(At some point Wicke would settle in with the Baron and start a monologue. She wouldn't particularly try to keep the following private from the rest of the acolytes. If others want to listen in, they could. I suppose I could have role played this conversation out on Saturday, and let the Baron and everyone else get words in edgewise, but it seems best to get some of the political role playing out of the way so we can advance the plot further on Saturday. So...)
I come from planet called Loss. It's a forest world, a jungle world. Tribal. There are more alien ruins scattered about than human. The aliens are long gone. The humans... Well... We've been too busy fighting each other to build anything to last, so there aren't many human ruins worth mentioning.
For a tribe to survive on Loss, it needs warriors and priestesses. You get priestesses by sitting girl children on the alien ruins. If the child screams and has nightmares, she is sensitive to the warp, so she is forced to sit and scream and have nightmares all the more. The strong among these girl children grow stronger. The weak sail on the Black Ships. The Imperium collects the garbage.
To get more warriors, you need more women. You get women by raiding other tribes. I guess I've had as much choice as a girl can get on Loss. I was in turn initiate priestess, sex slave and Black Ship cargo. This is to say, I had no choices at all.
I've travelled some since. I started developing a theory that Loss was the ultimate sewage pit of the Empire. I've a simple way of judging this. If I had to leave a young daughter behind as I continue my travels, what world would I least wish to leave her on? Mind you, they don't send acolytes to nice places where everything is working out fine. I've seen some pretty ugly places. Still, I was starting to believe Loss had a unique place at the bottom of the Imperium's pecking order.
Until I got here. Baron, you have yourself one ugly planet.
I'd like to tell story of one particular planet fall. It was a hive world, a place of giant cone cities, where the rich are literally on top, and climbing was a life's work. Someone was killing some of the elites dwelling on top. Our job was to find out who, and stop it. There was one minor detail. The Inquisition didn't bother to give us the cash or travel passes needed to travel to the top. We wasted a couple of weeks just trying to climb. We weren't getting much further much faster than the natives, reaching for the top of the cone.
We might still be trying to climb, but the killers got dumb. They were a drug gang. They decided to lean on us, to force us to leave. They out and out told us to leave. Now, most of us, especially Wolf, don't respond well to getting leaned on. So Wolf gets us all together, marches us into the office of the head of the gang, and tells the group's talker to talk us all out the situation.
OK. So, I'm the group's talker. You know, I still wish Wolf had told me about his brilliant plan in advance.
Anyway, the drug lord did explain the situation. You see, we were Ordo Hereticus. Don't ask me how he knew, but he knew. So, as he wasn't a heretic, he was just an ordinary every day gang leader. It wasn't Ordo Hereticus' job to mess with his drug smuggling operation. We should go away.
Wasn't it good of him to have cleared that up?
Now, I had to come up with something, so I made up this rule. I told him he was mucking up the tithe, which was true enough. His attempts to gain control of the smuggling routes onto and off the planet had mucked up trade and communications. I told him the Imperium doesn't care that much what is going on on a planet, so long as the tithe kept coming. If he wasn't ready to take over cleanly and pay the tithe himself, he should do nothing to interfere with the tithe. If he did, he should expect to be fighting the Imperium as well as the bosses upstairs. If he didn't like this, well, tough, cause that's the way the galaxy works.
We went around in a few circles from there. He didn't quite point out he had enough men to kill us all. I didn't quite claim to be in command of the combined might of the entire Empire. We were both oh so subtle. Anyway, we reached an understanding. He'd let us live. He wouldn't hinder interstellar commerce, communications, or the tithe. We wouldn't squish him like a small insect. Fair exchange? Good deal?
The deal lasted until we got topside, and explained what we had learned to the Inquisitor. The difference between the Inquisitor and my poor humble self is that he actually is in command of the combined might of the entire Empire, or at least enough of it as never mind. He decided to ignore my little deal, and send down enough storm troopers that the problem of that particular drug gang isn't likely to rise again.
OK? End of rambling stories. About this time, you should be wondering where am I going with this.
Not everything the Imperium does is about the tithe. We have a pyromancer, here. Likely enough, a mutant pyromancer. Rogue psychers are the Inquisition's problem, tithe, class problems and politics entirely aside.
And you've got an ugly world, but it isn't my job to make it pretty. I would, if I could, but I can't, so I won't, so why try?
But this is, in part, about tithe and politics and class. If we find and handle the pyromancer, the problem might go away, for a time. The mines might keep working, for a time. Folks might get born and die, for a time. Ugly will stay ugly, for a time. Then another pyromancer will come, or another mutant, or another xenos conspiracy, or another deadly bliss drug, or something. I just don't know that the lives here are much worth living, that the folks here will fight to keep what they have. They just don't have much to anything to fight for.
Your little conspiracy got ugly because this is an ugly place, which does come back to the tithe. This is, at base, a rich world. From it, much is taken. Gut feel, if a bit more were left behind, it might become a world worth fighting for, or living on. What you were trying to do with education might have been a start. Right now, from the Imperium's oh so distant perspective, the entire tithe is at risk. If leaving behind a little of what is being taken could secure the rest, this, to me, would be worth doing, not so much because I'm a nice little girl with delusions of making life pretty, but because I don't really want to come back here again in a few years and start all over.
And I haven't seen anything yet on how big a slice the bosses are keeping for themselves.
But nobody asks me. I can try to make something happen, but what I say matters far less than what the Inquisitor says. Any deal I make might not last longer than it takes to travel topside. It was suggested to me topside that your path was likely the better path, that the road you walked should have been taken, but nothing was written on a saint's hide and sealed with the Emperor's thumb print.
And they haven't taught me a thing about politics and economics. I'm just here to make things right, not to understand what's going on. They've taught me how to shoot a gun, to reload it, to free it up when it jams. I know how to meditate, to draw power from the warp, to heal with my mind. That sort of stuff, they'll teach. Not politics. Not economics. That would make me too dangerous. I'm too young to learn that stuff.
So I have to talk to you. You know this world far better than I. You know how the nobles think. You know how to get into trouble, and perhaps how to avoid it. I guess the question is whether to destroy the group you once made, or to try to take it back. If you want to take it back, you'll have to make promises.
And I'm just a not so nice little girl. I'm not sure what promises might properly be made that could have some reasonable chance of being kept. Once or twice I have pretended to have at my command as much of the Imperium's might as never you mind. I might do so again if it seems wise to do so. Delusions or illusions of power can be useful at times.
This leaves me with one little question. This group we are chasing? Do we try to make of them enemies... or friends? Oh, if the pyromancer is insane, and many of my kind are, he has to die. After that, from the stories, he might then have to die, die and die again. Beyond that, there seems to be an open question...
Whose side do you wish the Inquisition to be on?
