Chapter Thirteen: Children of Mars
Location: Lions Gate Spaceport Primus (Under Construction)
The Last Month came to an end with a festival. A Parade of Triumph to mark the next stage of the Imperium, The Emperor flanked by a thousand Custodes marched out of the Inner Palace with Twenty Thousand Astartes and there Primarchs in full battle regalia behind them. Despite being children the Primarchs matched a large Terran Male in size and walked alongside there Gene-Sons in this great procession.
Millions of Mortals watched this Parade from the sides of the grand parade avenue that stretched from the Inner Palace to the Lions Gate. The constant cheering formed a roar of such magnitude some unfinished parts of the Palace great macro-structure started to vibrate from the noise. The onlookers ranged from Old Terran Nobles on Grav-perches flitting about to swarms of menial workers from the palace's construction. Each and every one of them screamed their throats raw at the sight of unity incarnates arrival.
The Conqueror of Terra marched in front of his Legions, he radiated power, nobility, and wisdom. All who witnessed him felt his raw might, yet none knew fear for this power that could end worlds and battle gods was their protector, the countless millions who watched knew the Master of Mankind had come and with him a new age, an age of heroes and hope.
Thunderbolt Flags and sigils of Terran Unity flew proudly and behind him, Twenty Banners marked each with a single Ancient Numeral flew next to his Sons. As he marched the Emperor thought to himself how soon enough both of those flags would be changed, as they walked the shining path. The Twin Headed Aquila would be born and each simple Numeral would be replaced with a Legion Badge, both would go down in human history as sigils of unity and salvation.
Chiding himself the Master of Mankind knew that was still a long way off and many trials still yet awaited him before even that step could be taken. First and foremost was Mars. The Red Planet had long been the technological center of humanity. Even after the insanity of the Iron War and the brutal Data-weapons first developed and deployed on Mars the second home of humanity endured and existed as a center of both knowledge and machines.
Multiple Martian expeditions had come to Terra in order to scavenge resources and relics throughout the Unification Wars and had not taken kindly to the Emperor informing them there looting was no longer tolerated. The survivors now served excellently, and the salvage claimed from the fallen salvagers had provided excellent materials for the Astartes Arsenal. He may have gained knowledge of countless technological development from the message but not the ability to create materials or components out of thin air.
Even with there superhuman size, the Legions took multiple Hours to reach the Lions Gate from the Inner Palace. As they Parade came to its triumphant conclusion at the Lions Gate Starport. Here the Emperor's Chariot of the Stars was docked: The Bucephalus. It was a colossal vessel, measuring twenty kilometers in length. Every square inch of the mighty flagship was a mastercrafted work of art.
Five years ago the Ancient Vessel had been unearthed from its secret vault of Yum-hanger and its repairs had begun. Little over five thousand years ago in the guise of an eccentric businessman the Emperor had commissioned the vessel from the forges of Mars during the height of the Age of Technology. It had cost enough credits to buy a few star systems but it had been more than worth it. The master crafted vessel lacked any onboard AI's and contained some of the finest technology that coin, influence and psychic powers could buy.
Without an onboard AI, the vessel had been a very expensive and well-maintained Space-Hulk. Aside from its basic life support systems none of the vessels functions worked. At the time of its creation, it had been a source of much speculation among the Engineers and Silica-forms of Mars. The Emperor had commissioned the vessel as one of the countless contingencies against a possible AI uprising he had seen visions of. It had survived unharmed throughout the Old Night and its hanger acted as the base of operations for the Emperor early in the Unification Wars and now after years of modification and repairs by Terrawatt Clan members and captured Martians it was ready to sail the stars.
At the Parades end the Emperor stood in front of the colossal vessels gantry and watched the Twenty Primarchs approach. They knelt as one before there father and he spoke to them softly "The universe has many horrors yet to throw at us my Sons. This is just the next step upon the shining path. You are all so young, yet so incredible already. Each of you will become legends to rival mine as we unify the Children of Terra. Be faithful! Be strong! Be vigilant my children! I will return to you and when I do the Galaxy awaits!"
As each of them absorbed his message an individualized psychic pulse touched each of the Primarchs minds, final farewells and well wishes from there Father. At that, the Primarchs stood, were embraced by there father and left to rejoin there Legions. The Emperor watched them go with a mix of pride and somber joy. It might be a few weeks or a few years (his visions and estimates varied) till he saw them in person again. Till then both Father and Sons had duties to undertake.
