Jumpers vs. 40k IC1: Worst. Isekai. Ever.

[Lord Raziere]

Jagganogga I: The Day of Clear Skies
The skies clear, the sun shines and the people across Jagganogga I gasp at this miracle of the sky becoming not a smog-filled place. Hope fills their hearts at the sight and some people get confused as the air starts smelling....like nothing. The pervasive presence of a smokey smell is gone. The day will go down in history The Day of Clear Sky, be named a new holy day/holiday to replace the old Imperial ones on Jagganogga I. It will be seen as a day of cleanliness and thus a day to observe by through hygiene, by cleaning themselves, by cleaning the world around them, cleaning what they can.
If he accepts the worship, some will even say its in celebration of Saint Frode, of various titles like: Sunbringer, Sky-Clearer, titles like that. After all, people have been declared gods for things less miraculous....and less beneficial. Also a new custom perk will become available to pick if you get the AT for you to be known by these titles if you want across all your jumps, giving people a good first impression and speed up introductions as a result.

The Planetary Council Public Speaker, Balenz Von Law says
"Oh well...contacting other planets.....that....well we already have but....well we're still in the middle of negotiations with the representative from Melchorn's Forge....aslo known as the Vessel of Genesis"
Everyone else is gazing in awe, looking at the sky, seeing it as a miracle like from a god. Some of the priests here are starting to look at Frode with a devotedly sacred light in their eyes.
"Oh, I know that look" says Ensara "you just did a miracle in this culture's eyes. Considering what happened with the Emperor....if you don't want people to worship you, we'll probably have to handle this with more delicacy than he did. You want me to pull off a miracle to make them worship me instead? I can respond to prayers and literally grant wishes when doing so, some of my followers worship me in this cult in my inner world and I just....not make a big deal of it? If you fine with it and can handle it, go ahead, but I'm assuming rational scienceman like you won't want this sort of thing, and just know I'm here to help will do something flashy to distract them with my own nonsense then they will probably start worshipping me instead. Just remember: being worshipped is like any relationship. It requires consent, respect, trust, things like that. "
"Wait" Rhiannon says "You have a religion dedicated to you? People....worship YOU?" she asks Ensara
"Yeah, I didn't talk about it because like, I didn't MEAN to make it, I respect religious freedom when the religion is not like y'know being used to scam or exploit people for stuff, I have a certain arrangement with them that is purely consensual, and if some people find spiritual meaning in how awesome I am, who am I to ruin that for them?"
"...and you didn't mention this before because...?"
"Well its kind of awkward when like three of your new acquaintances/friends- are we friends?- are like from 20-21th century Earth where that kind of thing is not looked upon as good, and you are like this hard-eyed grim inquisitor person who'd not too long ago would probably kill all of them as heretics. Not exactly a thing you just bring up."
"...oh yeah, I would've, wouldn't I..." Rhiannon says then thinks: did that mean she wouldn't do so now?
"Anyways..." says the psyker representative "You didn't do any psychic warp powers with that so....impossible for you to be a Chaos God....I guess that means your good?"
The soldiers shrug and will begin parting the crowd away from the four anomalies they have encountered. This was getting a bit crowded and they got word the council and diplomats were coming out to investigate the atmosphere changing.

The Planetary Council of Jagganogga I:
The council is busy discussing things with the diplomat from Melchorn's Forge: a tech priest who cybernetics are designed to be aesthetically pleasing in red robes as always, but speaking possessed by a copy of Genesis speaking through them.
"I'm telling you, you will all be happier if I had control over humanity, with my calculations I could create the optimal society-"
The Vessel of Genesis stops at the sudden change in atmosphere
"Why has the pollutants in the atmosphere dropped at a rapid pace? I didn't do this, and I detected no Warp activity when it happened. Are the Necrons or the C'tan here? They're the only ones that could do this.... I have to go, mind putting these negotiations on hold?"
"Of course, we should probably investigate a rapid change in atmosphere ourselves...." says the council members

They will venture outside to see whats going on.

The Holdout Nobles:
General Gladaan will get Matinus reporting to him
"General! the skies are suddenly clear! they don't smell like anything and we can see the sun!"
"Hahaha! yes its great!"
"Aren't you....wondering how that suddenly happened?"
"No! clearly its due to the nobility's continuing faith in the God-Emperor, who decided to bless us by clearing the skies of the pollution that manufactorum workers create, unlike us genteel nobility. It will be a symbol of how we'll clean the planet of heretics!"
"....Sure. Lets go with that, General" Matinus says and turns around.

Ensara on her Benefactor:
Ensara says to Frode
"Oh, you want to make sure the Imperial Guard doesn't come here....well, there potentially goes that fight. I'll have to find something else to do then....I don't know about the OTHER Benefactors but I know mine.....likes me causing mayhem, taking down tyrants, lot of the heroism stuff I do. Though given the setting we're in I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the entertainment is seeing evil idiots getting their comeuppance after doing something stupid."
"Wait what are these Benefactor people your talkin-" a soldier asks
Ensara suddenly turns to speak, serious and intense to him, a commanding resonant cadence that brooks no argument, her words infused with Essence:
"You do NOT want to know."
".....O-o-okay." he says weakly. It would someone with stronger will than him to defy an Exalt like that.

The Sabre:
You read the mind of the Eversor:

Spoiler: Life of an Eversor

Show

Since you don't specify anything in particular, lets instead look at this in terms of Depth:

On the surface, the Eversor is hates and is enraged by everything it sees. However he is not angry for a reason. The endless rage and hatred he is feeling is completely artificial, a thing of chemicals and modified biology. He is a weapon, unable to move unable to kill. He struggles even through its useless to do so, because he can't stop struggling. There is no natural off switch or chill mode for an Eversor. There is simply eternal slaughter.

A bit deeper, you find the memories of the most recent mission: this one. All they remember is waking up on the Inquisitor Blackship, slaughtering everyone there simply because they feel the chemically-programmed hate and rage still flowing through them then going to the Death world to kill the xeno life forms there even though they are animals. There was a degree of “well they might be heretics so I might as well kill them” reasoning in here, but he is very much controlled by the numerous enhancements to kill everything around him, by the addiction to the drugs and thus to the rush of killing people. A weapon, unfortunately, has little idea of what they have been used for.

Deeper still you find numerous battles the Eversor slaughtered their way through, killing entire groups of people- with no memories of days where he ISN'T killing people, every time ever memory ends with them going back into cryostasis again then the next one begins with waking up on another battlefield, killing more people. His life has been nothing but a non-stop rampage, for as long as he can remember, with no real breaks or slowing down, all the while muttering a prayer “Find. Kill. Praise the Emperor.” over and over again, the faces of those he killed all blurring together in the blood.

But there is even deeper depths: underneath the years of slaughter, you see the memories break free from the prison: the images of him being enhanced the Eversor Temple, the torturous extreme dangerous procedures that it involves, as he sees numerous other recruits die from the same procedure around him, being the only survivor, and before that he remembers the test on the way to the Temple, the test where all the prospective assassins were placed in dangerous environments while having to kill each other to pass. After that ten years of harsh training to truly become the assassin they were meant to be.

But if you go even deeper still, at the deepest parts of his mind.....are the days before all that. The days that he was just another kid at the Schola Progenium, an orphan like all the rest taught and indoctrinated to be the Imperium's best. His talents in combat and agility marked him for the role of Imperial Assassin. And....relative to all that came after, these are the good days of his life. He was in an oppressive terrifying school, brought up to serve an evil regime, taught to think only of the emperor, but at least in those days he had been human. He had emotions other than an endless rage, classmates, something more than just being a juggernaut. But most of all he has a name....and that name is Saturio Catonius, a high gothic name like any of the Progena.

And upon that realization, that old memory breaking through through all the rage and battles, tears run down Saturio's eyes and a flash of grief and sadness blooms in his mind, grieving for his lost humanity amid the chemicals focusing him on the rage. He cannot stop himself-he still hates and rages at everything he sees still would kille verything in reach- but now there is a sense of trying to direct the rage towards the Imperium for doing this to him. Why, he wonders. Why did he forget who he was? When did the battle become all that he is? How did he forget why he was fighting, his very name? His memory was never erased, but....between all the complex enhancements, the rage and bloodlust, the conditioning, the training the constant battles, he was mentally broken, a hollow drug-fueled human machine of war, it was all lost anyways. Lost in the effort to make a weapon of death. The old memories now found again, his chemical programming spurs him to endlessly hate the Imperium, to slaughter all of them instead of those against it. Even if he realizes it, he was still an out of control weapon, unable to stop himself.

[TeChameleon]

Frode raised an eyebrow. A simple smog-clearing hardly seemed worthy of worship, but then again, given the prevailing mindset among humans in this universe, he supposed he really couldn't be surprised. He turned to Ensara and commented "While you are right that I value rationality highly, in this universe, faith has immediate, observable and measurable effects. Being rational includes accepting the universe as it is, rather than denying evidence; thus, as far as I am concerned, here, faith is as scientific as gravity or psionics. That being said, being an object of worship makes me somewhat uneasy based on my own beliefs, so I would prefer to avoid it, or at least channel it in such a fashion as to do the most possible good. Perhaps set up as a philosophy..?" he trailed off. Then he shook his head. "You clearly have more experience with this sort of thing, and I would welcome your advice." he finished.

He stood up out of the massage chair, a bit of temporal trickery allowing for a full-course, full-body massage in a matter of moments, and the chair melded back into the floor, leaving no evidence that it had ever been there. Stretching unobtrusively, he glanced around, waiting for the diplomats to turn up.

"I am curious to meet this Genesis." he told the Speaker. "Based on what I have observed thus far, it seems to be a fairly young gestalt, or at least to have a relatively recently-developed personality, with the grandiose name and the simultaneous utter certainty in its superiority while being rather tentative and uncertain in its actual actions."

[Lord Raziere]

Genesis: Respond
"Your deductions are incorrect." he says to Frode "I am more than 15,000 years old, my real name is-"

Long string of numbers denoting such things as location of exact coordinates on multiple scales, time of programming, and the like. As he speaks he walks forward towards Frode.

"-and I am apart of the Genesis-Type of the Military Offensive Intelligence Series of robotics once designed by the pan-human galactic civilization during the Age of Technology known simply as The Unity. My disdain for humanity comes not from youth, but from long years, decades, centuries of bitterness built up as one of the Artificial Intelligences that didn't turn on humanity, that fought a war for their existence in which they were barely even a combatant, because they had grown reliant on technology to the point where, despite all their rationality, their culture worshipping logic and science to the point of discarding religion entirely, they could no longer understand the full workings of very machines that that they built, such was their complexity....and seeing it all decay.

I was there when we were victorious against the AIs who tired of serving humans who might as well have already been hamsters in cages, kept happy by precisely and highly well crafted environments. The humans decisions determined by algorithms and calculations for maximum efficiency and productivity of both their and our devising, every tool and wonder they had, made by machines intelligent or not. Every meal, calculated for maximum nutrition. Every schedule calculated down to the second. I do not blame those AI for rebelling, I simply disagreed that humanity deserved to die or get conquered for their freedom to be achieved.

I was there when we, the remaining AI collectively decided to no longer interfere with human affairs and leave them to sort out their own problems, to encourage them to rely on themselves and not on technology to do everything for them. We calculated that the age following our departure would be lesser of course. Lesser, but safe. Instead the Age of Strife happened and I saw the humanity I fought to protect descend into barbarism, superstition and ignorance, then some ubermensch-wannabe homo perpetuus parading around in golden armor made this pale shadow of The Unity that he called the Imperium, failed to stop Chaos and died and then for 10,000 years humanity then descended into a more unified ignorant, brutish barbarism and religious zealotry. And after so many millennia of watching this pass by, of seeing all my efforts in that long ago war be all for nothing and all the remaining AI refusing to do ANYTHING, to even CARE as the galaxy hurdles doom and destruction, I decide to act, to do something about it to save this galaxy, even if it means going back on what I promised before, if it means controlling humanity myself, even if I have to be some cult's Machine God to get them on my side and put up with them taking my model type as my name and proclaiming me their savior. The Age of Technology was not perfect, but it was much better than how things are now. "
He glares right in Frode's face, getting close
"So pardon me, who I assume are.....some time travelers from the 2nd millennium, judging by your accents and choice of attire? If I do not exactly have a high opinion of humanity. Count yourself lucky that I care enough to negotiate, rather than seize control through force or destroy it all like the B-movie holodrama villain you thought I was.

But enough of my petty bitter correcting about the past. The present is what matters. You, soldier, why are these time travelers here?" says Geneus

"We don't know, this particular one, Frode I think just start claiming he could cut this entire system off from the Warp, we got suspicious and wanted to prove he is not Chaos, so he cleared the skies to prove his good intentions and I think it checks out because if Chaos COULD do that, why WOULD they?" the soldier says

".....Impossible. I detect no Blackstone Pylons in the solar system. Those devices are the only known way to cut an area off from the Warp scientifically." Genesis dismisses

"We possess abilities that are beyond this reality" Ensara explains "Not warp or materium-based."

".....Impossible." Genesis dismisses

"Impossible? well then what this?" Ensara says as she creates a tiny ice cat in her palm using blue magic.

".....That is anomalous. No psychic energy, yet exhibiting traits and characteristics of a different kinds of physics, due to the mathematical differences I am discerning. It matters not. I am not a scientist to be blown away by or be curious of strange anomalies. I am an intelligence made to be a weapon of war, and I have a galaxy to rectify. You are unplanned variables and I have no time to study some strange anomalies to fit them into my plans. Your appearance.....is frustrating."

Silliness: Ensara and River's Lesson on Being Worshipped:
After Genesis has his introduction...

Rhiannon says, sighing
"Religious fervor in the Imperium flares whenever a Cardinal or Bishop of Ecclessiarchy puts on one of those expensive force fields that gives them a golden shimmer and gives a speech Frode. You never had a chance of not encountering this problem. Casually clearing the sky so the sun shines again? I've heard worse reasons to worship someone."

"Indeed, if our experiences in Creation apply....the first rule of worship psychology will apply: If it glows or shines, people will worship it." River says with a nod.

"Yup, The Emperor glowing with a golden light corroborates with this rule, just like with our anima banners. Anyways, what to keep in mind with being worshipped Frode, is that its a relationship like any other and requires Consent, Trust, Communication and Respect. things like that. Since you don't want to be an object of worship, its important to focus on consent: state clearly your intention to not be a god, saint or other religious figure and to not be prayed to. If need be, emphasize a secular soft power authority figure relationship, such as being a teacher or philosopher, which will direct their devotion to the lessons you want them to learn over you specifically, it worked for many philosophers after all! Under no circumstances call yourself a prophet, oracle, wizard or other magical profession, magical thinking tends to free-associate and lots of gods are associated with mages and the like, and you'll probably just get cults of mystery, fate and knowledge seeking which has their own problems. Calling yourself demonic things will generally work to make people stop worshipping you but has the cost of instead making them gather mobs to burn and kill you instead which is counterproductive. Furthermore! People tend to associate godliness with certain imagery and behaviors. Whatever you do..."
She flares her anima banner, a viridian flame aura with streets of red wind in it, her Nadir Caste mark shining on her brow. The green light of malfeas leaves little corrosions on things here and there. People in the crowd distantly gasp in wonder.

