The Witch Lives (40k)

[open_sketch]

Even the blunts who trusted you, as much as anyone could trust anyone, got touchy during warp travel. During the dreaded transition into the Empyrean, after crews raced to seal windows and viewports with wax and iron, after the passengers had attended the traditional pre-jump mass, everyone just tried to brace themselves in the most secure place they could to pray the Geller Field held. Whenever they did, you noticed that all eyes, or at least all knowing eyes, invariably settled on you. If something went wrong, presumably, it'd go wrong for you first.

Personally, you preferred it that way. Better you didn't see it coming.

You made this transition to the warp in the guest quarters of Pilgrim's Wake, whose normal esteemed visitors were low-ranking representatives from the ship's distant owners or missionary priests on an impoverished pilgrimage. They were unloved places, converted to storage for lack of use and converted back in a hurry, tinged with the ernest desperation of generational spacers who didn't understand the wants and needs of those who scurried around planets.

You, Cass, Dremel, and Rhonda had met together in your room for a prayer circle during the transition, but when delays had struck this had become an impromptu card game, using the large deck Dremel carried; they still looked comically tiny in his massive fingers. As you waited and played, they worked their way through drinks, two bottles of amasec for the humans and barrel-like canteen of something that smelled like paint stripper for Dremel while you nursed your glass in measured sips and collected most of the beads you were play-gambling with.

"I realised in retrospect that playing cards against a psyker was a mistake," Rhonda mumbled, as you swept another handful of silver cubes to your side of the table. Once they'd been on a string that had long turned to dust; Cass had found them in her room on the last transport, forgotten in a drawer from centuries past, and she'd kept them out of her magpie-like habit of taking anything that would fit in her pouches. It felt safer to trade little icons of saints around during a warp transition than to tempt fate by gambling for real.

"I'm not," you protested. "Dremel's face is an easy read, Cass barely knows how to play, and I just assume you're bluffing if you talk."

Her mouth drew into a small, tight smile.

"You're very difficult to read," she admitted. You shrugged.

"I have a lot of practice with self-control."

"I'm just havin' fun," Dremel said, delicately drawing another card as you began the next round. His giant face lit up, just for a moment, before he remembered he was supposed to be serious. "Ah, well."

There was a metallic clatter somewhere in the hall, distant, loud, echoing, and the game stopped. The lights flickered, and then, a klaxon sounded out, joined by the distant clanging of ship's bells.

"That's it then," Cass said grimly. Dremel stood up and walked to the door; you knew it wouldn't make a difference if something went wrong, but you knew it wouldn't stop him from holding the hatch closed even if the forces of the Hells were trying to tear it open, because he'd not let anything get to you.

Everyone else's eyes, as they always did, settled on you. You finished the last of your glass, closed your eyes, and prayed.

The world fell away, and the unheard voices became louder.

---

The first few hours of any journey were always tense, but that tension could not last for long. Eventually people eased up, tasks needed doing, hunger and third and boredom replaced the terror. You got back to your game, but Rhonda excused herself not long after to meet with the bridge crew, and with her gone there was no challenge left to the game, so it simply became conversation.

Cass and Dremel got along famously; the stormtrooper's crude humour and directness delighted him, and she in turn was equally surprised by his simple insights. You were content to just listen as they traded war stories and complained about past officers, talked at length about obscure equipment, and compared injuries. You had another glass of amasec and relaxed, examining the saint-beads and trying to see how many figures you recognized.

"So where we goin' again?" Dremel asked eventually. "I know Rhonda said it, but I'll be honest kinda only half-listen to her, y'know?"

"Yeah, I do. It's some rock called Gathis, never heard of it, but I think there's Astartes there, right?" she asked. Dremel's face lit up.

"Space Marines! Which ones?" he exclaimed. "Ultramarines? We're dead close to… no, that's Ultramar, innit. Tryin' to remember whose out east… uh, Subjugamatators, I think, they were part of the Damocles Crusade so they must be around here somewhere, right?"

"... Alright, I'm impressed." Cass admitted. She'd only be peripherally exposed to Dremel's obsession since joining the expedition. "How do you know all this?"

"When I'm guarding the Inquisitor at the library, she gets the servitors to read books about Space Marines for me so I don't get bored," he said brightly. "Love Space Marines. You know I'm kinda like one, right?"

"I mean, you're big, yeah," Cass admitted.

"No, I mean… Miss Magos-Ann told me! Everyone says ogryns are big and strong because we used to be little humans that got left on big planets and we evolved, but she says that don't make any sense. Not enough time, and we woulda gotten stumpy and little like the Squats anyway, right?"

"I suppose," Cass said.

"We wouldn'ta gotten dumber neither, no reason to. Brain's the best tool a human's got, she says. Nah, she says sometime a long time ago we musta been proper warriors, waaaaay back before Space Marines; some old warlord made us big and strong and a bit shit at thinking for ourselves much, which…" He paused. "That part ain't great, but Miss Magos-Ann says they don't call it a Dark Age for nothin'. Sides…" He tapped the side of his head, where his implant lay under the reinforced steel of his skull; "Big difference between ogryn and you lot; when we're stupid, we can fix it. When you're stupid, you're outta luck, ain't that right?"

"Got me there," Cass admitted. "So, you know what marine's we're going to run into, Dahl?"

"Doom Eagles," you said. "I've not heard of them, but-"

"DOOM EAGLES?" Dremel bellowed, and you both twitched from the immense sound. He immediately brought his voice down to a whisper. "Sorry, but- Doom Eagles?! I don't know much about them, but I seen drawings. They wear silver, all over. Kinda like the Silver Skull, sometimes I mix 'em up, but Silver Skulls have black inside their shoulder-thingy and the Doom Eagles are just silver all the way. Don't know much else about them though."

"Nor do I. If they're anything like the Gate Wardens or Void Stalkers, though, they'll be helpful, and potential allies," you continued.

"Love them," Dremel continued, still beaming ear to ear (an expansive space indeed). "You never met 'em, damn shame. They're helping the Inquisitor, y'know."

"I do," Cass said, yawning and glancing at her chrono. "Shit, it's late. What's the plan for tomorrow?"

---

​

You've got some time before the ship finishes its journey. What are you going to do to pass it?​

​

[ ] You discovered in your last journey that the ship has an officer's library, ill-used and half-forgotten. As small and shabby as it is, it must be ancient indeed. What could you find in there?​

[ ] You thought you might go down belowdecks and check on the crew and passengers, see how the ship is run and how life is lived on the venerable vessel. You hadn't in your last journey as you'd been mildly ill during warp travel, but Praxis always made a point to.​

[ ] You hadn't wanted to test the patience of your hosts last journey, but this time curiosity was compelling you. The engine room of this ship must be quite the place, and you wondered how it was kept running. Who was the Magos who ruled this primordial domain?​

 

[open_sketch]

"There's an officer's library, I heard them mention it. I imagine it is a very old place,"you said. That meant old stories, and not just the ones printed on the pages. "After that… I would like to walk the halls a little. See what life is like here."

"I thought you might," Cass agreed. "I think it'll be better than the last one, though. The crew I've seen look better off. Better fed, at least."

The Lady Chandyll had given you full permission to clean house on any heresy or injustice you discovered in her far-flung fleets, and before Pilgrim's Wake was Vesperian Sanctum, a smaller vessel built out of an old Imperial Navy hospital ship. The family of the captain had styled themselves as a royal lineage, hardly unusual, while the lower crew chained to their stations for days at a time.

While none of this was a violation of written law, as intolerable as it was, the Queen-Captain's self-aggrandizing had crossed a line when you saw royal portraits in the chapels, placed above the images of the Saints and Primarchs. It had not taken much to turn their enforcers against the royals, once it was clear they had the blessing of a higher Imperial institution. You'd had the portraits burnt alongside the bodies when the firing squads had finished their grim work.

By comparison, Pilgrim's Wake had seemed downright pleasant so far, and despite yourself you hoped you'd not uncover anything to shake you from that revelation.

