Editing Warhammer 60K: Age of Dusk (Continued) (section)

==Additional background Section 42: The Will of Crolomere==



<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''[Note: The events of this section occurred concurrently with the Battle of Corbellus.]
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Upon Armageddon, an uneasy peace reigned. The people went about their daily lives much as they ever did during the Primarch War. They were all a little poorer, thanks to the enhanced tithes required of them by the state, but the rulers of the Pentus capital had fewer people to look after, and thus could spend more upon those who stayed behind, and didn’t joint the refugee fleets making their way towards the centre of the galaxy, away from all the turbulent warzones that risked spilling across the indistinct borders of the Imperium.<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> 

I was one of those people, just a young man and already aspiring to be a Primarch chronicler. But in those days, I did not have access to this history, and we did not truly understand the nature oft he wars being fought. Everyday we looked to the heavens, dreading what might descend. One day we could be visiting our food merchant for the week, the next, we might be utterly annihilated. It was a troubled time and a supremely odd one; a period of simultaneous prosperity and utter terror. Hope and despair filled our hearts, but so too did love for our families and hate for our enemies. We craved the security of our authorities too, yet secretly yearned for a day when all could think and act freely as we saw fit. We wanted to build new works, new wonders, for our children to enjoy, yet secretly we suspected all this effort was for naught; who could survive the reckless hatred of the hostile galaxy? We knew the five brothers had left us to protect us from the Travesty, but at the same time, we suspected, seditiously, that they had abandoned us. I am almost certain, looking back, that these warring emotions were the result of the turbulent warp, and the gods, daemons and angyls who were, even then, fighting for dominance of our waking souls.

Politicians, as is their lot in life, manipulated this for maximum benefit to themselves. Across the hundred parliaments of the grand metropolis, they dueled with words and sought to unite their disparate factions into a functioning whole. For the most part, the hardliners gained the most power. These were the true believers, those who saw the Primarchs as akin to gods. They were loosely led by Ibram Deitus, a powerful politician in the council of Hades, who wanted the lanes between the worlds closed, and all aliens within the boundaries of the Imperium extemrinated. Though they gained the most power, the moderates retained control mostly, leaving the followers of Deitus as a raving minority. The Astartes would never support Ibram’s lunatics, for their eldest dreadnoughts had lived through the madness of the Old Imperium, and even the Nova Astartes had veterans who remembered the Ophelian Imperium, possibly the most poisonous non-chaos aligned human realm history had ever seen.

Though moderate for the most part, the government was still preoccupied with security of the realm. Prisoners and people of interest were collected and interrogated by the Brethren of the Willing, under their new Director, Kathran Mozil. Their prisoners did not officially exist, and were beyond the authority of the democratic councils Vulkan had painstakingly set up. Some said the Brethren had been reformed by Corax into a more secretive organisation, a move which the Lion had not appreciated (he had had his fill of secrecy being the Primarch of the Dark Angels).

The Brethren had a facility built in the treasure vaults beneath Dak’ir citadel, which had been named after the famous Salamander who had died rescuing a billion refugees from the Slaugth during the battle for Scintilla in M42. Within this facility, the most valuable assets of the Brethren were kept. One of the most valuable was the woman known as Crolomere the Grey.

She had been brought to Armageddon on the final orders of Imogen, the previous Director of the Brethren. However, the old woman had died in her sleep, and had taken the secret of why Crolomere had been brought to Armageddon to her grave (or she had not elaborated her reasons to the current leadership of the Brethren at least). Thus, when Crolomere had been brought back, the authorities assumed this was as a prisoner or enemy of the Empire. Only interrogation of Crolomere could reveal the truth of the matter.

Unfortunately, the sensei was stubborn, and refused to talk to her captors out of indignation at her treatment. She would not be coerced or bullied by the ignorant. Every interrogation technique used upon her failed. Even psychic scrying failed miserably; her mental defences were too tough for anyone less than an Alpha level psyker to even scratch.

It is likely the Primarchs could have figured out her purpose had they been around, but alas they were not, and paranoia forced the Pentus Imperium to imprison her.

Eventually, the woman chose to speak herself. She tried to convince the Brethren that it was imperative they released her. She was the only one who knew how to thwart the machinations of Ahriman. When asked how she knew this, she was forced to admit that she had helped the Sorcerer access (and subsequently steal) the gene vaults of Terra. This did not go down as well as she hoped, and the Investigative wing of the Imperium pentus resolved to imprison her until Vulkan came back, who could corroborate her story.

