The Art of One Sided Murder-Suicide Pacts (Warhammer 40k/Waifu Catalog) (Patreon)

This is a rewrite of the idea Perfecting the Art of One Sided Murder-Suicide Pacts (Warhammer 40k/Waifu Catalog). I found that the original chapter relied too heavily on the story's premise rather than serving as a good introduction. Much happier with this version. Hope you enjoy!

...

The sky overhead was caught in an ever-eclipse, darkness wreathed in blood-red light, casting an ever-twilight upon the desolate planet I found myself on. An endless waste of grayish white sand stretched out before me, seemingly without end. There was no howl of wind, nor sounds of life. Except for my labored grunts as I placed one foot in front of the other, sand digging into my already weeping sores underneath the straps of my sled around my shoulders. 

There was nothing ahead of me. The only thing behind me was a trail of footsteps wiped away with a sled that carried everything on the planet worth carrying. It was impossible to tell how far I traveled. It was impossible to tell how long I had been traveling. There was no sense of distance or time -- just one foot in front of the other. 

Reaching into my pocket, I fished out the one guiding light I had -- a busted-down Vox that received a pitifully weak signal. “Ksssht-cuation. Termin-Ksssht three-one-oh-eight. Failure to laun-Ksssht. Repeat, requesting eva-Ksssht.”

“We’re getting closer,” I said, my throat raw and my lips cracked. A water canteen half-filled with piss tempted me. Barely. Dehydration had long since set in, but for all this planet was an endless desert, it wasn’t particularly hot. Or cold. Perfectly temperate. Adjusting course ever so slightly with a close eye on the signal, I returned the vox back to my coat pocket. “Just a little further.”

If there had to be a silver lining, no matter how selfish it might be… at the very least, I wasn’t alone. 

“Odysseus? It’s time for a break!” Came a voice from the sled, a flap opening to reveal a beautiful, if dust-smudged face. Bright blue eyes, black hair, and an unmistakable aura of divinity. “I can update your falna! I’ll be easier to carry!” The Goddess Hestia proclaimed with a fragile confidence. 

My hesitation must have shown, because her smile became a bit strained. “We can let the dew collectors work. You must be thirsty, right?” 

“I could use some water,” I admitted, shrugging off the straps of the sled. The truth was my throat felt like it was covered in sand, but I couldn’t say that much. Couldn't say I was fine, either. Not with a god’s lie detector. So, I stuck with half-truths. Rolling my shoulders, I began to set up the makeshift tent that I’d cobbled together from everything I found where we arrived -- a desolate bunker with a pair of stasis pods. 

If I were alone, I probably would have crawled back into the stasis pod. Content to either be found or never wake up. The latter being preferable since I wouldn’t know who would find me. But, I hadn’t been alone. So, I cobbled together a tent and a sled, and I got to walking with the one piece of junk in the bunker that worked. Most of the time. 

The dew collectors would capture traces of moisture in the air, typically at a rate of about ten milliliters an hour. A surprising amount, really, but it was just slow enough that for a full canteen, food would become the deciding factor. Meaning it was enough to keep me going, if on the cusp of severe dehydration. 

It was cramped inside the tent, but Hestia made it work. As expected of the Goddess of the Hearth and Home. I stifled a groan when I sat down, a bone-deep exhaustion that only got worse. It was easier to ignore when I was moving. Even if I did swallow it down, Hestia hovered as if she heard it anyway. 

“... Off with that coat and shirt,” she instructed, and I obeyed. Her gaze wavered when she saw the sand sores I was collecting far too quickly for comfort. Knowing the drill by now, I laid down, and Hestia staddled my back. 

“...If it gets too much, Od, I can use my Arcanum,” Hestia said, pricking her finger with a needle and squeezing out a drop of blood. It fell upon my back, but it seeped deeper. The dim tent was filled with an ethereal light Hestia guided. I could feel her touch on my soul, bringing forth the experience to augment by body and soul through the falna. “I’m not limited by the rules like I was in my world.”

I couldn’t say it wasn’t tempting. Hestia was a god, with all the power that came with it. Full on reality-bending power that could blow this planet away like dust in the wind. In theory, just teleporting us to our destination should be possible. However, doing so would doom us to something far worse than the desert. 

