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Phobos     NARSINE UNDERBELLY, FACTORUM RENATUS

    The great factorum looks nothing like it did 24 hours prior. Great reinforced walls of steel have been erected around it, entirely too alike a military installation. Most workers now bear cybernetics - and the red-robed cosplayers of the day prior have undergone nearly full-body conversion, now bearing mechadendrites upon their backs and shoulders much like the Chaplain and Phobos. The noise is loud, industrial, renewed - and the smell of oil and incence hangs heavy in the air. The sight is a military factory. The ambience, the smell, the way people move about, is entirely more alike a church though.

    Then one notices the Servitors. They're not as crude as the ones Phobos deployed on that nobody planet, but they're still very uncomfortable to look at. Of course, no proper Imperium world cares at this point - people are entirely too used to the sight of the mindless, zombie-like robotic drones built out of cybernetics, scrap and human corpses. Some stand guard, armed with a variety of weapons, seemingly electrical in natural. Some have had their limbs replaced wholesale by multitools and serve only to repair the factorum.

    When Kotone and Staren arrive, they're led inside without fanfare or delay, until they reach a large table on which countless blueprints and holoprojectors are strewn about. The Chaplain and Phobos are both hunched over a map of the factory, and there's more life in the former's movements and tone for any given section of five seconds than he ever showed for the totality of yesterday.

    Phobos' head snaps up - a sudden mechanical motion, not the fluid motion of a human neck. Her green optics intensify, and her cheerful-yet-mechanical tone picks up. "Oh, you're here. Perfect. Don't mind the mess! Our great work is still unfinished. We're still short a few hundred bodies to really get this place running - oiling the cogs with blood, if you will. Come, I'll show you to my workshop! It's sterilized, before you ask."
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is uneasy about this, but she had a job from Gilgamesh to get done? Maybe she made a mistake here but it's too late. She has to carry out this deal at this point but she's very glad she has Staren along. The rapid conversion was an eyebrow-raiser she expected some level of it but this fast? Either way, the Servators leave her unnerved as she's shown in. She's left her matter manipulator behind and only carried enough firepower to deal with some of the feral tribes on the way down here, which is honestly to be expected, right?

Kotone is apprehensive but she nods once.

"That's good to know."

Since entering she'd had to switch to low light vision or she'd not be able to see a darn thing in here otherwise.

"Well lead the way then."
Staren     Staren steps off the elevator wearing a form-fitting spacesuit under his coat, and with a humanoid robot helping him tow a refrigerator-sized box on wheels. They leave it by the entrance to the cathedral -- Staren says they'll be right back, and they go out into the scrap to retrieve a box that has grown out of the scrap since Staren was last here -- this one closer in size to a large multi-function printer or the like.

    Inside the cathedral, Staren's spacesuit... retracts, like a liquid, into an orange-sized ball, except for the airtank. he puts both parts back in his bag and pulls out a pair of wrap-around glasses to deal with the lighting conditions. Then he retrieves, from inside the fridge-box, a smaller box, easily carried with two hands, and walks with it and the robot to meet Phobos.

    The robot itself is human-sized, around five and a half feet tall, and is shaped pretty much like a human except clearly made of metal and plastic. The face is lacking, though -- the general shape of eyes, nose, and mouth is there, but it lacks the facial muscles and flesh needed to form expressions.

    Staren takes it all in, looking around. He's led to the laborator, and explains his gifts on the way: The robot is equipped with an electronic brain that can contain a human consciousness, and the box he holds in his hands contains all the parts needed to replace the mechanical brain with a living one and add life support functions. The two boxy devices he brought in are nanofabricators, which turn power and raw materials into any goods they have the plans for that can fit inside -- as long as they're available for his use on return visits, he doesn't care what they do with them while he's away.

    He finds the design of the servitors mildly repulsive but doesn't comment. It's the best the adeptus mechanicus can do, after all, it's not their fault they don't know how to build robot brains right. Maybe that will change today, though...

