The ship moves
The Ship is the Imperium.
The Imperium is the Ship.
The Ship is the Emperor.
The Emperor is the Ship.
All is the Ship.
The Ship is All.
The Ship Moves.
Yet another variation on the future of Warhammer 40K created by the Anons of /tg/.
In the not too distant future of 40K, the Imperium's borders have shrunk, devastated by wars, disease and famine. For a brief, shining moment, the Emperor awakes upon His Golden Throne and orders the construction of a massive ship, its keel 1AU in length. What remains of the Imperium is stripped to build The Ship, with Holy Terra itself hollowed out and fitted with massive cogitators and command system, the Imperial Palace itself becoming the bridge. All that is left of humanity is brought aboard this ark of civilization. Here humankind lives and dies in the bowels of its massive holds, whole world's worth of people living in single compartments. The combined psychic presence of humanity lies under the aegis of the God-Emperor's power, thwarting Chaos. Only the God-Emperor, now the God-Captain, knows where The Ship is going.
In other words, it's just battlestar galactica reworked for the Warhammer 40k setting.
Notes
In a recent thread (Part 5) Some new lore was added to the fray.
1.) Mankind IS working with Xenos scum, under direct orders from the God-Captain. (Eldar, Tau and Necron and a small fraction of Dark Eldar)
2.) After much, much, debate it was decided that Human-Xeno inter-personal relationships would be officially decriminalized. However it is greatly frowned upon and only encountered deep into the Grey Areas of The Ship.
3.) All Space Marine Gene-seeds have been slightly modified so that the God-Captains Angels of Death might produce human offspring in the more traditional sense. They are also given sanction to start families as a means of keeping them psychologically grounded given the relative rarity of large scale wars. They still have other duties to attend to. (Example: The Blood Ravens chapter now works as the Guardians for the Vault of Mankind, where all Holy Relics are stored for safekeeping until Journey's End.)
4.) EVERYTHING must be recycled.
5.) Xenos we are NOT allied with are on the Ship and still pose a threat, those being mostly Orks and Tyranids.
6.) Those left behind will be forever remembered as the Captain's finest.
Components and Location of note within The Ship
The Big Bang Bottles
A construction of a strange alien science. First envisioned by their creator as a source of inexhaustible, clean and efficient agony that could revolutionize the Dark City. A universe would be created in a contained environment, sped up until life inside was advanced enough to feel pain and then they could just live off of the collective suffering without the need for all that messy slave raiding. Sadly by the time the project started bearing fruit the denizens of the Dark City had decided that they quite like all that slave raiding. To make matters worse it seemed that none of the universes created were complex enough to allow life to develop. The only thing they were good for was the high energy output once they got started. Sadly they were expensive to build and start, took up a lot of space and the Dark City already had more reliable sources of energy.
Rehabilitated Dark Eldar wishing to start again in another galaxy bartered passage on The Ship in exchange for building a few of them to power The Ship. Each required a small star to warm up but once started worked perfectly.
Big Bang Bottle is almost certainly not their real name but nobody really cares.
The Dyson Spheres
A vast series of colossal and arcane pillars that seem to suddenly cease to exist at a certain height. Observers state that they feel the columns continue on, as their eyes tell them they cease. In reality, these pillars do continue on much further, extending through stabilised warp rifts, into the warp itself. At the peak of every Pillar sits a captive star, encased within a Dyson sphere. These are used alongside the Big Bang Bottles to supply the unfathomable demand for power that the ship ever requires.
Infinity Circuit
The largest single component of The Ship and the most massive single piece of psyco-plastic ever made in the history of the galaxy. It stretches from one end of The Ship to the other in a great web. The nodes where strands merge and mingle were often former Craftworlds that were incorporated into The Ships construction. The Infinity Circuit houses the collective dead of the eldar, their sleeping God of Death and also acts as a deamon deterrent as it did for the Craftworld. It is also used as the ships inter-com although use is restricted to the God-Captain, the Captain's Council and occasionally the Inquisition unless there is some sort of emergency that threatens The Ship as a whole.
