Our meeting with the ill-reputed Inquisitor draws to an end, but we do get a bit of further information. The location of the auction is named The House of Ash and Dust, for rather obvious reason, namely it being a crematorium. It is located a few days' travel out in the Balemire Sea, which is as everyone knows a very polluted body of water. Drowing is not the chief danger if one were so unfortunate as to plop into the sea. Or rather, it would be a fierce competition between your lungs filling with water, your skin melting off due to the absurd pollution levels or some giant, mutated sea monster having you for an afternoon snack with its tea. Quite lovely.
Our contact at the auction will be one Loktur Mayweather, who works as a solicitor and is in the employ of the estimable Inquisitor. Our task, even after some careful prodding, is rather vague: look for "interesting" material and/or people related to heretical activities. The attendees can be expected to be a mottled sort of the type typically drawn to such places: collectors, the rich and bored, heretics and other queer fish. Some witty cynics would say these are merely synonyms and quite redundant.
We are first and foremost to gather intelligence; only in the case of obvious heresy are we to act directly. Given our little adventure on Sephiris Secundis, I have little doubt the latter option will come into play in some way or the other. Still, there is nothing to do but to give it some stick and prove once again what resourceful fellows we are!
The auctioneers are from the Sorrowful Guild, which have control of the island (which is actually the top of a not active volcano). It is in something of a judicial vacuum, with significant leeway from the laws of the hives. It is also considered neutral ground for the noble families which according to long-standing tradition in the Empire are at constant war with each other. In addition this guild, there are some adepts, PDF guards and solicitors stationed at the island, one of which is the esteemed mr Mayweather.
As a parting gift, we are given a data slate containing the names, descriptions (rather sparse for almost everyone) and other tidbits of info of roughly 100 heretics which we may encounter. I resolve to memorize each and every one of them. The auctioneers have chartered a boat which we are to board more or less instantly. So we head out in a hover car. On the way I regale my fellow cadre members with tales of the Haarlock family. Obviously I select a small subsection of what is known about them, I could (and would love to) educate everyone for days on the matter but alas, we are short on both time and, I suspect, patience.
In any case, Solomon Haarlock was the founding father of the prestigious family. During the colonization of the Calixis sector, he mapped out large portions of the sector, thereby earning the gratitude of the Empire and a rather useful charter stating he and his family could do...well, just about anything and get away with it. Not surprisingly, being that power may or may not corrupt, his family used the charter to get every advantage they could think of in the coming centuries and grew hugely powerful and wealthy. Relevant to our current mission, Erasmus Haarlock won a war that raged for literal millennia between family members and devastated several planets and undoubtedly led to the death of billions of the poor and ever downtrodden. Mr Erasmus was known to be a rather dark fellow (in demeanor that is), and shortly after winning said war disappeared into the Halo Stars. This was roughly 100 years ago, and the auction reportedly contains items mostly from this sinister Haarlock family member.
A light drizzle of acid rain spatters against the car as we drive out towards the harbor. Inquisitor Mar luckily provided us with capes made to protect one from the awful environment. The Cygnan Martyr is a rather awkward-looking hull, made to imitate some sort of marine animal. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the ratio between hull and animal is 1:1. We are met by a very portly fellow named Nahun Grist, the steward abord the ship. Despite his uncouth appearance mr Grist is a rather jolly and charming fellow, eager to tend to our needs. After putting our gear in our cabins, we head to the observation deck to get some "chow" as Acadia calls food and engage in some investigation of our fellow passengers.
As predicted, they are a, well, not ragtag bunch, but quite the collection of characters. There's the morbidly obese cleric with his bunch of followers (who are already drinking quite heavily). There's Octavia Nile, who turns out to be an agent for a local guild looking for "interesting items", with her two bodyguards, one of whom practically screams "assassin". There's Mr Jerger, a tall, gaunt figure in his forties, who works for a merchant house but is here on his own looking for interesting objects d'art (particularly a statue reputedly made by xenos). There's an old gentleman named Lanus Cisten Went, a historian mainly interested in writings by the Haarlock family. And finally there's Vymer and Quill, two bonded agents for parties unknown.
The clerics are a very boisturous crowd, and one of them, a tall, wild-looking fellow, almost comes to blows with Dar due to some imagined slight - I suspect that would have ended very badly for him. After a couple of hours we retire to our quarters for some much needed sleep. After 3 hours of sleep and a further 3 hours, the entire ship is rocked by a big boom and the alarm goes off - we're being boarded by "wreckers". Damnation...never a boring moment in the Inquisition.
We storm off to the observation deck and see a bunch of thugs and the indomitable mr Grist who is under heavy fire. A furious fight breaks loose, but luckily the wreckers are poorly armed and disciplined and we manage to take them all down, about 10-12 of them, with Dar taking on the lion's share. By the God-Emperor, that man can really swing a sword! Potter also proved his worth, using his psyker tricks to jam the villains' weapons. Mr Grist is eternally grateful for us saving his hide, we have made a friend for life I believe.
We have dinner with the captain at night, an elder gentleman who is heavily geared up with cybernetics, sporting a constructed arm, leg and eye. The heavy-set cleric turns out to be called Abbot Tamas of Shale, hailing from Iocanthos. He claims to be after "the statue of Drusus" and spouts such gibberish that it's evident to anyone with an inkling of knowledge about the Ecclesarchial Creed that he's no more a cleric than I am a Moritat.
I make some conversation with Lanus, who tells me of a certain human-sized statue that reportedly will be on the auction. The statue has a sinister reputation and supposedly has dark powers and was something of a centerpiece of Erasmus' collection.
Later, we discover that our data slates have been hacked. We suspect the hooded bodyguard of Octavia is to blame - he had previously been close by her at all times, but was missing earlier. Hm. Apparently we need to be a bit more concerned about our security. We will also be a bit late arriving on the island, one of the propellers was damaged and is now unusable.
We go to bed, but with guards posted. Around 7 in the morning, we hear the abbot screaming bloody murder, literally, in the hallway. We rise to investigate. Lazarus has a strange sensation of the flapping of crows when he passes the abbot. In their room, we find one of their numbers dead. The rest claim they found him this way. I volunteer to investigate further, which the "abbot" accepts after some deliberation. The dead fellow was intoxicated at the time of his death, but nowhere near levels that are deadly. Early analysis points towards a massive brain hemorrhage as the cause of death. We recruit the aid of mr Grist to move the fellow downstairs where I can perform an autopsy in piece. What I find is quite disturbing: his entire brain is turned to, well, mush. No natural thing could have caused this, leading us to suspect a psyker and/or heretic.
Further, we find crow and tribal tattoos on his body. I recognize the crow tattoos as signifying worship of Tysiach, The Crow Father - a daemon/warp being some of the natives of Iocanthos have held dear for millennia. Some of the more liberal clerics ignore the worship of Tysiach, believing it to be relatively harmless and mostly functioning as a boogeyman to scare the children. For a core of the natives though, they see Tysiach as all too real.
Analysis of the brain matter reveals the exact cause of death to be electricity of some sort. The abbot later tells us the deceased went to their room alone - about the same time we had our slates hacked. Hmmm...mystery within mystery!
We arrive at the island around midnight. Smoke rises from gargantuan chimneys. As we prepare to disembark, Grist pulls us aside. He says there's a small village called Deadtown where gear can be bought (at a mark-up). More interestingly, he tells us they were hired to take the passengers to the island - but not back...The ship will however wait until they finish repairs, and longer if we're willing to pay (which we obviously are). It is obvious this will be no mere auction...
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