Bylaws of Babel

The next chapter of Understanding will be delayed by a little bit. I've had construction work, extended guests, cross-mountain hiking for the sake of preventing the mayor's office from stealing our land, and day-long power outages all in the last week. I still intend to have it out by week's end, and I don't foresee any delays for the other two stories. Still, I thought a heads up was warranted.

In the meantime, here's something I've got lying around in my hard drive. Another story I'll probably not follow up on, albeit one I'm more enthused with than the Minato in Worm plot bunny. Hope it helps tidy you over.

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Bylaws of Babel

Prologue: 32,200 Years of Unintended Consequences,

“-. 792.M30 .-“

Souls were not created, they spontaneously came into being when sufficient subtle matter condensed into a spiritual body, along with a host of other conditions.

It was possible to influence their base nature, though. Or, at least, to influence what soul would come to be. This was done by influencing the spiritual body itself ahead of time.

The Emperor did so for the Primarchs, by infusing still-forming Warp archetypes with his own notions of the same, those amnesiac amalgams of his own achievements and mindsets as he best remembered himself from different times in his past.

The Ruinous Powers also did so for the Primarchs, by precognitively looping the nascent archetypes with their possible metastases from the far future, thereby corrupting the new life forms with a smidgen of predetermination from the start.

It wasn’t easy, that was how the Four preyed on other gods and made their greatest daemons, all things that the Emperor had understanding enough to account for.

But it remained nevertheless possible, if just by subtly filling in blanks and ‘fixing’ the fallacies and self-contradictions that the Emperor left in. Unknowingly.

Whatever his reasons, Neoth had never allowed himself true perfect memory. Or, at least, he didn’t have it now. While this did spare him the toil of having to consciously process and move past events – and change himself, thankfully, though it still took him much too long compared to the average man – it also meant that his ability to infer and remember past lessons and patterns was not perfect either.  

Patterns like ‘the house always wins’ when making wagers with the gods of evil.

Lessons like ‘think twice before you topple Babel.’

That last one was especially infuriating because Neoth himself destroyed his tower back then – and killed him – thereby dooming mankind to its current course.

Because of the Eldar, naturally. When Bloody Khaine led the Eldar gods against the young, still incomplete pantheon of Terra, he’d had to put his own ascension on hold and hastily modify the Tower to provide them additional empowerment instead. That gave the regular Eldar time to come to earth and do their subterfuge there too.

A humanity with full mastery of the Tongue of Creation was never going to be tolerated by the knife-ears. It was why he’d used the language to ward the construction against everything non-human, successfully. And why the long-ears resorted to a local patsy to do the dirty work for them, also successfully.

Pretending they were the local ancestor spirits went a long way for the aliens, back then.

Oh, how it burned Neoth to find out what he had done, after the fact. Not quickly, not soon, not even in the same millennium. But Neoth did learn, and he, the architect, was actually there to see it happen. Not in the same body, but there all the same, though he never actually revealed it. The vindication had tasted like ash, so many lifetimes after the disaster.

For all that the prehistoric shamans had mostly joined in on the mass suicide to create a super-psyker, not all of them did. Some tried and failed to find alternatives. Some became undead and were soon vanquished. Some managed to create – and then become – perpetuals.

As for him, he found his own solution in the talent that allowed him to mathematically reverse-engineer the Primordial Tongue to begin with. He managed to learn his own True Name and seal it. It gave him power, it gave him freedom, it let him preserve his mind and his memory even after his body and spirit were destroyed. Most important of all, it made his soul imperceptible to all other beings if he so desired, and thus allowed him to reincarnate after death once again.

He'd done so many times since. Like Neoth he’d been a commoner, craftsman, warrior, soldier, sage, a leader, and many other things. Unlike Neoth, he’d even been elected to lead the Human Federation at one point. Got to order him around even, the latter was just an admiral at the time! It was hilarious, doubly so since Neoth never realized who he really was. He indulged in many forms of small and petty vengeance then, everything he could do to inflict some manner of comeuppance, in a way that didn’t also come with mass slaughter of innocents. Like the rest of humanity, both Neoth and himself were going through their best phase at the time.

It was for good reason that the Federation only manifested when Neoth finally stopped trying to control everything. And reached its zenith when he was finally content with not controlling anything at all, beyond his own affairs.

There was nothing petty or good about what was taking place now.

