As the Psychic Awakening spreads across the galaxy, many new cults are springing up. Though they may be dedicated to the Emperor in name, who can say what lies behind their strange beliefs? On the Satrapol Orbital Dockyards, one officer of the 86th Ghreddask Illuminators is about to find out how sinister these new faiths can be…
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-44-9/00cycle4
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 846>3
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary Second Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report commences. Throne but there’s a lot of them coming through at the moment. Four more pilgrim ships in the last three days. As if we didn’t have enough on our hands with the eighteen currently docked. Eighteen! You see the fear in every face. It’s the… thing… the hole in space. The rift, or whatever they’re calling it. The cowl-heads have some fancy High Gothic name for it, but the rift will do for grunts like us.
Whatever you call it, that’s what they’re fleeing, as though somehow you could run away from a void strangeness that stretches from… well, from here to eternity’s bloody gates far as I can see. Idiots. Cowards.
Faith in the Emperor isn’t a place, it isn’t words said or indulgences paid into offering-pots. It’s what’s in your heart. You either have faith or you don’t, and only them that has it are going to survive. Folk like the Illuminators. We’ve faith enough for all of them, and the Emperor sees it. Still… they might be idiots, but they’re idiots with credit. The coffers won’t be dry for a while, that much is for sure. Anyway. Long shift and few enough hours before I’ve to do it all again, so… report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-45-8/01cycle1
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 846>8
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary Second Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report commences. Violence today, an altercation in the penitents’ halls between a queue of pilgrims and the Cult of the Emperor’s Anguish. Far as I understand it, before we got there the cultists had stirred up trouble by haranguing the new arrivals. They were griefing the newcomers over what they called ‘bodily sin’, how none of them bore ‘the marks of purity’ and how they should all fall to their knees and repent because ‘the pilgrims carried seeds of annihilation in their hearts’. Load of pseudo-heretical fearmongering.
The Emperor’s Anguish have been a pain in the arse for months now – harassing us, harassing the pilgrims, spouting warnings of doom and damnation. As though we can’t all see the rift, awake or asleep! As though we’re not all thinking the end might very well be nigh. But what does it help, stirring people up like that, attacking them? I’ll tell you who it didn’t help, the pilgrim whose wick burned down with ’em so bad that he drew a blade to warn ’em off. Protecting his family, it later turned out, but that don’t carry no weight with the Enforcers and it don’t carry no weight with us. Naked blades aren’t allowed anywhere through the docks without a permit. He’d been past enough commandment placards to bloody well know it. So that was it. Had to shoot him. Did the deed myself. Only pity is First Luminary Janss wouldn’t let us put a few rounds into the cultists for disturbing the Emperor’s peace, too. Might’ve made an example, settled them down, but… I’ll just have to make my own peace with that, eh? Report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-46-2/03cycle1
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 847>2
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary Second Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report commences. Six more ships. Six. We’re spread thin, the Enforcers thinner, and the tithemasters thinnest of all. ’Course, that just slows things down even more, breeds unrest, leaves gaps for trouble to slip through. The idle are wicked and the wicked never idle, as they say. Hah, that’d make us the most wicked of the lot I reckon, we’re that busy. I take stimms to keep functioning. I hit a bottle of shocc to get off to sleep at shift’s end, and there’s few enough hours of that before it all begins again. What I’d give for a proper rest rotation, but no sign of that anytime soon. And on that, time for a few hours’ blessed oblivion. Report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-46-5/03cycle9
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 847>4
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary Second Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report commences. Emperor’s bones, this has not been a good rotation. The compress wrapped ’round my arm tells that tale all by itself and I’ll be honest, I’m angry. It was the damned cults again. The Emperor’s Mercy I expect this from, but this time they dragged the Church of the Radiant Hope into it. Or at least, both were involved.
By the time we reached Penitents’ Hall Septiam it was bedlam. We got into it, shotguns and flamers were discharged… I took a bullet to the meat of my right arm before it all got calmed down. Throne, but the Enforcers have got a lot of arrests to process after that one. Far as we could make out, it began with the Emperor’s Mercy preaching their bile and brimstone at the pilgrims again. Then the Radiant Hope arrive and start their own sermon, completely different message to the Emperor’s Mercy though no less doom and gloom.
