RYE - Buried Secrets

Excavate the Ship (1 4th and 26 5th Generation slann)

The frozen carcass of the mountain rose above the snowy plains like a titan's dwelling fallen into ruin. The neck-deep drifts of snow that blanketed the rest of the far north avoided it as if out of reverence, or perhaps fear, and the fierce skeins of wind blew frigid gusts of arctic air that coiled and snapped around its exterior but did not dare to penetrate within. It was a monolith too big for the world, a piece of grand impossibility that jutted up from the frost-clad tundra in defiance of probability, its sheer size acting as a mute reproach for any who dared to question its existence.

For millennia the mountain had stood, and even the orks who long ago had sprung from its depths had avoided it, for its bones were buried too deep and nothing but a force that could reshape the world itself could rouse them from their silicate entombment.

Twenty seven slann made their way to the northern mountain at the turning point of the hundred and fortieth year of the lizardmen's new calendar, and the snow and ice parted before them like rebellious servants fleeing the wrath of their lord.

The lizardmen had been busy; for decades, a miniscule crew of workers had labored day and night to map out the colossal vessel at the core of the stone ruin, and then to piece by painstaking piece, unearth it and reveal what had been buried centuries ago. Last decade's infusion of slann and labor from the temple-city Hualtecalaquiani had sped this process up a great deal; massive slabs of stone the size of cities had been shifted, and a great array of obsinite scaffolding now grew from the ground like trees, holding up parts of the structure that could not be moved without risking total collapse. It had been enough to allow skinks and kroxigors to move beneath the larger pieces, clearing out mountains worth of rubble, fossilized ork dung, and smaller pieces of debris, categorizing and disposing of each piece as was proper. Miles worth of tunnels into the interior of the ship were uncovered and cleared in such a manner, and much in the way of preparatory work conducted. All that remained was to commence the truly heavy lifting.

Zydr-Unass of the Fourth Spawning marshalled his understudies, drawing their minds together into a miniature Communion that shone like beacons against the ice. The slann reached out with a mind that was bigger and stronger than the sum of its component parts and grasped the largest of the stone slabs with an effort of will, a monumental piece more than a mile long. With a deep groan that bespoke the combined weight of millions of tons, the piece shifted, first by microns, then by millimeters, and then it was moving, floating through the air as if it were no more insubstantial than a bubble. Carefully, as if they were herding an unruly Stegadon, the slann steered the city-sized block of stone through the air, setting it down several hundred meters from the mountain with a gentle [i]thoom[/i] that shook the earth and sent dozens of skinks sprawling. The first of many such movements was deemed a success; hundreds more remained, each of which had to be carefully calibrated to ensure that the wreckage at the core of the mountain stayed undamaged.

It was a task of years, and the lizardmen watched with boundless patience as their slann masters shifted piece after piece, unearthing more and more of the massive ship that they had come to investigate. Teams of kroxigor laborers clambered over sections of the hull as it was exposed, clearing off debris, patching exposed holes with temporary barriers of obsinite, and setting up a network of linked Umbrella Field generators with the aid of their skink counterparts to keep the unending blizzards of the north off.

The ship at last lay bare, and its exposure stole none of its grandeur away from it. If anything, it was accentuated, for though the height of the mountain had shrunk considerably now that its outer shell was peeled away, it was more clear than ever that the vessel at its heart was what had allowed such immensity. It was vast, as big as Hualtecalaquiani or more, and designed in a sparse, utilitarian fashion that immediately appealed to the lizardmen's sense of function. Its hull was smooth metal that had been punctured and corroded in places from ork modification; there were obvious patches where equipment had been torn out or crude catwalks welded on in order to add additional weapons arrays, but other than those pieces of taint, it was remarkably well-preserved for its age.

It most closely resembled a scaffold, to the lizardmen's eyes, with a set of massive engines towards the rear of the ship connected by a long, slender spine to a compact 'head' portion that was still the size of several city blocks despite being comparatively miniscule. The largest portion of the vessel was the middle section, which resembled an enormous ribcage; slender metallic frames extended down from the central spine, clearly intending to hold something; cargo, perhaps, some of the kroxigors speculated. Whatever its original purpose was, it was clear that it had been subverted, for this was also the portion of the vessel that bore the most signs of orkish occupation; several massive asteroids were crammed into the ribcage until it was practically bursting, each of which sported its own set of engines and a colossal assortment of guns and portholes, all of which had long since fallen to ruin. The orks had taken this vessel and turned it into a troop transport, and from its collapse had risen the seeds of the infestation that plagued Mochantia until its most recent years.

Once the debris had finally settled and the ship’s superstructure had been examined a hundred times to ensure there would be no unexpected collapse, the slann sent their retinues within the massive vessel. Previous efforts had resulted in fragmentary maps of the ship’s interior, but with the debris cleared, a more comprehensive overview was finally in order, that the lizardmen might unlock the secrets hiding within the ancient carcass.

Skinks clambered through narrow ducts filled with wires and padded down vast, sloping hallways covered with metallic plates. They carried glowing stones with them to light the way, and every so often, they knelt to affix tablets carved with magical tracking signals that the waiting slann used to construct a map of the ship’s interior. The dust of ages had settled upon the vessel’s interior, but despite the signs of orkish depredation that littered the interior, there were few signs of aging. Whoever had built the ship had done so with the expectation that it would serve for many years, and their work had held up for centuries under the layers of stone and ice.

