The Spires of PIety

Six cycles after making planetfall, Inquisitor Torrescana had finally tracked down Ashrael Ben Sahar. Once his colleague and his brother in the Inquisition, Torrescana knew that there was nothing left of the man he had known since his disfigurement and descent into Chaos. Still, he did not relish what he now had to do. Torrescana's warband split into two groups as they approached the lair where Ben Sahar was holed up with Agrippa, the Dark Magos who had rebuilt his shattered body,  and their acolytes.  Auria, his interrogator, led one group from the North West. She had served in the Adepta Sororitas before being recruited to the Ordo Hereticus, and two of her surviving Battle-Sisters still accompanied her, along with an Arco-Flagellant gifted to her by Tech-Adept Katya Baumann of the local Explorator mission. Accompanying the Inquisitor were his loyal Crusader, Brother Argantael, who had guarded him for almost 9 standard decades, along with his acolyte Seargeant Aram Bartolis,...

Lord Feigling Wyrmtooth was petrified. He had survived two assassination attempts in recent days. The first had left his hand-picked bodyguards massacred but him untouched. The second had left him drugged, unconscious, yet still alive and unharmed.  He knew the signs and he knew the legends, and he was a superstitious man. The old stories told of an ancient Harmonculus abandoned deep in the bowels of the hive, four thousand years old, who woke from his stasis-slumber once a century to sate himself with the most exquisite torture. His rarefied tastes were limited to choosing victims only from the most privileged of nobles. Lord Wyrmtooth, it appeared, was next. He was also a close confidant of former Governor Alaryxx (last seen en route to an Inquisitorial blackship) and he knew it was only a matter of time before Inquisitor Ashrael Ben Sahar came for him. Wyrmtooth was a smart man and knew it was time to get off-world. He had arranged a discreet transport ship with a shuttle pi...

The Inquisition team of Ashrael Ben Sahar and the Rogue Trader crew of Calissa Perronix arrived at the abandoned Rogue Trader vessel with some trepidation. They brought significant firepower, knowing that the vessel had fallen to the dark gods, but really they had no idea what lay before them. Despite a careful infiltration, the Inquisition team were spotted quickly by a corrupted cultist, drawn to the dark happenings on the vessel. It soon became apparent that the ship was swarming with them. Lisbet Perronix, the Rogue Trader's older daughter, tried to silence him with her sniper rifle before he could raise the alarm, but to no avail. The cultists quickly advanced on both the Inquisitor and Rogue Trader crews, met by a withering hail of fire, yet undeterred. The Inquisitor engaged in hand to hand combat with cult leader Lady Cassilda. The first Daemon was summoned at the altar and quickly met by the Grey Knights brother in combat Soon the ubiquitous Drukhari pirates w...

Inquisitor Ashrael Ben Sahar was not pleased. His agents had brought him the Governor of Piety, alive and fit to be questioned, as well as useful information about the presence of heretics on the planet. But too many of his servants had been left behind by the idiots of the Imperial Guard, and the presence of both Xenos and the Ruinous Powers had neither been fully investigated or explained.  He rounded up the rest of his retinue, press ganged the other evacuation survivors into service,  and set off for the surface. Elsewhere in the same sector, Rogue Trader Calissa Perronix was equally angry. When her ship dropped out of the warp on the edge of the system, the Gellar Field briefly failed and the sanctioned psyker on her crew, old and wise though he was, finally lost his mind to the terrors of the immaterium. The horror he unleashed tore through the Explorator vessel and most of the crew in minutes. Calissa had seen a thousand horrors on the edge of the known galaxy, but w...

In the grim darkness of the far future, on the hive world of Piety in the Calixis sector, the blessed order of the Emperor is collapsing. Numerous food and water shipments have been lost in local warp storms, which has quickly created famine conditions in the lower levels of the hive cities. After weeks of fighting, Imperial reinforcements begin to arrive. But in the capital city of Baidun, the forces of Chaos and disorder are already reaching the highest levels of the spire. Governor Alaryxx waits with her personal bodyguard in the hope of a speedy evacuation to orbit, fortifying the last bastions of the city with any troops she can muster. The mutants and heretics seem to have their own agenda however, delaying the final assault for over a week now. After seeing peculiar apparitions and fiery lights in the sky, rumours abound of dark rituals and sacrifices to the chaos gods, or the covert involvement of xenos factions and their human agents. In the early turns, a group of Dark ...