The Testament of Alisabet Aronide

[ElectricPaladin]

 

This is the backstory of my Inquisitor for the upcoming Inquisition War themed narrative campaign upcoming at my FLGS. I'm about to share this story with my peers, so please help me poke all sorts of holes in it. What's the good, the bad, and the ugly? Spare me not! I mean, don't be a jerk... but I'm looking to make sure that this story is a) well written and 2) fits the fluff.

 

The Testament of Inquisitor Alisabet Aronide, Ordo Malleus

 

My earliest memory is not a pleasant one. The trauma and tribulations of war have wiped away all memory of my parents and any siblings that I may or may not have had. That is not to say that my early life is a total mystery, or that I have no inspirational recollections to give me strength in dark moments. However, where other Inquisitors I have known are sustained by some combination of smiling faces, pastoral settings, and the high ritual of the noble families.

What I, on the other hand, have, is this:

I am a small girl - six years old - crouched in the remains of a shattered basement. It is open to the sky, the building above having been sheered off by some terrible force, but I am hidden by the stumps of walls and enjoy a small measure of cover thanks to some shattered crates.

I hear the approaching Astartes long before I see them. Of course, I only barely know them for Astartes. I had learned about the Emperor’s Space Marines, but I had never seen one up close. They are enormous, giants of men clad in silver armor with crimson on their shoulders, knees, and helmets. Their leader goes helmetless. Half of his face is dark skinned, with a noble cast to his subtly distorted, abhuman features; the other half is mechanical, with gold metal for skin and a gleaming green augmetic eye. Many of them have curious devices worked into the armor of their shoulders - wings and chalices and swords - but the most common symbol is of a white shield decorated with a single teardrop of crimson blood, with black swords crossed behind it.

 

One of the monsters consults a handheld device, then points at me.

 

I clamor to my feet to run. I think that I may have been clutching some sort of comfort object, a stuffed toy or a devotional medallion, I can’t recall, and that I dropped it when the silver and crimson monster grabbed me by the back of my tattered jumper and lifted me to his eye level.

 

I confess that I scream. I wail, and thrash, and lash out with my tiny fists and tiny, bare feet. He begins to make a booming sound that I, in retrospect, suppose was laughter. Still holding me one-handed, he removes his helmet, revealing a face that, though also distorted by the characteristic gigantism of the Astartes, had a youth and kindness to it. Although fairer than his sergeant, his undamaged features have that same noble caste. They could have been cousins, albeit distant ones.

I will do my best to render here an approximation of the way his speech seemed to me. My world was on the outer edge of Ultramar, and we had experienced significant linguistic drift.

 

“Well met, fierceling,” he said, still laughing. “Bide a while with me, for I am a servant of your Emperor, and come I to save your life.”

 

And that is when I plant one foot squarely in the center of his face.

 

He laughs all the louder, and that, I think, is when the last of my fear of the Astartes fell away. I realize that these monsters are not the same as the many and varied beasts who are destroying my home.

 

“Oh,” he says to one of the other Astartes, “this one we must save, I think. She has a strength of will that must not go out of Man.”

“Will you carry her and fight one-handed, brother?”

“Aye, I think I shall. And when the day is done, my tally shall be ten times yours despite it!” He turns back to me. “I am not your foe, fierceling. I am come to save you. Will you hold tight to me, and let me carry you to safety?”

 

I nod gravely.

 

“Very well!” He replaces his helmet and tucks me under his arm, cradling me in his giant hand. I reach up and find handholds in the scrollwork of his breastplate. Thus, wielding his bolter in one hand and carrying me in the other, does the stranded tactical squad fight its way to the retrieval site.

The names of those Battle Brothers of the Adeptus Astartes are engraved upon my heart - and, indeed, incorporated into the tattoo that marks my chest, above my heart. The Emperor must have smiled upon them that day, for none of them died, not even brave Brother Assaku, who carried me in one arm, firing his bolter in the other, shielding me with his body every step of the way. To this day I am a little deaf in my left ear - the one that was closest to Brother Assaku’s gun - though I long ago had an augmetic installed to restore its missing function. Those Astartes fought through mile upon mile of hell to deliver all of us to safety.

 

Here, I must tell you a little of the broader history behind my little tale.

I was born on Vestris IV, the long habitable planet in its system, on the far edge of the Realm of Ultramar. That gentle protectorate of the Imperium is known far and wide for its stability and the justice of its rulers, but like all realms, Ultramar has a frontier, and in this decadent age, that frontier is torn and ragged.

