Codex Seraphim · recognition doctrine

What walks up there

You will sense each of these before you see it, and see it before you name it; and it is in the naming that your life is decided, for the name tells you whether to fight, to flee, or to hold utterly still. Ten chassis are common enough that every operative is expected to name them from silhouette, in poor light, at range — and, at night, from sound and light alone. Learn the four of ours first, for you will stand beside them; then learn the six of theirs in the order in which they will kill you, which is not the order of their size. Each entry below opens with its sign.

At one scale

Drawn at the same pixels to the unit, for in no other way is the picture worth anything. A Malakh is not a small Nehemoth, but a different problem altogether.

Ours

Ours are named for offices, and each office is an angel's. The old instructors say this was not decoration but instruction: build nothing whose purpose you cannot say in one word, and let the word be a word of service.

Flying · Small · “wheels within wheels”

Ophan

Its office is mending. Two rings turning perpendicular about a lit core — the very shape of Ezekiel's vision, chosen deliberately, and the older instructors will quote the verse at you if you permit them. It finds whatever near it is damaged — you first, if you are bonded to it — and mends it with a beam, three points with each passing second, turning the faster while it works.

Send one to the door of wherever you live. To come home wounded, and be mended without asking, is the best argument yet made for the building of constructs.

Integrity

15

Armour

2

Speed

0.35

Ohr/s

2

Quadruped · Medium · “the flaming sword”

Cherub

Its office is the gate. A low four-legged sentry with a railgun where a head would be, it patrols a small ground, casts a shield about its post, and puts a bolt into whatever hostile thing approaches. Cherubim are set at the entrance of that which is meant to be kept — the very office from which the name is taken, for one was set at the gate of Eden with a flaming sword which turned every way.

Slow by design; for a sentry that gives chase is a sentry that has been drawn from its post.

Integrity

30

Armour

4

Speed

0.25

Ohr/s

2

Bipedal · Medium · “the valiant”

Erel

Its office is to stand before you. Bipedal, the heaviest thing Seraphim fields upon two legs, and the only one of ours built to be between you and the enemy rather than behind you: eight points from its energy blade at hand, six from a thrown bolt out to twelve meters when it cannot close, and its first target is always whatever has dared to strike its operative. Fifty points of integrity and six of armor — more than the Hunter that will be sent against it.

The Erel is the construct you build when you have accepted that something must be met head-on; and it is precise where the enemy's fighters are ravenous, for it raises no hand against what has not endangered you.

Integrity

50

Armour

6

Speed

0.35

Ohr/s

3

Flying · Small · “the messenger”

Malakh

Its office is to fetch. A small drone of mining, and the only construct here with no armor at all: appoint it a ground and it digs — all things, or only what is worth the carrying, as you instruct it — and bears what it takes to whatever container you have named. It will do so until its Ohr is spent or something notices it. It is no fighter, and will not pretend to be one.

Fifteen integrity and nothing over it. Send no Malakh where a Watcher has been.

Integrity

15

Armour

0

Speed

0.35

Ohr/s

2

Theirs

Flying · Small · “the lidless eye”

Watcher

The sign is a flicker of golden light between the ruins, moving where nothing else moves. A hovering eye, bearing every modality of sensor the enemy has judged worth miniaturizing, walking a patrol that seems aimless and is not — the routes of its siblings layer over one another as the pattern of a mind's own introspection, written across a city; as above, so below. It is not what kills you. It knows you in three stages: unaware, it merely patrols; suspecting, it halts, for long seconds, comparing readings; and certain, it cries out to everything within forty-eight meters, and calls an ever-increasing weight of the enemy upon you until you are returned to dust. Struck, it does not fight; it flees, and keeps you in sight while it flees, which is worse.

Sixteen integrity and almost no armor: trivially destroyed, and its destruction is the loudest thing you can do. The correct answer to a Watcher is, almost always, to be elsewhere. The second answer is to kill it in the long seconds while it merely suspects — for it must be certain before it can speak, and a Watcher destroyed uncertain has told no one anything; though the wreck, in time, will speak for it.

Integrity

16

Armour

2

Speed

0.4

Sitra/s

1

Flying · Small · “the mender”

Gamaliel

The sign is a thread of flickering gold stitched between their machines, and an engagement you were winning that suddenly is not. A small flying frame that hides behind the lines of the fight and mends its own side, five points with each passing second, always to the most wounded first. Twelve integrity behind one point of armor: the frailest thing upon the surface, and the most consequential.