“Not without drawing attention,” I replied. “Walking halfway around the world isn’t so bad. I prefer it to risking Chaos looking our way.” Walking, I could do. It sucked. Sand got everywhere and my blisters had blisters. However, it was just walking. The moment Hestia used her Arcanum, or even took the lid off of it, she would shine like the Astronomican in the Warp. Only she wouldn’t be anywhere near as well defended as the Emperor. 

Not all infinite power was equal. A war god might be able to rebuff the forces of Chaos or the Chaos Gods themselves, but Hestia was the Goddess of Hearth. Of domestic life. If she used her Arcanum and the Chaos Gods noticed, there wouldn’t be anything either of us could do to stop them. 

“Bleh! I can’t believe that place is Heaven,” Hestia pouted, accepting the argument that happened every time I stopped for the… however long I walked. “I thought the Heaven of my universe was bad with all the paperwork. The Warp is just…”

“Yeah,” I agreed, knowing exactly what she was trying to say. The Warp did indeed suck. As did everything in it. 

The light faded, and my vision became obscured by a faded page of what had been a manual. Only instead of technical information, it displayed my Status. One granted to me by the divine blessing engraved upon my back and my soul itself. 

[CENTER]

Odysseus von Thorne

[/CENTER][CENTER]

Level 1

[/CENTER]

[CENTER]

Strength: H128=> H130

[/CENTER][CENTER]

Endurance: F326=> F338

[/CENTER][CENTER]

Dexterity: I80

[/CENTER][CENTER]

Wisdom: I20

[/CENTER][CENTER]

Intelligence: I35 

[/CENTER][CENTER]

Will: G203=> G208

[/CENTER]

[CENTER]

Skill:

[/CENTER]

[CENTER]

Spells: 

[/CENTER]

It wasn't a traditional blessing. Without her fellow gods to enforce the rules all gods agreed to before heading down to reality for a vacation, Hestia was free to alter the falna to our needs -- key word being alter. The template was still the same at its core, just tweaked a bit. Such as lower barriers for level-ups at the cost of smaller boosts in power from them. 

“Ohoho! Nineteen points! That’s pretty good, Od!” Hestia praised me, even as I eyed the pitiful update. No Skills or Magic to speak of. And nothing compared to the absurd growth of Bell Cranel. Not that I expected anything different, but I sure wouldn’t mind a teleportation spell or something. “Now, let's patch up those rough spots!”

Hestia possessed a natural exuberance that even our present state couldn’t dim. Or, rather, it was all the more fierce because of it. In what was becoming routine, I allowed her to fuss over me, changing the bandages and applying new ones. It was more for her sake than mine, admittedly. She couldn’t stand the thought of not helping at all. 

I wasn’t sure when I fell asleep, only that I did. Hestia was cuddled into my side, softly snoring. It felt like I was due a few more points in Will when I extracted my arm from her… grip. All the more so when I got dressed, made sure there weren’t any stray grains of sand between my flesh and my clothes, grabbed the thimble’s worth of water that had been collected over how long I slept before stepping out of the tent. 

I thought I did a decent job of being stealthy about it, but Hestia came bounding out of the tent when I got ready to start pulling once more. She aimed a beaming smile my way, walking alongside me. She would walk for as long as she could, I knew. Until her legs failed her. Despite having the power of a god, with her Arcanum suppressed, she was a perfectly normal 4’7 woman. 

The power of her blessing couldn’t be understated. I had always been in decent shape. I worked out whenever I felt like shit, and with seasonal depression, I usually felt like shit. With just the base blessing, my overall endurance had become borderline superhuman. The fact of it was, I could simply go on a lot longer than she could. 

“What do you think we’ll find?” Hestia asked, walking alongside me as she tried not to let her exhaustion show. Her gaze lingered on the vox I’d tucked away, the message on repeat just a little clearer. When we first began the journey, all we had was the signal and a few warbled syllables. 

“The failure to launch bit makes me think it’ll be a vehicle of some kind,” I ventured. “And ‘terminal’ makes it sound like some kind of depot. Food. Water. Maybe a way off this rock.” I had to hope for that much. Interstellar travel was going to be a real risk, but just getting off this barren planet would be a massive step up. 

