Gazetteer II
Coughs and the sounds of weary human cargo filled the belly of the vessels hold, occasionally punctuated by the forlorn cry of an infant. But, for the most part, the people spoke in hushed voices, and kept to little clumps, family groups, friendship groups, or alliances of convenience. Refugees - every unwashed Imperial citizen in that hold a victim of the war raging along the borders of the Sector. Nobody left their ad-hoc groups by choice - sometimes groups allied with other groups; but the problem with any mass gathering of humans like this was there were always those, despite mutual suffering, willing to prey upon others: to steal rations, to take what wasn’t theirs - humans are selfish - and, to be alone in a mass of humans, was to be a victim waiting to happen.
Ren was alone. He hadn’t been when they had boarded the ship, but his group, the handful of survivors of his family able to scrape together enough thrones to persuade the Shipmaster to carry them, were long dead now, claimed by illness or starvation. None of them had been young and healthy enough to survive in this place.
True, he wasn’t -truly- alone. Ren was a wanderer, he had walked and crawled the day-long journey back and forth the ship holds, using ratways to avoid the corridors the passengers were not supposed to go into. He had visited other holds just as, at home, he might have visited another village. Ren had many groups who welcomed him, knowing he wouldn’t steal from them, willing to care for him like a lost child, but he never felt he -belonged- and never stayed long.
They all shared one hope: the promise of shipment to a transit station on the borders of Subsector Primus, where, if they weren’t caught by port authorities, they would be able to disappear into the station and catch another transport beyond to a new home. Many spoke of traveling to Duroverum, believing they would be safe beneath the aegis of the sector capitol. Every refugee there had different glorious stories about the planet: streets lined with gold and marble, open markets with free food… the stories grew more and more fantastic by the day, as people resorted to fantasy to cling on to hope.
Ren didn’t believe the stories, but anywhere away from the shapes that had haunted his nightmares since his tribe had been driven from their home, anything far away from the hulking monsters, the black-armoured devils and their mad servants was an improvement. Anything was an improvement.
The fuel-fire burned amidst the huddle that were his surrogate group for now. The fumes made his eyes sting, but the heating of the ship was poor, and often power failures brought the holds down to freezing temperatures - and the cold claimed almost as many as sickness and the predators down here did.
The group was made up of rough-faced miners - Caudicans, they said they were – their faces marked with strips to designate family bloodlines - much as Ren’s people had used woad. They were good people, but there was a sadness about them. Their world was long-dead, but now they had lost yet another home when their asteroid mine was attacked by the Archenemy. Nobody spoke of what had happened, only the mad ones ever mentioned anything. It was a bad omen to speak in too much detail of the heretics.
Ren had never heard of Caudica Secundus; his home moon had known little of the wider Imperium, the Tribes had not been interested in things beyond the skies - not until monsters had come for them, not until the traders became their only lifeline of survival. But to hear the Caudicans speak of it was to be told about paradise – every one of them spoke of their world the same way. Ren had noticed that the elders of his group spoke the same way about his planet. Ren remembered a muddy, swampy place with unrelenting rainfall, but he supposed it was easy to only remember the best parts of something you had lost.
“The Emperor has turned his back on us,” one of the burley miners was speaking, a little too loose-lipped in her inebriated state to keep her blasphemy to herself, “look at what we’ve become! It was the Emperor’s own warships that took the life of our world, we were cast out… blighted.”
Ren had heard these words many times before - sometimes, people reported who spoke them, and ship’s Security hauled them away; sometimes, mob justice beat them to it. He had heard it from those amongst the passengers who wore green flames on their clothes; he had heard it from those who showed signs of mutation. Ren had been raised knowing that the God-Emperor was the brightest star in the sky of his home moon - a blessed warrior who shined upon the greatest leaders and warriors of the tribe, and took them to his side as warriors in his eternal war against the dark. There were no other gods in his mind, but some spoke of them - and those were the ones the Security was fastest to take away.
