The Callidonean Play

The Magus promised a world, but gave instead a box

of hive­metal, within which was only sand.

- Silencean linear contemplation fragment 1527

Saint Willard o' the Spear, Live'd yet three hundred

year, And watcheth o'er all ye here.

- Anglish commoner's rhyme

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Creative Commons licensed by Reason of Principia Infecta in 2011 under the
Attribution 3.0 License. You are free to do as you will with the words found herein,
provided fair attribution is given to the author.
Principia Infecta can be found online at www.principiainfecta.com.

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 Contents
4. A Rite of Passage
6. Handouts: Declaration, Request, and Materials
10. Brythan
13. Fragments of History
15. The Hive Foundations
18. Blessings of the Machine Cult
23. Life and Lore
23. Common Lore
30. Law and Justice
33. A Selection of Legends and Prophecies
36. The Past that Builds the Present
36. Players Upon an Arcane Stage
39. The Fall of Inquisitor Quassus
41. The Long, Slow Corruption of Geffarius Cauther
43. Lesser Heretics, Rebels, and Outlaws

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 A Rite of Passage
Summaris
It is the commencement of 816.M41, and remnant
detritus and pilgrim masses of the long All-Saints-
Festival are but slowly vanishing from the grand hives
of the Ministorum world of Rhame, golden yet corroded
center of the Yeuros cluster. Within Hive Templum
Primus, a newly ascended Inquisitor and his retinue of
Throne agents prepare for a long and uncertain journey,
the festival distant from their thoughts. Their destination
is Brythan, a world at the trailing edge of the cluster,
farthest from the hives of Rhame, last light of the
Imperium before the impassable warp storms of the
Lantac Abyss, and last of the Yeuros worlds to be
brought to the God-Emperor by the Rhamean Crusade
so many centuries ago.
But to Brythan it is. Three decades past, the
withdrawn and aged Inquisitor Willard Quassus, long
the sole representative of the Yeuros Conclave of the
Holy Inquisition upon that world, ceased to respond to
ciphered messages sent from Rhame. Long periods of
quiet and Inquisitors who operate alone for decades are
not unusual in the sparse Ordos of the cluster, but an
assessment is now overdue. This is the task placed upon
the Inquisitor Minor and his followers by the powers of
the Conclave—though in truth it is less a task and more
a trial, a test of uncertain difficulty set by uncaring
elders of the Ordos.
Upon their arrival in the Brythanic voids, the
Throne agents and their new master will face hard
choices, drawn into intrigue and corruption upon a world
whose inhabitants fear the Inquisition all too little.
The Threefold Path
The Inquisitors of the Yeuros worlds form a sparse
Conclave by the standards of greater sectors, but their
presence suffices—for Ministorum-dominated Rhame
remains synonymous with Imperial glory even millennia
after all who fought in the Rhamean Crusade are gone to
dust, and the God-Emperor is yet acclaimed the Lord of
Man upon every Imperial world of the cluster's many
suns. But Inquisitors die, and new blood must flow,
albeit slowly and carefully. Thus the ossified elders of
the Yeuros Conclave, their fortress vaults hidden within
the hives of Rhame, induct newly ascended Inquisitors
Minor by what has come to be known as the Threefold
4
Path, represented by the Forest, the Beast, and the
Temple in Inquisition heraldry.
A promising interrogator or savant-militant first
toils within the Forest, seeing comparatively little,
knowing comparatively little. With experience and rare
excellence, one such may be raised by formal carta to the
rank of Inquisitor Minor. This is a matter of sponsorship
and influence, usually orchestrated by a former master,
an Inquisitor of standing in the Ordos.
But an Inquisitor Minor has not seen the Beast:
he is only an Inquisitor by virtue of a seal upon
parchment, and all that he might have achieved until that
point is made worthless by the magnitude of that gift of
power. Granted the Rosette and able to command and
terrify all who recognize the dread sigils of the Ordos, a
Parchment Inquisitor is nonetheless neither
acknowledged nor supported by the Conclave, and will
be hunted ruthlessly should he give the first sign of
corruption. This, at least, is the case until after the
Inquisitor Minor has initiated and led an Inquisitorial
action against the Beast—the dark and hidden foes of the
Imperium. Only when he shows himself worthy by his
deeds and choices, and until the records of that action are
presented to the Conclave libraria upon Rhame, may he
move forward upon the Threefold Path.
There remains the return to the Temple: the
Inquisitor Minor must stand before the elders of the
Yeuros Conclave, within their darkened inner vaults, and
there demonstrate a continued purity of gene and soul.
He must prove to them beyond doubt that the Beast's
corruption has left no taint, no seed. Many are those who
fall—or who are made to fall, so it is whispered—at this
final hurdle.
Declaratio Caecorum
Deep beneath the baroque, spire-strewn slopes of
Templum Primus, a hive devoted to the inner workings
of the Rhamean Ministorum, the Inquisitor Minor and
his retinue face the Declaration of the Blind in a
darkened hall. Emerged from their hidden strongholds
for this one small scene in the larger play of Ordos
tradition, three ancient, hunched Inquisitors stand upon
pulpits in the shadows, their faces hidden by featureless
white masks. A stab-light shines brightly upon the
Inquisitor Minor and his followers in the centre of the
hall, circling them in white amidst the blackness.
 The three masked elders speak the few
ceremonial words of the Declaration, a matter of a
handful of heartbearts. The stab-light is extinguished,
plunging the hall into silence and darkness. Doors then
swing open upon grinding gears, and the dim light
beyond the sign for the Inquisitor Minor and his retinue
to depart. The ceremony is complete, brief as it is.
Beyond this point, as he leaves the Templum Primus
upon Rhame, the Inquisitor will speak only with lesser
servants of the Conclave. All doors to the Inquisition
and its resources are officially sealed: even his mentor
and former masters will not speak with the Inquisitor, or
at least not where others might overhear or learn of it.
The Lord-Inquisitor's Request
Immediately following the Declaration of the Blind
comes the Lord-Inquisitor's Request, a step that long ago
moved from a subversion of the Threefold Path to an
age-honoured tradition. The normal form of the Request
is a masked and anonymous missive-bearer, who may or
may not be recognizable as a part of another Inquisitor's
retinue, a dataslate, and the seal of an obviously fictional
figure high in the Conclave's hierarchy. The true origins
of the Request might be the Inquisitor Minor's mentor, a
coven of the mentor's peers, or result from some deeper
machinations, the original Request stolen and replaced
en route.
Regardless, it is foolish in the extreme to refuse
or ignore the Lord-Inquisitor's Request, despite the very
short litany of Inquisitors Minor who did just that and
then went on to ascend to the Conclave on the backs of
mighty and resounding victories, their names living on
for centuries past their deaths. Few Parchment
Inquisitors command the strength or pre-existing level of
support to make the Threefold Path an assured formality
regardless of their initial choices. Further, in addition to
most likely originating from those who will later judge
the Inquisitor Minor on his return to Rhame, and thus
reflecting their will, the Request arrives with an
unspoken one-time connection to vast
resources—resources that will all too soon be beyond
the Inquisitor Minor's reach.
Acceptance of the Lord-Inquisitor's Request
earns the right to make an oblique, formal demand for
specific resources. The resources will be provided, more
or less as requested—up to and including a dedicated
Battlefleet voidship for transport to a specific location,
regiments of Guard troops, or an equivalent draw upon
the coffers of trade guilds beholden to the Ministorum.
There is a fine line for the Inquisitor Minor to walk,
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however: between boastful relinquishment, the
appearance of incapacity, the appearance of aimless
greed, and the degree to which he is sure of the support
of his mentor in the Conclave. There are tales of the
malign judgements that fell upon Parchment Inquisitors
who reached either too far or not far enough. Resources
provided may be poisoned, either obviously or in some
clever and hidden way, or simply far removed from what
was requested. It is left to the Inquisitor Minor and his
retinue to determine whether he is being steered,
rebuked, or subtly attacked.
The Request delivered to the Inquisitor Minor in
this case is short, to the point, and threatening in its lack
of clarity, as the traditional form demands. He is directed
to find Inquisitor Willard Quassus, and thereafter carry
out those actions most fitting in the eyes of the God-
Emperor. Accompanying the Request are a minimum of
summary materials on Quassus and the world of
Brythan, and at that point the Inquisitor Minor is truly
set upon the path to seek the Beast.
A Theatre of the Known
The form of the Threefold Path and the Lord-Inquisitor's
Request is well known within the Yeuros Conclave.
Thus few Inquisitors Minor pass the rituals without
possessing foreknowledge, an opportunity to set aside
resources, and a grasp of the degree to which mentors
and sponsors will in fact withdraw their support. The
wise mentor lets the Inquisitor Minor rise or fall by his
own merits, for his influence alone is rarely enough to
sway the judgement in the Temple. Conversely, the wise
Inquisitor Minor does his best to ensure that lines of
communication remain open, unofficially, for use in
extremis.
+++ First Inquisitor:
He who stands is known.
+++ Second Inquisitor:
We see him not.
+++ Third Inquisitors:
It matters not. For he has not seen the Beast.
+++ All:
And thus he is nothing.
+++ First Inquisitor:
Yet something may come of nothing.
+++ Second Inquisitor:
So we offer this one chance to nothing.
+++ Third Inquisitor:
Go from us. Seek the Beast.
+++ All:
And until your return we are blind to you.

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+++ By command of the Lord-Inquisitor, His Eminence in Red.

+++ Seek out and find Inquisitor Quassus of Hive Rhame.

+++ Thence do as the God-Emperor sees most fitting.

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+++ Inquisitor Willard Quassus
Age is estimated as 360, and birthplace is alleged to be Hive Rhame upon the world of the same name.
Raised to Inquisitor in 488.M41, under the aegis of Inquisitor Habitasis, and into Ordo Hereticus.
Pure of gene and untouched by psyker taint. No visible augmetics as of 644.M41. Known to employ juvenat
treatments, but age places him at the outer limits of their effectiveness. Submitted few materials or action
reports to Conclave libraria, and none are recorded after 539.M41.
+++ Historia Brevis
495.M41. Inquisitor Quassus exposes and eradicates a blood-sacrifice cult upon Hyaspan.
517.M41. Defeat of a tainted raider fleet and its invasion of Brythan. Inquisitor Quassus destroys the enemy
war-chief and leads Brythanic forces to victory.
532.M41. Inquisitor Habitasis and his retinue presumed lost to the warp in banishing the necrotic space hulk
Ember of Ruin.
543.M41. Inquisitor Quassus recorded to have moved his residence to Brythan, though this may have
occurred years earlier.
552-570.M41. Astropathic queries made to the Ordos upon Rhame suggest Inquisitor Quassus is concerned
by the warpcraft of prophecy as employed by witches in mockery of sanctioned Imperial seers.
582.M41. The Thirteenth Grand Conclave upon Rhame. Inquisitor Quassus in attendance.
590.M41. Inquisitor Quassus' presence upon Brythan is designated Missio Minoris and granted a stipend
from Conclave coffers. No later record exists of the stipend being paid or otherwise drawn upon.
620.M41. Interrogator Valian, formerly of Inquisitor Quassus' retinue, raised to the rank of Inquisitor.
Records indicate that Inquisitor Quassus is the sponsor, but not in attendance.
644.M41. Last confirmed appearance of Inquisitor Quassus, validated by pict-capture within the Imperial
Governor's residence of Brythan.
667.M41. Adeptus Arbites report that Inquisitor Quassus destroyed a previously unknown sect upon Gahul.
His presence on that world in 667.M41 remains unconfirmed.
717.M41. Inquisitor Valian and his retinue confirmed dead upon Hyaspan in a purge of the Blade of
Sorrows cult. No close peers to Inquisitor Quassus remain within the Rhamean Conclave.
780.M41. Last known official communication crypt-sealed by Inquisitor Quassus is received from Brythan.
It is a simple protocol acknowledgement, similar to the prior eleven missives.

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+++ Brythan
Designated as a Hiveworld (Lesser, Category Delta, sub-designation War). Outermost Imperial world facing
the Lantean Abyss. Temperate to cold, breathable atmosphere, possesses seas, and is mountainous. One
inhabited moon. Brought into the Lux Imperia in 294.M40, during the later Rhamean Crusade. At that time,
the world was designated Feral. Present governance categorized as tribal monarchism with internecine
internal warfare.
+++ Imperial Governor
High Ecclesiarch Mathus Ager of the Church of Brythan. Raised from the local populace.
+++ Imperial Presence
Administratum records immediately accessible to the Conclave declare an Adeptus Arbites garrison of four
regiments and minor Adeptus Astra Telepathica shrinehold (Category Delta). There are no records of
stationed Imperial Guard, Battlefleet, or Departmento Munitorium forces. No Administratum bureau majoris
exists and nor is any Administratum adept of primaris rank present.
+++ Adeptus Ministorum
The High Ecclesiarchy of Brythan underwent schism from the Rhamean Temple in 699.M41 to form the
Church of Brythan. Sanctioned as an accepted sect in 752.M41, but relations between hierarchs remain
strained. The sanctioned sect of Destinism is present upon Brythan, but the nature of relations between
Destinist and Church of Brythan Ecclesiarchs is unclear.
+++ Imperial Tithe
Brythan has not failed in its tithe since the Rhamean Crusade. The tithe has been conducted through agency
of the Ministorum since at least 400.M41, coinciding with appointment of Ecclesiarchs to the post of
Imperial Governor.
+++ Brythanic Guard
The last Founding of Imperial Guard took place between 764-772.M41. Fifty full infantry regiments were
raised and consigned to the God-Emperor's forces.
+++ Void-traffic
Three guild-fleets are granted hereditary charters to the Rhame-Gahul-Brythan warp routes. The Battlefleet
flotilla designated Steadfast Glint traversed Brythan in 801.M41, exchanged envoys with the Imperial
Governor, and confirmed the system secure.
+++ Ordos Presence
Missio Minoris under Inquisitor Willard Quassus, established 590.M41.
+++ Ordos Actions
None recorded since 517.M41.

