X Kingdom: Kith's Army

Midian and Mordecai study the pages. If they are to be believed, it seems the unnamed author had been testing a variety of occult theories. Discovering how and why is frustrating, the difficulty multiplied by the fact that many pages are missing.
Never-the-less, as they become familiar with the author’s idiosyncrasies, the content proves to be quite fascinating and the ideas start to make them question what they’ve been taught about Navigation and Psychic Lore. At the very least it provokes introspective thought and inspires them to come up with new conclusions to old concepts.

The protagonists communicate with Maya only by notes left in Kith’s quarters, instructing her to build up a profile of Amael Lucretia’s movements.
(Limited: Spends all day and most of night in archive, never out of earshot of her eight bodyguards.)
On the third day her pattern changes, writing off much of Maya’s work. The Amael reopens the archive.
Given the time since Kith’s investigations first tipped her off, Mordecai hypothesizes that she’s likely purged anything dangerous or embarrassing.
Midian advises her to begin mapping the Amael’s patterns, but Maya has something more pressing for the protagonists, someone she wants them to meet…

She takes them down to the bottom of the ziggurat, to one of the many warehouses. A man with an augmetic eye stands watch but, after she vouches for them, they’re allowed to proceed. His distrust is still evident.
Inside, three dozen malnourished, bitter-looking plebs sit or stand, listening to a man standing atop a crate. The orator is a tall and wiry man with black hair, and looks like a worker himself. He is more heavily scarred than anyone else present and bares fresh bruises on his cheek and arms.
“…and it shall never change.
“The poor worker will always suffer. It is our lot – and we accept it… endure it.
“But must we suffer alone? Why do the rich deserve their comfort? What have they sacrificed? Why should they be spared?”
A lone voice calls out; “We must have faith!” but it’s a weak voice, and there is no conviction behind it.
“Faith? In what? Brothers… sisters… our ancestors departed the bounds of the Imperium. They came beyond its borders. Spurned the protection it ‘claimed’ to offer. They struggled – as we all struggle – but they were not free. Has Governor Xanatov not just given the resources of our world away? Has he not taken the food from your mouths and given it to distant, uncaring bureaucrats who offer – who can offer – nothing in return?”
[more bitter cheering, interrupted by another single voice] “But the PDF!”
“Bokor* is dead. Does anyone doubt this? And we are far from toothless.” Grigor prizes open a crate to reveal a rack of autoguns. “But more importantly, brothers and sisters, I ask you… With what little you have to lose, are you really willing to let the injustice of the fat man’s decadent rule?”
The crowd begins to nod, grim resolve building within them. As the orator steps down, they begin speaking in smaller groups, discussing useful targets (or else plotting petty vengeance).

A woman – who Maya identifies as Hala Chen - who stood watching behind the orator, takes him to one side. Maya leads the protagonists towards these two, explaining that this Grigor Orlac had been shaping up to be her most likely candidate to replace Xanatov.
As they approach, they overhear him Grigor arguing with Hala. She wants to use the remainder of their money to provide medicae for the masses, but Grigor eventually convinces her that unless the people are at their lowest, they’ll never fight back. He regrets the truth of it, but if their misery abates they’ll still put up with the status quo. Unless their fear of losing what they have outweighs their fear of the Governor, they’ll never rebel.

Mordecai peers into Grigor’s mind and does not like what he finds.

• Grigor is in significant pain, which does not show at all in his body language or demeanour.


• He genuinely wants a revolution, but knows people will suffer during it. He doesn’t mind this – he likes it.
  
• He got the bruises from fighting with Enforcers who were shaking down a farmer.


• He feels genuine relish from suffering (his own and that of others). This isn’t sexual, but instead a source of both pride and satisfaction.


• There are familiar traces of something that scares Mordecai in this man’s mind. Something that is encouraging the dark impulses within Grigor.

(He also pulls Grigor’s home address – a dormitory in the lower levels.)
At Mordecai’s telepathic prompting, Midian reads Grigor’s soul. The man is certainly corrupt, and he confirms that he has been ‘touched’ by some kind of darkness.
Maya introduces the protagonists as people who were working with Kith. When Grigor happily enquires as to how they intend to further the cause – how they can weaken their oppressors, strengthen the rebels or recruit converts – Midian is vague, obfuscating with rhetoric worthy of a practiced politician. Given the resources that their associate (Kith) has poured into the cause, Grigor doesn’t seem to mind.