Once enough of the slann’s tablets were placed, the mage-priests flexed their collective wills, and surging waves of magical energy radiated outwards from the devices, each of them forming a node in a holographic image that the slann swiftly built of the ship’s internals. Much of the vessel’s interior was, although the design philosophies were foreign, oddly identifiable to the lizardmen’s eyes - rooms sectioned out in regular patterns along the spine of the ship and nearby certain exits were clearly crew quarters, though they were strangely small for a ship of this size. They were most thickly arranged around the rear of the vessel, nesting in thick clusters where they afforded easy access to a cargo bay, the ship’s engines, and what were unmistakably weapons batteries.

The fore of the vessel was unmistakably taken up by a command deck, a space near the size of a temple-city plaza filled with wires and glass and metallic displays, proportioned to suggest an eldar-size species had been the ones to construct it. Much of the technology here was indistinguishable from the wreckage the orks had made of it, however - a great looming throne of scrap towered over the bridge, near every console had spikes welded to it or a red button affixed in place of a more sophisticated control panel, and the lingering, stale odor of ork was everywhere.

The engines of the ship were a three-part marvel, with inner workings so finely detailed that even the most knowledgeable of the kroxigors on site could not reliably discern any of their inner workings, let alone with the state of disrepair and impact they had been subjected to. They were absolutely gargantuan, large enough to propel the entire city-sized ship through the interstellar void, and even preliminary calculations of their output estimated that they would consume a mountain’s weight of ork-grade combustible fuel in seconds if fully activated - though doubtless their means of power was far more sophisticated than mere biofuel. What was stranger yet were the components of the engine blocks that, even after thousands of years under the ice, resonated with the unmistakable energies of the Warp. The connection was dormant, more an imprint of past times tapping into the Warp than an active influx, but the fact that it was there regardless drew a great deal of interest from the slann - to say nothing of the carefully-crafted metallic weave laced throughout the exterior layer of the ship that was obviously a work of sorcerous warding.

The ship’s defensive equipment, meanwhile, demanded the attention of Saurus experts, who spent months carefully analyzing what they could of the vessel’s weapons. The orks had left their mark here as well, repurposing spare components and even pieces of the hull wherever they could to mount gargantuan guns and missile pods all over the outside. These had by and large fallen to ruin, but the vessel’s original, more modest defenses had stayed intact, proving as resilient against the passage of time as the rest of the ship. Whoever had crafted them clearly had more advanced technology than that of the orks - there were no guns to be found, merely an array of metallic devices of some kind speckled upon the ship’s hull in a spaced-out pattern that suggested they were meant to protect it somehow. The manifold tracks of wires that were arrayed under each device, and the remnant aura of massive electrical charges that had once passed through them, lead the saurus to speculate that they were perhaps equivalent in some way to the lizardmen’s Tempest Crystals. Upon the vessel’s rear, a quartet of similar devices many times the size were supplied their power from the ready source of the engines. Rough calculations estimated that each device was capable of handling an electrical load equivalent to an entire thunderstorm before it could hold no more - enough to melt a portion of a city in a single eruption of energy.

The slann collected and digested all of this data over the course of the decade, and slowly compiled an overview that seemed to illuminate more of the vessel’s identity and purpose. It had been built by an advanced spacefaring species, one that had some knowledge of the Warp - at least enough to be able to integrate it into the vessel’s propulsion systems. Despite the likely staggering firepower of its weapons, it was not a vessel designed for combat - its hollow, frame-like midsection bespoke a cargo ship, something to haul material back and forth across incomprehensible distances, armed with what its makers considered the bare minimum to protect their investments. Perhaps because of this, the orks who had infested it seemed to have treated it like a massive troop transport, stuffing it full of other vessels, supplies of scrap, and eager greenskin bodies to invade whatever planet it happened to find itself in orbit over.

The slann fed this data back to the primary segment of the Communion, and in particular those mage-priests who watched over the construction of the great Spire that arose from Mochantia’s crust to pierce the void. There, the great councils of builders manning that colossal project looked upon the shape of the ship, and found their minds lighting up with synergistic ideas. The ancient vessel would serve as a framework, a stepping-stone to allow the lizardmen to construct void-sailing ships of their own without stumbling over the countless small mistakes and false starts that a lack of context might have doomed them to.

By the decade’s end, the ship still presented by far the biggest silhouette on Mochantia’s northern continent. Unearthed from its titanic tomb, its bones now lay on display, the echoes still contained within them calling out to the minds of the lizardmen. There was still more to uncover.

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Northern ship fully examined! It appears to be a colossal cargo ship meant for hauling material across interstellar distances, repurposed by ork hijackers into an attack craft. Its builders are long gone, but their ideas still remain embodied within the vessel’s framework. Projects unlocked to examine the engines (including their psychic component), the vessel’s weaponry, its defensive equipment, and the unknown warding array incorporated into its exterior. Fragmentary pieces of evidence have also been found that, with sufficient divination, could potentially provide clues as to the vessel’s origins.