew the danger, knew the foe but were in no shape to answer the immediate catastrophe. Where weapons awoke, they were faint sparks against the encroaching darkness, and tendrils of the thing wiped out all cells of organized resistance. For all their number, the Xenos scattered and died, some fleeing blindly toward the imperial defenses.

Those coming too close to the nearest Limes Fort were shot down by its gargantuan sentry guns. Their vessels went up in bright flames once, before disintegrating into dying ambers. But others survived, those keeping far from the fort and approaching the vanguard fleets instead.
The captains of the watch gave no firing order, few gunners disobeyed the command. Their own forces were in disarray and all attention is drawn to the true, the ancient enemy.
Whoever first caught sight of the demon were driven to madness, those who heard its cries in their psyche fled. But most were blind to it, kept deep in their armored vaults and chambers, knowing only their duty before the throne.
Because of this, the starships of the Imperial Fleet could charge, though it was a blind rage that drove them on. The first rows of their phalanx plunged into the empty space, disregarding the scattered Xenos horde, all guns trained on the arch-enemy, the hellish abomination spilling forth from the rift.
Crusade Impressions 080

*985.M41*

Stranded for two millennia, the wreckage of an ancient vessel lay half-buried in the silent wastes. A proud ship brought to ruin by now long forgotten woes. Broken statues were scattered among the regolith of the marred moon, blind witnesses to the calamity. Their dead eyes looked upward to cold and distant stars as if accusing the ones who had done this vile deed.
After two thousand years of waiting, their pleas for vengeance were answered at last. A new star awoke and fell from the sky. This flickering, golden flame belonged to a shuttle of the imperial starship Rubrum Ariadne, having found the ancient site through the crypticisms sent by the Crimson Queen.
The message of the ivory box had sent the voidfarers to precisely the position of the stranded ship, with the infallible precision of a marker left by one who had found the ship's carcass at least once already.

Priests and armsmen were sent to investigate the wreckage and find what the starship's augers could not uncover. They had not been told what precisely they were looking for, the captain trusting they would recognize what could be of interest to their Queen.
Crusade Impressions 127

*985.M41*

But the offshoot of the great plague-lord's garden had only just awoken to the coming threat, and the fire at its roots envigorated it as much as it destroyed the mundane matter. Screeching demons and spawn of the poisonous mist fed on the earthly pain that was imparted onto them and the souls they had consumed clung to their un-life even harder now, fearing the pain and nothingness that could follow their ultimate destruction. The pestilence shuddered and groaned and its psychic shrieks drove the fleet's psykers mad, and the garden reveled in the battle until it erupted in a sickly bloom.
All at once, the greatest stems and tendrils of the garden unfurled into hideous blossoms and unleashed vast clouds of moldy spores. They were nameless, eyeless things, undead flesh like a swarm breaking against the imperial fleet like a great tide of sickness.
Crusade Impressions 051

*984.M41*

Lingering on the edge of forlorn shores, the amassing number of Xenos's vessels grew with every day. They arrived in straggled fleets and convoys numbering a few hundred, seldom even a thousand vessels, and once they had passed over the threshold of their passage, they gathered in growing swarms revolving around seemingly arbitrary points spread unevenly in open space.
By the third day, their combined signals and transmissions drowned out most known imperial frequencies, the choir of a billion voices speaking in-human, chattering tongues. By the sixth, the augers of most imperial fleet command stations failed to distinguish the countless signatures gathered. The spaces they were observing had been filled with the ambient radiated heat of far too many vessels, and a haze surrounded the alien fleet moving steadily forward, creeping ever closer to the imperial encampments.
Still, for the first twenty days after the coming of the Amanshai, a tenuous silence continued. No force on the frontier of the Limes Gondwana was strong enough alone to engage an enemy of such magnitude and for as long as the imperial defense assembled, the Xenos hordes kept to themselves, retaining precisely enough range to the imperial stations as to stay out of their effective operational range. Though several attempts were made by overly zealous leaders to sway elements of the imperial force for a pre-emptive attack, a strange reluctance grew in the officers of the navy. Whereas the pirates and outcasts had stormed their walls with an eagerness to fight, the passive building of the Xenos' force was an altogether eerie prospect and one which required decisions of high command.
Crusade Impressions 045

