The Ringing of a Forge of Stars [Warhammer 40k/ Celestial forge V3||OC...ish]

TwilightHakumei · May 7, 2021

Aw OP item from the start, btw do you think you can merge similar items the Mc gains in the Future? like Power Armors would be automatically import and merged with each other? with the the Valkyrie Core merging with the Core of Infinite Stratus, Union Core of a Mental Model or something.

Trek · May 7, 2021

It seems pretty convoluted, you basically brainwashed mc into thinking the tail and ears were not mutated tumors rather a part of him. If he does not want to remove them he should at least hide them. This nothing like the color of his skin, his sexual orientation etc, this is a side effect-created tumor that has brainwashed him into thinking he is a fox. Maybe once he gets some safety perks which protect from mutations he will come to his senses.

Lets hope he does not share any tech with anyone. He has no blackboxing perks yet.

Cheetored20 · May 7, 2021

I'm hoping that he gets the dynamo thing that absorbs laser fire and converts it to power, it's stupid op in this setting.... Then again Ana is stupid op. As much as I'm hoping that the core is on Ana's level right now it probably isn't.

CreepyUncleLuke · May 7, 2021

Trek said:
It seems pretty convoluted, you basically brainwashed mc into thinking the tail and ears were not mutated tumors rather a part of him. If he does not want to remove them he should at least hide them. This nothing like the color of his skin, his sexual orientation etc, this is a side effect-created tumor that has brainwashed him into thinking he is a fox. Maybe once he gets some safety perks which protect from mutations he will come to his senses.

Lets hope he does not share any tech with anyone. He has no blackboxing perks yet.

I'm pretty sure that's wrong. The fact is if they were claws or something like that I could understand, but both the ears and tails feed into his sense of balance and hearing. Would you cut off your ears? I sure s hell wouldn't. Besides there isn't that much to help detect them in 40k if he actively uses his tech to hide them, I can't remember anything that actively helps detecting mutations apart from warp fuckery and that only works because most mutations are warp fuckery.

Jeff · May 7, 2021

Trek said:
It seems pretty convoluted, you basically brainwashed mc into thinking the tail and ears were not mutated tumors rather a part of him. If he does not want to remove them he should at least hide them. This nothing like the color of his skin, his sexual orientation etc, this is a side effect-created tumor that has brainwashed him into thinking he is a fox. Maybe once he gets some safety perks which protect from mutations he will come to his senses.

Lets hope he does not share any tech with anyone. He has no blackboxing perks yet.

I didnt realy get that with color of the skin and His Sexualität is he homosexual ? Black Or brown ?.

Trek · May 7, 2021

CreepyUncleLuke said:
I'm pretty sure that's wrong. The fact is if they were claws or something like that I could understand, but both the ears and tails feed into his sense of balance and hearing. Would you cut off your ears? I sure s hell wouldn't. Besides there isn't that much to help detect them in 40k if he actively uses his tech to hide them, I can't remember anything that actively helps detecting mutations apart from warp fuckery and that only works because most mutations are warp fuckery.

That the point, they are not his ears, if you grew wings from a side effect of an untested treatment and that made people discriminate against you and increase your chances of death would you still keep them when its easily reversabel?

This is not some innate part of him, its a tumor that grew from side effects and now its affected his mind to the point that he actually considered it a part of him and is willing to risk his life to keep the tumors.

If it was his fetish or he was born with this desire or grew the dersie to be a fox before the treatment than it would be one thing and I would happily accept it, but one moment before the experiment he did not want to be a fox and right after it he seemed to instantly want to be a fox and not fix the side effects.

Its not even like the benefits are actually great, he could easily make some tech to get far better hearing and balance than he gets with these new tumors which increase his chances of death.

Jeff said:
I didnt realy get that with color of the skin and His Sexualität is he homosexual ? Black Or brown ?.

Ya I didn't get what he was talking about either, I was just referencing it to show how different those things are compared to side effects from an experiment. They are innate while fox ears and tail are not.

CreepyUncleLuke · May 7, 2021

Trek said:
That the point, they are not his ears, if you grew wings from a side effect of an untested treatment and that made people discriminate against you and increase your chances of death would you still keep them when its easily reversabel?

This is not some innate part of him, its a tumor that grew from side effects and now its affected his mind to the point that he actually considered it a part of him and is willing to risk his life to keep the tumors.

If it was his fetish or he was born with this desire or grew the dersie to be a fox before the treatment than it would be one thing and I would happily accept it, but one moment before the experiment he did not want to be a fox and right after it he seemed to instantly want to be a fox and not fix the side effects.

Its not even like the benefits are actually great, he could easily make some tech to get far better hearing and balance than he gets with these new tumors which increase his chances of death.

Ya I didn't get what he was talking about either, I was just referencing it to show how different those things are compared to side effects from an experiment. They are innate while fox ears and tail are not.

I understand that, but they aren't tumors. Tumors don't have ear canals or bones. You can remove a tumor with no issues as long as it is relatively benign, you can't remove ears and a tail without massively affecting your balance and probably a decent amount of trauma from not being able to hear from where you are meant to be able to. And don't say it shouldn't affect him because he considers them parts of him already, so he would literally be removing parts of himself so he could be "safer", in 40k. Why not remove his nerves too since his muscle memory has been affected by all the perks and memories he considers his?

Trek · May 7, 2021

CreepyUncleLuke said:
I understand that, but they aren't tumors. Tumors don't have ear canals or bones. You can remove a tumor with no issues as long as it is relatively benign, you can't remove ears and a tail without massively affecting your balance and probably a decent amount of trauma from not being able to hear from where you are meant to be able to. And don't say it shouldn't affect him because he considers them parts of him already, so he would literally be removing parts of himself so he could be "safer", in 40k. Why not remove his nerves too since his muscle memory has been affected by all the perks and memories he considers his?

Muscle memory does not affect his chances of death and all perks are fiat backed to not be negative unless you mess them up. If anything perks increase his chances of survival massively as long as he is smart about it.

He has the tech to easily remove them and restore human levels of balance and hearing by regenerating his old ears. Its not a medical issue, the question is only if he wants to, as long as he wants to its easy with his current perks.

The question is not if he considered it a part of him, I can see that, what I am saying is that he has literally no reason other than the side effects to consider them a part of him, they are literally deformations cause by side effects. These are not new body parts he wanted, that he wanted to live with before the treatment.

If you reattach some other arm to an amputee they have mental issues, so imagine how much anyone whose ears were replaced by massive fox ears and a tail would suffer body dysmorphia and want to get rid of it as fast as possible.

In conclusion, as mc does not have body dysmorphia issues before the treatment we can only conclude that the treatment damaged his brain or warped it to forcefully make these body deformations acceptable and innate to his mind. I am saying that this is a bad thing, that someone with his 15k super-geniuses of combined int should be able to see that, overcome it and reverse the changes. If you know you have brain damage that's making your mind accept this would you not fix it asap?

CreepyUncleLuke · May 7, 2021

Trek said:
Muscle memory does not affect his chances of death and all perks are fiat backed to not be negative unless you mess them up. If anything perks increase his chances of survival massively as long as he is smart about it.

He has the tech to easily remove them and restore human levels of balance and hearing by regenerating his old ears. Its not a medical issue, the question is only if he wants to, as long as he wants to its easy with his current perks.

The question is not if he considered it a part of him, I can see that, what I am saying is that he has literally no reason other than the side effects to consider them a part of him, they are literally deformations cause by side effects. These are not new body parts he wanted, that he wanted to live with before the treatment.

If you reattach some other arm to an amputee they have mental issues, so imagine how much anyone whose ears were replaced by massive fox ears and a tail would suffer body dysmorphia and want to get rid of it as fast as possible.

