Gazetteer IX
Watch Station Aegaeon
Deathwatch Deep Space Facility
Piscina Sector
595.M41
“You are slouching, Corvinus.” A pause. “You look like a child wearing his father’s stolen clothing when you let your neck vanish into the armour like that…”
The reaction to her tone was instant, programmed; any protests he might have summoned that he held equal rank to her in the eyes of the Throne now, and that she could not boss him around like he was still a child, died when she used the voice. He straightened his back like once again he was that cold, soulless, little boy in the study on the Island. He then glowered a little, at nothing in particular, keeping his gaze straight ahead. She noticed, because of course she did, her eye for detail was, as ever, perfect, “Stop that, too.”
He locked his armour so he could at least twitch and fidget his fingers inside of the casings without her noticing. Pointless, surely, but still a deserved rebellion. The journey here had been commentary about his decision to grow a beard (strongly disapproved of) and let his hair grow out (mildly approved of) between the more serious business of briefing for their meeting. He loathed formality and company, she knew that - this was, even after all these years, another example of her trying to ‘train’ him to cope with things he disliked. He wondered if Charity also had to deal with this sort of thing.
Blaming his soulless nature for the extent of his dislike of company was, ultimately, a lie: blanks could be social creatures, if they chose to; he simply preferred solitude - it suited him better.
As the shuttle swayed a little on approach, he glanced down at the huge casket on the grav-sled between them: within its stasis field, Apothecary al-Sayed of the Death Watch looked as peaceful as any creature ravaged by a daemonically possessed greenskin could. He noted she’d put his helmet on, though.
“Why do this in person?” He finally muttered to her. “Why not send the casket via courier and dispatch astropathic summons to call upon them? They are the Chamber Militant of your Ordo are they not? Why not simply order them to your aid?”
Lady-Inquisitor Halcyona Duplesis raised her chin, and glanced up at her adopted son over the rim of her glasses, taking him in with a withering look: “Corvinus…” she sighed, “one of the first things you’ll need to learn when dealing with Astartes is that, while they are blunt, brutal creatures, exclusively created to wage wars in the God-Emperor’s name… they are also beasts with traditions, cultures, and strong warrior codes - a myriad of them. Handle things the same way with two different Chapters and you’ll please one and end up with the other’s knife at your throat - they know their oaths and their duties, but those are maintained by mutual respect. Inquisitors who treat Astartes like weapons often end up exactly like those who treat the Guard as canon fodder: with too few allies, and a little too likely to suffer a very fatal accident.”
He considered her words: he had not met many Astartes, and had socialised with none of them. It made sense, he supposed… and he filed the information away for later. What he read in cold sterile textbooks, the ones he liked best, was often far removed from the messy, complicated, reality of things.
They emerged onto the space station, their mutual security retinues spreading out around them, and the sled slid forth with the stasis casket in front of them, as the two inquisitors flanked it on either side. Glancing around the emerald lensed helmets watching them from around the hanger, he did not fancy their chances should things go south.
Mothe… Lady-Inquisitor Duplesis was the only of them who had ever had an Astartes on her retinue… and that individual now laid dead between them. He tried to disabuse himself of the smothering feeling of paranoia and suspicion that came with his line of work, and tried to remind himself that every one of these transhuman nightmares had taken oaths every bit as sacred as his own. Still, he had seen oathbreakers of every kind, Astartes and Inquisitors, too - and that made it very hard to ever truly quiet the voice of suspicion and accusation.
Still, if the Lady-Inquisitor believed that the Watch Fortress would aid them, then, he would have to believe her. The Ordos Prosperitas could ill-afford to snub any ally right now, and, knowing the truth about the Lions of Nemea, he felt they could hardly rely on that alliance to last forever: what was it that the Lady-Inquisitor had said over tea the other day?
‘Born of a similar purpose, yet divergent, and they are without the God-Emperor’s authority.’
He studied the silver armed Astartes before them. They spoke with the Lady-Inquisitor and barely acknowledged his existence - it was like being her Interrogator all over again. Still, that was fine as far as he was concerned - she understood the transhuman weapons better than he did. Perhaps that skill was what allowed her to handle so easily those strange and gifted children - children like him and Charity - that she brought to her home, only to forge them into Inquisitors and Assassins and other sharp and wonderful creatures. She clearly was very used to dealing with the inhuman, the broken, the wyrd, the monstrous.
Corvinus remained quiet, observed, and spoke only when it was necessary or polite to do so - he did as she had trained him to in the times long past: he would watch while she didn’t, taking in everything she could not while she was focused upon her task of diplomacy.