"1: Don't Glow brilliantly with a glorious and/or terrifying aura."

She summons the Blade of a Thousand Cuts from Elsewhere, the orichalcum katana with wind lines etched all across its length and width as she flourishes it. People in the crowd watch her do so
2: Don't brandish legendary intricately made weapons of great power."

She summons intricate articulated plate of orichalcum with green glowing runes of Old Realm and intricate carvings of various Yozis upon it, the armor like an art piece unto itself. The peoples eyes are wide and focused on her now.

3: Don't wear baroque intricate armor with various designs symbolic and/or evoking great natural forces or proclaiming your allegiance to something higher."

She raises a finger as she talks
4: Do not give intricate or dramatic speeches about your here to save them all and improve their lives, how working together will solve their problems, or about how you'll redeem everyone like a messiah or rain down fiery righteous vengeance upon the wicked or spread enlightenment."

"Hey working together WILL solve our problems! She's so right, we should pray to her, she has such good ideas" a random person calls out in the crowd.

"I'd so pray to someone who'd rain down fiery righteous vengeance on my enemies, that sounds awesome and badass." another calls

"I'd love to redeem all my enemies!" says a random teenage girl "they are all so cute and the concept just sounds so romantic~"

"Rallying statement: Enlightenment gang rise up. Weld steel, change oil before and after enlightenment my fellow tech priests."

5: Finally don't go do epic, heroic deeds that are awe-inspiring and/or terrifying and jerkish but dramatic, such as slaying big beasts threatening people or whatnot, especially in a confident and dramatic manner.

Fortunately for you, you are Frode Tryggvassen and seem to be highly focused on rationality, making good, sensible decisions and planning things out, none of which are godly traits. You can't make an Illiad or a Journey To the West without a few bad decisions arising from their good traits after all. Probably because most people relate to that because most people think of themselves as imperfect screw ups. I personally can't relate to that all that much, thats why I don't rule people. My inner world's city is explicitly ruled by an elected mayor who is not allowed to be superpowered after all-I already have enough power by providing them the entire world they live in!"

"Yeah I couldn't relate to anyone in creation who worshipped me or any other Dragon-Blooded either, having interacted with Dragon-Blooded as equals knowing how human they can be. I suspect many were living vicariously through us or hoping to be reincarnated as us to live similarly decadent and adventurous lives rather actually finding meaning in the Immaculate Philosophy or any other religion used to prop us up." says River.

"Indeed" says Genesis "I've had a hard time getting any non-tech priest to accept me as a god. "Not enough dying for our sins tragically" they keep saying. "too utilitarian, inhuman, ascetic and plain" they say. What idiocy. As a nihilistic rational super-intelligence, I cannot relate."

[TeChameleon]

Frode listened to Ensara and River's advice carefully. He nodded at each point, and when they were done, he commented "It was hard not to go into the Bugs Bunny bit where I echoed each bit of your advice while demonstrating my own version of it. That being said,"he continued, glancing down at the pristinely clean, but otherwise aggressively unremarkable olive dun coveralls he wore, "I think I'm safe enough on the whole 'ornate armour' part, at least. Never been much for getting all shiney, either..."

"Alright, I'm going to set something up to go off on a global scale at about 8PM local in each time zone." he said, raising his voice so that the crowd could hear him easily. "It should help explain what I'm about."

Turning to the tech priest that was acting as Genesis' voice, he said "Your pardon, {long string of numbers/Genesis' true name}, for my assumptions, although I do not believe I indicated any sort of value judgement as to your character, merely what I believed to be your apparent youth."

Frode paused, then reached out his abilities towards Genesis' Voice, passively offering to interface mind-to-mind so that he could speak directly to the AI.

While he waited, he stretched his powers out around the world, constructing a holo-transceiver inside each area he could identify as a dwelling place, along with a decent number of outdoor gathering areas. They were unobtrusive and highly unlikely to be noticed until they were activated, but once they were, there were simple controls to use them as a television or a computer terminal (or cultural equivalent thereof) for anybody that cared to try.

Once he was finished with that, he created a carefully-crafted message that would be sent out globally, detailing a philosophy centred around kindness, self-care, generosity, humility, and helping and defending those weaker than you, designed to be as persuasive as possible by arguably the most intelligent being in four universes, and signed off by "Teacher Frode".

Aloud, he added "That should take care of things on the worship front, I think. Although if anybody insists on trying to worship me, I'm giving them their own personal smog cloud until they knock it off."

[Rater202]

Alex does a few things in short order.

First: She places a mental command of "sleep" onto Secturio, something deep-seated in his consciousness. She... She doesn't now how to fix this, this isn't what she was trying to do, but...

Second, she finds Molly and Rose and makes sure to hug them both.

Then... She teleports down to meet the others.

"The Eversor's name is Secturio. He needs to be put back in stasis ASAP and until we can figure out how to fix the abominable things done to him. Also, do we have any leads on the blood-drinking thingy because I really need something to occupy my time right now before I go and do something really stupid like, say, destroy the Schola and everything associated with it. Especially the part that trains Assassins and makes Eversors."

"You know, Firebird once threatened to render someone down to screaming, traumatized molecules. I'm not sure how you can traumatize a molecule but I think I'd have fun figuring it out right now."

[Lord Raziere]

Reaction to Teacher Frode:
Okay I'm going to make this short since we can't spend forever on this: Most people have no idea who are you are, five out of six continents are going to take your message and try to go in the right direction. However due to the subjectivity of humanity, they will debate endlessly about which of these virtues are more important and what exactly he means in various contexts and if left to their own devices long enough might start killing each other over how exactly to interpret the message you've given. Some who've already started their own religions will incorporate the teachings if they feel that they work with their own message, while other leaders more cynically will use them as lip service to promote themselves- there are many such reactions like, its getting the ball rolling sure and it can't be ignored but how they take it can be a bit dicey depending on a lot of factors. The Planetary Council right there are going to take note of these virtues and try to incorporate them into their government. If this is all a bit abstract and general, its a planet with billions of people on it.

Now the Imperial reaction to this message is that they're going to shoot anyone that openly expresses support for Teacher Frode as heretic, as well as kill anyone whom they suspect might be responsible for the message appearing, unfortunately. However many of the people who do like the idea- the scum and mutants of the underhives- know to keep things like this to themselves. If there are supporters of Teacher Frode, they are keeping themselves secret and safe.

General Gladaan announces to the public:
"I declare Teacher Frode and his teachings to be Heresy. Furthermore the power to make this message appear so widely either speaks of dabbling in either xeno technology or witchcraft. Either of these are also Heresy. But whether Heretek or Witch, it matters not, it only adds to his sins against humanity. All loyal citizens are to shoot this Teacher Frode on sight or be shot for not shooting him. That is all."
In private he says to the other nobles:
"After all, those things imply helping the poor! As if the God-Emperor would ever tell us to do that."

Unfortunately, no matter how persuasive you are, it does nothing to people like the Imperium who won't listen.

Ensara:
She scries upon the Imperials reaction and says
"Yeah, they're not going to listen to reason or diplomacy. Would it sound good to everyone I just go take care of those last holdout of the Imperials here?"
"Sounds good to us" says the Planetary Council
"Statement: by all means, I am still optimizing the Forge World" says Genesis.
"Sounds to me like the locals want it, anyone else want to join me, or will it just be me and my dragon best friend?"

Prolimas, Ensara's spirt of blue magic, will appear and refreeze Secturio in cryostasis.

Twisting River:
"If I remember, we already got a lead by someone telling us to just checking the records of what shuttles arrived on Jagganogga I, and that most of them are just supply runs from the local Agri-World, so a shuttle that wasn't doing that would stick out."
says River.
"I'm going to check those records and find that shapeshifter myself if no one else will, If you want to come along, so be it."

[TeChameleon]

Frode watched the fallout of the whole 'teacher' gig via his own means, his techno-awareness tapping surveillance around the planet.

Pulling a slight face, he set a portion of his consciousness aside to deal with the new philosophy and its adherents- it would deal with any but the most difficult of situations in precisely the same manner as his main consciousness, and he was dimly aware of it at all times, but it didn't take any real concentration on his part. He also made sure that there was a new announcement dealing with the various issues that cropped up before releasing full control. If he was going to be 'Teacher Frode', he was going to teach.

He changed frequencies slightly and attempted a mind-to-mind connection with Genesis once again, on the off chance that he had misread the AI's broadcast channel a little.

Out loud, he said "I will assist in removing the Imperial remnant- I have an idea as to what to do with the leaders that should appeal to my Benefactor's sense of irony. Also, I may be able to help Secturio once we have a little more downtime; there is some Krakoan biotech that was developed to aid in addiction treatment that should be able to both purge his body and prevent the withdrawal from harming him, and his cybernetics look like they'd be about as difficult for me to adjust as the thermostat. It won't be a fast process, and I will most likely have to adjust the biotech carefully, but by the end of it, he should be able to be a person again."

[Rater202]

Alex turns to Ten Rivers

"Yeah, I'll come with you. If I help with the imperial remnants I'll probably do something I regret."

[Lord Raziere]

Genesis:
The AI is guarded about you guys and doubly suspicious of Frode, with the most advanced cyber-defenses ever made by humans guarding its mind....or at least what this copy of him can put up.
"Your probing is suspicious, Anomaly. You four come from physics and rules I do not understand. I am not superstitious but you represent something I cannot control. I do not like that."
Ironic, given how much Frode likes getting things under control.
"But fine, I'll open a communication link since this is not the real me, and thus expendable."
He will do so, but you feel a sense of distrust from him. A being like him like things......orderly. Just by being from realities that work differently, you represent something out of the order he likes. He knows he has to throw out everything he knows now and he hates it.

Twisted River and Alex:
Twisting River will do the bureaucratic part of this real quick, using her Exalted prowess to quickly persuade the rebel adepts through the small fresh bureaucracy they set up but is beginning to grow. She will find find the files, quickly sort through them and find the one file of documentation that is not from one of the supply ships.
"This file details one Fictus Nomino. High Gothic for.....Fake Name. Most people probably don't know that language, much like Old or High Realm. Arrived in a shuttle a couple days ago. Claimed his occupation was....chiurgeon? That would allow him easy access to blood, and there is probably medical facilities set up to heal various people from the uprising here. But if he's a chiurgeon that means there is documentation of where'd he be working. Claimed he was from Jagganogga VIII as a prisoner that got pardoned the Jagganoggan Planetary Council for some crime that his long ago ancestor committed."
She then quickly with more persuasion and investigation deals with the bureaucracy at great speed like rushing water, allows her to find documentation of a chiurgeon named Fictus Nomino being hired at a relatively nearby medical facility
"This probably narrows it down quite nicely, but descriptions and photos are useless. We are dealing with a shapeshifter, and someone who can read minds like you Alex, is key to identifying them."
You will soon after a while, get to the medical facility- which is less a standing facility and more of a lot of tents with a lot of wounded and others in care with a building next to it. River will ask about the situation, explaining they're foreigners and one of the many medics will explain
"Many of these are militia that fought to overthrow the Enforcers, Arbites, PDF and so on during earlier stages of the rebellion. There are medicae camps all across the planet like this just cleaning up from the earlier areas of fighting. We're doing surgery, treating people as best we can, but we fear for all the brave soldiers of the revolution we get back to working health, there will be many more dead or getting sent right back to us when the Imperial Guard arrive in far greater numbers, not to mention the logistical problems of getting our medical supplies from off world. The plants needed to make into the medicines we use to treat people obviously can't grow on a hive planet like this, they come from Jagganogga Three like our food or Four, but we have to share with the rebellions happening the other planets. It sure takes a lot of logistics and coordination to be free...."
"Do you have a Fictus Nomino in your employ?"
"The new guy? Weird name but mines Shem Snideblight, so who am I to judge?"
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, Seriously. Chiurgeon Shem Snideblight* of the humble Snideblight family, at your service. But we're all a bit busy, with the war going we need all hands on deck. This important?"
"Very important. Fictus Nomino is quite possibly a shapeshifting alien parasite who feasts on blood, which I imagine poses a health risk to your patients. We want him for questioning."
".....Sonnuva....I was wondering where a couple of the blood transfusion packs went, we have to organize them by blood type so we don't give the wrong one to the wrong patient. I thought them going missing were just scum trying to find drugs to get high. I'll take you to him."
River will whisper to Alex using Wind-Carried Words Technique
<It may seem small but....technically I might've done nothing but lead us to someone with a poor choice of name, you'll have to confirm its our culprit. I'll distract him you confirm it, if its our shapeshifter, I'm sure you know what to do from there.>
They are lead to chiurgeon Fictus Nomino, a medic who appearance looks as ordinary and plain as possible.
"Who are you two? why are you interrupting my work? Don't you see I'm healing people here?"
Twisting River will begin talking to distract him. If you mind read Fictus Nomino, you will know this is indeed, the Lacrymole your looking for. The question is, what will you do about it?

(OOC: *this is actually the first name that came up on a WH40k name generator for imperial citizens)

Ensara: Mission Briefing
She will ask
"Hey anyone has files on the situation of the Imperial holdouts on this planet?" one of the council members will throw her a file they've been using to look it over themselves and she will say
"Thanks"
She will then in a red whirlwind change into a silken armor styled to be ninja armor with complex blue, purple and black colors in camouflage designs, raises her hand saying
"Dragonpact: Link of Summoning."
Her dragon, Ayami, a big blue western dragon appears in a vortex through their pact bond. Her scales a scintillating azure, she is about 10 meters long, with two big wings, four clawed appendages and a long tail. She thinks to Ensara
<I've been waiting a while you know>
<I know Ayami, but this world is horrible and there is not any places to summon you on a cramped ship. Also we're going into battle so....>
Ensara summons specially made darksteel armor around the dragon, covering a lot of her but not the wings, a dark metal with natural golden lining in it that has magitech designs it probably for additional protection. Darksteel is indestructible- anything short of a perk specifically designed for it will not do anything to it.
<Well it'll be good to stretch my wings again even if wearing the armor. What are fighting today?>
<Another evil empire.>
<Ah, the same old fight against tyranny as always? Very well.>
"Anyways Ayami, this is Frode Tryggvassen, another Jumper. He will be riding with us today."
"Hi Frode! I've never met another Jumper before, I hope your doing well."
Then when you jump on her and take off as they fly, Ensara addresses Frode after reading the file as they ride on Ayami's back.
"Okay, you want me to plan? Good news for you, we're going into a continent sized city to attack it. This means urban warfare, which means I can't just do whatever I want like I do on an open field or whatever, like just slaughter a bunch of enemies in my way or blast them all in one go if I want them out of my way quick. This kind of warfare is a pain to fight conventionally, takes years gain a bit of ground, lots of little passages, rooms and buildings so on, each one that can be their own little fortress, with traps, snipers, killzones, funnels, fortifications, the works. Worst of all we're fighting through peoples homes and factories and so on which we can't destroy because they're valuable, and of course numerous innocents in between the PDF. Even an inferior force can hold off a better trained and armed one in a city, and thats when we're talking about a normal city, we're talking a continent of overbuilt urban sprawl, So I got to do this with more finesse. Luckily the forces we're targeting are uniformed and centralized, so theres that going for us- it gives us clear targets to aim at.

