recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Crusade Impressions 006

*23.913.M41*

In the wake of Airanaha's destruction by the Pale Blue Light, many worlds of the Subsector mustered their strength. Governors of previously all but dormant world called for the founding of new regiments. Forges were called upon to build vessels for newly forming navies, and old fleets were awoken from centuries of sleep. Dynasties and elected councils, all institutions of authority mobilized their strength over the course of the coming years. They did so not only in expectation of an enemy from without, but also to secure their position within.
Rumors of an entire world's destruction could not be entirely repressed. With many more omens of a great change on the horizon and the end of the forty-first millennium drawing ever closer, the powers that be knew full well the danger the rising unrest presented. In such times, the danger of cults and segregation grew and only a firm hand could keep its grip on power.

Every new force raised was therefore celebrated as a triumph, every founding ceremony a spectacle of Imperial might, ready for the common citizens to behold. Displays of glory and strength were enacted on world after world, proclaiming the resurgence of old glory and new heroic deeds to come.
Crusade Impressions 086

*984.M41*

Inquisitor Schadland had slept through most of the passage.
He had slept through most of an eternity, in fact, over the course of the past weeks in the care of the Amanshai. Although sleep was not really the right word for it anymore. When he slept, the Inquisitor had dreams, and when he dreamed, his mind experienced precious clarity. While dreaming, Schadland had learned to sort his thoughts and memories from an abstract point of view. Among the Amanshai, this had preserved his sanity.
It had stopped when they had brought him aboard the Triarch's ship, the Midas Maledicta. At first, Schadland had expected to find more peace aboard a human vessel, away from the ever sinister presence of the Amanshai. In truth, the opposite had been the case.
The Midas Maledicta was an imperial design, a ship crewed by human bodies and precious few surviving souls, but humans nonetheless. And yet, there was something profoundly wrong about the pristine aureate glow of that vessel, the ivory halls and silent statues adorning every corner and alcove aboard. Echoes of the absolute isolation the Trierarch so enjoyed permeated everywhere in this vessel. So much so that they had even seeped into the metal sarcophagus of the Inquisitor.
When he had finally slept aboard that vessel, it had been dark and without dreams.

Now, Schadland was awake and things had changed entirely. The subtle darkness of the Midas Maledicta had gone and so had the distant presence of the Amanshai. Alone with his thoughts, at last, the Inquisitor stood, confined to the metal sarcophagus, in a room with a solemn view of the Castellum upon the Limes Gondwana. Ships of the fleet were moving outside, and the Rogue Trader's vessel lay silently in its moorings. He had heard the Trierarch had been summoned, and the newly arrived Executor Admiral would wish to speak to him next.
Adam Reinhart

El mayor general **Adam Reinhardt** era el
comandante de la misión Pioneer durante la Segunda Guerra Robotech , y fue
mencionado brevemente en Robotech: The Masters. Fue uno de
los oficiales que ayudaron a sentar las bases de la división de Reconocimiento
inicial, Mercurio Base , y más tarde ayudar a
organizar la primera Robotech expedición de la
relevación .

Ordenó Major John Carpenter para volver a la Tierra y destruir la Robotech Masters bloqueo. Nunca
fue originalmente en el
Super Dimensión caballería Cruz del Sur , la serie que fue
adaptado en la segunda "saga" de Robotech.
Crusade Impressions 149

*986.M41*

The brethren on their pilgrimage from the Nimbus Imperatoria Laurentia would not be turned away by any world of the Imperium. But seldom did they receive such fervent a welcome as they did on the grieving moon of Nandraj III. This lone world in the dark shadow of the Glacial Nebula had endured much hardship in the past century, and its people knew little of the events beyond their own horizon. To them, the mere echoes and faintly felt consequences of the Sector's arm's race were already a world-changing tragedy. At the behest of Trantor, mandatory regiments hand been raised for the defense of the Subsector, but in their hurry, the envoys of the Imperium had brought a plague over the colonies, that had been isolated for so long. After their waning population had been thinned by the recruiting of all those able-bodied, the remainder had faltered under the weight of the sickness.
They were in dire need of help, and their voice was so small. There could not have been a world more suited to the Pilgrims. They had been looking for a chance like this, a chance, to make an entire world their own.
Crusade Impressions 018

*950.M41*

Watchful guardians see their lone posts renewed. For the first time in centuries, the stations of the Limes Gondwana were all alive with golden light and armadas of new vessels frequented between them. The Imperium's first line stood strong against the unknown dark, from the cosmic cold of the Glacial Nebula as far to the galactic south as the erstwhile crimson fiefdom.

