Trazyn - 13th Black Crusade: As Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade moved to its climax during the forces of Chaos' final assault upon the Fortress World of Cadia in 999.M41, Trazyn the Infinite played the unlikely role of hero, becoming an uneasy and self-interested ally of the Imperium of Man's defenders. Dedicated above all to his obsessive collecting, a victory by Chaos, condemning the galaxy to potential destruction at the hands of the Ruinous Powers, would severely damage Trazyn's ability to find new specimens. To this end, he decided to intervene on the side of the Imperium to try and thwart Chaos' final victory.It began on the Necron Overlord's home Tomb World of Solemnace. The first alarm came from the Bell of Saint Gerstahl. For thousands upon thousands of standard years, it had sat in silence upon its pedestal, content to while away eternity in the vast collection of artefacts possessed by Trazyn. Then, on a day seemingly little different to any other in the unchanging hallways of Solemnace, the bell began chiming with ever greater force -- in full and inexplicable defiance of the stasis vault housing it.The first doleful note it chimed split the vaulted ceiling of the bell's stasis chamber, unleashing a flood of coolant that instantly dissolved the last examples of Ooliac sand-sculpture in existence. The second note triggered a logic cascade within the circuits of Solemnace's master program, causing it to wrongly command each and every one of the Tomb World's Necron Warrior legions to return to stasis-sleep.By the time the Bell of Saint Gerstahl sounded its third chime, the reverberations had grown sufficiently destructive that even the composite alloys of Necron "flesh" could not withstand its onslaught. Trazyn lost five surrogate bodies in his increasingly desperate attempts to bring about silence. After the thirteenth chime -- and just as the collateral damage finally outpaced Solemnace's Canoptek custodians' ability to contain it -- the Bell of Saint Gerstahl finally fell silent.Pausing only to cast the contraption into the depths of the Webway -- where he profoundly hoped it would bedevil the Aeldari as much as it had lately inconvenienced him -- the lord of Solemnace pondered the meaning of it all.Departing Solemnace, Trazyn made for Thanatos, Crownworld of the Necron Oruscar Dynasty and home to the wonders of the Celestial Orrery. His welcome in those halls was less than effusive -- in part due to a misunderstanding over the Oruscar Glyph of Dominance, which had gone missing during a prior visit. However, after bargains were struck and promises made, Trazyn was finally permitted access to the Orrery itself -- if under the watchful gaze of Oruscar Lychguards.As he stepped into the whirling sphere of living metal and holographic light, Trazyn realised something was amiss. The intricate webs that formed the links of the Orrery were under-lit by a crimson stain. It pulsed beneath the weave of worlds like an infection, forcing its way to the surface. Something was coming. Something that would change the shape of the galaxy. Thus far, it had gone unnoticed, but there was no hiding anything from the Celestial Orrery, for it was not merely a representation of the galaxy, but a perfect reflection of it.Trazyn realised the Oruscar had known about the rising corruption for Terran centuries -- perhaps even millennia -- but had made no move to combat it. They could not, for inaction was the price of custodianship. But Trazyn had no such restraint -- indeed, he acknowledged no master save his own amusement. He could act, if he chose. After untold millennia, there was some appeal in playing at selflessness...But where to begin? Where was the cause of the corruption?Trazyn lost track of time studying the Orrery's pathways, searching for the wellspring of the galaxy's woes -- the source of the blight worming its way through the galaxy's heart. At last he found it, far to the galactic northwest, bordering the Eye of Terror. In the Orrery, that world was catalogued as a string of trinary data, whose details Trazyn deliberately forgot. To the Imperium of Man, it was known as Cadia. Trazyn could not recall setting foot there, not in all his travels. To his understanding, it was a drab, grey world, of interest only to the bellicose. On the other hand, if the role of saviour grew tiring, Cadia would surely offer opportunities to expand his collection.The door shuddered, then hissed open. Water crystals formed on the pock-marked metal of Trazyn's body. He didn't even need to examine the status panel to know that Phalanxes ZX/48 through ZX/128 wouldn't marshal for battle any time soon. They were