Jelas Space Station.
Great Sage Sandro stared at the Warmaster's envoy, Regulus.
"I heard Regulus died at Colonid."
Regulus swayed his black tendrils like living tentacles.
"Regulus endures—I am the Omnissiah's sacred guardian, and I am the founder of the Dark Mechanicum."
He had not deceived the Great Sage before him. He had forgotten his former name and received the Warmaster's personal blessing, gaining Regulus's sacred identifier.
He also possessed a trait identifier unknown to outsiders—25.
Regulus-25 knew that at this very moment, sixty-one sacred units were walking the galaxy as representatives of the Warmaster.
"Fabricator-General Sandro, the False Emperor abandoned the Forge World Dailangsi and demoted it into Jelas Space Station."
Sandro's eyepiece gleamed scarlet. Dailangsi had once built a forge empire spanning several star systems.
They cared nothing for sacred Mars, valuing only their own rule, and had rejected every diplomatic overture from the Imperium.
Among the many Forge Worlds of the Iron Ring, Dailangsi had opposed Mars and the Imperium most fiercely. Thus, after years of bloody warfare, it had been harshly punished, its sacred planet sullied with the filthy surname of the Rogue Trader Pierlant Jelas.
Since then, the people of Dailangsi had continually plotted to overthrow Imperial rule.
Yet the Imperium permitted Jelas Space Station to retain only the capacity to manufacture the most basic weapons, while a garrison force containing some God-Machines of the Flame Titan Legion suppressed every uprising.
Over the eight years of the thirty-first millennium, they had launched more than thirty sacred uprisings every year.
Generation after generation had given their sacred lives, and now he bore Dailangsi's future as he continued onward.
"The Warmaster promises you independence. He will allow you to continue your research into intelligent Constructs and provide you with Urtzi Malevolus's great research findings."
Sandro's mechadendrites swayed,