Many tried to hush the woman, but she was too in her cups to stop now, rambling about the doom of her people, before a single voice, quiet yet firm, stopped her in her tracks,
“That is not true…”
Ren was not the only visitor at the fireside: the woman was wrapped in dirty work-clothes but bearing ragged parchment on which words had been scrawled in messy script; still, the way she locked eyes with the miner, the fiery intensity of it, was enough to halt the far tougher-looking woman mid-sentence:
“That’s not true,” the woman reiterated, “The Emperor may be angry with the Imperium, but he loves every single one of us; humanity are his children, I have seen his love with my own eyes, been graced with it.”
The fire erupted in disbelieving guffaws, before the woman pulled back her sleeve, the puckered welt of a scar encircled it entirely, silence fell, “My arm was severed in a manufacturing machine on my homeworld, but one of the Emperor’s own Saints came upon my town, and healed me so I might retain my own flesh…”
Ren didn’t even realize he was speaking out loud, “A Saint…?”
The woman turned to him in her fervour, “Yes, a Saint! Saint Callum Gearwright… let me tell you of them….”
Despite her quiet voice, the woman now held the attention of the entire crowd with her tales of this Saint, this commoner of her homeworld, now raised up to holy heights, and although the legends grew less and less believable, the core message was always the same - not to die and bleed for the Emperor, but to love and care for Them; and, in turn your, fellow humans. It sounded nice - the Caudicans listened, as the message ranged from one of care and love, to one of rejection of the social orders one against the Ecclesiarchy and the Nobility’s abuses of power. If you love the Imperium, it said, then it will change.
Ren walked from the fire after the preacher was gone, with many thoughts in his head, and a poorly scrawled map in his pocket…
When he arrived at his destination after several days of procrastination, he found a small Temple, a rough-hewn thing constructed from empty shipping containers at one end of a vast hanger. The Gearwrights, as the woman had called herself, had turned it into a labour of love, with stolen paint and prayer-strips adorning the ad-hoc place of worship. Ren was not the first to arrive either, more had come today to listen, to hear.
The guards of the temple were hulking beast of metal and flesh - Ren had never seen a Skitarii before and would not know one to name it, but he could see these had been human once - and there were ragged strips of red cloth that had been torn away from fastening points on their bionics, replaced by the white worn by the Gearwrights – they looked out of place, and yet they were welcomed here, like all those of the unwanted and in need.
Normally, Ren would have walked away, but he waited, patiently, to be permitted into the space. Guided to the altar by one of the Gearwrights, he looked upon it. The statue of the Saint was also a labour of love - carved from wood, it carried the scars of being carried from shiphold-to-shiphold, by the refugee cult, an arm that had once been whole was now bound together by strips of adhesive tape and wrapped wires... and yet.
And yet, Ren felt something here, something he had not felt in a long time…
...belonging.
Months later, what had once been the corner of a hold had grown into a sprawling ad-hoc temple. Sometimes, Ren spotted members of the ship’s crew, even the officers, down here, giving worship. There were rumours that the ship’s Chaplain had objected to the cult, but that under threat of mutiny, the Captain had ignored the priest’s objections. They were almost at port, he didn’t need an uprising, and the Gearwrights would be his problem no more once they reached the dock.
Rain spattered across the outside of her armour, running in rivulets over the Sabbat-pattern helm clamped to her neck-seal and evaporating off the charged surfaces of her visors before it could distort her vision. Duroverum was a miserable world, but at least the fires were out now - the Emperor’s vengeful Angels of Death having returned to their orbiting vessels with a bounty of brutal scum ripped from the underhive.
Palatine Katerina Vael watched the slowly landing vessel, as her Sisters stood in a line stretching across the exit of the landing pad, bolters in hand, kill-senses in their helmets tracking threats. The Soror had reviewed the reports from the vessels these refugees had come from with a sceptical eye, reading between the lines of the alarmist warnings of heresy, there were unsanctioned deviances from the Imperial cult, an open hostility to the social order of the Imperium, and, worse, rebellious tendencies.
