House Vallimere's sons

House Vallimere's sons

It is the 41st Millennium.

The god emperor has sat broken upon the golden throne, ruler of man

On holy terra since the betrayal of his sons.

The world of men has shaken, trembled and decayed

In his “absence”, The Chosen Son now rules in his stead, weeping at what has become of his

father's dream, still he must fight. For as ever the dark comes, Beasts, Traitors, Xenos, Foulness

beyond mortal kine seeks to undo the living, Creatures from the outer dark devour all in their path.

Mortals do battle with the deathless at every turn. Upon these savage times, the greatest of

The emperor's creations, the Adeptus Astartes, do battle with all of this and more alongside

normal men from the Astra Militarum.

Who’s bravest wades into death's embrace with no fear.

Courage and bravery are still found in man, its light fades but is not broken. The ever-shifting dangerous warp tides, upon which the mighty vessels of the Navis Imperialis travel, leak

the reeking taint of corruption, must be navigated between solar systems.

Travel in this cursed realm is the pockmarked bedrock upon which the imperium stands.

Technician Prite had a secret, one so old it had grown sediment layers. The sort of secret that, if ever dragged into the light, would not merely ruin him, but likely see him recycled into nutrient slurry with a polite administrative note attached.

For you see, Prite had always wanted to work at the Academy. Not serve it. Not maintain it. Work in it, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with officers and theoreticians, basking in the sanctioned glow of knowledge rather than scraping carbon-scabs off machinery in the dead hours of the night. But the fates, being fickle and characteristically cruel, had delivered him to the next best thing: the holo-simulation suites and their cavernous engine chambers.

They were his life’s quiet obsession.
Steel-ribbed monoliths of humming power, miles of fiber-nerve, and the labyrinthine synaptic logic that made them breathe. They were ugly, imperfect, temperamental, much like every institution in the Imperium, and he adored them.

He had been only a boy when his father first smuggled him past security protocols with the casual ease of a man who believed rules applied exclusively to other people. As an apprentice technician, Prite had watched, wide-eyed, as his father teased open simulation casings and coaxed machine spirits into humming compliance. He learned the secret dialects of cooling pipes and transmission coils; how signals traveled, how systems thought, how the shimmering illusions of war were stitched together by raw computational brutality.

His father even kept a home terminal, ostensibly to “monitor system health,” though everyone privately understood that meant “play with his toys after hours.” Very few people ever glimpsed the full extent of what the machines could do or how they could be bent, nudged, or sweet-talked into improbable feats. Prite knew all of it. The machine’s anatomy lived in him.

When his father died, Prite committed the greatest act of grief-stricken devotion imaginable: he converted the old man’s room into a complete interface console. A forbidden one. A private one. A sacrificial altar of cable and steel. Replicating those parts was… delicate. Difficult. Nearly suicidal. As such things always go, two others, technicians just as machine-mad as he, discovered what he was building.

Naturally, they cornered him.
Naturally, he caved.
Naturally, the conspiracy expanded.

So began the weekly meetings: three grown men hiding in forgotten corners, hunched over screens, whispering strategies between maintenance reports, challenging one another in clandestine versus matches inside the same simulation chambers they were paid to keep holy. They learned, tweaked, broke, circumvented, and rewired. One of the simulators, due to the Academy’s archaic architecture, had to be tricked into identifying Prite’s home console as an internal subsystem rather than a new user. A feat requiring a level of technical heresy that would make the Machine Cult faint dead away.

But they did it.
Oh, they did it beautifully.

Over tense months they replicated the core machinery in secret, providing themselves private access consoles, illicit back-doors into the most sacred training engines of the Imperial Navy. Access to the official suites was regulated so tightly that junior officers could barely sneeze within ten meters of them without a paper trail. Which was precisely why technicians existed: someone had to maintain the damn things. Someone had to crawl into the walls and soothe the machine spirits when they threw tantrums. And someone, three someones, in fact, might as well enjoy the fruits of their irreplaceable expertise.