*983.M41*

The combined fleets of imperial Gondwana answered the call, the proud forces of the Triumvirate foremost among them. On mustering grounds along the fringes of the Glacial Nebula, the first fleets joined their formations for battle, united in their faith and duty to the Emperor of Mankind. Facing the enemy, the blue nova on their firmament, the leaders and admirals set aside the past and turned against the foe as one front.
The heretics and heathens broken by lesser forces on the Limes were little more than vermin fleeing the true foe of mankind. And while the fires of those first engagements still raged, the councils of the admiralty drafted plans for the first joined campaign into the pirate's former territories. A strike fleet was assembled, encompassing vanguard vessels of the Classis Astra Cambria, the brazen fleets of the Mechanicum as well as forces of the Administratum World Trantor and enigmatic voidsmen from Pahmn's Strait. Whereas the local forces of the forlorn worlds had delivered the Imperium the first victory in repelling the foe, this joint venture would finally bring about answers so many worlds craved.
Just like the worlds of the Triumvirate signing the orders for this mission, the naval leadership of the first crusade fleet was threefold. Admirals of the Mechanicum, the Administratum and one representing the lesser worlds would orchestrate the counter-strike of the Imperium. On their way to the battlespace, they would smite the last remnants of the broken pirate force.
Aarón James

Nombre.- Aarón James

Soldado destinado en la división Júpiter, y que lucha contra los invids en la tierra junto a Scott Bermard

Aaron James era un compañero de entrenamiento de Scott Bernard que había comenzado la protección de una ciudad después de la Segunda Fuerza de Recuperación de la Tierra fracasó. Cuando los Invid Regess descubrió que Bernard estaba en la ciudad, atacaron.

Se reveló que James estaba trabajando con el Invid , y traicionado rebeldes de Bernard, pero fue atacado por Alpha de Bernard. Posteriormente, fue capturado por los Invid y se lo llevaron.

Origen.-

               Apariciones

               Robotech: Class Reunion
Crusade Impressions 146

*986.M41*

The foundations of the forlorn fortress trembled with cthonic thumber, stone, and iron buckling under the primeval rhythm of titanic drums. There were terrors in the deep, age-old enemies, flesh and machine, looking to vanquish the intruding sun and all mortal blood from their elder halls. Some said hosts of ghosts were among them, murdering and snatching children from their beds. Others said the phantoms of dead men had come to warn them against a great slaughter. Such tales and whispers had been heard among the common folk for centuries, but they were now interwoven with reports of true incidents of an unsettling and inexplicable nature. Even still, the rumors of unnatural happenings might have been quelled at the hands of the authorities, if not for the far more tangible loss of connections and entire trains on the secretive, sheltered command lines. The vital network of infrastructure within and below the bunkers of Gahmuret was disrupted by incursions from the deep, shadows swallowing the heavily armed trains whole, surges of fire turning them away from their routes.
Planetary command and the stationed guard regiments did everything to keep rumors of those losses silent. But it was only a matter of time until all souls on the planet of Gahmuret became aware, that the war they had all been anticipating, was already being fought deep down below.
Crusade Impressions 024

*977.M41*

Where the orthodox forces of the Imperium failed, the servants of the Omnissiah turned to measures unthinkable at any other time. The vast industrious power of Gondwana's forges, martian domains, and technological enclaves, was committed to the task of confronting the unstoppable force that was the Pale Blue Light. A purpose, so it was decided among the archmagi and high priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, requiring solutions outside the catalog of conventional means.

For the first time in long millennia, queries to the ancient archives were renewed, the old vaults of the Ringworld opened and databases unraveled for the purpose of drawing new conclusions from the wisdom of the ancients. The knowledge bestowed upon the Cult Mechanicus through the Omnissiah was subject to fundamental re-assessments and analysis, a shift rippling through the stratified hierarchy of the machine-like organization.
To some among the Cult Mechanicus Cambria, this was the renaissance of a purpose long forgotten, to others necessary risk on the fringe of blasphemous tech-heresy. A fair number objected outright this course of action until they fell in line with the function of the greater machinery or were cast out from the mechanisms of knowledge and power within.

