recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Crusade Impressions 137

*986.M41*

In the ruins of Cambria's infernal wastes the Mechanicus found the antithesis of all organic life, a source of exotic energies and radiation entirely adverse to everything remotely understood as foundations of human existence. Faced with such a realm, the servants of the Omnissiah had to rely on the machines and their spirits the Machine God provides. To uncover the secrets from which all human souls are barred, the priesthood of the Cult Mechanicus Cambria mobilized automate legions.
Soulless metal soldiers marched into the fire by their thousands with each rank, and their formations were soon lost amid the smoke and unholy light, so that none but the most closely bonded engineseers could know anything about the progress of their mission. But a direct intervention of the Mechanicus was not needed, as the priests had conducted the operation in its entirety through the arcane power of binary code. Each column leader of the automata legion would carry a black box encased in pure sapphire crystal and obsidian, and within it was stored a vast catalog of simulations, logical networks, and algorithms. With these, so the Mechanicus predicted, the machines would be able to enact any action necessary to recover artifacts of note from the burning heartland of the infernal wastes.
This was a most ambitious undertaking and highly contested within the ranks of the Archmagos's hierarchy. For the strategem-tactical catalog of the automata legions akin to an eerie echo of ancient times, when last the machines of man had walked on their own. But the highest council of priests upon Cambria had been satisfied by oath and testimony, that within the black sapphire boxes, there was no spark of sentience, only the strict adherence to determined maxims.
Crusade Impressions 041

*932.982.M41*

The first battles of the crusade raged along the limes line, the frontier of Sector Gondwana where the forts and watchtowers stood, waiting for the storm. Their guardians had long taken up arms and oaths for holy battle, and they met the sudden onslaught of vile, savage fleets with the cleansing fire of their ancestor's wrath.
Those dismal souls and their cults and clans were held in deep contempt by the guardians of the Limes forts, for they sullied humanity's claim to those worlds, living on the ruins of greater powers for which the true servants of the Imperium had fought and bled for so long.
The guardian's defense against the pirates and separatists now fleeing an unknown threat from beyond was an act of vengeance against this affront to their history. And the pirate fleets bled, splintered and died before the castellum forts of the Limes Gondwana, the guardians their rightful executioners.
Crusade Impressions 092

*985.M41*

Among the reinforcements sent into the maw devouring Myriadenburg, were the well-traveled vessels of nomad warriors, whose captains and crews had seen more of such things than any officer serving in the Navy or on the Limes Gondwana.

The nomad kings of Feirefitz, the great horde reassembled at the dawn of the Pale Blue Light, had sent some of their finest starships to partake in the defense of Sector Gondwana. Numerous flotillas of their kinds secured the flanks of the allied formations, while huge, lumbering barges and haulers brought up the fleet formation's rear. But notably, none of their gargantuan motherships had come. For all the strength they had decided to lend this early phase of the crusade, the vast bulk of Feirefitz's forces seemed bound to some other, grander purpose.

Any question to that effect, however, was silenced quickly, and not by the nomads themselves, but by envoys of the inscrutable Adeptus Mechanicus, who were somehow closely bound to the nomad's mission.
Crusade Impressions 104

*985.M41*

The wheels of time turned slowly in the astral hall, moments frozen in time, stretching into infinity. Pain had become an abstract thing, a state of being suspended somewhere between life and death. Fate left the Inquisitor waiting.
Neither did it strike him down nor release him from these cruel bounds, it waited, leaving him lingering on the brink. In this way, his own existence resembled that of the imperial sector. His wounds and the Thetys Rift were entwined, and the clash on the edge of it had left him and the Imperium reeling from cost. All that was left to do was to stare into the abyss, waiting for the inevitable emergence of a terrible foe.

The only fate worse was to be waiting for the imperial side, to see the grand machinery of human civilization crawling to a halt under its own weight. In a state long beyond the physical torment forced onto him, it was this which truly pained the Inquisitor. Much like he himself could neither give up nor find solace so too was the force on the Limes Gondwana committed to stand ready.
Brass and Iron Wiki

## The 41st Millennium

Beyond the last frontier of the Great Crusade, there lies the Sector Gondwana, the domain of the Triumvirate Worlds. Bathed in the faint light of its far-flung constellations are old wonders of humanity and elder horrors still. Among their stars are scattered remnants of the Dark Age of Technology, monuments like the Jovian Clockwork of Trimantat, the Ringworld Cambria and ruins of even older times. Space itself in these regions is scarred by the war between machine and humankind, and through the great Thetys Rift which they tore, seeps the miasma of the Immaterium. This is a region enchanted by the elder history of man, a graveyard upon which forgotten peoples, wicked Xenos, and worse things dwell.

These are the lore and tales of these faraway worlds and of the Crusade of Brass and Iron, to answer the call of the arch nemesis of old humanity - the abominable intelligence and the Men of Iron.