Each of them adopted a moniker of historical import:
Admiral Chellborg. Admiral Hesperell. Admiral Tipton.

Pretentious? Yes.
Blasphemous? Probably.
Hilariously accurate? Undeniably.

One of the great hidden truths of the simulation systems was that while trainees believed themselves tested against either other students or system-generated foes… the truth was murkier. The system did generate simulated opponents, but only when no real human opponents volunteered to take the slot.

And the technicians, bored, brilliant, and armed with more access than any sane institution should have given them, had quietly added themselves to the pool.

They built a weighted system: sometimes the AI played the role. Sometimes another student logged in. But often, far too often, one of the three technicians would slip in wearing the rank and name of a long-dead admiral, and deliver to unsuspecting cadets an educational thrashing for the ages.

It helped that the holo-suites were used only sparsely during the day. Instructors hogged them for custom coursework. Students got evenings. Technicians? Technicians got… opportunity. They could work a shift, clock out, go home, slide into their illicit consoles, and hours later receive a polite system ping informing them that “Admiral Chellborg is requested for simulation engagement 14-B.”

They had been playing the game, their game, since childhood. They knew every glitch, edge case, and unlisted capability. Every simulated vessel and traitor legion AI routine. They had fought the Hive Fleet scenarios so often they could predict the spawn vectors before the system rendered them.

It was glorious.
It was horrifying.
It was, unfortunately, noticed.

Enter the cadets. The ambitious ones. The reckless ones. The idiots. They cranked the battle parameters to maximum, requested one of the three legendary Admirals, and flung themselves headlong into battles they had no business surviving. Some even dared team matches, three top students versus the three Admirals.

They were Almost always promptly annihilated.

In time, Academy analysts began writing internal papers about the “distinct tactical personalities” of these mysterious admirals. Their simulated doctrine. Their hypothetical strategic schools. Their “evolutionary trends in adaptive decision-making.”

The technicians watched in dawning dread as their off-hours hobbies were enshrined in official naval doctrine. Their quirks became citations in tactical coursework. Their playstyles, playstyles, became fodder for future fleet architects.

That was when fear set in.

They had always known the Academy was a viper pit. They maintained the simulation suites, meaning they also heard the whispers. The politics. The quiet murders. The noble houses dripping venom in their pursuit of naval power. The students groomed for war by people who considered assassination a polite debate method.

Now the technicians found themselves unwilling contributors to the machine of doctrine. Their alter egos were becoming famous. Students bragged about fighting them. Officers discussed “the Chellborg gambit” or “Hesperell’s enfilade preference.”

They were legends now.

And legends, in the Imperium, have an unfortunate habit of being dragged into the light, interrogated, weaponized, or quietly removed.

Prite had a secret.
But his secret, like all things in the Imperium, was beginning to grow teeth.

And secrets with teeth tend to bite back.

They lived in a constant, bone-deep terror that their secret would be exposed. Not the theatrical kind sung about in regimental ballads, but the cold, nausea-inducing type felt by men who know, know, that discovery leads to more wires, more pain, and possibly a cheerful re-assignment as lobotomized servitors.

So of course the reckoning arrived on a Sunday afternoon.
Nothing catastrophic ever has the courtesy of arriving on a weekday.

They met, furtively, stiff-backed, within one of the Academy’s sculpted gardens. There was a fountain nearby depicting some long-dead Imperial hero wrestling a demon to the ground. The water feature had long since broken, leaving the hero locked in an eternal, bone-dry chokehold, which felt metaphorically appropriate.

Technician Darcelle was the first to speak.

