Calibron Laan, the Governor of the Orpheus Sector, had recently been tormented by a relentless string of nightmares. These dreams terrified him more than any real-world threat, relentlessly assaulting his pampered and fragile nerves day and night.
His eyes were deeply sunken, his face pale, and his once immaculate attire was now disheveled. The man exuded an aura of impending collapse.
In his dreams, he always found himself in a place utterly unlike his own palace. It was not the luxury and light he knew, but a silent, freezing stone chamber. Ancient, eerie runes were carved into the walls, and the air was thick with the stench of decay and metal.
In this chilling environment, he was forcibly seated at a cold stone table, participating in a grotesque banquet with skeletal kings wearing metallic masks. These kingly skeletons were tall and radiated an ominous sheen.
Empty eye sockets flickered with ominous green light, and their mechanical joints made faint, clicking sounds.
They ceaselessly grabbed fresh, warm, bloody flesh from the plates and attempted to stuff it into their mouths. However, the raw meat only ever smeared across their slick, cold metallic faces, endlessly repeating the disgusting process.
And the wretched Calibron was compelled by these skeletal kings, like a toy puppet, to swallow the nauseating, unknown-source meat. They never explained why they did this, seemingly content to simply derive pleasure from Calibron's terror.
Orpheus was merely a remote, ordinary sector, not a Fortress World, and Calibron was just a soft, privileged Sector Governor. He had never endured true hardship, much less this kind of psychological torture that exceeded the limits of human endurance.
The mental trauma he suffered was extremely severe. Every time he woke from the nightmare, he would be drenched in sweat, his stomach churning, as if he had truly swallowed that awful flesh.
Calibron resorted to countless methods to try and stop the horrific nightmares. Initially, he summoned a Psyker Master clad in blue robes. The Master repeatedly examined Calibron's bedchambers, his psychic sense probing Calibron's body and soul like an invisible hand.
However, each examination ended with the Master shaking his head, his aged face showing confusion and a hint of fear: "Your Excellency, there is no trace of psychic influence on you, unless—unless the one tormenting you is one of the few terrifying entities in the Warp, whose power exceeds mortal understanding and detection."
Calibron naturally didn't believe he could possibly be targeted by such legendary beings, let alone that they would act personally. Even if it were true, spreading such news was not wise—what if it led the Inquisition to subject him to an "inspection"? He'd rather continue having the nightmares. He knew the methods of the Inquisition, and they chilled him more than the nightmares themselves.
So, he bypassed the only correct answer, deciding someone must be using a teleportation device to mess with him—a method indeed used by the Necrons in the original lore—and next sought a Magos.
Calibron even consumed an overdose of alertness drugs, the bitter, acrid medicine sharpening his nerves to the extreme. He swore he would not fall asleep again.
Yet, Calibron still succumbed. His body's inescapable fatigue dragged him back into that familiar abyss. Even the Magos could not guarantee he could be woken up without harming him.
When Calibron awoke again from the nightmare, the initially reluctant Magos showed intense interest, declaring it would not leave until Calibron's problem was solved. But Calibron had by now utterly lost hope in technological means. When he awoke, only a deeper despair remained in his eyes.
Finally, Calibron placed his hope in the power of the God-Emperor to protect him. He massively funded the construction of churches throughout the Orpheus Sector, donating most of his palatial wealth to the Ecclesiarchy, resulting in dazzling domes and towering spires springing up.
In a desperate, last-minute plea, he chanted scripture he had never cared about before, day and night. He even abandoned his luxurious palace, choosing to live in the simple quarters of a monk within a newly built cathedral. He knelt before the massive statue of the God-Emperor, praying over and over, hoping the holy light would drive away the gloom in his heart.
But Calibron clearly did not know that the entity tormenting him was, in fact, allied with the God-Emperor. Thus, this method predictably yielded no results; the nightmare arrived as scheduled, even clearer and more brutal than before.
By this time, Calibron's mind was pushed to the extreme brink of madness by the nightmares. His body began to tremble uncontrollably, his eyes unfocused, sometimes fearfully scanning his surroundings, sometimes falling into a stupor. Feeling danger draw closer and his life imminently threatened, he began to clutch the only thing he had left—power.
Calibron ordered all military forces in the Orpheus Sector—from a single battleship to a single Lasgun—to concentrate on Amarah Prime, the main planet where he resided. Since there was no objective threat, this command was utterly absurd and bewildering to all military officers.
Nevertheless, an order was an order. Even though the command swiftly plunged parts of the Orpheus Sector outside of Amarah into anarchy, with space pirates and xenos predators running rampant, leading to widespread public outcry, Calibron was still the Sector Governor.
Before he completely self-destructed due to his madness, his command within Orpheus remained absolute.
Despite the widespread grievances and countless curses aimed at the madman, the military structure still functioned. Soon, all military power in the entire Orpheus Sector was concentrated on Amarah Prime. Ships obscured the starports, soldiers jammed the barracks, and the entire planet was transformed into a massive military fortress.
Concurrently, Calibron also ordered continuous, maximum-power distress signals to be broadcast to all external receivers. The flood of messages overwhelmed other sectors, nearly jamming their civil and military communication networks with constant buzzing and alarms.
For a time, all wireless channels in the sectors surrounding Orpheus were inundated with desperate distress signals from Amarah Prime, hoarsely crying out about a non-existent danger.
However, while Calibron was an absolute potentate within Orpheus, his name held no sway outside it. Other sectors briefly investigated and, finding no clear anomaly—only Calibron's descent into madness—simply filtered out the distress signals from Amarah.
They dismissed it as the hysteria of a remote governor, not worth wasting precious resources on. Thus, no significant reinforcements had arrived at Amarah Prime so far. Calibron's desperate pleas had sunk like a stone in the ocean, leaving only the echo of despair.
Yet, Calibron clearly felt that the forces of the Orpheus Sector were utterly insufficient to resist those terrifying skeletal kings; he knew the beings in his dreams were far beyond mortal imagination.
Utterly disheartened, he considered suicide as a permanent escape, his glazed eyes staring out the window as if searching for release. This was, naturally, an outcome his subordinates would welcome—they all hoped this lunatic would die quickly, replaced by a sane person who could end this absurd farce.
It was at this very moment that events took an unexpected turn—an unanticipated light tore through the haze of despair.
Robert, the leader of the Helldivers and Governor of Perditia, personally piloted his flagship across the star systems and arrived at Amarah Prime. Against all expectation, a force of genuine reinforcement had responded to the call of Orpheus, despite that call being regarded as the ravings of a madman everywhere else.