Kay-Row-Moz the machines linger

By joeljami, in Dark Heresy Fan Fiction

most of humanity has forgotten about the long and brutal machine wars. humanity cant even piece the death of the emperor. but let me remind you.

a story of a broken man who rebuilt himself.

Drake castus, our protagonist was a sun of a navy officer who settled near the east rim. during crime and the taus first expansion sphere all was lost to him. drake himself was captured for a period as a child by the tau.

he should have been grateful, his imprisonment meant escape from the black ships. test patient was better than being dead. the tau were new to warp users, thus study was needed.

Released by agents of the inquisition drake was trained and made an acolyte. his connections to an inquisitor were the only reason terra passed him as sanctioned.

drakes first post was aboard a space hulk where rouge traders had shot down 3 ships (30000 lives lost) to get to the treasure within. combat ensued within but drakes ability to mold material like a sculptor allowed him to reach the destination first. the inquisitors flagship was full of many bounties.

the tech priest within his group stole eldar tech from a ship on the way which alerted the eldar to send a ranger patrol.

rangers, storm troopers and the pirate army clashed, drakes fear of combat pushed him deep into the hulk. there he met a genestealer. its bit the kiss of change would have turned him to one of the creatures brood. if not for a mysterious eldar ranger that cut the beast in 2 while severing drakes leg with a power weapon.

drakes tech priest later found him and repaired drake with the dead crew of an inquisitors flag ships legs. the storm troopers could not hold for much longer at the flag ship which drake had led them to. drake takes Armour and weapons of the dead inquisitor to assist with moment. (null rod as a walking stick)

at this moment chaos strikes. terminators led by "cruze" a night lord chaos lord that idolized their primarch destroys the pirate vessel, and makes way into the landing bays of the hulk butchering the hundreds of trader troops. the inquisition and traders make a pact to return to the inquisitorial pods and split profit.

the party flees but are caught near their ship. still within an air lock drake gives a volley of biolightning to the night lord commander. the armor resists, and with a swipe of the claw off goes drakes arm.

the good guys flee with an instruction book, but the bad guys take the eldar device, drakes null rod shielded them from the on slot of genestealers, but the unprotected cruze, was tracked and ambushed. a brood lord attacks him giving way for the good guys.

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years later drake castus a fully fledged inquisitor with years of experience under his belt, and the ability of matter manipulation to make humanoid rock forms to crush his enemies, as well as to dig himself into the ground and avoid combat is notified that the firing crystal for the device he once saw on that space hulk has been found.

over countless meeting drake forms a friendly bond with the eldar ashra who once saved him, the two form a mutual trust over the 3 decades.

drake and his acolytes take to the old ruins of an eldar colony, here the party is ambushed by eldar but are spared when the atiotic ranger ashra notes that it is a friend. drake is guided to the room where the device is and instructs that the eldar move it to a craft world. cruze returns in person and assaults the ruins, guard forces are over run and eldar are pushed back, cruze confronts drake, drake is pulled outside to the fringed cold of this planet. his ribs cracked, melta pistol bent. cruze cuts off drakes other lad so that he can crawl balanced. drake is thrown down a cliff side only seeing ashra engage cruze in combat.

drake is not willing to die, he crawls to a webway portal at the bottom of said cliff, long forgotten. here drake is brought to the laughing god. the god says that it is entertained by his will to live and wishes to be entertained.

drake is brought to his home system where the tau lay dismayed by the shear force of the imperium. drake confronts his captors, his assassination attempt fails on the tau ethereal, he is even bested in close combat to make maters more embarrassing. his face melted in a tau plasma generator, left arm, both legs cut off, he did not stand a chance. the ethereal takes pity. it shamefully apologizes for the torture that drake underwent, and shows him the value of the tau empire.

drake is installed with a anti warp potential device that restricts his ability to shape the warp. and he is sent back. drake is rebuilt with tau tech

drake goes back a new man, his personality changed, his view of the imperium shattered, and his hope to change things bettered. he begs the laughing god to intervene or else cruze will have his doomsday weapon, and ashra will die. the god agrees.

cue scene drake castus running at 100 chaos space marines alone in the snow, the laughs of soldiers saying that he is not worth a bolter round. but by the time they realize the invisible threat, it is too late. shrouded harlequins ravage the chaos ranks. drakes null rod prevented him from being shadowed.

drakes army powers the webways and allows a large host to appear, the battle is of apocalyptic scale, during the combat, unaided by powers drake saves ashra trapped in a war walker. his appearance and willingness to save eldar among the field grants him respect.

cruze realizing that the planet is lost takes to the skies to fire his device (basically an eldar beam that permanently kills deamons)

drake opens a warp gate on cruze pulling both in and saving the atiotic armies below.