“I wonder if it’s always been this way,” Hestia remarked, staring off into the distance. When I forgot how much I was learning to hate sand, it was strangely beautiful. The grayish-white sand contrasted with the night sky full of unfamiliar stars in a way that just couldn’t be compared to anything I saw on Earth. Or ‘Terra’, rather. 

“Probably not,” I reasoned, giving in to take a sip of my canteen just to speak. Which was probably why Hestia was chatting with me. “I’m not sure what is in front of the sun to cause the eclipse, but the sun hasn’t moved. We’re tidally locked.” Hestia made a sound of interest, squinting up at the sun until I covered her eyes with my palm. “You’ll go blind.”

“Is being tidally locked bad?” She asked, glancing at me with a pout. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

“It means the world doesn’t rotate, so only one side gets any sunlight.” It also meant that the core wasn’t spinning to produce a magnetic field, so odds are, we were being exposed to extreme levels of solar radiation. Maybe not deadly amounts though. And I did have a theory that the solar eclipse was caused by a radiation shield, but I’d learned the hard way not to be optimistic. “So, all of this might have been an ocean at some point.” 

The honest amazement in Hestia’s smile was probably- no, there was no probably about it. It was the only reason why I hadn’t just laid down and died. “I hope we find out at the terminal!” She exclaimed, treating it as an adventure. And that helped. A lot. 

The cycle repeated a dozen times or more. Hestia would walk as far as she was physically able, and I would carry her as far as I was physically able. I would rest, have my status updated, and hope that the numbers going up would mean we would reach our destination before our dwindling supplies ran out. The only tangible unit of progress we had was the signal that gradually cleared up as we drew closer.

“Requesting evacuation. Terminal three-one-oh-eight. Failure to launch. Repeat, requesting evacuation.” The Vox-speaker echoed a message that had been calling out into the void for a length of time I didn't even want to guess at. And for all the terrible things you could say about the Imperium, you couldn't deny that they built shit to last. 

I had no expectations when Hestia and I made our way over the top of a building-sized dune. Following the signal brought us this far, but finding the source wouldn’t be without its difficulties, or so I had assumed. I almost thought it was a mirage when we reached the crest of the dune, and instead of the same endless desert I saw a shift in terrain. The sea of sand gave way to reddish stone that almost hurt to look at. 

“Is… that it?” Hestia asked, pointing to a radio tower jutting from the top of the outcropping. I swallowed a lump in my throat, not willing to be relieved just yet. 

“Let's go find out.” We moved with a renewed urgency, swiftly crossing the distance. Even when we were forced to rest once more before our arrival, neither of us truly slept. The closer we got, the more hope and disappointment whirled in my chest. It wasn’t what I’d truly hoped for -- a voidship to get us off this hellhole. 

It was, however, what I thought it would be. Built into the stone outcropping were fortifications that had long been overcome with sand. Almost to the point that what the fortifications were guarding was buried -- a massive eighty-foot-tall bulkhead door made out of some kind of metal. Plasteel, I think. And it was as I beheld the door, a new emotion began to intermix with hope and disappointment. 

Fear. 

My gaze dipped low from the awe-inspiring door flanked by dilapidated walls to the sand-covered road leading up to it. There was no mistaking them. 

“Tracks,” I observed. Several sets of them led to and from the massive door. Tire tracks. Something with deep grooves, but small. A buggy of some sort, if I had to guess. 

“People!” Hestia understood, wasting no time to rush forward. All the while, she couldn’t take her eyes off the door. “I can’t believe what humans of the future can build. It’s incredible!” I didn’t disagree, but I found myself far more wary as we approached. “How do we open it?”

An excellent question, and one I found the answer to by looking for tracks in the sand. I found them relatively close to the door leading into a squat building with a collapsed roof. A set of footprints. Relatively small. Probably that of a woman, or a guy with really small feet. Whoever they were, they knew how to jury rig a console to pump power to it. A central terminal flickered with life, and with a press of a button- 

Loud. The sound of screeching metal tore through the air, forcing me to cover my ears and clench my teeth. A sharp vibration traveled through me, the sand trembling while the massive multi-ton doors began to slide open, but only so far. With a final screech, the doors got stuck on something, leaving an opening large enough for a few cars to pass through. With my ears faintly ringing, I picked up the harness of my sled, and we began to march forward. 

