 Tradition is a tool, like any other, in steering oneself and one's kith, through the trials life often presents. It is a means by which we ground ourselves in a continuity larger than the self, granting meaning to practices and responsibilities that would otherwise feel unmoored from the reality we experience. Through the work of the one the ancestors act to shape a future they have not lived to see, and so too do we commit to a future which we ourselves will surely never lay eyes upon. It is a ready preserver of identity, or a means by which an identity may be formed, born anew in a successor generation to preserve the past and build for the future. Tradition can also, however, be a yoke around the necks of those who have no real connection to the past that crafted it. The passage of time is relentless, as is the change it brings. What was once good and proper and even necessary can become no longer relevant, yet grasped with the pathological fanaticism simply because it was the way things have always been. This can be the refuge of the small-minded, the myopic, and the controlling, a tool, yes, by which power can be exerted over the masses who desire more than what the past has imposed upon them. When it is all one can encompass, well, it may even be a font of doom itself. The subjects of this record are new to Imperial knowledge, and yet have always been there, alongside us since the earliest days of the Imperium. The Mark III suit of Astarty's power armor, for example, was crafted to serve on the worlds they had claimed, but this is just one scrap of knowledge previously given little to no context that now finds its place in a wider, altogether grander historical narrative of a people that we share an ancestry with, but little else besides. Know then that this is a record of the galactic prospectors of epochs past, the redoubtable craftspeople of the galactic core, a record of the kin of the leagues of Votan. The kin, as they turn themselves, are a race of stockily built humanoids typically shorter in height than an average baseline human. They are, quite commonly, mistaken abroad across the galaxy for abhumans, genetic strains branching off from humanity through stable, if often pronounced, physical mutations. This is a point of contention, not only for the kin, but for the adeptus mechanicus biologis and imperial political establishments that are aware of them. The kin clearly share common ancestry with humanity, that much is clear, and will be explored subsequently in this record, but the sheer degree to which they have diverged from this lineage, such a concept itself being integral to their culture, has led to their determining themselves to be a separate race, a separate species, even, in and of themselves. This naturally is but one of the many points of contention in imperial relations with the kin. Those higher up than myself within humanity's empire will insist that the kin be deemed abhumans, with all the implications of moral and physical degeneracy, subservience and paternalism that are inherent to that designation. The kin themselves are far too proud and canny to submit to the terminology, and consider themselves apart from the imperium and humanity as a result. For the purposes of this record, one must acknowledge this fundamental disagreement at the outset. It is typical of the imperium to impose its will upon all, be they within or without. For this record, for the sake of clarity, one must grant the kin their fundamental right to self-determination, an antiquated concept in the extreme, I am aware, but by such small measures of acknowledgement may some light be brought to this world of grinding darkness. Given the interviews and chronicles from which the information herein was rendered, it is also the simplest and most base of decencies that I can offer under the circumstances. The kin occupy reaches of space within the galactic core, and do so in numbers that, if one's research and entreaties aren't to be believed, would shock and stun any within the imperium who are as of yet unaware of their existence. These numbers indeed are swelled by the presence amongst them of the iron kin, sentient machine intelligences that are treated by the biological kin as one and the same. These blended machine humanoid societies are held together by a series of cultural pillars that are resilient in the extreme to all that the galaxy can pit against them. Primary amongst these are the familial bonds by which their society binds itself. Not familial in the strictest sense, but in the sense of common cause, affinity, and shared vision and values. Conservative in the extreme, the kin rarely shift their viewpoints or ideals from those that they formed in their early lives and that were dictated to them by those who came before. Tradition has kept their society rigidly unchanging for millennia, and while this has led to stagnation in some capacities, it has proved quite resilient in others. Ultimately, survival underpins the entire motivating ideology for the kin, and from this core does it express itself throughout their daily lives. Obligations are paramount. Peshark personal responsibility is to not only bring dishonor upon the self, but to endanger the lives of those who a kin will share a ship, a hold, or a league with. This is born of their void-dwelling origins and daily lives. Should a bulkhead not be maintained correctly, should a water tank spring a leak that goes unaddressed, disaster may