< Labyrinthine Cascade | Sol Invictus IC Docs | Exalt Origins >
The story of Kilauea & Pentecost, The Lovers Forged in Lightless Depths
At the dawn of the First Age, the Plasma Tongue Repeater was a standard issue armament for certain elite units of the Deliberative's Illumined Aegis. Such small bands of highly trained mortal Tiger-Warriors were grouped under the command of a single Exalted officer. In one such unit, the Company of Lapis and Jet, served two lovers, their names now lost to history. They were brave and capable soldiers, and served the Deliberative with honor and distinction.
It was sometimes the practice, in those days, for such elite units as the Company of Lapis and Jet to use proprietary code languages in the field. These cryptic tongues, engineered by Exalted tacticians for use among their juniors, provided an added layer of secrecy to the movements and orders of the Deliberative's most trusted fighting forces. They also served as a bond between the soldiers serving under a given command.
In the course of their years of military service together, the soldiers who were lovers faced many dangers and saw many conflicts. One such conflict, a police action against the Darkbrood of the Underways, took the lovers deep below the surface of Creation. Down in the permanent midnight of the caves below the world, the Company of Lapis and Jet faced fell and terrible things from before humanity's first breath. In those lightless and narrow passageways, the lovers found their Plasma Tongue Repeaters to be ideal weapons against the seething, scurrying menace. Because of them, the lovers and their company emerged from the Earth victorious over the unclean things that lie beneath it.
This campaign against the Darkbrood gave names to the weapons of the two lovers. The names were given in the Blue and Black Speech, the code-tongue of their company. The first was named Kilauea, which means literally "spewing" and was a shortening for "spewing cinder into lightless places, I fear neither the darkness nor the fiends it abides". The second was named Pentecost, which means literally "count 50" - the number of Darkbrood slain by the weapon in a single skirmish.
Years passed and the lovers died, as is the lot of soldiers. Of the manner of their deaths, little is remembered It is known only that they died together, leaving their arms and equipment with no next of kin to revert to. The guns of the two lovers passed into the custody of their company's quartermaster, who treated them with solemn respect, remembering the hands that once carried them in war.
But the two weapons, Kilauea and Pentecost, did not remain restlessly quiet for long. For the quartermaster, a man of great virtue and heroic intelligence, was soon favored with the Second Breath. Chosen as a servant of the Sun, the one-time quartermaster, Zhou-ming Opus, inherited the shard first bestowed on Resourceful Furnace, the great military engineer of the Primordial War.
Zhou-ming Opus inherited the calling of his spiritual ancestor, crafting armaments for the heroes of the Age. Among his first projects was the rededication of Kilauea and Pentecost. Entwining their Essences and amplifying their capabilities, the artisan of war gave the pair the title of "The Lovers Forged in Lightless Depths". Once they had been finished, Zhou-ming made a gift of the weapons to a Solar airship captain named Askaru.
Stryck Wiki