The Guardian Spear did give him pause, however, his eyes tracing its shape - such things were rarely seen beyond the walls of the Imperial Palace in this day and age. This was an imitation made of adamantium and steel, not auramite; and, yet, its forging had been initiated in times long past - as a mark of respect for the bearer’s role as a guardian of the Imperium, against the alien and unknown. Much to his surprise, he realised he wanted it - in a rare pang of envy and emotion. Logically, he knew it was a wildly impractical weapon, only valuable in transhuman hands, but he wanted one, nonetheless. It was…he searched for a word… cool.
So focused was he on it that he missed most of the Lady-Inquisitors words to him, and when she repeated them, he turned his eyes towards her, and saw her wearing a wry smile that told him that she knew exactly what had distracted him - and that they would have words when they were alone, “I said, Inquisitor Corvinus,” she put the stress on the title, tauntingly, “that the Watch Master agrees with our assessment, and has kindly agreed to our requests…”
“Ah,” he murmured, struggling to keep his composure and not shuffle like a child caught with his hand in the sugar-biscuit tin “that is good. Very good.” He took in the transhuman, who had not removed their helmet their entire conversation, and who only glared back with unblinking eye-lenses, “I suspect, we shall definitely need it…with all the Xenos and such…” he added.
But not as much as he needed a new weapon…
Amenti
Keepers of the Underworld
Prosperitas Sector
596.M41
Their world was still, but for the quiet whispering of Ghosts. There had been a time when they were many, when they had hoped they would escape the Fall with a vessel full of life, but need and necessity had forced them to flee before they were ready. They had survived, but they had also dwindled, not as mighty as Biel-Tan, not as gifted as Ulthwe. Perhaps if they had been, they might have not allowed part of their world to have been stolen by workers, those whose souls were tainted by the Old Empire. That was what the Ghosts told them, what the Seers who had come before them told them - so few were they, so incomplete was their Craftworld, that many had either entered voluntary stasis, or walked the Path of the Outcast, in order to allow the Craftworld to continue to not wither while trying to support those it carried.
Khem-dae opened their eyes and brushed their hands along their robes, rising from amongst the crystalline trees: Amenti’s life was a life of long slumbers, tasked to one great task by the Farseers of old. This awakening had been rougher, made all the worse when the Ishari, as the workers now called themselves, had breached the webway gate while they were still in rest. Though the Wraiths had answered to the intrusion, the Ishari had taken one too many of their sleeping people before they had been driven off. The bonesingers were still healing the scars of the intrusion, and paid the Farseer no heed as they walked past them - Amenti had no room for hierarchies - all who remained walked the paths essential to the Great Task; there was no room for dalliances along the Path of the Poet or Mariner for them while growing up.
They entered the Warden’s quarter - when their ancestors had grounded the craftworld here millennia ago, they had fused it to the webway structure that guarded That Which Was Best Forgotten. They looked up, the Warden-constructs shifting to look at them as they entered - the constructs were not like the Wraiths, though they detected psychic presences within them - but whatever ancient spirits guided them were unknowable even to them - be they Aeldari of an older breed, or some other ancient guardian-race tasked to the eternal watch of the Ur-Entities prison.
They did not communicate by speech, but by telepathic flashes, and strange dancing body-languages. When they had first begun to walk the Path of the Seer, the first task had been to train their mind to survive contact with the thoughts of the Wardens: an unshielded, and unprepared mind, even an Aeldari one, could be overwhelmed by seconds of mental contact.
“My friends, have you been able to enact the repairs you wished for?”
The constructs danced, flickered.
JOY
It was done then. They flinched and rubbed their temple, nodding, “Then, it is time to end the Stilling.”
They did not notice the presence at their side, until she shifted a little and their perception was enough to see her armour assume its dark green shade: the Exarch glanced towards them, the claw on her hand slowly flexing, “I repeat the question, Farseer, it causes the Mon’keigh who have settled in the region distress, yes, but why put an end to it…?”
They sighed, Selqet, like all those lost to Khaine’s path, saw things in blunt terms, convenience, short term… It was alien to one on the Path of the Seer, but she had come to question them nonetheless - in another life, in a life before she was S’elqet, before she had given herself to the Exarch armour and become S’elqet, she had been their sibling,
“It is a magnificent thing, what we were tasked to watch over, but even the ancient constructs of those who came before us are not spared the mercies of time,” they said, patiently. “The Wardens repair what they can, but little by little it degrades…” They felt the tension in the Aspect Warrior shift, and the Wardens warbled a little. They found the violence in the Exarch threatening to them, normally passive and peaceful creatures (unless forced into violence). They didn’t like her sneaking in to the chamber after them for this reason,
“Then it is for nothing? Our entire home, dedicated to buying time for a Galaxy soiled by the Mon’keigh?”
