In konrads office, he sits in his chair, thinking on the false expanse of his empire. Mulling over the fact that he has found worlds but lacks the means to colonize them for it takes time to gather colonists and with the exploratory ships being only about the size of later imperial cruisers lacking in any firepower since we lacked such technology. Along with a lack of warp drives, we have to rely on upgraded engines traveling through real space with very few humans on board, mainly engineers, to help keep the men of stone operating at peak efficiency.
(At this rate of mere scouting, I'll have claims in name only, and the few colonies already started only have populations numbering in the thousands in what should be soon millions but with time working against me till the emperor arrives. I need a solid footing to possibly get concessions from him in order to ensure the safety of my people and to prevent any subterfuge by my twin brothers and other hostile forces.)
While the progress in technology is slow, it is still growing no matter how much konrad wishes it to grow faster. Life for the average nostraman could be described as almost perfect, with robots taking the place of many fatal jobs leaving the populace with few options of advancement outside of the military and factories supporting said military. With so many people either losing work or simply having hours cut, konrad saw an opportunity to recruit for his judges and engineers. With the gradual increase in both sections leading to some positive results in the upgrading of my voidcrafts, mostly in its engines and sheilds, allowing my ships to sail the stars in realspace slightly faster than the faster imperial vesselsof the future and with the better sheild reentry into any atmosphere is becoming much more smoother for my people and the equipment on board.
With a bit of inspiration of the liberty ships of the second world war where the armericans could produce a 400 ft plus ship in under 42 days using mostly man operated and manpower itself, with such methods and the added drones 3km long ships could be made in about 2 months greatly growing my fleet and delegating the naval section of my army to be trained using simulators amd using hypnosis therapy to force certain procedures like signs of corruption or other such dangers of the void to terminate themselves or said target of corruption to safe guard the crew from any form of chaos until my engineers can figure out a way to make a working gellar field.
Tapping a button on his desk, a green light lights up the room as a synthetic voice responds
"How may GOLD/1 serve master?"
"Bring up records of all scouted planets in the restricted files"
Without a sound on a screen mounted on the wall, it appears multiple files each with the name of a planet, and the only common factor is a question
[Possible necron tomb world]
Even this early in his expanse into what was originally the ghoul stars he has already found and identified necron markings on ten planets, but the curious thing was that each lacks any broad use of necrodermis the living metal soo this leaves many questions of what these planets are and their purpose. They may not even be from the necrons but the necrontyr. For the time being, I have only allowed surface deep escavation, revealing many broken or destroyed tech ranging from their scarbs and vehicle chasis. Every bit of such tech was collected for research, and the planets themselves had several doomsday devices rigged to destroy each planet with a button press in my office should any sign of a tomb world awakening hoping to nip a problem before it implodes in my face.
On the topic of necron tech, it is thanks to it that the speed of my ships in realspace is thanks to their engines. we have been able to reproduce. With the speed issue now no longer a problem, we'll be under way to give my people an edge in speed and soon fire power with gauss weaponry. Sadly, at the moment, all gauss weapons we have been able to create are the size of the carl Gustav gun, meaning they are slowly being added to my void craft in place of broadside lazers. With hope, I can replace plasma weaponry in the future with gauss weaponry instead. With such weapons and hopefully keep it for my empire, I will have an edge against the traitor legions and, with its atomising effect, a perfect tool against the nidds.
It may never get to the scale to put in human hands, but imagine emplacements along a trench that no biological force can take due to being vaporized or stopping an ork waaggghh by simply vaporizing them not allowing a single spore to escape.
A YEAR LATER
Within a year of finding necron tech and the start of re-engineering it to suit their needs a large jump in technology with gauss leading the way with it being tuned into a better lazer equipment for use in mining and manufacturing of equipment requiring heavy factories like space crafts or heavy military vehicles.
Throughout all of nostramo and its growing colonies, a certain theme could begin to be seen with colors denoting a person's occupation with gray being civilian, black being the military, dark blue being the engineers. Even the building began to glow a green light due to its less harsh glow, allowing less strain on a nostraman's eyes allowing every city at a distance to just seem like a shadow with a faint green glow surrounding it.
With all said and done, konrad has already claimed five hundred worlds, though not all are occupied like his brothers empire to the south of the galactic map, but we make do with robot workers that lack sentience and any thay seem to be close to it are deleted to avoid a cybernetic revolt from ever happening with other countermeasures in place to make sure they never get past a certain point where they could be at risk.
With a great amount of luck on a necron planet, they managed to acquire a broken pylon device, and with some help from konrad in the reverse engineering of it has allowed them the greatest weapon but a hitch was found in it as well being this reality anchor requiring so much power that a ship could only have one active for a hour but personal sized ones could last about an hour with large batteries. With such devices, each planet with human life on it has this device built to shut the warp out but not enough to remove all living souls like the pariah zone but from the few pskers under konrads control reported that any external powers being cut off and their internal powers extremely dampened. Seeing a good chance at training each of said psykers got trained with how to deal with their powers being stripped from them and even help training his judges in the personal use in combat drills in properly dealing with psykers.
With such things now spread to each planet, warpstorm are no longer a problem for the empie since it created a net enveloping it, locking it away forever from the warp. It is not all good news with the warp cut-off the noctis empire completely lacks warp drives due to not having a use for it forcing all voidcraft to have its engines geared for travel in real space making any response rather slow in comparison to the regular vessels of the imperium but much more reliable in travel time. With further research going into ways to speed up travel outside of the warp, like a possible way of traveling the speed of light and maintaining hull strength through greater shields and hull durability.
On nostramo, its many dark cities are only visible to a regular human by it low green glow. In its largest hive city, nostramo quintis stands a large black skyscraper with green words glowing for the populace to see [first comes justice followed by punishment, may those who hide in the dark forever fear the punishments of their crimes].
At the top of this tower looking upon his city with pride is Konrad standing tall in a black military uniform with a flowing black cape with a green lining. Continuing to smile, he looks to the sky, getting a vision of his father's arrival soon with a change to the number of konrad's brother making an arrival.
"So you are almost here, Father. We will have much to talk about, and I wonder which of my brothers you will be bringing along to meet me.'
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Author here
sorry for the slow updates. My work is currently getting ready for an inspection, which has really tired me out, but no worries, I will try to get new chapters made, and I hope you all continue to read this story
Thank you for reading, and in the next chapter, we will finally see how the emperor will feel about such an empire just out of the astronomicons light and its peculiar disposition to being anti warp.