In conclusion, as mc does not have body dysmorphia issues before the treatment we can only conclude that the treatment damaged his brain or warped it to forcefully make these body deformations acceptable and innate to his mind. I am saying that this is a bad thing, that someone with his 15k super-geniuses of combined int should be able to see that, overcome it and reverse the changes. If you know you have brain damage that's making your mind accept this would you not fix it asap?

Okay I think there's a misunderstanding here.1. The MC has the intelligence of 15k geniuses not necessarily the wisdom. 2.If the perks are all fiat backed why would the drawbacks not be? It's possible he literally can't get rid of them as they come from the terminal Oripathy drawback. 3. He has all these perks from Terra that are for use with animal parts, and perks that contain training come with memories I believe. So he would have memories of training with animal parts.4. It's possible he didn't lose his human ears, I think Harry would have noticed him losing ears overnight.

Besides have you thought that maybe having better hearing and balance is a damn good thing to have in 40k? Yeah it's dangerous but he should be able to hide them with his tech, it's actually my largest issue with this chapter that he didn't do it straight away. Inquisitors are used to people hiding mutations with belts and hats, not so much tech so advanced it might as well be magic. Honestly he doesn't seem to be taking the Imperium seriously, the fact that there is a SPESS MAHRINE chapter on planet and he isn't trying his damn best to hide such things makes him seem arrogant and foolish.

InfiniteChaosRai · May 7, 2021

CreepyUncleLuke said:
Okay I think there's a misunderstanding here.1. The MC has the intelligence of 15k geniuses not necessarily the wisdom. 2.If the perks are all fiat backed why would the drawbacks not be? It's possible he literally can't get rid of them as they come from the terminal Oripathy drawback. 3. He has all these perks from Terra that are for use with animal parts, and perks that contain training come with memories I believe. So he would have memories of training with animal parts.4. It's possible he didn't lose his human ears, I think Harry would have noticed him losing ears overnight.

Besides have you thought that maybe having better hearing and balance is a damn good thing to have in 40k? Yeah it's dangerous but he should be able to hide them with his tech, it's actually my largest issue with this chapter that he didn't do it straight away. Inquisitors are used to people hiding mutations with belts and hats, not so much tech so advanced it might as well be magic. Honestly he doesn't seem to be taking the Imperium seriously, the fact that there is a SPESS MAHRINE chapter on planet and he isn't trying his damn best to hide such things makes him seem arrogant and foolish.

he does still have his ears, which makes Trek's argument invalid.

Slider Zero said:
That I still had my regular human ears, and that they worked just as well as normal, was something of a surprise as well.

stads · May 7, 2021

hmm interesting that the tails and ears are part of his soul and not his body think basic hiding could work ish.
still beter for be to stuff the mc in his soon to be build mech suit on a permanent basis

Trek · May 7, 2021

CreepyUncleLuke said:
Okay I think there's a misunderstanding here.1. The MC has the intelligence of 15k geniuses not necessarily the wisdom. 2.If the perks are all fiat backed why would the drawbacks not be? It's possible he literally can't get rid of them as they come from the terminal Oripathy drawback. 3. He has all these perks from Terra that are for use with animal parts, and perks that contain training come with memories I believe. So he would have memories of training with animal parts.4. It's possible he didn't lose his human ears, I think Harry would have noticed him losing ears overnight.

Besides have you thought that maybe having better hearing and balance is a damn good thing to have in 40k? Yeah it's dangerous but he should be able to hide them with his tech, it's actually my largest issue with this chapter that he didn't do it straight away. Inquisitors are used to people hiding mutations with belts and hats, not so much tech so advanced it might as well be magic. Honestly he doesn't seem to be taking the Imperium seriously, the fact that there is a SPESS MAHRINE chapter on planet and he isn't trying his damn best to hide such things makes him seem arrogant and foolish.

The thing is its not a fiat drawback, its something mc caused to himself by accident with his treatment, its not a fiat drawback as the forge does not hand out those and the author has not stated mechanics to give mc random fiat backed drawbacks that he cant remove for no reason. All perks given by CF are treated as post jump as any attached drawbacks are automatically nullified and don't get carried along with the perk.

Perk memories are not his memories, and it still does not mean its not a side effect, he had those memories before he gave himself the treatment and he did not have the desire to have a fox body then so why randomly now?

If it was his choice to have this mutation it would be great, he could choose to keep these traits for their advanates and to adapt to the memories better, but that's not what happened, he fucked up with his treatment, which cause body deformation and then he randomly accepted the deformation as something equal to his skin color or his sexuality with no explanation.

Hearing and balance is a good thing indeed, but it can be achieved through tech rather than giving yourself a crippling deformation that will make strong people hunt you down.

The fact that he is not hiding it is even more proof that he has some mental damage from the treatment. How could he possibly want these mutations to the point that he is willing to reveal them in the Imperium of all places.

With the CF he can ignore everyone, if he wants to be a xeno he can, but I would rather he choose to do so and take precautions than randomly get deformed from his experimental fuck up and then accept it and reveal it freely.

InfiniteChaosRai said:
he does still have his ears, which makes Trek's argument invalid.

You got it the wrong way around, the argument was that it would effect his balance as he still has his human ears it means that removing new ones would still retain human ability.

Slider Zero · May 7, 2021

Once again it's time for Slider's Reply corner!

maitogai83 said:
... So, this derailed in three chapters.

The initial premise of a guy with some mechanicus knowledge and ME gear/commando abilities was neat. By now he doesn't have technology as much as straight up requity warping.

And it hasn't been a day IC.

In all fairness, I did EXPLICITLY state in both the title and tags that this is a Celestial Forge story, so the initial premise was "this is a guy who is going to get a hell of a lot stronger. that kind of escalation is bound to happen as a general rule.

InfiniteChaosRai said:
I will now never see mr. green as anything other then just tails. thank you, you have ruined my 40k experience.

for real though, keep it up, this story is fire.

might wanna swap it over to the NSFW forums if you want more readers though.

You're the second one to make the Tails reference now. (I don't mind it, really. Actually a compliment)

As for moving to the NSFW section...I've considered it...and am still considering it. Maybe later.

TwilightHakumei said:
Aw OP item from the start, btw do you think you can merge similar items the Mc gains in the Future? like Power Armors would be automatically import and merged with each other? with the the Valkyrie Core merging with the Core of Infinite Stratus, Union Core of a Mental Model or something.

Yes, I am well aware of just how busted a Valkyrie Core is...and one of my dream setups is combining this with the IS perk, some of the armored core stuff, and similar for extra OPness. It's just not there yet.

on combining suits...well there is at least one set of technology that will play quite happily with this kind of thing, but I haven't rolled anywhere near it yet. otherwise most power armor will have to go through the (drastically reduced) integration times of the Valkyrie core. as for direct imports into the core itself? maybe not quite so blatantly. Most of the available power armor is there as part of a larget tech base, and not just outright.

I will note that aside from shielding and reactionless flight that an infinite stratos isn't really adding all that much to the table, even if it was one of Tabane's specials. Impeller is freaking busted once you know how to use it right.

Cheetored20 said:
I'm hoping that he gets the dynamo thing that absorbs laser fire and converts it to power, it's stupid op in this setting.... Then again Ana is stupid op. As much as I'm hoping that the core is on Ana's level right now it probably isn't.

While the Valkyrie Core is busted as a system, Anna had some exceptional circumstances in her favor to allow for the sheer level of brokenness that is her and Durga.

Satori has more access to what makes the cores tick, so he could potentially create something similar to one of the 300 frames (where they constantly upgrade even without use) but a lot of Anna's BS will stay with her. Tory will instead make his own BS.

Jeff said:
I didnt realy get that with color of the skin and His Sexualität is he homosexual ? Black Or brown ?.

Err...excuse the clunkiness of that part. l may not have stated it, but Satori is a Large Black Man. as for the whole sexual orientation bit, that is currently irrelevant, but I will state that the analouge of our earth that he comes from has some really WEIRD politics sexually, and he paid for it by being on the "wrong" side of the "argument". That this side was not having taken a side is completely irrelevant.

