Serrated Query

== General Overview ==
The Serrated Query appears to be a clandestine criminal organisation that exists solely for the purpose of making profit without thought to morality or conscience. The group actively promotes conflicts throughout the Imperium, making proceeds by selling information and resources to all sides involved in any given war. The Serrated Query also engages in smuggling, drug trafficking, slavery, extortion and the movement of xenos goods. In short, if there is gelt to be had, the Query is interested. 
=== A Speculative History ===
Those that search after the Serrated Query’s history do not find a lack of information, but rather an overabundance of conflicting stories ranging from the plausible to the completely outlandish. All stories agree that the group is very, very old with a history that stretches back further than most are prepared to believe. The Inquisition regards three different versions of the Serrated Query’s history as being the most plausible: The first account holds that the Serrated Query was founded not long after the Horus Heresy, in the turbulent times that followed the internment of the Emperor into the Golden Throne. Supposedly, the success of the Great Crusade grossly cut into the profits of a considerable number of criminal cartels throughout the galaxy. Realizing that universal peace was not in their best interests, the various organisations formed an alliance in order to perpetuate uncertain times and steady revenue. 
The second version states that the Serrated Query was already in existence during the Great Crusade, composed in the main of rebels that had ties with various xenos races and were opposed to the new order that the Emperor was imposing on the galaxy. Those that believe this version of the Query’s history consider the fact that the group maintains connections with a wide variety of aliens as proof that this theory is correct, especially considering how reluctant the majority of xenos are to deal with human groups. The last story is the one that most Inquisitors, to their regret, find to be the most plausible of all. This version holds that an Istvaanian, whose name has been lost, created the Serrated Query as a tool to foment rebellion throughout the Segmentum Solar in order to strengthen the Imperium. The Serrated Query took on a life of its own, growing far beyond the Isstvanian’s ability to control. Or perhaps, that was the intention all along. Regardless, those that believe the third story regard the Serrated Query as the misbegotten child of the Inquisition. 
=== The Serrated Query’s Organization ===
The Serrated Query typically operates in an extended cell fashion, with each group knowing only minimal amounts of knowledge about the others. A cell generally has between three dozen members that are actually a part of the Serrated Query. Any others found within such a cell are hired muscle, unaware of their employer’s affiliations. Each cell makes profit in various illicit ways, passing information and a regular tithe to their unseen masters in another, older cell. In the way it conducts itself, the Serrated Query resembles a mercantile version of the Inquisition, an irony not lost on its more knowledgeable members and one of the reasons why many informed Inquisitors suspect the involvement of one of their own in its foundation. The cells of the Serrated Query are far flung, stretching from the Segmentum Solar all the way to the edge of the Astronomican’s reach within the Segmentum Obscurus. While the cell organisation prevents the group as a whole from being compromised, it also makes each individual faction vulnerable once exposed. This is acceptable to the higher echelons of the group for it acts as a sort of natural selection for the whole: clever cells subtly expand and thrive; foolish ones overextend, exposing themselves to Imperial scrutiny and swift destruction. 
The Serrated Query is not a cult, nor affiliated with the Ruinous Powers, though individual cells may have members who believe it to be such, or who venerate the forces of Chaos. The upper levels of the Serrated Query seem to regard Chaos worship as bad for business as it almost always attracts the wrong sort of attention to their activities. Faith in the Chaos Gods is thus allowed, but somewhat discouraged. Their superiors swiftly scourge individual cells that have become “corrupted” and thrown their lot in with the Ruinous Powers. Their former brethren often destroy well-hidden cells in quick, brutal assaults. Others are eliminated by the Imperium as the Serrated Query tips off the Adeptus Arbites or the Inquisition to their existence, allowing their foes to do their dirty work for them. 
=== The Serrated Query’s Beliefs ===
The Serrated Query tends to engender a great deal of loyalty within its ranks in much the same way that various cults and the Inquisition do: by telling them certain “truths” that the Imperium has hidden from them. Serrated Query members are given access to a wide variety of data-storage units and exposed to a great deal of knowledge about the galaxy around them, though much of it is slanted by the Query’s point of view. The Serrated Query starts by telling its newest recruits that the Emperor is merely a powerful psyker, not a god. After showing the new member various proofs of that revelation, the superstitions that the Imperium works so hard to instil become stripped away one at a time. Query members are allowed and encouraged to experiment with various tech devices, while specifically being told that they are not to in any way “appease the machine spirit” of the device as there is no such thing. They are told of the existence of Chaos and Daemons, but such are described as “powerful extra dimensional xenos” or by various other monikers. Eventually, they’ll be introduced to a xenos ally and shown that not all aliens are immediately bloodthirsty. Successfully indoctrinated members of the Serrated Query are thus cosmopolitan and somewhat condescending in their outlook to those outside their ranks, believing those loyal to the Imperium to be deluded fools. They tend to be cynical heretics, believing that profit to be made in the here and now are far more useful than any spurious hope of future salvation after death. Members of the Serrated Query are thus knowledgeable and dangerous opponents with access to a great deal of proscribed information, capable of jury-rigging tech without qualms, and willing to employ xenos devices with little hesitation. They count mutants, psykers, xenos and even Chaos cultists among their ranks, yet none of these groups actually define who they are. They are a dangerously amorphous group with an uncertain agenda. In short, they are a perfect foe for Acolytes of the Inquisition. 