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 Brythan
Brythan of the Yeuros cluster is a chill planet of deep
winters and short, rain-swept summers. The seas
surrounding its single continental land mass are stormy,
waves crashing against eroding cliffs. Rolling hills and
looming mountains are the dominant landscape. This
was a forest-green and storm-grey world of scattered
feral tribes when first brought into the Imperium by
Rhamean legions, but changed profoundly across the
fifteen centuries since. Under the blessings of the
Machine God and other Imperial technologies, the
populace and their structures grew unchecked into a
nascent hiveworld of billions—albeit not yet as
populous or as scarred by manufactory toxins as the core
Yeuros worlds. Brythanic hives are more spread and less
developed than the truly ancient hives of Rhame;
towering spires and piled base structures are few in
number, and where they do exist they are separated from
one another by league upon league of charred war-
wastes, industrialized farmholds, beast-tracts,
manufactory reaches, and commoner hab-block towns.
Nor is Brythan truly united under one rule: the
descendants of the ancient tribes and their conquerors all
worship the God-Emperor and count themselves
Imperial citizens, but they stand opposed in three
distinct regions, waging war with one another
frequently.
The Anglish Court
The Anglish are proud descendants of Rhameans and
conquered tribes, fierce in their Imperial faith. The
commoner Anglish masses have long been ruled by
Kings, Queens, and an ever-changing Court of Lords, a
nobility of extended houses descended from forbearers
who were raised up to nobility through wealth, war, or
great deeds. The Lord or Lady at the head of each noble
house maintains a standing army, an intricate heraldry,
and holds sway over a single spire fortress or hive
foundation and the surrounding structures and lands.
Commoners within a lord's domain must pledge loyalty,
service, and often harsh tithes, or face the Lord's bailiffs.
In turn a Lord pledges fealty to the Anglish queen and
imposes the queen's order and justice within his lands.
The power of the Anglish Court is made
manifest in the majesty of Hive Londus, oldest of
Brythan's hives and the location of the Court itself—a
large part of the palatial hivetop fortresses inhabited by
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the queen's ruling house. Of all the hive structures of
Brythan, only Londus is great enough in stature and
population to sprawl unbroken and piled high across
hundreds of leagues. Amongst the fanes of its many
greater levels stand ancient temples of the Imperial
Creed, schools of learning, pillars to support grand upper
landing zones, and strongholds owned by the most
powerful Anglish noble families. In every direction from
the outer slopes of Hive Londus stretch the populous
fiefdoms of Anglish Lords, the greatest of them marked
by the distant shadows of lesser hive foundations, like
gray clouds above the manufactory-covered hills.
Wealthy houses and fractious alliances amongst
Anglish nobility compete ruthlessly for advantage, both
within and beyond the civilized, treacherous confines of
the Court in Hive Londus, and all raise their own forces
of armsmen and militia. Were the Anglish not faced with
raids and the threat of war from the clans of Callidon
and Hybernea, they would surely be at one another's
throats to press claims upon land, commoner allegiance,
and vengeance for past slights. As matters stand, not a
decade passes without a feud between houses heating
near to war, giving cause for the Queen's house to
intervene.
Clans of Callidon and Hybernea
The moon of Hybernea and highlands of Callidon upon
Brythan are chill, mountainous, and harsh, resting under
deep snows for much of the year. Raised roadways cross
the vales and tunnel through mountains to link widely
separated foundational hive structures and industrial
regions, and between them deep manufactory-poisoned
lakes and ruin-wastes where outlaw bands and the last
beasts roam. Even the greatest fortresses of Callidon
cannot compare with the spires of Anglish lands,
however, and the combined Callidonean and Hybernean
populace is barely half that of the Anglish commoner
masses.
For all that commoners, nobles, and savants
alike amongst the Anglish speak of Callidonean and
Hybernean clansmen as painted savages, these peoples
are just as much civilized hive-dwellers. Many of the
everyday customs of the clans are broadly similar to
those of the Anglish, lacking only the pervasive
Rhamean influence on justice, ideals of noble conduct,
and religious matters.
 The spires of clan hive foundations and city-
fortresses are neither as great nor as gilded as those of
Hive Londus, but it is telling that Anglish Lords and
their armies have never succeeded in conquering any
reach of the moon Hybernea or the highlands of
Brythan. The clans are fierce in defence of their
independence and their lands, the peoples diverse and
fractious. Each clan is centred about a lesser hivebase
structure or spire-fortress, proud in its own traditions
and histories. The clansmen's extended families are
linked by a shared legacy of vows and lineages, of tales
both told in song and recorded in clan records.
The clansmen of Hybernea and Callidon have in
some generations bowed to Kings and Queens, in others
not, but they boast no strong tradition of obedience and
absolute fealty in the manner of the Anglish Court—and
nor is the position of monarch usually inherited, as is the
case for the Anglish. When a monarch does arise, that
King must rule from his own clanhold spire by the fickle
acclaim of the clan Lords, shifting from year to year,
and only grudgingly acknowledged by his peers as first
amongst equals. Across the ages since the Rhamean
conquest, the clans have fought one another just as often
as they united to drive off the Anglish or pagan raiders
emerged from the warp storms of the Lantean Abyss.
For all that, the Callidonean clans have acknowledged a
monarch amongst the clan Lords more often than not
across past two centuries, these Kings and Queens
chosen to lead the allied clans against their foes, or
raised up to hear great disputes between clans that can
have no other resolution.
Imperial Institutions
Signs of the Imperial Adepta upon Brythan are sparse in
comparison to other hiveworlds of the Yeuros cluster.
There are no Imperial Guard regiments stationed upon
Brythan, no Departmeno Munitorum infrastructure, and
no permanently assigned Battlefleet vessels—though
roving sub-fleets traverse the system every few decades.
Administratum presence is anaemic, a bare few
thousand sages and archivists of Imperial records buried
deep within Hive Londus. Collection of the Imperial
Tithe is managed instead by Ministorum priests and
clerks, coordinated through shrines and cathedrals across
Brythan.
Those Imperial institutions that are present are
at their strongest within the spires of Hive Londus,
where adepts and emissaries from other Yeuros worlds
pay court to the Anglish Queen. Beyond the hive's edge-
walls and outer slopes are found only lesser
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Imperial servants and outposts—and of all the Adepta,
only the omnipresent Ministorum wields any meaningful
influence in Callidon and upon Hybernea.
Imperial Governor
The Imperial Governor of Brythan is not appointed by a
distant Lord-Sector, but rather raised up from the local
populace, drawn from amongst the scions of Anglish
noble houses risen to prominent positions in the
Ecclesiarchy. Youngest sons and daughters of the
greatest lineages, otherwise destined to be excluded from
power, have long been encouraged to enter the Imperial
Cult. There they are elevated to positions within the
Anglish Court, such as confessor to an appointed office-
holder or messenger to the Queen for the Church of
Brythan. Those who find their way to greater influence
in the Court typically also rise in the ranks of the
Ecclesiarchy, and vice versa. Ultimately, the highest
rung upon this ladder is comprised of the favour of the
Queen, the acclaim of the more powerful Anglish lords,
and the deep red robe of a High Ecclesiarch. From
amongst this select circle is the next Governor chosen,
appointed by Queen and Court to orchestrate the
workings of the Imperial Tithe—an opportunity for the
appointed Ecclesiarch to gain great personal wealth and
power, beyond even that offered by the highest positions
in the Church of Brythan. The Governor is powerful
indeed in Hive Londus, but remains vulnerable to the
whims of the Queen and the intrigues of the Court.
There is an implicit bargain in this appointment: the
Governor's position rests upon supporting the dominant
factions within the Court, as well as ensuring that the
Ministorum publicly bestows the blessings of the God-
Emperor and Ministorum upon the Queen's reign and
actions.
Adeptus Ministorum
The Ministorum touches every aspect of life upon
Brythan; faith in the God-Emperor is tangible and
important. Preachers and lay-tutors are present in
every hab-fane, shrines and temples stand in every
hive foundation level. Neither noble nor commoner
can rise far without proclaiming their faith in word
and deed, obtaining the counsel of a priest, and
gaining his blessings upon their acts. Leaders of
men at all levels of Brythanic society are expected
to be trusted members of the laity, favoured by their
confessors, spoken of well by preachers who have
knowledge of them. Those who are not are regarded
with suspicion.
The Brythanic Ministorum is split into two
principle sects, Destinism and the Church of Brythan,
each consisting of varied theological factions and
orthodoxies. The priesthood—and thus control over the
considerable resources of the Ecclesiarchy—is uneasily
divided between the adherents of the two major sects, a
small minority of hermit priests of lesser sanctioned
creeds, and the few iconoclasts in the hierarchy brave
enough declare themselves beholden to no sect.
To the eyes of the commoner masses, the great
sects are divided over the veneration of Imperial saints
and whether places of worship are gilded in splendour,
in the manner of the grand cathedrals of the Church of
Brythan, or build of bare, unadorned stone after the
fashion of Destinist shrineholds. These are trivial
matters for scholars and theosophists, however: the
schism between Destinism and the Church of Brythan is
in fact a dispute over the Greater Questions of
predestination, the omnipotence of the God-Emperor,
and the nature of choice.
While the Church of Brythan is dominant
throughout Anglish lands, Destinists hold sway and
manage Ministorum coffers in Callidon and upon
Hybernea. There, Imperial shrines are unheated stone
vaults, rank amongst the ordained is largely informal,
and Ecclesiarchs teach that the God-Emperor steers
every choice. All that happens is foreordained, and
prophecies are God-Emperor-given glimpses of what is
to come. In stark contrast, Anglish cathedrals are
baroque and splendid, every alcove set with gilded
relics, statues of Imperial saints, and engraved scenes
from Imperial history. Anglish priests and lay-tutors
teach lessons based upon the scripture of the Rhamean
Temple, copied wholesale and made distinct in name
only as the creed of the Church of Brythan. The most
fervent Ecclesiarchs to follow these once-Rhamean
teachings reject outright all Destinist theology: men and
women must choose anew each day to serve the God-
Emperor, the future is unknown, and every choice has
consequences.
In past centuries, bloody purges of Destinism
took place in Anglish domains and when Anglish
legions raided Callidon and Hybernea. Some scholars
call the purges a rightful echo of the end of pagan Ald
Brythan, that time long past when priest-seers gathered
in sacred groves and made bloody sacrifice to dark and
nameless gods in order to see the future. The seers were
annihilated in the Rhamean Crusade, and there are
always some amongst the High Ecclesiarchs who
believe that Destinism must go the same way,
12
regardless of its status as a sanctioned sect in the greater
Yeuros Ministorum.
Relations between sects have become far less
hostile in recent generations, however, the heated
persecutions of the past replaced with a focus upon
collection of the Imperial tithe and bringing to heel
unruly elements amongst the commoner masses. Some
claim the rifts in the Brythanic Ecclesiarchy have
become comparatively gentile schisms over orthodoxy
and scripture, argued rather than fought, but occasionally
inflamed by other disagreements between the Anglish,
Callidonean, and Hybernean peoples.
Yet memories are long, and the differences
between sects remain sufficiently great to spark
intrigues, vitriol, riots, and rivalry between priestly
factions and their followers. The nature of the
Ministorum hierarchy only compounds this state of
affairs, as it is crosses both sects and regions:
Callidonean preachers often bow before Anglish
superiors, for example, but some have risen to high posts
in the cathedrals of Hive Londus itself. Anglish
Destinists exist at all levels of the Ecclesiarchy, albeit as
a minority, as do Callidonean adherents of the Church of
Brythan—and also charismatic priests who rebuke both
sides, or follow lesser sanctioned sects. A Destinist may
be given orders by a devotee of the Church of Brythan,
or vice versa, and the crucible of Ministorum politics
creates strange bedfellows: Destinist and Church of
Brythan priests allied as often as they are opposed.
Holy Inquisition
The Inquisition has been represented for centuries by
Inquisitor Willard Quassus, known widely upon Brythan
as Willard of the Spear. He and what little remains of his
immediate retinue reside in Hive Londus, and have long
been much withdrawn from the Holy Ordos. Past actions
have made the Inquisitor a legend upon Brythan; as he
grows ever older and closer to death, sainthood is much
discussed amongst Ecclesiarchs—and has long been
assumed as a fact by commoners.
Adeptus Arbites
Eight regiments of Arbites troops and light armour are
based in a network of fortress-barracks at the core of
Hive Londus—a not insignificant military force, but one
that pales beside than the combined household armies
and militia of the Lords of Londus and the surrounding
domains. While the Adeptus Arbites are supposedly
independent, protecting Imperial interests at their own
discretion, assignment of commanders by the Imperial
Governor and use of Ministorum funds has long ensured
that the first loyalty of Arbites troops is to the
Ministorum. In effect, the Adeptus Arbites are used as a
militant arm by the High Ecclesiarchy when the need
arises. More commonly, Arbites are dispatched to
protect Ministorum resources from the depredations of
raging hive-mobs and rebellious uprisings. More than
half of the Arbites force is scattered across Brythan at
any given time, squads and companies assigned to
protect the hated tithe-assessors, or guarding the relics
and finery of Anglish cathedrals from the venal urges of
a roused mob.
Adeptus Astra Telepathica
Whilst officially independent, in practice the few
astropaths of Brythan act as an arm of the Ministorum
through the offices of the Imperial Governor. The
astropathic enclave is set atop a thin, tall spire of Hive
Londus, and the Astropath Primaris is a favoured
presence in the Anglish Court.
Adeptus Mechanicus
The Silencius is the dominant Mechanicus faction of the
Yeuros worlds, a grouping of numerous contemplative
orders whose members focus upon binary prayer and
labours that lead to meditative unity with the will of the
Omnissiah. The painstaking maintenance of tech-
devices is one such path to communion with the divine;
to the true Silencean it matters not whether a
promethium engine, cogitator, archaeotech wonder, or
simple mechanical lever is the object of such work. All
technologies are equal in the Omnissiah's eyes, and the
eternal function of every machine is a holy goal.
Upon Brythan, all Mechanicus barring a few
emissaries from Rhame and Gahul belong to the
Silencean Orders. These tech-adepts, tech-priests, and
magi are little interested in politics, power, or expanding
the range of tech-devices available to the Brythanic
peoples. Monkish in aspect, quiet and inscrutable, they
diligently maintain hive machinery, void-ships, and
other advanced devices, and rarely engage in meaningful
dialog with the uninitiated. The inner society and secrets
of the Silenceans remain well hidden behind the walls of
their manufactory enclaves and hive-core machine
temples.
13
Fragments of History
As is true of every Imperial world in the Yeuros cluster,
thousands of years of history flow beneath Brythan's
present, much of it lost—either to the mists of pagan Ald
Brythan, or simply buried beneath the weight of
diligently chronicled uprisings, schisms, wars, noble
lineages, myths, legends, and the countless details of
billions of lives. But some of that history remains
known, and a fraction of it remains important to the
Brythanic peoples, tales of the past retold and kept alive
by commoner and noble alike.
The End of Ald Brythan
The Yeuros stars were conquered in the Emperor's name
in the early centuries of M40, added to the Imperium in a
crusade whose cost ultimately ruined the originating
world of Rhame. But for generation after generation
Rhamean Lords stood tall and gilded, and Guard legions
marched to victory upon every world of the Yeuros
cluster, their bronzed ranks strong and unbroken beneath
the Aquila.
Brythan was the most distant and last of worlds
conquered by the Imperial forces of Rhame, far out upon
the edge of the Lantean Abyss. It was wild and forested,
a primitive, tribal era of chanting priest-seers and horn-
beast hunts, known now to scholars as the age of Ald
Brythan. The ferals massed for battle with the Rhamean
legions, but were broken by artillery, lasfire, and orbital
bombardment. Within a generation, they and their
children were brought into the Imperial light, their pagan
ways of worship crushed and purged.
Fall of Rhame
Guild-fleets soon came across the voids to Brythan,
following in the wake of Battlefleet support vessels and
Crusade victory. Structures raised by the legions were
taken over by sanctioned guilders, by Administratum
adepts come to count the populace and minister the
Imperial Tithe, by quiet tech-adepts of the Silencean
Orders, and by Missionaria who taught the Imperial
Creed. Habs, cities, temples of the Rhamean
Ministorum, manufactories, and ultimately the first struts
of hive foundations were raised up, and wealth ran from
the heart of the Yeuros cluster to Brythan in the
generations before Rhame fell into decline.
But Rhame fell in the end, exhausted and
corrupted by the staggering expense of Imperial crusade,
its final Imperial rulers cruel and ineffectual
tyrants who dishonoured the God-Emperor and trampled
the Ministorum. Many of the greatest hive-structures
burned, the mobs rioted for years on end, and it would
be centuries before the first glimmers of Rhamean glory
returned. Commerce across the voids dwindled, and
much that was once gilded fell into poverty and ruin.
While the might of Rhame collapsed and
mouldered, Bythan grew—and even prospered. Taught
the civilized ways of Rhame and the Imperial Creed, the
descendants of feral tribes praised the God-Emperor and
grew vast in number. In their masses they completed and
populated the hive foundation structures, Rhamean
patterns first planned by the Silencean tech-engineers
who accompanied the Crusade legions. The forests were
felled, mountains carved into mine-pits, and the wilds
where horn-beasts once ran overtaken by industrial
farm-tracts and hab-towns.
Passage of Centuries
Generations of Brythanic peoples were born, praised the
God-Emperor as the Lord of Mankind, and went into the
darkness to their reward. Administratum rule gave way
to a nobility of quarrelling Lords and monarchs, lineages
whose greatest figures warred over domains established
amidst manufactory sprawls, growing pollution-wastes,
and towering hive-structures.
In time the most faithful and prosperous
servants of the God-Emperor upon Brythan became
known as the Anglish—many domains of commoners
and Lords united under the rule of a single monarch, all
descended from the mixed blood of feral tribes and long-
dead Rhamean administrators. Their customs were those
of Rhame, their faith that of the Rhamean Temple, even
after the light of Rhame itself had long faded. The
Anglish Ministorum grew to might and influence, and
built its cathedrals to echo the glories of the Rhamean
Temple of old. When Rhame departed its age of ruin, set
upon the path to become a powerful Ministorum world,
ties with the Rhamean Temple were reforged anew, and
the High Ecclesiarchs of Brythan pledged themselves in
humble servitude to the ascendent Pontifs of Rhame.
For more than a millennium the Anglish
squabbled and warred with descendants of the ferals
who once most fiercely resisted Rhame: fiery,
independent Hyberneans of the moon and red-haired
Callidoneans of the snow-bound highlands. In their
defeat before the might of the Rhamean legions, those
tribes of Ald Brythan were reduced to little more than
scattered households, but which then grew once more
across the centuries into mighty clans led by bold Lords,
14
their blood undiluted by that of Rhame, and their faith in
the God-Emperor more austere and practical than the
Rhamean creed. They rejected the Pontifs of Rhame in
word and deed.
Across these long years, some generations
brought only war and fleeting conquest, others a flood of
trade and Anglish missionaries to preach the scriptures
of the Rhamean Temple. At times there were even
uneasy alliances forged against pagan war-fleets,
despoilers come from warp-scourged worlds in the
Lantean Abyss. Even in times of comparative peace,
however, the three peoples of Brythan have stood
opposed to one another, scornful and wary, ever just a
few paces from war.
The yorde Invasion
Three hundred years ago, after the present Anglish
Queen Elyzia's grandfather became King and established
House Teuda, a vast fleet of raiders emerged from the
warp to invade Brythan. These were the pagan,
bloodthirsty Nyorde of frigid worlds in the Lantean
Abyss, known and feared but never before come in such
numbers. The Nyorde laid waste to hive-tracts and
enslaved and slew millions, offering up bloody entrails
to their false gods. The invaders were ultimately
defeated by the allied armies of Anglish and Callidonean
Lords, but that victory might never have been achieved
but for the intercession of Inquisitor Willard Quassus. So
the tale is told, Quassus slew the Nyorde war-chief in
single combat and broke the sacred spear of the
pagans—an act which gave them to fear and disarray.
The Inquisitor was feted by King and clan Lords, and his
name proclaimed in every vault and way of Bythan's
hives.
Founding of the Church of Brythan
A little more than a century past, early in the turbulent
reign of the present Queen Elyzia's father, the Imperial
Governor Thomar of House Crommell broke with the
star-spanning hierarchy of the Rhamean Temple to forge
a more independent Brythanic Ministorum. He rebuked
the Pontifs, declared himself Grand Ecclesiarch of the
new Church of Brythan, and set about a reformation of
past traditions and hierarchies.
That generation was a time of great upheaval
and political conflict within the greater Yeuros
Ministorum, marked by bloody rebellion and uprisings
of outraged, fervent mobs upon many worlds. One such
took place upon Brythan in the Anglish territories
near Callidon, only to be brutally put down by those
Anglish Lords who sided with the Court and House
Crommell. Many lesser priests were thrown from the
ranks of the Brythanic Ministorum for their part in the
uprisings, and the High Ecclesiarchs severed all ties with
the High Pontifs of Rhame—while nonetheless keeping
intact most of the ancient Rhamean traditions and
scriptures.
All but the most zealous of Destinists welcomed
the birth of the Church of Brythan, as there had come to
be a widespread loathing of the influence of Rhame
amongst the priests of Callidon and Hybernea. In the
years since, Destinists from the clans have become more
influential in the Brythanic Ministorum, and the older
sectarian divisions, while still very much present, have
begun to blur at the edges.
Present Times
Anglish monarchs have fought many ultimately futile
wars against the clans of Callidon and Hybernea since
the age of Rhame, but two centuries have passed since
last the Anglish Lords marched to conquer. Memories
are long, however. While busy tradeways cross from
Anglish border dominions into the mountainous
highlands, and orbital lift scows carry bulk cargo to and
from Hybernea, there is little friendship between these
peoples of Brythan. It is rare for more than a decade to
elapse between disputes and raids—some of which
might be called small wars upon another, more peaceful
world.
Even as militants of the border domains stand in
readiness year after year, the Anglish Lords have looked
more to their own affairs and conflicts since the
ascension of Queen Elyzia to the throne. The Queen has
been headstrong, popular, and powerful throughout her
life, the centre of a Court that is ordered according to her
vision. Lords vie for the Queen's favour, and duels are
fought between noble scions over slights real or
imagined. Rebellious heads have rolled in past years,
and Lords who pay too little heed to the Queen's wishes
are soon called to account. Rarely has an Anglish
monarch wielded such power over her unruly
nobles—and attempting yet another conquest of
Callidon or Hybernea is not her desire.
Relative peace with the Anglish has not caused
the clan Lords to lack for war, however. A conflict of
raids and massive void-landings waged between
Callidon and Hybernea has lasted the past decade, only
recently concluded by Callidonean victory. The
Hybereans used long-abandoned Nyorde raider
15
vessels to carry a vast horde of clan-guard down from
the moon for the final battle—and to hear the
Callidonean bards tell the tale, the Hyberneans carried
the taint of defeat with them, their chosen tools fated to
failure. The clan Lords of Callidon, united beneath the
heraldry of King Dunsean, defeated the Hybernean
King's guard and forced their ignominious retreat from
war-vales littered with the burning wreckage of
Hybernean light armour.
The Hive Foundations
Rhamean standard template patterns dominate the
architecture of Brythanic hives, their characteristic lines
and angles, pillars and squared portals found everywhere
in the looming spirebase foundations and upper works.
The core hive structure is formed of weighty decks of
hive-metal set above one another in layers, supported by
vast fluted pillars. These decks fill over time as
structures both great and small are piled and layered to
extend from deck below to under-deck above: grand
fanes, cathedrals, fortress estates, close-packed habs, and
maze-like districts of alleys, stairs, and lesser buildings.
A hundred spans separate each deck from the foundation
vaults of the level immediately above, and there are
narrow, dizzying rifts between district edges and the
walls of great structures.
Hive decks are enclosed by thick outer-walls,
sealed away from any view of the skies and mountains.
An outer-wall is a massively armoured bulk of hive-
metal, many spans broad, riddled by passages and
hidden chambers, pierced by massive gatehouses and
portal tunnels. New outer-walls are forged as hive decks
expand across the centuries, the previous outer-walls left
to as borders between lordly domains. Vast statues and
ceramic tile mosaics bearing the heraldry of noble
houses and Ministorum iconography are set into the
outer-walls, those on the exterior weather-worn and
crumbling.
The decks themselves, the outer-walls, and the
largest interior structures of Brythan's hives are forged of
materials whose true nature is known only to the
Silencean Orders: adamantine, cerasteel, silverplas, and
others. All of these are simply "hive-metal" to the
masses. Hive-metal supports immense weight, shrugs off
flame and impact, and corrodes but slowly, building up a
thick, dull patina of reactants over time rather than
rotting or weakening. Columns, sheets, and joists of
hive-metal are produced as needed within sealed
alchemical manufactories far from the hives, entirely
controlled by the Machine Cult.
 Still young by Imperial measures, the hive
structures of Brythan have suffered few collapses and
crushed sub-levels, and there is little to rival the
corruptions and horrors of the underhive found upon
more populous Yeuros worlds. Low decks and hive
cores swarm with the poor and the outcast, but even
amidst squalor and unrest the poverty districts remain
near to civilization. Bailiffs, militia, and other lord's men
walk the low ways, the poorest appoint their own
watchmen and torch-carriers, and punishment falls upon
those who fail to pledge fealty and pay their paltry tithes
to the assessors.
Roadways
