Phantasmagorians

"Heretics? Do not try to loose us in the jargon. We are no cult, no ragtag band of slavish devotees to uncaring intelligences. We simply choose to study and confront that which you would rather shut your eyes against."

- Augustine Dredger, the Voice

The Phantasmagorians, also known as the Phantasmagi or simply the Ghost-Eaters, are a cabal of Dark Mechanicus native to the Cancridrean Periphery. Originating from a splinter faction of the Gilgamesh Tech-Cult thought lost during the Revanchist Initiative, these former Omnissian acolytes inadvertenly stumbled upon the Inquisitorial caché Enkidu whilst plumbing the depths of The Outer Dark, and were subsequently corrupted by the dread artifacts held within. Taking their name from the heretical text known as the Formulae Phantasmagoria, the Phantasmagorians have become what in another age might have been labeled necromancers, raisers of the dead that barter souls like currency, all in the name of truly quantifying the emphermal nature of death, the soul, and the Warp itself.

The Oldest Question
The true origins of the Phantasmagorians were concieved light-years away from the Periphery or indeed the entire Niero Sector, on the far-away planet of Tanserbel, near the beating heart of the entire Segmentum Ultima. Sometimes called the Sophist's Paradise, Tanserbel was a Garden World given over to great academia with the express purpose of educating the the children of the Segmentum's elite. Indeed, the entire planet's economy was essentially based upon its services rendered as one massive university, where for exorbant fees the privaleged elite could be tutored in subjects both mundane and exotic, all while taking in the splendor of Tanserbel's majestic Cloudpiercer mountains and pristine alpine groves.

In was within the walls of these continent-spanning bibliocathedrals that the dread text that would come to be known as the Formulae Phantasmagoria was penned. However, its author was no Chaos facilitor nor power-hungry cultist, but rather a young but esteemed philosopher and lecturer by the name of Augustine Dredger, whose only true sin was curiosity. Driven by his own intellectual ambition, a passing interest in the occult, and a profound mistunderstanding of the dangers posed, Dredger sought to find a definitive answer to an age old question: "what happens when we die?" Using his not-inconsiderable influence he gained access to Tanserbel's most venerable libraries and infostacks in search of his answer, spending hours pouring through mouldering old tomes and treatesies of dubious origins thought long forgotten within the scholam's dusty archives. Any useful factoids or intriguing information he compiled he stored within a private journal, the proto-draft of what would eventually become the Formulae, whose contents grew larger and more arcane with each passing year.

By 847.M39, Dredger had become so confident in his unorthodox studies that he submitted the creation of a new curriculum to the panscholarly registrar: "Theoretical Thanatology", a branch of philosophical study that verged dangerously close to open discussion of the Warp and its functions. The situation soon escalated as some of his fellow academics began to show interest. Some were intrigued by the esoteric nature of Thanatology, some simply hoped to bask in the glow of Dredgers' newfound fame, but either way they began to orchestrate similar courses. Soon, Dredger found himself at the head of loosely-aligned cadre of spiritualists and metaphysicists, his Thanatologists, whose pooled knowledge further added to the already copious amounts of enigmatic lore held within the Formulae Phantasmagoria.

It is unknown whether or not the Thanatologists faction's morbid fascination with the Immaterium would had seen them devolve into true acolytes of the Ruinous Powers, for by the time there numbers truly swelled, the Archdeans of Tanserbel had already contacted the Emperor's Inquisition. Whisperings of a strange and influential group of occultists had reached their ears, and so in a purely political move sought to fan the flames of rumored heresy so that their own rule over the academia grouds would remain uncontested. What the naive Archdeans failed to realize was that the Inquisition did nothing by half, and they were no man's tool. The investigation led under the auspices of the Xanthite Inquisitor Ketos Kai Yspos saw the Thanatologists' "studies" decried as outright daemonology. Augustine Dredger and all his fellows were dragged from their beds by black-clad Stormtroopers and executed via firing squad in the central campus square for all faculty to see. Worse still, Yspos ordered that all copies of the Formulae Phantasmagoria and the irreplacable libraries worth of texts that had spawned it be burned to cinders. Then he left as suddenly as he came, taking with him the original Formulae and leaving nothing but ash in his wake.

The scandal alone devastated Tanserbel, noble families across the Sector withdrawing both their children and their support, both politically and financially. Funding soon dried up and by 849.M39 those who were not charged with heresy via association were forced to abandon their classrooms and seek employment elsewhere. As if to add insult to injury, eventually the Sophist's Paradise was repurposed as an Agri-World by the Adeptus Administratum in 890.M39, buildings once home to hundreds of years worth of scholarly tradition repurposed into wheat mills and processing plants. As for the Formulae, it remained in the posession of Inquisitor Yspos until his untimely death at the hands of the criminal Ruby Banner Brotherhood, wherein it passed down to the safekeeping of his most senior Interrogator, one Wolfram Beyale.