You ascend the steps to the platform, leaving your escort behind, and feel the familiar sense of doubt and nausea as you look out upon the shifting crowd. You have always felt thus, when preparing to address an audience; a lingering fear that you will make a mistake, that your message is not as clear as you might wish, that you will be laughed at or jeered or soundly rejected, but you have been doing this for over a century by now. You will always doubt, but you know from experience that your fears are poorly placed, and once you begin to speak the fire and passion of words spoken in true conviction will brush such fears aside.
mood, i think
It is the process of reviewing the laws surrounding insufficient tithing that brings you back into contact with Deacon Amelia, who has been working hard to find the logistical and economic support for all the projects you have spoken of. Your awareness of the finances underpinning Sanguis has always been somewhat vague; your domain is the final confirmation, the approval or veto, never the actual crafting of budgets and tax law. Being informed of just how complex matters get when theoretically-voluntary tithes are the primary means of funding the planetary administration was something of an eye-opener, and after seeing just how haggard Amelia has started to look you naturally agreed to assist her wherever possible.
It does not take you long to begin feeling the same way. Endless rounds of meetings with guild masters and pilgrim-ship captains, of balance sheets and allocation efforts, of prioritisation and distribution and negotiation… by the end of the month you're feeling increasingly worn down and on the ragged edge, and after a passing comment from one of your Sororitas bodyguards you decide that some kind of break is in order.
god give deacon amelia a fucking raise, she isn't some kind of super-noble or tech priest or exalt. she's just A Lady who's been trying to manage a shrine world's finances for years and apparently has been doing a pretty dang decent job.
[X]
The Nameless Angel. A mountain carved into the shape of an angel, reputed to be an anonymous member of the Adeptus Astartes. The sight of his broad wings and noble countenance has always left you feeling inspired and invigorated.
This isn't a super high key vote and I'm not, like, going to be super nettled if Pilgrim's Path wins. But I find myself more partial to some contemplation of the Astartes. As
@Cornuthaum and
@Admiral Skippy said Sanguinus was a. not only one of the most popular and widely beloved Primarchs and a Generally Decent dude as far as the stable of "tyrant-enabling posthuman fuckasses" go but b. was unambiguously a mutant. There's a special resonance too because we're on a world dedicated to him and probably have, like, some Blood Angels memorabilia
somewhere because of it but beyond that it really kinda encapsulates the Imperium's hypocrisy. What is beautiful is good and what is good is beautiful even though we as the audience and Ignatius IC know that that is far from true. The past is rewritten to be mythologized and to shore up the rotting, collapsing underpinnings of the modern day and contrary truths get buried while the comfortable lies are embraced.
Beyond that too I think it's a good point to get Ignatius's thoughts and feelings on the Astartes, especially from his new position and vantage point. He hasn't thought of them much and that's super fair, like, they're rare and most worlds and many super powerful people will never see one in the flesh. From an Ecclesiarchical point of view the Sororitas are always the more proximate concern. But it's hard to escape the fact that the Astartes are sort of the embodiment of the Imperium, it's few virtues and its many sins. They're born of the God-Emperor but now mostly enable the vultures that chew over his Imperium's corpse. They're capable of great, like, cultural and constructive potential a la the Ultramarines who actually branch out into being artists and administrators with an eye on a world beyond the endless war but all too often they end up as bloodthirsty, barely stable, myth-obsessed psychopaths. So many are fixated on the idea of an honorable death that they're blind, somewhat willfully, to the world around them and on balance often end up as the literal incarnation of a Hard Man Making Hard Decisions.
So what's Ignatius's perspective on that y'know? His weird, orphaned nephews-by-adoption. And does he have any idea what he's going to do when the Blood Angels or one of their successor Chapters decides to pay us a visit down the line?
[X]
Bureaucracy. Your experience with Deacon Amelia has given you insight into the mechanisms of finance and the state.
Sure sure, it's the vegetables to our War and Brawl dessert basically.