---

Pilgrim's Wake's small library was tucked in an alcove near the officer's chapel, a door you'd spotted returning from mass and noted with interest. It was a small space, nested into layers of worn metal, spared from refurbishment over the decades. The steel leading to to the door was bowed and warped by generations of footsteps, eroded like the stones of an old church. While an underused space, it was plainly not unloved, and the ancient door swung silently on its hinges as confirmation of the care.

Cass entered first, as she always did, her hand off her holster but never straying far from it. You waited for her all-clear as she scanned the room, which took longer than usual. Something was up.

"Cass?"

"... there's a servitor," she warned quietly.

"Thanks for the warning. I'll be okay," you assured her, and she nodded and stepped forward ahead of you, always positioning her body so that she was between you and any blind angles. Ever the bodyguard. You strode in while the two Catachans completing your escort took up positions outside the door, the breathing gear they carried reflexively aboard any ship clattering.

The library was not large; it was perhaps as big as the bedroom you'd stayed at on Eleusis. Except for the door you entered through and another, small one in the opposite wall, every surface was lined with shelves, with a desk and pair of chairs that themselves were piled high with volumes. The sheer volume of memory and meaning around you made you feel as though you were standing at the edge of a cliff, where a stiff breeze could throw you down into the depths.

The servitor Cass had mentioned was seated behind one shelf, scanning carefully over a book with a bionic eye, its other white and unseeing. Its organic components were clearly ancient, wrinkled and worn and colourless, while its mechanical components were likely even older. It finished scanning through the book and, with the greatest care, picked it up in a cushioned hand and placed it in one of the baskets to its side. It did not react at all to the presence of two new people in the room.

There were two kinds of servitors. The majority were vat-grown, gene-tailored to the role from ancient lineages. These clones were never allowed consciousness before their conversion, whose blank minds and uniform bodies made the process easy. When you were near them, you felt nothing but the inner peace that came with their focus, the harmony of organic feedback system and machine instruction. You could not call it an enviable life, because it was not life, but it was a tolerable void.

Even from here, you could tell this was not such a servitor. You turned away, pressing toward the wall, and the moment Cass noticed she placed herself between you and it, her protectiveness a ward.

"Bad?"

You nodded, and she glanced toward it with a wince. You could tell she was trying to figure out what she could offer you when the small door ahead of you opened, and a woman even older than the servitor emerged, the doorknob in a shaky hand.

"... I'm afraid I don't recognize you. Not one of our regulars, then?" she asked. You pressed past your discomfort and inclined your head in a respectful greeting.

"We're guests of the ship, Madam Librarian. We were curious about this space, and what treasures it might hold."

"Treasures? No treasures here, dear," she replied, breaking into a nearly-toothless smile. "Just books. It is the New Library, and I imagine He shall arise from His Throne before we ever recapture the glory of what was. But we do our best, don't we, Hubert?"

She was talking to the servitor. Something, dull and small inside it, recognized it was being addressed, the smallest glimmer of another life stomped out by a harsh electric impulse.

"Ah, he's busy," she dismissed. "Always working, such a dear. The books are old, getting a transcription servitor was the best thing to happen to this place in the last century or two, I suspect. Saved quite a few volumes that were crumbling to pieces, as best we could. Still, a sliver of what we had."

"In the Old Library?" Cass asked.

"Yes. Before my time, quite a ways. It was torn from the ship by Ork raiders, all those volumes pouring out into the void! Greatest tragedy since the Old Night, my grandmother would say. This is all our family could save." She gestured across the books, pride and sadness both on her face. "Of course, long ago, before my time. Nearing on a thousand years ago, you know. Tea?"

"Yes please."

"And for the young man? You keep quite the company," she said slyly. You coughed politely, hoping to give Cass an opening to correct her, but Cass kept silent. She hated doing it; she told herself it's because she was strong and didn't need to care about these things, but the buried reality was a stark terror of speaking up worn in by the drill abbots and their cruelty.

"Madam Librarian, if I may ask, my charge is uncomfortable with servitors in close proximity. Is there a place you could store it during her visit?" she asked instead. Deflecting from her discomfort by addressing yours.

"Oh, yes, of course. Come, Hubert, we'll look at waterlogged volumes again. See if you can't get any more out of them." The servitor (you refused to associate it with a name given after it had been made what it was) stood up jerkily and started plodding over toward the small door, its heavy swivelling back and forth as it calculated out its slow steps.

For just one moment, its eyes met yourself, and you saw it. A mother's love, a modest life in the corner of a dingy hive world, modest hopes for love and safety, pain and struggle and fear. A quota missed, and the final, terrified hours as a person, taken apart to make this.

You leaned against Cass, your eyes welling with tears. The old woman didn't notice, already busying herself in the other room preparing tea. Cass moved toward the chairs, pulling one out for you.

"It's gone. A conversion?" she asked, taking a seat herself. You nodded. "Fuck. I hate those fuckings things."

"He didn't even do anything wrong," you said slowly. "He was just too slow."

Cass nodded, then cast around, looking at the books.

"What were you here to read?" she asked.

"Something old," you said quietly. Something from before it was this bad, to see if anything had clung to it.

You were not much of a reader, but books were comforting anyway. Their stories clung to them even as you struggled with unfamiliar words and small print. Here, in this old library, you found books with ancient stories, fables of Old Terra you'd never read before, and even through time and copies of copies you could still tell most of it was made up, places and names which had never been.

But one or two words you recognized from other ancient books, the titles of old Empires, great rulers, and ancient lands long retreated beyond myth to most. You doubted the authors had any more idea what Ursh or Europa had been than you did, but the names had survived from somewhere and now you were one of the dwindling few who recognized any meaning in them at all, even if all you knew of them was that they were of Old Terra.

You still weren't sure if Mercia had been a place or a princess.

In the other room, you could hear the servitor working, the whirr of its servos and the clacking of its cognitator, half-thoughts sparking in the remains of its mind and snuffed out. Servitors unnerved you, but they certainly had applications to justify their existence in a general sense; any work requiring precision and repetition beyond human capability for one. They could also take on harsh or dangerous labour to spare thinking humans. In many places, like here, that is all the thought that went into them, where you could always tell yourself there was a good chance any given servitor was vat-grown.

But the first one you'd encountered as a child was none of those things. It was an uncle, a man of broad smiles and big emotions, who'd spoken out against a cut in rations at the mines. He'd disappeared one night without a trace, and a machine wearing his face had come back to manage the time-cards. The cards had never needed management before.

Servitors were punishment and reminder to the common people of the Imperium; that they were nothing but meat, that being a person was a privilege that could and would be revoked if they strayed. Servitor converts did not provide much more labour; considering how many of those conversions failed, it was if anything a drain. That didn't matter; it was nothing but a way of demonstrating the power of the Imperium to the masses, that they could take anything from you, up to and including your soul. It was a privilege to think of servitors as useful tools, because for the common people of the Imperium, it was necromancy, the bodies of loved ones stolen and the minds taken forever.

The Inquisitor hated servitors too. Just a few levels above her in the Hive was a facility that turned criminals, runaways, and orphans into servitors, which flooded the tank factory and local district. Forced conversion was her oldest nightmare, which ran so deep she twisted it in strange ways in her mind to try and control it. Whenever she found a conversation factory on the worlds she worked on she'd always tried to reform their systems, so only the deserving would arrive there, though she never really believed anyone could be deserving. It had seemed to her like too big a problem to solve.

This changed. After she met the Lord High Admiral, she'd come to a world where Imperial Guard regiments were sent after being rendered combat ineffective at Cadia, the survivors too traumatised or wounded to reconstitute immediately. This was supposed to be a staging area for treating, reforming, and demobilizating these soldiers, but somebody had paid somebody else and now they were being marched en masse into conversion complexes.

She arrived to see ragged survivors of a siege regiment being fed into it, rank on rank of teenaged boys and girls, many wounded and others trembling so badly from battle-shock they could hardly stand. Gas masks were torn from their pale, tear-streaked faces, their hands manacled to an automatic rail, and they stumbled through the chutes into the abattoir, begging for mercy to the unfeeling workers.