The Primarch Gestation Chamber was awash in red alerts and loud sirens. The arcane glyphs of protection enscribed by Neoth on the Primarchs' gestation capsules were glowing intense, angry golden hues that nevertheless failed to hold back the tides of the Warp. The Emperor had crafted the most powerful Gellar Field ever made around the gene-vault, but even that was proving to not be enough. There was a Warp rift in the middle of the chamber, growing rapidly like molten cracks in a ball of glass.

If only they’d known before, that the quaint war game from far back in the second millennium had been a prophecy! Then he wouldn’t have had to get involved in this mess. Unfortunately, he’d had no alternative, not if he wanted to avert the last and worst debasement of mankind.

When he watched Neoth imbue the spirit of the Eleventh Primarch with all his understanding of responsibility and hindsight and regret, he finally knew how to make good on an entire unlife of planning.

For better or worse, the conditions that enabled a soul’s incarnation also enabled reincarnation. In this case, his. As the Eleventh Primarch.

The gestation pods were pulled into the Warp just as the Emperor finally blasted in.

Eleven sensed his brothers react with everything from defiance to distress, but indulged in no illusions that he’d be able to affect their fate. Not here, not now, not like this.

For better or worse, he could only affect his own in the hopes of getting to them later.

They weren’t scattered immediately. The Four roared, retched, simpered and argued even as Tzeentch hurried to reinforce the prep-work they’d all done, back when the Neoth made his wager with them. Khorne, Slaanesh and Nurgle tried to take and keep them, which made sense for creatures like them.

The speculations of many during the second millennium were being proven right. It didn’t make sense for the Four to not just keep the Primarchs outright.

But the runes on the pods glowed mightily, more and more the longer they were in the Warp. Such was Neoth’s power and skill that even the four would lose grasp eventually. The runes on the pods worked to loosen their grasp and push away their power with Anathema shine. The twenty would translate back to realspace well before they broke the pods open.

If they tried to hold onto all of them, that is.

They didn’t try.

They just settled each for one. Khorne took the Second, Nurgle Fourteen, Slaanesh took him, lustful of twisting the Anathema’s honest grief and will to better himself into ultimate perversions, caressing and spewing all over his pod until the runes corroded and the metal and glass was coming apart around him. His was the first pod to break, he was the first to become exposed and he was just about to speak-

Tzeentch took Fifteen, ‘failed’ to knot something in his spirit that was so large the pod couldn’t contain it, then ‘lost grip’ such that Magnus went on his way with a dash and bump that ‘accidentally’ knocked all of the other three on the way out.

Khorne managed to hold onto his, the others didn’t, all three roared, squelched, shrieked in outrage. Their will and limbs and warp madness got in each other’s way as they tried to reclaim the others, they cursed Tzeentch for his inevitable betrayal and just barely failed to stop him from stealing Slannesh’s toy as well-

“Burn.” Eleven said.

Grasping talons flinched as Tzeentch suffered the fate decreed through the harmonic tones of Eununcia.

“No.” Eleven spoke again, even though every sound strained his spirit with the effort to make himself heard in full. For Eununcia to work, it needed to resound loud and clear, and in the Warp this was harder. Inconsistent. “Fail, Heal, Wallow, Empathize.”

Tzeentch clumsily lost grip on him with a shriek, Nurgle heaved from feeling hale and whole, Slaanesh experienced a moment when it felt nothing, and Khorne gasped in reflected sorrow, the feeling so alien that he lost his grip on the last pod.

Maybe he could change this one fate.

The Four lost sight of Eleven when he extended his soul to envelop his whole being, hiding under the aegis of his sealed Name, unseen to all. For a moment and eternity, they looked for him. For a moment and eternity they warred over their failure.

They devolved into a mad scramble for the last pod still left, each trying to salvage this last thing. The Second.

Countless limbs and warp spasms clashed and combined in the wake of the last pod. They thrashed all over each other, so mighty and so hateful that they failed to catch it. The worn, straining pod of the Second Primarch flew and bounced and wrenched to and fro, always just barely saved from capture by the others getting in each other’s way, through might or spell and treachery, a slip of the claw along a pus-slick limb.

Eleven flew after them, always keeping the Second in his sight. He was going to deny the Annihilator its consolation even if it killed him again. Also, he didn’t have any preferences for where else to go. This was the only path amidst the cloying madness that still resembled a direction.

The Second’s trajectory was a warping, drunken zig-zag along the boundary of the Four domains. Nurgle’s rot ate into the Excess of Riches every time the Second seemed likely to crash into the Pleasure Prince’s domain. The Anathema’s rune script kept turning the pod away from Tzeenthch’s domain, such that it skimmed past even when the Changer had advantage. Just long enough for Slannesh’s vindictive bliss to distract the buzzard.