Darcelle: “We’re doomed. That’s it. We’re done for. Melt us down and bolt us into a bulkhead.”
Prite: “You say that every time an instructor narrows his eyes.”
Renault: “He narrows them at everything. I saw him glare at a sandwich once.”
Darcelle: “And the sandwich didn’t have illicit access consoles hidden inside it.”
Prite: “Can we focus? We need plausible deniability. We need… stand-ins.”
Renault: “Artificial subroutines?”
Prite: “Yes. Something to impersonate our personas so we can stop logging in before someone notices we never sleep.”
Darcelle: “…We don’t sleep now.”
Renault: “Irrelevant. We need pretend sleep.”

Thus the plan took shape.

They would build simulacra, echoes of their alter egos, to continue fighting in the simulation engines while they gradually withdrew, hoping that if (when) the system began glitching, no one would immediately leap to the obvious conclusion: that three technicians had been masquerading as legendary naval tacticians for years.

They spoke in hushed tones about how to hide their home-unit access. How their junior technicians had been instructed, carefully, deliberately, to ignore certain system “errors” as normal quirks of the old machine spirits.

“Quirks,” mind you, that were actually deliberate bypasses.

The juniors were now complicit Out of ignorance and deliberate obfuscation …
Not out of loyalty, Imperial loyalty tends to snap like old wire, but because ignorance was safer than curiosity.

Their predicament worsened with the rise of the Headmaster’s obsession. The man regularly requested 3-versus-1 matches with the Three Admirals.

A normal officer would have been too busy, too arrogant, or too sane to request such sessions.
The Headmaster was none of those things.

He loved fighting them.
Sometimes he lost.
Sometimes he won.
Always, always, he studied them.

And should the Admirals suddenly fail to appear at his requested times?

He would absolutely go digging.

Their only mercy was that the last few matches had aligned with their commutes home, sparing them from having to fabricate emergency speed-wash of coolant pipes or “urgent servo alignment rituals” to escape the facility in time.

They had long ago forged rumors: that the Three Admiral AI routines required unpredictable “pre-simulation time.” Officers accepted this explanation because officers always accept anything that spares their ego the humiliation of losing seven matches in a row.

Renault: “My favorite is when they blame their loss on their console chairs.”
Darcelle: “Or the angle of the hololith projection.”
Prite: “Or the weather.”
Renault: “We’re inside a sealed facility.”
Prite: “Never underestimate the creativity of a humiliated officer.”

Their official explanation:

“The Admirals’ processing routines are superior, requiring longer tactical pre-calculation windows.”

Translation:

“We were making sandwiches when you queued your match.”

Regardless, it worked. Mostly.

So imagine, then, their collective horror, pure marrow-deep dread, during the next match with the Headmaster, broadcast live to the entire Academy for the Collegiate Finals.

The Headmaster’s avatar materialized on deck.
The digital battlefield shimmered into existence.
Thousands watched.

And then he said it.

“Prite. Darcelle. Renault.”

They froze.
Their hearts cratered.
Renault made a noise like a punctured plasma line.

Surely this was the end.
Surely their skin would be repurposed for cogitator insulation.

They were preparing to flee, to bolt for the starport, or the underhive, or the outer rim where no one asked questions unless the question involved a knife, when the Headmaster continued.

“I’ve always known it was you three.”

He said it calmly. Cheerfully. As if he were discussing weather patterns or tea preferences. The technicians stared at the screen in horrified awe.

“Prite, who do you think showed your father how to rig your home machine?”

If a holo-projection could smirk, his did.

“I saw your talent when you were children. You maneuvered Imperial officers like game pieces. For you, this was play. For them, it was hard-earned experience.
I want you three not as technicians… but as strategic advisors.”

Their jaw muscles collectively failed.

“I want the ‘Three Admirals’ to open their own rotating indoctrination course as tenured professors.”

A pause.

“The Academy needs your minds, not just your penchant for humiliating naval officers in public.”

The technicians felt the world tilt. Hard.

Once the match ended (mercifully quickly, as none of them were mentally capable of coordinating a strategy beyond “stare vacantly at the screen”), security escorted them to the Headmaster’s office.

Politely.
But firmly.
As if they were beloved but mildly explosive nephews.

The Headmaster stood, arms open.

