- Mordechai Voght, High Marshall It would be a long flight from the Gorgonid Mines on Sepheris Secundus to the center of the Calixis Sector on Scintilla. The transport ship that traveled through real space was not a luxury liner, nor build for speed or comfort. These two factors would lead to weeks of uncomfortable travel for the remaining Acolytes to be that lifted off out of the Imperial Guard camp at the mouth of the mines.
The long flight would provide them with time to heal their wounds, and incure new ones as an engine mailfuction would fill parts of the ship with a toxic gas. Yet dispite the set back of the trip the would be Acolytes eventually arrived on the captial plant of the Calixis Sector. Their landing would not be a warm welcome, or a parade of marching bands or ticker tape. In fact their arrival at the run down spaceport of Heradium Quarters in Hive Sibellus was more inocuous than their arrival on the mining planet of Sepheris Secundus.
Only a single woman stood waiting for them on the landing platform with angry words on their late arrival. The woman never gave her name, but her bone fides checked out, and her authority could not be in question. The Acolytes were taken to a small run down facility, the front declaring the place as a nutraslurry redistribution center, but once inside anyone could see it was only a front.
A chance to debref was given, and after several grueling hours of questions and requestioning the woman appeared satisfied, atleast in part. Cimbria and Ishmael would eventually accompany her, and as such have never been seen again. While the other three living Acolytes were given papers and direction to small hovels in an unnamed hab-block in the Hive Sibellus, lodged under false names, and given strick orders to keep your identities and purpose to themselves.
Every few days the three were summoned via courier and would report to a hidden facility where they were debrefed again, questioned and introgated about their time in the mines. An abundant number of questions about the dead mutant Cleric Iorgo are asked, and their ties to Cimbria and Ishmael are scrutinized to the finest detail. Eventually the three find an end to the questions, and begin some lechures in dark lechure halls, by aged professors. Among the classes are other Acolytes, all who keep to themselves. The classes are sporatic, and thankfully so, for at the end of many of them they leave feeling ill, sickened by the depravity of the heretics of the Imperium. Ciphers and codes are force fed to the Acolytes until they can be recited form memory. No offical grand training is ever held, no induction into some glorious academy or temple. Only the clandestine meetings in dark shadowy buildings with other men and woman much like themselves are the only indication that the three are part of anything larger. The other Acolytes become fewer and fewer, one is even killed in cold blood in the middle of a lechure when he fails to answer a question posed to him with satisfactory zeal. The sniper shot from the dark recesses of the chamber echoes out long after the man's life is left splattered all over the chair behind him. Eventually only four of them are left to attend the classes. Three are known to each other, Jericus the Adept, Mir the former Guardsman, and Xanthia the Sell-Steel. The fourth however is alone, Frastus is his name, and something about him is off putting right out of the gate.
Then one day when the four arrive in one of the black chambers for another lechure there simply is no one else there. The Inquisition has moved on, and Jericus, Mir, Xanthia and Frastus find only a single data slate on the rust and blood covered table to explain things with a few other items awaiting them.
In the green monochrome light of the display they read...
+++ By Dictates of the Ordo Hereticus +++
Indepth integration to Hive populous is to begin.
Await further contact. Make no attempt to spoil your integration
on punishment of death. Proof through obediance.
Z.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Laying on the table are four badges, and a pack of bone fides, each one keyed to one of the four Acolytes. They declare the bearer of the seals as true and loyal Acolytes of the Inquisition. There is a feeling of eyes on the chamber, and someplace deep in the shadows a click is heard as a safety on a sniper lasrifle is flipped. With the paperwork a small stipend is attached, enough to get each through a few more weeks, and perhaps enough to pick up some addtional gear.