Sounds as though the cultists lost patience with one another. Blades were drawn, things thrown. Then firearms were discharged and it got much more serious very quickly. People ran for cover, others got involved… Out-and-out fighting, on our docks, under our very noses! Don’t care who griefed who or why, I’ll say that. Illuminators were injured, Enforcers too. No one’s in the right once that happens, no one but us. I’ll be watching the cults carefully from now on, mark me on that! Report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-47-1/05cycle1
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 847>7
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary 2nd Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask IlluminatorsReport commences. Emperor’s Mercy and the Radiant Hope got into it again, this time in the mendicants shrine on deck four-eighteen. Bastards, the lot of them. There’s one Imperial faith, one creed, not dozens. The Emperor’s word ain’t open to interpre-bloody-tation! Should all be purged. My arm still bloody hurts, too. Still, these trials are sent to teach us the value of suffering, as they say. Report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-48-3/05cycle7
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 849>1
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary 2nd Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report commences. I feel like there’s a storm in the air. It’s like the tightness that settles over the tundra right before the maelstroms break above the hawkeries. Throne I miss Ghreddask sometimes – the open spaces, the hunts. At least those are honest, straightforward, a blooding at the end and the surety of a simple dawn the next day. Might as well wish for a theldrite-chased case of amasec eh? Wishes are the heretic’s promise.
In short, the pilgrims are unsettled and it’s making everyone’s jobs harder. They’re obstructionate, wary, suspicious… and we’re suspicious of them! There’s been arrests, far more than normal even with all these ships. Odd sigils daubed in… well, Throne alone knows what… on the walls of back-corridors and servo-oubliettes. Fights breaking out all over. Heretical proclamations pinned to bulkheads.
This can’t carry on, I know that much, we all do. But what’s to be done about it? Of that I’ve no notion. Punitive executions maybe? A purge? The Emperor will guide us in this, as he does in all things, I’m sure. Report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-48-8/06cycle8
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 849>8
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary 2nd Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Censured! Me! I can’t… oh… report commences et-bloody-cetra! I’m acting with the Emperor’s own sanction while these cult fanatics are just wearing his holiness like a damned disguise. Hiding behind it like a shield! Yes, you’re bloody right I shot that heretic and no I don’t care one Throne-damned whit if he was armed or not. Purge ’em all for the unrest they’re spreading. The righteous reap their reward beyond the veil, that’s the saying. Well, if they’re so damned righteous let them go and claim their prize and be done with it, eh?
Drinking too much, I know I am, but nothing else takes the edge off. Arm still hurts, healing with an ugly scar. Tomorrow will be better. Aye. Sure. Report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-49-9/06cycle9
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 849>9
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary 2nd Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report commences. Crowd crush today, massed panic in Penitents’ Hall Novemnus. Dozens killed, hundreds more injured. We had to close the bulkheads and let it wear itself out or they’d have stampeded Halls Octis and Decimal and that would have meant a lot more dead. Pulled the lever myself. Throne help me there was satisfaction in that, seeing their bovine faces turn to shock and terror. Yes, that’s right you vapid idiots, reap the wages of your own stupidity. The heretic’s reward is to be crushed by the merciless gears of his own unclean artifice, as they say.
Part of me is afraid that I should feel… something… for consigning them to death like that. Part of me doesn’t feel anything at all. Mostly I’m just angry. Just… angry. They said afterwards it was a hallucination as started it. Some mass vision, manifestation, Throne knows what that sparked the panic. Report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-50-02/07cycle2
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 850>3
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary 2nd Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report commences. This cannot go on. Absolutely cannot. Either we outlaw false creeds throughout the docks or… well… it’ll end in blood, I’ll say that. Almost hope it does.