Veterans of the watchtowers whispered of a change in leadership, a renaissance of the legendary past, and a return to former glory. Only a scarce few voices disagreed with them, those of the very oldest keepers who still remembered the price at which such old glory had come.
Crusade Impressions 105

*986.M41*

Below the war-torn surface of the Fortress Gahmuret, buried in its ancient crust, run the vast tunnels of the command rail network, the greatest engineered feat of those sent to this world by the grace of the Omnissiah.
For millennia, the people of the forlorn fortress have worked their machines to drive tunnels and bunkers ever deeper toward the molten core. Through vast shafts reaching down to the realms of overwhelming heat and molten stone, they channeled the energy from Gahmuret's burning heart, to fuel their industry and fearsome weapons and the planetary shield that envelops all of the forlorn Fortress.
Below seas of molten heavy metal, bombs are detonated to break through to this world's heart and in their wake, the tunnels are coated and cooled in armored adamantium. In this way, the priests of Mars have engineered a network perforating the innermost layers of this world.
Through them run the command systems, and crucial parts of the infrastructure, ensuring the Forlorn Fortress will fight for its survival, even if all the system, the surface, and even the lithic fortresses near the surface should be overrun.
Powered by the world's burning heart, the railway fortresses of the command system will not cease their function until the last of them has been found and halted by the enemy. To take Gahmuret whole, even if it would be left without any living soul to mount a resistance, would thus still be a task for centuries, and would have the forlorn world swallow entire hosts of cultist armies long before it would finally fall.
Crusade Impressions 010

*01.963.M41*

On the edge of the black hole's gravity well, where the Pale Blue Light was imprisoned for some time, there met the forces of the Cult Mechanicus Cambria and the first emissaries of the Feirefitz Horde. Voidships of their peoples often met, for there was much business between the nomad traders and the technocrats, and for the salvation from their doomed homeworld, the nomads of the Horde would forever be in the Omnissiah's debt.
Yet, despite this ancient bond between those two sides, they faced one another on the brink of the caged system with animosity. To those servants of the Machine God stationed by the blue light's prison, it was the highest task to prevent any living soul from interfering. To Feirefitz' wanderers of the void, the light itself represented more than a dangerous omen, but a sole link to their long-lost past. Though both sides agreed in their intent for the Pale Blue Light to be contained and ultimately destroyed, the stakes of this incident were just too high, and the Omnissiah's Order refused to let the nomads pass.

The Nomads of Feirefitz, however, were patient, and peacefully besieged the black hole's system. Even though the servants of the Mechanicus would not agree, the nomads knew in their hearts they had some destiny with the Pale Blue Light and, at the very least, would be needed when it came free.
Crusade Impressions 014

*977.M41*

The cage was broken in 977.M41 and set the Pale Blue Light free. Once more it broke forth from imprisonment and shattered the straining web of scrith wrought by the Adeptus Mechanicus.

The precious fleet of weavers fled before the imminent eruption, plunging themselves into the warp in order to escape the arcane horror unfolding around the prison of the black star. They left behind the close observers, volunteering priests and servitor legions gathering more data even as the installations of the cage crumbled around them. Their last stand did nothing to contain the light, and when it swept over them, their millions of lives were snuffed out within hours of the first weave breaking.
Still, their sacrifice provided the Adeptus Mechanicus with yet more data about that which they had awoken upon the Ringworld Cambria. As they had done for all the time the Pale Blue Light had been trapped in the black star's prison, the archivists and explorators, analysists and logicians of the Omnissiah went to work siphoning tangible meaning from the data.

They were eager to learn how the light had broken free, how it was controlled by the very signal of binary malice it carried. They yearned to unravel the nature of the impossible beam and light. But their first task was to answer a far more simple question: What was the Pale Blue Light's new destination?
Crusade Impressions 081

*984.M41*

For seven weeks the Trierarch Midas remained in the vaults of the Amanshai with the wounded inquisitor, sharing in his visions of the falling Pillar World and the destruction wrought by an enemy unknown. Seven weeks he spoke to the man in the sarcophagus, half a respected rival, half deadly persecutor. It were these conversations that kept the mind of the inquisitor from falling to insanity, the presence of another human soul within reach of his own being grasping for anything kindred.
For all this time the Amanshai kept close to the shadows, showing images they intended to convey, without revealing themselves anymore to the humans in their care. Their silence was precarious, mysterious and even threatening, but in all measures better than to endure their presence outright, so the Trierarch thought.
In the fourth week of the seven, he understood their intention and his role as something of an honored guest. He, Midas, chosen corsair of the Crimson Queen, was to become the envoy that the inquisitor had been destined to be. With Schadland's demise, he was next to pick up the mantle. And before long, he also learned, who it was they intended the message for.
Word of a new admiral on the frontier spread like wildfire among the Castellum Fleets. As of yet, they were still unaware of any survivor's presence among the fleet of the Amanshai. And if they would not make their return across the no-man's-land, the Trierarch and the Inquisitor might well be caught in the hellfire of the next offensive.
Crusade Impressions 050

*984.M41*

From the tumultuous writhing of damned souls bleeding through the Thetys Rift, the astropaths on the imperial frontier discerned many a worrisome omen. Messages of the dead, curses and unholy blessings made their way into the dreams of the seeing ones, now that the rip toward the realm of chaos had been stirred by the bloodbath of the pirates breaking against the star forts of Limes Gondwana. The demon beasts of the Immaterium were hungry and their corrupted lords unleashed hordes of beasts into the mundane realm. Where the sea of souls touched reality, the seething energies now surged in spasms of arching light, purple wisps of flame intermingling with the cold, pale light of the Blue Nova. On the far side of the rift, it still burned, its power rippling out into both universes.

