The rioters are the people you should be sympathetic to, not the viewpoint character in this one.
The crowd outside his palace was baying for blood, chanting as one in their newfound service to the blood god. What few guards remained would hold for a while, they knew their duty to the Emperor even in the face of death, but this world was lost and all he had left was to give his last failed report.
It had started so simply enough, almost routine in its mundanity that he had overlooked it. A few of the lower classes had gotten dreams above their station, and his stormtroopers had seen to the problem. Crushing their dissent like the triviality that it had always been as they'd executed the deviants. What had they been protesting? He couldn't remember.
But rather than being cowed like usual they'd grown angry. That should have been the first sign as the streets flooded with protestors angry, calls rising up from the populace that his soldiers had gone too far. You could never go too far in supressing dissent.
Better to kill the Innocent along with the guilty then let both go free.
They were merely the price of business for a safe Imperium free from the horrors that plagued it.
Some had even dared call for the troops themselves to be punished. That his soldiers could be in the wrong when it was their place to be obedient. If they had done nothing wrong then his troops wouldn't have needed to murder them, it was as simple as that. And as their senseless violence rose, he had given the order to supress the riots in full.
His police had done their work and fired upon the masses to let them know their place. Lasguns burning flesh as his will seared the price of disobedience into the face of an unruly mob. Amidst the screams of the dying and the thrum of holy retribution they'd committed sacrilege.
His soldiers had been fully armed, equipped with the best weaponry money could buy, sanctified by the Ecclesiarchy but they had only been a few of them at any place in time. Fuelled by their rage and heedless of their dying the crowd had overrun his troops and dragged them out and daring to blood the lives of good Imperial soldiers.
Father Orpheus had stood in front of them with all the fire of the Emperor filling his lungs. "Citizens of Ranos the Emperors mercy can still be retained if only you act now. You have allowed darkness to infest your thoughts but if only you turn back your souls can still be saved. Lay down your weapons, give up the instigators and their families for execution and your punishment will not be too severe. Through holy fire and sacred steel we may still yet excise this travesty against the Emperor."
Father Orpheus hadn't even managed to make it back to his palace before the mob tore through his guards and dragged him out. The priest's head was taken, and his body burned by the rioters in service to their dark god.
He penned his way further even as he mourned the priest's death. But they had not stopped their violence there and in the wake of the offer the streets had run red with blood. His soldiers had better equipment, better training more faith than the enemy could muster. But their enemy had numbers without end and cared not whether he spilled their blood on the sands.
His head held heavy he'd made the hardest decision in his life. A once prosperous city that had paid dividends towards the tithe was a priceless resource. But if the people within were corrupted there was no choice.
It was better to kill a million innocent than let a single guilty man go free.
And the entire city could be considered guilty in one form or another. For they had not stepped in against the madness of the traitors and so death was only a fitting reward for them all. The order had gone out to the PDF and plans had been made to raze the entire city in the ground, a great pyre standing as a triumph over the forces of darkness.
The head of the PDF had planned it out, issued his orders in full and been murdered by his own troops in broad daylight the next day.
His replacement promising to fulfil his oath to protect the citizens of the empire even as he felt ash in his mouth. For there were no citizens left in the city, only traitors and heretics resisting the rightful rule of the Emperor.
He penned more even as the shouting outside grew. The barricades straining under the strength of people pressing in against them. A single mindless chant pervading the world as they came together in one chant. A call for his skull amidst the violence.
Buoyed by the wrath of the crowd reality broke. Their voices rising as one into a single moment as it stepped forth into existence. The manifestation of their rage stepping forth as the Bloodthirster spread its wings and casually struck down the gates.
His guards opened fire, lasers burning into its hide like pinpricks as it tore through the walls of his palace. Pattering away like flashlights against an existence pulled from the darkest reaches of the human mind.
His pistol blessed as it was came up.
The Executioners axe passed through it as it came down.
AN: Ah the old Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows and cares for only skulls taken.
And its clear parallels with calling for the heads of a department after a scandal and constant fascist attempts to portray all kinds of legitimate protests as violence for the sake of violence.
From the Civil Rights movements to Black Lives Matter to Union strikes, you'll always be able to find a fascist willing to argue that the disruption and anger produced is unjustified and the protestors need to learn their place, go home and learn to accept whatever injustice society inflicts.
So I'm inherently sceptical whenever anyone makes quotes like that and assume that means the riots themselves are wholly justified, and looking at what the Imperium espouses, riots would always be justified.
