Beast of Solomon

“You do not understand! If we do not sate its hunger it will come for us and our children! There is no other way...”
—The Statement of Corrin Ur, Shift Foreman, Chemstack Nineteen Lambda
Solomon is a blighted, slowly dying, and heavily
industrialized hive world where rebellion, superstition,
and hate fester in the shadowed canyons of rockcrete
and steel. Its hives are pollution-shrouded places plagued by
suspicion, greed, and unrest. Between the towering monolithic
citadels of Solomon’s hive metropolises, thousands of square
kilometers of rusting pipelines, thundering processing vats,
and fire-belching pyro-towers cover the landscape and
darken the skies with a thick haze of black smog. In the
lightless spaces of these Interior Industrial Zones, or simply
the “Interior” as the Solomonites call them, many terrors are
said to haunt unseen. Of these tales, the dark legend of the
so-called “Curse” or “Beast of Solomon” is perhaps one of the
oldest, most consistent, and most widely recounted.
It is passed from generation to generation among the
unfortunates forced to dwell in the work-houses and labor
in the depths of Solomon’s Interior. It is a myth of some
monstrous alien thing that stalks the darkness seeking only
to kill, a shadow within shadows, and of good men taken
without warning to gristly deaths with only bloody shreds
left to mark their passing.
The Beast is an envoy of merciless death made manifest
and a horror never fully seen---a thing lurking at the edge
of the terrified minds of the populace. Yet the Beast is no
mere tale, but an ingrained fear that alone is powerful enough
to move ordinary men and women to commit horrors in its
name. Worse yet, the monster itself may be far more real and
dangerous than the most febrile imaginings of those bound
by its terrors can conceive.
==The Darkness’s Due==
Down in the lightless pathways beneath still-stacks of the
Interior, in the pollution choked chem-spoils and rust barrens
where people labor to eke out a living by the light of
guttering promethium wicks, fear has an unfettered reign,
and chief among these is the fear of the Beast. A mind and
heart consumed by terror can contemplate any act to gain a
moment’s respite, and amongst these dwellers in the dark a
horrific tradition has grown.
These people have been consumed by their fear of
the Beast. They have no self-given name, no title, and no
organization. They are simply victims who have succumbed
completely to their terror of what lies in the dark. They are
united by a single factor---their wish to placate and propitiate
the Beast, to preserve themselves by giving the Beast its due,
even sacrificing their own in desperate, appeasing worship of
this emissary of death.
Those not living their brief years cursed with poverty,
disease, and fear in Solomon’s darkest places cannot
understand the fear of knowing that the darkness is watching
you and may take you if it pleases. Accordingly, most who
make sacrifice to the Beast are ordinary industrial laborers
and families who are forced to live in the areas of the Interior
where tales of the Beast are strongest. These stories are often
backed up with slews of disappearances, the discovery of
bloody remains, and sightings of monstrous things stalking
the shadows.
To understand those who sacrifice to the Beast, it is
important to understand how these bitter and fearful people
live. Buried far way from light and wind in the depths of
Solomon’s Interior, these “zoners” labor by promethium
lamps, drink water thick with pollutants that seep from the
still-stacks, and know that they are born and will die at the
whim of greater forces---be it the slow death sentence passed
by the Imperium’s thirst for the product of their toil or the
Beast that stalks their dark world. The poisoning of Solomon
by its own industries has brought other miseries that those
forced to inhabit the Interior bear the brunt of---successful
births are rare, and with each successive generation, a greater
percentage of those born live only a few months or are
touched by mutation. Those who sacrifice to the Beast believe
that their only chance to affect their fate is to appease at least
one of the forces that prey on them.
==The Ritual of Sacrifice==
Around the areas considered to be the Beast’s hunting
grounds, even those who do not seek to placate the Curse
with sacrifice know of the practice and keep their mouths
firmly shut on the matter to outsiders. Thus they are to some
degree complicit. Though some may believe firmly in the
God-Emperor, they also know that they are accursed and that
they must offer sacrifice to appease the Curse. Those sacrificed
are often outsiders who find themselves in the wrong place at
the wrong time, so it is that offerings tend to be roving scum,
minor officials, and those unfortunates who have been forcibly
“relocated” to the Interior to keep up the work quotas.
It may even be the case, where fear of the Beast has grown
so strong that an entire community has fallen into sacrifice, that
the community’s leaders may lure outsiders into their deadly
web so that they can be offered to the “Beast in the Dark.”
However, given the danger this posses, the situation will be
desperate indeed for this to occur. In other cases, sacrifices
will be taken from amongst the local populace, the
victims being selected by lottery or some
other dubious means of divination. At
the agreed time, the bound victim is
taken by a throng bearing bright
torches to keep the Beast and the dark
away, their faces hidden by crude (yet
sometimes elaborate) cloth masks. In
a place where the tangle of pipes is
thickest, the sacrifice is chained
and left in complete darkness
to await his fate.
==Inquisitorial Threat Briefing==
The Ordo Xenos has been long aware of the myth of “the
Curse” but has long relegated it to the mass of other petty
myths and horror stories that abound on Solomon, as on many
other worlds. The Ordo reasons such stories are a simple,
natural response to the frailty of life and harsh conditions
there. Received wisdom points to the myth’s widespread
nature as evidence that it is likely a mere convenient scapegoat,
as a single Beast could not be everywhere at once and a whole
genus of such creatures would have made themselves apparent
some time ago. They do not, however, dismiss the possibility
of one or more rogue xenos predators’ actions or even a
localized daemonic incursion being blamed on the Curse,
or even some heretical faction using the myth for its own
ends. Some factions within the Ordo Xenos are not so sure,
however, believing that there is more than meets the eye in
these “folk tales.” Perhaps there is enough to warrant further
investigation...