On the watchtowers and fortifications along the limes line, the guardians of the Imperium remained vigilant and cautious. Where the wreckage of the first battles had been cleared away, they laid out new mines and traps for any foe to follow and drilled their victorious forces all the more rigorously.
It was at the central fort castellum Krommburg, on the central vanguard line, that the anxious waiting of the fleets first came to an end.

Out of the treacherous tides of the Thetys Rift emerged strange artifacts and vessels, their twisted, bloated forms unlike any ship conceived by a human mind. Swollen, rotund bodies clad in metallic scales and plates, blistering with antennae and phalanx emplacements, formed the center of those formations, motherships of sorts carrying unfathomable masses of Xenos toward the Imperium.
Though in its scope and number, it was nothing short of an invasion, the make-up of the Xenos onslaught was most peculiar to behold. Those voidsmen who dared to observe their foe directly via visual telescopes soon reported debris and damage clinging to every last of those oncoming ships.
They were scorched and ripped and blackened, mutilated by the scars of battle, even though many of the mighty behemoths appeared all but unarmed themselves. They moving fast, ferociously, but not in formations fit to attack.
The Xenos had been caught, thus the assessment of the imperial tactica, routing from another enemy. Like the pirates had before, these broken forces of the Amanshai, freighters and evacuation fleets, dared take their chances with the Imperium rather than to stay on the far side of the rift.
Crusade Impressions 142

986.M41

Black fleets crossed the stars of Gondwana in greater numbers than ever before. The long shadow of their influence was felt on many worlds, where the people feared the false prophets proclaiming armageddon. False accusations and witchhunts were rampant in every other system, fueled by a fear of the unknown that had been confirmed time and again with every news of the frontlines and the battle for Myriaden that reached them.
To deal with the overflowing dungeons and prison fortresses of claimed unsanctioned psykers, the black ships called on the hunters and the lodges of the Inquisition. Agents of the throne made their rounds on those burning worlds, setting free the innocent and exacting harsh punishment on those found using the panic to their advantage.
Crusade Impressions 070

*984.M41*

He awoke to the cold hard pain of metal.
The inquisitor felt the weight of metal bonds pinning him against a bed of steel, the sting of brazen sutures and silver needles in his chest and the stark metallic scent of blood permeating through air forced down his throat by iron lungs. All of these sensations were familiar to him. Schadland recognized the kind of pain administered by imperial physicians. He felt his body being forced to live against all bounds of nature.
Long sleep had numbed his mind. The memories came slowly back to him, halting and reluctant as if trying to escape his mind. The mission, the fleet, the demon and the crushing pillar falling onto him – the alien chatter of the creatures. Nausea welled up from deep inside his punished body at the sounds and shapes Schadland recalled. Only the forceful push and draw of the artificial lungs prevented him from retching. The air tasted sour.

Inquisitor Schadland forced himself to open his eyes, the only movement of which he was capable. His gaze was fixed on a vast firmament, a many thousands stars beyond a vaulting dome, held up by soaring pillars of varnished metal. The pillars weren't of imperial design.
For a fleeting moment, he contemplated possibilities to escape, but only death awaited beyond the shackles keeping him alive. The Emperor hadn't spared him on his ship just for a belated death, not worthless, not like this.
Schadland's eyes clung to the stars, those distant fires in the dark, each a shining beacon of the Imperium. As he watched, the dark spaces in-between coalesced into a single shape, the spread wings of the Aquila. As his mind drifted in and out of consciousness, it became real. The two-headed eagle grew, coming closer, until the bright lights of the surgical theatre revealed its form wrought in gold, shining like an angelic vision. It was broken, but not defaced, its pieces held in invisibly in place to show him the grand imperial symbol. The inquisitor recognized the splintered statue from the bridge. Something, for some reason, had preserved this last part of his ship.
Crusade Impressions 109

*985.M41*

Just beyond the frontline, standing still upon the Limes Gondwana, vast efforts were underway to keep the combined forces of the Triumvirate, its many worlds, and the Imperial Navy battle-ready.