Trek said:
I*Snip*

CreepyUncleLuke said:
I*snip*

Alright, I just grabbed the first posts of your little side argument there so I could call attention to this more than anything else. Satori has decided (for good or ill) that the ears and tails are now a part of him, and we will not be willingly parting with them. It's worth noting that one of the early drafts for that scene went into detail about just how bad slicing off what is literally part of one's spine is for them, and I had a similar setup for the ears. The mutation part is potentially applicable as his regular ears are still there, faunus style (granted Arknights does it the same way, so it's just following the style).

I'm not sure if either of you noticed, but I DID try to put it in that the new ears were largely responsible for keeping him and Harry from getting whacked by that killteam through enhanced early warning, so it's not all just for show.

As for calls that he may or may not be underestimating the imperium in general and the inquisition and/or Astartes in particular, it's a yes/no thing. on the one hand, what he said about the simplest things being the most effective is absolutely true in all regards. on the other, the Inquisition actually IS that good, when roused, and Space Marines are even better. it really comes down to levels of knowledge. as long as he keeps a lower profile than they are willing to push against, it is unlikely they will notice anything out of the ordinary. Give them a reason to search, though, and its almost a given that discrepancies will start piling up..but that's true for most hive worlders anyway, so it's ultimately a moot point.

As for the Intelligence/wisdom thing: this is true, that his intelligence is now vastly superior to his wisdom. That does not mean that his wisdom is shit. and while I may have done an extremely poor job at it, I did try to make the point that the technology for what he wants/needs is not available just yet, and just inventing it out of the blue is currently outside of his knowledge and parts availability. this is subject to change, however, and he is constantly on the lookout for new ways of keeping himself low key until he can accomplish his objectives.

Morkail · May 7, 2021

40k and worm share the same problem if you show up on earth bet with out blank there's a decent chance a portal will open in front of you and you can except to be killed or to mind controlled in short order. Same problem in 40k on the local level it's fine but the minutiae you have any kind of power the warp gods are going to come for your ass. Not to mention the eldar or even the emperor.

even if he gains god like power trust me 40k will rise to the occasion. Good story keep up the good work.

TwilightHakumei · May 7, 2021

Slider Zero said:
Yes, I am well aware of just how busted a Valkyrie Core is...and one of my dream setups is combining this with the IS perk, some of the armored core stuff, and similar for extra OPness. It's just not there yet.

on combining suits...well there is at least one set of technology that will play quite happily with this kind of thing, but I haven't rolled anywhere near it yet. otherwise most power armor will have to go through the (drastically reduced) integration times of the Valkyrie core. as for direct imports into the core itself? maybe not quite so blatantly. Most of the available power armor is there as part of a larget tech base, and not just outright.

I will note that aside from shielding and reactionless flight that an infinite stratos isn't really adding all that much to the table, even if it was one of Tabane's specials. Impeller is freaking busted once you know how to use it right.

Nah its not the matter of adding functions but merging items/equipment into one so their won't be too many duplicates that do or provide the same thing. Maybe I'm just to nitpicking but most of it should be solved by the storing those items/equipment Valkyrie Core, btw does the Valkyrie Core combine items or just improve the items stored inside it?

InfiniteChaosRai · May 7, 2021

That Phineas and Ferb perk is quite possibly the most overpowered thing you could have gotten, combined with the time dilation perk, you could probably reverse engineer the Valkyrie core in like a day or two.

for those without 3 brain cells to rub together, being able to do weeks worth of work in an hour is the very definition of time dilation.

Slider Zero · May 7, 2021

TwilightHakumei said:
Nah its not the matter of adding functions but merging items/equipment into one so their won't be too many duplicates that do or provide the same thing. Maybe I'm just to nitpicking but most of it should be solved by the storing those items/equipment Valkyrie Core, btw does the Valkyrie Core combine items or just improve the items stored inside it?

I may have stated it poorly, but that was what I was getting at. The Valk Core will generally take the things it likes and /or those that would not have adverse issues to duplication and then use the rest as fodder for projects and upgrades, likely even fusing things together a la Anna's crazy particle cannons.

Valkyrie cores CAN combine items (again, see Anna and her Heavy Particle Cannons) but most of the ones we see in BAHHSCQ DONT, mostly due to lack of time/experience. not going to stop me from milking it for all it's worth, though.

InfiniteChaosRai said:
That Phineas and Ferb perk is quite possibly the most overpowered thing you could have gotten, combined with the time dilation perk, you could probably reverse engineer the Valkyrie core in like a day or two.

for those without 3 brain cells to rub together, being able to do weeks worth of work in an hour is the very definition of time dilation.

Oh yeah. I knew how busted that was when I rolled it. part of the whole Oripathy cure set that I wrote was illustrating that to the readers. and Do note that the perk has yet to be used to its full effectiveness, which generally requires a team of people to pull off. I pushed the envelope of the normal use limits for a single person for the sake of narrative and showing off...but that does not mean that a similar effort cannot be performed again.

(edited reply in because I didn't wanna double post)

RangersteveP · May 7, 2021

I'm getting Security Forces or PJ vibes outta this MC. Not a lot of jobs in the Airforce have training that calls for assaulting an ambush. Shit, shoulda had Harry go for an L shape sweep, heh.

Nimeroni · May 7, 2021

Slider Zero said:
This does present a bit of a writing challenge for me, though, considering that anyone who discovers this (and is not a chaos worshipper) will likely be trying to kill him on the spot.

See the bright side: you now have a great way to detect Chaos worshippers: they are the only one not trying to kill you !

Morkail said:
40k and worm share the same problem if you show up on earth bet with out blank there's a decent chance a portal will open in front of you and you can except to be killed or to mind controlled in short order. Same problem in 40k on the local level it's fine but the minutiae you have any kind of power the warp gods are going to come for your ass. Not to mention the eldar or even the emperor.

You are vastly overestimating Cauldron. Contessa is one woman, she have a medieval mentality which make her underestimate Tinkers, and most fic goes with "news powers are treated as triggers, so they scramble precog".

To go back to W40k, let's hope by the time he get the attention of the warp assholes, he'll have enough bullshit tech to keep them at bay.

Hadrian.Caeser · May 9, 2021

A fox? Why did you splice his DNA with a fox? Not that he couldn't claim to be a surviver of the golden age and that such manipulation of one's DNA like that was considered normal. Still, why?

Cheetored20 · May 10, 2021

Hadrian.Caeser said:
A fox? Why did you splice his DNA with a fox? Not that he couldn't claim to be a surviver of the golden age and that such manipulation of one's DNA like that was considered normal. Still, why?

DNA is not spliced, it's forge fiat. Also author said the chapter INSISTED on it.

Hadrian.Caeser · May 10, 2021

Cheetored20 said:
it's forge fiat

It might be due to not being a native speake, but I have no idea what you tried to tell me

ATP · May 10, 2021

Hadrian.Caeser said:
It might be due to not being a native speake, but I have no idea what you tried to tell me

i think,that the same like deux ex machina,but i could be wrong.Basically,X is X becouse higher authorities/for example Zeus/ say so.
Ancient writers used that when they could not explain something logically,and all writers after them followed.

velinus · May 11, 2021

I mean ... People who are complaining about the tails / ears that are easily covered up and actually not a huge problem if they are discovered since the Imperium has Abhumans (Catgirls are a thing.) aren't thinking about the real problem of the obvious Xeno/Tech-Heresy the MC will be using.

Inbetweenaction · May 11, 2021

velinus said:
I mean ... People who are complaining about the tails / ears that are easily covered up and actually not a huge problem if they are discovered since the Imperium has Abhumans (Catgirls are a thing.) aren't thinking about the real problem of the obvious Xeno/Tech-Heresy the MC will be using.