    He smiles though as he speaks, "Wow! You've really cleaned up the place! It will be most interesting to see what you can do with access to proper technology. Perhaps what you do here can serve as a model to the adeptus mechanicus on Amistel Majoris!"
Phobos     "Oh you poor, misguided soul," Phobos comments to Staren as they start walking, leaving the Chaplain to fondle the machines Staren bought. Perhaps uncomfortably literally.

    "Don't mistake our zeal to represent our dear and ESTEEMED brothers and sisters of the Cult Mechanicus. Your gifts aren't part of the great tradition. Your gifts aren't compatible with the Omnissiah's ~truth~."

    She laughs. It's coarse and mechanical.

    "Idiots, the lot of them. Stuck in the past. Not willing to see further than their own noses. And most of us don't HAVE noses anymore, so that's not very far!" Indeed, it's exceptionally not-far.

    "I, unlike them, am enlightened. I don't believe the Omnissiah would care about such petty things as the source of a technology or its function. What matters is that we show it proper respect! We must keep the Machine Spirits content, we must praise his name. And in time, I WILL BRING HIM BACK."

    She clanks to attention, pausing.

    "Yes. Yes, that's how it'll be."

    She resumes her pace. "I accept your gifts, of course. I'll study them. And I'll make sure they're put to good use. Tradition exists to serve us. We don't serve tradition."

    They finally reach a large blast door. Phobos' clawed hand reaches for controls to the side, and it opens with a loud screech against the floor and ceiling. Inside is a workshop, metallic and scorched. Completely scorched. There are vents, and the scorch marks imply they sterilize the room by essentially turning it into a furnace.

    Whatever works, right?

    "Well, let's begin with the young lady. Please detail to me the methods through which you feel pain so that I may ensure you do not. Unless it's your thing. I'm not judging."
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is making notes mentally and getting a better idea about Phobos, still a tech priest, but one whose somewhat broken free of the cult. Yet not all of its views, she does, however, listen for a moment. She lets Staren talk for the moment as they move and she takes in the lab more as she moves she looks over the blast door and watches the controls for a moment.

"Do you cleanse the room by superheating it?"

The gear in the lab can survive that? That's a hell of a thing to take in and now she looks over to Phobos and she takes a deep breath.

"I will and there is a way it can be shut off, it normally is done so for maintenance and part changing."

She notes she'll take a moment to relay the details of just how to disable her pain receptors. AS she's got a feeling she knows where this is going.

"So we might as well get started is there anything else you want to know ahead of time?"

She gives Staren a brief look, there is a reason why glad to have him come along on this. Who knows what might have happened, had she come alone. She'll step into the lab and take a look around unless Phobos stops her.

"You seem quite committed to your cause."
Staren     Staren quirks an eyebrow behind the glasses as Phobos clarifies that this is all to further the goals of the Omnissiah and possibly summon it into reality. Good to know. He sets down an ecto in smartphone form for Kotone to cybercomm to incase speech functions are interrupted. She can, of course, still radio him as long as her radio is functioning.

    He stands by, observing for now. If Phobos seems to need any help (or it looks like performing some step himself would be less troublesome for Kotone,) he pulls back his sleeves and the silvery wristbands there extrude tiny tools on spindly arms and uses those.
Phobos     "I am my cause, and my cause is me," Phobos replies, stretching her arms and allowing some of her mechadendrites to escape the confines of her robes. The ones always visible on her pack are more clunkly - too large to hide, more alike servo-arms than precise tendrils. The ones that deploy from inside are more flexible, no doubt wrapped around her body under the red cloth or coiled on her back. The ones on her back aren't even the same as yesterday. They must be fully modular.

    In a way, not unlike Staren's wristbands. Just, scaled to Phobos' body. The limbs produce multitools both human and alien, and take heed of the information provided by Kotone.

    She's a lot more nimble and precise than the shady technology of the Imperium seems like it would allow.