Another sigh, another anxious tug on their robes - social skills had been neither of their graces before they had taken their respective paths, but hers had degraded faster with the influence of the other spirits in her armour, “Not for nothing, no - all things are done for a reason. Those who built this place intended it to contain the Ur-Thing until they might find a way to end it entirely… as they did to the one they used to capture it. Regrettably, they fell before such could come to pass - but the Farseers of old saw wisdom in our vigil. The skein of fate is as ever uncertain, but portents grow worse: perhaps our vigil is ending, perhaps whatever time had to be bought is running out… but if that is so there would have been a reason we were here all along…”
There had to be, but the Ghosts offered little illumination… And, yet, the runes again and again spoke that Amenti -had- to be here, that it -had- to continue its vigil. All portents where it was not here spoke of doom spreading out from this region. They clenched their hands into fists, and glanced at S’elquet, “Return to your Shrine, meet with the Starstriders and the other Outcasts, see what they have seen. Once the Wardens are done, we can only expect things to become more challenging from here on out; Others are meddling with the Skein for their own ends…”
“The Watcher?”
“The Wardens tell me the Nectrontyr has been…meddling. Likely they are the cause of us sleeping through much of this crisis, but no, not alone. She has been working her dramaturgy - I can see it dancing like a web across the skein.” They noticed S’elequet bristle: the devoted of Khaine had little time for the Rillietann or their Laughing God. “And she is not alone - others have been playing their games. I will have it stopped.”
The Exarch nodded, before Khem-dae bade a moment before she left, “And check on the status of our…other prisoners. I am worried, weakness in the main structure could have caused issues in others…”
Gazetteer IX - Within the Silence
The Ordos Prosperitas
The scattered forces of the Ordos Prospertias organised locally, founding hidden fortresses on the worlds they are stranded on in order to carry out their work, and relied on esoteric devices uncovered from the Inquisitorial vaults to maintain some semblance of contact with other worlds - though spotty at best. Many missions - even those deemed critical before the Silence - went unattended in the interim, for the necessary agents were unable to carry them out, or were simply missing in action. For the Holy Ordos, the task was simple: continue the most essential duty of the Inquisition - protecting the minds and souls of the Imperium, while trying, best as was possible, to investigate the source of the Silence.
The Inquisition was not stupid: for a long time they, had observed the Xenos-constructs known colloquially as the ‘Prosperitas Pillars’, especially after the events on Korimesta some years earlier - where one such pillar had been activated, nullifying the psychic powers of several Inquisitorial psykers nearby in the process. Further knowledge gathered by servants of several Inquisitors meant that, by now, the Inquisition was well aware that much of the Sector existed originally as a prison-facility for the Ur-Entity known as the The Darkness - it was easy to presume that the Silence had been caused by some function, or malfunction, of that Prison. The question for the Ordos Prosperitas was not ‘how’ the Silence had occurred, but why, and why now.
Ultimately, the trouble it brought to the common citizens of the Prosperitas Sector were beneath the attentions of the Holy Ordos - the last time a malfunction had been induced in the Prison, an entire subsector had been dragged screaming into the Eye of Terror. The entire sector could be left to burn, if necessary, so long as the security of the Cadian Gate and the Prison of the Darkness could be ensured. But the nature of the Prison was alien to the Ordos - even the Inquisitors willing to deal with the Xenos who claimed any knowledge of it found them frustratingly opaque about the prison’s functions: this lead them to privately confide to their colleagues that, most likely, the Xenos’ intractability was simply a way to conceal embarrassment that they truly did not fully understand the workings of the ancient construct, and that they were barely better informed than the Inquisition themselves.
For the loyal Inquisitors who formed the Ordos Prosperitas, the Silence became a time of compromise. Many different philosophies, both radical and puritan, are spread amongst the handful of Inquisitors still active in the Prosperitas Sector - and this meant necessity compromises had to be worked out to prevent infighting. Still, the space provided by stellar geography also meant that most Inquisitors were able to pursue their goals separately from each other on the worlds where they and their agents had been stranded on - pursuing their own investigations into the Silence, while keeping a lid on local problems. Although the stilling of the Warp put an end to more esoteric threats, cultists and rebels still remained a persistent problem - and, on the warfronts, the Sovereign Order, Weeping Eye and Creeping Death all remained active: even if the more direct aid of their foul masters was denied them, they still had weapons and fanaticism to fight with.
