Turn 32: The Final Chapter (Patreon)

[X] Plan: A HAPPY YALDABOATHSMAS to The Toymaker, our Gods and Shrines

-[X] Fleets Actions

--[X] Endeavor-B

---[X] Spidercide 1

---[X] Drydock 1

--[X] Resistance

---[X] Spidercide 2

--[X] Valiant

---[X] Spidercide 3

--[X] Discovery

---[X] Drydock 2

---[X] Spidercide 4

--[X] Spirit of Toxel

---[X] Drydock 3

---[X] Spidercide 5

--[X] Delivery

---[X] Spidercide 6

---[X] Spyring

--[X] Emissary

---[X] Echidna Observation

---[X] Spidcercide 7

--[X] TKK MothaShip

---[X] Horizon Librarius Outposts

-[X] EXP 168

–[X] The Cage: (0/25 → 25/25) construct the Cage, limiting damage from Dark Seed. Cost 1 ART.

–[X] Court of Cycles: (0/25 → 25/25) create Chronotemple of the Eternal Wheel, increasing Network by 3.

--[X] ShrineCity: (0/20, --> 20/20) establishes ShrineCity, a Holy Site that increases FTH by an elevated amount.

--[X] Master Control Shrines: (0/25 --> 25/25) establish Master Control Shrine network, increasing FTH and EXP, cost 1 Network.

--[X] CityBlok Resonance-Drives: (0/20 --> 20/20) upgrades Arcoocubes with Resonance-Drives, increasing FTH and CUL.

--[X] Mycelliometal Network: (0/15 --> 15/15) upgrades metal TotemTek Conduit Network, an arcane connection network that allows for inter-spirit communication and coordination, increasing CUL. Cost 1 Living Metal.

--[X] Yr Albain Herd-Temples: (0/15 --> 15/15) gain Saurian Herdbeasts, increasing CUL

--[X] Alkemote Bottling Facility: (0/25 --> 10/25) gain Alkemote Bottles, used by Mysteks as alchemical supplements, increasing Warp by 1.

--[X] Hypermodular Power Bay (0/15 --> 15/15) unlocks Hypermodular Power Bay upgrade for ships, improving performance and adaptability, costs 1 Nuclear Material.

-[X] CUL 138

--[X] Celestial Resonance: (0/50 --> 50/50) gain Celestial Resonance, increasing all categories. Cost 1 ART and 1 WRP.

--[X] Empyrean Resonances: (0/50 --> 50/50) researching Divine Rites will now grant Empyrean Resonances, in the same order of potency as Rites, Least to ???. Gain Empyrean Resonances for all gods whose rites have been purchased, increasing points in all categories. Cost 2 Warp.

--[X] Create Volcanus 9 (0/25--> 25/25) Spy-Ring: Requires a ship.

--[X] Glasmite Resonart: (0/10 --> 10/10) Glasmite Resonart becomes standardized, increasing CUL and Warp. Cost 1 Nuclear Material.

--[X] The Conduit Folios: (0/25 --> 3/25) gain Conduit Plays, improving the performance of all Calculator technology and .ARCHONS, increasing FTH.

-[X] FTH 138+6+25(sphere)+3(frontier society) 173

--[X] The Book: (0/15 --> 15/15) craft the Book, Avatar of Memory, allowing for the storage of memories and experiences and increasing ACD.

--[X] The Dagger: (0/15 --> 15/15) craft the Dagger, Avatar of Sacrifice, increasing the strength of rites and increasing FTH.

--[X] Hypercomm Quantum Consecratek: (0/25 --> 25/25) Temples upgraded with Hypercomm Consecratek, allowing all gods to transmit their blessings and miracles between their major temples and holy sites and minor temples.

--[X] Holy Crucibles: (0/50 --> 50/50) gain Holy Crucibles, causing each theurgy tier to allow its associated order to create Blessed Artifacts of equal potency, increasing all point categories. Cost 1 Warp and 1 Network.

--[X] Hallowed Shrine: (0/20 --> 20/20) Shrines upgraded to provide FTH.

–[X] GIFTEN-NACHT OF ALBYRT ST. KLAUF: (0/25 → 25/25) Toymaker Festival upgraded into Giften-Nacht of the Toymaker. Cost 1 LM and NK.

--[X] Polar Tower of the Hermit: (27/50 --> 50/50) gain Polar Tower, greatly increasing the power of magic in all shapes and forms, increasing FTH. Cost 1 Warp.

--[X] Holywick Lantern Candles: (5/15 --> 15/15) Gain Holywick Lantern Candle Artefact, increasing FTH and conferring an additional degree of protection.

-[X] ACD 121+4

--[X] Holy Emulator: (0/50 --> 50/50) all divine entities gain Holy Emulators in their holy places that allow for them to be channeled through AI simulacra and theurgy. Cost 1 Network, 1 Warp.

--[X] Shield Capacitators: (0/35 --> 35/35) gain Shield Capacitators, improving ShieldTek performance.

--[X] Academy Fleet Compartment High Energy Lab: (0/20 --> 20/20) Academy Fleet Compartment upgraded with High Energy Lab, increasing available power and efficiency of all advanced subsystems. Costs 1 Nuclear Material.

--[X] MegaBeast Serum: (0/15 --> 15/15) create MegaBeast Serum, increasing FTH and Warp by allowing for the development of Shrine MegaBeasts.

--[X] M-Boost Formula: (0/25 --> 5/25) Aleketeks develop M-Boost Formula, increasing EXP.

-[X] Resource Management

--[X] Artifacts: 2 --> 1

--[X] Biodata: 1 --> 2

--[X] Intel: 0

--[X] Living Metal: 3

--[X] Network: 4 --> 6

--[X] Nuclear Material: 2 --> 0

--[X] Warp: 4 ---> 2

((((()))))

Resistance is futile.

((((()))))

Fleet Actions

While the Directorate enjoyed a Cosmic Renaissance, the fleet would embark on its most ambitious outing yet.

On Volcanus 9, they helped foster a spy-ring, comprised of humans hand picked by the fleet. They would infiltrate the hive pretending to be recent arrivals from the Hand, slipping into the middle hive.

The V9 Ring would immediately run into complications when one spy, Thesophillius Von Argetlam-Harris De Bouche, was discovered with a piece of Directorate technology. The result would be numerous minor spies being burned and the rest having to go to ground, meaning that what information they successfully managed to relay back to the Directorate was limited: they had identified a few small gangs, a list of important but publically known nobles, and a handful of minor Mechanicus manuals.

The captured spies find themselves becoming human sacrifices via burning at the stake as punishment for harbouring illegal xenotechnology and being aligned with the forces of darkness. They are, unfortunately, unabled to be rescued.

Observation of the Echidna System, named after the planetoid of note, prove more broadly successful. Long range spy-probes and stealth-metal equipped observation platform would reveal the presence of Khimer: highly augmented even by Khimer standards, but the evidence is irrefutable. They seem to be accompanied by strange centauroids who seem to serve as religious leaders, using biological interface technology on both themselves and hundreds of Khimeroids to conduct ceremonies that can only be described presently as organic-telepathic sermons.

They also seem to worship or are led by (which, or even if there is a difference, is unknown) what appears to be an augmented, if living, example of the shaperformes that were discovered within the Bioship, one with multiple cranial units and what appear to be additional artificial neural structures.

The rest of the system is uninhabited: one of the planets, the next one outward from Echidna, seems to have a light presence on its rocky, thin gassed surface in the form of capillary structures whose purpose was unknown. Several other biological structures were scattered throughout the four gas giants of the system, ones that seemed to be siphoning their atmospheric contents.

Deeper in, instead there seemed to be a large array of structures orbiting the star, each the size of major space stations whose mass, according to scans, was 90% neural tissue. Once this information got back to the Khimer, they reacted with extreme alarm: quietly, overnight they would begin redirecting their resources to increase the pace of re-armament. Developing better combat bioaugments, producing more tanks and artillery, researching better fusiontek.

It seemed the Khimer were preparing for war.

And, towards the latter end of the second decade of the final fold, the fleet would gather the entirety of its fleet: every combat capable ship available, installed with anti-morphogenic disruptor-emiters. Extremely advanced field manipulators, they were intended to use a particular form of arcane waveform to disrupt the morphogenic field.

Infinitely cruder than the technology displayed by the Spiders, this technology was a brute force solution, its development spurred along by a vast conglomerate of private citizens panicked by the destruction of the Accomplishment as well as various charities formed by the survivors of the Accomplishment.

Each of these ships also contained a bevy of other upgrades. Advanced shield capacitors to block the weaponsfire of the spiders for longer. Advanced hypermodular power bays capable of rapid reconfiguration in crisis situations with additional high energy labs on every vessel to provide healthy increases to performance across the board (and, on paper, improve physics research in the Directorate).

A vast and overwhelming force, commanded by Admiral Wurf aboard the Resistance. All seven military vessels of the Fleet, including its two dedicated warships. They would abuse the rules of the timefold and use it to ambush the Spiders, save the Accomplishment, and if it was possible, even save the people they were attacking.

It hadn’t been enough.

Met with the entirety of the fleet, the battle had at first seemed difficult, but winnable. The enemy were numerous, but the upgrades let the fleet hold their own: the protections of the shields kept the hull safer for longer, and when shields were breached, their shots would do less damage, turning less of the hull into spiders, who themselves were weaker, more sluggish under the fields effects, and in turn more vulnerable to the weapons of the Hunteks, the order newly equipped with a bevy of devastating god-forged field annihilator artefacts and blessed cursite weapon-spirits, discovering the Spiders primary weakness: their fields absorbed curses like sponges.

