Xanthite

“...And I heard the voice in the midst of the thunder saying ‘Comeand See,’ and I saw,
And I beheld the Children of Men bearing terrible weapons while the eight-fold star was trampled at their feet,
And the fourth seal shattered and the Beast did cower in new-forged chains,
The Ancient Seraphs bore witness, their wings dipped in blood, and the lamentations were mighty as They That Can Not Die werecast down,
And the Voice in the Abyss spoke again saying ‘It is Done’..."
–The Corrinto Propheticum, declared to be an extreme moral threat and suppressed, 744.M41''
The Xanthites are a powerful Radical faction who take their
name from the great Inquisitor Zaranchek Xanthus, reputed
to have had a dangerous and unhealthy amount of knowledge
of the warp and its uses. The Xanthites believe that Chaos is
but a reflection of mankind, mirroring its whims, desires, and
emotions. Therefore, with the right knowledge, mankind may
use its power. In the simplest terms, they believe that only
the power of Chaos can fight Chaos and that humans must
embrace this power or perish by it. Within the Calixis Sector,
Xanthites are more spoken of than seen, though rumors
continually persist of powerful Inquisitors and Imperial
officials who follow their ideals.
== Xanthite Domains ==
The areas controlled by the Xanthites are less apparent than
those of many of the other factions. By their nature, Xanthite
Inquisitors have learnt to tread lightly among the ranks of the
Conclave and seldom mix with others of Ordo or Cabal. More a
loose confederation of individuals, the faction structures itself
around the master-student model, with Xanthites usually only
operating in pairs or alone. On the fringe and where the gaze
of Imperial authorities grows dim, members of the faction are
most commonly found, seeking out those that hide from the
Emperor’s light in such shadows. Of course, it is believed that
many Xanthites also operate quietly deep within the heart of
the sector, in the depths of hives, and in the grand edifices of
the Ministorum where corruption is wont to fester.
== Xanthite Operations ==
Xanthites are primarily concerned with the garnering of
forbidden lore and schooling themselves in its use. They
are also, despite the views of most Inquisitors, some of the
most zealous opponents to the Ruinous Powers. Of particular
interest to the Xanthites are fallen Inquisitors and corrupted
acolytes, who they seek out not for retribution and punishment
but to better learn how to treaits very essence, Chaos is an unpredictable and
dangerous power to harness, and many who seek out such
fallen agents of the Throne end up joining their ranks.
This, of course, does not stop the Xanthites from their
pursuit of proscribed texts and forbidden lore, which they
consider paramount to their cause. In recent times, the
Xanthites have been gathering lore on the nature of the
Tyrant Star and how its terrible power might be harnessed
for the Imperium. Whenever Xanthites meet, they exchange
small pieces of such information, slowly building up an
extensive amount of data on the so-called “threat” rivalled
only by the Amalathians in its breadth and accuracy. In fact,
it is probably only a matter of time before they learn of the
Amalathians’ secret, and when they do, they will doubtless be
far less conservative with such knowledge.
On occasion, the Xanthites are known to employ Imperial Diviners to foretell the future.
== Xanthite Inquisitors ==
Records of Xanthite Inquisitors are sketchy at best, many
being surrounded in myth and rumor as much as actual fact.
Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Felroth Gelt is a good example of
this. A bold Monodominant and a Puritan, it is said that he
was once ranked high in the Conclave and the favored of
Lord Inquisitor Caidin. However, sometime during his third
century of life, after years of struggle and bloody conflict with
the Emperor’s foes, he became disillusioned. The strict tenets
of his faction and the hollow victories over his enemies began
to lose all of their meaning.
