The Shadow In The Warp - Dark Heresy [IC]

[LCP]

The Shadow In The Warp

OOC thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=277828)


Chapter I
The Traitor's Hand Lies Closer Than You Think
Act One

Scintilla. Hive Sibellus. The Tricorn Palace, the dread fortress of the Inquisition, rising out of the iron-grey sea on a pinnacle of wave-washed rock to look down on the countless, worthless lives that began and ended in its shadow.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/hive_city_by_columbussage-d4ho4s9_zps0365450a.jpg

At least, that was where Jericus Flange had thought they were. Now he wasn't so sure. Since their shuttle had left the transport Miranda - a minnow among the wallowing leviathans of the freight ships that thronged Scintilla's orbital lanes - there had been no tooth-loosening rattle of atmospheric entry, none of the wind and rain that habitually swept Sibellus' spires. He didn't think it had been long enough either, for their shuttle to have made landfall - and yet here they were.

They had landed in a covered shuttle bay that echoed like a cathedral, its high walls and flagstoned floor cut from polished black marble. The roof was one huge iris shutter, its triangular teeth already closed before Jericus exited the craft. That must have been how their shuttle had got in.

There were, he had noticed, no windows. Instead, he caught the steady glint of picters everywhere they went: perched upside-down on the high ceilings, peering out from behind the smooth rectangular pillars. He even thought he had seen a glint of lens-glass in the left eye of one of the busts of stern-faced Imperial heroes that lined the corridors. None of the Acolytes, not even Tauron, recognised those stone faces. The plinths that supported them were blank.

If this was the Tricorn Palace, it was not a part the cell had ever seen before. The echoing corridors seemed mostly empty, only the occasional adepts hurrying past with their heads down and their arms full of papers. At the corner of two passages, a servo-skull hovered over two fuzzy figures deep in conversation, masking their faces and voices in the shimmering cone of a privacy field.

At last, their escorts brought them to a large pair of carved hardwood doors. Saluting, they took up guard positions to either side, waiting for their charges to head inside.

1

Everything about the room on the other side of the doors was old. The brass-cowled lumen globes shed pools of yellow light around its circular walls, leaving most of the rest in darkness. Concentric rings of raked seating descended towards the central point of the room, antique wood with upholstery of cracked green leather. There were other figures sitting at various points around the ring, but their faces were in shadow.

In the centre, an elliptical pit had been sunk into the floor. Lit from above, it contained a large white screen and a table, cluttered with data-slates and projector apparatus. It seemed this was a lecture hall. What kind of classes were given here was anyone's guess: the man at centre stage certainly didn't seem the kind to be tutoring Scholam brats.

Inquisitor Al-Subaai looked up at the new arrivals with a hard stare. Their faces had to be in darkness, the same as the others, but somehow Nova felt he knew exactly who they were.

The low buzz of a miniature grav-motor hummed over their heads. Trailing spools of inky paper, a yellowed servo-skull descended into the arena, carrying a slim data-slate in its delicate, tong-like claws. Al-Subaai took the message from its hands and spared it a cursory glance. With the most minute of nods, he set it down on the table and turned his eyes back to his audience

"If we are all here," his voice rang out, "we may begin."

1

Leonid. Phaestus. The Byzantium. Images flicked across the projector screen, hashing out details of a story that the Acolytes already knew. Red got the feeling that this briefing was as much for the benefit of the other groups of figures sitting in the shadows as it was for theirs.

"You have all been brought here because you have been working on separate facets of this investigation. Whether you know it " - Red felt as if the Inquisitor's gaze had fallen on them again " - or not, your work has been leading us closer to the heart of the Magos' conspiracy."

"You all know that you are servants of the Inquisition. What you may not know is that you are also servants of a still more exclusive organisation."

Nova noticed that two other figures were lurking on the edge of the light, as if waiting to come forwards. One looked to be male, the other female. The woman was smoking something in a long cigarette-holder, desultory wisps of smoke catching the light from time to time.

"More than one thousand years ago, a conclave of Inquisitors was convened to address one of the gravest threats this Sector has ever faced. They called themselves the Tyrantine Cabal, and they founded their order around one terrible secret."

Walking over to the table, Al-Subaai picked up a small remote. "We have brought you here today because - if you are to be useful to us in the battle to come - we have deemed it time that you were inducted into that secret."

He clicked the remote, and the projector threw its next image onto the screen.

It was a pict-capture of a framed painting. The painting showed a scene of men and women in archaic clothes, falling to their knees and pulling at their hair in the streets of an unfamiliar city. In the sky above, the sun was half-obscured as by a solar eclipse – but the black disc that obscured it seemed far larger than any moon, blazing with a corona of violet light. Its ghastly radiance seemed to permeate the colours of the whole scene, reflecting unwholesomely from the buildings and lending flesh an unhealthy bluish tint. In the distance, apocalyptic fires could be seen raging through the city, spires cracking and raining rubble down on the slopes of the hive below.

“Jorn Martin's Fall of Tanis. Not a planet you will have heard of. After the fate that befell it, it was struck from all records by the order of the Inquisition. This painting is kept in a secure vault on Prol IX. Or at least it did... before its recent destruction in an unexpected fire. Now all we have are these pictures.”

Al-Subaai turned and stepped closer to the screen, looking up at the painting. “A black sun appeared from nowhere between Tanis and its parent star. While it hung there, geological upheavals and severe warp manifestations ravaged the surface of Tanis. An epidemic of violent madness swept the population, and the planet's orbit was permanently altered."

Click. The painting vanished.

"Nothing could be salvaged.”

Turning away from the screen, Al-Subaai set down the remote.

"That was in the year 740 of the last millennium. In the aftermath of the disaster, the Inquisition searched everywhere for an explanation. They found the beginnings of one in several fragmentary pre-Imperial prophecies, confiscated from various cults. Cults scattered the length and breadth of the sector; cults previously believed to share no meaningful connections." He clasped his hands behind his back. "Put together, the documents predicted the downfall of Tanis with uncanny accuracy. It was clear they must have stemmed from the same original source. They gave the black sun a name - Komus, or the Tyrant Star."

The Inquisitor paced before the projector screen.

"Since that time, we of the Tyrantine Cabal have worked tirelessly to uncover the rest of this text - the Hereticus Tenebrae, as it is known. Since that time, there have been six documented manifestations of the Tyrant Star. Each time, it has brought death and disaster with it. It appears when and where it pleases, without rhyme or reason."

"Leonid was one of us, and Phaestus was his most trusted ally. It is clear to me that whatever plan the Magos has hatched, it was born from the knowledge he gained on Leonid's last mission - knowledge of the Tyrant Star. Something he saw corrupted him, made him contemplate the ultimate treachery. Perhaps he tried to seduce the Inquisitor into joining his plot. Perhaps that is why they parted ways." He paused. "Perhaps that is why Pallas Leonid had to die."

Placing both hands on the table, Al-Subaai leaned forwards. His eyes swept the crowd.

"Well, we will make him regret his betrayal. We will burn his conspiracy around him, and break him of the knowledge he stole."

Lifting his hands slowly up off the table, Al-Subaai straightened his back and exhaled.

“There is much to be done. Over the next few hours, you will be extensively briefed. But first – are there any questions?”

[Destro_Yersul]

This did not, to Tychon, seem the best time to ask a lot of the questions he had running around in his head. The Inquisitor must have read their reports, but they hadn't heard from him since then, and he had no idea what their failure would mean for the investigation.

The gunslinger had tried to make himself presentable for this. He'd kept the small accoutrements he'd taken from the Miranda, though not the clothes. Tychon was a man for practicality more than fancy clothes, and his flakcloth coat and battered hat were enough of a statement for him. The hat had been repaired after its encounter with Octavian Rhodes, and the coat had a few new holes in it that needed to be stitched up. At least his boots were better looking, now. Tychon had spent much of the trip replacing the metal with ceramite plates, when he wasn't busy with Tauron or helping take care of Nova. Seemed like it was a good plan, all things considered. From what the Inquisitor was saying, Tychon expected life to get a lot more dangerous.

For now, though, he stayed quiet, arms crossed, listening to the briefing.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Some part of Red would have preferred the starched red and black of the 345th's dress uniform, with its humble array of medals, ribbons, awards, and commendations. This place was massive. It was immense and grand, and they were being summoned before an Inquisitor - no, the Inquisitor. Al-Subaai. The man who controlled Red's very life. Such an occasion called for neat clothes and fancy accoutrement.
The Sargent felt unworthy in combat fatigues - although they had been pressed and creased in preparation for the event, no amount of polish or repair could ever make his bettered chest-plate look new again. There was a million little cracks spiderwebbing all over its surface. A million impacts from fire, las, slug, and claw. The chest-plate had served in more than its lifetime's worth of battles - that was one of the reasons why Red had added a request for Stormtrooper-grade Carapace to the end of their last report - and Red was grateful for it, even when he cursed and hoped nobody would berate him for its homely appearance.
1
He had spent quite a bit of travel time on the Miranda holed up in the ship's medicae bay, breathing and eating through a tube. The ship's chirguons took the bullets out of him, one had pressed up close to his heart, its soft nose crumbled flat. If he hadn't been as heavily armoured, he'd be dead.
He had coughed up blood for the majority of the remainder of the trip, but what damage the Guardsmen had taken was nothing compared to Nova, who had fought Lot 11 in hand to hand, without backup. From the state of the thing as it left 41 Pry, stolen away and frozen in the back of the Magos' shuttle, she had nearly killed it, too. Nearly, it turned out, wasn't good enough.

He had been there. Gun in hand, and on his feet. He had shot at it, bucking deckplates be dammed as an explanation, but he'd missed. He split his resources trying to commandeer the ship and sending Drake to kill the pilot instead of killing the important prize. Lot 11 was free, and now Phaestus probably had everything he needed.
He had been there at the Scrivener's Star, he had the glass-eyed Magos in his sights. He plugged las into the traitor's teleporter, but it wasn't enough to stop him. The Magos should have died then and there, but no. He had to lose Hieronymus and Kat, he had to lose Ignace. He had to nearly lose Nova. Twice.
Phrenz, he told himself sometimes, couldn't be helped. There was nothing that could have saved him. Except, of course, for Red. Why hadn't he been more vigilant? Why couldn't he kill the gene-stealer?
This was all Red's fault. He wasn't able to stop any of it, and the guilt weighed down upon him heavily. And still, he didn't seek absolution. He never sought out Drake on the Miranda to confess his sins and take the weight off. Instead, the ganger reverted to old habits.
He found the deepest, darkest bowels of the ship, filled with the dirtiest, ugliest, meanest Ratings there was, and he found there a probably-illegal boxing ring.

And he broke some faces.
Again and again, whenever Red needed to clear his head, whenever he should have been deep in prayer, he went to the boxing ring and broke some faces.

When Nova was well, the Guardsmen tried to engage her in some light sparring, and she always came out on top. She was just that much better than him, and he holding back too much, for stupid fear of hurting her. Of killing another member of his cell.

So he would go back to the ring.
1
Now, Red was nursing a split lip that nobody was rude enough to comment on yet, sitting in a dark room, heavily armed and solidly-armoured, listening to Al-Subaai tell the other shadows in the dark what he already knew. Red was there from the beginning.
It started here, in Hive Sibbellus. Sector 963.

He only had one question at the end of it all. It was simple, and it was venomous, but he didn't lend it voice. He didn't want to have to have the opportunity for Revenge to be torn away from him.

Who gets to kill the Magos?

[Etcetera]

Jericus was about as happy as a Techpriest with a gun in his arm could be. Which is to say very. He forced his attention back to the briefing.

They were going to have to be more careful this time.

[Thragka]

Despite the weight of his failures - made all too literal by the uncomfortable hairshirt - it was something of a relief to have left the ruins of 41 Pry behind. Here, on Scintilla, at the heart of the Imperium of Mankind in the sector, Tauron at least knew who he was. He was a servant, a man of faith and will. An imperfect one; oh, how he would never lose awareness of that, thanks to the ring on his finger and the cilice beneath his jet-black Ecclesiarchy robes and the scoriada coiled at his waist. But the physical penance only focused the knowledge that he already had, as opposed to generating it. On the return trip aboard the Miranda his thoughts had been hounded every waking (and almost every sleeping) moment by the bitter, poisonous presence of failure. The sense of powerlessness Byzantium had left in its wake had been smothering.

He'd fallen back on routine, as a tool to control his moods. Prayer and penance in the Miranda's makeshift chapel had taken up many of his waking hours. He'd spent the majority of the rest in the medical bay, at first simply supervising Nova's recovery, and then, when he could take it no more, politely demanding that the chirurgeons taught him the basics of their craft. He'd thrown himself into that task, but he'd known even then that it was little more than a distraction - he could never hope to develop such life-saving skills to a level beyond the absolute rudiments with the meagre time available. Lessons with Tychon had felt almost like an indulgence, the closest the cleric had had to leisure time as he helped the Metallican conquer his illiteracy. Tauron had been quite touched by the gift Urbanus had given him. When he'd almost given up hope, that simple act of goodwill had served as a potent reminder that there was still good in the galaxy, and that mankind was worth fighting for. The priest was surprised to realise that the other acolyte was probably the closest friend Drake had ever had.

He'd had less interaction with the rest of the cell - Nova, of course, had spent most of it in convalescence, and Jericus had comported himself in his typically inscrutable fashion for the journey. As for Red, Tauron got the impression that the guardsman might have been purposefully avoiding opening up to him. The priest had noticed the occasional bruise, and even respected the Sergeant for it; after all, self-harm was a perfectly acceptable medium of penance, of cleansing the body and purifying the soul. Red would find the redemption he sought, Tauron suspected; and if he, Drake, were ever needed along that journey, then he would be available.

Here, and now, though, he was calm, and his mind was at peace as he waited to be instilled with holy purpose once more. A couple of questions did form in his head, about the nature of the Xenos beasts Cell Lambda had encountered and their connection to this Tyrant Star, and further about what Phaestus's motivations might be. But he kept silent. His role was not to question, but to obey; and the questions that were acceptable to think in order to better achieve his purpose would doubtless be answered before the briefing was finished.

[Rizhail]

Nova stood quietly with the rest of the cell, hiding a bored expression under her hood. She had been somewhat distant since recovering from her wounds, spending the few days that she'd been on her feet in various forms of physical therapy. She was recovering relatively quickly, but Nova expected that the pain from her injuries would likely never go away; the twin scars running from shoulder to groin never seemed to stop hurting when she sparred or ran.

Nova let the silence continue; she had no desire to draw the Inquisitor's attention just yet.

((OOC: Keeping it short. Too tired from work to write more, and I don't want to hold things up any longer))

[LCP]

None of the other watchers in the darkness seemed to have questions either. Stepping back from the table, Al-Subaai nodded to the two figures waiting in the wings. It seemed Cell Lambda's Inquisitor wasn't the only one who would be briefing them today.

1

The first of the new speakers was introduced as Inquisitor Renfield, of the Ordo Hereticus. He wore clothes that would not have seemed unusual on the average law-abiding citizen of the hive – at least, the hive's upper reaches. The only hints of his higher purpose were his rosette – pinned to the lapel of his clean camel-hair coat – and the curved sabre that hung scabbarded at his hip. He had pale blonde hair, just beginning to recede from his high forehead, and a short beard framing his mouth. Red thought he seemed to have a kindly face.

“Inquisitor Al-Subaai has invited me here to speak to you,” he addressed the hall, “about one particular aspect of this investigation. Inquisitor Sinon,” - he motioned to the other figure in the shadows - “will be addressing another.”

A couple of menials in technicans' robes were fussing with the projector. Taking the device's controller from them, Renfield clicked the central rune. A new image flashed up on the screen.

“We are not the only ones with an interest in Magos Phaestus' plan. This,” said Renfield, “is Octavian Rhodes. Missing, presumed dead.”

“Rhodes was first brought to our attention in the events on Prol. At that time he was seeking to secure a document known as the Phryxis Transform, ahead of our friend the Magos. His actions brought him into direct conflict with the acolyte cell dispatched to that world.”

Click. Another picture of Rhodes, among a crowd of richly-attired men and women. The spires of a strange hive rose up behind them.

“Rhodes is – was – from a prominent noble family on his home planet, Cantus. A family that has suffered a rather spectacular fall from grace, courtesy of our Ordo, since the head of their household placed his cards so brazenly on the table. The question is, was Rhodes working for himself – or someone else?”

Click. The image vanished.

“That is where things become interesting. The Phryxis Transform has deeper connections to Phaestus than its theft. As some of you will already know, it was Inquisitor Leonid and his retinue, including Phaestus, who returned the Transform to that vault in the first place.” Another click of the controller brought up a grainy image of Leonid and his associates.

“The struggle to retrieve the Transform was a bloody one. It pitted the good Inquisitor and his allies against many disparate cult elements – cults that were previously thought to share no links. Our questioners could extract little from the captives that were taken about what had coordinated and unified their efforts, but the effect was deadly. Leonid's own Interrogator was killed in the final battle to retrieve the Transform.” A click brought the face of Interrogator Kraus into sharp focus, the man's stern expression every inch the ex-Commissar he had been.

“From this chaos, we managed to sift one salient datum – a name. More specifically, the name of an organisation: the Servants of Twilight.” Renfield smiled. “Perhaps I should say, the name of an organisation that doesn't exist.”

“Data-slates will be circulated to each of you when this briefing is over, with more detailed information – but suffice to say, the Servants of Twilight are a rumour, an apocryphal bogeyman as old as the Calixis Sector itself. Minor cults and renegade governors alike have laid their heresies at the feet of the Servants of Twilight, attributing them the most... fantastic powers to coerce and mislead. Despite this, no member of the 'meta-cult' has ever been apprehended. It is the official stance of the Inquisition that the Servants of Twilight are a fiction, concocted to deflect blame from heretics of a more mundane variety.”

He gave a significant pause.

“In many cases, no doubt, that interpretation is true. As a universal hypothesis, though, it would sit a little more comfortably if not for two facts. One: prior to each manifestation of the Tyrant Star, the number of reports and rumours related to the Servants has shown a marked increase. Two: they are alluded to – repeatedly – in the source documents of the Hereticus Tenebrae.”

“Tracking the Servants of Twilight has been the work of half my life. Thanks to the work of Inquisitor Al-Subaai's acolytes, I believe we now have the most substantial lead in decades. Octavian Rhodes, while in all likelihood nothing more than their cat's-paw, was doing their work on Prol, representing the same interests from which Leonid and Phaestus originally rescued the Transform.”

Renfield's eyes scanned the darkened faces of the audience.

“They left it alone for twenty-two years. Only now, when Phaestus wants it too, have they reared their heads again. To me, this indicates they know something about the Magos' plan, and they don't like it.” He set down the projector control. “Rhodes may be dead, but there must be more of their agents out there. We find one, and we may be able to crack two mysteries at once – both what Phaestus is planning, and the identity of the meta-cult.”

There was an eager glimmer in the Inquisitor's eyes – those last two sentences had been spoken with real passion. Cutting himself short by force of will, he stepped back from the table.

“I now yield the floor to Inquisitor Sinon.”

1

Inquisitor Sinon was a slight woman who seemed ill-suited to her ornate carapace armour. From the way her left leg moved it was clearly augmetic all the way up to the hip joint. Quite a crude augmetic too, by the sound of it – to Jericus' knowledgeable eye, it looked like it was giving her some pain. It was odd for an Inquisitor to have such low-grade cybernetics. She walked with a cane to assist its motion, and in her other hand held a lho-stick in a long cigarette-holder. Nova could smell the smoke from her seat.

“So,” said Sinon. She spoke laconically, but something about her manner betrayed an incisive intelligence. “You've heard from the Ordo Xenos and the Ordo Hereticus. You'll have guessed which Ordo I'm from.”

Placing her cane upon the table, she cradled her elbow in her free hand and took a draw on the lighted low-stick.

“Relax,” she said, “I'm not here to tell you what's waiting to kill you horribly. Inquisitor Al-Subaai has another bit lined up for that.” Smoke curled under the light of the overhead lamp. “I'm here to tell you about something else.”

Limping over to the table, she jabbed the controller without picking it up. A new picture flashed up.

“This is 41 Pry,” she said. “Some of you will be labouring under the belief that this was the location of the last recorded sighting of the Byzantium. You are wrong.”

Another jab of the button, and a star-map of the sector took the place of the seedy space station.

“In the last few weeks, astropathic relay stations across the Sector have begun to fall silent. Here,” she said, picking up her cane and pointing to a white dot, “on Fedrid. Here, and here,” she continued, “at Granithor and Munsk. There may be others that have not yet been reported.”

“These are isolated stations, the kind of places that run with a skeleton crew. Nevertheless, the station at Granithor managed to send a distress signal before they were cut off. Help, help, etcetera, etcetera.” Sinon sounded bored. “Thankfully, they also managed to encode and send the data for this image.”

Click. A distorted pict-capture, grainy and low-resolution, took the place of the map. Some chunks of it were missing, but still there was no mistaking the blocky outline of the Mechanicus light cruiser at its centre.

“This was precisely four days ago. A Navy fast response team has been sent to the scene of the attack, but we have yet to receive their report. In the meantime, all three of the stations in question have been as silent as the grave. In the absence of other evidence, we're assuming that the incidents on both Fedrid and Munsk have the same cause. This is despite the detailed assurances of House Orthellius that no ship could have ridden the known warp routes between these planets in the time it seems to have taken.” She sighed. “We also have the assurance of every Navigator house with operations in the Sector that all their loyal sons and daughters would rather die than serve the traitor Magos. So let's not throw out the hypothesis that they're a pack of liars.”

“Still, every cloud has a silver lining. Our archivists have been sifting the libraries here, trying to tally the events we've been witnessing with fragments of the Hereticus Tenebrae. This has provided the last piece of the puzzle. Conferring with Inquisitor Al-Subaai has left me in no doubt that this is the text we were looking for.”

Finally picking up the controller rather than jabbing at it, she pointed it at the projector. A new image filled the projector screen - inky letters printed over some ancient parchment.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/Prophecy_zps7742b37d.png

"In lonely towers, three choirs will cease to sing," Sinon read aloud. "This fragment was actually added to the pages of the Hereticus Tenebrae by Inquisitor Al-Subaai himself, in a raid on the ruins of the Maedb. A mission for which I'm sure he has the archivists' eternal gratitude."

"The final paragraphs are of course of the most interest. If this is truly part of the prophecy" - Jericus thought he saw Al-Subaai frown - "then the implication is clear. All these events are leading up to one thing: the manifestation of the Tyrant Star."

"The Tyrantine Cabal maintains a network of observers across the sector, and over the last years the number of signs and portents associated with the Tyrant Star have been steadily rising. Rates of mutation and stillbirth have shown a statistically significant increase across half a dozen worlds, mainly around the boundary of the Josian Reach and the Markayn Marches. Repeated outbreaks of group madness have been reported in the Brontian underhives, although this has been attributed by some to scavenger gangs reintroducing condemned shipments of synth-protein into the food supply." Statistics and pathology reports flicked over the projector screen. "Cult activity has undergone a spike across the Sector, with many millennialist sects proclaiming the end of days."

"In the past, we have never been able to predict when or where Komus will strike. If we can unlock the secrets of this prophecy, we may be able to gain more understanding than the Cabal has gained in a millennium. And if we can stop it, we may be able to save countless lives." She put the controller down. "A subject on which I believe Inquisitor Al-Subaai has one last thing to say."

1

Having taken the floor again, Al-Subaai took a moment to compose himself before beginning.

"Inquisitors Renfield and Sinon have briefed you on the darkest threat the Calixis Sector holds." He paused. "I regret it now falls to me to describe to you another threat - one that comes from outside."

The projector threw up a succession of images. They were grainy pict-captures of a strange sky, slowly turning dark. Swarming shapes poured down like squalls of tainted rain, blotting out the horizon.

"In 745.M41, Hive Fleet Behemoth entered the galaxy from the Eastern Fringe. These are images from the Fall of Tyran, retrieved from the data-codex of Magos Varnak."

Slowly, Al-Subaai painted the awful picture. Of the ravenous, extragalactic swarm that had poured through the void, stripping worlds bare in its wake. Of the Battle for Macragge, and the long illusion of victory. Of the ravages of Hive Fleets Kraken and Leviathan. Images from new theatres of conflict crossed the projector screen - aerial photographs of Imperial fortifications overrun and dissolved by hordes of leaping horrors, of black swarms crawling across the landscape like rivers of ants. Colossal spider-like shapes strode storeys high through wheeling flocks of bat-winged creatures, big enough to reach over fortress walls.

"As you can see," he concluded, "it would not be an exaggeration to say that the entire Eastern Fringe is locked in a struggle to the death with the Tyranid menace." A click of the projector shut off the last of the ghastly images. "The swarm is guided by what are known as vanguard organisms. Scouts dispatched ahead of the hive fleets, to seek out... edible... worlds."