Other factions, shadowy factions working to complex agendas set up from the dawn of time, conspired to spring the sensei from her cell. But Crolomere was no helpless damsel; she was cunning and intelligent, honing her intellect over countless millennia. Using the sound of her guards’ footsteps, and the brief glimpses of Dak’ir tower’s surrounding suburbs and vaults she gleaned when she was first brought to the prison, she mentally built a map of the facility and its outlying area. Through carefully listening to snippets of conversations by the guards, she learned the rotations and the shift patterns of the guards, and where their sentry points and barracks wer elocated in relation to her internal map.

Once she was sure she had the measure of her prison, she made her move. When the guards came to search her room, she attacked them, severely beating two of them until they were forced to fire upon her. Their lasguns ripped ragged, head-zied holes in her unarmoured torso, vaporizing the flesh entirely. Consciously, Crolomere suppressed her formidable regenerative abilities, and the guards easily believed they had slain the woman.

Solemnly, they bore her corpse to the incinerator for disposal. Once they reached the furnace room, she sprang to life once more. Crolomere had been alive for thousands of years, and in that time she had become one of the most formidable human close quarter fighter, unaugmented by synthetic musculature or genetic engineering. She took down the seven elite Steel Legionnaires in quick succession, slaying them with their own caputured weapons. She didn’t have much time; in less than a minute. She kept a single las pistol and a vox bead, before she began to strip the men for their equipment. Crolomere had been a chymist in a past life, and she knew how materials reacted when burnt together. He poured the contents of several different grenades and flash bangs into the incinerator. Then, she clambered up into the chimney of the furnace, stoppering the way behind her with the helmet sof the guards. The flame retardant material prevented the furious fire from melting Crolomere as she climbed arduously through the narrow pipe. Meanwhile, the incinerator began to billow smoke and noxious fumes into the faiclity, as its chimney was blocked. When the guards burst into the incinerator chamber,r it was full of smoke, setting off fire alarms across the vault. The guards, briefly blinded by the smoke, did not see that seven lasguns were busily overcharging in the furnace, nor that they had been surrounded by chemically enhanced blasting powder from a dozen frag grenades.

The blast shook the entire facility, and almost dislodged Crolomere as she crawled through the red hot, airless interior of the Incinerator. Third degree burns covered her body, but she ignored the agony as she climbed upwards. The Pentus soldiers hadn’t anticipated anyone escaping via the scorching chimney of their corpse furnace, and thus had installed no safeguards or perimeters. She bypassed layer upon layer of security details, pillboxes and laser defence grids. The entire lower level was on lockdown; every door had sealed tight to prevent anyone escaping from below. All this had achieved was sealing the guards of the lower level down there too, leaving Crolomere able to escape upwards. Her soul was invisible to psykers; she had learned this fact centuries ago. Thus, even the psyker-wardens of Dak’ir tower could not scry for her.

The chimney came out halfway up the many-tiered hive tower, which loomed like a horizontal city above and behind her. It was raining as she finally kicked out the grate at the top of the chimney, and slithered out into the cooling night’s air. She lay upon a sloping roof for several moments, weeping with pain as the cooling grey rain fizzed over her red raw body. The healing process always hurt her more than the initial injury; after a while, a severe burn would go numb, as the pain receptors were destroyed. When she healed, the pain receptors healed too, and brought the pain back with a vengeance. Miraculously, the vox bead in her ear had survived relatively intact, and she managed to tune into the frequency of the only person she knew on Armageddon.

“Drazak... you have a purpose. Remember me Kage. Remember...” was all she managed to wheeze down the vox line through her scorched larynx. 

The tower was in uproar; searchlights swept across the heavens, and armies of Confederation troopers rushed inside the tower, searching for the girl who must surely still be inside. Little did they know that she was crawling, slowly, between sloped rooves, biting back the pain as she regrew her skin and dirty blond hair.

Yet, just as she reached the lower levels, an Arbitrator APC stopped, and trained its spotlight onto her. A man in carapace stood up in the vehicle’s cupola. He recognised the girl instantly, and swung his storm bolter towards her.

The APC was a solid, hefty vehicle. Nevertheless, the vehicle was no match for the ninety ton ore-truck which barrelled into its side at seventy miles an hour. The APC flipped end over end, before crashing to a halt on its roof. From the truck’s cockpit, two figures emerged. One was a muscular man, festooned with tattoos and scars. The other was a looming dark figure, with spindly limbs and soulless glowing blue eyes. For a moment, she deliriously thought she was back on Drazak and was being assailed by a necron construct, but the lithe figure was too upright and too obviously human-built to be a mirror devil.

