Legends of Angels 2016 - Stories of the Ecclesiarchy

[Servant of Dante]

well . . . two stories at least .

The first I'm rather proud of. It's not nearly professional grade writing of course, but still I wrote it about the thine Genestealer Cults were coming out. I think that's all the context that's necessary really. I'll let the good Father take it from here:

An imposing figure stands upon the balcony, his somewhat copious form looming over the still growing crowd far below. His golden and white robes flap in the afternoon breeze, and his gold staff glitters in all its gem-encrusted glory under the light of the sun. Around his stern, sagging face flock a half-score of cherubim, their laud hailers awaiting his voice. He looks down upon the flowing masses assembled below the balcony of the Ecclesiarchal Palace, the seat of power of his Diocese, as the smoke begins to rise from the fringes of the hive.

“Brothers and Sisters,” he bellows, his voice amplified a thousand-fold to echo over the tumbling spires and into dilapidated underhives of the city, “I come before you not as a Cardinal of the Ecclesiarchy, but as a fellow child of our Immaculate God-Emperor! This very day, this very hour, the enemies of our Lord on Terra, the enemies of humanity, are upon our doorstep, nay within our walls, our cities, our very homes! They come not from the void, or the irradiated wastes of the northland, but from our cities, from the highest spire and fom the deepest underhive, our mines, our villages and towns!”

His eyes blaze with holy fervor as he continues, “Laying bare their heresy for all to see they rise from the depths and descend from the heights, calling, from their blasphemous lips, upon the populace to rebel against their Emperor!” his jowls gyrate as spittle begins to pool at the corners of his mouth, “But we, the faithful, see through their lies, their heresy, evident in their every word! Xeno abomination they consort with, blaspheming against the word of the Emperor of all men! Mutation they spread with glee and abandon, tainting the purity of the glorious human form, the physical reflection of Him on Terra which we all possess! Against His church do they strike, kneeling before false deities!”

His staff sparks against the surface of the balcony as he reaches fever pitch, his arms whipping up and down as his words ricochet like bullets over the crowd and down the streets and alleyways of the hive as fire burns in his eyes, “Witches! Yes, psychic abominations they do shelter and hide from the Emperor’s saving light! These thrice-dammed infidels dare encroach upon the domains of the Emperor, our homes!? We cannot stand idle in the face of this affront to our God and Savior! We shall rise in response to their heresy! We shall fall upon them as the avenging light from above! We need not fear, for the Emperor is with us: He is our strength and our shield, and we shall not falter! With our bare hands we shall strike down the roiling mass of mutants, the insidious deceivers, the false prophets, which seek to tear us from our Emperor’s embrace!

Now he raises his staff overhead, pallid flesh holding the Ecclesiarchal icon high, “Gather your weapons: guns, swords, clubs, hammers, take all that you can find! We shall rally before the oncoming tide, and with the Emperor as our witness, we shall beat it back. We shall pursue the foe wherever they go; they shall lead us to their strongholds, reveal their dark hiding places, and their insidious schemes shall be laid bare before the Emperor of all! The gates of their keeps shall shatter, and the followers of the True God on Terra shall pour through and BURN. THEM. DOWN.”

His voice almost breaks as he sends forth his congregation, “Go forth; tarry not! Do the Emperor’s work and have no fear. Only in death does duty end, and only through death shall we live!”

This second one requires some context. It's about Inellia, a character I created using the Inquisitor's Handbook Adepta Sororitas Career and the Ascension supplement for the Dark Heresy RPG (1st edition). She's obviously not your typical Sister. Just know that her story is not representative of the Sisterhood at large. For reference, her character background is in the Hidden Content tag below.

Hidden Content

The girl who would become Sister Inellia was born deep in the bowels of a cruiser of Battlefleet Bakka in the Segmentum Tempestus. Her parents where two amongst tens of thousands of crewman native to the ship, born within its hull and invisible to the great men and women who ruled their lives and commanded their fate. Her tremendously pale skin and pink eyes marked her as an albino, not entirely uncommon aboard the ship of her birth, where she lived as normal a life as any child ever does aboard an Imperial Navy vessel.

It was not the simple news of new arrivals that had caught the attention of the girl, now thirteen years old. Thousands of troops and other personal came and went every day that the ship was in realspace. No, it was who these new arrivals where that had piqued her interest. It seemed that over five hundred Sisters of the Adepta Sororitas had taken up residence in one of the ship’s many barracks for transport from one warzone to another.

