A Heretic's Life (40K)

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A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Imperial Overlord »

I could say that the accommodations have made the wait comfortable, but that would be a lie. I must say that I'm rather disappointed though. I thought the dread Inquisition could have managed something more impressive than this. Perhaps it's because I'm jaded. There is, after all, so many torture chambers in the Imperium. The gendarme's have theirs, the Arbites have their own, the Ecclesiarchy spends so much time figuring out which torture is right for which sin and then having the means on hand with which to apply it. Add in public executions, the iron fist with which industrial combines and feudal lords enforce their will, and all the other engines of torment available to the great and powerful and the Inquisition is special really only in its reach. Your racks are just like everyone else's. You're only special in that people beside the weak and powerless can end up on them.

Slaanesh's tits that hurt! Let me revise my opinion upwards. As a connoisseur of Imperial brutality, your torturers are definitely better than average. Motherfucker! Top tier. Definitely.

Which is it? Shut my filthy heretic mouth or spill my secrets? I can't be the first one to give you a few barbs along with the truth on your table.

Very well, if you insist. My story, with a minimum of editorializing. It's going to require a little background to put it into context. I was born in the worker habs on Golgotherra Tertius. My parents worked six twelve hour shifts a week in the factoriums on a planet with a twenty two hour day. The seventh day was theoretically free, but it included a mandatory four hour session in church so it wasn't that free. We lived in a squalid little block apartment that was one of thousands in the same building. The heating and warm water were unreliable and luxuries.

My father drank too much and my mother tended to look away from the hardships of the world. That meant our family had even less money than most, (well not that much less, it wasn't as if my father was unique) and growing up I was always wearing passed down garments and I was almost always cold or hungry or both. I wasn't big or strung and in what passed for schola for hab worker rats that counted for a lot, but not in my favor. I did well in classes and that counted for a lot, but again not in my favor with the hab rats.

Last year at schola was age twelve, just like everyone else, but my skills meant that I would graduate to a data entry clerk position instead of a line menial. The hours weren't better, but the pay and the status were and the opportunities for promotion into a vastly more comfortable life beckoned. It's absurd how tiny my horizons were. Meat on more than feast days. Warm baths. A full belly. A wall shelf full of books.

The hab rats objected to the skinny wretch getting above himself. My older brother turned away when they beat me. The broke my fingers as I cried and begged. A clinic medicae set my bones, the worthless wretch, but my hands didn't heal right. Fast typing and fine motor control were things of the past. No more data clerk job. No opportunity for skilled labour jobs in the future, the other legitimate way to advance my pathetic station. Nothing but another slot on the line for me.

No, no, no. I'm not sharing this story for pity. You're a fucking inquisitor for Throne's sake. There is no pity in the Imperium. I learned that from the time I was old enough to understand speech. No, I'm telling you this for context. You wanted to know my secrets. This, this is my defining moment. This is when I became who I am today. This is what made me something other than a puling, sniveling, boot licking, belly crawling slave to an imaginary throne.

The hab gendarmes were, like all their kind, more interesting in keeping us in our place than in justice. The rats lied for each other and my brother said nothing. So they did nothing. My hate and rage made me strong. They made me endure. They gave me the will to plot and the strength of purpose to see it through. I wanted nothing more than to see those who had broken my life suffer before they died by my hand. Khorne. Nurgle. Tzeentch. Slaanesh. I didn't know the names then, but my service had begun.

Well, I exaggerate. Really it was all Khorne then. Bloodlust and revenge. I went to work in the factories like the rest of the boys. I saved a pittance. They weren't smart. They had habits, one of which was the sniffing of industrial solvents which was the easiest and cheapest high available in the habs. Improvised and crude weapons were easy to come by. I waited for one and beat him to death with a bit of rebar. It took longer than I thought it would. He was down before he could fight back though so it wasn't difficult. I took his money and rolled the body into the trash.

