Amaranthine Syndicate

“You entered into the agreement freely and benefited greatly from doing so. I strongly advise you not to renege on it now, no matter if you think you no longer need us, no matter how powerful you think you have become. The consequences of disappointing our Principal in this matter would be…appallingly unfortunate... Please believe me. I know.”
—Captain Alicia D’antess, Amaranthine Agent
The Amaranthine Syndicate is a new threat rising on the
Trailing/Coreward Border region of the Calixis Sector
and one whose influence is quickly spreading from the
troubled worlds of Hazeroth to the Josian Reach. It has even
begun to brush at the edge of the hive worlds at the sector’s
core. The trade cartel known as the Amaranthine Syndicate
outwardly appears to be a loose confederation of trader-captains,
void clans, and outpost colony merchants, but has
roused the suspicions of some with evidence of involvement in
unlawful trades, smuggling, and backing trade wars. In recent
years, individuals linked to the group have been the subject of
capture and destruction by the Arbites and Navy, and several
Syndicate vessels have been found in possession of forbidden
xenos artefacts. Some have even been implicated in pirate
attacks, horrific massacres on isolated outposts, slaver raids,
and other atrocities. In each case, the Syndicate has disowned
those involved and covered its tracks well, but the suspicions
of some within the Ordo Xenos have been roused.
Inquisitorial involvement with the Amaranthine Syndicate
is a new one and so far only superficial investigations have been
carried out. However, suspicion is growing that the Syndicate
may have been infiltrated or is being secretly controlled by a
xenos force or agency from beyond the sector’s borders.
What the Ordo Xenos does not know is that the
Amaranthine Syndicate is merely the tip of a deadly iceberg
that could spell doom for the entire Calixis Sector. The
Syndicate represents a concerted conspiracy to infiltrate and
corrupt the Imperium by a terrifying xenos species known
as the Slaugth. These baleful creatures epitomize everything
that mankind has come to hate and fear about the alien; they
are horrific, implacable beings with frightening powers and
nightmare science. To them, mankind’s only use is as cattle
to be farmed and slaughtered to feed their depraved hunger.
==The Syndicate by Reputation==
The Amaranthine Syndicate appears, to outside observation, to
be nothing more than an up-and-coming cartel of interstellar
traders, minor merchant houses, and void born families who
have successfully banded together over the last few years
to improve their lot in a region notoriously difficult and
dangerous to operate in. The Syndicate’s reputation has yet to
spread much beyond the Hazeroth Abyss and its nearby stars.
However, its rise has been noted by the economic powers of
the sector who, though long established, always keep an eye
on potential rivals and commercial shifts. As far as most of
the emissaries and notaries of the great trade houses, Chartist Captains, and sector grandees are concerned, the Syndicate
offers little threat or challenge economically as it is simply
too small a group and founded on too precarious a footing to
be worthy of being considered a potential rival.
Those that have encountered the Syndicate in action,
however, might offer a different opinion. It has proven itself
efficient, well-resourced, and ruthless in its operations, as
many who have crossed it have found out to their regret.
Many independent interests, criminal groups, and even local
governments where the Syndicate has taken hold are starting
to view it with growing disquiet and some suspicion, as are
some within the Adeptus Arbites and Battlefleet Calixis,
although the voices of concern in those last two organizations
are still relatively few so far.
The suspicions that surround the Syndicate are linked
primarily with travel to prohibited areas outside of the
Imperium, the trade in illegal xenos artefacts, and piracy.
While none of these conjectures is without merit (or entirely
uncommon or unexpected for that matter), many who have
had dealings with the Syndicate believe something even
darker lurks behind its façade. Whatever that darkness may
be, it is something most cannot identify but fills even the
usually hardened voider families, commonplace smugglers,
and dockside gangs with deep unease.
Apart from its more sinister dealings, the Amaranthine
Syndicate operates exactly as one might expect of any
successful trade cartel. It is made up of a diverse group of
private commercial interests that trade between the worlds
on the Calixis Sector’s Trailing border and has recently
made inroads into the more established areas of the Josian
Reach, as well as the northern edge of the Ixaniad Sector. The
Syndicate’s membership includes independent free-trader
captains and local void born clans, as well as planet-based
merchant houses, trade guilds, prospectors, petty nobles, and
the like. While these members continue to operate largely
independently, the Syndicate acts on their behalf to cement
trade agreements, negotiate settlements, and quell discord
between its members.
It also works to control markets and prices, massing its
power against competition, rivals, or outside threat.
The Syndicate’s ruling body, known within the organization
as the “Principals,” also provides resources, financing, and
armed force and punitive measures at its members’ request.
These Principals demand that members give them a
(surprisingly moderate) cut of their profits, that potentially
useful information be reported back to them, and that when
they do make a direct request of their members, it is carried
out promptly, expediently, and without question.
