Report on Investigations on Acreage (5)

The inn proved to be inhabited by deserters and madmen. During the night, the piles of corpses in the fields outside the inn began singing, which provoked a weird reaction in the wounds suffered by Hastus Quint. Black alien tendrils danced inside his flesh in time to the singing of the dead. Alaric managed to wound one of the tendrils with a knife, but this caused the song to change, and soon after the inn was attacked by cloaked figures.

The attack was driven off, and Alaric was able to remove the other tendrils from Quint. Meanwhile, Verbal and Thondor destroyed the nearest corpse-pile, which seemed to disrupt the eldritch connection between the dead.

The acolytes reached the capital city and immediately sent an astropathic message to Grumaire. They then went to intercept Kirith at Princess Rhozena's palace. As they arrived, a shot rang out...

The Clockwork Moon (3)

Uller ordered his gun-servitors and acolytes to kill the inquisitorial team. Fortunately, the group were too close to the Magos for the Titan to open fire, but a hail of autofire from the machines severely wounded many of the team. Dorn was able to reach the shuttle and call for aid from the Oculus Imperatus.

Lupus Wosley drew on previous unsuspected reserves of psychic power and lashed out with electricity. Metal melted and flesh caught fire in the fury of his wrath. While the rest of the acolytes fled to the shuttle, Lupus opened himself up completely to the Warp...and something came though.

The Oculus Imperator blasted open the airlock, and the shuttle flew out. The Inquisitorial vessel jumped away just as the Guardian of the Moon opened fire.

* * *

Blasted and broken, with her navigator dying, the Oculus Imperatus limped through the Warp to the nearby world of Testament. For six months, she was buffeted by warp-storms and dark powers before tumbling into realspace once more. On Testament, the acolytes made contact with several potential allies, including Jermais, who claimed to be a friend of Drake, and the mysterious trader Twocoin. They discovered that Gristus the Techpriest had visited the outlying regions, and that these regions had once been the lair of Illuminated cultists.

Under the shadow of a storm cast by the arrival of the tithe-ship, they set off into the wilderness.

The Clockwork Moon (2)

Pursing Tantoblin, the acolytes travelled to the lifeless world below, and entered a vault of stored machines. In the depths of the vault, they discovered Tantoblin trying to use a warp engine to open a portal to the Empyrean. He held the stolen corpse of Magos Vulcan, the foul root of the Illuminated corruption. The intrusion of unnatural energies reanimated Vulcan, and he implanted a device into Sham's head. This implant allows the acolyte to sense the presence of other parts of Magos.

The psyker Lupus was able to seal the warp breach, and the team returned to the Clockwork Moon, only for Malthus the Techpriest to accuse Lupus of heresy. Lupus invoked a power and disabled the gun-servitors, but was unable to escape. The team were able to calm Malthus down...then Sham revealed his implant, and that he could sense the corruption of Vulcan within Magos Uller...

The Clockwork Moon

The acolytes returned to Outremer, where they reported to Inquisitor Drake. He was unimpressed with their failure, but with the growing crisis on Constanthus, he was forced to spare them. All of them were punished with agony boxes; Scam and Lupus both excelled, and Lupus was entrusted with the acolytes' one prize from Constanthus - the Eye of Cius Amaranth.

The group then travelled on the ship of Imperial Courier Tarit to the Clockwork Moon of San Valuso. There, Magos Uller-Gamma4 allowed them access to the archives. A priest called Tantoblin was assigned as their guardian. In the archives, the acolytes uncovered several clues. Many years ago, Magos Vulcan passed on his cybereyes, one to the navigator of the known heretic vessel Blessing of St. Gustavius, and the other to the Amaranth family. Other components from the monk's body were installed into other Techpriests, including the traitors Lazarus and Gristus.

Meanwhile, Lupus was taken by Tantoblin to have his teeth replaced.

One of these investigations triggered a defense mechanism, and the team were attacked by a robot, who set the archives on fire. They fled. Tantoblin and Lupus returned, and Tantoblin leapt into the flames.

Returning to Magos Uller, the team voiced their suspicions. Uller spoke privately to Techpriest Malthus, and found that the records relating to the monks who were given relics from Vulcan's body had just been deleted. While the two priests conferred, the rest of the acolytes were surprised to be attacked by Lupus's new teeth. Battling off these bizarre tiny machines, the acolytes realised that Tantoblin was the traitor.

A quick search revealed that he had vanished from the Clockwork Moon, but was still somewhere in the system...

In The Crush of the Hive, Part 3

Lacking further clues, the acolytes chose to investigate the Underhive. Joined by a mendicant Techpriest, they travelled into the depths and followed a psychic trace to a hidden shrine of the Illuminated Brethren. The keeper of this shrine was an old woman named Matron Rho, who they recognised as being a scion of the Amaranth family. In the shrine was a statue containing the skull of her father, Cius Amaranth.

Rho explained that when the family chapel was defiled by 'men with flamers', she and her father fled. Her father died, but she enshrined his skull and cyber-eye here. She also mentioned that a nice man named 'Falco' often visited the shrine, and that the cyber-eye of her father was stolen after one of her visits.

Unfortunately, the acolytes let slip that they worked for the Inquisition, and Rho attacked them. As they fled the burning shrine, they were attacked again by the Mushers, and sustained considerable wounds as they retreated to the upper hive. There, they found a scene of carnage. Rioting had begun in the Basilica of the Founding and spread across Constanthus Hive. The acolytes travelled to the Basilica, where they discovered hundreds of thousands dead. The Amaranth crypt had been broken into, and the Illuminated Brethren - led by a man with a cybereye - were conducting a bizarre ritual.

The acolytes were unable to stop the ritual, but they were able to capture the cult leader as the Imperial Guard turned their guns on the Mushers, and blood and fire consumed the sanctity of the ancient basilica...

Report on Investigations on Acreage (4)

Rallying themselves, the acolytes fought off both Duke Ollard's men and the Slaught-animated zombies in the tower, and questioned the heretical duke some more. He spoke of a 'summoning' and claimed that the Slaught had shown him a truth beyond death. He was killed for his corruption by xenos. The acolytes attempted to convince Ollard's men that their lord was a heretic, but only a few heeded their words.

Fleeing through the sewers, the acolytes took refuge by the docks. Alaric tended their wounds, and discovered that Quint's belly was puckered with strange marks from where the alien touched him. Meanwhile, war engulfed the city once more. It seems that word of the duke's heresy had spread, and now the Rhozeia-loyal forces were fighting each other. Verbal made his way to the camp of the ex-Guardsman Tholos, after attempts to reach him by radio failed. Tholos had indeed turned on Ollard's allies, and arranged for the other acolytes to be rescued.

With the duke's confession that Prince Olcan's seneschal Kirith was an ally of the xenos, the acolytes decided to travel to the capital city to intercept Kirith and use the planet's Astropath. They asked Tholos for aid, and Alaric was alarmed when Tholos let slip that he knew the xenos were named Slaught. The group departed in an armed carriage.

Crossing a land of dead men and charnel fields, they came to an inn...