Rare sights could be seen along the projected path of the Pale Blue Light, where clades of the Adeptus Mechanicus began deploying singular feats of technology. Ancient experimental designs, renewed applications of half-forgotten knowledge and theoretical constructs brought to life through the iron will of the forge-masters.
They began not only to probe the pale blue light itself but to bend space itself to their will, in an effort to slow it, to capture it once more. Experimentation on an interstellar scale took place among the stars of Glaive's Reach and finally the No-Man's-Land, as the Pale Blue Light crossed those constellations on an irrefutable course toward the uncharted regions.
Crusade Impressions 145

*986.M41*

The cold was Inquisitor Schadland's constant companion.
It alone numbed the pain of old wounds, it alone granted him reprieve from the dreams. Only the cold had allowed him to retain his thoughts in the brazen sarcophagus, and only the cold had allowed him to retain his station.
As he lay entombed aboard the station of the Triumvirate, the Inquisitor slowly rebuilt his strength. No measure of injury relieved him from his duty, and every purpose he could garner from his existence was a welcome distraction from the silence. He rallied trusted agents and old friends in his halls and soon began to establish a network of informants and operators along the length of the Limes Gondwana. No longer able to lead in the field, Schadland was forced to assume the role of a guiding hand from the shadows. It was an unusual, new kind of authority for him, a challenge to overcome.
In time, the influence of the inquisitor reached new heights and his name came to command respect for the resilience and loyalty of its bearer alone. Where before many had scorned him as a radical for his relations to the Xenos breed, they would now not dare to question Schadland's loyalty to the imperium. In this, the inquisitor found a purpose to his suffering, and the pain he had endured became an asset to be leveraged, putting him in a stronger position than ever before.
As weeks and months drew on, stretching into years, Inquisitor Schadland came to command a force of note among the ranks of the Triumvirate of Gondwana. His carefully positioned network had come to encompass vessels and bases of various worlds, agents throughout the fleet and regiments, and, some rumored, that he had even managed to build up ties to the most enigmatic fiefdom near the Thetys Rift. They whispered his eventual recovery would be aided by gifts bestowed upon him by the Crimson Queen.
Crusade Impressions 140

*986.M41*

The strife of Myriaden was known to the Triumvirate of Sector Gondwana, and its lords and marshals followed the ongoing siege of the system as imperial forces encroached, slowly onto Myriadenburg's inner system.
By this time, hundreds of vessels had fallen, among them some of the scarce heavy cruisers of the Mechanicus, and a command ship of Trantor after nineteen hundred years of service. The massacre had continued without rest for days and weeks, and like the tides of an ocean it had swelled and waned with time. On some days, barely more than a scarce few shots between maneuvering battlegroups and the growing tendrils of the un-god were exchanged. On others, the sun illuminated eruptions of violence on mythical scales, as entire fleet segments charged into the flanks of the pestilence garden, or many-eyed beasts of the plague demon lashed out and feasted on the fallen.

It was a hell unfolding that could not go on. And when the messages were transmitted of the Anfortas Paladin's coming, the Triumvirate knew the time had come to ensure its authority on the front would remain unchallenged.
And so, they called upon a resource they had so far been hesitant to use. The highest representatives of Trantor, Cambria, and Laurentia gave an order to the starfort's choir of elder astropaths, and with the combined strength of their many hundred minds, they called on the sacred light of the golden throne, to envoke scathing flame of the Astronomican.
Crusade Impressions 103

*986.M41*

The enigmatic machine-priests of Cambria were not the only ones concerned with matters of importance far from the frontline of the Subsector.
Of the lesser worlds and peoples under the governance of the Triumvirate of Gondwana, the void-borne hordes of Feirefitz were among the few who had the knowledge and reach to see the movements of the great game as they unfolded sector-wide. Because of this, the Khan knew of things being set in motion beyond the Emerald Nebula, out of sight of the grand stage of the sector, far away from the regions where the first battles took place. Even though the worlds cradled so close to the hallowed Ringworld had nothing obvious to do with the unleashing of the Pale Blue Light and the destruction it had wrought, there was some connection buried in the data, carried along secretive transmissions to the secretive world of Cornubit, long under the Machine Cult's ominous protection.