In terms of structure, the Syndicate follows a simple
pyramid layout. The largest, lowest tier of the pyramid is
the Syndicate’s production base and markets---local planet-bound
individuals, such as nobles, guild bosses, traders,
prospectors, specialist artisans, and the like. These individuals
might be quite powerful locally and control large bodies of
men and material; indeed, their own organizations might
know nothing of the master’s affiliation to the Syndicate.
The middle tier is composed of the Syndicate’s agents and a
number of groups with direct Syndicate affiliation. This tier is
primarily made up of starship trader captains, their crews, and
associated void born clans. However, it also includes a number
of mercenary groups and a small dedicated body of scribes,
emissaries, and logisters who negotiate for the Syndicate in
more formal settings as a legitimate trade body. This tier of
operation also incorporates a less legitimate “shadow” made
up of smugglers, outlaws, hereteks, and assassins who also
serve the Syndicate.
The upper tier controls the Syndicate. It is composed of
the Principals---a rarely encountered group who deliberately
hide behind layers of secrecy. Outsiders and many within
the organization believe that the Principals are simply taking
prudent means to protect themselves. Some believe they may
be powers already present within the sector (such as a great
house who wishes to keep its involvement under cover) or
one or more Rogue Traders seeking to expand their power
within the Imperium’s bounds. Others believe the Principals
are renegades from outside the Imperium---pirates, noncompliants,
and outlaws---and that the Syndicate is backed
by blood money taken in raids and destroyed shipping. This
would be bad enough, but the truth is far worse.
==A Black Market Indeed==
The illegal operations of the Amaranthine Syndicate operate
in tandem with its more legitimate trading interests and
are centered on intersystem smuggling operations. They
deal primarily in illicit drugs, stolen items, controlled
technologies, arms, and other black market goods, and in
the worlds bordering the Hazeroth abyss, the Syndicate has
quickly come to displace other organized smuggler gangs,
being the first to challenge the domination of the Cold Guild
in generations. It has been utterly merciless in crushing any
organized opposition against it and the Syndicate will readily
utilize targeted assassination and mercenary kill teams in
order to employ a strategy of divide and conquer---backing
one local criminal or mercantile faction against another.
The Syndicate is also careful to leave petty gangs and local
independents largely untouched, using their activities to mask
the Syndicate’s own and providing convenient scapegoats for
the authorities. For those with the wealth or connections, the
Syndicate has other goods and services to offer. Its agents
deal in forbidden xenotech, artefacts, and other trinkets from
beyond the Imperium’s border. The Syndicate can also do
more, much more, for the right buyer; it can arrange to have
enemies permanently “vanished,” provide clients with vast
sums of financial backing, and arrange for shipping (or even
whole outposts) to disappear without trace. However, the
price for such services is total loyalty to the Syndicate and its
often strange requests.
==The Devil’s Bargain==
The Amaranthine Syndicate first appears as a friend to those
in need, offering a lifeline to those so desperate that they do
not care who saves them and for those for whom the need
outweighs good sense or caution. Once a suitable target has
been identified, a Syndicate emissary will make the approach,
and the deal offered will always seem more than generous,
designed to alleviate the subject’s immediate problems.
However, as time progresses the Syndicate will secretly
contrive to increase its target’s dependency on it by setting
the target’s enemies against him, blocking other forms of help,
and creating “accidents” or adverse turns of events. This forces
its targets to repeatedly take the easy way out and ask for the
Syndicate’s help until the target is so heavily embroiled there
is no way out. It is at this final stage that the subject (if he
is particularly unfortunate) will be introduced personally to
one of the Principals, leaving him in no doubt as to just what
kind of bargain he has entered into and the consequences of
betraying his new-found allies.
The Principals’ demands may at first seem trivial or bizarre;
that a commodity price is raised fractionally, seemingly
random personnel reassigned, a report misfiled, or a book
in a private library burned for example. Over time, these
demands change, becoming truly dreadful---relief shipments
to outlying worlds redirected away from planets in need,
medical supplies tainted at the source, a blind eye turned to
pending disaster, or even hundreds of colonists betrayed in
order to stock the Slaugth larder.
==The Dark Design==
The ultimate power behind the works of the Amaranthine
Syndicate is a covenant of xenos known as the Slaugth.
The Slaugth are an ageless and patient race, and their plans
and schemes are tangled and largely incomprehensible to
the human mind. However, they share one motivation that
humans can understand, that of an addictive hunger. To feed
this hunger, the Slaugth have undertaken to destabilize the
Calixis Sector in order to see it unravel in civil war, anarchy,
and terror so that they might feed on the fractious masses of
mankind with little or no opposition.
To this end they infiltrated the Amaranthine Syndicate
when it was a fledging trade cartel, overcoming all opposition
until they controlled it completely. The Syndicate is their
pawn in a wider game that may take generations of human
lives to see fruition. Their plan is elegant in its simplicity.
