“Look back at the long glorious history of your people, before the Fall. If you met a foe, you found a way to overcome them. Your defenses adapted to their weapons, your weapons were changed to defeat them. You accumulated knowledge of their weaknesses, how to fight them, and if they changed, you changed to meet them.

“Since the Fall, you have done none of that, have you? You have a paralyzing fear that what happened to the Fallen will happen to you. Yet, your foe can only be fought by following that road. The road of magitech is absolutely barred to you, and the only road open you refuse to walk.

“They don’t need to fight you. Unless you can overcome your fear, you have already defeated yourselves, afraid to venture into the heart of the mountain where old veins you once passed by in favor of richer ores are there for you to recover.

“Your ancestors were awesome, jumping right past psitech to magitech. They climbed to the top of the mountain and built a great tower.

“That tower has lost its foundation, and the only way you are going to survive as a race is to rebuild that foundation!

“Yet you refuse to place the keystone, build that first wall, and create a bastion!

“Your ancestors had it easy, and you are REFUSING TO WORK.” I just rolled my eyes at them, and this time their stony skin actually changed hue. That was a dire insult to them, and I knew it.

“Get off the main tunnel, it has collapsed ahead of you and cannot be cleared without bringing down the Warp Gods entirely. Clear the side tunnels! Find the ore! Follow the harder path your ancestors passed by! The tunnel to the future awaits, but you must throw off the fear inflicted upon you and GET TO WORK!”

They flinched. Getting berated by an alien for not doing the things they were famous for was jarring to them. Were they not taught from cradle to grave that enough hard work can solve anything?

“We are not psions! We-”

“YOUR WHOLE BLOODY SPECIES ARE PSIONS!” I bellowed back at them, and they closed their eyes despite themselves. “Do you think you are less magical than the Elvar, simply because you are attuned to Matter? LOOK AROUND YOU! Magic is a transpsionic discipline! Every single member of your species is a potential psion! The fact you have not bothered to Awaken yourselves is a crime against Creation! Do you think there is any chance that the souls of your ancestors will be free, or your gods speak to you once again, if you do not grab the tools Creation has given you and GET TO WORK?”

My hair flared with utter, withering disgust at their attitudes, driving it home with post-50 Charisma.

“Our... our ancestors? Our gods?” the tech-priest spoke up into the silence, very quietly.

I looked back at him sharply. “What? You don’t even know that? Oh, that’s right, because you didn’t bother to Awaken yourselves...” They shuddered, and could feel a bunch of horrible news coming.

“The souls of the dead go to the Warp. Full Stop. There, the Warp Gods do with them what they want. Torture them, boil them for emotions, rip them asunder; feeding on their resistance and resolve to increase their own.

“The souls of the dead of all species in this galaxy are Damned. There is only one Afterlife now, regardless of what your tales tell, and it is the Warp, where the Warp Gods reign supreme.

“What do you think they did to your gods, the only beings that could see your plight, wake you up, guide you on the right road? Why do you think the Divine have been silent all these millennia, when your records clearly indicate they spoke with you, walked among you, blessed your great works, and guided you on your ascension?

“If they live still, they are the prisoners of the Gods of the Warp. If they do not, then who struck them down should be blatantly obvious to all of you.

“They did not abandon you... but you, it turns out, have abandoned them, because you have made no efforts toward saving the souls of your dead, or the gods who made you what you are.”

I leaned forwards in the holo, and they flinched back despite themselves. “The only way you will get your gods back is to find them, and free them, the same as every other race in the galaxy. Ask the Elvar what became of their gods when Amourae rose!

“This is the time for mortal souls to stand forth and save their gods, their ancestors, and themselves from damnation. If you are unwilling to take on that task, you deserve the ending coming for you!

“You came across the galaxy on a whisper and a prayer for help from those you thought long lost. Perhaps someday you will find the spine to help those who have been screaming for your help all this time!

“Contact me again when you have made a decision on what to do. Elders.” With a twist to the word that indicated an elder who was fuddle-headed and in their dotage, I signed off, and the holo pedestal went quiet.

-------

Cantor Rantha, one of the Fantastic grandkids, standing well off to the side, pursed her lips, trying not to smile. “Mithar, Sama, you almost broke their souls!” she observed.

“You can’t change rock without breaking it down,” I replied with a sniff. “Tom-C, Alys-A, how goes the backtracking?” I asked the air.

-The Dark Matter hole they made is drifting away, but bloody apparent. If you know what to look for, it’s like a wide road in a sea of black.-

“So it can definitely be traced. Have they bothered to set up a defensive array yet?”