She adjusted her grip on her bolter as the transport opened, and, from it, poured the faithful horde. They were singing…
And, in their middle, a grubby young woman carried an icon of this unsanctioned ‘Saint’ they worshipped. She was bedecked in prayer seals, and had in her eyes the wild look of a demagogue. She should have been struggling under the weight of the hardwood icon, but though what had to be through sheer force of will, she managed to not to show the strain of her burden. Katerina stopped ten paces from the mob; most of them, facing the sight of the wall of black armour and red robes of the Sisterhood of His Sanguine Tears, hesitated and came to a stop when she barked the order enhanced by her armour’s vocoders - but the grubby nonconformist ‘preacher’ kept coming, carrying her icon.
It would have been trivial to make an example out of her: to unsheathe her blade or her bolt pistol, or to simply snap her neck with her powered gauntlets, but Katerina stayed her hand. In truth, she had grown weary with all of the schismatic conflicts: how many faithful souls had been sent to the God-Emperor before their time in the past few years? So she listened when the woman spoke listened to her words, her message of love and her messages against the establishment of the Ecclesiarchy.
In any other time, in any other sector, her words would have been heresy, a crime against the proper order of the Church -- but, then again, so would have been the Canoness’ decision to break with the Order’s oath to the Cardinal over his apostasy and flouting of the Decree Passive. How many had died at the hands of the Cardinal’s assassins, how many had been put to flame by the ‘Fidelis Templar’ in their rampages against the Archenemy in Subsector Secundus?
She tilted her head upwards, her visor steaming a little as the rainfall hit the charged surface, then looking into the carved face of the ‘Saint’ these grubby refugees had latched onto….she didn’t even realize she’d reached out to touch it until she saw her hand grace the care-worn thing.
She triggered her vox-link to her Sisters,
“Let them pass.”
“Sister?”
“Let them pass.”
“The Canoness…”
“Will make me answer directly to her to explain my actions… let them pass.”
There was a moment of hesitation, of uncertainty, before bolter safeties clicked on, and the soft growl of moving power-armoured bodies told her that her Sisters had followed her order. Katerina stepped aside, and the woman looked at her, thankful, as she carried her iconic burden past the Palatine.
As the mob passed, some laid thankful hands upon her armour, before they vanished into the planetary city, maybe – Katherine thought, hoping she had done the righteous thing in His name. What the sector needed, right now, was hope…
Ren had not gone with the others. He had accompanied other Gearwrights to Nivalis, to the heart of the faith. They had gone amongst the refugee camps of pilgrims trapped here in the fighting with the Archenemy, spreading words of hope and caring for those they could. In the shadow of the walls of the Cathedral City, the uncaring Ecclesiarchy cowered and feared for themselves, and took no care of their flock. The message spread, and they had gathered as many as they could before the gates of the Cathedral City. There they stood, some carrying icons of St Gearwright, some simply holding hands – occasionally someone would strike up a tune; occasionally, they would cry out at the walls hoping those behind them would hear their calls for sanctuary.
They stayed together here, even as twisted things hunted at night – things that might once have been human now broken and bent into malformed shapes that preyed upon those caught alone, raided the camps, left the already battered survivors of the invasion of this world ever more bloodied. That made them deserving of the sanctuary of the Cathedral City, surely?
Ren did not think the uncaring Ecclesiarchy would heed them, buy it was the point of the thing, to be here, to show solidarity, even in the face of the betrayal of the priesthood who meant to protect them. He was just as surprised as any when the great doors opened, and at the head of a throng of warriors came the Cardinal-Emissarius himself.
The withered old priest bellowed over vox-amps to the crowd, promising them protection, promising them better safety in the camps, gesturing to the lines of Fidelis Templar around him as a demonstration of the Ecclesiarchy’s benevolent might. Unfortunately, the Cathedral city couldn’t hold them all; for that, he was sorry, but patrols around the camps would be increased.