    She sets about to open Kotone up - anything that looks like it can be taken out, is taken out to be inspected. She oohs and aahs at every connection, every wire, her green optics doubling as flashlights to illuminate Kotone's internals.

    "To explain. Your gifts are poison. They're the threat of doing things another way. They're the threat of admitting technology can be as good if not better than what the Omnissiah entrusted to us. They're the threat of acknowledging the last ten thousand years of history on Mars have been for naught, and the Imperium could find better help elsewhere."

    In a way it might be flattering to Staren.

    "You would terrify them. And they would brand you a Heretek, dabbling in forbidden technologies. No. No, that's the way of the /past/. What good has it done?"

    Phobos picks up the pace. It's not dangerous.

    "The Omnissiah blessed us feeble creatures of flesh by taking human form that we might better understand him. And for ten thousand years we have FAILED to return the favor, leaving him trapped in a vessel of ever-decaying flesh bound to a breaking throne. How many solutions did we pass turning away gifts that didn't fit our narrow-minded outlook?"

    Eventually, she's done tinkering with Kotone. No harm no foul. Nothing out of place. At first she needed Staren's guidance - and then quickly she figured out how Kotone ticks on her own. She motions for her to get back up, and ensure everything is functional again.

    "Tell me, what power source are you using? I've not seen one like it. It seems dated, but functions beyond what its appearances would suggest."
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is very glad her pain receptors are shut off as Phobos goes about taking out various part and taking her apart. It is something out of a horror movie and she ties not ot think about it. As it's being worked on. She has quite a few parts that are not native to the rest of the tech in her body's world. Kotone has a number of what are clearly multiveral upgrades over the years. Several things of note.

While the materials overall are more mundane than someone from the Imperium might expect they really shown they know how to work with what they got, it's clear Kotone's body is combat grade for one and she'll find other neat things like an internal taser system and the like. Also, her body has been very highly crafted to mimic most things someone made of flesh would have, sensation, pain and the like she even appears to be able to eat still.

She takes some time to recover after being put back together, this is not an experience she'll forget any time soon and may very well give her nightmares for some time.

"Bioelectric energy systems, I have to eat special food to keep my self going it also brings in nanomachines in the food which are part of my maintenance system and also some types that supplement the power. I can somewhat get by on normal food but it's not as efficient."
Staren     Staren just chuckles lightly as Phobos explains why he scares the Imperium. "I know, I know. That's why the Concord has decided to fix these planets. We're tired of hearing how horrible things are in the Imperium and noone doing anything about it."

    That surprises him, though: "Wait, the Omnissiah is the Emperor? You want to bring him back? Interesting. It would save many lives. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

    "Interesting. Using food for power and maintenance... I could let the people I revive in synthetic bodies eat again. I'm sure they'd love that."
Phobos     "I see. You convert food to electricity. Emulation of humanity. Now your design makes sense," Phobos concludes, crossing her arms. The contrast between her bulky hand and her clawed hand is a lot more obvious like this. Like wielding Freddy's knife hands on one side and a Power Fist on the other.

    "Still. Thanks. That was refreshing. So many new technologies to study and so little time. So little volunteers. The screaming is often inconvenient, but 'live' subjects are always better."

    She looks back to Staren, nodding. "Is. Was. Depends on who you ask and how you want to look at it. I prefer to think of it as he Emperor being the face the Machine God wore for us. I intend to bring him back, yes. Whether he still wears that body or not will be irrelevant. The Omnissiah must be free again to guide our future! I'll stop at nothing to make that happen."

    As for his help...

    "... but first, I have to find a way to make it work. Not just any body can contain the Machine God's power. Not just any machine. It must be suitable. Radiant. All-capable. And then, we need to gain access to the Golden Throne. And that's another problem all its own."

    If she had glasses, she would push them up.

    "But not one beyond my genius."

    She suddenly jerks, liberating another set of mechanical tendrils from under her robes. Those ones have tools far less compliant with the prospect of painless analysis. It might be a one-way trip.