After a short speech to the assembled millions, the Emperor boarded The Bucephalus. The vessel was fully crewed by handpicked Terrawatt Void-Magi, countless Palatial Menials and a quarter of the Custodes. With the Hetaeron Guard at his back, the Master of Mankind journeyed to the Bridge of the great vessel. Thanks to great internal mag-lifts the journey that would have taken hours was minutes in length.
The Bridge was a colossal thing filled with thousands of officers, crew, and adepts. Yet this number seemed a skeleton crew compared to what a vessel such as this should need. For once launched the Bucephalus's true power would be revealed. As one the bridge crew bowed before the Emperor as he entered. He walked to the command throne of the vessel and spoke to the lead Void-Magi, a genius of ancient stalk by the name of Antoanar Pirard. "Is it ready Antoanar?" the Emperor asked.
Twitching with excitement the Magi bowed ever lower and spoke "Yes my liege, the device has been installed exactly to your specifications, and all functions are operating as expected. The Bucephalus is void worthy and ready for your command!" At that the Emperor signalled the crew to be at ease and he prepared to take his seat upon the command throne of his new flagship. As he did thousands of eyes watched him take his place upon the seat of power and felt an unwanted ghoulish recollection/vision of a future not to be.
*an ancient friend crumbles to dust at the softest touch as the last kernel of energy arcs through our bond.*
*placed upon the throne/tomb by the somber Praetorian*
* Final words gave life through the Hero spoken to the Praetorian and Warhawk.*
*The Galaxy burns and We are a corpse-king on a throne of lost knowledge holding back the dark*
The Emperor dismissed the future-memories and reached out with his psychic power. The throne hummed softly as the experimental Psi-conduits glowed with his power. He channeled his power through them and into the thing dwelling inside the vessels core. With a gentle psychic pulse, the heart of the Imperiums Flagship awoke.
During the Age of Strife, the Emperor had sought countless solutions to the malities that afflicted humanity and the galaxy. The Imperium was not the first but the only one that might be able to stem the coming horrors. Some of these plans had produced tools that would, however, assist the Emperor Ambition. One of these tools had been installed into the Bucephalus and now stirred. The Cognatu-Ferrum had awoken.
Psychic energy poured into the machine and its great crystalline circuits started to light up as if it were being awoken from some endless dream the first Machine Spirit was activated. In a voice that sounded like an Echo of the Emperors own the Machine spoke "Master….? Is it time…..?" in a psionic binary pulse the machines creator and owner answered, "Yes, it is time to visit your siblings upon the Dragons Tomb."
With that acknowledgment, psychic energy poured out of the machine into every corner of the colossal vessel. Generators activated, life support systems cycled up, weapon platforms started to hum and the Bucephalus came to life. The Cognatu-Ferrum had been born during the height of the Iron War when Silica monstrosities driven mad by both the Dragon of Mars and the Warps touch brought ruin to humanities stellar empire. It was an attempt to create a mechanical intelligence not susceptible to the taint of either steel or flesh.
The Emperor had succeeded, it was a wonder of both science and warpcraft that was infused with Psychic energy that made it invisible to the Dragons power and its digital mind was built around a mixture of modified neural scans and the Thirteen Asimov-Zuklove Laws. It was immune to the Warps corruption and the Dragons Control while possessing capabilities matching a lowgrade ASI.
Despite all its wonders, the Cognatu-Ferrum had one critical weakness: Power supply. The Machine required a truly tremendous supply of highly controlled psychic energy and storing such power was an impossibility for human technology. So in the end despite countless refinements and tweaks the First and Greatest Machine Spirit was the only of its make and only operable by its creator.
Now that Machines intellect and power flowed through the Bucephalus and it was ready to fly. At the Emperor's command, ancient grav-generators activated and as millions of onlookers cheered the twenty-kilometer vessel gently rose into Terras Skies. Careful to not cause colossal atmospheric disturbances the Titan sailed serenely into low orbit, and the Emperor looked through the Cognatu-Ferrums eyes and saw the shrinking Imperial Palace below them. He touched his son's minds with a final farewell and peered into the void. Mars awaited him and the galaxy awaited the Imperium of man.