## About this Codex

This codex contains the works of Imperial Archivist Alexander Falkberg regarding Sector Gondwana and the ongoing 'Crusade of Brass and Iron' story/artwork series. Here you will find artworks and codex entries of factions, planets, units, and history taking based on the Warhammer 40k Universe.

**Any and all ships, factions, technologies, cultures and other lore entries & artworks created for the Brass & Iron project***are not***intended to adhere to strict canon.**

**The reason for this is simple:**
Warhammer 40k canon itself is at times incoherent or downright contradictory. And there are a lot of interesting science fiction concepts, most notably megastructures, which are rarely considered in official media at all.
So instead of trying to take on the impossible task of adhering 100% to a canon which itself doesn't do so  - a practice which I would also find restricting from a creative point of view - I have decided from the very beginning, that I am going to present my own version of the 40k universe, based on my own interests and interpretations of the lore. This means, in practice, simply that**nothing in Sector Gondwana is intended to be uniquely powerful, strange or special beyond reason.**

This fan work is 100% unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop.

Some artworks of the Brass & Iron Fan project are created using assets by FrostBo / milavasileva / TextureX / Freepik
Crusade Impressions 019

*976.M41*

Carried by the Pilgrims of the Hallowed Glaive, a call to arms reached even those systems of the No-Man's-Lands declared forlorn by the Triumvirate. These were worlds on the frontier, close to the uncharted regions and with no allegiance to one of the Sector's greater powers. During the last calamity, the Thetys Surge, they had been quickly overrun and ever since were blemished, symbols of defeat and the tinge of warp.

They might truly have been susceptible to the hollow promises of false prophets, prone to secede when they had been shunned by the Imperium, had it not been for the Pilgrim-Brothers of Laurentia, a chapter of saviors to the lost souls. By the time the Pale Blue Light was about to break free, Missionaries of the Hallowed Glaive had been sent to every last world of the No-Man's-Land and the adjacent regions. Small though they were in number, their presence envigorated these worlds and facilitated the raising of some formidable forces.
In-system fleets and regiments were raised, armies led on by the Laurentian Brethren. Sworn not to the distant Lords of Terra or the Throne alone, but to the living angels walking among their worlds, these forces would fight more ferociously than they had ever before, in the war that was undoubtedly to come.
Crusade Impressions 062

*984.M41*

Black tar poured from the eyes and wounds of the beast, coalescing into material forms of consuming, scorching black. They latched onto Imperial and Xenos vessels alike, corrupting them at the slightest touch, burning them with light-less flame. Bodies writhed, turned inside out and broke down into base organic mass, blood and sludge filling the decks and soiling them in the remains of what once was sentient life. The souls cast into the afterlife were hunted down and devoured by the beasts of the false creation, their incorporeal screeching deafening more of the fleets astropaths.

Against this festering surge of chaos stood the Emperor’s righteous flame, carried defiantly by His loyal servants. The vigilant warriors of the Limes Gondwana, the legions deployed to answer the emergent threat, thrust into the hopeless battle’s heart, driving a wedge of cleansing light towards the black shadow-veil of the demonic entity.
Corrupted ships turned their weapons against them, insane minds descended upon the psyche of their crews and the blackness reached out to touch them, to infect the righteous force with the madness of the warp.
Crusade Impressions 025

*979.M41*

Ignited by the sight of the Pale Blue Light crossing their firmament, memories of the distant past grew into ardent fires burning at the hearts of the Feirefitz Hordes. Their voidfaring peoples gathered under the stars to which their old homeworld had been delivered by the cursed rift in time. That which had been left behind so long ago, the planets and legends of their origins, suddenly emerged once again in the minds of those lost clans and their hordes.

Fleet gatherings of unprecedented scale occurred among the stars of the Feirefitz Constellation, as the hordes of the voidfarers for the first time truly coalesced into a single display of the might of their people. After thousands of years thriving within the Imperium, growing their numbers with souls from many hundred worlds, the once dying people of the lost world had ascended to a power of note in the grand scheme of things.

Their messages to the Archmagos of Cambria, first barely noted, were now answered as the voice of equals, for the Adeptus Mechanicus saw in the voidborne hordes an asset worthy of respect through their devotion to the gifts of the Omnissiah.
In the hallowed halls of Cambria, an alliance was forged between the Hordes and the Forge World, an important bond for the dire times yet to come. Understanding the severity and significance of the unfolding power, these two forces alone would be able to grasp the nature of the conflict ahead before it had truly begun.
Cryonic Transports

Every branch of the Imperium of Man deals in the fates of myriad souls, countless lives depending on the untold divisions of military, bureaucracy, law, and governance. For the most part, the bodies and souls of the Imperium’s masses are confined to the worlds of its domain, to planets and moons, other bodies and the artificial isles of civilization in between.
But at times, the need arises to re-locate the life-blood of the Imperium in substantial numbers, calling for the capacity to transport servitors, slaves and citizens in their billions from one world to the next. In such times of need, the Imperium often makes use of ancient technologies, as they were used in the very first age of humanity’s ascension. Utilizing cry-tubes and stasis chambers, the mass conveyors forego the need for living accommodations for the common imperial citizenry. At the same time, such confinement is said to shield the cargo from the worst experience of journeying through the warp, a matter which is said to drive the weak-minded insane even when the Gellar Fields run at full capacity.

