Almagest
The Almagest was a Magellenic Class Explorator vessel of the Adeptus Mechanicus constructed on the Forge World Gryphonne IV.[1b] The Almagest was active during the early centuries of M41. The ship would eventually be subsumed by the Space Hulk known as Misery's Daughter.[1a]
In the Era Indomitus, explorator Talin Sherax would seek out the Space Hulk containing the Almagest. She had hoped to extract what salvageable data she could find of Magos Lucanus' records and research from the ship's systems. Magos Lucanus an Archivist and theorist once serving as Chief Datamancer of the Almagest, had records left in Gryphonne IV's archives uncovered by Sherax after her homeworld's fall. Lucanus' records and theories regarding a mythic Genesis device that could seed life to barren worlds. This device is what lead the explorator to pursue what remains of the Almagex in the vain hope of restoring her lost homeworld.[1a]
Plot
The Almagest was undamaged, only bearing cosmetic damage of a variety of bullet holes and black scorch marks marring the hull for hundreds of yards around its weapons batteries. The ship had no signs of crippling injury that other vessels within the space hulk had. The airlocks of the ship had remained active and pressurized.[1b] The ship suffered minimal internal damage before its interment within the space hulk.[1c] The power grid remained active, if stuttering. The ship's gravity plating also remained active, if fluctuating in intensity in varying areas due to the stuttering power grid.[1d] The air recycling and ventillation system also remained functional to a similar degree.[1e]
Once Explorator Talin Sherax, Protector Phocon Xal, Datamancer Thess Rahn-Bo, and Dataseer Erasmus Luren entered the Almagest the ship's vox alarm systems would blare bihnaric code warning of intruders. Soon after, as if summoned by the alarms, the Tech Priests and their protector would defend themselves against attacking Praetorian Servitors. The servitors were falling about but showed crude, but effective signs of maintenance and repair.[1d] They would subsequently encounter a pack of at least 15 mutants, these devolved human descendants of the Almagest's former crew appears from the shadows and dark corners, and may have also been attracted by the ship's bihnaric vox alarms.[1e]
The mutants were short thin-limbed abhumans with hunched postures and nearly translucent flesh. Most looked no older than 13 Martian years, most were considerably younger, and moved with an odd, loping gait. Their rank seemed to be denoted by amount of cladding and physical fitness. Some of the emaciated creatures were completely naked or clad in molded fabric and bits of scrap metal. The mutants were nearly all armed with some kind of scrap of metal instrument in the form of blunt clubs, spears, or knives. Two among them had older models of las carbines. None of the explorator's cohort took any initiative to attack the primitive creatures, as they posed no threat to their group.[1e]
Most peculiar, or insulting, was that the creatures appeared to dress themselves in crude parody of the followers of the Cult Mechanicus with metal plates riveted to their flesh or held in place with coils of wire and thin lines of silver soldered to their skin in a parody of corpuscarii electoos. Each creature went further in their mimicry and wore a scar or brand somewhere on their bodies of an icon with a vague resemblance to a skull within a wheel carved into their flesh. They had blackened these markings by rubbing promethium residue into the wounds. The most healthy of the emaciated creatures - one of the two wielding las carbines - had a Cog Mechanicus welded into its chest, mirroring the placement and iconography of a Skitarii's chestplate. The unhealthy swelling and thick pus leaking from the flesh beneath the metal's crimped and corroded edges suggested the adornment was added recently.[1e]
The mutants regarded the tech-priests with a curious awe and reverence, both parties recognizing eachother as servants of the Omnissiah and the mutants would make the sign of the cog with their hands, bow to the tech priests, and chant prayers to them. The mutants' prayers were verbalized in a crude approximation of bihnaric, slowed to a pace that the human mouth and vocal cords could produce, imitating the bihnaric vox notifications and alarms of the ship. The creatures seemed to understand the meanings of the ship's bihnaric vox announcements, to a degree, and would react in accordance to the ship's vox-emitters. The mutants primary form of attempted communication amongst themselves and the tech priests appeared to be simple grunts, hoops, hollers, and capers.[1e]