A weakness shared by their fleet, as scans would, over the course of the battle as more and more of the fleets mystics across all seven vessels cast the Curse of Darktide upon the enemy vessels, the water bursting apart sealed microservers, quantum microactuators being covered over by barnacles, and conjured fish oozing various organic chemicals inside the internals of the Krillships, their morphogenic technology unable to simply remove these irritants, forcing them to devote more and more of their field and overall structure to account for these problems even as the ships fields began to suffer a curse buildup.

Initially, the outlook had been good. However, the enemy were numerous, unrelenting, and even weakened and presented with countermeasures still devastating. One by one the  smaller vessels of the fleet would fall, forced to retreat, brought low by sheer volume of the cloud of hundreds of trilobitic, chrome ribbed vessels, which to the dismay of those who saw it would see that not even a perpetunite bomb could fully destroy them, the ships slowly reforming, bent and deformed, once the reaction finally went out. The damage caused by the Teeth and the three Heavy Fusion Cannons aboard the Resistance would likewise also see their damage regenerated, though both would cause their targets to slowly deform and twist under the strain of the energy utilized.

It would take a grotesque amount of damage to destroy even a single krillship, the vessels taking the same amount of force that would down a resistance three times over to fully annihilate. As the battle continued, more and more of these ships would disengage from the forgeworld below, joining the assault on the Endeavor, easing the defenders burden.

And yet, the battle would not reach its first terrible tipping point once the fleet began to run out of fusion torpedoes. The most effective weapon against the krillships due to being able to engulf and disrupt multiple at a time, without them the Endeavors were forced into using only their laser batteries, while the warships had to contend with their cannons. It was at this point the Spider Infection on both the Emissary and Toxel would reach the critical point, forcing the vessels to disengage.

Desperate, the sorcerers came together, making a concentrated occultek push, using the power of every scrap of cursite aboard and several magicians aboard taking massive karmic debts to amplify the powers of the Darktide to their absolute limit, succeeding…

And in the process accidentally creating a morphogenic INFECTION. The spirits of life governed illness, and so their curse, in lieu of seasickness was an altogether more arcane form of oceanic plague. From ship to ship they would rapidly suffer from a self-perpetuating darktide curse, probability folds slowly converting and mutating the krillships field like a virus.

Parts of their structure wouldn’t just be covered in barnacles, the vessels would literally be barnacalized, forcing the ships to devote more and more effort towards remaining functional as more and more crawling corrosive molusks burst apart from the vessels overheating microservers, which began producing that most destructive of substances: pressurized steam in millions of micropockets across the structure, causing them to puff up and bloat. Even their spiders were affected, sluggish due to the nanocells that formed their “organs” ceasing to function properly due to water leakages, their matter deletion function malfunctioning and converting its target to coral.

This would cause the krillfleet to react immediately with prejudice, the entirety of the fleet disengaging: the handful of uninfected vessels, their numbers dwindling, would head to the uninhabited dustball next to the forgeworld, using its lack of defenders to begin an immediate planetary infection. Within moments the krillships began merging with its surface, producing more and more krillships to aid their fleet. Within two hours, the total amount of converted planetary matter was approximately two hundred miles.

The rest of the fleet, those already infected, would turn their full undivided attention away from the forgeworld they had been in the process of erasing. Thousands of vessels would bear down on the fleet, and immediately the Delivery and Discovery would find themselves overcame by the swarm, so large that it blacked out the sun as it fired on the Directorate, a hail of annihilation that would reduce the ships to empty space, leaving those aboard to choke to death, the spiders only extending the courtesy of a quick death on humans, the insectodroids systematically murdering the homo sapien inhabitants of each vessel.

Given the ability to breath again, the inhabitants of the forge world would take the brief respite to both evacuate, loading what few ships they could with priceless artefacts and senior magi, the leftover space reserved for those among the priesthood who weren’t essential to the war effort as well as what servitors they could successfully ship off, the small amount remaining going to the citizens and civilians of the world, the adepts, overseers, and other servants of the Omnissiah deemed worthy of salvation, while the war-priests and cybersmiths of the world began attacking the synthetic consciousness of the swarm using ancient noospheric relics designed to allow the user to project sanctic schismaticals into the machine technology of the enemies of mankind. The menials and labourers meanwhile would be sacrificed into the maw of the spiders, given unstable plasma weaponry and told to die to protect the Omnissiahs chosen.

Combined with the morphogenic curse infection, the Spiders would begin rapidly deteriorating the creatures rapidly seeing their operating ability degrade. On the dustball below, the healthy infestation would only barely outrun the cursed infection, water and barnacles growing across the planet even as it found itself more and more krillformed, great bands of corroded metal stretching behind smooth chrome even as the infestation began to reach downward, attempting to draw power from the planetary core in at attempt to accelerate the production of healthy ships and burn out its infection.

However, as potent as the infection was, it wasn’t enough to destroy each ship, and though the Fleet attempted to weather the barrage, one by one the ships fell, forced to retreat to preserve its occupants.

Eventually, Wurf was forced to call a retreat: the humies weren’t done evacuating, but he couldn’t justify wasting the lives of the rest of the fleet in a doomed battle. They had already lost two ships. He wasn’t going to lose the only genuine warships.

As he ordered the retreat, the only consolation prize for the Fleet was that they had at least helped some of the humans survive.

Catastrophic loss! You have lost the Discovery and Delivery! However, you successfully saved the Accomplishment and allowed some of the human forge worlds inhabitants to retreat. As such, you have gained at least some reputation with the survivors, wherever they might end up.

Horizon has reached Outpost Level 5. Further, it has gained one rank of Hobbgrot Propagation.

((()))

The Cosmic Renaissance. The process that began at the start of the timefold grown into something all encompassing, a supreme confluence of public opinion leading to a massive increase in interest in casual theurgy, which would eventually result in a number of mystek developments.

On Teklia, the city of Yaccae would be created: a gigantic Arcolocube sized shrine complex located on one of the equatorial continents, deep in Tekla’Kul, a jungle that was otherwise entirely overgrown with a mile tall mass of runaway plant-life, most of its fauna living in tunnels and cavernous hollows. Many of these criss-crossed the length of the jungle, the Arcolocube easily incorporating these biological tunnels into itself, a way to keep the Wyld exceptionally close for proper offerings.

Yaccae was created to be a city of shrines, a city of spirits. It would have a single dark portal, one created in its heart: this titanic warp-gate, warded by four spinning rings of biometal studden with lumium, would feed the Central Teklian Master Control Shrine, a titanit array consisting of a several hundred foot tall monolith located at Yaccae’s zenith, one with thirteen pillars installed in it, the motive spirits of the greatest shrine in Yaccae. In a grid around it were four TekPyramids, each surrounded by Fire Fairy Courts.

Protecting the shrine was Seeryu, the divine dragon spirit of Yaccae, a vast and powerful spirit that appeared as a long and flowing whiskered serpent with brilliant jade scales. An ancient vita, supposedly the idol they had been born from was thousands of years old, tended to faithfully from ancient Teklia to modernity, surviving countless fallen dynasties and dark spirits and even the destroyer war where the idols spirit protected the family who served it by cursing a destroyer sorcerer with enlightenment, ensuring that its offerings had been steadily maintained and even growing as the Directorate did. Now, Seeryu served as guardian for thousands, their blessings upon the city ensuring that they could see throughout the city and congregations of malicious spirits attempting to pass through the Dark Portal and crushing them like a bug, incinerating them with golden fire, or punishing them by transmuting the offenders body into solid petrified silver or else jade.

The power from the Shrine would be fed into the shrine network via mycelliometal cables made using harvested biometal from Naklis, criss crossing across the city and connecting every shrine to one another. Even as power flowed, so too did information as across the Directorate additional parliaments would begin to form: the Parliments of Root, the networked spirits of arbor and wyld, and the Parliments of Thunder, the spirits of urbantek, of terminals and power circuits, and the Parliments of Ore, the spirits of elements, of stone and steel deep beneath the earth and soil. Individually, these Parliments may have consisted of invisible or hard to see spirits, but by coming together each were able to use the many Oracle Stone Chambers of the Directorate to communicate their will and desires and in turn gift their Oracles various blessings for carrying out their desires, the CityBlok Resonance Drives serving as their vocal chords.

Together, the thousands of shrine complexes, libraries, spiritual bureacracies, and embassies would come together to make a city of spirits, one populated by massive amounts of vita, devils, ambassadors, guardians, and archetypes. To allow these teeming masses of masked and metal cloaked spirits and semi-mechanical awakened automata to traverse the city, no expense was spared: the city utilized a series of great lifts, each using mobile shrines at their center and gravitic arrays on their bottom to allow spirits to venture to different layers, roadside shrines using the empyrean resonances of the Functionary and the Roadguide to act as anchors for the denizens.

It was in this place various spiritual consortiums began forming, cabals of likeminded spirits who would congregate, whether from shared ideals, interests, or hobbies, forming various amenities designed to service the myriad citizens of the city. On the lowest level, located in the Red Lantern district visitors could visit a variety of vice indulging ventures, though none were as infamous as the House of Sin.

Ran by the White Masked Mrs. Knives and her husband, Azzmodiax OrphiaTek the III, this outlet of the House of Devils catered to every sin its guests desired. Tekket and other mortals interested in dark spirits, Occulteks looking to mingle. Dark spirits that were interested in the same, in experiencing vice with spirits and mortals alike. Booze and other alcohol flowed endlessly from the houses taps, provided by the House of Sins staff, a variety of debtors who had agreed to work for Mrs Knives, the deviless having acquired their freedom from the Dicemaster through unknown means in order to help secure their loyalty. From these taps it entered the cups of anti-anima, vita, and devil alike, the air filled with the singing of Current Witches and strange serpentine ambassadors, the tables served a constant flow of food brought forth from the kitchens of the house of devils itself, both houses connected via quantum consecratek and dark portals to allow both Nis’Roc and Gum’Boh to serve visitors vast, grotesquely INDULGENT meals. Of course, the House catered to all vices: a mere floor away from the hellish cabaret was the party floor, a nightclub in which the dance floor was covered by swathes of undulating spirits and mortals dancing to the tune of the near hypnotic music produced by the clubs DJ. It was there that many would mingle, leading to many, Tekket, Devil, Ambassador, Winterspite Kabalist, and even on occasion a visiting Yr Albainite to require the last of the Houses amenities.

