After reaching an understanding with Lin, the Hunter Dreadnought returned to his slumber to conserve power. Lieutenant Admir, heading the four-man decision-making council, quickly gathered the remaining warriors and announced Lin's formal joining of their band.
The Astartes would follow Lin's direction as a matter of course — that much was settled by order. But Lin knew perfectly well that earning the genuine respect of these warriors could never rest on the agreement he had struck with Admir alone.
He needed to lay out a development plan — one that would demonstrate his capabilities while genuinely and lastingly improving the Astartes' situation. Only then would these warriors pledge him the kind of loyalty worth dying for.
The centrepiece of that plan was obvious: return to the crashed space hulk, scavenge whatever usable materials remained aboard, and construct a vessel capable of taking them back to the void.
According to Admir, however, after they had slain the "green armoured fire-breathing lizard," the creature's "flying companion" had taken up permanent residence near the space hulk — and occasionally ventured out to hunt down any Astartes it caught sight of.
Such ferocious vindictiveness was plainly beyond the reach of warriors who were scraping the bottom of their ammunition stores. Before they could even think about returning to the hulk, Lin would have to give these Space Marines the weapons and equipment needed to fight a monster of that calibre.
But every trade has its depths, and the more technology advances, the more impenetrable those depths become. Any tech-priest not of senior Forge-rank encountering this situation would have thrown up his mechadendrites and lamented that even the most skilled cook cannot conjure a meal from an empty larder.
Fortunately, Lin — golden finger and all — was himself a walking, self-contained industrial civilisation. Building a tower from bare earth was no great hardship for him. All he needed was a little time.
And if you wanted to develop anything at all, the first problem to solve was always power.
Lin had taken stock of the Astartes' reserves and found a grim picture: despite having over a hundred warriors, only thirteen functioning power packs remained. Even cycling those thirteen packs' solar panels to keep the Dreadnought's life-support and the gene-seed cryo-stasis tubes running was already a strain — there was nothing left over for combat.
Their MK II Crusade-pattern power armour had become scrap iron without power packs to drive it. On a world crawling with enormous, rampaging monsters, the marginal protection offered by armour that slowed your dodging more than it helped you was simply not worth the trade.
"Not worth the trade" did not mean every creature on the planet could punch clean through ceramite — but the sheer impact of a charging monster was more than enough to transmit through the armour's surface and turn the man inside into a Sanguinius-brand tin of paste.
So, as the power packs drained one by one, the remaining Astartes had gradually stripped their armour down to individual ceramite plates, bolting them over vital points on their bodies. As a result, complete MK II suits were as scarce as functioning power packs.
Lin very much wanted to berate them for what amounted to vandalising priceless antiquities — but at the end of the day, it all came back to the lack of power.
He couldn't conjure refined nuclear fuel for the power packs out of thin air. But if he wasn't limited to nuclear energy, nature itself offered quite a few alternatives.
He gazed at the small hydroelectric station currently taking shape before him, quiet satisfaction gleaming in his eyes.
There was also a certain private satisfaction in watching those Astartes — two-and-a-half metres of pure muscle, every one of them — diligently moving earth with iron spades in the riverbed. He was beginning to understand why Rogal Dorn and Perturabo had both liked to haul half their Legions along to lay siege-works.
"When it comes to power, it always comes back to water," he explained to Admir. "Water is humanity's oldest and most reliable energy source. The potential energy of falling water drives dam turbines. Coal burns to produce steam — which is water. Even the first method of converting nuclear energy into electricity relied on water. You could argue that the true measure of a civilisation's advancement is how quickly and efficiently it can boil water!"
"But can something this ancient really provide the power we need?" Admir sounded sceptical. "If it could, why didn't our tech-sergeant set one up while he was still alive...?"
Because he didn't have the ability to pull a generator assembly of near-impossible efficiency out of another world — that was what Lin wanted to say. But the existence of his golden finger was something he would never, and could never, say aloud.
The nature of a Blank ensured that nothing in Lin's mind could be peered at by the powers of the warp. But if someone who was not a Blank came to know of it, a trace would be left in this world.
Even if the four warp-peddlers hadn't noticed anything yet, those conceptual entities existed simultaneously in the past, the present, and the future — once words were spoken aloud, they would eventually catch the tail of the truth. So Lin was always scrupulously careful on that front.
"Never doubt the wisdom of the ancients," he said instead. "The oldest methods aren't always the most efficient, but they are always the most reliable."
He deflected Admir's concerns by invoking the classic Warhammer principle that older means better: "The terrain here is excellent. Combined with the artificial dam raising the height differential, the potential energy of the falling water will at minimum free up all thirteen power packs while simultaneously supplying the new settlement — and leave enough over for me to run basic experiments and do some forging. If we stagger the load, we can top up a bank of batteries as well."
"Thirteen Astartes re-armed with power packs and power armour — that's not bad. But what about the rest of the brothers?" Admir asked.
"I have some new ideas for them."