She stopped the line, had the workers and guards assemble, and then had them shot en masse. The managers were pushed into the reject macerators by the freed prisoners. The surviving Tech-Priests were banished. The factory was burnt, and she led the ragged survivors out into the streets of the surrounding city, to the shops and warehouses which supported the factory.

Tens of thousands died, in the chaos of a disordered violence she'd always worked to avoid, but whenever she faltered she remembered the ledgers, the records of bodies in and bodies out and the numbers year after year. Whenever she hesitated, she remembered how proud they were that, with the war in Cadia, they had exceeded their quota at last. How they'd lined their pockets selling the spares. She remembered signing ledgers like it, and swore she never would again.

You learned a valuable lesson that day, when she returned covered in blood and fear and disgust with a hundred thousand broken veterans at her back. The Imperium was right about one thing; there were things in the galaxy that one could not tolerate, whose existence was a sin, who could only be met with violence.

The old woman hummed cheerfully as she worked, tuneless and half-audible, and passed another book for the once-person to scan. You sipped the tea she'd made and tried to block out the screaming.

---

Part two, into the city-decks, soon, but in the meantime, let's get a nice reward here in the form of some skills for our witch. You'd be surprised what could come in handy.
[ ] Historian +1, and "of Old Terra" Speciality
[ ] Historian +1, and "of Pilgrim's Wake" Speciality
[ ] Historian +1, and "of Imperial Trade" Speciality

I'm trying to get writing again as much as I can; pain from carpal tunnel has sapped a lot of my energy over the past year, so it's really not happening as much as I'd prefer, but I'm going to do my best.​

 

[open_sketch]

You spent several hours in the little library, your hand gliding over books, wishing you had forever to read them all, and every book in every little library like it. It was common knowledge that the Imperium had lost more knowledge than anyone could know, but Sister Charitina had told you it wasn't so, it wasn't lost in the sense that it no longer existed, it was buried, uncategorized, lost in the stacks on stacks in the endless archives. All of Imperial history, and much of the history before, had been dutifully recorded, copied, stored, and forgotten about, the press of ten thousand years compressing that which came before like the pressure of an ocean's depths.

Or it existed in little libraries like this one, as little stories that would never go farther.

Your finger stopped on a book. Something ancient stirred within. Carefully, gingerly, you slipped it from the case and laid it out. It fell open, and you began scanning through it. Cass, curious at your intensity, scooted her chair closer and joined you.

It was a story, a very old story. It was written in an ancient dialect of Trade Gothic, and had gone through several translations to get there. You understood maybe one word in three by reading it, but slowly you pieced it together. It took the form of a series of short stories in verse, told between a diverse group of refugees hiding deep in a hive city. Between each was prose about the storytellers, commenting on each tale and reacting to the cataclysmic events happening above them. They seemed scared to give a name to whatever had driven them from their home.

They were pious, modest people, whose devotion was obvious in every word. Some were identified by trade or station; the factory worker, the merchant, the mayor, the clerk and her wife. Others were identified by where they came from; the Pacifican, the Albian, and the Princess of Mercia, who always ended up in such stories. That meant it was set on Old Terra, usually.

But there was something else. They spoke of the Emperor, as their Emperor, so post-Unification. You soon noticed they spoke of a Temple, not the Ecclesiarch or the Ministorum. From your understanding, that meant this story was written sometime before the mid-33rd Millenium, but the tale was clearly set in the past. You got the impression the reader was supposed to recognize the event they were hiding from.

When you told her that. Cass brought out a sheet of paper and began making notes, translating as best she could.

There were two dozen stories, all of them very different. The longest was told by a character identified as The Remembrancer, a trade you didn't recognize; he told a story about the Great Crusade which sprawled on and on with names and places, never quite making it to its conclusion. One was told by a child, who told a simple tale of a rabbit which you gathered was supposed to have some kind of religious moral or meaning but which made no sense to you.

The Princess of Mercia told her usual story, which you'd seen a dozen variations of; at a great ball she meets a noble from Himalazia, an exotic prince who was effortlessly charming and perfect, but upon her accepting his proposal revealed he just wanted the fortunes of Mercia for himself. She fled, as she always did, and disappeared into the dark of the underhive, and now here she was.

Then, there was the story of the Pacifican, the foreigner who it was clear nobody really liked. Nobody wanted to let him speak at first, to hear his lies, but eventually they agreed that'd all tell a story, and he told his. It was short and simple.

"Of yore, a Pilgrim trod the path to Roma,
Was halted by a Stranger, shrouded, dark,
Who sought to learn the ruler of the land.
The Pilgrim spat and voiced, 'No lord commands,
Not even Europa's noble-born sons.'

The Stranger asked, what of the Emperor,
The Master of Mankind, whose legions sweep
Across the realms. The Pilgrim scoffed, 'He?
What right holds He o'er the whole of the world?
What lineage boasts He to claim such might?'

The Stranger declared, 'The line of Caesar,
Of Alexander the Great Conqueror,
Of Gilgamesh, Abraham, and Khan!
His is the right of every King of old,
How could any deny a man of such noble blood?'

The Pilgrim mused, the smiled, laughed deep and long,
'Emperor!' he proclaimed, 'crown me thus,
For thirty thousand years have passed, and sure,
My blood commingles with such regal lines.
Where is my throne, so I may rest my legs?'

Pilgrim and Stranger walked in silence,
Mile on mile, till Roma's outskirts they reached.
There! Warriors, in golden armour clad
descended, and the once-great city burned.
The old river flowed afresh with blood.

The Stranger gestured to the flames and spoke,
'Hark! You see now how noble lines are made,
That the blood of kings spills from humble veins
and the river crimson their claim to rule.'

The Stranger loosed his cloak to reveal,
An eagle of gold and bearing noble,
The Pilgrim, defeated, saw his Lordship,
And fell to his knees, a loyal servant."​

Unlike the other stories, this one had no denouement, no commentary from the others, and the absence was so striking it felt to you like perhaps it had been left out. You read on. There were six more stories, names of places and people you'd seen before, and others you hadn't. Cass filled two more pages with notes before the end.

The final story goes unfinished. The Merchant was telling a tale about bolts of silk when he is cut off by the child exclaiming that they were saved; that the Emperor had sent a Space Marine to rescue them. The mother silences her child, and the story ends abruptly, their fates unknown.

You made more notes, and left deep into the evening, placing the book carefully into the basket to be sorted back. You wondered when it would be read next.

---

The next day, you were met at the elevator to the common decks by a member of the local enforcers, dressed in an ancient and patchwork void suit with a silver badge to denote their authority. He was not tall, only a few inches more than you; though the stereotype was that void-dwellers grew stretched, Pilgrim's Wake maintained standard gravity even in the lesser areas, a rarity. The little man was plainly anxious about having to tell the guest from the Inquisition no, but to his credit he held his ground.

"It's not safe!" he insisted, as you stared at the air past him, as though you were being held up by an invisible wall rather than a visible, and visibly terrified, man. "We simply cannot let you go down there."

Were they hiding something? Scared of what you might see? Telling you not to go was the best endorsement of going you could think of. With a gesture from you, Cass stepped close to him, close enough to press her pauldron against his cheek. The words SLAM SECTOR took up most of his vision.

"Who is we?" she asked.

"T-t-the Ministry of Security, y-y-you are our charges as guests aboard the… but-"

"Cass," you said simply, and she stepped back, grinning. "Let me make something plain. We're going down to walk the halls. If our safety is your responsibility, and it is dangerous, the proper thing to do is to arrange an escort, not stop us. You understand?"

"B-but-" You met his eyes, and he wilted. "Y-yes, Miss Interrogator. I will inform-"

"And what makes it so dangerous down there?" you asked, and he froze.

"T-the deviation from our normal course and change of routine has… riled up the… the crew. Old conflicts, sectarian conflicts, flare up, you understand? Last time there were… bombings, it would be-."

"Sectarian conflicts?" you asked. He winced.