Kage rushed to her side, and hauled her over his shoulder. “I have to stop saving you. It’s getting embarrassing,” he laughed mockingly, as he set her down in the vehicle and sped off.

Crolomere was finally healed by the time they reached their destination; a non-descript hab on the edge of Chronol hive, a gleaming city of adamantium and glass. There was nothing exceptional about the house; Kage had moved in after being contacted by Bronislaw and his associates. Inside was a different matter.

The place was built of wriathbone and living crystal, which clung to the wraithbone walls like fibrous, solid cobwebs. A glittering, bejewelled webway gate shimmered in the far corner, studded with protective runes that seemed to fluctuate as she sought to look at them directly.

Kage had made a deal with the Revelation Host, and Jaxx, the Iron Man ally of kage, explained that they had been searching for Crolomere ever since she had defied Ahriman. Kage gave Crolomere some of his spare clothes before he let the skeletal android spokesman for Revelation continue.

She had proven tot he Host that she was not a servant of dissolution, as they had feared. Czevak had been made aware of the grey Sensei’s vital importance. Jaxx explained that she must come with him, to the heart of the webway, where she msut fulfil a vital role.

Crolomere turned to Kage, then back to jaxx. Then, she refused.

“No, false man. I am not going to go with you on some unknown errand, just because you believe in prophecies and fate. All of you; the Red Sorcerer, the Yngir star-hungry, the daemons and angyls, you all want the universe to dance to your tune. I am not a damsel to be won like a prize, I am not a pawn!” she snarled, as the android stared at her, blankly as ever.

“The White Lancer Astartes Commandery have been alerted to your escape, and have deployed a hunter company of one hundred Nova Astartes to bring you back into custody, alive or otherwise. We will be unable to protect you from them in this present location. We have roughly 10.236 minutes before the space marines locate our escape vehicle to this location, and approx 11.002 minutes until the Astartes assault this location directly,” Jaxx explained.

“I do not care. We’ll escape, me and Kage, won’t we?” she looked to Kage.

He shrugged. “I’ve been in worse situations.”

“Your deliquence is not apprieciated. I have been directed to bring you back to Lord Bronislaw Czevak and the Host,” Jaxx reiterated.

“Then explain why I should go,” she demanded.

Kage peered out of the window, and looked towards the eastern sky; a flight of White lancer fliers were approaching across the horizon. “Hurry it up, whatever you’re doing, or we’re all fugged!”

Jaxx cocked his head to one side, before opening a compartment in his hip and withdrawing a rune-covered cube, no bigger than a die. He placed the device in Crolomere’s hand.

“Close your hand. The psychic archive will sample your blood, and establish a psychic uplink. You will obtain clarity,” Jaxx instructed her.

Reluctantly, Crolomere did as she was asked. As the cube pierced her digits with pinpricks, the woman seemed to shimmer, gleaming with an aura of purest white and gold. Kage shielded his eyes as the light built to a blinding intensity. The moment passed, and the chamber returned to normal. Crolomere dropped the cube, and turned to smile at Kage, her cheeks wet with tears.

“The webway portal. It’s our only way out Kage. Will you come with me?”

Kage’s eyes narrowed, unsure what Crolomere had experienced (indeed, the printed chronicle of Vasiri the Watcher doesn’t seem to reference what she saw that so changed her mind). But his expression eventually softened.

“Well you weren’t leaving me here girl. Now let’s go if we’re going.”

And with that, the three entered the portal, which sealed itself automatically upon their passing.

However, Crolomere did not travel towards Revelation’s lair, as Jaxx had wanted her to. She travelled the forbidden routes, and headed towards the world where the Black Cube of Ahriman stood, with kage and the android in tow. Only she knew how to even the playing field against Ahriman, and she was determined to stop him. 

In frustration at her willfulness, Czevak sent the Apex Twins and the Legion of the Damned after her. He only hoped that would be enough to resist the Librarian-King of the Thousand Sons and his nightmarish rubric.

[EDIT: I found it! Lion-bless me I found it! Vasiri hadn’t included it in the printed Chronicle, she had handwritten it, and shoved it in amongst the reams of dataslates and memory crystals that made up her chronicle of the Age of Dusk. ]

''She felt the rushing of fire and ice water through my veins, as she beheld a great field, endless in all directions. But through the field rose up clouds, nebulae and infant stars, wheeling about her, as if she were some impossibly huge entity bestriding the galaxy itself, which filled her vision wherever she turned.
Where she focussed upon a particular patch of stars, those stars grew in size and scale, until she felt as if she were an invisible voyeur peering from orbit at the events unfolding below. She saw fleets clashing over Corbellus; mechanical nightmares and demi-gods, mortals and devils crashing together, and the undulating roars of the Red Angel and the Wolf. The pain and fire was too hot to bear, to raw to know. 

