Shades on Twilight Preamble

+++Space Hulk Twilight Scan+++


Contents of the Magnus Ecthelion Armory
Selenite Void Suits - 3 AP to Arms, Body, Legs. 4 to Head.
-10 penalty to Agility tests while worn. Internal Vox, seal-
patching kit, compact grapnel/clasp, 10m line, photo-visor.

Void Rounds-Gain reliable when fired under void conditions.

Blazer Shells-Reduce weapon's range to 15m, change damage type
to E, give the shells the flame and primitive qualities.


2 Chainswords
Unlimited Shock Mauls
1 Flamer


Thought for the day: Piety has one face, heresy, many.

Rejoice for You Are True Part 1, 2, and 3

++++Thought for the Day: True happiness stems only from duty ++++

The acolytes, having completed their mission at Stern Hope, were retrieved and transported home to Scintilla. During the six month trip, they were probed, questioned, and examined closely for any hint or corruption from their encounter with the Dancer at the Threshold. Upon arrival, they were escorted to meet with their Inquisitor, Globus Vaarak, and briefed upon their next mission.

The xenos circuitry found within the Magus Emperor's Tarot card didn't match anything found within the Inquisitor's databanks, and he was near to giving up until he was contacted by an old friend, retired Imperial Navy Admiral Laurent Strophes, contacted him about a favor. Apparently the Strophes had lost a niece, Saia Strophes, after she had joined an upstart cult known as the "Joyous Choir" which had sprang up recently on the Callixis sector homeworld. This Choir was apparently dedicated to the idea that the Emperor wanted his followers to be happy and, in doing so, apparently had developed a broad following within the rich and upper-crust of the Hive Scintilla society. Strophes would normally have not bothered Vaarak with this, but after sending a bounty hunter to investigate what had happened, had discovered that a device known as "harmony meters" which the cult used to read how "true" a follower was to the Emperor, contained strange circuitry which Vaarak later discovered was very similar to the circuitry in the tarot card. Upon more closely examining the meter, Jemhadar discovered that the meter was capable of detecting psychic activity and, since this was correlated with a slight dip in the number of psykers tithed to the Imperium, this warranted further investigation.

The group were met by Laurents daughter, Julia, and entered into their cover as distant relatives of the Strophes from Fenksworld. A meeting with the bounty hunter, Orday, revealed that he possessed a datapad containing some information he believed to be valuable and wished to be paid for. Agreeing to provide the cash at a meeting time to be determined later, the group was trained in etiquette by Julia Strophes and prepared for a social soiree meant to help them infiltrate the Joyous Choir.

The party, held by a Lady Borella, was meant to be a coup for her by inviting a member of the sector commander's personal staff to attend. The group mingled, with Drake winning over the crowd with a stirring performance, Zane making friends with a middle hiver who had been invited, and Cane attempting to ingratiate himself with the group to win an invitation to the Choir's Alabaster Court. Cane managed to win the attention of Borella and fend off Siprit Daneen, a society hanger-on who was angling for the same invitation, partially through an assist by Jemhadar to damage his outfit. During the course of the proceedings, a drug known as Farcosia was distributed amongst the party goers which Cane sensed possessed a living essence, which cast a particularly grim pall on the drug's use.

The next day, the group was called to meet with Orday at a middle-hive marketplace known as the Hustle. Orday, however, was assassinated before the he could make the delivery, allowing a heavily augmetically altered gunman to make off with the case containing the information. Discouraged, the party attended the event at the Alabaster Court. There, they watched a performance wherein an unknowing lowerhiver was cast in the main role and ultimately was slain for the crowd's amusement. The reaction of Drake led him to engage in a duel with the orchestrator of the performance, again a moment of high entertainment for the party. During this, Jemhadar and Zane investigated the building, ultimately finding a psychically null room with some of the xenos circuitry engraved into the floor. Meanwhile, Cane and the victorious Drake were introduced to Caros Shoal, leader of the Joyous Choir, and were having a spirited discussion about inviting Cane to the cult and helping to spread the Choir to Fenksworld, before they were interrupted by the arrival of the cybernetic gunman from earlier in the day, which many of the party goers knew as another cult official named Theodosia. The two drew off to the side for an animated discussion, culminating in Shoal loudly proclaiming that he had made the people on Ambulon a fortune a dozen times over, leading to Theodosia angrily dragging Shoal out of the room.

Thankful that they were not recognized, the group left the party and returned home. As they planned their next move, perhaps relocating the investigation to the walking city of Ambulon, the power was cut in the Strophes home.

Illumination Part 4

The group retired to various pursuits, mostly sitting and waiting anxiously outside the small medicae facility inside Stern Hope and waiting to see whether Drake would survive. They found him carrying a rebreather, pumping pure oxygen into his lungs to try and offset the severe damage done from the warp-spawned flames. Hooked to the respirator and pumped to the gills with pain meds, he rejoined the crew as an alarm came over the vox from Aristarchus. They found the temple's priest, battered and bloody and apparently hurled through the stained glass windows on the second floor of Stern Hope. Before passing out he muttered that black crow in the form of a woman assaulted him, which Aristarchus took immediately to refer to Esha Raine. He ordered the group to go and arrest her. Reluctantly, they complied, traveling to the distant camp and engaging in a tense stand-off with the natives. The moment that the group started to turn towards the Death Speaker's viewpoint, a dust storm blew out of the wastes. They were assaulted by demonic laughter, flashes of baelfire in the clouds, and a flock of the local shale crows, who were quickly driven away by the acolytes utilizing the shotguns confiscated earlier.