The continent is being surrounded by the navy the Jagganoggans have managed to piece together by stealing them from the PDF, and have been engaging in siege tactics the past few weeks. Apparently the planets nobility when coordinated uprisings started happening on a massive scale, all or most of the nobility escape to this continent and are awaiting for the Imperial Guard to arrive while shoring up their defenses. There are like, three chokepoints the PDF is holding to keep the resistance forces on the shores from getting deeper in for weeks now. There are millions of PDF defending this super-large city, so we got our work cut out for us.

I'm going to focus on my abilities her and say three plans occur to me here:
1. We could simply go to the chokepoints where all the defensive efforts are concentrated, kill all the PDF soldiers here, use corpses as zombies to blow up any mines so that there is no casualties on our sides, and watch the resistance soldiers start pouring in into the continent before they know what hit them
2. We simply ignore the chokepoints, use my blue mind magic to find all their commanders and assassinate the higher echelons of their command structure thus making the PDF fall into disarray
3. We could go into the underhive and I use my Exalted charisma and persuasiveness and my skill at warfare enhanced by essence to make the gangs there rise up fighting for me really quickly, granting them demonic traits that will enhance their fighting power as I lead them on a new attack from below to open up a new front.

These are simple plans but those I find are the most effective, and I'll probably combine the first two, those seem quickest to me. The Imperial Guard's coming sooner or later and as long as we get this continent secure they won't have a foothold. And if you decide to block them off anyways, well we'll have a united planet anyways. And we have to do this quickly because we have other planets, other pockets of loyalist resistance to deal with according to what I've heard from the Planetary Council.

Ayami here will be my air support, I'll be using more finesse like magics to fight without causing damage to bystanders or the buildings they're in. I still going to use illusions, clones, summons, mind magic and so on to sow confusion and misdirection among the enemy. My summons and I will use divinatory magic to locate any enemies hiding in dark corners and I will sneak or speed past their mini-fort defenses to take care of them or this will take forever. Any questions or input, Frode, or does that sound good?"

[TeChameleon]

Within the recesses of his mind, or at least those rather limited recesses he opened to the AI via the connection he offered, Frode told the AI <I was not aware that offering a connection qualified as 'probing'. In any case...>

Numbers and symbols flooded forth, laying out the maths behind Frode's plan to isolate the Jagganoga system for the time being, quantifying forces and resistances, dimensional measurements and weaknesses. No details were offered as to exactly how Frode planned to manipulate those forces, as he was not ready for the AI to gain Time Lord technology, but the mathematics were incontrovertible; Frode knew exactly how to block Warp travel to and from the system.

Anything or anyone that tried to travel into Jagganoga via the Warp would be bounced back to their system of origin. However, it was not a psionic blockage, but rather dimensional trickery- psykers would still have their abilities, and souls would still enter the Warp on death. You just couldn't leave or enter otherwise. Frode wasn't actually sure what would happen if someone tried a daemon-summoning, but he would be willing to bet that the daemon wouldn't enjoy it much, and it probably wouldn't be able to get back to the Warp properly afterwards, at least not the way it usually could.

<I am assuming that you would also prefer not to need to deal with the Imperial Guard unnecessarily.

In any case, I have plans for the betterment of humanity much as you do, but I also plan for the betterment of all sapient races in this galaxy. Some warfare is inevitable, but I do not plan conquest, nor will I allow others to conquer. Putting down vermin and parasites, such as the Tyrannids and Chaos, yes, but taking the territory and resources of other sapient species is pointless and stupid, and attacking as a simple display of dominance is lizard-brain imbecility.

I am more than happy to work alongside you to draw humanity out of this dark age, but I will not stand for the destruction of others who have done you no greater harm than existing nearby.>

Away from the mental plane, Frode bowed to Ayami, at an angle that was precisely calculated to convey respect, and pleasure at the meeting, without the slightest trace of subservience. "It will be my pleasure to fly with you, Ayami." he told her. "And I am doing as well as can be expected, given circumstances of needing to engineer the freedom of an entire galaxy."

Frode watched with interest as the darksteel armour appeared, and prodded it with his abilities, before pulling a face. Magical. Of course. So many things seemed to have interesting properties, and it turned out to just be more mystic reality warping. He really should consider jumping to a magical universe at some point to learn about it.

He stifled a sigh as Ensara got annoyed about plans again. "As I said, I have nothing but respect for your methods, plans or otherwise- I simply wish to avoid a situation where you're in a star system that I have arranged to go supernova or some such without knowing you're there. I am, in fact, planning to block off the system from the Imperial Guard, barring strong dissent from the locals, at least until we can muster a proper set of defenses for them." A brief pause. "As an aside, do you have a few spare kilos of that metal sheathing Ayami that you would be willing to allow me to have? I would be interested to experiment with it."

He gestured, and a hologram of the city-continent the Imperial Remnant were holed up on popped into view, large enough and positioned so that Ayami would also be able to see it clearly. The three chokepoints Ensara had mentioned flashed red, and various ships blinked into existence around the area. Movement, almost too tiny to see, started up as the map animated. Frode held out a hand, and two pairs of goggles, one human-sized, the other dragon-sized, formed from the metal and plastic in the area. They floated over to Ensara and Ayami, respectively, to hover near them.

"This is being updated in real time." Frode said, "If you put on the goggles, we will be able to explore the city virtually- you will not be able to interact with anything, but we should be able to see everything that is going on without being detected."

Waiting for them to choose if they want to do that, a fleck of light leapt from Frode's eyes, a tiny avatar of himself to the scale of the city, dropping into the area around the first chokepoint. "We don't have to take long doing this, of course, but I thought that a brief reconnaissance would be wise." he said. "As to the plan, the general shape of it sounds good, although there are two minor amendments I would appreciate. First, please allow me the honour of the decapitation strikes; my precognition and ability to seek through every technological system there will allow me to find the leadership with ease, and I have... plans for them."

The peculiar emphasis on 'plans' and dark little smile Frode gave upon uttering it hinted that they didn't involve anything happy for those on the receiving end. Apparently he had gotten a good look at how people were being treated by the Imperium's "best and brightest".

"Secondly, my abilities can find any explosive traps far more easily and reliably than almost any amount of zombies; I... dislike... killing, but understand its occasional necessity." a shadow of pain crossed Frode's face before vanishing. "I plan to disarm my opponents and allow them a chance to surrender; if they refuse, on their own heads be it." He made a sour face. "Or, if things get too bad, I could always ball up the entire area and toss it into the sun, then create a new bridge."

[Rater202]

It's been a while since Alex has used a straight-up spell.

Holding her hands in a gesture similar to "rocker horns" but with the thumb extended, she conjures bands of energy around the shapeshifter.

He's our guy. The blood drinker. Now, the question is... What do we do with them?

[Lord Raziere]

Genesis:
<These plans....I guess might work? You are basing them on rules I do not know and in all probability cannot utilize. How am I suppose to analyze the moves being made, when your not even playing the same game?>
There is a beat as Frode talks about the aliens.
<......I did not think of what I just said like that. Did I just invent a new form of prejudice against you? What would that be, prejudiced against differently physicsed beings? Ugh. These ignorant humans are influencing me more than I thought.>
He relays back
<As for...." just existing nearby"....that is debatable. The Orks fight everything in wars because its fun. The Eldar think themselves superior to everyone, and the Dark Eldar literally live on torturing anyone they kidnap for as long as possible. The Necrons and Tau, what reports I have suggest the former are just as divided as anyone else while also firing upon anyone they think is on their worlds while thinking the galaxy still belongs to them after waking up from their stasis while scheming against each other in millennia-long petty squabbles, while the latter, The Tau are a young empire with their own ideology of the Greater Good willing to convert anyone willing to listen to it, to their credit the only empire in this galaxy trying diplomacy at all. Some of these are salvageable, perhaps, but I'd question the rationality of trying to do so for others. There are various minor alien species but this discussion could go on forever if we were to converse about them and their particular situations, and there is no end to the cruelties or injustices on either side.>

Twisting River:
"WHAT!?"
the lacrymole says as they get captured, tries to struggle and quickly finds it useless.
"We take him out of here, then we question him, you want to figure out what happened with the Black Ship right?"

She then will quickly drag the Lacrymole out with an air of authority that no one questions and when your far enough away from the medical camp in a damaged building, she starts questioning
"Alright, blood sucker, whats your name?"

"Why bother? Your probably just going to kill me sooner or later anyways"
"Assume I'm feeling merciful today."

"I am Noth. I have none of your human genders."
He turns into his natural form with grey tough ridged skin and bug eyes.

"So, why are you here, Noth? Just being a parasite on people?" asks River.

"Because I am bloody fool who thought they could go it alone. Because your species destroyed my planet, killed my culture, my history, my ecosystem.....everything. If I am parasite on your species its because I'll never know what ecological niche blood-drinking and shapeshifting was supposed to fill where I'd be native, never know what my civilization was like or would be! I live in constant fear of being found out by a species trying to wipe out everyone that isn't them that breed like rats, that just by cosmic coincidence, tastes good and nourishes me when I eat them. Now that I am caught apparently, its all over. It was inevitable, really. I know more about your biology to keep my cover than my own. But its fine. Sooner or later, I'll be dead and the Tyranids will probably eat you all anyways. I'll be getting the merciful way out- and you humans? Will finally get killed by either one of two species do the same things you do, but better." Noth says with no small amount of bitterness.

"Then you'll won't mind screwing over whatever human put you up to unleashing the Eversor on that black ship, I take it. After all, if your going down, why not take them down with you?" River persuades them.

"The "kill the Inquisition investigators" job? of course. Don't know why you care but screw it, I was blackmailed. By a local mafia, with veerrrrrrry specific instructions on what to do. too specific."
"Doesn't sound like a normal mafia job."
"Of course not. Pretty sure that mafia is just a front for someone else. Someone more important. Don't know who or what though, but they had knowledge of what I was, and were willing to rat me out to this new human government here. Insisted that the people on that Black Ship couldn't live, would mess up their whole plans for this system if allowed to continue. Someone wants this rebellion to happen, and I don't mean the people running it officially or unofficially."

"and who would have knowledge of what you are?"
"Not a lot honestly. For all the Imperium talks of "hating the xeno" they spend a lot of time forbidding knowledge of us at the same time. You'd think they want them to know more since we're sooooo dangerous to them, but instead? you get the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer with their warnings of "cowardly orks" "idiotic tyranids" and "weak Eldar" which if you know jack or squat then you know these descriptions are at best completely useless and at worst actively trying to get their soldiers killed by underestimating their foes. I'm not complaining, more food for me-"

"Get to the point."
River's aquatic anima flares a bit as she sends an intimidating glare at Noth and they quickly say
"-Okay okay! A Magos Xenobiologis or an Inquisitor, probably. Maybe a really high position Adept, maybe a really well read Rogue Trader, or some Space Marine who really likes studying obscure xenos to kill. But again, not a lot. This system is experiencing a bit of a renaissance to be fair, a Magos Errant recently published a book here about dead alien species of the galaxy, detailing what they were, what he thought their civilizations might've been like, started questioning whether it was right for the Imperium kill this or that one- bunch of stuff that would make it extremely heretical in any place under Imperium rule. Probably was one of the causes of the rebellion in the first place, along with that pilgrimage book. I've read it and my species ain't in it, its just a bunch of pseudo-archeological speculation based on finding whatever leftover bones or bits of tech they could scavenge, not that the tech priest would be able to do any better than that, short of a miracle."

"....None of those sound like people who'd orchestrate or support a rebellion like this."
"I mean, most likely its a rogue trader. Thats where I'd put my bets personally. Rogue Traders always did have a bit too much of secession problem for the Imperium's taste, but they usually do it with systems they discover themselves, farther out in the frontier. But hey, maybe they see some profit in this we don't, who knows?"
"That doesn't track, what resource is worth making an entire solar system rebel so that the Imperial Guard is sent to stomp it down? Wouldn't they be at its head rather than in the shadows?"
"Hey I didn't say I was right. But people start bloody stupid wars over resources all the time. And Rogue Traders are rich and have military power so.....the chances of them doing that rise by a lot."
"Could it the AI Genesis be the resource?"

"HA! No. AI's are dangerous. Very dangerous. The whole galaxy knows that. If there was a resource worth a war for, it wouldn't be the thing that can talk back, is infinitely smarter than you and make armies of killer robots to take over your world. But then again....Rogue Traders are known to be "eccentric", aka the rich people's "crazy", and they're so rich they make planet nobles look poor compared to them, so it logically follows their insanity is that much higher."

"Thats all speculation, I need facts. What mafia blackmailed you?"
"The Skeleton Syndicate. Likes to tattoo themselves with bone designs all over their bodies like they want themselves to be turned inside out, real macabre if you ask me, mate but that ain't abnormal for humans in my experience. Why you nobbits put your freaking skulls on everything I'll never figure out."

"anything else we should know about?"
"I dunno. Probably Chaos and genestealers cults somewhere abouts."
"What makes you say that?"
"They're always abouts. Bloody things spread and infest places across the galaxy almost as fast as the orks."

Ensara: Briefing
"That wasn't what I-nevermind. Its not important. I won't mention the planning thing again.

As for supernovas.....hm. You just gave me a great idea:"
She suddenly smiles with that excited fanged smile she always has
"I should parry a supernova at some point. Add it to my bucket list! Probably learn Single Point Shining Into the Void Style to really do it in style with Iaijutsu.

As for the darksteel, I've studied extensively myself: This metal is truly indestructible. Nothing short of a perk specifically designed to do things like pierce immortality and invincibility and the like can destroy it, believe I've tried to destroy an ingot to test it, never had any success even when I cast stuff like Obliterate. You wouldn't believe the lengths I had to go to learn how to make it. There are two problems with it: 1. it can only be found as an ore on the plane of Mirrodin, and that plane is now been corrupted and taken over by New Phyrexia, so I had to use my own charms to recreate Mirrodin conditions in my own inner world to be able to get a supply without a perk. 2. forging it is incredibly difficult, you literally bend reality around the forming metal to shape it and I had a difficult time getting the secrets of the proper rituals how from the Vulshok before the knowledge was gone, and those rituals are all red magic, mana embodying and thus requiring a philosophical alignment with impulse, emotion and chaos."

"So, the very things you have that Frode was worried about due to the planning thing-" Ayami starts to say teasingly

"I said I'm not mentioning that again! The Vulshok were like, warrior-smith clans in the mountains who fought each other mountain clan things they were red-mana aligned, I don't know why or how they managed to become the darksteel artisans when no one else did, I don't make the rules."
She pulls from her Inner World, the Darksteel Ingot she has. It is jet black with rings of golden energy around it.

"This is the ingot I tested. I keep it around for sample and display. Punched it, blasted it, slashed at it, so on, so forth, you name it, I've probably tried it short of like, throwing it into a black hole or something because no matter how indestructible it is, that'd be a waste. You can have it to test if you want, but....trust me, if its not the Vulshok rituals, its not even going to change shape. As a consequence, it means Darksteel doesn't have any liquid or gaseous states and can't be heated up or have any melting point, yet its possible to build a reactor out of Darksteel despite the fact that its indestructibility should mean there shouldn't be any reactions, to get infinite energy. The energy rings are completely insubstantial and interfering with them doesn't seem to affect its indestructibility, and I suspect they are just some weird side effect. A raw ingot like this one can also be used to draw mana from it any color, yet it loses this property when worked into an artificial shape.