Click. A detailed anatomical sketch of two half-dissected specimens flicked up onto the screen. Had they not so clearly been dead, Red might have flinched.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/Vanguard_zps088729ff.png

Stepping forwards, Al-Subaai pointed up at the first specimen.

"Genestealers. Known to the Imperium even before the arrival of Behemoth, the connection with the Tyranids was only made when they were witnessed among the Xenos ranks. Their disgusting progeny infiltrate our societies, breeding true to each other until they can produce a deviant psyker to light a beacon through the void. A psyker that, in Sector 963 of Hive Sibellus, Magos Phaestus attempted to abduct through the mercenary services of the criminal Megaera Merrick."

A pause. Al-Subaai turned his attention to the second creature.

"Lictors. To our men in the Imperial Guard, also known as the Mantis Killer, or Spook. Dispersed in solitary pods ahead of the hive fleets, they seek out concentrations of our forces to bring down the swarm upon them. Once the Tyranids arrive, these scouts function as assassins and saboteurs. On 41 Pry, Magos Phaestus escaped with a live specimen of this foul breed, shipped in stasis from the domains of Ultramar."

"There are countless other breeds of Tyranid, breeds that do not have any specific ability to call to their kin. To our knowledge, Phaestus has shown no interest in them. The implication is clear." Reaching over, he flipped a switch at the back of the projector, shutting down the machine.

"The Calixis Sector is old and indolent. Our military resources are already being funnelled into the Spinward Front, as well as..." - he shared a glance with Inquisitor Sinon - "...other projects. Even if our armies were waiting and ready, Guard forces with no previous experience of the Tyranid mode of warfare have been shown to be far less effective than those who have fought them before. They have a fivefold casualty rate, a tenfold suicide rate, and are six times as likely to desert."

"We have seen no signs of Tyranid presence anywhere this deep in the Segmentum Obscurus, but when an enemy can attack from outside the galactic plane, anything is possible. The arrival of a hive fleet would mean a new kind of total war for the Calixis Sector. And we are not prepared."

"And now, the general briefing is over. Each cell will now be briefed in private on the part it is now to play." Walking over to the table, he looked down at the papers there, then looked up, as if surprised that the watchers were still seated. "You are dismissed."

1

It had been a long, silent walk back down the echoing corridors to the cramped office they now found themselves in. A marble bust of some stern-faced woman looked down at them from a wall of bookshelves, judging.

The door opened, and Al-Subaai let himself in. Taking an empty seat behind a heavy desk, he pulled open a drawer and pulled out a data-slate. Tychon recognised the words of the cell's report in the little green characters that glowed on the data-slate's screen.

"So," said the Inquisitor, after a long silence. "What do you have to say for yourselves?"

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon didn't want to be the first to answer. He pushed his hat back, forced himself to meet the Inquisitor's eyes. Here it was, then. Time to face the music. In a way, the gunslinger supposed, the fact that Al-Subaai had bothered with the briefing first and this second boded well for his continued survival. The Inquisitor likely would have just had them shot, if he wanted them executed for their failure.

Oh, and it had been a failure, Tychon had no doubt of that. They had failed to capture or kill Lot 11. The Lictor, he corrected himself, now that they had a name for the thing. They had failed to capture the Representative. They had, most certainly, failed to properly identify who it was they were meant to capture in the first place. About they only thing they had done right was kill heretics. Even then... The gunslinger's thoughts strayed to the two fine pistols he'd been gifted with. At least some good had come out of this mess.

"Well," Tychon began, running a hand over his jawline where his stubble had grown back. It still itched sometimes. "Ain't worth much, but we almost had the blighter. Few more seconds would've done it, I reckon. Still, we didn't have a few more seconds. We cut it close as it were. Almost died in the void, during extraction."

Something occured to him then. The representative had carried a box. "That device we brought back from the servitor. What was that?"

[LCP]

"You mean this?" asked Al-Subaai. He cast the matchbox-sized device onto the table. "It appears, Mr Urbanus, to be a box. What it contained was rather more interesting... our Mechanicus allies tell me it is some expensive variety of spy-fly."

For a few seconds, Al-Subaai sat glowering silently.

"So here we are," he said, at last. "Phaestus has his prize, and has vanished back to Throne-knows-where. Every single subject who might have been able to tell us something is dead, with the exception of one Malfian harlot, who," he said, "was intercepted attempting to board a long-distance liner on Merov. One of my Interrogators has been questioning her with considerable artistry. Apart from a few petty Cold Trade contacts, she's told us nothing of use."

"You are the only cell who have had direct contact with Phaestus. Twice, you have survived his pets, which if we had foreknowledge of them would have justified an Astartes strike team. And yet wherever you go, you manage to leave nothing but havoc behind."

He reached into the deck and produced an official-looking form. "Sergeant Red. Your request for improved combat gear was received by our quartermasters. I have personally countermanded it." He put the form down on the table. A large winged "I" had been stamped across it, along with the bold letters DENIED.

"You are being given a non-combat assignment. Octavian Rhodes was our best remaining lead. Having seen to it that we will not be able to question him," he said, "you will instead look for the evidence he left behind. Find out what he knew that we didn't."

Rummaging in the desk, Al-Subaai produced a stack of data-slates, and began sorting them.

"Inquisitor Renfield has been investigating the Servants of Twilight for some time, and may be of some assistance. The Miranda is currently refuelling and resupplying. Tomorrow, she will depart for Rhodes' home world of Cantus. You will be on board." He looked up at the gathered Acolytes. "Am I understood?"

[Thanatos 51-50]

"My Lord, with respect, we may have a better lead than Cantus." Red interjected. "Before the auction on 41 Pry, I decided to follow up the Sinophia Magna lead, mentioning it in conversation with Octavian.
Whomever he was doing business for, they're based there. He all but confirmed it when I asked if 'his friends' there financed his trip."

[LCP]

"And we have agents there investigating as we speak," said Al-Subaai, cutting Red off. "If Rhodes had friends there we will find them. An acolyte cell has also been dispatched to Fedrid, to investigate Rhodes' contacts on that planet." He looked Red straight in the eye. "As the cell with the most personal contact with Rhodes, you know him best. That is why you will be investigating Rhodes himself, and not these shadowy 'friends'."

"His estate was frozen shortly after the events on Prol. It has been in our hands since then, although we've found little. I need you to give the investigation a kick up the backside. Find out what drove Rhodes, and we're halfway to finding out what drives Phaestus."

[Thragka]

"My Lord Inquisitor, please forgive me for being direct," said Tauron as the discussion fell into another lull. He kept his tone respectful, speaking slowly and carefully to the stern face across the desk. "You asked us what we had to say for ourselves. Well, it is as Tychon said. Another few moments would have allowed us to leave Pry in success.

"You have our report. What you do not have are our experiences. 41 Pry was pandemonium from the outset. Rhodes, Phaestus, the Beast House and Stubbs opposed us, and each other. Temporary alliances of convenience and opportunity were as ephemeral as the gaseous miasmas of the void. We tangled with the Xenos - the Lictor - on multiple occasions. Mistakes were made," Tauron allowed, casting his gaze about at the other acolytes. "None of us contest that. But in the end, it came down to a matter of seconds, and inches, and that was where we were found wanting.

"I do not presume that you of all people are unaware of this, of the nature of an Acolyte's work. All that we do - life, death, the fate of millions if not billions - depends on the most minute moments commitment, of pushing our minds and bodies and souls as far as, and further than, they can possibly go. That is the nature of our vocation, and you would not have chosen us if you did not demand such unity of purpose from us. And in those instants, we failed.

"We were not complacent. Each of us threw everything we had into the mission" - here, Drake's eyes flicked over to Nova for a fraction of a second - "and despite that, we failed. But the Emperor protected us, and brought us here in the hope of redemption. When you inducted me into this cell, you told me that Lambda was the most successful group of investigators you had. We know the price of our failure, and none of us will repeat it. In the inches and moments to come, you will not find us wanting. I am not the only one that would gladly give my life to find that strength within me, the next time it is required."

[LCP]

Al-Subaai subjected Father Drake to a long, hard stare.

"That may be asked of you sooner than you think," he said, at last. "Let us hope you are equal to your words."

Looking down at the data-slates, he picked up two and placed the first face-up on the desk.

"These contain your briefing materials. Your destination is Hive Augusta, where Octavian Rhodes kept his household. The turn of the solar year is approaching on Cantus, and pilgrims will be arriving in large numbers for Saint Drusus' Day. You should find it easy to blend in. You are authorised to use whatever cover you deem appropriate." He paused. "Should you discover something urgent, an account has been opened in the name of 'Gideon Kastor' with an astropathic choir in..." - he looked down at the slate - "...Tarsus Spire."

"Some local forces have been acting as caretakers for the Rhodes estate. They will be instructed to cooperate with you in all matters. But remember, this is Rhodes' home soil." Again, the Inquisitor made eye contact with Drake. "Trust no-one."

Reaching forward, he placed the second data-slate down on the table.

"This has been prepared for all acolyte cells by Inquisitor Renfield. He calls it... 'context'." Al-Subaai seemed to handle the word with tongs. "I was reluctant to involve him and Sinon in this investigation. Inquisitor Sinon in particular has some unorthodox ideas. Nonetheless, they have their uses."

He slid the data-slate across the table.

"I understand you were given a copy of the Litanies. I suggest you read this with them to hand. In the hands of a civilian, this knowledge would be considered a moral threat. Needless to say, it must not pass your lips."

He looked around the group. His initial anger seemed at least to have ebbed.

"Now," he asked, "do you have any questions?"

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon did, in fact, have a few questions. He started with the one most pressing to him, flipping a lho stick out of the case and holding it up. "May I?" He held off lighting it until Al-Subaai had allowed or denied his request. If the Inquisitor didn't want him smoking here, he could wait.

With his habit out of the way, the gunslinger continued. "I have a few. I'll start with Verenwyn. Y'ask me, he was the biggest heretic of all the lot at the auction. Said he was from Solomon, and had a lot of private backing. Is that being looked into? He had this sort of odd beetle thing on his wrist that we couldn't recover, and I wouldn't want anything else like that lying around to be found by..." Here, Tychon permitted himself a small smile. "Well, by folks what ain't prepared to deal with it."

"Then there's Stubbs. Working for someone named Mr. M, and all the other lot at the auction seemed to have an idea who that was. Do we? I don't like loose ends, and I get the feeling he ain't gonna be happy about the Lictor escaping his hands." Scratching his chin, Tychon frowned. "Like a lot of 'em ain't gonna be happy. Suspect we made a few enemies on that one. The Byzantium worries me, too. One of the bridge crew said it couldn't make a warp jump in the gravity well, but it did. I watched it. Is the Magos using the Phryxis thing for that? Is that why he wanted it?"

Shaking his head, Tychon moved to his last question. "Which brings me to now. How thoroughly has Rhodes' house been searched? What might he have left behind? We survived a couple fights with the Lictor, but we got damn lucky, and I think maybe the Emperor was with us, there. He have any traps or the like hiding in dark corners?"

[LCP]

Al-Subaai merely nodded to allow Tychon his lho-stick.


I'll start with Verenwyn. Y'ask me, he was the biggest heretic of all the lot at the auction. Said he was from Solomon, and had a lot of private backing. Is that being looked into? He had this sort of odd beetle thing on his wrist that we couldn't recover, and I wouldn't want anything else like that lying around to be found by..." Here, Tychon permitted himself a small smile. "Well, by folks what ain't prepared to deal with it."

Al-Subaai sat back in his chair.

"In the wake of your report, certain operatives on Solomon were contacted. It took some time to track down this... Mr Verenwyn's home, but it was found, in the end. Some of the local hive-dregs believed it to be abandoned. You can imagine they told all sorts of stories." Al-Subaai watched Tychon's face closely. "Our men found quite a collection inside."

Looking down at some case files on the desk, he straightened them out so that they were obscured by the sleeve they had come in.

"I would recommend that you not trouble yourself any more about the mysterious Mr Verenwyn, Mr Urbanus. He is no longer your concern."


"Then there's Stubbs. Working for someone named Mr. M, and all the other lot at the auction seemed to have an idea who that was. Do we? I don't like loose ends, and I get the feeling he ain't gonna be happy about the Lictor escaping his hands."

Al-Subaai permitted himself the tiniest, briefest smile.

"Inquisitor Renfield was able to assist us on the matter of 'Mr M'. Or rather, Inquisitor Renfield's contacts within the Adeptus Arbites. 'The Solar Macharius of crime' - rather an imaginative appellation."

"Stubbs' employer made a calculated risk in sending her to the auction. It did not pay off. Only a fool would use her failure as a pretext to antagonise the Inquisition, and I am assured he is no fool." He shook his head. "No, I don't think we will be hearing any more from 'Mr M'. Not until this investigation is concluded, at least."


"The Byzantium worries me, too. One of the bridge crew said it couldn't make a warp jump in the gravity well, but it did. I watched it. Is the Magos using the Phryxis thing for that? Is that why he wanted it?"

"Mr Urbanus, if I knew what the Magos was thinking, we would not be sitting here idly discussing it."


"Which brings me to now. How thoroughly has Rhodes' house been searched? What might he have left behind? We survived a couple fights with the Lictor, but we got damn lucky, and I think maybe the Emperor was with us, there. He have any traps or the like hiding in dark corners?"

Al-Subaai raised his eyebrows.

"A relevant question."

He leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the desk.

"Rhodes' house has been in the care of local personnel - under Inquisition orders - since his identification on Prol IX. None of them have been eaten, so I think it's safe to say you won't find any Tyranids lurking in the shadows." He looked down at some papers. "An inventory was taken when our men first took possession, but nothing of significance was reported. Perhaps they were not thorough enough. That will be for you to judge."

"Perhaps more dangerous than anything you might find in the house will be Rhodes' family. The Rhodes bloodline is an old one, and several of his direct relatives remain on Cantus. They were all held for questioning at the time of the Prol incident, but without more definite charges we were obliged to let most of them return to their lives. Now that they think they are free, perhaps they will be a little less careful how they tread." Al-Subaai fixed Tychon with a stare. "Which means, of course, that you must be all the more careful how you do."

[Destro_Yersul]

"I would recommend that you not trouble yourself any more about the mysterious Mr Verenwyn, Mr Urbanus. He is no longer your concern."

"Good enough for me." Tychon puffed on the lho-stick, watching smoke curl towards the ceiling. "Turned in that pistol of his for a reason. I ain't no heretic."


"Perhaps more dangerous than anything you might find in the house will be Rhodes' family. The Rhodes bloodline is an old one, and several of his direct relatives remain on Cantus. They were all held for questioning at the time of the Prol incident, but without more definite charges we were obliged to let most of them return to their lives. Now that they think they are free, perhaps they will be a little less careful how they tread." Al-Subaai fixed Tychon with a stare. "Which means, of course, that you must be all the more careful how you do."

"Guessin' we can't just shoot 'em." The gunslinger sighed. That would be the easiest answer, of course. "Well, we'll be careful. We'll have to. And if we turn up any heresy on their part, I ain't about to mourn 'em. That bastard Rhodes put a hole in my hat." The way he said this, it sounded as though damaging his hat had been a personal affront.

[Thanatos 51-50]

"My Lord, what ARE the rules of engagement, in general? Are we operating under official and open Inquisition sanction?" Red asked, before pausing for a moment and chewing his lips.
"We didn't find Octavian's body. What are our orders if rumours of his death turn out to be exaggerated?"

[LCP]

"My Lord, what ARE the rules of engagement, in general? Are e operating under official and open Inquisition sanction?"

"Openly advertising your allegiance is likely to close more doors than it opens, in this case. As I said, you are authorised to use whatever cover you deem appropriate."


"We didn't find Octavian's body. What are our orders if rumours of his death turn out to be exageratted?"

"Then you are to retrieve him for questioning. At any cost."

[Rizhail]

Pick up the investigation at Rhodes' estate, avoid drawing attention to ourselves from his old friends and family, and do our best not to murder any leads we find. This is boring already, Nova thought to herself, keeping her expression unreadable. After the cell's last mission, she had at least hoped for more action.

She let the others continue to ask questions while thinking about how she might be useful in the mission ahead. A thought occurred to Nova as her hand rested on the elaborate power blade the 'Malfian harlot' had sent the cell as a gift, currently in her pocket after Tychon had given it to her. I might have an idea for a cover story...

"M'lord, would I be correct in assuming we have information available on local customs and fashions on Cantus, in addition to the short briefing information on the dataslate? I have several ideas for cover stories for our cell, but I'd prefer to have some material on hand for planning purposes."

[LCP]

"A concise briefing on the planet is contained in this data-slate," said Al-Subaai. "You have the rest of the day to consult with our archivists here if you wish for more information."

OOC: If you'd like to compose a list of questions not covered by the data-slate, I can answer them in one post when you guys are done talking to Al.

When you're all finished with the questions here, just let me know and I'll move things on.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Speaking of 'retreiving for questioning,' we're a bit lacking in nonlethal options for that. Think the Inquisition could issue a web pistol or a web gun, or something along those lines?" Tychon was remembering the webgun they'd almost captured on Pry. Shouldn't have given it back to the Beast House.

[LCP]

Al-Subaai looked a little surprised at the request.

"Something like that could be arranged," he said. "What is your eyewitness estimate of the chance Rhodes could have survived?"

[Etcetera]

"Speaking from limited experience, I'm near certain he survived without his vital functions being compromised. Rhodes has proven exceptionally durable during our previous encounters, and judging by the professionalism and co-ordination of his entire outfit, it's probable he had reasonable medicae equipment close to hand."
Jericus paused.
"He did drop quite some way, but he's tough for an organic, assuming he possesses no bionics... or other less Sanctified augmentations. Considering all the data, I think we must assume Rhodes is still operational. "

[LCP]

"Then arrangements will be made for you to be provided with the equipment you need to take him alive." He spared a glance towards Red. "If Rhodes still lives, then he will be taken alive. I hope that is understood."

[Destro_Yersul]

"Never did figure what happened to his shuttle, either." Tychon adjusted the Lho-stick, thinking back. "Pretty sure the kill-team transported him back to it, but I was a little busy at the time to go look. Whatever you can provide, I'll take. Get the feeling we'll need all the help we can find."

[Thanatos 51-50]

"I've always intended to take Octavian alive, m'lord." Red clarified, meeting the Inquisitor's gaze. "He's obviously much more valuable that way. I hold no higher ambition regarding the traitor than to be present during his executuion."

Red mulled over his encounters with th Cantus nobleman for a moment. "What about Katrya? She's been MIA ever since Octavian captured her on Prol. I assume we want her returned to the Soriatas' care?"

[LCP]

"I would not hold out hope, sergeant. Our enemies are not merciful people. The chances of Sister Katyra's survival are slim." Al-Subaai considered the question a moment more. "If you find her, her retrieval is a secondary priority to finding the information we need."

[Thanatos 51-50]

"The Emperor Protects, m'Lord." Red reasoned whilst making the Aquila. "If she's confirmed a cas, she'll finally be Gilded, like she deserves."

And I'll torch everything Octavian owns around his ears.

The Guardsmen then fell silent, giving his compatriots another moment to speak their piece. Tychon's request for web pistols was a good idea, and Rd found himself wishing he'd thought of it. But then, if he had, they'd probably be ammended to the denied request for Carapace. That rankled at him a little. Al-Subaai knows how often their non-combat missions turn into combat sorties, and he still denied the request.
Then there was that tone.

This was going to turn into a full-fledged suicide mission, unlike the previous ones. He could feel it in his bones.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just execute them outright?

[LCP]

Al-Subaai said nothing in reply. Perhaps he had long ago accepted Katyra's loss. Perhaps to him she had always been expendable.

“Very well then,” he said. “You have your mission. You will use your account with the astropaths of Tarsus Spire to report any significant developments to me as soon as they arise. You will waste no time.”

He leant forwards and pressed a brass button on the desk. A small receiver panel clicked open.

“Adept Cuvier,” he said. “We have a party for the archive, and a party for the armouries. Arrange an escort.”

A muffled squawk that might have been “yes, lord” came in reply. Al-Subaai pressed the button and the panel clicked shut.

“Follow the adepts,” he said. “And a word of advice, in this place – do not stray from the path.”

Outside the office – it was difficult to tell if it was Al-Subaai's or just a temporary space – the cell were met by two black-cowled adepts who led them away in separate directions. Nova and Tauron went with one, while Red, Jericus and Tychon left with the other.

1

Nova & Tauron

Their silent guide led them down tall, echoing corridors, the walls faced with the same polished black stone. They passed through a high gate, its burnished face engraved with a tableaux of a writhing serpent. Beyond it, a dark hall yawned like the mouth of a cave.

The air was slightly chilled, the quiet hum of atmospheric recirculators the only sound in the silence. Hooded reading lamps cast pools of light over heavy wooden desks, arranged in concentric rings in the centre of a circle of towering bookshelves. Slender walkways crawled up to the higher reaches of the shelving, brass handrails gleaming in the half-light. In the very centre of the room, the shoulders of a vast cogitator stack rose up through a pit in the floor, a spider's web of cables snaking out from its many outlets to small terminals set in each desk.

“This is the west reading room,” said their guide, speaking in a whisper. “Please take a seat and use the terminal to identify the materials you would like to examine.” He gestured to a spidery, much-augmeticised figure hunched over the central cogitator. “The archivist will see to their retrieval.”

Working in silence, both Tauron and Nova composed handwritten lists from the titles and authors they saw blinking on the cogitator screens – the assassin's work with the arcane machine being considerably slower than the priest's. Their requests were carried by silent adepts to the archivist, who seemed to summon book-bearing minions from the upper reaches as if by some silent sorcery. Soon enough, both Nova and Tauron had stacks of documents set out before them.

Tauron's Research


What is organised Ministorum presence like on Cantus? Does the Ecclesiarchy have any official or unofficial influence on local politics, be it de facto or de jure?

The Ecclesiarchy has a strong presence on Cantus, with the highest spiritual authority on the planet being the High Ecclesiarch in Hive Augusta (a cleric who is one step down from Cardinal Yvenna of the Markayn Marches). They run many Scholams and are heavily involved with the planet's famous choirs.

Legal authority resides with the hive governments of the various hive collectives, but the Ecclesiarchy commands great popularity due to the way it bridges the planet's historical national divides. Hive governments tend to court the Ecclesiarchy for support, and the Ecclesiarchy uses this influence to keep a lid on the frequent (and sometimes fierce) conflict between rival hive collectives. Thanks to the distant, hands-off relationship between Cantus' governor and the hive lords, the case could be strongly made that the Ecclesiarchy is the strongest representative of the broader Imperium on Cantus.


What is the nature of Cantus's tithe?

Cantus is a hive world and its tithe grade is Exacta Extremis. It is particularly valuable in its production of textiles and munitions, most of which go to supply the Spinward Front. In recent decades its production has grown.


What are the details of Saint Tarsus' background in Hive Augusta? Is there any particular local lore that would be necessary if he wants to pretend to be a pilgrim, or possibly an established member of the Cantide Ecclesiarchy?

Tarsus was one of Drusus' generals, retrospectively canonised long after his death. During the Angevin Crusade he was the commander who brought Cantus back into the Imperial fold. The planet welcomed its Imperial rulers back with open arms, and most of the pilgrimage sites surrounding the Cathedral of Saint Tarsus are along the processional routes that Tarsus' army used to enter Hive Augusta on taking possession of the planet.


Similarly, he'd like an overview of the mentioned lingering pre-Imperial traditions, local Ministorum attempts to curb them and any particularly worrying trends - not enough to put his own mortal soul at risk, of course, but enough to pass as someone concerned and au fait with the local moral landscape.

Cantus was isolated from Imperial rule for a long time prior to the Angevin Crusade, and the fact that the planet acquiesced peacefully rather than requiring military action to reclaim denied the Crusade's preachers the opportunity to cleanse unorthodox beliefs by fire. Since then, the Ecclesiarchy has made great strides in propagating a unified dogma, but many irregular beliefs persist – some reinterpreting worship of the Emperor in an unusual light, others putting forwards entirely separate systems of belief. The aristocracy in particular take great pride in their pedigree; this leads to many pre-Angevin practices being passed down among the oldest-established families under the mantle of family tradition.

To fully catalogue all the superstitions and sects of Cantus (extant and extinct) would take more time than Tauron has. If he wishes there is a book by Inquisitor Eusebius which he can take with him on loan. The book dates from 437.M41, so may be a fair way out of date – but then again you're dealing with beliefs that have filtered down from far more ancient history.

Nova's Research


What is the cultural view on women/their role in society (e.g. are the sexes pretty equal in the social hierarchy, etc)?

Attitudes to women on Cantus are broadly up-to-date with Imperial norms: both sexes are largely equal under the law. The noble families are notably patriarchal (with a strong emphasis on one's pedigree and the continuity of the family line pushing most noblewomen towards the raising of children), and inheritance laws favour men, but in the right circumstances a woman can hold any position a man could.


What sorts of fashions are common amongst the upper and middle social classes (or, more to the point, are such clothes/items available amongst the Miranda's disguise wardrobe?)