During his time suppressing the Rebellion of the False on
Kasha he first met Inquisitor Draven and witnessed the true
power of Chaos turned upon the Emperor’s foes. Over the
next few decades Gelt and Draven travelled together, until
Felroth’s eyes were finally opened to the teaching of the
Xanthites. Now Gelt travels the sector and beyond, seeking
out the tools with which to fight the Imperium’s foes, his
aging frame invigorated by the power of the warp. Of course,
whether or not Felroth Gelt truly exists is unclear, and only the
oldest and highest ranking members of the Conclave would
know for sure. His story could equally be a cautionary tale
about the perils of Chaos or a message to potential Xanthites
about the true path to man’s salvation. In either case, from
time to time rumors surface of Gelt’s activities, causing a stir
among both the Xanthites and their enemies.
==Xanthite Forsaken Priests==
The Xanthite goal is to master and
dominate the powers of the Warp and of Chaos and bind them
into mankind’s service, a deadly pursuit that requires women
and men of unfailing will and vision to accomplish. To this
end the Xanthites seek out and draw clerics whose faith has
been sorely tried or whose own creeds have strayed far from
the Ministorum’s narrow path into their service, the better to
slowly mould and shape to their own ends and to embrace
the darkly visionary Xanthite ethos. Raised up in forbidden
knowledge, these Forsaken Priests serve the Xanthite cause as
trusted Acolytes, exorcists, and daemon-binders whose faith
in the God-Emperor, though no less fervent than before, has
changed as through a mirror darkly.
== Xanthite Secrets ==
The Xanthites have many secrets. Each member of the faction
is a repository of lore unto himself, and they are known
to venture further into the dark nature of Chaos than any
other arm of the Inquisition. Within the Calixis Sector, this
delving translates into an unparalleled knowledge of warp
cults, witches, and daemonic incursions. More than once has
a member of the faction flawlessly infiltrated a cult, draining
its knowledge and power before smashing it beneath the
hammer of the Inquisition.
Perhaps most interesting of the faction’s secrets, however,
is the Aleph-hosts. It is rumored among the Xanthites that
some of their number have found a way to bind several
powerful daemonic intelligences into multiple hosts, each of
equal power and bound so that all must be killed for the
Aleph-host to be destroyed. This hellish act requires a long
and complex ritual, the formulae of which has been the object
of many quests by Xanthite Inquisitors. Dark rumors hint
that the ritual can also be configured so that a greater being
of both materium and immaterium may be created in a single
physical host. True or not, it is a rumor that persists and
which many Xanthites are eager to pursue, if for no other
reason than to keep the knowledge from the hands of their
foes or those within the Imperium who would destroy it.
== Angelique De Falk and the Calixian Malleus ==
Perhaps the most famous Xanthite Inquisitor in the history of
the early Calixian Conclave was Angelique De Falk, a woman
whose great cunning and implacable intelligence marked
her out from her days as an Acolyte of the Ordo Xenos as a
rising star. De Falk, newly raised to the rosette, was one of a
number of Inquisitors assigned to the fledgling Calixis Sector
in the middle of the 39th millennium in the aftermath of the
Angevin Crusade. This period, known to Calixian histories
as The Great Founding, was far from an untroubled one,
as war and anarchy still blighted the area. The subsequent
mass colonial expeditions from the overpopulated worlds of
the distant Segmentum Solar and from nearer afield in the
troubled Mandragora and Gehenna regions created serious
problems of their own. The newly born Calixian Conclave
soon had its hands full weeding out the corrupt chaff from
the good wheat in the new population and helping manage
the difficult transition from High Crusade to stable civil
rule. De Falk took to her duties with bravura and won for
herself considerable fame within the Conclave, smashing cult
after cult, battling human renegades and mutant uprisings.
In particular, De Falk is credited with exterminating one
of the last hellish nests of the warp-worshiping Yu’vath, a
xenos race that had bitterly contested the Crusade’s latter
stages. It is recorded to have caused some acrimony when De
Falk crossed the floor to join the Ordo Malleus, leaving her
erstwhile comrades in the Ordo Xenos somewhat aggrieved
to lose the famed and influential Inquisitor to what was at the
time a political rival.