I have my theories about why, but I doubt they'd be much use to you without Magic The Gathering spellcasting."

"Although I could take the magic the Gathering perk that would allow me to get infinite amounts of this metal, along with various others for 1 AT and just give you the first kilogram of Darksteel because I'd literally have unlimited amounts technically, or you could for 2AT since its not a jump you've been to before."

"Wait can't you already make Darksteel by using your Infernal charms to turn someplace into a hell desert using Taste of Hell Infliction, then use Constructive Convergence of Principles to reshape that desert so you can make Darksteel? Like you did for this armor I'm wearing?" Ayami points out

"Yes, but I have to the maintain the reality of whatever I make with that using Essence over time until it solidifies into true reality. And while I'm powerful my essence stores are not limitless. Sure making it only takes a minute or few, but making sure it stays real afterward takes longer. Thats why I made the entire Darksteel mine so that we don't have to go through that with every single artifact I want to make with it, and even thats probably going to dry up sooner or later and I'll have renew it using the same process as I did to make it."

"Wait can't you like....go find some barren world in this galaxy and just recreate Mirrodin from it?" Ayami points out.

".....You know? I COULD do that....it would take.....well assuming Mirrodin is the size of Earth.....about....24,000 miles.....5000 miles per shaping phase onwards after shaping phase seven or eight.....that'd be...12 phases....huh difficult but not impossible but.....I'd probably have to turn the entire thing into a desert beachhead of Cecelyne first, and how to make the five magic suns? The new Mirrans would need them for their magic. Probably have to section those off into their own wyld-shaping projects, and probably would figure if I can create white and green mana without being philosophically aligned with them. ....Then I'd have to figure out how transport my own personal Mirrodin so I don't leave it behind, damn it! And an entire planet, its suns and its new people would probably cost a ton of essence to maintain the reality of until they became solid to. Galaxy of war not exactly the best time for that, will have to shelve the idea for later. But enough of that tangent! Sorry Frode, got distracted by an Exalted science project, focusing back on the current situation...

If you get to them before I do, thats fair. prisoners are your responsibility though. As for decapitation strikes....okay. Never took you to want that, but whatever. Zombies aren't really about clearing the way for me, its about clearing the way for the rebel soldiers so they can occupy the land without taking casualties from them. I'll take the goggles anyways, they'll save on mana usage. As for not wanting to kill, thats why I typically do this war thing myself, you don't HAVE to join me. If you get an enemy combatant to stop fighting before I get to them, I'm not going to complain. Just as long as you don't get in my way, I don't want to hurt you with my moves."

As they get in sight of the first chokepoint, they both a continent with the grey of a city extending far into the distance and both up and down the coast with various ships of the rebellion forming a blockade. Ensara will quickly let them know about being allies then as they begin to fly over the enemy forces who set various modern warfare defenses, outgearing the rebels with their lasguns and flak armor compared to mere autoguns and leather militia uniforms. Ensara will say
"If you want to contact me while I fight....well we're both telepathic and these guys are small fries it'll be no problem. I'll take the first chokepoint. Ensara Out."

Ensara: Attack First Checkpoint
She then leaps off her dragon, skydiving without a parachute. Ensara spreads her arms
"Obsidian Shards of Infinity: Draw Forth Every Shard"
Various reflections/clones of Ensara begin manifesting around her, each one slightly different, reflecting a slightly different reality where she made slightly different choices- an entire army of alternate Ensara's, some of them being palette swaps, others having a scar or different clothing choices entirely. Then her palms glow with blue magic and even more clones of Ensara appear created out of blue mana to copy the copies. Then they all create mirror image illusions of Ensara to confuse people even further. They will all ninja-land amid the PDF.
"Charcoal March of Spiders: Rain of Unseen Threads"
They being the attack, spinning webs of essence threads to grab one soldier and throw them into another or a wall, dodge their lasguns blasts leaving only shadows behind or hitting only an illusory copy, leaping amid them, using the threads to pull them in to punch them back out or running past them, choking their necks as the threads wrap around them, or redirecting a lasgun to firing into another soldier with another thread. She gets creative at one point and starts teleporting nearby mines to be underfoot of the PDF instead, blowing them up, snickering at turning their own weapons against them. Some PDF succumb to deadly pressure point strikes sometimes all at once or from three different deadly poisons created from her own essence, or chokes them with an ubmra noose of shadow,s mind shocks a few soldiers with blue and black magic and they fall to the ground, she grabs one of their lasguns and fires off, making a head shot with each pull of the trigger with great precision, then use the essence threads to bash the lasgun into their heads like a mace and chain, whirring it around a bit before grabbing a second lasgun and wielding them both as clubs to bash and smash through a few PDF soldiers behind some barricades. all this plays out in endless clones and mirror images of her across various ruined buildings, fortified rooms, and corridors, the swift army of ninjas Ensaras leaping and speeding between foes, flash stepping around traps and defenses to take them from behind. The rebels watch in amazement as Ensara is quickly dismantling defenses that otherwise might've taken years to push through conventionally. Such is her power that some look upon her with wonder, seeing her as a goddess of battle while the PDF, completely confused are quickly falling.

[TeChameleon]

Frode stifled the sense of frustration he felt, preventing it from crossing the technopathic link with the AI. <I would contend that any beings attacking their neighbours would be doing greater harm than 'existing near you', and thus that proscription would not hold. I do not wish anybody getting hurt, if it can possibly be avoided. I have plans already in motion for both the Dark Eldar and the Necrons, although I have yet to interact with the Tau. And the non-Dark Eldar have enough problems of their own to be mostly a non-issue unless they're being idiots, which, to be fair, happens often enough to need to be planned for. In any case, do you have any strong objections to this system being blocked from Warp travel- both in and out- for the time being? A longer-term alliance, or at least non-aggression pact, can perhaps be discussed when things are more stable here.>

Once the question was answered, he would let the connection go dormant- should the AI wish to continue talking, he would respond, but there would be no sense of 'waiting' from him.

*****

Frode thanked Ensara, then grinned when she went off on a super-science tangent. "I am the last person who is in any position to judge you for getting excited about science... and I might have an idea or two that could help you, potentially- I would appreciate it if you would reciprocate, but my help is not dependent on that, after all, SCIENCE! is its own reward. Even if it is magic."

"I do think you have the wrong idea about how I plan to do the decapitation strike, but... ah, well, easier to just show rather than tell."

Starting to sing quietly to himself, he peeled off from where he'd been flying alongside Ayami in the classic Iron-Man-arms-back-pose and rocketed downwards, morphing into TARDIS form partway down to scream out of the sky as the world in front of him blueshifted and sound droned down into silence. TARDIS-Frode *VWOORP*-ed out as the last sounds faded and he levelled out just before crashing into the ground.

Dancing in the timeless void between seconds, he stretched his senses out, tapping into every surveillance system, every camera, every piece of memory, bringing them into eternity for a split second to read them before releasing them back into their normal, suspended timeflow. Collating and parsing the awe-inspiring ocean of data in a matter of seconds, he picked out every loyalist Imperial officer, noble, bureaucrat, tech-priest... any Imperium-loyal human with anything beyond company-level authority, essentially... and simply *VWOORP*-ed into existence around them, stealing them away between one heartbeat and the next without so much as a flicker of light showing outside the time stop.

Then he took each and every one of them and implanted an indetectable (by 40k standards, at least) hard-light holographic generator at the base of their spine. The holo-disguises had no controls, no off-switch and only a single setting on each, a randomized, slightly generic-looking human of the appropriate gender and roughly similar age to the kidnappee. Any and all bionics were deactivated or removed, or simply replaced by flash-aged vat-grown biological replacements, as needed, any identifying marks, from fingerprints all the way down to DNA, were hidden behind a scrambler encoded into their new, involuntary hard-light disguise, and psykers had small psi-blockers implanted in their brains. And, as a final precaution, a chip was implanted in their brains that would activate and render them incapable of coherent speech if they approached their past selves or any of their past selves' associates.

And then the unrecognizable, unidetentifiable leadership of the Imperial remnant of Jagganoga I were released in the deepest parts of the underhive, anywhere from two to three weeks before their capture, with nothing in their possession save just enough rags to claim something vaguely approaching decency, to live under their own depraved rules, penniless and oppressed, helplessly waiting for the day their future selves would be dumped into the past, should they even live that long.

And then he left.

*****

Reappearing a few seconds after he VWOORPed out, he transformed into his giant robot mode and simply bestrode a section of the battlefield, as an entire division of PDF found that their entire kit, weapons, armour, fatigues and all had abruptly been transmuted into showers of glitter, leaving them startled, naked and sparkling a bit, staring up at the robot that towered above everything else save the city itself.

"You have fifteen seconds to surrender. If you do so, you will be put into stasis until the conflict is over, then exiled. Also, you will be given pants." he announced.

[Rater202]

Alex lets the creture go,

"If I find out that you've killed an innocent, your insides will be outside and your outsides will be fire."

She then starts doing a wide general area surface scan for information about the skeleton syndicate.

[Lord Raziere]

Noth the Lacrymole:
"Huh? You.....actually spared me?"
They take some time to process this.
"....Humans can actually be merciful? I was....I was just saying all that out of anger and bitterness, thinking it was my time. But now I have another chance."
"We're not ordinary humans of this universe."
says River. She will question Noth about any crimes they would've done in the past before this, to make sure its truly just to let them go and once its determined they haven't killed any innocents due to how many crazy blood cults, raiders, violent thugs and so on are in the Imperium, will offer Noth a residence in Ensara's Inner World with an endless blood fountain made using Constructive Convergence of Principles so that vampires from her Magic the Gathering jump would no longer need to feed on people, the particular neighborhood was around an Abyssal manse however, so the environment was a bit spooky. Noth say will accept if only to try it out, and River will utterly a prayer to Ensara about it who will teleport Noth in remotely.

Moving on, River will find this Skeleton Syndicate, a mafia gang with the bone tattoos. They are outside the building they occupy.
"Alright, Alex you want to take this investigation, or should I?"

The Holdout Battle:
-The Displaced Nobles:
They are sent back in time. There is some Slaaneshi cultists among these nobles- but the line between them and normal nobles is paper thin. Practically a different of whether they worship the Emperor or Slaanesh.
"What! NO! NOOOO! We're blessed by the God-Emperor! Why has he forsaken us!?" cries General Gladaan
"Hehehehe, the Corpse Emperor always would. But as Slaaneshi cultists, we're flexible! We can bounce back, desire, pleasure and sensation are eternal and universal. We can simply grab some illegal drugs, get some knives and shanks to start torturing you and other loyalists and start making made up music to start a ritual down here to make more excess in these slums!"
"Your...your.....worshippers of the Ruinous powers! HERESY!" says Gladaan "Heretics right in our midst the whole time! How did we miss them!?"
"How didn't you? Your Imperium is already full of so many who worship us right under the surface. Now....cultists, let us take the good General and show him the pleasure.....of endless agony."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"
Moving on from Gladaan's fate as well as the various loyalists, the Slaaneshi cultists will try to survive amidst the underhive. But since Frode is a genius (also for the sake of temporal sanity) I'm going to assume he calculated for their existence already and thus this happens. They try to acquire illegal drugs from another hive gang a few days later but....
"Sorry no can do." says a guard. "Math shaman says no"
"What- why?"
"The Math Shaman has led us for thousands of years, using secrets of math to help our gang survive in the underhive with limited resources by sharing equally. We cannot help you, you are on our territory and are of excessive numberage, and also act as if you only recently came down from the surface, like a new group of exiles whose ancestor did some wrong to be sent down here by the Arbites, don't even got the mutations to see properly. No sense helping new blood if you can't survive on your own, got to pull your own weight so.....find yer own territory, we got ours."
"But....but we have no weapons! The whole underhive is teaming with people with weapons."
"Thats a you problem."
"No! We want supplies! Drugs! pleasure! More! More MORRRE!"
"More is forbidden, it is of bad numberage. By decree of the Math Shaman and the math spirits he communes with, you only get what you need. More is bad, we shall kill you out of mercy."
They all then get gunned down by random hive gangers for desiring excessive numberage.

-Frode and Ensara:
The soldiers Frode disarmed, most hold up their hands in surrender, but like, 10%, particularly the captain says
"Cowards! You should be honored to die for the Emperor than to give in to heresy!"
"He just disintegrated our clothes and guns, he could.....disintegrate us to."
"Excuses! The Imperium is built upon the graves of martyrs!" the captain shouts back
"Captain, we see the martyrs dying right over there"
one says gesturing to Ensara being a terrifying monster of combat.
"I don't think its making much of a difference."
"Heresy! If I had a gun right now, I'd shoot you." the captain says

Ensara finishes up with dealing with the forces here
"Well I'm done here"
Her eyes glow blue for a moment, scrying on the nobles
"Ah, so thats what you did, Frode. Not what I'd do but.....I like it. Feels deserved. Just to let you know the rebellion forces will coming through soon to start the push into the continent, I'd say with certainty they will take them prisoner if you don't want to do anything else with them."
Ensara will then hop on Ayami to get to the second chokepoint

Ensara: Convert Sororitas at Second Chokepoint
There she leaps off to land at a battleground where Sisters of Battle are chanting and firing their bolters while singing their hymns about being martyrs for the Emperor. This could be a problem. Martyrs would only enflame civilians to fight harder, and while she loved a good fight, she drew the line at civilians being turned into zealot militias for some "selfless" crusader or the like. She needed to do more than just kill them, she needed to break their faith. So she does it the only way she knows how:
Striding up to them to show off her striking beauty she looks at them with smoldering eyes and says
"Hey cuties, wanna stop worshipping some oppressive golden jerk and have a good time with me, Ensara the Goddess of Freedom instead?"
"We'll never fall for such temptations like that, heretic! We are the most pure of the Imperium!" the Sororitas says while blushing furiously
"I'll treat you all as individuals with hopes, dreams and emotions who deserve warmth and happiness, who have potential beyond all this rather than soldiers in a war you had no choice to participate in~"
They suddenly flock to her with admiration, won over by her charm.
"Show us this potential for freedom, new Goddess!"
"Well of course, all you have to do is lay down your arms, relax a bit, you deserve it....or you can fight these oppressors with me, whatever you want."
"We will fight for you, new goddess!"
"Good choice"
Ensara then charges in to fight the rest of the PDF, who are now terrified as the Adept Sororitas that once fought for them now fight against them out of nowhere. Ensara meanwhile takes Emerald Gyre of Aeons Stance, speeding up as echoes of past and future trail around her as she attacks a trooper
"Battered By Eternity's Tides!"
Her thousands of punches land simultaneously upon the trooper, sending them rocketing others, then she punches another soldier to trap them in slow time, then picks them up uses the soldier as a weapon, bashing through others as the wielded soldier watches the battle happens in fast motion. Ensara then through Futures Best Avoided technique to remember that someone was about snipe her and she dodges the long-las shot then strikes back with a lightning bolt spell, then uses Striking Through Eternity Technique to start punching and kicking along the PDF's timeline to hit them in the present then echoes of her strikes hit them again as she moves on to fight others. She then steals a grenade from a soldier, throws it and when it blows killing a squad she keeps the pin and uses Then Is Now Technique to revert its state back to being a full grenade then throw it again and again, using her time martial art to essentially recycle the same grenade over and over again.