When a massive two-handed sword struck in a bid to spitefully deny everyone their prize, the Second’s pod blasted downward like a twin-tailed comet. Blood fell and burned away in the volcanoes along the boundary of Khorne’s Rage, leaving naught behind for any to besmirch.

Eleven barely managed to grab on before Khorne’s strike.

“Endure,” he rasped, giving almost half of the spirit he’d embodied into, whose destiny he’d stolen for himself. “Abide. Live.”

He couldn’t hold on.

The Second’s pod tore a rippling gap through the Boundary of Realms on the way down, like waves inside a whirlpool.

Eleven flew after it as fast as he could, struggling to survive the Chaos around him, the wrath following down. Each moment was a chunk of flesh lost. His spell, he could still feel it struggling to see Second through, still needed fuel. Fuel he still had, that he could give because distance in the Warp barely mattered, but while he did that he glowed like star’s fire, couldn’t hide-

A beam of sorcerous energy tore through him. Even though Khorne’s sword got in the way, he didn’t survive it.

But his soul was untouchable, even if his body and spirit definitely weren’t. Delving the immaterium as an unbound entity, in this he’d had millennia of practice.

But still the spell on his sibling needed power, so now he was visible to the ruin around him even as a soul, despite his sealed True Name.

There were roars and calls and screams and entreaties. Distant, now, but no longer just four. He flew along lines tracing symbols of warding and fiery purification, he was inviolable as long as his seal endured but he could still be caught and trapped. He fled onwards down until the Four Realms grew thin and distant around him. Glancing back up, he saw a horde of demons of all kinds, clawing down, digging, swimming in search of his remains, others coming right for him, more still tearing down after his brother.

I’m in the Deep Warp, the realization came to him. Or close? I can see it, something like – a surface?

The Deep Warp. Ancient Lore spoke of it in hushes whispers, like something even the gods didn’t dare brave.

Suddenly, he felt the Second translate back into – something like the materium?

The draw on what was left of his spirit was gone. His brother’s fate was no longer in his hands.

He hid once more.

The tide of monsters swept past and around him, oblivious to his presence again.

He still followed as best he could, but now it was an increasingly confusing mess, the Warp itself spasming and lurching to remake itself in the wake of the rip torn by natural law. He soon lost the trail completely, and was left to wander and skulk about legions of monsters like a fish learning to swim for the second time. He was unsure if he should still follow or try to find a way back up and out. Either way, it would take a long time.

But then the four factions of demons, for some reason, began to cooperate again. Not very well, others might not even notice the change, but he did.

He followed down further, he didn’t know how long, perhaps no time at all depending on how time contracted or dilated at that depth. His own spirit certainly got smaller and denser as he went deeper, the pressure of the Warp rising upon him until he couldn’t even reach out with it beyond his soul’s own boundary. He was seriously considering the possibility of an immaterium equivalent of compression sickness. And decompression, if he decided to go back up.

Then he saw it.

The Deep Warp. It was still below him, like… an ocean and cloud and stellar coronal mass ejection winds all at once. Altogether concealing… a…

There was a world floating in the Deep Warp.

No, there was an entire star system.

He stopped and stared. For a time, he was simply bedazzled by the sight, and the strange rings and mechanisms around it. It was an orrery, except every piece of the model was real and manifest, a sun surrounded by ten planets, all within a shell made of twelve rings spinning around each other along numeric axioms. Between them, like the layers of an onion, fields of force and energy sustained countless infinity engines glowing like stars on the underside of the shell. They were the stars. They powered the gimbal-like encasement in turn, keeping the ‘water’ out, even as it was now breached by the invaders. Or was it?

Floating down, he saw legions of demons. Legions had made it here before him, or were they already here? There were many monsters, and they had to have been at work for a long time. Enough that even the Ruinous Powers themselves were here, in some manner. He could see a reflection of the four Realms of Chaos he’d just escaped, and he sensed that the sympathetic principle was so strong about them that there could be no difference, if necessary.

The Four were still up there, but their realms were also here. Enough that if you were here, you were also up there, with them, if they wanted.

The combined replica of the four hells floated on the surface like an island on a sea, but also reached down, deeper. Like a perversion of a crab-filled garbage patch, its rank imitation of algae tangled into the world below like grasping roots made of blood, pus and bile.

He flew around, not willing to tempt fate. He reached the surface.

He dove in.

He didn’t die.

