Continent-wide Mass Warp Incursion Zone, Restricted.
I wiped away the drool. Oh, oh...
So that's why there were four varieties of mutant native insects... they'd been to the Incursion zone and/or eaten things tainted by the Warp, like, uh, Warp marauders. So bloody obvious now that we knew what was there.
Satellite feeds naturally couldn't see jack, the whole area was under dimensional instability and the equivalent of a permanent sand storm from above. Not a bloody salt desert. Naturally, sending in fliers was a death sentence to the crews, and sending a tech-reliant survey crew, even if they could fight their way through along on the ground, meant they would run out of power quickly and die out there without even being able to tell anyone why.
The higher-end Mentats probably knew it was there and had no wish to go exploring. Sticking their minds into an area of the Warp was like textbook crazy behavior for a psion.
I was sure Philius and Sir Dorval knew it was there, and it was probably the reason that both organizations actually had a presence on the planet. But I hadn't asked, so they had said nothing. As for the Imperial Navy, it wasn't really their problem unless things called for an Omega Sanction. I was pretty sure the components thereof were in permanent orbit around the planet, given the size of this incursion.
It did explain the amount of random Warp incursions that happened, energy leaking off the writhing of the Veil as it tried to contain the instability. At the same time, the area clearly had a border, and non-native creatures weren't crossing it. They only stumbled out of the rare incursions that found a point of power or emotional trigger outside the storm.
The Warp Storm had been there for as long as humans had. It said something for the mineral wealth of Janus III that it had still been set up as a mining world with such an awesomely dangerous thing looming over everything.
And I was pretty sure that it was my ticket to Eleven. A Warp Incursion that large... there was no chance that I couldn't make Eleven if I broke it.
I had military obligations, but the wonders of Marktell and obscenely Talented underlings/daughters/sons meant that I wasn't actually needed to run this kind of mundane stuff personally. My training paradigm certainly didn't me to be there in flesh and blood... about the only thing that actually required me being there was for the new generations of Rantha Hags and Briggs Brothers, both going in and maybe coming out.
But the siren call of unlimited Karma was ringing out from the moaning foothills of the central continent to the west. The thirst rising in my soul at the thought of an unlimited hunting grounds was making my hands shake. My daughters were zeroing in on it like falcons a-wing, thinking of the time they would make Ten, tear down the walls to their past lives, and finally and absolutely be their own person... and able to join the Marktell.
That was going to be one freaking HUGE Marktell...
Sure, they could do it at Eight, and they might have thought about doing so before an Unlimited Hunting Ground came up. Now it was Ten and foundation absolute.
On the other hand, the time constraints still applied. Basically, the thing to do was go in there and just make an absolute ton of Karma, then come out and start paying for the improvements day by day. Of course, small raids for Naming Karma could continue, but there was no reason to stay in there and grind with the present limits on speed. Nobody doubted that they could earn the Karma faster than we would be allowed to spend it.
But then, we also had the Ten Ceiling to get past, and the massive amount of Karma required to do so. Given how many Ranthas now had their eyes fixed on the Warpstorm, I seriously had to wonder if there was enough in there for all of us to do that.
Whatever. I was sure there was enough for me, and I did have the advantage over my girls. There was only preparing properly, and then going in to do what needed to be done.
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Special orders came in from the Coronal Duke for special duties to be executed by one Colonel Sama Rantha, which my superiors didn't much like until they realized it wouldn't interfere with the training program I put in place... whereupon they were only too happy to get rid of me and the threat I posed to their own accomplishments. That was fine, my girls were more than happy to step into my footsteps and continue the rapid accumulation of power and influence. Yes, Mom, bye Mom, we got this, don't come back, we're empire-building here...
I teleported out to my closest lived-line track, and then diverted myself a few hundred miles further north, being polite and leaving the easier alternate routes up to the plateau to the very, very eager vanguard teams itching to go up there and test things out. I had to add my own contributions to the Map, after all, and there were a lot of eyes watching with great interest as I came up on the Plateau, and gave it a Look.
Mmm.
I studied the interplay of energies with all the power of a 40+ Intellect and True Seeing in five different spectra, including above and below visible light. Such an influx of sensory data was enough to blow out the mind of someone not sufficiently reinforced, especially with where the Warp energies here were coming from, but I wasn't sharing any more then interested people could handle.
I sat there for six hours, doing nothing but looking at what was going on there. Pspectrum of psionic energies. Thaumaspectrum of magical energies. Veil Spectrum of Dimensional Interplay. Electromagnetic Spectrum of reality. Taospectrum of positive and negative forces. And, oh sure, the neospectrum of spiritual Profound Forces at work, and the necrospectrum of the dead...
Some Talented kids with focus in brainy work stuff were shifting this data from the Markspace into some isolated computers and connections with Mah Girls, everyone in a freaking tizzy. The Null kids knew if they could break this on an intellectual basis, they'd be able to smash through to Seven without any problem whatsoever. The formulas behind what was going on could provide data that would need to be unwound for years, whole new insights behind the rules and laws of this reality, and like good scientists, they were slavering over the potential.
