To better protect Iax and his creations from harassment by other Adeptus Mechanicus personnel aboard the ark, Cawl thoughtfully invited Iax to stay by his side, along with his bodyguard and an entire squad of armed guardians slightly larger than standard Iron-pattern Dreadnoughts.
Iax did not refuse.
As long as he ignored Cawl's habit of casually running a hand over his creations' Mechanical Body, the other Priests had indeed become much better behaved.
At least Iax no longer found crushed probes or other miscellaneous junk in the joint assemblies of the Elatana-class armed guardians.
As an Archmagos Dominus, Cawl was busy, but he had also made immense contributions to the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperium. Among those contributions was a series of technical books he had written.
Although most of these books had been produced by Recording Servitors on his behalf, all their knowledge came from Cawl himself.
Cawl was generous toward Radicals of his own faction, who excelled at innovation and enjoyed developing new techniques from old technology.
The many books on fundamental technologies compiled by these Recording Servitors were his gifts to them.
Over more than ten thousand years, Cawl had accumulated far too much technical knowledge. Releasing some outdated technology to free up storage space was clearly a good thing as well.
These were also the reasons the other Priests aboard the ark treated Cawl with particular respect.
Though they still hoped to get up to something while Cawl was not looking.
Cawl found nothing strange about this. As a scientific researcher, maintaining curiosity about the unknown was essential.
And as Cawl began studying the data he had brought back on those gigantic Necron constructs while overseeing the ark's repairs,
Iax, who followed Cawl as he roamed throughout the Ark Mechanicus, discovered something that interested him.
A