Culture: Legacies

## Legacies

Avernus is an ancient world that has seen incredible struggle, thousands of species are born and die out upon its surface and even more heroes fall in its eternal battle against Chaos as well as the constant war upon its surface.

As such one of the parts of Avernus’s strange universal yet also not culture\*, is the concept of legacies. That one must always leave behind something for a successor to pick up, as testament to your existence and to aid that inheritor. What the legacy is varies, from individual gifts to the storied remembrance of entire civilisations, but nevertheless if one looks they can find that Avernus is overflowing with carefully hidden artefacts, texts and advice.

Not all of these are miracles, many are simply personal legacies as simple as food recipes, but even then the tradition of passing on legacies from person to person enhances them over time, gradually creating myths and legends out of a handful of them. Sometimes even more.

\*The reason we say universal, yet not is because this phenomenon can be found amongst all known peoples, including humans, and even those that are considered peoples only by technicality such as the Lizardmen. In fact we suspect the concept may have originally been started by the Saurus. However, there is often not enough contact between these peoples for such a culture to be formed in the first place. The historiography is split between those that attribute it to the world and those that blame an old empire of the People.

While the sheer variety of legacies prevents any strict categorisation, we can roughly split them into three categories, the Personal, the People’s and the Legendary.

### The Personal

By far the most common form of legacy, these usually take the form of quite literal inheritances passed down from one generation to the next. On the surface these are not too unusual, in fact it is very common across the galaxy.

What sets the Avernite system appart is the emphasis on storytelling and putting care to remember the history of a specific item. An example from Dis is the las pen of Grawle. Each member of the Grawle family who has inherited the las pen (one of the oldest examples of its kind) has in turn had their lives saved from certain death by it at least once. As such it is normal for the pen to be passed down the line, in particular to the youngest of the now very expansive family.

Basic research in the records office would show that initially the pen had no statistical impact on survival rates at all, but after several hundred years of the family repeating this story and handing the pen on, there is starting around one hundred years back, which has only been growing stronger with time.

Similar examples such minor relics being created from “legacy” items indicates that this is a tap into the system which enables metaphysical modifications that humanity is peripherally aware exists, but like many psychic phenomena are entirely opaque to us in their operation. We are however, capable of cross comparison and on Avernus personal legacy “items”\* seem to undergo the process more rapidly compared to off world.

\*Physical items are used here merely because they are easier to describe. Family techniques for example swordsmanship or literally following in the path of a person like the Huntsmaster of Avernus who take up Sir Pellanor’s search for the Questing Beast are also considered personal legacies, but any effects on these more ephemeral things are more difficult to categorise.

The effect might be the result of a confluence of factors ranging from the greater warp exposure of Avernus to much more constant usage in conflict. However, given the current ubiquity of this system amongst the peoples as well as humans it seems probable that the “passing on” combined with the tales told of these objects which makes them legacies forms a part of this process it is likely indicative of at least a degree of cultural engineering on the part of the world.

At present the report has spoken on “internal” personal legacies, that is to say handing on items within a People, sometimes within single groups within a people. However, personal legacies will often be taken and carefully hidden for anyone to find.

The exact reason for this may vary, especially depending on what the legacy is, but once we took the effort to ask our explorers to keep their eyes out, they started to report hundreds of assorted items which before had been classified under the moniker “heretical xenos items.”\*\* Often times these were ignored as unimportant or even were attempted to be destroyed\*\*\*, but at least a few hunters and explorers used them instead and found these strange items to be very effective tools. They are also extremely common amongst bushwalkers who are far more likely to stumble across them.

\*\*A categorisation authorised by the Governor shortly after colonisation began with the items marked for immediate termination for marked heresy and offense to the God Emperor. Although brought up for review the category was never abolished until recently.

\*\*\*This is apparently yet another reason why we were and are looked at with disdain by Avernites, although we did not realise it at the time. Intentionally destroying another’s legacy is considered an immense sin by many Avernites. At the time we believed they were referring to the Abomination hence missing what they were talking about. That we did not realise it does not absolve us in their eyes, almost making us doubly guilty of wilfully blinding ourselves.

