Warhammer 40,000 · Month 10 · Spooky October
Week III — The Dark Path · Stacy & Caelwyn
When saving someone also means deciding what they may become, protection stops being a simple promise. Explore the human side of that question in NO APPEAL: Adeptus Arbites in a Living Hive — our Wrath & Glory campaign of investigation, authority and lasting consequences.
Stacy is still looking for signs of life when the patient opens the door for them.
Her instrument has found neither a pulse nor breathing.
The tall metal figure waits beneath an arch of seamless dark stone. Beyond it, green light runs through a chamber that has been waiting longer than humanity has existed.
CAELWYN:
“A tomb with an attentive caretaker.”
STACY:
“Or a hospital whose treatment succeeded.”
She lowers the instrument.
“It keeps looking for organs. That isn’t his mistake.”
The Necron turns and leads them inside.
On a low pedestal stands a shallow bowl.
It does not glow. Nothing moves inside it. Amid the impossible machinery, it is almost offensively ordinary.
Their host stops beside it.
One metal fingertip turns the bowl until a worn pattern faces the doorway.
Stacy watches the adjustment.
Then she puts her scanner away.
The archive shows them bodies.
Not the bodies waiting in the corridors.
The ones that came before.
Organic. Vulnerable. Marked by the diseases that burdened the Necrontyr through their short lives.
STACY:
“Imagine being offered an end to that.”
CAELWYN:
“By the C’tan.”
“We know what the offer became. Someone hearing it for the first time would not necessarily know everything we do.”
She studies the image.
“A body that doesn’t fail in the same way. Time to finish your work. Time with the people you love.”
CAELWYN:
“An understandable thing to want.”
“More than understandable. Something worth trying to achieve.”
The display changes.
Living metal replaces flesh.
The Necrons endure.
So do the consequences.
Their souls are consumed. Far more of the rulers’ personalities survive than those of the ordinary population. Survival arrives differently depending on where someone stood in the hierarchy.
Caelwyn looks towards their host.
CAELWYN:
“The treatment succeeded?”
STACY:
“In some respects.”
“That’s a considerable qualification.”
“It is. But the qualification works both ways. A terrible cost doesn’t make the benefit imaginary.”
She glances at the organic figure still visible in the archive.
“And I won’t tell a dying person that wanting another day is a moral failure.”
Their host returns to the bowl.
Perhaps it dislikes where the light falls.
Perhaps the object matters.
Neither visitor knows.
CAELWYN:
“We say they lost their souls.”
STACY:
“They did.”
“Then we sometimes speak as though there is nobody left.”
Stacy watches the metal hand withdraw.
STACY:
“That doesn’t follow automatically.”
“Does he remember drinking from it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he remember someone who did?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Their host turns towards them.
For a moment, Stacy nearly asks.
Instead, she considers what the answer could establish.
STACY:
“If he remembered a whole life, would that prove he was the person who lived it?”
CAELWYN:
“Would being unable to remember prove that he wasn’t?”
She looks at him.
“That would be a very poor rule for deciding whose life matters.”
CAELWYN:
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t use it here.”
Stacy nods, but not quite in agreement.
STACY:
“I still want to know what continued through the transfer.”
“So do I.”
“And whether the person entering the chamber could understand what would emerge.”
Caelwyn looks towards their host.
CAELWYN:
“While remembering that whoever emerged is now standing in front of us.”
At the next doorway, several warriors wait.
Their host makes a small gesture.
Every head turns at once.
The movement is precise enough to make Stacy stop.
STACY:
“That is a different question.”
CAELWYN:
“From whether a metal body can contain a person?”
“Yes. A different body is one thing. Losing the ability to refuse an order is another.”
CAELWYN:
“They had rulers before.”
“And a ruler’s command is not the same as a mechanism that makes disobedience impossible.”
He studies the waiting figures.
CAELWYN:
“Some might still have accepted the bargain.”
STACY:
“Perhaps.”
“Even with the losses.”
“Perhaps. I would want to hear them say so.”
Their host waits at the far end of the passage.
STACY:
“We’ve been shown a history preserved by someone important. That isn’t the same as hearing everybody.”
CAELWYN:
“Nor does the silence tell us that everyone would have refused.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
A warrior looks towards Stacy.
She cannot tell what the movement means.
For once, she leaves the uncertainty alone.
They return to the archive.
The image of the organic body remains.
Stacy stands before it again.
CAELWYN:
“Would refusing the offer have saved them?”
STACY:
“We don’t have the other history.”
“They might have found another way.”
“They might. But imagining an alternative doesn’t make it available.”
Caelwyn considers the dying figure.
CAELWYN:
“And accepting gave them time. Enough to turn against the C’tan themselves.”
STACY:
“It did.”
“That matters.”
“So does this: short individual lives don’t automatically mean a species is about to disappear.”
He turns towards her.
STACY:
“We shouldn’t quietly replace ‘this ended their mortality’ with ‘this was the only way their people could exist.’ Those are different claims.”
CAELWYN:
“Nor should we ask someone in pain to wait indefinitely for a better answer.”
Stacy rests her hands against the edge of the display.
STACY:
“No. We shouldn’t make refusing sound painless.”
They look at the same figure.
Neither can ask it what it would have chosen.
Their host returns to escort them out.
At the pedestal, Caelwyn pauses.
CAELWYN:
“Suppose someone offered him flesh again.”
Stacy looks towards the Necron.
CAELWYN:
“Suppose it were possible. A different body. Another future.”
STACY:
“We would need to know what that future contained.”
“And if he didn’t want it?”
“Then calling it salvation wouldn’t settle the matter.”
Their host reaches past them.
It adjusts the bowl once more.
The gesture might be habit. It might be preference. There may be a reason neither of them can imagine.
Stacy does not reach for her instrument.
CAELWYN:
“Would you have entered the chamber?”
STACY:
“With the promise they heard?”
He nods.
She takes her time.
STACY:
“I might have.”
“Even knowing there were risks?”
“If my body was failing, and I believed I would remain myself.”
“And now?”
She looks back towards the warriors.
“I would want to know which future I was being offered. The one that can discuss the bargain, or the one that cannot tell us what remained.”
Caelwyn studies his own hand.
STACY:
“What about you?”
CAELWYN:
“I would like to say I would refuse.”
“Would you?”
“I have never been offered another million years while watching someone I love run out of days.”
The door opens.
Behind them stands a being who no longer needs to breathe, in a room he still chooses to arrange.
Stacy looks towards us.
STACY:
“If the offer came to you, what would you need to know before you could call it a rescue?”
Caelwyn waits beside the open doorway.
CAELWYN:
“And would your answer be the same if you were choosing for someone else?”
A promise of protection can become a decision about somebody else’s future. Take that responsibility into the living hive of NO APPEAL · Wrath & Glory, where your investigations and verdicts leave consequences behind.
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