Project Andromeda

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In the 84th century, the Holy Empire spans Earth, the Electrosphere, and the whole of the Mare Galacticum (Milky Way). Beyond the Pale, in the Andromeda Galaxy, it hangs one bright lamp: Craftworld Andromeda, a moon-sized tree grown rather than built, nine million elven souls turning slow and green against the void — and no illusions about how far away help is.

Brother Titus arrives by teleportarium with a hammer, an armor, and a mission. A novice of the inquisitorial marines, he has been sent to the frontier to investigate a strange astronomical activity in the local area and to discern whether the Order is truly his calling. He is met by Princess Cassandrea, youngest of three sisters and a Watcher with a talent for finding trouble a good deal faster than she can get out of it.

Together they face pirates, cultists, and a deep red smear of light the Empire catalogued from a galaxy away: QSR-24601, or the Red Quasar. Something in that quasar is waking. A hundred years ago, at the quasar known as The Gates of Hell, a marine of the Order put a hammer through its skull.

But macrobes are never killed, only banished.