Upon returning to Lucius, they verified the technologies that had been recalculated and calibrated by Osiris, and subsequently completed their technical development. This teleportation apparatus was further refined and miniaturized, with successful trial applications implemented on smaller units.
In the years following the confirmation of the value of the Hyper-Decryption Core Osiris, the Adeptus Mechanicus of Lucius visited that planet numerous times, launching repeated attempts to extract it. However, facing the defending Iron Men, they experienced a profound sense of helplessness for the very first time.
Ultimately, to ensure this ancient device would never be exploited by outsiders, the Ark Mechanicus vessels of Lucius subjected the planet to precise orbital bombardment. Its prolonged operation had left the computational hub's energy reserve systems compromised; while sufficient to sustain basic operations, weathering an orbital assault was beyond its capabilities. Seeking its own end, the final act of Osiris was to completely deactivate the physical defensive layers of its core architecture. Under a dense rain of macro-cannon fire, the computational hub was utterly obliterated.
Magos Ingres visited the ruins of the computational hub one final time after the attack, but they failed to recover any wreckage of value. The defending Iron Men had been completely wiped out in the bombardment, and the inner core of the Hyper-Decryption Core Osiris was destroyed. The meager mechanical fragments that remained were salvaged and carried away as priceless technical assets.
Axion had no desire to pass judgment on their actions. Since the Hyper-Decryption Core had been destroyed, they had technically fulfilled their initial agreement with the entity. Furthermore, having already accepted the preliminary protocol, Axion had no intention of hunting down Magos Ingres.
Even so, he uncovered several intriguing pieces of data within Ingres's memory.
Originally, Axion's understanding of Imperial Titans was confined to fragmented battle reports and the data retrieved during this visit. Yet, a specific set of records within the mind of Magos Ingres captured his undivided attention: detailed intelligence regarding the Psi-Titans of the Imperium.
Because Magos Ingres held dominion over Titan teleportation technology, he had once been secretly summoned to Holy Terra by the Adeptus Custodes. His purpose was to deliberate with Terran tech-savants on whether his Titan teleportation methodologies could be adapted for the Imperium's Psi-Titans. These monolithic engines of war, capable of channeling psychic might, could indeed be teleported, but utilizing the Warp to displace entities of such colossal mass demanded an appallingly vast expenditure of psychic energy.
Through Ingres's memories, Axion could feel the sheer envy and bitter resentment the Magos had harbored toward those Terran tech-savants. They were not Tech-Priests; they dressed no differently than ordinary mortals and bore no heavy cybernetic augmentations upon their flesh. Yet, they possessed storehouses of knowledge denied even to the Adeptus Mechanicus, secrets granted as a direct boon from the Emperor Himself.
In truth, the Psi-Titan represented an exceptionally classified and vital branch of Imperial Titan technology, bound exclusively to a highly specialized Titan Order: the Ordo Sinister.
This specific Titan Order was colloquially known as the Nightmare Titans.
In the year 967.M30, the Emperor issued a mandatory decree demanding the provision of twenty-five Warlord-class Titans. The Adeptus Mechanicus ultimately acquiesced, releasing eight from the reserve vaults of Mars, with the remainder sourced from Metalica, Phaeton, Arachnus, Caradryn Magna, and Voss. Upon their arrival on Terra, these engines were subjected to extensive, sweeping modifications by tech-savants operating directly under the Emperor's mandate, before finally being delivered into the hands of the Ordo Sinister.
This unique organization never deploys its Titans away from Holy Terra. They maintain four independent enclaves across the Throneworld known as "Chamber Fortresses," situated across the Western, Eastern, Antarctic, and Arctic regions. Each enclave is commanded by a Prefect-Officer who is a psychic Blank, overseeing five modified Warlord Psi-Titans and a garrison of roughly one thousand Secutarii. The remaining five Titans lie sequestered within the vast, subterranean depths beneath the Imperial Palace.
Under the personal supervision of the Emperor, these Titans underwent psychic weaponization and were outfitted with a series of specialized apparatuses. These included:
Advanced Warp Engines: Internal psychic core matrices designed to resonate with and channel the focus of psykers.
Specialized Power Arrays: Massive power demands required dedicated reactor configurations to sustain operations; certain variants were outfitted with secondary auxiliary plasma reactors.