For every ship facing the unknown enemy and the ominously waiting fleets of the Amanshai, there were a hundred more running along the supply lines, forming the caravans and convoys feeding, clothing, repairing, and maintaining the fleet. They were protected in turn by patrols and flotillas sent from the Forlorn Worlds, and in this way, they spanned across the No-Man's-Land, to the Trantor Reef and the Glaive's Reach and all those other regions considered civilized on the star maps of the Imperium.
It was along these lines that the Administratum World Trantor brought the full extent of its executive control to bear. From beacon to beacon, one array to another, the executor councils of the first Triumvirate World expanded their linked connection to the common citizenry and the workforce dispatched for the crusade. Working in most inscrutable ways, invisible to the commoner and beyond even the grasp of any of its individual parts, the great machinery of the Administratum was set into motion and began working through the logistical herculean task of allocating the resources at the disposal of their world.
Crusade Impressions 136

*986.M41*

The battle for Myriadenburg stretched unnaturally through space and time, stretching and contorting as the servants of the pestilence god warped reality to their whim. Out of the wounds they inflicted upon the universe, more growths and tendrils of their kind spilled forth, for every sickly growth that was cut apart, another dozen shot out of the darkness and struck out at the source of the cleansing fire.
Unnatural forces ravaged their ships, and yet the forces of the Imperium would not relent. Even if they had desired to turn away now, there was no route anymore for a safe retreat, no path left but the bloody road through defeat or victory. Both seemed unfathomably far away. For despite all damage and casualties sustained, the imperial ranks closed every gap again, and their formations threw themselves at the foul garden with the ferocity and strength of desperate beasts, fueled by the righteous wrath instilled into them by the Imperium for ten-thousand years. No loss nor unnatural phenomenon could now break their morale, as they descended alongside their foes into the maddened frenzy of close-quarters fighting.
Crusade Impressions 114

*985.M41*

A demonic, cosmic pestilence had taken hold of Myriadenburg, enveloping the sickly sun and its worlds in phantoms of the great grandfather's garden. Winding roots swallowed all light and churned the plasmic phlegm of the star, spewing raw matter into the void and infecting it with the destructive, parasitic life that bred under the stewardship of the unnamable god. Between those cataclysmic shapes weaved the vessels of the imperial navy, brave and unerring on their course, guided by the guarded minds of their helmsmen and navigators. Even just making their way into the inner system was akin to a journey through the warp, so utterly alien and wrong space had become, overflowing with dark energies and magic, conjuring the ruinous powers in this place.

Against this outbreak of material madness, of a carnivorous god's curse made manifest, there could only stand the Emperor's undying flame. Fire and steel, wielded by the voidsmen of the gathered fleets, were raised and thrust against the enemy.

Great ships turned about, heading into the nest, as their broadsides fired, unleashing all their might. The light of their shots alone illuminated the dark of night and brought about reflections of the known world, hidden behind the pest's veil. Where the shells struck at the garden's roots and stems, they interacted with the unreal matter in strange ways, ripping it hear and being swallowed there, some even reflected to strike back at their ships.

But the material extent of their destructive firepower did not matter as much as the resolute constitution of the gun crew's minds. In their actions, they channeled all hatred and disgust at the place that Myriadenburg had become. Daggers of pure faith, spears of imperial conviction were formed along the battle lines where the comrades in arms saw their brethren fight on. Every shot, every thundering salvo boosted their morale and in time, the collective faith of the fleet's crews began to push back the cosmic misery that fed only on more primitive, undirected emotion.
Crusade Impressions 151

*986.M41*

From worlds far and wide under the frontier suns, the voidriders of Immortan returned with their holds full of bounty and treasure. Among their most valued acquisitions were vessels of the pirate cabals and Katzbalger Clans, whose forces had been shattered upon the Star Forts of the Limes Gondwana. Many erstwhile honored vessels had been among the marauding forces and were now reclaimed by the ratlings for imperial glory. To return those tarnished vessels to the debris fields of their kingdom, to refurbish them and make them ready for battle in service to their King Immortan, would grant the mutant kingdom a force to be reckoned with.

Vast convoys of captured vessels, escorted by the small but proud Immortan cutters and sloops, began the long journey back to their homes. Already, before the war had properly begun, the kingdom would enjoy these spoils. But they would have to make the best of them because the prize for any further victory would certainly be high.
Crusade Impressions 005

*435.910.M41*

In those realms of the Sector Gondwana where the opening of Cambria's Gates was known, where the consequence of such an action was prophesied or otherwise anticipated, preparations of untold magnitude were soon set into motion.

Long before there would be a call to the Crusade of Brass and Iron, long before news of the event would reach the common citizenry of most worlds, the forces that be already moved their pieces in the great game. Nobles and merchants, guilds and entire dynasties began relocating, shifting their investments and influence, started to make their worlds fit for the coming of catastrophes or war.

They did so in the myriad subtle ways so often overlooked by the chroniclers of imperial history. Vast armadas, surpassing in their numbers any force fielded by the Imperial Navy, began moving supplies and rations, strategic resources and foundations for entirely new infrastructures, according to logistical plans devised by entire legions of information brokers and administrators. Military and civilian leaders planned defensive and offensive actions decades in advance, interstellar treaties were established, old feuds set aside, old friendships renewed.
In the high courts of imperial palaces, in the command bunkers of still non-existent armies, overall, in the shadow of the sleeping giant that was the Imperium, the consequences of the opening of Cambria's Gates could be felt. A feeling of unease and anticipation rippled out, from world to world. And soon there was no planet left untouched by the earliest shadow cast by the coming war.
Crusade Impressions 102

*986.M41*

The fires on the hallowed Ringworld Cambria were burning still. Planitia and mountain ranges, lands equivalent to many hundred worlds had fallen to the red hot inferno. Its incandescent flames had dug their roots into the very foundations of the world, consuming the impenetrable bedrock from which the ring was wrought.
The scrith was burning. The arcane element, holiest creation of old humanity, had been ignited by a force unimaginable, beyond even the power bound into the heart of its parent star. Its energies were unleashed, the exotic force binding its nuclei together, a slow-burning nuclear reaction fueling the fires for untold millennia to come. Unstoppable, unquenchable, the wave of the last inferno swallowed all.