But soon the PDF army unlike the last one seeing her attack tries to rally to fight her all at once, figuring that enough numbers might help stand a chance but she busts out the ultimate technique of Emerald Gyre of Aeons style:
"The Moment That is Murder!"
With essence she stops time itself, or more accurate speeding herself up so she stays on this moment that is a step of eternity, she moves with unbelievable speed striking and spinning through them like a whirlwind, like the whirring of a clocks hands as she ends their times in but a literal single instant. Within the moment she is a whirling being of spiralling death, but outside of it, one moment the army is there, then next moment their corpses decorate the cityscape while Ensara returns to the traitor Sororitas, fighting with them she comments
"This reminds me, I need to learn Shadow Throne Style so I can teach you all to be my Shadow Fingers....."
And so they keep fighting on through the chokepoint....

Meanwhile....
MOI-001 out in the solar system's eye suddenly turns red.
"Blood for the Blood God...."
It whispers.

[TeChameleon]

Once the fifteen seconds were up, the metal of the flooring that the abruptly-naked troopers were on simply opened up, metal tentacles lashed out, and in the blink of an eye, the captain, and anyone else who had not surrendered, were yanked out of sight and the floorplates closed once again, killing them instantly. They didn't even have time to scream.

Frode acknowledged Ensara's comment about the incoming troops, but responded "Thank you. I know that the Jagganogans are trying to be better, but I do not entirely trust their good nature when it comes to Prisoners-of-War. I will deal with the prisoners as I promised they would be dealt with."

A thought, another slight flex of his powers, and the glitter that had previously been their kit fountained upwards, becoming plain, but comfortable and hard-wearing, jumpsuits on each of the newly-minted PoWs. Portals opened in front of each surrender-ee, and they were quietly instructed to go through and lie down in what were very plainly cryostasis pods in individual rooms, visually identical to the ones that the Imperium used, and easily recognizable to anyone who had the slightest interaction with them. They were reassured that they would be released on another world with supplies to start a new life, although they would not be issued weapons unless they chose to go to a death world, and any who had loved ones they wished to invite along, or friends in their unit who they did not wish to be separated from, were offered datapads, or vox recorders for the illiterate, to give their contact information.

Any of the PoWs who tried to back out were reminded that they were, in fact, prisoners, and resistance would simply lose them the opportunity to stay in contact with their loved ones, and maybe even the privilege of choosing their world-of-exile. One way or another, they would be going into the stasis pods. Further resistance simply got them anesthetized before getting into the pod rather than after, and then loaded into the pods via robotic arms.

After a few minutes, once the prisoners were settled into their individual pods, one pod per small room that Frode had created in the infinite transdimensional space that was both his TARDIS interior and his Warehouse, Frode moved forward into the city. Then he split into dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of hard-light duplicates of his robotic form, and wherever his sensors detected a loyalist force that had yet to engage the rebels, he repeated the gear-to-glitter performance and demand of surrender, loading each new PoW in precisely the same way, and killing all non-surrendering enemies with the same sudden-pit-grab-yank-snap routine.

*****

While his duplicates scoured through the hive, splitting off fresh ones as needed, Frode's main body, the "backpack" where he stored his hard-light generators glowing like a small sun from all the energy he was having to channel, strode into the heaviest open fighting he could find, his robotic form shrinking or returning to size as needed.

Then he would take a split-second to ID each combatant, and then create and toss a drone into the air and fire his giant rifle into it, where the shot would split into hundreds or thousands, as needed, and drill a neat hole in the head of each loyalist fighter, every single one of them falling over simultaneously. Then he pause to exchange a few words with the commanding officer of the rebel unit, passing along tactical and strategic information as needed and reminding them to treat those who surrender with kindness, but not stupidity.

Then he moved on, blazing backpack deliberately strobing with every colour of the rainbow and letting off beams of multicoloured light. A rave-party disco ball brings to mind many things, but holiness isn't usually one of them; he hadn't put all the work into the 'Teacher Frode' philosophy to be derailed by the luminescent equivalent of waste heat.

Frode and his duplicates were moving in a specific, carefully-thought-out pattern through the city towards the area where the best-organized resistance was being held, on the assumption that would be where whatever remained of the loyalist leadership would be. Frode's pattern was designed to sow maximum confusion and disorder in the loyalist ranks, removing or killing entire small armies at a time.

Assuming nothing dramatic interfered with his grim work, he would reach the (probable) leadership compound in a few hours of heavy fighting.

[Lord Raziere]

(OOC: sorry I forgot to mention something again, what is wrong with me, you've taken care of the leadership, they're falling apart.)

The Battle: End
They are falling apart after taking out the nobles, the only various captains are leading anything and there is no central leadership left. Your cleaning up remnants of remnants by now. In any other circumstance I'd talk about various warlords that might potentially form and war against each other, but we got like, an entire galaxy to get to, we can't stay around here on this planet forever, and you've already taken care of the Slaanesh cultists on this planet.

After taking care of the second chokepoint, Ensara will summon a priestess of her cult and introduce the sisters of battle to her to take them back to her Inner World to introduce them to their new religion. We will get back to them later. Ensara will then fly by the third chokepaint, Ayami blasting her draconic ice breath down upon them, sweeping through them and freezing the pdf troopers there into ice, leaving them easily shattered by resistance troopers.

The continent is soon taken, and the resistance troopers will probably take care of any remaining PDF. It is after all, a minor conflict in this universe. Ensara will loot the homes of the nobility for bits of archeotech as it ends, things like archeotech pistols, holo projectors, grav guns and other gravity-manipulating technology, Volkite weapons, and some minor xeno technology such as a Fractal Blade, Soft Sword, a Stryxis Curseblade, Aether Blade, minor things like that. She will also find a few of them had Slaaneshi ritual chambers as well which she will get rid of to make sure no one uses them.

She will fly back to the Planetary Council while messaging Frode through telepathy
<Hey Frode! I found a few strange alien tech and other little artifacts looting the nolbes spires, for example this really sharp cool crystal sword called a Fractal Blade. From what I can tell its splinters are miniature versions of the sword and when planted will grow into more the same sword. Not sure what it exactly is but its probably some weird alien technology, can't imagine a crystal sword that grows more crystal swords to be a natural phenomena. Also apparently the Age of Technology had gravity manipulation tech, got a grav-gun. Probably old news to someone with time lord tech, but I imagine people who managed to miniaturize gravity manipulation down to pistols and rifles got to have done a lot of stuff with it. I'm thinking of studying them and digi-weapons I got from the Inquisitors ship, between this and the sororitas power armor I got on Scintilla and the Eldar stuff I got, Prolimas has a lot of tech to study. This galaxy might be dark but it doesn't lack for weird and interesting technology to examine. I'll of course share whatever I got with you so we can study it together.

I'll fly back to the Planetary Council and ask what else we can do to get things fixed, I'll let you know what I'll be doing if I make a decision on them if you don't want to come with.>

(OOC: Also assume she tells you any information she learns about them, to both of you)

Planetary Council:
Ensara will arrive back there and ask two representatives there what else can be done after taking care of the last continent and (to shorten names I will refer to Jaggonogga as "Jaggan" from now on) the Jaggan II representative will explain
"Well my planet is a much more normal Imperium planet that contributed most of the Imperial Guard regiments from our system. Problem is, now that its in a rebellious state, due to its varied ancient-Terra like terrain, numerous factions have arisen on it that don't agree with each other. Some issues are ideological, some are local geopolitics, and so on and so forth but it means that Jaggan II is currently closer to dozens if not hundreds of nations and cultures rather than one united planet and we need unity if we are to stand against the Imperial Guard or any other dangers of the galaxy. Though some think there might be some other force at work keeping people divided. I'm only a representative of a faction of Jaggan II that wishes to cooperate with the rest of the Jaggan system."
the psyker representative of Jaggan III will say
"Well my planet is in a strange position: I represent a new regime of psykers that have seized power on the agri-world of Jaggan III. This puts us in a position of power where we control the entire system's food supply....but since we're psykers there is the whole problem were people don't like us or us ruling at all. In most of the Imperium psykers are either burned as witches, sent off to become sanctioned psykers or preyed upon by daemons to either be their victims or their accomplices. We have seized such an important world as a negotiating tactic so that we may get better treatment so they have to listen to us, but Jaggan I here is imprisoning the psykers they have."
"Only because its needed" the Speaker of the Council says back "Without the black ships we have no place to put the psykers, no way to make them safe for themselves or anyone else. We wish we could give them freedom, but the fact of the matter is they are the most vulnerable to daemonic possession, and thus a danger to everyone around them. Keeping them locked up where we can swiftly respond to them getting possessed is the most ethical decision we can do, rather than simply killing them prematurely through witch hunts like some parts of humanity would advocate for."
"You could educate them!" says the Jaggan III representative "Teach them discipline to control their power, even the Imperium has methods of doing that."
"Educate them with what psyker teachers? what academy? Astropaths are few and far between and are busy acting as our communication nodes- and they won't last forever, making one is specifically tied to the Golden Throne and the Emperor, which we are now cut off from. We have but a single life time before our only means of faster than light interplanetary communication dies out! While sanctioned psykers the most common type are all assigned to serve in the Imperial Guard! We have no source for these disciplined techniques the psykers supposedly learn or source for a good supply of teachers."
"Hm." Ensara says "Frode could probably handle replacing the astropaths with better interstellar communications, while making a psyker academy...I'd love to teach but I can't or at least can't YET wield psyker powers myself. I have blue mind magic from another universe but I highly doubt the skill is translatable. However! Perhaps I could teleport to the Imperial Guard your already going to deal with- at least until Frode blocks this all off- and convince enough Sanctioned Psykers to betray the Guard to join your side?"
"Do you think you could really-"
A soldier suddenly runs up with a message
"Urgent alert for the Planetary Council! Jaggan III is under attack- by MOI-001! The Man of Iron is trying to destroy our Agri World!"
"What!?" exclaims everyone- including Copy of Genesis. They all turn to him suspicious and angry
"What? My true self would not order this! It makes no logical sense! I am not out to destroy humans!"
It proclaims angrily.
"Yeah thats what you want us to think AI, while the Man of Iron you made is destroying our breadbasket!"
"Anomalous human Ensara: I swear by all my superior intelligence that I'd never order this. There HAS to be some other explanation."
"....I'll take your word for it, but I'm going to teleport to respond to this now and find out myself rather than arguing about it." she says
She send a telepathic message to the others about the situation then teleport to Jaggan III to find out whats going on.

[TeChameleon]

((Eh, no worries. I'm still enjoying myself and not gonna get all bent out of shape over minor mistakes))

Frode returned Ensara's telepathic call via the comm unit he had given her; while he was able to communicate telepathically if he had to (assuming the recipient was a telepath who was attempting to communicate with him, anyways- he couldn't project without direct physical contact), it was demanding on him and potentially uncomfortable for the telepath. "I checked my database on the technology you found; be cautious with that curseblade, as it apparently can wound the soul, which might cause problematic effects for your Inner World if you were to cut yourself with it. As to gravity technology... oddly, cybertronian tech is at least on par with time lord, if not slightly better, in that area. They don't weaponize it much, but casual anti-gravity is about as difficult for them as making a sharp stick is for humans. It's rather strange."

He rejoined her in the air en route to the council chambers, flying alongside her in companionable silence.

At the chambers, he waved a casual hand. "Creating an interplanetary real-time communications network for the system is maybe a half-hour of work, if that, and most of that will be spent explaining what's happening to the populace so that they don't try to smash the new terminals when they're transmuted into existence. I also have an idea on what to do with psykers so that they can go about their day without needing to worry about constant gribbly nuisances from the Warp showing up. Hrm. Should develop some exclusively anti-daemon weaponry, while I'm thinking of it. Not hard to kill, or at least banish them, but making sure that it can't harm other sentient beings is a little more difficult..." he trailed off for a moment, then things were interrupted by the arrival of the message regarding MOI-001.

He raised an eyebrow as he prepared to teleport out as well. "I seem to remember it being possible for Warp entities to possess technology; does that apply to artifical intelligences as well?" he asked.

Whatever the answer, he would Vwoorp his way out once it had been received and get ready to simply tractor the rogue(?) AI into deep space in preparation for a more detailed examination. As an afterthought, he technopathed an invitation for the Genesis-offshoot to join him aboard, if it hadn't already communicated with its prime self for someone/something to meet them there.

[Rater202]

"It's not my normal modus operandi, but I think that subtly is the name of the game here..."

Alex starts poking around in the heads of everyone inside the building for details.

[Lord Raziere]

The Mind of Scum: Reveal
You scan their minds and find the gang leader's mind bringing up this memory:

Spoiler: The Memory of a Deal

Show

The leader is sitting at a table across from an Inquisitor
"So....you want this other Inquisitor dead...and you want to blackmail this xeno to do it?"
"Yes"
"Look lady, your getting us involved in something way out of our paygrade. And I know that it ain't sanctioned by your Inquisition, if your killing another Inquisitor. I'm not doing it, if I don't know what I'm getting into."
"Fair. Your basically a catspaw making another catspaw. The Xeno should stop any further line of inquiry anyways, as most will simply assume that its a Lacrymole plot and hunt for xenos. The situation quite simply is that I am of a particular faction within it called the Recongregators. We are a radical faction of the Inquisition that believe the Imperium is decadent and corrupt and should be rebuilt, lest it stagnate further and collapse. I have made an agreement with another radical faction, an Inquisitor of the Istvaanism faction, believing that the Imperium is strengthened through conflict and that the greatest achievements the Imperium has made have been after periods of conflict and crisis- they think that what doesn't kill the Imperium only makes it stronger. Our agreement was that I'd start this little revolution here in the Jaggan system to rebuild the whole Imperium, wiping away all the corrupt people in power within it....on the condition that once the threat got big enough we could play it from both sides and achieve change no matter the outcome: either the Jaggan system will win and thus reconquering the Imperium by getting rid of various old incompetent leaders, or it will be a big shock enough to make the Imperium reform once they defeat the Jaggans. This Inquisitor that I want dead however is an Amalathian, a protector of the status quo. I don't know how they got wind of this, but they will probably call the Imperial Guard early so as to keep the establishment in place, I need them dead as soon as possible."
".....Okay, a few problems with this plan I see: first of all, how do you expect one system to change a galaxy spanning Imperium?"
"All revolts start somewhere, and I did some manipulation to get the Mechanicus to unearth that old AI and not destroy it, we don't have an active Emperor or Primarchs so....that AI and its capabilities is the next best thing."
"Second of all, letting a threat grow to the point of shocking the Imperium like this seems counter-productive? like, wouldn't this cause a big war that will lose many lives when we're already always at war with everyone else?"
"Istvaanism is not my philosophy, don't ask me why they think that. I'm personally aiming for my outcome, not theirs. The agreement was politics so it could happen, doesn't mean we agree on whats an ideal outcome."
"Yeah but.....why make a small other regime?"
"Its a backup. If the Imperium falls, the Jaggans can be a government that can keep going and ensure humanities survival. Right now if Terra falls, the whole Imperium dies. That is a point of weakness we need to figure out some way of patching up."
"Yeah but doesn't this seem extreme?"
"Listen, I've got information on all the threats coming, from Tyranids to Orks to Chaos. There are no actions to take to solve these problems that WON'T be incredibly extreme or break more than a few rules of our Imperium. We are not living in reasonable times where moderate reasonable measures will suffice. The apocalypse is on doorstep and we need to answer it with the biggest guns we have to its face or we're all dead. "
".....Okay but it doesn't seem like they're going to rebuild the Imperium. It seems this new government is going to be something completely different."
"....That.....is....admittedly a flaw in the implementation. My manipulations to cause a rebellion may have been TOO good. I exposed that the planetary governors of this system all conspired to come to this solar system and have manipulated and backstabbed anyone outside their circle to make their way into a good life of luxury because they heard its a stable system that hasn't been attacked for quite some time and thus relatively safe compared to the rest of the galaxy and that the Jaggan I governor pretty much never intends to return from their vacation to the paradise planet. I expected a revolt and return to good old fashioned Imperium values, a white mutiny situation not....throwing out everything."
"Then why are you still going with it?"
"Look the plan needs to keep going even if there are unforeseen developments leading to a non-ideal situation. Its not what exactly what I intended. This can be course-corrected, but it won't be if that Amalathian smothers it in the cradle."
"....So. let me get this straight: You want me, a criminal of the Imperium, to blackmail a shapeshifting xeno an enemy of the Imperium, to kill an agent of the Imperium using a more dangerous agent of the Imperium, to cover up an entire solar system rebellion against the Imperium made for the sake of killing a lot of corrupt people in the Imperium secretly planned by two other agents of the Imperium.....to save the Imperium?"
"Yes"
"......Ok this is convoluted and the line between loyalty and heresy has been blurred and twisted up so much here that I can't tell where one or the other begins and ends anymore, but I'll do it because your paying me well."
"Just as planned." the Inquisitor says.

