Tekrons with their fixed resources and admittedly fantastic tech going up against a non-finite AI with mortal servants having all sorts of wonky ideas...

The Warp was infamous for its subtle traps. One of their sneakiest was using woodcuts, carvings, and paintings to form complicated sigils and runes. If you followed the path of the sigils or carvings from beginning to end, be it by touch or by eye, you instantly opened yourself up for demonic Possession, with prompt Fun Times starting for everyone around you.

Cathilda Rantha, a Natural Scrivener, had inquired if the effect of drawing Symbols and Glyphs like that could be replicated psionically and in computer code...

Oh, but hadn’t that set off a few billion man-hours of study. The Great DM’s ability to determine the optimal course of study had certainly helped, as had Grandmother’s Spellcraft Ranks intersecting with Ronnie’s Psicraft Ranks and having puppy-kittens of really deadly implications.

End result... yep.

The course of the probe’s ‘survey path' was the Rune for setting all of this off. Branching data requests replicating it created resonance, until it reached the point where it set off, and vivic flames exploded out through every computer system and device plugged into the systems running on negative energy.

Compared to working out that runecraft, working out a TL 21 Computer language hidden in a TL 11 code network was relatively minor. Nobody quite understood how the runework functioned as a result, which was perfectly fine by all concerned. This was a nice little trick for the Deus Machina, no reason to spread it around.

------

“Transfer all the data you needed to?” I asked his avatar idly.

The big sphere of vividermite was currently plugged into his pet Planet-Eater. He had conscripted a bunch of True Believer cyborgs into doing some very, VERY long overdue restoration and purging work on the Gatherer bots he had taken over, and was using their communication protocols to locate and suborn the other fourteen of the swarms of them still tooling about the galaxy.

Some were corrupted more than others, of course, courtesy of both the Warp and the Tekrons, but he had complete command and understanding of their tech, so it was just a matter of time. He generally just shut them all down when he found them, snaffled them up inside the Planet-Eater, and then got to work cleaning them up.

He had a few zillion to work on. Happily, he had a lot of converts happy to repurpose some of the deadliest war machines in the galaxy.

“A great deal. Some were lost to the ignition of the vivus, but it is understandable. There should be backups in other datacenters of the Tekron,” the DM’s even voice responded, sounding a bit smug. Well, ingesting the vivic remains of a Crecheworld was probably a big meal even for him, and a lot of data.

“What’s your prediction?” I asked, watching some of the tentacled Harvester delivery ships moving by in the Void. We were currently en route to his third swarm, using Phlo rivers to accelerate the weird combination of Mass Driving and Quantum Sailing formed by the conjoined tech of the leShay and the Shaitan that had been used to make these fleets.

“Without significant additions to my avatars, a considerable amount of time if I want to harvest the Crecheworlds. They are spread throughout this galaxy and the neighboring ones, and number 1,843 different systems from which to launch their attacks.”

“How long before they realize something is wrong?”

“Lack of reply from automatic updates and datasharing will activate certain protocols by the fourth Crecheworld.”

“In the Milky Way?” I clarified, and the Great DM paused, calculating.

He and I both looked at the Map expanding in the neighboring galaxies, where the bravest scouts in the most advanced Alias-class ships in our Fleet were expanding our knowledge of the neighboring galaxies.

They’d found only bare rock in every single system, stripped down to the mantles, with barely any atmosphere, only that which it had managed to attract from the neighboring vacuum. The conditions for life to rise were basically non-existent.

On the other hand, there were groups of mature and very well-fed Gardeners following them, and finding plenty of places to Seed...

These Gardeners were very well-equipped for their Seeding. Each of them had their own devoted Tug equipped with full Harmonic Drive and a resonating Tachyon Bubble whose effect they could enhance by going into starflower form and Quantum Sailing.

If they didn’t have to maneuver, they were just as fast as a Tachyon Drive using Gravity Braiding inside a Phlo, zipping between star systems calmly and smoothly to do their job.

The kids hadn’t seen any xenosyms in any of the systems yet, and any place radiating the necroic energies of the Tekrons were avoided entirely.

The locations of those exo-galactic Tekron bases were painted into the Map as a formality, and we regarded them... and the expert way the Scouts had avoided the few in their paths. Newly updated, and with some less-than-ideal starmaps from the Tekrons to help guide them, new search patterns and routes to take were being drawn up.

Seventeen systems not reached and seemingly randomly spaced in the three galaxies lit up. I lifted an eye at the Great DM.

“Xenovore Mother Nodes, capable of birthing entire swarms. They are resting in planet-free systems in hibernation, where they cannot contaminate anything.”

