Artifact

A Recording from Euclid, Alpha Squad leader:

As Spiral HQ is not yet fully operational and most systems are offline, these personal recordings will have to suffice as a record of our expedition until HQ can establish an Uplink system with squads in the field.

The clockworks are both fascinating and horrifying. Within a seemingly impossible machine all manners of alien worlds exist within the giant globes that endlessly churn through every floor. What purpose do they serve? And from where did these worlds come from?

Before the crash the Skylark performed a partial scan of Cradle's surface that revealed what appeared to be a landscape composed of enormous parches of disparate terrain. The Clockworks are a manufactured place, perhaps the worlds they contain are harvested from the terrain above. But how?

A Recording from Parma, Alpha Squad scout:

Someone out there has it in for me. While in recon training I was routinely frustrated by the limits of the training simulations- I knew they were not real. I craved the open air, soil beneath my feet and the wind. I wanted the challenge only the wild can offer.

The Skylark crash was horrible, and the resulting situation even worse. But when Captain Ozlo selected me for this squad I was excited- there is no greater wild than what this planet offered. Is that wrong?

But then as we stepped off of that first elevator platform and sunlight warmed our faces it began to sink in: the grinding of gears, the buzzing of enormous lights, the smell of smoke and the steam-filled air... the wild we had stepped into was not real. It was another simulation.

More ironic still is how little of my training actually applies now. This world is crazy, the terrain changes constantly. I think this squad would have been better off with another guardian instead of me. At least then they would be better prepared to fight whatever they didn't see coming.

A Recording from Rulen, Alpha Squad technician:

We narrowly evaded a gremlin trap today. Ambushed on a platform above a pit of molten slag, we had to hold our own against a horde of the snarling beasts as we dodged incoming rocket fire from above. Fun stuff.

Grantz took the full blast of a rocket twice, reacting only with a stagger as if he had discovered a stone in his boot. Sometimes I think that beneath his iron suit is a body of equally heavy iron. It wouldn't surprise me.

Parma has been hard on herself, saying that she should have scouted the trap. But how can you scout that is ever in flux? How can you be sure that the path ahead is still safe if you can never be sure it's still even there?

This is a world designed to confuse its travellers. It wants to trap and destroy them. I'm starting to think it's like a cat, toying with its prey before delivering the final blow.

I hate cats.

A recording from Grantz, Alpha Squad guardian:

We have seen so many worlds on this mission, but none such as this. This burning citadel is not some construction of gremlin design. This is a real place, some kind of shell of a former empire. There is great sorrow here, something unlike anything I have felt before.

Legions of shambling dead have attacked us here, relentless in their defense of this place. Their broken, burnt frames crumbling and rising once more, ready for another battle. And just as they refuse to fall, so does the burning ruin around them. It is almost as if this whole realm is trapped in a single moment from some forgotten time, never changing, never allowing itself to finally turn to ash.

You can feel it in the smoldering air—an eternal will holding this place together, never allowing its inhabitants to rest. No creature deserves such a fate, it is beyond my understanding.

I wish to leave this place soon. I only hope that our doing so will provide some peace to the souls that dwell here.

I dream...

Within my dream, I saw it open the void, felt its endless hunger.

You are safe here, Knight. Within this dream, its many eyes cannot see you nor can its many arms reach you.

But this dream is fleeting. Use what is here to prepare for the battle to come. It knows of you now. It will find a way out and come for you.

I dream...

Within my dream, I see your legion, falling to this world like burning stars.

You fall with purpose, burning ever brighter as you reach for the heart of this world.

Hold dearly this fire in you, for darkness will consume all the night if its stars begin to fade.

This world was created to protect me.

Vulnerable in slumber, worlds were drawn to shield me from the darkness.

This world has become my prison.

In his madness, the architect betrayed the pact. Twisting his creation into a game of death, it now devours all who enter its iron embrace.

As I dreamed, it consumed.

It devoured the knowledge of time... Memories of the dead... The hearts of kings and the souls of their people... Good and evil... It consumed.

It grew stronger, endlessly mirroring itself within the space of my dream. Endlessly mirroring... Expanding... Infinite.

What it was before, it is no more. Neither beast nor god, it is a creation unlike all.

It is... The Swarm.