To cater to those with a more carnal or romantic interest, the House had its own hotel, each room soundproofed, consecrated by the Dancer, and warded, each suite designed that its occupants would have their needs automatically cared for so that they wouldn’t have to leave for days, if not weeks.

Higher up, one had the middle layers, consisting of various residential districts which consisted of myriad apartment complexes with shrines at their heart to house all manner of vita and miscellaneous spirit. Most non-native arrivals would arrive from emerging from the Ark of Night and Day using the Shadowgate Transit Nexus: managed by a collection of Judgements, Debtors, and even a handful of White Masked Devils, this facility consisted of a series of portals, four in total. The Gate of Brass, the Gate of Flux, the Gate of Vines, and the Gate of Pearl, each connected to a different location on the Ark, two in the city of night, two in the refuge of day: the former two in the house of devils and scraptown, the latter two placed within the grove of eternity and the smithy of souls. Surrounding the portals were a massive travel plaza, one in which visitors too and from the ark travelled as they wished across the city. To service these spirits, the Shrine-Keepers and Nova Adepts of Yaccae would take on a variety of additional roles: noodle cart vendors, architects, IT support technicians.

It was on these layers that the Nova Mechanicum would nest, creating cybertemples of their own so that their own adepts could study the rituals of the Directorate to improve their technomagicks, in turn bringing with them all manner of machine spirit and paleotech vita such as the Castellatrons, descended from ancient battle automata found in moon-side data schematics and modified with Directorate technology to serve instead as mechanical labourers for the Nova Adepts, or the Nova-Technomats, masses of cogitators with implanted cerebral matter that successfully awoke, their bodies equipped with masses of magnetodendrites for mobility. Their Preservatoriums, where they lay broken machines and dead members of their faith to rest and where priests on the edge of death would inter themselves into life preserving technocoffins flooded with organic-preservative and wired to complex life support technology and mind machine interfaces, would be patrolled by scores of Tacchis-Pattern Servitors, complex bio-automata constructed using donated body parts grafted into the machines through the careful specialist work of the Adeptus Bionovae Geneteks, each of these artificial cyborgs the product of dozens of priests, adherents, or friends of the faith being joined with the machine to create a single automata from their pieces and countless pieces of paleotech augments in order to create a perfect synthesis between man, alien, and machine.

Higher up one would find the greater temples and holy garden, the white lantern district where great centers of learning and spirituality would be constructed, such as the headquarters of the Ordo Caddeuces, a house of healing ran by the Testament, staffed with the archetypicals of their order, the silver skinned multi-armed and multi-winged Malaks, and lifegiver effigies on every floor, topped with a TekPyramid designed to allow the order to conduct healing ceremonies across the Arcolocube, or the Central Bureacracy, the organization having moved its headquarters with the construction of the city. There, the servants of the Functionary, whether spirit, mortal, or machine would collaborate to sort through the grotesque amount of paperwork produced in the Directorate, helping train Shrine-Keepers and aspiring bureacrats in the Halls of Honor, and certifying Occulteks seeking to utilize the darker and more dangerous technologies of the Directorate and monitoring those who did so. With the development of Shadowgate technology, many would seek out the rarely handed certificates required to construct them, only a few hundred per year, and only if the Bureacracy could confirm they belonged to either an organization with conjuring contracts or if they already possessed their own conjuration contract with a spirit of the ark, so long as it adhered to Directorate contract law.

They would also serve in most other administrative roles in the city, processing applications, request forms, marriage certificates, and other tediously mundane to most but endlessly riveting to the Bureacrats minutiae required to keep a city functional. A surprising number of these bureacrats would consist of Hobbgrots, collections of Shroomboyz and Lurp veterans looking to apply their skills and talents to the real world. As a result, their habit of consuming mojo-shrooms would reveal a surprising fact about the Functionary when these shrooms would make their way to the hands of his more conventional priesthood: it seemed the functionary had a fondness for recreational mind altering substances, especially powdered and smoked mojo-shroom incense, his priests finding it remarkably easier to call upon his miracles when using the substances.

And in its uppermost layer was the Green Light Districts, a series of eco-domes and open air wyldland where the city kept the vast majority of its herds and herb-gardens, hundreds upon hundreds of minor temples scattered throughout to rear greater tri-eye psi-aurochs, minigargantuas, pyrofowls, and Primal Arcano-Tyranosaurs as well as harvesting all manner of elemental lotus, mojo shrooms, sacred mints, and other components for incense. The product of efforts to improve Lifeforce generation in the Directorate and the fruit of collaboration with Yr Albain to do the same for them.

MegaBeast Serum. Fossegrimm Professors. And the Yr Albain Orbital Herd Temples. The Serum would create greater beasts, produce greater wells of lifeforce by use of the Mysteks and Herdtemples, allowing for them to create greater guardian beasts. The greater guardian beasts, leaders and protectors of the herd, would be produced from lifeforce and mountain-blood enhanced versions of the serum, growing near titanic, the size of buildings, the alchemical power within them igniting their souls and awakening all manner of power, making them almost in texture to spirit beasts (and, it would be discovered in the centuries afterwards, possessed of enhanced, albeit not infinite, longevity). These herds would frequently be hybridized when possible with the HerdBeasts of Yr Albain, their most arcane tutored by the Fossegrimm and joining the Parliment of Flux.

The Fossegrim’s own project, this parliament was formed from the beasts and plants whose psychic ability it had awoken, each tutored in the arts of the Living College and joined together in a great WyldGestalt, working alongside the other protectors and agents of nature to protect against preternatural threats, such as the daemonic Jaggedy Crow, a corrupted nature spirit in servant to Tzeench summoned by the ignition of the Polar Tower that sought to manipulate its way into control over a WyldShrine in order to advance its personal ambitions of power and corrupt its Vita, only to find themselves frozen by the cryokinetics of the Parliment and placed near the tower, the daemons power siphoned to fuel it even as the tower gradually reinforced their icy prison, which found itself tended to by the Frost Ape Shamans, who made sure to keep the Crow entertained with strange hooting music-chants and oddly satisfying wyld-plays.

Elsewise, the WyldPsykers would grow in power and prominence in various ecological niches, such as the Desert, where the war between the Formics and the Wasps once again escalated, the formics deploying Swarmlocks, Psi-Ants of various castes possessed of near-sophontic intelligence, Swarmlock Generals capable of commanding from afar with peerless strategic accumen hundreds of ants, Swarmlock Commanders using psychic kinetic manipulation and bio-reinforcement alongside biological acid-blasters to turn themselves into living jetfighters, and Swarmlock Princesses acting as synaptic nexuses for the Parliments of Hive and coordinating the vast gestalt spiritual powers of the formics when threatened by necroid colossae. This would be met with the psychic awakening of the wasps in turn, many of them undergoing a second metamorphosis to become Nekrodopteran Priestesses, large Nekropsykers who would harvest the souls of fallen Nekrowasps to use in their magics, each of these wyld-covens erecting strange idols made in veneration to some nameless insectoid bee-god, collecting Ambergeistens containing small ancient wasps and bees to create effigies and talismans to this unknown deity, using them to call down vicious curses and terrible disasters upon the ants and their armies and fight against the powers of their swarmlocks. In the desert, the battles between these two factions would reach such a scale that the hollow-wither of those lands would actually GROW, causing another bitter war between the deathly hollow-spirits and the organic infective necroids over control over these death-grounds and the rich bounty of corpses within.

And yet both would, when called by the Parliment of Flux, still join forces, such as when a malfunctioning desert wyld-shrine would unleash a swarm of war-daemons on the desert, both rallying their swarms to quickly and efficiently destroy and eat the intruders before returning to battle.

The grasslands surrounding Yggdrastil would see the great trees cousins attain some degree of psychic power as well, the Lesser Baobabs becoming beacons in the warp, illuminating both the savanna at night but also the Refuge of Day, creating from their dreams great grasslands to the south of the refuge, the Savannahs of Flux, whose light was bright enough to help guide ships in the warp near Teklia, acting as an alternative to the far away, rapidly dimming light termed by the Imperium as the Astronomicon, albeit a highly localized example, one mostly benefiting the various trade ships of the region.

The scraplands would ironically become more dangerous due to the various spirits of the mechanism being far more volatile and erratic. Awoken Ferrolycans would go on to become leaders of large packs of these viral metalbeasts, their psychic matriarchs capable of calling all manner of malefic psykery to hunt prey and crush rivals, while creatures such as the Cathedral of Ruin would gain finer control of its entropic powers, the Directorate having to create a no-fly zone above its nesting grounds after it mistakes a directorate ship for prey, strategically corroding key components to make it crash and allow the Cathedral to feed, the beast hosting symbiotically within itself a variety of anti-anima, namely Booug, who used the innards of the giant to conduct their Boouger Battles, wrecking machines offered to them by the Directorate in great tourneys and feeding the scrap to to the Cathedral. Briefly, for a single year, the Cathedral would disappear, travelling with the Booug to an unknown location and returning with great and titanic mounds of broken and destroyed daemonic machinery and surprisingly severe battle damage, the Cathdral feeding well that year and the Booug showing a grotesque amount of enthusiasm and cheer in the aftermath, claiming to have made pilgrimage to “THE gr8-gr8-gr8 WRECKING GROUND in thE SKYEYEYEYE for MANIAC MOTORWRECKING DESTRUCTODERBY SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!”, an apparently holy ground for the Booug filled with infinite machines to smash in an infinite rampage located in an unknown region of the warp.

