It must be noted that, despite the humoristic aspects of TTSD, I have the unfortunate ability to always veer into the dramatic and grandiose. This works particularly well in balancing the humor of TTSD with the tragedic opera of the Horus Heresy/40k.
I note, however, that humor is not my strong suit and liable to be very, very black at times.
Edit: FEED ME JOKES AND INSPIRATION.
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Chapter 2: Initiation to the Past.
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A grave and terrible silence stood in the room as the occupants tried, desperately, to understand the words spoken by the Emperor. Lorgar, a traitor? The brotherhood of the Legions, broken by treachery? Gods?
"... Okay, seriously, I'm starting to be freaked out here. You've been staring at me for the last five minutes."
Sanguinius shook himself. He shared a look with Horus, who shared his horror at the entire situation. His brother nodded slightly, leaving him the initiative.
"Father... Please explain what you mean by... all of that."
"The Webway Project? Alright. It started off when I realized that Warp travel seriously sucked when you want to talk to someone quickly or make a call for Eldar pro..."
"LORGAR... I meant about Lorgar, Father." interrupted the Great Angel. He was minutely glad he'd interrupted the Emperor. He didn't particularly know what the Eldar had to do with all this, but the matter of Lorgar came first.
The Emperor seemed unshaken by the shout.
"Hm? Oh, yeah. I guess I should elaborate on that. The little edge lord has been keeping a low profile, after all. Alright, where to begin..."
He seemed to consider, even as Malcador woke with a start and a sneeze, smelling salts being waved under his nose by Valdor.
"The beginning would be nice, Father.", interjected Horus, a familiar calculating look coming to his face. Sanguinius couldn't help but be gladdened by the sight. Ever the strategist, his brother already dismissed the impossibility of the situation and moved on to the logistical and strategic considerations of... fighting a full military campaign against a fellow... a traitorous Legion.
"Okay. It starts with Colchis. It's always been a hotbed of religious maniacs. Normally, not a problem apart from the unfortunate altar boys. Except this idiotic place used to be an Old One experimental lab a couple of million years ago. Now, they cleaned up well; you won't find anything left of them... except for the thinner barrier between our Materium and the Warp. Barely noticeable back in the day. Now..."
The Emperor shook his head in disgust.
"Now, the barriers are thin enough that those f*ckers can speak to psykers easily. And that's pretty much anywhere in the galaxy. On Colchis, anyone with enough faith can fairly easily communicate with daemons in big rituals. Which means that the Old Covenant Lorgar overthrew was a full blow Chaos cult."
Sanguinius would not have understood the gravity of the situation if he had not dared a look at Malcador. The Sigillite looked... sick.
"My lord... You mean..."
"That we f*cked up? Yeah. We were too hasty, Mal. They knew we were coming, so they hid. Now, Colchis is stuffing daemons into Word Bearers in preparation for their grand plan."
Horus, still showing his intensely calculating look, interrupted.
"Father, what is this enemy? You keep tell us of their actions but we have no context to understand them. I cannot plan a campaign against an unknown foe."
The Emperor actually chuckled.
"Right, right. I'll write you a little briefing of their general capabilities. Speaking of that, I'll need to grab Magnus, Jaghatai and Russ' Rune Priest to set up countermeasures with the Librarius program. Remind me of that, Mal."
"It shall be done, my Lord. Shall I call upon the Sisters as well?"
"No. The Sisters are a counter-measure in themselves. We need to essentially write a manual on how human psykers can avoid being either possessed or corrupted from scratch again. Our current attempt doesn't take active Chaos corruption into account."
Malcador responded with an impressive blanch.
"I'll get right on that."
"No, I'll take care of it. And yes, I will keep in mind that not everyone can stubborn mountains into gravel, you old goat."
With a wry chuckle, the Sigillite made as if to leave, before stopping and remaining in the room.
"You old bastard, you almost got me to leave before explaining yourself again!" he shouted in undeniable frustration.
Both Horus and Sanguinius were shocked at the sight and sound of the Emperor laughing uproariously.
"Ah, I missed that. So, Colchis, Chaos cult, yada yada. A slight tangent needs to be made. You know when I say that the Warp is essentially uninhabited and Warp Predators are de facto non-sentient? Well, I lied. Mind you, I lied because Humanity is sometimes like the bastard offspring of lemmings and magpies. Show'em anything shiny or powerful and they'll run after it straight off the cliff."
