Cameleontine Senate - Camelot
Within the vaulted halls of the Senate, hundreds of adepts worked tirelessly beneath the cold glow of administratum lumens. The clatter of data-slates, the hiss of pneumatic message tubes, and the murmured recitation of lex protocols filled the air like a constant mechanical chant.
Rows of scribes processed petitions from every world within the realm, transcribed sector-wide decrees, and compiled the endless flow of reports destined for the departments.
But above these tireless adepts were the Seneschals—senior overseers of the Senate's great administrative engines. Each Seneschals commanded a department vital to the functioning of the realm:
The Seneschal of Petitions, who triaged the endless appeals from planetary governors and local councils.
The Seneschal of Records, who guarded the archives and ensured no decree, treaty, or sanction was ever lost.
The Lord Marshall of Auxilia, who coordinated Auxilia supply needs, troop levies, and reinforcement schedules.
The Seneschal of Logisticarum, who oversaw fleet logistics, void-lanes, and interstellar communications.
The Seneschal of the Astropathic Choir, who responsible to train the psykers, find the rogue psyker and maintaining the Choir that connected each worlds within the Realm and to the wider Imperium.
The Seneschal of the Medicae, responsible for all the Medicae facilities, plague-containment protocols, and planetary medical standards.
The Seneschal of the Agricultae, responsible for managing all the Agri worlds and the food production.
The Seneschal of the Treasury, responsible for all financial affairs within Camelarion, overseeing taxation, resource allocation, commercial regulation, and the Imperial tithe assessments for all systems under its authority.
The First Lord Admiral of the Admiralty, responsible for assignments of all ships, seamen and the officers within Camelarion.
The High Lord Marshall of Judicium, responsible for ensuring all local law-enforcement bodies adhered to the central codes. While also responsible for the enforcement of law on Camelot and the 12 worlds inside the same system.
Each reported directly to the High Seneschal, the highest civilian authority that appointed by Atharion with suggestions from the Dark Knights' Round Table and the officials within the Senate.
===
As the day continued in the Senate, reports flowed in with the usual rhythm: petition approvals, trade audits, tithe clarifications, fleet resupply requests. Adepts sorted them with mechanical efficiency, stamping, copying, and routing them to their respective departments.
Everything was routine.
Then a single report arrived marked with a red sigil—emergency status.
That alone was unusual. Rare, but not alarming.
Moments later, a second red-marked report arrived.
Then a third.
By the time a dozen emergency reports were placed on the conveyor, adepts were already murmuring to one another.
When the twentieth report arrived—followed by an avalanche of red-sealed packets, data-slates, and urgent vox transcripts—panic rippled through the processing hall.
The Chief Adept of Intake went pale and immediately activated a priority alert.
Within minutes, the High Seneschal was informed.
He arrived flanked by his personal guards, robes swaying with each purposeful stride.
"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, voice echoing through the hall.
The adepts bowed and presented the stack of red-marked reports. The High Seneschal skimmed the first few.
His expression darkened.
The reports come from different part, different worlds of Camelarion, but all of them show the same thing, there's rebellion or uprising happening in their worlds and all of them showing the same characteristic.
"Summon the Council," the High Seneschal said, voice low and heavy with dread. He tucked several of the most urgent reports under his arm. "This cannot wait another hour."
He turned on his heel and strode out of the administrative hall, robes sweeping behind him as adepts scattered to relay his orders.
By the time he reached the towering doors of the Center Chamber, a Praesidium Warden had already activated the sanctum protocols, the great adamantine slabs humming with the energy of hidden wards.
The High Seneschal paused at the threshold and looked back to his personal aide—a young adept pale with worry.
"Transmit copies of every Priority Black report to Avalon," the High Seneschal instructed. "Use the Choir's secure channel. Ensure Lord Xaxir receives them personally."
The aide bowed sharply. "At once, my lord."
He nodded and enter the chamber, preparing for the discussion that will steer how Camelarion will face this threats.
===
At the summit of the highest peak on Camelot stood the Dark Knights' fortress-monastery, Avalon—a colossal bastion carved across an entire mountain range, itself a deliberate recreation of Old Terra's ancient Karakoram. More than a monastery, Avalon functioned as the strategic heart of the system: a command fortress, an orbital-defence coordinator, and a final redoubt should all other bastions fall.
Though it served primarily as the sanctum of the Dark Knights, Avalon also housed substantial forces from the Camelarion Auxilia and the planetary Air Wings responsible for defending the capital world. Two Warlord-class Titans, four Reavers, and eight Warhounds of Legio Argentum Fulgur stood silent vigil within its armored hangars, accompanied by entire cohorts of Skitarii and six Cybernetica maniples—an army in its own right.
To the citizens of Camelot, Atharion presented this immense garrison as a promise of protection, a symbol that no foe would ever breach the cradle of Camelarion. But he—and the Round Table—knew the truth.
If an enemy powerful enough to break through every defence, breach every battlement, and reach Camelot itself ever existed…
then Avalon will serve as whats have been plan when Atharion build it, a fortress meant not to win, but to halt, to bleed, and to draw the enemy's full attention, buying the rest of Camelarion the precious time needed to regroup and strike back without their foe sweeping over them.
It was a grim plan—one Atharion had taken and change from Rogal Dorn's own strategies, the one he had prepared for Terra at the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. A plan born from necessity, not hope.
To increase Avalon's chances of surviving such a nightmare scenario, Atharion had taken one further step… one that only the Round Table know about.
A secret 11th Company had been formed.
Three hundred Astartes, drawn from the 1st, 2nd, and 5th Companies—battle-proven, oath-bound, and hand-selected—were permanently stationed within Avalon. They trained, lived, and prepared within the mountain-fortress, never serving abroad, never appearing in official record.