Broad ceracrete roadways permit transport of goods
across and between hive decks. Lined with sigil-posts
and statues, the roadways run alongside outer-walls and
turn in at marshalling junctions to cut through each deck
like chasms. Steep roadway ramps and spiralling stair-
pillars large enough to pass an army link each deck to
those above and below. Lumbering, belching
promethium transports crowd the roadways night and
day, occasionally shunted aside in disarray to pass the
armoured caravan of a noble or wealthy guilder. A
millennium of promethium fumes have stained black the
metals and statues of the roadways, and corroded a
glistening patina upon the facing structures.
Fanes and Hab-Mazes
The fanes of Brythan's hives resemble the temple
patterns of Rhame: tall and foreboding, fronted by broad
steps, crouching gargoyles, and hive-metal colonnades
that rise almost to the deck ceiling. The heraldry of lords
and guilds surrounds these grand hive-halls: painted
upon entry portals, embossed upon steps, and woven
into banners hanging between fluted columns, swaying
in the airflow from ventilation ducts. Within the fanes
are echoing vaults set with statues, sweeping stairways
and curved balconies, and level upon level of corridor
grids and narrow cells, fit for scribes and monks.
The oldest and largest fanes face open courts or
roadways, but most are surrounded on all sides by
crowded districts of stacked hab-blocks and guild
warrens, lesser buildings and hive-metal supports piled
atop one another until no space remains between the
deck floor and the vaults above. Some of these
commoner structures are built of hive-metal themselves,
others of stone, metals, plasteen, even chem-treated
wood, but all are typically narrow and tall. They look as
16
though they reach upward, each seemingly crammed into
a narrow gap overlooked by earlier architects.
Hab-district sublevels are linked in countless
places by thin, precipitous stairways and narrow ladders.
These warrens are further riddled by alley-tunnels that
wind and twist between walls—each a maze that opens
out into narrow chasms where the district ends at
roadways or looming hive-metal walls. Even markets are
piled vertically, taller than they are broad, the commoner
crowds climbing as much as walking to view cavorting
entertainers and goods laid out by merchant guilders.
Meeting squares, muster avenues, and other
comparatively open spaces are hidden within these
districts, but only those who dwell there know all of the
secret ways and places: hive maps are notoriously
unreliable.
Bridgeworks, Fortresses, and Cathedrals
Hive decks are not simply flat layers of hive-metal
bulkhead material, foundations for districts and great
halls. They are broken by numerous enormous
structures: sealed river-ducts a hundred spans broad;
domed cistern-lake vaulting; old outer-wall sections;
bridges over the upper works of generator temples;
empty sink-pit foundations around major support pillars;
the baroque upper works of cathedrals, rich with
gargoyles; the walls of fortresses, palaces, and noble
estates.
The boundaries of a hive-fortress, often the
estate of a noble house, are marked by curving bulkhead
walls many spans thick, hung with fine banners and
painted with noble heraldry. Estate walls bisect decks
and roadways, the only official points of entry their
imposing armoured gatehouses. Within these enclaves
the structure of the hive is much the same as without: a
mix of warren-districts for servants and household
militants, open squares and long avenues, and great
Rhamean fanes where the nobility hold court. Inside
these halls of influence and power, the corridors are
panelled in old, polished wood, grown in plantations
beyond the hives—or perhaps cut long ago from the last
of the true forests. Hidden passages run between hive-
metal bulkheads and wooden interior walls, used by
servants and conspirators.
Noble houses are only rivalled in their power by
the High Ecclesiarchs of the Church of Brythan, and it is
thus fitting that Anglish cathedrals and their domains are
as large as the fortress estates of Hive Londus. Each
spans several decks, surrounded by districts housing
monks, clergy, and other religious orders, its flanks and
upper works boasting lofty bell-towers and massive bells
of iron, brass, and bronze. Outlying shrines are similarly
set with towers and bells, even in the poor and filth-
strewn lower decks where priests are sent to do duty as a
penance. The bells toll dolorously at allotted hours,
marking sermons and masses, each place of worship
with its own distinctive pattern. Upon high holy days,
such as the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension, the bells
of Brythan's hives ring constantly from dawn to dusk.
Light
Light filters into the enclosed, tight-packed hive decks
through arrays of mirrored slits and vents in the high
outer-walls, or is provided by vast lumen-devices that
hang suspended upon corroded chains from the deck
foundations above. Some greater fanes are set with stab-
lights to illuminate the heraldry of their facing, that light
spilling into surrounding districts, but piled hab-districts
usually bear their own lesser mirror-vents and lumen
devices powered by charge packs, better maintained in
some reaches than in others—every deck has its dark
alley-tunnels where the disreputable lurk.
While commoner and noble alike have light in
the upper decks, the low poverty-warrens are either
buried in darkness year-round or left dark through
winter when deep snows block the mirror-vents. These
districts are lit only by the few meagre tech-devices that
the wretched and the poor win for their own use,
alongside the flames of combustibles distributed as alms
by compassionate sisterhoods. Beast-fat candles and
torches are as common as battered, inherited
promethium fuel-lamps, and for these least amongst
commoners even a partially functioning lumen is a rare
prize indeed.
Heat and Air
Ventilation tunnels and ducts sheathed in hive-metal run
through hive outer-walls, within support pillars, and
alongside bulkheads, branching mazes of circulating air.
Thrumming fan stations run constantly to draw in
exterior air, circulate it between decks, and force it
through stained purity filters. The filters at least
somewhat curtail the omnipresent promethium fumes,
stench of poor districts, and alchemical pollutants that
flow from hive manufactories—but only somewhat. The
servants of noble and guilder houses maintain further
layers of filtration engines and scent-devices in order to
keep the halls of their masters pure, and even these
measures are not always successful in the brief summers
17
when a warm, terrible miasma rises from low decks and
roadways.
Besides air, the ventilation channels serve as a
path heat in winter: as the rains turn to snow, plasma
torches and electro-element grills burn white-hot within
the largest fan stations in the hive depths. This is rarely
enough to render the halls and hab-warrens comfortable,
however. Nobles and guilders warm their estates with
promethium-torches, electro-ovens, and other heating
devices—a luxury that many commoners can also afford
for their smaller hab-spaces. But when snow lies crusted
many spans deep atop the outer-walls and a profound
chill seeps through the hive-metals, the poor and the
outcast have little recourse but to gather in unruly
crowds at the vent-ducts, swaddled in rags and layered
cloaks, to seek what little warmth is provided.
Provision of Power
Hive gates and other large moving structures such as
drawbridges and pumps typically employ oil-hydraulic
machinery, massive pistons and wheel-locks sheathed by
hive-metal guards. Power for these imposing engines, as
well as for the vast lumens that light some decks,
ventilation fans, manufactory machine-lines, and more is
provided by plasma generators sealed deep within the
hive core. These generators, hidden within Silencean
enclaves, serve more than just the hives: raised conduits
and lines of skeletal transmission towers carry much of
their output far beyond the outer-walls. Outlying
manufactories, mines, and hab-regions all depend upon
the nearest hive foundation in this way. Despite this
great breadth of the power networks that extend from
hive core generators, shielded power conduits within the
hives themselves only lead to the largest interior
structures: fanes, cathedrals, fortress estates, guild
manufactories, and installations of the Imperial Adepta.
At the outskirts of these privileged regions there are
power-wells and conduit-taps, where servants and
commoners crowd each morning to fill the charge packs
that power lumens, element-heaters, and other lesser
tech-devices. Power is for the privileged, and the
Machine Cult of Brythan is just as reluctant to provide
for the unfettered use of plasma generators as it is for all
other technologies.
Wastes and Waters
Waste and water flow through the hives side by side
within gargantuan pipes and echoing, vaulted pump
stations, to and from reprocessing vats in the hive-core
Silencean enclaves, walled off and watched over by
tech-priests. The churning of powerful pump
machineries can be felt through the hive-metal support
pillars on lower decks, as somewhere below arcane
mechanisms separate and purge the worst of the waste,
sending it into buried, poisoned rivers or corroded
pipelines that lead to the grey, polluted seas. Reclaimed
and purified waters are pumped upward through
branching channels to fill sealed cistern-lakes higher in
the hive foundation structure.
From the cistern-lakes water flows directly to
the largest structures of a hive, where lesser arrays of
internal piping and pressure tanks direct it as
needed—taps and water-rooms are the sign of nobility
or guilder wealth. Elsewhere, few structures are
provided with any easy way to tap the flow from the
cistern-lakes. Most commoners draw their water as they
draw their power, from meeting square pipe-wells, from
fonts projecting from outer-walls and support pillars, or
from tanker transports crews when they pause for a
while at hab-warren edges. Nonetheless, shared bath
houses and small, ad-hoc piping networks are
commonplace outside the poorest districts, served by
their own crude cisterns and pumps, corroding and
leaking where maintenance is lax.
Sewer vents are also communal for the
commoner masses, but webs of piping and pump-
engines exist in wealthier professional districts so as to
at least allow dwellings to boast water-closets in the
same style as those of noble estates. For most
commoners, however, wastes must be carried each day
in bedpans and seal-buckets from hab to gaping sewer
pit. A pervasive industry of waste portage exists
amongst the poor to serve this need, and these near-
outcasts walk the alley-tunnels of the hives each
morning to cry for night-soil to fill their noisome sacks
and chugging promethium-engine carts. In the darkened
poverty districts where they dwell, there are as many
alleys turned to open sewers as there are waste-vents,
however, and filth crusts every surface.
Blessings of the Machine Cult
Brythan is technology-poor in comparison to more
populous hiveworlds of the Yeuros cluster. While the
tech-priests of Brythan maintain at least a few ancient
examples of almost every Imperial technology within
their hive-core enclaves, the vast majority of those
devices are rarely if ever used in earnest—few outside
the Machine Cult even know of their existence.
Manufactories operating under the guidance
18
of Silencean tech-magi produce only lesser tech-patterns
for the masses and their Lords, such as promethium
engines, electro-heaters, charge-packs, and stubguns.
More potent tech-devices nonetheless circulate upon
Brythan, infrequently and in small numbers, brought
across the voids from by chartered guild-fleets, and often
accompanied by tech-adepts pledged to support these
unusual devices. The tech-magi of Brythan
disapprove—and are notoriously reluctant to indulge
even the most powerful noble houses with compacts of
support for tech-devices from other worlds—but do not
interfere in guild trade. Thus most Lords and influential
guilders possess a few curios, weapons, and other
esoteric tech-devices that were not forged upon Brythan.
Wargear is favoured: potent devices such as
powerblades, powered armour, and plasmaguns are
considered house treasures and handed down across
generations.
Vehicles and Vessels
People and goods most often travel by promethium
engine ground transport—the dominant tech-patterns are
loud, heavy vehicles with six or more wheels and hard-
shelled cargo containments. Fleets of these transports are
owned by guilds and Lords, running under arcane and
often hereditary compacts of support struck with the
Machine Cult. Metalled and raised ceracrete roadways
link the spirebases and fortress structures with outlying
regions, and cut through districts within the larger hive
foundations, crowded with vehicle caravans. There is
space for walking travellers beside the roadways, but
few are seen outside the hives and hab-sprawls: only the
occasional hardy pilgrim bands, starving outlaws, and
farm-tract poor forced from their habs by ill luck or
harsh treatment.
Upon the seas, corrosion-streaked barges and
stinking fish-processor vessels churn slowly between
coastal hivewalls, each home to its own insular
community, and almost a town in and of itself. Despite
the size of the sea-barges, land routes still carry the
greater portion of goods for trade and travelling workers,
however. The grey oceans of Brythan are empty save for
the barges and processors: coastal waters long ago
ceased to be a haven for the traditional small sails,
wooden hulls, and fisher boats. The last visible remnants
of the old fleets are rotting ribs and keels left upon
mudflats and in effluent-choked estuaries, shadowed by
manufactory towers and waste-discharge stations.
Aircraft are comparatively rare, and not
produced by any of Brythan's manufactories. The
Anglish Queen holds a few robust, ancient Imperial
Guard flyers, while noble houses and clan lords between
them possess a handful of flyers, ranging from ugly bulk
transports to ornate and gilded pleasure craft. These air-
vessels are maintained largely for prestige rather than
utility, and are put to little meaningful use. More
commonly seen are drogue transports employed by
wealthy guilds for sedate long distance flight and heavy
lifting, although there are still only a few score such
vessels in all Brythan.
Voidships
There are no true Imperial voidships based upon
Brythan: no Battlefleet detachment, no vast defence
vessels, and nor any guild charter-fleets. The landing
fields of Hive Londus and the greater clan-holds of
Callidon and Hybernea are instead served by slow-lift
scows that thunder upward on plasma flames, each
capable of bearing the contents of a dozen warehouses
or a thousand crowded pilgrims into orbit in a single
flight. The scows ferry cargo between Brythan,
Hybernea, and the meagre, skeletal orbital docks that
service trade vessels arrived from distant Yeuros worlds.
A handful of the largest orbital lifters are crudely refitted
as war-vessels, set with paired macrocannon and thick
hive-metal plating in place of holds. These are owned by
disparate noble houses and clan Lords, potent signs of
status and wealth that are rarely sent forth to fight in
earnest—but which have nonetheless served well
enough in Brythan's wars. Even heavily armoured scows
are small, fragile, and ill-equipped in comparison to a
warp-capable frigate, however.
Planetary Defence Installations
Beyond the absence of Battlefleet-scale vessels, Brythan
also lacks the extensive unified planetary defences
characteristic of a greater hiveworld. The orbital
docking structures are sparse and unarmed, but Hive
Londus and the largest spirebase structures in Callidon
are guarded by orbital-reach macrocannon, enormous
weapons sunk deep into shielded pits. There are scores
of these installations, some of which are melted ruins,
lanced by the Nyorde centuries ago and never rebuilt.
Others are simply abandoned, their tech-devices failed
or corroded to uselessness—a consequence of the
history and character of the controlling noble house or
clan. Nonetheless, enough defence macrocannon remain
active to threaten lesser voidships with destruction,
should the varied Lords of the domains containing these
19
weapons put their differences aside and act in unison.
Arms and Armour
The manufactories of Brythan turn out simple, robust
wargear such as stubbers, shotguns, a range of
promethium flamers, fragmentation grenades, and light
flak armour. Light armoured vehicles, cannon, and
standard template tanks are also constructed, though not
in the numbers appropriate to the size of Brythanic
armies: battles are slow and bloody, decided as much by
men on foot as by weight of cannon or speed of mounted
deployment.
The bulk of an army marching to earnest war is
made up of militia, conscripted from the commoner
masses for the duration of hostilities and released
thereafter. As many of the able-bodied as can be found
within an Anglish domain are called by marshals to the
practice squares every tenth day—and later mustered to
fight in the Lord's wars or march to suppress riot and
rebellion. In some domains the practice is proud and
crowded, in others reluctant and poor—but regardless,
militia are typically ill-led and poorly equipped in
comparison to professional soldiers, trained to use little
more than breach-load rifles and shotguns. When militia
must travel far to battle, they ride packed into the same
pattern of transport that carries meat from the beast pens,
given little or no protection.
Effective wargear, such as automatic stubbers,
body armour, heavy cannon, and armoured vehicles, are
restricted to the standing militant forces maintained by
the nobility: household guards in peace and heart of a
larger army in war. A Lord's estate-guard will typically
include a few tanks and scout amour alongside a larger
number of Chimera-pattern transports. Large
cannon—murder-tanks and artillery—are towed behind
promethium engine tenders or crudely mounted on
standard template tank hulls. More potent Imperial
weaponry exists, brought across the voids by guild
traders, but only the trusted elite bear such rare wargear.
A Lord's close-guard might be equipped with a score of
hellguns, carapace armour, and a scattering of bolter,
rocket, and melta weapons, for example, while the Lord
himself goes to war in powered armour embossed with
house heraldry, bearing a scarred powerblade from the
forges of Gahul, wielded by his father and father's father
before him.
Beyond the nobility, the wealthiest guilds
maintain guard forces that approach the size of a Lord's
standing army, although these militants are typically
scattered throughout mercantile holdings in many
different regions rather than being centrally barracked.
Some are armed as poorly militia, whilst others are
given heraldry, uniforms, and more sophisticated
weaponry—but this depends on the guilder's influence
and noble indulgence. A Lord typically only permits the
privilege of raising a personal guard in his domain in
return for a pledge of military support in times of war
and tithes or favours in times of peace.
The Adeptus Arbites barracked in Hive Londus
possess extensive armouries of light wargear, a equal
mix of ancient tech-patterns from the age of Rhame and
weapons manufactured upon Brythan. Enforcers are
typically equipped with Rhamean-pattern carapace
armour and Brythanic shotguns, but can muster a
smaller number of heavier man-portable weapons if
needed. The barracks in Hive Londus support more
armoured vehicles than are found in any one Lord's
forces, both tanks and Chimera-pattern transports, and
all Arbites deployments within the hive are fully
mechanized—more than enough to intimidate even the
most bloody-minded mobs.
Cogitators and Data Vaults
Cogitation devices of all varieties are rare on Brythan,
even in the hives. The lesser cogitators and data vaults
commonplace on other Yeuros hiveworlds, heavy
devices slaved to key-slates and flickering pict screens,
are little seen beyond Machine Cult enclaves and the oft-
neglected Administratum vaults set deep within Hive
Londus. But there, hidden away, are rank upon rank of
cogitation cells suited for scribe-labour, as well as huge
data looms capable of intricate psalm-algorithms, such
as ciphering and sifting tasks. Elsewhere, however,
cogitators are conspicuous by their absence; a few
battle-cogitators and savant's data vaults are held by
sophisticated guild elders and Lords, but rarely used
well. Orbital scows and a few arcane tech-installations
such as the planetary defense cannons and massive psy-
damper generators of the Astropathic Enclave are guided
by dedicated, slaved cogitators, but these are exceptions
to the general rule: vehicles, devices, and installations,
ranging from sea-barges to electo-heaters to hive-gates
are controlled manually, or through simple mechanical
linkages.
Lexical Tools
The common scribes of Brythan have little or no access
to sophisticated Imperial lexmachinery, such as auto-
quills, memory augmetics, and librarium servitors. They
20
work with tools that are little more advanced than those
of their ancestors: parchment, ink, and rattling type-
machinery that presses heated sigil-blocks upon sheets
of silversheaf. The educated Lord's private librarium is
thus a mix of folios copied and illuminated by hand,
type-printed and metal-bound silversheaf manuscripts,
and a few rare and prized dataslates.
Servitors
Upon Brythan, the dominant Silencean scriptures declare
that a labour servitor exists in a state of grace, closer to
the Omnissiah's Will than any mere man.
Transformation into a servitor is the rightful and fitting
reward for a long life dedicated to sacred duties.
Servitors work alongside red-robed Silenceans in the
hives, and many more toil hidden within Machine Cult
manufactories and mines, but all were once tech-adepts.
To the Silencean eye, a servitor is a machine shrine in
and of itself, honouring both the Omnissiah and the aged
tech-adept whose flesh and augmetics it incorporates,
and thus any ownership of servitors beyond the Machine
Cult is unthinkable and impermissible.
Augmetics
Machine augmentation of the body and mind are rare
beyond the ranks of the Machine Cult, only provided by
monkish Silencean tech-priests under exceptional
circumstances. A few Lords, High Ecclesiarchs and
other powerful figures bear augmetics to evade the
consequences of crippling injury, but even these signs of
favour are given reluctantly.
Communication
Portable vox devices are constructed in Brythan's
manufactories, but vox communication itself is poor and
fragmented: the hidden installations and Machine Cult
mysteries that allow for distant communication are either
ill-kept or deliberately limited. Few commoners are
granted the opportunity to use a vox device for its
intended purpose, and few nobles would stoop to
perform a task clearly fit for servants. Thus most devices
are stored, forgotten and dust-covered, and most vox-
rooms were long ago left to corrosion and darkness. The
few forms of vox device that function well are only
usable within a particular hive spirebase, or only able to
communicate with other devices of the same issuance.
These include Adeptus Arbites vox-beads, heavy
voxcaster packs used by the trusted elite of a Lord's
household guard, and the vox-augmetics of tech-adepts
toiling in the darkness of hive foundation vent networks.
Other devices exist, and some can even be found in the
hive markets, but they typically hear only static and
unidentified fragments of speech at best.
Both the Machine Cult and Ministorum
maintain potent voxcaster emplacements within Hive
Londus and other important hive foundations, but the
control seals are only broken to send messages of great
import, or in times of war and uprising. These
voxcasters are capable of exchanging pict sequences and
voice missives across the breadth of Brythan and
Hybernea, but only between emplacements. Lesser
shrines and outlying regions must make do with
messengers and delay in the relay of vital information.
Thus despite prevalent vox-tech, most
communications are delivered by means of parchment
missives and trusted messengers. Upon the war-fields,
runners and signal-banners are much used, while vox-
traffic is restricted to a Lord's elite and little trusted for
strategy in any case. For the masses, news of war and
current events travels alongside rumours and tales,
carried between regions by pilgrims and transport crews,
spreading rapidly through each new hive foundation by
word of mouth. All that is heard upon the hive-ways and
in the taverns is unreliable, changing from day to day,
but the mob is still easily roused by exciting falsehoods.
In contrast, proclamations issued by Lords and High
Ecclesiarchs are type-printed upon silversheaf, posted
upon every wall, and their contents declaimed in public
spaces by a legion of criers and paid demagogues.
Auspex
Auspex devices beyond the Machine Cult are
rudimentary at best, while Silencean tech-adepts make
little use of the more potent auspex tech-patterns within
their enclaves. Hand-held auspex devices are extremely
rare, and most reside within the vaults of noble
houses—treasures rather than tools. Nonetheless, crude
auspex installations and control rooms are built into
orbital scows and seagoing barges, allowing for a vision
of vessels and terrain at great distances. Ground vehicle
patterns lack such capabilities, however, and battles
upon Brythan are shaped by lines of sight: in place of
auspex, Lords and commanders learn to make good use
of scouts and spies.
Psykana Devices
Very few devices capable of detecting or interfering
21
with the psyker curse exist upon Brythan, and most
consist of large and strange machine-halls, served by
arrays of generators. These installations include the
heavy psy-dampers that shield the Imperial Governor's
palace—where witches are brought to be
imprisoned—and the Astropathic Enclave of Hive
Londus. The psy-dampers are humming, crackling
mysteries of the Machine Cult, arcane engines
maintained across long centuries of silence and tradition,
barely understood even by their Silencean keepers.
Medicine
The medicae of Brythan are an uneven mix of faith-
healers, mercenary surgeons, travelling bands of quick-
tongued rogues, and esteemed scholars of Rhamean
Physik—some pretending to more than one of these
roles, and each class divided into many rival guilds and
brotherhoods. The poor must rely upon prayer to the
God-Emperor, folk-remedies, and dubious tinctures
purchased in the hive foundation markets. The wealthy,
in contrast, are attended by respectful scholars who
debate one another on the finer interpretations of the
folios of their trade: an array of treatises handed down
from ancient Rhame and other, farther worlds, written in
the dim Imperial past, and translated and mistranslated
many times over in the millennia since. The most
revered medicae have gained the rare favour of
Silencean tech-priests and so possess effective medicines
and medical devices, including even limited juvenat
treatments, but only the most powerful can command
their attention. Thus whilst the poor die young, suffering
the progressive burden of alchemical pollutions, fluxes,
and poxes, the Kings and Queens of Brythan can live for
near two centuries—if not cut down by war or treachery.
Despite these disparities, surgeons competent in
matters of cleaning wounds, setting bones, and quick
amputations can be found in even the poorest districts.
Equally, although widespread, most lesser agues are
survivable for an adult, even one suffering the added
burden of toxic potions mixed by rogues dressed as
medicae. All too many unfortunates are left ravaged and
crippled by disease, however: amidst the stench of
poverty districts are the eye-scarred blind, the mad, the
cancerous, and the withered. Far worse is the fate of
those who fall prey to plague: little can be done for the
commoner masses save prayer and quarantine when a
district is touched by wasting sickness or the black
cough. Times of fast-spreading plague arise every few
decades, attended by great unrest, and are terrifying for
commoner and noble alike.
 Like plague, madness is a dread fear, for
medicae are seemingly helpless in the face of it.
Rhamean Physik has little to say on the subject of
insanity, and faith-healers much, but there is little real
hope for the mad or those who must tend to them.
Madness is thought to be a curse as often as not, the
God-Emperor's hand striking down the wicked—and in
consequence the broken-minded are treated harshly by
the commoner masses. To be mad is to be cast out into
the snows to die in the highlands, or banished to the
filth-strewn ways of the poverty districts in Anglish
domains, or at best confined behind locked doors.
Respected elders who lose their minds to dementia are
sealed in small rooms, hidden away in shame or
judgement, and for an outsider to speak of their plight
openly is a great breach of manners and decency.

