Act 1, Scene 1: The Long Haul [One Hour to Midnight]

Toloran

Junior Member
Yesterday, you received the following message from Inquisitor Yojimbo while on you were on Scintilla awaiting assignment:


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Ref: Inq/045678499/BI


Author: Inquisitor Philbright Maximillion Yojimbo


Subject: Mission Briefing


Name: Iocanthos


Location: Segmentum Obscurus


Sector: Calixis (Scintillan Sub)


Tithe Grade: Exactus Median


Notes: ref -- Ghostfire Pollen


Mission Details: The Inquisition offices on Scintilla have been formally issued with a request for assistance from the settlement of Stern Hope on Iocanthos. The report, while vague, suggests suspicious distrubances, possibly psychic or warp-based, occurring in the area of a new cathedral raised to honor Saint Drusus. The cathedral lies at the heart of the remote outpost and its successful completion will do much to further the Imperial Faith on this troubled world, a laudable goal and one that the Holy Ordos shares.


You are requested and required to proceed to the planet Iocanthos where you will assist Senior Inquisitorial Agent, Aristarchus the Seer, in investigating the incidents and ensuring that the consecration of the cathedral goes as planned. Your peripheral tasks are to gather data about any phenomena encountered and, where needed, eliminate any threats you find. For the duration of the mission, Aristarchus has the honor of command over you in my name. Assist him and afford him the same loyalty as you would give me, in the God-Emperor's name.


Passage for you has been aranged on the trade-hauler Brazen Sky for immediate departure for Iocanthos. Make yourself known and familiarize yourself with your fellow Acolytes on board using the codes you have learned during your training.


Landing close to the site is impractical due to its geographical location in a mountain range and the potential hostility of natives. Instead, you will make planetfall at Port Suffering (Iocanthos' primary Imperial outpost) and meet Aristarchus there. From Port Suffering arrangements have been made for your journey to Stern Hope.


Addendum 1: The Cathedral Mission


Missionary-Abbot Orland Skae successfully petitioned for the first Iocanthan cathedral to be built in the settlement of Stern Hope two years ago, and since then reports indicate that he has gathered a sizable congregation of native converts and worthy off-world pilgrims to his cause. Skae himself, a very distant scion of Scintillan nobility, has managed to garner both off-world donations and considerable local support to his mission, so far succeeding where others have failed.


Addendum 2: Reported Phenomena


As the cathedral structure has neared completion, unusual phenomena have been evidenced both at the site and in the surrounding area. These include strange lights in the hills, animal attacks, missing persons, an upsurge in accidents and unexplained deaths. The accidents have culminated recently in more serious and obviously unnatural events such as manifestations of phantom sounds, walls weeping blood, telekinetic disturbances and other such phantasmagoria.


Addendum 3: Planetary Briefing


Society: Iocanthos is an anarchic pseudo-feudal society, where all power-relationships are based on violence or its threat. A war-torn and brutal world, the control of the planet rests with various warlord and clan factions that compete to harvest or steal the planet's only tithed material, Ghostfire Pollen, in order to turn it over to the Imperium in exchange for supplies. The most powerful warlord is currently King Vervai Skull who is currently acknowledged as Iocanthos' de facto planetary govener. Iocanthos boasts a single fortified Administratum-controlled spaceport settlement, Port Suffering, where tithe is collected and trans-shipped.


Founding: Iocanthos was taken by General (Saint) Drusus's 2nd Army Group during the first great crusades through the sector. As the planet lacked any significant technology, Drusus's forces defeated the indiginous people, known as the Ashleen, in a single week of bloody fighting. Drusus later remarked in his memoirs that the only memorable aspect of the planet was the vast fields of wild flowers which resembled "Shimmering fields of rippling explosions, caught at the fleeting moment between beauty and destruction" [Ref. pg. 526-- Breaching the Darkness]. As ever, the general was perceptive as the Ghostfire would become central to the world's future.


Additional Notes: In times past, Iocanthos served as a penal dumping ground for undesirables that the Scintillan authorities for various reasons didn't wish to execute or expatriate further afield. Such exiles were given minimal supplies and allowed to thrive or falter without further interference. The current population is largely a mixture of their decedents and the native Ashleen.


Imperial xeno-botanist Mogren Thunt was the person who discovered that the pollen of the native Ghostfire flowers contained power psychoactive properties and refined their use.