fall upon the ship or the hold and all who live aboard her. No task is too small nor too unimportant, and this the kin take to heart with all things. Unity brings survival and survival allows for prosperity. The ultimate goal of any group of kin is the acquisition of resources by which to build more ships, sculpt stronger holds, and bring more kin into the fold, ultimately continuing the growth and survival of their kind against all that would stand against them. As with the history of many within the galaxy, the exact origins of the kin are occluded by the passage of time, the forces of which have whittled away the stones of the past better than any kindred's mining equipment. What remains for the race are what they term the first truth, facts in as much as the quasi-legendary origins can be considered so, around which the basis of their culture revolves. It is a first truth that the kin departed their homeworld tens of millennia ago. This homeworld is of course almost certainly pre-imperial, pre-age of strife-terra. Although as the kin do not know this for certain, nor do they apparently wish to know it for certain, this is not included under the auspices of truth. It is a first truth that they were from the beginning minors and prospectors, whose purpose in life was the extraction and processing of resources and the crafting of devices and technologies. It is also a first truth, they were from the outset a race of clones, and that with them were born the iron kin, artificial intelligences that would live and work beside them in partnership. This is the extent of the first truth that your humble servant can independently confirm. My contact demures on any further inquiry here. It appears that the kin have significant internal debate around other details of their origins, many of them blurring the lines between allegory, chronicle, or creation myth. Almost all, however, speak of the being Votan, known variously as the gilded one, the primal ancestor, or the stone mind, depending on a particular kindred's cultural predilections. Votan can be depicted as one humanoid being, clad entirely in gold, or a giant graven face of stone, or as a council of beings, or as a circle of visages turning in industrial precision. There is no consensus, and while there is debate, there is expediency to how the kin approach these myths. They are aware of the contradiction, and while it may form the basis of interesting conversations, it is rarely a thing that divides them. Pragmatic to their core, maybe even to their very genes, the kin are not frightened by things they cannot explain. The need to drive to answer the fundamental questions about their own existence troubles them little. Even the Grimnir, the sage shamanic figures amongst them that seek such knowledge, do so more out of a sense of curiosity than some form of faith-fueled existential dread. No doubt there is freedom to this radical acceptance of one's reality. One cannot help but be slightly envious. Recorded history does eventually assert itself, around the period when the generation fleets of the original kin reach the galactic core. This is additionally the period when the references to Votan as a being, and to the near-mythic first ancestors who followed him, or were him, fade away, and are replaced by writings of the ancestor cores. These, in honour of the progenitor, or progenitors, are collectively referred to as the Votan, the terms used interchangeably. First ancestors were apparently responsible for the decision to awake the generational sleepers once the core had been reached, as well as being the catalyst for the genetic strictures around which the reproduction of kin lines were first organised. As a clone race, the kin could, strictly speaking, be uniquely at risk of massive genetic degradation events. All genome engineering projects within the Imperium, that we have attempted, from the work of the Emperor himself to that of the Adeptus Mechanicus, are fraught with peril. The example, for instance, of the near-gene death of the Third Legion during their foundation is just one such instance. This risk, for the kin, appears mitigated by the sheer variety of their bespoke mutations, as well as their scope. The kin do not seek, as the Emperor once did, to break the boundaries of what the human template can achieve. They do not, for instance, seek to make astarties out of themselves. Rather, the gene pool coalesced patterns of mutations, known as clone skines, that can be assigned to new batches of clones as situations demand. Often minor, these changes can be as simple as improving eyesight, bone durability, or skin's radiological resistance, to sundry others. By focusing efforts on broad and varied changes, as opposed to hyper-specific or radical transhuman augmentation, the First Ancestors ensured a durable system of reproduction that could be assured for years to come, and the challenges of the galactic core regions to be met by the fleets they had previously led. The kin record these early fleets as immediately working through pressing genetic modifications, more robust bone structures, denser musculature, higher white blood cell counts. This is likely the origin of the kin's squat physique. The worlds of the galactic core are prone to having higher gravity, and the region itself is awash with gravitic anomalies. A body best suited for these conditions will, of course, survive much longer than a baseline human. It is at this time that kin