She quickly mastered the arts of the daemonhunter and rose
swiftly with the ranks of the Calixian Malleus, demonstrating
a mastery of occult lore that swiftly had Inquisitors of far
longer service seeking her aid and council in matters of the
infernal. As time progressed, however, she demonstrated
increasingly Radical Xanthite leanings. Rumors began to
circulate that she was able to command dark warp spirits at
will, and that she had replaced her left eye, lost in battle with a
Chaos Magus, with a baleful orb torn from the skull of a half-daemon
thing worshiped as a god amid the steaming jungles
of Fedrid. Her successes against malign forces, however, only
grew in number and scale, as she and her Acolytes cast down
the first and most terrible flowering of the Cult of Balphomael
on Scintilla. By her own hand, De Falk destroyed the black
beating heart of the Nightmare-Hulk Spectre of Winter,
which had terrorized Imperial shipping since it was first
sighted during the voyages of Solomon Haarlock.
After two centuries of service within the Calixian Conclave
and a track record that arguably has never been equaled by
her successors, Angelique De Falk was the leading power
of the Ordo Malleus in the sector. She always refused to
have the fact officially acknowledged, and she declined the
appellation of ‘Lord’ which her peers repeatedly offered
her despite her growingly sinister reputation. During this
long tenure she acted as mentor to more than a dozen
Acolytes raised to the Inquisitor’s rank in their own right,
only ensuring a strong strain of Xanthism in the Calixian
Conclave to this day. De Falk’s successors, in turn, produced
other legends. These include Requis Corina, the first to battle
the Pilgrims of Hayte and halt the Bloody Solstice on Malfi;
the infamous witch-master Inquisitor Soldevan, who slew the
psi-abomination of the Bloodmind on war-torn Malice; and
the malignant Kul Harkness, perhaps the most suspected and
feared of the current Calixian Xanthites. But her gravest test
and the act that was to grant both glory and infamy within
the Inquisition was yet to come.
== The Three Daughters of Atropos ==
In 799.M39 the hive city of Atropos on Solomon, a citadel
with a population of more than 100 million, went mad in a
single night. The culmination of a nightmarish plot long in
the making, this terrible night of insanity and wanton murder
was the work of the Master Sorcerer Alrac the Broken. Long
a foe of the Calixis Sector, born beyond the Emperor’s Light,
founder of a dozen cults, and author of the thrice-cursed
grimoire the Liber Noctis Eternem, Alrac had come to Solomon
to kill this vital Imperial world in order to pay off a dark
pact struck centuries before with the hellish forces beyond.
As the death toll rose steadily into the tens of thousands and
Atropos tore itself to shreds, violent chem-storms engulfed
Solomon, and madness began to leap from ship to ship in
orbit. With every drop of blood shed, Solomon tipped toward
the Chaotic destruction of a full-blown warp incursion on a
planetary scale. At the center of this whirlpool of violence,
Alrac took the high-prelate’s throne in the gore-spattered
Cathedral of Saint Morgana at the pinnacle of the Hive Spire
and began his ascension to daemonhood as the gates holding
back the warp began to shatter.
Plunging through the storm like a bolt from the heavens
came Angelique De Falk’s gun-cutter. It had been pure
chance she had been in the outer Solomon system taking
on supplies in preparation for a long journey to a distant
Inquisition fortress. Ill-prepared for a major confrontation,
she was accompanied only by a number of junior Acolytes
in training and her personal staff. Although long past the
prime of her life, De Falk’s mind was sharp and her power
greater than ever. So it was that in order to save Solomon
and countless Imperial lives, three of De Falk’s Acolytes gave
themselves up to damnation aboard her ship in hurried rituals
of terrible power. The gun-cutter smashed its way into the
twisted cathedral to confront Alrac at the moment of his dark
apotheosis, and De Falk and three bound daemonhosts of
dreadful potency confronted the ascending arch-sorcerer.
