Dark Heresy Ascension: Daemonica - Inquisitor Victus Brakespear

The power of the God-Emperor compels all things. It compels the stars to shine, the blood to flow, and the fires to burn. This power is limitless, far more so than any foul warp beast's master. The power of the God-Emperor compels all things and today it compels them to leave this planet, to suffer upon us no longer. He compels them through me to die.

Background highlights

• Born: Maccabeus Quintus, barren shrineworld in the Drusus Marches.
• Family: Slain in service to the Emperor, details classified.
• Youth: Spent in education in the Schola Progenium. Exited into the Maccabean Ecclesiarchal monastic programme.
• Career: Given his purity of faith, seconded into the Black Priests of Maccabeus. Possible Inquisitional influence at this stage.
• Recruited: by Omidus Jaspher from the Black Priests in order to form an Acolyte cell. Likely chosen as a failsafe for Omidus' "experimental" Acolyte, a psyker.

Key personnel/contacts

• The Black Order, the order of militant Ecclesiarchal priests created to aid - and at the behest of - the Ordo Malleus.
• His family - he has no connection or knowledge whatsoever of who his family were, but as Imperial servants deemed worthy enough to have their offspring consigned to the Schola (and who spawned a man like Victus in the first place), who knows what they may have been involved in? (c.f. Ibram Gaunt)
• Inquisitor Omidus Jaspher, who chose Victus as an Interrogator and mentored him for much of Victus' career.
• Daemonhunter Ahmazzi, the old Inquisitor. Victus earned Ahmazzi's respect in their chase of the Pilgrims of Hayte.
• The Pilgrims of Hayte. Their near-victory, thwarted by the actions of Ahmazzi and cadre, has entered the cult's legendry.

Motivations

Victus has an unbreakable faith in the God-Emperor as an exemplar of righteousness. Victus knows that the Emperor cannot save every human from harm, but Victus' conception of the most worshipful thing possible does not include this requirement. Victus believes that the Emperor's strength is in his children: all of humankind. Thus, it is up to people to express their own righteousness and in doing so, become closer to their father, the God-Emperor. These things are what forms the tapestry of Victus' life.

Victus has experienced what he believes to be the divine touch of God Himself, and knows that he has been chosen as a tool to help the Emperor express His righteousness and protect His children. Victus is compassionate, but his compassion is tempered by the knowledge of how to balance the commands of the Emperor - that Humanity must flourish - against the needs of those children who do not understand the nature of their place in the universe.

Where before his ascension to the office of Inquisitor Victus was an exemplar of the Black Priest archetype, his training has made him appreciate the art of playing a role, and an awareness of the tools and levers in all social situations. He is now capable of adopting many kinds of social tacks to get what is needed, and has no attachment to any one sort of personality in his dealings. He may now be a man of shadows, but at his core burns the light which casts those shadows: the flame of pure faith.

The Preceding Ten Years

One: Interrogation

Immediately after Inquisitor Omidus Jaspher chose Victus as his Interrogator, he ordered him to return to Vaxanide and finish what Ana Tharia had begun: the prosecution and cleansing of the mid and upper hives of the taint of heresy. Building on the work already laid down by his predecessor and the Acolyte team proves to be well within his capabilities, and by engaging with the Ecclesiarchy presence Victus manages to instigate a popular movement amongst the workers and middle classes to watch over one's neighbours and superiors for signs of deviance in return for spiritual rewards. The processing of the heretics arrested as part of the Acolyte's original mission is quick and brutal.

Two: Introduction

Subjected to high-intensity training, mnemotic- and hypno- locution of certain lores, and is confirmed as Interrogator at the Tricorn Palace on Scintilla.

Omidus, acting on information gathered from his network of Acolytes, takes Victus on a mission to prevent the Pilgrims of Hayte allying with Saynay Clan pirates and causing untold damage to the Imperium. They race to stop the plot, but somehow the Pilgrims stay half a step ahead of them. Omidus is forced to commandeer a Free Trader vessel, push its engines to critical, and engage the Pilgrims in vicious man-to-man voidfighting in the tumbling rocks of a planetary ring. Omidus and Victus take to the battle, fending off knife-fingered horrors and void-daemons amongst the scarred and twisted Pilgrim warriors. In the fight, Victus glimpses a man floating free in the void, a black silhouette against the silver planetary ring, golden chains drifting around him. The figure does not engage and is not sighted again.