Though most outstanding objectives placed upon the Agents of the Holy Ordos remain unresolved due to the Silence - that it is not to say that the Inquisition has been idle. In particular, Inquisitors Duplesis and Corvinus undertook the arduous journey beyond the veil of the Silence in search of new allies…
Imperium Prosperitas
“Pity those who live outside of the God-Emperor's light, for their worlds exist beyond moral influence.” - Ecclesiarch Anastasia XI - m.38
The term ‘Imperium Prosperitas’ has existed in the writings of some scholars living within the Prosperitas Sector since the early years of the Imperium’s reconquest of the sector in m.41. - it refers to the division of the Prosperitas Sector’s worlds between those worlds that had been returned to the God-Emperor by the Crusade, and those that had not. More recently, it had become something spread amongst those citizens of the Prosperitas Sector who believed themselves more loyal and connected to Terra than those members of their community who continued to hold onto the Annwfyn and Ruwwad social identities - and refused to being fully assimilated into the identity forced upon them by their Imperial conquerors - although this rebellion was definitely not born from any sort of loyalty to the Regency masters who came before them.
Fanned by years of insurgency from the allied rebels that formed the Rising Flame, “Imperium Prosperitas!” became a common cry when mobs turned upon those they wished to blame for misfortunes of a less esoteric nature.
Though the phrase was fanned in recent history by the Temple of the Saviour Emperor in their quest under the Heresiarch Grulge to form an independent heretical religious state in the sector - it might have died out completely during the Silence, had not been adopted by Hermione Durovera, who saw power in the phrase. “Imperium Prosperitas!” was echoed at the end of every propaganda piece broadcast into space from Duroverum during the Silence, though most of the Sector Governors retinue would defend it as a way to express faith in the Prosperitas Sector’s survival. In truth, it was treated as a demonstration of the loyalty of the individual citizen, and a clear reminder to any who held onto the Annwfyn and Ruwwad identity - rise up, and suffer the same fate Korimesta had.
The Prosperitas Sector was, for the most part, not badly scarred by the Silence - though the loss of transport and logistics invited disasters on a planetary scale - such as famine and plagues - such deaths were on a scale that the Administratum could comfortably stomach: because, despite everything, no worlds fell, even if many suffered in the the fighting - the forests of Helaerus burned, and the beaches of Lerwick were littered with the dead of countless sea battles.
The Noble Houses of the Prosperitas Sector weathered the storm, as they always had; though their coin purses were lighter. All of them, even those who claimed heritage from storied noble clans, were long used to surviving the Imperial Frontier - with each planetary branch of their Houses adequately supplied and entrenched within their planetary estates to ensure their survival. So, while Hermione Durovera fanned the flames of tensions between the Citizens of the Sector, little came to pass for all but one House of the Prosperitas Sector…
Watchers Beyond
While Imperial and Archenemy forces are limited to fighting over the worlds they can reach with sublight engines, there are those whose movements are not as restrained. The Ordo Xenos cells reported to their Inquisitors of an increasing number of engagements with the sightless Aeldari sub-race known as the ‘Ishari’ - known to be mostly in service to the Ur-Entity known as “The Darkness”. These raids do not take any grand form; instead, they seem to be predating on the dispossessed and forgotten of the lower hives and slums of the Imperium - but the numbers of the taken is still considerable. No harm is done to those abducted: witnesses have seen the Ishari stun and paralyse their victims, before dragging them into hidden gates beneath the surfaces of worlds. Kill teams are scrambled on many worlds to hunt these blighted xenos, but, for the most part, the Inquisition is uncertain how many people the Ishari have taken during the Silence - and not all worlds are blessed with enough of an Inquisition presence to truly log the extent of these abductions.
Curiously, the Lions of Nemea continue to demonstrate their unnerving ability to strike and vanish - their raids against the Archenemy remain uninterrupted, the same vessels being spotted in many systems despite the Silence. Many amongst the Inquisition suspect that the ‘Chapter’ has some degree of understanding of how to navigate the local Webway, which seemed unhindered by the Silence - this would make sense, being a construct of ancient xenos itself.
But the black armoured Astartes are not the only travellers in the Webway, and reports of ghost warriors are commonplace on multiple fronts. The Ordo Xenos in the Ordos Prosperitas believe them to be members of the Eldar race not seen in the Prosperitas Sector before.