Lin turned and walked back, heading for the small settlement that had already been relocated closer to the riverbank. Along the way, Astartes moving back and forth between the settlement and the construction site gave Lin and Admir brief nods of acknowledgement.
They still couldn't see what all these changes would actually yield — but the simple act of breaking the monotony of their long, unchanging existence had already rekindled something in them: an enthusiasm for hard work, and for the future.
Back at the new settlement, several small barracks blocks and a rudimentary chapel had been erected. To conserve space, Lin had set up his workshop in the chapel's back room.
He brought Admir there and showed him the battery sitting on the workbench.
"Neon Genesis Evangelion brand high-output battery," Lin declared. "This single cell pack contains enough charge to keep an eighty-metre-tall giant combat machine fighting for two full minutes. I'm planning to use this battery as the basis for a new force-feedback powered suit and matching weapons — for the Astartes who don't have power packs."
"An eighty-metre giant machine?" Admir's eyes went wide. "Enough to run an Emperor-class Titan for two minutes?"
"Ah, well, it's not quite..."
Lin rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, privately noting that products from two different universes were hardly comparable. Given the Warhammer universe's absolutely profligate energy consumption, ten of these cell packs wired together probably wouldn't be enough for an Emperor-class Titan to fire a single Plasma Annihilator shot. "But for individual personal armour and weapons, it's more than adequate."
"So what exactly is this 'Neon Genesis Evangelion'?" Admir asked.
"An ancient order of Terran warriors," Lin said, spinning a plausible tale without missing a beat, utterly unconcerned about being caught out. "In their era, they piloted a class of Titans known as EVA units — fighting for love and the salvation of humanity. The high-performance generators used in the hydroelectric station and these battery cells are technological relics from their age. I was fortunate enough to discover their STC templates. By today's standards the technology is quite primitive, but it turns out to be remarkably useful given our particular circumstances."
"Warriors who could defeat their enemies running on a battery with only two minutes of runtime — they must have been extraordinarily capable and resolute," Admir said with sincere admiration.
Lin had a hard time keeping a straight face. "Extraordinarily capable, yes — their pilots could certainly handle a manual stick."
Admir took the remark at face value: "Anti-aircraft capability? Can't we manage that as well?"
Lin's expression became even more pained. "You really can't."
Admir looked like he was about to press the point, but Lin didn't let the conversation linger there. He turned and presented Admir with another piece of equipment he had been working on — the force-feedback powered suit he had mentioned.
Like the Energy Shield and the solar-powered war-axe, this suit was technology he had previously reconstructed from StarCraft — only instead of Protoss as the template, the reference was human.
The limitations of this primitive planet meant Lin hadn't even been able to assemble the CMC-300 Powered Combat Suit that every Terran marine on a proper battlefield carried as standard kit. He couldn't fabricate the suit's miniaturised cold-fusion reactor either.
What he could do was strip out the internals from the scavenged power packs and rebuild them into EVA-pattern battery cells, then redesign the suit itself as a more primitive variant.
"CMC-200 Powered Combat Suit," he announced. "Don't expect miracles in the protection department. I've riveted your ceramite armour plates over the critical areas; everywhere else, it's whatever metal I could find."
"It's a force-feedback suit rather than true power armour, but it does have some basic functions — small servo-motors to augment the wearer's strength and speed, and two small turbine jets on the back. Under normal conditions, those jets provide a constant thrust that reduces the wearer's effective weight and improves agility. In a critical moment, they can even let the wearer glide a short distance through the air."
"It doesn't sound like equipment designed for Space Marines — but if it makes the warriors more agile, that's exactly what we need right now," Admir said, nodding his approval.
Lin confirmed the assessment: "As a matter of fact, I originally designed it for baseline human auxiliary troops — the kind that go for fifty bucks a dozen. I've just scaled it up for this emergency application."
"Because its functions are minimal, this suit's power demand is low enough that it doesn't need a full power pack. Slot in one of the Evangelion-brand cells, and it will augment the wearer for a considerable operating time."
"It also comes with a matching electromagnetic rifle — I call it the C-14 Impaler Gauss Rifle. There's an integrated interface on the suit's gauntlets: when you're wearing the suit and gripping the C-14, the rifle draws power directly from the suit's internal battery."
Lin patted the weapon beside him. "This rifle uses electromagnetic acceleration to fire 8mm solid ammunition at supersonic velocity. Material requirements for the rounds are minimal — as long as the bullet material meets basic hardness thresholds, this rifle will punch through the weak points of your power armour."
The technology of humanity in the StarCraft universe was nowhere near as advanced as in Warhammer's — but in a universe where faster-than-light travel was routine, the level of integration and miniaturisation available to ordinary humans was genuinely far ahead of the Imperium. Every Terran marine carried a suit of powered armour as standard. A Space Marine's ceramite power armour, even a rough non-artisan version, required a Forge World decades of production to turn out in any meaningful quantity. The gulf between the two was not something easily put into words.