The jungles meanwhile would alight with all manner of psychic organism, such as the Brain-Fungus, psychic mycellium colonies that would use photokinetic manipulation to turn themselves into bubbling masses of glowing fungal bulbs, or the Pyromancer Frog, which had the ability to set animals and mortals that annoyed it on fire with its mind, and the Gemini Nymphs, shadowy humanoid gestalt-creatures formed from clouds of umbralkinetic insects that possessed telepathic bonds with the fellow gestalt that served as its pairmate, and the roar of Arcano-Tyrannosaurus Rex, titanic psychic reptiles trained by the Fossegrim visiting Yr Albain to serve as mystic powerhouses for the wyld, these titanic lizards imported to serve as the most destructive agents of the Parliment of Flux.

The next development of Yr Albain during the fold, the Yr Albain Herd Temples were created to serve as a source of lifeforce as well as to study Yr Albain’s dinosaurs for use in herdtemples. Four five mile sized installations erected on a disc-shaped structure in YOART, these saurian temples would be tended to by hundreds of Shrine Keepers and Worldsingers, both collaborating to develop various genetic augmentations, both applying the discoveries and principles of the Herdtemples to the Saurians, as well as the knowledge of the Worldsingers and genetics of the saurians for the Directorate, and most critically serving as a source of lifeforce for both polities. Yr Albain would use it for both powering the Wings, using seven vast drums of it during their test sorties and allowing it to take on more daring battles, intervening during the mission during the earlier fold targeting the Imperial Titans to attack the Fleet, destroying much of it and cutting off the machines support, allowing the ship of that fold to destroy several more of these titans, ensuring they wouldn’t be at the use of the Imperium for the foreseeable future and costing it several hard to replace ships. The rest would be offered to Dhia Albain or used for sorcery, with many Yr Albainites with mystical inclinations but unsuited to the strict discipline needed to be a Lorekeeper or the spiritual harmony of being a Worldsinger taking up another path, that of the Wyldruid, utilizing lifeforce and fossegrimm and other psychic beasts to perform a variety of rites instead.

Together, these would come together to produce the Shrine Herds of Yaccae, a mix of saurian, bovine, and elephantine beasts of tremendous spiritual power, the Psykers of whom would act as bridges for the Herds, allowing them to reach in dreams the expanse of the Savannahs of Flux, the bright and fierce souls of the herds many defenders protecting the region from dark vita, corrupted dreams, and terrible daemons that would attempt to stalk their way within. When awake, they would join their lifeforce together, the arcane energies flowing across the shrine-network to power alongside the rest of the infrastructure of the city not just Yaccae, but much of the Directorate shrine network on the continent, flowing to myriad spirits, gods, and devils.

This would only be one component of the Cosmic Renaissance, however.

+2 Yr Albain Reputation

EXPansion Points (EXP Points): 173

Nuclear Material: 0

ChronoSpoolers: An artefact of the Wheel, these structures consisted of miniaturized timefolds placed inside pocket timelines, generating chronokinetic energies through the temporal manipulation, essentially creating and then using GodTek manipulation to detonate atom-sized universes by cycling them through the entirety of their existence from big bang to big crunch. Placed at two ends of a warp-route, they should allow for various corrections to the ships temporal field, making particle barriers generally more stable. 0/50, select one Trade Route. Create ChronoSpooler Artefacts, improving Gellar Field quality on all ships on that route. Cost 1 ART.

VoidRail Shrine Train: A proposed way to make travel for spirits easier: creating a special series of void-trains, designed to consist of shrine-trains of sorts that utilized cabal mobile shrine technology to allow mobile spirits to venture abroad as they wished with only a modest loss of strength. 0/25, Void Rail upgraded with Shrine Train, increasing FTH and EXP.

Yaccae Generatoriums: The Nova Mechanica had all the designs to produce special archaeotech reactors. By agreeing to help them construct a series of electrotemples in Yaccae hosting these generatoriums, they were willing to provide the holy city vast stores of power. 0/25, Yaccae upgraded with Mechanicus Generatoriums.

Erichthean Shrine-City: Yaccae was powerful indeed, and there existed no reason that Erichtheo couldn’t benefit from having a Shrine-City constructed as well to service the more aquatic spirits of that faraway moon. 0/25, Erichtheo gains Shrine-City, increasing FTH.

Mycelliometal Antennae: The mycelic metals of Naklis could likely be used for more than just point to point connections: the wide dishes of their ferrocaps could be used for wireless connection, growing the parliaments and producing more. 0/25, gain Mycelliometal Network, increasing EXP.

Arcolocube Resonance Broadcast Spires: A proposed iteration of Resonance Drive technology, installing in each Arcolocube specialized broadcast towers designed to transmit resonances across the entirety of the structure. 0/25, upgrade Arcolocubes with Broadcast Spires, increasing FTH.

Electrocyclical Power Bay: The Directorate needed more power, and this the Wheel could provide: they offered the Directorate access to their knowledge of cycles to engineer an upgrade to their hypermodular powerbays, one that would gradually cycle power: waxing and waning, its lows would grow taller and its heights would reach beyond what Directorate reactors would normally be capable of: to regulate the generation, these devices would in normal circumstances reroute the energy to the Demiurgist Courts for consumption by their dieties, but in times of crisis the energy could be harnessed by the ship and its parliaments for protection, offense, and other tools to survive disaster. 0/25, Hypermodular Power Bay upgraded with Electrocyclical Actuators, slowly cycling and increasing power over the course of battle.

((((())))

Meanwhile even as Yaccae ushered in spiritual revolution, the Demiurgist Courts would erect a temple to the machine-god of cycles, the Wheel. An ally of Mother, the Wheels temple existed in a constant timeloop, the dieites chosen being given eternal life in the form of repetition of a single year in one day while learning the secrets of time, weather, and network, the Demiurgists going on to aid in both the augmentation and improvement of several key bits of Directorate architecture as well as the construction of the Cage, crafting around the Seed an array of purified cursite, wards, and lumium alongside achronal godforged temporal manipulators produced by the cults Holy Crucibles, designed to imprison and siphon the malevolent energies of the Dark Seed, purifying it in order to prevent it from leaking up and down the timeline. This would, retroactively, reduce the damage caused according to the courts by preventing the energies of the present and future from leaking backwards, though it would never be undone or prevent the magic created by the Dark Seed of the past.

Beyond this, the Demiurge of Cycles would produce other gifts: the C’tek Archetype Spirits would be upgraded with arcane rebirth protocol that would manipulate the eddies of time upon destruction to resurrect them at his temple through temporal duplication, as well entropic hourglasses the entities would utilize to emulate the Demiurges abilities in other ways, giving the wraithlike spirits the ability to alter the flow of time for themselves and those they gazed at, as well as manipulating quantum fields to render them completely unobservable to the Aeldari, who found the skeletal metal clad entities deeply uncanny, their mere presence activating some vestigial instinct of alarm, ensuring that the Aeldari were fine being unable to see the story-spirits.

This would be the mere stepping stone, however, for even as the Chronotemple was built, a dozen other factors would come together to birth the Cosmic Renaissance.

Culture Points (CUL Points): 148

BioData: 2

Netratheum: A piece of GodTek Cybertechnology designed by the Wheel, its exact purpose was unclear beyond it serving as a source of ‘digital cycles’. It would loan the device to the Directorate for use if the Directorate assisted it by installing an infinity pool and aquatic entertainment center for use by the temple and its denizens. 0/100, Chronotemple gains Infinity Pool and the Directorate Gains the Netratheum Obelisk, increasing CUL and raising NT by 3.

Heavenly Crescendo: It would be very likely that more advanced iterations of the Holysong would require more advanced Orchestrions: very likely, they would have to be played on the Symphonions utilized to play Tyygbers Crescendo. 0/95, gain Heavenly Crescendos, increasing all point categories. Cost 1 Warp.

Hearts Crescendo: The Crescendo of the Heart, which would combine the Powers of Memory, collected from thousands of brainscans converted to audio-resonances, the Power of the Engines, installed on special symphonions to power and fuel them, the Powers of the Dagger, soul-songs created by the sacrifice of countless mysteks and theurgists across the Directorate, and lastly the Power of Identity, countless spirits coming together to form a living song, a song of creation, a song of souls, a song of hearts and awakening. 0/95, gain Hearts Crescendo, producing an unknown effect. Cost 1 of every special resource.

Volcanus 9 Charitable Organizations: A valid way of influencing societal mores: charity. The Directorate would ship the spies enough resources to begin establishing various organizations intended to use the guise of being faithful servants of the Emperor to both improve conditions in the lower and middle hives as well as subtly propagandize them into being more potentially accepting of progressive doctrines. 0/35, Volcanus 9 Spy Ring gains Middle Hive Charities, increasing Directorate influence as well as providing a front for further operations by Nova Testiment Agitators.

Volcanus 9 Nova Mechanicus: A proposed way by which the Directorate might increase their presence on Volcanus 9: creating a few enclaves of Nova Adepts presenting themselves as newly immigrated members of the Mechanicus. With the likely destruction of a nearby forgeworld, it would present the perfect excuse for why they would wish to immigrate somewhere as “important” and “safe” as Volcanus 9. 0/35, Volcanus 9 Spy Rings gain Nova Mechanicus Enclaves, allowing increased observation of Mechanicus affairs and allowing for further operations by Nova Mechanicus operators, increasing Intel.

Volcanus 9 Trading Company: The bureaucracy utilized by the Imperium was, frankly, insane. However, by successfully planting members of the Functionary Cult into its structure, it could be manipulated to finance Directorate spy ring operations as well as perform economic sabotage and manipulation by creating a fraudulent trading company. And, best of all, it would provide a perfect opportunity to learn about Volcanus 9’s trade partners. 0/35, gain V9 Trading Company, a front that will be used to commit fraud by the Functionary as well as collect Intel.