frozen solid. Just like all the others."Why did I ever bring that wretched bell here?" Trazyn muttered, even though he knew precisely why he'd done so.The Shrine World's guardians had been just as desperate to keep the Bell of Saint Gerstahl as the Black Legion had been to destroy it. Thousands of lives, cast into oblivion in pursuit of one singular artefact. And all for nothing, as events had transpired. That story alone made it worth preservation -- or so Trazyn had originally thought. Now, with half his stasis vaults collapsed or ankle-deep in coolant, and his legions frozen at the command of Solemnace's damaged master program...Trazyn keyed the release. The door jerked closed. He could hardly make the journey undefended. Cadia was a near-permanent war zone, and he'd not survived the endless aeons since biotransference by taking unnecessary risks.Perhaps one of his peers would lend him a phalanx or two. Imotekh of the Sautekh Dynasty, perhaps? No...Not after Somonor. In fact, now Trazyn came to consider it, he didn't have any peers left who wouldn't turn him down outright, or else use the opportunity to assassinate him.Then perhaps one of his contacts within the Imperium itself? No. They were too parochial. There had been that one Inquisitor... A shame what had happened to her, but humans took such great delight in killing one another. No, sadly Helynna Valeria would be of no assistance, but maybe she held the key -- or at least invited a certain sardonic justice. His spirits restored, Trazyn headed deeper in the catacombs, searching for one particular vault...Trazyn eventually made his way to Cadia, accompanied by several key items holding portions of his Imperial collection. He made contact with Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl, who had set himself the task of determining how to make use of the Cadian Pylons to close off the Eye of Terror from realspace and save Cadia from the forces of Chaos.The archmagos at first mistook the Necron Overlord for another xenos who had aided him in the past and set him on the path to Cadia, the Harlequin Shadowseer Sylandri Veilwalker.Cawl turned, servo-crawlers scuttling beneath him. The intruder was not the Aeldari Shadowseer. Green eyes blazed from beneath a hood of metallic scale. The power core of a burnished staff glinted."I mean you no harm." The figure cocked his head to one side. "Are those the correct words? I find that no matter which I use, no one ever believes them." He paused. "Wait...What did you call me?"Secondary circuits meshed, retrieving ancient data. A Necron. A soulless embodiment of the Motive Force. A blasphemy against the Omnissiah. Cawl's Arc Scourge slithered to life, energy crackling across its coils. "You are an abomination."The Necron set his staff aside. "'Thief' normally suffices. I prefer 'honoured guest.' But abomination or thief, you and I have common cause."Cawl willed the Arc Scourge's tendrils to war mode, already anticipating the joy of dissection. "Logic dictates otherwise.""Then you don't seek to understand the nature of this matrix?"The Arc Scourge grew still at Cawl's wordless command. This was unexpected. Or was it the abomination's trick to preserve its mockery of existence? "You comprehend its secrets?""I was there when they were first erected. Or perhaps I wasn't. You of all people should understand that memory is a fickle thing."Cawl allowed an angry hiss to rattle through his rebreather. "We share no commonality.""Perhaps. I went to the fires of biotransference in chains. You, I think, have gladly sliced away your humanity piece by piece." The Necron stepped closer, eyes blazing. "But neither of us desires to see this galaxy ripped asunder by the Empyreal Ones. Destroy me if you wish. I will simply awaken elsewhere. Nothing will change. For me, for you ... for this world."Cawl remained silent, probabilities warping and reforming with fresh data. First an Eldar had set him on this path, now a Necron offered to guide his steps. But if the knowledge preserved the Omnissiah's Imperium ... "Show me."Sardonic laughter, dry as dust, echoed around the cavern. "I thought you'd never ask."With Trazyn's aid, Belisarius Cawl began to master the intricacies of the Necron-built pylon network beneath Cadia's Elysion Fields, the largest field of the pylons on the Fortress World. Unfortunately, a massive Chaos assault led by the Black Legion began on the caverns beneath the Elysion Fields where the Archmagos worked. To provide Cawl with more time to complete his work, Trazyn released "reinforcements" from his Tesseract Labyrinths, all potent defenders of the Imperium of Man in days past.At Trazyn's direction, Cawl focussed