| abstract
| - Little is known about the great Magos and Technoarchaeologist who is remembered in history as Arkhan Land. His birthplace remains a mystery, although it seems likely he was raised on Mars itself. That he was gifted with extraordinary perceptive abilities from an early age remains unquestioned, though most surviving accounts of the man seem to dwell more on his eccentric lifestyle and peculiar personal habits than his intellectual gifts. For example, one particular marble etching on Mars shows the great Tech-priest on his daily walk amongst the great sky vaults of the Sierra Planum with his pet psyber monkey, while an account in Geronimus' Citations makes frequent reference to his affection for highly ostentatious wigs to obscure the baldness that afflicted him from an early age. Whatever his idiosyncratic personal behaviour may have been, it was Arkhan Land who led the greatest expedition into the ruins of the Librarius Omnis on Mars. For three standard years he searched the labyrinthine catacombs of that deserted edifice in search of functioning STC databases. In this he failed, but three other discoveries were made which revolutionised technical thinking for millennia to come. Land's first major contribution was a near-complete database of STC information about a heavily armoured main battle tank which would become the Land Raider Proteus, originally known as "Land's Raider". This flexible vehicle would serve as the Legiones Astartes main battle tank at the start of the Great Crusade, but internal storage inefficiency and the rear-mounted entry hatch limited the vehicle's usefulness in the field, and over the course of the Great Crusade and subsequent Horus Heresy the design would evolve, first in the Spartan Assault Tank, and later in the Land Raider Phobos that is still in use in the late 41st Millennium. Land's second discovery unearthed information on rare anti-gravitic plates, and theories on their uses, which eventually would lead to the construction of the first "Land's Speeder" (later known as the Land Speeder). Without Land's discovery it is likely that there would be no anti-gravitic vehicles remaining in use by the Imperium at all. Unfortunately, Land would not live long enough to see the the Adeptus Mechanicus begin regular production of the Land Speeder for the Imperial military forces of the Great Crusade. Land's third great gift to Imperial civilisation was the Land Crawler, another of the STC constructs re-discovered by him at the birth of the Imperium. Unlike the more famous Land Raider and Land Speeder, the Land Crawler is not a military vehicle but an agricultural one, although it has over the millennia often been pressed into service as an infantry support vehicle, artillery tow vehicle, ammunition tractor, ambulance and transport vehicle. Countless billions of Land Crawlers are used on Agri-worlds across the Imperium, where its versatility, ease of maintenance, and forgiving driving characteristics make it hugely popular as Imperial farmers' primary source of transport and motive power in their fields. It has been argued by more than one Imperial historian that the humble Land Crawler is by far the single most important STC construct discovered by Arkhan Land; after all, even Space Marines need to eat. The walker-engine known as the Onager Dunecrawler owes its origins to the Mars Universal Land Engine. Fashioned by Arkhan Land, the original M.U.L.E was inspired by the bad-tempered, insectile beast of burden that its maker believed walked Holy Terra in aeons long past. Intended as a workhorse that could escort its masters across the wastes of Mars in relative safety, the machine proved so successful it was soon rebuilt as a weapon of war. It was renamed, outfitted with Emanatus force shielding, replicated by the millions, and sent to the front lines. Land was to eventually die leading a second expedition into the Librarius Omnis; his Vox diary was discovered two centuries later by one of a number of rescue teams. It is believed that he and his party were picked off one by one by some mysterious predator, although it is still a matter of much controversial debate whether this predator was some kind of living beast, a psychic entity or perhaps even a sentient virus. For most it is simply proof that the secrets of the Dark Age of Technology are best left to the shadows of mystery and prehistory.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)