-They’ve sent out some sensor buoys to a million miles, but nothing along their backtrail.-

“That N’grth device that could track matter fluctuations by their reflection in the Warp while Helljumping was made to track Ruk vessels with Dark Matter Cores.” Said device had also been on one of the ships partially phased into the Grimshield Citadel. Now that we knew the responsible races, inferring that a N’Grth vessel had been present when the Grimshield fell into the Warp was not a stretch of the imagination. It might even have caused it, gambling that the loss of a Citadel was easily worth the sacrifice of one of their own ships.

“A Helljump will probably take longer than the Ruk themselves, especially if they have to track the trail along the phlos,” Cantor mused. “They will have to keep making course alterations to reflect the realspace travel route, stretching out the time...”

“If the Ruk don’t know they can be tracked now, they are idiots. How much time before they arrive?”

I already had the answer, but we all liked exercising our brains. “Two and a half to three days?” she guessed.

“And when they find two Citadels here?”

“Squeals of glee and joy. They’ll mass a huge fleet for the chance. This is not something to miss out on.”

“They’ll have to gather the ships, but they can come straight here, and we’re outside the heliosphere. They can literally come in on top of the Ruk.”

“A week, outside?” Cantor mused, running through probabilities... and foisting stuff off to the Strategos people, who didn’t have enough on their plate to not suddenly swarm over the possibility of an Elder Races fight with the Ruk. “Without full power, the Ruk can’t possibly win without reinforcements, and certainly won’t be able to save the Grimshield.”

“I am aware. On the flip side, I have absolutely no goodwill for the Mi-Go at all, and the Compact of the Black in general is worth shooting on sight. We have, in effect, set the biggest bait for them to jump on in millennia here.”

She took a deep breath, her eyes shining. “Damn, all this for the chance to introduce the God in the Machine to the Ruk?”

“Honor, mutual interests, and goodwill are things that have to be proven, and they have to be proven with blood. If we want to establish ties, there must be strength backing them, and trust must be balanced on that strength.”

“Do we actually have enough forces to take the fight?” she had to ask.

“No, but there are two Citadels here. We only need enough to make it impossible for the Compact to take the fight, and they’ll withdraw. They won’t fight a losing battle without a reason, and if they can’t take the Citadel, there’s no reason to stick around.”

“So, it all depends if you broke their King and Elder Priest enough.”

“Diplomacy Checks at 70 can be pretty nasty,” I agreed with a slight smile.

“I’ve got to get that up to be a decent priestess,” Cantor sighed. “Ugh. A Rantha priestess. Still feels weird, especially since I’m such an over the top techie...”

“I’d apologize, but you’re the one with a Super AI at the top of your Curseline.” She blew a raspberry at me, and I just laughed at her.

“So, we’re bringing pretty much all the assets we’ve built up over the last decade here, aren’t we?”

“Oh, we are! I want to spring a big, bloody, nasty trap on the Compact, and I want them to think the Ruk arranged it, if at all possible.”

“We’ll need to move the fight to a busier area, to make things more interesting,” Cantor thought, eying the readings of local space.

A lock of hair pointed idly, her pale green eyes went over that way, and she squinted. A gesture, and it expanded for her.

“My, how incredibly busy with leavings of... stuff.” She rolled her eyes at me, and I grinned.

“Yeah, it’s like a bunch of extremely dense crap got shattered violently and spread all over the place, making it really interesting to get reliable readings from. I wonder who might have arranged such a thing?”

“Is that a comet coming in there?” she had to ask, pointing.

“Well, no, but it’ll sure look like one when it’s appropriate to.”

She snickered, eyes roving over all the various things floating around of interest. “My, my, my. And this was only the preliminary stuff, I can see. You didn’t even get serious.”

“No. I just passed it off as a test of how to set up an ambush point. If it wasn’t needed, we could just collect what we needed to and move on.”

“Are you worried about the Sargasso at all?” she had to ask.

“If the Mythos knew this place was a Sargasso, they’d’ve set up shop here. My assumption is that they knew the Warp was thin here, and didn’t want to risk it traipsing into realspace without a good reason.

“So, we whipped up these things.” I waved my hand at another display screen, and she bent forwards eagerly to review the attached schematics of the massive lens-shaped nanofoil devices. Massive, as in tens of thousands of miles across.

“Psychic resonators. You’re gathering the horror wave and condensing it into a ten-degree arc that encompasses the entire travel zone!” Her eyes widened in delight. “The force of the horror wave will reach all the way outside the heliosphere!”

“What a horrible, horrible thing to do, I know.” I flicked up more images, and she swore silently at the waiting rings at various arcs around the screaming star, ready to focus those waves in any direction required...