his attentions on the pylon that served as the command node for the Elysion Fields. With each moment, the tendrils of his machine consciousness wended deeper into the pylon's pathways, his understanding of its arcane constructions magnifying with each binharic calculation. At last, he comprehended the full scope and purpose of the pylon fields, the elegance of a design millennia beyond the advances of the Adeptus Mechanicus.Trazyn the Infinite watched from the shadows, careful not to provoke the Kataphron Breachers tasked with his obliteration should he attempt betrayal. He still didn't know himself if he intended one. The possibilities offered by the immediate future were too tempting, yet too finely balanced. Had he come as thief or a saviour? Did he any longer know how to make the choice? Uncertain, the Necron watched the Archmagos at his work.The western wall of the vast cavern collapsed with an ear-splitting roar. Black-armoured Traitors crashed into the line of waiting Electro-priests, a line that collapsed within moments of the first blow. Abaddon the Despoiler himself hacked and tore at their head, the Daemon Sword Drach'nyen cleaving alloy and bone without effort.Cawl saw none of it, his tri-level consciousness locked in the joys of discovery. Trazyn watched the Breachers' Torsion Cannons rip into the Traitors' ranks, and knew at once the Kataphrons could not prevail. Thief or saviour? The decision had been made for him. At least for the moment.Reaching beneath his scaled cloak, the Necron withdrew a gleaming fractal Tesseract Labyrinth and hurled it into the fray. It bounced twice, the shifting energy fields decomposing into glowing gossamer strands, then its captive dimensions unfolded in a burst of dazzling light, disgorging a new army into the war-torn cavern.This was not a Necron legion, nor even a body of troops drawn from a single world. The Tesseract's contents comprised the merest fragment of Trazyn's Imperial collection, drawn from archives filled to bursting, or storage vaults given over to duplicate exhibits. Some had languished in Solemnace's stasis vaults for Terran millennia, the fleeting centuries passing unnoticed. Others had joined the collection in but recent times, their captivity measured in solar months or years.For Lieutenant-Commander Cerantes of the Ultramarines Legion, barely an eyeblink had passed since the dark days of the Horus Heresy. For his Contemptor Pattern Dreadnoughts and mortal brothers alike, no guidance was needed save the presence of the blasphemous icons of Chaos, and the Imperium's double-headed Aquila. The Dreadnought Talon at their head, the time-lost Ultramarines prosecuted their eternal battle anew.Others were not so swift to react. The Vostroyan Firstborn's XXI Regiment, taken by the Necron Overlord during one of the innumerable Greenskin offensives along the Segmentum Obscurus, found themselves beset with stasis sickness, their heads swimming as perceptions snapped back into step with reality. But the roar of battle cures many ills of the mind, and the desire for survival transcends all existential doubt. Orders rang out, and the shaken Vostroyans entered the fray, joined by snipers from long-dead Tanith, Salamanders Astartes thought lost during the Klovian disaster, and a lone warrior in golden armour, his scarlet plume and eagle heraldry of the Adeptus Custodes seldom seen so far from the cradle of Mankind on Terra.With the arrival of the impossible reinforcements, the Black Legion assault stalled. His self-appointed duty done, Trazyn returned to the shadows. The role of saviour might perhaps have suited him in that hour, but self-sacrifice was a task he gladly left to organics.Yet there was one amongst the Tesseract-loosed group who did not join the battle, but surveyed it coldly from the fringes. Katarinya Greyfax, Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, was not known for leaping to rash conclusions, for she counted rashness as but one of the many paths to heresy. Her bodyguard, drawn from the 55th Kappic Eagles, had learned this harsh lesson over many standard years of indentured service. Though Lasguns were levelled and safeties disengaged, not a single Scion fired without the Inquisitor's order.The Puritan Inquisitor Greyfax would prove to be the most potent of the Imperial agents that Trazyn released back into the galaxy that day. Though even she had not survived her time in captivity wholly unaltered, as the Necron Overlord soon made abundantly clear when he reappeared to the Inquisitor during a lull in the battle beneath the pylon fields.Greyfax aimed the muzzle of her Condemnor Bolter squarely between them. "Abomination.""That