Cantus society is highly stratified according to class: there is a wide gulf between the working middle classes (who may ape the styles of the upper class) and the gentry (who look down on them for doing so). Noble clothing is always fitted, so the Miranda's wardrobe of disguises may not serve you quite as well as a visit to one of Hive Augusta's more prestigious tailors if you are looking to impersonate an aristocrat.

Cantus has a love/hate relationship with the more powerful established hive worlds of the Calixis Sector (e.g. Malfi, Scintilla), so off-world fashions from those planets can either be seen as bold and trend-setting or brash and tasteless, depending on what mood Society is in. Just like anywhere else, novelty is fashionable.


What sort of weapons are considered okay for open carry? (e.g. no weapon is allowed to be openly armed, only nobles can go around but must use swords, etc)

This varies from hive to hive and landmass to landmass. In Hive Augusta (where you are headed) there is a strong enforcer presence, so violent crime is kept relatively well under control (for a hive city!) - it is not normal to see people carrying assault weapons around on the streets. This is still the 41st Millennium, though, so carrying a pistol or knife about would not raise any eyebrows. The nobility also have a list of traditional privileges as long as your arm, and a sufficiently noble-looking nobleman could probably push a wheelbarrow of lascannons down the street without the enforcers doing anything more than touching their helmets and bowing their heads as he passed.


What sort of ties do the local noble-types have with off-world interests (merchant contracts, mercenaries, kinda xenophobic, etc)?

The hives of Cantus are in general cosmopolitan places. The truly old noble families tend to manage their interests through mercantile middle-men rather than getting their hands grubby with the direct business of commerce (it's not done for a gentleman to work), but the ultimate owners of the vast majority of Cantus' industry are the aristocracy. They do a great deal of off-world business, particularly with the Departmento Munitorum. Having off-world friends is often seen as a status symbol for the rich and powerful.


Is there a 'typical look' for someone from Cantus, so to speak? Basically, is the planet a melting pot of ethnicities, or is there not much variety to the people? (condensed to: how hard would it be for a mildly tanned, black haired woman to blend in)?

Cantus has as much ethnic variety as there is on present-day Earth, and there is plenty of traffic both between the various hives of Cantus and between Cantus and other worlds. You'd have to be from somewhere fairly weird for your ethnicity to give you away.

1

Red, Jericus & Tychon

Following their guide, the three acolytes entered a square lift that had no walls or ceiling, the polished platform descending smoothly on a piston. The black sides of the shaft soon turned to rough-cut rock, before the lift finally came to a halt in a deep chamber with armoured walls. A floating monitor-skull pivoted slowly in mid-air as it turned to track their progress.

The corridors that led away from the lift chamber jacknifed through forty-five degrees at regular intervals, heavy blast doors leading away to sealed side rooms at each turn. Through one open door, they saw a squealing thing with a cylindrical, boneless body and five membranous wings being pinned to a vivisection table by a team of chirurgeons. Through another, Tychon could hear the sounds of what sounded like a vigorous sword drill.

Two men in faceless crusader helms guarded a particularly large blast door at the end of the corridor. They stepped aside as the Acolytes approached, and the doors hissed open.

Inside were lockers, racks and chests of weapons. A woman with an augmetic arm and extensive facial scarring met them, holding in her metal hand a message that had been delivered from a pneumatic tube set in the wall.

"Cell Lambda?" she asked. "My name is Mordant. A pleasure to meet you." She looked down at the message capsule. "I understand you're in the market for some subdual systems. Please, come this way."

Leading them into a side room, she unrolled a sheet of cloth, revealing a pair of unusual-looking weapons.

"Needle rifle," she said, picking up the first and turning it over. "Will let you knock out the target at range. These," she said, picking up what might have been a cigarette case, "are the ammunition."

Opening it up revealed five long darts.

"Loaded with Morphia-Five. First three are dosed for a large male, last two for someone smaller. Be careful not to mix them up."

Closing the case, she set them down. She picked up the next weapon, a stocky thing with a bell-shaped nozzle instead of a barrel.

"Webber," she continued. "For subdual at close range. Just point and shoot; avoid the target's nose and mouth if you can. People have been known to suffocate." Lifting up a heavy case with her augmetic arm, she plonked it onto the table beside the gun. "Ten canisters' worth of reloads for you there. Don't use them all at once. And if you could return these guns in one piece, that would be greatly appreciated."

Lastly, she picked up a small brown bottle, no bigger than a box of pills. Opening the cap, she showed them the contents: a fine, yellowish-silver dust, reminiscent of pollen.

"Powdered maidensfoil, from Acreage," she said. "Has to be ingested, but a fairly powerful sedative. Not as powerful as some, but not as likely to kill the target with an overdose either. Tastes fairly mild, so you can mask it with something strong. Don't go taste-testing it yourself."

Once the Acolytes had finished inspecting their new weapons, their guide respectfully approached again.

"Your transport," he said, "will be waiting in the shuttle bay."

OOC: Itemised list:
One needle rifle with telescopic sight
Five needle rounds loaded with Morphia-V
A webber with 10 rounds
One medicine-bottle of powdered maidensfoil.

1

Later, when the Acolytes' business was concluded, they found themselves returned to the echoing shuttle bay they had first entered. There was no sign of the Mercator: it had been spirited away without a trace. In its place, a matt-black Aquila Lander stood centre stage. A pilot in Navy fatigues was waiting beside it, looking slightly uneasy about his surroundings. As the Acolytes approached, he stood up and saluted.

"Ready to fly?" he asked. Tauron thought that he looked familiar - perhaps one of the Miranda's crew? He seemed keen to be on his way.

[Destro_Yersul]

The Armoury
Tychon looked at the weapons, 'hm'ing in thought. "Don't suppose you could give us a pistol instead?" he asked, pointing at the web gun.

"I ain't much for longarms, so if it ain't too much trouble I'd appreciate the switch."

[Thanatos 51-50]

The Armoury"Similarly," Red interjected, "I'm not sure if anybody in the cell is familiar with such exotic weapons. Would it be possible to requisition some practise rounds?"

[LCP]

The Armoury

"Hm," said Mordant. "A pistol doesn't have the spread. But I'll see what I can do."

She left the room for a moment, and Tychon heard the muffled sounds of conversation from outside. After that, Mordant came back in and waited.

After a short time, a few black-robed menials appeared carrying cases. A box of soft plasfibre needles as practice rounds for the needler; a slim, compact web-pistol and two cases of its ammunition, which Mordant said came to twenty rounds.

[Destro_Yersul]

Armoury
"Much obliged," Tychon said, touching his hat and taking up the web pistol. It looked smaller than his other pistols, which suited him fine - easier to conceal, even if it shortened the range a bit. On a weapon like the webber, the smaller size didn't matter overly much. The gunslinger slid it into a pocket, and headed for the docks.

Tychon arrived at the shuttle bay alongside Red and Jericus, inspecting a small web pistol. At least now they had the means to take out a target without risking killing it, which could come in handy if he could figure out how to work this thing properly. He didn't want to practice too much with it, given the limited amount of ammunition he had to work with.

"Ready when you are," he told the pilot.

[Thragka]

The Library
Tauron scratched out some notes in a spidery hand from the various documents that were brought to him, working methodically to summarise what was useful and discard what wasn't. After about a minute's internal deliberation, he submitted the request to borrow one of the tomes. He frowned as he browsed the introduction, occasionally directing a silent glance at Nova as he waited for her to finish her studies.

When Tauron arrived back at the shuttle bay, he was clutching a book in his left hand. The fingers were clamped around the open end, as if he were worried that the pages might begin fluttering of their own accord.

"Is it to be a long journey?" he asked the pilot.

[Rizhail]

The Library:

Nova spent quite a bit of time going over the various cultural tidbits she discovered about Cantus, trying to formulate ideas for the cell's cover story based on what she found. She was careful to record the important details into a dataslate, eventually deciding that she had enough when Tauron seemed to be growing bored.


Nova was apparently deep in thought as she and the priest approached the shuttle. She was brought back to reality when the pilot spoke up.

"I'm ready, so long as the gear I requisitioned is either here or on its way to the Miranda," she replied, referring to several items she'd sent in requisitions for as the ship had made its way into the system. "We should find a few of the items useful on this mission."

[LCP]

“I'm sure that's all in hand, miss,” said the pilot, sounding rather unsure of himself. “I'm just supposed to take you back to the ship.”

Once inside the lander's passenger hold, the armourglass dome in the top of the fuselage afforded the Acolytes a clear (if narrow) view of the great iris shutter that served as the shuttle bay's roof. As it rumbled slowly open, it revealed not the gunmetal-grey clouds of Scintilla's sky, but the closed jaws of an airlock. Why would the Tricorn Palace have an airlock?

The lander rose up into the airlock, and the shutter closed beneath it. There was a moment where they hovered like a fly trapped in a box, before the outer gate began to open. Beyond was the black, twinkling gulf of the void.

The thrusters fired and the lander flew free. Stretching away beneath them was a desolate landscape of pale rock pitted with great, shadowy craters. From one of the largest craters beneath them, a cluster of gothic spires rose out of the waste; a black monastery in the airless desert. The airlock they had emerged from yawned like a sinkhole in one of the complex's furthest edges.

The lonely bastion shrank to nothing beneath them as the curve of the horizon came into view. A black eagle against a black sky, the soaring Aquila left Scintilla's moon behind.

1

Back on board the Miranda, the ship's landing bay was a bustle of activity. Sweating ratings were shifting great stacks of provisions that had been brought up by cargo lifters from the planet below; Red recognised the Munitorum stamps on the crates of hard tack, corpse-starch and synth-protein. Three heavily-muscled men were lifting barrels of antiscorbutics onto a grav-pallet, overseen by a narrow-faced adept with huge, owl-like spectacles. Each barrel was another tick on his clipboard.

There were other new arrivals in the shuttle bay. Jericus could see an Arvus Lighter that was surrounded by a bustle of crew, matt-black like their own transport. Over by a sleek Vesper-pattern shuttle, a tall man and a pair of heavily-armed women were overseeing the unloading of various books and data-engines, chastising any of the Miranda's crew who seemed to take insufficient care.

Lambda Cell did not have time to stare at their fellow passengers, however: they were quickly shepherded away by the warrant officer on duty. Some cargo was waiting for them, apparently: a selection of crates and cases, unmarked except for a crude lambda stamp and the triple-barred “I” of the Inquisition. Apparently their requisitions had come through.

The ship would be underway, they were informed, within twenty-four hours. A couple of grimy ratings helped to gather up their things, and led the way to the Acolytes' cabins.

1

The Miranda was nine days out of Scintilla, on the long leg between Iocanthus and Dreah, when it happened. Kneeling before one of the votive shrines in the crew quarters, Tauron was thrown to the deck as the slow groans and clicks of the hull became a sudden, tortured squeal. Tychon was jolted upright in his bunk, losing his place in his new prayer-book. The sandwich Jericus had been about to bite into sailed clean across the galley.

They all felt it, deep in their stomachs: the sickening, disorientating lurch of the ship transitioning back into the Materium. For a few frantic minutes, alarm klaxons whooped and hazard lights flashed, patrols of armsmen rushing hurriedly along the Miranda's narrow corridors. No-one saw fit to tell the Acolytes what was going on.

In the hours after the incident, when it became apparent that no soul-eating horrors had boarded the ship to devour the crew, their picture of what had happened began to become a little more clear. Their emergency jump had been triggered by the Miranda's navigator, who appeared to have undergone some kind of psychotic episode.

It took the best part of a shift-cycle to calm him down. When he spoke, he spoke in private to the captain and his most trusted officers: nevertheless, stories started to circulate among the crew of what the Navigator had seen. Stories of the corpse of some leviathan of the abyss, drifting like flotsam across their path. The deck-hands whispered of glassy, lifeless eyes the size of battlecruisers, of rotting tentacles and gaping wounds that could have swallowed the Miranda whole.

Such monstrosities were almost never seen on the stable routes they were following, opined one old voidsman. It must have, like, floated up, right? From the deeper reaches. The other ratings universally took it as the most evil of omens, and over the next twenty-four standard hours the lower decks of the Miranda became festooned with a profusion of charms and talismans. As a Ministorum priest, Tauron found himself implored to lead sermon after prayer-vigil after sermon. It was a duty he would have enjoyed, if the ratings packing out the ship's chapel had not continually nudged him back onto the topic of petitioning the Emperor for safe passage every time he tried to edify them on anything else.

After 36.23 hours of realspace manoeuvres (Jericus was counting), the Miranda finally translated back into the Warp. The Navigator gave them no more cause for concern, but for the rest of the journey the shutters of the ship's observation dome remained firmly sealed.

1

It was some days later that the Miranda finally sailed into the orbital lanes above Cantus. Looking out through the observation ports of the bridge, Tauron had seen fractured landmasses separated by wide, dark seas. On the shadowed side of the globe, the lights of hive cities glowed like burning cobwebs.

The Miranda, it seemed, was moving on. Tauron had not had much chance to fraternise with the other passengers: they seemed to keep to themselves. Still, he had overheard some talk of 'Omicron' and 'Psi' as well as Lambda among the bridge officers, and he had caught a glimpse of a star-chart with the Prol system circled on the seventh day of their voyage. Perhaps Al-Subaai was not yet done with the Scrivener's Star.

Their transport was made ready, and their luggage loaded up. With the barest minimum of ceremony, Cell Lambda departed for the surface.

1

Streaking through banks of swirling cloud, the shuttle broke into the open air beneath. Beneath them the hive sprawled like the web of some great stone spider. A great river wound through its heart, bisecting the city with its leaden gleam. Where the yawning estuary emptied into the sea, clouds of curling effluent coloured the icy waters a darker shade of grey.

This was Hive Augusta, master city of the terrestrial globe. Soot belched from its smokestacks, the busy sounds of industry hammering from its dockyards and factories. Fat-bellied pilgrim ships churned the swollen waters of the mighty River Isis, their steel-plated prows turning aside the plates of grubby ice that broke away from the river's frozen banks. Up above the smog and the wheeling flocks of raucous seabirds, the pilgrims' destination gleamed in the sun - the golden dome of the Cathedral of Saint Tarsus, rising from the highest point of the highest spire. Beneath it, titanic bridges spanned the river at a height of many hundreds of metres, linking the upper slopes of the cathedral summit with the soaring heights of the Ministry Spire on the other bank.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/HiveAugusta_zps03942385.png

It was midwinter in Cantus' northern hemisphere, and Saint Drusus' Day had almost arrived. Pilgrims were flocking from across the planet - and some from beyond it - to hear the High Ecclesiarch's Drusine address. They filled the narrow streets of Augusta's lower reaches, spilling through the thoroughfares and clogging the roads to such an extent that mounted enforcer patrols were needed to keep the hive's vital highways open. There were more than a few millennialists among them, preaching about the coming end of days, but the other pilgrims had little time for their ravings. The Imperium of Man had endured for ten millennia; it seemed unlikely that the arrival of the eleventh would bring about its end. Besides, this was only the turning of the year on Cantus, and in the Cantid calendar the year was 3024 - a date that was disappointingly unexceptional.

The shuttle touched down on a broad landing-pad that rose on tall brick pillars above a cramped jumble of rooftops. Leading away from it was a high viaduct that joined the arteria routes snaking their way up towards Ministry Spire. A man in a smart chauffeur's uniform was waiting there, next to an idling autocar. Though clearly lovingly maintained, it looked to Tychon like a funny kind of antique.

Shutting off the Aquila's engines, the pilot leaned back to speak to them.

"This is where I leave you," he said. "I've been instructed to leave the access codes and the keys to the bird with you, Mr Flange." He handed Jericus a small data-slate and a chunky ring of keys. "Take good care of her until we get back."

Outside, the driver had approached. As the ramp lowered, he peered around the edge and into the passenger bay, doffing his cap.

"Mister Lamder?" he asked. "I've been sent to bring you to the house."

[Etcetera]

Jericus took the dataslate and keys with a nod to the pilot. Powering it up, he ambled over to the car. It'd be nice to have something to read during the journey.

[Thanatos 51-50]

The Armoury
"My thanks." Red supplied with a sharp salute before slinging the rifle and pocketting the maidensfoil. "I'll be sure to take care of 'er." Turning to the tech-priest "Webber is in your custody, Jer." With that, he waited for the others to assemble and followed their guide to the dock.

1

Before boarding the Aquila, the Guardsmen slipped Nova the bottle of Maidensfoil. "Maidensfoil apparently. Sedative. In case we can ever slip it into a drink or something."

1

Nine Days out of Scintilla, Red was doing what he had been doing the entire rest of the deck, practising shooting drills with the loaned needle rifle. If the time came when they needed it, he wanted to be ready, and he didn't want to waste one of his precious few shots simply because he had never actually pulled the trigger on the weapon before.
He was finding the recoil tricky, but the weapon was crafted well, and performed admirably in his hands, with only the slightly parabolic arc f the needle and the light push the rifle gave consistently throwing off his aim. It was going to take getting used to, but if Red took his time ad throught through the shot, he found he could land a solid hit with reasonable accuracy.

Then the deck bucked, and the plasfibre needle shot off towards the overhead.
They had dropped out of the Warp. Why did they drop out of the Warp? What was wrong?

Deamons. The answer could only be deamons.

Apparently, though, none were running amok. The provosts had checked that. The ratings seemed mostly unharmed, though they were un-nerved, and they spread to Red rumours of what the Navigator may have seen.
For the first twenty-four hours in realspace, though, Red locked himself in his quarters, playing back Heironymus Bosc's last words. Over and over again. Was there anything to his voice that would have indicated the deamon's grip on his soul?
Red tested it out. He spoke to himself in the dark, repeating the long-lost provost's last words like a fervent prayer aloud to the dark emptiness of his quarters, only to have the bulkhead echo back his voice, precisely as it should be.

This wouldn't do. Red wasn't trained for this He wasn't equipped for this. The Guardsmen, when he slep, slept dreamnt of agonizing hours spent floating in the Void, all air sucked out of his lungs, and a deamonic eel circling around him, hissing and spitting, mocking him for his failure. Reminding him that he had done the killing, not it.
But that was a dream. A dream brought about the the warp-spawned mists of Abandoned Hope.

It plagued him. Thoughts of the firey warp-beast Bosc had become on the Scrivener's Star, int he Proscribed Vaults plagued him. He dreamed of himself morphing into that creature.
He dreamed of tearing them all apart. Nova, Jericus, Tychon, Drake. All of them, reduced to shreds and chars. He felt the dreams weigh in on his soul.

In the dead of the night-cycle, the Guardsmen found Tauron Drake. In Red's hands, he held a Naval Ironclaw. When the priest answered the door, he intended to hand it over to the man, stock-first, and rest his own forehead against the business end.
Drake would know. It was his job to know. If anything happened, Red had no doubt that the priest would see it and do His Holy Duty, splattering the Guardsmen's brains against the Miranda's walls.

Without explanation, he chanted fragments of half-remembered prayer from his childhood. He chanted the the prayer he recalled from the eddies of Abandoned Hope's mists. He chanted the names of the dead, and he looked the Cleric straight in the eye.
At the end of it all, his grey matter still firmly ensconced in his skull, the soldier smiled.
"The Emperor Protects. It seems I've still work to do."

1
That had to be a deliberate slight against him. He was the pilot, after all. Jericus wouldn't know what to do with the Aquila if they had to make preparations to lift off. Red swallowed his pride, though. No sense countermanding Al-Subaai's orders.

Red stepped forward to meet the driver. "Red Lambder. That's me."

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon had been wary of testing out his new laspistols on the ship, worried about accidentally punching through something important with the high-powered shots. The Miranda had a practise range for a reason, though, and he'd drilled with them as well as he could, given that they only held one shot each. He found he could use one to place shots dead-center every time, though - the weapons were wonderfully accurate, even without the sights he'd had installed with such great care.

The warp translation had brought back some old nightmares - nightmares about a world called Dain Rhealtha, and an endless horde of daemons in the form of his wife, come to claim his soul. More than once, the gunslinger woke suddenly in the night, his hands on his weapons. The presence of the firearms gave him some small comfort, at least: He'd seen Executioner put a hole clean through the last daemon that tried to fool him, and the blessed rounds he kept in the third magazine should help see off even the worst the warp had to offer.

Tychon attended Tauron's services all the same. He had smiled to himself, quietly amused at the ratings always redirecting Drake. Sitting in the back and flipping through his prayer book, his hat pulled down, Tychon had listened. He'd never been the most pious of men, back in Gunmetal City. Sure, he'd attended the services, but he'd always figured the Emperor had more important things to do than worry about him - something he'd heard somewhere sprang to mind: "The Emperor protects those who protect themselves." He wasn't sure he believed that anymore. With all Cell Lambda had seen and done, and what he'd gone through in the course of his two missions with them, Tychon had started to believe that the Emperor might just be watching them after all.

1

Appearing on Cantus, Tychon had shot for looking much like he normally did. Hat, dusty coat, and an old faded shirt paired with his newly re-inforced boots. Some of the purity seals were new, intended to make him look a bit more like a pilgrim. He'd abandoned the finery he'd worn as Gideon Kastor, though a couple of the smaller items were still with him. Tychon had also appropriated a backpack from the Miranda's stores, packing his book, the wooden case that contained his beautiful duelling laspistols, and a number of spare clothes. Extra pack of Lho sticks, too: he didn't want to run out. Lighting one of the sticks, the gunslinger stepped off the lander's ramp, letting Red take the lead as far as the chauffer was concerned.

[LCP]

"Pleasure to meet you, sir," said the driver, bobbing his head in respect. He held open the door of his autocar for the Acolytes to climb inside. "This way, then."

The old vehicle coughed and spluttered into life before purring away along the viaduct. The driver was separated from his passengers by a thin plastiglass screen, a circle of air-holes allowing his voice to reach them when the doors were closed. As they wound down towards the arteria routes, Hive Augusta rose up to engulf them.

Every hive city has its own unique character, and Augusta was no exception. There was less metal and rockcrete than Red or Tychon were used to, bricks and stonework rising up around them in surprising profusion. Like Hive Sibellus, much of the architecture seemed ancient. The fumes from passing traffic had streaked the sandy-coloured stone with thick layers of soot.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/CantusArchitecture_zpsd4bc7c9c.jpg

As they cut a course towards the spear-like pinnacle of Ministry Spire, the buildings that rose up around them grew taller and grander, piercing up out of the grimy veil of dirty air that hung over the lower reaches of the city. Pilgrims packed the broad avenues beneath the towering structures, spilling over the pavements of the side-streets and haranguing those private citizens who were trying to go about their business. At the edge of one broad plaza, a squadron of enforcers in tightly-buttoned blue uniforms and steel custodian helms waited on horseback, watching the passing crowds in silence. Jericus noted the cranial cables that ran through the horses' shorn manes: behavioural regulators, no doubt. One man who wore a plumed helmet - no doubt the mark of an officer - was riding a particularly magnificent beast with three of its legs and half of its ribcage replaced by gleaming augmetics.

Around a circular junction studded with statuary, and the car peeled off along a different road. The air was clean enough up here that Tauron could wind down the window a little - high on one of the most prominent buildings above the junction, a public broadcast screen was playing an interview with some public official.

"...the truth is that this is your fault, isn't it?"
"With respect, Jeremiah, that's a completely unfair portrayal of the situation," said the official - a short, mousy-haired woman with huge square spectacles that made her eyes seem three times their normal size. The scrolling bar beneath her face proclaimed that she was Ariadne Haust, Minister for Air Purity and Public Sanitation. "If you'd just let me - "
"Was the accident due to human error, or was it not? Yes or no," demanded the interviewer, a belligerent man with bristly grey hair. "And more specifically, was the human who erred a member of your department?"
"Investigations are still ongoing," said the Minister, looking as if she desperately wanted to escape. "In the meantime, the Mechanicus are working around the clock to restore the Lowton Marsh facility to fully operational status." The interviewer tried to interrupt, but she cut him off. "I really think you and your colleagues are blowing this entirely out of proportion, Mr Pax. We still have three out of four air treatment plants functioning at their maximum level. Barring... freak weather conditions, there is absolutely no danger to public health..."

They turned the corner of a tall building and the screen slipped out of view. No more appeared as they wound their way up the outside of the spire, following the corkscrew path of the road. There were grand houses up here - houses and actual trees, green and growing. Between two sooty towers, Red saw what looked like a park laid out on a sloping terrace, a swathe of green laid out above the termite's nest of stone and smoke.

At last, they turned off down a narrow road that branched off from the main route, heading towards a crag of agglomerated architecture that stood like a buttress to the central spike of the spire. There, looking out over the sprawl of the city below, was their destination.

The car drew to a halt on the street outside - a street that was silent and empty, except for a cherubic-looking paper-boy who stood suspiciously quietly on the corner. A moment's inspection showed that the paper-boy was in fact a servitor, his eyes staring blankly ahead. The up-spire nobility here valued their peace too much to allow real live urchins onto their streets.