"Yes. Um, between, well, it will seem foolish to you…" he gasped, and you indicated to Cass to press the call elevator button as he shrank away.

"Explain on the way, will you? I would like to be informed."

By the time the elevator had descended, you had the basics. Pilgrim's Wake had a patron Saint, Saint Malpeus of Junction 32-B, and there were squabbles over the details of his life. A lay saint, clearly, but that meant little; you knew many of Saints were canonised not because their deeds were truly miraculous, but for political purposes, and many true miracle-workers overlooked for the same. Perhaps this Saint Malpeus had been the real deal, but was overlooked like millions of other faithful for his distance from the seat of power.

(You were particularly suspicious of the small canon of Living Saints and their tendency to be beautiful young women; you suspected this was merely a series of historical Cardinals independently converging on a cover story for dalliances with unsanctioned witches. Oh sure, when you saw and did impossible things it was the work of daemons, but when the tall blond Sororita with big tits did it, well, that's a miracle.)

The doors opened onto a curious space, though not an unfamiliar one. Pilgrim's Wake was a sort of mobile town more than a transport, trading labour and labourers with the out of the way ports, and sure enough it looked far more like a small city than a ship in its habitation decks. The hallways and junctions were streets and intersections, with bulkheads carved out to create shopfronts and living spaces. It was as densely-packed and noisy as any hive city, swarming with people, animals, and even small vehicles which fought for every move against the tide.

You beamed; this was a far cry from the ancient and empty halls below the command decks you'd wandered before. It was a living place, continuously inhabited as long as some of the oldest cities in the Imperium, awash with stories. It would be just a handful of city blocks on the surface of a planet, but here in the void it was a whole world unto itself.

"What is your name?" you asked the security man who you'd forcefully promoted to tour guide.

"G-G-Galane, M-miss Interrogator…"

"Galane! Is there a church to this Saint Malpeus?"

"Two, you see, that's… the issue," he said. "P-perhaps somewhere else, first? Get a feel for the place?"

You felt the Catachans draw closer to you as you moved out into the street, fighting to create a safe cordon. They looked nervous. Maybe you shouldn't be so casual about the danger.

"Perhaps…"

---

[ ] The Old Market, to see what wonders of the galaxy had arrived here. Perhaps something worth your stipend?
[ ] Hammock-Hang Junction, where the poorest of the crew slept in and lived in the open halls. It is where Praxis would have gone.
[ ] The Enforcer Station, who surely would have at least some grasp of the security situation, and might be able to direct you to the groups responsible.
[ ] On second thought, none of that is as interesting as simply heading to one of the churches and getting to the bottom of things.​

 

[open_sketch]

"Hmmm?"

"If you want the lay of a place, see how they treat the lowest among them. Where would we find such a place?" you asked. That's what Praxis used to do when you were a kid. Lately, she'd taken more to studying markets and places of trade, what she said were causes instead of symptoms, but you hadn't enough to diagnose the place yet in any case.

"W-what do you mean, to…" the man stumbled over his words. "I don't exactly know what you mean, this isn't a Navy ship, the people here do not have ranks, you can't-"

"Cass, spell it out? you asked. The tall woman leaned over, almost casually.

"Your slums, Galane. The rookery, the ghettos, the encampments. A prison if you have one. Where the people you call scum live, right?" she drawled.

His mouth simply hung open a moment, before he finally managed a syllable which sounded roughly adjacent to why?

"I'm feeling homesick," you said simply, then shook your head. Enough fucking with the poor man. "Poverty breeds resentment, resentment breeds heresy. Right?"

"... of course, right," he said. "Well, enforcers don't typically, uh…" He scanned over Cass in here carapace, and the heavily muscled Catachans close behind, and steeled himself. "I think we'll be fine. There is a place, a disused serviceway near the heat exchangers at the belly where nobody wants to live, where itinerant sorts end up. Workshy and the like. The locals call it Hammock-Hang Alley."

There was something incredible about a man talking about an area this small speaking of 'locals' like he wasn't one, of 'itinerant sorts' in an area of about 30 hectares, it never ceased to amaze you what could be normal to people.

With your guide leading the way, you set out down the narrow 'streets' carved through the halls. What you couldn't help noticing was how beautiful it was, in a disjointed sort of way. Often places like this were gripped in decay, built to last centuries and neglected just as long, the people pressed into them unable to spare a moment for its upkeep with their quotas. You'd been on transport ships which felt equal parts like tombs and shanty towns, the once-habitable purpose-built structures having turned to rust and the people living in the scraps, clinging to life. Places where you could see the mould on the air. Prisons.

This was a city, and not the pale imitations erected by industrial planners. The ancient halls of Pilgrim's Wake, the immutable and indestructible plasteel girders and pillars, provided the skeleton, but inside it countless generations had built layer upon layer. In a sense, there were two parts to this ship; you'd been in the working sections before, from the forward nav position down the spine to the command centre and engine room. That area could have been any Imperial ship in the galaxy, albeit one whose simplified duties had left miles of empty halls for your curious footsteps to echo in.

This was the payload; they'd once been enormous cargo containers for massive bulk loads, but the Imperium standardising their transports in some ancient reform had seen this ship shuffled to the charter merchants, and then to the free cartels. Inside that cavernous space, generation upon generation had transformed it as, more and more, the cargo of Pilgrim's Wake became the people who lived on it.

Parts of it still looked like a ship, or close enough, those ancient pieces from when this was a Charter vessel and the passengers were less permanent. Then those pieces had been subdivided or torn down or rebuilt, layer on layer in a thousand different materials turning 30 decks into a maze of disconnected halls, free-standing high-rises, and chaotic walkways. Pipes and wires criss-crossed everywhere you looked, lights of many hues and temperatures hung wherever there was space, and despite the fact there was certainly a ground floor and 'streets' at the base of it all, you could very rarely see all the way to the ceiling for the outgrown buildings, gantries, and elevated streets laid above.

You didn't need psychometry to see how much the people here cared about their home. It was clean, metal was polished, things look worn, but never worn-down. This was a city of tradesmen, after all, people with skills worth hauling across the void, in a galaxy where life and labour was cheap and disposable. They were also tradesmen with nothing to do on the long journey between worlds but work for one another, and nothing to spend their earnings on but the ship itself.

They had helpful signs on many corners, layers and layers of them to help guide people through. At many of the four-way junctions were support pillars wrapped in spiral staircases or ladders, often looking very different from centuries of cyclical restoration and decay, but each was absolutely covered in posters, letters, and art. You noticed quickly how much paper there was on every surface, crinkly fragile rice paper presumably made from some hydroponics byproduct. It couldn't last long in public, even sealed in a spacecraft, so the art and missives on everything must be constantly refreshed with messages, practice, and advertisement.

You got a sense of districts as you moved through the tiny spaces, places where the dialects shifted, a phenotype was dominant, where certain arts or techniques were practised. One area saw everything framed in a beautiful dark red wood, often with intricate and swirling carvings, another was decorated with lovingly painted bones, every family home proudly displaying the history of residence. These were obviously enclaves from the worlds on the regular circuit, clinging to their home cultures, but even then they blended into one another at the margins and the main streets.

That so much could be packed in such little space made more sense as you wound your way through; a walk that should have taken no more than ten minutes in a straight line took the better part of two hours, pushing past the crowds and winding your way through the chaotic, uneven streets. There were so many people, shoulder-to-shoulder in the main corridors, many busy but others relaxing at streetsides, smoking from curious glass pipes, reading, lounging, laughing. You waited around the corner of a junction while a forklift passed and caught sight inside one of the rooms through a half-pulled curtain, where a small theatre was engaged in some kind of performance art, though you couldn't stay to watch.

And children! There were so many children, happy children playing, lounging, watching their parents work and working themselves as they learned the family trade. Your journey came to a halt for a procession of young ones dutifully following a number of the local Sororita to or from schola; presumably this was a lay or insular branch, as you'd doubted the ship had had much contact with the Eccesiarchy's hierarchy of late. You almost diverted from your task to find their convent, curious about their theology.