society, as it almost entirely remains to this day, emerged, with the formation of the first leagues of Votan. The foundation of each of these leagues were built upon the Votan they were named for. The artificial minds are, to put it mildly, a simply abominable concept to any within the Imperium, with an iota of devotion within their veins. They are intelligences born of the dark age of technology, things believed perished with the rest of their damnable kindred in the wars of the thinking machines prior to the age of strife. Somehow, they escaped the catatlysmic conflicts that engulfed the galaxy, presumably due to the kin's isolation within the galactic core worlds. Operating as a hybrid of leadership entity, digital archive, and STC system, the Votan were clearly anticipated as repositories, from which the genetic system that was the kin was intended to be run. A font of wisdom, knowledge, and technology that would allow the resources of the core to be extracted, processed, and shipped out system to the worlds of the pre-strife human dominions. That being said, the sheer cogitative power of the Votan, the depths of their knowledge, are almost unthinkable to any within the Adeptus Mechanicus, save for those either with the kin of Heratechnica that is abominable intelligence, or those who have encountered the unique machine spirits of such devices as the mighty Ark Mechanicuses. Their power lends them in almost supernatural quality, and indeed given the way in which modern kin obliquely refer to them, it has led to many a misunderstanding that the Votan are somehow the gods of the kin, or perhaps demons of the warp that capture them in their thrall. This is not helped by the fact that the kin only speak of the Votan to outsiders under extreme duress. To obtain the information one has obtained for this record, the contact in question only provided scant details under oaths of paramount secrecy, with the remainder of my information being drawn from the depths of sequestered Inquisition and Mechanicus archives. This is because the value of an ancestor core simply cannot be overstated. Not only do their quantum archival stacks contain all the scientific, philosophical, military, and technological data that the humanity of the Dark Age bequeathed on their void minor fleets, they additionally serve as a repository for the genetic lineage of the kin themselves. When a member of the race dies, their cerebral data, the core of their once selves, all the memories of a life serving, is uploaded to the League's Votan, so that their experiences will join with those of their ancestors and better serve the future prosperity of all. Not only this, but so powerful a device were the ancestor cores that they were able, and are able, to this day, to serve as quantumly entangled beacons, providing the kin with the means of navigating warp space, albeit in relatively tiny volumes compared to the jumps possible to Imperial ships guided by the Astronomicon of Terra. The kin simply cannot let knowledge of the Votan be known to outsiders. There are perilously few who would understand, and even less who would desire to, and far, far too many that would simply seek to destroy. That they have maintained these secrets for tens of millennia is a testament both to the sheer unity of purpose in the kin as a species possess, and to their skill at hiding themselves from the galaxy at large. Their survival of the Age of Strife, simply how they conducted themselves through the trials of that benighted epoch, is unknown, and few indeed are the kin that speak of those days. Their lack of warp presence is almost certainly crucial in this, possibly due to their status as a clone race, or perhaps related to a far more esoteric genetic tampering during their creation. The kin shine far, far more dimly in the warp than even the most mundane of humans. They have displayed no evidence of uncontrollable psychic mutation, or emergence, common in baseline humanity. Indeed, their only psychana-sensitive individuals possess their gifts through specific, specialized clone-skines, and technological augmentations to activate them. Demonic possession is almost, almost unheard of amongst them, as is the falling of one of the kin to the depredations of the Dark Gods. Thanks to this unique resistance to the immaterial, the kin no doubt avoided the rash of aetheric incursions and mad psychor plagues that engulfed and consumed so many human worlds throughout the Age of Strife. And as a species bred literally for survival in the harshest of galactic reaches, and provided with all the knowledge of their progenitors through the ancestor cores, they needed not the fragile supply lines and resource-providing client worlds that the human core systems required to simply maintain their populations and empires. A prospecting race set to the most isolated volume in the galaxy, bred for harshness primed for endurance. Perhaps none were better suited to weather old night than they. And whether they did, and prosper they did, far from the eyes of all, the galactic core is a truly cyclopian region of space, vast despite its relatively compact volume that it nominally encompasses. The sheer density of the stars drawn into the orbit of the supermassive black hole at its center are staggering, and present phenomenally dangerous risks to any ships that would seek to traverse the area. Space does not function in the mostly ordered cosmic ballet it does elsewhere in the galaxy. Gravitic