As a cheap and proven solution since ancient times, the cryo transports cross vast swaths of imperial space, bringing pioneering settlers to new worlds, returning refugees from lost worlds and redistributing the workforces of the Adeptus Mechanicus and Administratum.

## Architects of Dreams

The sailors of cryonic vessels are more than mere ferrymen for the Imperium's uncounted souls. To many who make such a journey from one world to the next, the voidsmen and their astropaths are the architects of all dreams experienced during the long passage through the immaterium.
As such, the crews of these ancient vessels carry the responsibility for all souls aboard, for their sanity, the purity of body and mind. To fail in their duty is sheerly incomprehensible to the oldest masters of this trade, and thus they are known to be among the most caring, meticulous groups among the void-borne traders. Whilst most ship captains would not concern themselves with the fears and in-experience of planet-dwellers, the sailors upon ships carrying so many more souls make it a point to know the names of every one of them, keeping them in sacred archives protected by dedicated priesthoods of the ecclesiarchy.
Crusade Impressions 124

*986.M41*

Approaching the rotational speed of the Hallowed Ring Cambria, a trio of most unusual vessels dipped into the flames of the raging inferno of its inner surface. They had come from the Khanate at the behest of the Arch-Magos Cambria, and been given unprecedented permission to approach. Their blue burning torches cut through the fire as they closed in less than two hundred kilometers to the racing surface of the burning regio. Their machine spirits in tune with the guiding beacons of the ring, the vessels maneuvered with utmost precision. Every one had an entire delegation of the priesthood aboard, facilitating such feats that the crews themselves had thought impossible. This too was a concession most uncharacteristic of the enigmatic cult. Greater forces were at play.

In this way, the ambassadors and learned souls of the nomads got to see first-hand a glimpse of the gates, the titanic ruin at the heart of burning lands. They all but felt the scorching heat on their skin and heard the machine whispers emanating from every console and runebank aboard their ship. They were convinced, at this point, of the ruin's threat.
All this exercise was an overture of sorts of further negotiations, initiated at the court of the Archmagos in answer to the most recent developments the Khan's rise had brought. Rather than an ally, so many tech-priests thought, the Archmagos would make the nomads a valuable ally.
Crusade Impressions 055

*583.984.M41*

Having delivered the Xeno's box of ivory, a gift from the inhuman ambassador called upon by the Crimson Queen, her loneliest Rogue Trader departed from the outlying port of the shadow fiefdom. Crossing the outer systems of the Erinnyenmere, the trader's golden ship made its way just behind the Limes Line, where it would bear witness to the inquisitorial actions commencing just in time.

On its way along the imperial frontier, the trader ship passed through deserted spaces, the empty places in-between the bustle of imperial maneuvering routes and supply lines. In the wake of the nova, all but the most daring civilian vessels had left these cosmic seas, leaving behind a deserted zone, a sharp contrast to the crowded spaces on the other side, where imperial fleets and Xenos's vessels clustered almost in shooting distance – both sides unable, or unwilling to give way.
Crusade Impressions 038

*729.982.M41*

Armadas of buccaneers and rogue mercenaries, disgraced imperial formations, deserters and criminal scum, were all on the move in the aftermath of the Nova.

Where the Pale Blue Light had found its destination at an unknown star, it ignited forces of evil buried in arcane history. Waves of terror rippled out through the void and roused all lesser groups who had no strength to stand of their own.
Scared now for their souls, countless of them sought to return to the Emperor's light for redemptions, others thought to fight their way in or to die in glorious battle at last.
All would find the divine imperial justice at the hands of the stalwart guardians of the Imperial Domain.
With fire and faith, they were destined to be slaughtered on the shores of the Thetys Rift, at lasting being delivered to their righteous doom.

And yet, for one brief moment, this was the greatest uprising of pirates and rebels in the Subsector's recent history. A last, fading note at the end of those faction's history. Only precious few of those vessels belonging to the outsiders would escape the imminent destruction. Those very few escaped, if they could, to the fiefdom of the Crimson Queen, pleading for her absolution rather than the mercy of the Imperial guardian fleets. Only those in which she saw the potential of valued servants would be permitted and thousands more again died at her hands.
Crusade Impressions 113

*984.M41*

A lone shot went aimlessly out into the night, headed for an outcrop of the Glacial Nebula.

By estimate of the vessel's third astropathicus, second rank, who bore witness to the incident, the projectile would travel for nigh two millennia, before its course would eventually be visibly altered by entering the strong well of a white glowing star. It would go without consequence for the larger universe, but the lives of those who shot would be forever changed.