“Gentlemen. I know this is a… transition. But I want you to train new staff to replace your maintenance duties. Free your time. Teach. Guide. Explain your doctrines.”

He studied each in turn.

“Your styles are unique. Your patterns unmistakable. Your tactical brilliance undeniable. You are invaluable.”

Then he added, almost playfully:

“And yes, I monitored your chats. Your attempts to create simulated versions of yourselves? If you succeed, do let me know. A simulacrum of the Three Admirals would be… quite the gift.”

All three technicians turned to each other.

Fear drained out.
Shock gave way.
A slow, spreading grin took its place.

They snapped to attention, saluting with crisp precision.

“Yes, sir!”

For the first time in many years, they weren’t afraid.

Only exhausted.
Deeply confused.
Mildly amused.

And, Emperor help them, just a little proud.

The Headmaster’s office was dimly lit, more shadows than walls, more relics than furniture. The air smelled faintly of incense and machine-oil, as all respectable Imperial holdings do. The three technicians sat stiffly in front of his desk, hands clasped tight, as if waiting to be judged by some ancient tribunal.

The Headmaster folded his fingers, leaned forward, and spoke with the soft, assured tone of a man delivering terrible news with paternal warmth.

“Now,” he began, “there is one unfortunate matter we must address immediately.”

All three swallowed. Hard.

“Due to the… circumstances…”
He gestured vaguely, as if the circumstances were a lingering odor in the room.
“…and due to the regrettable events involving Captain Regard and Captain Zevin of the 3rd Fleet…”

Prite stiffened.
Darcelle inhaled sharply.
Renault mouthed, “Oh no.”

Everyone in the Academy remembered what happened to those two men. Few spoke of it aloud.

Prite: “…Sir, we’d appreciate some clarification.”
Headmaster: “They challenged the three of you. Indirectly.”
Renault: “Indirectly as in…?”
Headmaster: “As in they lost so catastrophically that their Houses demanded reparations. They demanded, excuse the archaic term, blood for blood.”
Darcelle: “…We didn’t even know they were playing.”
Headmaster: “Yes, well. They assumed the same about you. And yet there you were, eviscerating their ships like you were clipping your nails.”

He sighed. Deeply. The kind of paternal sigh that said “I’m not angry, just profoundly disappointed and mildly terrified.”

The Headmaster reached into a drawer and produced three vellum-sealed documents. The wax bore the crest of various noble houses, byzantine, cruel, unmistakable.

“These,” he said, “are formal duel petitions.”

All three technicians froze.
Renault made a small squeaking noise.

“Due to the… humiliating defeats you handed Captains Regard and Zevin, their Houses assumed these Admirals must be ranking officers hiding behind encrypted avatars. When the Houses pressed for identity verification, well… the system does not list you. Obviously.”

He let the implication settle like a falling guillotine blade.

“Therefore, the noble Houses concluded:
If they cannot identify the officers…
Then the officers are committing rank fraud.
And thus: duels to the death are justified.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

Prite: “Sir, we’re technicians.”
Darcelle: “We fix things.”
Renault: “We avoid confrontation on a cellular level.”
Headmaster: “Yes. Which is why you would die instantly.”

The Headmaster stood, walked around the desk, and rested his hands on the backs of their chairs like a benevolent executioner.

“To prevent this unseemly end, you are to be immediately admitted to my private House.”

Three pairs of eyes widened simultaneously.

“This provides you with legal, military, and political protection.
And, I regret to say…
permanent alignment.”

A heartbeat of time as they all stared at each other the only sound the whirring of the atmospheric fans. 

Darcelle: “…Permanent?”
Headmaster: “Permanent.”
Prite: “As in… forever?”
Headmaster: “As in, irrevocable. Bound by oath, by bloodline registry, and by the Emperor’s own bureaucracy, which is, frankly, more frightening than any oath or bloodline.”
Renault: “…And if we decline?”
Headmaster: “Then the Houses will have the legal right to carve you into decorative filigree.”