Once the nearest vox-emitter interrupted the interaction of the two groups inspecting one another with a bihnaric burst stating "Fall in for crew inspection." The mutants would immediately depart and beckon the tech priests to follow them deeper into the Almagest.[1e] As the group followed, Luren and Rahnn-Bo would debate the Laws of the Cult Mechanicus and whether these mutants were true followers of the Omnissiah or simple abominations aping their religion's practices. Sherax knew there was no logical benefit to humoring the creatures in following them and that protocol required the destruction of the beasts, but she nonetheless rationalised her behaviour as pursuing an anthropological curiosity, in full accordance with her explorator’s mandate.[1f]
While following the creatures they passed what was evidently a crude shrine to the Omnissiah with various offering placed around it. As the party moved deeper into the Almagest, more mutants like the ones guiding them would appear, apparently the abhumans infested the ship. With barks and chanting, the initial mutants they encountered heralded the tech priests' arrival with their crude expressions of reverence and religiosity.[1f]
Their guides would lead their Machine God's holy representatives through the Almagest's secondary agriponics chamber where the mutants farmed nutrient-rich fungus grown in their own waste. A wide variety of fungus crops were being grown. Hundreds of mutants were at work across the chamber, squelching to and fro along well-worn lanes, spreading muck or harvesting ripened fungi by hand. Many of the larger, more vital abhumans watched them carefully, wielding lengths of metal or braids of cabling as goads to keep their more wretched kin at their labours.[1f]
The Tech Priests readily recognised these crops as orkoid fungus. The orkoid ecosystem that pervaded the Misery's Daughter had taken root within the Almagest, and had permitted the survival of the ship's crew beyond any reasonable expectation. What truly disgusted the tech priests, though, was that it had been cultivated, brought aboard by the degenerate descendants of the Almagest’s crew in imitation of the orks’ own life cycle. The abhumans had become a fusion of xenos and human physiology. By their initial estimation, this undoubtedly accounted for the creature's extreme devolution.[1f] However once discovering the Genesis device in Magos Lucanus' possesion, it became unclear whether the abhumans’ devolution was the result of genetic decay, the malignant influence of their orkoid diet, or the result of exposure to the Genesis device.[1i]
The mutants would lead continue to the tech priests to the ship's prow[1g] where Magos Nekane Lucanus dwelled after being trapped with the Genesis device for two centuries.[1l] The command deck was a paradise of verdant growth that touched every bolt and rivet of the deck. Steel-fringed moss and silvery coils of ivy covered consoles and cogitators. Grass carpeted the floor plating, ranging in hue from arterial red to copper and bronze. Other arboreous growth – slim saplings and curving vines and thick-leaved fronds – erupted from voids in the walls and hung from the high ceiling. The air of the command deck was oxygen-rich, free of toxic taint and the stale markers of overtaxed purifiers. Against all the laws of nature, cold metal and stone had been transmuted into the fundamental building blocks of life.[1h]
Talin and her companions would meet was once Magos Lucanus. Beneath a central ferrus tree, inmeshed with its roots, did the magos lay. The mutants seemed to revere him as a god who gave orders to his followers through the ship's bihnaric vox-emitters. Eventually Talin and her companions would be forced to kill Lucanus and steal away with the blood-red crystal fragment, referred to as the Genesis device. Information on where the artefact was found was also accessed during this incident through one of the consoles on the command deck.[1i]
The party would depart with the artefact ignoring the protocol to not bring technology of unknown origin aboard the ship, as well as not purging the derelict vessel of mutants.[1j] The mutant population of at least several hundred would remain.[1k]
Known Crew
- Lord Explorator Traskel[1h]
- Magos Nekane Lucanus - Master datamancer[1a] and Archivist Primus to the Lord Explorator[1h]
Sources
- 1: Dominion Genesis (Novel):
- 1a: Misery's Daughter, Chapter Four
- 1b: Misery's Daughter, Chapter Five
- 1c: The Almagest, Chapter One
- 1d: The Almagest, Chapter Two
- 1e: The Almagest, Chapter Four
- 1f: The Almagest, Chapter Five
- 1g: The Almagest, Chapter Six
- 1h: The Almagest, Chapter Seven
- 1i: The Almagest, Chapter Seven
- 1j: The Almagest, Chapter Eight
- 1k: Interlude (1)
- 1l: Ikaneos, Chapter One