Though all the houses were grand, the house before them was the grandest. Spiking up into the open air out of the tangle below, its stonework looked centuries - if not millennia - old, its many rooftops clustering together like the battlements of a fortress. Two stone lions guarded the massive front door, regarding the new arrivals with a lofty disdain.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/Rhodes_Manor_zps9ef5e5a2.png

Over the lintel, a complex coat of arms had carved into the soot-stained stone, under which was engraved the motto:


QUARE? QUIA POSSUM

Two soldiers in smart red uniforms were waiting to either side of the door. When the Acolytes got out of the car, they saluted, waiting to be approached.

[Thragka]

That frantic period after the unexpected transition from the Immaterium passed in something of a blur - afterwards, Tauron was tired, physically and mentally, and he permitted himself a modicum of satisfaction about how he'd tended his flock. Ganf Magna seemed very far away. The Pry excursion seemed like a long exercise in proving faith through deeds rather than words; but the common man needed words as well, sometimes. Not as much as Humanity needed deeds, he could not forget. There and then, though, all he had to give were reassurance and guidance, and so he plunged into his duties.

He certainly had plenty of words. When the canonical sermons on travel and protection had become boring, even to him, he'd had a few helpful hands bring the Litanies to the chapel. In between the regular services of the day (a routine drilled into him on Valon Urr, long ago), he would simply open the massive tome and begin reading. Those that stayed would hear a chapter or passage, and then a quick discussion of its relevance, and spend a few minutes in silent prayer; and then the cycle would repeat, as long as there was someone still in the chapel to hear.

Once or twice, when he'd been particularly cranky from lack of sleep and incessant, repetitive demands for intercession, Drake had shut the litanies, taken out Tychon's much smaller gift and extemporised at length about the virtues of brotherhood and trust in one's fellow man, and the nobility of the human spirit when held aloft by the Emperor's grace; but when he thought he saw another Lambda acolyte in the congregation, he'd grown embarrassed, and quickly returned to the tried and tested framework of sermons memorised in his youth.

1

When Red had pressed the gun between Tauron's hands and his own head, the priest had said nothing. Part of his mind tried to imagine what could have led the guardsman to think this was the right idea, but decades of training had allowed Drake to keep his face serene. Patience was the answer here. Red did not need Tauron; it was the priest who was necessary, not the soul attached to that spirit, the ego that could not be entirely expunged from that corporeal vessel of the will of the Throne.

Drake listened to Red's prayers, and contemplated each and every one of them as they came tumbling out of the guardsman's mouth. As they echoed in Red's words and Tauron's mind, they would resonate all the way back to Terra. When Red was finally done, Tauron smiled right back at him. As he the weapon back, he considered a few choice words.

"You are right to think that the Emperor demands that you die. He demands this of all of us. But of you especially, my son, my sergeant, my brother, He demands that you live, first; and that you choose to live. For when your allotted time has passed, the most important thing He needs from you is your promise that His galaxy is a better place because of your choices."

1

He could not say he felt refreshed, by the time they got to Cantus. But then, the luxury of a body and mind at ease were only desirable for the weaker sort of men. Tauron did not need to rest; he knew that working would give him the fulfillment he yearned for.

In the car, he frowned at the interview. It seemed fundamentally dangerous to allow the common man to question the actions of their betters - there was no surer sign that this hive was blighted with corruption than that perversion of the natural order. But he did not comment on it. He would not risk saying something foolish until he had more than a fleeting first impression of this odd world.

Gazing up at the coat of arms, his lips moved as he tried to work out the High Gothic. Then his stern features melted a little, and he raised an eyebrow. If they meant what he thought they did, then they were auspicious words.

"Why? Because we can, and thus we must. That is why we are here," he said softly to the others. Then without any further airs and graces, he began helping to unload their luggage.

Blurgh busy; posting might be spotty over the next 2-3 days.

If I am pushing the envelope of Liturgical Familiarity by Google-translating understanding that much Latin High Gothic, let me know and I'll axe that last bit there. Here's a roll, if necessary, vs. half Int 19: [roll0] heretices eunt domus

[Etcetera]

Jericus, for his part, scanned the facade of the house. There was the servitor, obviously, but someone like Rhodes (and the Rhodes) would probably have all number of security systems round the front here, and it'd be useful to find out about them now, as opposed to when they're activated.

Security vs 40 [roll0]

Nor, indeed, did Jer trust a groundcar to get them anywhere fast. He admired the analogy - the steel servant of the Omnissiah beset on all sides by the unenlightened, purposeless flesh - but that was just theology. And fitting a dozerblade to the car might not go down well.

[Thanatos 51-50]

"I have no desire to die, today Brother." Red replied, face solemn. "I knew a man, once. He was a brave man, full of courage and martial zeal. He saved my life, more than once. Or so I thought. It turned out to be a lie. You see, Tauron, the man had a rider on his soul - it had been claimed by some foul deamon. I did my duty and turned him in - I don't know what happened to him, presumably he's dead now. I know he tried to run.

"I fear nothing more than becoming like that man. To have my soul claimed by the Great Enemy. And I know the Enemy is cunning. I fear that it might take my soul and control it entirely without my knowledge. It is the our duty to fight these things, I know, but I'm just a solider. I can purge them with las, but I'm not trained to ward against their advances on my soul.

That's your job, right? You're trained to fight that. You're trained to know. That's why I had to come to you. That's why you're holding that weapon. If I faltered, if I spoke the hymns untrue, you would have killed me, right? You would have sent whatever foul beast that latched on back to the Warp?"

1

"I think it more likely the man who drew the arms had a sense of humour." Red said with a half-smirk, pointedly not returning the door guards' salutes.
"Give me a SITREP, solider, and cut down on the sniper tags." he ordered after eyeing their colours and ranks.

[roll0]

[LCP]

Jericus could see no overt security systems in the mansion's elegant facade. No weapon emplacements, no shock-grids. Not even picters - although looking up at one of the cast-iron lumen poles behind him, he could see the street had picters of its own.

The two men lowered their saluting arms rather hesitantly. They wore dark crimson uniforms that reminded Red of Sergeant Summerson, Rhodes' bodyguard on Prol - but he could also recognise the insignia of the Imperial Guard when he saw them. He would have been hard-pressed to name the regiment.

"Sir!" said the first man, a tall fellow with a bushy moustache. "Corporal Villiers, sir. This here is Lance-Corporal Compton." He gestured to his younger companion, who suppressed a second salute. "Been keeping watch on the house for you. Nothing much to report, sir; it's all been quiet as a mouse since the assessors left. Servants keep the place ticking over." He paused. "Assessors left an inventory for you what we've been keeping in the safe. Just inside, sir."

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon didn't salute either, but then Tychon wasn't a soldier. He was just a civilian, albeit one with a lot of guns. The web pistol was an unfamiliar weight, concealed in one of his coat's inner pockets. So far, Rhodes hadn't seen fit to spring from hiding behind one of the trees (trees! In a hive! ridiculous, and yet there it was), and the gunslinger hoped it stayed that way. Augusta was at once both familiar and unfamiliar to him. Being in a hive, amongst civilisation, was always welcome, but he wasn't sure he liked all of these brick buildings and auspicious dwellings.

They didn't look trustworthy.

"How many servants?" Tychon asked the Corporal.

[LCP]

Villiers frowned, the effort of recollection showing on his face.

"Four, sir. The butler and a handful of housemaids."

[Rizhail]

Nova had been relatively silent for most of the trip to Cantus after the warp incident, spending most of her time either practicing with her new firearms or practicing bladework with her new powersword.

When the cell had loaded up on the shuttle, Nova had arrived looking quite different from her normal self. Gone were her white cloak and grey tunic, her openly worn blades, and her shoulder length mane. The assassin wore rough khaki clothing with a loose jacket, her hair tied back into a short tail. Her new revolver was visible in an underarm holster as she moved, with her three smaller blades hidden in other spots. Most of her belongings were stowed in a duffel bag slung over her shoulder, including all of her infiltration kit, her remaining bastard sword, her new rifle, and the various poisons she'd picked up before the mission had set out.

All told, she looked like an off-duty Arbites or enforcer, rather than her usual holy assassin appearance.

1

"Are any of them currently on the property, and do you have their names?" Nova asked the guards, putting on the professional air of a law enforcement officer.

[LCP]

Villiers looked at Compton, and the younger soldier fielded the question.

"Butler's name is Aubrey, ma'am. Housemaids are Annabel Larkin, Salena Blevins, and, um..."

He hesitated, struggling to remember. A spark of recollection came into Villier's eyes, and the older soldier interjected:

"Kendrick! That's the other one," he said. "Larkin, Blevins and Kendrick. The maids only come in part-time now, but Mr Aubrey should be inside."

[Thragka]

Aboard Miranda

Tauron steepled his fingers as Red spoke, frowning thoughtfully. There were a couple of heartbeats' silence before he replied.

"You are speaking of Heironymus Bosc. I am aware of that sorry tale."

Another pause.

"The Enemy is treacherous. I am sure that Bosc was a good man, once. But his treachery began the moment he first knew that his immortal soul had been compromised. He hid his foul nature, and it conspired even within the strongohld of the Inquisition. I do not need to tell you that you did the right thing; he could have brought ruin and damnation to our cause at any time, with the knowledge and power he wielded as an Acolyte."

Drake sighed.

"Bosc was weak, and easily corrupted, and in the end the memories of the good man he might once have been are worthless to us. He lacked the resolve to do what needed to be done. But as for you, Sergeant Red - as you stand here before me, you prove you have some courage he did not. And you're correct; that is my 'job'. Rest assured I will ever be vigilant when it comes to our immortal souls. I would have gunned you down in an instant, if you were corrupted. That is a promise. You were right to come to me, if you had these feelings - after all, a suspicious mind is a healthy mind - but you need not be so consumed by anxiety that you cannot act out your role in the Emperor's plan. Betrayal is a cancer - let it eat Bosc's soul. May it leave yours be."

1

As the others spoke to the guards, Tauron went over to the driver.

"Thank you. Do we have the pleasure of retaining your service, mister ... ?"

[LCP]

"'Fraid not, sir," said the driver. "This far and no further. 'Course, if you're needing a lift in future, you can always call us on the public vox." He rummaged in the glove compartment and produced a dog-eared card. "There you go, sir. Very reasonable rates, sir; always happy to serve the friends of the nobility."

Getting back in the car with a last reverent look up at the house, he revved the engine and pulled away.

[Thragka]

"Well then," Tauron said, pocketing the card. He grabbed his luggage and began plodding up the steps to the front door. "Let's meet Mr Aubrey."

[Etcetera]

Jericus turned to Villiers. Inconspicuousness was going to be a little hard what with the arm-gun. Better play to his strengths.

"Closest Mechanicus shrine?"

[LCP]

Villiers bowed his head to Jericus.

"The chief Mechanicus temple is up in Tarsus Spire, cogfather. Other side of Titan Bridge. There's a presence here in Ministry too, though, advising the Mayor's office. Top of Squall Processional." He paused. "About twenty minutes' drive, if you have a pass."

He looked over at Tychon, Red and Nova. "We've been seconded to guard this place for as long as you're here. Anything you need looking after on-site, Lance-Corporal Compton and I are at your service."

Beside him, Tauron walked up the stone steps and placed a hand on the front door. The knocker, he noticed, was a heavy ring held in the jaws of a brass lion. The metal was pale green with patches of ancient verdigris.

With a push, the great doors swung silently open.

1

It took the Acolytes' eyes a few moments to adjust from the bright daylight outside, but when they did, what they saw inside was worth it.

A broad atrium, big enough to swallow Tychon's old hab-unit five times over, stretched out before them. Two sweeping staircases descended from galleries on an upper floor, meeting in the centre of the room. On a stone plinth that rose up between them, a Xenos beast of staggering dimensions was looking straight back at them. Its powerful haunches were crouched low, ready to spring.

It didn't, of course - because it was stuffed. Black-skinned, vaguely feline, and at least twenty metres long, its tripartite jaws hinged wide to reveal a curling array of saw-toothed tendrils surrounding a cutting beak. The muscular tentacles were artfully posed to display every jet-black thorn and barb in a masterpiece of the taxidermist's art. On the plinth beneath it, a brass plaque simply read


SA'VAK

The rest of the entrance hall was equally well-decorated. The polished hardwood banisters of the staircase ended in carved lion's-heads, while faded old battle honours hung from the upper galleries. A selection of paintings graced the walls, depicting the great and the good in every possible pose and attitude. In one faded old piece, Tauron recognised a man in the ornate trappings of an Ecclesiarchy Cardinal.

Occupying centre-stage above the stuffed Sa'vak was a far more familiar face. Rhodes' portrait was so lifelike that it almost felt like the man was in the room - Red felt the instinctive urge to reach for his gun.

Octavian's face looked hardly an iota different from when they had seen him last, though the painting was clearly quite old. He was depicted dressed in fine outdoor clothes, posing next to the slumped body of the creature that stood stuffed beneath the painting. In the painting, you could see the neat bullet-hole that had punched through the dead centre of its thick skull. One polished black boot resting on the back of the animal's head, Rhodes' left arm was folded across his knee, while his right held the Nomad loosely out to one side. Red could almost swear the painting seemed to be looking straight at him, smiling that infuriating, supercilious, white-toothed smile. The moustache followed you around the room.

One of the dizzying array of doors that led in and out of the atrium opened with a quiet click, and a man in a black tailcoat appeared as silently as a ghost. He was tall, almost as tall as Bosc and Rhodes himself had been. Where Rhodes had had broad shoulders to match his height, though, this man was slim and skeletal, more reminiscent of the gangling Provost.

"Ho there, Aubrey," called out Villiers, stepping inside. "The new masters have arrived."

The butler's gaunt face remained utterly impassive. He looked at Tychon and Nova with hooded eyes.

"Very good," he said, his voice as calm and neutral as his face. He had a slow, slightly hollow way of speaking. "I had the serving-maids make up five of the second floor guest bedrooms. Would you like me to show you the way?"

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon had to resist drawing one of his pistols to shoot the stuffed Sa'vak when the door opened, his hands going to the fatebringers at his hips. He caught himself in time though, peering suspiciously up at the creature. Keeping something like that was probably heretical, but they already knew Rhodes was a heretic.

"I would, yes." He told the butler when he appeared. Tychon suspected they would need the man to get around here. The mansion was huge, completely massive in scale. If this was how the nobility lived, Tychon was never going to get used to it, no matter how long he ended up staying here. He resolved to explore the place once he knew where his room was, try to get a lay of the land. It couldn't be so big that he'd be unable to piece together a rough idea of where everything was, could it?

[Thragka]

"That would be meet, Mr Aubrey," Tauron said. Curious as he was, he kept his voice level and looked only at the butler. He was, in fact, a little surprised to find that they were actually in Rhodes' home - this was enemy territory, and he would not assume that the cell was safe here. Nor did he intend to trust the butler. Aubrey might have been Octavian's right hand man, for all they knew. So, for now, he would not allow himself to relax.

Not that he generally allowed himself that frequently, anyway.

[LCP]

“Very good, sir,” repeated Aubrey. “This way.”

The butler led them by a fairly direct route – up one of the sweeping staircases past the stuffed Sa'vak, along a short gallery hung with discoloured paintings of Cantus nobility, up a squared-off spiral staircase and down a long corridor. Out of one of the narrow windows in the outer wall, Tychon caught a glimpse of unobstructed sky.

They passed a multitude of doors, some grand, some small: it seemed to Red that this place could have housed a whole company of Guard. The ones that Aubrey led them to were on the understated side: inside were five small rooms, no two exactly alike.

They had old but expensive furniture, and a few curious ornaments. In one was what looked like a bone flute, standing in a glass case on top of the dresser. Another was decorated with little porcelain figurines of Ecclesiarchy saints, their colours faded with great age. A third had a pair of antique laslocks mounted on the wall. The other two were hung with some small paintings of unidentified cities and landscapes. Three out of the five had brass-chased fireplaces built into the wall, with a small bucket of firewood – real firewood – to burn. All but one had en-suite bathrooms attached, although for the most part they were somewhat cramped.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” enquired Aubrey, in the same smooth, lugubrious tones as before.

[Thanatos 51-50]

"You can hand the Assesors' count to Mister Drake here," Red said cordially, indicating the priest, before turning to make a show of examining the laslocks in greater detail, and waiting for the butler to bow out of the room.

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon, idly, wondered what the laslocks were worth, and if it'd be worth trying to take them. For all he knew, the weapons didn't work anymore. If Red wanted that room for himself, the gunslinger wasn't about to argue, but if not he'd be the one claiming it.

"There a map of the estate anywhere?" he asked the butler, suspecting the answer would be no. "Appreciate it if we could get one of those, and the list would be a good thing too. What will be done for food while we're here? I'm told the estate doesn't have a cook on hand at the moment. How many rooms are there in the house? Are any of them locked? Will you be able to provide us with a msater key, should we need it?"

Full of questions, but not expecting helpful answers, Tychon was mostly fishing to see if he could get anything useful out of the butler.

[LCP]

"You can hand the Assesors' count to Mister Drake here," Red said cordially, indicating the priest, before turning to make a show of examining the laslocks in greater detail, and waiting for the butler to bow out of the room.

"I'm afraid I haven't been trusted with that document, sir," said the butler. "It's been left in a safe to which the gentlemen downstairs have the combination."


"There a map of the estate anywhere?" [Tychon] asked the butler

"I'm afraid not, sir. The house is over a thousand years old, and has been expanded on multiple occasions since its construction."


"What will be done for food while we're here? I'm told the estate doesn't have a cook on hand at the moment."

Aubrey gave a polite inclination of his head.

"I can arrange for a cook to be retained, if that is what you wish, sir," he said. "Unfortunately most of the help were dismissed on leave when the master's... trouble... first began. We have only a skeleton staff, as you see. But we have a full larder, and Blevins is a passable substitute for a cook." He nodded a shallow bow towards Tychon. "Naturally you have the run of the kitchen, should you wish to prepare anything for yourselves."


"How many rooms are there in the house?"

"Seventy-seven, sir, depending how you count them."


Are any of them locked? Will you be able to provide us with a master key, should we need it?"

"Of course, sir."

Bowing more deeply this time, Aubrey turned to leave.

OOC: A laslock is essentially a laser-musket; single-shot, not a practical 'modern' weapon in most respects when to a lasgun. These ones are Best Quality.

[Destro_Yersul]

Well, seventy-seven was a lot, but not as many as Tychon had been expecting. The map, of course, was about as he expected - perhaps they could get Jericus to make one. "I ain't any of us can cook," he told the Butler, "But we can probably manage, if nobody's around to do it."

Once the butler had left, Tychon looked to the others. "Well," he said, scratching the stubble on his chin, "Where d'we start?"

[Etcetera]

Jericus dispatched Minerva to begin an initial survey of the house, happy to have more than one pair of eyes again. That and the silent wingbeats of a bird of prey were far less likely to set off anti-intruder measures than the slow *clunk* of the firearm connoisseur.

[Thragka]

Tauron deposited his cases in the room with the Ecclesiarchy figurines, before stepping back out to Tychon and the others.

"This estate represents our best starting point, I feel," he said. "Octavian's possessions, and his people, are bound to it. Mayhaps the inventory will show us something of interest - in conjunction with your surveying," he added with a nod to Jericus. "I should also like to interview the staff. They must know their master better than we do. If we can handle their loyalties tactfully, they could tell us much that might be useful."

"Then, if we are venturing abroad in the Hive, I shall visit the local Ministorum presence. We are hunting a cult; perhaps I can discreetly find someone knowledgeable and ... sympathetic to our cause." Was that a wry smile on his lips?

"But first," Tauron said, fiddling with the ring on his finger, "I must pray." He drummed his fingers against the braids of the whip tied to his waist.

[Rizhail]

Nova deposited her bags in the room with the bone flute display, curious about the object and looking forward to inspecting it once the cell was done with their work for the day.

"I'll head back down to talk to the guards about the assesor's list," Nova said in response to Tychon's query. "It should be as good a place to start as any, unless someone has a better idea."

[LCP]

Minerva winged silently away, vanishing into the yawning corridors outside. It would take some time for one owl to make a full sweep of all the rooms, but the advantage of servitors was that they didn't get bored.

Heading downstairs, Nova asked Villiers and Compton for the documents they had been promised. Leading the way to a large cloakroom that appeared to have been appropriated as some kind of office for the guards, Compton produced a key and unlocked a heavy, brutish safe that was clearly not part of the room's original contents.

Inside were three documents. The first was a great sheaf of papers as thick as Nova's fist: Compton explained that this was the inventory the assessors had taken. The second was a slim thing in a card folder, consisting of only three sheets of paper: it purported to contain the details of those members of the Rhodes family still on the planet. The third was a small folder containing the names and addresses of those staff who had been dismissed, along with contact details for their next of kin should they have gone missing.

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon did not have a better idea. The gunslinger had followed Nova downstairs, and wound up looking over her shoulder at the stack of documents. "Damn," was his thought on the matter.

"We got a whole lot of ground to cover. Reckon it's best to start with the house, though. Top to bottom. May I?" Tychon asked, holding his hand out for the sheaf of papers that represented the inventory list. Getting ahold of it would result in him flipping through it, muttering to himself as he read the still not quite familiar letters. "Drake an' I could go through this in a few hours, see if there was anything really looked worth having a pass at. I'm interested in this 'gun room,' of course."

[Thanatos 51-50]

"No secret passages have been discovered, I guess?" Red thought aloud, carefully replacing the laslock.
"In the vids, the Heretic's Mansion is always riddled with secret tunnels so he can hide from the Noble Heroes. I'd like to see just how true-to-life that is."

[Rizhail]

"There's a reason such passages are considered secret," Nova replied to Red as she looked over the list. "If they're easy to discover, people like me can use them to get in."

Frowning, she traced a finger down the 'basement' section of the list. "I doubt an arch-heretic would leave any clues in his servants' quarters, so we'll save those for last. Jer, care to come with me to check the garage and boiler rooms? We'll see if there's anything interesting down there, then work our way up through the various storage and drawing rooms. I somehow doubt it will be all that easy to find anything useful, but I don't see a better place to start."

[Etcetera]

"That would be wise. I wonder if we could convince someone to bless us with an Auspex - that particular gift of the Omnissiah would be most helpful in divining hidden spaces."

OOC:
Whether or not we actually can, Jer's gonna try and get his hands on a crowbar, a tape measure, and some chalk.

[LCP]

Red

With the others headed downstairs, Red began to search the rooms Aubrey had prepared for them. Although modest by the standards of the nobility, they were still far more luxurious than anything within Red's experience. A single one of the items of furniture on display would probably have sold for enough to make him king of the sump back home.

The downside of this, of course, was that there were a lot of places to search. Starting with the washrooms, then looking in the backs of closets and wardrobes, before working his way around the light fittings, Red looked for any sign of a secret entrance or exit. It was slow, painstaking work, but he found nothing.

1

Nova & Jericus

Find their way down to the basement level was easier said than done, given the labyrinthine nature of the house. After a couple of false turns, passing down echoing staircases and a corridor hung with ancient battle-flags of red and gold, they fixed on the right path.


~

The boiler rooms were a departure from the baroque grandeur of the house – brick-walled, stark and utilitarian. Despite this the boilers themselves were impressive affairs, their bulky systems surprisingly modern. In the central boiler room, Jericus noted a Kaboth-pattern backup generator lying dormant in the corner. Its reserves were almost full: in the event of a blackout, that would be enough to keep the house powered for about a week. More, if usage were rationed.

While the big boilers had a new-made gleam, the pipework they fed into was as ancient as one might expect. Along the walls of the central boiler room were rows of black fuse-boxes, each one's cover fitted with a keyhole. In the corner next to the boiler itself, a plain wooden chair sat empty, with a broom leaning next to it and a local broadsheet lying folded on the seat. From the date on the headline it was several months old.


~

The garage was located near the primary staircase that led down from the ground floor, where the owners of the house could reach it easily without passing through the servants' quarters. Inside, the broad, low-ceilinged room was dark. The click of a switch set long bar-lamps flickering into life.

At the back of the garage, a plentiful selection of machine tools were arranged around a sizeable metal workbench – everything the civilian mechanic might need for automotive repairs. Cans of oil, polish and paint were stacked neatly on shelves, along with jars of screws, nuts and bolts.

At the front of the garage, a gentle ramp led up to a steel shutter, looking like it was rigged to open and close under remote control. Jericus had not noticed it from outside: the exit must have been quite artfully concealed.

In the centre of the floor were two large automobiles. Glossy black and perfectly-maintained, they bore little resemblance to the kind of robust working vehicles Jericus was used to. They reminded him a little of the car their driver had brought them here in – in the same way that a racehorse reminds one of a donkey.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/Rhodes_Car_zps870bd186.jpg

The first seated two, while the second seated four. The smaller car was unmarked, while the larger vehicle had a golden 'R' picked out in curling script on its passenger doors.

