by Jason Soles

The following is an in depth overview of the Aeternus Continuum Faction for Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika. In addition to providing an in-depth look into the Continuum’s background and organization that helped inform its design, I will also discuss the models, strategies, and tactics that underpin the Faction and how it plays. Over the coming weeks, we will provide additional overviews of all of the Factions and provide a look into their guiding design philosophies as we developed them for Warcaster.

Part I: The Temple’s Long Shadow

Key to understanding the Aeternus Continuum is comprehending its true purposes, organization, and inner workings. The Aeternus Continuum is an ancient and renegade cult dedicated to unnaturally extending the lifespans of its senior membership. To achieve this end, they have experimented with and mastered a variety of arcane, anatomical, mechanical, and medical sciences. They have plundered technologies from their rivals, sought out the relics of lost alien civilizations, delved into forbidden arts, contacted malefic entities, and committed untold atrocities.

Outlawed and forbidden throughout the civilized territories of the Hyperuranion, the Aeternus Continuum operates from the shadows. It is only in those places where the Continuum holds complete control that its temples operate in the open. Such territories, though expansive and inhabited by many millions of citizens, are relatively small and insignificant compared to the holdings of the other Great Powers. The Aeternus Continuum possesses few large population centers and tends to operate at the fringes of developed territories. Though the Continuum holds little territory of apparent value, this belies the true strength of the Temple.

In truth, the Aeternus Continuum has already spread throughout the Hyperuranion and has deeply infiltrated the territories of its human rivals. Its tendrils reach out from the great temples at the heart of Continuum space into the very bowels of the teeming industrial cities and mining outposts spread across Marcher and Alliance territories. Though the authorities in those regions have some inkling as to the activities of the Aeternus Continuum, for a variety of reasons, they remain ignorant as to their full scale and purpose. If such activities were to come into clear focus, the priorities of the Great Powers of the Hyperuranion would change with haste and the full weight of the Alliance and Marcher military forces would come crashing down on the Continuum—a truth of which the senior clergy is all too aware.

As a result, the Temple moves with careful clarity of purpose yet in ways utterly unpredictable by their rivals. Though the far-thinking members of the Aeternus Continuum seek to spread their faith and influence, they do so from the bottom of society up. Their cells seek to infiltrate the downtrodden lower classes, where the authorities have fewer eyes and where substantial gains are easily and cheaply achieved. These Vassals are drawn directly from the working classes of Alliance and Marcher societies.

The Vassals not only provide raw manpower in times of need but are also called upon to liberate resources and machinery from the vast factory complexes of the industrial territories to secretly build arms and warjacks for the Continuum’s cause. Though such subversive networks and clandestine activities are stamped out as fast as they are detected, these tactics have enabled the Aeternus Continuum to accumulate great caches of arms throughout the Hyperuranion. Safeguarding such stores requires the Continuum to devote vast resources to the study of the void gate networks and the defenses of their enemies so they can always stay one step ahead. The ability to call upon such reserves makes the Aeternus Continuum incredibly unpredictable, contributing a sense that they could strike anywhere and at any time.

Over time, hidden cells grow into full congregations with dozens or hundreds of members disguised as secretive trade guilds or workers’ unions. Such shadow organizations operate as recruitment centers and secret outposts well within enemy territory. The working poor who join these organizations as Vassals pledge their allegiance to the cult but are not afforded true membership in the Continuum; the Vassals serve the Temple as thralls but are not truly part of it. Such service comes with temporal, rather than eternal, rewards. Roughly ninety-eight percent of the Continuum’s total membership is made up of Vassals.

To the Vassals, the clergy of the Temple are mysterious and holy masters with a complete command over life and death. They are feared utterly. When they interact with the clergy, it is through low-level Zealators, the missionaries dispatched from the Temple who are at the heart of its many cells. Through the Zealators, the clergy instruct and command the Vassals and the Vassals, in turn, are expected to follow their dictates without question.

