Acolytes!

In these posts I will depict what happens in our Dark Heresy: Tattered Fates campaign. Thus, there will be plenty of spoilers for people who want to play this set of adventures. You have been warned. I shall also refrain from explaining the background of Dark Heresy. I assume that you know about the Empire of Man, Him on Terra, the Warp, and the agents of the Golden Throne. The group consists of only two characters, who are at about 3500pts at this point. Their adversaries have been adjusted to this level. We started off with “The House of Dust and Ash”, a preliminary adventure to the campaign, contained in the fine sourcebook “Disciples of the Dark Gods”.

Mortuarium VII is a hallowed place, where thousands of dead are burned every day. Resting a mile beneath the surface of Hive Sibellus on Scintilla, Mortuarium VII is a tomb, a sanctum, a factory, and a laboratory. It is a hollow cylinder two hundred paces across, its walls honeycombed with tombs and coffin-holes and blackened by the soot and dust of centuries of use, its vaulted ceiling lost high in the darkness. In the middle of this dark and echoing space stands a ziggurat, crowned by huge statue of a black angel wielding scythe and hourglass. The face of the angel is hidden by a heavy cowl, but its gaze seems to fix on the visitor as he enters the mortuarium. Large iron smokestacks snake between the folded wings of the angel, blowing the ash of the burned dead up through the layers of the hive and into the atmosphere of Scintilla. The angel towers like a giant over the dead and the living. Solemn priests with long, black staves and greenish lanterns guide the mourners with their oblong bundles, wrapped into shrouds, carried on biers and in lacquered sedan-chairs, through fields of votive tablets and grave markers towards the maw of the ziggurat, where skull-faced servitors take over the mourners’ burden and the flames finally claim the dead.

Two men stand out in the mass milling in the large entrance to the Mortuarium. It is less their clothing or their weapons – nobles will take their bodyguards wherever they go – but rather the routine they exhibit while moving through the grieving masses. It seems like these two are not here to fulfill some solemn duty or to visit the dear departed, but on an errand, which, while pressing, is essentially mundane. They move in the shadow of the black angel like merchants on a busy trading floor or travelers on a well-known train station. The larger of the men is a dusky fellow with a proud face and long, black, straight hair. A short but dense beard covers his chin. On first sight one could take him for a noble from Malfi, but his skin is too dark for a son of that world. Getting closer, you would see the spider’s web of scars covering his face – even his eyelids are covered by the old traces of short, but deep cuts. And you would notice his eyes and the strange fire within them.
A dark blue cloak barely covers his silvery armor, a carapace worthy of a Kasrkin, with scenes of an ancient battle and clashing horsemen etched into the metal breastplate. A large laspistol and a sword of uncommon form and design dangle from the belt on this armor. He carries the helmet of this valuable suit under his arm: It is fully enclosed with a void seal and crowned with golden laurels.

His companion is far less conspicuous in his dark grey trousers and vest, and the leather hat drawn deep into his face. But some mourners close to him gasp and avert their gaze: His lank figure, white-grey skin and his colorless hair mark him as a voidborn, a member of those unhallowed tribes sailing the empty abyss between the worlds of the Imperium, with the poison of void and warp seeping into their genes. The voidborn is armed to the teeth, with two straight blades strapped across his back, a heavy handgun holstered at his belt and two weighty Irontalon pistols under his armpits, rapid firing sidearms usually restricted to officers of the Imperial Navy, with long barrels and weighty grips, sturdy enough to serve as clubs if their ammo runs out. His baggy, utilitarian clothes hide an armored mesh body glove – and many other items which a man of his trade might find useful. Among all this lethal hardware, the leather whip wound at his thigh seems more like a badge of office than a weapon. These two men are Drizz Al’Rahman, imperial psyker from far Tallarn, and Yuri Orlov, voidborn assassin and formerly the whip and spymaster of captain Leif Morgenstern of the Ribald Pilgrim. They are agents of the Golden Throne, acolytes of the Holy Ordos – the Inquisition, the shadowy and much-feared organization known as the left hand of the Emperor.