Given what he’s learned, Mordecai is horrified that Maya would think to replace even a decadent, self-interested ass-wipe like Xanatov** with someone inherently worse (Grigor). Maya shrugs – she wasn’t thinking of choosing him because he was a good person, but because he was most likely to succeed. She adds, quite callously, that it wasn’t like she and Kith intended to stay afterwards.
When she leaves he questions Midian about the whole endeavour. It seems more and more likely to him that their actions will further the agenda of a ‘daemon’. Midian responds that he doesn’t care if it does. If there is a chance that their current path can increase Midan’s knowledge, understanding or power, it’s worth risking the wellbeing of people he doesn’t know.

Back at their lodgings, the protagonists continue to study the pages. Though much of the text is gibberish, much of it also seems familiar, and Mordecai finds psychic focusing rituals and meditation techniques which, with very little practice, he could add to his mental training regime.
Many of the experiments documented parallel theories you’ve encountered through their own research (SL: Occult). Huge sections of it, however, turn out to be incredibly detailed Navigational formulae. With these algorithms you could plot Vinh’s position not just within the system, but within the Expanse, the Sector… even the Segmentum, if you really wanted to go that far. It takes into account everything Midian can think of – from stellar drift and galactic expansion to the gravitational effects of irregular cometary matter. It is frightening the level of detail someone’s gone into – a Navigator would never need to do this.
At some point, the author must have made what they believed was a breakthrough, as the later pages detail some kind of sorcerous ritual. Devised by the author, the purpose of the ritual is, evidently, to “conquer” or “master” somewhere or something called “Malkuth”.

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* Colonel Harakeen Bokor was killed on Blemish (a meeting place for several pirate-kings) by Sabine Alcina (facilitated by Sarvus Roe and his command crew – Midian included). Despite having been officially retired from command of the PDF, his name still made them feared

** Governor Oren Xanatov has been exaggerating his defence requirements to the Administratum; using the defence budget to line his own pockets, at the expense of the people of Vinh. “At great cost”, he also acquired the “Black Imperator” – a staff that was reputedly cursed, but was in fact harmless – and handed it over to the Ecclesiarchy for disposal.

X Kingdom: Prophesy

Anya’s place it sits in the back of a semi-circular depression, making the building look like it has backed its way into a corner. Roots from trees on the ridge above have emerged from earth behind it, their blind progress following the building’s surfaces. Were it not for the flickering light of the many candles inside the protagonists would guess this was deliberate, natural camouflage.
The shack itself is old and rickety. The boards are uneven and have a rough finish to them, porch roof appears to be held up by stripped tree branches, and the windows are unglazed – only tacked-on gauze keeping the insects out. From damp, rotting beams hang wind-chimes made from clattering animal bones. Before the threshold is a thick arc of red-brown powder which Mordecai shifts with the tip of his sword.
After Midian’s inquiries are rebuffed by the occupant, Mordecai kicks the door in and brusquely enters the abode.

Anya herself looks in worse shape than her home. She is old, perhaps in her eighth or ninth decade and wears a cloth patch across her left eye (which, Midian later notes, removed two or three weeks ago). From her squint, it seems her other one isn’t working too well either.
She was afraid of and cowers when Mordecai telekinetically wrenches the knife from her hand.
At this point she gives up, and does whatever she can to get rid of the strangers (beginning with patching Midian up sufficiently that he can walk unaided). Her subsequent interrogation is hampered by her addled mind and she frequently mistakes Midian for Kith (referring to both by one of Lum’s epithets, “Wayfarer”), so Mordecai attempts to take what he needs from her mind. At this point his own mind is almost sucked down into a spiralling darkness the likes of which he has never experienced. Whatever is in there with him certainly enjoys the rising panic before he extricates himself, fleeing into the night. Midian tries to stop him, attempting to freeze him in place with one of his warp-spawned talents, but (having to restrain himself so as not to injure his felow renegade) is unable to overpower the psyker’s formidable mental defences.

