Organizations

Having made this decision, I spent another three weeks digging through documents, treatises and manuals, both on the Imperium and on the galaxy as a whole. Of curiosity, there was no mention of Tyranid beetles, iron undead necrons. Either it was a gamemaker's invention, or they would appear later, I logically concluded. Some superficial familiarity, at the level of "there is such a thing," I had, but no more.

I was curious about Mechanicus, and I wasn't lazy to look at a few of their creations. They had NO manifestation of warp, no "wind and rays". At the same time, though I had not yet encountered it myself, there was a certain "machine spirit" which, according to all(!) treatises I had read, improved the mechanism, reduced the probability of breakdowns, etc. And that's not warp, but some kind of mysticism, I somewhat confusedly concluded.

But with the delusion of swordsmanship in the world of small arms and energy weapons, I figured it out, which was both somewhat amusing and frightening. So I went to the shooting range to hone my skills in using my gun, which turned out to be a bolt gun, the hands of the very same Jokaero, and functioning as an active-jet gun should. I mean, it had almost no recoil, but the bolt also reached its "working speed" at ten meters from the shooter. I admittedly thought sawbones and other fencing had something to do with this property, but no.

The other bolters had a solid "knockout" charge, so that a point-blank shot was no weaker than a hit at half a kilometer. This seemed to negate their usefulness, which I was wrong about. The key role was not recoil, but mobility and barrel length. That is, a one-meter long large-caliber assault and twin bolter - the power ceiling of a hand-held bolter weapon - could shoot its shells up to 3 kilometers without losing its killing power, and a space marine handled it with one hand (!), being able to change the target in a fraction of a second.

Anyway, on the firing range I saw a pair of gray knights beating each other with a hammer and a sawn-off hammer. That said, I couldn't track their speed, but they're mutants, so be it. Their weapons, however, had been engulfed by the "wind of warp. Ordinary, training weapons that were in no way bound to warp.

And the investigation yielded a paradoxical conclusion: swords, hammers, and other such things have a BIGGER killing power than various types and kinds of firearms. It's clear that a meltagun is tougher than a baseball bat, for example, but a sawn-off hammer will cut through armor that a stream of 10,000-degree plasma can't handle.

And it was the "winds" that were to blame. Obviously, there was a warp-distorted topology, where the mind believed in the killing power of cold weapons so intensely that they became more deadly than firearms. It should be noted that this worked "in general", a kind of mystical "constant" of the World - the cold steel received an unreasonably high bonus to the performance characteristics when used. And whether it was a psiker or an ordinary man, whether it was a training sword or an artifact relic - it made no difference, the bonus went to everything, the only question is what was added to.

When I realized that this reminded me of something, I dashed into the library and began to rummage through the data on orcs. And it was described there, quite seriously, that they assemble high-tech equipment and weapons out of shit and sticks. And it works. Because they BELIEVE it works. There were a lot of examples, but they weren't important.

And what came out was that, within the framework of the warp breaking through into the material world, every reasonable person is a "little" miracle worker. Psykers are a different story. They are operators of warp energy, a completely different type and approach. And simple minders changed matter and its properties by their faith. The most famous sorcerers were Orcs, and for good reason: they lived their lives at war and ninety-nine percent of their lives were spent in war. And all of their "miraculous potential" was aimed exclusively at war, weapons and military equipment. This allowed them to perform "miracles" unattainable by others. Although I noticed a similar miracle with weapons, but here it is obviously severely weakened because of many other human interests.

It was curious, though, but not useful, except to write some books in a few decades. It is true that, in addition to shooting, I included training with the so-called "lightning claws. It's a glove equipped with a kind of sorcerer's field generator that makes a fist and claw strike faster, stronger, and simply impossible to crush: I could punch through ten centimeters of damnable armor with my fist! I ripped the training sword from the claws of the gray knight! Yes, it was a surprise, and the training sword, and I myself could not keep my feet... But strongly, a fact.

And again - the winds of warp "blew" the gauntlet and fields, making the blow stronger and unrealistically powerful (and non-traumatic for me), but inside and in the "idle" course of this kill no manifestation of this energy was observed, even with the most partial observation. Mysticism, as it is, I concluded, having included in my "Inquisitor's arsenal" a pair of small thunder claws.

Anyway, this "miracle game" wasn't working out so well. If I could manage ordinary warp energy, even if it was subordinate to a psyker, then this "miraculous distortion" was difficult, bad, in fact, not possible at all. Obviously, the consequences of the belief of trillions that "it must be so". And, incidentally, a reminder of my not being "absolute" at warp. The gods, for the record, are also tied to faith, so if I'm going to kick Khorn, I'm not going to get a kick out of it anytime soon.

Having thought about it, I pulled myself together, grabbed a can of beer (just in case), and headed for the workshop, to Maximus. Checks and checks, and they are understandable, by and large, but it is necessary to consult. Somehow I did not succeed in communicating with the other Inquisitors - and time was taken to read, and they usually did not crowd together for the purpose of "chatting with Terentius".

And going down to the technical rooms, I witnessed an entertaining spectacle. I saw Mechanicusnic running down the corridor, at a fairly high speed, holding the floors of his scarlet cloak with his manipulators. Judging by the amount of augmentation, no less than Magos. There was no human flesh at all, which, for these techno-lovers, is a sign of high spirituality.