In a very fitting midsummer magic show, Stefan has more to share! Wow!

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The Bio-Pilgrymme, Part IV: The Linnæanne Brotherhood
“What strong allurement draws, what spirit guides,
Thee, Vesper! brightening still, as if the nearer
Thou com’st to man’s abode the spot grew dearer
Night after night? True is it Nature hides
Her treasures less and less. Man now presides
In power, where once he trembled in his weakness;
Science advances with gigantic strides;
But are we aught enriched in love and meekness?
Aught dost thou see, bright Star! of pure and wise
More than in humbler times graced human story;
That makes our hearts more apt to sympathise
With heaven, our souls more fit for future glory,
When earth shall vanish from our closing eyes,
Ere we lie down in our last dormitory?”

(Ancient Terran Poet, To the Planet Venus, upon its approximation to Terra, 838. M2)

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IV.I

Allegedly Brostten Haggwers and his team of Paleo-Botanists and Bio-Explorers have entered the Sol System! The Rogue Trader Anaxaegoras, now infamous in The Rift for its rumoured thorny cargo, has been logged in Imperial transcripts in the Sol System – apparently they have been bound for Venus before making planet fall on Terra. 

Imperial lore tell of how Venus, the second planet from the sun, used to be visible to the naked eye as one of the brightest objects in the evening and morning skies of Terra. That was many millennia ago in the times before the Dark Age of Technology – a period from which only few treasured artefacts and scriptures endure. 

Today thick smog and smoke from vast incense factories usually encapsulates burdened Terra hiding the sky from plain sight, but to this day Venus is still known among Imperial chroniclers and astrologists at one and the same time as the Evening-Star and the Morning-Star heralding both the Terran dusk and the dawn of a new day…

Green Man Cometh…

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IV.II

During the last ten millennia, coincidentally the same period, in which the Green Mechanicvm has been isolated in Crataegus Fragmentum, the Genetor Brotherhood of Mars together with generations of Imperial Paleo-Botanists, Horticulturalists and Topiarists, has transformed Venus into a living botanical laboratory. Here, both on the inhospitable surface of the planet and in its dense atmosphere, the Imperium has been carrying out botanical experiments with plant life gathered from countless of worlds colonised by man.

Where Venus is a living and weather-beaten botanical laboratory Neith, the only moon circling the planet, is an artificial moon-sized Seed Vault and Hortorium constructed over a period of thousands of years. It is circling the dark side of Venus and is occasionally seen as a faint glimmer of ashen lights emanating from behind the dark horizon of the planet. By avoiding the planets 116 earth-day long solar days the artificial moon is a cold and eerily silent library of botanical samples, seed specimens and herbariums containing priceless data for future terraforming in other star systems throughout the Imperium. 

The plant and seed specimens contained within its frosty vaults and catacombs have been meticulously classified and gathered in countless botanical tomes and plant collections known under one as Species Plantarum, in effect making Neith a single moon-sized catalogue of plant life in the Imperium. The moon itself is a labyrinth of rime-covered hallways, stairwells and artificially lit vaults, catacombs and study chambers. Apart from the occasional servitor hum only the odd sound of slow footsteps, drafts of ice cold wind and frosty pages of Herbarium parchment being turned by glove covered hands can occasionally be heard whispering through its labyrinthine hallways. 

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IV.III

The classification of specimens shipped to Neith by Imperial Bio-Explorers from the frontiers of space is carried out by a secretive group of Vault Librarians and Herbarians known as The Linnæanne Brotherhood. The current Princeps Botanicarum is Pater Fredrik Carolus Linnæus XVIth who is responsible for overseeing the continued classification work. 

From what can be drawn from Imperial chronicles this is a secretive brotherhood consisting of a mere few thousand solitary librarians and herbarians widely dispersed in the vaults and catacombs of the artificial moon. For the most part the Linnæanne Brothers live in solitude surrounded by taxonomy servitors, plant samples and seed specimens. Only on very rare occasions do some of the Fraters venture outside the gravity of Venus to ensure and oversee the gathering of very rare plant specimens or relics of interest for the studies of botany in the Imperium.

Apparently, with the arrival of Brostten Haggwers on board the Anaxaegoras, such an occasion has now occurred.

Green Man Cometh…

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I originally planned to build two members of The Linnæanne Brotherhood, but have so far built and painted one. He has joined Brostten Haggwers and his team on their race to find the Pilgrym and in turn the missing fragment of the Daerwynne Palimpseste…the key to the Green Room! I see this particular Frater, and the link to the Linnæan Brotherhood in general, as a plausible way for Haggwers and his team of Bio-Pilgrymmes to be allowed planet fall on burdened Terra.

Cornelius Linnæus XIIth is a Neith Herbarian armed with a Haw Staff made of ancient Haw Tree and an archaic pistol with poisonous bullets made of black thorn wood. He carries a herbarium containing priceless samples from Species Plantarum of the Crataegus specimens Haggwers and his team aim to use to find the Pilgrym – rumoured to be safeguarded in a forgotten Botanicarium hidden underneath one of the countless pilgrimage routes on Terra.

He has been painted in tones of white, cold green and gold to resemble the frosty and glimmering hallways of Neith.