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+ The RPG Nook Presents + + A Rogue Trader RPG Campaign + + THE SILENT ARCHITECT + 'What profiteth a man who, with the world in his coffers, loseth also his soul?' - The Ancient Sages Damocles Hive Primus Noon (Zulu local) Six months after the Damocles Incident ++++++++++++ The scene is set. A private docking bay juts out over the plunging spear of Damocles Hive outer shell. The kilometres plunge away, as the figures on the landing pad, a giant oval disc, encircled with gold and landing lights in red and green receive the trio from within. They stand back, cloaks and expensive silken clothes billowing in the hot, dry wind soaring up the tower. The fug of poisoned clouds tears in the gust, revealing the miles and miles of barren desert below - pocked and dotted with the still-glowing nuclear fire of two destroyed hives and an orbital strike. Blistering radiation makes the air shimmer blue, ionising it into three strange pillars of azure light, which the locals without a bent toward literacy call 'The Pillars of Heaven'. They are not wrong in some respects, the blue cuts a pleasant, remarkably pretty relief against the unrelenting desert. A sliver of silver light descends, the sun glinting off a hull, the ship falling towards the shimmering spire thrust into the tortured skies. It closes with this comparatively tiny sliver of metal perilously clinging to the building. Jet turbines flare, powering the craft closer. It is light, agile. Unlike the bulky Guncutters used as personal craft, this is somewhat avian, and beaked with the head of a golden Imperial Aquila. This sleek bird's advanced-tech wings slope and sweep as it closes, making final approach, and the pilot, whoever they are brings it down with a flourish and flare, landing square and perfect in the centre of the pad. The ship is scored black from re-entry, obviously dropping from off-world, the rich blue, red and purple livery marred unequally. Ten minutes later, the deep chest forming the cargo bay opens, sloping down with a ramp, which gives the impression the metal bird is disgorging something stuck within it's throat. Four figures emerge, at the head a tall man, dressed in a frock coat and striped breeches, a fur pelisse flaps in the breeze as the tails of his coat snaps. Gripping his weapons, his face has the air of a man who brooks little insult, indeed his single human eye sweeps the landing platform and spots the three figures awaiting him, and his baleful, augmetic eye lances an angry pink light into this strange palette of fate. He stops at the foot of the ramp, attended by a powerful man in a masterwork of carapace and voidsuit, another who clings to a tall stave topped with the sign of the Imperial Adeptus Telepatheca, and a woman who seems like she would be at home behind a gunsight. The tall man, wearing the clasp of explorer, is then obviously a Captain of Marque. His first words upon this world, his first words of greeting fall over the landing pad as if there were not one-hundred feet between him, and his target. 'Fabian Von Cassal! You are the son of gutter-whore mother, and a beast-herding father. You the offspring of Grox and Felid-spawn, with the charms of neither! I spit on your honour, your family and piss on your grave!' Silence reigns as the first man, in his Imperial Navy uniform, of a Flag-Lieutenant no less, visibly turns purple. Without a word, he turns to his 'second', another Imperial Navy Officer, and begins doffing hat, cloak and tunic. In shirtsleeves, he marches into a large space between the doors to to hive, and the ship. He stands there, angry but shivering, as the Captain likewise hands his gaudy garments. A case is produced, and duelling pistols drawn. Then men turn and take ten steps before turning and firing the ancient laslocks. Fabian Von Cassal is shot through before he even pulls the trigger, cored right through with a heart-shot. He slowly burns from the heated beam, until his party extinguishes him. Dressing again, the Captain approaches the doors to the hive, checking a pocket-chrono. He is in the perfect spot therefore, when the lift reaches the docking bay deck, and disgorges Kerr Restal, Reynard De Carebas, and the Hospitaller Petrus Kovac. With them, is a tall, handsome woman of dark hair, draped in a simple cloak, but heavy across her shoulders with authority. 'Lady Viceroy,' the Captain bows over her proffered hand. He ignores the Inquisitorial Seal in her palm. 'Your information and assistance were impeccable. What pray, do you wish in return?' 'Lord Iago De Wiart. May I present these Holy Pilgrims, who may serve on your ship.' 'As spies, my lady?' 'As explorers, my Lord. And there is something I want. Something hidden.' 'And what is this?' 'The Silent Architect.' ++++++++++ + Chapter One: The God-breaker's Yard +