Siege of Vraks - Harbingers and Portents: On Thracian Prime Marshall Kagori was interrupted in his routine round of briefings and reports from Vraks. News of the breakthrough in sector 57-44 was being reviewed and, given the changing situation, new supply calculations were needed. The marshall's plan to employ a Space Marine Chapter had worked and it seemed that the 88th siege army was finally within sight of the ultimate objective. The crisis since the defeat at the First Battle of Vraks had been contained.Then a Servitor-cipher arrived carrying an automated message for the Marshall. An important visitor had arrived at his headquarters, claiming to be a representative of the Emperor’s Inquisition. It was urgent.The Marshall put his briefing on hold to meet with the stranger. Not even a high ranking Marshall of the Imperium, with millions of men at his command would keep an Inquisitor waiting. Under his heavy, thick robes the visitor was tall, almost unnaturally so, and built like a Space Marine, wide in the chest and shoulders, all muscle. His rich attire was trimmed in exotic furs. His face bore the scars of battle, his eyes were piercing and otherworldly, inhuman one might say. Around his neck he wore a heavy chain, from it a heavy golden T of the Inquisition hung as a badge of office.Behind him stood a retinue of equally strange individuals. Servitor-scribes whirred and hummed. Ritually-scarred feral warriors glared. A small cherubim creature hovered on feathered wings at its master’s shoulder. One pale, thin, dark-robed figure was blind, his eyes milky white orbs - an astropath. He was branded with the sign of Imperial conditioning - a mark of a survivor of the fabled "soul-binding."The Inquisitor addressed the Marshall sternly but with respect. He introduced himself as Lord Hector Rex, bearer of the Inquisitorial Mandate and Proctor-General of the Scarus Conclave. The war of Vraks was in danger, he explained. The Inquisitor had taken many readings from the Emperor's Tarot. His seers had been meditating on the subject, using their clairvoyance to search the probable future. All the signs were grim. Vraks was a world ready to explode. As an Inquisitor Lord, Hector Rex knew what he was talking about -- this was no mere warning, it was the truth.The future of Vraks was grim, far bloodier than anything the war had yet seen. The rebels might have been pushed back, but in the wider scheme of the dark gods the work of mere mortals was almost complete. Rex already knew that the traiors were openly worshipping the unnameable powers and had made allies of Traitor Legionnaires. Soon they would be offering themselves as hosts for possession and attempting to summon daemonic creatures. If they succeeded, Vraks might be beyond saving. All around the system the warp was already in ferment. The 88th siege army was in peril... peril that all the Marshall’s maps, reports and battle plans could not predict, and all his guns and tanks would not stop. The dark gods were ready to unleash their blasphemous legions -- the ritual was almost at its climax. Urgent action must be taken. Lord Rex was forced to invoke his Inquisitorial mandate and indenture the entire of 88th Siege Army into the Ordo Malleus' service......meanwhile on Vraks itself the signs and portents were ill, but there was none present who understood the changing nature of the war. A second sun had been reported by pilots over the Van Meersland Wastes. The planet’s naturally volatile atmosphere was becoming more so, lightning storms flickered constantly in the upper atmosphere. Clouds darkened. Some sentries even claimed to have seen the dead of previous battles rise from the mud of no-man’s land and walk again. Little attention was paid to these strange portents - but soon a new enemy would threaten the Emperor’s soldiers on Vraks...