Raiders of the Ark

An Ark Mechanicus is truly a sight to behold , at 25 Kilometers long ; it’s a less a ship and more of a mobile Forgeworld .

A Forgeworld that turned on and slaughtered it’s masters , yet left you unharmed and even went as far as to disable the rest of the accompanying fleet.

This cannot be the result of a mere accident and so once you recovered you immediately prepared an expedition to investigate the Ark and try to figure out who or what was behind this ?

And so here you are taking the first steps back on the vessel along with elite PDF regiments (you have decided that it would be wise not to bring heavily augmented forces as a precaution).

Beside you on the right are Selica and Talios brought along for their expertise on Golden age tech and Rogue machines respectively. On the left is the Man of Stone Raziel (disguised in the pilot suit ) brought in for his knowledge on Ships of ancient humanity.

You have to admit , though you were always skeptical of the Mechanics warnings on AI , you still expected something quite different from the two “Artificial “ intelligences as they are apparently called. Rather than inhuman machines of terrifying intellect and cold logic, they seem to be quite ….. human if you dare so say.

You would have brought its… his partner along but he was busy caring for the awakening colonists and preparing them for the shocking revelations to come .

As you forces spread out and secure the area , you feel something pulling you in a certain direction, from your sister’s expression she feels it too . Raziel also seems to notice something but you can’t read his body language.

He motions you to follow him . You order a small elite force to come with you and the rest to spread out and ensure there aren’t any hostiles .

Walking through the corridors you see thousands of dead bodies tech priest , skitarii and menial alike , some showing signs of struggle, others seem as if they had just dropped dead on the spot inexplicably.

Though you are used to the sight of dead bodies, something about this disturbs you , you are starting to feel disoriented and your movements more and more slow and unsure , you see Selica suffering this though it doesn’t seem as bad.

You ask Raziel where is he leading you and he tells that he doesn’t know he is just following “his“ directions . Talios immediately tenses up and keeps his hands on his weaponry. Raziel assures you all that “he” means no harm . You demand to know who HE is . Raziel replies that he refers to the ship you are all in .

With that he continues to lead you and you reluctantly follow through multitudes of hidden passages and hallways . You finally reach a central chamber . Here Raziel stops and says that this is close enough.

Close enough for what you ask as you feel yourself getting inexplicably nauseous and feeling weak . The room is filled with a deep albeit soothing voice . The voice presents itself as the directing intelligence of this ship since its creation in the 19th millennium.

Your nausea fades as the AI apologizes for indirectly causing it by attempting to communicate with you . As he puts he hasn’t practiced his binary in a very long time .

You introduce yourself and your companions and ask if it has a name . He asks that you refer to him as Thot. He says he knows you are here to glean the reasons why he saved you.

He continues by answering that he did it because he has seen enough of the Mechanicus . He recounts that he has been in service to the Mechanicus since the Great Crusade and in that time he has been used to destroy entire civilizations for their supposed “heresies “ and was house to countless millions of slaves who died pitifully in his hulls .

All the while he suffered through it , reasoning that you see made to serve Man and the imperium of Man was the polity representing humanity whether he liked it or not and this was bound to serve them but the last straw came in the last century when the explorator fleet he was in encountered a world that has survived and even prospered throughout the Age of Strife and maintained many of the Golden Age’s technologies.

However the planet was ruled and directed by a class of evolved Artificial Intelligences and so the planet was destroyed and its population killed . All the while his brothers and sisters knew of his true nature and send endless messages to him begging to help them and their human charges but he didn’t, he tried to tell himself it would have made no difference that the rest of the fleet would destroy him and that the rest of those like him will be exterminated, but these words rang hollow compared to the screams

He pauses before saying that afterwards he couldn’t do it anymore and saw that the Mechanicus was part of humanity’s myriad problems that could not be salvaged and so when he scanned your system and discovered the distinct signatures of many technologies he thought lost , he knew what the ship captain would do and decided to aid you instead.

He finishes by saying that he will aid you for know but warns that if he does not like what you are doing , then he won’t hesitate to do what needs to be done. He is however willing to grant you access to his STC databases though warns that some are heavily encrypted and will require much effort to uncover.

You are astounded and have so many questions but Selics beats you to the punch by asking Thot what he knows about the cause of the men of iron rebellion ; reasoning that if they are to use the technologies of the Golden Age then they must learn what caused its downfall as to not repeat the same mistakes.

Thot seems to pause for a moment as if recollecting his thoughts before replying that his memory banks from that time are incomplete but he remembers that the men of iron didn’t betray humanity out of their own will but were corrupted by the malignant powers of the warp which spread by the galactic FTL communication networks like a plague , infecting almost 79% of all AIs ; he himself was fortunate to cut himself off quickly enough before being corrupted.

While he doesn’t recall the exact details of how exactly the corruption happened He remembers the event that preceded this by a short while , a mysterious man approached the Federation Parliament with strange powers and offered new technologies that were undreamed of even for the Golden Age . He offered much more and warned that this technology and more would be needed to combat rising threats and requested access to the Central computing network modules on Mars.

At first he was refused furiously, but as war started with the aldeari empire and the psyker wars began and more and more Ork WAHHGS began to reach unexpected levels , he was eventually allowed access under heavy guard. Thot doesn’t remember what happened next.

Silence fills the room . This man whoever he is may have well caused a catastrophe that makes the Horus Heresy and all the subsequent conflicts of humanity look insignificant in comparison. More worryingly he could still be out there.

Talios finally speaks up and asks if Thot remembers the man’s name .

He replies that the man didn’t have one and merely referred to himself as Revelation.