You'd not been to a place like this in a long time; cities usually only looked like this after the Inquisitor was finished with them, which meant you'd need to leave soon after. You never got to sit and stay, and watch how these places were, what life was like when it wasn't being squeezed out of people. It was enough to make you forget why you came here.

At least until you heard your first gunshots.

You didn't see them, they weren't close, as absurd as that was in a place this small. They happened on the far side of a nearby compartment, the noise echoing above people's heads in the narrow halls, just a short rip of an autogun spraying out a burst, then two more snaps seconds later. Instantly, Cass and the Catachans formed around you, the stormtrooper's hand on your shoulder to push you down and out of the way at a moment's notice.

The world around you froze, the people stopping in their step and turning; they weren't panicked, they knew they weren't being shot at, but they were alert in case they needed to get off the street. The cacophonous noise of humanity stopped, for a moment, then started again louder than before. If there were screams or sobs or sighs, they were lost.

"Galane?" you asked, looking to the man, who'd drawn his bulky needle pistol the moment he heard the shots.

"That's on Emberway, that's a border district," he said quietly, then kept talking at your puzzlement. "B-between Luminar and Sanctifier neighbourhoods. If I had to guess, some Sanctifier juvie just tried to pick a fight and got got."

"Should we go have a look, or will that spark things further?" you asked, unsure if Galane would really know one way or another. He clearly wasn't that familiar with the specifics; he didn't think of himself as a local, even. He shook his head.

"Well that's the thing, r-right? Both churches think we're h-heretics because nobody in the crew proper care much for their fake Saint; we have a shrine to S-Saint Palmerinah…" Fitting; Saint Palmerinah was the patron of judges. And woodsmen, oddly enough. "Sarge said when he was a lad, the captain wanted to be proactive, and we lost a lot of enforcers for nothing. It's residents killing residents, ain't none of our business."

"... ain't you supposed to be the law, big man?" Sergeant Strakhard asked dryly.

"Yeah. Captain's law, so making sure the tithes coming in and things are quiet when we trade. The churches are the ones who organise the resident's tithes, and they got their own militias for sorting out petty crime and the like. None of our business, like I said. Besides, won't be nothing there, militias don't hold ground, they run after shooting. And not like there ain't enough medicae on this ship, every third resident's a doctor it feels like."

He obviously saw on your face that you weren't convinced, because he kept talking.

"L-look, Miss I-Interrogator, if an Enforcer comes through after something like this, the clerics might think w-we're trying to shut them down. It might make things worse…"

---

Do you press on to Hammockhang Alley, ask more questions, chase the lead? Do you try something else entirely? Write in. Plan vote.​

 

[open_sketch]

Can I get an Easy (6+) Sensing roll? You'll be at +6 due to all your bonuses (Sensing + Imperial Psychic 2 + Object Reader), so you can't fail to get at least 1 Success, but remember you need 2, so it's a question of it you think you can hit a 10+ to get two successes on one dice, or if you want to risk rolling more.

Whoever rolls, please announce in your post how many dice you are going to roll, without editing the post. That way, you can't change your mind on the number of dice you rolled without leaving an 'edited' note, so we can keep things honest. Can't believe I never thought of that before!

 

[open_sketch]

You took another glance down the street, toward where Galene had looked when the shots rang out. He was probably right that you arriving would be disruptive, but it felt like a dereliction of your duties not to at least take a look, and gather what information you could.

"I believe you, but it won't be an Enforcer going, it will be a representative of the Imperial Inquisition," you said sternly, beginning to walk. "To be clear; we are not going to a pick a fight. I just want to find out what happened."

"I… of course, but if I can ask… why?" Galane asked, falling in beside you, clearly reluctant to put his needler away. "It's just the usual dust-up."

"It's my job. You, in theory, enforce. I interrogate, and I have many questions."

Your guards fell in around you in perfect lockstep; the Catachans privately thought of it as kid-watching, the protective cordone they'd form around anyone vulnerable who needed to leave the wire. Even with the street clearing, people somehow finding other places to be, it was noticeable now how the crowds parted around their purposeful movement and half-raised lasguns.

"You mentioned the names and a dispute over a Saint, but few details. What, specifically, is the point of contention between the Luminars and Sanctifiers?" you asked, making conversation as you pushed to the corner. The man shrugged.

"They'll say it's some doctrinal dispute, and mean it, but the reality is…" He paused, thinking how to phrase it. "If I can be clear, Miss Interrogator, they've been locked in this hold for fifteen hundred years with each other. T-these are not rational people you can talk to, they're… petty little fanatics and grudge-holders who can't let anything go. They kill one of ours, we kill one of theirs, on and on forever. Pointless."

"Surely they realise that," Cass ventured, and the man snorted back laughter. The wall of Catachans between him and the city was seeming to boost his confidence, and with it his disdain.

"Don't let the pretty lights fool you. Sure, they're decent metalworkers and tech-wrights, but under that these people are savages. This is how they've always been."

Yeah. You'd heard that before.

You rounded the corner just in time to see a small crowd moving in the opposite direction. You couldn't see clearly, there were so many people around them, but you got the impression that they were carrying at least two people. In the street proper, a handful of stragglers still raced down the sides of the hall, swerving to avoid the scene of the shooting itself, a pockmarked wall and two blood stains. A silver, engraved snub revolver lay discarded on the floor, alongside the bloody remains of a shirt and several… pieces.

At the end of the 'road', if the small junction could be called such a thing, there stood two people in black clothing with rifles looking on dispassionately, their faces hidden behind blue masks. You could see little detail about them, and they moved off almost as soon as you approached. The street was soon silent and empty.

The Catachans took up position farther down the hall, and you approached the scene slowly, looking it over. The direction of the shots were not in doubt from the tears in the walls where rounds had skipped off, and their target was the first, smaller bloodstain, closer to where the shooters had been. The second, larger one, which marred the steel plates of the walls and floor with smeared blood and pieces, was farther down the hall.

The place felt heavy, weighed down by fresh anguish and despair. Hot with anger. You stood back as Cass approached closer, tracing one of the fresh silver lines with her finger to the larger bloodstain. She winced.

"Hmm?"

"Ricochet, it's why you never stick to the walls in a city or ship, lead will skip all the way down farther than you think. Look, the corrugation gives us perfect trails, see?" She paused as she got closer, then sighed. "Dahl, stay over there. Keep your distance."

"Why?" you asked, though you respected it. She indicated to one of the grooves in the wall, and traced it downward.

"Those are pieces of somebody's skull, but whoever was shooting was already aiming low and hit lower."

And she had a feeling it wasn't just somebody bending down. Fuck. There were always kids, Praxis said it over and over to convey the seriousness and risk of taking violent action, but it still always hurt.

You turned away and approached the pistol. You stepped, as best you could, around the blood, but it was already smeared by the efforts of the crowd, distributed in the thin film of prints from hands reached out to steady people, or stains transferred from bloodied clothing. It was impossible not to get it on your delicate shoes. Flecks dotted the weapon.

Gingerly, you removed your glove and reached out. Your fingers closed around the handle of the revolver, and its most recent and hottest memories surfaced forcefully, the last time fingers had closed around it. It was being drawn in a hurry, in haste, with anger and fear, and you saw out the barrel one of those blue-masked men, looming ahead. You saw them as the wielder had seen, not dressed in black but encased in midnight, their masks grinning, horrible demonic visages. They won't get away with it. I can't let them get away with it.

The weapon discharged high, aim thrown off by panic. The return fire was not. The revolver had dropped, and a dozen people had seen it and, wary of the masked men, had left it. Its owner had been pulled away.

The memories swirled away into a haze of the deeper history, of shots fired in practice and anger, of its creation just a hundred metres away and a century past, in a workshop that was now a nursery. Gingerly, you handed it to one of the Catachans.

"Galane, which ones are the ones in blue masks?" you asked.

"The Saint's Own Martyrs Platoon, the biggest Luminar militia, at least thirty of them. They answer directly to the clerics. As I said, some Sanctifier juvie with a snub pistol got stupid and got smeared by the SOMP," he said. "It's usually what happens."

