In the Crush of the Hive, Part 2

With a hail of autopistol fire, Sham cut Dark down, then grabbed the bigger man's autogun and turned it on the rest of the ambushers. Cortez leapt from his hiding place and supported Sham, preventing the thugs from rushing into the alley. Meanwhile, Lupus used his psyker powers to escape his pursuers, and Dorn escaped to summon aid. Modesty fled the scene in terror.

After driving away the ambushers, Sham discovered something horrific in Dark's belongings - an Inquisitorial identity card. Dark was an Interrogator! The acolytes dragged Dark's body back to their cheap hotel and stashed it next to Rig's corpse. They also destroyed the body's features so it could not be identified. A message was waiting at the hotel for Rig, inviting the acolytes to dinner at the Amaranth Palace.

The team stopped off at the inquisitorial fortress to scrub up and to confirm that Dark was indeed a member of the Inquisition. Dorn also contacted They then proceeded to the Amaranth Palace, where Lady Maris Amaranth questioned them extensively. She asked after her missing servant, Rig, and about the acolytes' knowledge of the Illuminated Brethren. She mentioned that Drake's deceased acolyte Falco questioned her mother a few years ago.

During the dinner, Dorn received a reply from Drake, ordering him to pull the team offworld.

Rather than accept her invitation to attend the upcoming Basilica ceremonies in the Amaranth family chapel, the team headed back into the city. At the cheap hotel, they discovered that everyone was dead and the bodies were gone. There were signs the Mushers had been there and left a booby trap to kill the acolytes. Meanwhile, at Modesty's apartment, Sham found signs indicating that someone was plotting a riot at the Basilica...

The Tainted Dream

A year before being sent to Constanthus, Cortes, Lupus and young Sham were sent to investigate xeno taint on an agricultural world. They traced a series of mysterious suicides to a travelling merchant, who had been peddling alien 'eggs' from a Rogue Trader, Faris, who visited the world a year before. The mayor's wife had been mutated by addiction to the drug contained in the eggs, and had transformed into a xeno horror.

Learning this was complicated by accidental exposure to the drug, which sent the three investigators into a surreal hallucination. Moments before killing themselves, they fought their way out of the alien dream and were able to return to the mayor's palace and slay his wife with his power sword.