Realizing that something malign was going on, the group listened to Esha as she told them of the bloody rituals that were conducted at the hill on which Stern Hope was constructed long before the arrival of the Imperial Crusade that had conquered the Callixis sector. Supposedly, the cult leader, a demonically possessed entity who led his followers in bloody trials and sacrifices, was killed by Drusus during the course of the conquering of the world. Upon reading a text known as a "Widow's Book" the party found the name of the creature, The Dancer on the Threshold or the Crow Father. Realizing that the attack at Stern Hope darkly paralleled the cults old rituals and that, accordingly, the next step was the ritual sacrifices at dusk, the group rushed back to the complex to save the followers.

They found the surrounding encampment abandoned with signs of violence everywhere. They arrived at the church, dividing into two groups to flank whoever was leading the ritual going on inside, and found the remains of Abbot Skae, apparently animated by the Crow Father, mocking them as Aristarchus was apparently about to be possessed by the demon and released back into the world. Most of the party was immediately overwhelmed with fear or demonic compulsion, but a chanting of the litanies of banishment by Drake helped to snap himself and Jemadar out to go and battle with the unnaturally fast demonic entity. Meanwhile, Zane tried desperately to convince Aristarchus that he had lost his way. The psyker was convinced that the Crow Father was actually the spirit of Saint Drusus trying to return. However, Zane's words cut immediately through the haze, causing Aristarchus to see that he had fallen and, accordingly, to drive his psykana mercy blade into his flesh. The resultant release of psychic energy shattered the ritual and drove the fragment of the demon back into the warp, utterly annihilating Aristarchus in the process and leaving only one of his possessions, the Emperor's Tarot card of the Magus, which had obviously been modified in some way with a form of Xenos technology.

The group helped the survivors of Stern Hope and finished up their investigations, preparing the for the inevitable long return to Scintilla and the corruption screens that would be coming along with them.

The Joyous Choir

Illumination: Part 2 & 3

The acolytes arrived at the cathedral, Stern Hope, shortly after local nightfall. They were escorted to a room that had been set aside at the common house, the Crying Clota, and waited for morning to meet with Abbot Skae. They were introduced to the cathedral's architect, who informed them of the numerous mysterious phenomena plaguing the settlement since the cathedral began to near completion. Investigation amongst the locals seemed to stir up rumors of an old cult that operated on this spot before the arrival of the crusade and the conquering of this world for the Emperor. Brother Lamark, one of the local priests and a former Imperial Guardsman, escorted them to one site where a group of bandits had been found stripped to their bones. During the investigation of the site, they were attacked by what was later identified as a local predator, a Hexalid. To their surprise, once the creature was killed, it appeared to have been dead for some time and, apparently, had had its eyes removed. This lead to suspicion that a cult or powerful witch was acting within the area.

The next day, they awoke for the beginning of the cathedral's commemoration ceremony. During the Abbot's sermon, however, the settlement was attacked by the troops of one of the planetary Warlords, Seth the Voice. The Voicers fought fanatically and the acolytes managed to head off the attack from destroying the local Generatoria before turning their attention to finding and stopping the leader of the attack. After a brief firefight, the Voicers were turned back, but Drake had fallen to multiple gun shots and a warp mishap. Medicae personnel rushed to save the priest while the acolytes went back to the cathedral and bore witness to a tense scene, a showdown between Abbot Skae and a native religious leader, a death singer known as Esha Raine. Eventually the Acolytes' superior, Aristarchus, settled the issue by executing a Voicer who had been captured and declaring that anyone who stood in the way of the commemoration was a heretic. Esha and her people left in a huff, vowing never to return to Stern Hope.

Stern Hope Map

Illumination, Part 1

The acolytes were called to duty by their Inquisitor and sent to the world Iocanthos to escort a higher ranking Interrogator, Aristarchus the Seer, to the dedication of the planet's first cathedral to the Emperor. Reports had been filed of strange phenomena occurring in and around the construction site itself with enough regulatory to at least draw the Inquisition's attention. They were greeted in the planet's primary spaceport, Port Suffering, by an attack from a gang of the native people, the Ashleen, when the group appeared to have assaulted a ranting old man in the streets. The battle was dealt with quickly, and the party continued on to their meeting with Aristarchus. The seer briefed them on the going's on around the cathedral and informed them that he was going to see that the dedication went off without a hitch, as he was a direct descendant of Saint Drussus, the Imperial General who initially conquered Iocanthos and much of the local sector of space for the Imperium. The crew mingled amongst the locals before heading out towards the cathedral the next day, where they seemed to have been dogged by a number of the bizarre manifestations that had been reported around the cathedral, including what Grunthor claimed to be a walking corpse and a rock with St. Drussus' symbol burned into the back.