1. Abhumans are treated as trash though
2. Cat abhumans are one of the rarest kinds that are officially not mutants, so how much are you willing to bet that this planets pupulus knows about them?
3. yes, the tech heresy is probably what would get him killed. But the ears and the tails are what would give him attention to have his heresy noticed...

Hadrian.Caeser · May 11, 2021

Inbetweenaction said:
1. Abhumans are treated as trash though
2. Cat abhumans are one of the rarest kinds that are officially not mutants, so how much are you willing to bet that this planets pupulus knows about them?
3. yes, the tech heresy is probably what would get him killed. But the ears and the tails are what would give him attention to have his heresy noticed...

And those tails will get in the way. He will need special everything, be it power armour or other equipment. Let's not even mention the ears. Let's ignore the necessary reworking of his skull to make them possible, they are not worth some relatively small advantages.

But if the author wants the protagonist to live with such disadvantages we will simply have to accept them. Let's hope the negative side effects of such characteristics won't be waved away for no reason

Inbetweenaction · May 11, 2021

Hadrian.Caeser said:
And those tails will get in the way. He will need special everything, be it power armour or other equipment. Let's not even mention the ears. Let's ignore the necessary reworking of his skull to make them possible, they are not worth some relatively small advantages.

But if the author wants the protagonist to live with such disadvantages we will simply have to accept them. Let's hope the negative side effects of such characteristics won't be waved away for no reason

Really don't mind the author keeping them, as long as they do make life hard due to it.

Mutilation is something that can be highly offensive to be forced into, especially if the si has history of being oppressed.

So as long as he respect the setting he is in and make it a problem, everything is fine

Hadrian.Caeser · May 11, 2021

Inbetweenaction said:
So as long as he respect the setting he is in and make it a problem, everything is fine

Yea. Let's hope for the best. Who knows, he/she/* might surprise us

Slider Zero · May 14, 2021

There are a lot of people who helped on this one, including some of the other CF fic authors. With that, a thank you and shout-out to Xolsis, darkchespin, and Melakias is in order, as well as the usual suspects of Cthulhu, Spiritual_Liege, and Sterlyn (the damned cheerleader). Special thanks to Ryune for one of the ideas I ran with in this chapter.

Note that this chapter is almost nothing but pure tech porn and me geeking out. As such, quality may be...degraded.

I could barely contain my excitement.

I had a literal, honest-to-god VALKYRIE CORE.

The seed engine of one of the most busted forms of power armor ever created.

The focus of massive evolving battleships that were the cornerstone of entire fleets.

Perhaps most amazingly of all, they were also the very heart of the massive Arcologies: tremendous post-scarcity cityscapes that utilized the potent Higgs energy generators to provide literally unlimited power.

One of their best core abilities was to adapt and upgrade any form of technology that they came across, and could reasonably store and/or integrate into the core itself through the use of it's space-warping defensive field, called an impeller.

The other was shockingly the impeller itself, being something so ridiculous that it could barely be placed into words just the kind of shenanigans that you could get up to with it.

That didn't even cover the power armor system that was usually a standard piece of equipment for most cores, and was generally referred to as the "frame."

There were downsides, of course. The first and largest were that of a limited use pool. Roughly one in ten thousand women could actually use the things.

And I say women for a very good reason: while the rate for the girls is low, but at least reasonably usable...the rate for men to be able to sync with a Valkyrie Core was literally one in a million. At best.

At worst the numbers were so low as to be almost infinitesimal.. It really was not fun to be a guy with those around, as you didn't get to play with the cool toys.

I, however, was fully capable of syncing with a core. And I would be using this time to dig as deep as possible into its guts to see what I could improve, too.

The power armor integrated into the core was nothing really major to write home about, all things considered. It was a bog-standard light power armor system, with some small bit of extras here and there to accommodate being integrated with a core. Besides, if my theory worked, then the armor system would get improved as well as a side effect. Thus, I was focusing my energies elsewhere.

For the first time since my arrival on this world, I intentionally and consciously leveraged the full and focused might of all of my abilities onto one single target: My Valkyrie Core.

The full force of a mind that was the equal--or, perhaps, greater-- of an entire football stadium of geniuses, that had an almost preternatural eye for detail and information processing...and was also a fully-trained ENGINEER. There would be practically nothing that could hide from my sight

And my prediction held true.

Immediately I began noticing issues that needed fixing. For one, the code was an absolute MESS. There were piles of inefficiencies and junk code everywhere, and that was just with a cursory scan of the interiors. A lot, a whole lot of my gripes with the system, few as they were, could be solved by simply cleaning up the codebase.

The second wasn't related to the core, but to the frame itself, which was unusual in that it was geared specifically for construction and support. Two brand spanking new fabricators sat in the storage, awaiting commands for use, while a medical unit sat on standby as well, in case of an emergency. This was very good for my plans, but failed to address the one minor issue of the fact that my frame had no weapons on it at all.

Not even the (supposedly) standard hypervelocity cannons and melee "halberd" were included. And considering that the second was a catchall phrase for ANY melee weapon whatsoever that wasn't one's fists...this would need to be rectified immediately. There was no way in hell I was going out there with no offense.

The third issue actually tied back into the first about the coding. Now that I had a better handle on the code base, which was improving even as I delved further in, I saw a very strange and troubling pattern emerge. It seemed that a lot of the linkage interfaces were...miswired is the only term I can come up with, even though it's wrong. It was almost like it was deliberately set to be as straining to the human body as possible for some reason, particularly the mind. And while this effect would fade with time, as the core itself learned its partner and adjusted accordingly, part of the process was a blatant enhancement of the human involved to meet the core. Which had some...interesting potential side effects if the data I was looking at was correct.

It was nothing major, and definitely would not have been an issue in its home universe without a freaking alien invasion directly forcing the issue to the surface, but it was something that could be fixed nonetheless, and with a small bit of coding.

I gave the system one last lookover, just to make sure that I had not missed anything at all that might be important before I started changing things.

And then I got to work, slowly but surely rewriting the entire core kernel for the piece of alien biotech I was currently synced with, to truly make it into a human technology, something which the Earth of the AG invasion would likely not have been able to do for at least another hundred years. (They did, however, have the very valid excuse of there being a literal war for survival going on, so there was some significant slack time involved.)

Now that I thought of it, this was almost a criminally perfect time to be multitasking and getting other stuff done...except that I had no desire to fuck up and ruin my core, as building a new one was going to be just this side of impossible without already having one. It could be done, just not without a very lengthy amount of setup time...and an amount of raw equipment that would have the Mechanicus breathing down my neck in a heartbeat, let alone the inquisition.

But those are bad topics. Right now the GOOD topic is how I'm about to pimp my core.

Now then, to the coding.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the major issues with the system itself were in the coding. There was a lot of junk code involved (and it WAS junk code, i'd quadruple-checked at this point), but also there were some very blatant inefficiencies as well. While I suspect that most of this would be optimized by the core itself, there was a lot of slack room involved, and it ate into areas where things could be improved drastically--like the improvement process itself, which was weirdly restricted by intentional code to not actually improve the core systems themselves, outside of partner interface optimizations. Which was weird, because I had the full knowledge of how the so-called 300 frames worked as well, and the setup was completely different.

Shrugging with the general weirdness, I instead pushed further with the re-coding, making sweeping optimizations across the board to everything that I could get my hands on while still synced with the core itself. And from the looks of it, my new partner seemed to be helping me. Or at least something was, as I was consistently getting pointed to areas of major snarls and otherwise bad decision making by the designers of the system, and making corrections as needed.

It was sad that one of the biggest changes I made (and was rather insistently pushed on, no less) was to the improvement and optimization routines themselves, which while good (and damned good, too) were not GREAT, as they could have been. As they should have been.

As I now once again made them.

Now the returned routine would be able to do much like the fabled 300 frames could, and optimize itself and its gear even without having a user synced up with the core itself...although the process would be, by necessity, both slower and less directed, less PERSONAL, than the normal process.

