Editing Nobledark Imperium Imperial Forces (section)

=== Psycannons and the Psi-Disruptor ===

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[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Men_of_Gold|Justinian]] and Theodora were the Man of Gold and Iron Mind of the Sol System, based out of Earth and Mars respectively. When the Age of Strife happened, and the Men of Gold and Iron Minds were driven mad by seeing that which was not meant to be seen, Justinian and Theodora waged demented war on each other first in the grips of their madness. Ironically, the fact that the two of them killed each other off so early in the Iron War meant that the Sol System was spared the worst excesses of the Age of Strife, and thus had more working Dark Age technology lying around compared to a place like [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Cthonia|Cthonia]], whose inner face was sterilized when someone induced the star it orbited to go supernova. Of course, this isn't to say that either Justinian or Theodora were in a healthy state of mind at the time; Justinian may have gone for Theodora first, but he was still psychotically insane and destroyed everything and everyone in his way to get to his goal, while concurrently Theodora targeted Earth with orbital bombardments and scrapcode. The descendants of the technicians that attended to Justinian and Theodora, in a very roundabout way, became the ancestors of the Terrawatt Clan and the Martian Mechanicum, though the Mechanicum accomplished this in a more indirect fashion in that the technicians of the Iron Mind were integrated into the general population whilst Mars more broadly devolved into technology worshipping cults (of which the future Mechanicum was but one of many) after the destruction of Mars' terraformed biosphere.

In order to kill Theodora, Justinian built a device known as the psi-disruptor, a device designed and optimized for killing Iron Minds. One can point it at a lesser mortal and pull the trigger to some effect, though said effects can vary from anywhere between a noticeable headache all the way up to total bodily disruption. The device draws on the psychic potential of the wielder, and so can only be used by an active psyker. The one made and used by Justinian was built to such a scale that it was only usable by Men of Gold. The higher end of baseline psykers could presumably wield Justinian's psi-disruptor to an extent, but the list of such talented candidates is very short, and as the Imperium only has one such weapon they aren't willing to risk the destruction of such a powerful device on such meagre speculation, so inquiries in this direction remain fruitless. This device would later be taken out of the doomsday vaults of the Mechanicum and used by the Steward to strike down the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Rangdan_Xenocides_and_the_Slaugth|Rangda Abomination]] when it became clear that conventional options were just not enough.

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The original psi-disruptor gun is contained in the low-risk section on Ganymede. Psycannons are thought to be in some way derived from the study of the original device; a much cruder weapon, but one that can be made using currently available technology. Creation of the Psycannon is attributed to the founding of the Grey Knights, though to one of Magnus' students rather than the Primarch himself. Magnus the Red was without peer amongst humanity in terms of daemon-lore and warp studies, but neither he nor Russ were very good with machinery.


The downsides to Justinian’s psi-disruptor are that it takes a huge amount of time to charge up and is very easy to dodge, but if you’re fighting an Iron Mind — whose physical forms and central processing units are quite literal building complexes — both of these deficiencies are non-issues. The psi-disruptor also has quite a large “splash zone”; when Justinian fired the weapon at Theodora it didn’t just kill the Iron Mind but also horrifically mutilated and massacred every sapient creature within a few kilometers of the blast radius.

When Oscar fired the weapon at the Rangda Abomination, the only things in the blast radius were the abomination itself, some Slaugth and their bio-constructs, and members of various sapient species the Slaugth had taken as livestock and slaves (the latter of which nobody wanted to hit, but reasoned that a quick death was better than spending years living in the Slaugth's feedlots). The Imperium nevertheless ensured that all of their forces and allies stood well away when the disruptor was fired. The Eldar threw a fit over the possibility of Eldar chattel being in the blast zone — especially given those Eldar had no soul stones and would go straight to She Who Thirsts — but backed down when even they had to admit there wasn’t a better option. The best they could come up with was pulling one of their own doomsday devices out of Yme-Loc, which would probably blow up the planet and wouldn’t be much better. At least when using the mon-keigh device the Eldar slaves outside of the blast zone would survive.

The Steward also seriously considered using Justinian’s psi-disruptor on the corrupted Man of Gold back in M34, given how it was so insane that its path was easily predictable, before the Grey Knights managed to resolve that problem on their own. It is a horrible weapon built by a madman to kill a god, with a terrible history on top of whatever reality scarring power it might already direct, and tends to rack up a massive body count in collateral damaged whenever it is fired. It is little wonder the Steward is so reluctant to use it.


After striking the killing blow on Theodora with the psi-disruptor in the initial days of the Iron War, Justinian just kind of wandered off. The members of the resistance found him in the sands of Mars, sitting in a fetal position staring at something no one could see off in the distance, tears streaming down his cheeks. Mars’ carefully constructed biosphere had been stripped away by the Iron War, and the fourth planet of Sol had returned to the red wasteland humanity had first set foot on almost twelve millennia previously. Justinian knew why they were there, as he could see their minds. But one doesn’t have to be a Man of Gold to figure it out.

The resistance members knew their duty was to shoot and kill. Justinian was calm now, but who knew how long this bout of stability would last, and it wasn’t especially long ago that he was throwing around ships in Martian orbit like they were children’s toys to attack Theodora. At the same time, his executioners couldn't bring themselves to do it. Everyone there knew Justinian, possibly personally if someone like Tiberius was there, and Justinian had been there for almost every human on Earth since before they were born. The Justinian they knew didn’t deserve to die. And if he had to die, he deserved to go out in a blaze of glory. Demigods shouldn’t die like this.

There were no kine shields, no nuclear eruptions, none of the cosmic temper-tantrums that characterized the death of his kin across the galaxy. Just a simple question:

“Do you think... do you think she will be waiting for me on the other side?”

Weapons are raised.

[[*BLAM*|“Yes… she is…”]]

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