Inquisitorial Report: Cainite Protectorate Sanitation Guild
By Inquisitor Armitage Shanks, Ordo Hereticus

Amongst all the reams of material written by myself and my colleagues from the combined Ordos on the apostate organisations of the Cainite Protectorate, my readers may think that mere hygiene workers and janitors would be the last thing an inquisitor should spend their precious time researching. However, you would be sorely mistaken, as the Protectorate (formerly Slawkenburg) Sanitation Guild is one of the largest and most powerful organisations in the entire Cainite Dominion, with the kind of resources normally associated with an Imperial task force, and should be viewed with extreme caution. Their role in Cainite society can simply be described as vital, and their many duties make for fascinating if unnerving reading. Initially, we will look at the Protectorate's own view of the guild:

Excerpt from Elbow Grease and Fire, the history of the Sanitation Guild, by Tomas Crappa

Founded by Guild Master Mario Mariano soon after Slawkenburg lit the fire of Liberation, the Sanitation Guild was given the job of repairing and modernising the planet's woefully under-maintained sewer system and water purification plants. By all accounts they did a fine job with this, but it was discovered in the course of their duties that some plague cultists had survived the planet wide purges by hiding out in the sewers of various cities, and took to performing hit and run attacks on sanitation labourers. At the time the Slawkenburg defence forces were stretched very thin, and so could not provide escorts for all the sanitation teams.

It was of course the Liberator's inspired suggestion to put the entire staff of the guild through an intense 1 month tunnel fighting course, which he himself devised based on his youth in the underbelly of a Hive City, and diverted resources to equip them with las-carbines, hand flamers, monoknives, and lightly armoured atmosphere-sealed bodysuits, a load-out ideal for fighting in tight and foul spaces. Equipped this way they soon purged the undercities of the last of the plague cults, and were able to carry on with their normal duties. They kept their new equipment and training regime as standard however, and arranged regular patrols to both perform maintenance and hunt for signs of entropic taint.

As they were seen to be actively combating the works of the Plague God, the Guild and its members (who are always recognisable even when not on active duty due to the red caps they wear in emulation of their founder, and the traditional moustache's worn by all male members (and some of the more notorious female ones too)) soon became very well respected, but it was to be more than a decade before they really took the form that we all know today.

As the first free generation of Slawkenburg grew up receiving an excellent education in a society which rightfully vilified Nurgle, the idea that being a member of the Sanitation Guild would be a fine career for a young & ambitious person of any faith who wished to actively support the Liberator's crusade against the Rot God but who did not meet the Military's stringent physical requirements worked its way into the public psyche.

This meant that just before Slawkenburg's expedition to and annexation of Adumbria, a large number of intelligent and energetic young men and women, many trained as civil engineers, medicae, or lay-members of the BORG, and most of whom who had undergone the proto-military training of the Cain Youth, applied to join the Sanitation Guild.

The timing could not be better, as after the dust had settled and treaties had been signed, the realities of the situation had to be dealt with. As the BORG started to harvest the ship graveyard in orbit, the Sanitation Guild was down on the surface, methodically examining the remains of the planet's utilities for signs of Nurglite tampering to make sure they would be safe to use, and designing plans for vast improvements. They also took on the task of removing and safely disposing of the hundreds of thousands of tainted corpses that still littered the streets and landscape, and destroying the vile viscera that had crept over the cities of the shadowzone before the Liberator stopped the monstrous ritual that had nearly condemned the planet to perdition, preferably without damaging the covered infrastructure. They were helped in this by a then new invention of the guild, which is now a part of the daily life of all citizens of the Protectorate, Slayer Soap.

Slayer Soap
Created by a joint research team of the Tzeentchian Bureaucracy and the Guild, this ordinary looking cleaning product is actually a potent anti-Nurglite tool. The ingredients at first appear to be the normal components of soap; oil, alkaline water, and some chemicals. However, the oil is specially psychically-impregnated to be inimical to warp entities (1), the water is blessed Holy Water of the Imperial Cult, contact with which injures Daemons at a spiritual level (the first ever batch used for this product was blessed by the Valhallan 296th's own padre, Prelate-at-Arms Julienne "Slash n' Burn" Guesclin (2)), and the chemicals include a low concentration of stabilised Panacea. In combination, these products can eliminate almost any Nurglite-influence on the Materium, as well as shifting difficult stains, leaving the human body clean and vital, and hair soft, strong, and silky (3).
By guild charter, it is for sale to the general public in both bar and liquid form at cost plus one percent, and due to it's inarguable efficacy and 'no-tears if untainted' guarantee, Slayer Soap is the number one cleaning and hygiene product in the Protectorate, and is available in 4 scents, Hegantha, Ackenberry, Molin, and 'Eau de Emeli', the last not being available for sale to minors (4).
The liquid form can also be dispersed across a wide area using back mounted sprayers converted from heavy flamers, or via vehicles adapted from Hellhound flamethrower tanks, to deal with large areas of taint in short periods of time (5).

During the course of their work on Adumbria, the Guild again found Nurglite cultists cowering in the sewers, remnants of the few willing followers of the madman Ventrious (6), and again they exterminated them and established regular patrols in order to prevent resurgence. Having encountered the exact same thing on 2 different planets, and assuming that this trend would continue, they petitioned to establish a new privilege and obligation in their guild charter, that of 'Custodians of the Undercities'.