"Do the Sanctifier militia fight back?" you asked, and he shrugged.

"Sometimes. Hasn't happened in a while, but things have been tense."

Lost in thought, you traced the splatter of blood down the hall, thinking. If random kids were trying to jump the other side's military in such a stupid way, that was usually the result of the leadership not taking action on their own. There could be a lot of reasons for that.

You stopped in front of a door, an ancient pressure door reappropriated from some other part of the vessel, set into a thin steel wall that ironically wouldn't hold an atmosphere. It was marked with the triple diamonds of a medicae facility, and you realised with a start there was a crowd here, staring at you. They'd fallen silent on seeing you, and you'd been so lost in the hollow feeling clinging to the blood that you'd not noticed them parting before you. You'd gone maybe thirty metres, turned two corners, and it felt like a different world.

To your left, Private Holis stepped ahead, her hand on the flamer hanging around her neck. People, angry, teary-eyed people, eyes fixed on you. No, not on you, on the symbol pinned below your collar. It was awe.

Gingerly, you pulled your glove back on and worked the latch of the door. It opened stiffly, creaking on the hinges. Behind it was a simple waiting room in sterile white and green, lined with a haphazard mix of chairs. There was a young woman behind a desk, talking to an older woman you imagined may be a nurse. Another man, his face covered with a black balaclava, yellow chequered headband, and a pair of mirrored goggles. He was wearing what looked like a sort of truncated yellow habit over a set of light grey fatigues, with a solid webbing vest and a truly ancient looking lasgun, and he briefly pulled it closer before realising how many soldiers you had behind you.

"I am Dahlia Hussain, Interrogator of the Imperial Inquisition," you introduced yourself. "Here in connection to the recent shooting. The victims were brought here?"

The young woman nodded, her mouth hanging open in reverent terror.

"Good. You aren't in trouble, but I have questions for-"

The young man apparently found some kind of nerve, or perhaps was simply overcome with a moment of pure idiocy, because he attempted to stand up quickly, his hand on his weapon. Instantly, a dozen weapons snapped up, and you winced at the noise your entire entourage screamed for him to drop the weapon. The lasgun hit the floor and he tripped over a chair attempting to back up, his hands held high.

Cass stepped forward and kicked the lasgun back across the floor; a sharp pain went through your leg as it bounced off your toes.

"Names and trade, now," she ordered, the slam of her footfalls punctuating the question.

The man made sounds which were very much not any sort of answer, closer to a sob than anything. Cass pushed him roughly into a chair and indicated a Catachan forward, who began searching his vest, then she looked to the nurse. The woman immediately fell to her knees, eye fixed on the floor, and dragged the younger woman with her.

"Udele ai'Emberway, My Lady!" she replied. "Senior nurse! This is Nova ai'Steelpath, she is the medicae clerk and book-manager."

"You can stand up," you said. Nobody stood.

"And he?" Cass asked, indicating toward the man. She shook her head, but one glance at you told Cass she was lying, using the mask as an excuse. Cass gave a signal to Corporal Arnan, who roughly pulled the mask from his face to reveal a man maybe in his late teens, pale and red-haired, his face stained with tears.

"... Calien d'Aquapon, he's a member of the Popular Crusade Youth Division," the woman said. And an idiot, she thought, so loudly you could hear it from here. "He's here in case the Luminars come to finish the boy off." And a fat lot of good he would have done.

"Let him go, Corporal," you said, indicating to move him toward the desk, and you started thinking about what to ask.

---

You have a medicae clerk, a militiaman, and a nurse to ask questions of, a pretty good group for getting answers. You can also ask them to bring anyone else who might be relevant.

What do you ask? This is a plan vote, and we can make this interview several updates, so do not worry about getting everything all at once.​

 

[open_sketch]

"Nurse ai'Emberway, what is the condition of the victim?" you asked, then paused. "Victims."

Still looking at the floor, she spoke with a frantic energy, as if afraid to pause too long.

"I am not sure, My Lady. I was sent out of surgery to receive and tend any more victims, should they arrive, and to keep the crowd out. I am not a doctor, but in my experience… Merek is poorly, but not beyond saving. Shot twice through the chest, collapsed lung, bleeding, but he's getting help. Flori's child…" Finally, she slowed. "I do not know what we can do but pray. Miracles happen."

They all knew each other. How could they not, in a space this small? Indeed, the way she answered your questions, it seemed she couldn't quite fathom the idea you didn't know them yourself, or else she simply presumed one of your standing would already know all the answers, and was asking merely to test her.

"You know them?" you asked, hoping to indicate that this was a question you thought you needed to ask. She missed the subtext, as blunts often did.

"Not well, My Lady. I know Flori through the kitchens, of course, she…" She paused. "The Popular Crusade sent a runner to her hab, of course, she… oh, and Merek, his uncle and I…"

"Stop," you said. "Sit up, both of you." Their deference was blinding you both to each other's body language, and making her more scared than she needed to be. It was making getting coherent information from her difficult. "I am not here to hurt you, I just seek the truth."

They did, slowly, hesitantly, eyes still down. This did nothing to reassure her. Her mind exploded with tales of what happened to traders caught alone on the planets they visited by the enforcers, how foreigners were always the first blamed for missing things and missing children, and how nothing they said could save them.

You felt her will, the discipline that had carried her through decades of hard work and tragedy caring for others, collapse, and you knew you'd get nothing more out of her for now. The secretary, who couldn't be older than seventeen, seemed even worse, her eyes stained with tears and mind running with desperate prayers to save her life, or at least her soul.

"Nurse Udele, please go inquire on the status of the patients. Tell them an investigator is here, and they are not to stop their work on my account." If you gave her a task, she could compose herself. You'd learned from experience that last caveat was one you might need to make, from a time Praxis had been shocked to see a terrified doctor emerge with bloody hands to meet her while a prized witness bled to death on the table behind.

You turned to the young militiaman, who at the very least was trying to rebuild his composure and be strong for the women in the room.

"Calien," you said. He nodded, his face steadier now, tears drying. "Do you know Merek, then?"

"Yeah. He's my mate Daul's lil brother," he responded, his voice wavering despite the steel he was trying to inject into it. "He's, uh, good kid."

"Do you think he's at actual risk from this… Saint's Own Martyr's Platoon?" you asked. He spit, reflexively, upon hearing the words, and Cass cuffed the back of his head, equally reflexively.

"Come on, idiot, it's a medicae," she said sternly.

"So-rry!" The young man sounded like a boy again for a moment, and he knew it, because his voice deepened again when he resumed speaking. "I mean, who knows with them lot, they're fucking mental," he said, glancing toward the door. You noticed one another of the Catachans shifted to cover the door, and when you looked back a head ducked back into one of the rooms in the hallway beyond, somebody gingerly checking in on the room. "They mostly stick to their own side, but they've been getting bold. Something in the water over there, I expect."

Over there, some fifty metres away. The young man's brain boiled with generational hate and disdain. He didn't see his opposite number as human, and could not conceive of human motivations for their actions. They were bastards, categorically, who did bastard things for bastard reasons unfathomable to the good human people on his side. Who did those bastard things too, of course, but for entirely understandable, normal, and sympathetic reasons.

"Did anyone witness the beginning of the altercation, or what happened before the boy pulled his weapon?" you asked, and there was silence for a moment before Calien jerked a finger to the door.

"People out there did, I reckon, but it ain't complicated. He pulled steel on the first Lumies he saw, I heard somebody say he clipped one, and they got him back. I know why he did it, though?"

"Enlighten me," you said. He laughed nervously.

"He's not allowed to join us, see? His mum wouldn't let him after Daul got hurt, and she talked to Father Rharv about it. He told Daul he was gonna change everyone's minds, which is idiot for doing something stupid and against Church teachings. We all thought he was gunning for Gründ, you know, but guess he got impatient."

You looked to your accompanying Enforcer, who'd spent the last few minutes pushed up against the corner of the room, and sighed.