The Slaugth understand mankind very well. Their weapons
are human greed and desire, and their plan is to effectively
destroy humanity by giving it what it wants---wealth,
power, weapons, drugs, and forbidden trinkets---and watch
as humanity tears itself apart as a consequence. At the same
time, they are using their “gifts” to further infiltrate not
only the criminal underworlds and economic structures of
the sector, but also its nobility and government. Certainly
the Ecclesiarchy, Munitorum, and Administratum are likely
targets. If their plan sees its apotheosis, then when the time
is right, the Slaugth will turn the key on their operations---eaten away from within, utterly compromised and eroded, the
Calixis Sector will collapse in on itself in fire and chaos. In
the ruins of once mighty Calixis, the Slaugth will have their
way, and the survivors will doubtless envy the dead.
== Inquisitorial Threat Briefing ==
As far as the Ordo Xenos is concerned, the Amaranthine
Syndicate, or possibly a faction within it, is under suspicion
of the organized trafficking in proscribed xenos artefacts and
perhaps more seriously of extensive links with renegades and
pirates operating in the Hazeroth Abyss region. As a result,
several Inquisitors (with the support and notice of Battlefleet
Calixis’s Hazeroth patrol squadrons) have begun to undertake
the tracking and investigation of suspect individuals and
craft connected to the Syndicate. To date, the results remain
inconclusive, although several smuggling rings and individual
xeno-heretics have been successfully prosecuted as a result of
the Ordo Xenos’s investigations. The matter is ongoing, and
the Amaranthine Syndicate remains under covert surveillance
and Inquisitorial suspicion. However, preliminary reports
indicate that no wider conspiracy or xenos-taint exists beyond
such localized corruption.
Only one organization within the Inquisition knows the truth behind the Amaranthine Syndicate, but they themselves are no ally of the Calixian Conclave, having long ago been decalred excommunicate traitoris: the radical Phaenonites. Having established themselves in the Hazeroth Abyss, they began to infiltrate the Syndicate only to discover the terrible secret lurking within. Rather than fight a war against a power whose nature and extent they did not fully understand the Phaenonites are now giving the Syndicate a wide birth where they can until they can find out more.
==Against the Arbites==
If the Arbites knew of the true nature and extent of the
corruption that the Amaranthine Syndicate is injecting into
the heart of the Calixis Sector there would be no delay and
no mercy. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the
name could expect to find themselves barb-cuffed to a rail in
the Chasteners’ dungeons in short order. So far, however, the
Syndicate’s foul masters have not only been able to keep their
nature hidden, but have had the audacity to add the Arbites
to their growing list of resources and puppets.
The Arbites have only once knowingly prosecuted an
Amaranthine Syndicate operation. A number of times they have
rolled up a criminal network that answered to the Syndicate---the Vidian’s Children sub-cult that had infiltrated half a dozen
Planetary Defense Forces in the Drusus Marches, the cruel
reign of the self-styled Underlord Hurango and his string of
notorious slave-farm stations, and the vicious campaign against
the bribe-broker rings in the fanes of Gunmetal City on Scintilla
itself. No clue ever reached the investigators that it was the
ruthless squeezing of the Amaranthine Syndicate that forced
these enterprises into the recklessness that left them exposed
and vulnerable. If any Detectives across the sector have noticed
that routine attempts to place informants in this new Syndicate’s
ranks invariably cost them said informant, then to date it has
only been recorded as an oddity, a slight upward blip in attrition
statistics in a field of operations known for its high turnover.
The Slaugth, however, are extremely aware of the Arbites,
and in the Precinct of Canopus they have scored a great success
in their early moves against them. The Commander of Court
there, Senior Arbitrator Reig Reigssen, a direct appointee of
Lord Marshal Goreman, has fallen into dereliction of duty
and borderline criminality through the outlawed doctrine of
Abstractionism. Reigssen’s attempts to purge his Chamber of
Judges, both from general prejudice and from their efforts to
reign in his excesses with the codes of law, put many of the
Precinct’s Judges in fear for their lives and the Chamber took
the astonishing step of relocating itself out of the Precinct
Fortress, commandeering an accretion-mining station in the
system’s outer dust belts. With Arbites throughout the Precinct
openly moving to take sides, Amaranthine agents managed to
persuade the already-compromised Arbitor Reigssen to accept
illegal help in saving himself from the retribution that would
follow once reports of his crimes left the system, and caused the
spectacular destruction of the station through wanton sabotage.
Reigssen knows how the station was destroyed, and is terrified
that some of its Judges might have survived. The Syndicate is
exploiting this, offering him more and more support, eliminating
other Arbites whom his paranoia paints as possible informers,
helping him hide his crimes and shore up his command so
that all within the system appears in order. Reigssen sees no
immediate way out of his involvement with the Syndicate, but
is past the point where he can rationalize his deeds away using
Abstractionist platitudes. He knows that the Syndicate knows
the value of such a powerful agent; he does not know what
depths his new masters will eventually push him to.
For its part, the Syndicate is delighted at the opportunities
that a single weak link has brought it, and, with Reigssen’s
reluctant help, they are starting to sniff out similar opportunities
in the surrounding systems. Their fondest hope is that Reigssen
will be rotated to a more central position where he will be
of even more use to them---the High Precinct command at
Solomon would be splendid, a position at Scintilla better still.