Winterspite Privateering: If the Kabal agreed to conduct themselves according to the Directorate rules of war, they would make valuable allies against both the Imperium and the Toothgrimm Kabal, though this would likely require the Directorate already have some diplomatic and strategic cache. 0/35, Winterspite begins conducting raids against Directorate enemies. Cost 1 Intel, requires 35 reputation.

Tartustus Parole Board: It was risky, but several of the Astartes in Tartustus had shown remarkable progress in their rehabilitation: it might be time to finally look into organizing a board designed to help determine which members of the facility had sufficiently improved to warrant their partial freedom, as spies and operatives for the Fleet in human space, chaos and imperial. 0/65, gain Tartustus Parole Board, unlocking Astartes Spies, increasing Intel by 1.

Sacred Jade Statues: Of all the various holy gemstones on Teklia, none were purer in power than Jade: perhaps the mighty Seeryuu would inspire a new wave of art using the gem to create statues and idols similar to the one he had been born from. 0/35, Sacred Jade Statues take off, increasing FTH.

Book of Forgotten Memories: Memories were power, but not all power was good. Some power was bad, hanging onto the soul like a chain or else corroding it: trauma, corruptive knowledge, hideous regrets, arcane sights. The Book had collected many such memories: perhaps by configuring grimoires by installing within them some of the essence of that Avatar, these memories could be drawn on for arcane power by those occult machine spirits and their wielders as forms of mental protection and training. 0/35, gain Book of Forgotten Memories, increasing FTH and allowing Occulteks to use their Grimoires to access the Book of Lost Memories.

(((())))

The final pieces of the Cosmic Renaissance came via the Grand Conclave receiving a variety of donations and making a number of incredible advancements, courtesy of increased interest from the Toymaker, the followers of the Hermit, and the establishment of the Yaccae Temples, as well as countless other factors catalyzing, such as a theological race occuring between the Assembly and Calculators as a result of a particularly passionate Assembler being elected to replace the prior one and even a handful of minor discoveries by the Order of the Candle.

The priests and priestesses of the Dancer would collaborate alongside the musicians of the great gallery developing advanced resonances, variations of the holysong designed to be far more powerful, played upon their art using glasmite resonators: using the advanced network capacity of the Directorate, the other priesthoods of the Directorate would slowly begin to untangle this song into a series of more specific, specialized resonances meant to channel the soul song of individual gods using their theurgies as a basis.

The Huntsong was a simple tune, meant to be whistled: possessed of the quality of phantasmal ventriloquism, this song would echo across a hunting ground, heard only by the Hunteks quarry, triggering the most primal and terrifying fear in the heart of the target: the fear that they were being hunted. Meanwhile, the Roadmasters Resonance, when played along paths lined with godsong emitter totems, would allow spirits to wander as they wished, as well as banishing from paths more malignant forces. The Dancers resonance meanwhile, the Brightsong, would cause those who heard it to find their voices easier to harmonize, rhyme and rhythm coming to them faster.

The Assembly meanwhile would finally complete their final Avatars. The Book, a titanic awoken brain-scan repository constructed using Lumium Chips, that utilized quantum consecratek to connect to every mausoleum in the Directorate for their data, the Avatar using a Dark Portal to connect itself to the Index of the Dead, allowing it to feed and be fed thus by the Evaluator, the avatar and the dark spirit working in tandem to serve as repositories of memories: those held in the soul, and those held within the heart: using the power of the NeuroChoir this Avatar could repair, destroy, and alter the memories of their adherents as needed, guiding those who visited them into processing their traumas and teaching occulteks how to draw on lost memories for arcane heart-power. The Dagger, a technoritual chamber awoken by the combined sacrifice and prayer of millions of Assemblymembers across the entirety of the Directorate using Neuro-Choir and Hallowed Shrines to create a demigod: not only would arcane offerings be amplified within the heart of the chamber when paired with gifts of blood, across the Directorate many magicians would find their bloodless sacrifices growing stronger and more potent, both lifeforce, talismanic, and food, in turn allowing all of these to more easily appease and sustain spirits and power spells. Together, their power would invigorate the Heart, helping to mould it.

It is at this moment that I must interject, now given mine own voice. Upon your gifts of memory and sacrifice, I would aid thy Conclave, creating from the Archetypicals masks of the heart they could gift to the spirits who had proven sufficiently pious, giving them the divine power of their chosen god. The Devilesses of Isohorrah, sanctic pink-masks that served the art goddess of agents of romance, helping connect hearts in twain. C’Tekkan, which acted as more advanced mergers between C’Teks and various spirits that the Machine Gods found pleasing. Agents, Debtor Ghosts who upon attaining freedom would be gifted masks of the Functionary. And dozens more, such as my own Cadiomasks, vita gifted the power of the heart through the masks of my Archetypics. These spirits would frequently find themselves enshrined as the guardians of various hallowed shrines, the product of the Calculators.

Created using Quantum Consecratek and variations on the Functionaries theurgic blessings, Hallowed Shrines used the power of entanglement and celestial mysticism to serve as a means to make offerings to the gods and serve as their anchors in and bridges to the physical realm via the same technology used for Vita, created in all manner of small temple and by various communities and hooked to the greater Master Control Godshrines of the great temples. This would be joined with additional upgrades, such as the Holy Crucibles, a series of sacred GodTek forges designed by Craft, which would be used by the various orders to produce assorted godforged artefacts and relics, such as the field annihilator weaponry of the Hunteks, Roadmax OraChoirs used as navigational tools by senior Roadwardens, and Greater Works, advanced pieces of art that doubled not only as great works but also dream engines, the Living College using the technology to forge the vessels of their Fossegrimm while the Skul’Dakkothian Tangle would three-D print living creatures to fill various ecological niches.

One of these Crucibles located in the Emberlight Temple of the Lanternkeeper would allow the Order of the Candle to manufacture replicated Holywick Lantern Candles, sacred items of particular power designed to replace the tenth great candle, lost during the Destroyer War. Channelling the power of the Final Flame, these candles would so long as they were kept lit weaken the forces of darkness, banishing daemonic taint and lifting spirits. Producing hundreds of thousands of candles per day, these items would be shipped to places of healing and learning, ever burning wicks being placed into sacred lanterns: many thousands of them would surround the great shrine of the Lanternkeeper, their blazing blue flames illuminating the Lanternesque Oracle, the digital avatar of the temples Holy Emulator, the artificial oracle of the god dispensing all manner of sage wisdom to visitors.

Another creation of the Calculators designed to act as an altogether different form of bridge, these programs utilized advanced netcode to create a holographic proxy for the deity they represented, helping guide their followers to their will. The Great Huntek would act as the voice of the Huntsmaster, helping train the assassin-priests as well as making sure they kept themselves grounded, reminding them to use their training responsibly. The Starpriest of Kadath served as the voice of the Old One, a shadowy digital phantasm that would impart on pilgrims dark lore.

All of these and more would contribute to the temple of the hermit expanding with the erection of an arcane megastructure, the Tower of Magick and Winter. Designed to resemble the former home of the Wintertide Goddess, this Polar Theurgiconstruct was designed using the most advanced possible mystek technologies. A solid pillar of biometal reaching into the sky, at its top it contained the Beacon, a light the size of an arcolocube, consisting of thousands of fire fairy bottles, Holywick Lanterns, and Lumium and Cursite Prisms, casting a great aurora for miles around the structure, lighting up the night sky and attracting all manner of malicious spirit and daemon, leading to the polar woods and icelands surrounding the structure to become haunted, many travellers coming across the frozen bodies of spirits such as the Jaggedy Crow and other malicious servants of the changer of ways that managed to sneak their way into reality. Descending, one would find the Halls of Alchemy, where great vats of Godforged Cauldrons bubbled with swirling brews of mountainblood and liquid perpetunite, feeding the tower and allowing the priestesses of the Hermit to create all manner of enchanted substance and tincture. Going yet lower one entered the Infinite Cogitators, a great arcane-server complex forged from lumium and special daturgic hextek cryptographical engines using advanced Calculator arcanosoftware patched daily by GriMM.EXE and QUESTBRO, fed by purified cursite that were used to alter the looms of destiny by rewiring the strands of probability with the possibilities of the arcane.

Going yet lower, one found the Theatrium of the Arcane, a collection of four theaters surrounding a greater one. The four would constantly cycle between tales of the Hermit, each depicting a season of her life: the falsely optimistic spring, her maidenhood when the goddess had sought out the greatest mysteks of the land, teaching them incredible magics in the hopes of them bettering themselves and their communities. The hard summer, in which she had been forced to go to war against a terrible dark NekroTek, mustering her students and the many nations of the world to destroy this terrible alien wizard, eventually confronting it in battle wherapon the Goddess caused the godlike sorcerers own magic to turn against it, burning it from the inside with icy flames. Autumn would be the rebuilding of the world, filled at the start with a quiet hope, telling the story of a particularly promising student of the Hermit, one she had hoped would restore the world to its balance, fighting the remnants of the NekroTeks armies. And yet, it was here that the chosens fall would begin: at the climax, they would come upon one of the servants of the NekroTek who had repented, becoming a humble healer and attempting to atone for their past. Presented with the choice of forgiveness or revenge, the mystek had chosen to give no quarter. The fourth play would chronicle the Hermits students descent into tyranthood, their good intentions slowly giving way to petty narcissism and bringing about a terrible winter as they callously used their powers to enrich and better themselves at the price of others, slowly crawling their way into being a duke, then a prince, then a king, then a king of kings, served by other mighty wizard-lords taught by the former chosen who would act as their lieutenants in the kings increasingly power hungry campaigns: by the end, they would be confronted by their former patron, angered by her use of her powers for tyranny. At this point, her student, now transformed into the Dread Tyrant Wysxex, was little better than the great nekrotek, and much like the NekroTek, he would attempt to destroy the Hermit, outraged by her defiance, only for his magic and all the magic of all his allies to be stripped, the soul of his lieutenants cast to the coldest, darkest place in the universe until they repented, while Wysxex would be cast further. His spirit careening into the vast emptiness outside existence to languish in an infinite sea of nothingness until the last star finally burned out, the sorcerers maddened pleas for mercy would echo out into the vast and unrelenting emptiness, the Tyrant eternally in the company of themselves. The play would end with the Hermit departing, traveling to other worlds and taking her tower and her magic with her, leaving the world with only the dregs of mysticism.