In addition to recruiting from amongst the downtrodden masses of the Hyperuranion’s industrial cores, the Aeternus Continuum has also had a varying degree of success in the infiltration of governmental, trade, aristocratic, and academic organizations throughout the Alliance and Marcher territories. The promise of eternal life can be both corrupting and intoxicating for many. In return for limited life extension, doled out as rewards, such agents are often simply required to turn a blind eye to Continuum activities. Rather than dirtying their hands directly, these agents are simply required to leave Temple activities out of their reports or to downplay the significance of the Temple’s movements, successes, and failures.

True membership in the Aeternus Continuum and the knowledge of its deeper truths are reserved for the Immortals, the ranking members of the true Temple. While Vassals can expect some limited benefits of membership and may have their lives somewhat extended through technologies at the periphery of the Aeternus Continuum, as their name suggests, the full benefits of life eternal are reserved for the Immortals of the inner Temple.

Over time a Vassal congregation may expand into a true temple, a Continuum franchise overseen by the Immortal clergy. These ruling clergy are always sent from within the Temple rather than being recruited from amongst local Vassals. It is a basic truth of the Temple that Vassals serve and the clergy leads.

The temples themselves operate either secretly within enemy territory or out in the open within territories claimed and controlled by Aeternus Continuum. Such clandestine temples are key to the Continuum’s expansion. As its membership grows, a temple amasses strength in terms of local influence, military stockpiles, and in raw numbers of its membership. Once a secret temple is strong enough, it may move to seize power over its locality, sometimes leading the Aeternus Continuum to take control of whole cities or vast swathes of territories, even if only temporarily. Such control can bring with it vast networks of void gates enabling the Continuum’s agents to quickly spread out to regions once closed to them, enabling recruitment even deeper into enemy-held territories. Such uprisings seldom result in permanent gains that truly expand Aeternus Continuum territory. In such cases that an uprising does yield permanent territorial gains, the temple at the heart of the uprising will begin to operate openly as the administrative and spiritual capital of the new territory.

Each temple, whether operating openly or clandestinely, is overseen by a Nomarch, or high priest. Nomarchs maintain a broad degree of authority and autonomy within the territories overseen by their temple. The Nomarchs answer to the Praetors, who coordinate large regional networks of temples with their interconnecting void gates.

At its highest echelons the senior leadership of the Temple is decentralized, ruled over by various senior councils overseeing narrowly defined aspects of the Temple’s work, such as theology, missionary expansion, military planning, logistics, arcane and medical research, intelligence, void navigation, geology, celestial history, and wartime production.

The most senior advisory council of the Aeternus Continuum is the Consilio Mortuorum, made up of the Ascended Masters, the discarnate dead too ancient to maintain even the semblance of life but who remain contributing members to the cult just the same. It is the Consilio Mortuorum who debate the most sacred mysteries and who hold the darkest secrets of the Aeternus Continuum.

The various temples and councils stay in close contact through the activities of various agents and messengers of the Continuum who are in turn utterly dedicated to the organizations within the temple they serve. The most senior of these agents are the Lictors, who represent the various temples and who directly serve the Nomarchs, and the Hierotheos, who serve the various councils of the Aeternus Continuum.

The venerable elders of the Consilio Mortuorum are attended to by the Advocatus Aeternam, whose membership is the Aeternal Advocates, the Advocati, sometimes called “the Intercessors.” The Advocati are theurges able to commune directly with the formless dead and so are charged with spreading the words and dictates of the Consilio Mortuorum across the whole of Continuum space.

The true and secret purpose of the Aeternus Continuum is to bring about the Eschaton, when the undying Theois will rise from the ashes of humanity and restore “true” divinity to the galaxy. Though their human rivals remain ignorant as to the fanaticism and sheer scale of the Continuum’s heretical plans, the Empyreans comprehend the true threat posed by the Temple. They regard the ambitions of the cult as nothing less than an existential threat to Cyriss as well as to the order of the universe.