Warp Proofing
Billions of Gellar Field generators, the Infinity Circuit, masses of Cadian Pylons and the presence of the Never-dying God-Captain. Further more the ship only skims the surface of the warp in the manner of the Tau ships of yesteryear and the wake it creates tends to mutilate and deflect all but the most terrible of daemons.
Matter Forges
The vast musical workshops of the Bone Singers. They sing into existence raw material from pure nothingness. It offsets the lost material in the not 100% efficient recycling. The fresh matter is then handed over to the Forge-shrines of the Mechanicus to be consecrated and purified before being made into spare parts.
Ark Vaults
The sovereign domain of the Adeptus Biologis. It is their sacred duty to preserve the seeds of the Old Galaxy so that once they arrive at Journey's End they may terraform dead worlds and have the Imperium live again as it should have been.
The Helmsman's Throne
The throne upon which the God-Captain sits as he guides The Ship through the inky black. It was once known as the Golden Throne in an age long since past.
The Space Hulk Cloud
As The Ship travels through the warp, the massive amount of turbulence it generates sweeps up thousands upon thousands of space hulks, forming what looks like a cloud of dust around The Ship.
Xenos of The Ship
Tau
- They, and their vassal peoples, were given passage upon The Ship for their technical expertise. Without them it is doubtful that the millions of warp-drives upon The Ship would have been synchronized through the Infinity Circuit successfully. For this, as well as the services of their repair and maintenance teams, they are tolerated.
- Their numbers even when combined with their vassal peoples is, when compared to the teeming masses of humanity, very low.
Eldar
- Early on in the ships design it became abundantly clear that even if the entire Imperium was stripped down and used in the construction of The Ship it would not be enough. They needed a means of generating building material on site. Sadly the only people that the Imperium knew of who could do this were the Eldar. For this reason, and their continued supply of fresh repair material, the Eldar are tolerated.
Dark Eldar
- Early on in The Ships construction a band of Dark Eldar brought forth the designs for the Big Bang Bottles. After these were incorporated into the design they were, reluctantly, granted a place aboard The Ship. Thankfully most Imperial Citizens can't tell the difference between them and the Craftworlders. Sadly the Craftworlders can and the two do not like each other at all. It is unsure how many of them are on board as they keep to their Enclaves around the Bottles and do not suffer visitors gladly.
Necrons
- Unlike the Tau and Eldar their existence has not been made known to the general public. When it became abundantly clear to them that their Empire was never going to arise from the ashes in a galaxy desolated by all out war between Orks, Chaos and Tyranids many of them bartered passage in exchange for inertia and momentum manipulation technology. These technological marvels allowed The Ship a much more rapid acceleration and departure. They are also responsible for the Cadian Pylons scattered about The Ship. Many of them, to pass the time, perform maintenance duties in places where the living can not go.
- Their dwelling places, although not off limits to the public, tend to be in the irradiated areas of the ships as they like their privacy.
- When asked about them the Mechanicus maintain that they are just highly upgraded tech-adepts.
Orks
- Managed to infiltrate The Ship almost certainly as spores. Tend to be found in the many vast uninhabited areas of The Ship. They range from undernourished sickly things barely better than weedy feral grots to fully fledged, battle ready orks with looted weapons or weapons built from scrap stolen from The Ship. Although no WAAAAAAGH!!! has ever threatened the integrity of the colossal vessel, they have proved difficult to remove entierly.
Tyranids
- Genestealer cultists got on board along with many other refugees. In the fraught time of departure there was not enough time to gene-scan everyone, and within a few hundred years pure-strains were spawning in the Unmarked Regions. Thankfully their psychic beacon can't penetrate the interference of the warp wake. The task still stands that they must be exterminated before Journey's End, lest they draw the Tyranids to the New Galaxy before the Imperium Reborn can have chance to get ready for them.
