Tau Empire Welfare Informative

VIGILUS REQUISITION: VYKOLA HERAT <ACCESS THRICEBLESSED> ILLUMINARIUM XENOARTEFACT GAMMA-PRIMUS-NON INSURRECTION BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT SECTIONS 11A, 12A "TAU EMPIRE' 'WELFARE INFORMATIVE' [ADDENDUM CLASS MAGNIFICAT] ***XENOMANTIC ARTEFACT***

The Imperium of Man. An institution so old and cruel it grinds its people under its crushing weight.

[PANORAMIC. Imperial industrial world EVENSONG. Horizon cluttered with jagged and broken architecture, chimneys belching pollutant into mustard yellow clouds. Zoom on sulphurous acid rain falling on citizens that queue for food slops in the alleys beneath]

The worlds of the Imperium have been abused and abandoned by their rulers. They exist only to give tithe to their overlords - tithes of flesh, and of steel.

[Interior, MUNITIONS MANUFACTORUM. Scalding steam jets, bubbling crucibles of molten metal heated by outsized bursts of flame]

The citizens toil at meaningless manual work, repetitive and soulless. They are locked into one single task, one stifling environment, from the cradle to the grave.

[Sweating, iron-collared workers clad in rags screw together ammunition varying in size from conventional bullets to arm-length tanker shells. Chains reach from the slave collars to overseer gantries above. CLOSE UP on a worker etching a word in gothic script on a bullet casing. He drops the round into a crate full of identical artefacts]

A typical worker is covered in burns and calluses. He eats once per diurnal cycle, and will sleep no more than four hours, often in a makeshift bunk under his workstation.

[The overseers wear heavy greatcoats and stylised skull masks. Many have thick, ribbed tubes in place of their mouths. They yank the chains hard to awaken indentured workers beneath. Shift workers choke and scramble from oil-stained sleeping nests]

There are no labour-saving machines.

[Interior, MUNITIONS LOADING BAY. Thousands of hive workers pull vast cables to swing an immense warhead into a transport cylinder. Cut to close up of filthy hands. They are cut and worn by rough metal cables. Blood runs down pallid wrists]

There is no freedom of thought or expression.

[A loading worker mutters something to his teammate. A five-limbed cyborg overseer on a quad-tracked turntable rolls in close and begins to revolve swiftly at the waist, the electro-whips on its main appendages indiscriminately lashing the offender and his peers]

Every act is geared to the furtherance of more violence and strife.

[CLOSE UP of human faces etched with misery. The only clean areas are the tracts where tears have run down their cheeks, making runnels in the encrusted dirt]

In this endless wheel of pain and death, there is no hope of escape. A worker will live, sire offspring, and die in the same industrial habitation complex.

[ALLEYWAY exterior. Human female with straggly, greasy hair is giving biological birth on a rain-spattered street. The ground is slippery with grime and unidentifiable, rotting matter. The sounds of the birth are traumatic. Mutant rats look on hungrily, eyes red]

A worker's children will perform the same task as their parents, often at the same alcove station, in dynasties of unthinking graft that stretch back centuries.

[MANUFACTORUM interior. The malnourished corpse of a bullet worker who has died of exhaustion is unshackled and cast aside. Skull-masked overseers step over the corpse without comment, force-marching the worker's daughter to the same workstation and collaring her to the gantry with the same chain. Its links are still wet with her predecessor's blood]

To be a cog in this relentless, grinding machine is to know nothing but futility and despair.

[MANUFACTORUM exterior. A crate of bullets is loaded at a bad angle into the back of a bulky transport by a badly calibrated lifter-cyborg. The crate catches on the transport's flatbed and tips over, emptying its contents. The bullets tinkle dully around the faulty servitor as they scatter across the street]

[CLOSE UP: the bullets roll to join a river of brass cylinders gently smoking in a gutter full of acid rain]

This culture is ten thousand years old, so ingrained in its deeply oppressive mindset that it is beyond saving.

[The transport's doors hiss closed, and it grinds away, containing little more than empty boxes and a scattering of bullets. Another transport truck takes its place. The malfunctioning cyborg continues its wasteful, blind charade with the next crate]

[CLOSE UP. Bullets with the word MORTIS hand-etched upon them, smears of bright red blood across the letters. Fade to darkness]