The gendarmes never bothered to investigate me. A didn't kill the second, merely crippled him as I had been crippled. I set the third on fire using industrial solvents. They both lived and neither saw my face. I had alibis prepared for all the attacks but never needed them. My older brother moved out. He feared me now and with good reason. I was willing to break rules, I still had my ambition, and I had a taste for blood. It turned out there were plenty of options for a man like that outside the system.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Swindle1984 »

.......... Proceed, heretic.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by DeRogue »

This had better be amusing, heretic, I have ways of torturing you that would make Slaanesh squirm in discomfort.
"With the God Emperor as my shield, and my faith as my sword, may we cast aside the heretics, may we eviscerate the Xenos, But most of all, may we NEVER LET THE FOUL TASTE OF CHAOS SEE OUR HOME! AVE IMPERATOR! AVE DORN! AVE CREED!" Commisar Tiberius Dirax's last words, before The 626 Cadian Fast attack regiment and now extinct Imperial Fist successor chapter known as the Fathers of Dir took the main spaceport on the Cadian planet of Dir, incurring near total losses.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by DeRogue »

Also, this is cool. Keep it up.
"With the God Emperor as my shield, and my faith as my sword, may we cast aside the heretics, may we eviscerate the Xenos, But most of all, may we NEVER LET THE FOUL TASTE OF CHAOS SEE OUR HOME! AVE IMPERATOR! AVE DORN! AVE CREED!" Commisar Tiberius Dirax's last words, before The 626 Cadian Fast attack regiment and now extinct Imperial Fist successor chapter known as the Fathers of Dir took the main spaceport on the Cadian planet of Dir, incurring near total losses.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Imperial Overlord »

There were a number of vices available to the hab rats and while some were legal (like alcohol) or effectively legal (prostitution and solvent sniffing) some were less so. I had killed and maimed and that changes a man. Yes I was still a boy but the point applies. I got involved. It wasn't long before I came to the attention of Titus Volno, a minor hab baron. I had a vicious streak, could do numbers, and smarter than a rock. You wouldn't believe far a little intelligence could carry you in the streets. Anything beyond rodent cunning is uncommon. I counted, I sold, I kept watch, and I collected debts. It wasn't long before I wasn't working even part time on the lines. Crime was better money and Holy Throne the gendarmes were-

Okay, okay. No blaspheming. Give me a moment. Where was I? The gendarmes. They were fucking useless and that's the ones we weren't bribing. I quickly found out that there was, how shall I put it, a lot of "defective" product being sold off at cut rates. There was a river of dirty money flowing through the factories and habs and while the big men were the ones who took the long drinks I was eager to get a bigger cut. It wasn't long before I wasn't handling merchandise anymore and was thus almost untouchable as far as conventional law enforcement. I was junior management, which was to say I was watching the small fry make money for the bosses.

I hooked up with a cute party girl and part time prostitute, the kind that travel from man to man collecting gifts and spending someone else's money. Her name was Trina and I thought the gates to paradise lay between her thighs. Sweet Slaanesh I was naive kid back then. If I new then . . . well that was then. It didn't last but we fucked like rabbits and she spent my money freely which was pretty much what led to the end of it. She was constantly asking for money and presents and did nothing but fuck to earn her way. Once the novelty wore off I knew she was using me and I could get a better deal for sex.

I might have clawed my way up or I might have died in a sewer but things changed. A cult began moving into the habs and they were something else. Actively anarchist, they fed off the discontent and oppression and they preached in garages and empty warehouses and what they preached was revolution. The New Dawn they called themselves and they weren't shy. The advocated a new way, a better deal, and something hazy and fuzzy about governing that I never really caught. They were crazy, of course, and scary mean.

Their street level warriors were fanatics and when they pushed, everyone else either caved or was rolled over. They weren't afraid of the gendarmes either and when they started hanging suspected informers on lamp posts and ambushing patrols everyone backed away from them. I got the idea that everything was going to blow and bought a worker's ID papers and had the particulars forged so I fit.