The priests of the Cult Mechanicus Cambria watched on. Machines that knew no fear were set to the task of recording the destruction, machine spirits set to guard the growing sphere of fire and legions of automata stood ready to repel those fanatic pilgrims wanting to see the gravely site of the Pale Blue Light before all evidence of its unlocking was finally destroyed.
From analysis, the Mechanicus hoped to gain salvation. The answer to their plight had to be buried in the data, somewhere in the knowledge which to attain was still the highest order given by the Archmagos of the Ring.
Whilst expeditions on the ring itself march fearlessly into the flame, the shipwrights of Annumaru were tasked with the creation of a singular vehicle fit for another approach.
Crusade Impressions 079

*985.M41*

The region opening to the Rubrum Ariadne was the forgotten site of an ancient battle. A single moon was left of the devoured system, pockmarked with the scars of a long past war. Its wounds ran deep into the core of the celestial body, its rocky hide punctured by a thousand holes and fissures. Those gaping maws had swallowed nearly of what remained of the battling foes, whose conflict had brought doom over these ancient lands. Crushed and regurgitated as interstellar dust, the ships and their survivors had become one with the debris fields and left little behind. To anyone crossing this system on any other mission, to anyone oblivious to its arcane significance, the moon would have been only an odd mystery, strange but not noteworthy in a galaxy of perpetual war.

The loyal voidfarers of the Crimson Queen, however, had unwavering faith in the import of their mission and would not cease looking at the exact place the Tarot indicated.

Two Millennia before, the host of the white conquistadore had passed here over an intangible threshold, making the passage toward a new frontier. It was his key that the servants of the Crimson Queen were seeking, for the Amanshai knew one had been left behind.
Crusade Impressions 032

*232.981.M41*

For long months lasted the First Congregation, even though it did away with much ritual pomp and baroque tradition. During this time, the envoys and representatives fought for a direction, a plan to put into motion for the Subsector as a whole.

Scribes of the Triumvirate drafted many libraries worth of new doctrines, decrees, and legislature, all in an effort to establish rules for a situation without local precedent. Chroniclers of Imperial History were called upon to find in the archives accounts to a similar effect, but the Pale Blue Light was a threat unique in its nature and so were its consequences for the Sector Governance. At the same time, ever-growing streams of information were channeled to the station, the matters of a thousand worlds viewing for the attention of the high echelons of the sector. Yet more experts and archivers, prophets and brokers formed circles of debate and question, inventing entire abstract concepts and philosophies for the rule over their worlds.

The Pale Blue Light was assessed as a threat, its potential consequences put down into writing. Entire programs dedicated to the acquisition of knowledge, inquiries, and expeditions were put into place. Queries to wise ones beyond the galactic gulf were formulated and sent on their way on urgent courier vessels.
With those deeds none, the congregation turned to preparation, digging deep into the ancient archives to discover what could be known about the potential threat.

The prowess of an entire sector's political minds was to be put to use in this monumental effort of governance, and from their collective work emerged, eventually, the outline of a plan.
Crusade Impressions 112

*986.M41*

Just two guards were placed outside the barred gate, watching the entrance of the chosen chamber. It was an unremarkable room for the most remarkable event, faraway from all pomp and posture upon the higher decks.

When the ceremonial rituals for the masses would be held, it would be a well-orchestrated, studied performance, leaving nothing to chance or the whims of the Xenos. There would be no stakes in that ceremony, for all things of import would already be decided. Should this negotiation fail, should the treaty turn sour and things fall apart, it would happen in silence, beyond this door, and that compartment, alongside this footnote of imperial history, would forever stay closed, far away from the chroniclers.