Captain Passerida of the Free Trader Beowulf counts his blessings that the Saynay pirates are yet to arrive, and plans to spend the Inquisition money Omidus used to bribe him on some guns for his unarmed ship.

Defeating the Pilgrims and leaving them and their ship to burn in the atmosphere of the gas giant they were orbiting, Omidus and cadre learn why the Saynay Clan were delayed: Daemonhunter Ahmazzi of the Ordo Malleus, already pursuing prosecution of the Pilgrims of Hayte throughout the sector, had learned of the potential Saynay alliance separately and used his great influence to have their ship intercepted by the Imperial Navy. The alliance was obviously a part of some greater plan, and the two Inquisitors agree to pool their resources to oppose the Pilgrims.

Three to Six: Persecution

Omidus seconds Victus to act as his proxy at Ahmazzi's side. The old daemonhunter take the cadre on a pursuit of the Pilgrims of Hayte, stamping out their machinations across the sector.

Deep in the jungles of Dusk, the cadre arrive at a blasphemous stone ziggurat too late to stop the culmination of the sacrifice of an entire tribal bloodline, precipitating a Warp breach. In the face of the teeming horde of gibbering evil, Victus impresses Ahmazzi by refusing to back down or show hesitation even against such massed terrifying foes, and leads their Storm Trooper contingent in a spearhead that gets close enough to seal the breach. He breaks six ribs in the assault.

The cadre spend painstaking months tracking an insidious cult operating within the very walls of the Governor's palace on Sinophia. In a decaying hall daubed with human blood and littered with bones in a forgotten wing of the mansion they finally uncover the cult's architect: a Daemonhost wrapped in bands of inscribed gold. The beast's daemonic strength easily overwhelms the Arbite strike team they have brought with them, and a lucky strike snaps Victus' leg like a dry branch. Gritting his teeth Victus utters the rite of exorcism, pits the creatures' depths of will against the font of bright faith that burns in his soul - and sends the daemon screaming back into the warp, its host nothing but a bent and broken shell. During his recovery his body's musculature is interlaced with synthetic myo-fibre and flakweave.

Scraps of clues gathered from the scene point to only one possibility: a False Prophet of the Pilgrims of Hayte, a sorcerer of tremendous power and malign will. The False Prophets are those who chart the Pilgrims' destiny, and this one - known to the Pilgrims as The Golden Tyrant - had put into motion plans which would burn the whole sector.

The cadre wage a shadow war against the Pilgrims' campaign, always rushing to catch up to the latest step in the cultists' schemes. The Golden Tyrant eludes them for many months; each narrow victory giving them the barest morsel of where to prevent the cultists striking next. On Archaos the cadre comes close to their quarry - too close. A small band of acolytes lead by a grizzled veteran called Tolen Vire and accompanied by Victus burst into a profane chamber deep in the bedrock, lit by the sputtering energies of a sorcerous warpgate, in time to see a figure from nightmare. The Golden Tyrant, a sorcerer who could not be called a man any longer, had long ago performed on himself the fell ritual of the Daemonhost - and mastered the summoned daemon within his own body, stealing its power. His skin swallowed light and defied dimensions, leaving him a black silhouette. He was wrapped around with golden chains marked with eldritch symbols, which stretched out and lashed the air - and Victus knew that it had been the Golden Tyrant he had seen in battle, unprotected in orbit around the gas giant. The chains whipped out and tore half the acolyte team into bloody chunks; Victus by good fortune managed to turn aside from the worst of it and his bionic eye was torn from his skull and smashed on the stone floor. The veteran Tolen Vire ducked the chains, ran charging at the horror firing his bolt pistol, and swung his chainsword - only for a wave of the dark thing's hand to slam him back, pinned against the wall, his skeleton ablaze with purple warpfire. Victus' pain shrinks to a diamond-bright point, and remembering Sinophia, he spears his faith into the False Prophet's well of dark power like a starship lance, tearing the daemon from the host and leaving the Golden Tyrant crippled in agony. A wall of dark flame erupts, blinding everyone in the room, and when sight returns the Tyrant is gone and the warpgate vanished.