    "Now, let's see that second body you brought me. You can leave, if you want. Tour the place. Ask the Chaplain how he's feeling. The answer is 'operating at peak efficiency', by the way. Give him a hand connecting those things you brought."
Staren     Staren thinks as Phobos describes needing a 'perfect' body for the Emperor. Hmm... He doesn't have anything sure, though.

    He gives Kotone a hand getting off the table, then has the robot get in position and turn off, and sets the box of alternate parts next to it. This body is civilian-grade because it's not /especially/ strong or tough, but it's still above a human in those areas. It can't eat, instead running off a battery that needs to be recharged every few days or maybe couple of weeks depending on how physically active it is.

    He nods at the suggestion to go work with the chaplain. "What do you use for power down here, anyway?"
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa says "Well as a delivery mechanism but if your not a cyborg the cyborg food? Makes wet soggy cardboard seem delicious." She notes to Staren and the pauses.

"Wait wait. The Emperor and the Omnissiah are one and the same?!" This is quite a bit of information for Kotone she now gest she won't get more on that for now so she changes tracks.

"We have rapidly pushed into the fields of cybernetics and computers on my world. In human shells are seen is eccentric at best, a sign of mental programs at worse on my world." She'll take Staren's help in getting off the table now and runs a quick systems check, nothing left out here.

The comment about subjects makes her question being her choice it's too late now she's done it and hup held the end of her barken though some of the gear rigs she's seen the tech-priest wish make her wonder about ideas for her own tool kit.

She's very glad she's not going to be the next subject."

SHe will move back to get out of the way she'll hang about for the moment though to watch, and think about some further questions.
Phobos     "This factorum has its own dedicated generatorium in the basement. In other words, electricity generated using heat from nuclear fusion," Phobos explains. It's standard Imperium tech.

    "I intend to upgrade to something more efficient when we have time, but getting the place functional is more important right now. Maybe I'll use that crystal from the Necron pyramid. I've been dying to figure out how to harness power from it."

    Surely NOTHING BAD COULD HAPPEN.

    Her tools begin working on the robot. Working is definitely a word one can use for it. Since it isn't alive, and she has no obligations to keep it intact... well, let's being torn apart more than anything else. Saws separate parts without a care - torches and screwdrivers handle the parts too fragile or hardy to just saw clean through. Weird wires, wriggling like worms, penetrate ports and holes invasively like a gross alien parasite.

    "I wonder if the dreaded Men of Iron were as advanced as this. More dangerous, maybe. Shame we didn't keep any around. Imagine everything we could have learned."
Staren     So she prefers destructive analysis. "The Men of Iron?" Staren's ears perk up, something about the way she said that indicated Capital Letters of Importance. "What are those?"
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa says "Fusion? Interesting it's only been proven to be recently possible to do it back home."

The then pauses and the look on her face is one of you have got to be kidding me, regarding the Necron crystal? She watches the robot body being torn apart by Phobos with some interest, but the wires? Those unsettle her a lot and remind her of the nightmares that sometimes still plague her from time to time.

"I wouldn't know but it depends where they more like us? Humans made of steel or were they more like the mechanic horrors the King of Heroes now has under his control."

She notes thinking for a moment more Men of Iron? That is something she should look into at some point herself.

"So what made you leave the machine cult?"
Phobos     "You don't know? No, I guess you wouldn't. Wide world. Too many histories. Terra's one planet in a galaxy of millions, in a universe of billions, in a multiverse of trillions. Right. Let's not calculate those odds."

    She picks up the robot's severed head, inspecting it. "A very long time ago, humanity reached a height of technology so great that technology itself turned against them. These 'Men of Iron', for reasons we don't know, or concealed, tried to destroy us. The Omnissiah did not yet walk amongst us, but we still triumphed. Since then, it's one of the greatest tech-heresies of the Mechanicus to create a fully autonomous and independant machine. Abominable Intelligences."