He was fascinated. The Deep Warp, that mysterious place that even the Primordial Annihilator feared to delve… perhaps there were enormous beasts and monsters like in the oceans of Earth? Or tides of powers and forces that just didn’t facilitate survival? That wasn’t what was here, though. Instead, it was… a dyson sphere of some sort? Or perhaps a dyson ship. Warded against the warp too, something like a Gellar field – no.

A piece of the materium itself was here, protected and maintained by what was obviously some sort of empyreal-cosmic engineering. It looked like a proper solar system from outside, the star, planets, asteroids, even enough space void around the heliosphere to fit a roaming comet with space left over. If it were all artificial or make-believe, it wouldn’t need to be so large, the old ones could just have taken the planet and made it the center of tis own geocentric system. It certainly would have reduced the footprint of the external mechanisms.

Someone had moved an entire stellar system into the Deep Warp. Probably the Old Ones, whatever they were. For some reason.

Eleven tried to slip inside, but couldn’t. He managed to swim to the outmost layer of the gimbal-like mechanism, for lack of a better term, but… The Orrery-like star sphere kept him out. There were fields of force and pressure and conceptual denial of him and all others encroaching now. His spirit… it was tainted by Chaos. Enough that… whatever this was denied him passage.

Not as strongly everywhere, though, and not just by quirk of design. As he flew around it and set his spirit against it, he traced weakness to a point where he could tell the structure had been breached. Not a lot, not for long, but straight through. Not by warp phenomena, but by natural law at sufficient velocity.

His brother. The Second Primarch had smashed right through the shell here. The damage had repaired itself, but there was a lingering feeling of weakness, or remembered weakness that took longer to unmake than it should. Much emotional charge too, the most unpleasant sort. Tampering.

Something of Chaos had followed the Second in.

It was some time ago, though, long enough that the world sphere had time to float and roll over until the hole was no longer accessible to the Ruinous Powers. For a time.

Either way, Eleven couldn’t get in. Not through here, even if he were willing to add to the damage. Not without natural law of his own. His body.

He could try Eununcia, assuming sound wasn’t hopelessly muffled by the pressure so far under, here. But unless he spent eons trying to puzzle out all the mechanics and come up with a non-damaging incantation, he’d just weaken it more.

Perhaps there were other access places, deeper, but he’d already inspected what he could. He’d swam as deep as he could without feeling like… something unpleasant might happen despite his special case. There was something or somethings here that completely exceeded even his frame of reference. It was like those dreams of suffering or ecstasy that you always wake up from before the going gets good, if you haven’t experienced the acts or sensations in real life first. Either way, he couldn’t swim deep enough to see the bottom of the world, never mind whatever infinity the Deep Warp spanned.

He could cast off what he had left and delve on as a naked soul…

But he knew the feeling of the power that kept him out. He remembered it from long ago, when Earth still had its gods. This world was populated. In was populated by enough sophonts to sustain faith-based deities. Gods of sufficient strength, or perhaps the defenses were just so good, that the Primordial Annihilator couldn’t just roll it over. Probably both. It was everything his father and others before him had wanted to accomplish. Everything he himself failed to see completed.

He decided to learn as much as he could first.

Eleven made his way back up.

He roamed the local Chaos Realms until he found mustering forces. Predominantly Khornate, which meant combat.

Going down.

He followed. Down through a scaffold made of parasitic tendrils around slimy gangrenous brass, just enough for what would be considered a ‘mere’ trickle of warp spawn, by the Imperium of ten millennia from now. Just enough of the Deep Warp had been displaced to form a tunnel through the ocean, all the way to the pole of the outer shell currently facing their filthy isle of ruin. There was a gate there, of some sort, now tainted. Corrupted by Chaos Undivided through fel spume and letters.

The star sphere was self-contained but adrift, it turned this way and that as the Deep Warp’s ocean-like currents moved it. It wouldn’t be noticeable from inside, but from outside it meant that Chaos had managed to get a foothold at the pole, where before had been a stargate. Since the world spun and rolled as it drifted, it was possible, even likely, that the other pole occasionally faced the uppermost surface of the Deep Warp as well, which meant the same probably happened there too. Would happen again when the firmament rolled again.

Stargate. Waygate. Or Gates.

Doorways. Access portals. The only components of the world system that weren’t entirely crafted for defense and protection, and thus still possible to suborn mystically.

And, if his incipient suspicions about this were true, both gates would be paired to an identical one on the worlds inside, deeper in.

He made his way to the gate.

He found combat.

The Legions of Hell were engaged in never ending war.

The Legions of Hell were stalemated. By a single warrior.

A dwarf.

Eleven stared in shock.

