Watching the 20th Purity Seal evaporate into ashes, Titus's eyes twitched in confusion. This was maybe the 45th time he had tried to purify the heretical object in front of him, yet somehow it had still failed to be cleansed up to now. Seeing the murky liquid sloshing in its container, Titus looked up, staring at its creator dead in the eyes.
"Are you sure this is a cup of 'coffee', and not some abomination conjured from the Warp?"
Unable to comprehend how on Terra someone had managed to concoct something so potentially corrupting from mundane ingredients, Titus looked at the younglings Himiko, March 7th, and the trashcan scavenger named Stelle. Seeing March nod furiously, Titus lifted the cup, and under the creator's expecting eyes, drank the foul concoction in one fell swoop.
"Hmm, it's not so- HWACKK!!!"
With a loud thwack, he fell to the ground, frothing at the mouth. Just before he slipped into deep slumber, he swore he saw Grandfather Nurgle beckoning him from the Warp, urging him to join him and his garden...
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Hearing the loud thud come from behind him, Shinji turned his head, only to see a fallen Titus being resurrected by the Apothecaries from the 5th Company. Just as he was about to dash over to see what had happened, he heard Welt roll his eyes before explaining. "Urgh! Did Himeko trick someone once again into drinking her disgusting coffee!?"
Stopping in his tracks, Shinji raised a brow, curious at what he meant. "How bad can a cup of coffee be?"
"Pretty bad..."
As Welt began his long tirade on how Himeko's coffee had affected everyone on the Star Rail, another set of discussions was being held further down the large room on the other end of Vinterkhold...
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"So, what you're saying is that the only reason you don't have artificial intelligence is because somehow, after what you guys call the 'Darkest Night', every single AI 'somehow' went ballistic, reprogrammed to kill every human in the galaxy? And that to go around the 'curse', you've designated something called the 'Machine Spirit' to facilitate a pseudo-AI?"
Unable to comprehend the sheer absurdity of the information haul, Ruan Mei, smoke coming from her head, kept pestering the belligerent Cawl about the Mechanicus Cult. His many eyes blinking, Cawl tried his best to explain why they did so, but also included his own set of questions. "Well, I could say the same thing here, little one. I've heard tales of how you've tried to create life on this miniature fortress, yet failing to do so spectacularly. Why, even the Emperor, in his infinite wisdom, still had to resort to stealing from the four wretched ones to create the 18 (or was it 20) Primarchs of mankind. Without knowledge from the Primordial, you'll always fail to get what you seek..."
Herta, standing to the side, fingers on her lips, asked something bugging her. "When you saw Nous, why did you call him the Omnissiah, but immediately call him fake or half-baked? Last I heard, you were searching for the so-called Omnissiah, and from the looks of it, I heard you've been calling whichever 'Mechanical Deity' the Omnissiah? Shouldn't you lot have only have one...?"
His mechaf-tendrites wiggling in the air, Cawl felt the urge to correct her. "The Machine Spirit is all-knowing, all-powerful. We believe that the myriad we face are one of the many faces He wields to spread his knowledge. So no matter which world we go to, we try to seek the Great Omnissiah's attention, to get as much knowledge as possible, all to better serve the Imperium. But regarding your first question, the reason why I say the being you refer to as Nous as 'half-baked', is because when I was floating through the vast sea that is His intellect, even though there was great knowledge, there was nothing to signify creativity. When I inquired to Him about it, He merely glanced at me, before revealing a single word-
Auchtertool..."