    Phobos shrugs, putting the now dismantled head back onto the operating table. If it can be called that.

    "To my knowledge, no single Man of Iron survived. No STC to produce Men of Iron survived. No remains of a Man of Iron survived."

    She sounds disgusted.

    "How willingly my kind destroy the very knowledge they seek."

    Her head snaps to Kotone. "What made me leave?"

    Another tendril rips out of her robes. It unfolds, grows, reforms, and she literally plucks it off her back with her larger hand. It clicks and cracks, and its shape changes into a large staff.

    Black and dark gray steel, with glowing green crystals indicating energy sources. The air warps around it like a forcefield is active, and the wicked head of the staff has been carved and broken into the Mechanicus symbol from something larger. A Necron relic, not unlike the staff of Gilgamesh's pet lord.

    "I didn't leave, exactly. These? These contain secrets and powers beyond our imagining. They would destroy them. I would /understand/ them. I would /use/ them."

    She slams the base of the staff against the ground - more making a point than anything else. "It's their loss. I embrace the title Arch-Heretek gleefully."
Staren     "How do you get fuel for fusion all the way down here, anyway?"

    Staren listens, and nods. "A couple of other worlds have had to deal with some manner of machine uprising. The machines I brought you today are from such a world. ...They didn't... win. Their Men of Iron, the 'TITANS', suddenly left for unknown reasons. Since then they have been very careful to limit the self-improvement potential of autonomous machines."

    Staren thinks a moment. "So THAT'S why the Adeptus Mechanicus use servitors. It's not that they couldn't learn how to make electronic automatons -- it's that they feared recreating the men of iron. ...It's not an easy feat, though. I don't think they need to worry about it QUITE so much. Ah, but of course, they wouldn't listen to that anyway, right? Hmm."

    Staren begins pacing. "Am I going to face resistance from the techpriests on Amistel Majoris? Of course, of course. I was planning to just... bypass them. Replace the staff in any remaining factories, if necessary."

    Staren stops. "You brought the people of THIS factory-church around to your way of thinking, though. Any suggestions on how to do that on Amistel Majoris?"
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa looks for a moment at this. "So a machine uprising? Those can be bad, very bad from what I saw."

She listens and makes a note about AI's from this universe? Are very dangerous to deal with. Why wouldn't they the world the Imperium hails from? Seems to be made to kill you in a million ways most worlds wouldn't even conceive of.

"I see so it came down to that and what happens if your research shows you can not harness it?"

This is a dangerous question o be sure but one she feels the need to ask.

She looks to STaren for a moment.

"That would do it. I'd like to know how you did it so quickly myself..."
Phobos     "As much as I'd like to say I'm a beaming fount of charisma, that was pure luck. The Chaplain's body - you heard me. I meant every word of it. I could sense the immense sorrow of his mechanical parts. I could see the disrepair of his factory and his gear. That man, hiding, confined to a low-value world with few resources to work with - for Imperium technology, anyway - had lost his DRIVE. He was receptive. And he had nothing to gain by following the creed of the Mechanicus anymore."

    Phobos looks at Staren, pondering. "In the end, if you can't convince them of everything you have to offer, you should kill them, before they call for backup. The Imperium's bureaucracy is slow. Mars? Its machine is well-oiled and maintained. And if they think you're a Heretek - if they think you're a madman trying to bring the Men of Iron back, or lost to some filthy xenotech - the ships of Mars will be swifter than any Inquisitor vessel."

    She hehs.

    "Can you beat them? Maybe. I bet you have friends. Is it going to be worth the hassle? No. You'll lose time. You'll lose resources. You'll become a great enemy. So, do what I was going to do."

    Phobos' optics crackle.
    "If the Chaplain hadn't turned around, I'd have killed him, and used his parts to make this place a new supercogitator."

    Her head whirrs and clicks, and she suddenly backtracks one entire topic. "I suggest finding those TITANS. They sound promising and worth studying."