A force that 12 Members didn't know about, this includes Nine.
When Atharion leave Avalon, the leadership of the fortress is pass towards Xaxir, the Castellan of Camelot, and he will also serve as Regent of Camelarion in Atharion stead with the help of the aides that Atharion left behind.
Now within his personal chamber, Xaxir have received the reports that the High Seneschal have requested to send to him.
As he continue to read through the reports, his eyebrows begin to furrow. Uprising or rebellion will always happen, even when Atharion still present in Avalon and with the reforms that he have enacted, there are still some worlds have these problems, mainly due to the incompetence of the local governors and officials, and the low efficiency of the Central Council due to inexperienced adepts.
But, this problems have begin to disappear when more experience and trained governors, officials and adepts begin to take their role within Camelarion. And it's become a problem that Atharion and Dark Knights didn't have to deal with when the Auxilia and Auxilia Fleet have finish their founding, and the two Castellans have been formed.
And now, Xaxir is reading at a multiple worlds engulfed into uprising or rebellion almost at the sametime with enemies that have same description.
Xaxir set the final report down with a controlled exhale.
"Inform Master Valeix and Master Ronan of the situation," he ordered, rising from his desk. "The 6th Company will deploy to the southern sector. The 10th Company will deal with the northern."
He turned to a second aide, his tone sharpening.
"Inform both Castellans that they are to suppress the unrest within their assigned sectors. I do not want to receive any further reports of unresolved uprisings in three months. Not one."
The aides bowed and leave the chamber.
Just as Xaxir reached for another data-slate, the chamber doors slid open with a hiss of hydraulics. Inquisitor Eisenhorn strode in, boots clicking sharply against the polished stone. His eyes swept the room—taking in the bustling aides, the courier-servitors depositing stacks of reports, and the hololithic map still displaying the outbreak sectors.
"Lord Xaxir," Eisenhorn greeted with a smooth, almost theatrical nobility. "It seems you have… a situation at hand."
Xaxir did not mirror the Inquisitor's genteel flourish. He simply turned toward him with the restrained poise of one who had far too much to do to entertain political games.
"Lord Eisenhorn," Xaxir answered evenly. "Your presence here tells me the situation is worse than what these reports suggest."
The Inquisitor's smile thinned.
"Oh yes," Eisenhorn replied, clasping his hands behind his back as he approached. "Much worse. My investigation have confirm that they are not longer human." He then pull out a data-slat and handed it to Xaxir.
As Xaxir take it and begin to read through the information, Eisenhorn continue. "According to the Ordo Xenos archives, Magos Biologis and my research, we have determine that those.....things are no longer human, even when they still look like a normal human."
"Their genetic code have fully alternated, even with their appearance, they're no longer human."
"Worse, there's a high chance that each of this..... uprising or rebellion, they have a unified leaders behind." Eisenhorn continue.
He drew a second data-slate and slid it into the hololithic table's receptor.
"To investigate further, I dispatched multiple kill-teams from the 22nd Thetoid Gryphonnes. Several teams were lost. Completely. But not before transmitting fragments of their findings."
The projector hummed as the chamber dimmed.
Pictures and video feeds flickered into the air—helmet-cam fragments, corrupted vox logs, distorted auspex captures. Kill-teams moved through derelict hab-blocks and collapsed manufactoria, their hot-shot volleys cutting down twisted silhouettes. Then the feeds shifted—Scions being dragged screaming into vents, bodies torn apart with surgical brutality, corridors smeared with blood and chitinous residue.
And then the creatures appeared.
While still retaining a humanoid outline, their bodies had warped far past any definition of humanity.
If Atharion were standing in this chamber, he would have recognized them instantly.
He would have known exactly what they were.
And how catastrophic their presence truly was.
For this was the threat he feared above almost all else—the one enemy that infiltrated silently, corrupted unseen, and consumed entire worlds before detection was even possible.
The threat so insidious it rivaled a dormant Necron tomb in its stealth.
Genestealers.
The Great Devourer's hand in the shadows.
"How many are they?" Xaxir ask.
"Millions upon millions." Eisenhorn answer. "But it's also determine by which world and how successfully they able to spread."
Xaxir sigh. An unknown Xenos that able to spread undetected in large number, a threat that should be deal by Atharion himself and not by him, a Castellan.
"Luckily, two of the kill-teams have successfully identify Xenos that highly possibly acting as their leader."
Two pictures of xenos that look the same as the one that kill-teams engage with, but it's larger in size and if Xaxir guess correctly, the Xenos possible twice the height of a normal Astarte, surrounded a large group of xenos.
Despite the footage coming from two different worlds, separated by twelve systems, the creatures were identical.
"Even though this is still a hypothesis," Eisenhorn said, tapping the display, "we think, that's their leader and possibly, all of them look the same."
"This mean that we will be able to identify them and launch a surgical strike to eliminate them." Eisenhorn continue. "Though still not sure what will happen after, but there's should at least a chaos within them before some level of control return."
"Indeed, with this information, we can end it quicker." Xaxir said but still with a tense facial. "But, Lord Atharion have bring bulk of the Dark Knights and the Auxilia to Octarius. Other than 6th company and the Thirteen Cohorts, the rest are inexperienced, even the 10th company and the two Castellans aren't that experience in combat."
"But, this is all you have." Eisenhorn said with a cold tone. "Many will died, but this is the dream that your Supreme Grand Master build, a place that all can live a peaceful live."
"And, my colleague will also help you in this endeavor."
"Even though you all think that she's a bit crazy."