Drawing a Blank [40K]

"Inquisitor, sir. Is the plan we discussed earlier...?"

"Yes. It may happen earlier, if events force my hand, but otherwise the plan remains unchanged. I release you from your obligation to socialize. You have already done quite well gathering information, and you are not obligated to go looking for more."

"Yes, sir."

"Inquisitor. Could it really be a xeno?"

"I have said as much, yes," he replies, sounding slightly irritable.

"Is it," you begin, and then pause as you collect your thoughts. "How would you know if it is really a xeno, Inquisitor?"

"Eldar are tall, wiry, and they move unnaturally," he says dismissively. "There are other signs, but most of those are not useful in this situation. In any case, it is not your job to make that determination, so do not concern yourself with it. If it becomes relevant, I will direct you to speak with Iona or Claritus about the matter. Why do you ask?"

"I was going to volunteer to look for them," you confess.

"I see," he says, the irritation returning to his voice. "Next time, lead with that. I do not entertain idle questions, especially when time is short." He pauses for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Very well. In truth, I was considering ordering you to do that anyway. You have found them once before, or they have found you. Since you have a need to know... To verify their identity, ask what the first card drawn for Akira was."

"What the first card drawn for Akira was?" you ask. You have no idea what that means, but of course that's the point.

"Yes. If it is the xeno I speak of, they will know the proper answer, which is 'The Eye'. If they do not give the answer, or they give the wrong answer, for the love of the Emperor, don't let them guess you're onto them."

You nod and bow. "Go," says the Inquisitor. "If someone else finds them, I will notify you. May the Emperor's fortune be upon you."

"As you will," you say, feeling slightly awkward at the sudden blessing. You hesitate. "My lord," you begin, and then stop. You want to ask what the intelligence he wants so badly is, but as you look into his eyes, your nerve fails you. Instead, you ask: "Is there anything I should know about the intelligence you need recovered?"

The Inquisitor's eyes narrow slightly.

"The day I became your master," the Inquisitor begins, "you gained my protection, you gained my trust, and you gained the tiniest, most miniscule portion of my authority. All of those are great gifts. Gifts that people would kill for. Gifts that people have killed for. You are but a servant, it is true, but you serve on an Inquisitor's retinue. And that counts for a great deal more than you might imagine."

"But you also gained two other things that day. You gained duties. A duty to serve me, just as I have a duty to serve the Emperor. And those duties may demand everything from you: your time, your labor, your health, your very flesh and blood." He holds out his mechanical hand and draws into into a fist. "You may even have the duty to martyr yourself for my cause, just as I may have the duty to martyr myself for the Emperor."

"Piety is one of those duties. Perhaps you cannot be saved before the Throne– but perhaps you can, and either way I require that you cultivate the proper mindset of faith. For the sake of appearances, if nothing else. Knowledge is not contrary to piety– indeed, is that not the nature of the Inquisition? To inquire, after things that are not yet known, but must become known?"

"Yet this search is constrained, Miss Ariadne. We seek knowledge so that we may use it to uphold the foundational truth of the Imperium– the divinity of the Emperor and His right to rule all of Mankind. Curiosity purely for its own sake so often leads to doubt, and from doubt it is only a short and gentle path to heresy. Your career, Miss Ariadne, is off to a promising start. It would be unfortunate to see that promise undone by carelessness."

You feel yourself shrivelling under the weight of his disapproval. If there is any pity in his gaze, you do not see it, and you bow your head in shame under his rebuke. "And yet," he says slowly. "And yet..." he looks away from you, his expression troubled. "And yet you may need to know," he sighs.

"But not today," he continues, his tone becoming brisk again. "To answer your question as far as I am willing, Miss Ariadne... On the day I became your master, the second thing you gained was the hatred of my enemies. I suffer not my enemies to live, and while you serve me, you shall not suffer them to live either. They know this, and so– you are now their mortal enemy as well. What I seek is knowledge about one of those enemies– a particularly dangerous and implacable one. More than that, you need not know."

"Yes, Inquisitor. My apologies, Inquisitor." You hesitate a moment. "From a xeno, Inquisitor?" The rest of his speech seems abundantly clear, but. Getting information about your enemies, from your enemies? Truly, the Inquisition works in mysterious ways...

"The irony is not lost on me," says the Inquisitor dryly. "Go," he says again. "And if you cannot find it quickly, perhaps it would be best to trail our other target instead. I have the creeping suspicion this evening is going to get a bit messy before all is said and done."