22
 Brythanic Life and Lore
As for all of the populous Yeuros worlds, Brythan is a
unique tapestry of lives, its history intricate and
distinctive. Commoners and nobles alike are suspicious
of outsiders, first evaluating strangers by their declared
allegiances to Lords and brotherhoods, and only later, if
at all, by individual worth. Faith and the hierarchy of the
Ministorum are of great importance to the Brythanic
peoples, and the schism with the Rhamean Temple is
recent enough in the mind of the masses for all void-
traffic to be thought potentially tainted by Rhamean
interests. But is still possible for new arrivals at the
landing fields of Hive Londus to find respect and
acceptance enough to learn of Brythan: guilders seek
trade opportunities, void-guilders are expected to send
emissaries to the High Ecclesiarch in his role as Imperial
Governor, and commoners are just as intrigued by the
exotic as they are suspicious. A handful of days is
enough to obtain a passable, superficial grasp of
Brythanic culture and history, and most of the subtle and
the taboo will reveal itself in the course of a season.
Common Lore
The hive masses of Brythan have little formal education
beyond the sermons delivered to gathered children on
feast days, and are apprenticed to a life of trade or toil at
a young age. There exist great schools and monastic
libraries of sweeping size in the great hive foundations,
but these institutions issue forth a pittance of priests,
scribes, scholars, and doctors of physik in comparison to
the vast size of the populace. Most commoners are
illiterate, or able to recognize only the runes and terms
encountered in the course of their labours. They rarely
travel from the habs and manufactories of their Lord's
domain: only in times of great upheaval do the masses
migrate in large numbers. Yet the telling of tales is
second nature to the Brythanic peoples: there is a rich
common lore expressed in popular plays, in stories
passed down across generations, in myth and
superstition, and in the embellished rumours of recent
events that circulate amongst taverns and hive markets.
Commoners know, in outline at least, the great
events of history upon Brythan, and that Brythan is but a
small part of a boundless tapestry of worlds created by
the God-Emperor. They have a surprisingly detailed
knowledge of the lineage of the local Lord, his
character, his friends and foes, and the meaning of his
23
heraldry. They know well the local priests, can recount
the recent history of the Brythanic Ministorum, and
name the differences between Church of Brythan and
Destinist factions. The more prominent teachings of
scripture are well known, oft-repeated in the sermons of
preachers, and celebrated upon holy days.
Callidonean commoners can name the greater
clans, their noted enmities, and, in some detail, the
supposed roots of the oldest feuds. Anglish commoners
can list High Ecclesiarchs past and present, notorious
members of the Queen's Court, and the Imperial saints
most honoured by the Church of Brythan. Most count
Willard of the Spear as a saint who yet lives and
breathes to grant the God-Emperor's blessings upon the
Queen's Court.
Prophecy is accepted and embraced by the
masses as a part of the faith of Brythan. Destinist priests
teach that Ministorium-sanctioned prophecy is a form of
holy revelation—but that the false prophecies of witches
must be rejected and reviled. Tales told by Callidonean
clansmen and in the Anglish border domains celebrate
the prophecies of saints and ecclesiarchs of past
centuries, even while they condemn outcast and long-
dead Lords who sought out the visions of mutants and
warlocks.
The hive masses are superstitious in all matters,
believing whole-heartedly in the existence of fate-curses,
ghosts, and other witchcraft, in charms, omens, and luck
turned good or bad for little reason. These are fearsome
evils that only rightful prayer can ward, and even that is
no defence for those who have fallen from the God-
Emperor's graces. The warp, xenos breeds, and voids far
distant beyond Brythan are mysteries little different from
the abandoned ruin-wastes that are popularly supposed
haunted—they are ill things to be spoken of in whispers,
and within which only evils can be can found.
The Spoken Tongue
The coarse Low Gothic of Brythan is rife with ancient
word-forms and grammars, a descendant of both Ald
Brythanic and the formal Low Gothic of ancient
Rhamean legions. Distant echoes of High Gothic can be
seen in both of these sources, much diluted.
"Hold ye and listen well, for I were told aforehence by
our Lord's given man as what I be telling now.
O'er all yon way, where be spires and walls, was naught
but beasts and green. A long ways and gone, it be, but
'twere as I say. Ye and ye, fathers of ye fathers were
abroad thence, naked as babes and fierce as all
Callidon. 'Twere a time o' spears and blood, afore the
preachers came o'er the voids to teach."
Differences between the dialects of Callidon, Hybernea,
and Anglish domains are very noticeable, even to
outsiders. Ald Brythanic words and forms of speech are
used more often by Callidoneans and Hyberneans, and
the speech of more isolated clans is at times near-
incomprehensible to the Anglish. Accents and dialects
also vary in characteristic ways between hive
foundations, clans, and hab-towns; within Hive Londus
even the inhabitants of different decks and noble
domains can be distinguished by their habits of speech.
Most Brythanic commoners are able to quickly guess at
a traveller's place of origin from his words alone, or
mark him as an outsider from across the voids.
Dress and Appearance
Brythanic gene-lineages are pale, and the high-born
enhance that appearance through powder-cosmetics and
dyes. The Anglish are most often dark-haired and dark
eyed, whilst Callidoneans and Hyberneans tend to red
hair. Skinbrands and pattern-ink in blue and black are
common amongst the clans of the cold mountain habs
and the hive foundations of the moon, but considered
barbaric by the Anglish—as are the full, wild beards and
braided hair worn by Callidonean men. The Anglish
nobility and guilder class cut their hair close, after the
timeless fashion of Rhamean statuary, styles modelled
upon the tonsures of monks and saints, or the carefully
tousled hair of Imperial heroes of the distant past.
The Anglish hive poor also crop their hair, but
to sell for a few tokens to roving agents of the recycling
processors and weaveries. Old justice-brands and marks
of banishment upon the face and neck are not
uncommon in the worst poverty districts. Many of the
poor cannot maintain water-rights and communal
conduits sufficient to bathe regularly, and the stench of
their hive decks is a horror in and of itself. Disease is
commonplace: disfiguring skin infections and
inflammations, lungs damaged from decades of
breathing promethium fumes, and the varied poxes and
fluxes that rage in warmer seasons. By comparison the
poorest of Bythan fare better in Callidon and Hybernea,
where clan Lords and merchant guilders are measured in
their generosity by the degree to which they give alms
24
and comfort to the wretched.
Fashions are very different for the two genders.
Men favour close-cut garb that leaves the arms and legs
free to move, such as leggings and belted tabards, whilst
all but the poorest of women cover a bodice or under-
shift in flowing layers of dress cloth, or baroquely
structured and voluminous garments that include many
varieties of skirt, gown, dress, and cloak. Clothing for
the masses is milled, pressed, and sewn from flax-weave
and leather—produced amidst mud, slaughterhouse
blood, tanning lakes, and churning machinery upon vast
farm-manufactories beyond the hives. Artificial fabrics
from other Imperial worlds are comparatively rare, and
are used for wargear rather than in the clothier mills.
Commoners hand down their plain, resilient clothing:
simple leggings; long overshirts; boots and cloth
overshoes; waist-ties and thick belts; heavy cloaks;
bodices and dresses. Items are patched and reused until
the very day they fall apart.
The nobility and the wealthy also wear garb
fashioned of flax and leather, but of a quality far superior
to that produced by the massed mills and leather-works.
Lords and guilders commission baroque, colourful, and
fine-spun raiment, and appoint clothiers to their retinues
in order to follow ever-changing fashions: each garment
must be designed and sewn to order by a master
craftsman, approved, and carefully considered as to its
appropriate use. The wardrobes of the high-born are
extensive, designed to illustrate their heraldry and
power: it is unthinkable for a noble of means to appear
in the same garment twice in a season, or worse, wear
clothes originally fashioned for another.
A Lord's retainers, from soldiers and bodyguards
to bailiffs and table-servants, prominently bear the
House crest and colours. Designs are painted upon
armour, dyed upon tabards and overshirts, sewn onto
leather, inked upon pennon-scrolls, or outlined in metal
filigree—and each of these signifies something of the
rank and duties of the retainer. In any gathering of Lords
it is immediately obvious to which House each servant
and guard is pledged.
Other figures in Brithanic society are equally
distinct: sages, savants, and travelling confessors wear
heavy robes dyed in the distinct colours of their
profession. Doctors of Rhamean Physik wear black
gowns and occasionally a formal mask. Many other
respected professions are marked by traditional forms of
dress, their use jealously guarded by guilds and
brotherhoods. Little mercy is shown to rogues who dress
above their station, or adopt the clothing of the other
gender, or who pretend to a profession or a Lord's
service. A man is valued first and foremost by the Lord
or leader to whom he pledges, and his garb marks that
pledge: to dress falsely in Brythan's hives is to broadcast
a vile lie, and is apt to cause far greater anger than
merely speaking falsely. Nonetheless, tales and popular
plays are replete with spies, deceptions, and the use of
forbidden clothing—it is a taboo that attracts as much
attention and fascination as it does condemnation.
Real jewels are prized and worn by all who can
afford them, in broaches, necklaces, and ostentatious
rings. Filigrees of precious metals are also sign of
wealth and noble status, woven into clothing or the hair;
silver and platinum are Anglish metals whilst the clans
of Callidon and Hybernea favour gold. Skilled jewellers
are rarely without a noble patron, and walk in the circles
of wealth and privilege. Flowers are equally prized
amongst the nobility and guild houses, however: rare
flowers of strange appearance and strong scents are
grown in sealed estate gardens, and grace the hair of
noblewomen in all seasons.
Amongst the masses, there is perhaps an even
greater desire for ornamentation. Commoner smiths and
apprentices, who will never so much as glimpse the
treasures worn by the Lords of Brythan, fashion intricate
mock jewellery of metal shards laced around glass and
rock crystal, and trade their wares in the hive markets. In
warm seasons, however, the prized glass jewels and
buffed brass worn by women throughout the Anglish
domains give way to twists of white weed-flowers from
the farm tracts, brought to the hives by the pressed
bale—caravans of promethium transports packed with
little else.
Heraldry
Heraldry makes visible the ties of fealty that bind
Brythanic society. Every Lord and lineage of wealth
possesses a distinct crest and coat of arms, rendered in
precise colours. A Lord's heraldry marks estate walls,
flies upon banners, decorates amour and the uniforms of
retainers—it marks the boundaries of the Lord's domain
and all who pledge to the Lord's service. The lore of
heraldry is as baroque as the crests; a savant of noble
tradition might spend a lifetime in learning and not
encompass even a majority of his craft. Each distinct
flourish, icon, and choice of colour upon a crest has
meaning, often subtle and tied to obscure historical
events in a Lord's lineage. The horned beasts of Ald
Brythan, fortifications, and flowers are common
emblems in the heraldry of Anglish Lords. In Callidon
and Hybernea, emblems typically include abstract
25
designs, complex knots, jewels, and spires, and the
markings of the clan are given a weight equal to a
noble's heraldry: lineage is ever lineage within the clan,
it does not stand alone.
Observance of the Imperial Creed
The formal year-calend of Brythan is maintained by the
Ecclesiarchy. It is replete with feasts, Saint's days and
minor observances on which toil is suspended and the
masses throng the shrines and cathedrals to receive the
God-Emperor's blessings. No part of Brythanic society is
exempt from frequent observance of the Imperial Creed,
and suspicion quickly falls upon anyone not seen at
mass, or who otherwise participate poorly in religious
ritual. The populace ever believes that witches, the
cursed, and heretical Rhamists are hidden in plain sight
amongst their numbers.
Even between the many holy days commoners
come forth to pray each seven-day, gathering beneath
pulpits and arrayed in standing pews to watch rituals
that might last for half the day. Preachers chant
teachings of the Imperial Creed in stilted High Gothic,
lay-whisperers deliver their own version of the
traditional sermons in Low Gothic, and acolytes walk
the vaults bearing censers. The high born and noted line
to kneel before the Aquila and be blessed by the
officiating priest. Guilders and professionals discuss
business, and hammer out the details of compacts.
Commoners gossip, barter goods and favours brought
out for the occasion, and even engage in disputes
between factions. Minor sins are confessed and penance
given in closed side-rooms. Seven-day mass is noisy and
disarrayed, even in the professional districts where the
populace dress finely for worship.
In the poorest hive districts, where many shrines
stand empty for lack of appointed ecclesiarchs, and
beyond the hive foundations in the sprawling farm-
tracts, worship is led by a host of travelling preachers.
They journey from ward to ward in order to hold mass in
squares, disused storage vaults, and cleared fields, and
some even risk the ruin-wastes to minister to outlaw
bands. It is a position that attracts the fervent, the fiery,
and the independent—those who cause trouble in the
Ministorum hierarchy, or who lean towards Destinist
teachings, for example.
Nobles, High Ecclesiarchs, and wealthy guilders
attend cathedral masses infrequently, amidst great pomp
and ceremony on feast days—and at other times when it
matters to show themselves to their supporters. Sections
of a cathedral vault are cordoned off for household
retinues and the wealthy seat themselves upon
palanquins raised above the masses. But more usually,
these worthies attend private shrines, or worship in their
own bedchambers in the presence of a confessor
appointed to the household.
Distractions and Pastimes
Nobles, wealthy guilders, and their trusted retainers have
access to sealed park environments within the largest
estates, where they can hunt and idle as though upon an
unspoiled world. Target-shooting with ancient
weaponry, a talent for beast-training, a knowledge of the
great plays and playwrights of past centuries, the ability
to hold theosophical debate, and a mastery of games are
considered signs of culture in such circles—but for
every cultured noble, there is another focused on the
crude machinations of treachery, intrigues of households
and court, minor acts of war, and preparation for battle.
The masses make do with simpler pursuits.
Intoxicating distillates are cheap and universally
available: manufactory workers gather in taverns and
eateries to talk of rumours and drink themselves into
oblivion on a regular basis. The same is true in the farm-
habs, and the scribe districts, and even the cathedral
cells of monks and acolytes. Beyond the taverns, even
the waters drawn from cisterns and pump networks are
usually mixed with some form of ferment for drinking
purposes—to mask the taste of pipe-slime and waste
leakage in the poverty districts, but as a matter of course
elsewhere as well. Commoners are frequently
intoxicated to the point of swaying belligerence, whether
they are working within churning alchemical plants,
amongst the marketplace crowds, or travelling the
roadways.
Plays and players are universally popular:
Callidonean bards and bawdy Anglish playwrights are
celebrated, as are travelling player troupes, rhymers,
singers, and religious orders whose members perform
traditional mummeries on festival days. Brythanic
mummeries are formalized religious plays that depict
historical and scriptural events—their bloody,
tumultuous scenes of ruin, war, and battle are popular
with the masses. Other plays are disorganized tales,
some traditional, some constantly reinvented, that by
turns delve into romance, crude comedy, treachery,
deceit, and tragedy. Taverns are frequently cleared to
form impromptu playhouses, and roving players perform
for coins and crowds upon the broader hive avenues.
Established playhouses are sponsored by noble patrons,
and some in Hive Londus are grand affairs indeed,
26
boasting stages circled by many levels of fenced stands
that barely manage to contain an often intoxicated,
riotous audience. The more educated of nobles and guild
elders gain status from their patronage of popular
playwrights, and the very best of players are even
brought to the Anglish Court to be lauded in person by
the Queen for their works.
Other activities amongst the poor are more
rough and ready. Bands of youths and manufactory
workers in poorer districts regularly gather in alleys and
stair-avenues for games and mock-wars that leave blood
and broken bones in their wake: hunt the horn-beast,
carry-ball, run-the-roadway, and many others. Keeping
score is less important than the rush of participation, and
the larger games are but one step short of a rampaging
mob—especially when the mood of the district is ugly.
Anglish fighting circles are just as violent,
though usually more controlled. Brawls between burly
men—either professional fighters or simply commoner
rivals—are organized by backers ranging from outlaw
bands to wealthy guilders with an interest in wager
profits. The combatants pummel each other bloody
whilst an unruly crowd cheers and growls: many a hive-
way and square has its flooring marked for prize fights
and grudge matches, and the most popular locations
rarely go more than a few days between events. Gouged
eyes and other crippling injuries are commonplace—and
a fight usually continues, hemmed in by the surrounding
mob, until one participant is beaten near to death.
The Unruly Mob
Mobs of the young, the outlawed, and the disaffected
regularly rise up in the hives to rage at the authorities or
battle one another. It takes little to rouse the masses: the
mere rumour of shortages, the perfidy of a Lord's
representatives, witchcraft, or rank injustice are
sufficient to light the fires. For many commoners, the
march of the mob is little different from the brutally
physical games they play on hive roadways. It is a
release for frustrations and a break in the monotony of
toil, welcomed by many, but the raging mob still leaves
dead and broken bodies in the hive-ways—outsiders,
outlaws, rival factions, hated bailiffs, or those suspected
of unorthodoxy. Only the most persistent demagogues
and rabble-rousers are judged and punished for rousing
the mob to destruction and murder. The masses return to
their manufactories and their habs, bloodied, sullen, or
triumphant, to await the next time of unrest.
Lasting or more directed uprisings are less
common and the participants dealt with harshly, but
even great noble households and militant commanders
live in fear of the mob. Armies raised by Lords are never
large enough to control the roused masses in full riot,
and the anger of crowds cannot be reasoned with. In the
long history of Brythan there are many examples of the
high-born chased down to be torn apart or burned alive
in their estates during times of great unrest. Mass
murder and great destruction are inevitable in any
massive uprising, taking place while a Lord's men and
hurriedly raised levies gather in sufficient force to break
the mobs that fill hiveways and squares—but whatever
force is necessary will be used, the leaders later rounded
up and sent to the Queen's Justice, and harsh collective
punishments imposed upon the unruly districts.
The ature of Lords and Appointed
Servants
Lords and appointees to positions of power are expected
to be venal—corrupt to a modest degree, but without
becoming rapacious. A leader of men uses his position
to dip into flows of coinage and favour, establish a
network of patronage, and improve his own position
upon the backs of the commoner masses. Many a trusted
servant is intentionally appointed to a position in which
he can slyly amass wealth, so as to make him a better
prospect for compact-marriage or alliance, and thus a
more valuable bargaining chip for his Lord. Only those
who become too greedy or obstructive are sanctioned for
it, such as when oppressive tithes rouse rebellion, or a
miserly attitude towards maintenance finally leads to the
destruction of valued properties.
Customs of Petition
Many Brythanic customs will be unfamiliar to an
outsider of the Imperial class—and that ignorance can
cause great offense. The most important of these
traditions relate to establishing new relationships, and
are founded upon the need for an emissary to
demonstrate his worthy fealty to a trusted Lord or
organization. It is beyond the bounds of courtesy to
simply approach an individual or organization directly,
and this is true at all levels of Brythanic society that
stand above the teeming poverty districts. There must
be, at the very least, letters of introduction, a meeting
arranged through a mutual contact, and some exchange
of gifts intended to demonstrate trust and means.
Thus it is customary for a new arrival of any
means to present himself to the local nobility and the
representatives of interested organizations. A guilder
27
promethium caravan journeying between domains will
pay respects at each Lord's estate, for example, or at the
very least send trusted emissaries bearing the appropriate
gifts and petition for free travel. A professional coming
to practice his trade would announce himself with florid
letters of respect delivered to the regional high magister
and brotherhood elders. Pilgrim bands visit each
cathedral and greater shrine upon their slow progression,
there signing the way-books and making themselves
known to Ministorum representatives. Manufactory
workers crowding into a tavern at shift end call to the
keeper such that he sees their allegiance and accepts
their presence, and then pass a few coins to call a table
their own.
These same customs apply to petitioners come
before the Lord of their domain, but are conducted in a
ceremonial and codified fashion. There is the attendance
of law-wrights, formal speeches given and returned, an
offer of relinquishment of weapons, a traditional request
to be shielded by the Lord's justice, and a renewed
pledge of fealty. Gifts of worth are required for the
petitioner be taken seriously—as all noble coffers are
bottomless. In turn the Anglish Lords are themselves
subordinates when they come to the Queen's Court, and
play much the same role as petitioners to their own
households.
Outsiders are not exempt from the customs of
greeting and petition; if anything, these traditions are
expected to be upheld even more exactingly, and greater
offense is caused by a failure to follow the correct steps.
Representatives from far Rhame arriving at the landing
fields of Hive Londus will certainly be expected to
engage law-wrights and present themselves to the High
Ecclesiarch and Imperial Governor—and possibly to the
Anglish Court—in order to declare their business and
make their petitions. Failing to do this will arouse
suspicion and anger amongst the powers of Hive
Londus, the degree of which depends upon the exact
circumstances: an Inquisitor arriving with a full legion of
Imperial Guard raised upon Rhame is a far different
matter from a small band of Throne agents disguised as
void-guilders.
Avians, Beasts, Foliage, and Victuals
Between the hives and foundation structures stretch
mountainous barrens, ruin-wastes, raised roadways, strip
mines, and watchtower spires—and league after league
of manufactory-farms, hab-towns, glass-plantations, and
beast pens. Few truly wild beasts and little untouched
foliage remains of what was once wilderness. Sickly
herds of mutated horn-beasts and thin, feral predators
haunt the less poisoned mountain wastes of Callidon,