An expedition was dispatched by the Hordes to follow this most unlikely lead to the truth of the matter. The leaders of Feirefitz did so out of curiosity and concern for their people. But most of all, they were driven by ambition. The secrets surrounding the events which said the Crusade of Brass and Iron in motion promised to be of such import that attaining them would grant the hordes an avenue to become equal with the Triumvirate Worlds.
To underline this importance, the expedition sent toward the emerald nebula was no small force of petty trader vessels, but a fully-fledged host assembled around one of the great arc ships of Feirefitz, carrying the people of the void themselves toward the truth they pursued.
Crusade Impressions 143

*986.M41*

The crumbling carcass of a world surrounded the Rubrum Ariadne, carried by the surreal torrent where it had exited the warp. Streams of immaterial energy moved the broken plates of the erstwhile planet against the pull of gravity, keeping its pieces dancing around the molten core, the light of which illuminated the dismal scene. What had been left of the planet told nothing of its history or purpose before, and there were no records aboard the imperial vessel that might have indicated its position or system. They bore witness to the end of a cataclysm that none in the Imperium might ever know or notice. Nonetheless, a display of destruction on such a cosmic scale humbled their mortal souls.
The ruby vessel navigated these spatial shallows, slowly and with caution. To regain its bearing on the cosmic plain, the helmsmen and navigator needed confirmation of fixed stars, points of comparison for their charts, and zodiacs to properly gauge their place in space and time. At the best of times after a chaotic journey through the warp, this was a challenging task. Stranded in a system enthralled in gusts of cosmic nebulae and planetary dust, it was nigh-impossible.
Flying blind, the ship accelerated, to try and break free of the cursed gravity well. All the while, the lookouts and auger arrays were searching for whatever might have caused the planetary cataclysm.
Crusade Impressions 030

*213.966.M41*

While the powers that be still debating the fate of Sector Gondwana amongst themselves, those events they had sent into motion affected even the least consequential of imperial worlds. In all regions of Subsector Cambria, the trembling anticipation of a Great War was felt, the loss of Airanaha, the preparations for a new Crusade and the calling of the Triumvirate's congregation. Though they lacked the power to change the course of history, they were not without a voice and some made themselves heard.
Lesser lords and kings, vassals of the Forge World Cambria and submissive worlds of the Administratum of Trantor, declared their own decrees and chronicles, some in support of another cause, some in open defiance of their lords. While some of these were simple deviants and malcontents, using a chance to give voice to their long-standing demands, others acted out of legitimate fear or out of true conviction to better serve the Golden Throne.

This upheaval in the imperial hierarchy created great risks and opportunities, breaking ancient allegiances and feuds for a new order to be established. For a few precious years, this fluidity in power structures was tolerated by the higher powers and allowed the myriad factions of the Imperium to settle in an order most suited to the coming dire times.

Among the most ambitious of the lesser powers seizing opportunities at that time, was the abhuman Kingdom Immortan rising in the system cluster Brumbana of the Feirefitz Constellation. Those united clans who had proven their merits in the eyes of the Omnissiah long before just to warrant their continued existence, now deployed their fleets en-masse and launched several daring, costly operations in an effort to oust criminal rings and syndicates from the inter-system routes. In this effort, they spent much of their immediate strength, but for this price, they hoped to buy the support of the Imperium for their rise to an interstellar stage.
Crusade Impressions 040

*932.982.M41*

There was little glory to claim when for the first time, the forces of the Brass and Iron Crusade met enemies of the Imperium.
The vermin fleeing greater evils from beyond the Thetys Rift, crossing into the No-Man's-Land, were slaughtered by the Fourth Interstellar of Trevrizent in a well-measured counter-offensive. Cutting deep into the seditious hordes, long before any meaningful force could be rallied, the youngest fleet of Sector Gondwana secured an all but certain triumph.
Their success inaugurated the Triumvirate's joint High Command and was subject to ceremonious celebration in high places throughout the sector. After the decades of turmoil brought by the appearance of the Pale Blue Light from Cambria, the forces of the crusade had delivered at last a tangible victory against the encroaching evil.