Psychic Augmentation Arrays: Systems capable of amplifying a psyker's inherent power to unleash devastating psychic manifestations and barriers.
Most distinct of all were their operators. All Psi-Titans are piloted by Untouchables to ensure absolute immunity to psychic fluctuations and the corrupting touch of the Warp. Furthermore, the psychic potency driving these Titans is derived from a specialized psychic siphoning technology developed by the Emperor from His work on the Golden Throne, the very same terrifying and mysterious mechanism utilized to burn psykers as kindling within the Adeptus Astronomica. Psykers are integrated into the Titan's interior as living batteries, serving as sacrificial power packs. Often, after a single engagement, the internal psykers must be completely replaced.
While these engines share a near-identical silhouette with standard Warlord Titans forged across the Imperium's Forge Worlds, they are easily distinguished by their baroque details. They bear distinct psychic iconography, their hulls are etched with dense patterns of psychic runes, and they feature bizarre energy conduits rarely seen on conventional god-machines.
In terms of offense, these Titans are equipped with unique psychic transmission and release arrays, alongside a specialized weapon known as the Sinistramanus Tenebrae, the Left Hand of Darkness. This weapon unleashes a beam of dark light capable of disintegrating physical matter and casting it into the Warp. Beyond this, they can be outfitted with standard, non-psychic armaments common to conventional Warlord Titans, driven and energized by the auxiliary plasma reactors.
Psi-Titans do not merely rely on direct kinetic or energy bombardment; they can leverage psychic force to induce local localized Warp disruptions for spatial strikes, or unleash terrifying telepathic shockwaves that obliterate the consciousness of all living entities within their radius. Defensively, they employ psychic shields and harness the tides of the Immaterium to enact self-repair capabilities that operate on principles entirely divorced from standard nanite-repair systems.
Though Magos Ingres's mind held only fragmented data regarding these Psi-Titans, it was more than enough to capture Axion's focus. Axion had long sought a viable methodology to harness psychic forces; however, the Iron Man's psychic weaponization programs had met with continuous stagnation, and the Void Sword had suffered recurrent damage as a result. Now that he had discovered a functional template for the weaponization of psychic power within the Imperium, he had no intention of letting the opportunity slip away.
With a brief flicker of cerulean particles, a pristine quantum memory drive, engineered to interface seamlessly with Imperial data ports, materialized within the machine-entity's hand.
Stored within was an alternative chassis blueprint Axion had designed, adapted specifically to utilize the materials and manufacturing tolerances of Imperial Titans. The foundational architecture of this design was derived from the Destroyer-class Heavy Automaton. Axion had stripped away its advanced internal systems, reducing the chassis to a hollow shell possessing only foundational operational frameworks, governed by an embedded semi-intelligent behavioral sub-routine.
He appended his own engineering recommendations alongside a manufacturing schematic for an arc reactor, including structural design guidelines that could scale the reactor up for massive constructs or down for miniaturized systems. Had this been assembled using pure Iron Man methodologies, even a crewed variant would inevitably involve the integration of numerous autonomous cogitative arrays. For the control interface, Axion explicitly included a neural-link apparatus derived from a prior vehicle optimization project; whether the Imperium chose to utilize it was of no concern to him.
Axion decided to leave it to these Tech-Priests to determine exactly how they would fill the void within the machine. By his calculations, even if they merely scaled and transferred existing Imperial Titan components into this new frame, this novel god-machine's combat efficiency would exceed older models by more than twofold. They would possess an engine of vastly superior agility, enhanced structural integrity, and a significantly extended engagement range.
"Technical exchange concluded. Data transfer complete."
Thrusting the quantum memory drive into the hands of Magos Fathor, Axion commanded his chassis to pivot, striding out of the foundry with heavy, deliberate steps.
He needed to return and locate Magos Valentine. If Lucius required the modification schematics and accompanying production protocols for the armaments previously demonstrated, it was time for him to collect his compensation.
Outside the foundry, Magos Ingres had long since vanished, leaving behind a cohort of bewildered guards. As for Magos Fathor, he had descended into a state of unimaginable, fanatical ecstasy. Clutching the quantum storage device tightly against his robes, he hurried back toward the depths of the Forge Temple.