While gazing into his obsidian mirror, meant for conjuring ghosts while used back on Earth, Emperor Zebulon Kosted sees his own spectral incarnation appear in the psychomanteum of the imperial palace on Vrozyld. Shocked to be speaking to his apparition he asks the form how he will die. The phantasm replies that the Emperor will be slain by the child of a Synthetic on the former mining colony of Themis. His majesty replies that this is an impossibility, the race of bio-mechanical creatures inhabiting the planet Synthos do not have the ability to procreate. The ghost vanishes. The Emperor decides then and there that preparations must be made to invade this wretched upstart world and destroy all life that dwells upon it before this prophecy can come to fruition. For what he does not know is how long it will be until he faces his demise...