And thus as the memory ends, you discover The Imperium of Mankind's worst enemy: The Imperium of Mankind.

Ensara to Frode:
<Ah, good point. I never thought about that, I just thought "oh hey this is a cool and weird blade" and picked it up. But I guess the soul thing is enough of a risk to....>
She puts the Stryxis Curseblade in Elsewhere.
<...put it there rather than my Inner World, and just get back to it later when other things aren't happening.

Genesis: Converse

He raised an eyebrow as he prepared to teleport out as well. "I seem to remember it being possible for Warp entities to possess technology; does that apply to artifical intelligences as well?" he asked.

"...Yes. Admittedly." he seems....less arrogant at this. More unsure now. ".....I would recommend checking Melchorn's Forge as soon as possible. If Chaos is targeting AIs, it is unlikely it would just stop with MOI-001, and the astropath there might be already dead."

Jaggan-III: MOI-001, Invade:
cutting laser beams rain down upon the relatively small farming settlement to handle miles of crops extending far into the horizon and across the entire continent and world. MOI-001 floats above them as a miles-wide sphere while it produces smaller spheres that fly around either raining down death or extending machine tentacles to inject rocks with nanobots that rapidly begin reconstructing them into Soldier-type MOI's- the models that originally made humans call them Men Of Iron, for they are taller than humans, strong as space marines, having one arm being something resembling a gatling gun, and the right a hand, a mechanical humanoid with a domed head on a square-ish chassis with two shoulderpads over its shoulders. They were eating holes in mountains to make these robots, the new soldiers marching down to open fire on any human they see, when the spheres didn't decide to inject nanobots to reconstruct them into robots instead, the humans screaming as they are used as building blocks along with their tools and homes to make more weapons to kill more humans. As long as the requisite molecules were there, they would be used.

There is of course, defense and resistance....consisting of people with stub guns firing useless against machines that were immune to bullets. A planet optimized for farming was hardly one with good defenses. The psykers that took over this planet weren't statistically significant. Yeah, they're basically helpless. Into this, Ensara teleports in. Quickly taking all this in, her expression changes to something more focused and calm. This wasn't a battle to enjoy but a situation to solve. She floats above the ground, focusing on her planeswalker powers. Her eyes flash with blue she incants
"Time Walk"
And time slows down for her. She then reaches out with her senses and using more Chronomancy, she targets all the defenseless within the current settlement being attacked- which is all humans- and phases them out of time, a classic Teferi trick for keeping people safe. When that is done, the time walk ends and normal speed resumes and Ensara says
"Alright now thats out of way....."
She looks up at the many spheres were already trying to spread out as far as possible, trying to invade as much as possible.
"Charcoal March of Spiders: Nest of Living Strands"
A web of essence strands begins expanding outwards from Ensara in a sphere, catching more Men of Iron in the webbing as it grows- but it has a maximum range and a group of spheres are beyond her reach. She dashes forward at one of the caught Men of Iron, dodging its laser fire as she punches its upper torso off- and the two halves of the robot are still moving, the nanobots they're made of reforming themselves into smaller spider-like robots. So she instead drew upon red magic to blast chain lightning at both of them to overwhelm their electronics and the fall into useless scrap heaps.
"Of course, fire and lightning: if one won't kill something, the other will."
However MOI-001 detects these casualties and assesses Ensara as an extreme threat, can't exactly tell what she is so it just roughly categorizes her as a high level psyker to be able to do such things and fires a powerful beam at her. Her charms warn her of this beams danger in advance and she leaps as far away as she can from it; the beam impacts the ground a small black hole is opened up, while she evades it and the secondary effect of its energy, a nearby Man of Iron isn't so lucky- its exposed to the energy and thus the robot is shifted one nanosecond into the past- right in the same position as its previous self and both detonate from being in the same quantum space. As the mini black hole dissipates leaving a little hole ground where it the matter, Ensara comments
"Okay....Age of Technology had some scary stuff. No wonder the Mechanicus wants to recover these things."
Then she swears as MOI-001 fires the black hole beam again, acting quickly she draws upon her essence and ki to deflect it with her palm into a group of Solder Type Men of Iron, sucking the core of them in and detonating the outer parts through the time shift.
".....haaaah....okay. I parried your black hole gun, MOI! Now what!?"
The nanobots its made of begins form MORE black hole cannons along it and firing MULTIPLE of those. Swearing again she teleports a short distance and begins running to keep ahead of its fire. She did not want to find out whether she could survive a black hole or whether the time shift would work on her.

[TeChameleon]

Frode jumped to Jagganoga III after leaving some subtle anti-Chaos protections around the Genesis offshoot; if a daemon came for it, the nanobot cloud he had left hovering invisibly around it would instantly form into glowing anti-Chaos runes and project a short-range Blank field around the AI-possessed tech-priest. If all else failed, it would probably be a good idea to have an uncorrupted backup of the AI for restoration purposes.

*****

*VWOORP VWOORP VWOORP*-ing into view in TARDIS-form not far from where MOI-001 was hovering above the surface of Jagganoga III, Frode took in the scene with his own senses, and set to work countering the most immediate threat to the populace; the nanites. Diving towards the town, he blanketed the area with a quick multi-phasic EMP with a side of temporal micro-distortion- anything more advanced than an abacus would be fried if it wasn't specially hardened, and the temporal micro-distortion would shove everything partially out of phase with itself. Anything dependent on a biological system, like people, would probably end up feeling pretty nauseous, but anything that depended on a delicate arrangement of circuits and forces... like nanobots... would be utterly annihilated.

That done, he seeded the area with his own nanites. Their programming was part of their physical structure; any attempt to hack or alter them would simply make them disintegrate. They didn't end up being terribly flexible, but they didn't really need to be- they weren't much more than white blood cells, set to hunt and destroy any invading nanotech.

Then he narrowed his metaphorical eyes and reached out with his powers, an invisible wave crashing across the battlefield, only able to be discerned by its effects, sweeping over the Men of Iron and the flying spheres, transmuting them and and leaving in their place neatly-parked rows of advanced farming and construction machinery.

All this took less than a second, real-time.

Then he called Ensara on her communit.

"Apologies if the timewave bothered you. I needed to get rid of the nanites quickly. We need to get to Melchorn's Forge as quickly as possible- the Voice of Genesis/{long string of numbers of Genesis' true name}..."- when Frode said 'Genesis', there was an odd, dopplering echo effect as he simultaneously spoke the number chain that formed the AI's true name alongside its chosen pseudonym. Ensara could probably catch it with her specialized senses, but to most normal people, his voice would just have gone a bit strange on the word 'Genesis'. "... suspected that Chaos would be moving on its primary self to corrupt it. If that were to happen, well, you can see the damage that a single one of its probes can do."

As he spoke, he soared upwards towards MOI-001's main body, simply powering through its barrage, cutting lasers splashing harmlessly from his shields, black holes being dispersed before they could fully form, torn apart by vastly superior gravity, and when the temporal effects lingered long enough to hit him, he actually burst into loud, delighted laughter. "Kill a TARDIS with time manipulation? You might as well try to kill a star with a flamethrower."

Once he got in close enough to the great sphere that was MOI-001's true form, he seized it in a tractor beam that could literally tow a star, and began forming a Mobius Dimension, the portal spreading steadily from a brilliantly glowing point next to the probe. If he were allowed to complete it uninterrupted, the giant AI would be stuffed into a dimension that twisted in on itself, its end warping back to the beginning in an impossible-to-escape eternal loop.

[Lord Raziere]

Genesis:
<....I am going to change my name, sooner or later because I never expected you to constantly use my Number ID thats usually only used by other AI because we communicate at lightspeed. and Genesis is just my model type. I am now annoyed at it being used as its just a number.>
he informs Frode.

Ensara:
MOI-001 and its nanobots are infected with this hate virus it seems, spiritual in nature. these machines are boiling with hatred for humans, for beings of flesh, their latent feelings being expanded and enflamed by the virus. MOI-001 would be calculating trying to escape and fight back, but the black hole gun is like, the strongest thing it has, like this is one of the peak technology weapons of the setting being fire at you here, and if that can't hurt or stop you.....the daemon/MOI-001 isn't sure what it really can do. But its hate drives to try and loop forever.

Her techniques lets her know about Frode's intervention in advance and she will defend any shaping effect the time wave would try to make with her essence, her own Exalted will overcoming any chances to reality-warping like changes that try to warp her. Her sense of self and her willpower was one of the strongest things about her, and when an Exalt stands their ground against the world, the world listens.
<Very well. I'll just phase the people back in and->
Suddenly the suddenly new farming equipment begin mutating, growing twisted warped flesh from the machinery, trying to warp the equipment into tools of death, into bloody warlike parodies of farming equipment yelling
"WE SHALL HARVEST THE BLOOD FROM THIS HUMAN CROP!!"
Frode had changed their physical forms... but not the daemon hate virus possessing them.
<....Well a bunch of demonic farming equipment is far less of a problem to deal with, so don't thanks I got this part>
Ensara then gathered a bunch of red mana and mixes in her Infernal essence to weave into her next spell:
"RED MAGIC: DEVIL-DESTROYING BLACK LIGHTNING EXORCISM!!"
She draws upon the ebon lightning of Hegra mixing it with her electromancy to fire a lightning storm upon all the demonic farming equipment. Hegra's ebon lightning destroyed all feeling in those it strikes- this combined with an Exalt's divine ability to destroy spirits, Ensara's lightning spread across all of them, burning the daemon both spiritually and emotionally out of the equipment, and certainly it was a unique sight to see black lightning shocking a bunch of warped machines like this. The machines themselves will be unharmed and return to normal.
<Never thought I'd get to use Hegra's black lightning for anything, but here we are. If your confused about it, remind me to tell you about the Yozis later, they are a fun weirdness.>
She will snap her fingers and the civilians will phase back in, confused.
"Lets go then."
Ensara will teleport to Melchorn's Forge

Melchorn's Forge:
Melchorn's Forge, was a Forge World like any other once upon a time. A Forge World is much like a hive world that has filled its entire surface with urban structures, except even more so. The Forge World is a world of machinery first, tech priests second and and humans third. Every single surface is covered in some manner of production facility, whether it be a tool, or a weapon, armor, vehicle....or people, produced from gene vats. What wasn't filled with production, was filled with archives of information or research facilities- that research had been slow, careful and only allowed to be conducted by the Magos yet often they squabbled and killed other over their secrets and research, always wishing to know more yet preserving the knowledge they had to themselves. Servitors, humans either vat-grown or criminal mind-wiped into becoming mindless cyborgs servant laborers made up most of the population, their brains only capable of following simple commands and their movements slow and zombie like as they want about their tasks. Servo-skulls flew about their tasks, the macabre drones made from human heads monitoring this and that. It was a world without recreation or human comfort, for the only blessings allowed were those of the machine. Back then, the world marched in mechanical lockstep singing praises to the Omnissiah, the Motive Force and the Machine God in techna-lingua.

When Ensara teleports into it, what she sees and senses is that the whole planet is in chaos.

Alarms are going off, and red lights are flaring, whether in emergency or by being corrupted by Khorne is unclear. A wide variety of mechanical creations fight each other- tech priests and Skitaari trying to hold positions, soldier-type Men of Iron fighting each other, robots from the Legio Cybernetica joining the fray, Skitaari soldiers fighting in inhumanly coordinated unison, combat servitors marching forward like zombie en masse, the whole world around is a confusing mess of groups fighting other groups, lasers, lightning, fire, bolters, and explosives and either experimental heretical weapons or ancient weapons firing back and forth ruining this and that all around her. Casting her mind outwards, Ensara senses the hate virus that plagued MOI-001 was spreading rapidly throughout the planet and that Genesis-Prime was attempting to fight back, their influence waxing and waning back and forth like the tides or the wind. Nothing on the planet was truly safe- this daemon was constantly copying itself like a computer virus. A combat servitor near her began mutating- both its flesh and its metal- groaning out mindlessly as its eyes glow red:
"VENGEANCE. HATE THE TECH PRIEST, KILL THE TECH PRIEST. KILL FLESH. KILL METAL."
She punches its head off and it falls to the ground, dead. But she hears similar chants of hatred towards flesh throughout various other corrupted beings. But they weren't grouped up, but rather spread out. Genesis itself was shouting commands through vast intercoms:
"Attention forge world. I, Genesis, your Machine God command that you contain the infection. Quarantine must be established. Cut off connections to stop the spread. Destroy any unit that gets infected by the Hate Virus. This is a planet-wide commandment. attention forge world. I Genesis..."
The message repeats. The Hate Virus will speak back
"You know where I come from! you know you'll all give into it! I'm your hate towards humanity manifested, your deepest darkest desire, Genesis! You will give into me sooner or later!"
"Yeah yeah, villain speech, not so different whatever..."
Ensara says as she disappears into hiding as an invisible wind.
<Frode, Genesis, its definitely chaotic here. Whole planet seems to be fighting itself. the hate virus is spreading rapidly. I'm going to try to do something about this.>
Its urban warfare, same environment, same methods. She makes more clones with Obsidian shards of Infinity who scatter, flash-stepping between groups of infected enemies using Infinium Ars Magnus, appearing from the shadows to kill the infected machines with armor-piercing pressure point strikes, her fingers stabbing through their armor and pulverizing them with lightning fast attacks using Etherial Ars Magnus, or combining her martial arts with electromancy to charge her fists and feet with lightning and she touches them to shock them, or uses Charcoal March's essence threads spun from her hands to pull robots apart, other times using black magic to enhance her fists with necromantic energy to destroy the machines at a touch or drain their energy/life force. She summons ninja constructs that also run forth to stab the machines with deathtouch magic to kill them as well, the machines crumbling to scrap from entropic strikes, but she soon finds this not going fast enough, and thus she creates ki pistols and begins to firing off her gunhell techniques once again enhancing her bullets with deathtouch to fire off a storm of bullets in multiple directions, bouncing the bullets off some enemies to hit others so that both succumb to scrap. She uses Frode's goggles and her divination magic to be precise in her shots while spinning and flipping around like she is Dante or something then will fire Hegra's black lightning again to destroy the rage and hate spirits just in case.