Yet, against the war and strife yet to come, those first battles would be naught but footnotes in imperial history, their names soon are forgotten and their heroes cast into oblivion. Those early battles, the overture to the grand crusade, reduced to a faint memory in the minds of those few who would survive long enough beyond this victory.
Crusade Impressions 144

*986.M41*No human soul had laid eyes on the Gates of Cambria since their opening. Nigh one century after the eruption of the Pale Blue Light, its lingering echo still irradiated the burnt-out wastes and the scrith of the titanic structure glowed with its exotic energies. But against all hardships of the inferno, against all barriers of deadly rays and erupting power sources, the expeditions of the Adeptus Mechanicus pushed through. At the top the mountain ranges of ash and rubble, the first automata vanguards stood and looked down into the valley, a crater hundreds of kilometers across, filled with the skeletal remains of cities, titans and the vast cogitator ranges, that had worked for ten millennia to unleash the gate's mystery.
Without it, without the destructive powers entombed and shackled within, the gates and vault were left hollow. A black, yawning abyss was all that was left behind the looming arches of the gatehouse, its arcane locking mechanism broken, the enigma solved.
Despite everything, it was a site of the Machine Cult's ultimate triumph. One of the greatest secrets of this sector, hidden by Old Humanity, had been overcome. And for all the consequences yet to come, this was an achievement unlike any other for the priesthood of Cambria. Their ability to open these gates, to unleash and weather power of this kind, was to them the confirmation, that they still spoke and understood the language of the Omnissiah.
Crusade Impressions 139

*986.M41*

The seething ship bled fire from a hundred wounds, shedding parts of its hull and the insidious growth, little parts of unreal matter dissolving in the open void. And yet, it could not be so easily defeated, for as much as its hull and shape of the mundane matter was destroyed, no physical act could make the conjuring of its presence undone. The very essence of every tortured soul aboard that vessel held it together, forced it to continue its existence despite every physical action denying it.
From its core broke forth more and more vines, roots, and tentacles grappling for the universe. And its agony was channeled into them, projecting the pain in psychic waves that drove man and machine likewise insane.
Because of this, the pulsing form of the seething ship became the eye of the maelstrom that was the battle for Myriaden. As every other slave and servant of the pestilence god was massacred and turned back into oblivion, this one anchor of the whole incursion remained untouchable, one foe too powerful for the mundane forces of the imperium to quell.
Crusade Impressions 071

*984.M41*

A sole imperial vessel consorted with the Xenos fleet, pressing into their formation as escorts parted upon its approach. The ship was ancient, wrought in gold and ivory, shining bright among their hulls blackened with battle-scars. Transmissions of the Amanshai greeted the Trierarch Midas of the Maledictus.

He had made the run north from the Erinnyenmere in record time, witnessing the spectacle of battles from afar. Braving the currents of the warp-tear like only a seasoned voidsman could, his arrival at the Xenos fleet had gone unnoticed by the imperials. Without the mention of any detail, his astropath had been formed that this was an utmost delicate matter, and he would have expected nothing less so in light of the dawning crusade.

The Crimson Queen's loneliest rogue trader set foot on a Xenos vessel for the first time. It had been long since he had left his palace aboard the Maledictus. In truth, an imperial vessel would have been just as alien to him.
He had gladly assumed the role of the queen's chosen emissary. The sigil of his station, the bone-white Aquila beset with crimson gems, was pinned high on the chest of the Trierarch's gilded uniform. At the sound of the sirens, he put up his rebreather mask and watched emerald mist pushing through airlock's opening gates.
Crusade Impressions 059

