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| *'''Calus''': Our last meeting beyond these doors was exhilarating, was it not? I wish you had been able to stay, to shed this… dead meat you inhabit. Perhaps in time, I can help you understand. All of this, it is temporary. Fleeting. It is not worth fighting for. | | *'''Calus''': Our last meeting beyond these doors was exhilarating, was it not? I wish you had been able to stay, to shed this… dead meat you inhabit. Perhaps in time, I can help you understand. All of this, it is temporary. Fleeting. It is not worth fighting for. |
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| *'''The Crow''': That sounds a lot like cowardice. You're too afraid to lose, so you'd rather just give up. | | *'''The Crow''': That sounds a lot like cowardice. You're too afraid to lose, so you'd rather just give up |
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| ====Baths Statue====
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| *'''The Crow''': [chuckles] You think this statue is big enough?
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| *'''Calus''': That monument was forged from exotic matter mined from the heart of a neutron star. It was sculpted by one of my empire's finest artists. May he rest in peace. The material was highly radioactive, and in the end, it looked better plated in gold.
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| <Br>
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| *'''Calus''': I once reveled here for hours on end, contemplating mysteries of the universe while soaking in these now-stagnant pools… Gorged on wines and fruits from across the empire, asking questions of the stars. Yet the truest question was one I could not think to ask.
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| *'''The Crow''': Going to take a while to get that image out of my head.
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| *'''The Crow''': Why is Calus showing us all this instead of Caiatl? Is he avoiding her?
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| *'''Calus''': You would do well to keep my daughter's name out of your mouth, whelp. She is not and never will be your concern. Caiatl will come to see things my way… in her own time.
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| ====Cloning Facility====
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| *'''The Crow''': There's definitely something below us, a larger facility. I can't tell if it's still functional. On a scan, it looks like the hull folded in on itself.
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| *'''Calus''': My Leviathan has been changing, contorting itself into new shapes and forms both regal and majestic. I encourage you to stay around long enough to bask in the majesty of our transformations.
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| *'''Calus''': My cloning facilities below the baths are a labor of love. It took centuries to perfect their design. It has long been a point of personal pride that my Loyalists are handcrafted. Each meticulously engineered to exacting specification.
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| *'''The Crow''': I suppose that makes sense. I can't imagine anyone willingly serving you.
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| *'''The Crow''': I'm picking up something weird under the — wait. This isn't water. It's a protein slurry. There's Cabal DNA mixed in this and —
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| *'''Calus''': Ah, yes. I suppose calling these "baths" is a bit of a misnomer. They are built atop a cloning facility where my Loyalists are engineered. What you are standing in is the liquefied remains of failed experiments, which was fed to their unborn kin.
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| ====Lifts====
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| *'''Calus''': I remember a day when these lifts would rise, expelling new, perfectly engineered Cabal champions into my embrace.
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| *'''The Crow''': Perfectly? The way I hear it, most of them were failures, like the one you engineered to bear the Crown of Sorrow.
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| *'''Calus''': It is not failure, it is progress.
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| *'''The Crow''': Based on structural scans, this chain is part of a containment system that connects to a lab below us. It's too badly damaged to use. This must have been a deployment system. When whatever was engineered down there was finished, it was brought here.
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| *'''Calus''': These mechanisms no longer serve a purpose. My cloning facilities no longer serve a purpose. I have been shown… new horizons.
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| *'''The Crow''': I'm reading pieces of exterior hull fused with the machinery below this lift. I can't explain how the outside of the ship got in here.
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| *'''Calus''': When this ship passed beyond the threshold of our universe, the change had already begin. You are witnessing its growing pains. I can feel every bulkhead, every door, every pillar pulsing with new life. You understand, now, what I wanted to show you.
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| ====Gardens Statue====
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| *'''Calus''': A once-glorious monument, now little more than a sunken head. All things decay and change. It is the nature of the universe. Entropy knows no master, walking hand in hand with the phantom of time. All things that exist are doomed to crumble. Only that which does not exist — which has never existed — is truly free. Contemplate this, my friend.
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| *'''The Crow''': Looks like Calus has seen better days.
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| *'''Calus''': There is an unplanned truth in the monument's depiction of my form. Just as I have let this statue crumble, so have I allowed myself to. This withered flesh is an inefficient vessel by which to explore the limits of sensation the universe allows. I wish for something new.
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| *'''Calus''': I imagine this is how Caiatl must see me. A crumbling monument to indulgence, long forgotten. It matters not. I gave my daughter everything she needed to succeed, and she returned the favor with a knife in my back. And yet, I continue to give her chance after chance. Hoping that, perhaps, she will see reason. That I only want what is best for her.
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| ====War Beast Statue====
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| *'''The Crow''': Huh. Cabal really do love their war beasts. I wonder if this was a specific one.
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| *'''Calus''': Milos, Caiatl's first war beast. I gifted it to her when she was just a girl. She was so very attached to it. Too attached. I had it butchered. It felt insulting for her to love an animal more than her father.
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| *'''Calus''': War beasts are celebrated part of Cabal culture. They were native to our homeworld, Torobatl… when such a world still existed. In my era, each war beast was bred to serve a specific handler from birth. The bond between war beast and soldier was profound. I assume Ghaul saw fit to change that, turning them into something that is a military asset and not a partner. A shame.
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| *'''The Crow''': War beast statue. Gold-plated and… can't tell what the material beneath is. Definitely radioactive, though. I wonder if Saladin has a war beast of his own, now that he's working with Caiatl? It's probably best that he's not here, though. With his history? [chuckles ruefully] I'd hate to see what Nightmare the Leviathan would create for him.
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| ====Garden Overlook====
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| *'''Calus''': They are majestic, are they not? These fungi are not unlike your world's mushrooms in how they live, how they breathe, how they grow. Their mycelial networks do not proliferate in soil, but rather spread like ethereal conduits between dimensions of space.
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| *'''The Crow''': This... sounds a lot like the Ley Lines in the Dreaming City. Is that possible?
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| *'''Calus''': Do you know these fungi are drawn to the unique psychological phenomena of death? The moment of true terror before life ends… the death of sentient beings fosters the growth of these fungi. Normally it takes centuries for them to spread like this, but…
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| *'''The Crow''': But Calus sacrificed countless lives to feed his pet project. This is horrifying.
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| *'''Calus''': I have become quite attached to this fungus since I discovered it on a world far from yours. It grew in great forests across the planet. Even here, infinitely far from where the first spore was harvested, they remain connected. Darkness is many things, Guardian. Many things.
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| *'''The Crow''': I'm sure Eris might find this information… insightful. But I'm a bit nervous about intelligent fungus that can think across the void of space.
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| ===Salvage=== | | ===Salvage=== |