OOC: A question regarding Minerva's survey – it would take me an age to give you descriptions of every single room. Is there anything specific you're looking for?

1

Tauron & Tychon

Poring over the inventory the assessors had left was the work of hours. It was written in crabbed handwriting, not all of it the same person's. In some cases, most notably the trophy room, they had clearly had to call in outside experts to identify some of the objects they had found.

Settling down to the task at hand, Tauron and his new assistant made a start.

OOC: Best if I do this in table form. The inventory itself contains an exhaustive list, but I'm not going to type that out because OH GOD MY HANDS. Instead I'll just try to give a representative picture including any weird or curious items. Then if you can give me any specific questions where you want to dig deeper.

Basement Level
{table]The Wine Cellar| Assorted wines, many old vintages, many from off-world. All barrels examined and accounted for.
Garage | Two expensive autocars, local make. Assorted tools and supplies.
Junior Servants' Quarters | Largely emptied with departure of associated staff. Furnished with undecorative but hard-wearing furniture.
West/East Laundry Rooms | Large copper vats for the washing of sheets, drying racks, canvas bins, stores of detergent. The East Laundry Room is semi-automated.
The Low Gallery | Assorted portraits, presumably of family members. Portraits here have no names attached.
Central, West and East Boiler Rooms | Three independent high-capacity boilers, large and well-maintained. Kaboth-pattern backup generator and fusebox array in the central boiler room.[/table]

Ground Floor
{table]Reception Hall | Portraits of family members, family battle honours. Stuffed Xenos beast, identified as a Fedrid Sa'vak.
The Grand Hall | Long dining table, enough to seat banquet. Six large fireplaces. Felid-skin rugs. Portraits of family members.
The Angevin Ballroom | Three large lumen-globe chandeliers. Ceiling mural depicting events from family history. Orchestra gallery with many brass music-stands.
The Great Kitchen | Four large tables for the preparation of tools, with large selection of traditional cookware (mostly brass). Attached pantry. Walk-in refrigeration unit. Three large ovens, two rows of gas-burning cookers.
The Trophy Room | Contains taxidermy specimens of 117 separate Xenos species (some sapient), along with various cultural artefacts and primitive weapons. Prominent painting of Octavian Rhodes.
The Scarlet Drawing Room | Many red-upholstered couches, chairs and chaise-longues. Extensively-stocked drinks cabinet with crystal tumblers. Pianoforte, antique. Array of well-stocked bookshelves. Grandfather clock.
The Jenyns Drawing Room | Seats as in the Scarlet Drawing Room (although not exclusively red). Tall windows facing street. Drinks cabinet, bookshelves, harpsichord. Prominent painting of noblewoman identified by name-plaque as Sarah Jenyns.
Senior Servants' Quarters | Better-furnished, slightly more spacious version of Junior Servants' Quarters. Sole current occupant, Reginald Aubrey, butler.
The West Dining Room | Large dining table, seating twelve. Brass lamps. Large windows looking out over hive slope.
The East Dining Room | Nalwood dining table, seating sixteen. Brass lamps. Large fireplace with lion's-head carvings.
The Breakfast Room | Dining table seating eight, various coffee tables. Bookshelves, large windows looking out onto the street. Silver set of utensils for the serving of expensive caffeine.
Billiards Room | Billiards table with ivory balls carved lion's-paw feet. Drinks cabinet and side table. Portraits of minor family members.
The Aurelian Smoking Room | Drinks cabinet with notable sunburst-design inlay on the doors, containing large and varied cache of lho-sticks and cigars. Ornamental display of pipes. Portraits, possibly of family members, notably discoloured.
West/East Cloakrooms | Each room had a seat for a servant to act as attendant, and racks for guests' cloaks and boots. The West Cloakroom has now been converted to act as an assessors' office.[/table]

First Floor
{table]The Master Bedroom | Large four-poster bed with lion's-head bedposts. Wardrobe, dressing table, bookshelf and drinks cabinet, the last resembling the cabinet in the Aurelian Smoking Room. Tall glass door with balcony looking out over hive slope. Full-length mirror, Xenos-skin rug, large fireplace. Wardrobe still contains large variety of expensive clothing.
The Lady's Chamber | Similiar in layout to master bedroom, with connecting balcony. Furniture is covered with dust-sheets and according to servants has been for years. Tall grandfather clock is the only item remaining uncovered.
The Ramilies Room | Unused bedroom of similar size to the master bedroom. East wall has large painting of what appear to be a collection of Imperial Guard and Navy officers watching a sunrise. Landscape depicted does not match any terrain on Cantus.
The Tarsus Rooms | Set of state rooms (three), with much gilt ornamentation on display. Have not been used in some time, and some items are covered or in storage. Enormous painting over fireplace shows landing of General Tarsus on Cantus; the colours of the Rhodes family are on display among the planetary dignitaries greeting him.
The Blue Room | Small bedroom with single east-facing window and azure wallpaper. Crowded with bookshelves, with many books on advances subjects such as politics, history and mathematics; books on the Imperial Creed are conspicuously absent. Chest at foot of bed was locked and no key could be found. The lock was removed, but the chest was found to contain only some old children's toys and a folded dress, suitable for a girl of perhaps fourteen Terran standard years.
The Nursery | Large room with two small cribs and a chest of expensive (but old-fashioned) toys. There is a painting of Octavian Rhodes on the wall, next to a woman who is believed to be Ophelia Rhodes. Other contents include adult-sized chair and a rocking-horse made in the shape of a lion.
Guest Bedrooms (4) | Various guest bedrooms containing antique furniture matching the rest of the house. Several curious include a set of Guard medals, a large stuffed avian and a tall clock with an ivory face.
Governess' Room | Small bedroom with washbasin and free-standing bathtub, rather than en suite washroom as in most of the guest bedrooms. Single book-case, wardrobe and small dressing-table next to narrow bed.
The Grand Bathroom | Large bathroom with deep octagonal bath, large enough to take multiple bathers and with steps leading down into the water. Bath has thirteen taps. Floor of the bath is a mosaic of starships caught in the arms of a void-kraken.
The Lady's Bathroom | Small private bathroom down a corridor from the lady's chamber. Contains all amenities.
West/East Bathrooms | Similar bathrooms located on opposite ends of main corridor leading to master/lady's/Ramilies/Tarsus bedrooms, and within easy reach of guest rooms. Larger and more ornate than en-suite washrooms.
The South Bathroom | Small bathroom located at opposite end of the house from master bedroom, easily accessible from guest bedrooms and the governess' room.
The Long Gallery | High-roofed corridor with exterior windows set in one wall. Opposite wall is hung with many paintings of family members, some large, some small. Pride of place is given to an individual called Titus Rhodes.
The Low Gallery | Low-roofed corridor on opposite side of house from the Long Gallery. Contains similar assortment of smaller paintings.
The Gun-Room | Many displays of guns: some functioning, some antiques for display only. All of excellent craftsmanship. Several mounted animal heads, tall clock.[/table]

Second Floor
{table]The Master Study | Large desk with many drawers, containing mostly documents related to the finances of the estate. Small fireplace. Two large bookshelves. Window looking out over hive slope. A phonograph with an extensive collection of record cylinders.
The Library | Many high bookshelves arranged in stacked levels, with a wheeled ladder on each level for retrieving books from the higher shelves. Lit by lumen-globe chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. Two reading-desks, as well as soft leather-upholstered chairs in the gaps between bookshelves. Some paintings.
The Ashe Smoking Room | Small room with various seats, side-tables and a drinks cabinet containing various inhalables, similar to the Aurelian smoking room.
The Music Room | Many musical instruments, including a spinet and several exotic items from other worlds. Two slim bookshelves contain sheet music from many of the Calixis Sector's greatest composers, and a cupboard in the corner contains folded music stands. A large phonograph sits in the corner with a limited assortment of classical pieces on disc.
The North Gallery | A long corridor hung with family portraits and other paintings. Many of the paintings here are extremely old and difficult to identify due to discolouration.
The Tutor's Study | Small study with desk for tutor and chairs for children. Contains a globe of Cantus and an extensive collection of notably advanced textbooks, with an emphasis on political history and astronomy.
Tutor's Room | A small bedroom, much like the governess' room on the floor below but slightly larger. Has a small fireplace.
The Masked Room | Unused bedroom. The walls are hung with exotic ornamental masks, not believed to be of Cantus craftsmanship. Has a large fireplace.
The White Room | Unused bedroom, named for colour of wallpaper. Only notable ornament is a painting of the Regent's Tower in Hive Lothian. Has a fireplace similar to that in the Masked Room.
The Turret Room | A small unused bedroom set inside a turret that protrudes from one corner of the house. Narrow windows look out over the hive slope, while most of the storage space in the room is built into cushioned benches that sit under the windows. These were found to contain little. Notable wood-cased wall-clock, carved in the shape of an Imperial Eagle.
Guest Bedrooms (6) | More guest bedrooms, furnished in a similar fashion to those on the floor below. Notable curios: collection of porcelain saints, bone flute or whistle, pair of antique laslocks.[/table]

Third Floor
{table]The Tower Room | Unused bedroom in surprising state of dust and disrepair. En-suite bathroom is larger than most others, but fittings are old and slightly dirty. Door has exterior locks, which servants had to be persuaded to unlock to allow access.
The Attic Room | Storage room refitted as bedroom, despite the easy availability of the Tower Room. Free-standing bathtub and mirror; bed is conspicuously newer than most other furniture in the house. Strong lock on door, hidden microphone and picter discovered in the wall. Notable lack of cords, wires or sharp objects.
The Chapel | Small devotional chapel, seeming to have seen little use. Triptych of Drusus and Tarsus kneeling beside the Golden Throne; old copy of the litanies. Golden Aquila fitted to north wall.
The Observatory | Attic room with hinging aperture in the roof and assortment of brass telescopes. Horizontal windows also allow excellent sightlines down into the hive. Bookshelves are filled with astronomy texts.
The High Study | Desk, bookshelves, writing materials; window looking out over hive slope. Documents found here contain far less material to do with finances, deal with more esoteric subjects. Notable collection of books on Death Worlds of the Calixis Sector.
The Council Room | Large octagonal table with a gap in the centre and eight high-backed seats. No windows, low lamps. Portraits in this room are so darkened and discoloured with age as to be unrecognisable.[/table]

[Destro_Yersul]

"Look at all this," Tychon said, flipping through the pages of material. "Take a damned army to go through all of it, and all for one man." After a moment, he amended the statement. "Well, and his family. Ain't many of them around, it seems. Have to wonder, how bad was Missus Rhodes when they found her, if they ain't able to tell her from a portrait?"

Flipping through a few more pages, Tychon found a quill and a paper, and started taking notes. The gun room would bear investigating, if only as a matter of professional curiosity. So would the Lady's Chamber, though more because it seemed unused - things could have fallen through the cracks. The Library and the Master study could probably use another look, as well. The really interesting rooms, as far as Tychon was concerned, were all on the third floor. Everything except the observatory and chapel deserved to be searched thoroughly, starting with the Attic room and the Tower room. The descriptions of those two, and the state of Ophelia Rhodes, made Tychon suspect that the house had seen its fair share of atrocities. The High Study and the Council Room also seemed like good targets, since Rhodes was likely to have used those frequently.

OOC:
In case it isn't clear, Tychon would like more detailed information on the following:

Gun Room, Lady's Chamber, Library, Master Study, High Study, Council Room, Attic Room and Tower Room.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red shook his head.
Nothing.

May as well continue searching around the estate. That picture portrait of Rhodes and the stuffed Sa'vak seemed important. He should investigate those before heading on down to the servant's quarters.

Going to Examine the Stuffed Savak and the Portrait. Red is, of course, going to "Accidentally" see if he can move the portrait off its perch and knock it to the floor.
[roll0]
[roll1]

[LCP]

Red

Leaving the guest rooms behind, Red began to make his way back down to the ground floor. Emerging on one of the galleries that flanked the reception hall, he walked out onto his side of the descending staircases and looked up at the stuffed beast and the portrait that hung above it.

If Red hadn't been trapped in a leaning shuttle with Lot 11, if Red hadn't been through the gate on Abandoned Hope, he might have said the Sa'vak was the most frightening beast he had ever seen. As it was, it ranked fairly low on his personal terror scale. What impressed him most about it was the work that must have gone in on the part of the taxidermist to pose it in such a dynamic fashion. Its three-petaled mouth looked like it had been flash-frozen in the act of hinging open to swallow someone whole.

The portrait behind it was similarly the work of a true artist. In the bottom right, Red could just about make out the man's signature - B. Hallward. Or Hallard. Or Hadvard. The handwriting was a little unclear.

To actually reach the portrait with his hands, he would have to climb on the Sa'vak's back. To do that, he would have to drop over the banister of the stair and climb the dais on which the Sa'vak stood. Neither seemed particularly daunting physical tasks, but he wouldn't look the most innocent if Aubrey chose that moment to walk in.

OOC: Just a note - the portrait is very large and will likely cause/sustain some damage if it falls down.

[Rizhail]

Garage Crew:

"Well, I don't see anywhere better to start. Let's search the cars and see if we find anything useful," Nova said, gesturing toward the unmarked two-seater. "Best start with that one. If I were an arch-heretic going out to meet friends, I'd take the car with no identifying markings."

With that, she attempted to get into the vehicle and begin her search.


Searching the two-seater. If the door is locked, Nova will attempt to pick the lock with her multi-key (or will leave it to Jer, if he is better at it).

Security roll, if necessary: [roll0] vs. 64 (if vs. Nova's skill)

Search check: [roll1] vs. 28 (38 if you consider this a sight based check. Even more if this falls under the 'assesor's list provides help' bit.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Alright," Tychon said, standing up at last and stretching his back. He'd been sitting for too long. "I'm going to go get a look at the upstairs, see if I can tell what scared the servants so much. You want to come along, Drake?"

Whether or not the priest decided to go with, Tychon started searching for how to get upstairs. Once there, he had a quick look around to get his bearings, noting different rooms and the sizes of them and their location in regards to the other rooms. Then he started searching, beginning with the Attic room.

Tychon doesn't have search trained, so he's not going to be especially good at this. He does get +10 to find things by sight, but this is still at base 19.

[roll0]

[LCP]

Nova & Jericus

The car was locked, but Nova quickly had it open. Sliding into one of the luxury grox-leather seats, she began her search.

The glove compartment contained a couple of loose cigars, a pair of driving-gloves, a box of sulphur matches, and an unmarked brass key. Twisting to one side of the steering-wheel, Nova could see nothing rolling around loose at floor level; a quick test of the pedals showed there was nothing stuck behind them either.

Getting out of the car again, she headed round to the back. A lever by the driver's seat opened the boot, which transpired to contain a case of fine amasec and a folded broadsheet that was some months out of date, dating from around 320.999. The name of the paper was the Ministry Herald.

1

Tychon

Tauron decided to spend a little longer with the ledgers. Taking his leave of the cloakroom-***-office, Tychon headed back up the stairs.

There were a lot of stairs in this house, and by the time he got to the top even Tychon was slightly out of breath. Hadn't Rhodes ever had any elderly relatives? You'd think they might have installed a lift.

The attic room was clean and neat, almost bare. Though it still represented a level of comfort far above that which Tychon was used to, it lacked the ornamentation of the other rooms. Tychon was reminded somehow of a hospital room.

A quick check of the items in the room corresponded with the page of the inventory Tychon had brought with him. Tychon noted the mirror had been turned to face the wall. The concealed pict-spy was visible behind a metal panel that had been prised away from the plaster, still dangling by its fittings.

Walking over to the wardrobe, he threw it open. The dresses inside were simple and plain, but he could tell by the feel of the fabric that just one of them would probably have cost him a whole year's labour back in Gunmetal Hive.

[Etcetera]

Nova, Jer, and that chap who does the numbers

Jericus debated the wisdom of simply taking the vehicle apart bit by bit. It'd be very thorough, but probably slight overkill. Jer noted to the best of his ability the make of each of the vehicles - if he could get his hands on some blueprints to the vehicles locating hidden compartments would be much easier. Although Rhodes probably wasn't arrogant enough to smuggle contraband in vehicles that conspicuous.

[Thragka]

Tychon sat for a moment, staring down at the ledgers as he idly twirled the pen in his right hand. He looked down at the scrawled set of notes he'd been making and realised he'd written the last sentence twice. Frowning, he crumpled up the page and threw it aside.

Running his hands through his hair, he sighed. He was not at ease here. He could not concentrate. He needed to clear his head.

He twisted the ring on his finger.

"It is time."


~

Returning to the second floor bedroom, he filled the sink with cold water. He stripped, depositing his clothes neatly on the bed. The hairshirt came off last - he removed it slowly, letting it scratch his torso as he worked it up and over his head. After a moment's consideration, he hung it in the wardrobe.

Naked, he spent a few minutes removing his belongings from their cases, and storing them in diverse appropriate shelves, drawers, and cupboards, until he worked his way through his pack to the Litanies. The massive tome was instead plonked down onto the floor. Tauron knelt before it, naked, and turned to an epistle on the themes of failure and redemption.

He read aloud. With each sentence, the whip arced overhead, knots colliding with oft-bruised flesh.

The first few strikes were tolerable. By the end, Tauron was weeping, tears equally expressing his pain and his joy.


~

After, Drake returned to where he'd left the ledgers. Giving it another quick read-through - and now being able to give it his undivided attention - he took up pen and paper again, and added to the notes Tychon had been making.

Toughness test at -10 to avoid losing a wound from the scoriada: [roll0]
Literacy (extended?) for more detailed examination of things of interest in the inventory for the Blue Room and the Chapel: [roll1]

After that, he'll head to the Blue Room. He wants to examine what Rhodes was teaching his progeny, if that's what he was doing. So you can keep things moving, here's a search test now, if you want - checking the books, mainly, for inappropriate material. Per 29, untrained, possibly +20 for the bones from the inventory? [roll2]

[Destro_Yersul]

This, then, must have been where Rhodes had been keeping his wife. Tychon had guessed that, but the why of it still eluded him. At least his suspicion was now confirmed. Noting the mirror and the pict spy, Tychon had a quick look under the bed and at the back of the wardrope for anything that might have been overlooked, then left the room. The tower room had yet to be looked at, and it was his next destination.

Entering carefully, Tychon inspected the room. Why it hadn't been used was another thing that was bothering the gunslinger. Too many questions, not enough answers. Poking around, he started lifting up the dust covers on the furniture...

Another search roll. Maybe I'll get lucky this time. [roll0]

NOPE.

[LCP]

Tauron

Completing his notes (for now), Tauron headed to the Blue Room. It took some finding. The house was a maze, and Tauron could have sworn that he ended up walking down the same corridor twice from the same direction. Paintings of long-dead Rhodeses looked down their patrician noses at him, frozen forever in cracked pigments. An enormous stuffed avian watched him with glittering glass eyes from its perch over the archway at the end of the gallery. It resembled a raven, but its wingspan was so great that its outstretched flight feathers touched the walls to either side. There was a vicious hook to its beak, like a seabird's. Tauron would not have liked to have seen it near small children while it was alive.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/ArgentavisMagnificens_zpsac89e574.jpg

At last, Tauron found the room he was looking. Pushing open the door with his notes in hand, he began checking off items against where they appeared on the list. They all seemed to be present.

The Blue Room would have been a reasonable-sized room for an adult; for a child it was large. Whole families would squeeze into smaller spaces in the lower levels of the hive city, and if anything Tauron had gathered from the others about hive life was true the price of a cubic metre would be exponentially higher the higher up the spire one went. It was quite possible that the most valuable thing in this room was the space itself.

That was a judgement that of course had to be reserved until Tauron had read the books on the shelves. They seemed to be loosely categorised by subject. The first bookcase was full of astronomy and mathematics; the second was full of history. The shelves that were mounted on the wall seemed to have a mixture of politics, philosophy and fiction, with the fiction being more prevalent on the lowest shelf.

The bed-springs creaked as Tauron sat down. Picking a book off the shelf, he looked at the spine. A History of the Great Trade Wars – Volume I.

One had to start somewhere. Opening it to the frontispiece to satisfy himself that the pages inside bore out the title, Tauron reached for Volume II.

OOC: No titles jump out as being heretical. However, Tauron is uneasy with the broader picture they paint.

The books on mathematics and astronomy range from introductory texts to highly technical, highly detailed treatises. One would not expect a child to understand the latter. Furthermore, that level of learning is inappropriate for anyone not destined for an appropriate post in the Adeptus. Do the Litanies not say that knowledge is power, to be guarded well?
The books on history are similarly advanced, but have a disproportionate focus on Cantus and Calixis Sector history. Where are the instructional books on the great victories of the Imperium's timeless heroes? There is only a single slim volume on the Great Crusade. There are also three sizeable volumes on pre-Imperial history.
The books on philosophy explore moral and metaphysical notions without couching any of their ideas in the context of the Imperial Creed - none of the authors are priests of the Ecclesiarchy. A child should not be taught to think independently of official dogma.

The works of fiction are the only books Tauron judges completely innocuous. In general they seem to be aimed at a lower reading age than the various factual tomes, and include a couple of thick collections of local fairy-tales.

Be sure to check the OOC for the detailed inventory list for this room.

1

Tychon

There was nothing under the bed, and nothing at the back of the wardrobe. Straightening up and straightening out his back, Tychon headed across the way to examine the Tower Room.

The door to the Tower Room was massively lockable, with great steel bolts designed to accept padlocks from the outside. On the other side, there was a simple keyhole, allowing the occupant to lock the door against any external intruders.

The inside was old and dusty – so dusty, in fact, that Tychon's clunking boots left noticeable prints on the floorboards, where they were not covered by a moth-eaten old carpet. There were older prints too, presumably left by the assessors – they tracked around every corner of the room.

It was quite cramped by comparison to the other rooms – very cramped by comparison to the lady's chamber. A quick wipe of the finger found a film of dust on every surface, and a look under the sagging four-poster bed turned up a collection of dead spiders. The drawers of the dressing table were empty.

The bathroom was a little cleaner, but not much. The bathtub itself seemed a formidable sort of antique, set in a great square block and with a tangled cluster of taps – more taps than Tychon understood how a bath could possibly need. In Gunmetal Hive there was only one kind of water, and it always came out grey. There were a couple of pegs on the inside of the bathroom door, on which hung a grey woollen nightshirt and a thick, pale blue towel.

The room's one narrow mullioned window looked as if it had not been cleaned for some time. Even at this altitude, Hive Augusta's atmosphere had left a thick deposit of soot and grime on the glass, letting Tychon view the world outside through a veil of dim grey. It looked like quite a drop.

Turning back towards the door, Tychon noticed something else. There was a small, square painting on the wall opposite the bed. Its colours had darkened and faded, but there was still something almost garishly colourful about the scene. It showed a pale pink woman, in the particular state of undress that Tychon had gathered was acceptable in fancy paintings, lying fallen on the ground. With one arm she reached up, imploring the creature that dominated the centre of the picture – a great yellow lion with a grotesquely detailed face. Its mouth was slobbered with red blood, and the limp form of a chubby infant dangled from its jaws.

Though it was only a painting, there was something vividly horrible about it. Tychon got the impression that the lion was looking straight out of the painting, right at him. It looked like it might still be hungry.

[Rizhail]

Garage Squad:

Plopping down in one of the car's seats, Nova sighed. "Well, I doubt this will be useful," she said to Jer as she held up the newspaper, "but perhaps the date could be useful. Maybe we can figure out what he was doing that day."

Stowing the paper, she sighed again. "Well, I didn't expect instant progress. Let's check the other vehicle, unless there's something else you want to do with this one."

Hopping out of the first car, Nova walked over to the four seater to repeat the process in hopes of finding something interesting.


Security roll: [roll0]

Search roll: [roll1]

[LCP]

Nova & Jericus

The second car proved equally easy for Nova to get into - she wondered if she wasn't getting too good at this. Sticking her head inside, she began the second search.

In the glove compartment of the four-seater was a wooden pencil and a ring-bound notepad; it was half-used, but the pages that had been written on had been torn off as the writer went, leaving the top page blank. There was also a small leather-cased authorisation pass for the car, designed to hang just inside the windscreen; it had the ornate heraldic stamp of the Mayoralty. Finally, there was a slim black wallet - Nova's estimate put the contents at about seventy-five Thrones. The wallet had no name on it, and contained nothing but the cash.

In the boot there was a can of engine oil, a canister of reserve fuel and a spare tyre. Squashed under the tyre, Nova noticed a pair of knee-high rubberised boots. Extricating them revealed that they were of a sturdy make, and sized for a man with big feet.

There was nothing on the seats or under the floor. Either Rhodes or some servant (more likely some servant) had kept these cars scrupulously clean.

[Thanatos 51-50]

The Foyer
Red considered the Sa'vak. The thing was too big to move, easily, which quickly bashed his idea of tipping it into the portrait.
He still didn't trust the Rhodes painting and stared at it long and hard, weighing his options. There was no way he could make tipping it down look like a accident with it being that far up.
He drew an arrow from his quiver, spinning it contemplatively in his fingers, and decided that discretion would be the better part of investigation right now, despite how much we wanted to sink the shaft into the canvas.
So he keyed his commbead."

