Medici surfaced from deep sleep the way he always did, his internal clock dragging him back before the rest of him was ready. His mind was still half-tangled in grand battles and server architecture, still breathing the air of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
What he saw when he opened his eyes made him stop.
The bedroom he knew, clean and spare and familiar, was gone. Every wall, the ceiling too, had become floor-to-ceiling glass. Beyond it, virtual snowflakes drifted down in lazy flurries, catching the soft simulated light and throwing it back in small crystalline sparks.
Tinsel and colored light clusters decorated the corners and the edges of the furniture. And there, in the open space beside his bed, a holographic Christmas tree had materialized from nothing. It was full and lifelike, hung with glittering ornaments and tiny glowing gift boxes, a slowly rotating star fixed at the very top.
The whole room was warm, festive, carrying a faint whimsy that had absolutely no business existing anywhere near the Gothic darkness, the steel, and the blood he had been living inside for the past several weeks.
"Good morning, Master. According to the system calendar, today is Christmas Day. The holiday environment simulation has been activated per your default settings. Merry Christmas."
Cortana's voice was soft and perfectly timed, and entirely without feeling.
"Christmas," Medici said quietly, rubbing his forehead.
In this world, heavily digitized and drowning in entertainment, the celebration of traditional holidays had quietly become exactly this: convenient, harmless, and hollow. A virtual gesture toward something that used to mean more.
Something stirred in him. The occupational instinct of a game designer who could not let a setup go to waste.
It was Christmas. And the celebrations in this world were so safe, so utterly empty.
A bold, irreverent, faintly malicious idea lit up in the back of his mind like a match.
Why not let that eternal war bleed a little Christmas spirit?
The corner of his mouth pulled into a small, quiet smile. In the 40k way, of course.
He skipped his morning routine entirely and walked straight to the immersive creation pod. The door slid open. He reclined into it and let the life-support fluid rise around him as the neural interface came online.
Consciousness dropped. Then rose again somewhere else.
The Christmas fantasy of his bedroom was gone. In its place was the familiar boundless void, waiting to be shaped. His divine realm. His place of creation.
"Cortana," he said, the command transmitting cleanly through the interface, "start building the base environment. A planet. Barren, dead, wasteland. Not a gentle desert. I mean a real wasteland. Something extreme. Utterly lifeless."
"Radioactive dust covering the plains. A volcanic belt in permanent eruption. Corrosive toxic marshes. Fractured glaciers. A planet where the only thing left is the evidence of everything that was destroyed. Call it Rubble Waste-313 for now."
"Command confirmed. Beginning construction of Rubble Waste-313, base terrain and environmental parameters…"
Cortana's voice carried through the void, and almost immediately a miniaturized planetary image bloomed in front of him, rotating slowly.
It was exactly what he had asked for. The surface churned with volcanic clouds and spreading toxic green miasma. The earth was cracked and radiation-scorched. What passed for forests had been stained into strange, poisonous colors by acidic compounds. No animals. No conventional plant life. Just a natural environment pushed all the way to the edge of survivability and then a little further.
"Perfect." Medici nodded. "Exactly that."
A flawless, despairing stage, set and ready.
Now for the cast.
"Next, create a new faction template. Species name: Ork."
He could hear the excitement in his own voice.
"Setting: Orks are a genetically engineered fungal war species, a degraded remnant of something far older and more sophisticated. They are not mammals. They are not true plants. They are a self-sustaining biological weapon designed for endless conflict."
"They reproduce through spore propagation. Every Ork, living or dead, constantly sheds microscopic spores into the surrounding environment. Invisible to the naked eye."
"Once those spores take root, and they will unless conditions are completely sterilized, they develop into a full fungal ecosystem. Squigs. Snotlings. Gretchin. And eventually Ork Boyz themselves, grown from subterranean gestation pits in remarkably short time."
"You do not eradicate Orks by killing Orks. You eradicate them by purging the soil."
"Social structure: violence, and nothing but."
"An Ork's position is determined by strength and size. The biggest and toughest Boy becomes a Nob. The strongest Nob who can dominate the rest becomes a Warboss."
"And if that Warboss keeps winning, keeps attracting more mobs, more Nobz, more territory, the psychic resonance builds. The Waaagh! field strengthens. Technology stabilizes. Weapons fire hotter. Engines roar louder."
"Given enough momentum, a single Warboss can unite a planetary invasion force. Given enough time, he can unite a sector. A true Waaagh! can drown star systems."
"Cultural core: war is life, and life is war. They do not fight for survival, or ideology. They fight because fighting is the point. Combat brings joy. Victory brings more joy. Bigger battles bring the most joy. It is pure, primal, and absolute."
"Belief system: simple in structure, staggering in scale. Across the galaxy, untold trillions of Orks worship two gods: Gork and Mork."
"According to the Weirdboyz, Gork is brutal but cunning, and Mork is cunning but brutal. Both dwell within the Warp, sustained by the vast gestalt psychic field generated by their species. That field flows through every Ork, binding them together unconsciously."
"Mekboyz do not invent in the human sense. They remember. Genetic knowledge embedded deep within them guides their construction. Their machines function on real mechanical principles."
"However, the Waaagh! field reinforces expectation. Red ones really do go faster. Blue is luckier. And when enough Orks believe something will explode properly, it tends to."
As the descriptions accumulated, the Orks took shape in the void.
Green-skinned. Thickly muscled. Broad-jawed and brutal. Armored in scrap iron, animal hide, and scavenged plating hammered into shape by instinct more than design.
They carried choppas, shootas, and crude heavy weapons that looked barely functional.
Yet in their hands, under the pressure of collective belief and biological certainty, they would be terrifyingly effective.
Each wore the same expression: eager, violent, impatient for the next fight.
A green tide.
Not opposed to the grim darkness of the far future.
But perfectly at home in it.
Medici looked at the nascent Ork template, at the dead planet waiting below, and felt something ignite behind his eyes.
"Christmas special event," he murmured.
And somewhere in the Warp, something brutal, and something cunning, might have approved.