She turned away, and beheld an alien city crumbling, a flaming hero battling a mighty tide of frothing bile. And above them all, a shattered ship and two gladiatorial killers locked in combat; the favoured Son of a favoured Son and the Lord of Wights, Huron the un-dead. Looking away in disgust, she suddenly beheld the thorny crown of Aurellian, rising one point at a time from an oily black soup of misery and horror. The Travesty with a face.

Looking south, mortal men charged the would-be God and his enslaved Rubric Hordes. They were mighty and courageous, Braiva’s best, but even the best were nothing compared to the ascendant darkness, the pretender to the throne of all creation.

Hope stood before the black sphere, but the fleet was left outside in the cold. Would they have their peace, or would they fail, like so many dreamers before them? The Last Good Man lowered his head, and mouthed silent words.

She saw necrons falling into dust, silent evermore. She saw the stars swelling with impossible hues, and tearing the materium in every corner of the galaxy. The vision accelerated, faster and faster, until she screamed and the vision retreated, leaving her surrounded by a hazy smoke.

The smoke cleared, as a figure emerged, wreathed by blinding shafts of golden hued light, that shone from behind him, making him indistinct.

“I am sorry it has come to this.”

The figure’s voice was beautific and youthful, and as he spoke, the shining light faded, and his beautiful, serene face was revealed, clad in a simple robe of pearl, edged with platinum. A singlet of simple gold crowned his head, and his eyes... 

Crolomere recognized those eyes, somehow she knew this man. Realization dawned in a flash.

“I see that you have questions. I will endeavor to answer them. You may call me Revelation, for the purposes of this meeting.”

Crolomere stepped forwards, and slapped the golden figure in the face. The man took the blow, and Crolomere felt her arm go temporarily numb, as if a great current had passed through it for a moment. She glared at the man.

“Revelation? All this theatrics doesn’t benefit you in the slightest when it comes to me ''Revelation''. I know you. I’ve always known you. I cannot help but remember my absentee father,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

The serene figure raised its hands placatingly. “The Emperor was a distant man, I will freely admit this. He had compassion, but it was submerged beneath duty; an awful burden that he had been given by the eldest Perpetuals. You know the story. It is true, you know this Crolomere.”

The world around them shifted and morphed, becoming an ancient sandstone city.

“This was where I was created, then abandoned to fend for myself in the universe,” Crolomere explained coldly. “Why show me this?”

“This psychic vision is not mine alone. Our minds are joined here,” Revelation explained.

Crolomere’s eyes glistened, wavering on the point of tears. “How could you abandon me? Abandon us? You have no idea how many offspring you fathered. I met some of them. None of them, not one, ever knew you. You lavished love upon those living weapons you built, why could you not have loved us?”

“Your souls were invisible to the Emperor. He could not sense you.”

“Mortal fathers cannot sense the souls of their children, but they still care for them. Keep them safe...” Crolomere began, before she turned away from Revelation. 

“I am truly sorry. I feel-”

“You feel nothing! You were a cold, indifferent monster, and the Empire you created was almost as bad as the Primordial Annihilator itself. Do you see why I turned form the Imperium, and became Grey? What are you anyway? The Emperor died, I felt him die when Cypher plunged the Lion sword through his heart. I felt the Star father rise. I don’t even know what this thing is, which comes to beg for my assistance. It is like no Emperor I recall,” she wept bitterly.

Revelation psychically placed a golden palm upon her sobbing shoulder. “Compassion, humanity; things discarded by the Anathema to become what it needed to be at the time. This compassion will pour into me, amongst other things. The moment is coming, sooner now than later. Please believe me,” the serene unborn god replied, each word perfectly formed upon his lips.

She turned to him slowly. “I could never abandon my children. I had so many; dozens upon dozens through the millennia. I watched them grow and thrive, love and live, age and die. They are all gone now. Your longevity does not pass down the biological line beyond your immediate offspring it seems. I stayed with my families, even when they withered to dried ancients and passed away in their sleep. I recall the names of every one. And you, you couldn’t find us right away, and gave up on us. You...”

She couldn’t go on.