Many of the less firm in their defiance were left satisfied, but Ren and the other committed Gearwrights remained. Ren didn’t see why the city couldn’t hold them - behind the line of warriors there was an empty parade court, able to contain most if not all of the gathered people. So, they stayed… singing, praying, and asking for the protection of the walls.
Cardinal-Emissarius Ignatius Grulge surveyed the grubby, unwashed mob, his face a mask of perfect patience - even if fury boiled in his gut. For hundreds of years, he had served the God-Emperor; for hundreds of years, he had bowed and climbed the ranks, while holding the secret of his faith in the Temple of the Saviour Emperor in his heart. And now, grubby followers of a jumped-up Astropath who had decided they were a Saint challenged him; now, the Ecclesiarch on Terra wrote proclamations to strip him of his titles.
Pathetic. Just as Thor had been an apostate, needed in his time, but by being allowed to continue causing the Temple to be wounded beyond recognition, so too had the laity been given too much freedom to form their beliefs; during his years in the Missionarius Galactica, he had had to endure the liberal thinkings of those Missionaries who believed in ‘altering’ the religious truths to make them more palatable to savages and their own heathen beliefs, rather than converting them by sword and flame. Words and songs, reached his ears, and he hid the sneer: the Ecclesiarchy had become soft and submissive, a tool of the Imperial state, rather than a firm hand guiding it.
He moved his fingers, a simple gesture, military sign-cant - subtle, but the two Templars at his side understood it; their vox-comms clicked in their helms as they transmitted their order.
The crowd did not have time to understand what the simultaneous activation of pilot-lights meant. The Cardinal raised his hand and brought it down; his Templars locking into formation in front of him, the force fields of their shields protecting him from the black-blast of heat.
And the Gearwrights burned.
Ren whimpered - his flesh singed, burnt - as he crawled as best he could, from beneath the charred remains of his fellow faithful. Dragging his blistered form across the dirt, his hand reached out and touched something, the black hem of heavy robes.
He looked up into the cold blue eyes nested within a withered face…
Grulge looked down at the survivor, before snatching his robes out of the grasp of the creature. He could not tell who the survivor had been beneath the mess of burns, but he lowered himself down, the joints of his bionics hissing as he did.
Near-dead lips cracked open, and a single word escaped a throat charred by inhaling superheated gasses, “Why…?”
A smile, laced with pity formed upon Grulge’s withered lips as he brought his hand over the survivor’s mouth, clamping down, closing his finger and thumb to seal the remains of the figure’s nose, letting the apostate suffocate under his grasp.
Holding his gaze, he said “To save you from your own heresies against the God-Emperor, my child, the fire cleanses your soul, so you might go to Him…” The figure struggled, but despite his age, the Cardinal was the stronger man, bionically enhanced, “Free yourself of your falsehoods. The ‘Saint’ you worship? They were nothing more than a Witch with delusions of grandeur… a fragile, pathetic thing that others used as a figurehead…” The survivor was growing weak, but Grulge could feel a lips moving against his palm. He removed his hand and leaned “What is that? Do you repent your beliefs?”
Ren, last of his Clan, met the eyes of the Cardinal with furious defiance, as he gasped, air filling his burnt lungs. Every breath was agony, but he gathered enough air to speak one thing, “I….believe…”
Grulge’s eyes blazed in furious outrage, as he rose up over the figure; with a howl of fury, he lifted his foot and brought it down with a hiss of pistons, crushing the figure's neck in an instant. His mitre toppled from his head, and one of his attendants scrambled to grab it before it was too coated in blood and much and ash. Panting, the wizened Cardinal, bare-headed now as he rose up and looked at the soiled symbol of his office and station, the Aquila upon it marred with dirt, for but a moment - before he turned to his Templars.