Not wishing to leave empty-handed, her returned and perservered with the interrogation piecing together what he could. Anya hadn’t been able to tell Kith what he’d wanted to know – there were no “magical” ruins about the place and certainly no temple. At one point she muttered, “I told you what you wanted to know – you should already have your army by now!” but when pressed said she didn’t know why Kith/Midian/Wayfarer needed an army (and was confused as to why he wouldn’t know), only that she wanted nothing to do with it.
Eventually, after Midian promises to return the eye he took from her, she is pressed into redoing Kith/Midian/Wayfarer’s “reading”.
She takes a fat yellow serpent from a basket and prays at a cluttered shrine consisting of herbs, animal bones, a Vinh-minted coin (Xanatov’s side is on display), a ceramic figurine of a woman holding a basket of fruit, and another figure – this one of carved stone - of some robed figure. Midian notes that it is not uncommon for primitive religions to disguise themselves within the trappings of a dominant religion, so doesn’t question these things. All this time she mumbles nonsense words to herself. She finishes abruptly, cutting open the serpent and emptying it’s entrails into a burnished copper bowl.

“See! Same as always, Wayfarer. Same as Anya always tells you. You and the Kingmaker are already on the path.”
She then goes into a fit. It abrupty ends and her bodylanguage shifts to that of someone with much greater confidence.

“A hollow soul, marked by sin,
“A traveller lost, hell beckons him.
“The monarch chained to stolen throne,
“A temple found… [laughter] by eye of crone.
“An ancient prize, sought, seized and won.
“First found, last forged, soon done.”

Whoever Anya is at this point isn’t too helpful. It doesn’t know nor cares about Maya Zin and sees the Wayfarer and Kingmaker’s progress as inevitable.

The reading leaves Anya weak. So weak that she can’t resist when Midian deocularises her with her own knife.
He realises that he has essentially doomed her to a painful death – likely sooner than later – so she is, effectively, of no further use to him. With this in mind he further realises he can engage in the spite he had intended to visit upon her for wounds inflicted by the undead in the jungle around her home (given what she was harbouring inside her, it doesn’t seem that unreasonable that she was their cause). He starts up his chainsword and carves her into chunks. As an afterthought, he searches the place thoroughly, finding a spidery grimoire beneath the floorboards. From the multiple corrections in various hands, he deduces that Anya wasn’t the first witch to own this book.
With the source of his terror very much dead, Mordecai is able to return and the pair snatch some fitful sleep.

The next day they head back, avoiding the village of Perdition alltogether. Hal (who is late) notes on the way back their dischevelled, bloody clothes, and listens with mild interrest to their story of how they killed some peasant witch.

Back in Vinh City, they head for a public park, the location of which Midian had planted in the transportation network. They wait for some time but eventually find their quarry. Maya Zin pulls a gun on Midian, preparing to publically execute him. She is forestalled not by threats or subtle mind-control, but by logic.
She initially tells them that she knows Midian set Kith up, and that Midian was trying to userp Kith’s place in the great work they had done on Vinh. Midian can see that this isn’t something she really “knows” (it can’t be, it isn’t true (though if he’d known it would have been – ha!)) but something she’s trying to convince herself of. Why? Because Midian’s someone she can kill and get away with it. The person she really suspects (and who our protagonists push her gently towards) is the Amael, Lucretia Casmirre. But that, she knows (so must already have conciderred) is a suicide mission.
The protagonists get a little more out of her, but she slams on the breaks before revealing everything she knows. Eventually, she wants an oath from Midian – he will not leave Vinh until Lucretia Casmirre is dead. Midian conciders. What she has is too important, it could get him something he very much wants. So, quite honestly, he agrees (for one, he suspects a second assassination attempt would be less nihilistically planned). She stares him in the eye and understands.

Maya Zin was bought when she was, she guesses, aged 11 or 12. This would make her about 23. Kith had her raised and trained to be a spy. Spies are a necessity for noble families, so Kith’s purchase isn’t unusual, but it hints at long-term vision, an independent streak and a more than healthy sense of paranoia. As she grew the two fell in love (Midian notes that this is unusual, if true – Navigators shouldn’t risk weakening their bloodlines by poluting it with offspring not wholy “of the gene”), culminating when he granted her her freedom.
A year or so ago, when the House’s fortunes started to slide, Kith decided to devote himself to what had previously been a dalliance – the study of Lum. He became convinced (for whatever reason) that Lum’s eventual disappearance wasn’t a mundane event, but the result of some empowering event. And it was power that Kith too could gain access to.
There’s more, but Maya tells Midian she’ll need to make contact with others first. In the meantime she sends him to Hostel Sierra, where she has stashed the mysterious “pages” with which she hooked Midian’s attention.