The interior looked like an inverse of the fortifications outside the gate, just without all the sand. They were bathed under a pale light from overhead, and the brightness hurt after so long in dim light. I had to walk with a hand covering the glare overhead, letting me see barricades reinforced with razor wire, ancient bulky security turrets, with a high wall and a gate blocking further access. Though the gate was open. 

“Oh,” Hestia muttered, her gaze falling to a skeleton on the verge of crumbling to dust with only faded scraps of clothing left. It looked as if it had been holding something, but whatever it was seemed to be long gone, and the bone had been left shattered in the theft. 

“I don’t see what killed them,” I remarked. Through the haze of light, I could see signs of battle. Sharp grooves and pockmarks in the fortifications meant whatever had attacked this place had made it inside. Which was worrying. The skeleton wasn’t the only one around -- I could see three more as we walked towards the open gate, but I didn’t see any corpses of what killed them. 

Meaning that whatever did either took their dead with them when they left, decomposed faster, or… none of them died in the first place. 

Past the gate, the interior changed abruptly. It was still very much a fortress, but it opened up substantially with what looked like an elevator on the far wall. The space between was storage. Vehicle storage. My brows rose at the sight -- three tanks that were in various states of disrepair, each one twenty feet tall, with a main cannon large enough to punch through just about anything. Arranged in rows around them were smaller vehicles. Troop transports of various sizes, with my eyes landing on a makeshift workshop. 

Someone had salvaged two vehicles and pieced together the parts to create a dune buggy. It was mostly just a metal frame, an engine in the back between two oversized wheels with two smaller ones up front. I wasn’t much of a car guy, but I’d doomscrolled enough shorts to know good welding when I saw it. 

However, I was looking at the buggy parked neatly near the gate. Meaning whoever made it wasn’t outside of the bunker. 

“We’re not alone,” I deduced, and to confirm it, a laser passed right by my head. I didn’t flinch when the pale yellow laser struck the ground nearby with physical impact, forming a scorched crater. Hestia, however, just about jumped a foot in the air. 

“No,” a woman’s voice spoke up from behind. She had an accent I couldn’t quite place. “You are not. Keep your hands where I can see them. No sudden moves. I want you to turn around slowly-” Doing as instructed, I looked up to the woman above, and there was a clenching in my stomach when I recognized her. Dark sunkissed skin, dark dreads pulled up in a bun, while her eyebrow had a scar running through it. “You- what are you?”

Hestia blinked at being addressed before she cleared her voice. Then, in a suitably grandiose tone, she began, “I am Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth and Guardian of the Eternal Flame.” I had mostly gotten used to it on the journey over, but I understood quite well what she was feeling. “Might I know your name, child?”

“I… P… Panam. Panam Palmer,” Panam introduced herself, visibly bewildered. It wasn’t a subtle thing, the aura of a god. It hit you in the face with a brick, and it kept hitting you until you were used to it. It was the aura of something more. Something of impossible power bound in flesh and donning the appearance of a human, but she was anything but. 

Then Panam blinked, “Wait, Hestia? The Greek God?” 

Hestia blinked right back at her, “Two humans know me?!” Her disbelief was apparent, even when she tried to recover. “I mean, of course, two humans know me. I’m a powerful goddess, after all. Fufufu…!” She was quite pleased with herself, puffing out her chest. 

“My name is Odysseus. We woke up in a bunker… I don’t even know how long ago. Neither of us knows how we got into the bunker or into the stasis pods inside it. We followed a signal here in the hopes we would find… something.” Panam’s eyes flickered to me for a long moment, and I could see her internal debate. When she came to a decision, she lowered the lasgun in her hands. 

“Well, you found that much,” Panam said, shouldering the rifle while walking down a staircase to us. “I woke up in this place. Same deal -- in a pod with no goddamn explanation on how I wound up there. That was months ago, though. I haven’t seen anyone since.” 

A small sigh escaped me, “So, you’re in the dark too, then? Do you have any idea what happened here?”

“Oh, I found some answers. Just none that made a lick of sense,” Panam replied, reaching the bottom step. “And you can lower your hands. Sorry about the warning shot. I wasn’t expecting company.” She offered the apology with a hesitant smile. I nodded in acceptance. 

“Sense or not, it’s more than we have,” I replied, lowering my hands. “There was nothing in the bunker. Just some gear that helped us make the journey and some food. You… ah, is there food here?”