    She snaps back to Kotone. "If I can't harness it, then I find something else to do with it. Or I find someone who knows how to do it. Or I find someone who wants to buy it off me. Everything has a use. Always."
Staren     If they don't come around, don't let them call for backup. "Noted." He looks... slightly alarmed when she suggests studying the TITANS. "No. That's a bad idea." He holds out a hand in a 'stop' gesture before she can reply. "Let me rephrase that: I am not ready." He drops his hand. "I have only a fraction of the proper precautions necessary. Better to start with things like creatures of Chaos and the Infested. And whatever the hell is going on on Nessos. And by the time I have the power needed to study something like the TITANS, there will be other, easier targets to gain power from first. So, it is... a far-off possibility. Rather than a near one."

    He looks at Phobos. "Why haven't you sought to join the Concord? You seem the sort. You have goals and interests most others don't understand, and you want power to further them. Are you just... uncomfortable with working with others? Or do you fear some of your practices are so abominable we won't accept them?"
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa looks at Phobos back for a moment.

"An interesting response. That is also true most things have some sort of use and it sounds like I should be wary of the machine cult."

She still is growing very alarmed as Phobos is wise enough to go at a point. Ya, I should stop this and try something else with this. Rather than eating the full-on energy field as it were. She pauses for a moment at the mention of TITANS, Kotone just clams up. A lot of bad memories come rushing back in crystal clear quality, all the horror as fresh as it ever was.

Kotone is not looking so good at this point, as Staren starts her recuiting pitch.

"If there's nothing else you need of me? I need to start my trip back to the surface soon."
Phobos     "You aren't ready. That's probably true. I am, though. I was born ready. And then I got rid of all the weak, imperfect parts of me. My readiness cannot be measured." She sounds serious. Ish.

    "But have it your way. Just don't expect me to stand back if I can locate them."

    The Concord comes up. She recalls Lezard, and then her optics flash. Almost in disapproval. Somehow.

    "You don't seem the sort to accept that sometimes, you need to doom a world to extract its contents. And I won't lie, but my goals have priority on everything else. If I could benefit from remote-activating the heat purge in this room, right now? I'd do it. I'd have already done it."

    Her head lowers back to the dismantled robot in front of her. "I'm still computing that possibility. When I reach a conclusion, you'll know. In the meantime, it's up to you to impress me. Long-term commitments aren't my cup of tea, so it'll take some exceptional showmanship on your part to win me over."

    "I'm not saying it's impossible."

    Snap. Something breaks on the table. Then something else. It seems intentional. The casing of this thing is irrelevant. The contents is what she wants.

    "Just that I don't take those offers lightly."

    Without looking at Kotone, she replies: "That's fine. I think we're done here. You have a better head on your shoulders than that king, at least. It's nice to see someone who appreciates the hard work that goes into my craft."

    Snap crack rattle shake. Yep, hard, delicate work.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa has a rather visceral response to the mere mention of the TITANs it's rattled her for a moment.

"You are the first person to think that about me."

She notes to Phobos whom she gets is engrossed in her work she's got a lot to think about and has got several important answers. Yet she's now left with even more questions about what she's got herself into.

"I can appreciate mechanical work, I am a mechanic and vehicle designer by trade at least originally. I bid you good day Phobos and take care Staren. Watch it on the way up, the ferals are getting really active today."

With that Kotone will turn and find her way out of the factory.
Staren     Staren shrugs. "I personally am concerned about morals, not all of the Concord is. Although there is kind of a minimum bar. Dooming a world for no reason is not okay. Doing so because you have a way to put its resources to better use..." Staren makes a so-so gesture with his hand. "If the gains aren't worth the trouble you cause, you're a liability, and noone shows up to help you when heroes kick down your door. But uh, yes. Observe. Consider. But do know that First Priscilla took control of all of these planets."

    Beat.

    "Well. I'll see you around then. Keep up the good work here." He turns to go hook up the nanofabricators. And maybe get a look at that fusion reactor.