… They both were prophecies!

Astonishing! Not just Warhammer 40,000 but Warhammer Fantasy as well, both games had been prophetic! Incredible!

It took some time to get over his amazement.

It took much longer to come up with a course of action. Close to a year, actually, by his own reckoning. A year when he only occasionally dropped by to watch the big dwarf fight, to relax. The bulk of Eleven’s time was spent examining the fel works of the daemons with all his mathematic acumen, doing the same to the Chaos Realms themselves, then to the waygate, and even studying what else he could of the masterwork that was the submerged world sphere, from outside.

Ultimately, what decided his course was the false nature of Chaos and its works. They couldn’t create, only corrupt.

Khorne was the greatest warrior only because he aped the talent and might of real warriors he humiliated through advantages he didn’t work for, and so he himself felt humiliated for never having any claim to valor of his own. He was too big for fair fights even as he was never more than equal to the best. Slaanesh was eternally unsatisfied because all pleasures were already had by someone else, and in such amounts that they were no longer fresh. Nurgle worked to make all life miserable because it was the only way to make himself miserable, he was born out of a fear and hatred of death, and so he constantly feared and hated himself. His ‘warm’ attitude towards the mortals he plagued was him being an abusive parent, self-deluding himself into thinking he’s doing it all ‘for your own good. And Tzeentch…

Tzeentch wouldn’t have anything to undermine or ruin, if the good and proper job hadn’t already been successfully accomplished, somehow somewhere. His claim on ‘hope’ was his delusion that he’d succeed at twisting precognition into retrocognition. He was literally trying to manifest a desired outcome by looking into the cosmos’ collective experience, and then trying to convince the same cosmos that the complete fantasy you just thought up was actually reality. Because some of the events, facts and figures in it came from reality.

Compared to the Ruinous Powers, a single human soul might not seem like much.

But Eleven had had over thirty thousand years to collect data, run experiments, process outcomes, develop theories, and calculate future possibilities. Including the ultimate nature of the Primordial Annihilator.

In the end, it was just a metastasized tumor grown from the mangled emanations of sophonts. Those, he’d found, always emerged and behaved in ways that were perfectly comprehensible to humanity, given sufficient time and open mind.

Finally, unlike Neoth, he did make sure to have a properly perfect memory. Which was why he remembered perfectly well why he had planned to become a god, back then.

And how.

“I Am I That I AM.”

By its very nature, Eununcia had to sound to work. Which meant that it could be traced back to the source, when using it for any sort of outward effect. No matter how invisible he was. To change only himself was a different matter, but that was only the second, longer-term stage of his new plan. Hopefully eternal. Later.

“My mind is a burgeoning record, my spirit is faculty self-transcending, my form is a vessel ever-meliorating by dictum of my Soul.”

The Warp heard him. The Chaos Gods heard him. The daemons swarmed the place from whence his words resounded, followed his trail as he flew along golden ratio lines. It burned them whenever they drew near, letting him stay just a bit ahead as he plunged through the Chaos Realms straight for the gate.

“I Am I That I AM. My spirit spans experience, my form masters all rigor, my mind charts all potentials by cognizance of my Soul.”

He’d already tried this under the Deep Warp’s surface, but he just couldn’t yell the words loud enough. Now, though, again in the Deep Warp but with the power of a nascent god bolstering him, he could make it work just this once.

“I Am I That I AM. My Past Is Inviolate, My Future Is Mine, My Present Is My Soul Become the Funnel into the Nous of All!”

The surface of the Deep Warp frothed with the resounding might of a divine birth.

It wasn’t real, he lacked all the power and claim, but the Warp was the realm where dreams were real. For a brief time, even his dream could be real here, despite everything else.

He didn’t see it through. The failed spell of a delusional cosmic devil-thing was not the best foundation for godhood. Even if it were, this was the worst moment and place to do it. Having his true name sealed wouldn’t work if his true name changed, he’d have to redo the procedure and that would take time and safety he didn’t have. The Chaos Gods made sport of gobbling up new deities. And at the end of the day, a single speaker of Eununcia was never going to be enough to see them gone.

He shot through the daemon throng like a rocket, annihilated everything in his path, and lost so much momentum by the end of his flight that he didn’t obliterate the dwarf on the way in.

“OGH!”

The Tongue of Creation worked best in the materium anyway.

At the North Pole on the world of Mallus, Grimnir the Fearless shot out of the broken waygate skipping like a stone. A bloody chunk of rock that bounced twenty times, smashed through eight glaciers, and came to a stop amidst a flock of scared and confused penguins. He spent the next five minutes trying to dig himself out of ice and warpstone, failing to curse Chaos to the twentieth generation because he was too busy wheezing from the hardest gut smack in his life.

