Although we were victorious in the combat with those gangers of the Brotherhood Of The Knife, they also had managed to land some good blows and hits and some of us were in a pretty bad shape. We scavenged whatever useful stuff we could find on the bodies of the killed gangers before we burned them and made our way back to our residence. I'm not feeling confident walking around with those tainted items we picked up. First chance we have, we should have them purified.
The next morning the wounded stayed in to ensure their wounds would heal properly and I, as I did the previous days, went back to the church. Because the situation had become more and more intricate and dangerous, after all, we have been stirring up the hive pretty badly down in the Downpour district and openly attacked one of the gangs down there, we decided that from now on, none of us should wander around alone anymore.
So, Victus joined me that morning to go to the church. But, on our way over there, it seemed that our plan to openly participate in the church community and by doing so drawing out the Downpour Ripper or whatever thing that was leaving a trail of devout bodies behind, worked like a charm. A vile creature managed to sneak up on us and attacked. |
A vicious, hideous winged creature came right for my head. As it descended with its wings spread out, it stretched its foul mouth and I could see the rows of sharp teeth longing to be plunged into my neck. Luckily I caught a glimpse of it right before it would plant itself on my head and wrap its clawed wings around me and I was able to dodge out of the way. I did understand how frightening this must have been for its other victims. As the beast swooped down again for the second time I managed to break its attempt to grapple me and could hold it at arms length. Luckily for me, I was not alone here and with Victus and me fighting off the creature, it was fairly easy to slay the thing. I Asked Phylan to come by and retrieve the corpse of the Gloomhaunt for further investigation if nescessary.
This time during sermon, I felt obliged to warn the people here about what was going on. I elaborated on how this community was under attack by veil creatures and a killer by the name of the Downpour Ripper. I think they were all too rattled and scared by those recent events and were in need of a boost of confidence in the might of Our Emperor. I hope they do not lose faith because of the menace in their district and hope that by showing that I'm not affraid I can keep up their hopes and suppress their fears.
Afterwards I talked to Gloria Chinn, the woman working at late Father Leganus' church. Once again, she proved to be very helpful. She filled us in on what kind of creature it was that attacked me. It is called a Gloomhaund. Those creatures are indigenous to the lower parts of the hive. As far as she knows, they rarely venture into these parts. They are unintelligent creatures who pray on all kind of small living things in those lower parts of the hive and are easily scared away by fire. It seems even more strange to me now that I know all this. Something or someone must be leading the Gloomhaunt over here, or even worse, controlling it.
As Gloria had been working here in the church for a long time and Kaspar, the imperial guardsman on leave, also a victim of the Downpour Ripper, frequented this church, she knew about him. She could in fact provide us with the address of Kaspar. When we asked her about the missionary Horg Faber, she told me that she indeed had met him before. As a matter of fact, he had been very active here lately, rallying people to join him on his crusade, or a mission as he called it, to travel the worlds and spread the word of the Emperor. She directed us to some of her friends who after asking around, came up with the name of the shoddy hotel where Horg Faber had been staying.
Once again we ventured into the lower levels of the hive to look for Horg Faber. The people seem to charmed by my work in the church and escorted us to the hotel where Horg Faber was staying. The guy at the front desk mentioned that he hadn't seen Horg in over a week, but he payed in advance and down here in the Downpour district people tend not to ask a lot of questions. We made our way up the stairs to the attic where Horg's room was and when we climbed the last flight of stairs, a pungent smell almost overwhelmed us. Not knowing what to expect we readied ourselves and knocked at the door. No one answered. We tried to pick the lock but it didn't work. Not wanting to spend any more time then necessary I kicked down the door.
The smell was even worse here. Now we could also see where it came from. In the middle of the room was a rotting headless corpse and blood covered the walls. No doubt the corpse was that of Horg Faber. In the blood on the walls was written: "The Aurelian shall come forth the eye of terror." Inside of the room was a workbench with papers and books and connected to a large power conduit was a vox caster. Too bad our techpriest isn't here as none of us could figure out what it was set up to do.
On the workbench we found a lot of tools, books and papers. We found a star charts with pins on them and a book book that was a manual of some sort: "How to conduct yourself in the DeVayne Incorporation" Scoping through the other documents, we found some papers on how to get a loan from the DeVayne Incorporation. We didn't know anything about the DeVayne Incorporation so we do have to look into that. Further more, it seemed that Horg was planning to board the "Misericord", a ship that travels throughout the Calixis Sector to visit the planets marked on the star charts.
Amongst his belongings there were also various religious books. By the looks of them, Horg Faber was a member of the Mendicantine order. The Mendicantine Fraters are a religious order consisting of missionaries, confessors and preachers. Its members do their duty by simply ministering to the faithful of the Imperial Cult out amongst the stars. They travel whenever the need arises or when they feel the calling of their faith. They may travel to either famous pilgrim worlds or long forgotten planets on the edges of known space. They are fiercely independent nomadic wanderers. Their noted reliance on providence over doctrine has been a cause of some alarm amongst the clergy with many Cardinals of the Ecclesiarchy finding Mendicantine missionaries to be a threat. However, this order is protected by an ancient tradition with it being said that they were founded by Sebastian Thor himself.
Having investigated Horg's room thoroughly we made our way across the square to the living quarters of Kaspar, the imperial guard. The landlord was in a bad mood as we started to ask questions about Kaspar. It seemed that Kaspar still owed the man money for the rent and thus he was very reluctant to let us in. Failing to convince him to let us pass, I pitched in the 20 thrones after which the guy lightened up and was smart enough to let us pass without asking anymore questions.
Kaspar was not there as suspected. His room that of a true madman. It was filled with a lot of bin bags. In the center of the room were some terrariums that seemed to be empty, except for one containing a dead squid. Papers were lying on the floor and pinned to the wall everywhere, but there was no body to be found. I got me wondering; was he really killed by the Downpour Ripper? The papers were a variety of scribbling, poems, drawings and so on, all about the ghost ship "Octavius". The ones on the wall were a collection of articles of alleged sightings of the ghost ship. Every time it was mentioned in the writings, it was encircled in red marker as were the names of the planets or regions. Checking them off with the star charts from Horg's room it became clear that all the planets mentioned here were the same as the ones on the star charts. All of them actually. On his desk there was a letter that seemed to be very interesting.
That captains log that was mentioned in the letter was nowhere to be found there. We must try to retrieve this log. Probably Kaspar had already met up with this brother Kulrak. If there is somewhere we might find out more about this log, or even find the log itself, it is at brother Kulrak's place. As there was nothing else to be found here in Kaspar's room, we left.