It was still nearly 200% faster than even the standard process, but I'm not going to complain just because I couldn't push it to 300%. I'd do that later on, and my partner here would help me.

The burst of feeling I got from that merely confirmed the suspicion that my core was developing far faster than the records normally stated happened with core users. Might be because I'm digging in the code, or perhaps because of all of the very subtle data interface implants I have on my person. Probably the latter, although the mega big brain likely helps as well. (an errant thought that seemed to be a shrug came to me then, along with an impression of the second being the culprit.)

NEXT CHANGE!!

I'd deliberately gone over the compatibility routines and checkers with a fine toothed comb, looking for any and all ways to improve the system. And find them I did.

With the new recode, the checks for compatibility with a user were more broadly defined even as they focused themselves. The end result was unexpected, but welcome nonetheless--the compatibility rate had gone down slightly to 1 in 11,000 for women...at the cost of increasing the male compatibility rate to the same level. I had, with a simple code change, nearly doubled the number of available users. And from the looks of it, the pool could be widened even further, given time.

I would definitely have to spread this around if I ended up on that particular earth. They needed all of the help they could get.

Oh...did I mention that this was a literal SIDE EFFECT of me going after the interface for the sync issues that newb valkyries tend to have?

The REAL targeted benefit was that now, even a brand new valkyrie could operate their cores (and by extension, their frames) for nearly four times longer before starting to burn out. And the adjustment period for the sync improvements had been cut in half outright.

This did not stop any of the issues that came from the fact that core partners with longer hours synced were still better than their newer counterparts, but it helped to bridge the gap between a total newbie and the trained core.

Lastly, Impeller improvements!

The code here was simultaneously and paradoxically both the cleanest and most organized as well as the worst, most blatantly cluttered mess that I had ever seen. And it would be improved.
I (WE) would improve it.

The process took HOURS, just for this alone. It was crazy, but necessary, as the impeller was directly tied to some of the core systems of how the complexity/storage space issues worked. And even then there was nothing that I could do for still needing to put in the time to actually get the results.

What I(WE) DID do, however, was to vastly improve the results.

Impeller growth rate was nearly tripled, and then tripled again as the optimizations started to kick in. core complexity, now that I really understood the mechanics behind it, was set to constantly improve at a far greater rate than present, without the occasional backslides from integrating "lesser" technology. Storage space size was improved over 400% thanks to the optimizations. And best of all, integration times for all but the most hardcore of technologies had been slashed all the way down to a mere 25% of what they once were...and unlike a "normal" core, these too could be improved upon with time.

All from optimizing the code. And we (and yes, it is we now, partner. I did notice) weren't even halfway done. This was going to be a really good day, I could tell.

Anyway, MORE CODING!!! This shit is WAY too much fun!

The end result would have had people looking at me crazy if they knew just what the hell I'd unleashed upon this world. (that it required a very rare and almost unprecedented core restart was beside the point)

The final project came out to an almost across the board increase capability of over 400%, all said and done. I'd even added in, at core's suggestion, a series of robust and cross-linked error checking and correcting routines, that would be optimized and upgraded just like the rest of the core, just to make sure that nothing funny went down.

Though I could have sworn I heard something screaming in rage in the distance as I did so. Curious.

An unexpected benefit of one of my abilities had kicked in, this one known as Robust Engineering, which made the already very durable and lasting valkyrie core even more so...and created a knock-on effect that transferred to everything that the core influenced as well, somehow. It was completely crazy, but I was rolling with it.

Second unexpected benefit of my weird perks is that the excellent craftsman skill kicked in while I was working and helped optimize the code even further than we had planned for, which was a big part of the sheer boost that was delivered even on top of the core optimizations.

Which had another five hours or so to complete, leaving me to my own devices for the moment.

And all this was just from CODING. I hadn't even touched the actual hardware yet.

I had a good feeling that the technology of the Valkyrie Core had a very high ceiling for improvement. I was probably only looking at the surface of what could be done.

The core tech of the frames, namely their spatial bending tricks and all of the impeller BS that came with it...I might be able to recreate the simulators using this alone. This would be absolutely HUGE if I could, as the damned sims were all but creating pocket dimensions for training purposes, a feat that was perfect for my needs.

And so of course a review of the tech involved with the sims proper (what little I had available to me, anyway) reminded me of not only the insane power draw requirement, but that the sim setup used by the UN was a Higgs-based setup...which I had no knowledge of at all. A minor setback, but still one that rankled a bit.

A mental nudge drew me out of my thoughts, alerting me to another set of abilities having finished integrating into my weird (not)soul-space. Two of them, from the looks of it.

I looked closely at the first, it was a weird mishmash of things, what seemed at first intended to be two separate abilities merged into one due to the overlap involved (especially as they were with the same tech). The tech in question was a piece of what my new knowledge referred to as "industrialized magic": the wonder of the 20th century, the Computation Orb (or Operations Orb, as some called it).

And as much as I was fascinated with the possibilities of the orb in being a legit form of magitechnology, there were some very, VERY serious flaws with the tech, first and foremost among them that it was literally from the 1920's. All of the biggest advancements either predated or were concurrent with World War One. or at least this weird version thereof. (I was tempted to call it Strangereal, but that name is already taken.) Second was related to the first: it was a pure analog technology, based off of clockwork motions of all things. Easily disrupted on a real battlefield, although it had the advantage of being resistant to nearly all forms of Electromagnetic Radiation as a result, meaning no being fried by EMP or the like just because. Related to this is that the gears involved were meant to be tooled by hand, and thus lacked a lot of the miniaturization possible with even what I'd considered modern tech, let alone what passed for contemporary on Necromunda. And the Valkyrie Frame I had came equipped with two fabs that could work on a Nano scale…

Yeah, I was snapping this thing over my knee just for the hell of it. It was a damned good starting point, and would have been downright revolutionary in its own time, but the tech itself is outdated and needed improvements everywhere.

Starting off, the gearing could be so, so much improved it wasn't even funny, although even I had to admit that there was a hard limit to human hands; if I wanted to stick with the analog system I would need to get downright silly with both materials and manufacturing techniques.

Mind you, this was SOLELY if I wanted to have an analog version. Considering that this is literally a giant calculator, I could go digital easily enough as well...that is, assuming that it would work on that level.

Y'know what? I have my new project. I'm making a digital computation orb, as well as an analog version comparable to the best work of the 21st century.

Of course, first I was gonna need to make some tools....

2:36:47

2:36:46

2:36:45

Dammit.

I literally went through the workshop and it's bins for all of the things needed to make small scale tools appropriate for a watchmaker, spent the time fashioning the (relatively) crude implements I would use, planned out the possibilities for what I wanted to do, and had set up some equally basic molds and such for creating the frames of the clockwork.

I'd even managed to get a few examples of the crystalline portions of the assembly worked up, all just to test out which might actually affect any of the processes in the orb.

I literally had all but built a basic computation orb and it still didn't eat up the time for my Core to finish its update.

Ah well then. Time to start the assembly process, then.

Putting it all together should have been a difficult task, fraught with errors as I fumbled and potentially damaged the various gears needed to have a basic computation orb function.

I did not, as I was, in my boredom, using the assembly as a test bed of sorts for a form of Arts-based fine telekinesis. (go multitasking.) While I could lie and say that it was easy, it really wasn't, as the basis for the Art was more or less brand new to me, and needed some fine-tuning as I went along. The plus side, though, was that the mistakes that I did make were far reduced in severity due to not having any of the bigger tools involved in the process and able to mess things up.

All in all, a productive use of time, resulting in a top-quality computation orb. (I loved excellent craftsman sometimes.)

I glanced at the countdown timer next to my Core.

1:02;21

Dammit.

Alright then, kill more time by setting up some spell design work?