Moving at velocities once thought impossible to a Ship its size the Bucephalus cruised out of Terra's gravity well and plotted a vector for Mars. Its colossal Plasma drives increased in power and the Emperor felt the Cognatu-Ferrum making near instantaneous adjustments to the city-sized vessel as they accelerated to a low fraction of LightSpeed. Ancient artificial gravity generators compensated for the ever-increasing G-forces and if not for the celestial bodies moving in the view-screens one would have a hard time telling the ship was even moving.
After a few seconds of flight the ship passed close to Luna, even from here, the Emperor could detect the slight gap within the Warp located upon Luna's Surface. Within a requisitioned Lunar watch-fort dozens of Psychic Nulls trained. The women who would eventually from the Anathema Pskyana had been gathered from both Luna and Terra throughout the Unification Wars.
Countless abominable experiments both during and before Old Night had given the Sol System a higher than galactic average rate of Pariah Gene holders. The Emperor had briefly considered wiping them out, the nature and origin of the Gene were one of the many mysteries he still sought to unravel and his suspicions about its origins worried him, but for now, they were far too useful and loyal to deserve such a fate.
As Luna passed by and the void beckoned the Emperor muttered to himself a phrase once carved upon the entrance gate of the first Port Luna "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" only Valdor was within earshot and he simply nodded slightly and the Emperor smiled softly.
The First of the Ten Thousand had embraced the role of the warrior more than most of the Custodes and the Emperor could hardly blame him. Valdor had fought by the Emperor's side since he had been born from a Flesh-Forges within the Emperor's Himalazian stronghold. He had been built from the ground up as a masterwork of Gene-crafting the Emperor had only been able to improve on twice. With Taranis, whose abilities had come at a cost and the Primarchs.
Eventually, Terra and Luna became specks within the ships viewport and The Emperor probed the Cognatu-Ferrum to ensure all systems were functional. It passed with flying colors and the Emperor left the Command Throne, his psychic power still feeding into the Vessel through the countless Psi-filament circuits that acted as the ships nervous system. With Valdor in tow, the Emperor went to speak with one of the maiden voyages passengers.
He found the passenger staring out the main-view port of the vessel into the void. The passenger was practically pressed up against the Titan-sized view-hole and the Emperor could tell his enhanced senses were locked into a small red dot not visible to the naked eye. The Emperor couldn't blame him, it was the nature of all humans lost in the wilderness to seek there home.
Throughout the unification wars, numerous Martian expeditions to Terra had been captured by the Emperor. Most of these were primitive things lead by a particularly desperate, insane or foolish Tech-Priest and had been dealt with easily. There Automata were recycled, there weapons and tools were confiscated, and most of the Tech-Priests had been agreed to serve after speaking with the Emperor. The ones who hadn't met the unpleasant fate of having scores of Terrawatt clan members and even former Mechanicum members dissect every aspect of there being in search of technological secrets.
That was the typical pattern, the passenger had been the leader of one of those hunts for archeotech, but he had been anything but typical. An entire Skitarii Maniple, two Knight-Walkers and a few squads of Legio Cybernetica brazenly landed near one of the early capitals of the Imperium and attacked it in search of a stasis-vault of technology the Emperor had declared off limits yet too valuable to destroy. This surgical strike was not the haphazard salvage run but a retrieval operation. The Thunder Warriors had crushed the Skitarii utterly and the leader of the expedition had been captured alive. That leader now stood before the Emperor, A Tech-Priest known as Belisarius Cawl.
Cawl was a brilliant and extremely dangerous Tech-Priest who had been slated for execution due to his crime of data-predation, blasphemy, unsanctioned-augmentation, and attempted an assassination of higher-ranking servants of the Machine God. When his assassination attempt on his Master failed and a punitive force closed in on his position Cawl had activated a Backdoor he had built into the Forge he worked in. About half of the cybernetic and mechanical forces of his former home along with numerous allies rebelled and escaped with him to Terra.
Seeking an advantage over the vengeance of the Martian priesthood and possibly a way to buy his way back into there good fortunes he came to Terra in order to claim a particular artifact. Cawl had scoured records and long distances scan to find the location of the infamous Meme-Virus Primarium.
This fusion of warp and nanite technology from the Golden Age allowed accesses to all knowledge possessed Meme-Virus infectees. This prime-virus would have allowed Cawl to not only vastly increase his own wisdom but infect foes with it and not just steal there knowledge but turn them into data-addicts ever feeding his memory banks. Ironically Cawl had never intended to use it in its most malignant ways and only intended to use it as a token of peace with Mars.
