Melchor was a man of few words but he chose those words carefully. And when he spoke people listened.

'It is possible that the forces of Chaos did not know what would happen. Perhaps their dark overlords did not warn them of the cost of the price they would have to pay.’

'I find this unlikely.’ Gdolkin said. 'Any commander, even one as twisted and warped as the Despoiler, does not so readily sacrifice his soldiers without good cause. Whatever lies on this Crucible of yours must be of incredible value or benefit to the Chaos hosts for them to surrender so much to claim it. How could loyal servants of the Emperor want the same thing? What is this prize? Do you even know what it is?'

‘Very well, Iron-Father, although it pains me that you would doubt a grand magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Could not doubt be considered a weakness?' No matter how urgent his mission, Thule could not resist making a dig at Gdolkin. The Iron-Father had earned the magos's enmity at their first meeting aboard the Gehenna.

'As a wise warrior once told me, a healthy dose of scepticism can be of great benefit to a commander.'

'Then let me go back to the beginning.’ Thule said. He sounded strained, his voice heavy with gravitas. Revealing his secrets to those whom he considered to be the uninitiated - even though they were Iron Hands and one of them held the rank of Iron-Father, a Chaplain-Techmarine of his order - patently pained Thule deeply. Obviously it was hard to change the habits of many lifetimes. 'Centuries ago I uncovered a reference to the lost world of Crucible and the Tomb of the Ironclad, amidst the archive labyrinths of Mars.'

Something the tech-priest had said seized Gdolkin. Implanted mimetic memory-chips began to search through the innumerable pieces of information codified in his brain.

‘The ancient manuscript I had stumbled across revealed that thousands of years ago, during one of the Despoiler's earlier Black Crusades, the techno-magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus had created an outpost on a star system close to the Eye of Terror and fashioned a mighty army there to defeat the forces of Chaos. However, something went wrong and the world was absorbed by warpstorm Araken. It was this one manuscript that set me on my quest. It took me from planet to planet, sector to sector, and steadily I uncovered more details, more clues as to the location of Crucible and of the curious Araken artefacts.

'At the start of this latest Black Crusade, the snowbound world of Hekla was attacked and an obelisk - one of the artefacts - was destroyed. This put me at last onto the trail for the next and ultimately, I hoped, to lost Crucible itself. But as you know, the forces of Chaos were always one step ahead of me. I was playing a desperate game trying to catch up with their plans.’