The incredulous and silent stare given by both present Primarchs at his declaration was enough to kill any mortal man from sheer embarassem*nt. The Emperor steadfastly ignored it.
"Warp Predators, or Daemons, are in fact pieces of 4 much greater constructs, which the common layman might call Gods, simply because they're beyond his limited understanding. I call them cancers on reality and pains in my ass. My Imperial Truth was originally designed to prevent most, if not all, religious expressions, which I hoped would either limit or extinguish their easy access to human belief as food. Then, they'd starve and be mostly weakened."
Horus nodded and gestured to speak, prompting a nod from the Emperor.
"I assume some variable has changed?"
"Exactamundo, Hory-sonny. I made my original plan based on what the Warp was like before the Age of Strife and before the creation of that new asshole where the Eldar homeworlds used to be. Now, thanks to those f*cking elven degenerates murder-f*cking Slaanesh into existence, the walls between Materium and Immaterium are so thin that religion is at most a useful aid rather than a necessity for them to influence and manifest their daemons."
"Hory-sonny?"
"You are not quite so easy to nickname as Manny-magick. Anyway. Lorgar, desperate and credulous edge lord he is, decided to worship me based of what little programming I encoded into every Primarch so they'd always recognize me. Understandable, but flawed. We're all familiar with what happened next until Monarchia, when I rebuked him. What happened after that... Well, it's half extrapolation, half psychic divining. But I'm the Emperor of Mankind for a reason, so I'm fairly certain I'm right."
At that point, the Emperor stood up and made a show of stretching. He moved to leave the room and waved at both Horus and Sanguinius to follow him.
"Follow along, kiddos. It's time for a vision quest. Haven't done one of those since... oh, M16 at least. It'll shorten the explanation if you actually get to see what happened."
The fairly anonymous Shield-Captain who'd been standing guard near-by spoke up then.
"But my Lord, you just said it was half extrapolation?"
The Emperor responded with a wry grin that managed to look both utterly at home and utterly bizarre on his (pseudo)divine visage.
"I'm the motherf*cking Emperor. My vision quests are always accurate and truthful, unlike those f*ckers."
===
As they strode through the long halls of the citadel towards... what wondered Malcador the Sigillite, closest and most trusted advisor of the Emperor of Mankind. He hadn't ever heard of "vision quests" being spoken by his Lord, and His claims of treachery from Lorgar...
Well, quite honestly, Malcador couldn't wait for a moment to tell the Emperor "I told you so".
As they marched towards the main entrance, as the outside was now obviously their destination, they happened upon Lord Dorn, speaking in his customary fashion with his First Captain as they searched for the Emperor.
"Lord Dorn, while I share your worry..."
"I do not worry, Sigismund. I merely seek clarification on the current events."
Never breaking his stride, the Emperor almost bowled over the Primarch of the VIIth in His march. For a moment, Malcador thought he saw a flicker of annoyance on His face as a psychic whisper of... "tacos" came to his senses.
What?
"There you are, Rogal. Come along."
Utterly unperturbed at having been almost ran over, Rogal Dorn nodded and formed up with his brothers, following the Emperor.
"Where are we going, Father?"
The neutral, almost disinterested tone of the Primarch did not much surprise any who knew him.
"We're going on a little field trip, Rogal. Or road trip as it is since we'll be following the road."
"A... field trip, Father? What do you mean?"
The Emperor continued unperturbed by the question, a slight grin of... triumph on his face.
"There'll be tacos tonight too. It's Friday, isn't it?"
Dorn's expression only grew more confused, which, on the fairly self-controlled man, translated as a slight frown and a quick questioning look to his brothers. The utterly confused looks he got back seemed to further perturb the Praetorian's calm.
"... Sigismund, inform the kitchens of the Emperor's wishes for tonight's dinner."
A slight, barely heard sigh came from the Templar as he twitched in a particular way that, to the superhuman eyes that surrounded him, indicated he was activating his vox caster and selecting an unusual frequency to contact. That or barely controlled rage. Or both, really.
"Yes, my lord."
Malcador was rather surprised that the duel-obsessed Sigismund even bothered to inform himself of the vox-caster frequency reserved for the catering staff. There was a story there and, were the circ*mstances not so utterly bizarre, it might have been interesting to ferret it out.
At long last, they came out of the citadel and unto the parade grounds.
The Emperor seemed to take the scene in for a moment, looking this way and that for something.