sheltering in valleys where the last woods stand, the
trees twisted and leaves discoloured. But the vast
majority of the once-proud beasts of Ald Brythan are
now bred relentlessly for their meat and leather in the
beast tracts, penned into cages and stacked into league
after league of stinking avenues, patrolled by beast-
tenders and slaughtermen. The noble horn-beast of
Brythanic heraldry is no more, save for a few pure-gene
animals kept within the sealed parks of noble fortress-
estates. The few remaining breeds of untainted beast and
tree can also be found in these carefully cultivated and
well-guarded enclaves, each a faux-wildland where
Lords and their companions hunt or while away the
hours.
The flocks of migratory avians that once
crowded Brythan's skies have suffered just as greatly as
the horn-beasts and their brethren, hunted almost to
extinction across past centuries. The last now largely
populate breeding pens, fed upon growth-alchemies,
packed into cruelly small enclosures, and conveyed to
the flensing machines in screeching masses. Yet some
wild and draggle-feathered avians still gather around the
outer walls and upper works of hive foundations, out of
reach of the hungry poor. They hop and crawk, feeding
upon waste and the pollution-moss that grows around
alchemical flues. Generations of their droppings crust
the statues and buttresses of the hive exteriors.
The soils of Brythan long ago gave up their
nutrients, or were poisoned by mine waste and hive
effluent, and must be alchemically treated with each
sowing in order for anything of worth to grow—white
weed-flowers are amongst the few breeds to yet thrive
despite the toxins. Manufactory farms turn out breeds of
tasteless fruits gene-altered to survive growth
compounds, but the original lineages of tart berries and
juice-fruits still grow in sealed hive-parks so as to grace
noble dining tables. The same is true of tubers and seed
grasses: the food of the masses is poor fare, tainted and
chem-laced to preserve it against rot, but the nobility
and the wealthy eat well. Pies, bland stews, and thin
gruel for the poverty districts are the common fare, but
Lords eat from long tables laden with the elegant and
unusual creations of master cooks.
Produce shipped to the hive foundations from
the vast farm-tracts ferments poorly, but nonetheless
vast quantities of intoxicant distillates are manufactured
in merchant guild alchemical plants. The poor
industriously produce their own crude intoxicants,
making use of rusted containers hidden away in dark
28
corners of the hives and spoiled food as a mash. The
resulting brews are foul but serve their purpose: to dull
the senses for a while in order to blot out the ugly
realities of a life of hardship and servitude.
The seas are as ravaged by spillage as the lands,
and the remaining eels and spined fish breeds are
harvested rapaciously by floating processor hulks.
Eventually only chem-soaked wastes will exist between
the Brythanic hives, and little will be left of life in the
oceans. Food will come from across the voids or be spun
from corpse starch and vat-motes in recycling
processories overseen by the Adeptus Mechanicus. But
for now the masses feed upon chem-treated meat, fish,
and farm-tract produce.
Institutions of Learning, Libraries, and
Record Vaults
Across the centuries, and under the guidance of
successive High Ecclesiarchs, grand schools of learning
were established in select monasteries of Callidon and
the greatest of Anglish cathedral wards. Caem's Bridge,
built about the core water-conduits of Hive Londus, and
a coastal monastery blessed by Saint Andrius in Callidon
are the oldest and best known. Their ancient libraries are
rich with illuminated works of the Imperial creed,
transcriptions of renowned plays, chronicles of
Brythanic history, and other tomes of import.
Theosophists, scribe-monks, savants, logicians, scholars
of Rhamean Physik, law-wrights, and apprentices of
many more esoteric professions are educated within
these halls—each grand school is an important hub in
the Brythanic network of professional brotherhoods and
guilds.
The schools are far from being enclaves of quiet
and learned speech, however. Students, scribes, and
monks are just as unruly and intoxicated as the common
masses, given to riot, dissent, and outright battles against
manufactory mobs. Many a demagogue to cry out
against harsh tithes and noble injustice had his origin
amongst the student hordes. The grand schools are
unpopular with the Lords of surrounding domains for
these and other similar reasons, but their charters are
protected, declared inviolate by the Ministorum. Every
few years the worst of troublemakers are sent to the
Lord's justice as an example, and little more is done.
Few formal institutions of tutelage exist upon
Brythan beyond the grand schools and a scattering of
fortress priories that might one day join their ranks. The
commoner masses apprentice young to learn a trade and
little else, whilst noble scions are educated in scripts,
theosophy, and the finer arts by priests and aged savants
pledged to the Lord's household. The student hordes and
ranked monks of the grand schools are numerous, but
account for only a tiny fraction of the greater
populace—and their learning and culture insular as a
consequence.
But this is not to say that the grand schools hold
the only record vaults or libraries in the Brythanic hives.
Numericists and seneschals pledged to noble houses
meticulously record transactions and transportation, and
the archives of past years and generations are consigned
to warehouses of mouldering parchment. Lords maintain
modest collections of religious tomes and works of art,
gathered over the generations. The Ministorum holds
sway over vast tithe-vaults, filled with the decaying
records of centuries, and watched over by aged scribes.
Further, the Administratum and Adeptus Mechanicus,
both of which are isolated clades upon Brythan, have
diligently recorded noteworthy events, omens, battles,
and noble lineages since the age of Rhame. Their
historical records, stored in data vaults and cogitator
cores, are in some senses far more complete and
organized than those of the grand schools, but they lack
context. These archives are hidden away in the depths of
Hive Londus and Machine Cult enclaves elsewhere upon
Brythan, largely unknown to scholars.
Coinage and Tithes
The coinage of Brythan is made up of measured weights
of precious metals, issued at the behest of Lords and
monarchs. The most common Anglish coins are of silver
alloy minted during the long rule of House Teuda,
stamped with beast horns, Aquila, and the profile of a
Teuda King. In Callidon, each clan Lord places his own
stamp upon the coinage, melting down all he can gather
to recast it in a new form. The use of jewellery such as
torcs and broaches as currency is commonplace in some
clans, as coin-ingots are seen as an Anglish imposition.
The exchange of great wealth, such as takes place
between guilds and Lords, is largely accomplished by
trade in land-rights or carefully appraised gems. Little
use is made of promissory notes or venture-shares,
common upon other populous Yeuros worlds, and these
concepts are viewed with some suspicion.
Over the generations many a Lord has
adulterated coinage with base metals so as to increase
his own wealth at the expense of guilders and
commoners—the tales call all such nobles black of
heart, foul and dishonest, and the mere rumour of bad
coin is more than enough to rouse the mob, or even lead
29
to earnest uprising and war between noble domains.
Tithes assessed by Lords over and above that claimed by
the Ministorum and greater Imperium are also a common
cause for unrest, ruinous as they are in many Anglish
domains. A commoner is bowed beneath his Lord's
demands, and between that and the Imperial tithe can
keep little for his own purse. Lesser guilders and
travelling merchants fare just as poorly, but to protest is
to be hunted by the sheriff's men, or beaten by a bailiff
and then dragged before a magister to be further fined.
Nonetheless, it is rare for a season to pass
without tithe-riots taking place somewhere upon
Brythan. Rabble rousers of the hive depths or outlaws
come to the manufactory-farms seize upon the fear of
bad coins and harsh tithes to raise up the mob, assault
the Lord's men, and set fire to noble properties. These
demagogues and their closest supporters can roil a
domain for seasons or even years, but they are inevitably
murdered by the Lord's men in the end—or by the
machineries of the Queen's justice should they raise too
great a following.
Witches and Witchfinders
Sanctioned psykers beyond the Adeptus Astra
Telepathica are rare indeed, as no sanctioning occurs
upon Brythan. Such "chained witches" are found only in
the households of the greatest Lords, brought into
slavery from across the voids for a ruinous price, and
constantly watched lest they taint the faithful. In the
Anglish Queen's court, for example, a maddened psyker
is kept almost as a beast within a null-cage as a curio and
demonstration of wealth. Another, more sane, is set to
guard the Queen's household against the witchcraft and
fate-curses that are imagined to writhe through the air
when evil is abroad.
Minor psykers arise amongst the hive masses
constantly; commoners are taught by their priests to fear
the signs of the witch, the cursed, and the mutant, for
they are beyond the God-Emperor's blessing.
Accusations of witchery are often made against outcasts
and the unloved—or as a part of other feuds. Church of
Brythan and Destinist ecclesiarchs employ witchfinders
to capture the accused and witch-magisters to issue
judgement. Witchfinders are often mercenary militants,
paid a bounty for each accused brought before the
Ministorum, while witch-magisters are appointed from
amongst the elders f the ecclesiarchy. As is true of the
Lord's justice, the guilt of a witch is presumed by
acclaim and it is the responsibility of interested parties
bring testimony to sway a witch-magister one way or
another. If the accused has few supporters, as is often
the case, then a judgement of guilt is a foregone
conclusion.
Witchfinders and witch-magisters are celebrated
local figures in some regions and hated oppressors in
others. Some are corrupt to the core, using their position
to harvest bribes and favours, whilst others are forthright
and holy. Depending on a witch-magister's temperament
and the nature of accusations, an accused witch may be
burned upon the pyre or sent to the stronghold of the
High Ecclesiarch in Hive Londus to await the Imperial
tithe. Most of those imprisoned are not in fact psykers,
and their fate is to be rejected by the Black Ships, left to
rot and die in dark prison depths. Nonetheless, few real
nascent psykers manage to slip through the nets of
superstition, accusation, and Ministorum agents.
Mutation
Mutation is present amongst the poor, the outcast, and
the lowers of indentured workers in the beast pens
beyond the hives, but is not as commonplace as upon
other Yeuros hive worlds. In Callidon and Hybernea,
mutants are often cast out into the snows at birth, and in
Anglish lands a mutant is at best doomed to a life of
hardship and pain. Many witchfinders and commoners
see little difference between the mutant and the
witch—corruption without is taken as evidence of
corruption within.
War
By the standards of the Imperial Guard, war is fought
poorly upon Brythan. Lords and their scions lead and
strategize, but few are the equal of a formally trained
commander. A Lord's forces raised for any significant
campaign are largely conscripted levies and poor quality
hive militia; only the core vanguard and the Lord's
close-guard are professional, well-equipped soldiers.
This, combined with the comparative lack of vox and
auspex devices, makes an unruly disaster of any battle
fought through close-packed hive structures. Opposing
armies typically march and counter-march through hive
levels and outskirts, scout companies and mechanized
outriders skirmishing whilst noble commanders vie with
one another to force an engagement upon a favourable
battlefield.
A Lord's objectives in war are typically to lay
waste and loot the wealth of an opponent's domain, or to
remove the best troops of his opponent. In achieving
either of these ends he proves the opposing household
30
weak, and this is often the prelude to forcing a treaty,
tribute, and the transfer of land-rights. Wars are often
decided by the acts of a Lord's vanguard—or their
weakness. Militia and levies forced to battle are
worthless alone, and will melt away when sent
unsupported against trained soldiers or light armour.
They look to their Lord and his men for leadership and
morale, and their true role is to die in assaults beneath
the cannon, pin the foe to a position by holding
structures, and buy time for a Lord's more capable
soldiers to strike hard where needed.
By preference, battles are fought where noble
leaders can view large sections of the field from a
commanding position, where massed and uncertain
levies will not become disarrayed amidst a maze of
structures, and where cannon can fire directly in support
of assaulting soldiers. Ceracrete roadways, spires on the
hive outskirts, Callidonean vales, and ruin-wastes are all
preferable to a crowded hive-deck and its layered
structures. But even these battles are fought at stubgun
ranges, dominated by deafening cannonfire: explosions
and fyceline smoke; the rush of often terrified and ill-
equipped levies; clouds of ceracrete dust; the abrupt
move of armour from one ambush point to the next.
Heavy cannon open fire point blank into opposing
formations and reduce enemy-held structures to bloody
hive-metal shards. The Lord's trusted soldiers
manoeuvre to find the killing blow whilst militia die all
around them, sacrificed to hold the battlefield steady as
the Lord commands. The carnage is great, and made
greater in the rout of a broken army: commoner levies
and militia are often slain mercilessly if they cannot
escape the chaos of a lost battle. Only nobles and
noteworthy retainers are taken captive—for ransom or
leverage in later negotiations.
Brutal as it is, war between Lords is rarely
fought to the bitter end. Destructive raids and pitched
battles are demonstrations of power, used to force
concession, tribute, or binding compacts from a rival.
The greatest of Brythanic wars, where armies numbered
in the tens of millions, took place when the Anglish
Lords sought to conquer Callidon, and amongst those
same Lords whilst they stood divided over a monarch's
ascension. The hive foundations are scarred and ravaged
where such hard fought battles once took place, entire
districts in the border domains left as ruin-wastes even
centuries later.
Law and Justice
The law of Brythan is the will of a millennium of Lords
and Kings, codified, ossified, half-forgotten, and argued
over incessantly by law-wrights of the grand schools. It
is the balance between noble supremacy and the cries for
justice from the masses. Every new generation of high
nobles seek to make their mark, or overturn the
inconvenient traditional laws of the past, and are
opposed by the Ecclesiarchy, by guilds, by monarchs, or
the Imperial class. Each struggle over law and power
stretches over interminable years, and its details are
recorded diligently in tomes, data-vaults, and archives,
making up a large part of the chronicles of Brythanic
society.
Anglish Justice
There are two bodies of Anglish law, the Lord's Justice
and the Queen's Justice. The Lord's Justice is established
separately by the ruling nobles of each Anglish domain.
Lords appoint bailiffs, sheriffs, and magisters from
amongst the commoner masses in order to write and
distribute laws, resolve disputes, hunt down the accused,
and collect fines. Most Anglish Lords wish to be viewed
as harsh but fair, but there is typically little investigation
of crimes: guilt is presumed by popular hearsay and it
falls to interested parties to gather testimony or evidence
to sway a magister one way or another. Little other than
the threat of unrest and the roused mob restrains the
Lord's appointed men from corruption: a magister or
high sheriff can grow fat and wealthy upon the backs of
the innocent and guilty alike for so long as he otherwise
maintains both tithes and peace in a Lord's domain.
Punishments dealt out to those who offend the
Lord's justice include harsh fines to fill noble coffers,
wealth confiscated and passed to victims, electro-
branding, and banishment. There are no formal prisons
beyond the sheriffs' temporary holding cells, and the
choice of punishment is invariably a balance between
the Lord's or magister's need for coin and the influence
of those who wish to see justice done—or wish to claim
the offender's wealth for themselves. Criminals who are
visibly marked and banished become outlaws, the lowest
of the low in Brythanic society. To be outcast is to have
no recourse to justice, and newly-made outlaws are often
murdered or beaten by the allies of their
victims—should they fail to escape or find allies of their
own. Outlaws frequently band together in squalid,
fortified poverty wards of the lowest decks or flee the
hive foundations to join the ragged bands that haunt the
ruin-wastes and farm-tracts.
Murder of the high-born, treachery amongst
nobles, treason, incitement to uprising, and other grand
31
crimes are governed by the Queen's Justice. These
events are often accompanied by unrest—the spread of
rumours, mobs baying for blood, and an ugly mood in
the populace. A Lord's magisters gather to assess each
such crime in solemn ceremony, and turn over those
declared guilty to executioners pledged to the Queen's
household. As for the Lord's Justice, there is little
pretence to fairness or a search for truth, for all that law-
wrights will stand to argue and magisters nod at each
new revelation. There is little doubt of the ultimate
verdict when the poor rise up and throng the roadways to
demand that the guilty be punished—someone will be
thrown to the canids in order to appease the mob.
The Queen's Justice exists to enforce an
important symbolism: that it is the right of the Queen
alone to execute and torment those who violate the
bonds of fealty that bind the Anglish domains. No other
may make that judgement, for all have sworn to the
Queen, who is seated upon her throne by the divine will
of the God-Emperor. The guilty are shorn, paraded for
the masses upon open promethium transports, sometimes
electro-whipped and branded, and ultimately beheaded
by executioners in a public ceremony, watched over by
all who still pledge themselves loyal.
Callidonean and Hybernean Justice
Justice in Callidon and upon Hybernea varies from clan
to clan, at least in the matter of wrongs committed
against a fellow clanmember. Some clans favour the
Destinist tradition of trial by ordeal, overseen by
representatives of the Ministorum and conducted before
the Aquila, in which both the accuser and accused are
charged to walk across steam-vents or pull hot wires
from a brazier. Other clan nobles appoint harsh
disputemen, quick to banish troublemakers and
confiscate property in their Lord's name. As a
consequence only the weak or the greatly wronged seek
formal justice from the nobility or Ministorum; most
disputes are resolved in other ways, such as by formal
feud, agreement between factions within a clan, or the
intervention of respected elders. Individuals and groups
who fail to resolve their grievances may leave a clan to
join one of its traditional foes, a final and telling rebuke
of their Lord's worth. This matters little, of course,
unless the exiles were prominent in the clan, or leave in
great numbers.
Wrongs committed between clans are a different
matter. These crimes against tradition and morality are
recorded by clanspeakers and accounted for when Lords,
emissaries, or their households gather to trade and treat.
An accused clan will lose the respect and cooperation of
allies should its nobles fail to pay recompense for the
offenses of its members. Lords haggle with one another
in these matters, as for all agreements, and the criminal
unruliness of their followers is merely one bargaining
token amongst many—but this tends to lead a Lord's
attention to the worst factions within his clan. A
Callidonean or Hybernean who causes great trouble for
his Lord in this manner will face harsh sanction: at the
very least banishment, and at worst a crippling or
summary execution at the hands of disputemen.
Blasphemy, Unorthodoxy, and Heresy
Accusations of common blasphemy and
unorthodoxy—meaning a failure to worship as directed
by priests—are commonly treated as offenses committed
against the most influential local Ecclesiarch. Trial and
punishment varies greatly according to the status of the
offender, the views of Ministorum representatives, and
the character of the Lord of the domain. Commoners
might be electro-branded for blasphemy, but a wealthy
professional such as a doctor of physik or law-wright
would be fined for the very same act, and perhaps
offered the chance to avoid any punishment in return for
a suitably public penance.
A wide range of sins are considered
unorthodoxy. Some are no more than laziness or
disobedience: lax seven-day attendance at the cathedral
or shrine, failure to make penance when so directed, or
failure to observe the rituals of a declared holy day.
More serious unorthodoxy involves worship of the God-
Emperor in ways that are neither sanctioned nor taught
by the Church of Brythan or Destinist priests. The
common folk—and a good many lesser priests—are like
as not to call out any unorthodoxy of ritual as Rhamist,
belonging to the loathed Rhamean Temple, regardless of
its true nature.
Heresy, by comparison, encompasses the
worship of false Gods, giving succour to witches,
disputing the Imperial Creed, denying the God-Emperor,
and other religious perversions. Treacherous uprisings
against a Lord or King might also be declared heresy if
the ecclesiarchy are supportive, as it is by the God-
Emperor's will that rulers are given command over
lesser men. Some unorthodoxy may also be declared
heresy, depending on circumstances. Rhamist forms of
worship are formally heretical, for example, but this is
political scripture dating to the schism and formation of
the Church of Brythan. Hive commoners are varyingly
hostile towards the Rhamists popularly supposed to hide
32
amongst their masses, but the upper hierarchy of the
Church of Brythan is no longer fervently opposed to the
Rhamean Temple. The schism is a lifetime past, and the
High Ecclesiarchs of Brythan are now strong in their
independence.
However it is discovered and declared, heresy
ultimately leads to death upon the pyre or at the hands of
the mob. Few accused of heresy have the resources and
influence to appeal to a Lord or persuade Ecclesiarchs to
honestly and fairly review a claim of innocence. When
heresy is punished officially, it is usually servants of the
Ministorum who carry out the sentence of death. This
task often falls to witchfinders, men well used to meting
out harsh punishment in the course of their duties. In
Anglish domains, heretics may instead be remitted to the
Queen's Justice, but this is usually only the case for
those who led covens and seduced others to their
cause—wherein a public burning and regal
condemnation of heresy serves to strengthen the position
of the Queen's house.
Justice for Outsiders
Outsiders from beyond Brythan have no recourse to
justice unless they are acknowledged guests of a Lord,
an honour only extended to visiting plenipotentiaries or
chartered void-traders. A guest is expected to respect a
Lord's writ of law and word in exchange for the
protections of the Lord's justice. Lesser outsiders are
subject to neither protections nor laws, and are typically
viewed with suspicion by commoners and Lord's men
alike. Efforts may be made to cast them forth from a
Lord's domain, or assault them—and no punishment will
result from the murder of an outsider who has no Lord or
powerful master to call upon, as he is little better than a
banished outlaw in the hierarchy of Brythanic society.
Justice and Disputes Amongst Lords
Lords are not subject to the laws they make, and hold
absolute authority over their domains. Disputes between
Lords are generally left to run their course until such
time as they threaten the authority of a monarch or the
stability of neighbouring domains. Breach of agreement
or land-right without seeming good cause or callous
oppression that causes widespread upheaval may bring
censure by the Queen for an Anglish Lord, or cause an
alliance of peers to force banishment upon a hated clan
Lord in Callidon or Hybernea. These matters are rarely
straightforward or rapidly resolved, however. An