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drake emerges on the planet of kayrowmoz, a primitive knight like culture. cruze his right hand man and black legion sorcerer that was with cruze on the atk on the eldar ruin have been there for a few hundred years. the sorcerer was only there so that the potential of the device could be observed to abandon the despoiler, and then sold for allot of tech.

cruze rules the planet with an iron fist, no technology exists here but his martial might and space marine body has allowed him to rule most of the planet. when drakes ship arrives years after cruzes landing the locals believe that an angel has been sent to aid them.

what makes it odd is that there is statues of his Armour (the same from the space hulk inquisitors ship) within the remaining cities holding out

drake confronts cruze and is brutally murdered.

his head taken of by a bolt round cruze had been saving for a long time.

in cruzes mind, dont tell the enemy your plan or play with them. kill them (he learned his lesson from letting him live over and over again) remove problems immediately.

to drake fortune he awoke again in a body pit, his limbs face and arm healed, he had also grow a few scales. a painful gold sphere protruded from his chest and he dug it out.

drake came back to the cities of the humans, he was announced a god and a true kayrowmoz (savior of life), upon digging around this old giant city drake discovered that it was built by the very inquisitor that he found dead raised this world of kayrowmoz, this world was shielded in the halo stars and be a staging point for said inquisitor to take over the galaxy. the device that cruze had was merely a power generator for a multi webway assault to every known imperial planet. so how was this inquisitor going to invade he had no army. so drake searched and he found that there were large factories underneath the temples that were making a machine army (the very same intelligent machines that almost wiped humanity out in the last war, right before the great warp storms)

[flash to the eldar atiotic craftworld where over the last couple hundred years ashra has become a warlock reading runes] she spots that her friend kayrowmoz is alive and wishes to save him from death at the hands of cruze for the second time. the other warlocks in the room view her actions as selfish, by her acting this way it would mess up the eldar plan and cost thousands of eldar lives in the long run. a firefight ensues as ashra runs to her old raiders, she takes a small ship to kayrowmoz.

ashra is not the only one to sense disturbance at said planet, the gray knights prepare to exterminautus the planet upon visions of its usage.

drake steals the power gem and starts his factory, it produces a sizable army to invade cruzes territory (machines with guns vs barbarians very unfair) but the sorcerer has drakes null rod, he overcharges it and makes a warp portal, after long months with the device he starts to bring large armies of chaos to the world to stage a massive invasion, even a warlord titan is present for the bad guys.

battle ensues, drake realizes he still has his powers for the device was blown off with his head, the chaos sorcerer says that drake must have worn a halo device, but was unaware of a psyker taking host of the device, the sorcerer flees combat with drakes halo device but is caught. they have a power struggle for the null rod when ashra comes out of no where and uses her psyker might to win the contest of power. with the null rod rods full energy of the warp coursing through him (a fate that would kill any human but drake was now crossed with a very old reptilian species) drake moves the statue of the city like one of his humanoid sized warp people and crushes the warlord, the nuclear blast annihilates most of the chaos forces.

(meaningful event within the battle has drake help one of his machine warriors and risk his own life to save the machines, the machines take value in their new master, and believe that he is worth fighting for, for they are living machines not drones.

chaos retreats but not before cruze laying bloody at abandon's feet bloody for his failure was seen by drake, the chaos grand lord presenting an angry glare to drake castus.

abandon says "and who are you to opposes the dark gods"

drake responds "I am KAYROWMOZ"

but the battle is bitter sweet. days later an exterminautus fleet attacks the planet, drake presents his inquisitorial seal, but it is then after revoked by none other than cortez himself, stating castus has perpetrated himself as a god and has colluded with xenos.

few members of the remaining kayrowmoz population made it onto ashra's ship. and oly the blue prints held in drake castus's personal data banks remained.

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we end this story with kayrowmoz going to a forge world where his tech priest friend from oh so long ago is forge master, he hands him the blue prints and asks "can you make this old friend"

the tech priest responds "though heresy, the machine god will be pleased"