A beat.

Prite: “…We accept your generous offer.”
Darcelle: “With enthusiasm.”
Renault: “Profound enthusiasm.”

The Headmaster waved a hand dismissively, as though the adoption of three grown men into his House was a casual afternoon errand.

“My House is not powerful,” he said. “Wealthy? No. Influential? Barely. But we are custodians of the Academy. And the Academy’s archives contain certain… shall we say… old bones.”

He smiled thinly.

“Bones that, should the noble Houses pry too deeply, would shift the political tectonics beneath them and send several dynasties stumbling into ruin.”

He tapped one of the duel petitions.

“So fear not. My family keeps its skeletons well curated.”

Then his tone shifted, less grand, more practical.

“From this point forward, all three of you will require security escorts.”

The technicians stared.

“Some of the cadets, particularly Captain Eldred, are statistically likely to attempt to disembowel you on sight.”

A dignified silence hovered.

“Captain Eldred,” the Headmaster continued, “is… what is the phrase… ah, emotionally volatile. You defeated him several dozen times. In public. And I am informed you destroyed him in five private matches before that?”

Prite: “We didn’t know it was him.”
Darcelle: “He chose anonymous mode.”
Renault: “He also tried to flank a minefield head-on.”
Prite: “Yes, that part wasn’t our fault.”
Headmaster: “Regardless, he blames you for his public disgrace. And, rumor has it, he has sharpened his ceremonial blade.”
Darcelle: “…That feels unnecessary.”
Headmaster: “You humiliated him twelve times consecutively. Unnecessary is his default state.”

The Headmaster extended three finely inscribed data-slates.

“These are your House induction documents. Sign them.”

Prite looked at Darcelle. Darcelle looked at Renault. Renault looked like a man about to make peace with his gods.

They signed.

A faint hum resonated, the binding encoded, filed, notarized by the omnipresent Administratum.

The Headmaster smiled with genuine warmth.

“Welcome, my sons. You are now members of House Vallimere.”

(An unremarkable house name, but still a shield far better than a shallow grave.)

“Now then,” he continued, “let us discuss your new positions, syllabi, and how to prevent any further noble catastrophes triggered by your recreational hobbies.And there's the simple matter of your pay As tenured professors you will be quite well compensated Needless to say you will receive the same housing on campus as the rest of the professorial staff, And yes I understand it will take some time for you alone to relocate your simulation suites to be properly on campus, Which is why I will have maintenance do it ”

The three technicians straightened in their chairs.

And for the first time, truly realized:

Their lives had just irrevocably changed.

In the Imperium,
a promotion was just another form of danger,
but at least this danger included room, board, and tenure.

After the last data-slate signature glowed and sank into the Administratum ledger, the Headmaster leaned back, steepled his fingers, and exhaled, relieved, as though having just averted an orbital bombardment through polite conversation alone.

He regarded the three men with the sympathetic gloom of one who must tell children that their carefree days of innocence are over.

“Now that we have settled your… citizenship… there is a matter of urgency.”

Prite braced.
Darcelle stiffened.
Renault’s eye twitched.

“Tonight,” the Headmaster continued, “before exhaustion, fear, panic, or political indoctrination can cloud your minds, you will each write up your core syllabus.”

The technicians stared blankly.

Prite: “…Our what?”
Headmaster: “Your core tenets. Your tactical dogmata. I want you to explain what you do, why you do it, and how you think.”
Darcelle: “…Sir, with respect, we just got adopted and nearly assassinated by paperwork. Can this wait?”
Headmaster: “Absolutely not.”
Renault: “Why the urgency?”
Headmaster: “Because soon, the establishment will have its teeth in you.”

A cold silence dropped across the room.

Headmaster:
“You will be locked down, off limits, for several days. During that time, you must commit your strategies, principles, and doctrines to record. Clean. Untainted. Before influence corrupts them. Before politics mutates them. Before certain Houses attempt to weaponize you.”