Anglish Lord who goes before the Queen to claim
justice will have the apparent support of many other
Lords should the Queen find his cause worthy—but he
will lose their respect, for he has shown himself weak
enough to need the Court. Lordly disputes have in past
generations involved kidnapping of hostages,
mobilization of soldiers and commoners, raids and
pitched battles, attempts to intervene or mediate by other
nobles or High Ecclesiarchs, complex treaties made and
broken, and years of argumentation by law-wrights or
savants of noble tradition.
Despite the constant friction between the
interests of Lords, there is a horror of noble treachery
and murder of the high-born at all levels of Brythanic
society. This happens a handful of times in each
generation, by an assassin's weapon or by the hand of a
Lord himself, and invariably leads to great unrest
amongst the populace. A Lord who sheds noble blood
beyond the hue and cry of the battlefield risks damnation
and the wrath of the God-Emperor—for Lords, Kings,
and Queens are set in their place by the God-Emperor to
watch over the faithful. Even the most black-hearted and
vile of Lords have been banished rather than executed in
past centuries, and the alliances that finally forced that
outcome were slow and reluctant to form. The names
and deeds of infamous banished Lords and nobles live
on in the tales told by commoners, ever more reviled and
their acts ever more embellished as the generations pass.
A Selection of Legends and Prophecies
The legends of Brythan are everywhere: in the taverns,
told to children, in the sermons of travelling preachers,
recounted in the playhouses, and embellished by
chroniclers for each new generation. The commoner
masses believe every word, savants pretending to
sophistication decry the details, and playwrights and
ecclesiarchs continually rework and restore the oldest
myths. The most popular legends are told in a score of
ways—every Lord's domain has similar local myths,
supposed prophets, hidden peoples, shades, curses, and
prophecies. Certain spectral themes recur over and
again, and a suspicious Inquisitorial mind might see the
past workings of the warp hidden behind these
commoners' tales.
The First King of Callidon
The first King of Callidon was a mythic figure of the
early Rhamean age, his clan-name and mighty deeds
varying with the teller of the tale: taming the seas,
slaying a thousand in battle in a single day, wrestling the
33
Old Men of the Woods into submission. To hear the
bards tell it, no King of Brythan shall ever be as great as
he who was the first in Callidon. At the very end of his
life, in the depths of his mountain fortress, the King lay
under an ague upon his deathbed, but lingered long
enough for the clan Lords to assemble. When the King
finally succumbed, a ghostly and terrible horn-beast
appeared within the greathall above the bedchamber. It
lowed and a chill wind from nowhere froze the very
marrow of the assembled Lords, stopped the hearts of
aged savants, and turned young hair white. None were
the same thereafter, and the throne of Callidon stood
empty for centuries thereafter.
The Cursed Legion of Rhame
In the shadowed taverns of Hive Londus poverty
districts, by flickering promethium candle and half-
broken lumen, tales are told of a cursed, dead
legion—the Imperial Guard of Rhame who became lost
in the forests and mists of Ald Brythan, and who yet
march to find their way home. Many reasons are given
for the legion's fate: a witch cursed them, their Lord
spoke blasphemy against the God-Emperor, or they fled
their own disloyalty. In times of war, their boots are
heard in the hive depths, and some poor souls catch a
glimpse of spectral ranks in marching through hive
bulkheads. Or so it is said.
The Ciphered Prophecies of Cauther
Geffarius Cauther was a playwright, chronicler, and
emissary to a long-past Anglish King; he journeyed far
across the voids to other worlds of the Yeuros cluster at
the behest of his Lord. It is his plays rather than his
chronicles that prospered across the centuries, however.
They are still performed by travelling players and
reinvented by living playwrights. It is widely supposed
amongst the commoner masses that Cauther had the gift
of prophecy, and placed ciphered signs, omens, and
portents within his works—a belief that may explain
why his plays are yet transcribed, performed, and
popular. Few scholars share these views, however, and
the chronicles of Cauther remain little known. Those
folios that remain intact are buried within noble
collections and the libraries of the grand schools.
The Ald Stone
Massive stones were set upright millennia past, deep in
the age of Ald Brythan, but little now remains of the
great circles and rows. Some solitary standing stones lie
deep beneath the hives in darkness, while others loom
amidst manufactory-farm fields. The Ald Stone in an
Anglish Lord's border domain is larger than most, a vast
rough-hewn monolith worn by the passage of years. The
prophecy of an ecclesiarch now long dead states that the
Stone must never be moved, else great harm will fall
upon the cathedrals of Brythan. Some tales claim the
stone rests atop the remains of a potent witch-queen who
fought against Rhame in the ending of Ald
Brythan—and the weight of it is all that holds her shade
in death.
The Shade of Catenbary Cathedral
It has long been said that a dark apparition stalks the
higher walkways and choral alcoves of the great
cathedral of Catenbary in Hive Londus, glimpsed only
by the doomed and the ill-fated, or upon the eve of
disaster. Some chronicles list its appearances, and name
it as the cursed soul of the High Ecclesiarch Stapellus,
torn apart by the mob risen against the rule of an
unpopular King. Playwrights have instead called the
Shade a treacherous Lord who slew his kin and knelt
before the Aquila with blood upon his hands—thence
cursed by the God-Emperor and all the saints to a chill,
spectral vigil upon the borders of fate and death.
Thomus of Eiladon
A prophet who lived centuries past, Thomus was spirited
away from the hive structures of Callidon's highlands to
a hidden realm ruled by haloed servants of the God-
Emperor. Upon his return he was a much changed man,
and for the rest of his life set forth prophecies in the
form of plays and rhymes. These have made their way
into many works and chronicles in the generations since,
and whatever truth lies beneath the legend is long
buried. The bards of Callidon credit Thomas with many
a true prophecy, some of which scholars claim to be
more ancient or taken from other sources—but
nonetheless, the tale of Thomas the Rhymewright is well
known in the clanholds. The greatest of his prophecies,
at once much derided and much desired, is of a time
when 'All Brythan shall be as One in Union Beneath a
Single Crown, and May It Be a Crown of Callidon.'
The Tomb of King Althar
Anglish commoners suppose the great King Althar to
have ruled the later age of Ald Brythan, a legendary
34
figure who swore to serve the God-Emperor and drew
together the domains to forge the first Anglish Court. A
well-defined cycle of tales exists, recorded in countless
tomes and chronicles, studied by scholars and retold by
playwrights—but who can truly know who ruled before
the Rhameans came to teach literacy and raise the first
hive structures? Nonetheless, Anglish heraldry,
chronicles, and traditional plays are rife with references
to the quests and conflicts of King Althar's Court, and
near every Anglish commoner can recount an outline of
this legend.
The end of the cycle tells of how the King,
betrayed by witchcraft and mortally wounded, descended
into the depths of his tomb with the last of his retinue
and remaining loyal Lords. There they fell into a deep
sleep, both alive and dead, to await a time when the
God-Emperor will call them to rise and take up arms—a
time when Brythan stands upon the very brink of
destruction.
Many great structures in the Anglish domains
are popularly believed to be built atop the tomb of King
Althar. One such is the Abbey Spire at Glastbarie, a
Ministorum stronghold that looms over nearby farm-
tracts, raised roadways, and a series of great artificial
hills that were constructed in ancient times for unknown
reasons. Similarly, the coastal fortress of Tinafel in an
outflung domain is supposed to have once hosted the
Court of King Althar, and some say the tomb lies
beneath its deepest foundations, where hive-metals give
way to crumbling stone and passages sealed by
crushfalls.
The Ragged Corvids of Hive Londus
One of the few remaining flocks of draggled black
corvids in all Brythan haunts the upper works of Hive
Londus, diminishing in number with each new winter
snow. A prophecy recorded by the chronicler and
playwright Cauther, of unknown origin even in his
lifetime centuries ago, states that the Ministorum will
crumble, the Anglish Court fall, and the very hive itself
be destroyed should the corvids vanish. Commoners of
the poverty districts believe that Queen Elyzia the
Glorious sends favoured Lords and militants to climb the
outer hive-wall buttresses in order to watch over these
avians.
The Water Beast of ayess
The lakes of Callidon are deep and narrow, less poisoned
than the remaining open waters in Anglish domains.
Tales are told of a vast beast that lurks within the Nayess
lake, a creature that rises from the depths when Callidon
is unsettled, foaming the waters but never clearly seen.
Saint Calomus of Hybernea set great ward-stones about
the lake a millennia past, when ties between Callidon
and the Hybernean moon were closer. Ever since that
long-past warding there are rumours and whispers of
what is seen within the morning lake-mists, growing
whenever there is unrest among the populace.
Callidonean hierarchs are regularly petitioned to circle
the Nayess, stopping in each nearby shrinehold to call
upon the God-Emperor, that He might protect Callidon
from whatever taint lurks within the lake's depths.
The Faithful of the Drowned Land
So the legend is told, long ago a doom fell upon a
spirebase and its peoples. Witches cursed the very land
to fall beneath the stormy seas, and down were carried
all the faithful and their works. Those who took shelter
within shrines and cathedrals were protected by the
God-Emperor from this curse, however. They live on to
this day, and on holy days ring great bells within the
sunken towers. Those who listen to the static of dead
vox networks and those who crew processor vessels far
from land can sometimes hear the distant tolling of
prayer-bells—or so it is claimed. Older tales told in
Callidon name the lost spirebase, calling it Lar Esse, and
tell of a Lord Trevalius who escaped the fall. His
descendants are many and hidden, so it is said, and form
a secret order who come and go from the hive
foundation beneath the seas, where dwell the most
faithful and blessed peoples of all Brythan.
The Hollowed Men
Many tales tell of things that were once men and now
only look like men, emptied of souls and whose bodies
roam the wastes or hide in the dark hive ruin-districts to
tear apart the weak and the outcast. Callidonean bards
speak of canid-men, wild and ragged, who steal children
for witches. In Anglish lands, the tales are of brutal
ferals who have forgotten how to speak. The outcasts of
Brythan are forsaken indeed and live harsh, short lives,
but the myths of the Hollowed speak of witchcraft above
and beyond the changes that starvation and poisons of
the wastes can wreck upon a man.
The Chained Lords
The untimely death of a Lord or one of his lineage is
35
mourned by all within a domain—for it is a grave omen,
believed to precede many ill-fortuned years. Ghosts and
fate-curses are drawn to such terrible events, and many a
tale tells of Lords past and the terrifying apparitions that
marked their deaths. When a noble dies young, shades
are said to walk the battleways of the household fortress-
estate. Chained and moaning, they are Lords who fell
before their time, dead of treachery, unlucky accident, or
the black cough. Forever condemned to a restless death,
they can do nothing but look upon what might have
been, their spectral presence placing a burden of
misfortune upon the living.
The Witch of Aven Underdeck
Beware the witch! The witch is cursed by the God-
Emperor for her very nature, and all touched by her are
likewise unhallowed. A time past, before the House of
Teuda rose to rule the Anglish Court, a dire witch
haunted the underdeck districts of Aven. She lurked
amidst the waste processors and ruin-wards, spinning a
poisonous fate-curse: many children of Hive Londus and
beasts of the breeding pens beyond were born misshapen
or witch-marked, and the mob rose up in fearful hue and
cry upon the roadways. Three witchfinders led men into
lowest Aven in search of the Witch of Aven, but she
boiled their eyes in their heads and stopped their hearts
within their chests. Only by the intercession of the High
Ecclesiarch did the God-Emperor strike down the Witch,
for upon his most earnest prayers all Aven underdeck
took light and burned for a winter. Only the faithful and
the righteous escaped a terrible death by fire, and the
Witch was no more.
The Black Canid of the Wastes
Commoners in the beast-pens and manufactory sprawls
between hive foundations tell of a great canid of glowing
eyes that haunts the wastes and ruin-districts, and some
claim it to tear open beast-pens and feed gluttonously
upon the terrified animals within. Some foul witchcraft
keeps it alive, hidden, and able to elude any hunter—or
perhaps there is a breed of such supernatural beasts, a
remnant of Ald Byrthan that loathes the spread of
mankind. It is universally agreed that to glimpse the
black canid in the distance is an omen of death,
catastrophe, or defeat, as the beast is a manifest curse,
called forth by evil souls to harm the works of the
faithful.
 The Past that Builds the Present
Players Upon an Arcane Stage
Beneath the noise and bustle of Brythanic society lies a
tumultuous secret history of seer-prophecy and blood
sacrifice, a living continuation of the age of Ald
Brythan—a corruption of the warp that was never fully
purged from this world.
The Horned God of Ald Brythan
A King of Ald Brythan lived well for the ordained years
of his short reign, and at its conclusion was sacrificed to
the beast-gods: the Horned One, the Dark Canid, and
others. Kingship in that feral era was both a great honour
and great burden, for a monarch stood at the head of his
tribe, a figurehead of success or failure in war and the
hunt. But most importantly, a King had to die well and
in the traditional manner, so that priest-seers could
divine the future from his entrails.
So it was for countless generations, and so it
would have continued—but the taint of the Ruinous
Powers seeps from the Empyrean to fall upon all worlds
of mankind. A malign, barely aware warp-eddy swirled
about Ald Brythan in those millennia before the age of
Rhame, summoned and sustained by heathen rituals and
suffering. The priest-seers who sacrificed Kings and
made offerings to totem beast-gods were in time
seduced into worshipping the warp itself, their
corruptions of flesh and mind cloaked behind the
bloodstained mask of tradition. They still gathered at the
sacred places, there to sacrifice each generation's tribal
King upon the altar of the Horned One, read the signs,
and assure the tribes of future victories. The warp-
touched amongst the priesthood channelled the power of
each King's rule, released in the rituals of death and
blood, feeding it into the writhing currents of the
warp—all but a portion that they kept for themselves.
Empowered and twisted, the inner circle of elder
priest-seers became bloated, deathless Ancient Ones,
their terrifying forms hidden away in the deep caves and
darkest forests, and their existence kept secret from all
but the most trusted and power-hungry initiates. For
long centuries these Ancient Ones fed upon the power of
feral belief, controlled their brethren, and divined true
glimpses of the future from the entrails of Kings. Their
hungers guided tribes to war and murder, and their
warpcraft seeped into berserkers upon the battlefield,
36
twisting flesh with power.
Over time the blackened hearts of the Ancient
Ones awoke currents of rudimentary awareness and
savage lusts in the near warp, and the Horned God of
Ald Brythan took form as a bestial entity of blood and
patterns, its essence the myriad fears, hatreds, and lusts
of the Brythanic peoples, channelled through Kingship
and ritual death.
The Ancient Ones
The warp-bloated Ancient Ones lived for an age in their
hidden places, grown into forms pleasing to the Horned
God—but then came the legions of Rhame, and Ald
Brythan burned. The lesser orders of priest-seers were
destroyed, the forest altars despoiled, and tribal
berserkers crushed by disciplined lasfire. The Horned
God writhed and seethed in near-mindlessness, for Kings
were slain at the wrong time and in the wrong way, and
the warp about Brythan roiled. But the Horned God was
not destroyed, and neither were all of the Ancient Ones.
Even burned and driven mad by the Horned God's
turmoil they survived, scratching and squirming in their
deep lairs beneath the sacred places—and so the touch of
the warp upon Ald Brythan never truly died.
In time Brythan prospered beneath the rule of
Rhame, and prospered further after Rhame fell into
decline. Vast hive structures spread and grew tall, and
the populace expanded to a million Imperial souls for
each former village of a few hundred ferals. The dreams
and harsh desires of new multitudes seeped down into
the hidden places where the Ancient Ones lay, and in
turn, witches, dreamers, and Ministorum seers were
touched by the madness that scratches in buried caverns,
half-remembering events they had never seen.
The warp will have its way, and cares not for the
passage of ages: secretive and hidden orders arose from
dreams of kingship, priest-seers, and blood. Over and
again the growing hives of Brythan gave rise to heretical
sects whose initiates aided the rise of Lords, mystery
cults that sought wisdom in the history of noble lineages,
and seer covens that worked to align the deaths of Kings
and Queens—to set a noble death in its rightful time and
place, and yet barely knowing why they did so.
The Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade
Inevitably, the most gifted, corrupt, and unfortunate
visionaries learned the truth: first through warp-
revelation, and then by descending beneath the old
sacred places to behold the Ancient Ones. Scarred and
maddened, the survivors brought old truths and old ways
to their secret orders. Some were slain in revulsion, but
the lore of Ald Brythan spread nonetheless—and the
Ancient Ones were served by initiates once more.
Since that time, the revived cult of Ald Brythan
has undergone many convulsions and betrayals. It was
always diffuse and hidden, but frequently divided into
warring factions of very different character and goals.
Many of these lineages were extinguished in the
upheaval and warpcraft that attended the bloody Nyorde
invasion, however, and the inner circle of the cult
became more unified. The forbearers of those survivors
and victors named themselves the Brotherhood of the
Unsheathed Blade: many of the cult's ignorant loyalists
are assassins and soldiers, and their lore is of the blade
that ends a noble life balanced against the blade that
defends a Lord who must live longer yet.
The Brotherhood lurks at the centre of a web of
heretics and agents, none of whom know more than
fragments of the true nature of their masters and
advisors. It is the origin and guiding hand for many
long-standing mystery cults and persistent heresies: seer
orders, corrupted soldiers' brotherhoods, unsanctioned
Destinist sects, assassin covens, commoner fraternities
that teach the legends of King Althar, and savant lodges
whose members seek after arcane wisdom. The
existence of the Brotherhood and the cult of Ald Brythan
before it is hinted at in many a myth, tale, and
prophecy—the common thread of hidden peoples who
hold arcane wisdom, revere Kings, and possess a
connection to the old ways of an age before Rhame. But
few indeed link these myths to any real group, and fewer
still hold any true lore of the Ancient Ones and the
surviving warpcraft of Ald Brythan.
The Brotherhood's leaders and elder initiates
seek personal power, the blessings of the Horned God,
and true foreknowledge—and know full well that they
are damned in Imperial eyes. Some are warp-gifted,
twisted in flesh and mind, set upon the same path of
corruption that formed the Ancient Ones. Yet the
outskirts of the Brotherhood are steeped in the Imperial
creed, in holy Destinism, and in Brythanic loyalty to
noble blood: the Brotherhood's agents believe
themselves rightful and holy. Even the assassins who
ritually murder a Lord do so understanding that they
37
guarantee his place beside the sleeping King Althar,
blessed by the God-Emperor to rise up in defence of the
realm when disaster threatens.
The inner circle of the Brotherhood guides its
servants, both knowing and unknowing, in rituals of
foresight that attempt to divine the true wishes of the
Ancient Ones. They read the signs of the warp to
determine when Lords must die, and in what manner, but
seer talents are uncertain and the answers unclear in
comparison to the age before Rhame. The omens align
perhaps once in a generation, but at such times the
Brotherhood's elders stand to gain the favour of the warp
and the attention of the Horned God—as the true power
of Ald Brythan awakens. In between these seasons of
portent and murder, the Brotherhood acts to protect and
empower noble lineages. At the same time it expands its
own influence: placing ignorant agents into noble
Houses, nurturing the rise of mystery cults, and steering
the disputes of Lords in accordance with prophecy.
Inquisitor Willard Quassus
Inquisitor Quassus was drawn to Brythan by his
conviction that a taint of blood-sacrifice corrupted all of
the pre-Rhamean cultures of the Yeuros worlds—and
that this taint persisted, a common foundation beneath
diverse contemporary heresies. Quassus believed that the
barbaric Nyorde from beyond Imperial borders only
unwittingly served the ends of the Ruinous Powers: their
bloodthirsty gods were puppets of the warp, and the
raiders were called to pillage Brythan by some form of
lingering, sympathetic warpcraft. To the Inquisitor's
eyes, Brythan was never fully civilized by the God-
Emperor's Guard, the legions of Rhame, and its old ways
were not all put to the torch.
After the heathen, tainted Nyorde were defeated,
Inquisitor Quassus established a modest mission and
made Brythan his base of operations. He became a
favourite of Queen Elyzia's grandfather, father, and then
the Queen herself—for he was a power in residence
whose very presence bolstered the legitimacy of House
Teuda's claim upon the throne. Over time the defeat of
the Nyorde passed from being a recent scar to become a
bloody, renowned episode of Brythan's past amongst the
commoners. They told ever more embellished tales in
which the war-priest Williard of the Spear came from a
far world to put the fear of the God-Emperor into
Nyorde berserkers, and slowly but surely the Inquisitor
became a saint in their eyes.
Willard Quassus did not rest upon his laurels,
however. Signs uncovered across his career hinted at a
waiting horror—a darkness that would one day rise to
drown the Yeuros worlds in blood and warpcraft,
undoing all that was won in the Rhamean crusade so
long ago. These omens and suppositions Quassus kept to
himself, encrypted in journals and cogitation cores,
never shared with the Ordos or even beyond the inner
circle of his retinue, as he was not a man given to trust.
As the decades turned into centuries, Quassus sought out
the truth of his suspicions upon worlds throughout the
Yeuros voids, but increasingly within the hives and
buried heathen ruins of Brythan. As age claimed his
vigor despite potent juvenat treatments he left Brythan
ever less often, unwilling to let the years slip away in
Empyreal travel between the stars.
The Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade
became known to Quassus by the shape of its careful
absence—so many hints and similar, futile
interrogations of petty heretics and lesser witches who
knew next to nothing. He gnawed at the outskirts of the
Brotherhood for two hundred years, silently quashing a
dozen varied unorthodoxies and slaying a score of
potent witches who eluded and slew witchfinders. The
Inquisitor built his theories, seeing in his mind's eye a
cult of endless subtle layers, with tendrils in the halls of
Lords, and some form of warp-taint or daemon at its
