Information about Warp and Imperium

On this I left (quite in vain, my "chambers" were a couple of hundred meters from the "bridge") to my escort and began to get acquainted with the dwelling. Quite luxurious and decadent, I judged. Six huge rooms, the bathroom with a small pool, a shag-house for a dozen of considerable persons, and not one, a dining-room, a study, a smoking-room... In general, you can live, I made a diagnosis, threw back my backpack and immersed myself in reading.

The first thing I did was to satisfy my curiosity by searching the databases for the word "warp. I did it for a reason, because in Laginia's vocabulary, "warp" and "chaos" were synonymous. In most of the information the question was not raised at all, but in several folders, marked skull (CPD, as I understand it), was a fairly sensible, though with the verbal "beauties" and in a few turns incomprehensible, parsing, what is where.

So, there's the so-called Warp, or Ocean of Souls, or Immaterialium, or Aether(!), or even Empyrea. A kind of neighboring material dimension, where thoughts and emotions of intelligent people are MORE material and are more important than the laws of physics. In fact, the only physical law that was in effect in Warp was the law of conservation of energy-mass. And the transition back and forth was not an explosion or anything like that for this space, but a natural state, like the water cycle on an oxygen planet.

Then there is the so-called Chaos Realm. In fact, it's a kind of "anteroom" of warp, the part where entities structured by thoughts and desires can live. By the way, the four, or rather the five "gods of chaos" are not the only ones, up to the fact that there are "gods of order". In fact, there's plenty of room for the atheist, I snickered, because there's EVIDENCE that the gods were invented.

But okay, the ships travel in what's called "deep warp," where islands like where I'm staying are the maximum material, everything else is energy flowing into different types and kinds. That some god of fuck or god of carnage will get fucked up there is absolutely not a fact, but it will be a shitty, uncomfortable place to live, and its existence will be painful, because that part of the orderly that makes up its essence is against warp, it does not accept it and is trying to change it.

Further, there are no inhabitants in the deep warp, but there are "gusts". That is, a ship flies through it, equipped with the Geller field, and nature itself, the basic property of this place tends to bring this ship and the "orderly" within the field into conformity with its aesthetic preferences. It can be not only some effect, but a kind of short-lived construct (they call it a demon, but this is not correct in this case), the purpose of which is to destroy "disorder" in terms of the laws of warp. Even skipping or summoning real demons without destroying their structure, such has also been cited. To reduce all being to thoughts, desires, and energy, as poetically written in one of the files.

Further, demons are, funnily enough, sentient. Imprints of consciousness, souls--you can call it whatever you want. This has been experimentally established and has confirmation. Namely, Slaanesh, spawned by the Eldars, hunts on the souls of its creators on principle. All Demonettes are almost exclusively Eldar, distorted to one degree or another in rebirth. Which, by the way, quite explains Laginia, her antics, and her subsequent behavior. She has quite a lot left of the big-eared, arrogant bitch she once was (like all Eldars, regardless of gender, age, or anything else), though not her personal memories. But the humans in the retinue of She Who Thirsts, as Slaanesh was also called, awaited the existence of wordless riding cattle, outcasts, and horses. There may have been exceptions, but that was generally the case for the forty-thousand-strong hospital.

That said, there was the opposing version, which was that all demons are the offspring of the will of the chaos gods. And the fact that they rebel, have personality, and so on is inherent in warp and these very gods chaotic. Let's say, not the most possible theory, but it has a certain right to exist.

However, there were still questions about the nature of the gods themselves: whether they were swarming associations of sentient souls, or any other evil in the form of especially outstanding types, which, however, was unimportant. But the fact that the Warp could not give birth to life was universally acknowledged, though the "poet" added: "except for a fleeting, candle-lit, ugly resemblance to a pathogenic microorganism which seeks to merge with or destroy a sentient being.

It is quite curious, probably reliable, but does not explain my abnormal nature - in the place where I was, I should have been torn in a second, but I lived myself, moreover, by some energy, and not chaotic, but "sweet as a reasonable soul", supported the demonette, and my existence.

This is at warp, really knows how reliable, but I suspect - high. Because the information was intended for the Inquisitor, the truth with him, in the sense of what he is, came out incomprehensible.

The thing is that the "children's books" from the "who's who in the Imperium" series, such as "this is a fireman, he saves from fire, and this is the Inquisitor, he burns with fire" was not in the tablet. That is, I was a kindergartner getting an institute course, although the analogy is not quite right, but close. And Ter diaries, clearly compiled "for the coming Inquisitors", explained very little: the fundamental points he took for granted, I could not approximate them, I got some kind of beyond-the-beltway crap.