The details of what occurred in the battle have never been
revealed, but it is known that Alrac was torn asunder at
the moment of his triumph and Atropos scoured clean. De
Falk’s shattered body was borne away by her last surviving
sorrowful ‘daughter,’ and she was never seen again. Whether
she lived or died remains a mystery.
==Current Conspiracies==
“To slay a Xanthite, you must first become one...”
–Proverb of the Ordo Malleus
The Xanthites are a diverse group and one whose individual
members are continuously subject to the pull of their own
obsessive drive to master the warp, enslave the dark powers
that threaten mankind, and turn them back on themselves.
These obsessions may manifest in a myriad of ways, from
the never-ending quest to expand their own knowledge and
power, to the hunting down and destruction of Chaos cults
and the appropriation of their dark secrets for the Xanthite’s
own. Some Xanthites, particularly those who chose to conceal
their Radical tendencies, conduct their business of the Holy
Inquisition with diligence and zeal, but always with an eye
toward their own hidden agendas; they do not shirk from
using covert murder to achieve their ends. Other Xanthites
care little if they are known as such, confident enough in
the rightness of their position to follow it heedless of the
opprobrium of their peers, while others have attained such
levels of infamy that the fear of their name precedes them
even in the Conclave. Regardless of their methods and goals,
conspiracy and secrecy are ever the Xanthite’s watchwords
where needed, and lies are always a favored weapon---just
as with the daemons they seek to bind.
Hayte, Suspicion, and the Rising Tide
The number of demonic encounters and the spread of Chaos
cults within the Calixis Sector has increased at fearful rate over
the last century, a fact that has not been lost on the Ordo
Malleus or its Xanthite constituents. Given this rise in baleful
activity, many of the most senior members and their trusted
allies have come together in secret council on Maccabeus Quintus to discuss and debate this phenomenon and its possible
causes and potential eventual outcomes. The conclusions of
this council, which is believed to have met several times over
the last three years, have not been made available to the wider
Holy Ordos, or even to the Conclave Calixis, and despite
their vehement protests the Tyrantine Cabal has been shut
out as well. Some see this development, which has caused
considerable acrimony, as an indication that the Ordo Malleus
suspects some part of the Calixian Inquisition itself in the
matter. No public charges have been made to this effect, and
the Calixian Malleus refuses to be drawn into debate.
Since then, it has been observed that several prominent
Puritan members of the Ordo Malleus have become decidedly
more distant to their colleagues. At the same time, known
Xanthites and other Inquisitors with long-standing ties to the
Malleus, along with their independent Acolytes and agents,
have become vastly more active to those trying to track their
movements---far from an easy task at the best of times. These
roving groups of Radical Xanthites have been observed
travelling to hotspots of daemonic activity as they flare up,
often re-visiting the sites of older atrocities searching for
wisdom in their ashes, appearing and disappearing suddenly,
without recourse to wider Imperial authority, and occasionally
riding roughshod over the activities of other Inquisitors. This
has only worsened relations between the Xanthites and the
rest of the Conclave. One example includes an incident on
Carver’s Gate, when the warband of the militant daemonhunter
Justinius Vorr clashed with the forces of the Witch Hunter
Compt Pryce while pursing a secret cult of the Pilgrims of Hayte in the deep flood vaults of Bane City.
Incidents such
as these have done little to ingratiate the Xanthites with their
Calixian brethren. Matters have worsened recently following
the notorious Xanthite Inquisitors Harkness and Golgol’s
activities on Landunder, which disrupted a covert operation
of the Tyrantine Cabal. Their actions resulted in the death
of Inquisitor Slake, a former pupil of the senior Spectarian
Lady Olianthe Rathbone. Only the direct and unexpected
intervention of the Puritan Lord-Malleus Ionfel, avowing
that the two Xanthites were on the Ordo’s work, prevented
Rathbone and her allies from declaring Harkness and Golgol
Excommunicate Traitoris and sparking open conflict. Deep
resentment still simmers over the matter, and Rathbone
is known to have privately sworn her vengeance. Given
Harkness’s past, this merely adds one more name to a long list
of personal enemies, a list that up until now was believed to
have included Ionfel himself.