centre. The culmination of his life's work would be its
unmasking and destruction. The clues, theories, and
interrogation transcripts filled entire data-vaults, a web
of lies and complications to shroud the hidden truth, a
greater tapestry than any one mind could hold at once.
Across these decades of toil, Inquisitor Quassus
faded from the Yeuros Conclave. In the past century the
only signs seen by the Ordos of his continued existence
were slim, ciphered missives of acknowledgement to the
issuance of major cartae. Thirty years ago even those
ceased.
Caesopher Marlow
Fifty years past, Inquisitor Quassus and the chill, regal
Queen Elyzia shared an oblique conversation in which
both revealed to the other that they believed a hidden
force, some malign assembly, had long acted with great
subtlety to oppose their respective agendas. One
outcome of this conversation was the induction of the
Queen's agent Caesopher Marlow into the Inquisitor's
retinue.
Marlow was a consummate spy and emissary,
well versed in Brythanic society high and low. He was a
veteran of Court intrigue, and a figure of note in the
Hive Londus society of playhouses and
38
playwrights—and the Inquisitor shared those interests in
the stage, penmanship, and the acts of players. Marlow
was received well, and it was understood that his
loyalties were divided: he served both Queen and
Inquisitor. His was a common and traditional position
created in any alliance between Brythanic Lords, a
trusted bridge-servant pledged to two powers, highly
placed but never so highly placed as to be a true threat to
either party.
Thus Marlow stood one step below the trusted
inner circle of Throne agents loyal to Quassus, not privy
to deep secrets or cipher keys, but as the years passed he
became increasingly responsibility for running the outer
reaches of the Inquisitor's organization upon Brythan.
Jhonus Dee, Queen's Seer
Prior to the ascension of Queen Elyzia of the House of
Teuda, Jhonus Dee was a scholar and theosophist of the
grand school of Caem's Bridge. He was persecuted by
Anglish ecclesiarchs for his lectures upon Destinism and
use of seer tools in casting auguries for Lords of the
Anglish Court—this was a century past, when to preach
the tenets of Destinism in Hive Londus was a grave risk
for one who stood outside the priesthood. His noble
defenders rescued him from the tender mercies of the
Ministorum, and in the years since Dee has walked a
narrow path between the favour of the Queen and the
enmity of cathedral hierarchs.
During his long life, Dee gathered an imposing
private collection of historical tomes, chronicles, and
esoteric works on prophecy and Destinist theosophy. He
believed hidden ciphers and omens to be recorded in
noted plays and chronicles, perhaps intentionally placed
by one who was slyly aware of secrets and greater
powers, or perhaps a work of the God-Emperor and the
saints, wherein the writer was merely an unwitting tool
of the divine. Dee's goal was an understanding of the
fundaments of holy augury, universal truths he felt were
obscured by the superstitions of chroniclers and
misguided Ministorum dogma.
Sisterhood of the Caldera
The great, steaming caldera of Din Edin in Callidon was
a sacred place of Ald Byrthan, its mountainous walls
honeycombed by tunnels even then. In its heated depths
lurked the twisted, bloated form of an Ancient One,
slumbering amidst dreams of blood and sacrifice,
sustained by the warp in a state that was neither truly
alive nor truly dead. It was perhaps inevitable that
Destinist seers would be drawn to the caldera and
corrupted by what lay within. The Sisterhood of Holy
Fates was already an old and sanctioned seer order when
its stern matriarchs ordered their charges to journey
from the hivebases to the looming fortress of Din Edin.
There they toiled at the bidding of their masters in the
cult of Ald Brythan, most entirely ignorant of the
heresies and warpcraft they aided.
During fierce wars between Anglish Lords and
the clans of Callidon many centuries ago, Din Edin was
conquered by the Anglish King Eduard, retaken by the
clans, and then scoured upon the order of Lord Robath
of Bruch, a legendary figure soon to be acclaimed King
of Callidon. Much was written of these wars by bards
and chroniclers, but little of the Scouring of Din Edin.
Obscure tomes referenced by the prolific Geffarius
Cauther speak of witchcraft seen upon the battlefield,
and ill-thought prophecies decried by clan Lords. The
Sisterhood and other servants of the cult of Ald Brythan
were cut down without mercy, and the halls of Din Edin
cleansed in promethium fire.
Yet the forces of Lord Robath did not venture
deeply enough and in great enough force to destroy the
true source of corruption: the Ancient One remained.
The Sisterhood returned soon enough to Din Edin, for
those slain were merely servants and apprentices of the
true seers. Never again did it grow to its former size and
influence, however. Instead the Sisterhood of Holy Fates
ultimately became a part of the hidden inner circle of the
Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade, tutors to witches
who evaded Ministorum hunters, and wardens for the
Ancient One in the deep tunnels.
The Fall of Inquisitor Quassus
Elders of the Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade were
long aware of the threat posed by Inquisitor Quassus, as
he appeared as a powerful signifier within their auguries.
For so long as witch-seers of the Sisterhood of Holy
Fates caught glimpses of the true future, the
Brotherhood could place itself beyond the Inquisitor's
growing web of understanding—if not beyond his
suspicions. The warp is a fickle mistress, however, and
the strands of fate finally fell into line in the winter of
784.M41.
A Chance Disclosure
Whilst chem-greyed snows lay heavy upon the upper
structures and spire balconies of Hive Londus, Inquisitor
Quassus and Jhonus Dee chanced to meet and talk in
39
formal High Gothic at a grand function in the Queen's
Court. This was not the first time, but it was the first
time that Dee said anything to catch the Inquisitor's
interest. Later, the two spoke at length in Dee's spire
quarters, and Quassus spent some hours within Dee's
collection of rare works, perusing early transcriptions of
the works of Cauther, and fragmentary chronicles of the
Callidonean Kings.
By chance, a simple reference, a filigree of
information hinted at innocently by Jhonus Dee,
completed a large part of the web of hints and obscure
references that Quassus had toiled to build for so long.
Patterns suddenly aligned, many pointing to the caldera
of Din Edin and the seer cults that had long occupied
that reach of Callidon. Inquisitor Quassus returned to the
Strathvedum, his residence and base of operations in
Hive Londus, and hastened to gather his retinue and
most capable militants.
A True Augury
Dee knew not what had caused the interest of so great a
figure as Willard of the Spear, and could only guess at
which of his remarks or collected tomes brought such
triumph to the aged Inquisitor. He was uneasy—the
attention of Imperial hierarchs proved dangerous in the
past, and Dee had become more cautious in his later
years.
Thus in the dead of night, Jhonus Dee took forth
his seer tools and forged an augury partly of the Ald
Ways, learned from scraps and hints within old tomes,
and partly of Imperial tradition: reading the entrails of a
freshly slain beast whilst muttering phrases of Ald
Brythanic, the ritual conducted by the light of thrice-
blessed candles and beneath the Aquila. It was an
inadvertent warpcraft, made by a man determined to use
all the lore at his disposal in a matter of importance. By
his actions Dee pressed a careless thumb upon the
strands of fate, one augury to disrupt those taking place
elsewhere in Brythan—and the Brotherhood of the
Unsheathed Blade was made blind for a day in the
matter of Willard Quassus.
What Dee saw disturbed him greatly: death,
downfall, and the seeds of great ruin were marked by the
coiling of the beast's entrails and spill of its blood. That
troubled night passed without sleep, for to share a dire
augury with the powerful is deeply unwise—and doubly
so if conducted using unsanctioned techniques. By
morning, Dee resolved to tell no-one, and kept to
himself in the months and years that followed, wary of
what had been revealed.
Departure and Loss
Upon the same morning as Jhonus Dee's troubled
resolution, Caesopher Marlow and his bodyguards
watched the Inquisitor's force ascend from the Hive
Londus landing fields, meltwater from plasma jets on
thick ice flowing about their boots. Marlow did not
know his master's destination, but by the Throne agents'
demeanour expected a triumphant return and great
breakthrough in the Inquisitor's secret work—and
perhaps even explanations and an induction into the
inner circle of Quassus' retinue. But the Inquisitor did
not return. Only the God-Emperor and the dead know in
certain surety what happened within the depths of Din
Edin: the fortress of the Sisterhood was scoured once
more, this time by a heavily armed company in search of
heresy, warp-taint, and captives to interrogate. They met
their match in what lay hidden in Din Edin's tunnels,
however, and it consumed them utterly.
Aftermath
The days turned to months, and Marlow had nothing to
tell his Queen but the continuing fact of the Inquisitor's
vanishment. He had control of the Strathvedum and the
loyalty of much of Quassus' remaining organization, but
neither the ciphers to the datavaults nor the knowledge
that truly mattered at that time. Still, he searched and he
prepared—for a foe that could defeat Willard of the
Spear was a foe he did not wish to meet in an open and
fairly matched conflict.
As winter warmed to first-melt and past, the
Inquisitor was found. Manufactory workers of an edge-
wall installation a hundred leagues from Din Edin
discovered Willard Quassus at the outer vents, comatose
and his powered armour rent. Their masters and the
Lord of the clan were soon enough involved, for the
armour was a sign of wealth and privilege. Caesopher
Marlow journeyed to Callidon in haste bearing letters
from Queen Elyzia: resources were transferred, gifts
made, and nobles sworn to secrecy. The Inquisitor was
borne back to Hive Londus, where the most renowned
scholars of Rhamean Physik could tend to him.
Willard Quassus lived, though that outcome was
uncertain for months. In time he woke from his fugue,
but his soul was lost—he did not respond to those
around him. He sometimes spoke, but in strange tones
and with jumbled words that bore no relation to the
questions asked of him. There was seemingly nothing
left of the sharp mind and will of the Inquisitor.
40
The Passage of Years
For years Marlow toiled to continue the work of the
Inquisition upon Brythan. He sought to find those who
defeated the Inquisitor, to restore Quassus to sanity, and
to follow the commands of his Queen in keeping the
Inquisitor's incapacity hidden. Willard of the Spear was
a power and a myth that supported the Teuda throne—he
must be known to be alive and potent, or dead and raised
to sainthood, but nothing in between.
Expecting further assault, Marlow made a trap
of the Strathvedum and laid many more subtle ambushes
throughout the organization he inherited. But no such
assault ever occurred. Over and over, Marlow traced the
last sane days of Willard Quassus, seeking some insight.
He alienated and later reconciled with Jhonus Dee, but
Dee never told Marlow of the augury he forged upon the
night prior to the Inquisitor's disappearance.
Lacking the Inquisitor's cipher keys, Marlow
could neither read nor formally respond to missives from
the Yeuros Conclave. Nor could he open the data vaults
that once resided in the Strathvedum to learn what he
needed to know. In the early years, Marlow maintained
the fervent hope that Quassus would return to sanity. He
did not contact the Inquisition openly because that would
not have been the Inquisitor's wish, and to do so would
in any case violate the Queen's orders.
What Marlow could do was take up the
Inquisitor's toil, insofar as he was able: to maintain and
put to use the Inquisitorial agents and retainers he alone
now commanded. As the years turned, Marlow and his
servants defeated witches and lesser heretics in the
manner of the Inquisitor—and with increasing
confidence.
A decade passed, and Marlow allowed many of
the traps he had forged to lapse. He came to believe that
a hidden foe of Queen, Ministorum, and Imperium had
indeed been defeated by Quassus in the winter of
784.M41, for how else to explain years of silence instead
of the vengeful assault he had long feared?
Strange Prophecies
The Inquisitor, aged and frail, began to take corvid-quill
to parchment. His mind remained lost, his mannerisms
and speech the disarrayed nonsense of the asylum, but he
penned fragments of plays. Scribed out of order,
strangely styled, and each couplet discarded to the floor
upon completion—but plays nonetheless. Even now,
Marlow well recalls the eve upon which he realized that
the fragments formed true prophecies when arranged,
lightly cloaked in fiction and the verse of the Brythanic
stage. What warpcraft was this?
Marlow began to fear what might come from far
worlds at the orders of the Yeuros Conclave, and
prepared for the worst. Still, his loyalties remained
sound: whether the scribed prophecies were curse of the
warp or blessing of the God-Emperor, Marlow would
stand between Quassus and any Inquisitor to declare him
unholy. Willard of the Spear would be a saint when his
body finally succumbed to age, and his hidden victory
would not be sullied by those who knew nothing of his
deeds.
The prophetic plays grew, line by line, to more
than a dozen in number—but none even close to
completion after a decade of scribed words. The
arrangement of couplets was itself a puzzle, and most of
the prophecies contained within their verse remained
obscure. On the basis of his interpretation, Marlow
believes the prophecies may refer to events that will
soon come to pass. His soul has been weighed by this
for years, for many verses speak of the death of Kings,
the treacherous murder of Lords, and of blood, war, and
massacre. These are matters of horror for any loyal
servant of the Anglish Court.
By the time of Marlow's reconciliation with
Jhonus Dee, he firmly believed that the God-Emperor
worked through Willard Quassus, and that the hive
masses were indeed correct in hailing Willard of the
Spear a saint of the Imperial creed. But upon the matter
of the prophecies he remains divided. They are
incomplete, the arrangement of couplets Marlow's alone,
and his interpretations plagued by uncertainty. To his
eyes it is better that these works remain hidden, even
from Queen Elyzia. Despite the present age of greater
unity between Destinism and the Church of Brythan, for
Quassus to become a Destinist icon would most likely
deny him the formal blessings of sainthood.
As the years passed, Marlow remained a man
weighed and conflicted, burdened deeply by his two
loyalties, fearing what might come, and bearing a secret
too great for his soul.
The Long, Slow Corruption of
Geffarius Cauther
A long time ago, the playwright Geffarius Cauther led
an extraordinary life: servant to an Anglish King,
emissary across the voids, and chronicler known to the
masses. Across those years, Cauther's interests in the
cults and myths of monarchy led him ever deeper into
the outskirts of the cult of Ald Brythan. There came a
41
day when the last play was completed, the King he
served lay within his tomb, and the arcane had a stronger
hold upon Cauther than the mundane. The former
playwright vanished from the hives of men, initiated into
what would later become the Brotherhood of the
Unsheathed Blade—and thereafter the warp sustained
his life long past its natural limits.
Shadowed Centuries
With the passage of decades Cauther was once again a
trusted retainer—but in service to an inner circle of
heretics who wielded true and potent warpcraft. He knew
well the cost of leadership, and in his wisdom made
himself an indispensible seneschal rather than a would-
be ruler. When Lords fight, it is the servant of talent and
means who prospers regardless of the outcome.
Immersed in the true lore of the cult of Ald
Brythan, Cauther came to understand that the Lords and
Kings who once held his loyalty were little more than
urns of flesh, their only purpose to hold secure some
measure of the mystic, churning power provided by the
warp. The True Nobility of seers and savants stood in
the shadows, both foreseeing and forging the death of
Kings—and in doing so they harnessed this power. The
Hidden Court was all but empty, however, and had been
so for long centuries since the age of Rhame. The Ald
Ways were lost, and the populace of Brythan swelled
aimlessly, unguided by true wisdom. Even the witch-
seers of the Sisterhood of the Holy Fates cast auguries
weak in comparison to those of the distant past, and the
rightful future was rarely glimpsed.
Nonetheless, elders initiates taught Geffarius
Cauther that the Hidden Court could be reclaimed, that
new True Nobles could rise to power, and that worship
of the Horned God could be returned to its rightful place.
The inner circle of the cult of Ald Brythan would ascend
to arcane supremacy, able to view the threads of fate laid
out in a single shining array, and so rule Brythan for an
age. So it was taught, but frailties and lusts betrayed the
heretics ever and again, and the fate of most was to be
destroyed by their peers, by the monstrous Ancient Ones
whom they served, or by the warp made manifest.
The years of Cauther's service flowed like water,
past the hidden battles and wars of assassination, and
past the death of many a master. He penned legends and
esoteric lore that commoner fraternities and Destinist
cults would teach one another for lifetimes to come. He
carefully set seeds that blossomed into seer cults and
soldier's brotherhoods, ready to act unknowingly to the
benefit of the inner circle—for these were his talents.
 Cauther survived the blood-soaked upheavals
that accompanied the Nyorde invasion, when the warp
turned against its wielders, and the Horned God briefly
roared. Of the varied factions of the cult of Ald Brythan
it was the Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade that
continued past that war, the others extinguished, hunted
down, and their lore forgotten or burned. In the decades
that followed other threats arose, and at times Geffarius
Cauther matched wits with Willard Quassus and willful
servants of the Teuda Kings whose actions disrupted the
foretold path—though they knew it not. Their small
victories were often as not in fact Cauther's victories,
bones thrown to distract and confuse the beasts. For so
long as some true foresight of the acts of Quassus and
Brythanic monarchs could be glimpsed by warp-tainted
seers, the insightful plots of Geffarius Cauther would
ever prevail.
When he took quill in hand, Cauther was closest
to the man he once was. But that humanity had slowly
eroded under the touch of the warp, decade by decade.
The madness and bestial corruption of the Ancient Ones
seeped into the Brotherhood's rituals, and could not be
withstood forever.
Ascendant in Disaster
When Quassus and his retinue fell upon Din Edin in the
winter of 784.M41, the inner circle of the Brotherhood
were within the seer fortress or the caldera tunnels
below. Blinded to their fate by the fickle warp, they died
at the hands of the Inquisition. Seers who stood at a
nexus of ritual power, who held the threads of fate that
linked the deaths of Kings past and deaths of Kings to
come, were burned alive in promethium flames. Long-
standing rituals of power were disrupted, and the
Horned God churned and coiled within the warp. An
Empyreal power of madness and fury came foaming
upward from the Ancient One in Din Edin's depths, and
the warring souls within the caldera wall fortress were
charred in witch-lightning, or dissolved as the warp
briefly melted through to the material world. Few
survived, and near all who did were left drooling husks,
soon to freeze to death.
While the steaming powered armour of
Inquisitor Quassus stumbled from the lower tunnel vents
and into the ruin-wastes beyond, Geffarius Cauther
crawled to the shelter of caverns in the high caldera.
There he ranted and suffered visions, driven insane for a
time. The inhuman urges and fractured memories of the
Ancient One had flowed through his mind, burning it
just as his flesh had been touched by the Inquisitor's
42
flames. But Cauther survived, albeit twisted yet further
from the man he once was.
The innermost Brotherhood lay near annihilated
by Willard of the Spear and the warp's blind, focused
fury—but within a bare few years it lived again. The
many covens, fraternities, and mystery cults used as
tools by the Brotherhood elders stood largely untouched.
The seeds carefully sown in past decades would yet
grow. Geffarius Cauther and three witch-seers of the
Sisterhood of the Holy Fates yet lived: once returned to
sanity and crawled from the caldera caves, what
remained of the Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade
was his to command.
A Time of Quiet and Directed Fear
Inquisitor Quassus vanished as a signifier in the auguries
of the witch-seers following the scouring of Din Edin.
Only the long fate-shadow of his past and final deeds
remained. Cauther came to believe him dead, and signs
to the contrary the lies of an Anglish Queen who wished
the populace to think Willard of the Spear yet lived to
bless her rule. But Cauther was not idle: in the same way
as Caesopher Marlow, and at the very same time, he
expected further assault. Traps were laid, and innocents
sacrificed to empower auguries cast by the three witch-
seers.
The expected attack never came, and the most
significant auguries showed no doom of violence and
flames, no vengeful Imperial force in preparation. Yet
the charred-dead seers had not foreseen their fate in Din
Edin's vaults, and so Cauther spent long years in his
preparations for survival. By his plans and orders, the
remnant Brotherhood became even more a hidden and
subtle power. Its most knowing agents were silenced and
its strongest ties allowed to lapse until only the essential
core remained. Unfettered, a range of lesser heretical
cults and sects used by the Brotherhood became careless
and unguided, ultimately attracting the attention of
Caesopher Marlow or Ministorum witchfinders. Their
destruction was no great loss.
Visions of Kingly Death and Treachery
With the passing of another decade, a new concern arose
for the remnant Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade.
Omens became suddenly evident and even the weakest
auguries glimmered with the future echoes of noble
murder. Two Kings of Callidon must die in treachery
and vengeance, and by the time and place of the spilling
of their lifeblood the warp would awaken once again.
Empyreal fires would flow and coil, and those who
correctly laid the rituals of Ald Brythan would be
empowered by the Horned God—raised to a new
Hidden Court as members of the True Nobility. Such a
golden arrangement of fate, a blessing of the warp,
would not arise again for centuries—and woe upon the
corpses of the Brotherhood's elders, who missed this
shining moment by such a short span of time.
As the opening years of the 9th century M41
came and went, Cauther and his attendant witch-seers
directed all of their efforts toward understanding and
orchestrating what was foreseen. The form of the stage
and the players upon it were laid out a hundred times
over, and in as many different ways. It was a puzzle set
in darkness, with only a bare few pieces illuminated by
true foresight. Yet still the toil progressed, and agents,
spies, and other unknowing servants were put in place
within the clan fortresses and noble halls of Callidon's
hive structures. The witch-seers and their acolytes crept
back into the deserted and battle-scarred caldera fortress
of Din Edin, there to set in motion sorcerous rituals that
would span the years, rouse the Ancient One to full
wakefulness, and bind fate-threads to the churning of the
warp.
While Caesopher Marlow struck in ignorance at
the discarded fringes of the old Brotherhood, and the
populace of Brythan lived, prayed, and died unknowing,
Geffarius Cauther and the three witch-seers of the
Sisterhood of the Holy Fates toiled upon a path to
ascension.
Lesser Heretics, Rebels, and Outlaws
Numerous long-standing heresies and rebellious
teachings exist amidst the populace of Brythan, and their
suppression is a constant concern within Ministorum
conclaves and the meeting halls of Lords. Across the
generations heretics and the disloyal have been culled by
the mob, by Lord's men charged with seeking out