"Right. Vision quests. I know Malcador over here", He said with a quick nod towards the Sigillite, "is wondering what I mean by that. Not much of a surprise, since I haven't used this trick since... oh, M8 thereabouts. Regularly, I mean. I'm fairly sure Jaghatai can do a similar trick pretty much instinctively."
The Master of Mankind began to stride forwards, heading west along the road, gesturing to His current entourage to follow.
"It's pretty much a mixture of divination and initiation to adulthood rituals, as I finagled it. Point of the matter is to undertake a journey of discovery and trials to better oneself. It's useful, but not entirely reliable for most since it shows you what you need to see rather than what you want to see."
At this Sanguinius spoke up.
"But wouldn't we want to see the critical information we need to know anyway, Father?"
The Emperor nodded slightly, never letting His gaze waver from the path in front of Him.
"Yes, but some truths people need to know are not truths that they can necessarily bear or even want to face. To achieve my purpose, as I said, I mixed in bits of initiation rituals which, because the Warp loves symbolism, means facing your inner demons, your flaws, your particularly obscene and disgusting fetishes, et cetera. I couldn't filter out that part and end up with a reliable divination method. Purely divinatory rituals can end up becoming a confirmation bias experiment. You keep asking the question, but the Warp reacts to the answer you want to get. You need to have a little randomness in the rite so unexpected answers can also come through."
Dorn nodded in comprehension.
"It is, in effect, acknowledging the randomness of the Universe. By letting the Warp control part of the ritual, you allow it to show you all possible results."
"Aww, little Lord Adornable is trying to understand Warp mechanics. Nice try, but no. That's utterly stupid. You never, ever let the Warp control anything. You never trust the Warp with anything, especially not direct access to your soul for a proper initiation. What you do is throw bait into the waters by pretending to be an immature, naive soul and let the Warp taunt you with all the possible answers. They won't lie since, effectively, all answers are theoretically possible and can be equally harmful if presented the right way. Meanwhile, you remain in the nice, warm fortified bunker of your... well, my immensely powerful soul, use cynicism and contempt to blow through the outright impossibilities and figure out the most probable truths."
The assembled party took a moment to digest the information as their boots clanged on the metal floor. Dorn, in particular, seemed fazed by the nickname the Emperor had suddenly dubbed him with.
"I stopped using it pretty quickly after the end of the early ages of Terra, what with the rise of rationality and the loss of traditional symbolism surrounding the Hero's Journey as an initiation. Unfortunately for us all, the current state of the Galaxy makes the ritual reliable again, so we get to do goofy sh*t for answers again. I'm also brute forcing most of the fine work to gain time. Be glad I didn't have to pull out the woad and the cosplay. We'll even avoid most of the bullsh*t I usually had to sieve through since we're asking about something that did already happen, rather than what may. Speaking of which, we're here."
It was at that moment that they each took a real look at their surroundings. They were... in a ship? In one of the main concourse of the dignitaries quarters on a capital ship, even.
"This is... these are the halls outside of Lorgar's quarters on the Fidelitas Lex," spoke Horus in astonishment, "How can this be?"
The Emperor looked at him with a wry grin.
"Yes and no. If you pay attention to the corners of your vision, you'll see the slight unreality of this scene. In effect, we're all still standing on that granite road and..."
At those words, even Malcador saw his surroundings distort and felt the cold wind on his face once more.
"f*ck! No. I mean. Yes, yes we are on the Fidelitas Lex, about 40 years ago. Don't think about it, I'll explain later. Stay with me. Eyes on me. Pay attention to me and what I'm about to show you. Me damn it, I forgot that normal people can't really achieve the doublethink necessary to keep it up while remaining cynical."
Their surroundings solidified, helped by a slight psychic compulsion from the Emperor, as everyone stopped scrutinizing their surroundings and questioning how they had gotten there. The slightly dream-like quality remained, however. Constantin Valdor then spoke.
"My Lord, what is it we are here to witness? While the current circ*mstances are... questionable..."
A weary sigh escaped the Emperor.
"Damn it, Valdor. Use your brain a little. I've told you where and I've told you when. Do I have to spell it out?"
Horus interjected, a grim look on his face.
"This is just after Monarchia, isn't it? This is where our bro... Lorgar's betrayal starts?"
The Emperor's face was grave as he nodded. Even then, Malcador thought he could glimpse a flash of... regret in His eyes.
"Yes. This is when Kor Phaeron began whispering of Chaos to Lorgar. Where the fall of the XVIIth began, though the rot was already present."