I didn't get out fast enough. The gendarmes were useless but the Arbites came down like a hammer. And the New Dawn fought back. They fought back with guns and grenades and heavy weapons and warp sorcery. I was creeping along, trying to get out the war zone with my pathetic savings when I saw a daemon for the first time.

It was small, smaller than I was. Humanoid in shape with a hunched build and long fingers that ended in talons. It's eyes were like giant sapphires. In the dark it looked black and I never saw it in the light. It looked at where I was hiding and I could swear that it saw me. It turned away from and walked away. I never knew why.

The cordon around the habs and the wider one around the city failed. The New Dawn was too strong. Blurry things I could half see swam in the air and dark clouds surrounded the city. Just before I snuck out through a sewer pipe it started raining blood.

The sewer pipe was a bad idea but someone else had tripped the first booby traps and something else had eaten the guards on the other side. City boy that I was I starved for five days and drank not nearly enough dirty water as I hiked overland. The Planetary Defence Force was arriving in force, joining the Arbites. I saw their flyers in the air and their transports on the roads. I never went near them.

Eventually I arrived at a small town with a rail hub and got a ticked to Gelhalt, the city of opportunity. Turns out that local legends were a little exaggerated. Gelhalt had a modest number of refugees, a competitive underworld, a less useless class of gendarmes and I had no contacts. Money began to run out.

Gelhalt also had a star port and ship captains had a hunger for bodies. A recruiter spun stories which I knew were bullshit about the opportunities aboard The Star of Nadara, but her sailors did enough boasting and spending in dockside bars that I signed on anyway. So, in short, I was still a fool.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by LadyTevar »

A fool, but one who can learn from his mistakes.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Imperial Overlord »

I found out pretty quick that a space ship was just another prison. It was a hab block that floated through space, but from the inside it was just machines, enforcers, and a system where the bottom toiled so those at the top can receive great rewards. There was a rigid hierarchy and I was at the bottom, a dirt foot rating with no skills.

Like any other system it chewed up those at the bottom. Moving parts, high currents, toxic fuel leeks, and so forth meant maiming and death weren't strangers. The enforcers were all void born and a separate caste and merciless. As you can imagine, it wasn't much of a step up.

I had enough knowledge of machines from my time in hab factories and learned enough in my first year to get nudged up into skilled crew, a significantly safer and better paying position. Food was the same slop though. It was two more years before a good opportunity to jump ship came along. I didn't look back.

Chalice wasn't a hive world, but it was a heavily polluted, heavily industrialized hellpit and wouldn't have been my first choice of jumping off place if I hadn't made a good contact with the Crimson Brand, a group of mercenaries and raiders on a planet that had a huge appetite for private muscle and exported much of the same. Being a gun for the authority was definitely a step up.

It turns out that I could commit crimes not without impunity, but something close as long as the victims were from the lower classes. Our jobs mostly consisted of keeping our boots on the necks of our employers' subjects or guarding our bosses' stuff. Chalice was boiling over with discontent, but the nobles had figured out they could pay part of the poor to keep the rest down and it worked. I delivered more beatings and committed more murders in a year of service to the lords of the Imperium than the rest of my criminal career put together.

I hadn't forgotten that my masters, from officers to high lords, would throw my body into the threshers if they thought it might help them. Actually, they wouldn't notice me because they would be throwing bodies in job lots. I was bullet, waiting to be fired.

So naturally I looked for a way to steal a fortune. The opportunities to commit an inside job were boundless, but unfortunately that would supply a short list of suspects and that meant death. So I waited and made friends with potentially useful tools over cards and booze and bets.

Eventually the right opportunity came along. It wasn't a place we were directly responsible for so the finger wouldn't be pointed straight at us. We did a smash and grab at a poorly guarded estate whose owner did business with our boss. We knocked out the security systems and transmissions and then iced the guards. I did feel a little bad about that, but that way I was safer. We plundered the hell out of the place and then left. We burned the getaway vehicle and stashed the stuff.