Anatolia made some noises that might have been a tired curse, Ronnie started wondering how fast we could kill the things, and Briggs just glared at them and promised they’d die.

“So annoying.”

There was a slow wave of thought from Flowerbush, backed by the other Gardeners.

-How much biomass?...-

I looked at the Great DM, who turned an eye-module to meet mine.

“So, how many Gardener pods do you think we can tempt out of the galaxy with news of those?”

The Great DM agreed that it was a definite possibility. As always, it was a question of scale...

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In the Empire proper, many of our recent advances were being made more possible by the Void Brothers now at work there.

Forget the Umbrans. They might be the Inquisitors, but they didn’t have the Land on their side, and any divinations they could do could be foiled by equally skilled and more powerful Warp Sorcerers pulling off stuff.

But those people simply could not hide from the Void Brothers who decided to adopt a world, gathered a crew to support them, and got to work.

Generally speaking, the Void Brothers stayed away from battlefields, save for pure Karma. War was a chaotic place where all sorts of possibilities opened up, and was best worked by Sources who could bend results their way, making new possibilities out of none, and the like. Sure, they could point the way to the command crew, but in the end, Nulls were just as good at taking out the enemy command structure as they were.

No, the Void Brothers plunked themselves down on some critical Imperial worlds, one after another, especially those that had G&G bases and Ranthacorp offices and production facilities.

Oh, and Corunsun worlds. Can’t forget those.

Once in place, they began to disassemble ALL of the Warp Cults, infiltrations, plans, schemes, and machinations going on.

It didn’t matter how deep an infiltrator had hid. It didn’t matter how the cult was disguised, where it was buried, or who it recruited. The Fireswords and the Wayfists went for them.

Anyone who played with the dead ran across the Bonescythes, who also ended up being one of the prime people dealing with alien infiltration, as well as things triggering Dead Walking Events. On the worlds they walked, soylent started to go out of style, Necroic Collectors went up remarkably quickly, and the numbers of haunted locations began to dwindle as they walked among the dead, and gave them the final peace they needed.

Also, many, many Ghost Knights chose to follow them...

The Lightscepters were rapidly among the most notorious of killers in space. They were drawn to Shrineworlds of all kinds, plus anything worshipping false gods... which meant they were also very sensitive to alien infiltrators suborning people in false cults.

The Cult of Man, which was basically a galaxy-wide faith worshipping a non-god, got a LOT of attention from them. Priests who were false even to their false god were candidates for elimination, and secular corruption was very heavy within the faith, to no one’s surprise. On worlds with a Lightscepter active, the Cult of Man soon became synonymous with venality and corruption, as deaths after scandal after suicide after corruption came out of it, and the Lightscepters purged the false from their ranks.

The aliens trying to set up Mythos Cults didn’t much like them, either.

The Mindrings went after everything that had to do with psionic corruption, human or alien, which made them almost as sensitive to the Warp as the Fireswords, and certainly better at going after corrupt psions and alien infiltrators using that vector. From thought viruses to pslavers to bodyjumpers, the Mindrings went after them all, and their purges of the supposedly clean Mentat organizations were something the Silent Sisters might envy for their thoroughness.

The Waterspears were, like the Lightscepters, wholly unwanted almost everywhere. With no halvyr, the Windbows fell into the same category, as did the rare Ancientaxes and Mountainhammers. All of them were nature-oriented, and addressed despoilment of the Land by any source with endless vigor, holding those responsible terminally so, and driving efforts to stop the rapacious and thoughtless exploitation of the Land that was usually encouraged by the Mechanists in pursuit of ever-greater efficiency and profits.

The Waterspears were defenders of the Waters, and the hunters of ancient evils that dwelled in them. The Windbows prized the atmosphere and the green life. The Mountainhammers watched things that dwelled down deep, particularly mining worlds where ancient things might be caught and caged, and dark races plotted things that could endanger whole worlds.

The Ancientaxes were soon renowned as monsters and alien killers wherever they traveled, getting rid of mutated creatures and invading alien monstrous life with implacable calm and deadly skill. Their ability to predict the invasions of the Zygom, Xenovores, Kundi, and the unaligned Gardeners bordered on the uncanny.

And, of course, there were the Shadowknives.

The population of Shadowknives had grown proportionately even faster than the hyn had, as it was now a Rite of Passage to be Awakened... and indeed there were many Shadowknives among the hyn, and no end of world after world begging for them to come there.

Tribe after tribe had sent their children out of Gloom, a whole generation and more of them had been raised outside it now... but there was more need for Shadowknives than ever, and the popularity of the hyn in certain circles made their enclaves on worlds easy to set up... but only on the other side of the Rift, where word had not yet reached the Empire... and the Emperor.