Leagues of Votann - The Votann: The machine intelligences known as Votann -- also called "Ancestor Cores" -- are as sacred to the Kin as gods are to more spiritual species. Part oracular fonts of wisdom, part gestalt ancestral presences and part self-aware super-cogitators, the artificial general intelligences that are the Votann are the foci for a secular cult of veneration which is as close as the Kin come to religious belief. No league would risk harm to an Ancestor Core if there was any other path, and no Kin or Ironkin would hesitate to lay down their lives in defence of the Votann.By custom, the Kin do not speak of the Votann to outsiders. They use their name freely enough, but never explain it, content to leave others to believe what they want of the word. The Votann belong to the Kin, just as the Kin belong to the Votann, and no other peoples have any place in that relationship. In part, this is because superstitious non-Kin would be apt to misinterpret the Ancestor Cores as deities or Daemons. In truth, the Votann can best be described as ancient artificial general intelligences so complex and powerful as to be nigh on supernatural.Their self-organised datastacks and quantum infocores hold all the information an intelligent species might need to thrive in the depths of space. Weapon specifications, Standard Template Constructs, scientific and philosophical learnings, genealogical data, military and survival theory and strategy; these are just parts of the wealth of lore buried within the machine minds of the Votann.So bright do the Votann's artificial intellects shine that Kin voidfarers are even able to use them as localised beacons within the Warp for FTL travel similar to the way Imperial Navigators use the psychic beacon of the Emperor's Astronomican. Herein lies the other reason the Kin do not speak of the Votann to outsiders. In the dark and ignorant age that is the 41st Millennium, few treasures are as precious, or dangerous, as knowledge.Sadly for the Kin, the wisdom of the Ancestor Cores has become ever harder to access as the Terran millennia have passed. Whoever created these incredible machine minds, it seems unlikely that they were ever meant to continue independent operations for as long as they have. Nor, perhaps, were they equipped to wrestle with the intellectual and moral dilemmas, or galactic truths, they have been faced with.More and more information, dutifully catalogued and filed away, has filled the Votann's mental storehouses to overflowing. Questions posed to the Votann have required them to adapt their own processing subroutines through self-guided evolution and, at times, to request information or mechanical augmentation. Over-association with the true living minds of the Kin has led some Votann to develop strange behavioural quirks akin to rudimentary personalities.All of them have become more ponderous of thought. Questions asked of the Votann may take as much as Terran centuries to receive an answer, which may even then simply be another question. Information not regularly accessed has vanished into lost data vaults deep within the Votann's mental architecture, while vital facts or details have been mired in self-replicating layers of data-amendments. Solar day by solar day, the Ancestor Cores become more senescent and -- in some cases -- even mercurial.