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.