The last theatrium, the largest one at the center, would be used to tell a tale of the future: of the Promise of Return, of the Polar Tower eventually bringing the Hermit back when mortalkind proved ready to use her gifts responsibly, of the redemption of the wizard-lords, and even distantly when even the Dread Tyrant would be freed from their prison in the infinitely distant future.

Below this, the Devils of the Hermit would tend the Infernace of Curses, a mystical motive-spirit powered by a cursite boiler and a vast dark portal, these infernal sorcerers applying hellish warp-magicks to protecting the tower against their daemonic cousins as well as reinforcing it with enchantments stolen from the heart of Tzeenches grimoire by the House of Devils, summoning forth her Antianima, the souls of the tyrant-wizards that served her fallen students, these dark figures clad in technomechanical armors of frigid cryosteel, the brutal conquerors given brief parole only to serve the Devils and defend the tower: many an overambitious dark spirit would meet their end via the antianima, their last moments a sight of an imposing figure in black, caped armor, wielding a blazing red blade made of mystical light, the last sound they would hear the heavy laboured mechanical breathing of the Tyrants. Those few powerful enough to survive their blades would be destroyed by their magic, the raw might of the Tyrants was matched equally by their arcane prowess.

The next layer was the Hall of Resonance, whose ephemeral magic-song would echo across the Tower and beyond, filling the air with the sound of chimes as dozens of Orchestrion units worked, both generating lifeforce through Tyygberts Crescendum and the Hermits own arcane resonance. Going deeper, one found the dormitories, where the priesthood slept and studied, the massive library a collection of their studies. Eschewing most modern conveniences, the only technologies allowed in were simple candles, pen and paper, and various arcane tools.

Going lower in the tower, one reached the Chambers of Feast, where wintertide fairies would congregate and meals would be held, the highest level of the facility open to visitors and pilgrims. There, every night, the kitchens would serve a variety of foodstuffs such as roast fowl, pots of warmblood soup, trovian salads, lunar cheeses, and other such victuals produced by the Tower gardens, used as a source of food and lifeforce.

Below this one found the Grand Ateliers, workshops used by the Hermits to craft various Godforged artefacts, cauldrons and talismans and wands that in turn would be used to create and perform great rites and rituals: benches littered with all manner of strange arcane relics, halls patrolled by the Archetypic Spirits of Magic, blue cloaked figures resembling silver skinned, elderly bearded humans, pointed hats adorned with myriad golden bells and chimes. Known as the Moug Hain, they were born from tales of wizardry and the character archetype of the wizened and reclusive but knowledgeable sage, and much like their inspirations, so too did the Maug Hain keep to the Tower, the spirits expressing a marked distaste for crowds and urbanity.

And, at the base, one had the Halls of Mojo, filled with myriad FathaShroomz, SistaBrainz and Shroomboyz, volunteers who had agreed to help power the tower so long as the Hermits agreed to allow them some alterations to the overall structure, crafting a Mojo Shrine which would find itself constantly surrounded by MojoShroomz of unusually strong potency: Da Good Stuff, according to the shamans of Mojo who consumed them. Otherwise, the base of the tower was used for recreational and administrative purposes, the many FathaShroomz working to help sort out whatever problems visitors had via Mojo-power while the SistaBrainz managed the paperwork.

And then, under the earth was the roots of the tower, an array of arcane actuators and manipulators alongside grafted roots of the World Tree, containing a Dream Engine connected via Consecratek to the heart of the Seed, the Tower siphoning off the dark, paradoxical energies alongside the Cage to power itself.

As it was erected, the Priesthood would gradually develop the consecrations required to create those ancient tools of the Hermit, wands of magic whose creation had been birthed by the advancements allowed by the Holy Crucible and the aid of the Fairy Court of the Hermit. The highest quality would be the godforged artefacts of the tower, but the lesser varieties would still be considered highly valuable for mysteks.

Across Teklia, magic SURGED. Rites would double in power, and when performed via Wand, would require no sacrifice or source of power. TekPyramids would become arcane vortexes of swirling arcana, spilling forth torrents of strange energies that could be moulded directly by the power of the wand, shaped and directed with precision and power, used for blessing and, when needed, destroying hostile spirits by drowning them in the torrents of power they had sought to consume. Certain humans would begin to display minor psychic powers, using the wands to control and direct them: while the more reactionary branches of the human population were dwindling thanks to education and living conditions, these psykers, though generally fairly weak, would still be faced with discrimination and ostracization by those who still harboured anti-arcane prejudices. Shroomboyz would use the wands to channel the mojo, using it to accomplish a variety of menial tasks with a flick of their hands, allowing them to focus on their scholarly meditations, media cultural studies, and epicurean indulgences.

Across the wilderness, one would find fairies: those of the Toymaker, those of the Lady, and even those of the Hermits, the creatures forming their own pseudo-parliments, each working the auspices of a particular season which would likewise govern their territories: in places of warmth, in times of heat and drought, the Summertide would govern, while in deathly places and times of water and storms and growth the Springtide would flitter about. Those possessing wands would find their affinity with the fey increased, allowing them to both conjure them forth from the Ark as well as make fairypacts, many bold Ocean Mages making alliances with Spring and its water fairies, while many a healer and hospital would instead forge friendships with the Autumntide life fairies. These many fey would also be joined with stranger variants: products of the seasonal festivals and the fairy songs being augmented, producing such kinds as the ferrofairies, lunar pixies, and illusionary sprites.

Plays would become stronger when performed on or near Teklia, amplified by the tower, wands being used elsewhere to provide the same effect, resulting in the High AutoPriest purchasing a number of them. As a result, the renditions of the Mechanābhārata would produce more fruit: the existing Watchmaker Gods would grow stronger. Jogmakog would grow larger, the giant gaining more hands to lift up the sky, increasing the size of the barrier surrounding the Ark, while his excess hands would be used to shape the earth, strengthening the Walking Walls of the Refuge even as The Many Songs of Takkag would grow to encompass the entirety of the woods surrounding the walls, the multi-god taking on more advanced vessels, patrolling in wooden figurines of great ursines to maul daemons that wandered their way to heaven. No Longer Broken Upon The Wheel would remain a simple statue, but one that could control the very fabric of their garden at will, trapping several daemons in pickle-pots as punishment for trespass, to stew in brine for however many centuries until they swore upon their true name to cease their villainy forever. And two additional dieties would join them: Kogmajog Mountain-Thrower, twin of Jogmakog and fellow Giant. The lord of eruption, during the Mechanābhārata he had died trapping the Ancient Star beneath an entire range, the entity crushing his skull as the mountains landed on it, breaking its back and trapping it. Made from carved granite with a titanium-adamantium head, Kogmajog proves fierce, stomping beneath their feet spirits that earn their wrath or incinerating them with their fiery breath. And following them was Ghanekar, a pachyaderm-headed god of good fortune recreated as a mechanical gargantua-headed droid, torn apart as the Ancient Stars first victim and reborn as a herald of golden ages according to the Mechanābhārata: this god would take up residence in the same garden as No Longer Broken, the pair blessing those who visited with wisdom and luck both.

Brightway plays meanwhile would produce more and figures in the warp and dream, the phantasmal characters occasionally popping up within the Warp, showing up during transit on ships to mingle with the crews and on the Ark occasionally, typically on the day side, where they would frequently produce around them impromptu musical numbers that somehow had perfect choreography: spirits, including daemons, who approached would be compelled to join in, an ability that proved useful in subduing a lesser daemon of Tzeench who had managed to trick their way onto the Ark, the mutagenic morphohorror being forced to join a song extolling the virtue of ball-point pens, allowing Judgements to arrive and arrest the Daemon once the song ended.

With the bevy of tools provided by the Cosmic Renaissance, preparation would be undertaken by the Toy Makers temple: they would host a Giften-Nacht like no other, an act of cosmic charity that would echo across the galaxy to help catalyze the awakening of the Toymaker, St. Klauf. Gathering millions of fairies, the Workshop would work alongside the Heart, which would cast titanic renditions of the Toymakers Theurgies, repeated across the Directorate in hundreds of thousands of TekPyramids. //PATH would attempt to construct a digital simulacra, using all of their processing power and arcane knowledge to form a bridge. For years prior, the Toymakers and the Grand Masters would collaborate, using the Holy Crucible to construct a breathtaking amount of sacred toys, filling warehouse after warehouse with hundreds of thousands, then millions, then hundreds of millions of toys assembled from biometal with nuclear batteries, toys like no other due to the assistance of Craft and the Sphere in their design, the titanic sphere belching out millions of flawless recreations. On Naklis, Brightway would unveil a series of holiday plays, autumnal Giften-Nacht tales, while the Union would host its own great offering not to St. Klauf, but to the spirits that laboured in his workshop, the industrious red-capped goblins and mischievous green-capped imps that, in the Unions opinion, were the real heroes of the holiday.