The world shifted again, becoming a thousand battlefields and warzones, across different worlds and shifting versions of the Earth. Some were alternate futures, where Terra was a sterile rock of nuclear fallout, others where the orks or the Necrons stood over a planet of slaves, desperately worshipping those beings that had laid them low. “Look upon these wars. These neverending wars. The Emperor was forced to intervene, time and again. Forced to manage humanity, and bring it back from the brink of disaster. His responsibility was to all humanity, not just you or those he might have called his friends. His mind... you do not understand the nature of this man, but you can understand this; he became so old, everyone he had ever met had perished, destroyed by the tyranny of time. Personal attachments seared his soul. It was like falling in love with a mayfly to him, again and again. He dared not make attachments, or else he would certainly lose them, to death and to time. He sacrificed this for humanity. This made him cold, but this was the pragmatic thing to do.”

Crolomere smiled bleakly. “That’s the talk of the Star Father.”

“Yes, and the Anathema is wrong. It is a distorted image of a creed humanity failed to understand. They lost their guidance, and let their fear and hatred make a monster out of the one being who wanted, more than anything, to save them.”

Giant monsters loomed alla round them, and Crolomere recoiled in sudden fright. 
There was a giant brass-horned devil, spewing blood and sulphur. 
An odious monster of cogs and gears and crushing claws. 
A smirking fiend with a black and white face. 
An androgynous princess with a serpent’s tongue. 
A feathered tower of undulating flesh. 
A festering mass of cancerous growths and billowing slime. 
Faceless armour with gauntlets of silver.
Three other things pushed up through the undulating plain, but they were formless, and voiceless, like unworked clay.

“Who are the final three?” Crolomere asked Revelation, her voice oddly weak as she watched the creatures rip their way through the flimsy ground.

“They aren’t anything yet. Their form is not yet set. History is not written in stone; even I am only potential. But there are forces, powerful forces, getting close to ascension. Some will be bad, some insane, some might be good. But all of them are desperate, and will all rush headlong into this future. On some level, they all know their chances for godhood are dwindling. That is why things are speeding up for your time period. Events are unfolding faster than any can predict. My time is approaching.”

Crolomere sneered at Revelation. “You want to be part of this pantheon too?”

He smiled then, and it was as if sun had risen on a stormy day, and vanquished the rain. He placed a hand on her cheek lovingly. “No. When I come into existence, it will not be as one of the great powers. That is not my way. This deep rising nightmare... this Nexusofeverfatedrisingmadnesshopeofallturnedblackdoomtoallthebeligerentsandtheirgodsallhaildoomnightmares... is not undefeatable. There is a chance, a slim chance, that I can save everybody; everything that has ever existed or shall ever exist. But I need time, and time is working against me.”

The world turned dark and cold and Crolomere found herself upon a dune of grey ash. “What do you mean?”

Revelation sighed, and seemed ancient beyond reckoning for a brief instance. “I must be born before the last god rises. If not, the barriers between realities will fail, and the window of opportunity will close. Then everything will be ash.”

“I see what you demand from me. You only care about me now so you can harvest me. You need a host, is that it?”

Revelation shed a tear, to Crolomere’s surprise. The droplet fell from his face, and struck the ground like a fifty ton weight, cracking the ashstrewn earth like a jackhammer. “No. You do not understand. I need time. The rise of gods can be slowed. That would give me the time.”

Crolomere considered his words. “Ahriman. He is the closest to ascension. I know how to stop him. Are these your orders? You want me to destroy him?”

Revelation was youthful again, but his golden gleam was gone, as the vision grew ever colder. Snow covered the ground, and the world was barren at their feet. “I do not demand anything of you, my dear Crolomere. I would never demand anything of you if you truly did not wish to go. I just needed to speak with you. I have faith in you. You will make the right choice.”

Crolomere looked at revelation, with her ever-youthful blue eyes streaming with tears. “I helped bring about Ahriman. I can destroy him. Revelation, I will destroy him, I promise you.”

And with that, Crolomere faded from the psychic vision, leaving revelation alone in an every darkening vista.

“You didn’t tell her?” another man said, at Revelation’s side.

Revelation’s expression was no longer serene. “I couldn’t. It had to be her choice. I am nobody’s tyrant.”

“But if Ahriman kills her, the process will never take place. You might never exist my Lord,” the second man responded, as the world became pitch black. Only voices remained.

“Perhaps. But would she have gone to face Ahriman if she knew?”

The second man had no answer, as the vision ended.

The Compassionate one was of course right. Crolomere was not ready for the final Revelation. The revelation that the emperor was dead, and had died the moment he had thrown his compassion into the warp. The revelation that the one who called Himself ‘Revelation’ was not the Father of Crolomere.

He was the Son.''
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