After being graced with a powerful vision telling her to build a temple, "Where the flowers burn", Sister Semberle of the Adeptus Sororitas came to the world and ordered the building of of the Abby of the Dawn in one of Iocanthos's flint mountain ranges. The Sororitas facility is forbidden to outsiders.


Ref--Ghostfire Pollen: Iocanthos's sole tithe. It is a power psychoactive substance use as the base for a considerable amount of combat drugs used by the Imperial Guard's penal legions throughout the Segmentum Obscurus.


Past Inquisitorial Involvement: To the average Iocanthan, the Inquisition is merely a half-legendary power from beyond their world, and while there records of several Inquisitorial missions to Iocanthos in the past, they are all classified beyond your clearance rating. I have reviewed them and judge none to be currently relevant to your mission.


The planet historically registers a slightly higher per capita level of psyker birth, but not significantly so.


The Sisters of the Abbey of the Dawn regularly report any unusual heretical activity to the Conclave. Other then this, the Holy Ordos retain no standing presence on Iocanthos.


** Ignorance is a blessing not to be disdained by the wise. **


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That was yesterday, today you are already aboard the Brazen Sky while in transit to Iocanthos. You were hustled on board while the crew frantically loaded and unloaded cargo. You were left in a large and disheveled looking open-plan crew bay, largely on your own except for the other acolytes. You are told to remain in your quarters for the duration of the trip by the purser who goes by the name Sebek who occasionally visits you to "see if you need anything."


The trip is three days by warp so there are about two more days before you arrive at Iocanthos.
 
Bored bored bored bored boredity bored bored bored.


Emperor were trips in space the epitomy of boring. From the undehive, Space was that romantic final fronteer full of opportunities and "adventure". His experience of space consited of waiting in a crew lounge with an over enthousiastic guardsman and a killjoy enforcer. Who would of thought he'd be in the same room as one of these (well one that's not an interogation cell that is) ?


At least they were getting close to work. Only two more days to kill. If only he could mingle with the rest of the crew (and get his paws on some amasec). On the other hand, the name of the place they were headed for... Who in their right mind nammed a place Port Suffering ? That's the sort of title that is just begging for xenos or other things to come and make the place live up to its name. But then again, maybe the in their right mind part was optimistic. So murders, strange apparitions, dissapearances and blood on the walls... that sounded like just another day back at the hive to him. So, they had to sniff and take care, enforcer style, of the source of the problem. He could work with that.
 
42


43


44


An anarchic feodal-society ? Pff no organization, totaly mess, no victory haha


45


Brutal wolrd ? Haha like home.


46


Primitives warrior ? Hmm someone to kill


47


Strange light ? Morons with flashlight, certainly


48


Animal attack ? Hmm something to kill


49


Accidents and unexplained death ? In an anarchic feodal-society ? Obvious


50


Make abs ... check. Let check the gun ...


"Hey guys do you also think that this mission sounds like holidays ? Fresh air, hiking in a forest and warmly natives people, isn't it ?"
 
Ezekiel sat in front of a low steel table, his weapons disassembled in front of him, meticulously checking and cleaning them. A smoking lho stick sat in the ash tray next to him, and he paused occasionally to take a drag.


His first assignment in the service of the glorious Ordos of the Emperor's Inquisition wasn't shaping up exactly as he'd imagined it, although to be honest he'd had little idea what to expect. But not assignment to a hell-hole like Icanthos, certainly. He'd left one backwater, only to head straight to another one, now with added barbarism. Fantastic.


He wasn't quite sure what to make of his companions, either. One was pretty clearly ex-guard, judging by his kit. He seemed...zealous was probably the word. The other one, well, Emperor knows what he did for a living, but he looked like the sort of person Ezekiel would have busted without a seconds hesitation back on Vallombrosa.


"Hey guys do you also think that this mission sounds like holidays ? Fresh air, hiking in a forest and warmly natives people, isn't it ?"


Ezekiel glanced up at the guardsman's words. “Sounds like cursed warp-craft to me.†he replied bluntly.


He sighed, and sat back in his chair, picking up the low stick for a longer drag. The thought of tangling with psyker madness made him uncomfortable in the extreme “Ezekiel Savitr, by the way.†he said “You guys got names?â€
 
"Manny, also known as two guns or you here with the funny beard. I've never actually met a psyker before... knowingly. Do bullets kill them like us normal folk ?"





Manny didn't find it natural to talk with an enforcer but if he was going to work with him, a minimal communication would be required.
 