"Galene, start making this make sense?" you asked. He nodded.

"Okay… so Father Rharv is the lead cleric of the Church of the Sanctified Saint, who have their Popular Crusade. Father Gründ is the leader of the Illuminated Church of Saint Malpeus, who have their Martyr's Platoon and a dozen other little squads of fanatics. Recognize those names at least."

"And remind me, they're fighting because..?" you asked again. He shrugged sheepishly, having decided that he couldn't get away with telling you they were just 'savages'. You knew it was a mistake to ask anyone here that question, so you turned back. "Was anyone else involved?"

"Don't think so, he mighta told his mates but I've not seen any of them," Calien replied, then glanced at something behind you. You turned to see Nurse Udele returning, her face twisted up.

"They think Merek will live. Little Ada is with the Emperor," she replied, steel back in her voice, her mind blank. She'd done this too many times, and she hated that it had become easier. "If it was just the boy, Father Rharv would implore calm, but Flori's kid…"

"We'll get the bastards, Mrs. ai'Emberway," Calien spat. "We'll fuck 'em up for this, it's about time…"

You heard, at the edge of your perception, somebody outside screaming and wailing, and a churn of voices start up again. Private Holis stepped to the vision slit and pulled it a bit wider, wincing.

"That's a whole lotta assholes out there, and they do not look happy. I count three more guys in yellow packing heat, and I think they want in," she said, sliding the metal shut again. "They look pissed off."

"That'll be her," the nurse replied. The unseen Flori, whose grief was already pouring out into the community right now, and surely already making its way through them to the armed men and this mysterious Father Rharv. Udele wanted to ask you to let her in, to see her child, but couldn't get the courage.

"Any other exits?" Cass asked the secretary nervously. The woman pointed down the hall.

---

What do you do?​

 

[open_sketch]

Cass' hand gripped your shoulder as she prepared to shuffle you toward the exit, but you pushed her back, glancing at the door and taking a deep breath.

"We need to defuse this situation before it becomes a crowd in the hospital or a war in the hold. Sergeant, clear me enough space to speak to these people," you instructed, gripping your Interrogator's badge for comfort and trying to steady yourself. It maybe wasn't the smartest move, but this is what the Inquisitor would have done.

Sergeant Strakhard nodded and moved to the door, unclipping the sheath of his enormous machete from his belt, though not drawing it. He gripped the door and nodded to Private Hollis, who stood back and snapped open a boxy silver lighter with her free hand. She touched the dancing flame to the muzzle of her flamer, and the pilot light caught in a flash of acrid fumes as she snapped the lid of the lighter shut and tossed it to another Catachan.

The Sergeant pulled the door open with both hands, and the crowd that was going to surge toward the door instead found themselves scrambling the other way as Private Hollis advanced, flamethrower braced at her hip.

"BY ORDER OF THE IMPERIAL INQUISITION, BACK RIGHT THE FUCK UP!" she announced, her voice carrying over the crowd as she pushed out through the door. The other Catachans followed, their shortened lascarbines slung at the hip to leave a hand free for the dizzying variety of knives and cutlasses they carried. Guns were more lethal, the Sergeant had once explained, but there was a primal terror to the edge of a blade.

You followed, Cass behind you with the confiscated lasgun slung just in case somebody came from behind and dragging something in her free hand. Just as you realised that you couldn't see the crowd behind the wide, muscled bodies of your escort, that something turned out to be a chair from the waiting room for you to step up onto. It still didn't get you high enough, not until Cass unslung her backpack power pack and placed it on the seat so you could finally see up over the crowd. Your hair almost brushed the steel ceiling.

There had to be two hundred people packed in the tiny intersection of hallways, the ripple of shock and deference still travelling through the ones at the back. Those up front had fallen to their knees, eyes to the deck plating, stark terror evident. The shouts and cries and prayers were dying down to a still silence, just the strained breathing of many sets of lungs blending with the low hum of the flamer's pilot light.

There was a trio of figures in yellow robes at the edge of the crowd, armed but with weapons slung, watching.

"Is there a Flori among you, mother of Ada?" you called out over the silent crowd. One of the figures, a mother, a young mother, stood, trembling. Her face was twisted with emotion she couldn't contain, tears streaming down her face, her eyes locking with yours just long enough to see it. You'd never be a mother, but you'd had three and had known how they loved you, feared for you, how they'd let the galaxy burn for you. You saw it here and it felt like like a weight pulling at your sternum, a cold pain in your soul.

You nodded to her and gestured, unable to muster words yourself. She stumbled forward over the prone man in front of her, and several others moved before you found your voice.

"Just Flori is allowed through. Remain where you are," you said, but the words came out too soft, too quiet. Strained from the effort of holding back somebody else's tears. Cass repeated the instructions in firmer tones, and the other sank back, hands retreating as Flori picked her way forward and the Catachans parted to let her through. She stumbled as she slipped between them, gathering up the hem of her robes as she tried to press forward; it looked almost like she was walking into a gale.

"Cass, go with her," you instructed. She hesitated just a moment before turning, offering her arm to steady Flori as they moved for the door. The poor woman hung off like it was the only thing keeping her standing.

"A crime was committed today, a crime against the Lex Imperialis, and against this community. It is my understanding it is the latest in a long line of crimes," you said, your voice firm now. You pulled loose your badge and held it out in front of you, the red and gold glinting in the artificial light of the hallway. "I am Interrogator Hussain of the Inquisition, an agent of divine justice and revealer of truths. Your hold has come under my scrutiny; where there is heresy, I bring light, and where there is injustice, I am punishment. I, and I alone, am the law."

It was still silence, still terror, but it wasn't confusion or the fear of sudden violence. This was the reverent silence of a congregation.

"Any who acts in retaliation for the events of today will become a part of my case and subject to my scrutiny. Any who disturb the process of justice commits a grievous offence. You are to return to your homes, knowing justice will be done."

There was flinching among the prostrate crowd, but nobody moved. Nobody wished to be the first to move.

"This intersection is off-limits for those without official business or aliments for the next forty-eight hours. Those of you at the back of the crowd, stand and walk away now. Once those behind you have moved, you move as well."

There was movement, but it was slow.

"NOW, you degenerate fucks!" Sergeant Strakhard boomed, and they moved much faster. Within a minute, the halls were empty to the next intersections, where those three armed men waited and watched.

"... Sergeant, can you spare a man to help me down? It is a long way."

---

You have an investigation ahead of you. Where do you start?

[ ] You came here to visit Hammock-Hang Alley, and you may as well go now. The Inquisitor used to say the poor could not afford the illusions that cloaked the vision of other subjects; that clarity may be helpful.
[ ] Those three armed men, presumably members of the Popular Crusade, were an obvious path to a meeting with Father Rharv, the leader of the local faction, the Church of the Sanctified Saint. The clerics are the law in the hold; you should speak to him.
[ ] There was another story here. The Illuminated Church of Saint Malpeus, its cleric Father Gründ, and their militias represented the other side of this conflict. A masked member of their Martyr's Platoon pulled the trigger which had killed Ada, but you suspected they had tragedies of their own.
[ ] Tensions had been calmed. This might be a good time to regroup and get your bearings (clear penalties and gain XP).
[ ] Write In​

 

[open_sketch]

You left not long after; you had work to do, and you needed to be seen doing it. You wished you had access to the resources needed to post somebody at the hospital door, but it wasn't practical in this situation. You needed more information, that's why you'd come down here in the first place.

Guided by Enforcer Galene, you proceeded on to this Hammock-Hang Alley, which was a shockingly short distance from the hospital clinic, yet felt as though it was part of another world. You turned a corner, and then another, and then the beautiful, tense city was gone and you were in a place of neglect and rust, of the kind found on every Imperial starship sailing the void. True to its name, there were hammocks strung across the hallway, hanging from the exposed support pillars or embedded hooks in the walls; many were occupied, others were strung on just one side, wrapped around their seated owners like shrouds. The ancient overhead lights and the more recent wall lamps had all long failed, plunging the area into darkness. It was rank.