The problem with doing the job with a crew is that in any group of people there is likely at least one greedy fool. We needed to sit on a lot of these pieces for a long time and not everyone was up for that. So I took the stash and vanished. I had transpo to another city, money saved up, and nice new identity. Then I laid low.

The cash we had stolen kept me living easy for a while. A few discrete sales of the more generic pieces left me with a lot of money and another move and identity switch kept me ahead of everybody. Actually, I don't even know if they ever came close. I bought a ticket on a Chartist ship as a passenger and ended up on Halitha. There I fenced the rest and ended up real money. A lot of real money.

That's when heresy became a full time occupation.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Grimnosh »

A good quantity of cash and the start of heresy? Sounds like a start with Slaanesh there.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Ugolino »

This guy's fingers still broken?
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Imperial Overlord »

Ugolino wrote:This guy's fingers still broken?
He's still in need of good reconstruction.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by KlavoHunter »

He ain't playing the piano or a typewriter, but more than good enough to shoot, stab, or club you.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Swindle1984 »

KlavoHunter wrote:He ain't playing the piano or a typewriter, but more than good enough to shoot, stab, or club you.
At short range. Crippled fingers tend to make precision with a firearm all but impossible. You wouldn't believe how often people who aren't injured in any way miss even at a distance of three yards.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Imperial Overlord »

Swindle1984 wrote:
KlavoHunter wrote:He ain't playing the piano or a typewriter, but more than good enough to shoot, stab, or club you.
At short range. Crippled fingers tend to make precision with a firearm all but impossible. You wouldn't believe how often people who aren't injured in any way miss even at a distance of three yards.

His hands are functional and he's functionally a thug for hire, not a sniper.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Imperial Overlord »

First thing I did was get my hands fixed by a real surgeon. I had held off before because I knew I could be tracked by it, but I had switched identities and locations enough times to feel safe. I went under the knife and the surgeon went to work. It was a while latter that I could use my hands, but it was glorious. Most of the pain went away, they didn't look odd, and I could do delicate work. It was as if I had managed to steal my life back.

I had money, my hands, a hatred of the powers that be, and contempt for the law. I was, in other words, ready. Like any other world there are shadow lands on Halitha, places where the proscribed are bought and traded. On Halitha the enforcers were called the Wardens and like most places in the Imperium they were clumsy, brutal, and venal. Their suppression of the criminal underworld amount was in the form of extortion from the purveyors of vices and the crushing of the most visible and odious members. If blood flowed they would look, but not too hard. There were a few among them who were dangerous and determined, zealots following their vision of justice, but the machinery of oppression ground them up along with everyone else. The Imperium has no use for solitary virtue.

No need for that. I'll stop degressing. Where was I? The shadow lands right. There are so many things for sale there. I took council with warp dabblers and bought forbidden books. I acquired a small horde of forbidden knowledge.

Some of it was philosophy or theology was considered suspect or downright heretical. It made for an interesting read, sharpened my hatred for the Imperium by adding contempt to what I already felt, and sharpened my mind. Much of the rest was dross, but I was able to separate out the strands of true metal running through it. There were gods other than the Emperor and they gave gifts and power to those that honoured them. These gods encouraged indulgence not restraint and freedom instead of slavery. They were capable of great cruelty but did not stock hells full of breakers of arbitrary rules. They were strong and their followers were many and their greatest servants would live forever and indulge in every vice conceivable as well as those beyond the ken of mortal man.

My accumulation of lore was, of course, pathetic. It's a fraction of what I know now and I'm sure most interrogators know more than I did but I knew enough. Enough to name the Four Great Gods and pray to them. Enough to learn rites and pieces of spells. What I knew then was horribly dangerous to the user, but the Architect of Fate had a role for me. I honed my skills with practice until I was capable to executing the spells without mishap before trying them out. The actual workings were quite feeble, but quite useful. I could beguile others, making them friendly and pliable. Favorable terms came my way in business dealings and money flowed in. My offerings to the True Gods became more extravagant and with the luxuries my growing bank balance allowed I was able to indulge and entertain.

