part 8.5 A Certain Chaotic Warp Sorceror
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Week 1
GCU The Right Hand of God has arrived at the mining planet and is currently meeting problems investigating the rumoured artifact. It appears that in an effector scan of the planet, a large section near the surface has... unusual physics.

The easiest method of description is that hyperspace doesn't exist inside a sphere centered on what appears to be a mountain, probably with underground mines. Effectors and Displacers cannot target anything inside the sphere. This anomaly is of great interest. We suspect Warp activity.

It appears that we have found our artifact.

Week 2
Due to the dangers of the Warp, we will not be directly observing the artifact, not least because extraction is impossible by Displacer and the artifact itself will disable this ship's Mind and its engines. Instead, we will allow the Imperium to collect the artifact and observe their reactions.

Some plans for manipulating them to conduct the tests we want are underway.

Warp Sorceror
The sorceror completed the divination circle yet again, sitting down on the barren rock. Then he snarled once.

So far, all his divinations indicated that he was on track. Now suddenly, a problem had appeared. The Culture had come, he was sure of that, but they had not come to collect the artifact. Still, it wasn't completely irredeemable, at least according to his divinations...

The Culture
Due to the potential problems we might encounter within the no-hyperspace zone, we are currently designing a modified Effector array for use as an arbitrarily long relativistic cannon.

The first interested mercenary has arrived. We have placed primitive bugs into their systems to tap into their findings as they attempt to find the artifact.

A few subtle clues were dropped and the mercenaries easily found its location. They obtained permission to land and investigate the tunnels from the local governor (not difficult since their ship is the only one in orbit).

At this point, we opted to attempt contact with the mercenary in order to negotiate a deal where the mercenary will run various tests for us.

Week 3
The mercenary, after the usual introductions, has demanded that he gets to keep the artifact afterwards and that we provide him with materials and weapons at least 30% higher than the IoM's best. This seemed fair enough, so we came to a preliminary agreement.

The mercenary's team found the artifact, which appears to be some kind of broadcasting array, although clearly of partial Warp construction.

Warp Sorceror
The Warp crackled to life as the unwitting humans touched the array. The sorceror grinned and suppressed the Warp around him, no scrapcode, no weird effects, nothing to suggest that they were walking into his trap.

He bent down to the rock where sigils were carved into the surface and lifted the sigil off, leaving a flat rock clear of scratches behind. The sorceror spoke calmly to the sigil, knowing that the array would let him communicate with the Culture's pawns.

"The Durfan Empire sends its greetings to the Culture. We come in peace. "

Sorry to leave it on a cliffhanger, but I really need to sleep now. =P