CityBloks full of food would be taken, shipped for use during the festival, the Khimer loaning the Directorate use of their food replicators to help supplement and process the vast stores of food while the Worldsingers would help enchant Directorate crop-yields, both in the interest of fostering better relations, the former economic, the latter cultural as both found many of their population joining in on the festivities, the promise of treats and gifts helping draw interest. Even the Autons would participate, Ijin and Kaziin helping to coordinate St. Klauf’s ride, a multi-system spanning gift delivery accomplished using temporary access to Aeldari subspace that would see every Khimer Spawnling, Auton NuFrame, Hobbgrot Anklebita, Ork Yoof, Tekket Kit, and aeldari and human child in nearby space given a gift on one night, fringe radical elements of the fleet managing to secretly arrange for the same for Volcanus 9 with the assistance of the Huntek Temple.

Trovians would donate gems: emeralds, sapphires, glasmite, azureamber. Erichtheans would conduct great carols, Urzala hosting a great ball in the Toymakers honor that she would invite the Winterspite Kabal to, personally presenting the Banefrost with gifts for each true and vatborn child of the Kabal upon obtaining a verbal contract enforced by terrible curse from the bewildered Drukhari ensuring its recipients would receive the items, while on Mongus, even the spirits of Enigma would get into holiday spirit, Undamoon rising with a great stone grin and holiday pattered jingle-belled hat, while the strange and implausible scenarios presented by the Hypothetical Man would take a brighter and more cheerful Giften-nacht tenor, the strange monochrome human presenting all manner of life lesson to child and adult alike through their manipulations of reality, though they seemed to be unable to properly pronounce the Toymakers name correctly during these incidents.

Each and every Wonderpark outlet would host a branch of this festival. Battlezone to MineWorld, from the reaches of the outback to the far corners of Meeklak, it would span the entirety of Directorate space and even beyond, the work of the cosmic renaissance and all corners of society coming together, Conclave to the great shrine of Yaccae, all centered around Wonderpark, which would host the epicenter of this festival, conducting a massive offering to the Toymaker in the process through the assistance of the HerdTemples and Lunar Cabals temporarily forgoing their yearly surplus and donating the excess surplus of prior years, while the Demiurgists conducted a titanic food offering of baked treats, millions of pounds of cookies, cakes, pies, and candies ferried through the Fairy Portal. Druids would give logs: cut from the branches of Yggdrastil, harvested from sacred trovian arbors, these items would be sacrificed in great bonfires to the toymaker, their flames flickering an eldritch amber. The House of Devils would even participate: playing on their fiddles infernal renditions of the Toymakers song, while the Kitchens would prepare a great banquet to give to the various poor unfortunates.

Over the course of that great giften-nacht, the fairies would increase in power, their magic stretching further and further, reaching through the brane of dimensions, alighting the warp: a strange force would grip Ijin as they found themselves travelling faster and faster through the warp, delivering presents faster and faster, until they disappeared in a haze of amber. Those who were aboard the Ark would say a great light filled the western sky, and those who dreamt or had psychic affinity would claim hearing the sounds of bells and laughter. And as the Toymakers poured their offerings of lifeforce, food, and toys through the fairy portal, for a brief moment, the sound would be heard in reality, as above in the skies a golden-red streak crossed the sky, shooting through twinkling constellations and multihued warp storms as it blazed a trail across the sky.

At the zenith, though the Tekket would likely never learn this, the sound of St. Klauf’s laughter could be heard across the galaxy as his divinity hit critical mass: across the entirety of its breadth, people would awake to find themselves gifted jars of giften-nacht candies. Children in the deepest depths of the hive would receive shiny silver soldier-men. In the hellish shadows of daemon worlds, they would receive stuffed toys that would banish malign forces to protect their charges. On Biel-Tan, the farseers would be driven into an uproar by a mysterious phantom placing in every home a tidily wrapped wooden box containing all manner of strange (if, they would discover, entertaining) gewgaw, while Abaddon the Despoiler would be bewildered to find themselves the recipient of a mechanical wall-mounted singing fish. Daemons of Nurgle would nervously gossip about their master receiving a mysterious package: someone had played a nasty trick, sending Papa Nurgle an automatic pie in a box, they said, leaving the god in a foul mood that someone would play such a meanspirited prank on him. The Halls of the Dark Prince meanwhile would gain a new feature, a flawless mirror of perfect, incorruptible silver: and yet, whenever they saw themselves in it, She-Who-Thirsts would always be dissatisfied, eventually covering the mirror with cloth and claiming it distorted.

The servants of Tzeench would also report a strange prank: it was the same as the automatic pie in a box such that hit Nurgle, but instead of promising delicious gifts the strange wind-up, bouncily musical chest instead promised to give the Architect of Fate all the knowledge he deserved, and instead of containing an automatic pie it instead contained an automatic fist, and instead of hitting him in the face with streuselberry it had hit the god in the face with semi-automatic knuckledusters.

Orks across the galaxy would find themselves gifted strange blokky gubbinz, no good for war, but they were fun to play with at least, while in the future many Necron tombs would awaken to find a bevy of tribute placed by unknown parties in the very heart of their tombs, their Crypteks at a loss to explain the strange items of unknown biometal powered what appeared to be a bastardized nuclear-necrodermis alloy.

In the halls of chaos, the event would recorded as the Night of Japes, named by Lorgar Aurelion after losing large portions of his library to a bibliovore that had disguised itself as a rare copy of an ancient tome of chaos. To the Imperium, it was declared Sanguinala came early, a blessing of the God Emperor for a year of piety. Only the Eldar would ever have any true inkling of its cause, rumors leaking from various Exodites that it had been an act of the Tuatha, a special and momentous celebration that had gone a bit out of control. Who these Tuatha were, however, was a mystery: many exodites would admit they didn’t know, just that they had connections to the Wyld Hunt. Only a few would know of Yr Albain, and even fewer knew more than that.

With the manifestation of St. Klauf, the cosmic renaissance would reach its zenith: fairies would grow stronger, those aligned with the Toymaker specifically evolving, taking the form of diminutive winged imps, sharp toothed and compound eyed: these small creatures would flit about, their magics stronger, their personalities more mischievous. Every Giften-Nacht after, they would emerge from the warp to spread gifts and blessings, and many a kit in directorate space would find them recipients of various toys and puzzles. Some of these toys, as well as those produced by the Holy Crucibles, would be possessed of permanent animations, the technologies used in their construction and their biometal batteries helping permanently render many a stuffed ursine or Captain Syysko action figure into living toys, these figures becoming valued members of many a family, a small village of them congregating together on Wonderpark.

St. Klauf had manifested. Giften-nacht had reached across the skies. And now, the Cosmic Renaissance had reached its zenith.

Cosmic Renaissance triggered! All Rites, Resonances, and Theatriurgies discounted by 1 Warp and 5 FTH, to a minimum of 0! All tiers of Toymaker Rite will also be discounted by an additional 1 Warp!

Faith Points (FTH Points): 158

ART: 1

Warp (WP): 3

Quantum Consacratek Ankhs: Connected via entanglement to the Dagger, these items would be used to invoke their power across the vastness of space, drawing upon the sacrifices of millions across the Directorate to serve as a source of restorative energies. 0/25, Dagger gains Quantum Consecratek Ankhs, increasing CUL. Cost 1 Warp.

Daggertine Memorial: The Dagger was about making sacrifice, yes, but also honoring sacrifice. The NekroTek wanted to create a series of theurgies for use during the funerals of those who gave their life to save others, blessing the soul of the departed with the power of the heart. 0/50, gain Daggertine Memorial, increasing CUL. Cost 1 Warp.

Oven of Sacrifice: Food sacrifices were becoming more common as the surplus increased. The Dagger could be used as a way to simplify the process of making food offerings: by creating special implements designed to flash process food sacrifices, they could be converted directly into nourishment and spiritual power. 0/100, Shrines gain Oven of Sacrifice, increasing Warp by 1.

Nekronomikon: The Book had great power over memory: by using its essence, special brainscan readers could be installed in Mausoleum, allowing the NekroTeks to use the Nekrosynapse Array to relive the lives of those passed on within their care. 0/25, Mausoleum gains Nekronomikon Readers, increasing ACD. Costs 1 NT.

Book of Priests: Memories had power. The Book could use their essence to create special holy archives, ones consisting of the recreated memories of millions of priests from the dawn of brainscan technology that could be drawn upon by the theologians of the Grand Conclave for inspiration, wisdom, or insight. 0/50, Temples gain Books of Priests, increasing ACD. Cost 2 NT.

Assembly Cognohistorium: The Book was currently limited to brainscan data, but with the assistance of the Living College and its knowledge of divination and the vast processing power of the internet, it was possible that the Heart could be upgraded with a post-cognitive array that could let it reconstruct memories of those long past, even without brainscan data. 0/100, Book gains Cognohistorium, increasing ACD. Cost 3 NT.

Black Ghost Lantern Candle: The 9th sacred candle of the Lanternkeeper, supposedly existing to help guide the souls of the dead to the land of the living during the final days. Like the tenth candle, it had been destroyed: like the tenth candle, perhaps it could be remade. 0/50, gain Black Lantern Candle, increasing FTH.

The Scholars Candle: The 11th Candle, lost to time. Supposedly, it had mental rejuvenatory abilities: perhaps by using the wax collected from certain varieties of mojo shrooms the Lanternkeepers would learn to reforge this candle. 0/25, gain the Scholars Candle, increasing ACD.

Temple to the Star Maiden: A goddess of sky and moonlight, it was said that the Star Maiden came from distant and far away land, drawn to Teklia by the Lanternkeepers flame, wherapon they helped banish the darkness by placing the stars in the sky. The Candlemakers wanted to establish a temple to this goddess on Erichtheo, in the hopes that when the apocalypse came, the Star Maiden could be summoned once again. 0/50, gain Temple to the Star Maiden, increasing CUL.