The crowd is thin when you step into the main chamber. Perhaps the music playing now is popular, or maybe you're just lucky. Either way, you find yourself with plenty of space as you skulk through the dark corners of the room. And that's about as far as your luck gets you. You search the crowd from various balconies, and you diligently look into every secluded nook and cranny you can find. Despite an exhaustive search, you find nothing.

Well, not nothing. Just the regular stuff you find when you walk into places where people don't expect company: improptu games, whispered conversations, sloppy makeout sessions, drunken rants (company optional, of course). Speaking of that last one...

"...but I tell you, duckie, it's not all sunshine and daisies," comes a man's voice.

"I know, great-uncle."

"Oh, you've heard, but you don't know. You can't know until you get old enough to get tangled up in all..." he makes a vague noise of disgust. "Lords and ladies and magnates and Arbites and Inquisitors. Everyone below you grabbing at your coattails, everyone above you breathing down your damn neck." His voice is a little slurred, but loud enough that you can hear it from a fair distance– and you're not the only one. You pass several people walking speedily away from the sound, and if you weren't on a job you'd join them.

"Uncle, please," says the young woman desperately, but he's on a roll.

"Just ask your daddy– our good Emperor knows he's dealt with enough of them. I remember when all these up-and-comers were glints in their daddy's eye, and now here they all are. Palus skulking in some corner, and Veritas trying to marry you off to what's-his-name, and Mors putting on airs like we didn't make his family!" Oh boy. Ohhh boy. Better get in and get out before fists start flying.

"Why now," she groans, "why couldn't you get drunk at literally any other time, uncle, please quiet down."

"Yeah, yeah," he subsides, the fire leaving his voice. "It's your birthday and you don't want any of this. I'm just– seeing a good young lady like you grow up in times like these– it makes an old man bitter." His voice finally drops to a reasonable volume at last.

"Uncle, really. You sound like someone monologuing in one of Sidereum's trashy plays. It's not that bad," she says, sounding exasperated.

You hurry past them before they he can start up again, looking everywhere but at them. Thankfully, everyone else seems to have excused themselves, so it takes you a grand total of three seconds to check the area. Then you walk out as quickly as you possibly can. You don't trust that this uncle won't start mouthing off against the other nobles– or Emperor forbid, the Inquisitor.

"It's worse," he says tiredly. "You'll see. Something's coming. I can feel it in my bones. You go enjoy the dance– and look after yourself, you hear?" You finally power-walk out of earshot, and thankfully don't have to listen to the rest of his rambling.

The next few minutes of the search are fruitless. You can't find them anywhere on the edges of the room, and you don't see them in the crowd, either. Perhaps you missed them... Or perhaps it's time to change tack entirely? You haven't checked the upper balcony or the atriums. You turn to move, and as you do you catch a glimpse of a lithe figure in patchwork and a battered overcoat, resting their forearms on the railing as they stare out over the crowd. You've found them!

Oh. You've found them. You hesitate. Your orders are clear. And you intend to obey them! You're not a coward. But...

Nobody back home had ever so much as seen an Eldar, and your brief time in the Inquisition has taught you little about them. But even the whispered rumors you've overheard are enough to bring you up short. Eldar are sorcerers, slavers, shameless murderers who worship evil gods that drink blood. They eat the souls of the wicked to sustain their immortality. Eldar are daemons wearing human skin, if you believe the wilder tales. And the war stories old soldiers like to tell about them always end with the same warning:

Never get taken alive.

And yet you have to walk up to one. Or perhaps something even worse, if they're a heretic instead. How hard would it be, you wonder, to take one of the skin-wights, and ensorcell it to walk and talk like a normal human being? A glowing skin, with nothing but evil inside, flattening itself to squirm under doors and between windows, all the better to grasp at the unwary with its hollow hands... Is that what lurks behind that mask? And did you really find them? Or did they– or it– find you instead?

And yet you know what you must do, even though every step forwards feels like a step further into the jaws of a trap. As you walk up, they straighten out and turn around. Perhaps they sense your approach. Or perhaps they were waiting for you.

"Looking for someone?"

[X] ...Maybe. (Try to strike up a 'normal' conversation. Perhaps they'll let something slip if you put them at ease?)
[X] Yes. You. (Just get to the point. Who are they, and what do they want?)

The time is 8:30 PM.