Yet it was just a single hallway, maybe thirty metres long. Maybe two dozen people lived here, and about half that were here now; the others were evident by the empty spots. With space at a premium, even their slums couldn't afford to be large.

"What do they eat, Galane?" you asked quietly.

"Some of them go and beg at the main arteries for spare coin; we used to have to drive them off whenever we came down. I understand the Churches both provide meals and spiritual services on occasion, but it is left mostly to the false sisters," he explained, looking extremely uncomfortable as the Catachans switched on their flashlights and swept the entrance to the alley. In the beam, you spotted two figures moving among the group, standing out in spotless blue robes, heads bowed. Local lay sisters, no doubt.

"Which side are the Sisters on?" Cass added, and he shrugged.

"Not really sure how that works, to be honest."

You suspected the lay Sisters here operated as the Sororitas proper usually did in such theological disputes; they took the question seriously but held a diplomatically ambivalent view, and then treated the conflict as a temporal matter until either one side was in definitive ascendance or an authority arrived to settle the matter one way or another, at which point they would be first in line to set up the pyres. The Adepta Sororitas and its emulators existed in delicate balance; they had no legal authority, for that was the domain of the Frateris, but their status was dependent on their unquestioned spiritual authority and unshakeable faith.

Moreover, though, the Orders Passive and lay sisters had practical reasons to maintain neutrality; they functioned as a vital secondary interface between the Ecclesiarchy and the regular people of the Imperium. Grand temples, great processions, confessors and preachers, the Frateris Militia like the local groups who enforced local religious law, and the Battle Sisters in the role as the Chamber Militant of the Odos Hereticus, these functioned as arms of the authority and glory of the Adeptus Ministorum, and as its violent enforcers. It was Sister Charitina's belief that the Holy Synod would very much prefer if that was all there was.

The lay sisters had clearly noticed your party and were moving toward you now. The one nearest adjusted the bag over her shoulder, her eyes still glued to the deck plate, while the other was holding her hands to her sides in a way that made it clear she wasn't going for her holster. They ducked under the nearest hammocks and emerged, bowing low.

"Please excuse your humble servant…" the nearest began, a generic deference to an unknown authority. "I am here on behalf of my Order, tending to the faithful."

You eyed the bags over her shoulder; one was bulging with food and water, the other a slim case marked with the Red Helices. She was very young, dark skinned, filled with anxious energy; sixteen at the oldest. The other was older, mid-twenties perhaps, and while she had a bag and canteen as well her primary purpose was betrayed by the stub pistol at her hip, to make it clear any interference would not be tolerated.

"We are not here to stop you," you assured her. She nodded, but didn't move. "What aid are you bringing these people?"

As the Inquisitor often said, man cannot live on faith alone. All the Imperium's systems were extractive, but most were distant or alien; tithes and tolls, conscription papers and press gangs, roving enforcers and watching Inquisitors, serving distant officers which intruded into the lives of citizens only to take. But people went willingly to the Church, believed it in, loved it, they needed it, and the Church in turn needed that fervour so it could be directed toward their political and economic ends.

"Food and water, mostly, and medication for some of their ailments. We come once every other day on permission of Father Rharv; it keeps the alley quiet, you understand," the older Sister explained, relaxing marginally and folding her hands in front of her.

Hence the Orders Passive, who performed for the Church the thankless maintenance work women had done since the murky dawn of human civilization, the hearthkeepers of the faith. The lay sisters who distributed food and water, did paperwork, laboured and assisted the true Orders. The beloved Hospitaliers who healed the sick and comforted the dying, the Famulous who educated the youth of nobility and ran the pauper's schools, Planxilium to guide pilgrims, Vespila to bury the dead… all the forgotten functions of community the Imperium's absolutism had abandoned fell to them.

It varied, of course; the more urbanised and populous and developed a place became, the more heavy-handed Imperial authority grew. In a hive city, where there were more people than uses for them, they could respond to poverty and unrest with poison gas or flamers or simply cutting off the food supply and welding shut the doors. But a smaller place like this needed ways to ease the tension, lest the collateral damage cost the very expertise the ship traded on.

"My name is Interrogator Hussain of the Odos Hereticus, here on behalf of the Imperial Inquisition. We're investigating the ongoing sectarian violence in the hold; I thought I would begin with the unnoticed people of the hold," you explained. The older Sister nodded firmly.

"My Lady, I know to whom you should speak, if you'll permit me to fetch them," she said. You nodded, and she ducked back under the hammocks. You noticed the people in them had not moved, despite your presence and the conversation; you suspected they were under the influence of narcotics to the point where if they were at all aware of you, they may very well lack the capability of moving.

The sister returned with an older man in tow, bearded and ragged but with a broad, toothless smile and alert eyes. He introduced himself as Nathaniel, no other names, and you asked his story out of curiosity before getting to proper questions; it interested you how one fell to poverty in a prosperous space like this. He said simply that twenty-five years ago he had been a goldsmith, and he had made debased coins; the metal had been supplied by a man on the planet they were stopped at, and while Nathaniel had noticed the impurities, he had said nothing and taken the job.

That man had been hanged, and while Nathaniel would not be handed over, he had been blacklisted by the community and driven from his workshop. He could not work or find a place to live; his old friends in the guilds had for a time put him up and fed him, but he could no longer stand to take their charity (and risk their standing) after a few years, and he had come here.

What made him a good source of information was that he was, oddly, beloved. His guild had followed its code when they exiled him and none others would take him, because that was not how the hold worked, but everyone understood the fault lay with the perfidious crustrunner who had supplied the metal and that Old Nate had been done dirty. When he was younger people would give him odd jobs in exchange for food and drink, and now that he was older and his hands shaky he simply talked with everyone, and everyone spoke with him; a confessional with no scourge at the end.

It also meant nobody batted an eye when he crossed between the territories of the two Churches; the mad old man could believe what he liked. His guild had been a Luminar one, but he knew nothing of spiritual affairs in particular and hadn't been to a sermon in the time since. What he did know was, in close detail, the rough disposition of both side's forces and the reasons things were rough.

It was quite simple; the agreement the Churches had with the Captain and each other was that each paid half the 'passage fee' for the hold, which went to the Captain of the ship to keep it flying to planets where they would make their wealth. Some of that wealth would invariably flow down into the hold again as the crew required their passenger's expertise to fix things.

And thus the issue. The industries of the hold were not equally divided; the Luminars held the majority of the metalworkers and tech-smiths, while the Sanctifiers' wealth came mostly from the medical services and esoteric skill training they could provide to planetary clients. Both sides made good money wherever they went, to be sure, but only when they were able to work. Neither had been much able to in the four months you had commandeered them, but the Luminars held the majority of income from the ship's work. And both sides were painfully aware that it would be the better part of a year before they got back to their route.

The Sanctifiers were losing ground; they might be forced to sell precious land to their rivals just to have enough coin; the man on the street knew that the money he gave to his Church was ended up in the coffers of the heretical bastards across the way. The Luminars were ascendent, and eager to press their advantages; while poverty loomed over all, the laity rejoiced that its burden fell most on their enemies. There was only so much to go around, there was no place to go in the void, and the Tithes were coming due.

---

You have bought some time before things boil over again, but you do not know how much. You will need all the information you can before you make a decree.

[ ] Those three armed men, presumably members of the Popular Crusade, were an obvious path to a meeting with Father Rharv, the leader of the local faction, the Church of the Sanctified Saint. The clerics are the law in the hold; you should speak to him.
[ ] There was another story here. The Illuminated Church of Saint Malpeus, its cleric Father Gründ, and their militias represented the other side of this conflict. A masked member of their Martyr's Platoon pulled the trigger which had killed Ada, but you suspected they had tragedies of their own.​

[ ] The lay Sisters are a neutral force in this conflict; they may have information, or could be swayed to back a side.​

[ ] Tensions had been calmed. This might be a good time to regroup and get your bearings (clear penalties and gain XP).
[ ] You are ready to make a decree, with all your authority, that will hopefully put an end to this.
[ ] Write In​