Annwn

"I do not appreciate crossing the expanse, I do not appreciate docking, I do not appreciate the malignant data-djinns which flit over my ships skin. They leave me with a foreboding sense that I am being watched by things greater then even a battleship."

- Attributed to Mechanicus-Captain Johan Arnfried of the Logos Aeternus

In a distant system of the Ixaniad Sector staring out into the intergalactic abyss, a single planet orbits a lonely star with no name. Upon it resides the infamous prison complex known as Annwn; The Black Cells. A ferrous mass of spindle structures which stretches from the orbital tethers to encompasses a series of foreboding, black spires which span a continent in size. A tangled maze of pipes and cables swath the structures, and evokes images of a great spider nest in the boughs of gnarled, black trees. Among this ominous web, hanging like bulbous egg sacs and speared with support struts, are clusters of Confinement Units, any of which houses up to a thousand recidivists and malefactors. From across the Ixaniad Sector and beyond they come, each one a special prisoner of the Machine Cult; commoners, sub-mechanicus grade technicians, smugglers, and hereteks. All condemned for crimes against the Machine God, each with secrets that the Prefecture Magisterium demand be revealed. Once a prisoner passes through the gates of Annwn, they will likely never return.

Prisoner Intake
Upon arrival and initial processing, prisoners are transported from the orbital tethers to the intake facilities of the world, the Tech-Priests of Annwn strip prisoners of any nonessential cybernetic implants or biological augmentations and inter them in arcane life-support chambers known as Revelatus Chambers. Here they remain in a chemically induced coma; linked to neural jacks swiftly installed through brute surgery. Through these harsh implants, canted supplications to the Omnissiah and condemnations of those who violate his doctrines bombard their minds and cogitators while neural tissue is primed for the procedures to come.

The Revelatus Chambers routinely interrupt this fitful slumber in order to probe the accused for any damning or useful information. To this end, in addition to life-support systems, each chamber contains an Explication Array. A terrible device brought from sacred Mars that inflicts tortuous pain, discomfort, and despair on the helpless subject within, while the chamber’s automated life support systems ensure that the prisoner is spared the mercy of death. Servitors record all utterances, biological or cybernetic responses, and synaptic fluctuations in exhaustive detail on data scrolls that feed perpetually from their rebuilt torsos, their impassive gaze offering no pity.

These horrid devices are also capable of interfacing with any implanted cogitator systems and memory banks, ruthlessly stripping every bit of cognitive data from the subject’s augmented cortices. Data-factorisers, code scrubbers, and other harvesting protocols thoroughly examine all inloaded data for virulent scrap code, corrupt memory files, and other detrimental information. Cognition buffers are stripped from the victims skull and memory wafers are poured over, with recent data exloads being particuarly interesting to the Magisterium. If any security protocols and sub-routines within the Heretek’s mind try to resist, logic-cants, cipher-shunts, and cognitive-fractors relentlessly disassemble them until no pre-programmed resistance remains. This process of forcefully retrieving data from an augmented brain is absolutely excruciating to the condemned, but the Juris magi have long put mortal concerns for others from their minds, and are unable to respond to such factors, only to record the data acquired such that it may better serve the forge.

Those subjects who, through great willpower or uncommon techno-arcana, prove particularly resistant to the blessed mechanisms within the Revelatus Chambers disappear into the spires themselves, where they fall beneath the ministrations of the Magi Interrogus and their Excruciator Servitors. These macabre Tech-Priests excel at peeling away lies and extracting the truth from the most unwilling of subjects. Hailing from the ranks of the Biologus, these masters of their craft are adept in inflicting any agony imaginable at any intensity such that among the Xenobiologus, that they might approach the tales of the Drucharii Haemonculi. While these magi work, the Excruciator Servitors continuously monitor the vital biological and synaptic functions of the unfortunate specimen, serving as impassive doctors aides; passing agonizing tools, injectiving chemicals, and adding inducements to his unyielding flesh. Together, these servants of the Omnissiah exploit every nerve, synapse, circuit, and servo within their victim’s body to the greatest possible effect, bringing the accused to the very limits of sanity and sentience and beyond. This agonizing process continues until every last byte of incriminating data from the condemned resides in the info-crypts. Once certainty is achieved, the Cleansing Pits receive the prisoners and grant them their absolution: final death, or life as a servitor.

The Black Cells, as much a part of the Mechanicum as any other, strive for efficiency. Upon Annwn, great research facilities for servitors exist. Within the gloomy complexes toil diligent coteries of Tech-Priests who continuously work to create servitors for a myriad of functions and new applications. Endlessly they prod and cut, graft and splice, commonly using the condemned as unwilling test subjects for novel or more efficient servitor patterns. Such things often constitute the last thoughts of the condemned of Annwn, before their brain ceases to register such trivialities as conscious thought, and Annwn's rune of a three cogs within a cog is branded into their flesh and they are shipped to the outposts and holdings of the Ixaniad Mechanicum. These servitors are held at arms length by the superstitious, seen as bad omens, and a reminder that the cherished 'unity' of the Ixaniad mechanicus is not quite so easily won after all.

Hereteknica
There are whispers among the ratings of Magisterium ships of specialized stasis vaults hidden within the deepest crevices of Annwn. Evil holding bays that contain Hereteks who display blasphemous and unsanctioned psychic abilities. These cells supposedly harness technology of forbidden provinence, and are said to resonate with the moans and cries of the souls within. Within these deep layers lurk the dark robed magi of the Order of Binharic Cessation; The Silent Order. Scattered accounts of these devices tell of unexplained power fluctuations, invisible forces hurling objects about, and sudden visions of death, destruction, and madness. Perhaps most disturbing of all are the descriptions, of the sickly glow surrounding the bays themselves and of fleeting impressions of tortured, screaming faces upon their metal shells before flicking and gelid fields of green energy drag them back within.

Archmagos Silas Pajari
The ruler of Annwa, the Archmagos is a shadowy figure within the Hephaestian Archimanditure. For centuries, the reclusive keeper of this prison has dwelt within his spire, jealously guarding his position and the secrets of his inner sanctum. Silas is a very influential figure in Hephaestian politics, with strong contacts in both the Chamber Ordinary and the Prefecture Magisterium. Some suspect that his reach may even extend into the ranks of the Ixaniad Inquisitorial Conclave itself, his power bought with traded secrets of mind scourged hereteks. Others suspect that the rumors of the dreaded Black Ships hanging suspended in geostationary orbit near the spire are more accurate then the Archimanditure lets on.

Magos Interrogus Marzhol
An elder magi of the prison and head interrogator. The body of this miserly priest is modified with so many mechadendrites as to be almost a moving polyp.