At first, the news of the Battle Sisters arrival was no more than a curiosity to the girl, but as the days passed she thought of them more and more. She had no idea what they looked like, and had heard only vague and fanciful tales of the deeds of the Emperor’s most faithful servants. The pull toward these righteous protectors of mankind grew in the girl’s mind daily. Finally, one night, or rather, during one of the shifts when the group of habs in which she lived was darkened, the girl pried open a large ventilation panel in a corridor and began to climb her way up from the depths of the ship.

It was twelve hours later when she arrived at an air vent that looked into barracks where the Battle Sisters where quartered. She sat behind the large grate and watched the Sisters. At first, they seemed not to notice her, but as the hours passed they began to take note. Some frowned or glared at the girl, while a few smiled. Eventually, she fell asleep where she sat.

The next day, a few of the Sisters spoke to her. They where kind to the girl, curious as to why she was sitting behind the grate. One even gave her a portion of her simple lunch. When it was once again time to begin the night cycle that portion of the ship, a woman with a scarred face and a bionic eye came to the girl. She introduced herself as a Palatine of the Order of the Valorous Heart, and asked why the girl was here. The girl said that she had to go with the Sisters when they left the ship. The Palatine smiled and asked why she had to go with them. The girl told her that it was because she knew that it was the Emperor’s will that she follow the Sisters. After staring into the girl’s eyes for an eternity, the Palatine removed the grate and wordlessly ushered the girl to a vacant bunk in the barracks.

A few months later, when the Sisters returned to Celestine VII, the girl was inducted into the Order of the Valorous Heart as a Novice. She took the name of Inellia, one of the Sisters martyred in silence before the blinded eyes of Saint Lucia before her death. Despite being several years behind the other Novices of her age, Inellia progressed admirably through her training, showing a sharp intellect, and a natural aptitude for the use of a Boltgun.

Besides her martial training, Inellia studied the Imperial Creed in great depth, and spent hours rehearsing hymns to the Emperor with the other Novices. She was content, and her tutors where quite impressed with her progress. Inellia was received fully into the Sisterhood, swearing her holy vows to the Emperor and her Canoness at the age of twenty-two. Then, an Inquisitor came calling.

He was of the Ordo Hereticus, and he requested that five newly minted Sisters be transferred into his care. The Canoness could not refuse the Inquisitor, and just three days after receiving her Chaplet Ecclesiasticus, Sister Inellia left Ophelia VII, along with four of her fellow Sisters. The five Sisters where quickly separated, and Inellia was put to work investigating and crushing heresy in the name of the Emperor’s holy Ordos. Her Inquisitor seemed to have a proclivity for seeking out the most twisted and insidious of Chaos cults, and throwing Inellia and her fellow Acolytes into their jaws time and again.

As the years passed, Inellia faced the servants of all four Chaos Gods, human and otherwise. Those around her fell away - killed, driven insane, or dawn into the festering corruption which they sought to snuff out - but she endured. She learned to protect her mind from the foulness she encountered, and to rebuke the onslaught of the witch. Eventually, she found herself once more before the Inquisitor.

Inellia was sixty-one years old, though through the Emperors grace and impeccable gene therapy, she had maintained the physical ability and appearance of one in her third decade, while serving the Ordo Hereticus for thirty-nine years. The Inquisitor told Inellia that he was immensely pleased with her work, and that she was a remarkable individual. He said that she would be given more freedom to act as she saw fit in the future, and that the filing process for her new position would take some time. She was to do as she pleased for the time being, and to return when she was prepared to continue her work in the Emperor’s name.

It was the first time in her life that she had had the freedom to go where she willed. At first, Inellia did not know what to do, but the answer came to her quickly. With the help of her Inquisitorial identification, she gained passage to the world where Saint Lucia, the patron saint of her Order, had been martyred millennia before. The Saint’s eyes had been gouged out, and she had been forced to listen to the screams of one thousand innocents being tortured to death before her. She had not known that some of her Sisters where among that thousand, for they had died silently to keep from adding to the Saint’s torment.

Eventually, Inellia found herself in the cathedral built on the site of Saint Lucia’s martyrdom. The Inquisition had changed Inellia. She had witnessed things that would, and had, driven men and women mad at their mere mention, but she had remained faithful, if not completely sane. The training forced upon her by her Inquisitorial handlers had been almost as painful as the horrors of Chaos and heresy that had clawed at her psyche. She had mastered the art of interrogation, and was a capable hunter of men. She could make even the most deluded of cultists cry for mercy as she ripped the truth of their heresy from their twitching bodies, and it made the young girl singing righteous hymns inside of her scream in agony.