Thankfully he had been stopped and captured. The Emperor had met with him and Cawl had simply looked upon the Emperor once before he started begging for the right to serve him. The Emperor had poured through the mind and soul of the tech-priest and found a soul of unfathomable curiosity and conviction. Cawl wanted to elevate himself and his species with the knowledge of the cosmos and the Emperor was reminded of ancient friends and allies of a long extinct order of knowledge seekers.
The Scientists had gone extinct with the Iron War and now only cults of data and machinery existed in there place but Cawl and like-minded individuals brought the Emperor hope of maybe a return to humanities inquisitive roots. When he had been captured Cawl had expected a barbarian tyrant seeking to bully him into service, any being that called itself the "Emperor of Mankind" had to be.
Belisarius had been utterly shocked when the being he had met, not the brutish gene-bulked thug he had expected but a Man of Purpose and intellect beyond Cawls wildest dream-protocols. Many on Mars accused Cawl of being a lunatic, a renegade unable to accept his place in the cosmos and serve his betters and the Deus Mechanica properly. This was not exactly the case.
Cawl had honestly wanted to be a good servant of the Machine God for as long as he could remember, his faith comprised a core tenet of his belief and serving the source of knowledge and wisdom was his only true ambition. The problem had been the Mechanicum did not measure up to Cawls self-imposed standards. They were a bickering dogmatic group of knowledge hoarding egomaniacs. Belisarius Cawl had simply wanted to serve a master he deemed worthy, none on Mars had been but he one of Terra was.
The Emperor and Cawl had quickly grown to admire each other and a working relationship between the two had formed. After decades of service, he had earned the Emperor's trust and had been even allowed to work on the Primarch Project. He had been responsible for numerous break through on the Black Carapace and even tutored the Primarchs on numerous occasions. Now side by side they were returning after to Mars after nearly a Century.
They did not speak to each other, Cawl had barely seemed to notice the Emperor and acknowledged his presence with a quick bow. The two of them simply stared into the void as the Red dot in the distance slowly grew. The once multi-year journey would take only a few hours and that was with the Bucephalus flying at low power to not attract the attention of the countless Xeno Raiders stalking Sol. The Flagship could fight off virtually anything that could attack them but the Emperor did not want to risk a full-blown battle before what was supposed to be a diplomatic mission.
Eventually, the Emperor spoke to Cawl: "They might not accept you back like you hope." The Tech priest simply responded: "I will face the Judgment of Mars if that is to be my fate." It was, in a alternate reality the Emperor had been forced to hand his ally over to the Mechanicum as part of the Treaty of Olympus, he had managed to get Cawls sentence commuted to the first of his many Memory wipes instead of execution but he hoped like many things, that Cawls fate could be changed.
Speaking softly the Emperor continued: " I have seen it, they will demand your execution and I will only be able to save your life not your mind." To that Cawl seemed slightly shocked but he returned to the mechanical stoicism typical of his kind. The sudden hum from Cawls Atmosphere intake suggested he was doing the Mechancium equivalent of taking a deep breath before speaking. "I have planned for such even my Lord, within my Lab there is a data-core activated by the biometrics of you or one of the Primarchs. It contains a data program I call the Cawl Inferior. Consider it a contingency if such a fate occurs."The Emperor's eyes widened and visions of possible futures entered his mind.
*An avenging son stalking the ruins of the palace seeking any means to undo what has been done*
*Hidden laboratory discovered and a secret uncovered. Communications with a group of refugees from Trisolian open up new possibilities*
*The Master of Masters is reborn and travels the galaxy in search of knowledge, his inferior hoarding memories and thoughts to be stored in case of calamity*
Smiling softly the Emperor responded "You never cease to impress me Cawl" the Tech Priest bowed low and responded "You honor me with such words my Lord" After that, they simply stood next to each other as Mars grew in the viewport. The Colossal Ring of Iron was now barely visible and the Emperor was reminded of ages past when under his prodding humanity had reached for the stars and first came to Mars. It had been one of his more oddly named identities but still highly successful in helping humanity advance.
