"All right."
Lorgar cleared his throat. The faint, peculiar expression left on his face by the absurdity quickly faded, restoring the composure of a leader.
He looked away from the holograms of ancient history and back at Archmagos Etna, calmly bringing the conversation back on track:
"Let's set these interesting 'historical discoveries' aside for now. My primary purpose here is to learn how production of the Cissel armor is actually progressing. How are the current production lines doing?"
Archmagos Etna seemed relieved as well, glad to extricate himself for the moment from ancient mysteries that both excited and baffled him and return to the more familiar, more certain subject of present-day production.
He directed a Servo-skull to put away the holograms. Data streams flickered steadily in his mechanical eyes as he reported:
"My lord, across the entire Forge World of Hephaestus, only eight dedicated workshops fully meet the precision and material standards required to produce the Cissel. This is already the greatest capacity we can free up without seriously affecting production of components for the Titans, capital ship modules, and orders from other Legions. The resources, senior priests, and dedicated processing power from Cogitator arrays that we can reliably allocate to this new production line... are likewise limited to that."
He paused. His mechanical arms made a slightly helpless gesture resembling a human shrug, and the voice beneath his faceplate carried the unmistakable practical concerns of the man responsible for carrying out the work:
"As you know, the Forge World's production capacity is already filled by demands from every quarter. Every production plan involves complex supply contracts and priority rankings. The spare capacity available for establishing an independent production line for new equipment, especially something as complex as the Cissel, a 'new development' not included in the Departmento Munitorum's standardized