Victus and the remains of the strike team recovered as quickly as they could, Victus' bionic eye rebuilt with far more advanced components, far more fit for purpose. The Pilgrims of Hayte continue their campaign of terror unabated. The strikes form a pattern however, and Inquisitional adepts are able to decipher it - though not without loss of life and sanity. In the climactic battle that follows, Victus stands side-by-side with Ahmazzi. They enter a defiled basilica, thronged with cultists surrounding a pulsing blood-drenched warp-gate tended by the crippled Golden Tyrant. As the cadre fight their way toward it, the Tyrant tears out his own heart and casts it into the gate, and with a shuddering rending it rips open and something terrible steps through: a Walking Nightmare, a beast from the dark of the Warp, followed by a throng of gibbering spectres. The Nightmare rips a path through the cultists to slake its thirst for purer blood on the cadre. It is a terrible sight; many of the cadre fall back in terror, and many cultists fall to the floor in screaming supplication. Only Victus, Ahmazzi despite his age, and a grizzled Tolen Vire stand fast to meet the warpspawn's eager onslaught.

The three duel the monster for tense moments. Each lightning blow is strong enough to rend steel, on both sides. Suddenly Tolen is gutted on a screaming claw and cast into Ahmazzi, sending them both tumbling. With a shriek of triumph the mosnter closes to finish its prize, the Inquisitor. In the second before it can strike Victus closes, smashes aside a tentacle with his aquila shield, and with a mighty blow buries his power axe to the haft in the daemon's chest. A crackling explosion sends him reeling as his axe overloads and detonates; the daemon is stunned and flickers, giving Victus the chance to leap upon it and with a booming shout of exorcism crush its grotesque skull with the Ninth Killing Blow of Drusus.

With the defeat of the Walking Nightmare and without their demagogue, the cult is swiftly dealt with by the storm trooper reserves. Ahmazzi, in recognition of Victus' achievement, presents him with a powerful new weapon to replace the axe lost in the battle.

Seven: Putrefaction

Ahmazzi declares the persecution of the Pilgrims of Hayte over, and he and Victus part on good terms. Omidus immediately brings Victus into his own ongoing investigations - on three worlds equidistant from Zel Tertius, every astropath alive suddenly developed brain lesions and died in screaming madness in the space of a single day. Travelling to Zel Tertius, Omidus' shadowy agents discover the presence of the Vile Savants amongst the population, though their purpose is not clear. Victus is well able to act as a field agent in combating this pestilent cult, versed as he is in the daemonic and insidious nature of their warfare. Tracking outbreaks of plagues not seen in the Zel system for three hundred years or more, Victus' cell crushes clan after clan of the Savants, cropping up like pustules across the continent.

prevents the Quickening of Zel Tertius

Eight: Machination

Is lead unwittingly into the machinations of the the Menagerie's Danse Sinistre

Nine: Revelation

Learns his true self in the Crucible of Hellfire and ends the Danse

Ten: Inquisition

Eventually summoned back to the Tricorn, several facts are revealed to Victus as truth: the Emperor is dying in his throne, his power over Chaos is only the power of mortal belief, humanity stands at the brink of destruction by its own hand. Victus refuses to bend even in the face of such revelations; this testing is the final trial before he is sponsored for Inquisitorhood. It is never revealed whether these 'truths' are fact, or elaborate deceptions designed to test his resolve. Victus is sure enough that he doesn't feel the need to ask.

He begins his career as an Inquisitor, chooses a destiny, and sets out to build his cadre for the long road ahead. He spends months ensconced in the dark and forbidden libraries of the Inquisition, researching and planning and sending encrypted missives to shadowy contacts. His planning is only interrupted when he receives an official request to attend a certain ceremony on Malfi...

Benefits

• Resistance (fear)
• Insanely Faithful
• Fearless
• Contact: Daemonhunter Ahmazzi

Ascended Equipment

• Digi-melta
• Inquisitional Rosette
• Thunder Hammer
• Tolen's Bolter - good-Quality Sacristan Bolt Pistol with red-dot sight
• Good-Quality Bionic Eye incorporating photo-visor, infra-goggles and Psyocculum
• Good-Quality Sanctified Carapace with Ecclesiarchy Overlay with Concealed good-Quality Powerblade
• Good-Quality Synthetic Muscle Grafts
• Good-Quality Hydraphur-pattern Crusader Suppression Shield with Exterminator