anomalies abound, electromagnetic squalls, radiation cascades, and things stranger still. Records of the kin have spoken of seemingly sentient nebulae, mendicant black holes, and something referred to only as the enigmatic gray stars. It is no surprise why the races of the galaxy simply do not venture there. The risks far outweigh any potential rewards, for all, but the kin themselves, seeing as they were literally bred to extract its riches. And riches are plentiful. Rogue planets torn from their home systems hurtled through the void, their mineral worth uncleaned. Asteroid belts profuse with space hulks are everywhere, the flotsam of the galaxy drawn to the proverbial whirlpool at its center. It is upon this wealth, and more, more besides, that the leagues of Votan were founded, and where they grew. All kin belong to a group called a kindred, ranging in size from a set of families linked by patterned clone skines to effectively a small nation state, as many as a dozen kin to potentially millions, depending on their lineage and historical prosperity. A kindred will inhabit what is known as a hold, but as with the scope of kin the term kindred encompasses, so too is the term hold fairly nebulous. One should note that this is a common facet of the culture of these people. Seemingly robust terminology is invested with deep meaning depending on the individual or the kindred one concerns oneself with. Meaning is always contextual, and thus an inherent part of forming an in-group. As a culture, the kin abhor wasting time on flowery language, preferring direct communication that comes off as blunt, and trusting in the knowledge of the recipient to guide their understanding. A hold, thus lay, can be a fortress complex on an asteroid, a void stationed lurking in the atmosphere of a gas giant, or even a collection of ships forming a nomadic flotilla. It is in short whatever the kin desire it to be, or wherever their ancestral history has led them, and it is central to their identity. Kindred names too form the basis for this identity. They may be named for a superlative ancestor, such as Vaikats kin, or for some essential nature or role, the star delver kindred for example. Location two may be used, as in the case of the kindred of the thousand stars, but even to this day relatively basic kindred names persist, such as the famed kindred six or kindred eleven d. It is quite likely these latter names are the oldest indeed. Their origins is lost to the galaxy as a dark age of technology that no doubt bore them. For all kin, however, their hold is built around the so-called four pillars, hearth, forge, fame, and crucible. Robust terms, but again as nuanced in meaning as the hold itself. The hearth is of course no simple fire pit. It is typically the hold's reactor core, or similar power source, the essential flame from which everything within the hold is powered. The forge is a bit more direct. It is a technological and weapons factorum, from where the kin derive all the devices they require for survival. Within the fame dwell the Votan themselves, tended to by the so-called living ancestors, the Grimnir-Shamen technicians that preside over and commune with the words of the ancestor cores to discern their wisdom. Lastly, the crucible are the gene wombs, the gestation devices and genetic processing technology from which new generations of kin are brought into the light of the hold, to serve alongside their kindred in whatever role the Votan demands of them. Political control of the hold flows from the Spakerrand, a form of parliament attended to by the elected representatives of the guilds, the war captains of the kin hosts, and the chiefs of the Grimnir. Despite being all nominally of the same kindred, the Spakerrand is a chamber of strident debate and often deliberate obstinacy. The conservative kin are given to debate, yes, but rarely change their minds with it. The largest of assemblies can converse upon single topics for weeks or months, with a little resolution and even less movement, but to the kin this is not seen as political paralysis. Rather, it is a point of pride that matters are considered with the depth and gravity they apparently deserve, despite little being accomplished. The aforementioned guilds are crucial to modern kindreds, and function in much the same way as their terminology would suggest in other human societies. They are mercantile and, after a fashion, capitalistic in character, seeking to control and order all kin who inhabit a strata of civilian life that lends them a particular role, everything from ship mastery, to mining, to agriculture, to engineering. The guild masters are responsible for setting the standards of work demanded by all those who serve with them, as well as the rigorous accreditation levels. The degree of exploitation of the worker kindreds is debatable, but the guilds do offer civilian kin a means by which to affect political change, rather, outreach. The kin do not best appreciate the word change. Ostensibly speaking, guilds are expected to supersede affiliations to any one kindred, hold, or league, although in practice this is not the case. Smaller guilds will rarely operate outside of the confines of their kindreds territories, while larger guilds absolutely utilize their power and influence to direct trade operations beyond the bounds of many leagues. Similarly, though guild service is neither expected nor demanded of a kin, there is significant competition