Part II: Darkness Given Form

With the background of the Aeternus Continuum in mind, we are better able to explore the design decisions behind the Faction. At the heart of the Continuum is the hierarchical Temple, which oversees a sprawling and ever-shifting empire of loosely held sovereign territories and clandestine bases deep within the territories of their rivals. The Temple is served by vast numbers of Vassals drawn from the working class poor of hundreds of worlds. The Continuum itself is held together by the missionaries, agents, and messengers who continually move between its temples and its far-flung congregations.

Lacking the resources, population, and manpower of its rivals, in times of conflict the Aeternus Continuum relies on its mastery of the arcane at least as much as it counts on its force of arms. While it maintains a number of small, elite fighting forces and has developed its own arsenal of formidable warjacks, the Continuum’s largest body of fighters is its Vassals, poorly trained militias drawn from its congregants. To offset the limitations of its regular fighting forces, the Aeternus Continuum turned to the arcane.

Whole councils within the Temple are dedicated to unraveling and weaponizing the mysteries of the universe. Free of moral constraint, its occult researchers plumb the depths of human knowledge in search of ever more terrifying and destructive Cyphers that can be unleashed upon their enemies on the battlefield. The Aeternus Continuum has also become adept at rooting out wyrds and theurges from amongst the civilian populations under their control. Once detected, such talented individuals are immediately relocated to one of the great temples for instruction, training, and indoctrination. They will be trained in ancient techniques to serve as Immortal Weavers and spiritual combatants vital to the Continuum’s war efforts. What they lack in fighting strength, the Aeternus Continuum tries to make up for in raw arcane might.

And so, as we developed the Continuum, our goal was to create a Faction with powerful but dedicated arcane and technological capabilities, as well as strong elite fighters and warjacks but with weaker regular infantry to draw upon.

The most basic of the Aeternus Continuum’s military forces are the Vassals. While fanatical and utterly devoted to the Continuum, the Vassals are not truly soldiers. They are more akin to heavily armed gangs or civilian militias who can be pressed into service in times of need. The Vassals primarily serve the Continuum as workers, both skilled and unskilled. They lay the foundations and build the walls of the temples (both literally and figuratively); they manufacture and assemble complex mechanika including warjacks, ships, and small arms; they act as recruiters among the lower classes; and they fight when called upon to do so.

As a result of this unique role, the Vassals have slightly lower stats and wear less armor than the dedicated soldiers of their rivals. At the same time, however, they have benefitted from the Aeternus Continuum’s arcane developments. Each Vassal is equipped with a Mimetic Cloak (which grants Stealth while the Vassal squad is charged) and a Phase Sequencer (which allows the squad to spike to move through walls or other models). These stealthy and incorporeal qualities both match the clandestine feel of the Faction and provide distinct capabilities to these somewhat unrefined troops. These capabilities may not always be called into play, but they can offer some real surprises and advantages when they are.

Intended to support the Vassals are the Marauders and the Rakers. Marauders are full cyborgs drawn from the ranks of the Vassals. Though such extreme cybernetic modifications are usually reserved for the Immortals of the true Temple, the Marauders are granted limited eternal life in exchange for endless service slaved to Continuum’s war machine. It was the intention of the developers that these overpowered solos directly make up for some of the martial limitations of the Vassals.

The Rakers are massive robotic hunting beasts originally developed to patrol the grounds of the Aeternus Continuum’s temples. When attached to Vassal squads, however, these savage machines give the light squads real staying power, enabling them to hold objectives and generally survive long enough to be delivered to wherever they are of the most use on the battlefield. Both the Marauders and the Rakers provide the Aeternus Continuum with relatively inexpensive models to deploy that simply cannot be ignored.

The Vassals are further supported by Grafters, terrifying surgeon-mechaniks who treat both men and machines. It is the role of the Grafter to keep the Continuum’s military assets in fighting form. To that end, they can repair warjacks, return destroyed troopers to their squads, and provide additional ARM to warrior models in their vicinity while charged.