But here she was, at this, her final test. If she could complete the task set before her, there could be no doubt that the Emperor held her worthy of the Sisterhood that she held so dear. Inellia stared into the eyes of the statue of Saint Lucia, drawing strength from her likeness. Reverently, she drew her power blade from its sheath, and activated its power field. Exhaling slowly, and refusing to close her eyes or utter a single sound, she slowly sliced off her left arm just below the elbow. Tears of triumphant pain running down her face, she sheathed the blade, and applied a tourniquet to her upper arm. The throng of stupefied pilgrims that filled the cathedral parted quickly as Inellia walked, smiling, from the building, not unchanged, but unbowed.

and here's the story. I'm sure I could edit it more, but I kinda ran myself out of time :

+++ 986.M41+++

Inellia knelt at the front of the chapel. Her knees ached as they bent, and she grimaced as she was placed a hand on the pew at her side to steady her decent. The pews provided minimal cushioning while kneeling, and Inellia eschewed even that, her knees resting on the rich tiling of the room’s center aisle. She welcomed the pain. Her hair, striking in its whiteness, framed a ghostly pale and gaunt face, and pink eyes. Some said her albinism was the mark of a tainted soul. Sometimes Inellia agreed with them. Through it all her eyes never left the face of the statue before her. The likeness of Saint Lucia, one of the six founding Saints of the Adepta Sororitas and patron of her order, the Order of the Valorous Heart. The statue was not the only of Saint Lucia in the Convent Sanctorum, and the chapel it sat in was often empty, but that suited Inellia. Her wrinkled and calloused hands almost shook as she raised them before here to begin her prayer. Juvant treatments could only do so much after one hundred eighty years of life. She suppressed a hiss of pain as the fabric of her vestments, rough by choice, pulled at raw flesh on her back. Her ritual flagellation had increased in fervor in the past days, and the blood normally hidden by the black cloth had become apparent to several of her Sisters, though they had said nothing. She began chanting her prayers.

Inellia jumped as the deep ring boomed from the Convent’s highest steeple, audible to all those within its walls, and to many without. It was the call to Vespers. She had not noticed the time passing. Normally her afternoon prayer and meditation were southing; At least, as southing as she allowed anything to be for herself, but today the knot of pain, anger, and guilt in her stomach had only grown. As she left the chapel, a though came to Inellia. She looked back at the statue of Saint Lucia and almost smiled. Yes, but there was no time tonight. She made her way quickly down the corridor toward the cathedral were the Sisters would be gathering for mass.

The hem of her black vestments swished lightly as she walked down the halls of the Convent Sanctorum. The rough fabric tugged painfully at the raw flagellation wounds on her back, and blood ran down her spine. As it should. As she deserved. All the preparations had been made, but still she was uneasy. If only she had been stronger. She need not have done what she had done this morning, but that only made what she was about to do all the more necessary. She stopped before a nondescript door set in the gilded marble wall hesitating a fraction of a second before knocking. For a moment, there was no answer; maybe the Sister Superior was out, but the door opened. She looked up at Sister Superior Gendel, about six inches taller than Inellia’s five feet nine inches.

The Sister Superior appeared surprised to see Inellia, hesitating infinitesimally before speaking, “What is it, child?”

“Sister Superior, I have come to make a confession. Many confessions.”

The Sister Superior’s eyes widen at Inellia’s words. For a second her mouth seems to move soundlessly, then, “Come in.” As she closes the door behind them, she continues, “Sister Inellia, you are . . . hardly an average member of our order. I am past my fifth decade, and counted among the Order’s senior Superiors, but you are surely thrice that,” she finished with a questioning tone; Inellia had never discussed her age, or her time with the Inquisition, with her fellow Sisters, “Do you not wish to speak to the Canoness? I’m sure she would see you.”

Inellia shook her head quickly, “No, Sister Superior, I ask that you hear my,” her words begin to stick in her throat, “confession, as proscribed by the Rule of Sororitas.”

Sister Superior Gendel nodded slowly, and motioned for Inellia to sit, and did so hersef. She too wore the simple black vestments of the Order of the Valorous Heart, a small metal pin over her heart marking her elevated rank, though like most Sisters the cloth was of a much finer weave than Inellia’s. She looked into Inellia’s eyes, “What is it that you have to confess, child?”