Something in Panam’s eyes softened a touch. “More than I could eat alone. Actually, how about you two get cleaned up? Hit the showers while I whip something up?” She offered, and Hestia staggered. Panam looked worried until I answered. 

“We would appreciate it.”

[CENTER]

…

[/CENTER]

The bunker had five levels, only three of which Panam had accessed in the two months it had been since she woke up. She didn’t use the vast majority of the bunker, leaving it powered down. She hadn’t even been aware that the vox-caster was still active. What she did know was that there had once been a whole army stationed in the bunker, and that it was appropriately equipped.

Which meant barracks and group showers. 

I stood alone underneath a showerhead that continued to flow over me, even though I was long since clean. The scarcity of water has been overturned, becoming an abundance, and I just basked in it. There were more than a hundred empty stalls in the bathroom, so the sound of water hitting the floor seemed to echo. I knew Hestia would be enjoying her own shower elsewhere. 

It was painful to turn off the water spout, but my Will stat was showing its worth. The old me would have lived and died under the showerhead. Drying off, I tied a towel around my waist and made my way to a mirror. 

I didn’t recognize the man who looked back at me, in a very literal sense. It wasn’t the sunken-in eyes, gaunt cheeks covered in an untamed beard, or the paper-thin skin from dehydration. My hair was a dirty blonde instead of black. My eyes were bright green instead of blue. There was a slight crook in my nose, telling me it had been broken at some point. Something I never experienced. There was a scar that marked my lips and beard at an angle, but I had no idea how it got there. 

It wasn’t my face. It wasn’t my body either. I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not. 

Grabbing a razor I had prepared, I slathered on shaving foam and went to work cleaning up my appearance. As much as I could, at any rate. Removing the scraggly beard helped, but it revealed how weak I looked. Hollowed out. Maybe not on the verge of starvation, but I certainly hadn’t been getting enough calories to replace the ones I’d burned to get here. 

Of all things, it was brushing my teeth that just about reduced me to tears. 

Since the bunker was a military base first and foremost, everything was military fatigues. There was a distinct lack of the imperial aquila, which I couldn’t tell was a promising sign or not. It didn’t feel quite right when I was putting them on, even if they were comfortable. Though I did pause shrugging them on to check my back out in the mirror. 

There were bone-deep bruises from the sled, but etched onto my back was my falna. A script I couldn’t decipher framed around a burning brazier. The Sacred Flame that Hestia had guarded in Heaven. It brought a little smile to my face while I finished shrugging on my clothes and making my way to the mess hall that had been part of the grand tour. 

My stomach felt like it was caving in on itself when I smelled rich aromas coming from the kitchen. Panam glanced up from a massive pot that was simmering, blinking at me, “Oh. Look at you? You almost look human,” she remarked with an uncertain grin, not sure if the joke would land. 

I rubbed my chin, “I almost feel human.” I admitted. 

“Take a seat. You and Hestia were in there long enough that it's almost done,” Panam said with a wave of her hand, bringing my attention to a pile of dataslates and faded books that were piled up. “Hope you have a strong stomach. I’m not exactly known for my cooking.” 

“If it’s half as good as it smells, we’re in for a treat,” I replied, picking up a dataslate. It took me a moment to figure out how to turn it on, something Panam watched from the corner of her eye. Dark green text on black greeted me. No idea what the HDF stood for, but it seemed to be a military briefing. 

“You look like you could eat boiled shoe leather and call it delicious, so not exactly a high bar,” Panam replied. “That’s what I managed to scrounge up for an explanation. Like I said, it didn’t make a lick of sense to me. Felt like I was starting at the tail end of a book.”

Denial. That’s what it was, I realized when I began to click through the dataslab. There was enough information for Panam to piece together what happened, even if she lacked context. 

The very first thing I noticed was the date the report was marked. 

374.27M. 

Everything was clearly older than that, so I doubted it was still the twenty-seventh millennium, but I had no idea how long after. A thousand years? Five? Ten? Fifteen? Given the task I was saddled with, I doubted I was any time after the forty-second millennium. The HDF was revealed to be the Hestian Defense Force. 

“Huh,” I muttered. The planet was named Hestia. 