Though the Vassal squads may feel a little soft compared to the squads of the other Factions, the same cannot be said of the Aeternus Continuum’s warjacks. These machines were purposefully designed by the councils of the Temple and are manufactured and assembled by the Vassals, often deep within enemy territory.

The Scourge is a melee specialist designed to brutalize the warjacks of the Continuum’s rivals. Its massive Wrecking Claw is amongst the most powerful weapons in the game, making it a welcome target for any Cyphers affecting melee combat. Its additional weapon options span a horror show of high-tech mechanikal innovations drawn from the blackest depths of the Continuum’s arcane knowledge, from freezing Entrophiers that deal out activation tokens to enemy models it hits to the corrosion inflicted by Hollowphage Cannons to the geometry-abusing Force Rods and Reapers. The warjacks of the Aeternus Continuum pack all manner of dirty tricks and unforeseen vectors of attack.

The flying, black-iron insectoid Nemesis perfectly exemplifies such capabilities.  Though technically a heavier warjack than the Scourge, the Nemesis focuses on ranged combat and is not as brutally effective as the Scourge in close quarters. It is, however, the most maneuverable and speedy warjack in the game, making it both hard to pin down and incredibly unpredictable.

Sharing the skies with the Nemesis is the Scythe, a light and speedy fighter craft with both melee and ranged armament. Repurposed from industrial machinery, these vehicles were not developed whole cloth like the Continuum’s warjacks. Instead, they are cobbled together by the Vassals to support their insurgencies and combat actions. The resulting machine is a fast-moving weapon platform that can take a beating and keep on flying.

Rounding out the Continuum’s forces are its arcane assets. These include both the Faction’s unique Cyphers and their Immortal Weavers. Though the Empyreans are obviously the universe’s great masters of Arc manipulation, the fragility of their immortality means the followers of Cyriss seldom risk losing their true arcane adepts in battle and instead rely on the Oculi, robotic servitors lacking the fine control of a natural-born Weaver. As a result, the Immortal Weaver is arguably the strongest in the game, with Fury range of up to 18˝ while charged and with additional built-in movement shenanigans on top of that.

The true arcane heavyweight of the Faction at the moment, however, is the Hero solo Heirotheos Raxis. With the ear of the Consilio Mortuorum, Raxis is a singularly powerful agent of the Continuum and heralds the sorts of arcane innovations we are likely to see in the future of the Faction. In addition to his direct combat capabilities, Raxis also expands his controller’s hand of Cypher cards by one while he is in play. He can also spike to return cards from the discard pile back to his controller’s hand. The concept here is that when Raxis is in play, your arcane capabilities are turned up to eleven.

Finally, the Continuum’s arsenal of offerings is rounded off with its Wild Card options. These include Baron Cassius Mooregrave, Captain Jax Redblade, and Harlan Sek, the Curator. All three pack a number of dirty tricks typically associated with the Aeternus Continuum. Of them, Sek’s Arcane Artifacts makes him by far the most unpredictable of the Heroes available to the Faction. When paired with Heirotheos Raxis, Sek can sap the effectiveness (and surprise) from your opponent’s hand of Cypher cards while Raxis works to expand the number of cards at your fingertips.

Though Redblade and Mooregrave are more straightforward in their capabilities, both provide welcome strengths to the Continuum. Mooregrave is a hardy warrior who can tie up and engage enemy forces or personally eliminate outsized numbers of enemy models until your opponent is prepared to dedicate enough resources to remove him from the table. And while Redblade is slightly less offensively capable, her great speed while charged and high defense generally means you will get her to any position on the table that’s most advantageous to your plans. If you keep her charged and in cover, your opponent is likely to ignore her completely rather than risk repeatedly missing her with attacks and potentially opening up their own forces to Riposte counterattacks.