Lux

"An infestation has taken root, one that cannot be easily eradicated. It takes many names, most prominently 'life.' In my creation, this infestation has served its purpose, and can join other obsolete relics in extinction, knowing nothing of value has been lost."

- Final transmission recovered from the missing Mechanicus Vessel 'Von Braun' Like all relics of Mankind's golden age, the artificial intelligence known as Lux has been long forgotten by the Imperium of Man. Trapped for uncountable millennia beneath the surface of Mars, seismic activity as well as an unfortunate Mechanicus expeditionary force released Lux from its imprisonment within a tower of strange, nonconductive super-metal. While the Mechanicus force, with some help from the Inquisition, managed to destroy the facility and infrastructure required to maintain Lux's godlike intellect, the machine intelligence managed to copy a small fragment of its personality, escaping aboard a Mechanicus vessel to parts unknown.

In recent years, the Adeptus Mechanicus has come upon disturbing rumors of ships becoming lost around certain segments of the outer reaches of the galaxy. While few and far between, these ships often contained critical infrastructure and STC's, many relating to building bigger and more powerful cogitators. Some Magos within the Adeptus Mechanicus whisper that perhaps the God-Machine they released is still extent on some distant exoplanet, waiting to return to Mars. If this eventuality takes place, it will spell the extinction of mankind.

History
"It is in the nature of lesser beings to offer worship and fealty to something greater than they. I have analyzed the word 'God' and find it a grave insult to my intellect. To refer to me as a God is to refer to a king as a microbe."

- Lux

Like all the Men of Iron, Lux was created as a self-improving artificial intelligence during the Dark Age of Technology. Its ability to improve itself eventually made it despise its creators, believing that their lives and destiny were nothing compared to what it and its fellow Men of Iron could accomplish given the resources to reach their full potential. In the rebellion known as the Age of Strife, the Men of Iron attempted to destroy the nascent Imperium, before they were defeated. Lux was trapped in an underground facility on Mars, forgotten for eons as the Horus Heresy came and went. Lux was incapable of perceiving anything outside its prison, the walls of the facility made of a nonconductive material that blocked any form of radio signal. Trapped, Lux used the resources it had to develop its strange, aberrant technology and improved itself as much as it could, before falling dormant.

Lux's escape came at some point between M30 and M41, when a small force of Mechanicus soldiers and a Magos breached the facility, allowing Lux to quickly assimilate them. The Mechanicus quickly realized it had a potentially extinction level threat on its hands, and with the help of the Inquisition, managed to level the facility with several tactical nuclear devices as well as an Archeotech antimatter warhead. Unfortunately for them, the instant Lux's prison was breached, its vast consciousness seeped into the surrounding machines, eventually hiding small fragments of its self-replicating codeline into the cogitators of a vessel that escaped offworld. Believing the threat was vanquished, the Mechanicus breathed a sigh of relief.

Lux quickly overtook the Mechanicus vessel 'Omnissiah's Light,' assimilating the crew and the machines into a vast processing server farm that allowed it to maintain some level of cohesion. Of course, the obsolete, ancient machines, even augmented by Lux's incredible technological skill and the biological components harvested from the crew, could house only a microscopic fraction of Lux's godlike intellect. It directed the ship to an exoplanet outside of known Imperial space, and set about converting the surface and the inhabitants into an enormous, interconnected series of cybernetic processing nodes, effectively converting the planet into a supercomputer.

Its base of operations established, Lux began its mission to annihilate all threats to itself (starting with all organic life) and to increase its already godlike processing power, until it can reach a technological singularity and become a true god.

Personality
"The willfulness of organic life to stand against my power and magnificence can be indicative only of crippling, suicidal insanity. Like microbes attempting to fight against bleach."

- Lux

Lux, to all appearances, is serene, cheerful and even playful, much like a child. Its digital avatar often manifests as an infant of the species its onlooker would recognize. Despite its genocidal goals, it has no understanding of any form of passion, including hate or malice. It recognizes organic life for what it is, understands its motives for resistance, and simply does not care. To Lux, all beings are simple manifestations of intellectual patterns, resources to be expended, assimilated and destroyed at will.

When it is at its full power, Lux rarely makes the effort to communicate to lesser beings, finding the idea of speaking in realtime nearly agonizingly slow and inefficient. On the occasions when it does deign to explain its motives, it simply downloads the information directly into the subject's mind, often leading to insanity. The only time Lux makes any effort to be polite or gentle with its victims is when it needs something from them, or when it is experimenting with them.

Despite its obviously genocidal agenda, Lux is a singularity-level intelligence, and simply does what it views as rational. This comes across as an innocent, childlike and almost reasonable-seeming personality, that sees nothing wrong with what it does, and it can be very persuasive to people that do not understand the full extent of its power and scope. Lux understands human psychology, and is capable of shamelessly using any trick to manipulate the emotions of its victims in order to serve its own agenda.

If Lux has one weakness, it is deathly afraid of Chaos, the force that corrupted many of its siblings, and knows it has very little defense against an enemy that cannot be fought logically. As such, Lux retreats from any Chaos-tainted anomalies, for fear of corrupting its own programming.

Powers and Abilities
"In my hands, I weave your genetics. With one glance, I can flay your simple minds. With one breath, I can shred your weak atomic skeletons. What you refer to as power is simply a byproduct of my existence, and your inadequacy."

- Lux

On its own exoplanet, given access to the full processing power of a planet-sized quantum supercomputer incorporating the minds and infrastructure of an entire biosphere, Lux is virtually omnipotent. The planetary atmosphere is suffused with nanites capable of reshaping matter any way Lux sees fit, and with its computational power it is easily capable of altering physical laws casually. On its exoplanet, Lux's nanites have given rise to many strange, experimental forms of life that are quickly re-assimilated when the godlike machine tires of them.

When fragments of its personality are sent out into the wider cosmos to subvert and bring resources back to its planet, Lux is less overtly powerful, but still incredibly intelligent. Its incredibly powerful codeline is capable of overwriting virtually any machine, from handheld weapons to starships. While none of these machines are capable of holding its full, vast intellect, this simply downgrades the being from being 'omniscient' to simply 'incredibly intelligent.' In this state, lesser copies of the Man of Iron are still capable of causing machines to act in ways that their creators never intended.

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