NPCThe obsidian smoothness of the enormous slab begins to ripple and roil. A set of mysterious symbols appears on it, as if impressed on its black surface by an invisible finger. The three brightest ones are symbols for "Malefice," "Pestilence," and "Unravelling." They shimmer forebodingly, like a martyr gasping for air as life drains from them.
NPCAn inscription above them reads: "My Lord who hast known eternity, I heed mine guarding words that I spoke at the dawn of the wrathful stars! He who is condemned to torture by imprisonment must languish forever in the labyrinth of many dimensions, lest Their plagues befall us. A minute breach in the impossible prison would suffice for the spiteful will, the destructive thought incarnate in unperishing flesh, to obliterate existence. I lay my hand upon the vessel of the past, and I am revealed the doom that awaits one who breaks the commandments."
YOU[Place your palm on the Malefice symbol]
NPCOne after another, new inscriptions appear on the slab's surface. They dash around maddeningly fast, overlapping each other. Amid this chaos, only one inscription latches onto your mind, causing it acute pain: "My Lord, in my measureless eternity, I remember Their doom. I am revealed the first plague, the Malefice: a wormhole that invades the very essence of thought." Your vision goes dark.
NPCReality cuts through the darkness of eternal sleep like a cold blade. You sense wrongness, and gain a clear understanding of the nature of that wrongness. Your engrams have been tampered with and damaged. You try to move, but in vain — you are buried alive in the metal crypt of your own body. Some of your fellows are faced with the same fate. Almost as soon as they emerge from their stasis sarcophagi, they freeze like mangled statues, tilt sideways, and collapse, crashing to the floor. Maddened legions march mindlessly past them toward a gaping chasm, and tumble obediently into its merciless maw.
YOU[Place your palm on the Pestilence symbol]
NPCAs soon as your palm touches the symbol, the slab's metal pulls it in, enveloping it like water. The text is transformed: "My Lord, I dare not divert my gaze from the guarding words! I am revealed the second plague, the Pestilence. It is not enough merely to behold it; I comprehend it, as my own lifeless shell learns the truth of its doom."
NPCThe symbols begin to change at a frenzied pace. Their light burns your eyes, and their rapid flickering makes you nauseous. You are struck by a splitting headache, like an alien entity squeezing your mind out of shape as if it were soft clay, refashioning it after its own image.
NPCYou see an image of a voidship: a black crescent shape, its plating veined with green lights. Right before your eyes, its various parts start crumbling and flaking away as though gnawed at by invisible termites. It is being consumed by tech-blight. When only a lifeless carcass is left, you feel a searing pain in your hand, as if the Pestilence has spread to your flesh and is now consuming it.
YOU[Bear the pain]
YOU[Jerk your hand free]
NPCYou cannot stand the pain anymore and jerk your hand out of the slab — unscathed. The flickering symbols freeze at once and begin to fade. The symbol for Pestilence is the last to disappear from the slab's surface.
YOU[Place your palm on the Malefice symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Pestilence symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Unravelling symbol]
NPCThe symbol you touched splits into three that are akin to it, similar and yet different from one another. A message materialises in front of you: "My Lord, Their third plague, the Unravelling, is beyond comprehension; therefore I put before myself a question bearing clarity."
NPC"This I ask myself, my Lord: if my existence were to be reflected in myriad eternities, would they be the same?" Your mind is now drowning in a flood of thoughts and memories, ancient, alien, and indomitable. With a titanic effort of will, you hold on to one of the images and vest it in the sound of borrowed words, and utter it in a strained voice that is not yours...
YOU"They would be devoid of any difference, or they would not be reflections."
NPC"My thoughts are sparse, and they are erroneous. I know that the cascade of defects that is my Unravelling has already done its work of destruction. Woe is me."
NPCThe symbols come together again underneath your palm and then vanish from the slab's animated metal.
YOU[Place your palm on the Malefice symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Pestilence symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Unravelling symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on a random symbol]
NPCAs soon as your hand touches the symbol, new sentences start appearing on the slab's surface. They dash around maddeningly fast, overlapping each other. They seem to be trying to burn alien and unsettling messages into your mind. Discerning these messages, let alone comprehending them, is beyond you. Your nostrils are bleeding. The searing pain inside your head is like dead fingers digging their nails into your brain and trying to squeeze it out.
NPCYou snatch your hand back in a hurry and look away. You feel nauseous. The sense of being invaded is gone, leaving only its horror behind: a horror you are not sure is your own and not forced upon you by the will of a different mind. The inscriptions freeze and fade away. The symbol you touched is erased from the slab's surface.
YOU[Place your palm on the Malefice symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Pestilence symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Unravelling symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on a random symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Give the vile slab a hearty kick]
NPCThe slab withstands your anger stoically and continues its silent display of the same incomprehensible symbols. This calls for less barbaric methods of interaction.
