Part 4: Fear the enemy beyond
As you take your time to answer, you hear the enforcers continuing to discuss.
"If it's again insurgents, I'm not surprised that we've gotten another group. The entire district is circling down the drain and Villeneuve isn't doing anything to help the locals." says the patrol leader, a small women carrying a combat shotgun, prompting grunts of assent from a few other enforcers.
"Villeneuve sent us to keep order and that should be enough, Cordier.", answers the second riot squad leader, a stony-faced man called Pradier, all the while checking the ammunition in his sidearm.
Having taken your decision, you call the attention of the enforcers and begin your presentation, knowing that you had likely condemned them to the hands of your colleagues, or even your own hands, if they survive the trials to come. Their souls would also be at risk, the mere knowledge of the Warp and what dwells there a blight on their souls.
"Before I begin, take a moment to pray the god emperor so that he may gird our souls." With those words, the whole room fall silent, all the attention focused on you. "This knowledge is dangerous and should never be repeated to anyone, but it will help you in the completion of our duty. Most of you have heard in the catechisms of the Ecclesiarchy about the Warp, how it is a dangerous dimension of psychic energy. But you might not know that in that dimension dwell vile xenos, hostile to mankind and jealous of our dominion on the the galaxy. One of them is the lord of brass and skulls, which seeks to corrupt the flock of the Emperor and destroys all His works." As you reach this part, Telemacus makes the sign of the Aquila to ward against evil, a gesture copied by many of the enforcers. "It revels in war, destruction, slaughter and bloodshed, pushing the lost souls worshipping it to kill and murder in its name, to plunge mankind in an eternal war." You deliberately chose to avoid talking about the true nature of the Blood God, of daemons and how they try to invade the materium, as you judge it would be too much of a revelation and wouldn't be useful in the current situation.
"Why would they do that? How can they lose faith in the Emperor?" asks a younger enforcer in riot armor, ashen-faced and visibly shaken by the revelations.
"Rage. Anger. Martial pride. Thirst for victory. All righteous emotions when turned toward the worthy cause of the Imperium, but those can be twisted, the xeno whispering lies and feeding off the emotions and carnage. The cultists worshipping it will fight, kill and shed blood in his name, hoping to sate the rage and bloodlust the xeno inspire and to received its gifts, which transform the cultists to better serve it and damning them even further by the same occasion."
"Like what, mutations?" asks Cordier.
"Yes, mutations making them better in combat or giving some monstrous, beast-like, appearance. And not just physical, but also mental mutations, like unquenchable bloodlust, frenzy or the like, so that the recipients may shed more blood for their dark patron. So the cultists will favor melee combat, in most cases closing ranges as quickly as possible and usually disdaining traps and ambushes. In melee they are relentless, fighting savagely, not stopping until their target is dead. They are merciless, just as we will have to be when confronting them. Do not falter and remember that the Emperor protects."
"Do these cultists sometime takes the head of their victims with them?" asks commissioner Magret.
"Why do you want to know?", you ask, not wanting to reveal too much.
"Some of what you just told us reminds me of an ongoing case, a spat of gruesome murders, with the bodies of the victims shredded as if they were attacked by savage beasts and some were missing their heads. The murders were clearly done by a group, we shot one of them and he was clearly a mutant, the fingers transformed into brutal claws. So I would be interested in knowing if those murders might from the same group."
"Yes, sometime the cultists will take the heads, usually to adorn their dark altars with the skulls of their victims. But as we know of the cultist compound just outside of the town, it's not surprising they are active here, if that's the same group."
"There's more, using clues from the dead murderer, we tracked suspects to a decommissioned factory in the Meulun quarter yesterday and we've been keeping an eye on them since."
"You have found a group of murderers and you're letting them live?"
"Suspect murderers. But even if we were sure they are guilty, they'd still be low on our priority list: as grave as murders are, they are far less than sedition, organized crime, weapon trafficking, disrupting the tithe collection and rioting, which we are frequently dealing with in the district and which have worse consequence than the death of a few workers, to say nothing of how understrength we are compared to our duties. And we hadn't realized they were part of a deviant cult."
"Nevertheless, what do you know about them?"
This time, it's not the commissioner who answers, but lieutenant Le Floch. "The surveillance team spotted a few people arriving earlier today, so they'd be about a dozen suspects, with a few vehicles which could have been used to bring weapons. Currently most are inside and we don't know what they might be doing, with the rest outside, keeping watch."
"We could go there, smash those bastards then go to the compound outside the city, but that's your call bosun." adds lieutenant Navarro.
AN: Well, if knowing that the Warp was inhabited by xenos was good enough for the primarchs, I guess it should be good enough for the enforcers. And this time all the players voted to go to the factory first. I'm a little wary of having unanimous votes, that make me worry the other option(s) aren't appealing. I'll try to do better in the next choices