Having their boss as a living supercomputer only made it all the more fun, and like good kids, they leapt right into it. Psions, Hags, Hagspawn, and normal humans were going apeshit looking at all the data I was seeing and breaking down.
And then, I began to run.
My lived-line extended out behind me as I ran right up to the edge of the distortion zone, but did not go in. With great speed, I was lightfooting around the edge of it.
Mapping it, and the area around it.
Behind me, the second vanguard team had joined up with Shiera's, the first, and they were setting up a hardpoint for those coming behind to operate from. There was no rush on jumping into the distortions, at least until I did so. Stuff was coming out of the place constantly, mutant Warped shit that was prime for being reduced to Karma and vivus out here, far away from observing eyes, and where the satellites above were not looking... because they'd get their systems infected with the Warp and fried if they did.
This had to be done in person by the living, or not at all!
That meant that I was running, for nearly twenty-two hours a day, for stretches of time broken only by brief periods of extreme violence wherein certain large Warped indigenous life-forms' nexals became my personal property, and most of the rest of their remains became Veil reinforcement. I couldn't draw a true Veil circle without a Void and a Source, of course, so this was purely necessary scouting, and not an attempt at containment.
I did take the time to salvage sand wurms properly, however, which wasn't that hard, as they couldn't burrow properly through the stone of the plateau, meaning they were on the surface, exposed, and there was always a crystal roc somewhere in view just waiting to turn them into a snack.
I so wanted to jump right into the place and see what was past the roiling haze and sand and dimensional skewage, but I contained myself nicely and stuck to eliminating the things rolling out of the place like a good girl. I was basically building the first accurate map of the borders of this thing in history, and could act like a foolhardy adventurer after I acted like a proper explorer.
I did confirm quite a few things as I traveled over the wind-scoured rock, all of which got stuffed into the central database, to be verified and expanded upon by those coming later for the benefit of everyone who wanted to kill shit here.
First, the stuff coming out of the Warp Zone was small. Pretty much all of them showed signs of combat, physical harm, and battle, as if they were being driven out of somewhere else. Given natural territorial proclivities, that meant they'd been forced out by something stronger.
Eyes sparkled. Bigger stuff meant more Karma!...
Second, stuff came out, but it didn't go in. Indeed, there was absolutely nothing wandering towards the zone, airborne or landbound.
Third, Crystal Rocs did most of their hunting along the rim here, since there was such a constant supply of stuff. Er, well, the BIG rocs did. Little rocs got relegated to outlaying areas.
Fourth, this was where the Warp Mutants that infested the Wastes actually came from.
Packs or small hordes of them would occasionally come bursting out of the Warp, looking like they'd been in a fight, and mutagenic energies would crackle over them and adapt them to the environment. They had a nice spread of tech with them, including stuff that absolutely didn't work in the rim area... but would kick in just fine down in the Wastes.
That meant highly variable tech levels were possible inside the zone, and they actually carried around new and old stuff when traveling because of it. Axes here, fusion grenades there...
The few times I ran across them, they were all happy to see me, starting off fireworks and pyrotechnic displays and everything. I was quick to reply with equally enthusiastic light shows, exploding motors, heartfelt screams, and fine displays of Chalice's and Paten's abilities.
There weren't any scrap vehicles or stuff on the plateau because the mutants snaffled it all up, fixed it with psi or weird science, and turned it into new stuff. I only saw one conflict between rival bands, but it was emotional and eager, so much so that I had to rave and join in on the fun.
No, I didn't co-opt any of the chaositech, although I wasn't above reviewing it for ideas. The principles a lot of the stuff worked on would actually twist your mind to accommodate the concepts, which generally wasn't good for your psychological health...
If I were to sum it up, chaositech was designed to be used by stupid people, who understood it by dint of expending their sanity instead of being smart. The more batshit crazy they were, the easier they understood the stuff. Weird science at its most far-out...
Fifth, the massive roiling energies here is what resulted in so many Energized minerals, and in such purity. The chaotic energies would stratify as they hit Reality, becoming the standard spread of Energizing Elements as they did so, and streaks of them would shift and separate standard mineral compositions into different, purer elements as they did so. So, normal stones of carbon, silica, and metallic elements would be split apart as the Energies of the Warp split apart, each picking a different random element to empower at one time.
It was also this effect which likely caused the alkaline nature of the planet, as the normal bases which would mix with oxygen or other gasses instead remained separately Energized and would not combine with other Energized Elements readily.
So, this shithole world... might have actually been a viable planet once, before the Warp opened here and changed anything and everything about the place. The infusion of Energized elements and the Warp presence is probably what drove everything to adapt so ferociously and violently, and become phrenic.
It would be hard to tell without some real archaeology and geology, as the same diffusion of Warp energies would also wipe out the remains of living things in the strata, making it look as if the planet had always been this way... which made no sense whatsoever, of course...