and sometimes outright hostility between those who would claim guild membership and those who would opt for lives as freelancers. The former seeing the latter as feckless gadabouts, the latter seeing the former as maddeningly intractable obstinates. Whatever the strife they may cause, it is impossible to deny the value that the guilds provide to the culture of the kin. They organize logistical support in times of both peace and war, provisioning kindreds and holds with ships, food, weaponry, and technology, as well as simply smoothing over the trade risks inherent in a galaxy as dangerous as this. Expertise, support, coordination, all can be provided by one guild or another, should their asking price be met. Over and above all of this are, of course, the leagues. In the earliest epochs of the kin, they were simple designates assigning one or other of the prospector fleets to work in concert. Over time they evolved into military alliances to protect the Votan themselves from the hostile Xenos of the galactic core, and from there to the still-sustained form of multi-system, many kindred stellar nations they are today. Part state, part defense-packed, part multilateral alliance. All leagues bear a common heraldry seen across all space claimed by them, and all kindreds pledge to their banners. Given the nature of the kin, these leagues initially rapidly evolved into a particular cultural bent or specialism, which rapidly became set in proverbial stone as enviable tradition. The greatest and oldest of the leagues are thus almost identical to how they would have existed tens of millennia ago. The kindreds pledge to them, all know that surely their traditions are the most successful and robust, and see no reason to change anything about them. The Cronus, Hygenomy, and the Grendel dominance, for instance, are overtly warlike, having suffered endless Xenos incursions since their earliest days of struggle. The Greater Thurian League, by contrast, is far more mercantile, but the Trans-Hyperian Alliance is exploratory. These are but four of the largest leagues. There is not the dictates the size one has to take in order to earn the term. As discussed previously, kin language is subtle and nuanced. The league can hold as little as one system and be a concord of but two kindreds bound by shared intent, custom, and outlook. What begins as a simple written agreement, or even a spoken one, can be in but a generation evolve into the most rock solid of traditions, and one all who are pledged to it are expected to carry within their very beings. Territorial claims work in a similar fashion. Once a league has laid claim to a system, sector, or volume of space, it rapidly becomes hallowed ancestral ground. Boundaries established rarely shift as they become, well, traditional. Should territory change hands, it is almost always due to some form of a court, shifting allegiance of a particular kindred or some form of disaster or external invasion. Civil wars have, of course, occurred between leagues, although they are relatively rare. The concept is viewed by the kin as being dishonorable and, worse, needlessly wasteful. Should the annexation of new territory, occupied previously by humans or Xenos, be necessary, the kin take on an altogether different mien. If the inhabitants occupying the systems, or planets, should prove agreeable, the kin will allow them to continue as they had fully before, content with mutual trade and cohabitation, provided the resources the kin are seeking to extract are entirely at their disposal. This relationship may even be mutually beneficial. Kindred's dwelling in non-league space have often come to the defence of their hosts in times of peril, if perhaps only as a strictly utilitarian move to defend what they are there to acquire with the most amount of bodies. Should, however, resistance be encountered, either at the outset or even after centuries of coexistence, the kin immediately adopt a war footing with a resolution that can seem stunning to the hapless defenders. Warfare is not unknown to the kin, far from it. They are the occupants of this most hateful of galaxies, just like the rest of us. From their earliest generationships to the millennia old leagues, the days of the kin have been marked by countless conflicts, both in defence of the core word hearth, and in seeking new volumes to plunder and settle. Their greatest hatred is reserved for the orcs, being their most numerous and most enduring of enemies by far. Being the one species capable of thriving in all reaches of the galaxy, even the wild space of the core, the kin know so well, the orc is a persistent scourge upon the holds of the leagues, and their anarchic, senseless destruction is utterly anathema to every cultural pillar the kin hold dear. A similar revulsion is reserved for the followers of the Dark Gods, whom the leagues attempt to avoid at whatever cost is reasonable. Many a kindred has accidentally unearthed a tombworld of the Necrons, leading to catatlysmic conflicts as the rashly awakened dynasts seek to claim their supposed birthrights, from what the kin have deemed their legal territory. The high fleets of the Tyranids have earned a simple and portentous moniker of the bane amongst the kin, with dark tales of the devouring of entire leagues abounding amongst different holds. The Xenos are given a respect afforded only to an Apex predator, not admiration per say, but an acknowledgement of the supreme danger they