Kill the mender first: it is the oldest instruction in the Codex, and operatives die learning it still. But kill it from a distance — for a Gamaliel does not die quietly, and its bursting reaches four meters, hardest at the heart of it.

Integrity

12

Armour

1

Speed

0.45

Sitra/s

2

Bipedal · Medium

Hunter

The sign is a rhythmic stomping, growing louder; by the time you hear it, it is in more than one alley. Bipedal, shaped as a raptor, and built to one purpose alone — they hunt in packs, converging from behind you and before, running wherever the Watchers have pointed; for their own senses are poor beside their perception-purposed siblings, and the mercy of this is that a Hunter unled is a Hunter half blind. When it has you, it sprints; its eyes carry a searchlight, and it will use it; and when it cannot reach you, it halts, charges, and fires a golden beam instead — six points, every five seconds, a thing most discover only after they have climbed something.

To pillar upward does not work. For about a year it was the standard advice; it stands in the older manuals yet; and it will get you killed.

Integrity

24

Armour

4

Speed

0.35

Sitra/s

2

Quadruped · Large · “the Disputer”

Thagirion

The sign is a wall where no wall stood. Sixty integrity behind eight of armor upon four legs, and it anchors: rooted, it takes but a quarter of all harm, raises a barrier of light before its face that swallows your fire, and sets itself between your blade and whatever more precious thing it has been posted to keep — stepping into blows not aimed at it, which no other machine of theirs will do. Come close and it bashes; stand off between six and twenty meters and it charges, a second and a half of gathering and then through whatever is in the way, stone included, twelve points at the impact. It is slow — a fifth the speed of a Watcher — and in that slowness lies the whole of your advantage.

The barrier faces forward, and the anchor cannot turn quickly. The fight is behind it and beside it; take it to a place with corners, and never stand in the long straight line it wants.

Integrity

60

Armour

8

Speed

0.2

Sitra/s

3

Quadruped · Large · “the Burners”

Golachab

The sign is a thread of pale gold laid across your chest — the aiming line, and the two or three seconds it grants you are a courtesy of physics, not of mercy. Artillery: it scarcely moves at all, the slowest thing fielded by either side, nor does it need to, for its beam renders stone to slag at thirty-two meters — twelve points, and the weak places of your cover with it. Eighty integrity, eight of armor; but its core stands exposed in the moment it fires, taking half again all harm; fire enough upon it and it overheats, and stands helpless for five seconds; and within six meters it cannot bring the beam to bear at all.

The whole fight is written in its failures: the telegraph, the exposed core, the overheat, and the dead ground inside six meters. All before them is positioning; all after them is speed.

Integrity

80

Armour

8

Speed

0.08

Sitra/s

2

Stationary · Large · “the Whisperers”

Nehemoth

The sign is that the fight does not end. A node of control: stationary, three meters of it, a hundred and fifty integrity, and it attacks nothing, ever. It makes all about it better — a fifth again the speed and the harm of every construct within thirty-two meters — and ferries Sitra to whatever runs low; for it is rooted into Sheol itself, an open door to the enemy's own country, and its light is renewed from the far side. Through that door come its reinforcements: a new machine every twenty seconds while fewer than ten of its brood stand, drawn from all their kinds, and weighted — mark this — toward whatever it has not yet sent against you. This is why the surveys report variants that none predicted. It is not inventing. It is remembering what you have not yet been shown.

While it stands, the engagement does not end; for the engagement was never with the things attacking you, but with the open door that keeps sending them. Close the door.

Integrity

150

Armour

10

Speed

0

Sitra/s

0

Fuel, and a courtesy

Both sides run upon the same principle and not the same substance, and this is exploitable. A construct of Seraphim takes an Ohr Capsule from your hand and is the better for it. A construct of the Adversary takes Sitra the same way — and takes Ohr as harm; which is a fact worth carrying with you.

Ours will also accept Sitra. It works; it costs you a point of corruption each time, and costs the construct something slower than that; and § 3 of the manual is where that argument is properly had.

10 chassis, with integrity, armor, speed and drain read out of each construct's own configuration in the mod source rather than out of the player guide, which is a generation behind on roughly half of them.

Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. Job 41:33