Cauldrons of the Hermit: Alkemy was also governed by the Hermit: her myths had many references to her teaching the art of transmutation, restoration, and alteration through special cauldrons. Recreating them would be difficult, but not impossible. 0/100, gain Consacratek TekCauldrons as alchemy tools, increasing EXP.

Crystals of the Hermit: The means to manufacture these artefacts had long been lost, but through the theurgies of the Hermit and Hypercomm Consacratek they could be reborn: no doubt many a mystek would find them useful. 0/100, gain Crystals of the Hermit, long range communication and divination devices, increasing CUL.

Magic Mirrors of the Hermit: Once it was said there existed a collection of mirrors enchanted by the Hermit to contain spirits of mind and illusion, ones that could reveal hidden spirits, allow the user to divine answers to their questions, and even converse with the spirit within for advice and wisdom. They were lost, but such didn’t have to be the case forever. 0/50, gain Magic Mirrors, increasing ACD

Lesser Polar Towers of the Hermit: One tower had not been enough: what about more? Built individually, the towers would be customized for each world, acting as anchors for magic and helping to draw the hermit back by acting in tandem. 0/75, Select a planet. Gain Lesser Polar Towers, increasing FTH. Cost 1 Warp. Repeatable.

Prismatic Beacon of the Polar Tower: Perhaps it was a mere matter of magical lumens: by expanding the Beacon, making it bright enough to shine in the Warp through a special Lumium prism and the power of the Fossegrimm and other Psykers projected through it, she could be called. At the very least, it would make warp travel safer. 0/75, Polar Tower gains Prismatic Psi-Beacon, increasing FTH. Cost 1 NK and 1 WRP

Offering to the Magic Maker: It would likely be somewhat more involved than making an offering to their father, both in cost and complexity, but many magicians believed the action would have significant benefits. 0/50, gain random Hermit boon. Cost 2 Warp.

Fossegrimoire: The Living College was willing to lend some of its Fossegrim to senior ocean mages, placing them into grimoires in order to allow their users to wield a small portion of the Living Colleges psychic power. 0/50, veteran Ocean Mages gain Fossegrimoires, increasing FTH.

Fossegrim Protectors: Creating a special modified Fossegrimm Vessel meant for combat would be costly, but it would allow the Fleet to utilize Fossegrimm Agents in combat scenarios and it would give the Fossegrim ways to protect themselves. 0/50, gain Fossegrimm Protectors. Cost 1 ART.

Parliamentary Investiture: The Parliments were, by and large, the product of myriad invisible, immobile, inanimate, or unawakened spirits communing together to pool power. While together they could enact their will, this was effectively by brute forcing the situation, or else by involving a Shrine-Keeper. Giving them the ability to elect a spirit to act as their agent and investituring them with their power would help solve this issue perhaps, though it would require at least some expense. 0/25, Parliaments gain the ability to empower other spirits as their officials, agents, and representatives, increasing CUL and EXP. Cost 1 Warp.

Parliamentary Halls: As seen with the Biocity, certain locations could achieve spiritual significance to certain Spirits: perhaps it would be possible to develop a series of rites that could be used to consecrate these locations such that they could serve as a place of power for whichever Parliment the space was dedicated to. 0/25, certain locations become Parlimentary Nexi, increasing FTH and CUL. Cost 1 ART.

Parliamentary Terminals: A proposed modification of Shoal-Net Terminals that could be installed on totems, these upgrades would be given to the Parliments as a way of ensuring even the lesser, unmanifested spirits of the land could act with intelligence. 0/50, gain Parlimentary Terminals, increasing CUL and ACD. Cost 1 NT.

Sacred Dragon Magatama: Yaccae was the home of the Guardian Dragon Seeryu, whose scales would occasionally shed, showering the city below in rains of precious (if occasionally injurious due to speed of fall and material properties) jade, of a particularly pure variety. Perhaps an enterprising Shrine-Keeper would learn a way to use these scales in a way that wasn’t purely decorative. 0/35, gain Shrine-Keepers gain Sacred Jade Guardian Dragon Magatamas, increasing FTH and ART.

Yaccae Greater Cogitorium: The Nova Mechanicus always needed more processing power, and so did the Directorate. They were offering to construct for the Shrine-Keepers a Greater Cogitorium, so long as the resources were provided for them. 0/35, Yaccae gains Greater Cogitorium, increasing ACD and NT.

Yaccae Pantheocropolis: The city was mostly dedicated to other shrines, but by expanding the White Lantern district with additional temples, arranged around a singular shrine dedicated to all the gods of the Directorate, it would increase the influence of the Conclave and the gods considerably. 0/45, Yaccae gains Pantheocropolis, increasing FTH.

Temple Jewels: While Sacred Jade was the most universally popular Teklian jewel, there existed a great deal of interest in others by the various religious traditions. It would take only a few factors for the Directorate to learn how to utilize these more effectively… 0/35, Temples begin enshrining special jewels as holy treasures, increasing FTH.

Reliquary Vaults: The Imperial practice of treating the pieces of their dead saints and holy people as sacred talismans was, while ghoulish, likely highly effective if their literature was anything to go by. A few (typically human) priests of various religions had begun donating their bodies to their faiths, and it wouldn’t take much for the Temples to begin expanding their shrines to accommodate these relics. 0/45, Temples begin enshrining some of their more pious dead in Reliquary Vaults, increasing FTH.

Planetary Genetorium: In the Imperium, Genetoriums (not to be confused with Generatoriums) acted as bio-administration centers, where all life on a world was cataloged, indexed, and studied, as well as where the general health of the population was monitored for public health purposes, as well as several less savory processes (largely eugenics). The Nova Bioadepts wished to establish more such facilities, though without the eugenics, across the Directorate to study the myriad lifeforms found within. 0/35, select an inhabited planet: gain an ACD and BioData generating Nova Mechanicus Genetorium.

Toy Village: The location on Wonderpark was a residential area whose inhabitants were entirely sacred toys granted permanent awakening. While currently they were largely just a curious novelty, the Toymakers wanted to upgrade and improve the area with its own Master Shrine and other mytek alterations. 0/35, Toy Village upgraded, increasing prominence of Toy Spirits in the Directorate and acting as a Toymaker Holy Site, increasing CUL.

Jingling Magic Toymaker Caps: A proposal would be augmenting certain caps worn by the order: modify the festive bells with glasmite resonators, install a NeuroChoir, consecrate it in the name of the Toymaker, and it might be possible to turn them into tools capable of streamlining the creation of sacred toys as well as quality. 0/35, Toymaker Priests gain Jingling Magic Caps, increasing CUL.

Mystek Compartment Curseworks: So far the greatest weapon the Directorate had against the Deconstructing Spiders was the SeaWarp curse. If the Mystek Compartment was expanded with a Cursite workshop, it might be possible to strengthen not just the SeaWarp, but all curses that were used in combat. 0/30, Fleet vessels upgraded with Curseworks, improving the potency of all Curses used in theater. Cost 1 NK.

Mystek Compartment Shadowgate: Alternatively, while riskier, installing Warp-Gates that could be utilized to actually power these curses might prove more prudent: it could be used for more than just offense, for one thing. 0/30, Mystek Compartments upgraded with Shadowgate Array, improving all naval rites and rites performed aboard ships. Cost 1 Warp.

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Academy Points (ACD Points): 125

Living Metal: 3

Network: 4

Morphogenic Countermeasures: The Deconstructing Spiders, though no longer as immediately lethal to non-organic matter, still possessed enough matter manipulation abilities to infest ships, survive most weaponry, and unless overwhelming energy was used would eventually reconstitute themselves anyways. More work was needed to develop better protections. 0/200, gain Crude Morphogenic Countermeasures. Cost 1 ART.

Lesser Emulators: While the primary emulators were progress, not everyone could make the trip to the various temples. The Calculators proposal: creating lesser emulators that could be installed in local community shrines and temples. 0/40, upgrade Hallowed Shrines with Lesser Emulators, increasing FTH.

Cosmic Netscape: The Ark Simulacra was the main means by which digital and Ark interacted: perhaps the Calculators would develop a means by which the Temples could forge their own netscapes, in the hopes of creating their bridge. 0/35, Temples gain Cosmic Netscapes. Cost 1 NT.

Shield Emitters: The improved capacitors were one thing, but it might be possible to upgrade the emitters in order to increase the overall RANGE of shields while neither reducing power efficiency or durability. 0/35, gain Shield Emitters, increasing shield coverage.

Multilayered Shields: If one was willing to go power efficiency, a way to upgrade ships would be by developing the methodologies to layer shield-fields atop one another to provide them some degree of ablative resistance. 0/45, gain Multilayered Shields, increasing shield durability.

Multiphasic Shielding: Alternatively, some brilliant engineer or scientist might stumble on the means to modulate shield wavelengths, allowing them to more easily resist various forms of attack. 0/45, gain Multiphasic Shielding, increasing shield durability.

Academy Compartment Electrostatic Armor: An idea that had been used to help slow down the spread of Spiders during the battle, the Toxel had used their high energy lab to electrify the outer hull, frying and damaging spiders and slowing them down long enough for Hunteks to respond. 0/35, Academy Compartments upgraded to electrify armor to harm borders.

Academy Compartment Particle Manipulators: The Academy was interested in performing even more advanced physics research, and this brand might be able to help the Directorate in a variety of ways: by installing specialized particle manipulator labs, they could work to optimize various subsystems: gravitics, nuclear, quantum… 0/35, Academy Compartments upgraded to improve all Particle based systems and weaponry on ships.

MegaMutagen Serum: A hobbgrot specialist variety would have to be designed separately due to biological factors, but conventional MegaSerums could otherwise be upgraded universally by including various minor mutagens designed to encourage beneficial adaptations in the host organisms. 0/20, gain MegaMutagen, improving crop yields and accelerating ShrineBeast evolution.

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Alright, done!