The silence, the waiting, the secrecy of it all had strained the nerves of all crews of all ships along with all the Limes Gondwana Line. The first gunnery captain of the 'Pacificus Tremor', mid-tonnage escort of the 441st patrol group section echelon, had been merely the first to break by chance. Seeing the once mortal enemy, the Xenos vessels of the Amanshai, coming into view, as they approached imperial lines in peace – it had driven the man mad and into a most unwise action. Against explicit orders from high fleet-command, his turreted battery opened fire without aim. And for this, his poor soul would be made a cruel example of disobedience in the chain of command.
Crusade Impressions 015

*0023.913.M41*

Six months after the system-wide destruction, arrived the last trading convoy bound for Airanaha.

In the wake of the world's sudden death, many ships on the regular routes had arrived to find nothing but ashes at their destination. Many were lost in a maelstrom of asteroids surrounding the planetary corpse, crashing as they were stunned by the sight of an entire world of the Imperium so utterly destroyed.
Others still failed to find their way out of the warp, unable to return to reality where their goal had vanished. Slowly, traffic to the lost world lessened and died, until no more ships found their way to the system at all. None except for the very last convoy, for it, had been held up by unfavorable tides of the Immaterium and beyond the reach of all astropathic warnings.

Those last voidsmen bound for Airanaha found themselves in an empty system, where even the cataclysm of the planet had dissipated.
Chunks of the broken world had been flung into interstellar space, the main corpse collapsing into itself to form a new, loose planetoid of barren rock and molten stone. By this time, little of the broken pieces reminded anyone of the once-prosperous colony, and its destruction was already becoming a part of legends.
Crusade Impressions 082

*984.M41*

In the year 984.M41 of the Imperial Calendar, the golden ships of Trantor's celestial fleets returned to the frontier of the Limes Gondwana.
Since their retreat in the early days of the Thetys Surge two Millennia before, there had not been such an armada of the Administratum present among those worlds declared forlorn. Not since those times of dire defeat and costly victory, had an executor general taken command of a Limes Castellum and orchestrated war from its throne of imperial supreme command. Her presence alone was momentous in the star forts history, the orders of rallying all the many forces directly under her command a portent of greater things to come.
Beta Brumbana

A jewel, blessed by the Omnissiah, the world of Beta Brumbana glistens in red and emerald green. The entire planet is alive with ever-growing infrastructure and machinery, reaching as far down as the glowing heat of its mantle, and up high, skyward to the edge of space. It is the living center of Brumbana II, hallowed by Cult Mechnaicus Cambria.

## Zechenstadt Vodonn

In high and low orbit and all about the mining world, countless stations and habitats, automata complexes and the vast ring of inter-connected industry make up the technological wonder of the Zechenstadt Vodonn. Much of the void-borne megalopolis is linked via physical bridges, creating a thin web spun all around the planet. The population of the Zechenstadt rivals even that of the planet itself and is made up mostly by workers toiling in the harbor stations, local forges, and manufactorum complexes.

From its ports hail the unending caravans and merchants fleets delivering the precious product of Beta Brumbana's works to the Cult Mechanicus of Cambria.

Wondrous works of hallowed silica and steel are brought back to the Zechenstadt in return and administered by the technomagi of the Mechanicus Beta Brumbana Magna to maximize the productivity of their beloved world.

But the Zechenstadt is more than just the endlessly revolving wheel of commerce surrounding the planet Beta Brumbana. On its vast ring stand countless fortresses and gun emplacements, endless ranks of batteries and turrets, and huge hangars harboring an entire defense fleet. The military might of the Mining world is that of a sleeping giant, ready to wake at any moment to smite the foes of humanity.

## The Iron Rise

All roads and railways, all conveyor belts and production lines on Beta Brumbana lead eventually to one of two points of ascension on its surface.

The two pillars of the Iron Rise pierce the atmosphere on opposite sides of the planet, creating from space the appearance of a single spear piercing Beta Brumbana through its heart. In truth, the two pillars are massive strands of interwoven space elevators, conveyors and orbital towers, grown into singular structures of titanic scale. Through these, the vast majority of raw materials, components and goods are transported from the surface of the mining world into space.
Crusade Impressions 106

*986.M41*

A vast force came to guard the royal plates of the red world Ispolin. Not since the last war had such a force been seen and the denizens of the giant gathered in untold numbers to witness the coming of the imperial starships from afar.
Ispolin, sole planet to the black crimson star, had been tamed by humanity in a golden age of old. Vast plates had been constructed t carry artificial continental structures into the thin layer of hospitable atmosphere that persisted in the deadly tempest layers.
The admiral and officers of the imperial navy were greeted as honored guests upon the highest of these, which in their magnificent beauty and overbearing splendor might have rivaled a respectable imperial garden-world.

In those grand estate palaces of the royal dynasty, the plans were drafted for naval defense, a military show of force the likes of which Ispolin had not seen anywhere else than in the textbooks of their own world's history. The leaders of the local militia discussed the fact of imminent war with a distance bred from isolation. To bring them and their potential into line with that of the Imperium at large would prove as the greatest challenge for the officers in high command.
It was a challenge they were well adapted for. In that world of tainted glass and clandestine shadow, they were at home as much as anywhere else in the imperium, apt in the customs and function of those highest circles of civilized society.