"Is there any indication that the assesors looked behind the paintings?" the solider asked over the network, and then, after a long short pause, in which he recollected the Prol Incident, "Or inside the trophies? Make sure they're not -- y'know, Minevra-ized?"

[Thragka]

"Not that I recall," Tauron replied. "Speaking of Prol, however ... as I recall, Lauressa was not Octavian's only daughter. Do we remember the name of the other one?"

The Blue Room
The cleric began flicking through the front covers of the fiction book, seearching for an inscription that would signify ownership. Then he began selecting a few of the more interesting non-fiction books from the shelves to bring elsewhere.

First, look for the name of the room's inhabitant. If the fiction books don't reveal it, do the non-fiction ones too.

Then, Tauron wants to select a shortlist, so to speak, of perhaps ten of the more technical tomes that between them cover the following subjects:

Stellar navigation
Mathematics of warp-transit or the Immaterium at large (to be held at arms length and speed-read as abruptly as possible!)
Any of the Cantide histories discussing pre-Imperial cults or (past or present) unorthodox local beliefs
Any of the philosophy tomes dealing with psykers, clairvoyance, prophecy or eschatology
Finally, I suppose trained ecclesiarchy clergy might be taught to recognise and classify certain mainstream brands of heresy; if so, he'll see if he can categorise any obviously heretical principles in the philosophy books.


Various rolls that may be of use, all against Int 37:
[roll0]
[roll1]
[roll2] to identify the Astartes doll.

After, he intends to take the summary group of books down to the cloakroom/office, look over Tychon's notes on the Master and High Studies (if they're still there) and proceed to do another detailed examination of the Tutor's Study.

[LCP]

Tauron

The first book Tauron tried gave him no joy. The second - a compilation of Cantide fairy tales from the northern isles - brought better luck. Just inside the front cover, written in blue ink, were the initials "M. R.", in a small but juvenile hand. Underneath them was a small scribble, which might - in a poor light - be interpreted as a child's drawing of some kind of feline.

He found a few more books that were signed "M. R.", but none with a full name. Setting aside fiction for the time being, he turned to fact. Soon he had compiled a stack of books that seemed of particular interest to his judgemental eye. They were:

Elements of Stellar Cartography; An Introduction to Parallax And Other Theorems, by Phoryces of Pythea. A concise tome of introductory (but advanced) mathematical techniques, confined solely to the bounds of realspace observations.

Discourses on the Empyrean, by Vordecai Streng. A rather rambling and bulky book compiling various perspectives on the nature of Warp Travel. Half the book was history, and half the other half accounts of empirical observations, but Tauron was wary of the remaining quarter.

Magna Mater - Stories from the Long Shadow, by Adrastia Hedlam-Morley. A collection of Cantide folk tales and ghost stories dating from before the reunification, Tauron wasn't sure if it was there with the fiction or with the history books. The foreword seemed dry and academic but the pages of stories themselves seemed well-thumbed.

Penumbral History, by Wu Yingfei. A rather oblique and mystical book which traced the legacy of various prophecies - some made by holy men, others from altogether less palatable sources, both treated with the same misty detachment - in shaping the history of the Calixis Sector. It was difficult to tell without a deeper reading whether the author was trying to assess the accuracy of the prophecies, or exploring how knowledge of the prophecies themselves had shaped the outcomes that followed.

The Freedoms of Man, by Maximilien Versainte. A slim work of political philosophy whose inflammatory themes Tauron quickly recognised as being contrary to the blessed dogma of the Ecclesiarchy. Encouraging men to believe they had rights not won through duty to their Emperor was a heresy of the most common and predictable sort.

Beyond these, he could find few others to fit his criteria; most of the others would have passed muster at a Scholam inspection, albeit with a few raised eyebrows. There were no books at all on the interaction between mathematics and the Warp; an esoteric subject to be sure, but one he was watching for.

OOC: The doll is in the colours of the Storm Wardens chapter.

I've given you all the books that are a direct fit to your criteria: do you want to take more to make it up to 10 anyway? Also, not 100% clear - do you want Tauron to go visit the tutor's study, to pore over its inventory in greater detail, or both?

[Thragka]

Tauron

Hugging the five volumes of interest to his chest, Tauron left the Blue Room, retracing his steps back to where he'd left the assessors' inventory.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. What I would like to do right away is have Tauron go back down to the ledgers, and draw up detailed inventory for the Tutor's Study in the same manner as I asked for for the Blue Room and Chapel. If Tychon took his notes on the other two studies with him, Tauron will have to make his own set for those as well.

Then, the plan is to visit each of the three studies in turn and search them for various forms of relevant-sounding text, depending on the contents of each room. From Tychon's notes, Tauron's already interested in the astronomical observations and the journal of astronomical observations, but he'll have to search the other two when he gets to them to see if anything stands out as interesting.

Apropos, ten was the maximum number of books he wanted to take - it'sconvenient that there are fewer than that that seem relevant to his interests.

MOAR Literacy for search the inventory for Things of Interest in the Tutor's Study: [roll0]

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon
"Well, that's... hmm." Taking a few steps closer to the painting, Tychon drew one of his pistols and carefully prodded the frame with his weapon's muzzle. Then he took a few steps to the side, so the lion was no longer looking at him, and raised the frame off the wall a few centimeters to get a look behind it. It hadn't jumped out and killed any assessors, it seemed, but one couldn't be too cautious in the home of a known heretic.

If there was nothing behind the painting, Tychon tried to get it off the wall. If there was something, he tried to decide how likely getting it off the wall was to do anything dangerous.

[LCP]

Tychon

The painting remained inert. Removing it carefully from the wall, Tychon saw it hung from a simple hook. From the slight difference in the colour of the wallpaper beneath, he thought it likely the painting had been hanging there a long time.

As he stood there with the painting in his hands, he heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Probably one of the others, come investigating. Probably.

1

Tauron

Returning to the makeshift office, Tauron unburdened himself of the books, poring through the scattered pages of the inventory once again to arrange in his head the contents of the house's various studies. Gathering the pages he needed, he headed upstairs again. There were a lot of stairs in this house.

Passing by an enormous painting of some Rhodes long dead, posing in a truly splendid military uniform, he made his way first to the Master Study. Quite a few of the books there turned out to be financial ledgers, and still others were padding, perhaps designed to make whoever else was in the study feel at home. Tauron recognised Katuldyne's Crusade Strategy and Vermis' Varieties of Faith; a biography of the Sector Governor Marius Hax also caught his eye. There was also an enormous, twenty-two volume series of books that seemed to make it their goal to catalogue the family tree of every noble dynasty on the planet, called Burke's Genealogicon.

Many of the books in the study, in fact, seemed to be preoccupied with the theme of family. There was a shelf of slim campaign diaries belonging to one Claudius Rhodes of the 18th Augustan Lancers, so old that Tauron felt afraid they might fall apart in his hands. There was a huge ledger of births and deaths, handwritten and so heavy that it required both hands to lift. The pages towards the back of the book were considerably yellower and more age-worn than those at the front, and the spine showed signs of having been rebound several times. Leafing through the other books revealed that many of them were lighter imitations of the Genealogicon for other worlds, giving insights into the prominent noble families of Malfi, Scintilla and a dozen other Calixis Sector planets besides. Still, none seemed to approach the sheer shelf space dedicated to the Rhodes family itself.

The Tutor's Study contained exactly what Tauron's notes from the inventory had indicated it would. Although the emphasis of the education on offer was not what Tauron would have desired, it was not enough to damn its teacher. Opening a few of the books to make sure they contained what their covers advertised, Tauron continued upstairs to the High Study.

The higher up he went in the house, the more ancient and claustrophobic the manor's spaces seemed to become. The High Study's bookshelves were tall, crooked things, leaning over its dark mahogany desk like vultures over a kill.

The documents here were a little more interesting. Where the maps in the Master's Study had been of Cantus' hives and the shipping lanes of the Markayn Marches, there were maps and orbital images here of the Sector's Death Worlds - Fedrid, Kenov III, Phyrr. A couple of the books on the shelves were Rhodes' travel journals, written in his own curling hand. They read like checklists of exotic animals, detailing exactly what xenoform his party had brought down that day and how they had done it. Another set of notebooks was filled with astronomical observations in the same handwriting, tracking the movement of the stars across Cantus' sky from day to day and month to month.

Setting the journals aside for now, Tauron looked at the other volumes on the shelves. It was hard to concentrate: there was a clock in a recess in the wall that had a strangely eccentric tick. Its case was made from some kind of ivory, and had been carved with the design of a rising sun surrounding the clock-face.

A Field Guide to Fedrid. Dead Worlds of the Calixis Sector. No two books seemed the same. Most of them seemed to be older than Tauron - some, much older. Xenos Breeds of the Calyx Expanse. Lost Tongues. The Sisters of Cybele. The Locara Accounts. The War of Brass. Travels Among the Halo Stars...

Tauron heard a sound from a nearby room. Perhaps one of the others was investigating up here too?

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon
Having ascertained that the painting was not likely to do anything terrible, at least in the next few moments, Tychon returned to the bathroom to pick up the towel. Lifting the painting carefully off the wall, he wrapped it in the thick fabric of the towel. Let the lion try to watch him now.

Fitting the wrapped painting under one arm, Tychon stepped out of the room to look down the hall. If it was one of the others, there was nothing to worry about. Especially if it turned out to be Tauron. Tychon wanted to show the priest what he had found.

[LCP]

Tychon

The hallway was empty, but the door to the High Study was ajar. Tychon could hear small sounds of movement coming from inside.

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon
Tychon walked over to the door. He'd been meaning to look in the high study anyways, may as well see if somebody else had the same idea, or if it was Aubrey for whatever reason.

[LCP]

Tychon & Tauron

Tauron heard footsteps suddenly approach from outside. Turning quickly to face, he saw Tychon peering around the corner of the door. The gunslinger was holding something large and square wrapped in a towel.

[Thragka]

T&T

Tauron raised an eyebrow at the gunslinger's cautious manner.

"Something of note?" he asked.

[Thanatos 51-50]

The Foyer
Left without options to make removing the painting look like an accident, Red wandered off to find either the nearest servant or a ladder which he could climb to get to removing it, whichever he happened to stumble across first.

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Maybe." Tychon said, stepping into the room and relaxing considerably. It had only been Tauron, that was a relief. "I had a look in the tower. Ain't much left, 'cept this."

Placing the towel-wrapped object on the desk, Tychon uncovered it. It was a painting, faded but still colourful, of a pale nude woman fallen on the ground. The woman was reaching upwards, imploring the great yellow lion that dominated the fram. The lion's jaws were red with blood, a chubby infant clutched in its teeth. It had an extremely detailed face, and seemed to stare out from the painting, watching the viewer.

"Was hanging on the wall, 'cross from the bed. Something ain't right about it, but I can't figure what. Horrible thing, ain't it?"

[Thragka]

T&T

Tauron wrinkled his nose as he studied the painting. He was neither well acquainted with nor overly tolerant of art - iconography, he could recognise fairly well, and metaphors or parables of Ecclesiarchy teaching were just about acceptable, but beyond that, secular works stank of decadence and idleness. Still, he spent a few moments looking the frame over, just in case he could determine the source of Tychon's misgivings.

"Quite," he said. "I have been endeavouring to characterise the staggering volume of literature in this house. And without much success." He sighed. "There is, of course, plenty that paints the Rhodes family in an unpleasant light - but Octavian has been canny enough not to obviously display anything that reveals his true motive or connections. Perhaps, when I have visited one or two more bookshelves, I will prepare to interview the staff instead."

Let's try a Common Lore (Imperial Creed) test to determine whether baby-eating lions is a religious motif with which Tauron is familiar.

1d100

[LCP]

Red

Seeing a bell-pull in the corner, Red gave it a sharp tug. He didn't know exactly where to find the servants, but presumably they would know where to find him. He turned around and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Aubrey standing behind him. The man had appeared as if from nowhere.

"You rang?"

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Lot to get done," Tychon agreed. "Figure it's important we talk to the staff, though. I was planning on doing that myself. Ask them what got them so spooked 'bout the tower. Aside from this painting, it seems normal enough."

Shrugging, the gunslinger had a look about the study, picking up books and scanning the titles before putting them back down. He wasn't hugely interested unless he saw something that seemed obviously out of place, though. "War of Brass? What is this, some kind of story?"

Muttering softly to himself, Tychon started poking into drawers and likely-looking recesses.

[Thragka]

T&T

"I very much doubt it!" said Tauron. "You would do well to remember our brief lessons on the morality of literacy. The written word is an indispensable tool to the wise and the damned alike. Those who read carelessly open themselves up to corruption. One must exercise restraint."

He sighed again. "Forgive me, Tychon, I did not mean to snap. I am a little on edge. I have already come across one minor heretical text downstairs. And I must admit, I am not comfortable letting my guard down here, in the belly of the beast."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Fo-yer consideration
Red whirled around on the spot, stopping himself at the last moment from drawing the Fury and illuminating the butler's insides.
Then, he glanced behind the butler, taking special note of the nearby walls and making a mental note to check those spots for secret doors as soon as he was alone again.
"Yes. I'm doing some supplementary investigation, and I find myself in need of a ladder. Could you get one for me, please. Tall."

[LCP]

Red

"A ladder," repeated Aubrey. "Very good sir." He glided out of the room. Red noticed that he opened a door that was so flush with the panelling of the wall you almost didn't notice it was there. Not secret, as such - there was a handle - but very discreet.

In a short time, two women in servants' uniforms returned carrying a tall stepladder, and Aubrey supervising them. He bowed his head obsequiously to Red.

"Will there be anything else?"

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
Tychon actually chuckled at Tauron's pronouncement, continuing his search through the suspicious looking areas of the study. "Mighta noticed I didn't open it," he said. "Figure you're the best judge we got of what's heresy and what ain't heresy, so I'll be leaving the deciding to you. Plus..."

Dusting his hands off after peering under the bookshelves and straightening back up, Tychon shrugged. "I ain't sure this is the belly, Drake. I think the beast is hiding somewhere, grinning out at us like that frakking lion."

[Thragka]

T&T

"That might indeed be a more apt metaphor," Tauron said with a nod. He picked up Octavian's travel diaries and astronomical journals, and tidied the rest of the books he'd been looking at away.

"What do you make of Aubrey?" the priest asked the gunslinger. "Or rather, what do you think he makes of us? Octavian's butler could be a valuable asset ... but a pressing thorn in our side if he decides our goals do not coincide with his remaining loyalty to the Rhodes estate."

Tauron intends to bring the journals down to the books he took from the Blue Room - happy to continue this conversation on the way downstairs, if Tychon doesn't have anywhere else to go.

When Tauron gets back to the ledgers, he wants to do one last session of summarising the inventory - for the Library, which might take a while. He will in particular be mostly looking for the same list of subjects as he searched the Blue Room's books for:

Stellar navigation
Warp-transit, the Immaterium, and/or the mathematics thereof
Cantide histories discussing pre-Imperial cults or (past or present) unorthodox local beliefs
Philosophy tomes dealing with psykers, clairvoyance, prophecy or eschatology.
.

[Rizhail]

Nova and Jericus:

"Well, unless Rhodes liked to meet with his heretic friends in a swamp somewhere, I expect the boots are in case it rains. A wallet with spare change, just in case. And a pass of some sort for official dealings. I am getting the feeling that this was his vehicle for official business."

Nova sat back against the vehicle's trunk, frowning. "Any thoughts before we continue searching elsewhere? I'm thinking we'll hold on to some of these as clues, but I get the feeling we haven't found anything useful here."

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"I don't know," Tychon admitted. "Reckon he knows more about the house than he's told us, though. Maybe we should talk to him? He don't strike me as the type to let much of his thoughts past the 'yes sir, very good sir' in fancy settings."

[Thragka]

T&T

"We shall have to see if we can break through his walls of etiquette. But then, I intend that we do the same with all of Rhodes' staff. Perhaps Aubrey is not, after all, special in that regard."

Tucking the journals under an armpit, Tauron swept his gaze around the High Study one more time.

"I am done here, for now. I am going to spend a little time investigating the contents of the Library, but then I will be ready to see what information we can gather from living and breathing people, rather than these inert things. If you are questioning any of the household, I shall rejoin you then."

[LCP]

Tauron in the Library (& Tychon if he tags along)

Heading back to the ground floor, Tauron left the journals with the other books he had gathered beside the inventory papers in the cloakroom office. Turning back to the papers, he began sifting through them in search of the library's contents. Slowly, his gaze was drawn to a stack of paper as thick as his thumb. Tables of close-written titles spooled down the first sheet.

Picking up the sheaf with a determined expression, Tauron headed back upstairs to the library.


~

The doors to the library were aged and dark, carved with painted shields carrying the Rhodes insignia. It was a complex piece of heraldry, quartered in blue and red, but with a blazing, golden sun where the quarters met in the centre. In the top left were what looked like stylised harps; in the top right and bottom left, rampant lions, raising their claws to the central globe. The bottom right quarter contained a sickle moon, with the shadowed part shaded in black.

The doors swung open without the decency to creak when Tauron pushed. Inside was the library. It was a magnificent library.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v700/LordChilipepa/Library_zps1d3f53e2.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/LordChilipepa/media/Library_zps1d3f53e2.jpg.html)

A gilded chandelier hung from the centre of the high, vaulted ceiling, shedding light into the many nooks and recesses created by the bookshelves. Two large, expensive-looking reading desks sat at the base level, with tall chairs upholstered in green leather for the reader to sit in. Four tall paintings marked the cardinal points on the walls. Two were family portraits, darkened with age; the third depicted a clash between ocean-going ships. Though the pigments were old and cracked, the scene was vivid: towers of white water leapt up where their shells struck the sea, and the sky had been painted red with the flash of their great guns. Colourful pennants streamed from the comms arrays above the bridge of the nearest ship, and Tauron thought the second flag down bore a strong resemblance to the Rhodes colours he had seen on the door.

The fourth painting showed a trio of aristocrats - two men and one woman - in the finery of an age long gone. The man in the centre wore a splendid blue uniform vaguely reminiscent of the Navy, although far more ornate. The man on the left had a pointed white beard and something of the Rhodes cast to his face, while the woman on the right was younger and dressed in a similarly military-looking uniform to the figure in the centre. Behind them, an alien landscape of blasted rock stretched out, dark cliff-faces sloping down to what looked like the bed of a vanished sea. Great banks of mist drifted across the background, but Tauron thought he could make out the shapes of artificial structures rising from the foggy mire.

OOC: Performing a comprehensive search of this library will consume the rest of today and you still won't be finished. Do you want to commit to it now or leave it 'til later?

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon and Tauron in the Library
Tychon followed Tauron to the library, reasoning that he might as well help the priest out. He wouldn't be the best at interogatting people on his own, so talking to the staff would have to wait. The gunslinger about changed his mind when the door opened.

"Emperor on Earth!" He said, looking about at the rows upon rows of books. "Take a frakking week to go through all that. You sure it can't wait? People can move, but the books ain't about to get up and wander off."

[Etcetera]

The Servant's Entrance:
"We can conduct a more thorough search of the vehicles later, but I wouldn't estimate we'll find anything useful."
Jericus paused for a few breaths. Not that he was actually breathing.
"Where to now?"

[Thanatos 51-50]

Foyer
"Not right at this moment, thank you. I'll summon you again when and if that changes," Red responded politely, keeping a grip on the ladder until Abernathy left, and immediately setting it up to climb up the Rhode's portrait and throw it on the ground as soon as the man disappeared.

[LCP]

Red

The picture was larger than Red was - at the top of the ladder, it was pretty much impossible for him to grip both sides at the same time. Doing his best by gripping the near side with both hands, he managed to gradually work it off its hooks, and let it drop straight down to the narrow chink of floor behind the Sa'vak's plinth. The frame made a crack that sounded like something might have broken.

The wall where the painting had hung was bare, apart from the fittings. There was a slight discoloration where the canvas had shielded it from the light, and nothing more.

[Thragka]

In the Library

Tauron raised an eyebrow as he cast his glaze around - and then up.

"I think you may in fact have a point," he conceded. "So, to the staff? Shall we pay Mr Aubrey a visit?"

[Destro_Yersul]

Library
"May as well start with him, yeah. He's closest," Tychon agreed. "Just have to find him, now. Suppose he'd respond to the bellpulls?"

[Rizhail]

Team Tech/Assassin:

"Let's head up a floor and start checking storage and drawing rooms," Nova replied, hopping to her feet. She tucked the newspaper and other potential evidence into the trunk of the second car before heading up, intending to start looking through the Scarlet Drawing Room next.

[LCP]

Nova (& Jericus?)

The Scarlet Drawing Room was a large, long room, its walls covered with a deep red damask wallpaper. The chairs and chaise-longues that dotted the broad floor were similarly red, as were the thick curtains on the high, arched windows. A fireplace made from polished porphyry, with a burnished brass fire-guard and a black iron fireback, stood empty on one side of the room, while on the other was a drinks cabinet ornamented with curling, complicated inlay designs.

There were portraits all around the walls, broken in the centre of the east wall by a tall grandfather clock that ticked solemnly away. In the adjacent corners were two sets of bookshelves built to fit into a right angle, the books they contained all seeming old and rather valuable. To the left of one set was a high silk screen with three hinged panels, depicting exotic, tropical-looking flowers; the flowers were mostly red. To the right of the other was an antique pianoforte, with the name "Vervaent" picked out on a discreet brass plaque above the keyboard. The keys appeared to be ivory, and a few sheafs of what looked to be hand-written sheet music were stacked neatly on its ornately-carved music rack.

[Thragka]

The Library

"I would imagine so, if he's worth his salt," Tauron said. "Do you have any objections to interviewing him here and now?"

[Destro_Yersul]

Library
"Not unless you do. Seems a good enough place to sit down and have a talk." Tychon looked around for the library's bell-pull. He'd seen them in the other rooms, made sense there would be one here. Assuming no objections from the priest, the gunslinger walked over and pulled it.

[LCP]

Tychon & Tauron

The bell-pull was a velvet rope, tucked discreetly in beside one of the high bookcases. Tychon pulled it, but heard nothing.

Thirty seconds later, there was the squeak of a door opening somewhere nearby. Still standing in the door, Tauron looked behind him, and received a start as he saw the gangly figure of the butler standing stock still in the middle of the corridor, his hands clasped behind his back. Aubrey was only about two metres behind him, but Tauron had not heard a single footstep.

"Can I help you, sir?" he asked, with a polite inclination of his head.

[Thragka]

The Library

"If you would step inside, Mr Aubrey," said Tauron, endeavouring to sound equally cool and not at all surprised. He held a hand out in the direction of the nearest desk. "Mr Urbanus and I have a number of queries you may be able to help us with."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Foyer
Red descended from the ladder and made a quick, cursry inspecting of the painting's frame, to determine if that was the cracking noise he heard.
Then, the solider drew the combat knife he had confiscated from one of Rhodes' men what seemed like years ago, and cut a long, careful slit diagonally across the back of the painting, intent on discoving anything that may be hidden inside.

[Rizhail]

Nova and Jer:

"Hmmm..."

Contemplating the room's contents, Nova first walked over to the piano and ran her finger along the keys, slowly playing them one by one. She listened intently for anything odd about how it played. Afterwards, she inspected each painting in detail, along with the grandfather clock.

"I somehow doubt Rhodes' would leave any clues this obvious. But this kind of search seems as good an idea as any other to start with."

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon

"As you wish, sir," said Aubrey, stepping into the library. He didn't sit down - it seemed bred into his bones to remain standing, at his masters' service. "How can I be of assistance?"

1

Red

The painting was awkward to retrieve. The space it had fallen into - behind the Sa'vak's plinth, itself sandwiched between the two sweeping staircases that led up to the first floor landing - hadn't been designed for people to walk around. Red had to clamber down over the banister and squeeze himself around the corners of the great stone block to get a grip on it. By the time he'd managed to manoeuvre it out, he was out of breath from the exertion.

The frame was broken at the bottom - that had been the cracking sound. Cutting a slit across the back revealed nothing but canvas.

1

Nova & Jericus

The piano had been kept tuned; the slow sweep of Nova's finger played a rising scale of pure notes.

Of the five portraits, three had the Rhodes name - Antigonus Rhodes, Nicomedes Rhodes, Cassiopeia Rhodes. Antigonus Rhodes was a small, slim man with a rawboned face and a stern expression, who had been painted among accoutrements of the Imperial Creed; Nova couldn't see much likeness to the suave, jovial giant she had encountered on 41 Pry. Nicomedes Rhodes, on the other hand, seemed to have Octavian's smiling eyes - a portly fellow, he sat with his hands clasped in a chair with a red velvet cushion, his portly frame overflowing his belt. Cassiopeia's picture was the oldest, close examination showing the fine cracks that ran through the paint; a pale, aristocratic beauty, she was shown reclining on a chaise-longue; possibly one of the chaise-longues in this very room, from the dominantly red decor in the background. Her eyes were hooded as if half-asleep, and she was clothed in a billowy silken dress that managed simultaneously to appear attached to her shoulders only by some invisible string, and yet threaten to swallow her whole in its voluminous folds.