The basic computation orb that I had designed and built was a relatively simple affair. Utilizing a means of mechanical calculation based around a single "core" it was capable of casting one spell at any given time, plus whatever auxiliary spells were built into the orb itself. Under normal circumstances in the world of its creation, these would be used for the flight spell or support gear for the same, along with the accompanying field equations needed for protection during flight. Similarly, the available spells for the user were largely geared towards combat utility more than any general purpose bent, and it showed plainly in the design.

My build, however, was different in that it was set up for general purpose use and stability first and foremost, and included supporting equations to allow for the flexibility needed from a "civilian"-use piece of equipment. It could, of course, still be used for combat applications, but as I could now clearly see after building, the technology as it was didn't allow for much in the way of shifting specializations on the fly. A purpose-built combat orb would be superior in all regards in its chosen field, regardless of any improvement that I could leverage upon the orb construction itself...at least, as I'd built it.

I had intentionally gone for a single-core design just to test the theory work and accompanying math needed; now I could push it further and see if it was possible to build an orb with more processing power.

I blatantly scoffed at even the idea that my orb wouldn't work properly. I had leveraged most of my skills in it's creation, after all. What might be faulty was the basic spell equations needed to operate it, and even that would be more or less trial and error as I worked out the new formulas. Having already known the full underlying process behind why the orbs worked was a big bonus in this regard. (That actually building an orb proper fully disabused me of the field durability issues I'd originally expected to see from the orb was a bit of humble pie on my part, but I took it in stride. Progress waited for no one, after all.)

Anyway, back to improvements.

I started on the design work for working in another computing core, complete with a few improvements in where I had noted some...slack. The second build was shockingly faster even than the first, somehow, and I now held in my hands this world's first dual-core computation orb, and one that was set for general purposes, at that. I gave the internal a quick once over before getting set for a brief test of the improvements I had made.

Unsurprisingly, they worked as intended.

Fully emboldened by the success, I set to designing and building up both a three and four-core model as well, just to see if it was possible. Used up most of the prepared materials that the workshop had available, but I could get some more later on, or just wait long enough for it to replenish itself. (it was convenient like that).

The three-core had some minor issues that were quickly cleared up with a small tweak to the build. The four-core, however, tried to tear itself apart for some reason. Curious, I looked it over and saw the problem involved in the gearing and setup processes, then just did a (relatively) quick mod and the problems went away just like that.

I got a strange feeling I had just completely spat on someone's life work by doing so, though.

Shrugging, I then considered what I had learned...which honestly was not much, as I had been sticking to the basic principles of operation for the cores and nothing too groundbreaking from a more modern (or advanced) perspective. The real tests were going to be from the expansion of the technology into the digital age, and a third option that had appeared to me during my tinkering: the possibility of using pure mana as a sort of "virtual core" setup allowing for nearly infinite processing power if used right.

First off, though, I had an idea that needed checking.

Computation orbs had one major flaw aside from the low-tech nature of the build: Power. Rather, the fact that the vast majority of mages would never actually be able to use the damned things to anywhere near full capacity simply due to lack of natural mana output.

My solution to this was very simple: the capacitor.

Basically, I would find a way to create a form of battery for the excess mana produced when not in operation, or when not under extreme load, and then channel it into a form that could be used later by the operator of the orb, regardless of their actual personal output, as long as it was not zero. Combined with some of the efficiency tweaks and mods I was making to the designs I'd made, this should allow all but the absolute weakest of mages to have a usable ability with the orbs.

I began the planning process for how to adapt the damned orbs for a battery that wasn't complete garbage (or far, far too large for proper operation) and paused when a feeling of warmth spread over me.

I looked over at the timer for my Core and was startled out of my working trance at the display.

0:00.00

It was finished.

Feeling absolutely giddy at the news, I all but dropped my current work to rush over to my core and resync.

The difference was the equivalent of high noon and pitch black,

Everything seemed so much smoother, so much faster, so much MORE. I played around a bit with the various settings I now had access to, trying to find an ideal setup for my use...and really couldn't decide one way or another. Giving it up as a wash for now, I left it to my core, which really needed a name now, to figure out as we worked together.

The biggest change other than the vastly improved sensory awareness granted was that the impeller was improved a great deal in strength and thickness. My control was still shitty, as was true for all newbie valkyries, but a quick check showed it to be more responsive than examples have shown most low-sync hours valks would have. Noting major by any stretch, but it would likely help in practicing later on.

The second biggest change was that I now had the super-neat "constant improvement" code built into my core, and it had already started on what was available to it at the time, doing some improvements to both the fabricators and the medical suite installed on my frame, as well as some general purpose tweaks to the frame itself. If the code that we had created worked out, then the speed and overall efficiency of the process should improve as time went on and our sync (and tech base) improved. (A feeling from within suggested that the code would work just fine.)

Now that I had access to my best tools though, I could push the computation orb project even further than before...and possibly even go beyond!!!

ONWARD!! FOR SCIENCE!!!

I hate my life.

It had been three whole weeks, and I have been banging my head against the wall that was the computation orb to no avail.

Oh sure, I could push the level of the orbs up to some absolutely ridiculous stages; after all, I had managed to make a legit 16-core orb. The problem came from the fact that the sheer power draw for anything beyond eight cores became nearly unsustainable for anything but the highest level mages. I had been looking into ways to reduce the strain on the user, but nothing seemed to want to stick. It was frustrating on a level that I had reserved for the damned scrub gangs that still tried to make a nuisance of themselves whenever I chose to step outside for longer than ten minutes.

The capacitor project was going no better. Despite getting a decent one set up and operating, it had the relatively minor problem of being the size of a goddamn super duty pickup truck...for maybe five minutes of power output at levels worth the effort.

The issues with making a digital version of the orb were both lesser and more complex all at once. Making the circuits seemed easy as hell, until I ran into the issue that apparently the mana calculations needed a completely different design type and architecture tha anything even dreamed of by most in order to work right, and then add in the fact that the process nodes themselves were notoriously finicky and unstable for all that they seemed very easy to make, and the frustration factors piled up even more.

And I didn't want to just throw it at Thoth (the new name of my Valkyrie Core, and a reference to the Egyptian deity of the same name, who symbolized wisdom and Science, among other things) in order for him to fix it up. I wanted to actually understand this technology and why it worked from the ground floor and not just cheatcode it. Besides, this was literally MY OWN GODDAMNED TECH. I SHOULD be able to understand it, right?

But NOOO. The damned answers to the questions kept themselves away from me in any and all ways possible. I swear that this shit was going to be nearly impossible to do…

I stopped for a moment to consider other things for a bit. The issues I was having had plagued the early 21st century as well, with availability of power and overall power draw being the main advancement of computing during that era. Every major advancement seemed to be about efficiency in some way or fashion instead of raw power. Considering the advent and proliferation of the smartphone, this was no real surprise.

The issue is that none of the science principles that worked for those revolutions seemed to be taking hold here. I knew that a digital, or at least circuit-based version of the computation orb was possible, I just couldn't crack it. Likewise, I had no way of actually breaking the limiters keeping the capacitor project from advancing past the stage of near complete uselessness.

I'm supposed to be a super genius dammit! How can I not figure this shit out?

I took a shuddering breath. Nope, not thinking about it.

Instead, I would do some more practice with originium and the things it allowed for.

After the last incident involving me getting shot at, and the subsequent lay-low order, I had cleared out a small section of the workshop proper to use as a sort of training area for my experiments with Arts and originium in general, though I had yet to really work with the material properly just yet. It was something I was saving for the future, after I cracked the computation orb.

See how far that got me...

For the most part, my Arts usage had advanced in steady, predictable ways. I had given more thought on usage to some of the basic examples given by my Class training, and made some (admittedly small) attempts at branching out from there.

For example, let's take the Vanguard Class. It specialized in movement, both in terms of sheer mobility and of maneuverability. What this meant is that the skills adjacent to the class were all about getting in fast, kicking ass, and getting out again just as fast.