YOU[Place your palm on the Malefice symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Pestilence symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Unravelling symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on a random symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Give the vile slab a hearty kick]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Step away from the slab]
end of branch
YOU[Step away from the slab]continues where this line first appears above
NPC(sequence)
Abelard"Lord Captain! Are you uninjured? Sound of mind? Why am I even asking... the answer has been obvious for a while now." The Seneschal mutters the last sentence under his breath.
end of branch
UlfarWrinkling his nose in disgust, Ulfar asks, "Do you go poking your fingers in every kind of xenos filth you encounter, Aett-Vater, or have you just taken a liking to this? Would you like me to chop off that hand before something happens? It will be quick and almost painless. We'll choose a nice augment for it... No?"
end of branch
EogunnEogunn's auspex briskly scans you. "The Rogue Trader is not compromised. Brain cell damage is within the acceptable range." With a greedy look at the slab, the Manipulus adds, "Repeated interaction is permissible."
end of branch
Marazhai"Aah. Do it again, [Name]."
end of branch
YOU[Give the vile slab a hearty kick]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Step away from the slab]continues where this line first appears above
NPC(sequence)continues where this line first appears above
YOU"No, for every mirror has its own defect that flaws the resemblance."
NPC"My Lord, I am revealed the nature of the Unravelling: an interminable flow of unmanifested defects of my eternity incarnate. The world known to me is unidentical to the other worlds, nor is it one with them. The other manifestations, the unlikenesses, will wage wars upon me, seeking to absorb and thus obliterate me. I dare not lose my way and doom my eternity to perdition. I am firm in my memory that mine alone is the true eternity whose existence is rightful. I will shatter the mirrored unlikenesses."
YOU"Eternity cannot be escaped, and therefore cannot conceivably be reflected."
NPC"My thoughts are sparse, and they are erroneous. I know that the cascade of defects that is my Unravelling has already done its work of destruction. Woe is me."continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on a random symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Give the vile slab a hearty kick]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Step away from the slab]continues where this line first appears above
NPC(sequence)continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Unravelling symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on a random symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Give the vile slab a hearty kick]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Step away from the slab]continues where this line first appears above
Entry point 2 of 5
NPCThe obsidian smoothness of the enormous slab begins to ripple and roil. A set of mysterious symbols appears on it, as if impressed on its black surface by an invisible finger. They shimmer forebodingly, like a martyr gasping for air as life drains from them.
YOU[Place your palm on the Malefice symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Pestilence symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Unravelling symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on a random symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Give the vile slab a hearty kick]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Step away from the slab]continues where this line first appears above
Entry point 3 of 5
NPCYou clench your teeth and press your palm harder into the slab. The pain is but an illusion. You overcome it and let the second vision into your mind.
NPCA cyclopean pyramid comes crashing down on the rocky ground. It seems intent on preserving its shape, but tech-blight twists it and eats away at it. An enormous hand cuts short the fortress's death throes as it crumples the pyramid into a shapeless lump and tosses it away. The shining metal giant lifts its little finger and points it at a cohort of mechanical warriors. They are turned into puddles of black metal. The giant clenches its fist, and the soldiers' remains merge into an enormous tentacle that lashes and sweeps at everything around it. Rays of wrath radiate from the giant's face.
NPCThe vision of the vengeful deity ends. The pain subsides at once, and the metal releases your hand unscathed. The flickering symbols freeze instantly and slowly begin to fade. The symbol for Pestilence is the last to disappear from the slab's surface forever.
YOU[Place your palm on the Malefice symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Pestilence symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Unravelling symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on a random symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Give the vile slab a hearty kick]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Step away from the slab]continues where this line first appears above
NPC(sequence)continues where this line first appears above
Entry point 4 of 5
NPCIt seems that the enigmatic text speaks of some distortions of causality, resulting in multiple alternate versions of existence. It also suggests that these versions are hostile to one another.
NPCThe symbols come together again underneath your palm and then vanish from the slab's animated metal.continues where this line first appears above
Entry point 5 of 5
NPCEven while being flooded with xenos visions, your mind remains sound enough to analyse the incoming information. Now you grasp the nature of the pernicious "Malefice." Someone powerful on the outside is broadcasting insidious interferences that disrupt the xenos' awakening from their stasis sleep. Madness is the nearest human equivalent of the effect this has on them.
NPCForever frozen in a silent scream, you feel the haze of approaching madness cloud your mind as it is overrun by rows of distorted emerald-green symbols. As soon as their glow becomes unbearable, they go out at once, and you find yourself standing beside the black slab again. Right under your hand, the symbol for Malefice vanishes from the smooth black surface.
YOU[Place your palm on the Malefice symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Pestilence symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on the Unravelling symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Place your palm on a random symbol]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Give the vile slab a hearty kick]continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Step away from the slab]continues where this line first appears above
NPC(sequence)continues where this line first appears above