Death Cult - Notable Death Cults: Emperor's Blades - One of the oldest Death Cults in the Imperium, the Emperor's Blades are only found on the world of Acanon, not far from the Sol System. The legends of the cult claim that it was founded when the Emperor still walked as a man. He fought a great battle against the forces of Chaos on Acanon, and millions died in the conflict. It is supposedly after this battle that the Emperor said, "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Humanity's future," more commonly misquoted as the "seed of the Imperium." The Emperor's Blades are the archetypal Death Cult, revering the use of the blade in combat. They are a hereditary cult, in that no one can be inducted; only those born to previous cult members can join in their worship. The cultists themselves use only a sign language to communicate, having neither speech nor written word. Their ceremonies of devotion are thus eerily silent, the stillness broken only by the scrape of blade on whetstone and the drip of blood into the offering cups.Sons of Dispater - The Sons of Dispater care only for money. For them, every life has its price and only the station of the target and the ease of the kill mitigate the cost. The Sons of Dispater started life as a mercenary company taking part in the vicious trade wars that flared up in the Calixis Sector. It slowly coalesced into its present shape, but with this refinement, it evolved to become a freelance guild of assassins, providing skilled murderers, duellists and saboteurs to anyone who could afford them. Over the years, the Sons of Dispater have built up a well-deserved reputation for reliability and lethality and their reach extends outwards from their centre of operations on Malfi to almost every important world in the sector. While their only loyalty is to the gelt they have been paid, the organisation does consider its contracts to be inviolate, realising long ago that an organisation of turncoat assassins would have a very short life expectancy. Thus, any member of the Sons of Dispater that betrays a contract had better hide their tracks very carefully or risk the wrath of their own. The Inquisition is not above hiring an assassin trained by the Sons of Dispater, valuing their skills and predicable motivations. Likewise, the assassin may have fallen foul of the Inquisition unwittingly (a member of the Holy Ordos is one of the few targets the Sons of Dispater consider off-limits), and now has little option but to make amends.Astral Knives - As members of a proscribed Imperial Death Cult, the Astral Knives must keep their beliefs secret to all but their most trusted confidants. A secret society within the closed society of the Voidborn, the Astral Knives cult takes it upon themselves, as a sacred duty, to keep Mankind safe during voyages through the Warp. If a voyage suffers, dark portents are witnessed or danger draws close in the Warp, the Astral Knives carry out a sacrifice to ensure the Emperor's divine protection. Those most obviously "unclean" targets, such as mutants and psykers, are selected first, but almost anyone might be selected in consultation with ritual foretelling. Some fifty standard years ago, the Ordos Calixis declared the Astral Knives a heretical sect after it was found that worshippers of the Ruinous Powers had infiltrated large parts of the cult, and a concerted purge was undertaken. Despite this, the entrenched and widely dispersed Death Cult lives on, although scattered and in far fewer numbers than before. An Astral Knife cultist is usually born rather than made, with certain Voidborn families having long traditions of involvement with the cult, either as assassins themselves or in tacitly providing support. Nor are they ravening killers. They are taught instead that their murders, often arranged to seem as accidents, are a dreadful but necessary divine duty. Some members grieve over their victims when appropriate, although many seek to hone their skills further by taking payment for the use of their skills among the Voidborn, particularly if the target is a "dirtsider" or not of the ship. Some more Radical elements of the Inquisition have chosen, where possible, to absorb the surviving untainted Astral Knives into their service as skilled spies and killers, and the Astral Knives for their part are keen to prove their faith.Moritat - The Moritat is an Imperial Death Cult, far older than the Calixis Sector itself. Some legends say it was brought to Calixis by adherents secreted among the forces of the Angevin Crusade who carved the sector into being. Others claim it was already seeded in place, waiting for the Imperials when they came. Regardless, the Moritat leans heavily on the Imperial Creed, albeit with a very bloody and mystical interpretation of its dogma. It teaches that only through the merciless application of violence and death can the Imperium be sustained, the weak and corrupt winnowed out and the Emperor's own great sacrifice honoured. In organisation, the Moritat is supremely difficult to infiltrate or pin down, operating in independent cells each led by a single master or mistress seeded in recruiting grounds such as underhives, Feral World wildernesses and war zones. The Moritat selects those who have already been "marked" by tragedy and bloodshed to serve the Emperor as a bringer of death to His enemies. They take these individuals from a young age and forge their bitterness and hate into a weapon. Training recruits relentlessly in the arts of destruction, deception and bloodletting, while at the same time indoctrinating them into their own brand of the Imperial faith and the mysteries of the cult. Moritat aspirants who survive this education become full members of the cult and are sent out alone into the wider Imperium -- a process they call the "travail" to hone their skills as assassins, vigilantes and peerless duellists, believing that only through continuous conflict and bloody experience can they become supreme in their arts and worthy to serve the Emperor. The existence of the Moritat is something of an open secret in the hierarchy of the Calixian noble houses and the Imperial adepta of the sector, although facts about them are scarce in the extreme. The cult's existence also seems to benefit from some measure of toleration by the Imperium's higher powers, a fact that leads some to whisper that the Moritat's true sponsorship lies with the distant and dreaded temples of the Officio Assassinorum itself. For a Moritat assassin, the chance to serve the Inquisition is a blessed thing -- dealing death to the God-Emperor's enemies first-hand and also a proving ground where they can test their skills against the most dire and powerful opposition imaginable. Many Inquisitors regard Moritat assassins as invaluable resources, monsters of their own to fight the many monsters they must challenge.Winged Skull - The Winged Skull is a Death Cult of the Imperium. It is the cult to which the Death Cultist executioner Knosso Prond belonged. Its governing priestess required Prond to swear that she would not speak another word nor return to the hidden temple of the cult until she had slain a single individual from each of 1,000 designated xenos species that were hostile to Humanity.Bloodspun Web - The Imperium is founded upon death and bloodshed, and maintained only by the further sacrifices of Humanity. There are those for whom death is a way of life, and Death Cults of many types can be found on worlds across the Imperium. They revel in holy slaughter, dedicating their victims' souls to the God-Emperor, offering up blood sacrifices to Him of his many enemies so that He might answer their prayers. The practices of these Death Cults are dark and terrifying. Common folk maintain a superstitious fear of ruthless assassins who specialise in ritual murder, self-mutilation and bloody communion. Vague omens can make these zealots of the Imperial Cult target seemingly innocent people just as easily as obvious enemies of the Imperium. One such cult lurks within the bowels of the Rogue Trader House von Valancius' flagship in the Koronus Expanse. For standard years, the ascetic and inscrutable servants of the Death Cult known as the "Bloodspun Web" have protected the dynasty from enemies aboard the vessel, stalking the threats hiding in lower decks and spraying the bulkheads with the blood of their victims. One of the cult's greatest assassins, Kibellah, "Second Spinner of the Bloodspun Web," was tasked with serving as her Lord Captain's bodyguard after a foul Genestealer Cult was revealed to have taken up residence in the bowels of the von Valancius flagship. Kibellah proved invaluable in helping her patron eliminate the foul xenophiles.