- There are other, more feral, bio-forms on The Ship also. Various variations of Lictors and other stealthy ambush hunters crept aboard possibly during construction. They are feral things that have long since gone native. Whether this is because they can't hear the song of the Hive is unknown. Often found as pets and war-beasts kept by the Genestealer cults.
Others
- The Hrud are on board. Nobody knows how.
- The Umbra have taken up residence near many of the warp drives. They don't seem to do anything if you leave them alone.
- Lacrymole and Simulacra are, sadly, probably on board somewhere given their ability to disguise themselves as human.
The Primarchs
Several of the Primarchs are on board the Ship.
- Leman Russ, Jaghatai Khan, Corvus Corax, and Vulkan came forth from the Warp during the construction of the Ship to help lead Mankind in its retreat into the Ship. The four's roles are unknown, although it is said that Leman Russ leads his Wolves to defend the civilian populace from all possible threats.
- After Mankind allied it self with the Eldar, they used their Xeno magics to heal the Primarch Roboute Guilliman. Although their magics could only do so much, his body is brittle and worn, leaving him only able to command, never battle. He helps manage life aboard the Ship so it isn't total anarchy.
- Sanguinius, although killed at the hands of Horus, was reborn as The Sanguinor. His position on the ship is unknown at this time, although it is believed he helps keep the Xenos in line.
- Rogal Dorn, as it turns out, faked his death so that he may take control over the Adeptus Custodes, and now commands the defense of the Hull with the remnants of the Imperial Fists that did not stay behind to defend the Ship as it departed.
- There is a legend among the people of the Cargo bays that two figures came aboard the Ship just before its launch and have remained there ever since. No one has ever gotten a good look at either of them, but accounts all say that one of the two always say 'Hydra Dominatus' before vanishing. In their wake there is always a game of Chess that ended in a stalemate. This is all legend of course, something that is told to new recruits of the Cargo Bay guardsmen to spook them.
- There is also a very interesting legend among the civilians of the Maintenance crews, who work closely with the Iron Hands chapter, that their Primarchs skull was recovered shortly before the launch, and they are now using mysterious Necron, Eldar, and Tau machines to restore him to life... again, this is nothing more then a legend.
- Lastly, there is Lion El'Jonson, who was awoken at the same time as the Emperor to help defend the construction of the Ship. He now leads the Dark Angels to fight any Heretics that might be found on board, what little there are that is.
- Of the Traitor Primarchs, only one's fate is known for certain. Angron sits outside the ship, beating on the hull in a futile display of rage.
Part 1
Junction 344-68B was my home. I mean, it wasn't much of home, but still.
It was perched on the edge of corridor 65, built into the bulkhead, 3 miles of city climbing up the ironcliff like a vine climbing an orchard wall. My family lived at the bottom, in the shanty habs that bordered the corridor proper, in tumbledown fibreboard houses half buried in the encroaching Flakesands. We scratched a living servicing the Smeltships when they came back from mining the Rust Dunes, or thieving from the uphivers when they came down all covered in rust cowls to collect their goods from the trawlcaptains.
I used to hear stories from the traders about other places, places where the Plasma lights didn't work and the environmental systems were so cold, people had to live over vents to the engine cores to stop themselves freezing. Places where you couldn't even see the ceiling and where it rained water instead of oil and forgeash. Some even said there was places where you could see outside the ship. Look out of the inky black and see things they called stars.
The preachers told us not to listen to those folks. Said they was crazy. There aint nothing outside the ship. How could there be.
Then the Guard came calling and I learnt better.
They were looking for fighting men and Emperor bless me, I volunteered. People don't usually come back from a stint in the Guard, but I had a head on my shoulders that yearned for travel, and a brain too young and dumb to realise that was a bad idea, so I signed my cross on the sheet they gave me and got me a uniform in return.