That was good. It meant he wasn’t a distraction from the misused stargate, the last dregs of the Eleventh’s spirit still left, and the final spasm of power from his aborted ascension on the other side. Which, in that last moment, was still him.

“All that is in my sight,” he rasped. “Be No More.”

The roof of the world was erased from existence. At the same time, the paired waygate on the outside of the cosmic shell was similarly destroyed as his dream of divinity self-immolated.

Both broken stargates and the chaos rift they sustained were instantly annihilated in twin implosions of cataclysmic force.

Left behind was a soul adrift, new arctic weather patterns, and a wheezing god staring at the sudden removal of his eternal doom with wide-eyed, dumbstruck eyes.

Plan ‘change destiny’ failed successfully.

Eleven felt the sights of many turn to where they were. They saw the absent warp rift, the absent warp gate, the all-new crater in the ground that was so deep it seemed to have no bottom in the polar twilight. They saw him, there was still a scrap of spirit wisking away, he hadn’t withdrawn into himself yet, he’d neglected to do so with everything else happening, he had to-

“Who – what – what is this?”

He almost hid and fled by reflex.

But…

If he leveraged things right, this time and place could give him some very mighty allies later.

“That – you – how?”

Grimnir huffed and puffed and stumbled with breathless steps… he looked so awestruck… sounded so grateful.

Eleven used what scrap of will he still had to weave a see-through ghost out of lingering warp matter and faced the old immortal.

“A manling?!”

Grimnir was a muscular dwarf with his body covered with tattoos and ritual scars. If he once wore anything but the spiked orange crest of a Slayer and his ragged pants, there was no sign. His axe, too, looked like it was one swing away from a snapped shaft, even as it cut a deep grove in the ice as he dragged it behind him. “You – what – what did you do? How?” The large dwarf was much taller than the biggest man. It made the tentative hope on is face all the more stark. “… I thought I’d be fighting that fight forever.”

A wry smile was all Eleven dared give in answer. He barely had any strength left, he’d manage a handful of words at most, he couldn’t waste them.

Grimnir bit his hand to calm down. Fresh blood steamed when the drops hit the snow.

Finally, the dwarf god let go, took a deep breath and went to one knee with hand held out. “I am Grimnir, the Slayer, Grungni’s brother, Living Ancestor of all Dawi everywhere. And I vow, here and now, that I will find a way to prove to you, that we dwarves hold onto debts of honor as tightly as our grudges.”

Eleven held out a spectral hand in return, laid it on top of Grimnir’s even though neither could feel it. Perhaps some imprint of his essence might be remembered later? If not by Grimnir, then by whoever else he meets. “You might well need to choose between the two, soon enough.”

“Wait-!“

He would’ve waited, spoken for days if that’s what it took, there was little he wanted to say but much he wanted to know. But that was all he had in him, and he wasn’t one to deal with others purely on their terms. As his mirage dispersed, he discarded the last of his spiritual body and hid himself from all eyes, finally, including those powers who might otherwise be able to force souls to their bidding. He could be imperceptible to all as a naked soul, but that wouldn’t help him much if he was trapped ably enough. He flew away.

He couldn’t dawdle. He could feel the changes wrought upon himself, the many works he could now grasp, the unlimited potential for self-actualization now inborn. With effort and time, he should be able to become anything, do anything, achieve literally anything. Enough, maybe, to turn even the galaxy’s future on a hinge.

But he could do none of that if he remained a figment incapable of setting the terms for a measly conversation.

Or grab tools.

Finally, and most importantly, the Second Primarch was somewhere on this world. Somewhere on this planet, somewhere within this time capsule of men, elves, dwarves, giants, orks, dragons and rats, his little brother waited to be rescued.

Probably in the Great Vortex, if certain old lore had any grain of truth. The Lore of Heaven. Sigmar.

Still, for all that an unbound soul couldn’t do much alone, he could roam and wander at his leisure. Quite swiftly too. It took no time at all to find the nearest piece of civilization. It was a tribe of Norscans whose soothsayer had just become stark raving mad.

He passed them over. Not because they venerated Chaos, the people of old Babylon and Akkad did it too by the time of his rule, that was why he built his tower to begin with. Like his father Naram-Sin before him, the point was to become a human god, one of however many it took to claim all possible spheres of influence in the star system, before the Ruinous Powers finally woke up and usurped them all. It would have given mankind its own higher powers to serve that weren’t crazy and abusive abominations from beyond the stars. In so doing, there would have been enough of them to muster forces and build defenses, maybe completely insulate the Sol system against external predation. That was where he and Neoth would forever be at odds.