Even now, many of the Xanthites of the Calixian Conclave
seem to be moving in an unprecedentedly concerted, overt
manner, and many other Inquisitorial factions harbor with
deep suspicion and fear about what this unknown pattern
portends.
== The Seven Devils of Dread Calyx ==
Of all the dark lore that rests in the secure vaults of the Calixian
Malleus, some of the most contentious and strange deals with
the myth of the so-called Seven Devils of Dread Calyx, an
ancient legend that still forms the obsession of many Xanthites
to the present time. The region was first named in the writings
of the legendary Rogue Trader Solomon Haarlock, whose
thirteen voyages out past the edge of Imperial space in the late
36th millennium would define the Calyx Expanse as a realm rich
in “Souls, Plunder, Wealth and Things Best Left Undisturbed.”
Three millennia later, the Angevin Crusade would forge this
region into the Calixis Sector. Haarlock’s writings spoke of the
seven devils as beings of dark power, fiends who haunted this
area of space, some as savage predatory beasts, some walking
amid the cold stars and others worshiped as fickle gods by
those mortals who fell inside their domains. These seven,
Haarlock claimed, were connected together by a dark and
terrible web of fate, and if all were brought forth at once, a key
would be turned that would extinguish the stars themselves.
Haarlock’s writings, filled with allegory and symbolism, have
continued to strike a cord with the Ordo Malleus, particularly
those of the Xanthite persuasion, and still echo through the
sector’s histories. Those who have sought out the truth behind
the legends are known to have discovered much of value in
them, as well as great peril.
Today, the greatest authority on the myth of the seven
devils and the malefic lore that surrounds them is Inquisitor Emeritus Andros Bray, Keeper-General of the Ember Archive at
the fortress-asteroid of the Bastion Orpheus in the Maccabeus
system. The aged Bray, a fiery proponent of the Xanthite ethos
in his younger days and reputedly the longest-living servant
of the Calixian Conclave, has long since retired from the field.
However, he will happily expound on the subject to anyone the
clearance to plumb the Ember Archives’ depths. He also makes
it a point to show any would be seekers a shrine he keeps to
those Inquisitors and their Acolytes lost or vanished on the
quest to uncover the seven’s secrets. Among the memorials and
reliquaries is the empty tomb of Morell Orpheus, the famed
daemonhunter and onetime master of the Calixian Malleus,
after which the bastion is named.
Andros Bray, in his long consideration of the legend
of the seven devils, has formed his own list that he
believes offer the strongest clues as to the nature of
the entities involved. Compiled from concordances
and evidence ranging from recovered cult relics, local
folklore and divinatory prophecy, to the records of
entities encountered at various times by the Inquisition.
They are as follows:
*The Voice of the Flame: The daemon Balphomael, lord of the dark fire, Scintilla/various.
*The Dweller in the Depths: The Sightless Gaze, autochthonic entity, nature unknown, Spectoris.
*The False Prince: Tychak Crowfather, spiteful, pre-crusade indigenous deity of the Ashleen, incarnate form slain by Saint Drusus, Iocanthos.
*The Treader in the Dust: The Radiant King, legendary avatar of madness, Malfi/various.
*The Eater of the Dead: Mord’dagan, supernatural beast of legend, godhead of the Saynay cannibal cult, Dusk.
*The Empty Hunger: Astral entity/aetheric residue of extinct xenoform, attributed cause of lethal psychic phenomena, Drusus Shrine World/Sacris.
*The Night Traveller: Nature unknown, also known as the kin-slayer, one that returns from where none has before and whose predicted coming will herald the End of Days.