Ede /Artisian /Adepts Superior /Divisio Extremis/Collegia Scientia/Adeptus Mechanicus
How I came into the glory of Omnissiah.
Many years ago my name was Liam Bede, I was from Salonica Prime. Both my parents were with the Administratum of hive Ripoll. They were well positioned. My father even had his own ground transport a classic Matabe with V-drive. My early years were uneventful just a quite unremarkable life in the Administratum block. I lived in a Administratum Hab, went to the Administratum scholam, was clothed and feed from the Adminstratum stores. As I look back now it was very monotonous.
That would have been my life if it wasn’t for my uncle, who applied for a series three waiver that enabled me to attend the Medicae Collegia. The only exception was I would be required to serve a 10 year term of service. I excelled in Chymistry and botany, this enable me to synthesize Chiapa, a low grade De-Tox from a common hive fungus. Which wow’d the instructors at the collegia and accelerated me towards graduation from the Collegia in less than seven years, with high marks.
During my last week at the Collegia I was informed that my term of service would be as botany assist on an exploration to an abandon world. The term would also include a rather large stipend to be paid on my return. Enough thrones to setup my practice or buy into one. The vessel was a system ship without warp drive and would take years to travel the distance. The journey would take two an half years voyage each way with a five year survey. What luck half my term of service would be cover in just in travel time and bank account full of thrones.
The more I looked into my term of service the more I was shocked. First due to the environment of the planet a respirator unit was going to be fitted to me. I was a little stunned. I was told that the respirator unit would protect my health and could be removed at the end of my term of service. Second was that for the travel time I would be in cryosleep, during the travel time. The thrones encourage me more than anything. I decide not to tell my parent about the “respirator unit” it would only worry them, I left them with a hurried “good bye”, shook my uncle’s hand thanking him for his help and headed to the port.
I was next alarmed at the port when I was directed to a shuttle to be transported to a vessel called “Oculus of Omnissiah”, that’s odd I thought why was the exploration using an Adeptus Mechanicus vessel for transport. To my surprise the exploration would be led, outfitted , and ran by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Once I arrived on the vessel an escort was waiting. In a short time I was standing before a cryosleep crypt. I was told to disrobe for a scan and to be equipment with status sensor. In the lower part of the crypt there is storage locker were I stored my kit and clothes. In a matter of a few hours I was cocooned in the cryosleep crypt.
When I woke years later to my dismay, I had received numerous implants during my long sleep. In addition to the respirator unit, Electro-grafts, Electoo Inductors, Potentia coil all wired to linked processors, and cortical circuits implanted in my head. What was this! I demanded, all I was told again it was required and could be removed at the end of my term of service.
What was I going to do. I was confused and hurt parts of me had been cut away. While I was there trying to adjusting to the changes made to my body and mind. I suddenly realized floating on the edge of my consciousness was a fountain of implanted knowledge. Thousands upon thousands of maintenance rituals, rites, identification sources, fabrication procures, were there waiting for me.
It was mind-blowing, the full schematics for my father Matabe, how to power it with everything from steam to aetheric plasma, forty seven different ways to synthesize De-Tox with the common hive fungus. The knowledge to operate, how to maintain how to repair, and even how to fabricate the cryosleep crypt that I slept in, along with thousands of other machines. This inclusive knowledge encompassed both the Mechanical and Biological….. I began diving deeper and deeper in to that pool information, “Oh my Omnissiah”. I was going too deep. I panicked, I quickly became lost, I couldn’t find my way out… which way did I need to go. I was drowning in that pool.
It was a brutal screech of binary was what brought me back that time. The binary screech was a warning about running before I learn how to walk. A second screech directed me to get dressed, collect my kit and report to the secondary shuttle bay. I hastily dressed in the red robes and metal boots the vestments of Mechanicus that were set out for me. A careful dive into the pool provided me the location of the secondary bay. I grabbed my kit from the storage locker and was off.
Out of the shuttle starboard window I could see the planet. From the information feed being direct to all in the on the shuttle, below was Flores an abandon Hive world in the Angel Seven System. The world was lost because of a grain shipment contaminated by a bio luminous fungus. There the fungus grew at a remarkable rate once in the Flores environment. Damaged, to the hive’s air filters and dome, led to a large increase in mutation in the young and death in the older population. In less than thirty years ninety nine percent of the population had devolved into mutant living in tribal societies within the hive. Many years later when a large section of the hive dome collapsed all the mutants left to live in the fungal forest that had grew up around the hive.
The planet has been marked as forbidden by the Inquisition for over two thousand years. The Adeptus Mechanicus had permission for a five year survey. Vast sections of the hive were still running automatically, Saladin class plasma generators were suspected. The exploration was going to be split into three teams, one to salvage the plasma generators another to map and explore the hive. I was assigned to the third team that was tasked with collecting and cataloging fungal samples, and maintaining the base camp.
I meet Jena, during the first week on Flores. She was an approachable Electro Priestess with a lust for life. Who enjoyed the freedom that the exploration offered her. She was born and raised in the Mechanicus so I was able to learn a great deal from her. It would be safe to say she was my mentor, friend, lover the person that most responsible for my exposure to the workings of Mechanicus.
Jena told me about the Machine Spirits, the “fragments of Omnissiah” she would call them. Fragments, she believed that ever item from a lasgun to a starship had one. I’ve never talked to a lasgun but I’ve have conversed with a starship it was a dull diatribe that last 6 hours about it’s sense of stability and how there is a lack of equilibrium between port and starboard sides of the vessel. In my experience the older and more complex the item the more chance that there is a Machine Spirit housed within it.
It was during my time maintaining the base camp with Jena that I was exposed to Standard Template Construct technologies. The STC is the holies of holies for the followers of Omnissiah. STC is a standard of construction that utilizes a universal interchange ability of technological components. What does that mean? It is not a hard concept to understand, for example the air filtration system from a four passenger STC based ground transport, could be removed and used as the air filtration system for a thousand of other STC machines that utilize that magnitude of filtration system. So that air filtration system could be used on everything from a Sentinel walker to a rack cooler for cogitiator banks. There are significant gaps in the record of what is recognized as STC. Only a fraction of what there should be is known. It is that fact that makes “The Quest for Knowledge” the driving force pushing the Mechanicus beyond their forges.
Servitors, made up the bulk of the labor force on Flores. Unlike the rumors that are spread the Adeptus Mechanicus does not kidnap children in the middle of the night or use criminals to make servitors too often. Many servitors are fabricated out of friends and relatives, in fact the first one I crafted was made out of injured lover. They are not always mindwiped servants, machines of metal and living flesh From time to time it was my responsibility to perform the rites of maintenance on them. Early in the three year of the survey Jena was crushed while charging a cargo loader . The damage was extensive, after being rebuild she was not the same person. She had lost her lust for life and could not perform the functions required of her. Lingering on as a pale of shadow of who she once was, it hurt me that she would never be the same. A few weeks later I had her mindwiped, refited, and programed to perform as a tethered technomat in the maintenance facility.
Damage to lungs, skin, and blood due to exposure to the fungal contaminated air was common. Even through the respirator unit, the damage to my body became so dire that it was necessary to replace my respiratory system, to include respiratory filters and Hermetic Infusions. Other had to receive subdermal skinweave similar to Voidskin to function in the contaminated air.