“I apologize that my confession will require some explanation, and beg your forgiveness,” as she speaks Inellia removes a metal disk the size of her palm from within her vestments and hands it to the Sister Superior, “That is the mark of my service in the Ordo Hereticus of the Inquisition, given to me by my Inquisitor upon my elevation to Throne Agent. One silver stud for each year before that point, and one gold for each year after.”

The Sister Superior gazed at the disk, at the crimson rosette emblazoned at its center, squinting as if to count the suds arrayed in rings around its edge, “How many years did you serve the Emperor’s holy Ordos?”

“One hundred forty-five years, Sister Superior, until my Inquisitor died and I was permitted to return to Ophelia VII.”

The Sister Superior’s eyes widen slightly, “A great honor to serve the Emperor in such a way.”

Inellia hesitates before she speaks her next words, “I had a duty to the Emperor to do as my Inquisitor bid. I did so faithfully, in accordance with the duty proscribed by my vows, for a century and a half, but in doing so I have committed innumerable sins,” tears well up in her eyes, but she continues to meet the Sister Superior’s gaze.

“On Enta III, the 828th year of this millennium, I killed Father Mazoc Yanth. I had been ordered to stand watch while my fellow acolytes bought information from an underworld contact, and to shoot interlopers on sight. The Father had been investigating our contact, and had tracked him to our meeting place. I saw his face, I knew his station, and I put a bolt in his head.

“Two years later, the Inquititor ordered me to interrogate . . . torture a man. It was not uncommon, and was often a practical method of rooting out heresy, except that the man I tortured and killed was a man of pure faith. I listened to his screams, his prayers to the Emperor that I caused, thinking them lies from the mouth of a blasphemer, but the Inquisitor had simply wanted to make a point. To me and to the man’s family,” Inellia’s voice wavered as tears ran down her face, over the blood red fleur-de-leis tattooed below her eye.

She continued in this way, recounting in excruciating detail every sin, every trespass she had committed in a century and a half of life. As she finished, Sister Superior Gendel slowly leaned back in her chair. There is a sad look in her eyes, but her voice is hard as cured ceramite, “Sister Inellia, what you -“

“Sister Superior, there is one thing I have omitted,” Inellia says in a rush, then pauses to look up at the Sister Superior. Sister Superior Gendel nods, and Inellia continues, “In the 872nd year of the millennium, I was sent on detached duty to the Ordo Xenos and the Deathwatch, to oversee a Kill Team made up of Astartes of dubious faith. Almost as soon as we deployed on our first assignment, we encountered a Psychic Pariah and her mother. The mother, having harbored a mutant and being an unnecessary impediment to our mission, I killed, but the girl I took with me. Though a mutant, she was a valuable asset, and a great boon in dealing with an unchained witch. I saw to her training myself, and took her on as my personal agent. Over the decades I found myself coming to care for her, a mutant,” Inellia shakes as she struggles to maintain eye contact with the Sister Superior.

“When I returned to Ophelia VII I put the girl - she’s was hardly a girl anymore, almost a century of age -” the corners of Inellia’s mouth quirk slightly upward as she speaks; she smooths her face immediately, though her eyes are still wet, “I brought her with me, and she lived in a secluded part of one of the orbitals. When, last night before Vespers, I decided I must make my confession, I knew I should bring her with me to be cleansed; I should kill her myself, but I couldn’t,” Inellia cried freely, her gaze wavering.

“I couldn’t kill her. I . . . I love her, she is almost my daughter. She’s a mutant. A defilement of the human form, a stain upon His galaxy, and . . . I love her,” she finishes in a whisper.

Then Inellia breaks down completely, her head in her hands, heaving sobs over and over and muttering, her crimson chaplet clutched against her face. Sister Superior Gendel stares over Inellia at the wall behind. A single tear runs down her face. Softly, she speaks, “where is the mutant now?”

Inellia slowly raises her head, her white hair in disarray and her eyes red, “I, she, she’s gone,” she replied, despondent. “I gave her every access code and identification number I could remember and sent her away this morning. She’s gone.”

The Sister Superior nods slowly, her face set in a grimace, “you will seek atonement?”

“Yes. For Everything.”

Originally I intended (and I still plan to, eventually) go on to write about Inellia's penitence (she's bound for the Sisters Repentia). It's going to be great but I ran out of time, and I think this is a nice ending.

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