==The Nature of the Beast==
Nobody really knows what the Beast is. To the spire nobles
and guildmasters, it is a childish fable. The Administratum
scribes and hab residents know it as a chilling ghost story, or
a parable of how terrible life is in the Interior. But to those
doomed to live in the Interior Zones, it is very real, and very
deadly.
Those scholars and Adepts of the Holy Ordos who have
taken time to study the stories of the “Beast in the Dark” have
come up with several possibilities. However, until dedicated
teams of investigators can be dispatched to Solomon to
uncover the truth, these will remain only theories. The truth
could be any or all of these possibilities, or perhaps something
else entirely.
The Beast is This Place
The most popular theory amongst the Ordo Calixis, (especially
with those adepts who have never had the misfortune of visiting
Solomon) is that the Beast does not exist in any literal sense.
It is rather a figment of the imaginations of the ignorant and
superstitious lower classes on Solomon invented to explain
the bleak hopeless nature of the lives they lead. A mythical
“Beast” lets these people blame their troubles on something
they can regard as concrete and tangible. More importantly,
their belief in a literal Beast gives them the misplaced hope
that they save themselves through the act of sacrificing.
A small subset of researchers have suggested that although
the stories of the Beast may be myths, something more than
the polluted environment and harsh conditions is responsible
for hunting those who live in Solomon’s Interior. They
theorize that some arcane or even xenos mechanism from the
ancient past may be responsible. Those theories are roundly
ignored in the Ordo Calixis.
However, if either case is true, then the Beast cannot
be appeased, hunted, or stopped. It would likely be a self-perpetuating
fear caused by the blight and slow death of
this world. Alternatively, the Beast may be some strange,
unknown, external force---all around and possessing reasons
and purposes either too inhuman to comprehend or too
mechanistic to placate. It takes people in the dark, and as
long as people are there, they will disappear. As for those
sacrificed to the Beast, some may be taken but most likely
starve to death or are eaten by rats. No matter how they end,
their deaths are futile attempts to control something that does
not understand the gifts or wishes of men.
Existential Enemies
More exotic theories as to the cause of the “Curse” include an
ancient alien device buried beneath the surface that consumes
life energy or an ancient system from the Dark Age of
Technology that eliminates living things according to some
inexplicable programmed parameter, its victims rendered
down by blade-fingered servitors or swarms of brass-cased
insects. It could also be some property of the materials used
to build part of the foundations of that part of Solomon’s
industrial complex, causing people to slip out of reality and
into the warp. It could even be the work of some ancient
creature or xenos species that predates human involvement on
Solomon, acting to preserve its secret existence.
The Beast is Man
When people fear the unknown, they may talk of Beasts that
lurk in the dark and of fiends with sharp teeth that thirst
for flesh. These tales, though, are the products of wishful
ignorance---Man is the worst Beast that lurks in the darkness
of Solomon.
Several Inquisitors whose minds tend to think in such
terms privately suspect that someone is using and propagating
the stories of the Beast for his own purposes. After all, the
population that lives in the depths of the Solomon industrial
complexes are a hidden, blighted people who will not be
missed and are perfect cattle for others who need a regular
supply of humans for some vile purpose. While the terrified
dwellers gather around their chem-lamps and whisper about
the Beast, others watch them unseen, waiting for one to stray
into an isolated spot so that the others can do what they
wish. To these quiet watchers, the whimpering offerings left
in dark places are amusing and readily accepted gifts that do
not dissuade them from their purpose.
Potentially Monstrous People
Both the Amaranthine Syndicate and the Brotherhood of the Horned Darkness represent active cults on Solomon whose
activities may inspire the legends of a Beast, just as they have
inspired different tales in other parts of Solomon. A murder
cult amongst the elite of Solomon could also be to blame, as
could the needs of a hidden xenophile or heretek cabal that
requires a continuous supply of human subjects.
The Beast is Real
While not a common theory, a vocal minority of Inquistiorial
scholars contends that the Beast actually exists as some sort of
creature. Why, in a galaxy full of strange and terrible things,
could there not be some sort of creature living in the depths
of Solomon, preying on the population there?
If this is true, then the frightening legends from Solomon’s
Interior describing the Beast cannot be dismissed out of
hand. Those who dwell in the dark places of Solomon tell of
a crawling nightmare and the silent scythe of death. Gorged
on rumor, fear, and superstition, the Beast has as many forms
as the people who tell of it, yet all speak of the thing in
the dark that comes and snatches away the living without a
sound. If the Beast is real, then it is a savage and unknown
alien predator as dangerous as any anything that might be
confronted in the depths of the void. One such example
creature is detailed at the end of this section.
Killing the Beast
If the Beast is real, then killing it will not be easy. The stories
describe it as a vicious and highly effective predator and an
extraordinarily powerful creature, well-adapted to the cramped
and dark conditions in Solomon’s industrial complexes. It
is also likely to know its environment better than any man
could. It will retreat if attacked openly and then return to pick
off an individual before disappearing again. Combined with
the fact that it is a fearsome combatant, the only way to kill it
is with extremely good fortune or an even better plan.