represent. This has not however deterred numerous intrepid pioneer fleets from carefully stalking the hive flotillas of the Tyranids, patiently waiting for stragglers to fall behind, that they may be looted for the biomass and genetic resources that they have stripped from unfortunate worlds in their wake. Not all relations between the kin and the wider galaxy are hostile, however. They have conducted sporadic and profitable, if often tense, trade with the Eldare. Although they have little respect for what they see as the arrogance of the Assyrian craftworlders, and no time at all for the depravity of the Drukhari, this is nevertheless a generally equitable arrangement. Perhaps the most profitable accords have been struck with the Tau Empire. The Sarantok Mercantile League, the kin's primary contact with the Empire, was even mistaken, due to certain physical presentations of their clone Skynes for an entirely new Xenos species, the Demiurg. In typical kin fashion, none sought to dissuade their new trading partners of this, as it granted them plenty of plausible deniability and concealed from the Tau the fullest extent of the kin's presence across the galaxy. Relations between the kin and the Imperium have been, to put it mildly, complicated. For a start, the Imperium is generally little aware of the sheer amount of them that do in fact exist, something the kin seek to perpetuate wherever possible. As with the aforementioned Demiurg misunderstanding, the clone Skynes of the kin often give them appearances so deviated from anything resembling humanity, as to appear entirely Xenos in aspect, leading to imperial designations of one kindred or another as an entirely new Xenos-minorus species. In other cases, they are simply determined to be abhuman bands, leading to the development of a pejorative term, squats. This designation, variously a disapproving noun, all the way to a slur, is often applied to bands of kin that settle within imperial space for one reason or another, be it prospecting, exile, or accidental stranding. For the kin's part, they do not seek to disavow the Imperium at large of this notion. The existence of the Leagues, and more importantly, the Votan, are facts they know to be guest kept occluded. Whatever the genomic links between the kin and old earth, they bear no love and little respect for the God-Emperor or the Omnissiah, nor their empires. Acceptance of such divinities would only grant the Imperium a claim upon the kin as subjects, and that is not something they would ever countenance. The Empire has been the foe of the kin as often as they have worked in concert. They have been quickly dubbed Xenos in need of purgation by many a faithful Astartes chaptermaster, military commander, or inquisitor, and the kin's own acquisitiveness has frequently led to their invasion of imperial systems in the name of the wealth therein. The Adeptus Mechanicus view the kin with a deep suspicion that would no doubt blossom into genocidal hatred should much of what the Leagues conceal from humanity be revealed. The concept of artificial minds is forbidden under the strictest of Martian dogmas. Should any tech priest learn of the existence of the Votan, perhaps even the Iron Kin, the Mechanicus crusade of staggering ferocity would no doubt bear down upon the hapless league that the eyes of Mars have settled upon. The Votan, however, are not all they once were. For millennia, the ancestor cores were beacons to the kin, literal ones by which their ships sailed and metaphorical ones, fonts of all knowledge the kin required to survive and prosper. Time has a means of accruing. The sands of the hour at last fall softly and slowly, but even they can bury the mightiest of monuments. Submitted to this record, under accords of strictest severity is the following reality. The Votan are failing, and it is the fault of the kin themselves that they are doing so. It is the most ironic of things. The cultural practices set from the outset to preserve knowledge, to enable prosperity, are the very things that are stifling them. The Votan are responsible for the dissemination of wisdom and gene data of both. Upon the death of a kin, their body is rendered into their constituent elements, and their life's knowledge is uploaded to the Votan itself, joining with their ancestors in the core's quantum cogitators. The practice was likely once a purely practical one. The recycling of the organic material and the processing of whatever worthy information was gleaned from the life that was just departed. However, as a nigh religious practice that it has morphed into, the Votan are becoming filled with countless generations of kin, the accumulated mined data of millennia, and it appears that even their dark age of technology mechanisms are unable to cope with the sheer weight of these records. The apparent effect of this degradation is the response rate of the Votan to queries put to them. In times past, it is said that the Grimnir were able to ask the most esoteric of questions to the ancestor cores and receive answers within minutes or even seconds, nigh instantaneously. In these times, the Votan may be silent for years, decades, even centuries, the memorial cogs of its abominable intelligence churning through tens of thousands of years of data it was likely never intended to function with. Their status as living, unliving progenitor devices of the kin mean that the kin themselves have no means of repairing them, nor expanding their