> Wherever you are…

> On every vidscreen and newsheet…

> Early 599.M41

House Durovera Scion Executes Renegade Dunkelds

Is the headline they give as the vidreel plays out: Lance Durovera, Scion of House Durovera, Hero of the Aeronautica Imperialis, armed with an heirloom hand-cannon that once belonged to Jacinta Durovera herself, executing Governor Alice Dunkeld and Archdeacon Ingrid Dunkeld - fallen bodies of Rising Flame troops all around them, our strapping hero flanked by imposing Stormtroopers of the Militarum Tempestus. The vidreel repeats again and again, and the daemon of mass media crackles in the static.

The reel has seemed to possess a life of its own already: right from House Durovera’s Vid Mill to your local vidscreen or local communal display - it’s all they’ll play for a week, and it spreads with efficiency that only a motivated Imperial Noble House can muster. Some versions, there is regret in Lance Durovera’s voice as he mutters that all-important soundbite of his Aunt.

“Imperium Prosperitas.”

In other versions of the reel he shouts it, nobody cares how relentlessly manipulated the footage is, as there is a collective belief that it is -real- because the High House, the Ruling House, of the Prosperitas Sector, says it so - so much so, that even in the Underhives and the far-flung colonies it is said:

House Durovera Scion Executes Renegade Dunkelds

It sends two messages. The first is that House Durovera has a steady hand on the tiller of the Great Ship Prosperitas, as it sails through space, and that it will punish those that step out of line. A pity that nobody remembers that the Dunkelds were officially tragically kidnapped. But it's been nearly a year since that happened - ignorance keeps most citizens’ knowledge focused solely on the moment, and reality is what the Imperium tells you it is right now.

Editorial Truth is a tool for the Imperium.

A useful tool for its enemies too.

The second message is far more insidious and disruptive: that Prosperitas is for the Imperium, and the execution of one of the few surviving Annwfyn leaders within the Imperial Nobility sends a shockwave because the message heard is not ‘the Dunkelds were Renegades’ it is ‘we cannot trust the Annwfyn, they’re all potential traitors’.

And violence follows shortly after…

When the vid reel first plays on Polarnus Station, Inquisitor Corvinus and Inquisitor Valtrois are taking tea in the Nebularium, a private expanse of plantlife for the leisure of Crusade High Command. It is located in a blister of transparisteel on the surface of the Asteroid where the weird light of the Polarnus Nebula can play upon those relaxing within it.

Corvinus, known for either reacting coldly, or surprisingly dramatically, picks the opportunity to go for the latter: he spits out his tea (which honestly he never understood the appeal of anyway, so less of a tragedy), while Valtrois, on the other, nonchalantly wipes the sprayed tee off his sleeve, and finishing off his own cup calmly.

Upon being questioned by his fellow Inquisitor as to his lack of immediate action, responds:

“Well, I can’t stop this any more than you can, Inquisitor; what I can do is finish my most excellent tea, then look after the safety of my Agents…”

Which he does.

Gazetteer XI - Hero of the Aeronautica Imperialis

The Vidreel Everyone is Talking About

It is impossible for you to avoid the graphic replay of Lance Durovera’s execution of the Dunkelds unless you are spending your time between missions living under a rock. The Imperium trades in raw violence, which is why public executions are commonplace: it feeds off the fear produced by that violence, and weaponises it to keep the masses suppressed.

You may question why the Inquisition, with its supposedly infinite power, does not simply suppress the video - but herein the limits of Inquisitorial power are often exposed by machinations of the Imperial Nobility. Whoever captured the footage ensured that House Durovera got access to the original recordings, and House Durovera is more than happy to spread them far and wide before the Inquisition is so much as made aware of it. This means that not even the Ordo Redactus has any real power to undo the damage. By now, censoring the broadcasts will only seem like a bigger lie, and therein lies the other issue:

This is not a lie, but an actual fact: Inquisitor Valtrois is first to move, recovering Lance and confirming that the bodies are not simulacra: the Dunkelds are truly dead, and Lance, under questioning, admits to their killing. Valtrois is quick to tell all concerned parties that Lance is not a traitor - but was simply caught in a trap of expert devising, having his mind violated by a psyker to carry out what amounted to a stage play. He is also quick to challenge any who wish to lay blame on him or any orders he might have given, and few are stupid enough to challenge an Inquisitor.

Lance is soon cleared, considered fit for active duty. then returned to his Inquisitorial Cell.

The Silver Tongue of Hermione Durovera

Much has been said of the history of House Durovera and its collapse in status -- not to long ago, the Sector had been saddled with an ill prepared and unfit second born of the House as Governor when as his Sister fled with the family wealth to go forth and conquer. It turns out that (besides being killed and replaced by a Daemon) the Sector might well be in a far worse state had it been Hermione who had ascended to the Throne Prosperitas as intended.