Darcelle swallowed.

“Sir… you make it sound as if the Academy is unsafe.”

The Headmaster chuckled darkly.
The technicians flinched.

“Oh, my dear boy. Everything is unsafe.”

The Headmaster stood, brushing dust from his robes as if the act could brush away the nightmarish bureaucracy waiting on his desk.

“Once your syllabi are drafted, we will address the systemic… irregularities you introduced.”

A very heavy pause.

“…Including undoing your modifications to the user registration system.”

All three winced.

“You will be registered properly. Recognized. Cataloged. And yes, your win-loss ratios will be reset.”

Renault: “Reset? Sir, with respect, we’ve earned those numbers.”
Headmaster: “You humiliated half the Navy.”
Prite: “They queued the matches voluntarily.”
Headmaster: “One does not ‘volunteer’ for public destruction."
Darcelle: “Sir, respectfully, the Admiral-class dreadnought maneuvers, ”
Headmaster: “, will be removed from your personal records.”
Renault: “…Even the one where I soloed a Hive Fleet simulation?”
Headmaster: “Especially that one.”

He sighed.
Deeply.

“Your victories are now evidence. And evidence is dangerous.”

The Headmaster waved toward the door.

“Now then. Your holo-simulation suites will be unbolted from your current residences and installed in your new quarters. A trivial task. Maintenance will have it completed by morning.”

The three technicians stiffened.

Prite: “Sir, our setups are… complicated. Intricate.”
Darcelle: “Temperamental.”
Renault: “Alive.”
Headmaster: “…Do they require blood sacrifice?”
Prite: “…Not anymore.”
Headmaster: “Good. Then maintenance will manage.”

The Headmaster clapped. A crisp, final gesture.

“Now be off. Edward!”

A tall, stone-faced security officer stepped into the room, boot heels clicking.

“Escort them home. Ensure their safety. Assign a full team.”

The technicians rose uncertainly.

Darcelle: “Sir… truly? Security escorts?”
Headmaster: “You would not survive the courtyard, let alone the parking platform.”
Prite: “…Because of Eldred?”
Headmaster: “Eldred. Regard’s House. Zevin’s House. The competitive league. Several instructors. The board of governors. A custodial staffer you embarrassed in a training skirmish three years ago. A dozen score of years worth of rivals will be crawling out of the woodwork, Should I continue?”
Renault: “…No sir.”
Headmaster: “Good. Go. Write your doctrines. Rest. Tomorrow, we begin forging you into something the Imperium can stomach.”

The three saluted, dazed, and shuffled into the corridor.

Edward the guard turned sharply.

“Gentlemen. This way.”

What the technicians did not, and could not, know,
was that Edward had not been Edward for several hours.

The real Edward was unconscious, drugged, and gently stored in a linen closet three wings away.

In his place stood Interrogator-Senior Grade Iral Vane, clad in Edward’s armor, wearing Edward’s face, and bearing orders sealed with the rosette of the Lord Inquisitor Belfran Hellfrost.

When the pseudo-Edward tapped his vox-bead, the coded phrase hissed quietly:

“Assets acquired. Reinforcement expected. Priority Omega: keep them alive.”

Because these three overly modest technicians,
these simulacrum-smashing, doctrine-shattering, naval-tactics-destroying gremlins of simulation warfare,
were now classified as Imperial Strategic Assets.

Their insights were worth more than treasure fleets.
More than regiments.
More than worlds.

In the words of the Inquisitor Lord himself:

“The pompous little nobilitas have mismanaged naval doctrine long enough.
These three minds are worth their duplicated weight in planets.
Guard them. Shepherd them.
And Emperor help anyone who harms them.”

Interrogator Vane kept his eyes forward, guiding the trio into the night.

He would protect them.
Guide them.
Shadow them.

For the Imperium bled to death brilliance long ago,
and these three, somehow, impossibly, had brought it back.