Midian finds them exactly where he is told they’d be – in a small, glass-fronted wooden box taped to the back fo the dresser. The first of the velum pages is an Astromantic map of the Vinh system, with an odd error upon it: it lists Vinh as “SRef: X”, but Vinh isn’t the tenth Stellar Reference point in the system, it’s the first (there being no other planets between it and the system’s sun).
The rest of the pages are unclear – they’re someone’s personal notes, written solely to benefit themselves and use phrases whose meanings are never explained. It would take some time to make more sense of it…

X Kingdom: Expedition

The protagonists get Hal to take them to the last place he took Kith – a tiny village called Perdition. The trip is pleasant, whipping along on a landspeeder, skimming the treeline, warm air racing passed. It’s only after he drops them off and they’re standing in the still air that they notice just how unpleasant Vinh actually is.
33 degrees by day, 26 degrees by night; 88% humidity. Unending clouds of buzzing, biting insects. Within five minutes Midian is miserable.

The able-bodied of the village are out in the paddies, leaving children and a few old folk in the village hub. The protagonists are dressed as nobles in comparison to the locals, who wear short, formless, threadbare robes. They are left alone by adults (who clearly expect nothing but trouble from these “rich” outsiders) and spied upon by the children.
At a watering hole, they are given free drinks by an elderly barkeep and asked to leave. When Midian’s questions provide little information – he pleads ignorance to everything – Mordecai savagely tears through his mind.
A navigator did come here, with a woman in tow. He asked about old buildings from the first surveys or the founding but, like with Midian, no one was forthcoming. So he executed someone in the street. Nobody was able to help but, desperate to appease the callous noble, they steered him in the direction of someone who may know more – a local woman who had been shunned and exiled and branded witch, called Anya Qi. The navigator returned the next day, but there was no more trouble.
The man knew only the rough direction to where Anya had gone to make her new home but, bribing some children, Midian was given a fairly decent map.

The trip is gruelling, but Midian proves himself a master of all forms of navigation as they trek through the steaming, rotting, serpent-plagued jungle.
They neared their destination around dusk. Rather than be relieved at nearing the end of the exhausting journey, Mordecai becomes suspicious. Something isn’t right. At his urging, Midian continues more cautiously. Even so, Mordecai notices them first.
Initially, it’s the smell of rotting, bloated flesh. Then the rustle of leaves. Then, through the dense foliage, they start shuffling into view – the walking dead.
Midian is quickly* surrounded. He fights a desperate fight, searching potential future-tides that will best keep him alive, but eventually falls – only moments after realising the creatures’ downfall was in his grasp all along. He lies on the ground, bleeding to death.
Mordecai fares better. Encased in a telekinetic field, he lashes out, striking the undead down, or else hacking them down with his sword. At no point does it seem he considers running. But is this loyalty to his meal-ticket, or simply him revelling in his superiority to the monsters the universe throws at him?
Battered, bleeding only a little, covered in putrescent gore, he soon stands alone. Through the trees he sees a rickety old shack. Shouldering Midian he makes towards it…

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* A little too quickly. Oops.

Renegades

Midian Astis-Kyn: Rogue Navigator

Midian took his charter with the Rogue Trader Sarvus Roe to get away from the stifling restrictions of the Imperium, but found that he still felt suffocated. Abandoning his obligations, Midian seeks knowledge and freedom from a galaxy which will never be allowed to accept him.

Mordecai: Rogue Psyker

Born to be hunted, Mordecai seeks a place where he no longer has to run, and can explore his abilities in peace. As soon as that bloody navigator gets him on board a ship, he may get a chance at finding it.

Maya Zin: Spy

A former slave, trained from youth by the far-seeing Kith Conran as a spy for a House that was sliding into Shadow. Maya fell in love with her master and she believes he felt the same. He took her to his bed, granted her freedom, and promised her a place by his side.
But Kith, as has been pointed out more than one, kept secrets…