Her official biographies (of which many thousand copies have been gifted to anyone too slow to refuse them) portray Hermione Durovera’s theft of her House's resources and abandonment of her duties to the Throne as some grand act of derring-do and adventure. Even if, ultimately, they are the acts of a selfish noble with loyalty to no-one but herself, whose colonial brutalities are quietly ignored - for they are for the most part atrocities that would make even the Crusade High Command blanche; being carried out against unaligned human worlds, like Finisterra, by someone who was little more than a pirate with a gilded warrant of trade.

The Inquisition has only itself to blame for her ascension -- it was by their directive that teams were sent to retrieve Hermione from wildspace and bring her back to challenge the throne usurped by the shapeshifting daemon that had replaced her brother. It was through their direct (even if secret) sponsorship of the Inquisition that Hermione Durovera was able to so smoothly take power after the removal of said daemon.

It is an act that most Inquisitors have come to regret.

Hermione Durovera is no daemon, no witch, no secret cultist or xeno-shifter - her evil, which stands out even amongst the sheer evil of the Imperium around her - is born of very human and inexcusable behaviour. In a system of extremes, where nobles will exterminate a cadet house without hesitation, or murder their own relatives, Hermione is the most extreme of them all, in her utter willingness to pay any debt in the blood of others to secure her own position.

“IMPERIUM PROSPERITAS!”

Has been the bellowed cry of the red-faced Imperial colonist who listens to the rally call of a Sector Governor who, they truly believe, has made it her mission to put them first. And this is what makes her creed of hate so effective in cowing Warmaster Khan to the point she will not challenge the domestic politics of the Prosperitas Sector - because should the Warmaster Khan is seen to try to impede Governor Durovera, then the Ruwwadi will very likely begin to likewise have their loyalties questioned - as the Annwfyn do.

It is a gun against the head of the Warmaster, and Hermione Durovera revels in the impunity it gives her to shore up her influence with the myriad of minor nobles born of colonial Imperial lines -- by abandoning policies fostered by her ancestors to integrate the native peoples of the sector into their thrall.

The deaths of Alice and Ingrid Dunkeld, and the effective extinction of the Dunkeld line - with their daughter believed dead in Imperial service - have an inflammatory coverage. Even after just the first broadcast, signs of the tension have began almost immediately: Imperial soldiers are harsher, and the Annwfyn more afraid.

Because what the meaning behind the footage is very clearly

Loyal Imperial House Durovera Scion Executes Annwfyn Governor and her Wife For Sedition, Imperium Prosperitas!

The cracks spiderweb from Lerwick, pouring fuel on the conflict already encouraged by Hermione, who has little interest finding out who would go out of their way to give her this precious ammunition of Lance executing the Dunkelds; the Propaganda Machine is practically controlled by House Durovera, and it won’t slow down for something as paltry as the truth.

Annwfyn will die, Annwfyn will stand up and fight back, Annwfyn will die.

The Inquisition is concerned that this conflict - carefully orchestrated by some unknown party from what was a competently staged ambush - was very clearly meant to, no doubt, grant some advantage. What might this advantage be remains to be seen yet, but the fact is that it destroyed the effective ability to contain the population. In turn, this increased suffering will both swell the ranks of the Rising Flame, and feed the hungering maw of the Darkness, as it presses against the bars of its cage.

You would not be the first to ask “What should we do about Hermione Durovera?”

Should you choose to ask it openly, you will find yourself echoed in the halls of power: in the Inquisitorial Conclave, in an unusually public confrontation, the question is asked by Inquisitors Corvinus and Valtrois both - and find some agreement, only for Lord Inquisitor Aetos to silence the point. Herein lies the trouble of a Puritan at the head of the Conclave - for Lord Aetos believes truly in the divine rights of the Nobility, and that Hermione is acting well within her Emperor-granted divine right as the Governor of the Sector. He refuses the Conclave any right to intervene, unless it should be proven that Hermione Durovera is a heretic.

However, he is not entirely blind to the mounting atrocities and tensions in an already ravaged sector, and resolves to make it his problem to advise the Governor.

Those of you who do not serve under him get a general feeling - from the reaction of your own Inquisitors - that the belief in his success is… minimal.

The Realities of What you Serve (OC Note)

No player should be under the illusion that the Imperium is a necessary evil - even if it is a common enough belief in the fanbase of the official setting - but more than absolutely not true in ours. That “but is it better than Chaos?” is not the correct question to ask, for Chaos would not have its present source of fuel if the Imperium did not exist. Groups like the Rising Flame prove that you can have rebellion without falling to the dark gods, and that humans can live with freedom, without destroying the galaxy in the process.

Our game is now moving into a period of strife, where it will be more commonplace to see the native peoples of this Sector displaced and oppressed by Colonists who believe it their right to do so.

It is a crapsack universe, indeed. However, in the same way some people are trying to make it worse, your character can try to make it better: this strife is being stoked by -one- individual; likewise, single actors and acts can make a meaningful, positive difference in an otherwise dark universe.

And indeed they already have, this situation would be far worse if not for efforts to ensure the welfare of the population by your characters - and the Arbites, the bootheel of the Imperium, are more often stepping in between Colonists and Annwfyn then they are stepping on them - thanks to your Influence.