I met a lovely young woman with the mind of a spider named Trella Arbane and we swiftly became lovers. She had a taste for a wide variety of vices and perversions and a number of schemes and manipulations. In her Slaanesh and Tzeentch both had a home and I did not so much as lead her into heresy as give her the true names for what she already practiced. She was an enthusiastic partner in bed and in every shady enterprise.

This went on for about two years before the spark happened. Trella had gotten into a fight with some bitch over something trivial and it escalated. She was thrown out of the cafe it occurred and she wanted revenge. I was obliging. The woman was a regular customer with a regular schedule and so one day I bumped into her and cut her "by accident". Just a tiny cut, but the blood served as a connection for the rite I conducted later that night. When I met her again she readily agreed to come to my townhouse.

We spilled blood that day and well into the night. We had her in just about every way possible and subjected her a wide variety of degradations. She was like a puppet on strings, helpless to resist the command I had over her flesh and submitting to everything we did. I closed the bounds I held her in like a vice, performing the rite again over her naked and helpless body. Not a scarp of skin or a strand or hair or a drop of blood but her body and soul.

I wracked her flesh with sorcerous pleasure as raped her. Her mind tried to retreat by my hold on her was too strong and she could not. She became an enthusiastic participant in what we did as I worked to remake her as our degraded slave. I learned that night that every other pleasure and vice was a pale second compared to that of power. No wonder the Imperium is as it is. A thousands sins can be abjured and what does it matter? The powerful can indulge in the greatest of vices and have it called virtue. That was the first lesson I learned that night.

The second was the pliability of minds and flesh. Never before had I such total control of a subject, able to push them into enjoying what they feared and hated. We are forged by circumstance but we can be reforged by a drastic enough change in those circumstances. The strongest of us can be broken and the staunchest among us can have our lives inverted. Why do you think I am talking to you so freely? I know that eventually I'll crack. There's no point in resisting. You might still torture me anyway but why force the issue? You'll learn what you want soon enough.

The third lesson is that the warp is always watching. Always. It was an hour or two before dawn and we had her hanging by manacles attached to a ceiling ring when it happened. Her head stopped lolling and instead she stared into my eyes. I said she stared, but that's not true. Something else was seeing through her.

She tugged and ripped the ceiling ring down and then pulled the manacles off. I was frozen for a moment in shock, a moment which I was sure was going to my death. "Ahh," she hissed. "Damarus. Such a delight you are."

I took a step back as she advanced. "What are you?"

"What am I?" she answered coquettishly. "I am a servant of the Dark Prince. Your prince. And you have served me well as has your leman." She licked her lips lasciviously and swallowed the blood on her tongue. "You broke her down so marvelously and your sorcery was so helpful. She was ripe fruit, waiting to be plucked. So I picked her."

She ran her hands up her flanks and fondled her breasts. "Yes, a very pleasing steed," she said. "And for you a reward."

"Reward?" I asked. My throat was rather dry at the moment.

"Yes," she hissed and stepped forward. Her hand reached out and fondled my groin. I instantly became almost painfully erect. "You have been faithful and so very helpful. I will dance in the world of flesh and serve the will of the Dark Prince. And you, you foolish but faithful and favored mortal shall be rewarded and instructed on how to be a more useful and pleasing to Her." She extended her tongue and it was longer than it should have been. She smiled at me and then sank to her knees.

It's unfortunate that you don't want to hear about what came next. You should really broaden your horizons but I know I'm wasting my time. Suffice to say that this is the point when I went from heretic and warp dabbler to full fledged servant of the Dark Powers who was intent on burning down your empire of slaves.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Morilore »

Well this story just changed MPAA ratings.
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by White Haven »

You should try some of his Free Federation stuff. Makes 40k look tame at times. :twisted:
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Rhine »

Well, that got interesting in a strange way
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Re: A Heretic's Life (40K)

Post by Ugolino »

"Slaaneshi Hijack lol"?

Well, Our Hero(?) just got a few dozen Corruption points....
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