“Send word…burn this new heresy out wherever it is found.”
Prosperitas Gazetteer II - Hope
The Gearwright Heresy
With the sack of Olethros Secunda, the largely localised cult of the obscure and un-canonized Saint Callum Gearwright has been scattered amongst refugee populations of Subsector Secundus. Though the ‘Saint’ has had small followings elsewhere, this leads to an explosion of the sect amongst the Imperial laity who listen to demagogues preaching a cult of caring and solidarity. In the face of the wanton slaughter of Archenemy Cults and the dirges of the Ashen Cults, many lowborn flock to the sect and join in worship of the God-Emperor and veneration of the messages of their newfound patron Saint.
The response to this unsanctioned Sect, the Gearwrights, is mixed amongst the Imperial hierarchy, with many nobles were concerned about the equalitarian and anti-establishment undertones in the preaching of the apostate sect. The Ecclesiarchy response is oddly mixed: with the Sorors of the Order of his Sanguine Tears refusing orders to punish this deviance, and choosing to focus upon greater concerns, while many Priests oppose the sect openly, condemning its teachings loudly at the guidance of the Governors of the Sector. But other Priests, and even some Nobles, show sympathy to the Gearwrights, seeing their anti-establishment teachings as directed against not against all of the governing bodies, but, rather, to the failings of the Great Houses and Ecclesiarchy in the Prosperitas Sector; some even openly uplift the sect, and there are rumours of petitions for canonization of the Saint being sent to Terra.
The apostate Cardinal-Emissarius Ignatius Grulge, who rejects his laicisation and excommunication by the Ecclesiarch on Terra, and now openly speaks of his followers as a part of the proscribed Temple of the Saviour Emperor the Fidelis Militia raised by him has begun to call itself the Fidelis Templar (though it is unclear how many of his army, are aware of his laicisation and excommunication) has a far more violent reaction. There are rumours of massacres of the followers of this sect in Subsector Secundus, with Grulge brooking no challenge to his primacy by the uplifting of an uncanonized Saint by the sect. The Templars that follow him pursue this sect as ruthlessly across Subsector Secundus as they would any heretic or archenemy cult.
And yet, despite the Temple faction’s brutal response, there is a general feeling of good fortune amongst the population - as the faith does not erupt into something malign - and more and more the Saint is embraced, and the belief grows.
A spark of hope, however small, has been lit.
OOC: It is more than possible for a player character to be or convert to being, a Gearwright: this newborn sect has no legal backing by the Ecclesiarchy, and the Ordo Hereticus are likely to be critical of membership of it as a result – but many characters met Cal before their martyrdom, and have seen stranger things. Though the sect might not actually reflect their words, accurately, of course.
In legal terms, under Ecclesiastical law, the Gearwrights are a heresy until such a time as it is formally recognised by the Ecclesiarchy. However, for that process to occur, the Sector requires a Cardinal, of which It currently has none, while Nivalis is held by the Temple of the Saviour Emperor. This could make membership somewhat problematic for an Inquisitorial Agent who isn’t at least subtle about it. Their relationship is even more complicated, because Callum Gearwright was known to the Inquisition, and many Inquisitors believe that without proof and canonization, the sect is walking a very dangerous line by worshipping them as a saint.
The Gearwrights are mildly anti-establishment and lean towards a liberal belief system - they have seen the atrocities committed by the Imperial state against faithful citizens, and believe their Saint would agree with them. Oddly, this has resonance with many lowborn and the rare liberal/progressive members of the State and the Imperial Hierarchy, who do feel the Sector has suffered way too much, and that Hermione Durovera is too fond of the Gauntlet over the Velvet Glove.
Known Gearwrights suffer an additional external threat in the form of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, which has openly targeted members of the Sect.
It is possible, as a side note, for characters to be members of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, but this is a sect actively hunted by the Ordo Hereticus, and would align a character against the rest of the player party - most likely leading to their eventual retirement from being playable.