*984.M41*

In the venerable vaults of Limes Gondwana's theatre command, the air was bristling with electricity, alive with the flickering green of hololithic data streams, projected into every empty space. Ships and battle groups, entire worlds were being conjured and arranged, carefully brought into position to play their part in the great games orchestrated by the Imperium and its appointed leaders. Reams of raw data scrawled across every wall in runes and letters. Some encrypted, some in binary speech, some mundane reports alongside highly sensitive information, all was to be processed in the Triumvirate's ultimate center of command. In its catacombs inhabited by the cogitator machines of the imperial tactica division, new libraries and archives grew, encompassing all knowledge available from every segment of the front.
And, whilst the leaders and commanders, admirals and high envoys of every major force were still debating, more subtle minds set to work to unravel the endless data streams for patterns, correlations and ultimately, meaning. Things that would escape the limits of any unaugmented human mind, would not avoid the absolute scrutiny of the scribe- and servitor legions set to work by the high command.
Crusade Impressions 129

*986.M41*

The peregrine was lost, misplaced in space and time, forgotten by all gods and demons, forgotten halfway even by the living souls aboard. For an eternity it had been drifting, aimless in the star-less void, gliding between clouds of lightning and thunder and the great mechanism that loomed in the far distance. This strange space was the realm of an enigma, too obscure, too uncertain to be claimed by any power other than its own. Amid the churning tides of history, before the maelstrom coming at the turning of millennia, it was a peaceful vale. The lost ship had been preserved, granted respite before a singular task and fate yet to come.
Crusade Impressions 060

*882.984.M41*

The vanishing of stars was the first ill omen. Quakes followed in the spatial realms, rippling across the firmament like waves of a stone cast into still water. The truth had been seen by prophets years before, driven mad by the visions they had received, visions of an old monster returning, a creation of the war of their ancestors. It broiled below the surface of the universe, all space near the rift churning where the passages of the Xenos fleet had penetrated the tapestry of scars left after the last Surge of the Thetys Rift.

An invisible seam in the void came apart.
Fire welled up from beyond the continuum of space and time, spatial realms set alight with the white glare of annihilation where the wisps of strange matter met particles of the known universe. Singularities of black void snapped in and out of existence, shortly defiant of all known phenomena before succumbing to the force of universal laws. Wild energies consumed the distinction between dimensions, immaterial pus weeping into the world, old souls escaping from damnation as new ones were drawn into the torment of eternal existence.
Cosmological carnage, the wrath of gods unleashed, expanded in thundering waves across the regions of the Thetys Rift, the worlds upon the forlorn shores shaking, trembling in anticipation of their doom. Yet these were more-so echoes of the distant past as omens of the storm to come. The last ruptures of the Thetys Surge, caught in-between when the rift was sealed, now escaped their bounds and were set free, memories of infamous might before the ruinous power had been defeated.

From those pits of unreality rose the thing, the entity, the shrieking, murderous abomination of a demonic creature trying, succeeding to some measure, to cross over from the Sea of Souls into the physical dimension.
Its existence broke the minds of several thousand uninitiated, the bow wave of its arrival decimated both the Xenos fleet and the entourage of the Inquisitor within. His vessel shuttered and broke, torn in two, energies and lights failing, leaving the Inquisitor alone in the dark, surrounded by silhouettes overshadowing the holy Astronomican.
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No soul aboard the Rubrum Ariadne would experience the passage in exactly the same way. Much like the sea of souls, its very essence was defined by the consciousness of the beholder, bound to the whims of their dreams and nightmares.
But to all, the tunnel, the stream, the corridor leading through the other side, was a fundamentally artificial thing, a silver blade cutting through the purple veils, a hard metal rod thrust through the viscous sediments of reality. On a flood of blue lightning, the vessel carried on, keeping its momentum as the engines burned without aim. All augers were blind, the machine spirit frozen in time, and the minds of the crew set on only one point in all the universe: The exit, the point where the passage intersected once more with the known cosmos of their own.

According to the ship's chronometer, the vessel journeyed in this way for seven months, three days and twenty hours. To some aboard, it had been mere seconds, others had died of old age after a lifetime spent in their compartment. Some said the vessel could have only made the safe voyage thanks to their sacrifice, and those who had gone mad in their time.
By the end of it, the ship was set free and tumbled into real space on a plume of white plasma and sparks of raw energy. It remained silent for a long while until the spirit awoke from its unsteady slumber.
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There need not be bare temples to the Omnissiah. The Machine God has no need for empty shrines and wasteful gestures, for all things in the universe shall find a purpose in His grand design. To the servants of the machine, there can, therefore, be no greater act of worship, no deep spiritual fulfillment than the satisfaction that is felt by all who set to work on a broken mechanism and return it to the Omnissiah's glory in its proper function. Through ritual, the machine may be awakened, its spirit soothed, and brought to fruition. Therein lies enlightenment and ultimately, the soul's ascension.