word again." A metal hand gestured lazily across the cavern. "Stop me if this sounds familiar, but I suspect your priorities require re-evaluation.""You sow corruption wherever you tread. Your reckoning is overdue." She pulled the trigger. Or she tried to. Her finger didn't respond.Trazyn opened his palm, a ﬂood of microscopic machines ﬂowing over his fingers. "I'm not a fool. The Mindshackle will not let you harm me."Bile ﬂooded Greyfax's mouth. Anger seared it away. "You've corrupted me! As you did Valeria!""A precaution only. As for Valeria ... She had a remarkable brain. You robbed me of the opportunity for study."Again Greyfax tried to pull the trigger. Again nothing happened. Useless."I brought you here out of common cause," said Trazyn. "I am not yet done with this world, and nor is your Imperium. If you seek to save it, I suggest you focus that formidable certainty of yours elsewhere. Our reckoning will wait."And so it did. Cawl managed to get the Cadian Pylon network functioning briefly, and it even cut the Forces of Chaos' connection to the Immaterium by causing the Eye of Terror to begin to shrink, badly weakening the hold of its daemonic forces upon the Materium. Even the Despoiler was forced to retreat off-planet, angered that its defenders had once more managed to prevent him from claiming the prize directly in bloody-handed battle. But Abaddon would not be denied his prize this time. He used the damaged remains of the Blackstone Fortress Will of Eternity, incapacitated by an assault from the Imperial Fists mobile fortress-monastery Phalanx as an artificial meteorite, which slammed into the surface of Cadia, toppling the pylons and killing most of its remaining defenders. Not only were the Chaos' forces links to the Warp restored, but the Eye of Terror began to grow beyond its former bounds, engulfing the Cadian Gate and the dying Fortress World itself. The instability in the Warp would extend outwards from the Eye of Terror, eventually cutting the galaxy -- and the Imperium of Man itself -- in half, creating the Great Rift.For Trazyn, the cause was lost, and having done what he could, he decided to claim one more prize addition to his collection. He watched the end of the battle for the caverns beneath the Elysion Fields from a rocky perch, aware that history unfolded before him. His taste for the glory of the hero had faded, replaced by the urge to claim a trinket from the momentous hour. Perhaps a thief was all he was meant to be in the end. Metal fingers toyed with another Tesseract Labyrinth, its unfathomable dimensions fit to carry a single trophy from embattled Cadia. But what should that trophy be? So many prizes worthy of preservation clamoured for attention. A stray Volkite Culverin blast shuddered Trazyn's stalagmite, and he retired to safer ground. The Tesseract would wait. Whatever his prize, its historic value would only increase as the course of victory tipped one way or the other.And Trazyn waited til the very end, as the Imperial defenders fled the caverns beneath the Elysion Fields in the wake of Abaddon's catastrophic meteorite strike. As Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed, Cadia's greatest defender and the man who had almost single-handedly kept the Fortress World alive, organised the evacuation of the surviving Imperial forces from the dying world of Cadia, determined to die with dignity even as he tried to save what he could, the Necron Overlord struck.With a shudder, the line of Cadian defenders shrank towards the evacuation fields. The winds rose, stirring the dust-storm to new heights. Suddenly Creed was alone. A ﬂame-chased shadow passed overhead, the cog-toothed skull of the Adeptus Mechanicus emblazoned on its ﬂanks. Las-fire lanced from its prow, provoking daemonic screams from deeper within the dust-storm. Then engines roared, and the transport thundered skywards. The last transport. Cadia was now little more than a graveyard, haunted by the stubborn and the dead.Creed stumbled. Despite the medics' valiant labours, his wounds still bled. He felt his strength ebbing as his lifeblood seeped into the greatcoat's fabric. One last effort. Then he'd rest. One last effort.The storm parted -- not before a daemon, but a metal giant in a scaled cloak. The wind snatched away Creed's hurried shot. Light glittered upon the figure's upraised palm, iridescent polygons billowing in a hypnotic dance."Ursarkar E. Creed." The giant's words slammed down like tombstones. "This need not be your end. Eternity awaits."The giant's laughter followed Creed into darkness.And then Trazyn let the darkness claim him, teleporting back to Solemnace, thief and would-be saviour both.