The common voidsmen of the navy detachments, however, found themselves in a world entirely different from that which they knew.
On the lower plates of Ispolin, barely at those heights where the air was breathable and the wind could be withstood, the lower class of imperial citizenry looked up at the sky in awe for the first time in centuries. To them, every newcomer from off-world was a potential savior, a hero, and a saint. And so the simple soldier souls of the navy at anchorage found themselves being greeted with unique hospitality and warm embrace. The forlorn world took them in and bonded with them and before them, they swore not to leave this place and never to seize it and deny any enemy this victory even at the ultimate cost.
Crusade Impressions 155

*986.M41*

Aboard ancient fortress stations, arcane powers ignited, the age-old mechanisms of void shields and defenses. Their shimmering shapes like protective specters sparked from their highest spires, azure glimmer illuminating rows upon rows of warden statues and slumbering macro batteries.
Fortifications along the Limes Gondwana were made ready, most numerous near the Myriadenburg incursion. Where the warp had lashed out from the Thetys Rift and made a claim for the venerated world of knights, all imperial forces were mobilized to aid in the threat's containment. Their old splendor and glory renewed, the star fortresses of nearby systems shone once more as bulwarks of civilization. And for the first time in centuries, these bastions were fully manned and their spirits awoke, in grim anticipation of the coming fight.
Crusade Impressions 067

*984.M41*

The hiss would mark his death, the sound of atmosphere escaping through some crack within the ravaged hull. By the time he registered the hissing, Inquisitor Schadland's vision had mostly gone. His eyes were crusted shut with tears of blood, the breathing reduced to a dry rasp on spent, metallic air.

But it did not get thinner. On the contrary, the hissing was drowned out by a long, mournful moan and a shuddering of the deck. Where the ripped coat exposed the inquisitor's skin, it tingled with a waft of something new flushing in. A pungent smell, sickening and bitter, stung his lungs and the inquisitor retched up clumps as he tried and push himself away from it.

Something grabbed him from behind. The hands brushed back his hair and wiped his face with a cloth stinking of sharp chemicals. His eyes opened just in time to see the mask. For a moment, it fogged up until he sucked in hot, but breathable air. Long, deep lung fulls of life-giving oxygen without the acrid smoke revived his senses and he saw clearer.

Green light filled the hold, falling through an open crack where the airlocks had been forced open. An inhuman form stood in the light, a twisted parody of the human form, with too many limbs and too high a statue, three burning eyes like glowing embers fixed on him. More like it were already inside, one pushing the inquisitor down while another manipulated the fallen column with some sort of instrument. Schadland gasped as the weight was lifted from his broken bones and the heavy debris slid away.

A creature moved over to him, gesturing with hands and appendages in ways he could not comprehend. Muffled through the mask, Inquisitor Schadland heard a high-pitched chitter in the air. Then the blood-loss of his exposed wounds finally took its toll, and he drifted into a dreamless unconsciousness.
Crusade Impressions 021

*977.M41*

A grand congregation was assembled when the Pale Blue Light broke free, calling upon every clade and order of the Adeptus Mechanicus represented in Sector Gondwana. The countless servants of the machine god, so often at odds in their ways of worship, laid their ancient feuds aside in the face of an immeasurably more consequential matter. The failure of containment called for the response of a unified martian empire, transcending the petty conflicts that come about in flesh and history.

The time had come for the machine cult to prepare to face inevitable consequences.
Freed from its shackles at the black hole's event horizon, the pale blue light, signal from beyond the Gates of Cambria, would reach its destination. To know with any certainty what would happen then, the Adeptus Mechanicus lacked sufficient data.
For all they knew, the destination was an ancient relic of such danger, that even the humanity of old, at the height of its power, sought only to lock it away behind the Cambrian Gate's cyclopean mechanisms. It was malevolent and, by the measure of even just the signal's sheer destructive power, an existential threat to any world of the sector, perhaps even beyond.

As messages of the many enclaves of the Mechanicus leaped from star to star, ever more machine masters mobilized, flocking toward the hallowed Ring, where they would combine their strength in an effort to launch further missions, gathering data and learning from what the Pale Blue Light had left behind.
Within the Adeptus Mechanicus, more than the machinery of War had been set into motion. Their efforts would be bent on the acquisition of valuable information.
Crusade Impressions 031

*821.980.M41*

The grand congregation of the Triumvirate of Gondwana begun 821.980.M41, under the holy vigil of the High Cardinal of Calhall and his order serving as Arbiters to the gathering of the sector's ruling body.