I got travel as well. God-Emperor did I. They took us in airships across the Rust Dunes, gathering men all the way, from habs like Outlet-35, Irongate, Rifttown and a dozen I hadn't even of. They said we was mustering for a crusade in Sector-585. That didn't mean much to me but I was damn sure the newly formed 56th RustCrawler Rifles would kick ass when we got there, even if it took us a year to haul our green behinds to the fight.
Which it did.
I spent 5 months on a boat. Do you know what a boat is son? It travels on water if you can imagine such a thing. I travelled on boat the size of a city down a waterpipe the size of hive. I saw things from that boat I can barely describe. Whole hives built out over the water, like mushrooms growing out of a condenser pipe, full of folk with different colour skins. I saw things living in the water that still give the jeebies in my dreams. And sometimes the pipe opened up, flowing through rooms with ceilings so high you couldn't even see 'em. Just a blue you thought you'd float away into. Yeah, scared the shit out me the first time too.
They taught us how to shoot in the ranges, how to get chewed out by the sergeant for not drilling in time, how to polish your boots and chant the Imperial creed. When we mustered out on the field at the end of that boat ride, we weren’t boys any longer. We were the Guard. We were proud. We were stupid.
But nobody ever said you have to be clever to fight.
We met other regiments then. CabinHivers from upship, covered in chains and gang tattoos. Bearded Hyruns who hadn’t even known they was on the ship till the recruiting ships had landed in the middle of their villages. Stiff backed Pretars. Spoilt bastards the lot of them, but I lost three teeth when I said that to their face.
So we mustered out, marched up and down the field, drilled, saluted all so that the bigwigs could inspect us or whatever it is they do. We obviously passed the test because they put us on the Train.
God-Emperor, the Train! Imagine a cathedral tower the size of a city, laid on its side and put on rails. 4km of spiked turrets, gargoyles and guns. An iron sheathed prow like the beak of a rusthawk. One of the ratings told me she’d been a Navy ship once, unimaginably long ago. Before the ship. Before the exodus. The thought awed me. Still does.
They put us in the holds, but we lucked out and got a view anyway. Once the Train had carried gun batteries big to level planets, but they been stripped out millennia ago. Now there was just a gallery where you could look out on the Ship as the train rolled by. When they weren’t drilling you, or shouting at you, or searching your bedclothes for contraband, you could just sit and watch. We saw, cities glimmer in the dark, oceans of oil, and coolant, and water and on top of it all floating towns chasing whatever lived down there. We saw whole agri-spheres covered in crystal glass like a jewelled planets. The glow of Forgehold 34-786 where they cast tanks in moulds the size of houses. We went through gates, and locks and elevators large enough to make a man feel like an ant next to a mountain.
Once we even came to an area of quiet pines and solemn mountains, stretching as far as the eye could see, and in the distance a single spire of black granite. Someone said that’s where the Astartes waited. Where they watched. After that no-one went into the gallery for a while.
It never pays to be too curious about the angels of death.
We spent 6 months on that train. Waiting, watching, wondering where the hell we were going. Then one day we got our answer.
We were going to Ravengate.
My first impressions of Ravengate was that it was big. But big doesn’t do it justice. My father was big. My mother got big when she stopped exercising and kept eating. Big implies some kind of largeness, like you could stand up against it and compare yourself to it. Compare yourself to Ravengate and you’d just be lost. A Gate, city, and fortress all rolled into one, the hive was a hundred miles of steel, and artillery and trainports. It stretched up the bulk head like a iron door studded with a million rivets, each a city, each a weapon. I remember the train pulling into a siding alongside a dozen others just like it. I watched as a million men disembarked beneath the unmoving glare of the titan legions that strode the ground like metal gods. I remember looking up and seeing a hundred more stations just like it crowded round the oval gate like piglets sucking a teat. I saw the might of humanity gathered for a war in the belly of her own creation. God-emperor it felt good.