In a way, it was very similar to the general specialization for Alliance biotic operatives than anything else, as they had the same modus operandi. The main issues I was having in training the related Arts for the class was space, as nearly all of them involved movement of some kind, and usually enabled movement in unusual ways, such as the eponymous spider climb ability (which was actually hard as all hell to keep going, let me tell you).

The Sniper Class was exactly as I thought it would be based on my previous training, focusing on being able to both identify and then hit the target specified at extreme ranges. There seemed to be some extra stuff in there beyond a skill wall of sorts, but I could never seem to get past it with the limits I'd set for myself. Something else to work on for the future.

The Caster class was paradoxically the easiest to train in, as it focused on Arts to the excursion of almost everything else; a blessing and a cure all in one on the battlefield. I doubted anything but the strongest casters would be able to stand against even a newbie sanctioned psyker of the imperium, let alone the stuff the Eldar were capable of, so I focused instead on the utility portions of the Arts, figuring I could get to the rest later. The telekinesis trick I'd been using to help construct the computation orbs had been a godsend in training me on fine control with my powers, and I had managed to work in some similar uses as well, mostly based off of my memories of Golden Sun. Including all of the general purpose TK-adjacent utility psynergies, I also could adjust temperatures in objects by a small to moderate amount with a bit of focus. Along with a minor ability to affect the electromagnetic spectrum over a shockingly broad range that was growing faster than anything else, really. I practiced all of it whenever I had the chance, usually when I needed a break from banging my head into the wall over the orb tech.

Then there was the Medic Class. The Arts here seemed to defy everything I thought I knew about arts proper in the way that they operated, and came attached to quite a few specialty abilities depending on the user. As I was still new, I had no real specialties to speak of, but I did have a very useful, if basic, healing art that acted as a cellular regenerator. I suspected that this was one of the primary treatment methods for those infected with oripathy on that world. It was definitely something that I would be doing closer research on in the future.

By comparison, the remaining classes were almost carelessly simple in their functions. The Guard, despite its name, was a frontline melee combatant first and foremost, tasked with standing toe to toe with the enemy and taking them down by any available means. The benefit it granted me was a not insignificant skill in melee combat, particularly with blades of varying types, though I favored the sword, spear, and a form of partisan that was a very close mix between the two.

Specialists, on the other hand, were something of a grab bag: the title itself was meant as a catchall for anyone who had skills that didn't fall under the standard operator training classifications. In theory, this meant that anyone who had a unique and/or useful skill could be classed as one. In practice however it tended to work similarly to the more applied MOS of the various militaries of history: namely demolitions, assassinations, and other specific point work. That my personal rating was as an engineer was not a surprise in the slightest.

My practice with arts today would be focusing on the abilities of the Guard, to whom the basic skills I knew were of some minor body strengthening techniques. Supposedly one could push really, really far and do some downright anime shit at higher levels, but I wasn't there. Not yet.

My training continuing apace, I still had reserve brainpower to consider other issues while I attempted to distract myself from the orb problem. The higher ups of Van Saar, having noted that something was going wrong in their area of expertise, started looking into who and what the hell was trying to kill me off so urgently...and was finding jack and shit, which concerned them greatly. That I was currently able to handle myself to a degree was noted and ignored--this was an assault upon the house itself to be gunning after one of its assets. To that end, they had apparently pulled House Delaque into some form of contract to look into exactly what the hell was going on. Delaque had yet to send a report back in, which according to Harry was highly unusual for them, even if the work was being contracted out to one of the lesser gangs of the house. Still, something that could move around like that more or less undetected to a house that was known for specializing in the same was a scary prospect.

For most.

For me it was currently an annoyance, as my house minders, in the form of the Lieutenants three (and that's what they were, fancy title or not), were intentionally keeping me from wandering around too much until they had solid info. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, considering I was hip-deep in my own tech development at the moment, but it was the times like this when I needed a real break that it grated.

Even when I was working out the alternate core configurations to allow for the eventual 16-core setup, which required something similar to the core cluster model of 21's t century multicore computing chips. the sheer strain on my psyche wasn't that bad, and I had been considering doing something absolutely silly at the time and just making a three dimen--

No.

No. way.

There is no way in hell it is that easy.

Stopping myself in mid-motion of a swing with the training weapon I had thrown together out of some junk, I turned back to the computation orbs set on the workshop table . If this theory was right…

It was a quick build, all things considered. I'd used the same materials leftover from my many other attempts. The same processes in forging and shaping the circuits to be. Hell, even kept them as oversized as normal in order to see what was happening and make changes.

The only difference was that instead of making it like a standard circuit board, I made the gates, pipes and arrays, as basic as they were, in the full three dimensional spectrum.

The resulting piece of circuitry was clunky, and actually a bit larger than it needed to be., at about the size of a pair of fists, cubed. I took a look at it, and fired it up.

And of course it didn't work.

The difference, however, was not in that it didn't work, but HOW.

It was a completely new failure mode. One that actually baffled me for a bit as I examined it and tried to draw some conclusions from the mess. And nothing seemed to make sense. The damned thing seemed to defy logic. How the hell does a system fail Left?

It was even more frustrating than it should have been, but I still felt that I was on to something here. So I made another one

And another, and another, and another.

All of them failed, but not in exactly the same way. Some failed left, others failed up (don't ask, I don't get it either) and one particular version seemed to just...absorb itself and fail that way.

But each failure point gave me more data. And I learned what I was doing wrong.

It wasn't about the shape. Sure, making a 3D circuit helped a bit, but it didn't NEED to be that way, and in fact would work better in a 2d config until I had a basic operations process worked out. What was important here was that I now had an idea of how the mana flowed and operated in the circuits proper.

Which meant that I could now create a proper circuit for it to work in.

The design process, oddly enough, only took an hour, even without me leaning too hard on my abilities. The build took less time, as I was now used to putting the experiments together. No 3d circuits for now, at least not as we would normally think of them. Instead, it was similar but vastly different to a "standard" integrated circuit, with several of its most defining features (including the transistor) either missing or so completely redesigned as to be unrecognizable. But it was finished.

And the test spell was fed in, which did nothing more than create a small but of light.

I waited with baited breath as the test started...and then whooped with joy as the tiny glow appeared above the circuit itself.

Oh HELL yeah. I had created the very first digital operations orb.

You would have thought that I would have immediately ran through the whole super-iteration process with this new discovery, but I didn't. I really had no need to do so right now, for one, and for two, the capacitor problem was now more important than ever, as I had noticed even in the initial test of the digital orb that it was going to be a power-hungry beast. Which meant that I needed a way to supply that power in a reasonable fashion.

Well, part of it was pride, I'll admit. The postmortem on the experiments with the digital orb made it clear that the fix was staring me in the face the whole time and I'd ignored it because I knew better. After having been fed my considerable helping of humble pie on the subject, I was hesitant to push too hard with the capacitor project without actually looking at what I was doing, both right and wrong.

So for now, I let it sit. Besides, I was expecting a visit from Harry soon, and hopefully with an update on the whole assassins thing. Maybe even a decent timetable on when Van Saar could get together a training platoon for me to start working into shape.

It was around this time that I began hearing an odd and kind of ethereal tune. I know I had heard it before, but I had trouble placing it. It was kind of uplifting, in that sense of wonder way, that used to be reserved for things related to outer space. What sounded similar to..sea life? Echoed in the background in a pleasing way. And yet that tune ,it seemed so familiar...almost like a song without words, one for an eternal story. An impulse led me to seek out the source of the music, only to find it playing from seemingly everywhere and nowhere at all.

Wait a minute...It reminded me a lot of the title theme of--

A vision appeared to me. In it, I saw the endless sea of stars, the countless planets, moons, comets, even nebulae stretched across it's vista. Each seemed only to add to the gathered splendor, acting in a way that created an amazing backdrop of colors.