Within the inner chambers of a secret haven, emissaries of Gondwana's Triumvirate met on neutral ground. Graciously, the blessed Arbiters of Calhall had ordained the remote temple station for the purpose of this most important congregation. All souls sent forth by the sector's worlds of power received the ministorum's blessing and rested under the watchful eyes of their faithful custodians. Mighty fleets had followed in the emissaries wake, vanguards of the war machine put into motion by their leaders.

The meeting of the Triumvirate Gondwana was a singular event, unparalleled in the sector's recent history. Chroniclers of the Imperium would not, that never before the Triumvirate had put its might on such a political display. For the truly astounding scale of this meeting was not to be measured in the multitude of its attending vessels, great as though it was, but in the sheer number of influential representatives to have been sent forth from all three powers for their most careful attendance.

Where the Triumvirate, in older times, had been concerned solely with matters of grand sector governance, it would now, for the first time, seek to take a full measure of its resources on a nigh planetary scale. Intervention into matters of planetary governance was unheard of in the circles of the aristocracy, but petty notions of their indignation were swept away by the reports which were presented by the envoys of the Cult Mechanicus Cambria.

The Pale Blue Light, thus was the first motion, was to be declared a threat of the highest order, warranting the direct intervention of the Triumvirate in matters of war.
Crusade Impressions 028

*980.M41*

The last delegation was sent out by the Forge World Cambria. Reluctant to face their peers of the Triumvirate without another, crucial revelation, the high priests of the Machine Cult had been biding their time for as long as possible. The breaking free of the Pale Blue Light had ignited discord among the clades of the Mechanicus and led to disagreements that remained unresolvable even in the rigid hierarchy of the Forge World.
When their envoys were sent, they went in the company of a sizable fleet, protected by guardian vessels of Annumaru. Among their great number traveled representatives of many different orders, voices demanding equally to be heard. Ultimately, they would all speak as servants of the Omnissiah and united against any accusation of fault. But beneath the surface, old feuds were seething and threatening to weaken the greater whole.

Thus, much was at stake during the congregation to come, both for the fate of the Sector Gondwana, and the grand powers therein.
Crusade Impressions 057

*984.M41*

A new age, and new war dawn, the last of the forty-first millennium. The enemy stands at the gate
and the foes of old once again besiege the imperial domain. Legends have emerged from the realms of myth, old powers reawakening, champions of both the Golden Throne and the Ruinous Powers which stand against humanity.
The leaders who were called upon to lead the imperium's first charge into this war, look out from their vessels into the Blue Nova's fading light, into the endless vistas of distant stars beckoning. They must rise to this challenge, for it is their duty to the Emperor of Mankind.

Not for two thousand years have so many been gathered for the prospect of an imperial crusade, not for two thousand years was a war council convened between all members of the Triumvirate, not for two thousand years has the fate of all of Sector Gondwana hung in such a balance. In this time of extraordinary events, of prophecies and destiny, the chosen leaders of all will look to the Imperium for strength and wisdom. For too long, the Imperium of Mankind has seemed far away to its subjects in its far-flung corner of the Galaxy.
Crusade Impressions 003

*324.908.M41*
Breaking forth from the Gates of Cambria, an unholy beam of arcane light cut through all the sector's firmament. It disturbed the night skies of so many worlds, breaking constellations apart and with them, the zodiacs generations had known. Seeing the symbols of their future defaced by such might, untold billions of souls cowered in fear and turned their faces away from the blasphemous sight. The cold, cutting blue threatened them like a long blade piercing the sky and instinctively, they all knew it to be malevolent.

But not all feared the light and turned away. There were some, especially among the voidfaring peoples, who knew more of the skies than mere superstitions. Foremost among them were the void-dwelling hordes of Feirefitz, their vessel spread far and wide among the many worlds of the Cambrian Subsector.
Sightings of the pale blue beam were reported to their elders from dozens of perspectives, relayed via their astropathic network, holding the hordes together. Where so many populations, especially those planet-bound, would know nothing but helpless fear at this sight, the elders responded with curiosity. They sent librarians down into the deepest archives of their voidward worlds, those crypts rescued from the destruction of their homeworld during the ascension.

In those records of ancient scripture, the kin of Feirefitz found the shadow of a memory, stories harking back to a time half shrouded in the mists of the deepest past. Such lights, beams crossing the sky and cutting it apart, had once already been recorded in their history. It had been signs like these which preceded their homeworld's fall into the grand rift when it was pulled into the streams of history.
Before their world had been displaced in space and time, before it had been washed away by surges from the age of strife reaching back so far in history, lights like these had warned of an invasion.