And if the machine is the altar upon which the flesh is sacrificed to make way for pristine steel, then the god-machines of the Legio Titanica cannot be anything less than the avatar incarnate of the Omnissiah, shadows of his true self, wrought in iron and silica. To come face to face with such an engine, to bask in its presence and live to remember it, is the truest form of a blessing any follower of Mars can experience. For these moments of pure fulfillment fight the cohorts of the skitarii, the priests, and their loyal flocks of workers.
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Echoes of the Blue Nova were to be seen in the tangled, disjointed realms under the spell of Prophet Mekephau. The immaterial spheres of space and time conjured around the enchanted system broke the light passing through like a prism and to the silent watchers on the other side revealed a whole spectrum of forbidden knowledge and data. Cyphers of another age streamed into the minds of Mekephau's worlds, heard by the astropathic choirs, councils of the learned ones and the lone rogue trader from beyond the veil, who had come to gather what the witches knew.

Of five lights they spoke, five stars in the sky pointed all against the domains of Sector Gondwana, hell-bent on its absolute demise. Each star, so the prophets foretold, would present the Imperium with a new foe, a challenge for heroes and common souls to be overcome, and only when they should pass the test, would the worlds this side of the galactic chasm be granted the faint chance to survive.

The soul of the lonely trader was heavy-laden with knowledge of such import as no-one else carried at this time. It was enough to crush a mortal's spirit, driving others before to commit themselves to oblivion. But not this one, who had withstood the test of time in the clutches of Mekephau's maze. And the high coven of the prophet proclaimed that fate, as long as the decision rested on this trader, would not yet be decided. The future they saw was one of indistinct shapes and shadows, and the clarity granted to even the highest of their order faded when looking at the strife ahead. There was hope in this prophecy, amid many an ill omen, and the lone rogue trader was sent forth to return and deliver this knowledge with all the conviction of a saint.
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At the behest of the Executor Admiral, the expeditionary forces of Trantor were to be reinforced by the Amethyst Fleet. Those elite paladins from the Administratum World would serve as the honor guard for the signing of the truce between the Imperium and Amanshai. Under strict supervision by the Inquisition, the council of the Triumvirate, and representatives of the great guilds of the sector, the authority had been given to the first envoy of Mogontiacum, to present a proposal to the Xenos from the other side of the Rift.
It would be a contract, not in denial of humanity's eternal mandate of all heavens, but in service to the greater purpose of defeating the arch-enemy and whatever greater evil had been awoken at the heart of the Pale Blue Nova.