Not even the guards themselves new the tremendous importance of their duty that day. They would stand and watch as it was their duty, while history was written in solemn silence.
Crusade Impressions 131

*986.M41*

Spires of fallen hives rose like hollow teeth from ashes of their denizens. What survived of their ruins were only the strongest walls, the foundations, and skeletal structures at their very core, often the oldest, most masterfully crafted pieces of those ancient settlements, where first colonists of the old humanity had made their homes. In these infernal fires, the flames of the ring had revealed the last remnants of that golden age one final time. And they would have remained there, slowly cracking and crashing into one-another unseen, had not the expeditions of the Cult Mechanicus Cambria come to bear witness to that final fall.
God-machines of the Imperium stood by, humbled by the presence of those older, vaster things and forces, and before their machine-eyes the world of old crumbled. There was nothing left for them to save or reconquer, only the symbolic loss of beauty and craftsmanship from the world.
The princeps proclaimed this sight touched something in the hearts and minds of their machines. Those enigmatic, feral intelligence of the Titans, were not impervious to the worlds of old unraveling. Somewhere, buried deep inside their souls of cold, there remained some knowledge, some recognition, and awe for the grandest works of their creators. And their loss filled the God-Machines with something more than rage or lust for battle, with a deep yearning for retribution. War-engines, built for the sole purpose of destruction, had encountered something they did not bear seeing ground to ashes. Whatever it was what possessed the Titans of the Legio and their Princeps that day would fuel acts of immeasurable weight later on.
Crusade Impressions 027

*980.M41*

The pilgrims of Laurentia sent their wisest on the way to seek council with the powers of Sector Gondwana, the worlds of the Triumvirate, Cambria and Trantor. Their pilgrim vessels were highly anticipated by all systems they would cross along the way, for the word of the Emperor's Astartes held more truth in the eyes of the common people than any message of the Techpriests or the Administratum could convey.
In this way, it fell to the brethren of Laurentia to spread the word of a congregation of the Triumvirate, that would decide the fate of their worlds, the sector, and the coming war.

The ships of the Chapter of the Hallowed Glaive took a long route, for this reason, arriving last at the undisclosed destination of their journey, where the others had been left waiting. This was no coincidence.
Long since the Triumvirate had been founded, the Astartes of the Hallowed Glaive had taken a neutral and reserved position on matters of politics and the feuds between the older worlds, though their allegiance was ultimately owed eternally to the Cult Mechanicus of the Omnissiah. Now, however, their feelings of loyalty to one world over another were overwritten simply by the highest order of their existence: Service to the Emperor, in whose eyes there would be no difference between any of the worlds rightfully claimed by humanity.
Thus, for the first time, the Astartes set out with their agenda in these negotiations, and their standing would be reinforced by the countless voices of the common folk, which they had gathered along the way.
Crusade Impressions 033

*980.M41*

Between the star systems of Subsector Cambria, the old, well-trodden trading routes swelled into streams of golden light, glittering across the deep, black firmament. In standing up against the unforgiving dark, humanity raised its very own constellations, billions of far-flung souls coming together in the united effort of the Imperium to hold its worlds together.

There were few warriors along these routes, safe for the patrols and in-system navies, who stood guard against insurgents and agents of chaos among the masses. Rarely was their watchful vigil ever tested, so strong was the impression of the Triumvirate's congregation.

Word of the great gathering of the strong and powerful had spread quickly among the lesser worlds, faster even than the news of arcane wonders and destruction had before. It had muted, for the time being, the voices of dissent, and given the voidsmen and captains all throughout the sector new purposes.
Merchant convoys converged on the central systems at the heartland of Subsector Cambria, pilgrim- and evacuation fleets headed for Glaive's Reach from the No-Man's-Lands. Crossing their course in the opposite direction, material trains and supply lines of the entire subsector's forces made their way toward the proposed frontlines.

The machinery of war and fortification, set into motion decades before, had now reached the peak of their production and began to redistribute those resources on an interstellar scale.
Crusade Impressions 134

*986.M41*

Hard light streamed from the fissured gates, where the cyclopean mechanism trembled and opened a crack in the impenetrable hull of the ruined fortress sphere.
Old machines obeyed the orders of their long-dead masters, incantations rediscovered and relearned by the priesthood of the Dyson Clade. In the throne halls of the melded realms, they had mended many thousand-year-old systems, for the sole purpose of this moment, when the message would arrive that the ancient evil had awoken.
Their astropaths had seen the opening of the Cambrian Gates and the light, but that alone had not been enough to fulfill more than ten-thousand years of prophecy. More had been needed for the supreme dedicator to assign the materials and resources needed for the launch of the clade's paladin forces.
It had been visions of the Pillar Worlds, images of the proud planets burning, that confirmed the suspicions of the machine master. And in his aetherial connection to the spirits of the Star Machine, he had found memories of such destruction, fragments of the war of which the machine souls would not speak. This could only mean one thing.

The time for the unsheathing of the Durendal had come. Deep within the melded labyrinth, the Paladin Forces of Anfortas slipped their moorings and headed for the black crack of the fissured gates. Into the open void, they would venture, and past the frontline of the Imperium. The great evil needed to be met early on, this much they knew. Because no world of the Imperium could endure the siege that Anfortas had seen. But they knew they were facing the very same enemy, the one that had brought humanity at the height of all power, to the brink of ultimate destruction.
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*981.M41*

Far beyond the charted realms where the Imperium prepared its war machine, a single vessel bore witness to the sector’s greatest fear and fell victim to it shortly after. Perhaps it was not even the first, nor the last imperial ship to encounter a sliver of the Pale Blue Light that had slipped into the Immaterium. But it was the only one to send a message out in time before the white-hot wave burnt out the astropaths and silenced their choir in the swift inferno incinerating the voidship whole.