Although Lin could appreciate a certain mass-production aesthetic in the StarCraft equipment, the calibre was obviously at odds with Warhammer's foundational aesthetic — bigger is better. Admir was a man of traditional Warhammer sensibilities, and he reacted to the weapon with predictable discomfort.
"Isn't 8mm a bit small?" Admir asked. "Even if it penetrates, a calibre that size won't cause lethal damage. Wouldn't a bolter serve us better?"
"We don't have a choice right now. A bolter might look big and sturdy, but it's actually not easy to manufacture at all. A bolt round — self-propelled and explosive — is not something I can hand-fabricate on this planet. The gauss rifle and the suit together can both be powered by a single battery. That's the entire power solution in one package."
Lin laid out the practical reality: "Besides, you already know the creatures on this planet are resistant to conventional firearms. Don't set the bar too high — if it can inflict damage and pin the target down, that's enough. Make do with what we've got."
That reasoning was persuasive enough. Admir paused briefly, then began thinking through squad configurations: "How long will it take you to produce one suit and one rifle?"
"By hand, roughly two days. If you can supply more ready-made ceramite plates directly, I can cut that down — hunting for ordinary metal and smelting it takes a fair amount of time. But the suit itself isn't complicated to produce; the turbine jets can be fabricated from materials stripped out of the salvaged power packs. I'll draw up schematics your people can follow, and they can produce them at a slower rate than I can."
"What about solid ammunition? You can't just machine ceramite directly into bullets, can you? We have no means of melting ceramite and casting it into rounds."
"That part's simple."
Lin smiled with quiet confidence and pointed at the dragon bones he had moved into the workshop. "I've run analysis on these. The hardness of this material as ammunition is comparable to ceramite, and at key structural points it's on par with adamantium. All I need to do is grind them into shape. Won't take long."
Admir studied the bones before him carefully. "These are the bones of that green-scaled fire-and-poison-breathing lizard we hunted...?"
"More precisely, I call her a Rathian. And her companion who's been hunting you — that would naturally be a Rathalos."
Lin corrected him, then continued: "And it's not just the bones. If your people had thought to collect the Rathian's venom glands when you hunted her, I could put together some rather interesting things with those as well."
"This is something I need to remind you all: the monsters you hunt, and even the small insects you find crawling in the undergrowth — the treasures hidden in their bodies far exceed anything you'd imagine. As long as you can organise people to gather those materials, I can craft items from them that will surprise you."
"You claim you've never encountered these creatures before, yet you display an altogether uncanny familiarity with them." Admir shook his head. "Chaplain Lin, you truly are an unfathomable man."
"There's nothing unfathomable about it. This is simply the identifying expertise that any seasoned Hunter is supposed to have."
"You're a Hunter too...?"
"I am," Lin said, shrugging. "In assisted-imagination training simulations."
"...?"
Leaving Admir to his bewilderment, Lin moved straight on to deploying the next phase of his plan: "Anyway — start by selecting thirteen warriors who can still fit into MK II power armour. Armed with melee weapons, they'll form the backbone of our big-game hunting force."
"Then assign roughly twenty brothers with outstanding marksmanship. I'll progressively equip them with CMC force-feedback suits and matching gauss rifles; they'll provide fire support and equipment support for the melee fighters. Oh — and when you're picking suit-wearers, make sure you don't include yourself on that list."
"Why not? Is this about commanders staying off the front line?" A look of mild indignation crossed Admir's face. "I am not one of your Ministorum commanders who stands in the rear directing the Frateris Militia. Personal combat is where our glory lies!"
"No, no — it's simply that I have a separate idea for your armour specifically." Lin smiled. "Though that particular idea will require some additional materials... Steel yourself, Lieutenant Admir. Our road back to the stars isn't going to be as slow as it looks. And the very first step begins with hunting a Brachydios!"
[Author's Note 1: By the actual in-universe data, the Terran marines' rifle really can punch through a Space Marine's power armour. Whether real-world damage numbers hold up in practice is another matter — but as a paper comparison, rather striking, isn't it?]
[Author's Note 2: After looking into it at length, I found that the Terran marines' miniaturised cold-fusion reactor is technology the Imperial Guard can't even access — which is honestly alarming. Space Marine power packs are driven by thermonuclear fusion; even wearing fully sealed armour, the long-term radiation output is lethal to unaugmented humans. (As for how the Battle Sisters manage — your guess is as good as mine.)]
[Author's Note 3: Based on the data I could find, I've benchmarked a standard Monster Hunter map apex-class creature against a budget-tier Errant-class Knight (the one with the 5+ invulnerable save against ranged). Combat power aside, the more important thing is that monsters can't just show up and fight — they need to be plausibly situated within the Warhammer framework, and I plan to give them that context.]
According to my current outline, there'll be a substantial arc set on this world — roughly another dozen or so chapters — mainly to give these monsters a proper in-universe Warhammer explanation and plant some seeds for later.
But that's all for today's update.