The Emperor’s Mercy and the Radiant Hope are as good as at war already. Skirmishes through the duct-networks and maintenance decks. The cults sending processions through the Penitents’ Halls and demanding the pilgrims choose between one creed and another. As if they both weren’t treading the highwire over heresy and damnation their own selves. We break it up where we can, and the Enforcers have doubled their guards around the tithemasters but still… Throne knows… ah… report ends.
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-52-03/07cycle9
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 851>1
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary 2nd Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report… umm… this is…
…I don’t want to hurt anyone. You know that, don’t you? Emperor? You hear my truth? I only do my duty. Bloody hell… too much to drink again… these damned dreams… I don’t want to hurt anyone, not really. They just make me so… angry… make me want to do… things… I’m loyal, you hear me? I’m loyal to the… the Emperor and it’s… just faith that makes me want to… just anger at these… bloody heretics… that… never mind, erasing this one. Erasing… Erasing! Oh Throne and… saint’s bones… to it…
ENTRY DATE: Talledus Standard 99-52-06/08cycle3
LOCATION: Satrapol Orbital Dockyards // Corminius Ward
REPORT LOG: 851>7
REPORTING OFFICER: Luminary 2nd Class Leandra Payce, 86th Ghreddask Illuminators
Report commences. It has gone too far. We shan’t stand by and allow heresy and sedition to flourish any longer! There has been a riot, spread like wildfire through the pilgrims and still being stamped out by our soldiers and the Enforcers both. We see it now. Informants came to us, backed up the findings of the Enforcers… I am angry, for we have been blind.
The Cult of the Emperor’s Mercy. How did we not see them for what they were all the sooner? They started that riot, decrying the Radiant Hope as heretics, demanding the peoples’ aid in purging their rivals. Anger and fear begat violence as they knew it would and by the time the storm had died back, however many hours later, hundreds were dead. Pilgrims, cultists, Enforcers… only it wasn’t the holy crusade they claimed, was it? How could it have been, when we found eight of our own butchered in some kind of rune-etched ritual circle, their bodies dragged from their posts and deposited in the docks’ cathedrum primus.
That must have been the work of the Emperor’s Mercy. They used the pilgrims’ weak faith as cover to work their own nefarious evils. Their own murder. Well, they’ll find soon enough that our fury knows no bounds, and the Emperor has no mercy for them no matter their name. I depart now. The purge commences. Report ends.
ENTRY DATE: The moment of rapture
LOCATION: The holy heavens, praise the Emperor’s crimson light
REPORT LOG: 888
REPORTING OFFICER: Enlightened Leandra Payce, Ghreddask Illuminated
Praise be to the Emperor, for we are delivered at last while the Cult of the Emperor’s Mercy are no more! Days it took us to purge them, days after they got news of our onset and fled into the maintenance decks. Had it not been for the aid of the Radiant Light we might never have cornered and butchered our quarry as we did.
Oh, blood flowed on both sides but then, it is as the Preachers of the Radiant Light say, all bloodshed pleases the Emperor – for it is all holy, no matter whence it flows. How did it take me so long to see? I thank the Emperor from the bottom of my heart that we heard the message of the Radiant Light as the blood flowed and holy battle was joined. I am shamed that, for so long, I believed them to be no better than the recidivist vermin of the Emperor’s Mercy. But I am enlightened, now. They who prate of mercy, of forbearance and temperance, they are heretics.
This is not an age for merciful deeds, but for war unending in the Emperor’s name. He sits upon his Golden Throne atop a mountain of heretic skulls and he sees our deeds. He bellows his endless call to war. Oh and there can be reward, for those of true faith. I see it now, and I am not alone. We shall spread this message through the ranks, Throne, you can be sure of that.
We might be the first to join the Radiant Light but we shan’t be the last. And any who oppose us? Well, the Emperor cries out from Holy Terra, not for peace, but for battle unending. We’ll give him that. Report ends.
You can discover more tales from the Psychic Awakening on the website, along with a host of articles and an interactive map charting the psychic anomalies that are springing up across the galaxy. For the latest news, sign up to the Games Workshop newsletter – between that and the website, you’ll always be up to date!