The voices of the dead echoed through the sea of souls, rippling space and time, for many days before they were heard. Distant, weak and barely human, the words finally found the ear of a distant listener. A lonely priest watching out for tidings of the outer worlds was roused by the dreams preceding the incoming message.
He was a wizened soul, weary of gazing far into the warp, but mighty omens had foretold the importance of this sacrifice. Thus, in the blood of a dying man, the message of the lone witness was recorded. Once written down once in the archives of the lone watchtower, the message could be repeated, copied many hundred times and added to the wealth of imperial knowledge filling the aether between Gondwana’s worlds. Before long, it would reach the greater powers and would confirm what they already anticipated.

When the Pale Blue Light got free, some of it had gone beyond the black hole’s Event Horizon, and in this way, found a way into the warp. Whatever the malicious thing’s destination, it could now be reaching it at any time.
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*832.913.M41*

To most worlds of Sector Gondwana, the Gates of Cambria was an immemorial enigma, a legend told reaching back as far as the founding days of the Imperium. Stories and rumors of some kind had often persisted in the traditions of the local peoples, wherein they imagined the secret wonders and terrible curses still locked away upon the ancient Ringworld.

But, within the Subsector Cambria, there was one most notable exception.
The gates, their legend, the rumors and prophecies of the Gate's Opening, were all but unknown to the denizens of the Nimbus Imperatoria Laurentia. Having settled their artificial world in this Sector mere two Millennia ago, the Astartes of the Hallowed Glaive shared little of its distant history. Though notes of such events were certainly chronicled in the deepest archives and their vaults, legends of the gates were no common knowledge.
When widespread news of the opening and the destruction of Airanaha swept across all worlds of the Subsector, the Astartes and their Laurentian Brethren learned of the true scope of these events only through their pilgrimage. And even then, with all stories told to them about the common fears and faith, they could scarcely understand the true, age-old weight those events carried with them.

Barred from truly understanding what the souls they protected felt, the Astartes could offer only limited solace. So instead, they began to arm themselves for war. Unlike those of high nobility on other worlds, who would look with bemusement and condescension on the tales of the common folk, the Astartes took the denizens of the Subsector by their word. In this way, a force of great import began mobilizing at the perceived threat of the Pale Blue Light, which persuaded many other figures of authority to follow suit.
Frater Unhol

More lies in the deep well of Frater Unhol than merely the remains leftover by millennia of imperial industry.

Steeped in the crimson glow of the slumbering giant move interlocking rings of ice and debris, of forged metal and raw materials. Half natural occurrence, half by mankind’s design, these spheres of matter exist in a precise state of balance, a clockwork moving perfectly within the confines of Frater Unhol’s gravity well.
Most of the slow turning rings are dull shades of blue and gray, but some glitter in silver and gold, their warm light a portent of thriving civilizations. Life is abundant in Frater Unhol’s belts, despite its distance from the nurturing star. Neither devastating radiation nor the ravages of time could entirely snuff out humanity's colonial endeavors. Countless souls, myriad strains of humanity have established a hold over some part of the well, and with them came creatures of all kinds, domesticated cattle and predators, and some unnameable horrors, ship-borne parasites.

To the denizens of Frater Unhol, its well is an entire galaxy onto its own, a minuscule reflection of the universe at large. Its worlds are as numerous and different as the systems of the sector, and to the common soul, the affairs of their factions bear as much gravitas as an edict from the High Lords of Terra.
This separate world, fed by the leftovers of the greater Imperium, does not take kindly to any outsiders, and many travelers have been known to become lost in the maze created by those dwellers within.
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*986.M41*

For nearly two-thousand years, barely any soul had known of the twin-moons outside the system of Tannhaus, much less visited them despite the unparalleled sight they offered to the observer. Two celestial bodies of roughly lunar mass, both crowned with a ring of iron wrought by humanity. These rings were the fortresses and hives of this star, housing ninety-nine percent of all population, all the industry and agriculture, and the rare sites of learning.
The system was, by everyone's reckoning, well defended and developed, and could have been a site of note in the history of an entire sector. If not for the immaterial currents having changed some fife-thousand years ago, cutting it off from the great routes leading to the inner systems. Ever since the shift within the warp's tides, a visit of Tannhouse required a straining journey, dipping in and out of the warp nigh twenty-five times, with small stops in deep space to re-orient navigation.
In this way, the whims of the universe had reduced a strategic fortress to a backwater world with no interest at all. At least it had been this way until the nomads found its potential.

One of many trading fleets sent out by the Khan took on the lengthy journey to visit the twin rings. Alongside cargo holds full of spices and gold, the ships carried a proposal signed by the chieftains of the Horde. It was an offer they knew the local governor would not refuse.
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*984.M41*

The first vessel to cross those invisible lines dividing space between the Imperium and the encroaching swarms of Xeno's vessels was the Honored Shepherd Camuanlethl under orders of Inquisitor Thilenius Johann Schadland, favored second to the inquisitorial circle Mogontiacum. His was a soul of pure conviction and a strong appreciation for the human rational.

