Spy-flies

Spy-flies are tiny vibrating crystalline machine devices that resemble insectile flies that are seen on many worlds and are constructs of the orange-furred simian Jokaero.^[1b]

Their design makes them capable of flight which gave them the capacity to nimbly buzz around their environments where they transmitted everything they observed to an eye-screen within a range of twenty kilometers. Being small in size, it is possible for hundreds of roving spy-flies to be deployed into the field where they can provide a wide range of images of their targets.^[1b] Unknown to the Imperium, spy-flies are able to project an holographic astral shape that is weaved through the light that reverses the observation capabilities of the machines. This led to some to believe that this was perhaps the true purpose of these machines in that they were to serve as a two-way communication device. To alter the spy-flies function, it required the use of special runes to inscribe on the eye-screen with arcane litanies being incanted to achieve this purpose.^[1e] The workings of these machines is not fully understood by outsiders though its believed that the eye-screen required the psychic input of their operators.^[1b] Their psychic sense of presence buzzed as they made contact with their spy-flies with the eye-sreen being lit with hundreds of crowded little images on a mosaic of miniature screens that showed the faceted eye of these constructs.^[1a]

The Callidus Temple of Assassins are known to had used spy-flies as surveillance devices on the homeworld of Rakel binth-Kazintzkis as it contained the material that was used to create the shapeshifting drug known as Polymorphine. Thus, the Temple's assassin scientists studied the metamorphosis by using a captured native and injecting them with a pure concentrated sample of the drug in order to force them to alter and sometimes released them into the world where they were watched by way of spy-flies in order to witness their doomed struggle to maintain their form.^[1f] The Ordo Malleus of the Inquisition managed to acquire some of these unique devices with one of them being used by Inquisitor Jaq Draco to monitor his retinue as well as Genestealer Cult activity on Stalinvast.^[1b] After encountering Zephro Carnelian, Draco dispatched a spy-fly to accompany his Callidus Assassin Meh'Lindi during the chase of the mysterious Harlequin Man until they went outside the range of the machine.^[1c] The eye-screen along with its accompanying spy-flies were later stolen by Carnelian who used the machines to spy on the Inquisitor's Retinue until all the ones in the immediate area were eliminated by Draco.^[1d] Carnelian would later use the spy-flies to create a holographic version of himself in the planetary Astropath chambers in order to communicate with Draco.^[1e]

Sources

• 1: Draco (Novel) - The Inquisition War (Omnibus)
  • 1a: ^{[Needs Citation]}, pg. 22
  • 1b: ^{[Needs Citation]}, pg. 23
  • 1c: ^{[Needs Citation]}, pg. 37
  • 1d: ^{[Needs Citation]}, pg. 43
  • 1e: ^{[Needs Citation]}, pg. 50
  • 1f: ^{[Needs Citation]}, pg. 235