The other two portraits were smaller; one showed a bald man with a golden chain of office around his neck, and was wedged awkwardly in a corner; the other showed a pair of smiling young men in colourful Guard uniforms, their stripes and epaulettes giving them the appearance of officers. Like Cassiopeia's painting, these two as well were old.

Finally, Nova came to the grandfather clock. It was an imposing piece of apparatus, taller than Nova herself. The brass bob at the end of its long pendulum was engraved with the design of a radiant sun, a human face occupying the centre of the solar disc. The clock-face itself echoed the design, with solar prominences reaching out towards each hour; here, however, the human face was absent.

[Thragka]

T&T

"Please sit," said Tauron with a thin smile, stepping behind Aubrey to shut the library door. From behind the butler, he raised an eyebrow at Tychon, and pulled a stern face.

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
Still in the butler's field of view, Tychon had to try very hard not to laugh at Tauron's impression. He failed, more or less, chuckling to himself and gesturing to a chair before taking one himself.

"We're interested to know about the house, Aubrey. It's a big place, and there ain't no substitute for talking to the people as have lived in it for getting to know it. Myself, I was wondering about the tower room." Tychon made a show of consulting his notes, tapping the page he had been working from and then looking up. "Any idea why it was locked up so tight?"

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon

Aubrey obediently took a seat.


"We're interested to know about the house, Aubrey. It's a big place, and there ain't no substitute for talking to the people as have lived in it for getting to know it. Myself, I was wondering about the tower room." Tychon made a show of consulting his notes, tapping the page he had been working from and then looking up. "Any idea why it was locked up so tight?"

"The tower room has been kept locked since before I took up my post," said the butler. "Some of the maids believe it's haunted." He gave a smile as thin and mirthless as the priest's. "Superstition, of course, but unfortunately reinforced by history. Of eight people who have slept in that room, seven were found in the morning to have vanished into thin air." He paused. "I believe it was the seventh that caused the master's grandfather to order the room permanently locked."

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Who was the eighth?" Tychon asked, "For that matter, who was the seventh? I had a look around the room, and it hadn't been used for a long time. Going to assume you've never been in it. Have any of the other staff? For that matter, how long have you been on staff?"

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon

"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with every detail of the story. I believe the last victim was a writer for the Broadcasting Bureau." He gave a slight, equivocating motion of his head. "He heard the stories about the room and convinced Regulus Rhodes to allow him to put them to the test. A poor decision on both their parts, by all accounts." He shrugged. "As for the exception... that was long ago, and I'm afraid I've never had much interest in these ghost stories. I believe it was a member of the Mechanicus. The details will all be in the house chronicle."


"Going to assume you've never been in it. Have any of the other staff? For that matter, how long have you been on staff?"

"Most of the staff have been in once or twice, sir. To sweep out pests when they get in, and so on, or to satisfy the curiosity of visitors. The master is not a superstitious man; he keeps it locked mainly to satisfy his ancestor's wishes, and to make sure that no-one can wander in without his knowledge." He paused. "For myself, my father worked here when I was a child, as did his father before me. I have served the Rhodes family my entire life."

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Where is the chronicle kept? I'd like to have a look at it." Tychon had a lot of questions, but wasn't sure how many of them Aubrey would keep answering. "What's it been like, working here? Octavian. Lord Rhodes. He must've been offworld a lot, who was put in charge while he was away? On, ah, hunting trips and the like."

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon

"The completed volumes are kept here," said Aubrey. "In an alcove on the uppermost level. I can show you if you wish, sir."


"What's it been like, working here? Octavian. Lord Rhodes. He must've been offworld a lot, who was put in charge while he was away? On, ah, hunting trips and the like."

"The master often makes excursions," said Aubrey. "I am usually in charge of administration for the house while he is away."

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"I'd appreciate that. Once we're finished talking. All the history of the house is in those?" Tychon had already made a mental note to keep the towel-wrapped painting out of whatever room he happened to be sleeping in. He couldn't be sure that was the cause of the so-called haunting, but it was terribly creepy and the gunslinger wanted it nowhere near him when he was unable to keep an eye on it in case it decided to leave its frame. Unlike Aubrey, Tychon had some very good reasons to believe in ghosts.

"What can you tell me about the other servants, or about the Rhodes family? You must know a lot about them. Octavian's wife... Ophelia? Was that her name? Ain't my meaning to pry, but it seems like there's an unfortunate story there. If you can't tell me about that, maybe you can tell me about something else. Did Octavian ever have guests?"

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon


"I'd appreciate that. Once we're finished talking. All the history of the house is in those?"

"Much of it, sir," said Aubrey. "I'm afraid some of the older volumes were irreparably damaged in seven seventy-two. Mould. They had to be thrown away."


"What can you tell me about the other servants, or about the Rhodes family? You must know a lot about them. Octavian's wife... Ophelia? Was that her name? Ain't my meaning to pry, but it seems like there's an unfortunate story there. If you can't tell me about that, maybe you can tell me about something else. Did Octavian ever have guests?"

"The master often entertains," said Aubrey. "The Rhodes name is a well-respected one in Hive Augusta. He has many social obligations."

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Any of them seem odd, to you? Off-world types, maybe?" Tychon was beginning to suspect they weren't going to get much out of Aubrey. He wasn't really the type to tell tales, if his answer to the previous questions were anything to go by. He knew his way around the house, though. He must, if he was left in charge of it that often.

Tychon made a mental note to borrow Jericus' owl, have it follow the butler around for a while. Big old house like this, there had to be secrets hidden in the woodwork.

[Etcetera]

NJ

Clocks were always important in the picts, Jer remembered that. If it chimed 13? Time to get out of dodge. Maybe there was a concealed compartment or a secret catch. Maybe there was just clockwork. Either way, the clock.

OOC: What sorta test do you want to spot anything of interest?

[LCP]

Tychon & Tauron

"I don't judge the master's guests," said Aubrey, patiently. "That would not be my place."

[Thragka]

T&T

"Most dutiful," said Tauron. "And yet, with so many guests coming and going in your master's absence, you surely do more than simply attend their every need. You must be prudent in judging their behaviours and intentions. It would not do to discover that any of them were acting at ... cross-purposes to the Rhodes estate."

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon

Aubrey blinked like a lizard.

"Such a judgement would be the master's to make," he said. "I am just a servant."

1

Jericus & Nova

The clock looked to Jericus like it would have required a great deal of craftsmanship to make. Antiquated, obsolete craftsmanship; it was not the kind of efficienct device that any adept of the Mechanicus would choose to make or own. Even so, electrical or not, it couldn't have been cheap.

Running his circuit-inlaid fingers over the casing, the tech-priest couldn't find any secret panels or compartments. The cavity that housed the pendulum could be opened, but that revealed little that the glass door did not already show. By the look of the face, it might be possible to prise it away by the determined application of leverage and a thin edge, but Jericus didn't think that would be possible without doing a certain amount of irreparable damage to the casing. An ear pressed to the side of the clock reassured him that there was genuine clockwork ticking away inside.

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"You were in charge when he was away, though." Tychon pointed out. "Did everyone who turned up during those times get turned away? Reckon there must've been a few, at least."

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon

Aubrey took on an expression of mild confusion.

"I administer the master's household, sir, not his business affairs. Guests do not come here uninvited." He raised an eyebrow. "The master cannot entertain while he is not here."

[Thragka]

T&T

Tauron frowned, and briefly made eye contact with Tychon. He had expected Aubrey to have something of an ego to manipulate, but this response was proving a little tricky.

He sat down beside his fellow Acolyte. Placing his elbows on the desk, he steepled, and then interlocked, his fingers. He leant slightly forward.

"Where is the master now, Mr Aubrey?"

[Rizhail]

Nova and Jer:

"Did you find anything useful in there, Jer?" Nova asked as she finished perusing the paintings.

Looking back over the painting of the bald man with the golden chain, she frowned. "Now why is this one tucked away like that?" The assassin carefully poked around the edges of the frame to see how it was held to the wall, before carefully attempting to move it.

[LCP]

Nova & Jericus

The painting was hung on a simple brass hook. Being smaller than the others, Nova could lift it away from the wall without difficulty - looking front and back, it appeared to be ordinary enough.

1

Tauron & Tychon

"I'm afraid I haven't the faintest idea," said Aubrey, his voice and face remaining placid and calm. "He departed some time ago on his business trip to Prol. I haven't heard from him since... but I understand from the people who have taken possession of the house that there has been some trouble with the authorities."

[Thragka]

T&T

Another glance at Tychon.

"And what do you understand our rôle in this trouble to be?"

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon

"I was informed you would be arriving to carry out another inspection," he said. "I was told to accommodate you here for as long as you required."

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
Something else had occured to Tychon. "Aubrey, do the house chronicles include events involving the family as well, or just the house? If they don't, think you could provide us with some news clippings or the like, dealing with the Rhodes family's activities in the hive?"

Either Aubrey was lying to them, or he really didn't know how much trouble Rhodes was in. Tychon saw no reason to tell him, and hoped that was what the repeated sidelong looks from Tauron were about. "I'd also appreciate anything you have on family history."

[LCP]

Tauron & Tychon

"It is the Rhodes family chronicle, sir. It is merely kept here." Aubrey paused. "If that is what interests you, I believe the master keeps a copy of the family tree in his study."

[Thragka]

T&T

Lapsing back into silence, Tauron eyed Aubrey at length. He struggled to see any tell that this unflappable man was hiding something, any hint that there was more to him than that one-dimensional facade of servitude.

[roll0]

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Reckon that'll be everything then, Aubrey. If you could show us where the chronicle is kept?" Tychon assumed Tauron had already found the family tree, if it was in one of the studies. Even if he hadn't, it would be a lot easier to search then the library.

[LCP]

Tychon & Tauron

"Of course, sir. If you'll just follow me."

Rising smoothly from his chair, Aubrey led them to the uppermost level of the library. There, on a lectern in an alcove, was a large leather-bound book, its corners edged with brass guards. Other similar books - some very old from the cracked and flaking state of their binding - were arranged in a row on an adjacent bookshelf.

Each book had a parchment label on the spine, stating two dates: when it had been begun and when it had been completed. The current volume apparently started in 914.M41.

Tauron: Aubrey didn't seem to be lying, but neither did he seem stupid. Perhaps he really didn't know... or perhaps he had deliberately turned a blind eye.

[Etcetera]

Nova and Jer
Jericus set about removing the remaining paintings from the wall as delicately as possible, on the admittedly rather low chance there might be something concealed behind them.

OOC: What's the floor like? Carpeted? Carpet? Boards?

[LCP]

Nova & Jericus

The other paintings were hung by the same method as the first, although some of the larger ones required two hooks instead of one. They exposed nothing unusual on the walls behind - just a slight discolouration of the wallpaper where it had been shielded from the light.

OOC: The floor has rich red carpets and rugs laid down over polished floorboards.

[Etcetera]

Nova and Jer

Jericus began rearranging furniture, trying to free up the carpets so he could remove them to get a clear look at the floor.

[Thanatos 51-50]

In the Foyer
Red sighed. Either Rhodes hadn't ever watched the same vids he had, or -- worse, the old codger had and was deliberately put Red in the mind while not stowing any incriminating secrets anywhere.
The soldier put the knife through the canvas one more time, neatly splitting where Octavian's neck stood out in the painting before sliding the knife into its scabbard and approaching the servant's door, giving it a tug and slipping inside.
May as well investigate those.

[LCP]

Jericus & Nova

There was a lot of furniture to shift if all the carpets were going to be moved. Jericus set to it with a will, putting the various chairs, tables and chaise-longues close to the wall so he could roll up the carpets and leave the centre of the floor bare. With the paintings taken off the walls, the room now looked like it was being prepared by some very thorough removal men.

The floorboards themselves were polished to a shiny finish, and meticulously clean of dust. At a first glance, Jericus couldn't see anything that looked like a trapdoor. A second glance didn't show him anything either.

1

Red

The door Aubrey had used led into a narrow corridor, just wide enough for two people to pass abreast. There were no paintings on the walls, just light fittings; two similar corridors branched off at right angles to the first passageway, and at the far end Red could see a narrow staircase descending into the lower levels of the house.

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Which of these tell about the tower room?" Tychon asked. "Do you know? If not, I suppose we'll have to look through them the hard way."

[LCP]

Tychon & Tauron

"I'm afraid I'm not aware of the specific dates," said Aubrey. "All I know is that it last happened when the current master was still a child."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Servant's Passage
Keeping one hand hovering close to his rifle, Red examined the door he hd entered through, in case it was disguised and he needed to find a different exit, bfore heading towards the stairs and into th bowels of the mansion.
This was more like it. More like home.
Left turn, if it matters

[Rizhail]

Nova and Jer:

"Well, this has been amusing. Too bad we still haven't found anything," Nova said from the doorway, watching as Jericus finished pulling up the carpet to check the floor underneath.

Sighing, she reached up to key her commbead. "Let's see how the others are doing. Maybe one of them has hit on a lead or a better way to search."


"Are any of the rest of you having as little luck as Jer and me?" Nova asked through the cell's comms. "We haven't found anything particularly useful yet, and not for lack of trying."

[Thanatos 51-50]

"Mostly dead ends." Red admitted over the comms. "But I have found this nice cozy servant's tunnel."

[LCP]

Red

The staircase was a narrow, right-angled spiral with bare stone walls. At the corners there would be space for two people to squeeze past; otherwise the stairs were too cramped for anything but single file.

After a few revolutions, Red emerged on a lower level. Here there was none of the lavish decoration that bedecked the entrance hall: the walls were solid and unadorned. A long corridor stretched out to the left and to the right, dotted with plain wooden doors to either side. A metal door that looked to Red like a fire escape capped the end of the corridor to the right, while on the far left he could see a larger door with faded green paint.

Two other corridors branched off at right angles to the one he was one. One was broken by a short flight of six steps, raising the level of the floor; the other was flat. There were more doors leading off from them, but they looked the same as the others. These corridors were wider, too, unlike the cramped passage behind the walls that Aubrey had used upstairs. Red was starting to suspect that this place was bigger than some of the sump settlements back home.

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Manually it is. Ain't that lovely. That'll be all for now, Aubrey, less Drake here has something more he wants." Raising an eyebrow in the direction of Tauron, Tychon started leafing through the current book in search of details on the tower room. He was damned curious about the place, or any mention of that lion painting he could find. Plus, he hardly expected Tauron to complain much about family histories. Leave the possible heresy for the priest to deal with, this was more on Tychon's level.

[Thragka]

T&T

"Indeed, thank you Mr Aubrey. You have been ... cooperative." Tauron bid Aubrey be off with a lazy wave.

When the butler had departed, Tauron gave a half-hearted shrug. "That was not very enlightening. Perhaps I had the wrong end of the stick, and the junior members of the staff might be better placed to help our enquiries, being less proficient in service and loyalty."

"Is anyone having more success than Tychon and I?" the cleric asked across the comms in an exasperated tone.

[Rizhail]

"Jer and I aren't. I'm not particularly sure where to go from here. What areas have been searched already? We've hit the downstairs, focusing on the garage, and are in one of the drawing rooms now."

[Destro_Yersul]

"I think most everything upstairs has been looked at," Tychon replied. "Found a few strange things, but it ain't much to go on."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red clcked his commbead twice, just to let his allies know he was there and monitoring the conversation.

[Secret Passages]
... as he crept up silently to the metal door and pressed his ear against it, listening for any sounds on the other side.

[roll0]

[LCP]

Red

Red could hear nothing except a faint, whistling rustle - like wind blowing through a canyon.

[Destro_Yersul]

T&T
"Reckon there's not a lot more to do here," Tychon said to Tauron, closing the book he was looking at after a few more minutes of flipping through it.

"I'm going to go back and see if I can meet up with Nova and Jericus. You coming?"

After a few minutes' pause, Tychon came back onto the comms. "Which drawing room? I'm on my way to meet you."

[Thragka]

T&T

Tauron drummed his fingers against the table precisely once. "I must be thorough. But perhaps ... a break, to refresh, would serve us better than driving ourselves into the ground. I'll come."

He spent a moment tidying the table neatly, sorting the few books he'd looked at into piles that the work would be easier to resume, later.

[LCP]

"Scarlet drawing room," said Nova. "We'll wait."

Tychon, Tauron, Nova & Jericus

The drawing room was as lavishly-appointed as the rest of the house, its wallpaper, carpets and furnishings all decked in various shades of red. Where it differed from the other rooms Tychon had seen so far was that Nova and Jericus had thoroughly dismantled it. Carpets had been rolled up to expose the bare floorboards beneath, paintings had been taken down off the walls, furniture had been pushed up against the walls. The drinks cabinet and a tall grandfather clock looked like practically the only items that hadn't been moved.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Seeeekrits and Passageways

Red opened the door, as quietly and slowly as possible, examining the room on the othe side centimetre by centimetre

[Etcetera]

All the colours of the wind. Other than Red.
Jer glanced at Tychon and Tauron, before taking a seat on a rolled-up carpet.
"Any success?"

[LCP]

Red

The door's handle turned with a heavy thunk of metal, as if it controlled a sizeable deadbolt. The riveted hinges squealed as it swung open, almost leaping from Red's hand.

There was no room on the other side. There was just a drop. Below, the hyperbolic slope of Hive Augusta planed away, tiny rooftops visible amidst the industrial tangles of smokestacks and factories. Red could hear church bells ringing down among the ants below, the foghorn wail of great prayer horns drifting on the wind.

At this altitude, the wind meant business. Red could feel it whipping past his face, trying to push the door further open. Looking down, he saw a flimsy metal platform and a set of stairs, bolted to the wall - or the foundations - of the house. They zig-zagged back and forth, descending a sheer cliff of masonry and rockcrete before disappearing from view into a dark, cylindrical aperture.

[Thanatos 51-50]

The Edge of the World
Well, that's certainly, interesting. fought the urge to go explore, instead deciding to mentally make not of the passageway, and reached for the hatch to close it. Not without some safety gear.
He'd had enough falling to certain doom already, thank you very much.

"There's a hatch here, leads outside, and then into foundations, can't see where it ends up. Wind is nasty. Not going to descend without precautions."

[Destro_Yersul]

Red Room, No Red
"Frak, you did a number on this room," was the first thing out of Tychon's mouth when he saw the Scarlet drawing room. "Ought to have you go over the studies, I reckon. Drake an' I ain't had much luck. I found a weird painting, and we got a couple of interesting leads, but nothing you can fire out of a gun."

"So to speak," The gunslinger added, realising the Metallican expression might have gone over a few heads. "We're going to go talk to the staff tomorrow. Had a chat with Aubrey, but either he don't know nothing or he ain't saying what he does."

[Thragka]

Blueshifted; or, the Contracting Universe

Tauron gave an approving nod when he'd taken in the state of the room. "Prudent. As for Aubrey, I would not be averse to trying more persuasive methods of interrogation - but not until we have exhausted the polite approach."

[Rizhail]

"I've got a grapnel and cord, but nothing I'd consider using in heavy winds. Anyone else have anything amongst their equipment for that kind of work?

Team People-Not-Named-Red

"So, we have a secret passage and a few odd items to show for today's investigation. I agree with interrogating the staff tomorrow; that will hopefully yield better results than this kind of searching. The passage Red found will be worth fully investigating as well."

Nova looked around the reorganized room and sighed. "If we don't find anything with those methods, then I guess we'll be back to handling all of the rooms like this."

[Thanatos 51-50]

"En route to your 20 to RV," Red keyed through the comms, providing an ETA before heading off to the Scarlet room.

[Thragka]

"Perhaps we can discuss our plans for tomorrow over dinner?" said Tauron. "If Ms Blevins is not on the premises tonight, I propose that the next room we overturn be the kitchen."

[Destro_Yersul]

"That sounds like a damn good plan," Tychon said. "I wonder what kind of food they keep around this place? It's probably a lot better than anything I ever got to eat."

Looking around, the gunslinger made to pull the nearest bell, but reconsidered given the state of the room. "To the dining room, then?"

[LCP]

The dining room wasn't far from the drawing room, but it was on an altogether different scale. Its length reminded Red of the Munitorum mess halls, back when he was in the regiment - but they hadn't had ceilings this high, or furnishings this rich. The ancient rafters were carved with coats of arms, their dusty beams so tall and tangled that it looked like you could lose a flock of birds up there. And everywhere, all along the walls, those bloody paintings. Ranks and ranks of long-dead Rhodeses, looking down their noses at these intruders in their house. Mixed in among them was the odd mounted head, the stuffed jaws of various Xenos beasts slavering down at where the diners would sit.

A huge marble fireplace dominated the centre of the west wall, its iron fireback stained with centuries of soot. In the centre of the room, the long dining table could have seated scores, but it was bare - clearly it hadn't been used in some time. Over in one corner was the bell-pull to summon the servants.

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon walked over and pulled the bellpull, waiting patiently with his back to the wall for AUbrey to arrive. Once the butler did, he intended to request food, though nothing specific. Just 'whatever can be made quickly.' After not eating for a good portion of the day, the gunslinger was getting hungry. Once that was done, he took a seat at the table and brought out his notes and a quill, setting them beside his place and watching the others.

"So. What's the plan? We've got a lot of ground to cover, here. Let's hear some ideas."

[Rizhail]

Nova plopped down in a chair across the table from Tychon. "I'm thinking the method Jer and me have been using isn't the best way forward. Cathartic, sure, but not the most efficient way to start looking for clues. Questioning the help might produce something, though they're likely ignorant of their master's actions. It wouldn't be a bad idea to track down any other holdings Rhodes might have around here: business investments, official duties, that sort of thing. I know he had some sort of official pass in one of his cars. That might be a place to start."

[LCP]

After a short time, a side-door opened just a crack in the far wall. The face of a timid-looking woman in a starched servant's uniform peered around. At Tychon's request for food she nodded and scurried away.

Jericus, meanwhile, had become aware in the privacy of his cybernetically-augmented head that Minerva had finished her sweep. The cyber-owl had detected no traps or living beings other than the serving staff in the rest of the house, although the trophy room was apparently lousy with alarms should anything be removed.

If Minerva was reporting back, why wasn't she here? Cycling through to the owl's visual feed, Jericus saw that she was in the library, perched on top of one of the highest bookshelves. It seemed some kind of old patrol algorithm had bubbled to the surface.

A few transmitted commands drove home to the simple creature that this was not Prol and these books did not need guarding, and Minerva came winging back towards the dining hall.

[Etcetera]

Minerva swooped in, perching on one of the mounted heads with something of a nonchalance.

For his part, Jericus turned to his comrades and began to speak.

"Ignoring for one moment heresy, might Rhodes have some unique vices? Men of his station often indulge in such weaknesses of the flesh as rare alcohols and tobacco. If he is as accustomed to easy living as his dwelling suggests, we may be able to trace his purchases."

That was, Jericus assumed, how narcotics addictions worked. He'd never seen the point of them, personally.

[Destro_Yersul]

"I think his was hunting," Tychon pointed out, gesturing at one of the trophies. "At my guess, all of those are his. This place probably also has a good few hundred secret hiding places. I agree we should question the help, Drake and I plan to do that tomorrow. You want to know anything, you ask the people who don't get noticed."

Pausing, and drumming his fingers on the tabletop, Tychon stopped to think. "We should have a look at the thing Red found after supper. Library will take a bloody age to go through."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Rather than order his supper cooked, Red followed the tired, bleary servant and kept an eye on her as she prepared dishes, grilling up the juiciest-looking cut of meat he could find as he did so.

[LCP]

The maid headed to the kitchen through more of the servants' side passages, similar to the ones Red had explored earlier. Tailing close behind, Red saw he glancing continually back over her shoulder, not sure what to say to her silent shadow. In the end, it seemed she was too afraid to say anything.

The kitchen was huge, although the ceiling was not as high as the rooms used by the gentry. Two great black ovens stood to either side of a fireplace big enough to roast a grox, metal flues for the smoke stabbing up into the whitewashed stone ceiling. A rectangle of tables for the preparation of food stood in the centre of the floor, with racks for every kind of knife; there were bowls, whisks, baking trays, and strange, more complex instruments hanging from hooks on the wall. By the neat order they had been left in, Red took a guess that most of them hadn't seen real use in some time.

The right-hand wall opened into the pantry, which was impressively large, but disappointingly empty; most of the shelves were bare. Still, what was left was more than enough. Pulling open the door of a walk-in refrigeration unit, Red waited for the spilling vapour to clear and pulled down a plump, dressed game-bird from where it hung on a hook. Poultry seemed far better represented than red meat. There were a couple of pickled things that looked like they were some kind of invertebrate; no doubt a delicacy. Red avoided them.

