Void Trekkers

Void Trekkers
Battle Cry	Don't Panic
Number	42
Allegiance	human
Colours	Red, Blue or Gold

The Void Trekkers are a heretical group of Imperial citizens who are currently located on a world near the edge of the Halo Star region that they named Magrathea. While undoubtedly heretical to the established orders of both the Inquisition and the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Void Trekkers see themselves as striving to fulfill the Emperor's vision for mankind. The group is comprised of various subgroups of outcasts from many different Imperial institutions and different worlds across the Imperium. As previously mentioned, the group's primary goal is to fulfill the Emperor's vision for humanity, which for them includes returning humanity to the days of unquestioned superiority in regards the internal and external pressures. The philosophy behind this effort, and indeed the heresy, was formulated by a man by the name of Petarca who was once a initiate studying under an auto-savant of the Inquisition. Petarca's philosophy was formed while working across the Segmentum Obscurus where he mistook archived data from The Sigillites as historical records. Using these "Records" as a guide, the Void Trekkers strive for the betterment for all Humanity, with the mentality of Humans first.

Fluff

History

A Fundamental Misunderstanding

A initiate of the Inquisition by the name of Petarca served as a under clerk for a traveling autosavant. His superior's work involved verifying documents and conducting audits for the Inquisition. Cleaning boots, scrubbing floors, and retrieving any item the autosavant required was the least of Petarca's duties. While carrying out these duties at a hiveworld, Petarca's superior was sent to inventory a collection of salvaged cargo from a recently discovered space hulk floating near the Eye of Terror. There was indication that this cargo belonged to the Inquisition but was mistakenly sent to the forgeworld of Belacane.

Upon arrival to Belacane, Petarca's autosavant wasted no time and started his inventory of the cargo. While examining the containers, which seemed to contain mostly mundane items like clothing and candles, the autosavant's interest was mute until he came across a relatively inconspicuous container. The markings did appear similar to that of the Inquisition but the container was ancient and completely out of place in this cargo. The autosavant speculated that the container was well over 10,000 years old, and if that being case was most likely to be originally belonging to The Sigillites. The autosavant was deft of mechadendrite when handling the artifact from another age and was able to confirm his speculation upon opening the container and finding the contents being data-recorders that predated the Imperium of Man. All the while this investigation was conducted Petsrca was holding his autosavant's tools and taking notes. The autosavant had his own language, which Petarca did not understand. did very little explaining. Thus Petarca was completely uneducated about what exactly he was helping investigate.

Upon the realization of how old the artifact was, the autosavant began to immediately suspected that the Adeptus Mechanicus had deliberately opened this container in search of some forgotten or forbidden knowledge. This only fueled his interest to the contents of the data-recorders, which were contained a catalog and appeared intact. The autosavant and his retinue took possession of the cargo and scheduled passage on the next void ship off world. Unfortunately the next ship going to Valon Urr was not scheduled to depart for several standard months. The autosavant became increasingly worried about being stranded on a forge world with potential galaxy changing technology. He was completely flabbergasted when the Adepts of the Machine God simply let him go and take all the contents to a secured Inquisition envoy facility.

During the months of wait, Petarca further assisted investigation of the data recorders. It took over a month of the autosavant and his retinue to adapt their existing cogitators to a compatible format with the ancient data recorders. The end result of their work was a device that consisted of a view screen visor and audio output which was fed directly into an ear. While the autosavant no longer possessed ears he could have adapted the technology to his enhancements but was ultimately worried about scrap code from a forgotten age ravaging his body, mind and soul. This meant Petarca was going to be the human guinea pig. Of course, none of this was explained to Petarca, and his understanding for this great honor was due to him being the closest person physically near the autosavant at the time that still had flesh and blood ears.

As the machine powered on, Petarca had a moment of existential aghast that gripped him as he stared into the black screen. Instantly the display lit up as the autosavant began to access the data. Petarca was exposed to sights and sounds he sounds that were unimaginable. It appeared to be audio and visual records of a past age of man. In it there were wondrous sights of humanity's triumph and endeavors through many different times and places. They mostly contained an unknown language to Petarca but sounded extremely familiar. After what seemed like hours of having Petarca viewing and listening to the recordings the autosavant powered down the device to hear what Petarca had to report.