This was the crusade that they’d talked about. The liberation of Sector-585. The commisars told us it had been taken by the Orks centuries ago. They’d boiled out of the bowels like a wave of filth, vermin infesting the shadows of the blessed Ship. At the time nobody had the resources to do much about it. So the Ravengate had been sealed and held. The Orkish tide stopped. Now they were going to be cleansed. About damn time.
I don’t remember much about the next few days. I remember the tram rides through the gate itself. A few days in a maze of steel, and firepower. The grim set faces of the RavenGaters who’d been fighting the Orks since they were old enough to stand. I remember watching a speech by Lord-General Perrus and not being able to hear a word he said but cheering anyway. The first look of the from the low mound of RavenGate where it protruded from the sector floor at wastes of 585 themselves; a torn and broken ground or rock and iron, dirty with the scars of two hundred years of artillery. Being literally sick with fear in the mess tent, and the Commissar’s surprisingly comforting hand on my shoulder. The rest’s a blur, a whirl of orders and preparations, waiting and nerves. I don’t even remember the order to attack.
I remember the war though. Such a thing’s hard to forget.
Do you know how I killed my first Ork. The Primer says they’re stupid gutter rats, big dumb animals primed for slaughter. Strong but stupid. What they don’t tell you is that they use every ounce of that strength to try and kill you dead, and that they are really really fucking strong. This particular one took half my squad with it. Guardsmen Kanth was the first to die, head blown of by a gun bigger than my torso. It killed Ren with knife made from a tank door. It just head butted Godis but that was enough.
Then I shot it between the eyes and turned its head into fried meat.
If that sounds unduly skilled I should point out I had my eyes closed and was shitting my pants at the time. But it died and I didn’t, and like anything, once you’ve done something once it gets easier. It also helps to have a few hundred thousand friends on your side follow your example. And follow they did.
Can you imagine what it’s like to hear a half million artillery guns fire at once. To feel your diaphragm rumble to the sound of an angry god. To hear the scream of a rain of steel and fire so loud it makes your ears bleed. To sing the same song of praise as million other voices and mean every word. To feel a million lasguns heat the air to a furnace so every step is through an oven that blackens your skin and makes your hair smoke. To kill in the name of the Emperor, to watch Sgt. Sando get his Hero of the Imperium medal for gutting their Warboss with its own power klaw, then feel the joy of survival as you watch them break and run. That’ll stay with me all my life.
Of course that was just the start. There was more battles, more killing. I was there when we broke the Kult of speed after three months of running battles on the Kodyi Plains beneath the perpetual twilight of a malfunctioning plasma light. I lost an ear in clearing of Debris Warren Godlin, in the dark tunnels beneath the collapsed hive. I got promoted during a defence of the Imperial Artillery Corp’s Lance batteries in Orkish counteroffensive, where a hundred thousand men died just so they could keep firing in support of an offensive on Ork held positions on the other side of the sphere 6, 000km straight up. I got busted back down again for getting trashed celebrating the news Astartes strike teams had severed the support chains of the Ork fortress of Mork’s Town and sent it and all its inhabitants to a fiery death in the reactor core 300 miles below.
And I remember my surprise when a kid, green out of boot, called me a vet for the first time and realising it was true.
But most of all I remember the end. Two years after marching through that gate, we stood at the edge of Sector-585. The histories will talk of the Astartes facing down the Warboss Mragga Thzrat and the liberation of Esme City. They’ll talk of the burning of the Rok-yards in Docking Bay-743Theta. They won’t recall the patrol of the remnants of the glorious 56th. How we chased a bunch of fleeing boyz for three hours in the darkened rat maze of corridors beneath 743Theta. But I will. I remember every ork I shot, every shadow I jumped at. I remember because that chase, it led me there.
The preachers say there’s nothing more than the ship. But they’re wrong.