 

Long before I was born, the Vestris system came under the domain of the Hantavalier family. They were a justifiably proud family, who had once achieved honor far in excess of a mere planetary governorship. Years of frustration turned their ambition into a bitter and curdled thing. The family fell under the sway of Kenmet Chor, an “economic advisor” who was truly a slave of the Ruinous Powers. With Chor bending their ears, the Hantavalier family first pushed for more independence from the rest of Ultramar, then began stockpiling arms “just in case,” and finally gathering “psychic advisors.” The Hantavalier family was no longer in control of the situation long before the first Daemon appeared on Vestris IV, and I am told that the pitiful remains of the last three Hantavaliers - fused into a single entity by a Daemon’s whim - died of a bolt round, may the Emperor have mercy on their souls.

 

Vestris was a minor world, and it took Ultramar a long time to recognize the growing threat. By the time the Ultramarines responded, it was too late for Vestris IV. The world was overrun with Daemons, and the Codex Astartes had only one reply: Exterminatus.

 

That was when the Strike Cruiser Redemption arrived carrying the Knights of Blood Fifth Company. They transmitted a single message to the Ultramarines before beginning their insertion:

 

“We are the Knights of Blood. In the Emperor’s Name, give us one month to cleanse this world. If we succeed, grant aid and mercy to those mortals who remain. If we fail, let us share their fate.”

 

Unwilling to begin the Exterminatus with their brother Astartes on the planet, the Ultramarines granted the Knights of Blood’s request, and waited.

 

One month later, Vestris IV was cleansed. It is, perhaps, melodramatic to say that the world was utterly safe at that point. Scattered Daemonic and rebel elements still remained, as well as roving bands of untainted, but still violent and desperate survivors. The need for Exterminatus had passed, however, and the Ultramarines were happy to send their battle brothers, their engineers, and allied contingents of the Astera Militarum and Adepta Sororitas to mop up and begin rebuilding. Ambitious as always, the Ultramarines were determined that Vestris IV would become another jewel in the crown of Ultramar, all the more beautiful and prosperous for the horrors it had survived.

You must understand that despite what happened next I have nothing but admiration for the Ultramarines.

 

The Emperor’s most holy Inquisition was placed in an awkward spot by these events. It would not do for a chapter that had been declared Excommunicate Traitoris to have performed such a heroic task, boldly rushing in where loyal Astarted feared to tread. So it was decided that the official histories of the Vestris IV war would be changed. It was not the Knights of Blood who saved that benighted world, but rather the Ultramarines. A fictional detachment of Ultramarines composed entirely of battle-brothers who had died at roughly the same time on different battlefields was composed, and in the official histories, it was they who liberated Vestris and slew its Daemons. As to why the usually traditionalist Ultramarines chose to defy the Codex Astartes and delay Exterminatus, the official histories are silent.

 

The people of Vestris were largely willing to accept this change. There were very few survivors - only slightly more than a thousand mortal souls - and most of them were deeply traumatized. Of those few survivors, even fewer had come from the hives, where the fighting had been fiercest, and most had escaped exposure to combat altogether, hiding in bunkers and the deep wilderness. I was one of the very few to see a Knight of Blood up close. I believe that most of the rest of those who had seen what I had seen were re-educated, and those who resisted the process were recruited by the Inquisition if they were useful and executed or transformed into servitors if they were not.

How did I escape this fate myself? I must confess that I do not know. Perhaps I was overlooked because of my youth or size. Perhaps some Battle Brother - perhaps even Brother Assaku himself - concealed me from the Inquisition, or arranged for a lie on my behalf. I doubt that an Inquisitor suffered a momentary pang of conscience about consigning a young girl to mind-wipe or lobotomy - such men and women do not generally become Inquisitors - but it’s not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.

Either way, I was swiftly assigned to one of the many schola progenium that were founded to deal with the many, many war orphans left behind. There, I discovered that my temperament led me both to scholastics and combat. I suppose it’s likely that I was always an intelligent girl, but my trauma left me with both an anger and an insecurity that combat training satisfied. For a war orphan, there is nothing more satisfying than mastering the stubber, the lasgun, the sacred bolter, and the arts of hand-to-hand fighting and knowing that no one will ever find it easy to harm you again. As a result, it is not surprising that I was eventually pushed towards the Adepta Sororitas and took my oaths as a Battle Sister at the age of 16.

At the same time, I took particular interest in the history and nature of the Adeptus Astartes. At the same time that I was taking my oaths, I was already an authority on the subject of the Emperor’s Space Marines. I had written no fewer than fifteen monographs on their history, organizational practices, and anatomy. Although they are quite embarrassing to me, now, at the time I was very proud of me. No one mistook me for a true scholar, at least not yet, but I had sent my monographs to several true sages, and had received generally encouraging replies.

 

Five years later, my Battle Sister squad was seconded to Inquisitor Cardaine of the Ordo Xenos to protect her while she indulged in her interest in xeno-archeology among the Basalt Pillars of Moloth II. It was a good thing, too, that she requested support from the canoness, because we were presently set upon by Eldar raiders, intent on carrying off the Inquisitor for some unfathomable slight. We fought hard, and repelled the attack, although both my squad and the Inquisitor’s warband suffered heavy losses.