With such half-forgotten memories in mind, vessels of Feirefitz were sent closer to the pale blue beam, and others, silent couriers, made their way swiftly to the Archmagos of Cambria.
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Treading in the shadows of the great machines, the troops of the most curious magi entered the inferno. Where the pale blue flame had reigned, it had scorched the scrith and stripped the earth from it, leaving behind a perfect plain, wherein only the vast geometric structures of the ring's foundation stood. The whole world was reduced to the monumental plates and pillars that old humanity had once created, a testament to the powers of yore, but also their hubris and inevitable fall.
Now the titans strode where the old worldmakers had failed, and their might vanquished the remaining fire, cutting a swath through the impassable lands toward the old ruins where the gates had stood. Of those who had been stationed there, who had held the watch for ten-thousand years, not even charred bodies remained. They had been consumed in their totality. Many of them had been souls known to the tech-priests now leading the expedition. Their interest to recover whatever they could was tainted by a certain degree of emotional attachment to this site, where an entire age of the Mechanicus' meticulous inquiry had come to such a brutal end.
There was still a chance for the price to be worth it all. If something from the machine tomb of the Pale Blue Light could be recovered, a relic or a piece of knowledge to aid in the brewing war, then the lives of those lost here would not have been wasted.
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While the whole of Subsector Cambria awaited the coming of a judgment day, some braver souls called on sources beyond the Imperium of Mankind.

Rogue traders and corsairs in service to the undying Crimson Queen were sent dangerously close to the Thetys Rift and to seek out age-old shadow allies still in her debt after five millennia. These allies were outcasts of the Amanshai, Xenos hailing from the Pillar Worlds, those shrouded and unholy realms on the very edge of the uncharted regions. On secret pathways, they had crossed the rift and made way toward the fiefdom, where the corsairs awaited.

No living souls among the voidsmen there knew anything about the bond between those Xenos and their queen. If there were any dealings more recent than those of secret legends, none of those actors were called upon on this occasion. Thus, their vessels met with mutual distrust and there was no friendship between them. Even so, leaders of both sides had independently devised the plan for such a rendezvous, and this alone proved to their agents the utmost importance of their mission.

From the shrouded alien vessel which emerged from the very tendrils of the Thetys Rift, the envoys of the crimson queen received a single cartouche without a word or sign. The artifact was sent in a glowing beam of light, hurtling through the cold of space without so much as being touched by vacuum or radiation. Yet, when it was recovered on the hangar decks of the trader's vessel, it appeared to be little more than a box of carefully crafted ivory.
Before the humans could enquire about instructions or anything more, the outcasts of the Amanshai had vanished once again into shadows.

The ivory box kept secret whatever answers lay within. It was clear to even the daring corsairs, that its contents would only ever be revealed to the eyes of the Crimson Queen alone.
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All progress of those expeditions daring to brave the ever-burning inferno was reported to the higher echelons and the masters of the ring. The archmagos himself granted audience to those couriers who came through the fire, to receive word directly from the front-lines of his realm. For he was blind to the burning lands by any other means, as they were shrouded in smoke, interference, and arcane veils. For the first time in centuries, a regio of the Ringworld had slipped from his iron rule, and this fact alone had greatly alarmed the powers that be.

On every day of every year for all recorded history, the legions of Cambria waged crusades on a thousand fronts, pressing the advance against Xenos nests and techno barbarians, seditious rebellions, and cults on the outskirts of the civilized planitia. But not in a long time had any of these many foes posed a tangible threat to the supreme reign of the Omnissiah. Not until the damned gates had been opened and revealed a horror from the past.
The balance of power was shifting on this world, the Cult Mechanicus Cambria trembling from within. Even as all the sector anticipated war, some feuds among the priests and servants of the machine-god could not be quelled by this external threat. The Arch-Magos himself, so some prophesized, would ascend or fall with the outcome of the inferno-expeditions. Until those forces marching through fire reached the end of their path, an air of uncertainty and whispers of treachery would surround the brazen spires. But when word would come from the threshold of the opened gates, all the world would inevitably change.
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Where the seething ship had renewed its strength and conjured the powers of the war, it spawned throngs of sickly tendrils and spores, growths of the Plague Lord's garden blossoming and sprouting into the wild, open void. Where every true living thing should have withered and died, they thrived on the escaping souls of the dead and the dying, fueled by the very effort of the Imperials to drive them out.

Driven back from the inner heart of the System Myriaden, the virtuous admirals consolidated their hold on the outer nebulae, where the Glacial Nebula broke against Myriadens starlight and cosmic snow hid all ships away. Before long, it swallowed the imperial's bloodied forces and they continued their fight out of the mist and shadows. Salvo after salvo should wear any pursuers down, but it would take a herculean push to regain any of the lost ground.
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The trembling of Cambria's power was felt by many leaders throughout Sector Gondwana, first among them the Khan of the void-borne Hordes of Feirefitz, who had his mind set on rising through the impending upheaval.
Whilst all forces of the Sector had turned towards the Rift, the great Khan put his forces carefully in place. On the interstellar stage of Gondwana's many worlds, vast fleets of his people appeared along many major routes. Before old ports and anchorages, the nomad hives took their position, and their trading fleets were dispatched to depots and scrapyards in many systems.
Traders said the nomads were recruiting and even press-ganging scum into their service by the millions. Raiding parties were sent into underhives, to abandoned stations and the shantytowns of lesser worlds, and they returned with plenty souls to meed the demands of the khan, to raise vast regiments of expendable troops and a few units of elite veterans for a purpose other than the war.