I stop my verification one step and look the arbitrator before answer him


"Private Gabriel Rain of the 71th Cadian ... I mean I was in the 71th Cadian"


Then I return on my task but still talking


"And I think that a laser ray or a ray in the head of a psyker kill him. But the only problem is to pull the trigger before he understand that you'll shot"
 
Ezekiel nodded in agreement with Gabriel. He snapped a clip into the pistol he had been cleaning, racked the slide and sighted down the barrel. “Bullets kill everything.†he said, confidently.


He didn't feel anything like as confident as he sounded. He hadn't had much contact with psykers either: the odd glimpse of Vallombrosa's small astropathic choir, the occasional salute to one passing through as an adjunct to a visiting dignitary, but that was about it.


Sorcery and the like he knew even less about. He'd always concerned himself with the temporal crimes, and left men's souls to the Ecclesiarchy.


And to the Inquisition, of course.


Which, he supposed, in this instance, was them.


Frak.
 
You hear the hatch to your "cabin" squeak open and you can see a short, somewhat ugly man with a pointed nose and wispy mustache coming in through the hatch. It is as if all the universe were conspiring to make him look as rodent-like as possible (and succeeding). You recognize him from earlier as Sebek, the purser. "Greetings, greetings. Have you settled in ok? mmmhmmm?" He nods as if he can't possibly think that you wouldn't be, "If there is anything you need, I'm here to help. Mmmmyes."
 
Holy crap ! A Ratling in space ? Oh ... No it's just an ugly face, no luck dude ...


"Overcharge pack and rest time... check. Lets do some push up. Hey guys you should practice some sport, we'll certainly have to walk in Locanthos, a perhaps run too"


 
Ezekiel cocked an eyebrow at Gabriel when the man mentioned sports, and rather pointedly lit a second lho stick.


He shook the the packet. Nearly out. He glanced back up at the purser, who still seemed to be hovering. “If you can hunt me down a fresh packet of smokes, I'd be grateful. Something to eat wouldn't go amiss either. Grox for preference, but if it used to have fur, feathers or scales I'll probably eat it.â€
 
Sebek's eyes gleam slightly for an instant, "Smokes? Very easy to get, very easy. Mmmyes. But Grox? Very expensive, if you get my meaning. We mostly eat soylen veridians around here so meat is hard to come-by." Sebek shrugs, "That is, of course, depending on how picky you are about where the meat comes from... and how much you can afford? Heh, mmmhmmm." He pulls out a small data slate from his jacket and begins looking through some information on, all the while muttering to himself. After a minute or so of it, "Hmm... I could probably find both, but as I said it won't be cheap. mmmhmm. I could probably get a couple packs of smokes at about, oh, 20 thrones each and a nice steak for about 15 thrones."


*****


OOC: You ARE getting food as part of your passenger fare (eating in the galley with the rest of the crew) but it isn't exactly good, mostly food tubes or soylen veridians.
 
"15 throne for a Steak ? You kidding ? Do you think we're millionary ?"


In fact it was a long time before I eated a steak 15 throne ...


"Give me some tube food. No taste, no defined shape, no time wasted"
 
Ezekiel's eyes widened. “20 thrones for a pack of smokes? That's bloody daylight robbery, that's what that is.â€


He thought about the meager handful of thrones in the pocket of his uniform. No help there. He briefly considered seeing if he could get the captain to bill the Inquisition, but that seemed...unwise, at best.


He cursed “Put me down for some damn processed tube snacks as well then. If I get desperate, I might even be able to roll them up and smoke them.â€
 
Sebek frowns briefly before returning to his almost disturbing smile. "Well.... I guess I could give you a small discount for a rare guest on our ship. Hmmmm... How about 15 credits for the smokes and 10 for the steak? I have hungry children to think about so there is only so much I can take off."
 
By the Emperor some people had some luxury tastes. He was used to his diet of soylent viridiens and stagnant water. And these two were moaning about the price of unprocessed food... on a ship. He missed the booze but he knew he could wait a little.


He simply signed that he was alright and needed nothing more.
 
Ezekiel waved his hand to indicate he was out: the eight thrones in his pocket clearly weren't going to stretch to any extravagances.


It was a bit of a shock to the system. Vallombrosa, out on the way as it was, had met it's food demands with on-planet agriculture: real crops, actual herd animals, not this vat-grown rubbish. Clearly he was going to need to get used to the fact that what had been an everyday thing for him was in no way a constant throughout the Imperium.


He sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, and sighed heavily. What a start.
 

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