Conduit
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This page contains spoilers for: | The Outcast Dead (Novel) |
The Conduit is the name given to a chamber located within the heart of the web of towers in the City of Sight on Terra.[1]
It serves as the nexus for all intergalactic communication in the Imperium of Man. Originally, this high roofed chamber had been constructed by blind Servitors from the limestone of the mountains and is populated by black-clad infocytes that are plugged into brass keyeboards that are arranged in hundreds of serried ranks. The typical process involved a message being received and interpreted whereupon it is sifted through by the Cryptaesthesians. Once this process is complete, it is passed to the Conduit who in turn provide it to the intended recepient that is done through more conventional means. In the shadow ceilings included looping pneumo-tubes that sped information cylinders to and from the works of the infocytes.[1]
Within the terminals resided the many infocytes with each of these operatives being hard-wired into their station though are not considered lobe-cauterised servitors. This is because they are still capable of independent thought though such behaviour is frowned upon. Noospheric halo tags appeared over operators that indicated the nature of the message that needed to be relayed. Gray robed overseers with featureless silver masks drifted on floating grav-plates through the ranks of nameless scribes. The messages received ranged from being interplanetary communications to ship logs or scheduled checks. Members of the Adeptus Administratum that visited the Conduit found it to be a soulless depressing environment with few of their kind returning to it though saw it as a harsh necessity.[1]
During the Horus Heresy, much of the information arriving at the Conduit concerned the traitorous actions of Warmaster Horus Lupercal. In this time, many messages contained high-level encryption that was being sent from Terra to the expeditionary fleets in order to determine who was loyal to the Emperor.[1]
Sources
- 1: The Outcast Dead (Novel) by Graham McNeill, Chapter Five
