A dry wind blew in off the desiccated sea across the plains of Atlantripa, flowing over the ridge that was all that remained of an ancient coast line, until it struck the City of Domes. Half engulfed by the desert dust, any majesty the city once held was long gone or deeply buried, lost to the ages of time. The Franks to the north and Norda to the south were rebuilding with the spoils of the Emperor’s crusade and the gifts of the Imperial Truth, but the tendrils of reborn civilisation had not reached this place, not yet. Broken by the remaining walls and sapped of its power by distance the wind now barely moved the dust of streets and by the time it blew through an ancient portico and into the dome, its fragile strength could not even disturb the oppressive silence of the abandoned place.
Though many of the domes that had given the city its name were naught but broken shells, this one, the oldest of them all, had withstood the ages, outliving those that had followed it as though they were but pale copies. Beneath its coffered vault, amid the detritus of eons, stood two figures, deep in conversation, each clad in a dark cloak. Around each shimmered the tell-tale distortion of a falsehood, each technological marvel from a lost age, that disguised the wearers true form, and hid them from any form of technological surveillance or esoteric scrying. But even the wonders of a lost age could not fully conceal the power of the two intruders however, and though the light that filtered down from the oculus illuminated a cavernous space, their presence seem to dominate it, like the gods of old that had once been praised there.
“They must be stopped,” the first figure pronounced. The second figure considered for only a moment before concurring, “They meddle with powers they do not understand, it will be their undoing.” “Not just their undoing, the foulness they dally with will undo us all, bring down all that we have built, it must end,” the first figure exhorted. “We are agreed then?”, the second said proffering his arm. The first figured nodded solemnly and gripped the others forearm in the ancient tradition of warriors, “No matter the cost brother, we will save Him, and the Imperium” With the hint of a smile in his voice, the second figure replied “Brother, together, we will be save them all.”