Editing Quest:The Long Night:Volume Two:The Rise (section)

=Continuing on=

Fortunately, the damage to Avernus was relatively light, and most importantly, localized. Meaning you need to pull the ships out of your Hive, patch up the holes, and quarantine the affected area due to another Cultist wave. Would have been an excellent time to buy what you need from Sirens; unfortunately, they had their fill of souls during the invasion, and are now only buying new ones at a 99% discount. The Mechanicus hardly suffered any damage at all, and are already considering an expedition to Roskilde.

On the diplomatic side, you have two tasks. The first is Sphinx aid. In regular mythology they love asking riddles; now here, they love answering them. And the question “What's the access code for the Roskilde map?” is actually quite a valid riddle for them. The second is finding that strange lady who nuked the Crusade.

The map is decoded, although it will take some time to prepare the expedition; a thousand light years is a journey of years with the current state of the Warp. And, before that, over twenty years to fix the ''Well of Urd'', since they're not getting anything closer to a proper [[Ark Mechanicus]] Also, Scott finally restores – with upgrades – that Titan her predecessor died saving.

You make contact with the lady. Her name is Areatha, the Ancient Wanderer. She is indeed a human... mostly. The Dark Age colony upon Helheim was conducting genetic experiments based on local biome, and she is the last one. An impossible success, presumably due to the Planet Mind itself interfering. A stable Alpha Psyker with twenty thousand years of experience. Of course, after so long, she feels little connection to humanity. However, she has no trouble cooperating if needed... for example, to shut down that Tzeentchian Psyker-snatching ring.

In the meantime, the High Council decides that, despite the casualties, now would be a good time to finally take out those Abomination servant neighbors. In five years, all their naval capacity is gone, helped by the fact that their Daemon World capital was claimed by a larger empire. Seven years more, and the whole polity is gone, leaving you with fifteen worlds tainted by Chaos to various extent. Saint Lin states he can reduce the taint level, but it's going to take years per planet.

Diplomatic ties are established with the Nynye, Lulana's people. They turn out to be very knowledgeable in the subject of biochemistry, things like healing and enhancing potions. They are willing to trade potions for ingredients, but in return for sharing the knowledge, they want advanced regular technology. It may look cheap, but is sure to cause a war with the Mechanicus for trading the sacred knowledge of Omnissiah to Xenos. At least, until you realize they will hardly object to you trading away the knowledge of other Xenos, and hand them a Quartok database.

Another WAAAGH! fleet comes. This one is ambushed along the way a few times, thanks to Rids. You do try to be very careful not to kill the Warboss; apparently, he's too moronic to risk someone else taking his place. Ridcully manages to divert the fleet to Svartalfheim; maybe it doesn't have our wildlife, but the city defences there are second to none. With Warboss Headcrusha indeed too stupid to order a concentrated attack, the individual forces are stopped or even routed within a month and a half, with barely any even breaching outer defences.

Headcrusha himself, however, is far more of a problem. No way such a moron could have been in charge without being the deadliest Greenskin around, and he certainly is. The Black Irons are all but destroyed by him personally, along with a couple of Astartes companies. Then Major-General Mineyev, the commander of the Black Irons, attempts to sacrifice himself by shoving a Vortex Grenade down the Warboss'es throat.

He fails.

That is, he fails in the sacrifice. To his great chagrin, Mineyev survives the attack, although the amount of prosthetics he needs now falls somewhere on the level of General Grievous.

The total losses of the campaign are well below a billion, against over two hundred billion Orks counting the ones who never landed.

A year later, that's counterbalanced by events on Avernus. Two Alpha-Plus level Psykers wake up less than a year apart. The first one turns into a Warp Rift right in the middle of one of our island Hives. That one is handled by the wildlife, both Island Turtles and Deep Ones (the proper name for those local Cthulhus). By the time they finish, there is no Warp Rift, no Hive, and no island. One billion casualties. The other woke up and was possessed soon after being detected, when the security forces were on their way already. Jane destroyed the child soon after the casualties reached a hundred million.

In a more long-term problem, we seem to have drawn the attention of Turoq, a powerful and dangerously sane Daemon Prince ruling over eighty worlds a few hundred light years away.

On the bright side, there are two major pieces of news. The first is that the Roskilde expedition is finally being prepared. Ridcully has divined the safest course for the fleet to take, along with saying what are the threats. According to him, the facility has a sizeable fleet of Defence Monitors and some Cruisers, controlled by a Man of Stone who has gone completely insane from twenty thousand years of loneliness. Currently, your Psykers are warding the fleet.

The second event is, the High Council gave permission to make contact with the Eldar for trade purposes. As agreed upon, the Trust gives the Eldar a century-long loan on some of its elites, along with the Blind Seer making a dozen divinations as asked by the Eldar. In return, the Eldar help us send diplomatic missions to the bigger sane human polities through the Webway, and, should these polities accept, arrange a later meeting for a technological exchange.

Oh, also; Ophelia's attempts to bring Xavier and Tamia together was successful. Recently, Tamia gave birth to twin girls.

==Expedition Results==

Tranth returns victorious. Barely. The ''Well of Urd'' is badly battered, the escorts are nearly destroyed, and so are the ground forces, including three Astartes Companies. Archmagos Prime Paladis, the head of the Mechanicus military, is dead as well. The finds, however, are considered worth it.

For one thing, Tranth found nine more Data Jewels. You still can't decode any, but perhaps the Eldar could.

Second, he does bring back the blueprints for a ship. A Deus Class Superdreadnought, a forty kilometre monster equipped with an antimatter reactor, hundreds of overpowered Plasma cannons, armour that shrugs off cruiser fire, Tachyon sensors, enough room to carry and deploy fifteen billion troops...

The one minor downside, of course, is that you can't afford it.

Also, you get the blueprints for a Heaven Class Superfortress. Three times the size of a Deus, same technology, same downside. Plus, it doesn't have the systems that allow a Ramilles to be towed through Warp.

The last piece of technology, however, is one you can build. A type of one-shot launcher for Torpedoes. Strap them to your ships, and watch the enemy run into a wall of explosives.