unorthodoxy, by witchfinders, and by the
Inquisition—but still heresy, unorthodoxy, and disorder
seems to spring forth anew with each passing year.
When the Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade
first moves against a newly arrived Inquisitor, the
cultists will act through outlaws and lesser heretics
manipulated into becoming spies and assassins with no
true knowledge of who stands behind their orders. The
Brotherhood retains ways and means to influence the
heresies that it long nurtured or used—even the Red
Ring, spawned of Nyorde corruptions that harmed the
cult of Ald Brythan just as greatly as the invasion
43
scarred the populace of Brythan.
Crethix Denialists
Denialism takes innumerable forms, the one
commonality being denial of the God-Emperor's
divinity, or that He exists at all. Denialism appears
throughout the Yeuros worlds, and is usually a matter of
a few rabble-rousers and the fools who follow them,
though denialist communes are at times founded in
remote regions—and later destroyed by Ministorum or
Inquisition forces. Small groups of determined men and
women who deny the Imperial creed are found in any
large rebellion, however, and individuals who quietly
forsake the faith of their communities are perhaps not as
rare as ecclesiarchs would like to believe.
Crethix Denialism is an entirely different beast,
however. It is an organized heresy that originated on
Gahul in a past century, carried throughout the Yeuros
cluster by zealous adherents. The book of this faith is the
Crethix Folio, named for a city of Gahul in which a
denialist cathedral is supposed to have once
stood—empty of all expression of the Imperial creed,
but a holy place of worship nonetheless. Crethix was
destroyed utterly in the aftermath of the first large
denialist uprising upon Gahul, and no-one now knows
what once stood in place of the present worn ruins.
The Crethix scripts are fierce in their
denunciation of Rhame and Ministorum, a revolutionary
tract in all but name that calls for the overthrow of the
religious order that shackles mankind. Denialist
missionaries and pilgrims risk death and worse at the
hands of the Inquisition to carry carefully copied folios
from world to world. They preach a faith of reliance and
equality that rests upon the strong heart of the
individual—not upon a lie created by cruel Lords and
fat, priestly hierarchs that is used to cage men and steal
their freedoms. The Crethix scripts recognize no God but
the distant, uncaring demiurge that gave form to the
galaxy.
Crethix denialists organize themselves as
congregations of a few dozen members led by a handful
of preachers, tutors, and missionaries. Each leader serves
in two or three congregations, but no one person knows
the full extent of a Crethix community, or how to find
more than a few congregations. Despite this defensive
segregation, missives can be passed from congregation
to congregation throughout the community, allowing the
denialists to coordinate—such as in the event of an
uprising or riot.
The broader populace of Brythan knows of
denialism and treats common denialists harshly—or
thinks such beliefs a form of madness. Isolated denialists
who persist in speaking freely may well be confined as
insane, but branding, banishment, or death at the hands
of an angry mob are equally plausible fates. Denialists
of greater standing, such as those who assemble covens
or preach from the Crethix scripts, are more often
dragged before ecclesiarchs to be formally charged with
heresy—whilst the pyre stands ready for the torch.
The Communion
Scattered hereteks haunt the ruin-wards and hidden gaps
of disrepair in the hive foundations, led by renegade
tech-adepts cast out and condemned by their Silencean
brethren. The more organized of these groups
collaborate with void-guilders to run a black trade in
tech-devices—this much at least is well known amongst
the restless and the outcast of Brythan.
Deeper secrets are kept amongst hereteks,
however, such as the existence of a mystery cult known
as the Communion, after ancient prayer scripts
collectively known as the Communion of Ab-Harzed.
The scripts place the holy technologies of Mankind in a
hierarchy of worth, but name the forbidden arts of the
Anima Mori as the greatest technology of all, a once-
glittering spire that the Adeptus Mechanicus must
regain.
Ab-Harzed taught that the dead are not gone, but
rather stand waiting for the lost technologies of
resurrection to be rebuilt. In the fullness of time, all will
be restored to life and thus shown the glory of the
Omnissiah. The tech-rituals of the Communion are
largely mystical in nature, as the hereteks undertake few
of the disturbing practices normally attributed to magi of
the Anima Mori—such as plundering the secrets of dead
flesh or perverting the sacred servitor tech-patterns. The
greatest of the Communion's endeavours are instead
knowledge-quests: sending forth emissaries in search of
heretekal information hidden upon other Yeuros worlds.
Few return, however.
Silencean tech-magi know of the Communion
and would gladly destroy it as an abomination. They are
neither an aggressive nor a militant order by nature,
however. Equally, they are secretive and would never
seek aid from the other powers of Brythan, or from the
Mechanicus of other worlds. Quiet victories have been
attained, and nests of tech-heresy burned out, but the
tendrils of the Communion have successfully survived
long centuries of these half-hearted persecutions.
44
King Althar's Men
The greatest warriors and wise men of King Althar's
court are said to slumber in their deeply buried, hidden
tombs until the God-Emperor calls them forth to defend
Brythan in its years of greatest need. This, at least, is the
commoner's tale of the King, and the way in which
playwrights tell the story of the King's end. But other,
more esoteric lore speaks of stranger truths: of men
made immortal by the God-Emperor's blessing, who bide
their time in the shadows as the generations pass, and
who guard secrets far greater than that of life eternal.
This lore is passed down through a mystery cult
of lodges whose initiates call themselves King Althar's
men, and conduct their meetings as though they were an
absent Lord's inner circle of retainers. A lodge is divided
into subtle ranks of ascending privilege and named
positions of power: sheriff, librarian elect, magister,
master of close-guard, and others. To lesser initiates, the
cult appears as a secret society of connections and
Imperial faith—a way for the influential to forge
compacts away from prying eyes, and for ambitious
commoners to attain influence far above their standing in
the hierarchy of Brythanic society. Only after years of
proven trust is the deeper lore revealed.
King Althar's men have long sought influential
initiates: lodges are typically a mix of Lord's men, lesser
noble scions, guilders, and a few forceful commoners.
The currency of the lodge is favour, and many mundane
conspiracies of trade and power are hatched within its
ritual gatherings. A lodge has no permanent home, and
its folios of lore and ritual items are scattered amongst
the households of trusted members for safekeeping.
Lodges keep ancient swords, spears, and pieces of rusted
armour, scraps of written revelations, and other items
said to have come from King Althar's Court in the
ancient times—but none are authentic.
In truth, the mystery cult of King Althar is
largely a creation of Geffarius Cauther, though that arch-
heretic weaved with older threads: myths of Kingship
and warp-borne secrets from the age of the Ancient
Ones. The innermost initiates of King Althar's men,
those who knowingly seek after secrets of the King's
Court, in the end read only the words of Cauther, and
follow paths that the heretic created long
ago—deliberate dead ends and false lore with the
appearance of ancient wisdom.
Across the centuries, King Althar's men proved
to be useful puppets, spies, and distractions, especially
the lodges established in Hive Londus. The cult of Ald
Brythan created many of the first lodges and agents later
acted as tutors, claiming divinely-given revelation—but
providing no true lore. Over time some of King Althar's
men nevertheless uncovered fragments of heathen
warpcraft, a paltry few of the secrets of Ald Brythan that
Cauther had deliberately obscured. Such initiates soon
vanish; believed by their fellows to have discovered the
final mysteries and joined the King's Court, they are in
fact spirited away to be murdered or inducted into the
Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade, depending upon
their reaction to the truths of the Horned God.
The Red Ring
The Red Ring is a remnant Nyorde corruption: one of
the myriad ways in which the Nyorde sacrificed to their
bloody-handed gods of the warp was by having
prisoners and slaves beat each other to death in fighting
rings. Yet bare-handed fighting in rings and pits—for a
purse, a woman, or to settle grudges—was a tradition
upon Brythan for long generations before the Nyorde
descended from the voids. It remains so: many a tavern
and hive-square regularly sees the flooring cleared and
crowds gather to shout and wager as men fight bare-
fisted.
In sharp contrast to the public fighting circles
found on every hive-deck, the Red Ring is secretive
indeed. It is a cult formed of isolated groups of trusted
initiates, led by shadowy patrons, who conduct brutal
fights to the death behind closed doors. When the time is
right for sacrifice, a false prospect is brought into the
Ring for initiation—but is instead set upon, beaten
bloody, and torn limb from limb. The leaders of some
circles believe that by shedding blood they call upon
nameless powers of Ald Brythan or the blessings of the
God-Emperor, while others chant fragments of Nyorde
rituals and impale those beaten senseless in the Ring
upon the spikes of carved idols.
The Red Ring spread in secret for a century
following the Nyorde invasion, but that first unified
incarnation of the cult was destroyed by Willard of the
Spear. The idols were cast down, the leaders slain, and
the hidden fighting circles demolished. Lesser initiates
of the cult were thugs and outcasts with a taste for
murder, violent men who followed the Red Ring for all
the same reasons as they ran with mobs through the hive
ways. Leaderless, their heresy was easily expunged, and
thousands of the tainted and the suspect alike went to
their deaths upon the pyre. To the Inquisitor's eyes the
Ring was a remnant blood cult of the sort he had come
to despise—unruly and corrupt, the heretics calling upon
the warp with little true knowledge of what they did.
45
Thus the old lore of the Red Ring was scattered
and burned. Where the Red Ring arises now, it is but a
shadow of what it was: small murder-cults born of
whispered secrets, hidden idols, and half-glimpsed
dreams. But even the most ignorant cultists of the Red
Ring can give rise to true warpcraft. A fight to the death
and bloodthirsty heretics shouting beneath a twisted
Nyorde idol can rouse a connection to the Ancient
Ones—and to echoes of the Horned God in the warp. At
its very worst, the warp might touch upon those within
the fighting circle, creating berserkers akin to the feral
warriors of Brythan who died beneath Ramean lasfire.
Their bodies bloat with power, their minds break, and
they slay all they can reach.
Rhamists
Rhamists are supporters of the Rhamean Temple, fiery
zealots and men of deep faith who view the Church of
Brythan as a grand heresy, and the Anglish Court and all
its nobles as heretics. To their eyes the Church imperils
the souls of the masses by its false teachings and
acceptance of Destinism.
Rhamists are known and largely despised by the
broader populace. In some Anglish domains even the
rumour of uncovered Rhamism is enough to rouse a
vengeful mob, and to hear commoners speak on the
matter, Rhamist heretics are secretly working to cast
down the rightful Lords of Brythan such that Rhame can
rule once more. This is in fact far from true: while some
few highly placed Rhamists are indeed agents of the
Rhamean Ministorum, the vast majority see themselves
as torch-bearers trapped in a long and terrible darkness.
Yes, they would gladly cast down the Lords who pray
falsely if they could, but restoring the Temple is a far cry
from restoring the rule of Rhame's legions. Rhamists
wish for Brythanic rulers who support the rightful and
holy Rhamean Temple, and to whom they can therefore
pledge loyalty—but that subtlety is lost on the mob.
The iconography of the Rhamean Temple is
similar to that of the Church of Brythan, but immediately
recognizable in its differences. Rhamists hide their
shrines well, and religious materials are kept behind
false partitions and in secret rooms, for discovery can
only bring persecution. It is often the case that small
wards or habs are largely Rhamist, the better to hide
their avoidance of cathedral worship and observance of
holy days. After a century of often bloody purges,
Rhamists have become secretive, cautious, and hostile
towards the authorities of Brythan's hives.
True Cipherists
The construction of ciphers and elegant mystery-
problems has long been a tradition amongst students and
scholars of the grand schools, a pastime shared by
Administratum clerks within the Hive Londus vaults,
monks better known for their illuminated manuscripts,
and a few less worldly noble scions. Many parchment
folios within the Grand Librarium of Caem's Bridge
contain later marginalia of this nature: cipher-notes and
pictographic crypt-seals left there by both present
students and scholars now long dead. Further, the works
of many scholars, playwrights, and chroniclers are said
to conceal arcane messages—and the most renowned of
these figures are popularly supposed to have penned and
hidden away ciphered works that contain opinions or
secret lore best kept from a wider audience.
Much of this is simply the intricate foolishness
peculiar to scholars of algebraic and universal laws, but
these activities nonetheless conceal a dangerous mystery
cult: the True Cipherists. The original Cipherists were an
inner circle of Caem's Bridge Destinists who used
cipher-psalms in divination and warpcraft, stirring the
warp by means of pattern and ritual. They destroyed
themselves long centuries past: scholars and priests who
touched upon warpcraft, they reached too far and were
consumed by forces they did not comprehend.
Nonetheless a legacy was left, and since that
time True Cipherists have arisen time and again amongst
scholars who stumbled from the game of devising and
breaking crypt-seals to a more serious endeavour, lured
on by the promise of hidden knowledge. They progress
in this gradual heresy by discovering fragments of the
original Cipherist mysteries within tomes and
dataslates—all of which are encoded in layers of
increasing complexity, requiring ever greater knowledge
of Cipherist lore to comprehend.
The present True Cipherist cult is a diffuse
brotherhood of scholars and educated professionals,
scattered across Hive Londus and connected by a shared
history of study in the grand schools. Their beliefs and
goals vary widely; some seek the universal cipher, a key
that will unlock natural laws and make all things
possible. Others believe that the secrets of true
divination, the God-Emperor's ascension, or life eternal
were once known—and are now hidden, ciphered in
ancient works somewhere within Caem's Bridge. All
True Cipherists see hidden messages where there are
none, and secret meanings in simple arrangements of
chance. Some are harmless fools, chasing an illusion,
but the inner circle have stumbled upon a sorcery of
46
patterns that causes ripples in the warp. Like the original
Cipherists, they are unprepared for where this will
inevitably lead. Their eventual fate is violent madness,
and their souls will be destroyed by the swirling warp-
presence of the Horned God as it is drawn to their
ignorant rituals.
A number of True Cipherists are respected
scholars within the grand schools, or have some
connection to the Anglish Court through patronage or
family. They will be useful eyes and ears for the
Brotherhood of the Unsheathed Blade when the time
comes for Geffarius Cauther to pay closer attention to
events in Hive Londus.
Wastemen
Every generation has its wastemen, the outlaws and
outcasts that gather at the edges of society, their ranks
sometimes greatly swelled by a failed uprising or new
declaration of unorthodoxy. Banished outlaws with
electro-branded faces and ragged survivors of rebellion
haunt the poison-tracts, and make their camps in the
ruin-wastes between beast-farms and crumbling,
outlying habs. Some outcast bands include mutants or
harbour those accused of warpcraft, terrified and on the
run from witchfinders, but most are more than willing to
slay any rivals who are visibly cursed. It is a harsh life,
and only the ruthless and the determined survive for
long. The weak starve, grow sick, or simply vanish.
Wastemen steal by night from habs, farm-tracts,
and remote raised roadways, and so raise fear amongst
commoners—who tell tales of the Hollow Men and
spectral beasts that stalk the wastes. The boldest of
wastemen raid warehouses and processories upon the
outskirts of noble domains, leaving their mark to ensure
that the Lord's men know who defies the law of the
domain. Attracting too much attention risks an earnest
hunt, however, or for local bailiffs and commoner fears
to raise militia enough for an effective sweep of the ruin-
wastes. Large bands of wastemen tend to be short-lived,
soon slain and scattered by military force—or torn apart
by internal divisions. Heretics, mutants, and outlaws of
different stripes hate one another just as greatly as they
hate those who cast them out.
Shadowy figures in need of ruthless, expendable
servants often turn to the wastemen. A few stacks of
silver and a cargo-hull of food can buy loyalty for a
short time, and there will be little enough to link dead or
captured wastemen to their patron. Given a promethium
transport, a mob of harsh wastemen could easily make
their way into the heart of a hive structure to carry out a
mission of assault, theft, or murder.
The Witch Houses
Many loosely organized bands of outlaws or rebellious
commoners are marked as "witch houses" by Church of
Brythan ecclesiarches, for they regularly strike at the
holy work of witchfinders. Where these Ministorum
agents are corrupt, hated, and grow wealthy through
false accusation and confiscation, the witch houses may
be little more than the early, vengeful rumblings of a
commoner uprising. But more organized witch houses
also exist, hidden in plain sight amongst the commoner
masses, and whose members work to spirit away nascent
psykers accused of warpcraft and innocents falsely cast
as witches.
The organized, formal witch houses may be led
by outcasts, and may work with outlaw bands, but they
are managed at a distance by the Adeptus Astra
Telepathica. Five centuries of Astropaths Primaris have
despised the crude Ministorum management of the
psyker tithe: more psykers are slain or perish after years
of suffering and neglect in cramped holding cells than
are turned over to the God-Emperor's rightful servants.
Agents of the Astropathica lightly guide the witch
houses, and the ultimate destination for rescued psykers
is the Astropathic Enclave of Hive Londus, where they
are held until such time as they can be secretly delivered
to the Black Ships. Not all survive the tutoring and psy-
machine restraints, but it is a kinder fate than to be taken
by a witchfinder.
Whether these actions of the Astropath Primaris
are a form of rebellion against the will of the High
Ecclesiarch and Imperial Governor is a matter for law-
wrights to argue. There would be repercussions and
political upheaval amongst the Imperial class should the
conspiracy come to light.
The Astropathica are not the only group who
influence and use the witch houses, however. Through
warpcraft and divination, the Brotherhood of the
Unsheathed Blade long ago learned of the organized
rescue and passage of psykers. Their own agents steer
the witch houses to send some of the most promising
psykers to other destinations—into Callidon, for
example, where they might become sacrifices to be
consumed by an Ancient One, or made into servants of
the Sisterhood of the Holy Fates. To the fractious local
leaders of the witch houses there is no difference
between agents of the Brotherhood and agents of the
Astropathica. Both come from nowhere and profess to
be servants of the Imperium, guides to lead an accused
47
witch to forgiveness and rightful service of the God-
Emperor—and who supply silver to help the falsely
accused find new lives, or even pay for the murder of
corrupt witchfinders.
Caesopher Marlow and the Lesser Heresies
Caesopher Marlow's view of the lesser heresies
prevalent upon Brythan is a product of his loyalties to
Inquisitor Quassus and the Anglish Queen. Many
heretics are also outlaws or would-be rebels, their
activities the potential seeds of rebellion against the
Emperor-blessed rule of the Anglish Court—and thus
Denialists, Rhamists, and witch-house outlaws have
suffered greatly from Marlow's attentions over the years.
By reporting these victories to Queen Elyzia, Marlow
maintains his position and influence, which in turn
allows him to protect the fallen Inquisitor Quassus.
Denied access to the crypt-sealed archives of
Inquisitor Quassus, Marlow is less aware of other, more
sinister heresies. He knows of and understands the roots
of the Red Ring: that much he learned from the
Inquisitor directly, and Marlow's agents have destroyed
lesser echoes of the Nyorde fighting circles. In contrast,
Marlow knows nothing of the true nature of the witch
houses, for all that he has sent their leaders to the witch-
magisters. Willard Quassus long knew the witch houses
to be an Astropathic conspiracy, and approved of
it—which did not stop him from destroying their agents
when they stepped beyond their bounds or caused unrest.
Only in the last hours prior to his assault upon Din Edin
did the aged Inquisitor suspect there might be other
fingers in the pie.
Caesopher Marlow and his allies have also
touched upon other less evident heresies. Fifteen years
past, he uncovered three True Cipherists and some of
their works—but only after the scholars lost their sanity
in the midst of pattern rituals. Marlow believes they
were driven mad by some mind-poison that long ago
seeped into the archives of Caem's Bridge, lurking there
to ensnare those who put words and parchment above
faith. There were pyres made of certain old tomes and
folios, and sections of the Grand Librarium were cleared
for a number of years, their contents put under lock and
key in the crypts below. Since that time, Marlow has
cultivated relations with magisters of the grand schools
and made agents of some few lesser scholars—but to no
end, for he is looking for a taint, not a cult, and the
remaining Cipherists are aware of Marlow's interest and
suspicions.
Insofar as the Communion is concerned,
Inquisitor Quassus had little interest in the prosecution
of tech-heresy, and Marlow is cut of the same cloth. He
believes hereteks guilty only of offenses against the
strange customs of the Silencius, an outcast fringe of no
more importance than the few outlaws who hide in every
poverty ward. Quassus may have known much more, but
Marlow is unaware of the extent and true nature of the
Communion.
As to the lodges of King Althar's men: six years
ago Marlow uncovered one such in the manufactory
domain of Essax, adjoining the outskirts of Hive
Londus. The then Lord Essax, Roberthe Devray, stood
in mixed favour with the Queen as a result of past
ambitions and intrigues within the Anglish Court. The
Lord himself and many of his trusted men were initiates
of a lodge that spanned his domain and the Court's outer
retinue, but Devray had become careless and arrogant.
Servants whispered and rumours spread—enough for
Caesopher Marlow to be encouraged by the Queen to
discover what he might. Folios of lore uncovered by
Marlow's agents and the interrogations of lodge
members were enough to see Devray removed as Lord
and confined within a residence of exile upon the cold
Anglish coastal wastes—but not accused of anything
more than unorthodoxy. Servants and trustees went to
the pyre in his place.
Thus Marlow and a number of his agents have a
modest outsider's knowledge of the lore and goals of
King Althar's men, but no real grasp of the scope of the
cult: to their eyes, this was a treasonous Lord who led
his followers astray in both faith and loyalties. Should
Marlow uncover other, similar lodges in Hive Londus,
however, his opinions would quickly change.

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