The scattered vessels of the Castellum Fleets and those sent from the nearby systems to assist, all paled in comparison to the pristine glamor of the fleet Amethyst, led by the Glory of the Trantor Reef.
A formidable force trained and decorated by the highest academies and veteran forces of their world, the ships fell in line side by side at the star forts, awaiting instructions for the most unusual ceremony.
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Under the banner of the Sundering Beast, the Pilgrims of Laurentia swore to deliver all those worlds forlorn from their misery, so that none may suffer a fate as grim as they and lose their homeworld outright to the whims of a desolate galaxy. Their oath was marked as a brand of the wyrm they had slain, cast in a monolith of scorched obsidian, that was to be placed at the heart of every capital on every world they visited. These monoliths, the black stone of the pilgrim's oath, would soon be enshrined, as symbols that no world would be forgotten. What to the populace of those worlds was a beacon of hope, was to the Astartes of the Hallowed Glaive and their mortal legions of Laurentian Pilgrims, a reminder of their duty and obligation. The black stones they gifted to a myriad worlds were all recorded in a great catalog. Only through blood and battle could this duty be fulfilled, and blood would soon enough flow.
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Among the Paladin vessels sent to the far corners of the sector was the voidship 'Prudent Rigor', fresh from the assembly lines of the Anfortas Sun-Machine. A verdant vessel, its mission was considered by the Dyson Cabal with care, intended to inoculate its machine spirit against the true terrors awaiting beyond the frontier of all known space. Safe imperial systems were to serve as its cradle, where it would sail in the light of the Astronomican and prove its bond with priests and crew. Many rites would be held to initiate the engine, many oaths sworn and traditions created so that the deus ex machina would bless this machine and ensure the fire of its furnaces would never go out.
The Prudent Rigor made way for the border worlds, those lesser systems of the No-Man's-Land, where the proud Dyson Clade of Anfortas sought to establish a presence of its own amid the Triumvirate Worlds vying for dominance. Upon its throne there sat a veteran of interstellar flights, a venerable captain in the forge world's service, whose steady hand had led many starships to their first victories and whose name was the first in long lines and venerated lines of commanders aboard more than a hundred vessels of the fleet. By his crew, he was hailed as a patron saint of new beginnings, and on his orders began the maiden voyage.
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Fire struck hard at the tendrils that had permeated from the seething ship. Fueled by faith and fury, they burned through festering flesh and sickly matter, tearing the creations of the pestilence apart and cleansing space through the blessed flame. One salvo after another crashed into the overlapping organic forms, as the plague spawn curled and huddled together, trying to protect itself from the righteous wrath.
In the midst of the system overgrown by malicious mutations of a cosmic scale, the charging imperial fleet achieves something like a victory, a sliver of hope at the end of the demonic strife. Emboldened by their success, vanguard elements of the fleet began to split up and seek out the beating hearts of the infestation, trying to find the crucial points of weakness for the core of the fleet to sow destruction.
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In the aftermath of the first imperial victory, there was nothing left of the pirate clans but wreckage. Those vessels not broken entirely by the Emperor’s righteous fury were conquered, one by one, by void-borne regiments and elite armsmen of the navy. Over a hundred ships were returned to service in the outer fleets of the Forlorn Fortress Gahmuret alone. Purged of the seditious filth, they would once more see glory in service to new loyal masters and bolster the wanting number of scouts going close to the Rift’s churning tides.

Dead husks and hollow corpses of those ships entirely burned were sent away from the cluttered battle spaces, sent behind the frontier lines to be repurposed or laid to eternal rest in the cosmic graveyards of the sector. Here, they would be given into the care of sanctioned scavengers, blessed with the holy right to disassemble bestowed upon them by the solemn priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Voidrider squadrons of the Kingdom Immortan were among the most prominent forces of such assignments, vying for the rights to scavenge with countless lesser local lords. Many times, they prevailed and the number of their proper vessels swelled rapidly to previously unknown scale, inaugurating to the abhumans of Immortan the dawn of a new golden age, where they would feast on the riches now brought into their possession for decades, even centuries to come.

Before the end of the year after the first battles during the Crusade of Brass and Iron, the traces of these skirmishes had already all but vanished from plain sight. The victory still fresh on their mind, the watches looked out once more into the abyss of empty space, waiting for what next triumph or horror the universe might hold.
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From beyond the battle lines, escorts of Mogontiacum bore witness to the fleets amassed. They accounted for all present ships, anticipated and assessed their strength, judged the capabilities of commanders, admirals and strategic leaders, all in adherence to their duty to provide reports of the coming action to the leadership of the Imperial Navy. During the first days of fleets joining and meeting alone, the analysis of those survey vessels produced reams of data fit to keep the navy’s tactical division busy for months unraveling the layers of meaning and implications embedded therein.

Their assessment excluded purposefully all assets of Mogontiacum itself and made no mention of intervention by elements of the Imperial Navy proper. The forces of the larger imperium moved according to laws and decisions transcending all matters of the Sector Gondwana by far. Though reports had been sent underway on proper channels, no force of the Triumvirate expected any response sooner than the nearing end of the century. For the time being, the fleets of Gondwana would fight alone and of that, so the reports of the cautious watchers concluded, they would be more than capable.