Kalf

Kalf is a Frontier World in the Pereiphery of the Calixis Sector. It is the home of the Sand Devil. Once, Kalf was terrorized by the infamous heretic Myrchella Sinderfell when she and her entourage burned town after town in their path, hunted the survivors through the night, and unleashed unclean spirits to plague any who remained. 
==The Dance of the Dead==
Reports reached Inquisitor Calith Nonoro of the Ordo
Hereticus of a series of strange incidents and rumors
circulating in the area known as the Periphery, a sparsely
inhabited but long settled volume of space that forms much
of the border between the Calixis and Scarus Sectors. The
reports, which concerned a number of unexplained murders
and disappearances along with garbled stories of the walking
dead and restless spirits, reached Nonoro through his extensive
network of contacts while he was rooting out a witch cult in
the rust wastes of Cyclopia. He dispatched several teams of his
most able Acolytes to Sisk, Sinophia, Kalf, and other outposts
to investigate the matter.
Nonoro was disturbed by the similarity of the stories and
feared that a widespread cult had infiltrated these worlds.
As reports from his servants arrived, he received them with
growing alarm. The Sinophian connection proved to be a false
lead, but on Sisk an abbey had been burned to the ground
and black–robed figures seemingly impervious to gunfire
had crushed all opposition. Nonoro’s Acolytes found that
the natives called forth the old legend of the Night Cult to
explain these events and claimed that the abbot and his priests
had been punished for their sins by the Emperor as they had
grown greedy and corrupt.
It was just as events on Cyclopia reached their most critical
juncture that Nonoro received an emergency astropathic
communiqué from Valadimar Haek, one of his senior agents
and a former Adeptus Arbites marshal---the dead were walking
on Kalf.
Arriving at a time of general unrest and sporadic conflict
among Kalf’s Sand-Barons, the Inquisitiorial team had been
drawn to the poor, lawless city of Vanitas. With the help of
local mercenaries, the Acolytes attacked a secret hold of a
cult of heretical faith calling itself the Children of the True
Resurrection. Despite heavy casualties, they captured a most
unusual prisoner---a man who was dead and yet alive. Their
subject was confirmed in local records as an honorably
discharged Guard veteran named Ezekiel Mather, who had
been recorded as dying of blacklung three months previously.
Mather’s heart did not beat nor did his lungs breathe, but he
walked and talked readily, communicating his faith in the “way
of the Emperor’s gift of true resurrection” with zealous fervor.
The team’s sanctioned psyker attested that Mather’s mind was
a dead void and his soul a “cold fathomless darkness,” but
unlike some warp-animated carrionate or rotting plague husk,
it was “still possessed of faculty, intelligence, and purpose.” The
communiqué ended abruptly with an emergency addendum that
the dead were walking in Vanitas and that the Acolytes were
besieged in the city’s generator station, with no help at hand.
Nonoro, unable to immediately depart, sent out a general
emergency call to the Holy Ordos and other neighboring
authorities placed to respond more rapidly. It was not long
before a Naval destroyer carrying Witch Hunter Sennacherib and
his retinue and the Rogue Trader vessel Rake’s Progress, operating
under bond to the Acolytes of Inquisitor Marr, had arrived at the
planet. What occurred next is a matter of some controversy and
wild speculation among the Ordos.
The official report, submitted by Sennacherib, states that he
and his forces purged Vanitas. He said he found nothing more
than a single witch who possessed powers to animate shambling
corpses for a limited time---a very rare but hardly unknown
“gift” possessed by some rogue psykers---who was being used
by a local criminal gang to terrify their rivals. The witch hunter
left much of the city a smoking ruin and its people scattered.
However, what the natives had taken to calling the “dance of the
dead” became rooted firmly in to the local psyche. Sennacherib’s
report goes on to vilify the “panicked exaggeration” of Nonoro’s
Acolyte Haek (who was reported dead at the time of the Witch
Hunter’s arrival), the “superstitious hysteria of the Kalf natives,”
and the “interference” of Marr’s Acolytes, although this last
criticism was written in more guarded terms than his other
accusations. Since this time, stories have begun to circulate that the
Rake’s Progress broke orbit from Kalf suddenly and was fired upon
by Sennacherib’s destroyer. The vessel escaped unscathed, and in
the aftermath, an official protest was lodged by Nonoro with the
Conclave against Sennacherib’s handling of the matter.
==The Last Testament of Vladimar Haek==
Without evidence for any challenge to its validity, Sennacherib’s
judgement and report has stood uncontested, and the Ordo
Hereticus considers the matter closed. Subsequently, Nonoro
removed himself from the public eye, reportedly having
survived an attempt on his life on Sisk, and his location and
activities are now unknown even by his fellow Inquisitors.
Rumor at the highest level of the Ordo Hereticus has it
that one of Nonoro’s agents has since recovered a recording
made by Vladimar Haek in his final hours, which he is
preparing to use to accuse Sennacherib of presenting false
evidence to the Conclave and to expose a wider conspiracy
of heresy and forbidden lore. Regardless of the truth of this
claim, it seems definite that the events on Kalf have now
become the centre of a schism within the Ordo Hereticus
and that Nonoro is now engaged in some covert investigation
or perhaps even a private war. Indeed, there are some with
the Ordo who are using words such as “Radical” and “rogue”
when speaking of him.
==Kalf Sand Devil==
Just under the size of a full-grown man, the Kalf Sand Devil is not particularly intelligent but it is very quick. The Sand Devil is akin to a corpse-eating desert worm, capable of burrowing through the loose sand of Kalf's many deserts. The creature's body features tough scales along with a fang-filled maw dripping with venom, as well as an advanced sense of smell to find bodies. The appearance of the creature, especially quickly and suddenly, is quite frightening to those not experienced with them. The creature seems to be almost like a “worm-hyena”, searching out carrion to feed off and making its own kills when hungry enough.
Category:Frontier Worlds
Category:Calixis Sector
Category:Planets
Category:The Periphery