Hebediah Bare-bones: Inquisitor campaign character fluff.

[Pavement Artist]

Evening all.

 

Along with a few friends, we are embarking on a lil Inquisitor style campaign. We are converting our own models but playing on a 40k scale, not the huge ass scale of the old specialist game (How we are doing that is by the by and i am sure we will work it out but whatever). They all seem to be sticking on the side of the throne so i felt it prudent to make a chaos character so...you know....we have a bad guy. The setting for the campaign is a cluster of fringe worlds on the imperium, very old west flavoured, bit firefly by the way of mos eisley and the dark tower. 

 

Anywho, i thought i'd chuck my character's background out and see what you guys make of it:

 

Hebediah Bare-Bones

 

The lightless fringes of the Imperium are grim and foreboding stretches of space that have barely known the touch of civilisation. Mankind's scant enclaves in these regions scratch out a desperate existence, lying forever within the shadow of xenos predations or the malign influence of the warp. It is to these scattered and beset worlds that come the pauper priests of the Ecclesiarchy.

 

Hebediah Bare-Bones is a minister of no small fame within the lawless stretches of The Ebb. Like many of his fellows, he belongs to a wandering sect of vagabond priests known as “Circuit riders”- Ecclesiarchy ministers who shun the cosseted and indulgent lifestyles of many civilised preachers, and instead take to the stars in time worn caravels and warp carriers in order to bring the word of the Emperor to the wild fringe of his realm.

 

Unlike his fellows who are almost universally a dour and forbidding bunch of doomsayers- Hebediah Bare-Bones, also known as Heb-raked-out-of-the-ashes, is a veritable firebrand by comparison. Jovial and gregarious, this particular circuit rider with his corpulent, jolly nature, offers a pleasant change of pace from the wiry, dour sorts that normally take up such a calling.

 

While the services of most of these pauper priests are normally a very basic affair- a few shouted passages upon a soap box amongst a town square or cargo depot; Hebediah brings an element of theatricality to his ministry. Descending from the battered Caravel Catarrahic Dream, the minister and his entourage of gaunt followers soon set up vast Shamianas and flags of bunting, bringing an air of carnivalia to proceedings. Hebediah himself is driven into town on an old wooden wagon, often heard reciting tracts and ancient blessings even en route towards a settlement.

 

It is inside the covered Shamianas that the fat preacher's ministries differ the most from his fellows. The waiting congregation are invited inside, where a session of cacophonous hymnals await them, as well as a bizarre arrangement wherein the ailing of the fringe communities are beseeched to approach the stage and to let old Bare-Bones administer his blessings. Amongst the isolated and beset regions of fringe space, mortal consternation is rife and to the denizens of these loveless realms, Hebediah's approach is a blessed salve.

 

Though keen to maintain at least a semblance of vigilance on what could be argued as “wayward” preachers, the Ecclesiarchy by no means begrudges its servants a modicum of celebrity, particularly among those who preach to the skittish and superstitious denizens of fringe space. Nevertheless, rumours have begun to circulate around old Bare-Bones- malign whispers of communities that have succumbed to sickness and death in the passing of his congregation. Rumours speak of the gatherings within the Shamianas and that instead of rituals of healing, compacts with lords of plague and malignence are made, all unknown to the ignorant citizens. Hebediah's detractors point towards his strange congregation- those malformed and malnourished followers who travel with the preacher on his scarred and pitted Caravel. Though swathed in Sackcloth, rumours abound of grotesque, bestial mutations, or scabrous forms beyond the ability of sane man to bear.

 

Though there is little concrete for his accusers to bring to bear, would that they knew the truth of the matter. Far from being the jovial Imperial servant he presents himself as, Hebediah is in fact a servant of the ruinous powers, steeped in the oldest and most potent of plague craft. Little is known of his early life, save that as a young infant, he was found on a grain carrier drifting with no power among the fringes of the halo stars. All of the crew and cargo had succumbed to some wasting plague, save for the infant Hebediah, who was taken in by a nearby Ecclesiarchy conclave. No explanation as to why the young babe had been spared the ravages of the plague could be given, but it now seems all too likely that even as a child, Hebediah was under the Aegis of his vile patron.

 

Though seemingly meandering as the paths taken by all circuit riders, the progress of the Catarrahic Dream has taken on a more determined course as of late, striking through the agri cluster of the region and making for the shadowed edge of The Ebb. His reasons are as yet unknown, but the superstitious folk of the fringe speak of malign whispers coming from beyond that penumbral darkness- a malign sussuration that speaks of something waiting to be birthed. Rumours abound of Warp cults abroad and compacts being made in the depths of space. Little do the denizens of these outlaw realms know of the peril that faces them what role the laughing priest in their midst is to play.