processing power or archival stacks. Perhaps they were once intended to just merely be functional servant minds. If that is so, the position of living cultural avatars may sit ill. The questions of the Grimnir can often be philosophical or existential. Attempts by the kin to grapple with the reality of the galaxy as it stands perched upon the precipice of midnight. Information not frequently accessed risks sequestering or even horrifically loss within the depths of the Votan's machine brains, mired in algorithmic patterns and statistical anomalies created through millennia of self-modification and maintenance, in continuous association and processing of the organic mortal minds of the kin that serve them. Some have, by the tale of kin exiles and radicals, even gone insane. Their selves, unable to maintain the amassed and hoarded data, are driven so by calamity, such as the tale of the Emberg Eignir block. Devoured by a tyrannid hive fleet, this league's Votan was ignored by the Xenos. Having recycled the majority of those who fell in its defense lest the hive claim their bodies, the ancestor core was driven to mechanical insanity by the glut of pain, desolation, and suffering the experiences of the departed kin endured. The Votan are not without their weaknesses. The kin are clearly aware of this, and although the senescence of the ancestor core weighs heavily upon their minds, they are so hidebound by their culture that to consider changing these practices, driving the Votan to solemnance, is literally unthinkable. As a small aside, and should any of you be aware of the oft-forbidden apocrypha of the era that birthed the kin, you may perhaps be cognizant of the tales of the men of gold and the men of stone. It would appear that, given all that one has accumulated for the submission of this record, that the mystery of these writings appears to have been solved by the awareness we now possess of the kin and their leagues. The fulsome record of this may be parsed at your leisure. For the sake of brevity, one will recount the key points here. The legends primarily speak of the ages of the first man, presumably the first great stellar exodus of humanity from Terra, and the creation of the second men of the stone race, by golden progenitors, who were great crafters of artifices and mechanisms. Another telling of the tale, far more allegorical, states that man created men of stone to go where he could not, to delve into the galaxy and bring back all that man needed to prosper, swimming the tides of the aether amongst predators that cared not for the half-life of stone, until man had spread so far and wide, thanks to the efforts of the stone race, that he remembered not of the trials that had brought him there. One had previously opined aloud as to whether the stone race were in fact humanity's first machine intelligences. With all that we know of the kin, this has been put to rest. The kin are, one is confident, the stone men of legend, craftsmen, prospectors, tools, a genetically engineered mining system of staggering proportions and complexity, living industry by which the furnaces of the dark age of technology were once fueled. The galaxy is full of remnants, and one suspects the kin are just that. An echo of something that once had a purpose. Cast adrift and forgotten by their creators, left to fend for themselves in a hateful universe. The awakening of the great rift has, as with so much of the galaxy, thrown the leagues of Votan into utter tumult. Warp travel is as integral to them as it is to any species. Their navigation of it, largely thanks to the ancestor cores acting as quantum beacons, combined with wayfinding data, processed through iron kin artificial intelligences, allowing for short but reliable warp plunges for faster than light travel. The disruption of the warp will affect them as it does others, and the warp storms thrown into real space by the Kikitrix melodictum have sundered millennia old transit corridors, swallowed entire kindreds in their holds, and plunged leagues into sudden conflicts with the followers of the primordial annihilator, and those displaced by the storms. Worse yet, stellar phenomena previously charted and deemed stable by the kin in their home reaches have become chaotic or mutated. Black holes suddenly change in course, anomalies suddenly inverting, and rogue planets becoming self-aware predators. Such conflicts and perils as with the other species of the galaxy have prompted a massive shift in the outlook of the leagues and their activities. Far space, the kin's term for the void beyond the circumnuclean disc that marks the boundaries of the galactic core, is no longer the traditional boundaries for established league territories. The predations of Xenos rampages, scores of esoteric disasters, all have forced many kindreds to shuck their traditional homes for the sake of mere survival, necessity overcoming tradition. The times are troubling indeed, and many a fierce debate has raged within the spakarons of the holds galaxy wide as the kin attempt to chart a course through an era unprecedented. Conflict, as it so often does, bruise. The galaxy has barely encountered the kin as they truly are. It appears that that is about to change utterly, until such a time as I may explore this race further. Ave Imperator, Loria in Excelsis Terra. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on twitter at oculusimperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.