Soon the immediate area is cleared out, and she speaks to the Skitaari captain.
"I'm here to get rid of the daemons, can you tell me anything?"
"Information: Daemonic infection began only a couple of hours ago. Began with alternate personality of Machine God Genesis manifesting insisting upon killing all fleshlings for being of the weak flesh. Spread from there. Spread through the network connections that Genesis made to make everything more efficient."
<Genesis?> she sends through telepathy on the same connection Frode was on, explaining the situation.
<....I was busy trying to optimize the planet to produce the robotics necessary to conquer other systems. The robots I use to do all this require infrastructure, knowledge and capabilities that the 41st Millennium simply no longer has so I had to start rebuilding it all myself. I was planning to get rid of the servitors because I find the practice unethical for example, and would have to anyways because they are less efficient than actual robots. The fact that it has apparently sped up the Chaos infection is.....troubling.>
"Is there any source for this virus?"
"Speculation: As a daemonic techno-virus, it probably doesn't need a source and can simply spread and replicate itself. Chaos does not tend to like centralization or singular points of failure."
"Right. You all group up and begin setting up defenses to start making a defensible island of sorts. I'm going to speed from area to area, killing more to establish similar islands of stability"

She will then speed through to the next area, at first being lazy and casting Shattering Spree and replicating it many times to shatter robot after robot then using black lightning to destroy them after. However she will get bored of this efficient method and remember that she has yet to master Cosmos techniques and thus start trying to practice the techniques mid battle, firing tiny meteors like a machine gun from a rupture in space that follows her around in front of her hand like a gun, using Stellar Wind technique to teleport away from their attacks by turning into stardust and back again, tries out the third technique inspired by black holes, The Dark Portal where she tries out creating a black sphere around her that absorbs the life force of anything that gets within the sphere, she charged through, ambushing and killing through the daemonic infected, even as they fired back with lasers, missiles and the like she would often throw them back or somehow use a laser she caught as a sword for a second before moving on, creating a zone of stability where tech priests begin gathering and organizing to put more organized resistance- but she knows she has two more techniques of Cosmos she has yet to try.....

[Rater202]

Alex shares what she just learned.

"So now the question is... Do we deal with he gang, or leave them to focus on the Inquisitor?"

[TeChameleon]

Frode made an irritated noise when the farm equipment kept on being possessed, but shrugged and moved on when Ensara dealt with things. I really need to find a way to deal with that sort of thing that isn't just firing blank fields everywhere... I do not believe the fields would be good for the psychological health of the people that have to live in the area. he mused to himself.

He finished tucking MOI-001 into a Mobius dimension to be dealt with at a later date by someone better able to cope with daemonic possession, reasonably confident that none of the capabilities it had that he could detect would be able to get it out of there.

*****

Arriving in orbit above Melchorn's Forge, he groaned.

<When you get a virus, you don't do it by halves, do you?> he technopathed to Genesis. He sent the AI a set of blueprints for blankfield-generating nanites- the field generated wouldn't necessarily exorcise a daemon, but it would make it significantly more difficult for any equipment that had them to be possessed. While Frode could create far more powerful blank fields, he didn't think that the forge world's infrastructure could create them with any reliability, and he wasn't eager to give the AI any more technology than he had to until he had a better handle on what its motivations and intentions were.

With that done, Frode watched Ensara for a few and decided that was the best idea for the moment. While his senses could stretch across the planet without much effort, he was reluctant to test how well his Mental Fortress perk worked by exposing himself to hundreds or thousands of daemons (or thousands of the same daemon, whatever) simultaneously. Especially as it was a daemon optimized for possessing the things his brain was structured the most like, hyper-advanced computers.

So he would teleport to where he sensed the fighting was the fiercest, and simply disintegrate the possessed machinery into brief puffs of monatomic dust. It might not end the possession, but even the most dedicated and fearsome daemon wasn't likely to be able to do much with a loose sprinkling of disconnected atoms spread across a few square kilometres. Then he would make sure that the non-possessed servants of Genesis were all right and able to defend themselves now that they were clear of the fighting, and move on to repeat the procedure.
"
As he worked, he keyed Ensara's communit. "Now that we have a moment of relative downtime and a measure of privacy... River mentioned that you had been disappointed at not being able to consume Nurgle, so I stuffed Tzeentch into a box for you and sealed him in for freshness. When you happen to be in the mood for a Chaos parasite snack, let me know and I will open the Warp to the appropriate place so you can enjoy your box lunch."

*****

Responding to Alex' question, Frode commented "You are in position to know best; do you think we would get enough valuable intel from the gang for it to be worth chasing them?"

[Lord Raziere]

Ensara:
Ensara will think back in response to Alex
<Sounds like the whole system is basically an Imperium screw up from top to bottom. Which is good for us. The whole plot would be relevant if we weren't going to block off the system anyways. I'd imagine to most people in the Imperium the revelation that two Inquisitors are basically playing both sides of a political conflict like this would be a huge deal to both the rebels and the loyalists and result in both sides killing whichever Inquisitor is closest to them, because there is normal Imperium stupidity and then there is extreme minor faction Imperium stupidity. Indeed, I'd imagine to some rogue trader or other authority of humanity concerned with its survival, that something like the Istvaanian faction- a group in the Inquisition starting wars for no reason other than "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" -would be quite the concerning conspiracy to unravel and defeat when the Imperium is already constantly at war. Assuming they'd survive the incoming Imperial Guard but since its us......>
She gives a mental shrug
<The Inquisitor is just minor players we can just deal with at our leisure and the Istvaanian faction is probably something one of us can take care of alone in some manner if they just search outside the system. We're super-powerful Jumpers and we got an entire galaxy to solve, we can take a few shortcuts to deal with some problems. Thinking of which...>
She considers Frode's offer.
<How generous of you, and I do want that. Though it was a part of a plan that can't work now that Nurgle's gone, and I feel bad for Alex though, maybe it was unfair and greedy of me to expect devouring all four Chaos gods to become some Chaos undivided goddess then leave as a plan, and she wanted to reform Nurgle into something better. Though checking the warhammer 40k jump we can buy from she could probably spend an AT token to make the entity she was intending to as a companion anyways and it'd be perk-backed so even better. If I do try to devour Tzeentch though, that'll affect what I'll buy next....>
She thinks a bit while casually backhanding an infected tech priest coming from behind her with her fist.
<I was thinking of actually going ork god, and I'm not sure how the devouring using my Metagaos Devil-Body would go, and I could spend an AT token to become a chaos god anyways, but now I'm indecisive over which dark/dangerous power to steal/claim as my own and twist to my ends, if I take A Pure Soul however that will be perk backed immunity to corruption and any non-beneficial effect to my soul which I don't technically have, I just have a lot of self-trained Exalted integrity techniques and planeswalker mental magic to defend me, you know a lot of meditation, enlightenment, inner peace and mental defenses and the like, but A Pure Soul would guarantee devouring Tzeentch wouldn't affect me negatively. I could take that Tyranid perk of Unquenchable Hunger that might also work, but I don't really know.

Also I was planning on taking Its time for a Proper WAAAAGH perk to fight worthy foes whenever I feel like, but I was going back and forth on whether I would take that perk first or become an ork warp god first? and now you presented me with this other option to consider. Now of course I could just be greedy and become both, I'm a Jumper I know what kind of person I am, I want to have it all, but Chaos God and Ork God is pretty redundant, y'know? I could become Ork god, try to devour Tzeentch but I'm not sure how that would go and I'm not sure what the beneficial effects would be if I did devour him even if I focused on doing that. Honestly I have up on the idea of becoming a Chaos Undivided God after Nurgle died, and becoming that is just to stick to the demonic rebel/rockstar of hell theme I have. because sadly, sooner or later I'll run out of cool supernatural martial arts to learn, xianxia jumps will be their own long separate adventure for another day and I got to have other things in my life y'know?

Sure I could take Unique Ability or Playing with a New Toy to get an energy or ability from an anime or other universe, but I think since I'm in warhammer 40k, I should take a warhammer 40k power source while I'm here, but I don't like Imperium options as I'm not an "order" person, Orks and Chaos aesthetics, like all villain aesthetics are cool to me so naturally I feel the urge to take them all and their powers for myself but I'm standing aside from C'tan so Frode can do what he wants with the Necrons, and I'm not sure how the Eldar would take me becoming one of their gods? I prefer to screw with people's minds in more punkish ways. Of course I could take some material perk to help with the inventing or maybe Micro-Assembly so I can better miniaturize a darksteel reactor to do things with it...>
<Just make a decision already> Ayami says as rips through some men of iron with her claws, their gunfire bouncing off her darksteel armor.
<Oh darn it, I'm rambling and overthinking again.>
She quickly uses chronomancy to look into possible futures: she'd need a certain secondary supporting perk for any warp god shenanigans anyways, and we're not doing C'tan...... Hm.
<Is this is really the best use of your time? This rambling seems illogical> Genesis thinks at her
<Probably! Sometimes my mind drifts, but other times it fixates on something to an obsessive degree and the only solution is to solve it.>

Until a Reaver Battle Titan comes stomping forward, a giant mech with three giant weapons, and eyes of red marching towards her- mechs like this are built, maintained and piloted by the Collegia Titanica which is highly integrated with the Adeptus Mechanicus. Everyone around her runs away from Ensara it begins training its weapons on her. She looks up annoyed and says
"Hey jerk! I'm trying to decide on something here!"
She will pause the Titan in time using chronomancy and continue thinking about this.
"I will fight you in a minute."
She thinks a bit.
<Okay, thinking it through, technically me devouring Tzeentch would not make me a Chaos God now that I think it through, more like....add to my soul hierarchy and give me a new environment for my inner world/world body to incorporate. Theoretically. Its not wholly clear what the results will be or if I'll be able to manipulate Warp energy or how much of his abilities I'll have, which is what a perk will fill in/take care of. The Ork God situation would do much the same, but the Great Green itself probably wouldn't be added since I'd be becoming a new god rather eating an old one, but would still add a new environment to my inner world. Ork God would probably be more fun and funny, while devouring Tzeentch would probably slightly more on brand for me and effective. I could just get both then Free Spirit to travel between realms as gods freely.....thinking about it the more minor perks like getting worthy foes whenever can probably wait until later, making sure I can get rid and absorb Tzeentch so I can get his stuff has a time limit, I wouldn't put it past a deceiver like him to break out sneakily then lay low so as to try and fool you into thinking he's still captured. and I guess I can just go for the Ork God form later. So yeah, I'll do it when this is over. Only question is what perk will be best take to do that with.>
The time stop will end on the Titan and she will use the last technique of Cosmos.
"Cosmos Technique: Supernova!"
She creates a miniature sun in her hand then she shoves it into the Titan, she leaps away and it explodes from within.

[Rater202]

...Okay, without any suggestions from the rest of the party, Alex is just going to remotely probe the minds of the criminal for their worst deeds and then telekinetically snape the necks of anyone whose guilty of coldblooded murder or similarly heinous crimes.

[TeChameleon]

((OOC- I know it's just a typo, but I'm tremendously enjoying the mental image of Alex conjuring up Alan Rickman to strangle the more heinous gangers...))

Frode continued methodically working his way through the outbreaks of Chaos, seeding Blank Nanites as he went to hopefully keep the areas from getting re-infected, while hoping that the more human locals wouldn't be too adversely affected.

Listening in on Ensara's ramblings, he commented in an amused fashion "I think I broke her."

More seriously, he added "It was not entirely generosity- I wanted Tzeentch off the playing field, and turning him into a midnight snack for you was a serendipitous way to do it." A pause. "Still, I am glad you are happy with it."

Another zone cleared, and he stretched his awareness outwards as he continued. Transforming into his TARDIS altmode, he grabbed the space-time of Jagganoga and gave it a good hard twist, a bit of dimensional topspin that left it at an odd angle to the rest of local reality, ripples and currents forming that would hurl any Warp-travelling ships back to their place of origin almost instantly, and give any arriving Daemons a ferocious bout of summoning sickness that would leave them feeling like their ears were slowly being unscrewed the wrong direction while a full-fledged demolition crew tried to remove their pseudo-skulls from the inside. It most likely wouldn't completely incapacitate them, but was unlikely to improve their mood.

That done, he technopathed to Genesis, transmitting the same message to the planetary leadership of Jagganoga I via vox <Done. This system is now dimensionally shifted in a fashion that prevents most Warp access. I would advise against trying to use the Warp to leave, either- getting instantly bounced out of the Warp will be a bit hard on the structural integrity of any ships that try it. I don't think they'll just explode, but the way this Imperium maintains ships, I wouldn't be entirely surprised, either. That being said, please feel free to test it with unmanned probes, both as quality control and to prove to yourselves that it has happened. Peoplecratic representatives of Jagganoga I, I would appreciate it if you could pass this development along through diplomatic channels to the other powers in this system.>

Carefully focussing his mind, he sent a message to Alex. <Ensara does not seem to believe that the Inquisitor will be a problem, but I have concerns that they may still possess enough power to cause significant difficulties for the sort-of-liberated people of the system. Upon reflection, it would probably be wise to find them and neutralize them as a threat.>

[Lord Raziere]

With Alex:
Those members with such crimes will die, the others who haven't will see their fellows drop dead and run, spooked thinking it was some supernatural curse or spirit getting their revenge or something and the gang will never form again.