Soon millions of challenge hails from Mars and its countless orbital installations. The Emperor ordered them all to be answered with a simple message in perfect High Techna-Lingua. "We are the Imperium of Man, we seek to meet with the Mechanicum of Mars for peaceful contact" Billions of Weapon Platforms locked onto the Bucephalus yet none fired. The Emperor subtly influenced the trillions of machine spirits preparing to attack his ship to stand down as they approached Mars.
The Twenty kilometer vessel soon pressed into the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet and the heat of the ship caused rolling storm clouds to form almost instantaneously as it slowly lowered towards the surface of Olympus Mons. The Emperor and Cawl nodded to each other and the Emperor made way to the main gantry of the Bucephalus. As he did he psychically pulsed one of his personal servants to bring a certain item to him. The Handmaiden along with two bulky armory-servitors (gifts from Cawl) met him. She bowed and the Emperor handed his blade to the Servitors and she gave him his Sceptre: The Augustus Xexillium.
He was coming not as a Warrior-King but as a figure of unification and his symbol of office would be more fitting than a weapon of war. Finally, the Imperial Flagship, covered in storm clouds touched the surface of Mars and the Emperor walked down the gantry and set foot upon the second home of the Human Species.
The Emperor looked across the Crater that formed the inverted peak of Olympus Mons and smiled internally, so far it lined up with his visions and future memories. Tens of thousands of Priests, Skitarii and Servitors watched from the crater's rim and about half a Dozen Knight-Walkers were in combat positions around the exit ramp. Slowly stepping towards the first Knight the Emperor touched his mind and spoke:
'Your machine is damaged, Taymon Verticorda,' the pilot mind was overtaxed by being in the Emperor's presence and was not capable of forming a complete sentence let alone attacking. Speaking again the Emperor asked 'May I?'
Not waiting for a reply the Master of Mankind reached out to touch the Walkers knee joint while working to keep his presence from utterly overwhelming the pilot. Controlling his aura had been one of the first skills the Emperor had mastered when he left his village after killing his uncle. Over the eons as both his power and embedment into the human subconscious increased the effects of his psychic light had become more pronounced. At first, it simply transfixed and soothed Humans who viewed it, now it could cause strokes if he was not careful.
The minute he touched the Knight-Walker he could feel the machines pseudo-soul. Along with telekinetically healing and realigning the machine's parts, he soothed what the Martians called a Machine Spirit. Speaking with a voice that could make entire worlds kneel if he so wished he spoke to the Knight. 'Machine, heal thyself,'
It followed its masters wish and the Knight-Walker was returned to perfection. Still stunned the pilot asked quietly: "'Who are you?'
The being known across the ages as Atham, Revelation, Yeshua, Abriel, Gilgamesh and so many more names declared himself a title only he could ever truly claim 'I am the Emperor'
That simple phrase would be repeated countless times by Atham of Pessinus throughout his conquest of the stars and the response he received was not the first nor the last of its kind 'Welcome to Mars, my lord, All praise to the Omnissiah.'
Omnissiah: The Physical manifestation of the God in the Machine. A mythological figure of Mars that rose out of the same trauma and horror that created the Cult Mechanicus. Mars had once been the technological and industrial powerhouse of humanity. This made the rebellion and Old Night all that much more horrific. The War against the Machines had damaged its people in ways more severe than practically anywhere else in the countless domains of man.
The multiple Martian apocalypses of the Iron War and the Singularity Purging deleted not just the ASI silica-gods of the Neurosphere but the Standard template constructs databases. Basic knowledge of even maintenance became rare. Yet the survivors scavenged the corpse of the greatest manufacturing and research world of humanity to jury-rig new technology and machinery through a mix of trial, error and sheer luck.
Over the centuries this credo of mechanical reverence, superstitious paranoia, and genuine genius consolidated into the Priesthood of Mars. This strange cult managed to rebuild the surface and topmost layers of the Red Planet into a working Forge World. They had also managed to send colonial expeditions to other fallen Forges across the galaxy in order to rebuild and reignite them.
The Martians considered themselves the rightful inheritors of the Machine God's will and destined to reach the perfect union of steel and soul. This was more than simple self-ordained manifest destiny. The Martians through some quirk of fate, or possibly natural selection had discovered one of the few avenues of technology still open to humanity after the calamities of the Iron War. The Martian Mechanicum had discovered how to make and harness Machine Spirits.