Flash focus,, to a world beset by a crisis beyond anything they had seen before. The planet itself was dying, and very soon it would no longer be able to support life in any form. The people of the world sought a solution, any solution, that would save them.

Flash away again, to another, different world, where beings wielded what seemed to be the very stars themselves in all things, growing powerful beyond measure with the mastery of this strange power. A castoff remnant of the knowledge is tossed away like trash into the void, unneeded and unmissed by these great beings

Flash again, to a distant future. The great ones had fallen, somehow destroyed by their own hubris, and their works left to be cast adrift. The only salvation: a race of purpose-designed inheritors of their legacy, wielding only a fraction of the power that had been available to those who had eventually created them.

I got the distinct feeling that this was just meant as a reference point, really

Flash again, back to the cast off remnant, now an asteroid containing the lost fragment of a whole so much greater. This fragment fell to the doomed planet that I had seen first.

And with it, hope.

Within, lay the means to access that great and terrifying power, even if it was only barely understood at the moment. It was used to advance the understanding of the doomed world to unseen heights, allowing them to build a series of arkships to escape their world, and begin the search for a new home.

A final, all-consuming flash blinded me, leaving me in a white void once it finally cleared away. Before me was...something, a thing, a creature, possibly even a consciousness? of unimaginable power.

And it began showing me things. The works of those who had wielded the light, and the same works of those who had despised it, who sought to corrupt it into their own image.

It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measures (and felt oddly familiar as well), and just as relentless in the barrage of information, both of what was and of what could be.

And within it all, even as I was being overwhelmed by the sheer deluge of knowledge, to the point that I could barely process any of it at all, let alone hang on to it, was a simple question.

What path did I choose?

I had to force myself to focus, to place context to the scenes playing out before me, and even then I failed, swamped with the metaphorical (and likely metaphysical) weight crashing down on me. The strange light (or was it a darkness? It was getting hard to tell) watched with a passivity that would have been annoying if I had even a second to process it.

And the question repeated. What path do you choose?

I barely managed to focus myself, to cut myself off from the flood tide of data swarming me, to get a clever look at what I was dealing with...and what I saw horrified me.

The darkness, it sought out a means to control me, to use me for its own ends...and it had nearly succeeded, pushing me towards making a hasty choice that would have had devastating consequences had I accepted. It was a path of corruption, of being twisted into something that I was not, and being used to erase all that I held dear, even simply favored, into an all consuming black void of nothingness.

Something that I would not allow to happen, ever.

Finally having found myself, I rejected the false flow of damaging data, recognizing the attack for what it was at long last, and turned away from the source of the darkness, what I had once perceived as a blinding light.

Instead, I looked away, finding the final piece of the cast-away fragment of the bearers of this light, shining even still. They sang out to me, a promise of a brighter tomorrow, as long as one was willing to fight for it. A sentiment I wholeheartedly agreed with.

And thus, it was with a determined step that I turned away from the howling darkness that even then threatened to consume me utterly...and walked towards the light--

The trance ended just as suddenly as it began, and left me with the feeling that I had dodged a very large bullet, one that had specifically been aimed at me, no less...and had been rewarded handsomely for doing so, as well.

I consulted my memories...and nearly gasped in shock at what I had found.

It was a power unlike anything I had ever seen before in my life, the potential to wield the very light itself in ways that seemed almost magical in nature, to push for levels of technology that were likely unknown even during the dark age of technology.

It resonated with me on a level that I couldn't quite explain, as if it just somehow FIT.

It was also very much not something that was normally a part of the forge of stars, having added itself to my repertoire of its own accord. For what reason I did not know, and really did not care.

Because I recognized it for what it was now.

I knew it as the power of Photons.

The power best known, and used, in the world..no, universe, of the game series Phantasy Star.

And I was going to put this knowledge to GREAT use.

A knock at the front door of my actual lodging broke me out of my musings on my new prowess. Quickly moving to exit and close the workshop, I answered the door, thinking it to be Harry with that status update.

Instead, it was one of the Adjutants to that Augmek that I had met. The thin guy with the beard, Janus Farhish,. We had built up a small but firm rapport with each other after that first meeting, with him being suitably impressed with my skills and the sheer balls I had to display them in the manner I did...nevermind that I hate being an asshole as a rule...a trait that he surprisingly shared with me. It didn't take long for us to click after that, although his responsibilities kept him busy for a lot of my current tenure. And even then I usually had to come to him to get news.

Apparently something had changed.

"Hullo there, Farhish."I greeted him, even as I waved him inside. I used his family name as a form of respect, even though he insisted I could call him Janus. "Whatcha need so badly that you showed up in person?"

The look on his face turned unusually grim after my question. "I'm here because we have a lead of sorts on what might be happening."

I would have grinned at the statement, but something about his expression dulled the impulse. "And you had to come tell me in person? Usually you guys go through Harrisyn for stuff like this."

"That is part of the issue, I'm afraid" he replied. "Agent Cain was in the process of collecting the information that had been received and processing it when an incident occurred. He has yet to check in as per standard protocols.

"We have reason to believe that Harrisyn Cain has been either kidnapped or killed in order to keep him silent."

Two notes here: first is that there was a minor mixup in the forge doc, and two of the perks, normally an 800cp cluster, have been merged into one. Reason being? They are technically the same perk, or at least were intended as such, as the first (Magical Science) was part of an early beta version of the Youjo Senki Jump, and was replaced in the final with the second (Computation Creation). As they were meant to serve similar roles in the jump (and I didn't want to subject people to hunting down the beta jump) I merged the two.

Second is the addition of a perk that is not normally in the forge proper, and was likely an oversight on the part of the creators of both v2 and the current v3 which was refined from it. It is an addition of my own which I felt would be interesting. Note that the actual perk covers multiple, and I mean MULTIPLE domains, though I have provisionally assigned it to the magitech domain. (honestly, I wasn't expecting it to pop up this early, at ALL.)

-Computation Creation | Magical Science (Youjo Senki - Saga of Tanya the Evil)
Computation Creation (400CP)
The operation orb - or computation orb, if you prefer - is a masterwork of science and mathematics. A unique crystalline and clockwork structure allows for mathematical code to be stored - called spells - and channels energy from the user in order to empower them. You now understand not just how they work, but why - and in doing so, can apply the principles to other aims. Magic is currently used solely by the air corps for long range bombardment. Let's fix
that, shall we?

Magical Science (merged with the above, no cost)
You are at the forefront of mage technology, and can easily improve on what is currently being used, with some effort you can also build far more powerful mage tech. Whatever faction you belong to is sure to value you greatly.

Walk Towards the Light (Phantasy Star Online) (600 CP)
You have the knowledge necessary to work with Photons. You can create photon-based weaponry, defensive equipment, and even powerful FTL engines. Given enough time and resources, you could build your own Pioneer ships. In addition, you have the knowledge necessary to create most any of the items found in Phantasy Star Online. D-Cells are the exception to this, as even you don't understand how they work.

Morkail · May 14, 2021

Ya... better get real fucking good at hiding what your tech really is even wearing crappy power armor in a underhive is going to make you stand out... a lot.

The Ringing of a Forge of Stars [Warhammer 40k/ Celestial forge V3||OC...ish]

The Soft Glowing Light From The Sky

The Ascendant

Versed in the lewd.

Superior Shut-In

Not too sore, are you?

The Ascendant

Superior Shut-In

The Ascendant

Superior Shut-In

World's only not-cringe Furry

Experienced.

The Ascendant

Not too sore, are you?

Shado-Master

The Soft Glowing Light From The Sky

World's only not-cringe Furry

Not too sore, are you?

Versed in the lewd.

Getting sticky.

Know what you're doing yet?

Versed in the lewd.

Know what you're doing yet?

Well worn.

Know what you're doing yet?

Versed in the lewd.

Know what you're doing yet?

Versed in the lewd.

Know what you're doing yet?

Not too sore, are you?

Shado-Master

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