Guidance of the Blind

Part 1; The Hunt
(Date 347.987.M41)

 (In orbit of Delta-Omega-2 (local name Gathsan), Hadir Sector, Segmentum Obscurus) 

Inquisitor Justin Dall put his pen down and leaned back in his chair. He was currently in his office aboard his personal vessel, ''The Shadow of Doubt. ''He had just barely finished a load of paper work that came as a result of being an Inquisitor. Many people fear or envy the Inquisition for their power and prestige but few realized that with great power comes a great amount of paperwork. Most of his current paper work was to explain why the Imperial Planet he was orbiting now had a giant smoking hole in it.

He had come to the planet Gathsan, or Delta-Omega-2 as the Administratum called it, at the request of the planet's Governor. One of the Hive cities had been reporting unusual behavior for some time, so when a plague erupted throughout the Hive the Governor had sent some of his top men to investigate. After losing contact with them almost immediately the Governor had subtly sent out a distress call to outside forces and Justin had happened to be getting his ship refit at a Forge World in the same system. Upon visiting the Hive Justin had found it in a state of decay, from the top to the bottom there were overfilled plague wards by the hundreds in a failed attempt to halt the spread of the unknown disease. It took the Inquisitor only a short time to deduce that the plague had been introduced and spread deliberately and soon he found the source; a Chaos Cult dedicated to Nurgle. Attacking the base of the worshipers with his retinue and a contingent of the Planet's PDF he found what the Cult in the midst of trying to summon Daemons from the warp. So far the Cult had only managed to summon a single Nurgling which was swiftly banished and the cult executed and burned.

However, while many among the PDF celebrated the easiness of destroying the cult Justin remained suspicious. The Cult had been comically incompetent if they managed to bungle the summoning so horribly. He could still feel that the combined illness of the Hive was being used for something. Searching farther he had confirmed his suspicions, the Cult had been a front, a deliberately incompetent group of cultists designed to draw attention away from the real cult. By the time Justin found them they were in the midst of summoning a Great Unclean One. With barely enough time, Justin interrupted the ritual and killed many of the Cultists, but the damage had already been done. Even without the Greater Daemon, the Cult had still managed to infect the lower levels with the Zombie Plague and Justin's retinue had to fight fiercely to escape, in the end they had to sacrifice the PDF to enable their escape. Once on his shuttle and away from the Hive, Justin contacted his ship and ordered a it to wipe out the Hive via repeated nuclear strikes. Fortunately the Hive never raised its void shields and soon nothing remained but a blackened crater, standing out on the planets surface like a Cauterized wound.