Amaranthine Syndicate - The Horrors of the Slaugth: The Slaugth are terrible and monstrous beings whose minds and bodies are utterly alien and who are rightly feared and reviled by Mankind. The Slaugth (known in some cases as the "Maggot Men," the "Dream Eaters," or the "Carrion Lords") are regarded by most that have heard of them as little more than a nightmarish myth -- Voidborn tales or the dark fancy of some mad Rogue Trader. The Inquisition, for its part, knows the race to be all too real, but have suppressed all knowledge under a blanket of secrecy for millennia. The Inquisition also knows what terrible desire motivates the Slaugth's contact with humanity -- the desire to feed. They are carrion eaters and crave the flesh of dead intelligent beings above all others, savouring in particular the cranial matter from which they seem to derive an almost narcotic and addictive pleasure in consuming. Some tales even go so far as to say that the Maggot Men somehow consume the memories and knowledge of their victims this way.The history of Mankind's involvement with them is uncertain, but if some sources are to be believed, the species may have been encountered at the edges of what is now Imperial space as far back as the Age of Strife. Most encounters follow a similar pattern: black, tenebrous vessels slipping into Imperial space to wreak havoc, isolated outposts or shipping attacked without warning by a vastly superior and horrific foe, bodies left mutilated or missing all together, and vile technologies and blasphemous creations traded to depraved human Renegades in return for slaves and captives. Aside from what little can be gleaned from the historical record, the true nature and dangers the Slaugth represent are largely unknown to the Imperium, as are their origin and numbers. Some xeno-savants and Rogue Traders believe that their home system (and perhaps even a great hellish Slaugth empire), lies far out into the Trailing Halo Stars beyond the Imperium's borders. Sealed Inquisitorial archives speculate that several Frontier Worlds in the Segmentum Obscurus have, over the millennia, been purposefully destabilised and tipped into civil war by the Slaugth in order to give them free reign in which to feed. However, these have been rare occurrences and in any such encounter the number of Slaugth involved has been mercifully few, for the creatures themselves are savagely powerful combatants and nearly impossible to slay.The Inquisitorial Ordos remain unaware of the Slaugth's involvement with the Amaranthine Syndicate and the threat it represents, although encounters with the Slaugth in the Calixis Sector have been spiking dramatically in the last several standard years. There are several reasons for this, not least of all the Slaugth's own abilities as infiltrators and puppeteers, and the degree to which they have already spread their network of agents in the sector. At present, the Inquisition has no expectation of the Slaugth being behind such a subtle and widespread conspiracy; they know them only as raiders and abductors -- extremely dangerous, but few in number and limited in scope. The Ordos, the Calixis Sector, and indeed the Imperium have been blindsided by this strange and subtle invasion. If its true nature is not soon uncovered, then billions of lives stand in dire peril.