Guarded only by an escort of two, Inquisitor Shadland embarked on a journey to cross the forlorn shores, leaving behind the imperial worlds of the No-Man's-Land and staring down to the abyss of the Thetys Rift. Vanishing almost in the pitch-black nothingness embracing all outside the bounds of the Imperium, the ship made its way from the last watchtower stations into the unknown.

He approached the Xenos force without fear, a shining example of human valor facing off against the decrepit, bloated force of the inhuman creatures. His approach already was the first trial of his mission, risking to be the first to fall at the Xenos hands. But their weapons remained silent, their vessels were withdrawn from the imperial frontier and their formations parting where the inquisitor's ship met their lines.
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*985.M41*

A sentry ship of Myriaden first took note of the encroaching night. The lone watcher on the brink of the imperium saw the dark shadow cast by the clouds of the weeping ship and therein the glimmer of false constellations. Vast and silent came the aura of the weeping vessel, sprouting vines embracing space in every direction.

On the fourth deck of the imperial vessel 'Divine Profundity', adjacent to the gray section of compartment C, there was a woman bedridden with a vicious sickness.
The ailment was rooted in the mark of her bones and drank blood with the thirst of a carouser. Consuming every ounce of strength, the sickness made her gaunt and thin, clear eyes deep-set in a pale face, her voice high and frail, with a sing-sang pitch of ebbing pain. The image of the sick was strangely fascinating, an aura of romantic, fleeting beauty as it could only be encapsulated in the melancholy of the dying.
For weeks and weeks she died, and yet after each night found herself once more living, wasting away, deprived of her strength, yet too strong to give in to the black void beyond. All her nature fought the release of death, binding her to a much crueler fate, and in her soul was soon reflected all the pain her continued life entailed.

To the choir of the weeping ship, a scent as sweet as roses grew, out from the mind of a suffering patient, into the fever-dreams bred by the minuscule legions claiming victory on this one forgotten front.
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*985.M41*

The red star swallowed by darkness was one of the countless forlorn worlds at the outermost edge of the No-Man's-Land, now finding themselves at the frontier of a coming conflict once again. But this time, they had ships of their own, ancient and venerable vessels, bound by oath to protect those vessels ever since the reconquest of the region at the war of the Thetys Surge. Some of these were ships beyond the reach of any local fleet, artifacts, and vessels with a troubled past, forged into something new. The Imperium let none go to waste.
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*986.M41*

For two thousand years, a lone watchmen force stood guard over the iron monolith. The old relic was silent, as it had been since the founding years of Sector Gondwana, a relic erected by the pioneers of old, who anticipated the need for a dire warning to its worlds. In ten-thousand years of its recorded history, it had only shone a half-dozen times, and each time it had been at the turn of centuries when new eras for the Imperium began.
Every generation of guardians stood in its shadow, half hoping to never see its blinding light, half yearning secretly to become part of one such legendary event.

None of those stationed at the Iron Monolith of Minasara saw the day of their chosen fate coming. When energy was building deep within the old machine, it took them hours to believe the readings.
By the fifth hour of the first day, it was undeniable. The relay of elder psychic force had tapped into a stream of the Immaterium.
In the archives of their chosen vessels, the elders of the watchmen drew the envelopes of their sacred duty and produced from the ancient scrolls the instructions to operate the arcane machine.

A single ship was sent to confront the elder light, chained inside its cargo-hold, the seventy-seven dormant psykers granted to the watchmen under the strict supervision of the Emperor's Holy Inquisition. Black ships lurked in the shadows, as the minds of the chosen ones were unshackled.

Here, now, on the lone watchmen's ship in front of the Iron Monolith, these chosen souls could see the holy light, could it at an intensity otherwise reserved to the witnesses of Sol. The relay, drawing energy through the false dimension of the Immaterium, granted them a direct glimpse of the Astronomican.
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*985.M41*

The cold stone of a mighty fortress shivered and came alive at the touch of the festering god, bestowing upon all things his breath of eternal life.
His host had come forth from the throbbing edge of a spatial wound, torn brutally by talons of ruinous power, to cut through the veil between worlds and unleash the gifts of the caring father two all those wayward children awaiting him.
As the green swirls of this distortion overtook the firmament, they replaced true stars with sickly lantern lights, drowning out the universe outside. And from the wound slipped limbs and pieces, reaching out from beyond the universe, grasping for an anchor to hold them in place.

The souls of humankind were such fickle things, withering from the very start of their life and surrounding themselves with trinkets and all technologies they could muster as if to guard their one state of existence to live forever in blissful stagnancy. The children of the lord of flies knew better, knew the blessed gifts awaiting those willing to give themselves to the father's warm embrace. Birth and rebirth, one life after another in an endless cycle of creation.