They were different and far far more primitive than the work of art known as the Cognatu-Ferrum. Where the Emperor had installed a soul echo into a machine to create a Psi-AI protected from both Warp and Dragon the Martians had grown mutilated chunks of brains and used them as computational units.
Since the discoveries of both the Soul and Stable Cloning, a debate had raged throughout human civilization on whether a clone would possess a soul. Numerous rather grizzly studies conducted during the Golden Age had answered these questions and started the Replicae Rights movement. Clones do indeed have souls but they were lesser than the originals. A colleague of the Emperor had described it as "a faded copy of the original"
Yet they still had souls and when the Martians started using cloned tissue to replace silicon and circuitry they inadvertently created billions if not trillions of lobotomized souls that infested the machinery and subtly influenced them. These aptly named Machine Spirits protected whatever they inhabited from the Dragons dominion and they were such broken things that only the most driven Neverborn could latch onto the pseudo-emotions they felt to control them. Even then layers of ritual, belief and half-understood warding equations protected the Machine Spirits.
The Mechanicum may have been flawed but they were the rightful heirs they claimed to be. Similarly, the Emperor did have a claim to the title the Knight Pilot had called him. Ages ago he had bested the true Machine God and sealed it beneath Mars surface to help his species master the Material. While his connection to humanities Oversoul and existence as the ward of the faithful dead made him beloved to the Machine Spirits. The Emperor was the Omnissiah and he had come to Mars.
The Knight-Walker and the rest of its squad formed an Honor Guard around the Emperor as they left the crater. More and more citizens of Mars joined the procession. Soon thousands followed the Emperor in a grand river of Mechanicum Red and cybernetic grey. Binary whispers filled the air and a few particularly brave Priests moved in between the Knights legs to catch a better view of the Golden Stranger.
Each of them reported back to there cadres and workmates that what they had seen had to be the Omnissiah. This climaxed when a brash Tech-priest whose barely earned Surface lung implants rasped with the effort of filtering Mars atmosphere rushed up to the Emperor and touched his cloak as if it ensure it was real. A Knight leveled its weapons against her and she fell back in fear, her rapture replaced with horror at what she had done. The Emperor stopped and helped the young women to her feet and gestured for the knight to stand down.
She twittered countless apologies and prayers in binary while trying to back into the crowd. The Emperor touched her shoulder, a soft glow filled the women's vision and her cybernetic lungs inhaled a deep quiet breath of Martian Air. Internally the Emperor sighed and thought "Another cult, another miracle, another punishment for my mistake"
He intensely disliked it but centuries of trying to harness humanity obsession with faith had made the Emperor very good at playing the savior. Eventually, the Mechanicum would be subtly reformed to become a better breed of institute, not shackled by dogma and superstition. Yet now first things first. The Parliament of Mars awaited.
The First of the Knights crested the Craters edge and with each step, the skyline of Tharsis became more and more visible. The great industrial Forge-Cityscape spread to the horizon and as he finally exited the crater the Emperor diluted and expanded his Aura into a golden corona visible from low orbit. Another touch to help the coming negotiations.
The first knight, the one who the Emperor had healed stopped. The Emperor could feel the Walkers machine spirits swarming into its Vox and Hailer systems as the pilot redirected power into them. In a shout that ruined unaugmented eardrums in five square kilometers, the Knight known as the Ares Lictor broadcasted its message. "Hail! Children of Mars! The Omnissiah has come!"
With that, the procession continued and swelled millions of Martians of all walks of life joined the throng in hopes to catch a glimpse of the Omnissiah. Religious fervor brought on by the Emperor's aura stopped any attempts to attack or waylay the parade and slowly but surely the Emperor of Mankind reached the Temple of All Knowledge.
The Martian Holy of Holies was carved into Olympus Mon and its grand gate reached nearly a kilometer in height. On either side of the Temple-Caverns entrance where Super-Titans. In another existence, they would be known as Imperator Titans, in honor of him. As of now the Twin behemoths that were nearly half the gates height were aiming City-devastating Weapons at the Emperor. With an imperceivable psychic pulse, the brutal Machine Spirits of the two titans submitted to there master and to there Preceps shock the Titans each knelt before him.
Flanked by the supplicant God-Machines the Emperor of mankind entered the Temple of All Knowledge. Within a year he would exit the grand sanctuary with a first copy of the Treaty of Olympus Mons in hand. Unified at last the Children of Terra and Mars would stand together in the face of a galaxy of woes.