My house, long in decline, had lost our suits a century before the Helmawrs repossessed any that had left their noble line. 

But we never lost the tradition that owning them entailed, the martial excellence and tactical thinking required to dominate.

And we never lost our connection to the Spyrer's prey, the rabble of the Underhive. We still owned crumbling manufactorums, employed the downtrodden masses to toil in our archeotech devices. Making just enough money to survive, but never enough to truly matter. 

The scions of House Helmawr think the pain of connecting to a suit, the modifications made to their flesh, is some kind of character building sacrifice.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'VE SACRIFICED! 
WHAT I'M WILLING TO SACRIFICE! 

These brutal songbirds we have rendered in steel picked the flesh from my bones. Muscle replaced with steel sinew, nerves with neuroconductive cabling, organs suspended in ichor and threaded with wires. 

The Helmawrs, in their arrogance, think it's the suit that makes a Spyrer.

But it's not the suit.

It's the software.

Software that has been installed directly into my artificial nervous system, that will flood my brain with dopamine after every act of violence, that will optimise the myriad of archeotech systems that now make up my physical form.

I am like clay, the Spyrer program my sculptor. 

It will find no imperfection left in its materials.

My sister gave me this sheen bird as a joke upon hearing the details of my project. Even after sacrificing my mortal remains to his flock, our bond remained.

I was a duelist par excellence, pride of my house. 

I had twinned Archaeotech Duelling Pistols.

I was undefeated for over a hundred years, still able even in my old age due to expensive rejuvenat treatments.

Then one of Helmawr's bastards cheated in a duel. He loaded his pistol with a Tyranid Fleshborer he'd picked up from a Cold Trader.

In spite of the pain, I easily killed him.

But it burrowed through my system dealing untold damage, seeking out some illicit glandular chem synths in my extremities as its delicacy of choice. I managed to coax it into my left arm, which I severed with a well placed shot, but by then the damage was well and truly done. My body was a ruin, and thus I am reduced to a variety of vats containing my remaining organs and a lot of conjoining pipes.

There I remained for some time, my house unwilling to let me die. 

But then my Nephew came to me with a gleam in his eye and a dusty old data-vault and suddenly being some organs in jars wasn't the sort of liability it used to be.

I miss my Dueling Pistols, but it's hard to argue that wrist mounted rapid fire missile launchers are anything but a direct upgrade.

I was not born into wealth. I was the bastard of some nothing noble house, poor in property and inconsequential in influence.

I worked for a living, as the bodyguard to a driven young factotum from House Artamidae. I shadowed him as he made his way about the hive and after a decade of this I'll admit I became quite fond of him.

He never found my services wanting, and he was prone to get into the sort of trouble that intrepid scions of fallen houses tend to when they wander about in the lower hive reading dusty tomes and shaking hands with nameless scummers cast in shadow.

His father was a sallow cadaver pinpricked with wiring by this point, so close in function to an abacus servitor you could say he served as a prototype to what we would eventually become. But for me then I likened him to our Emperor entombed on his Golden Throne.

My exemplary service came with few additional perks outside my income and the pleasant meandering conversations with my benefactors.

Except for her. She made my job harder because when she entered a room, it was hard to concentrate on anything but her. Her brother noticed my lapse in wit instantly and from then on took every joy in steering our conversations so I would say something mildly embarrassing whenever she was passing through a room.

I take my job very seriously, so the hiding I gave 'the young master' wouldn't be visible to any of the household. He thought the occasional kidney punch was worth making me admit I was greying prematurely and so dyed my hair, or that I dinged the town car trying to avoid hitting a sheen bird.

What effect he sought with these revelatory games I do not know, only the effect that they inevitably had. To spare you the tawdry details, two years later, she and I were wed and I was inducted into House Artamidae, debt cleared and family seen to. 

Some habits die hard, though. I was playing Billiards with the Young Master when a Helmawr came calling, and a heated argument began. As a subordinate member of the house, I didn't speak up and my fingers started to itch as the interloper made increasingly spurious claims about my brother in law. They ended with a knife being drawn.

I, as I  had so many times before, threw myself between him and the clear and present danger. My armoured undersuit stopped the decalcification knife from severing my aorta, but my ribs crumbled to powder and my lungs were collapsed as my skeletal integrity plummeted. As I lost concsiousness, I remember the Helmawr brat announcing I wasn't a suitable candidate for blooding his new blade. 

Like the rest of my family, I am not half the man I used to be. The bone decalcification spread, and so I was jammed into an exoskeletal frame to preserve my life. As it happened, it had been designed by the Young Master and would have been my wedding gift, had my romantic conquest been slower and subtler. Now it stops my muscle mass from crushing my lungs. And once again I find myself between the young master and those who would harm him.

Although this time, my darling wife soars in the sky overhead.

The mark on the towncar from where I swerved to avoid hitting this bird was never repaired and it stands as a permanent reminder to our psychoteric bond.

Target shooting was a hobby of mine. My father was just glad his guns were seeing some use after my Aunt passed and he had no excuse to hit the range anymore.

Unlike the rest I don't have some tragic story, I just followed my Brother and Husband into their mad scheme because I didn't want to be left out while they were off crusading. 

The old order crumbles as the Helmawr heirs vie for dominance with long forgotten ghosts of fallen houses far grander than ours. But no matter who wins, their dominion will be lesser by our unflinching efforts.