The maid, meanwhile, was assembling a collection of bread and cold cuts. It wasn't high cuisine, but it was well laid out; there was salad too and several large blocks of a thick, blue-veined cheese. It took her three trips to bring it back to the dining hall, along with the cutlery and various condiments. When she was done, she scuttled back into the walls like a frightened mouse.

The cutlery, Tychon noticed, was all silver. There was probably more portable wealth in the knives and forks before him than he used to earn in a year.

[Thragka]

Tauron nodded at Jericus's suggestion, and again at Tychon's reply. "I still hope that his taste for unusual game might tell us something more concrete about his travels - or any ulterior motives for travelling to illicit locations. That is, after all, ostensibly why he was on 41 Pry."

The priest sampled the most boring looking bread and a few small slices of meat. After a moment's deliberation, he cut himself a small chunk of cheese. He lapsed into silence as he tasted the food, his mastication slow, deliberate, and almost theatrical.

Presently he spoke up again. "Cataloguing the Library is essential, but not pressing - you and I," he said, nodding to Tychon, "can interweave shifts between the bookshelves with interviews or other excursions beyond these walls. I begin to feel that our reach must be broad to outwit Octavian, and it will be important to keep our minds fresh."

He assembled a small, dry sandwich out of bread, meat, salad and a layer of squashed cheese.

"Sergeant Red's discovery interests me, too. I agree that we should investigate it when we have eaten."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red set to dissecting the game bird, and soaking it in some sweet-smelling liquid for a few minuetes before slapping the pieces on a flat pan and setting them to cook on one of the ovens, sprinkling the bird with qa variety of spies as he did so.
It was difficlt to quickly poultry quickly and have it come out not-dry, but the soldier was used to far worse fair.

He returned to the dining room with a few extra servings and set to cutting up the bird, offering some to whichever cell member wanted a taste.

"I didn't exactly expect to find much on day one," the Sargent admitted. "How do we propose tackling the outside door safely? Maybe Octavian's chambers have some line? The senior servant's quarters?"

[Destro_Yersul]

"You said there were stairs, right?" Tychon said, selecting a small piece of bird and a variety of meat and cheese, as well as a few slices of bread. He stayed away from the salad - Tychon didn't trust vegetables. "Should be fine if we can take a rope or something along. Reckon the obvious bits of the house aren't as important as all the hidey holes. Rhodes is probably too smart to leave something out in plain sight."

It was tempting, very tempting, to stick a couple of the forks in his pockets, but Tychon resisted. They'd probably be noticed missing. Bloody nobles, always having the nicest things...

[Rizhail]

Nova picked over the spread, grabbing a little bit of everything before plopping down to eat. "Like I said, I've got a grapnel and line. If we can find a secure anchor point, that should work. If not, we might want to hunt around and see if there's anything here. A hunter like Rhodes would likely have plenty of spare rope or other climbing gear in his inventory."

[LCP]

With dinner picked clean, Cell Lambda rose to follow Red downstairs. He led them through narrow, undecorated servants' passages and down narrow flights of bare stone stairs, down to what Nova was fairly sure was the basement level. There, they emerged into a long T-junction of corridors; at the end of one arm, off to the right, was a green-painted metal door.

Cautiously turning the handle, Red braced himself to stop the door being yanked out of his hands as the wind came whistling in. The whole slope of the hive was visible below, curving away like the creation of some mad perspective painter. Clouds of smog from factory chimneys curled and curdled at levels far below the manor's lofty spire, rising over rooftops and church towers in swirls of billowing grey. Birds wheeled like white pinpricks above the sprawl of the city.

Bolted onto the exterior wall was a black metal staircase, which zig-zagged down to terminate in a circular aperture in the rockcrete foundations below the house. The shadowy well descended into whatever levels lay below.

[Etcetera]

"I advise the use of rebreathers by any who proceed outwards - one can never be too careful with the weakness of flesh. Regardless - if we explore in the morning, we will have greater perception - but equally be more easily perceived."

Jericus paused.

"Should we enquire amongst the staff about the stairs?"

[Destro_Yersul]

"I'd rather just go now," Tychon said, holding tightly to his hat. If he lost it here, he may never see it again, and that would be a travesty. "Stairs look solid enough to hold us, to you?"

[Thanatos 51-50]

"They look strong enough, but I've learned how decieving looks can be. Everything about Octavian is a trap." Red said quietly, taking the time to strap his helmet on over his garrison cap.
He lashed the quiver's lid tightly closed to prevent any arrows flying off, and took a firm two-handed grip on Abagail before stepping over the threshold.
"Catch me if I fall, Nova."

[Destro_Yersul]

"Somehow doubt Octavian expected us to find this," Tychon muttered, still holding his hat down. He'd been a worker, and could recognise solid construction well enough. Jericus would be the ultimate authority on that, of course, but Red did have a point: caution in the workplace was usually justified.

"I'll be right behind you."

[Rizhail]

Nova shook her head at Red's trepidation and started down the stairs. "I doubt this thing will simply fall apart. Even if it does, it shouldn't be hard to get a grip on something to keep you from plummeting."

[LCP]

The stairs were sturdy but steep. Using their hands where necessary, the Acolytes descended its switchbacking steps. The wind tugging at Tychon's hat, they reached the darkened hole in the rockcrete below and lowered themselves down.

Inside, it didn't take long for their eyes to adjust to the light. They were in a narrow oubliette, its rockcrete walls darkened with long streaks of damp. With the five of them in it together, the space was a bit of a squeeze - and there was nothing else occupying it. Bare floor, bare walls. The only item to break the monotony of the grey rockcrete was a scuffed red lever, set into the right-hand wall.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Well," Tychon said, raising his voice over the sound of the wind. Even down in the hole, the gunslinger refused to relinquish his hold on his hat. "Ain't much down here. Don't pull the lever yet."

Climbing back up a few steps, he set about investigating the top edges of the hole. What purpose was there building something like this, if you didn't put anything in it? It could be a trap, and he wanted to see if there was anything that looked like it could close over the top, any sort of hatch or mechanism, a break in the stairs where they folded down...

[LCP]

The edge of the hole appeared to be bare concrete - there was no break in the stairs, and no apparent means by which it could be closed.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Looks like there's no way to trap people in here," Tychon told the others. "What the frak is this for?"

[Thanatos 51-50]

"Probably opens a hatch somewhere, right?" Red asked aloud, feeling the wall next to the lever, looking for any seams.

[Rizhail]

"This passage is most likely a way for servants or friends to enter the mansion quietly, or escape should it be necessary; the switch probably controls a well hidden hatch in here or nearby. I doubt there will be traps here. Though it might not be a bad idea to only have one person in here when we test the switch," Nova said as she inspected the lever. "So, shall we? I'll pull the lever if no one else will."

[Destro_Yersul]

"I ain't pullin' it, I don't think." Tychon said, standing on teh stairs above the narrow opening holding on to the railing with one hand and his hat with the other. "We should figure out what it does, though. If you wanna pull it, Nova, that's alright by me."

[Etcetera]

Jericus backed up the stairs slightly, signalling his assent to Nova with as much of a non-committal shrug a man with a potentia coil wrapped around his spine could.

[Thragka]

Tauron spent a few moments glancing uneasily about the confined space. "A trap seems ... unlikely, but perhaps we should take precautions. If you don your climbing harness and let us draw out the line as we ascend, that might help mitigate any unpleasant surprises."

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red shouldered his rifle, and pointed it in the general direction of the lever, standing off-centre and in a modified "L" stance, waiting for Nova to do her thing.

[Rizhail]

Deciding to follow Tauron's suggestion merely to make the cleric happy, Nova pulled out her climbing rope and tied a loop around her waist, handing the loose length to the priest. "Those of you who would prefer to stand back a bit, feel free."

After giving the others a chance to move away, Nova pulled the lever.

[LCP]

From somewhere within the walls, there came a series of ominous clunks, as of heavy gears meshing. After around five seconds of nothing much else, there was a grinding noise, the sound of rockcrete scraping on rockcrete - and one wall rose slowly up into the ceiling.

Beyond it was an arched passageway, perhaps ten metres long. Looking out into it, Nova could see that it was in fact a T-junction, with their current position at the intersection. Corridors branched off to the left and right, each terminating in a padlocked metal door. The main passageway went straight ahead, ending in a similar door - but one that did not appear to be locked.

[Rizhail]

"Surprise, it's a secret door," Nova called out to those who had given the little passage some distance. "Two padlocked doors, one unlocked door. Do we want to check the locked side doors first, or take the obvious route of the unlocked door?

[Destro_Yersul]

"Make sure there's a way inside to open the door if we get stuck, or post someone outside" Tychon said. Paranoia had been creeping slowly up on him ever since they got here, and he saw no reason to disregard it entirely.

"Then, reckon we ought to check the unlocked door first, and have a go at the locked ones after."

[Etcetera]

"I am in agreement. Nothing could get through the locked doors with much speed. At least, if it could then we'd meet our end anyway. A shame."
Jericus clanked up to the unlocked door, taking his Tranter in one hand, and gestured to the team to take up positions behind him.
He made to open the door.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Mildly surprised at Jericus volunteering to take the front, Red stacked up behind the tech-priest.

[Thragka]

"Since I am still out here, with your lifeline, I will remain thus for now," said Tauron. Of course, in the back of his mind, something called out to lead the excursion into the unknown, and bring light into the dark places - but sometimes, discretion was the better part of valour.

He twisted his ring of suffrage, almost to pass the time.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Thanks, Drake." Tychon stepped inside, taking a moment to look around the inside of the hidden panel for another lever, in case it was obvious. That accomplished, he followed after Jericus.

[LCP]

The door handle turned without any burst of deadly toxins. Pushing the door open, Jericus leaned out over the threshold.

He found himself looking out onto a broad street. Great brickwork arches swept overhead, turning the street into a tunnel - at one end, a semicircle of bright daylight showed where it opened out to the spire's exterior. Closer by, tall wrought iron lamp-posts shed pools of warm light over the pavement.

The street was lined with pillared porches, shiny black doors looking down short flights of stone steps at the street below. Most on the far side had the look of the entrance to a private residence, although some had guild-marks or the name of some merchant syndicate engraved over the door.

On the near side of the street, the doors were smaller and more closely-packed. The smell of caffeine was drifting from an eatery down the street. A short way to the left, an archway faced with ceramic tiles led down a flight of rockcrete steps into what looked like a transit station, the words


LION SPIRE

picked out over the entrance. Just inside, the tiled walls were plastered with posters, the bold colours of the more recent additions standing out over faded layers of their predecessors.

On another world, the street would have been thought busy - but for a hive, it was quiet. Soberly-clothed pedestrians were passing Jericus by without giving him a second glance, affording him plenty of personal space. Dark-coloured autocars were rolling past at a slow but steady pace, their glossy monotony broken by the occasional sight of carriages pulled by strutting, augmetically enhanced horses. The craftsmanship of the animals' improvements was impressive, although Jericus suspected they had been designed for aesthetics over function.

Looking back, he inspected the door he had emerged from. On this side, it was painted a drab green, the paint beginning to flake. Faded words had been stencilled onto its surface in official-looking letters:


SYSTEMS MAINTENANCE
AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red lowered his rifle and shook his head, before fading back from the portal.

Just a street, filled with upper-class snobs. Escape tunnels were handy for noble scum, and Red didn't give this one any spare thought.
In fact, he felt a little guilty for bringing this matter to the cell's attention.

Always some time to check the other door, though.

The soldier faded back and examined the lock for a moment, before remembering that his only method of breaching security was blowing it away.
"Nova," he asked, "Got anything more subtle than a grenade for this thing?"

[Rizhail]

"I've got a multikey that should be able to do the trick," Nova said as she pulled the aforementioned tool from her pocket and took a crack at the left-side door's lock.


Security: [roll0] vs. 64 (34 base int, +30 for multikey)

[LCP]

The padlock was heavy-duty, but its workings were not complicated. Nova had it open in short order, and pulled back the door.

On the other side was a bare rockcrete wall, flush with the doorway. The door was a door to nowhere.

[Destro_Yersul]

"That's odd," Tychon remarked, knocking on the rockcrete to see if it sounded hollow or false. These things did happen, of course. Hives got built up, over time, and doors that used to lead somewhere were closed over and forgotten about. "See if it's the same for the other one?"

[LCP]

The wall behind the door sounded as solid as the walls around it. Being of identical make, the padlock on the opposite door was trivial to open in the same way. Behind that door was another blank wall.

[Rizhail]

"10 thrones says that those dead ends are also secret doors, and will open when the lever is switched back."

[Thanatos 51-50]

"You, madame, have yourself a bet," Red commented, moving to the lever, and resting a hand on it.
He paused for a dramatic moment.
"Any other takers?"

Then he flipped the switch.

[LCP]

With the same grating rumble as before, the secret door slid down between Red and the trio in the hallway. The way it locked flush with the wall, one would be hard-pressed to notice it was ever there.

The walls behind the two more mundane doors at either end of the passageway remained stubbornly solid.

[Rizhail]

Sighing, Nova dug out a 10 throne chit from her pocket and tossed it to Red. "Well, that's one theory down. Though I'm half tempted to grab the lascutter from my kit and see if there's anything behind those walls."

"At the very least we know that there's a secret access tunnel down here. It could be useful in case any of Rhodes' friends show up or if we need to bring someone in quietly for an interrogation."

[Etcetera]

"Quietly through the busy street? Simply because the aristocracy don't look at us does not indicate that they do not notice us."

Jericus glanced around the street, even hopeful that some kindly soul would have pointed a surveillance device towards the door and recorded its comings and goings.

[LCP]

Jericus could see no conspicuous surveillance picters. A high-class neighbourhood like this, people probably didn't appreciate being spied on.

[Thanatos 51-50]

"People don't normally build doors to brick wall, do they?" Red pondered aloud as he slid the ten thrones into his pocket.
"This had to be erected after the fact, that could mean that the structure wouldn't be as sound as the surrounding..." Red hummed and hawed over the seams on the doors, looking for a place where the joining mortar was weak.

1d100

[LCP]

The wall looked solid to Red. But then Red was no bricklayer.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Big fancy neighborhood like this, they probably get the big fancy bricklayers as know what they're doing," Tychon pointed out. "This could be just an escape tunnel. If you want to grab the lascutter, though, I wouldn't be opposed to knocking in a few walls."

[Thragka]

"How anticlimactic," Tauron muttered beneath his breath. "This house has mane mysteries, and these walls only add to them. Go you to get the las-cutter, Nova - in the meantime, I shall ask the guards if they were aware of this entrance. Or indeed any others we may have overlooked."

Handing his end of Nova's climbing harness back to her, he made his way back to the house proper, to track down Villiers and Compton.

[Rizhail]

Nova wandered back up to the room where she had left her duffel, digging out the cloth wrapped lascutter from amongst her possessions. After the cell's issues getting passed the sealed door during their last mission, Nova had decided it would be best to have this kind of tool around.

As she returned some time later with the cutter in hand, she held the device out to Jericus. "Would you like the honor of putting holes in Rhodes' walls?"

[Etcetera]

Jericus grinned.
"I like the way you pack."

Jericus powered up the cutter and laid into the first doorway. They were going to need a lot of caulk when this was through.

[LCP]

Tauron

Returning to the house, Tauron found Villers and Compton where he had left them, standing guard at the front door.

"Alright, sir?" said Villiers. "What can we do for you?"

1

Demolition Crew

The las-cutter flared into life with a high-pitched scream, sending a cloud of heated brick dust billowing back from the scar it gouged into the solid wall. As the beam bit deeper, it quickly became apparent that this was more than a partition wall. The cutter had scythed through at least a foot's thickness of wall before it broke through to the other side.

Letting the dust settle, Jericus pressed his eye to the roughly conical hole the tool had made. A penny-sized circle of light was visible at the bottom; squinting through it, he was just about able to focus on what was on the other side. The narrow hole didn't give the best view, but from the glimpse he got of tiled walls, it looked like he had punched through to the corridors of the transit station they had seen from the street.

[Thanatos 51-50]

[Demo]
At first, when demolition started, Red stood ready, stock of the rifle pressed to his shoulder.
After the first three inches, though, he slung Abby again and paced back and forth, waiting for feedback.

[Thragka]

Tauron

"Good evening, Corporal, Lance-Corporal," Tauron said with a prim smile. "Simply answer a question for me: do your duties always keep you at these, or do you ever guard any of the house's other entrances?"

[Rizhail]

Team Demolitions:

"Well, that didn't provide much of an answer either."

Glancing at the opposite 'hidden' wall, Nova sighed. "Do we want to put a hole in that one as well, or call this lead a dead end? I'm personally voting for the latter."

[Destro_Yersul]

Demo Squad
Taking a turn peering through the newly bored hole, Tychon slowly nodded. "Yeah, I reckon we're not going to accomplish much more here. Just a bolt-hole for the rats to run into, seems about the size of it." Straightening back up, the gunslinger shut the door on the hole they had made in the wall.

"Anyone asks, that was there when we found it. Should we go back upstairs, look around the servant areas a bit more?" It was Tychon's intention to do just that, no matter how fruitless this endeavor had turned out to be, whether he had help with it or not. Looking up unconciously, he made a mental note to keep firm grip on his hat every time he opened a new door.

[LCP]

Tauron (& anyone who joins him)

"Other entrances?" said Villiers, scratching his whiskers. "Well, we do a sweep, sir, three times a day. Check the lower windows, the garage doors and the servants' entrance. Most of the time we stand guard right here, though, sir."

[Thragka]

Tauron et al.

"The servants' entrance. Perchance, is the servants' entrance the hidden door in the outdoor oubliette accessible from the basement?"

[LCP]

Tauron

Villers looked concerned. "Secret door? What secret door?"

[Thragka]

Tauron

The cleric sighed. "Indeed, there is a hidden door in the basement that leads out down-hive. I had wondered whether you might be appraised it or any other secrets the house might hold, but it matters not. Be strong in your ignorance, brothers. Good evening," he repeated as he returned indoors.

[Etcetera]

Not Tauron
"That seems wisest. There's little to be gained standing around here, at least."
Jericus began making his way to Tauron.

[Thragka]

There was a buzz as Tauron engaged his comms. "Ignorance, is, of course, a virtue," the cleric announced, sounding rather as though he were about to launch into a sermon. "And this household is most virtuous. Unfortunately that is not a virtue we have the pleasure of appreciating right now. Are you still below? I must admit, I am tiring of asking these walls questions and getting no answers. Tomorrow I will be ready to make some inquiries in the wider hive."

That's assuming the commbeads aren't blocked by distance or intervening architecture, of course - will edit again if so.

[Thanatos 51-50]

"You and me both, Drake." Red buzzed back, a heavy sigh in his voice.

With a grim glower, Red proceeded back up the rickety passageway to the Rhodes estate proper. Assuming nobody else provided a reasonable destination, the soldier began moving towards the kitchens in search of discovering what Rhodes' recaf tasted like.

[LCP]

Returning to the luxurious interior of the manor, Cell Lambda began to drift off to their respective rooms. Tychon alone stayed up, hunting through the below-stairs corridors for any sign of other secrets like the exterior door.

Most of the servants' rooms were drab little cells, containing neatly made-up beds, empty wash-stands, and not much else. The laundry rooms were impressive, with gleaming copper vats for washing sheets. The boiler rooms were gloomy and full of vapour, the throb of the great machines filling the air with its vibrations. Apparently you needed a lot of boiler to heat a house this size.

When he had opened every door he could find, and satisfied himself that there were no more secret exits or hidden rooms to be found with a cursory inspection, Tychon too went to bed.

1

The next morning, the Acolytes trickled downstairs to find someone had laid out a breakfast for them. There was toasted wheatbread, real butter, citrus juice, a bowl of some kind of freshly-sliced fruit. Red looked at it suspiciously. The only fruit he had experience of was the tinned ploin extract they had served in his rations, and that had always looked more like chunks of white jelly than anything that had come from a plant.

In the centre of the spread, a platter of bacon had been laid out in rows of neat rashers. Tychon lifted the corner of one rasher up between finger and thumb, but could see no sign of the pale white aquila stamp of the Brontian Synth-Protein Mill. It looked like this had come from an actual grox.

[Thragka]

Tauron prayed before retiring, but still slept uneasily. He was plagued by inchoate nightmares - each fitful bout of wakefulness would find him thrashing beneath the bedlinen, barely able to scavenge a few moments of weary conscious respite before he slipped back into the next iteration of the dream. Rhodes was a common feature of the delirium, the nobleman's smug expression mocking the cleric as they chased each other through the many twisting corridors of the oppressive house. And Lot 11: always, its alien form was hinted at by sounds and shadows, far more terrifyingly than if the Lictor had confronted Tauron outright. Worst of all were the dreams where he relived those final few moments aboard Phaestus' shuttle back on 41 Pry: hammering to no avail at the cabin door; desperately trying to fight off the tranquilising gas; and that longest of brief moments where the cleric slid past the Tyranid beast through the haze. His last chance to gun it down replayed again and again. He failed each time.

It was a long night. When the room seemed a little lighter upon one of his feverish awakenings, Tauron kicked the tangled covers away from where they'd wrapped around his feet and hauled himself up off the sweat-sodden sheets. He leaned against the bedroom wall and caught his breath for a few seconds. Then the priest methodically stripped the bed-linen, piling it neatly by the door. Satisfied that the room was not untidy, he took his scoriada, knelt naked at the foot of the bed, and began to whisper of his sins to the Throne as he purged them from his flesh.

After, he washed and donned his cilice and sombre Ecclesiarchy robes. The aquila pendant hung proudly on his chest when he joined the others for breakfast; and though the shadows beneath his eyes betrayed his physical fatigue, there was a sense of calm about Father Drake.

He collected a sample of everything onto his plate, and placed the prayer-book Tychon had gifted him on the table beside his cutlery. Before he sat, he raised his forearms. Palms open to the ceiling, he indicated the food before them with a gesture.

"Blessed is the servant that gets the scraps of his master's table. Terra's harvest is ever bountiful, and as we accept this food we are mindful that the light of Sol suffuses us too. Throne be praised."

[Destro_Yersul]

Tychon made few preparations before going to sleep. It would be easy, he imagined, to fall asleep here, after all the many less comfortable places he'd had to do it over the years. He made sure the painting of the lion, wrapped in its protective towel, was outside of his room. He made sure that his door was locked. Then, he went to sleep.

1

Waking in the morning, Tychon made his way down to breakfast early, picking a seat at the table and piling bacon onto his plat. He poked the fruit suspiciously before selecting a slice, and added a bit of toast to that. Tychon mostly trusted the bacon. The rest was odd. He waited for Tauron's brief prayer before eating, bringing his own book out and flipping through it to look for something appropriate. He read it over slowly in his head, then set the book down and started eating.

"So," he said, between mouthfuls of bacon. Real grox. This was much better than Synth-Bacon. "I was figuring, we ought to go talk to the other servants today."

[Thragka]

"I am in total agreement," said Tauron once he'd sat down. He took a sip of the juice, and permitted himself a small satisfied smile at the tart refreshment. "It is inconceivable that all of them knew nothing about Octavian's ... business. I have no compunction about using every tool at our disposal to extract that information."

A bead of juice escaped from the side of his mouth, leaving a stain as it trickled down his chin.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Red ate heartily of the bounty set before him.
"I would not call it totally inconceivable, Brother Drake." Red opined between mouthfuls.
"Just as we know not all of our masters' plans and intentions, so too, may the servants be blind to the greater goings-on. Octavian is a wary sort, after all, and even he served - or still serves - at the behest of a greater enemy."

[Thragka]

"Wary, indeed," allowed Tauron between spoonfuls of fruit. "The difference, of course, is that our masters are guided by the light of Terra, and our plans and methods yearn to be included in the God-Emperor's divine vision. Conversely, our enemies, however damnably clever they may be, carry the seeds of their own downfall in their heresy. All of their schemes, and thoughts, and actions, are tainted by their corruption. Heresy always leaves its mark, Red," he said as he nonchalantly buttered a slice of toast. "Be it on this house, or on the people who served here, or simply somewhere we have not yet thought to look. We will find it. I will wrench it into the light and eradicate it in the crucible of piety, whatever form it may take, or lengths to which I must go."

Drake finished assembling a rasher sandwich. His eyes met Red's as he raised it to his lips.

"We burn a hot fire here; it melts down all concealment."

The sandwich was delicious.

[Rizhail]

Nova let Tauron ramble on as she ate, sampling everything at the table out of curiosity.

"Well," she began as soon as Tauron's attentions were taken by his sandwich, "I get the feeling we're not going to have much luck with the servants. That's a line of investigation worth pursuing, certainly, but given our luck thus far I'm not willing to place any bets on them knowing anything. So, while Tauron leads the interrogations, does anyone have any ideas what the less sociable members of the cell could be doing?" From the way she looked around the table, it was clear she included Jericus and herself amongst that group.