Right, I have finally have a solid new chapter up on
The Ghost Worlds - sorry it has taken a while. What I've posted is actually only half of what I wrote for this Elpis instalment, but there was so much action to get through that it just kept growing along the way. I have now divided it into two substantial episodes, because there has to be some kind of limit to how much text I'm prepared to put up in a single sitting! This week's half is called
Division & Subtraction, spread over two posts for character limit, and ends on something of a a cliffhanger (I'm afraid I had to break it there for structural reasons). I'll post the other half next week under
Deus Est In Machina. I am quite pleased with this as I've developed a fondness for writing Elpis, but due to the general content, I feel the following disclaimer might be warranted:
Warning: Contains Heresy.Just to be clear on this, Elpis has lived most of her life “outside” the Imperium for all intents and purposes, so her character and theological musings should be taken in that spirit. My depiction of these tech-priests and Skitarii is in no way intended to be representative of the Adeptus Mechanicus or STC technology in general – Fabraxis is a Heretek forge, and while they do still worship the Machine God, they do so in their own deeply heretical way. They’ve gotten away with it so far because they operate in the shadows on the very fringes of the galaxy, but they dabble in a lot of forbidden research/lore and have recently attracted the attention of Tzeentch…and of course Inquisitor DuBois, who already tried to enlist a supposedly open-minded Magos from the legit Adeptus Mechanicus to help with her discovery and ended up losing an arm.
Anyway, we do have a lot more background worked out for Fabraxis but it was created purely for the story. Anyone who feels like E.G. Abnett goes too far with inventing things/stretching the lore...please don’t send stormtroopers to my house? I plead artistic licence – this whole project is as much a tribute to old-school IC Conclave fiction is it is to the core canon, and a lot of questionable stuff got invented in the Nexus/Amon Dull days which I nevertheless enjoyed. When in doubt, blame the warp.