I suppose that I must have impressed Inquisitor Cardaine with my bravery, because when she returned to the sector three years later, she specifically requested me to attend her. By then, I had risen significantly in rank and was now a Sister Superior, responsible for an entire Battle Sister squad. We supported and protected Inquisitor Cardaine as she delved into the lightless tunnels of an Eldar city in search of one of her informants, who had been captured. We were unable to rescue the poor soul, but we did commend what was left of him to the Emperor’s mercy and retrieve from him certain information that was essential to Inquisitor Cardaine’s investigations.

 

It was after the “Dark City incident,” as the Inquisitor would continue to call it, that she asked me to forsake my oaths to the Ecclesiarchy and join her retinue. I had my doubts, of course, but the Inquisitor knew precisely how to manipulate me. She could tell that I had a mind that strained at the boundaries placed upon it by the Adepta Sororitas - I suspect that she had read and admired my monographs on the Adeptus Astartes. In short order, I found myself living a new life, as the bodyguard, and later interrogator, of Dame Inquisitor Beatrice Cardaine. Although I was no longer a Sister of Battle, I retained many contacts among the Adepta Sororitas, including one sister who has since risen to the rank of canoness and another who is abess. Although our relationship cannot be called easy, in light of my severed oaths, neither is it fair to say that we are no longer friends. As Inquisitor Cardaine before me, I often call upon the Adepta Sororitas to support me in times of need.

The event that sealed my fate and made me into the woman I am today came more than a decade later, when Inquisitor Cardaine was investigating rumors of Eldar meddling in the Eastern fringe of the galaxy, near the Damocles Gulf region. We came across a curious technological construct that was quite advanced, though not Eldar in design. Strangely enough, although the craftsmanship of the entire device was exquisite, it was ultimately a crude warp engine - without a functioning Geller Field, of course. No sooner had we arrived that the thing came to life and began spewing Daemons into the materium. My last memory of Inquisitor Cardaine is not a pleasant one, but I am comforted by the fact that I did not allow her to suffer for long.

 

As the Inquisitor’s interrogator, it fell to me to ensure the survival of the rest of the warband or, failing that, ensure that our lives were bought as dearly as possible. I fear that the most likely scenario would be the latter, but that was when the Tau arrived.

 

They are a curious race, the Tau. Surely, they are a danger to Mankind, but only in that they resemble us. They are arrogant, swift to hitch their wagons to stars and defer the consequences. However, unlike the Tyranids and, in a sense, the Orks, they are creatures of reason, and there is compassion in their hearts. Unlike the Eldar, there are creatures of honor among them, and they can be trusted to keep their words. I do not look forward and dream of a day that Man is dominated by the Tau Empire! But it might be fair to call me a sympathizer, in the sense that yes, I admit it - I have some sympathy for the Tau. They are beings not unlike ourselves, and perhaps a peace can be forged with them.

 

I also admit freely that it is only because of the Tau that my warband survived. The timely intervention of Shas’el Kyer’la Oroven Tcho is all that stood between me and my friends and fates worse than death.

 

Thus it was that when I returned to Imperial space with a wealth of information about the Tau, mastery of their language, some sympathy for their way of life, and a new burning hatred of Daemonkind, it was not the Ordo Xenos that I joined, but the Ordo Malleus. Having learned that some aliens could be gentle and kind, I could no longer pursue the downfall of all xenos species. I was a young Inquisitor, and my heart was hard enough for the task - for only one race can sit astride the galaxy, and for all that I admire the Tau I will not allow it to be them. It was that I no longer saw xenos as the most pressing threat. If they can be spoken to and reasoned with, if they can show compassion for us, then a peace can be made with them.

 

Daemons cannot be spoken to and they cannot be reasoned with and there is no possibility of peace. They can only be slain.

 

But my mistress Inquisitor Cardaine taught me to use every tool at my disposal. This is why my warband includes Fio’El Ralior, a Tau weaponsmith. It is why I have learned not just how to slay Daemons, but how to bind and command them.

 

My world was destroyed because Chaos is everywhere, but my life was saved because not all things that are condemned are corrupt. I would be dead today were it not for the mercy that dwells even in the alien heart. I know that we do not have the luxury to live in a world of black and white, but rather must contend with shades upon shades of grey.

 

Call me a radical if you will - surely I have been called worse. But I know what I truly am. I am Alisabet Aronide of the Emperor’s Most Holy Inquisition. 

[Argent aquila]

enjoyable read. i love the imagery of a space marine cradling a yung girl and firing away at a foe, could be a really cool build........

(i may take that if i ever get good at painting skin tones )

anyway, i loved this, and don't really care if it's exactly canon or not.

[Nuclear Fridge]

A number of layers in this story, and all of them interesting! I'd love to see more!