In that place we found a window, somehow intact and whole, ancient beyond measure, the thin pane of glass all that separated us from the nothing outside. For the first and only time in my life, I saw the stars, saw the stars stare right back at me. They’re beautiful you know. Each a diamond fit for a queen. But there also cold and cruel and jealous. Jealous of the Ship, of the Emperor’s light and of the glory of man. We walked in their light once. Now we walk in our own, and for that they hate us.
Let them hate. We need them no longer. In this Ship we have found a future. In this vessel we shall sail the void until long after the stars have grown cold and dark. We shall endure the endless night and rise anew. This is the Emperor’s plan, the Imperium’s course. It is the fate and duty of humanity to endure against a universe that wishes otherwise.
In the end there is just the Ship, our home, our salvation...
The Ship Is All.
The Ship Moves.
Part 2
(Sorry guys, it gets a lot more spread out and becomes a bit of a fucking mess after part 1. Most of these from now are just going to be from individual posts, hopping around plot points and narratives.)
Part 3
Let us ponder the Mysteries.
What is the God-Captain? What is the Omnissiah? What is the Imperium? What are we, the people? What is the Ship?
The God-Captain is neurally networked to the trillion trillion cogitators and servitors that permeate the length and breadth of the ship. One with the machine spirits, He is the Omnissiah. They are the mind and soul, and the body is the very decking beneath our feet. He is the Ship.
We, the masses of humanity, souls more numerous than the fabled stars, are the Imperium. And the Imperium is the Ship.
And so, the God-Captain, the Omnissiah, the people, and the Imperium are one, and are the Ship.
The Ship is all.
The ship moves.
The bad news is that that entire Section of Bilge Deck 1643 was jettisoned into space twelve years ago, due to a nearly complete infestation of fork-tongued bloodworms.
The only reason we can communicate at all is that even after all this time, that Section still hasn't cleared the length of the Ship. We estimate that it will go beyond sensor range in approximately twenty eight more years.
Its not terribly surprising you didn't know, there were several hives within that never received word.
Death by bloodworms is not pretty. I suggest facing them head on if you see them first. That way you die a nearly painless death.
Well, that's a lie. But you will die sooner.
This is Communion relay DU5573-A, signing out. May the Captain be with you.
Part 4
We are conceived to dream of it because it is magnificent.
We are born to create it because it is glorious.
We live to maintain it because it is the flesh and bone of the Omnissiah himself.
We die to defend it because it is the culmination of all that we are.
We are the Adeptus Mechanicus, and this is our most sacred creed.
The Ship is All.
The Ship Moves.
Cistern 37.
An empty and cavernous hold currently occupied by a small collection of traders and merchants, bartering to any wandering passengers who happen to enter their hallowed hall. The hold is in actuality a currently unused sewerage hold, and the inhabitants do not realise the peril that creeps ever nearer with each flush.
Deserts of Rust, formed by the air systems in concentrated amounts in areas where the air grows stale.
Tales of the Air System stirring near the vast Rust Deserts are usually tales of horror and mutliation as people recount the effects of hundreds of millions of microscopic rust particles being driven into the flesh of men, stripping flesh from bone and pitting what was left...
The Arboretum.
An enormous primeval wilderness region carefully designed to provide oxygen and scrub CO2 for the rest of the ship.
The Fishermen of the 0G seas.
What was once meant as a reserve for the aquatic life of a 1000 worlds is now a number of bubbles of water floating across the sector while men with jet packs harvest the sea's bounty.
Foundry 560-87-G
Where the floor IS lava and people live in cities and walkways suspended above it.
Personally, I'd stay away from Corridors 49^10 through 49^11. I hear there are bounty hunters dressed in medieval armor there, reading to cut you down just for crossing into their borders. I heard a rumor that they are in fact chaos cultists worshipping some abomination of a "God"; and that the Inquisition is preparing to launch a crusade through access hatches #13750^8 through #15888^8 - might just be a rumor, though.