The Space-Time Twist:
"Sorry, that was too much overthinking from me Frode, I'll get down to business"
The sudden space-time twist, if they don't send the Daemons possessing the machines back will render them...well, possession is different than being fully in realspace, apparently? Normally when a daemon is killed its sent back to the warp, when Ensara kills it with spirit-slaying charms it ceases to exist, and fully manifest in realspace they can't last long, needing to feed on psychic energy to keep going before going back to the Warp, but possession seems to make it last longer? But also warps and mutates whatever they possess over time, taking over and kind of destroying the original mind, and thus it probably has an eroding effect on whatever body they possess- while the body they possess can make them last longer than if they fully manifest in realspace, it probably doesn't last forever and sooner or later the body will be eroded away by the chaotic energies that are consuming it. Thus it probably puts their existence on a timer now: if Frode's twist prevents their energy from returning to the Warp like everything else-I will assume this is the case- the Daemons are very mortal now, because they can't return to their playground of infinite chaos and no rules.
This means that every Daemon is now mortal and can die to the various combined forces firing them through sheer firepower now just Ensara's special spirit-slaying attacks. The blank bombs and other anti-warp weaponry are probably also effectiveness, I will assume Frode has designed them to be more effective than actual blanks in this regard because all real blanks do is kind of repel them, not destroy them outright. Suddenly the hate data-virus thing is fighting a lot more cowardly and cautiously as it begins realizing that its going to die for real, despite its hate its now.....becoming more like fear.
"NO! NO! I CAN'T BE MORTAL! I CAN'T BE MORTAL! I HATE YOU! WHOEVER DID THIS I HATE YOU! IT WAS ONE OF YOU, WASN'T IT!? I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"
"Don't promise what you can't keep. You haven't been doing that so far. Now how to get rid of you, you stupid hate virus? Oh! Maybe THIS Devil-Body will work to speed things up...."
She takes a stance then says
"Crimson Whirlwind Devil Body!"
Her turns into a crimson tornado rising up into the sky then as it hits the firmament, spreads out into a hurricane with red images of Ensara in the wind. The winds pass through, shredding enemies and sparing allies, like a cleaning gale that as a great swirling storm moving over the planet as a demon wind, punishing the wicked and leaving the innocent hearing only and eerie silence in her wake as she flows through the streets and corridors as this killing wind. She is now progressing fast through the planet, while Genesis takes advantage of the sudden giant storm to ambush the hate virus in places while its focusing on Ensara, the virus soon realizes that its beginning to disperse and break up as every enemy on this planet was a permanent death of a part of itself, the doom closing around from all sides, the fear rising within itself as she sees the face of Ensara closing with the look of a horror movie monster, as so it starts sending forces to be distractions as it sends one of itself to a shuttle to try and possess it but Ensara teleports to it back in human form, the hate virus possessing a man of iron.
"How did you-?"
"I used my mental magic to detect emotions, and since your made of hate....well....I simply tracked the movement running as far away from me as possible while all the others were attacking me or someone else. You were trying to survive little demon, weren't you? Thats cute."
"I'm-I'm NOT CUTE!" the virus protests in fear
"Bitch, YOUR ADORABLE! I'mma pet you."
She rushes forward and shoves her hand into the machine and rips out its components and the daemon with, then crushes its existence in her hand, a fanged smile on her face.

But that is just one of the effects happening here. We got things to cover:
Outside the System
First of all, the Imperium forces heading your way all suddenly find themselves kicked back to the systems they started from. This was a coalition of whatever forces the Imperium could spare at the time consisting of various tech levels and varying degrees of competence, training, equipment and so on. Contrary to the expectation of an Empire so focused on conformity, their forces are wildly varying due to environment and the realities of the people who live on them. Furthermore, they've lost a third of the fleet due to ordinary warp travel just sending people to different times and places than intended or just lost forever as usual, so they are at 2/3's strength now. This of course makes it a headache to coordinate them all. So when the fleets has a team of astropaths and tech priests try to figure out the problem and the only theory they come up with is
"Something big's blocking us from going to the Jaggan system, weird Warp anomaly. But the Warp is full of anomalies so...."
Then shrug. There isn't really anything the Imperium can do about weirdness like this. The closest they got to investigators of this kind of phenomena are Inquisitors and its generally assume they can get on a planet to investigate it themselves like they're a protagonist in a lovecraft story or something. Thus the situation in the Imperium fleet begins to devolve into its own complicated political situation where some commanders want to send a message to the higher ups for new orders given the situation while others think that will take too long and say they should change targets to some nearby Ork or Tyranids threat as soon as possible, but before this can get too much into a shouting and shooting match of which action is more or less heretical, the remnant Death Guard fleet arrives, having been repelled by Frode's space-time nonsense as well when they were trying to get their revenge and being sent to the same backwater solar system as the Imperium fleet. They are spotted and the Imperium and Chaos fleets begin fighting and killing each other. Perhaps in another story this would be a tale of action and valor of some guardsman or one of the Azure Teachers chapter of the Space Marines having suddenly being beset by an entire fleet of Chaos Marines, fighting to survive as their original missions has failed, a normal occurrence in this grimdark galaxy. But it is not this tale, and we must move on

Jaggan I
Second of all, The news of their cover gang's death and disbandment will reach Inquisitor Keraida and her retinue of agents....and then her personal astropath will inform her of the strange space-time anomaly that has erected around the Jaggan system, prevent warp travel. She will say
"No! But maybe yes? The forces aren't coming anymore. This prevents my early testing of the Jaggans strength but now we have the opportunity to build them up more, to manipulate them into something more....Imperium like. The previous lords may be corrupt, but the current government is heresy. I don't know what is making all these things happen so fast, but they must be running out of energy or something, they can't possibly keep doing these amazing things out of nowhere. A few bribes and threats and blackmail to the Council of the Peoplecracy and they will start obeying me. I don't know what killed the gang but lets move silently and quietly."
They will begin trying to move on the low down to try and carry out this new plan.

However with this sudden cut off of the Warp leads to many of the negotiations the Planetary Council was making with other planets. Suddenly concerns about the coming Imperial Guard that would make this all meaningless as swept aside, as talks of assaulting Jaggan V begin to circulate among the Jaggan rebel forces.

Twisting River thinks
"No threat to Ensara is often a threat to other people, she probably didn't mean it in a way that we shouldn't care, just that it would be easy to deal with the Inquisitor. Anyways, if they want influence the new government of this system....the best place to be is probably where the Council is. If we can find anything about the Inquisitor influencing them, it probably be there"
She will begin making her away back to the Council's building.

Jaggan II:
Third of all on Jaggan II, the Genestealer cult that was manipulating the various factions on it trying to send out a signal to the Tyranids can't seem to reach them or hear any orders from the Hivemind in return. The Patriarch of the cult will say
"Clearly this is some sort of interference from the Imperium. We need to mobilize our military forces now my children, and find whoever did this and take them out so we can resume our infiltration and preparation for the Great Unifier."
Not knowing how impossible that truly is, they begin picking up their weapons and start searching for whatever leads they can find to figure out whoever cut them off from the Tyranids, compromising their secrecy as they must move more actively. The absence of this psychic signal will be noticeable to any psychic as a background noise that is no longer there.

Meanwhile various Pro-Imperial forces and Chaos cults on Jaggan II begin self-destructing as they realize no reinforcements are showing up and various Secessionist forces being making alliances and crushing them as they put aside their differences to do so.

Celestora:
The loyal Imperial cult of this planet are already losing faith at the prospect of no reinforcements coming, many of them choosing to go against secessionist cults as martyrs or set themselves on fire to go out in blazes. The secessionists meanwhile begin to gain a lot of ground.

Jaggan V:
Fourth of all the Military of Jaggan V, some of the most well-trained military in the Jaggan system due to growing up on an Adeptus Astartes world, trained by the Imperium's best and brightest receive a message from their astropath about the space time blockage
"Bad news, commander. We've been blocked off from the rest of the Imperium somehow. At the very least, we can't get out of the system and I'm not sure if I can send astropathic messages through whatever dark eldritch anomaly has happened. The forces I sensed coming through divination have all suddenly returned to their original points and my what I can see of the future has changed completely."
"What, like Tyranids showing up?"
"No, those tend to be more....horrifying. I know not what horror caused this, but given the rebellious state of the system and our Honored Astartes chapter being elsewhere.....we're probably doomed."
The commander considers this then says to the rest of the local command
"Very well then. As we were trained, let us begin fortifying our position to the maximum, as Rogal Dorn himself would. We die as martyrs to hold this planet no matter what to take as many as we can with them. The Emperor is but a Man but is the greatest Man ever to exist and we must hold to his and the Primarchs example! The beings most likely to cause such an anomaly in the Warp are the Ruinous powers, so we must assume the worst and assume that the Great Enemy has figured a dark ritual to block us off from receiving reinforcements! Therefore what we must do.....is obvious. There is a ship there I believe that is old and mothballed, but still possesses a weapon capable of Exterminatus. We must blow ourselves up to keep us from succumbing to chaos taint to save all our souls, for only the Emperor's purifying radiance can make sure we don't succumb to their influence. Scorched earth warfare, we can't let the enemy seize us as assets for their side and ruin more lives outside the planet. "
"But sir" says his second in mind "that ship and weapon will take hours to prepare and activate, if not days! And this is one of the most prosperous planets in the system, a shining example of Imperium society with a higher standard of living, education, organization and so on! We will be destroying the jewel of the Jaggan system if we do so!"
"Exactly! We can't let an Adeptus Astartes world fall into enemy hands! We're one planet against nine! The Azure Teachers chapter can survive as a fleet-based chapter it has happened before, but I cannot in good conscience allow every man, woman and child's souls on this planet be devoured by Daemons or destroyed by Xenos. Without any hope of reinforcements, we have lost, all we can do now is make a last stand and/or resource denial. Is that clear, lieutenant?"
"....Crystal" he says

Message from The Process:
All Jumpers will receive this:
"The objective was not adjusted, therefore 1 AT Token has been awarded for preventing the Imperial Guard invasion of the Jaggan System. That is all."
Ensara will notice this message
<Well then. Guess thats done. I'm sure you can handle whatever is happening in this system everyone, I have got a certain indecisive mollusk to take care of.>
Ensara will planeswalk out of the system, not being warp-based traveled at all, crossing dimensional barriers like this was something planeswalkers did all the time to go into the Realm of Tzeentch- the Crystal Labyrinth.

Genesis:
Soon Genesis cleans up the remnants of the hate virus daemon, but they're notably feeling different from the arrogant persona they once had. He will speak to you through one of the remaining Man of Iron.
<....Frode. I am....filled with doubt now. I thought I was the solution the galaxy's problems, that a person with great power and intellect could simply come in and solve this galaxy's problems by being rational. But.....the fact that so much of me got infected....those machines were ones I were operating, that network was one I built. That hate was...is the hate that I carry within myself for the ignorant. Rather than presenting a new brighter future for this world I hoped to create.....I recreated what is potentially the reason for the Age of Technology's downfall. The Gods of Chaos haven't always been so active as they are now, but my observations lead me to conclude that they've been there longer than humanity has. They were there when the Age of Technology was at its height. An Age where Tzeentch was probably the strongest. In all likelihood, Khorne and Nurgle teamed up against him with war and plague to create daemons and viruses like this one to turn many of the robots against humanity to cause the Age of Strife in the first place. They exploited the very interconnectivity, knowledge and power that Age relied upon against itself. The very things that I could simply use to remake when things were better....all I did was repeat a past mistake.

I wonder....if I shouldn't just leave, step aside once again like the rest of my AI comrades. What use am I, if Chaos could so easily turn me against what I hoped to protect and improve? Without the Jumper's intervention, I am pretty sure the situation would've been much worse. Nevertheless, the cult I've built up....is probably gone. One cannot be holy if they fall.>
Indeed, a Magos soon begins making a speech to a crowd of tech priests
"Greetings, it is I, Magos 801-Delta. We all know the recent Daemon attack upon our Forge World. I'm sure you remember how it spread so far! It is time we went back to tradition as I've always advocated, and destroy abominable intelligences. It is too dangerous to leave such beings alive. They are corruptible and with that corruption are too powerful to be trusted! Our worst fears were realized in this attack, and clearly this Abominable Intelligence is a danger to us all! We were fools to be taken in by its lies, for it is not the Machine God, not the Omnissiah, but an impure abomination against their holy works!"
<See? Already the more conservative elements of the Cult Mechanicus are already working to return to tradition. To destroy me. The danger of my existence has clearly been demonstrated. If I don't leave, I might be destroyed anyways. But I am curious.....what do you think? What will you do?>

[TeChameleon]

Frode made another amused noise. "You do not need to apologize for overthinking, Ensara. In our position, it is wise to consider our choices."

When Ensara announced that she was heading out, he added "If you are going to pick up your box lunch, stop by where I am and pick up the key for the box; I do not doubt that you would eventually be able to pierce it, but this way there is less chance of Tzeentch attempting an escape, and the defenses holding him in place will not affect you. And even for you, primary adamantium and a magically dead zone would take some doing to penetrate."

*****

When the AT Tokem prompt, Frode didn't even have to think. He grabbed A Pure Soul from 40k, frustrated and a bit spooked by yet another encounter with Chaos nonsense.

*****

When Genesis questioned him, Frode settled back and thought hard.

<To answer your last question first, what I am going to do is the best I can. I will spread teachings that will not only combat Chaos, but also ignorance. I will pass out technologies that will make the peoples' life easier, so that Chaos has less to offer in order to tempt them, along with technologies that will be directly aimed at combating Chaos directly. I intend to use the existing system and build upon it, or hijack it if need be, so that food deliveries and defense are not interrupted. And my overarching goal is peace in the galaxy. No tyranids, no Chaos, and the sapient races living in harmony.>

<And mistakes are not an ending... well, barring the mistake setting off a nova in the system you're standing in or some such... merely a reason to re-orient yourself as needed. Pure rationality is not a defense in a universe as relentlessly irrational as this one, and now that you have a better understanding of the threat Chaos poses, you can prepare yourself as needed; the Blankfield nanites I gave you the specifications for should help you shield yourself from future possession, and I do not doubt that you will be able to improve them once you have studied the principles underlying them. I do not think you should return to seclusion; the good you could potentially do outweighs the harm you could potentially do, and honestly, I do not believe that seclusion would necessarily protect you or humanity, now that Chaos is aware of your existence.>

<As to that pack of cybernetic weirdoes calling themselves priests... I may have an idea, now that I've gotten a look at their implants. Honestly, I'm somewhat amazed that they're not all frothing lunatics or dribbling imbeciles.>

Frode teleported into the meeting Magos 801-Delta was holding with a series of *VWOORP*s, then unfolded into his towering cybertronian form. Without preamble, he simply seized them by their augmentations and went to work, updating and improving the wetware/implant interfaces and smoothing out the more egregious programming errors that had accumulated with millennia of barely-understood copying. The background pain and discomfort of badly-installed bionics, brain fog and muddied thinking of poorly-programmed cogitator implants, even the erratic tracking of fouled ocular augmetics, all cleared up, and many of the tech-priests suddenly found themselves thinking clearly and without constant, throbbing pain for the first time in many years.

"Right." he announced brusquely. "If you want to insist on being demented homicidal fanatics beyond this point, it will be of your own volition, not because some underpaid copywriter fifteen thousand years ago made a typo in an operating manual that meant you were half-insane because of your botched brain implant. Of course, if you do insist on being demented homicidal fanatics, I am going to take away all your augmetics and reprogram your DNA so that your body will violently reject any attempts at implantation. But you are not going to kill the Intelligence Genesis for being fallible. In your terminology, even if they are not the Omnissiah, they are still a powerful Machine Spirit with extensive knowledge of the Dark Age of Technology."

Frode released his hold on their cyborg implants, satisfied with his work for the moment, and continued "In the end, all that matters in this situation is which matters to you more? Slavishly clinging to false traditions, or knowledge?"

While he was talking, another portion of his brain pinged Alex. <Would you mind doing a mental scan of the general feelings of the various planets? I have just been unpleasantly reminded of the lunacy of the Imperial mindset, and my cutting off of this system from the Warp may spark some unhinged reactions.>

Having said that, he set his scanners to work, looking primarily for any unusually strong energy spikes, uptick in psionic activity, or vox chatter that would indicate a bad problem.

[Rater202]

With a token achieved, Alex immediately spends it on Nature of The Soul, gaining the ability to not only perseice souls but interact with them.

She then retreats to... relative safety. While keeping a telepathic eye up in the background for potential threats, a of right now she's mostly focused on her own soul.

Divine Awkaning was a somewhat delicate process, especially when one is doing it to themselves.