Saurus wargear is the most common legacy by far. Their innate power means that forming metaphysically enhanced gear is literally inherent to their being, while taking up the arms of a fallen comrade is similarly a mark of utmost respect. It is not uncommon for a Saurus to indicate that when they die they wish for their relic to be hidden on Avernus for an aspiring member of the Peoples to find and use it to protect their homes. This is a tradition dating back to before the War in Heaven, when Saurus acted as protectors for younger races on a far larger scale.

### A People’s Legacy

Where individual legacies generally deal with a single person or single object a People’s legacy is far grander is scope.

It must be clarified that when referring to a people it does not mean an entire species and usually it does not. Avernites differentiate between cultures of the same species, so modern day Avernites are not the same people as the ancient Helheim natives. As such a People’s Legacy usually refers to what is left behind by a specific culture, although far too often it can be the remains of an entire species as well.

These legacies are usually the most painful to recover and take many trials and tribulations to retrieve. In addition to a history and testament to the culture that once existed there, they are sought for frequently as a source of rapid advancement. Although they will often be unusable as what is preserved is the specific achievements of a People, which are usually psychic in nature and thus very hard to learn, they can also be a source of vast inspiration to develop a people’s own power’s in a hitherto unthought of direction. Of course if the tradition can be learnt from the sealed scrolls, books and tablets directly then it is an even grander boon to a People.

Often a young species will stumble upon the legacy of a previous people and using their insights as a ground work will rapidly grow their own tradition, or even starting from the base of the legacy if their mentality is sufficiently similar to that of the extinct people.

It has been theorised that the Planet Mind will deliberately create species similar to a fallen race nearby such a legacy, likely as a work around whatever prevents it from simply recreating a dead species and giving them their old knowledge. There is not much proof of this though, particularly as Peoples can miss legacies entirely even if they’re extremely close to them. It does not help that legacies are usually stored away behind the strongest defences a People is capable of. This is a problem being encountered by Lulana, as the death vaults of her fallen Hierarchies stubbornly resist her attempts to open them.

An example, if a technical one, are the remains of Helheim’s original human colonisers, which were left untouched by other Avernites for lack of capacity or interest in reverse engineering them until humanity returned to reclaim it. Another as previously mentioned, are the legacies of the Nynye Hierarchies that fell in the incursion. However, they are sealed away so tightly that extracting (and in some cases even locating) them is proving challenging.

### Legendary Legacies

There are some legacies that surpass simple definitions of personal and people’s legacies. They can be legacies left behind by either, but are so significant in their scale that they are capable of surpassing either on their own.

The most legendary of these legacies are that of Alyrasin, whose undisturbed legacy remains his horde of divinely powerful artefacts and knowledge.

The Empire of Varjinash remains one of the most expansive legacies to recover. The immense civilization left ruins scattered across the world and discovered secrets of runecraft that its successor peoples are still recovering and studying to this day to combine with their own expansions of the art. Furthermore there are many other technologies, artefacts and weapons that Varjinash created and wait silently at the bottom of the deeps. The greatest treasures of all rest within the Blackest Pit, the great trench into which Alyrasin plunged their capital ending the madness of the Empire. In recent years the Queendoms have all expanded their scavenging operations, enabled both by new technologies and the increasing intensity of incursions.

Only the Ancient One has swum to the bottom of this place and returned alive, but he returned bearing the literal artefacts of Gods, the true rune inscribed items carried by the Eldar’s deities left behind on Avernus.

Perhaps most infamous is the legacy of the Termites, whose civilisations are built atop the ever growing legacy of their own destruction. Within these scavenged warrens lie uncountable corpses and even more weapons of unreasonable pussience, which doomed the civilisations of their day, forgotten quickly by the fast paced Termites.

Rarely do the Termites look to their legacy for their focus is always in one direction forwards, and it is even less common for a non Termite to manage to take part of it.  Yet chillingly in recent years, the Termite’s have begun to break their own tradition. The frenzy the species entered into after being informed of the Green Skies has only intensified and indeed is growing. It is likely they have deduced or been informed of another incoming incursion, or an attack by the Dragon and so for perhaps the first time in their entire history they are putting their cumulative focus into preparing. Although this is only rumours so far, the results are terrifying, with the Termites producing and rediscovering old super weapons of sector shaking scale seemingly every few weeks. If they continue their current trend it is likely they will surpass even their greatest strengths several times over.