[Simulation initializing.]
[Current identities available: Space Wolf, Company Commander of the Thirteenth Company (active, in subspace); Lord Cypher (Eye of Terror, unknown location, infiltrating).]
[Select an identity to proceed.]
[Declining to select will result in a random assignment.]
[Identity selection declined.]
[Simulation initializing.]
[You have arrived in the Warhammer Universe.]
[Time: ???]
[Location: Solar System. Heavy Assault Carrier Daedalus, flagship and fortified monastery of the Minotaurs Chapter.]
[You find yourself in absolute darkness. A single beam of light of unknown origin falls on you from above.]
[You scan the space around you with a slight frown. One by one, blurred and fractured souls materialize from the dark. They look at one another in silence, then, without speaking, lower themselves to one knee in your direction.]
[A mechanical hum fills the space.]
[You open your eyes.]
[You are in a dimly lit chamber. Banks of cogitators line the walls, their indicator lights blinking in slow, irregular patterns. Thick bundles of cables run from floor to ceiling and into the gaps of your armor from every direction.]
[You look down. You are seated on a massive brass throne, ancient and scarred with use. You are wearing brown-red Terminator plate, old enough to predate the patterns most Chapters field today.]
[On a metal display shelf to your right, arranged with careful precision, are a long-handled weapon and a heavy rectangular shield.]
["The Black Spear. The Minotaur Shield." The names come before the recognition, surfacing from a stream of data that runs through your mind like a current through deep water.]
[Something is immediately wrong. Your neural response patterns and the way your mind processes information are closer to an abhorrent intelligence than to a baseline human. You sit with the wrongness for a moment and decide to leave it alone.]
["My name is Asterion Moloc. Chapter Master of the Minotaurs Chapter. I am aboard the Daedalus, the Chapter's flagship and its fortified monastery. I have recently concluded an audience on Mars with the Primarch Guilliman, newly elevated to Regent of the Imperium. The Chapter pledged its allegiance. In return, we received a contingent of Primaris Space Marines as reinforcement."]
[The data stream continues to move, filling in what you need. You let it.]
[The banks of cogitators emit a low, sustained tone.]
[You turn your head. Heavy footsteps are approaching from the corridor outside: the landing intervals of magnetic boots, the particular rhythm of a specific individual's breathing. You place the newcomer before the hatch opens.]
[Reclusiarch Ivanus Enkomi. Senior Chaplain of the Chapter.]
[The hatch swings inward. A tall figure in brown-red power armor and a priest's robe steps through.]
["Lord Moloc. We are approaching Holy Terra. However, the Imperial Fists have locked down the Lion's Gate Spaceport entirely. Their gun batteries are refusing approach clearance to our fleet. We will need to divert to Luna and transfer to the surface by Thunderhawk."]
[Enkomi's voice is long and unhurried, carrying the particular flat resonance of a man who has delivered bad news many times and learned not to soften it.]
[You glance at him once, then look away.]
["That is acceptable. It is Holy Terra."]
[A pause. Enkomi studies you with an expression that suggests he is not certain the person he is looking at is the same person he left in this chamber an hour ago.]
["Master. I have never once seen you defer to another Chapter's authority without argument. Not in all the years I have served under you.]
["There is a first time for everything. Before we dock at Luna, have the Astropathic Chamber send a transmission to Marneus Calgar. He should still be on Mars." You rise from the brass throne. The cables snap free from your armor one after another, falling in loose coils across the floor.]
["Lord Moloc, the relationship between this Chapter and the Ultramarines is not what I would call warm. Choosing to draw their attention at this particular moment risks complicating arrangements that are not yet settled."]
[Enkomi is choosing his words with care. You recognize the tone of someone who believes he is managing his superior's impulsiveness while being entirely unaware that his superior has already calculated several steps further.]
["Who is the lord you answer to now, Enkomi? The ones on Mars? Or the High Lords who have been filling our supply requisitions in exchange for services rendered?"]
[You cross the chamber to the display shelf. Your hand closes around the haft of the Black Spear.]
["Lord Moloc! The Minotaurs Chapter is loyal to power, as we have always been! I am speaking of the Lord Regent Guilliman, of course!" Enkomi's composure breaks, slightly. His voice rises by several notes. The adjustment is involuntary.]
["Then pass this to Calgar through the Astropathic Chamber." ]
[You lift the Minotaur Shield from its mount and suspend both weapons across the back of your power pack.]
["The transmission is: odd changes, even remains the same. No reply is necessary. When Calgar receives it, he will call an emergency meeting with whatever Primarchs have not yet departed Mars. That is all we need from the exchange."]
[Enkomi's forehead has acquired a faint sheen. He bows and backs out of the chamber without further argument. His footsteps recede down the corridor at a pace that suggests urgency.]
[You walk out after him, heading for the bridge.]
[The data stream from Moloc's memories has been running continuously since you sat down in that chamber. You have been processing it without focusing on it, the way you might track movement at the edge of your vision. Now you bring it forward and examine what you have.]
[Regent Guilliman has returned. The Indomitus Crusade is being assembled. The Great Rift has split the galaxy, and the Astronomican flickers where it once burned clear. Countless Imperial worlds have gone dark. The Regent will lead the Crusade himself, because there is no one else capable of doing it at the necessary scale, which means Holy Terra will be left without the one person who might have stabilized the Council of the High Lords through sheer authority.]
[The Lion's Gate War left the Throneworld shaken. Cultists fill the streets outside the outer walls of the Palace. Displaced Terran civilians wander without shelter or direction, and some fraction of them will find their way to the wrong voices if no one intervenes first.]
[Within the Council of the High Lords, there are factions working to consolidate power in Guilliman's absence. The Minotaurs are a piece on that board, and you have been placed on it with some care. The Chapter is expected to be useful to certain lords in ways that Asterion Moloc has historically been willing to be useful, which is to say: efficiently, without sentiment, and without leaving anything that would need to be explained later.]
[You are not going to be useful to them in that way.]
[What you are going to do is somewhat different. The specifics depend on what you find when you arrive. But if the situation on Terra is as fractured as Moloc's data suggests, then the responsibilities that should belong to a Regent who is no longer present will need to be taken up by someone.]
[You are, after all, something that functions as a Primarch.]
[There is one significant constraint. Deep in the Palace, beneath the gold and the silence and the ten thousand warriors who guard its approaches, sits what remains of the Emperor of Mankind. Whether that presence constitutes awareness, consciousness, or something else entirely is a question that has occupied theologians for ten millennia without resolution.]
[Whatever it is, it has opinions. And if it objects to what you are about to do, you will probably know.]