The Emperor’s Angel of Death

Although the Zhao-Arcadia Magi had good intentions, the Banshee project encountered obstacles from the start.

After the Great Heresy, to avoid Martian investigations, Zhao-Arcadia sealed away all Titans. Only the then-Forge Master and a few Magi knew the exact locations. After three generations of passing down the information, these hidden coordinates were lost. No one even remembered that a Titan Legion was hidden away. Instead, the Banshee project continued, but it faced the awkward situation of not having a testbed.

At the time, the Zhao-Arcadia Forge Master, troubled by the lack of Titans for testing, suddenly had a brilliant idea.

During the Great Heresy, a large number of Titans fell in battle. Some of the wreckage was recovered, but some of it remained slumbering beneath the ancient battlefields for many years. What if exploration teams were sent to those worlds where Titan wars had erupted to find some Titans that weren't too badly damaged, or useful components?

Soon, the plan was put into action. The Zhao-Arcadia exploration teams spent three hundred years traversing three star sectors and actually found a Warlord-class Titan that was severely damaged but still had its main structure intact. They then used parts scavenged from various places to assemble and repair it.

One hundred and fifty years later, a basically complete Warlord-class Titan became the testbed for the Banshee project, and this also became its name.

Over the next few millennia, Zhao-Arcadia conducted countless modification experiments around this Titan, even updating the Black Iron Core four times. Their previous cooperation with the Thousand Sons had given them considerable experience with psychic devices, allowing the Banshee to possess a unique psychic piloting system. When the Black Iron Core was combined with this system, a very powerful piloting function emerged—unlike other Titans that required piloting teams of dozens of people, the Banshee could theoretically be piloted by a single person, as long as their psychic power was strong enough.

That's right, the Zhao-Arcadia designed Banshee's pilot ideally needed to be a psyker. This was also related to the characteristics of the Black Iron Core, whose underlying design came from Eldar Titans. Archmagos Tacitus created a psychic reactive substance that simulated some of the functions of Wraithbone, but the Eldar were all highly psychically sensitive beings, especially their Titan pilots.

To maximize the potential of the Black Iron Core, a psychic pilot would be the best choice, but this led to another hidden danger—psykers are prone to losing control.

The psychic abilities of humans are not as stable as those of the Eldar, a fact well known to the Zhao-Arcadia Magi, but they then came up with a solution.

Just like with mechanical devices, install a fuse in the Banshee.

This fuse was the Pariah.

Near the Banshee's cockpit, there would be two co-pilot compartments, each with a Pariah as an assistant pilot, serving as a weapons officer. Once the psyker showed signs of going berserk, the isolation doors would immediately open, and the two Pariahs would rush in to subdue the pilot.

After solving the piloting system, the remaining key was the weapons.

Since there had to be overwhelming superiority, the most powerful weapons had to be equipped. The Eldar Titan's D-Cannon immediately came into the view of the Zhao-Arcadia Magi. The power of this weapon was beyond doubt, although dangerous.

But replicating this weapon took a lot of time. Eldar technology was too complex and mysterious. Zhao-Arcadia made no progress for a long time and almost caused an accident.

Until they met Trazyn.

That's right, this project actually had a bit of connection with Trazyn. During the repair of the Eternal Crusader, the Zhao-Arcadia Magi finally discovered a problem by creating amplified Rift weapons.

Their thinking was wrong from the beginning.

Currently, humans simply cannot replicate the psychic conductive material of Wraithbone. Either amplify the weapon countless times, using a stacked output power method to offset the material's low psychic conductivity, which is the Eternal Crusader's main gun, or change the approach.

The Imperium has Vortex weapons, why must it be a direct-fire type?

In the Imperium's former armories, there once existed a very unique bolter weapon called the Vortex Bolt. These bolts were created by the mysterious artisan clans of the Sol System in that almost forgotten era and were extremely rare. They could generate miniature vortexes within the target upon detonation. This characteristic allowed Vortex Bolts to cause effective damage to even the largest enemies.

But Vortex Bolts were too ancient, almost legendary. Zhao-Arcadia had never even seen them, so where could they get them?

This again involved Trazyn.

In the armory of the Ark Mechanicus Aveistar, there were one hundred Vortex Bolts stored in special ammunition crates. Zhao-Arcadia, to cover their tracks, claimed to Ulan Hadar, their collaborator, that they wanted to research a large-caliber solid-projectile vortex weapon for equipping on battle servitors, but Ulan Hadar did not have this technology either. When Trazyn accidentally learned about this, he generously donated ten Vortex Bolts to the project as samples—after all, Vortex weapons were somewhat incompatible with the Necrons and there weren't many situations where they could be used.

And this was already more than ten years ago. Trazyn did not expect that Zhao-Arcadia would actually replicate similar solid-projectile vortex weapons in such a short period of time. It was called the Annihilator Soul-Rend Cannon and was equipped on a psychic Titan.

When this weapon completed its experiments and assembly, it meant that the Banshee truly possessed combat capability in a real sense.

But at this point, the internal divisions within Zhao-Arcadia could no longer be suppressed.

Not only Trazyn, but many Tech-Priests also felt puzzled by the decisions of their predecessors. Was it worth spending so much effort, so much manpower and resources, just for a feeling, for an almost non-existent opponent?

In Trazyn's view, the Banshee project had come to this point entirely because of sunk costs. The Zhao-Arcadia Magi of past generations had invested too much in it, and the more they invested, the harder it was to give up. Although they knew that the project was no longer very meaningful, they could not propose abandoning it, otherwise they would easily bear the blame for wasting resources.

". . .What use is this thing now? It can't be used on the open battlefield at all. It's completely a toy built with a pile of fancy technology."

Trazyn blinked. The Banshee used the Annihilator Soul-Rend Cannon once again. The whistling vortex projectile landed on the distant horizon, creating a purple glow and engulfing hundreds of Tyranid artillery pieces.

His question was also a question that many Magi had privately raised. The Banshee's weapon was powerful, but the problem was that it could not be used in public at all, because it was a heretical weapon, violating more than twenty-three Martian edicts. After all, any research into new psychic weapons was prohibited unless authorized by Mars—in 755.M40, an unauthorized psychic weapon test led to a severe daemonic incursion in the Eridanus Sector, requiring the deployment of a large number of Grey Knights to stop the incursion, but more than sixty billion people died in the incursion, and eleven worlds were permanently abandoned. Since that accident, Mars has implemented stricter psychic review standards.