Long before the greater powers took note, the Void-Hordes had become the sector's new rising star, on the minds of countless souls seeking profit or glory, a new power standing at the ideal position to exercise its strength, be it for good or ill.
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From the dead hulk of a ship lost to the open void for months on end, a red star was shot out into the night. The glaring flame, illuminating strange clouds and spatial nebulae, rose from the vessel's broken spires and sent out the signal of distress to all who'd see. It was a crimson sun in a lightless void, a disturbance that might easily attract greater monsters that might hunt ships for prey. And yet, that risk was thought better by those aboard than to waste away any longer on the brink of death aboard the drifting hulk.

The flare had been sent by the last few survivors, those who hadn't gone mad when the ship was set adrift months ago in the battle of the Rift. It had been lost, forgotten, and ravaged by demonic entities until the banishment of evil.
All survivors untouched by the curse of the warp had been deep in the shelters of the ship's innermost chambers. From there they had made the harrowing journey, outward bound toward an opening in the hull, to find a way to alert someone, anything to their position. The red flame they sent was a last signal of hope, the last ditch-effort against all odds in a striking display of humanity's defiance.
It was an act worthy of the Emperor's blessing and thus, the light was seen.
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Far north from the site of banishment, where the abomination of battles past had failed, a lone ship crossed all imperial lines unseen. Its crooked bow was trained at the glimmering star of Myriaden, homeworld of Gondwana's knightly houses.
The weeping ship carried a host of countless trillions, exceeding in their number any army all the galaxy could muster. And yet, they were so faint, their lives so minuscule as to slip through the cracks of the Limes Gondwana undetected, out of sight of all vigilant watchmen, all visions of the prophets and the all-seeing eyes of imperial guardian machines.
Alone in the dark, surrounded by will-o'-the-wisps and phoenix fireflies, the weeping ship passed into the domains of man, as of yet a lonely lantern, but contained within it the flame to spark an infernal apocalypse. The vessel's joined souls sang hymns to their father, whose touch had made them the undying brood. Through death and rebirth, the garden had sprouted from their flesh, life, and death and pestilence overgrowing all creation of technology. What the warp had created from the simple flesh of humankind, was a un-nature more wondrous, more beautiful than any sane imagination. Writhing, throbbing, growing, weeping pus, it had become a living thing, a single entity of them all.
The weeping ship rejoiced as it came upon the light of Myriaden. In the dark recesses of their conjoined minds, some souls of the brood still held memories of home. They brought with them the gifts of the garden, and in their minds already saw them spread and blossom.
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For the sake of the strategically critical system Myriaden, the war council of the Triumvirate of Gondwana could not afford to take a chance. The system, after all, was undeniably in danger and an incursion such as depicted in the Amanshai transmission was ranked high on the Tacita's list of likely scenarios.

Even if the warning was a ruse for the Imperium, it would need a force of no lesser extent to confirm its falsehood and hunt down whoever had it fabricated.

One way or another, an expeditionary force had to be mounted and sent on its way, led by twin flagships of the triumvirate worlds Cambria and Trantor. Highly mobile, the fleet would consist of light and versatile vessels, ready to engage any conceivable threat and buy time, if need be, for the arrival of heavy reinforcements.

As the ships bound for Myriaden entered the Empyrean, the emissaries of the war council directed their attention once more at the Limes Gondwana. Be it a ruse or aid the Xenos had given, in any case, they left the Imperium to seize the initiative. For the first time in millennia, if not ever, in this sector, high ranking officials of the Triumvirate worlds had come to consider open negotiations. If there was even the slightest chance of the reports of a massed chaos incursion being true, then the Imperium would not, could not afford a fruitless war on another front.
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Far out, under the veils of the Glacial Nebula, lay the first vanguard fleets of the Imperium of Mankind. Guardians against the menace of the Thetys Rift, their stood vigilant upon the brink of the unknown, gazing ever outward into the eternal depths.

They were far from the events at Cambria and the matters of the Adeptus Mechanicus, far from the dangers their technology entailed and the omens of a long-forgotten past. The vigil of the vanguard fleets hailing from Mogontiacum and the Limes Gondwana looked outward, not within. Thus, despite being on the forefront of the imperial frontier, its first line of defense against the outer dark, these fleets, and all their souls were among the last to learn of the greatest danger to befall their entire sector at the end of the forty-first millennium.

Though, despite knowing little of the events in the far heart-lands of the subsector, the lookouts of the vanguard fleets were not blind to certain signs.
At the same time when the Gates of Cambria were first opened, long before the message reached any soul on the frontier, multiple flotillas reported events of the most unsettling nature: Stars and constellations were shifting, astropaths heard unintelligible voices in the interstellar aether. But strangest of all were those sightings reported by the most avid priests of the Omnissiah serving aboard those vessels. They told, in unusually superstitious terms, of anomalies within their data, phantoms lurking like echoes in the noosphere accessible only to them.