The most dangerous aspect of the Serrated Query is a subtle one: its members’ mindsets. In a galaxy dominated by the enforced feudal ignorance of the Im.perium, the Serrated Query is a group of criminally minded, atheistic, cynical free.thinkers. They are thus far closer in out.look to those belonging to the 3rd Millennium than the majority of the Imperium in their time.
== The Serrated Query and the Calixis Sector ==
The Calixian Conclave has long been aware of the existence of the Serrated Query within their sector, though there is little they can do about it other than root out one cell at a time as they come to light. Many believe that various cells of the Query in fact serve members of the Inquisition in one capacity or another. Several members of the Tyrantine Cabal, however, have far darker suspicions about the activities of the Serrated Query within Calixis. They believe that the shadowy being known as Eloeholth the Faceless either created or suborned the Serrated Query within Calixis as an extended information-gathering tool in order to further its agenda—an agenda somehow tied to the Tyrant Star. None knows Eloeholth’s whole history, though there are a few who suspect parts of it—then again, like the Query itself, the Faceless seems to have a long history shrouded with lies. The Inquisition deduced the connection, though, because the Serrated Query within the Calixis Sector almost exclusively uses the symbol of the “question mark that cuts” as their own—a symbol also associated with the Faceless One.
=== The Purgation of the Serrated Query ===
Oblationism is rare and relatively new creed, and its adherents did not appear within the bounds of the Calixis Sector until many centuries after the final battles of the Angevin Crusade. One of its first acts (once it had gained some measure of stability) was to begin a secret war of annihilation with one of the oldest and most intransigent recidivist organisations within the sector---the Serrated Query. Inquisitors Ixon and Cordul had dedicated their careers to the complete destruction of the Serrated Query. Having hunted them across the stars, the pair came to the Calixis Sector and found a royal nest of their prey. Upon arrival, they joined the fledgling Oblationist sect to seek the means to do what they had never been able to do before---meet and vanquish the cult on its own terms. With the help of their new allies, the two Inquisitors worked in silence and shadows. They unleashed a flock of their most trusted and deadly servants and charged them with the destruction of every last member or associate of the Query.
This shadow reaping occurred at the turning of the 801st year of the 41st millennium, and for several months, none within the Serrated Query would have realized that a murderous force was bearing down on them like the silent fall of a headsman’s axe. The oathed acolytes of Ixon and Cordul needed knowledge, the kind of knowledge that takes months or years to gather. Rather than waste time, they went to work obtaining it from those most likely to have it---the Inquisitors and acolytes of the Calixian Conclave. Kidnapping, torture, theft, and the psychic flaying of truth from minds, were the primary tools employed in this pursuit. The Oblationist acolytes were so efficient that they obtained all the necessary information for the real operation whilst the Calixis Conclave struggled to respond.
The servants of Inquisitors Ixon and Cordul had all they needed and moved like a murderous ghosts through the Query’s membership and allies. Nobles, merchants, and crime bosses vanished. Merchant craft and war ships were destroyed. The corrupt pawns and secret allies of the Serrated Query went into hiding against the onslaught, only to be assassinated and hunted down in seemingly impossible circumstances. So grave was the damage to every level of the Serrated Query in the Calixis Sector that their complete extinction seemed inevitable. Then, just before the final death blow could be struck, the onslaught stopped. Overnight, the two Inquisitors and all their secret acolytes had vanished as if consumed by some great predatory beast disturbed from its slumber by their activities.
== The Serrated Query and the Koronus Expanse ==
While they do not have a fixed base in the Expanse, the Serrated Query are widely respected for the breadth of their activities and operatives, as well as the extensive network of spies feeding information to their controlling cells. If there are illegal Thrones to be made, the Query are probably already aware of it and demanding their slice of the action. They are also known for the extreme loyalty and ruthlessness of their agents, with their organisation acting more like a religious cult at times. There is quiet talk that this criminal enterprise might be more than they seem, but so far these are only the casual suspicions of a sort anyone in the Expanse might have.