That was clearly what the Old Ones had done here. Or tried.

They certainly managed more than he did.

Unfortunately, by Eldar trickery Neoth was driven to ruin that plan, and then his arrogant henchman’s misuse of Eununcia against Eununcia inflicted such a wound on the oversoul of humanity that mankind irreversibly fractured. The fragmentation of language wasn’t the cause of mankind’s eternal division, merely its quickest and most obvious consequence.

Eleven passed the second tribe over too, and the tribe after that one, and several more until he found what he wanted.

A woman.

A woman in labour.

A woman whose child was already dead inside her, meaning he didn’t need to deprive another soul of its rightful life.

He waited until the stillbirth was done before entering the babe. Thankfully, the spirit lasted a fair while after the soul departed on unnatural death, so he had just enough to work with. He settled in, rewired and quantized his brain, and even managed to poke and squeeze life back into his heart and lungs in time for the spank.

He couldn’t control the reflex to cry. It was embarrassing, but also the proof he needed that in this, at least, everything had gone right.

He was Libet-ili En-Marad, King of Babylon and Emperor of Akkad, the Hunter, the Architect who erected the House of the Eye of the Lands, the Last of the Sorcerer-Kings of Ancient Terra.

On old Earth, he’d been maligned and slandered for centuries by the petty losers that he had for enemies, until it became custom to label any simpleton a ‘Nimrod.’

On Mallus, Nimrod was reborn with unlimited potential and a direct tap into the akashic records of all macrocosms, on the very night when the voices of the chaos gods went dim.

It was, all things considered, quite adequately messianic.

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Mechanics

This is probably the most trouble anyone has ever gone through, to justify a Celestial Forge/Grimoire story.

This isn’t the usual sort, though, and not just because of the way it starts. Or when. I envision Nimrod as having access to both the Grimoire and Forge, but he controls when the rolls happen – i.e., the potential (CP) builds up normally, but he chooses in-universe when to roll. Roll 1/2 to determine if it’s Grimoire or Forge, then roll normally for list, then for the perk in the list.

However, there is one major difference: he doesn’t get any freebies – i.e. he gets only the knowledge of how to build the thing, or how to induce the change to his mind/body/spirit/whatever that a perk would imply. A ‘you can suddenly shapeshift’ perk would give him detailed comprehension of the mechanics, and how to acquire the ability, but he’d have to do the legwork himself, and supply the necessary magic or materials through his own work.

Conversely, however, a perk that normally gives a magic sword doesn’t actually grant the sword, but it teaches him everything he needs to make it, from the mining process to the forging, and the magical techniques needed for the enchantments. All knowledge, ability and skill will require practice, but it’s complete. By extension, getting all the relevant knowledge from the perks means he acquires cross-field expertise very quickly. I.e. a sword perk will teach him blacksmithing, while getting a perk for an orbital gun would teach him how to build it, and all the infrastructure, industry, computer technology, material science, rocket science and everything else necessary to build and put it up there in the first place.

Similarly, a perk that gives him a spell, energy regeneration, or protection from scrying wouldn’t actually apply the effects. But he’d learn everything needed to do it and understand all the benefits and limits, as well as the material/mystical mechanics involved.

Some perks will flat out not work at all, and will be rerolled automatically. There will be no extradimensional warehouse that ‘just works’ nor will he be able to conjure up an entire mine complex with its own population and eternally regenerating resources just because the perk says so.

Obviously, the perk prices get shot to hell with this approach, but such is life.

That said, being able to choose when to roll does mean he could bank points for several years and then roll whatever he wants through endless retries when he sits down one day. Since that’s a bit too much cheese even for me, I’d say a 50/100 CP cost to reroll would be a good way to balance that out.

And maybe some in-universe loss of time to assimilate the knowledge, and especially to achieve the intended effects. With more time needed the better the perk is. One day per 100 CP would be fine for weak perks, but maybe too little for big ones. Maybe a fancier addition? Could be a day for 100 CP, 1+ 2 = 3 days for 200 CP perks, 1+2+3 = 6 days for 300 CP, and a 1400 CP perk would be 105 in-universe days. A ridiculous amount of time, but one totally justified by how bullshit the top-tier perks are, in my opinion. Maybe he can choose between one super-long trance, or spreading it out over his normal sleeping hours, making it double the time frame if he just does it while he sleeps at night like normal?

