The Listening of Auspicia
Date: 13.09.2026 Combatants: Astra Militarum (House Crosius) vs Aeldari (Craftworld Iyanden, with Harlequin allies) World: Auspicia Result: House Crosius victory, 60–47
Auspicia is a minor agri world of no consequence whatever, save that something once built a long-range auspex array across its northern plain: four outstations on a fixed baseline and a central cogitator hall. The Administratum has maintained it, without interruption and without comprehension, for longer than the Ecclesiarchy has existed. It has never been given an order. It has never stopped listening.
Both forces made for the outstations. Neither was there to fight.
First account — Dispatch of the Lord Martial
“I am told the men in the drop squad knew. I am told this as though it should change what I ordered, or what I would order again.” — Honoria Calvert
++ DISPATCH: AUSPICIA THEATRE ++
++ FROM: Lord Martial Honoria Calvert, Household Regiments of Crosius ++
++ TO: The Lord-Captain Domenico Crosius,
aboard The Consolation of Just Slaughter ++
Lord-Captain,
Auspicia holds. Three stations of five, including the hall. The xenos took two and withdrew from the field in good order, which I want recorded, because we did not drive them off and I will not have the despatch read as though we did.
The hall was taken in the first hour by a section of the 23rd, who then held it for the rest of the day at a cost I have entered in full in the attached return. When the bullgryns reached them there was one man left standing, a sergeant whose name is in the return and who I intend to see promoted. The ogryns were then shot at for four hours by every weapon the enemy could bring to bear and came out of it with bruising. I have no explanation for this and have stopped seeking one.
On the left our armour ranged freely and did considerable work. The incendiary tank was destroyed late in the day and its fuel went up in a manner that cleared an enemy scouting party off the western station entire. I will not claim it as a manoeuvre. It was a bad death that happened to fall well.
The right was the true cost. A section of the 23rd, my own command squad and a single walker held that flank against scorpions, dark reapers and the painted ones for the better part of the engagement, and when the painted ones broke through I dropped the Tempestus Aquilons directly into their path.
You will want to know whether the Aquilons could have been extracted. They could not, and I did not intend them to be. They turned the painted ones off their line and held them two hours longer than the flank could have survived unaided, and then they were killed to the last man in a manner I will not describe to you in writing. I put ten elite soldiers where they would die in order to buy two hours. It was the correct decision and I will make it again on Thursday if Thursday requires it. I record it plainly so that no one later tells you I did it by accident.
Throughout, the mortar sections and the malleus battery worked the enemy line without pause, and late in the day brought down the witch who had been directing them. The enemy did not break at this. They simply stopped, all at once, as though the argument had concluded, and left.
The hall’s cogitator core is recovered and en route to you under seal. I am told it is corrupt, partial, and of no military value. I am told this by people who asked for it before I had finished writing this sentence.
I remain yours, and I remain blunt.
Second account — The Iyanden telling
“A mirror does not stop being a mirror when it is broken. It stops being one mirror.” — attributed to Morvael
Draft — for Richard to take, alter or discard.
They came to Auspicia because the mon-keigh machine was still listening, and because a thing built to listen must have been pointed at something.
There were already humans at the hall when Iyanden arrived, few in number and in no formation, who withdrew eastward without offering battle. Their kind were not the kind that came afterwards. The distinction was noted and thought unimportant, as the distinctions between mon-keigh generally are.
Aethenor read the baseline before the first shot and understood what the builders had not troubled to write down: the array was not watching the sky above it. It was watching a direction. A bearing held for ten thousand years by a device operated by a species that had forgotten the question it was asking, and maintained it with the diligence of men polishing a lock to a door they have never opened.
The Scorpions took the eastern ground and the Reapers held it, and for a long while the field belonged to Iyanden. The Laughing God’s own turned the human right and would have rolled it up entire, but the humans spent a company of their best from the sky simply to stand in the way, and the painted ones were obliged to kill them, which took time, and time was the only thing Iyanden did not have to spare.
Aethenor fell in the fourth hour to a shell fired by a crew who never saw him and will never know what they did. He is not gone. Iyanden does not lose what Iyanden has already paid for.
What he saw before the shell found him is the only thing of consequence recovered from Auspicia. The array is not aimed at a place. It is aimed at an arrival. The humans hold the numbers and cannot read them. Iyanden holds the meaning and has no numbers at all.
Morvael, who was present, has called this the most satisfying outcome available and has declined to explain why.
Third account — Fragment
Recorded by a junior clerk of the Ordo Scriptorum. The subject was not questioned. The subject was not, at the time, believed to be conscious.
++ transcription begins ++
The fourth one. You have the fourth one now, or a part of it, and you do not know that is what you are holding.
_(Subject was not addressed. Clerk continues recording.)
They built the listeners first and the doors afterwards, which is the correct order and the only sensible thing they ever did. A door you cannot see through is a wall with ambition.
You will want to know what it was pointed at. So did they. They pointed it, and they read what came back, and then they built the machine anyway.
I would like to be clear that I warned them. I am aware that my being here is generally taken as evidence that I did not.
++ transcription ends ++
(Clerk’s note: no interrogation was authorised and none took place. The subject spoke for some minutes without prompting and then ceased. I have logged the vox spool by file number. I do not know what to do with it and have been told twice not to ask.)
Consequences
The northern array of Auspicia is held by House Crosius. Its central cogitator core has been recovered under Ordo Scriptorum seal: astrogation data, corrupt and partial, comprising a single bearing taken from a fixed baseline ten thousand years ago. A bearing is a line, not a place. A second line is required, and the Ordo does not have one.
The core’s seals had been cut and reset before recovery. One partition has been wiped with precision. Whoever did so knew the array’s architecture, knew which record mattered, and did not consider it worth defending. House Crosius and Craftworld Iyanden spent a day and several hundred lives contesting what was left behind.
The core independently attests a count of sixteen. This does not make the testimony of the xenos designated The One Who Remains admissible. It makes it inconvenient.
Craftworld Iyanden withdrew in good order holding two outstations and the reading Aethenor took from the baseline before he fell: that the array was not built to find something, but to watch for something that has not yet arrived. Iyanden has the meaning and none of the data.
Each force now knows the other is searching, and what for. Neither can act alone.
Mechanically: House Crosius unlocks Lord Martial Honoria Calvert (Proxy for Ursula Creed) for future games. Craftworld Iyanden takes first choice of deployment zone in the final engagement. No battlefield effects otherwise.
Dramatis Personae
| Lord Martial Honoria Calvert | Commanding the Household Regiments of Crosius |
| Lord-Captain Domenico Crosius | Warrant-Holder of the Crosius Dynasty |
| Aethenor | Farseer of Craftworld Iyanden. Fell at Auspicia. Not gone. |
| Morvael | Harlequin. Present. Amused. |
| The One Who Remains | Designation unofficial. True name Oomvarah. Xenos, Zoat. |