Petarca was completely taken a back by what he had witnessed. There was an early time in humanity that humans traveled the stars in void ships much smaller then our current understanding of a void ship, with one of their largest being only 600 meters or so. He saw the exploits of a particular captain as he traveled from system to system for the betterment of humanity, which was usually done at the expense of Xenos. The captain had a xenos servant that was clearly an Eldar, as in the Eldar were under control of humanity at one point of time. The captain was a military leader the united federation of humanity. There were no signs of A.I. and humanity was capable of solving all the problems that came across them.

The autosavant was skeptical of everything he had heard but his interest in the data recorder had reached a zenith and he decided to access the data himself. After approximately a standard hour of time the autosavant took off the device and began cursing the Adeptus Mechcanicus, the recorders, and everything else in between. Petarca was worried and tired to figure out why his superior was so upset. The autosavant informed him that this data is useless and there was good reason the tech-priest gave no resistance to the autosavant taking possession of the recorders, it is futile and the data was useless. Petarca was very confused at this and became deeply panicked when the autosavant ordered him to dispose of the recordings. Petarca held back any emotions he had over this material and collected it to bring to waste disposal. When he finally reached the waste disposal, Petarca realized that he could not bring himself to destory the recordings of humans in their natural, superior, state. The seeds of heresy were planted.

If Petarca disobeyed the direct orders of the autosavant there could be only one way for him to avoid being converted into an servitor or being outright killed. The autosavant wasn't a deliberately cruel man but he would utilize the most effective methods of controlling his retinue. Petarca fled in the middle of the night carrying only the clothes on his back, the adapted cogitator and the data recorders themselves. Having no money or status on this world, Petarca had ended up in the lowest of low in society. He was homeless and begged for scraps of food when he could. Besides sleep and hiding from authorities searching for him, Petarca spent all his time continuing to review the data recorders. They became a obsession for him to the point where he didn't care about anything but trying to understand what he had witnessed.

What Petarca did not understand was that the data recorders did not contain historical records but fictional stories from the very early days of humanity. This would have been apparent to the data examining tech-priest (who could see the obvious failures to properly simulate reality through effects and deception) and the autosavant (who by his nature his extremely well versed in history and past cultural experssions), but to a relative lay-person in the current Age of Man it was indistinguishable from reality. The level of production of false recordings would have been unimaginable to Petarca. While he did have a concept of fiction, Petarca was completely unprepared for the level of effort of story telling. To Petarca, the inconsistency of graphics & sounds, current hypothesis of the historians for that timeframe, and seeming lack of well known omissions from the records were explained away by the sheer age of the recorders, (Indeed some of the recordings he thought hailed from the 3rd millennium). In short Petarca's mission was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the recordings he held so dearly.

Heterodoxical Beliefs

The Void Trekkers have developed an understanding of the galaxy that is very different from the rest of the Imperium over their development, including:

• Warp tech was developed in the second millennium.
• That there was an Imperium before the current Imperium where the Emperor went by name Atreides and periodically will intervene with a faltering humanity to ensure they remain on the "Golden Path".
• Even earlier in history, humans were united in a federation that dominated the nearby space around Terra. This federation extended to what is now the Eye of Terror and had conquered the Eldar, among several other xenos that have gone extinct by the 41st millennium.
• That women are the weaker sex, this is demonstrated in the historical documents where, in humanities golden age, women are shown to be irrational, deceptive, and largely focused on personal relationships. The vast majority of leadership positions and positions of power are predominately filled by men.
• That the majority of people in the past were light skinned. This did not prevent people with darker skin from participating but they were not numerous at the time.
• That the Emperor is the first of the "new man", essentially they believe they can ascend to the capabilities of the Emperor.
• Xenos tech can be rehabilitated by proper reverence and therapy.
• Deviations from humanity, including abhumans, psykers, and space marines, do not count as humans and should be subservient to humans. (much like a Squig is used as live stock by Orkz).
• Necrons are the Men of Iron, whom they believe to originally be humans that transferred their consciousness into a machine. This is what they consider "Abominable Intelligence". By logical extension, this means all tech traditionally associated with Necrons is actually human tech.
• Cogitator-based intelligence was what the savants call "The Men of Stone". This intelligence was directed by a set of laws to ensure they did no harm to humanity.
• Their was a distant galaxy a long time ago that humans inhabited, making humans older then the Old Ones, the Necrons, and the Eldar.