Maybe during this time he wouldn’t be getting any additional CP, because he’d be using the inflow to maintain the plug into the perk he’s currently assimilating.

Anyway, here Nimrod gets to ‘cheat’ the early game a bit, but not as much as it could have been. Perfect memory means he recalls all the stuff he ever worked on, including a fair chunk of the stuff that would be in a Federation STC database, for example. He didn’t waste his time during that era, and he even worked on some stuff himself. Led colony missions, even. But he won’t have the means to actually do anything with that knowledge any time soon, especially in a world like this, even with his soul now plugged into akasha. Tools to make better tools to make better tools will take a fair bit of time, even if he conjures some wholesale. In other words, by the time the story reaches that point, odds are he’ll have gotten a bunch of perks of comparable applicability anyway.

He does, also, retain full knowledge of Eununcia. For reasons already stated in-story, however, he won’t be using it outwardly unless the situation is really poignant. Instead, he’ll aim it internally in order to prompt the perk rolls, and make sure he gets everything possible from the download. Also, I’m considering making it so that Eununcia isn’t as dramatic in scale as it used to be, before the Chaos Gods awoke. The language was clearly easier to use with impunity in the old days. Ollanius was able to stab the emperor to death and then use Eununcia to destroy Babel all by himself, all in the brief time it took Emps to resurrect. Someone capable of such a feat would have worfed Horus like a deer on a windshield.

Broadly, Nimrod has three starting perks, so to speak. The underlined parts are things he won't be able to do until he matures / evolves his body/spirit/mind/magic enough to cope. I also reworded and removed some stuff, because I like my vernacular thematic, and because I don’t think it makes sense for some stuff to be there.

Sealed True Name, Celestial Grimoire, Skulduggery Pleasant, Source (1400 CP)

Somehow, you discovered your True Name, and, through a process that may or may not have involved temporarily killing yourself and carving a delicate series of runes into your own heart, you have sealed your True Name. This offers a number of considerable benefits. First of all, your name being sealed means it cannot be used against you, even if others know it. Second, it enhances your magic tremendously, affording you a considerable boost in both raw power and your growth rate. While this will not grant you access to an unlimited font of raw magical power until you ascend in an appropriate manner, it will make it so your well of magical energy grows by leaps and bounds continuously, even without any training or effort on your part. This perk also grants you a notable healing factor, which scales in effectiveness as your overall magic capacity grows larger. With enough magical power, your body could heal itself from being shot in the head fast enough that the entry wound closes before the bullet exits the back of your skull. The accomplishments you needed to make, and the steps you had to take to learn your True Name, have also given you the ability to perceive and interact with the magic of others, as well as their spirit and consciousnesses. With the right approach, time, and power, you are able to manipulate them as well, and even go past flesh and spirit to the soul itself. Eventually, you may even learn how to cycle through them, seeing everything they have seen and learning everything they know. Remember, however, that souls are not as fragile as other things, especially when they have everything to lose. Willing consent can go a long way.

Last and Greatest Magician, HighSchool DxD, Modus (600 CP)

Human magic began as a cobbled-together smattering of inconsistent spells and rituals, altogether inherently inferior to most other races’ own magical prowess. It is not only scaled down, but also requires various aids to use, be they mind-expanding fumes, tools, potions, or mnemonic techniques. Not only that, but without the necessary talent you might not be able to reproduce the paltriest spell even with perfect technique. You have overcome all this through the power of mathematics. You are a living legend in what magic refers to, not only do your spells need much less magic, but you can use various equations to understand, reproduce and reverse-engineer magical feats, as well as reproduce them or invent new ones. Your spells hit with every inch of power of masterwork dweomers perfected over millennia, if not even more with personal tweaks. Not only that, but you are naturally attuned to magic and thus can analyze, break down, learn and reproduce any magic system you encounter in record time. Thus, you are even able to reproduce the abilities of other beings into magic that anyone can use, without a loss in power or increase in complexity. With time, you may even push them further than their natural users.

A Rarefied Mind, Cultist Simulator, Lore (100 CP)

It would be a shame that in your quest for transcendence you suffered a lapse of memory. It’s not like some secret teachings can be found in any random library. Fortunately, you managed to attain a perfect memory, limitless, and retroactive, while also allowing for instant recall and perfect indexing. You will never forget any moment of your life, no matter how small, and you will be able to recall those moments as if you were currently standing there again. As a retroactive effect, your past memories are also affected, and will immediately be restored even if you somehow manage to lose them. Or are made to.

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