In exchange for the right to utilise all of the inactive resources and unused space that undercities contain, they would be required to keep them totally free of all Nurglites, genestealers, and indeed all hostile infestations (These days of course, if sane, non-warp twisted mutants are found hiding on newly liberated worlds they are brought up into the light of the Liberation, given a thorough medical examination, and depending on the nature of their mutation they are either acknowledged as a possible step in human evolution (such as highly superior eyesight or stable psychic abilities), or quietly and sympathetically told that their mutation would cause their descendants to suffer as horribly as they have, and given a range of options to prevent this. If their mutations are too severe to function even in our enlightened society (crab claws, tentacles, having no mouth, having a secondary torso, etc) they are additionally offered extensive corrective surgery, right up to a full cybernetic transplant in the worst cases. After receiving a remedial education the majority choose to join the Sanitation guild, to help bring their kinsfolk up from the darkness (7)), and turn them into useful and valuable parts of the city above, never allowing the systemic neglect so endemic in the Imperium to cause them to fall out of use (8).
This duty they took to with a will, establishing plans to convert abandoned caverns and tunnels into subterranean commercial facilities, mass transportation networks, manufactoria, and public bunkers.

The rest is history, and as the Protectorate has expanded, so has the guild. Wherever the fleets of the PUN have travelled to liberate worlds or fight the forces of entropy, the guild has followed closely behind, tidying up as they go. Eventually they even commissioned their own small flotilla of starships, which are rumoured to be kept so intensely clean that those who are sensitive to these things have reported that the essence of rot in the warp seems to actually recoil from them wherever they go. They have even taken to loading orbit to surface air burst shells with Slayer Soap, allowing them to bombard Nurglite positions from orbit and purify areas the size of cities in minutes. As with most Protectorate institutions they are centrally run from Slawkenburg, and do not organise themselves into uncoordinated regional chapters as they do in the Imperium, preventing the kind of petty power struggles found there (9).

As an organisation they are of course intensely loyal to Lord Cain and the Liberation Council, maintaining the attitude of their humble beginnings, that of service to the free peoples of the Protectorate.

In the next chapter we will discuss the technical specifics of the tools previously mentioned, and some other well known designs, including the Bore-cleaners, large armoured segmented worm like vehicles (modelled after the Tyranid Mawloc form) with vast drill bit heads designed to quickly travel through sewers to clear blockages and slaughter monsters (sentient or otherwise) without any risk to the pilots, and also dig new tunnels with commendable speed, and the Hygiene CAT, a highly specialised variant of this common BORG device which can give a floor a high shine or remove all muck from a carpet in a matter of minutes, based off a truly ancient device far, far older than the imperium, which was found on a ship in the very heart of Emeli's Gift (10), which is believed to have been called a 'Roomba'.

End Excerpt

As you can see, the heretics of the Protectorate view the Sanitation Guild with nothing but bewildering affection, despite it indulging in unholy horrors like Innovation and employing cursed Mutants. In my next installation I will cross-reference this excerpt against our infiltrator's own findings, with a special view to the economic, social, and spiritual effects this organisation has on the treacherous Cainites.

Thought for the day: Happiness is a delusion of the weak.

(1) Having obtained samples of Slayer Soap to reverse engineer, we have found that this oil is treated very similarly to the sacred flammable oils added to the fuel for Ordo Malleus Incinerator-pattern flamers. My colleagues there would be very interested indeed in knowing how these heretics learnt how to make this, as the necessary rituals are supposed to be a closely guarded secret, and they have been going even madder than they already are worrying about possible leaks and infiltration.

(2) A rare example of a female ecclesiarch who isn't a member of the Sororitas, who earned her nickname for reportedly being a bit overly fond of her Vindicator Flamer (2b). The fact that a priest of the Ministorum can still have faith strong enough to properly bless holy water while willingly working with sorcerers and heretics is frankly worrying, and given the vast amounts of Slayer Soap used across the entirety of the Protectorate, there must be quite a few of them on each planet.

(2b) It is also believed that it was this whisky priest who treacherously gave the protectorate sacred Rosarius shield technology, which we have reason to suspect they are currently trying to mass produce for inclusion in all their power armour, an idea that frankly frightens me.

(3) It is very hard to picture a whole society of heretics who habitually anoint their bodies with actual holy water, but every sample we have ever tested has been the genuine article. The theological dissonance committee who sat to discuss this have had to be replaced twice so far, and given the screams and whimpers we hear from the conference room, I expect the third sitting to need to be dissolved, literally or otherwise, very soon.

(4) Of the first three, I personally like Ackenberry the best. The last is apparently quite hard to obtain, due to its extreme popularity causing it to be sold out before our procurement operatives can get near stockists, and so must remain a mystery for now.

(5) The casualness with which the author talks about Innovation is extremely disturbing, my own Tech-Priest had what I can only describe as a crisis of faith combined with a massive short circuit when they were proof-reading this passage for me.

(6) It feels strange to see a heretic describe someone else as a madman…

(7) As a member of the Ordo Hereticus who previously specialised in mutants before joining the Protectorate research team, I never cease to be horrified at the sheer foolishness shown by the Cainite Heretics. Embracing mutants can never be sanctioned, they must be exterminated and those who give them shelter along with them.

(8) Hmmph! You try organising 1 million worlds into a galaxy sized realm, things are going to slip through the cracks.

(9) It is clear that this author has mentally divorced themselves from the Imperium so thoroughly as actually look down on it, rather than as their rightful existence to which they should plead to return. As we know, this mindset is common in this Heretical realm, and will one day need to be purged with extreme prejudice and lots of holy fire.
(10) It really was a very bad day for my poor tech-priest, he ran off screaming about Explorator fleets…