As an Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Belisarius Cawl is a legend, a Sage of the Machine God in the truest, most transcendent sense.
For ten millennia, other Magos and Tech-priests had viewed Cawl as an aberration. His conduct and idiosyncrasies were considered eccentric, if not outright heretical, even by the esoteric standards of his colleagues in the Priesthood of Mars.
Yet, when Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines and Avenging Son of the Emperor, was resurrected with the aid of the Armor of Fate, providing the teetering Imperium with a renewed foundation of hope, the galaxy stood in awe of Cawl's achievement.
The moment Guilliman drew breath, Cawl knew the next phase of his grand mission had begun.
As the reborn Primarch agonized over the decaying state of the Imperium, Cawl unveiled his ultimate masterpiece: the Primaris Astartes. These warriors, superior to the Firstborn Space Marines in every physiological metric, were a revelation to Guilliman. The sheer scale of this force, numbering as many as the Legions of old, immediately alleviated the Primarch's desperate shortage of manpower.
The realization that such a staggering host of Space Marines had been slumbering beneath the surface of Mars sent shockwaves through the High Lords of Terra, nearly causing them to recoil in collective terror. Even the Adeptus Custodes within the Sanctum Imperialis voiced their skepticism and displeasure regarding such a monumental undertaking. Yet, under the scrutiny of multiple inquiries, the Inquisition and the Officio Assassinorum played their parts perfectly, feigning total ignorance of Cawl's secret project.
The Imperium was failing; it required a massive infusion of fresh blood to force the ancient, rotting giant back to its feet, granting Guilliman the opportunity to excise the corruption within. And when Cawl presented a complete suite of new wargear and munitions for the Astartes, even the Primarch was visibly moved.
Currently, however, Guilliman found it difficult to establish contact with the Archmagos.
The emergence of the Great Rift had plunged the galaxy into chaos and unimaginable destruction. Cawl was perpetually hunting the xenos artifacts of the Necrons, obsessed with deciphering how their technology achieved the suppression of the Warp.
Before the fall of Cadia, Cawl had encountered one of the Necron Overlords, Trazyn the Infinite, within the subterranean Blackstone deposits of that doomed world. For reasons known only to himself, the Overlord had offered Cawl guidance. While the Archmagos remained deeply perplexed by Trazyn's assistance, the dire straits of the current era did not afford him the luxury of wasting processing cycles on the alien's ultimate motives.
Since Cadia's destruction, Cawl had frequently operated alongside Guilliman's forces. However, whenever the Primarch became occupied with strategic theaters or political reform, Cawl would depart with his Mechanicus fleet to seek out nearby Necron ruins, specifically those containing significant Blackstone constructs.
The Warp-nullifying properties of Blackstone often rendered Astropathic communication impossible. Consequently, Cawl was frequently "off the grid," existing in a state of total or near-total communications blackout.
To remedy this, Cawl had constructed a unique device for Guilliman: the Cawl Inferior. This machine utilized hexadecimal computation and featured a simulated personality of Cawl himself, powered by twenty bio-stored brains. Within this system, Cawl had encoded a portion of his knowledge, technical expertise, and temperament, governed by specific logic templates. This ensured that even when the Archmagos was unreachable, he could still provide counsel to the Primarch.
At present, Guilliman was aboard the Dawn of Fire, surging toward Ultramar. The Macragge's Honour was currently anchored in high orbit above the Forge World of Konor. Guilliman was uncertain of Cawl's exact coordinates, though the Archmagos had previously indicated he was traveling to the southern reaches of Segmentum Ultima.
Guilliman felt certain that by utilizing the Cawl Inferior deep within the Macragge's Honour, he would soon bridge the gap to the Archmagos. Even if Cawl could not respond in real-time, the message would trigger an immediate contact once received.
The journey from Segmentum Obscurus to Segmentum Ultima was vast, and the Nachmund Corridor was fraught with peril. Countless daemons lurked within the Empyrean surrounding the warp-routes, hungering for the souls of those aboard. Perhaps it was the presence of the Primarch, or perhaps the Emperor's protection, but the Dawn of Fire's transit was exceptionally smooth.
When the ship finally emerged from the tortuous currents of the Great Rift, even Guilliman felt a momentary sense of relief.
During this protracted voyage, Guilliman had intentionally avoided meeting with Axion.
As an Iron Man, time held no intrinsic meaning for Axion. If an action did not advance his objectives, waiting was a perfectly acceptable logical state. While the ship was in transit, Axion spent most of his time wandering the massive vessel.
Given the reverence the Ultramarines held for the ship and their Primarch, Axion refrained from the "mischief" of interfacing with the hull's systems to perform data-scrubbing or control upgrades. After all, the ship functioned adequately and its efficiency was high.
As he roamed the decks, Axion gained a comprehensive understanding of the technological level of the Imperium, and the Ultramarines specifically. However, he still struggled to comprehend the logic behind the Dreadnoughts held in stasis fields.
Automata of this size and configuration did not exist in the Age of Technology. To him, the design seemed redundant. The inclusion of biological remnants within the machine's core was even more baffling. If the body was so severely damaged, Axion reasoned, why not simply extract the bio-brain and integrate it directly as a controller?
To Axion, the sight of a shattered organic husk embedded in a mechanical chassis was a grotesque parody—an "ugly, hybrid mockery" of true machine transcendence.
The ones suffering the most during this time were the ship's Tech-priests.
They were consumed by a feverish curiosity regarding Axion, often trailing him in an involuntary attempt to glean some scrap of forgotten lore. Axion, however, spent his time delivering scathing critiques of their equipment.
"Standard Ceramite power armor: Inferior material quality. Output is weak. Using the Astartes as an internal skeletal support is inefficient. Suggest replacing with a self-supporting alloy frame; the vacated space could house additional internal power reactors or integrated weapon systems."
"Terminator Plate: Excessively sluggish. Massive waste of internal volume. Suggest independent alloy skeletal support with buffer zones, internal energy shields, and the addition of more heavy ordnance to the exterior."
Each comment felt like a physical blow to the pride of the surrounding Tech-priests. Axion, for his part, found it quite entertaining. To him, watching the auxiliary logic cores of these "oil-heads" overload and short-circuit under the weight of his logic was a pleasant diversion.
However, Axion's amusement was soon cut short by a warning from a "golden corn-cob"—a member of the Adeptus Custodes.
As the pinnacle of the Imperium's warriors, the Custodians were polymaths, and their intuition for proscribed technology was razor-sharp. Axion's critiques were not merely technical; they implicitly suggested the removal of the Space Marine from the equation in favor of a robotic legion.
The Custodian found it necessary to immediately silence Axion's dangerous rhetoric. He felt no particular warmth for the red-robed Tech-priests, dangerous zealots who would sacrifice any boundary for forbidden knowledge.
He thought especially of their leader, Belisarius Cawl. Primaris Space Marines? Hmph. Who knows when the seeds of betrayal might sprout within them?
Even the Emperor Himself had chosen to utilize the Space Marines over legions of automata. Clearly, the latter were far more dangerous, and far more uncontrollable.