As a result, I got such, rather unpleasant, picture. Or to beat the information out of those who can get handy, and necessarily with the elimination of the source of information, to avoid rumors that "the Inquisitor is not real! Or surrender to a fellow inquisitor, which seems silly at first glance. However, the tablet's queries for "memory, memory loss, amnesia" yielded a number of descriptions and warnings related to warp in general and demons in particular. No details, but it happened, so to turn to Maximus, the former mentor of Teryokha (to whom, by the way, he flew, the conclave was, judging by the diary, secondary). Judging by the diary, the relationship was quite kind and trusting, so it seems that this option is preferable.

By the way, after deciding to play "Don Pedro with amnesia" I found some fascinating information while looking through my tablet. So, travel to interstellar states in superluminal light was only possible through warp. With the exceptions, at a distance of several light years from the Eye of Awe, the Eye of Terror, and Malstrom, which I still knew from Earth, the constants of the universe were shaking. But, barring obvious exceptions, FTL is only attainable through warp.

Travel in this aggressive substance was provided by Heller's generator, which formed a bubble of the same name field around the moving ship, in which the laws of the normal universe applied.

And that generator was a hell of a lot bigger, more power-consuming, and required more than once duplicated circuits (for obvious reasons). Anyway, the Terran Debauchery was the smallest interstellar ship possible. A pleasure boat, for crying out loud, converted from a word no, a reconnaissance sloop.

With a nominal Navy standard crew of six thousand! However, in such a section, the laughing about ships of many kilometers in length that arouse back home become clearer. Not everything, but taking into account that the generator's machinery takes a parallelepiped three hundred by one hundred meters, and the field of its one covers a sphere of a couple of kilometers and there is no less - the picture becomes more logical and understandable.

At the same time, interested me, I found that there were both "shuttles" snooping on the sublight, flying from star to star for years, and quite small couriers. But the latter, funnily enough, acted on the "manual", or rather "brainy" drive by strong psyker. There were isolated instances, in great need (unless the psyker itself travels on its own need or desire), where the analog of the Geller field was projected exactly reasonable. There were merits in the descriptions as well, like how a ship with a generator could be at the finish line a few hours BEFORE the start, or a couple of years after it. Such twists and turns did not happen with the pseiker - either it flew "on schedule", or it did not fly. Here were the disadvantages - such courier shells "did not fly" almost an order of magnitude more often than "generator" ships.

And in general, technical information was unfortunate little, which was explained by the "monopoly on technology" of this ... state in the state, Adeptus Mechanicus. In general, the situation with them de jure was almost worse than in the binary empire. Autonomous planets, their own laws, insubordination to government agencies, and other nice things.

Except that they were accountable and subordinate to the Inquisition. I did not find, studying the documents and the diary, ANYONE in the Imperium, regardless of the position to which the Inquisitor could not come and tell to bare his ass and bend over. No one at all, the Council of High Lords of Terra, the highest authority of the Imperium, could be bent over by one lousy Inquisitor! Not quite, of course, de facto: well, there was an Inquisitorial representative on this council, but de jure that was the way things were.

And, in conclusion, a week before the announced start of the flight I decided to get acquainted with the former body-owner as a person. There was a lot of incomprehensible information on the structure of the Imperium, laws, and other things.

So, Teryokha wrote little about himself, mostly describing his surroundings. But finished a certain "progenium schola", after which he was recruited as an assistant, called "interrogator", by Inquisitor Maximus. Rather dryly and sparingly described his years as an inquirer and receiving the insignia (as I assumed, the abundant crossbones with the winged crock was the insignia) a dozen years ago. By the way, Teryokha was not thirty, but sixty years old. He was a member of a voluntary association, funnily enough, not a professional one, a sort of voluntary club, Ordo Malleus, specializing in creatures from warp, of various types and species, or rather, their extermination. And for the last dozen years he's been a demon hunter of sorts in Segmentum Tempestus, part six of the local spiral galaxy.

On second thought, I don't have a problem with Ter. Certainly not after he died. If he were alive, I would have a complaint, regardless of the fact that the uncle was doing his job. But he was dead, so I had to ask myself what to do. And, heart on hand, I can say that I do not mind to live his life. By all appearances, the Inquisitor is a person "outside the hierarchy," the freest man in the Imperium, with access to wherever he wants. And this is information that I am curious to receive. And to work as an Inquisitor, I'm quite curious. At least, if I were a soldier, or at least a mutant space commando, I'd try to get out of the bushes. But the Insignia, I grunted, could be a little harder to hold on to.

Five days later the "Lecherous Terranca" dropped out of warp in a nameless system with a lonely dead planet. That was where the Fortress of the Inquisition was located, and where the Conclave was to be held-as I understood it, the annual talk of the Segmentum Inquisitors, though not simultaneous for all, but still.

In fact, not long before leaving Empyrean, I was yanked into the ship's cabin - I needed the insignia, otherwise the ships and automated security systems would have blown the hell out of our trough.

Finally, I was lowered down in the shuttle with a welded box, so that I stood in the caisson, waiting for the appearance of fellow burners by fire. I was nervous, no doubt, but it was interesting as hell.