“One hell of a coincidence, huh?” Panam remarked. Yeah. Unless it wasn’t a coincidence. “Not sure if the name fits, though. This planet isn’t what I imagined one named after a Greek goddess would look like. Much less a real one.”

“It wasn’t always this way,” I replied, continuing through the pile, chasing down answers I had gotten used to not having. Now that it was here, at my fingertips… I was right about the planet being tidally locked. And the radiation shield causing the perpetual eclipse. “Hestia used to be a garden world,” I mused sadly. 

It had been colonized in 883.24M, though colonized was probably the wrong word for it. It was a refuge world from those fleeing the Men of Iron and their rebellion. They took an exodus ship called the Last Light, settled on Hestia, and then the Age of Strife began. I’m not sure how things were during the interim two thousand years, but I did learn when things took a turn for the worst. 

“A Space Hulk,” I muttered, reading the description. After two thousand years of apparent peace, Warp storms swept across the system. Hestia’s core stopped spinning, but that seemed to be the lesser issue in comparison to what the Space Hulk brought with it. Orbital defense guns fired upon it, breaking it in half… one half was still in space. The other half hit the planet, and with it came a tide of aliens called the Rotkin. 

“That supposed to mean something?” Panam asked sharply, stirring the pot. 

“A Space Hulk is basically a fifty-car pileup, just with spaceships. They fuse together to become one giant labyrinth.” Only because of the timeless nature of the Warp could the ships fused together be alien, ranging from ten thousand years in the past to twenty thousand years in the future. Incredibly dangerous, but full of opportunity for those mad enough to brave them. 

“Spaceships, aliens, and we’re on another planet named after the literal goddess that's taking a shower down the hall,” Panam muttered more to herself than me. She continued to stir the pot before pulling back a ladle full of soup she poured into a bowl. 

“Not sure about you, but I’m at least twenty-five thousand years in the future,” I pointed out, earning a hollow laugh. 

“There is also that,” Panam agreed. “I… suppose it is not any less believable than a literal god.” She grimaced, passing me the bowl, and I just looked into it. Enough so that I didn’t even realize she had continued speaking for a solid second. “- any idea what in the hell happened to us?”

My mouth was too full to give an answer, giving me a second to think of a response. Because I did have an idea. I just didn’t have any proof of it. And even if I did… “No. I just went to bed one night and woke up in the pod,” I answered, averting my gaze as I devoured the stew as much as I did the information. 

“Same, more or less. I crashed after a job in Night City. I thought I got nabbed by some corpo, but after months of nothing?” Panam shrugged, watching me eat and raising a brow at how the bowl was emptied in what felt like three bites. “Damn. You were hungry.”

“Compliments to the chef,” I said, feeling the food settle heavily in my stomach. I’m not sure what was in it, beyond that it tasted vaguely of meat and potatoes. Panam just smirked, taking the bowl to refill it. I think she was warming up to me. By the time she returned with a full bowl, I had a map spread out across the table. One that had been marked. A path with a series of checkmarks. 

“Well, I didn’t know what a Space Hulk is, but I do know where it landed,” she informed, leaning over the table. “It landed near something called Hive City Primus,” she said, tapping her finger on the map. “I figured that was my best shot at finding people, but it didn’t seem smart to commit to a trip without doing a little recon first. You’re lucky you arrived when you did -- another day, and I would have been a hundred miles away.” 

A Hive City. She was right on that mark. If there were going to be people on this planet, then that's where they would be. Though, I’m not sure how much would be left with half of a Space Hulk falling on top of it. And even if it was intact and inhabited, I’m not sure how much help we could expect to find there. Hive Cities weren’t exactly renowned for their generous nature. 

But it was also where we could find a way off this rock. If not in the Hive City, then in the wreckage of the Space Hulk. 

“Got room for two more?” I asked Panam, earning a cheeky grin in response. 

“I think I could squeeze you in.”

...

The story still holds to the same basic premise as the first iteration: countless waifus from the waifu catalog have been dropped into Warhammer 40k, scattered about for our MC to find. Only it will be a little easier as he is part of the Hestia familia. The same characters that featured in the original draft will still appear -- Felecia Hardy, Vegapunk Lilith, and Amy Dallon. Instead of throwing them all at you at once, their introductions would be a bit more spaced out. 

Let me know what you think.