Editing Perpetual (section)

===Dalia Cythera===
Dalia Cythera is a former Administratum Transcriber and a latent psyker during the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy (specifically during the [https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Schism_of_Mars Death of Innocence]). While she was at one point at risk of [[Blam| unemployment]] due to her insatiable desire to learn and actually read the tomes she transcribed, she was soon protected by [https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Koriel_Zeth Adept Koriel Zeth] and delivered to Magma City, her forge on Mars. Dalia has three wow factors going for her: one, she was somehow not a braindead thrall after all that indoctrination; two, she possessed an eidetic memory and could read noospheric data without augments due to her latent psyker abilities; and three, she had a connection to [[Mag%27ladroth| a cold dark thing]] that gave her bad dreams and intuitive knowledge about technology.

Zeth involved her in the development of the Akashic Reader, her pet project to tap into the the sum of all knowledge, which was the hypothesized source of Dalia's ability. Using an array of a thousand sanctioned psykers as a surge protector and another, Jonas, strapped into a gold throne-like device (the Akashic Reader), the plan was to siphon the energy needed to pierce into the [[Warp| aether]] from the Astronomican, shove Jonas' perceptions into the Akashic Records and somehow get that fool enough paper to jot it all down for them before his brain liquefied. Dalia forgot the first rule of engineering which is to overengineer (not helped by faulty data and assumptions on her part); naturally it went tits up, but [[Warp| it would have anyways]].

Such a feat would have been a great leap forward for a rapidly booming age of technology in this wonderful time of development and progress! Unfortunately, the project was utterly annihilated during the Martian Schism due to [[Waifu| Koriel Zeth's]] last stand, in which she chose slagging the entire forge city over allowing the Dark Mechanicum and Kelbor-Hal to plunder the miraculous technologies she had uncovered. Absolutely everything was reclaimed by magma, [[Grimdark|resulting in Mankind's last hope for a golden future dying in hellfire]].

Meanwhile, Dalia and friends are off on a merry adventure to seek out that thing that's calling her out to join it in the void of the Noctis Labyrinth. They meet some jolly characters along the way like [https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Kaban_Machine Kaban-chan] and later Semyon, just a normal (if rather unhinged) unaugmented 10,000 year old dude with a pet servitor living at the bottom of a pitch black chasm. Dalia could relate, having a pet Protector of her own, Rho-Mu 31. Semyon was blessed by the Emperor himself to fulfil the role of 'Guardian of the Dragon,' protector of secrets and warden. Semyon talks about how he is 'running out of time' which implies that Dalia's Perpetuity either has a time limit of 10,000 years, or will begin to wane when her replacement is found. It is clarified that it wasn't the Void Dragon initiating, turns out it was [[The_God-Emperor_of_Mankind| Big E]] all along (at least in part)!

Dalia is The Chosen One (plus her pet too, I guess), and is destined to [[Irony| rot in a hole where her innate abilities will be absolutely useless to everyone]]. Her job duties include somehow keeping folks from releasing the Dragon of Mars, and thwarting any attempts to steal a tome (which [[fail|immediately gets swiped, implicitly by one of her surviving friends]]) which makes sure to [[Derp|explicitly impart the lesson that the Dragon was put on Mars so jerkoffs would make whatever wacky shit it dreamed about in captivity later, without any of the requisite explanations of why he made the book explicitly impart such a damaging secret, so that's not bad or anything]]. As soon as Semyon passes his Perpetual status to Dalia he and his servitor go the way of [[Malcador_the_Sigillite|Malcador]], collapsing into dust.

Come the present day, it's unclear whether or not she's still around, though as the end of the novel indicates that her successor as Guardian of the Dragon is currently being drawn to the Labyrinth of Night, her chances of surviving into the age of the Great Rift seem slim in the extreme, if at all.