Greeting Inquisitor [Guilty of article 7 (v) heresy],

So you've really given me a challenge with this story. It's hard to verify anything with accuracy since most information I have on the sector is a few centuries old. I do have the description brought back by the Astartes from [insufficient clearance] and some reports on the grounds, but it's not much to work with. I did, look through a few of our larger dataslates repository to obtain a very spotty image of the actors at play here.

So I'll give a few larger contexts I think are missing from this work since one must remember it was written for citizens of Sierra Segundus.

Sierra Segundus is situated in the Ultima Segmentum, within the Sierra solar system which goes around a red sun about two billion years old. It was a sector where people have lived in since the dark age of technology. It was brought back under imperial fold in 837M31 by Saint Augustine Sierra. A minor imperial army general looking to relaunch the great crusade after the end of the Horus Heresy. They lacked imagination, but not martial valour. Hence, they named each planet they conquered after themselves. That's why all the celestial bodies in this solar system are called Sierra. I found at least two other solar systems where all planets are named Sierra and one named Augustine which made finding information about this specific solar system tricky.

Sierra Segundus is the largest Hive world of this solar system. A planet that according to old scrolls was mostly covered in nature with sparse population, before we brought it civilization. Supposedly its air was pure and covered in trees with purple leaves (probably just old myths).

At the time of its fall, it had 17 Hive cities of over a billion people according to our latest data. This meant it had an appreciable population size for such a faraway world. For such a size, its industry was modest as it mostly relied on trade as was explained in previous chapters (surprisingly accurate for a prop novel). It mostly produced specialized parts for cogitators and a variety of advanced optics for space ships. A very profitable niche, if the flow of trade is uninterrupted. Which totally collapsed with the Great Rift.

It was usually ruled by the dynasty of the Veriom, later deformed into Vermilion after a complex series of nobility intermarriage and wars that are hard to follow. That dynasty was on its downfall for at least a century before the events of the dark night. Inter nobility vendetta, coups and inbreeding led it to a state of decadence we see in many other planets. That could suggest it was indeed under the influence of some Xeno cult. That being said, we often exaggerate the role of the underclass rejects that are the core of those cults. They rarely have much control over what food they eat, so their real political impact is usually neglectful.

Either way, this world did go through a revolt of some sort about five years before the great night. It's unclear if it was really a Tyranid cult or an inter-nobility vendetta that got out of hands. Maybe a bit of both? However, the few pieces of information I have confirmed that some military junta formed around a few imperial guard regiments to crush that revolt. We are not sure if it was led by Lord Hibnar. We know he did exist, but we don't have much more. The book doesn't give us a clear indication of the planet he came from and considering his rule was fairly short (hardly three Terran years), very little was left. I've found 43,008 Terk Culrak in the Imperial guard record of the sector, 345 who are general or above. I do not have the time to comb through each file especially since access to those files has to be requested to different parts of the Administratum on a daily basis. It's also impossible to find the famous 14th mechanized regiment in the records. There are 200 regiments with this name only in the Segmentum we are looking at (the Imperial guard is so enormous it's hard to understand sometimes). It's also possible 14th simply has a religious significance or is an amalgam of many out of planet regiments who fought during that revolt. I may have all the information I need somewhere, but nothing was labelled appropriately so it could take a millennium to find further information on that Culrak or the 14th. It's certainly strange that this regime would have a book where their ancient enemy slays a demon with a sceptre. I don't think we could have come up with a better lie to make him sound like a great leader. Who can believe such absurdity? Ridiculous!

What I can say with any certainty is that the food situation described is very likely. We've seen many worlds before fall to famine once they've been cut off from the tithe system either by rebellion or by the fickleness of the warp. The collapse of the tithe system leads to a drastic drop in external trade which is usually accompanied by waves of famines and diseases culling drastically a planet's population. Likewise, the solution offered makes sense. Even very old records attest the existence of some form of underground primitive agriculture having gone on Sierra Segundus for at least a few centuries. Since the outputs were insignificant and the people practising it also were, it's not very surprising it's been ignored by the planetary government.

Now I need to talk about … her. The saviour, the mother of the Underhivers, the saint, the Demon bitch, the white glove pusher, Slaanesh whore. I personally like Slaanesh whore. However, for consistency sakes I shall stick to Seraphael Bale. As you can see from those many names, she is a controversial figure. Even within her empire, her legitimacy is challenged by many loyal imperial citizens. However, the opposite is also true. She has many devoted servant across the galaxy spreading her lies of the Emperor loving his citizens equally.

As such Seraphael Bale is an annoying character to cover, because everyone involved in the following events wrote and said everything and its opposite about her. Of course a lot of it is heretic trash that aims at glorifying her rule or the usual drivel we feed to the masses, but some of it is … well more grounded and nuanced. This leads me to second guess myself on a lot of things and I struggle to construct a cohesive image of our enemy. For example, this book is admitting the unquestioned ruler of a new heretic empire was a pathetic junky and an actress (on Sierra Segundus actors are usually also prostitute). Admitting this seems simply counter-intuitive. Who would respect a whore? Could you even imagine a prop novel talking about Guilliman [insufficient clearance]? But what if that's the point? To make it feel so absurd it has to be true? Or what if it is actually true?

All those questions are here to give us the illusion of something more nuanced. I suspect the reality is simply a very clever repackaging of the old trope of a servant of the Emperor using her faith and guile to save a doomed world. Except this time she is a servant for the whores instead of the good citizens of our empire.

This image is, of course, false, you've certainly heard about local Arbites report 342-J6T which establish clearly that at the time this "holy sister" was also the head of a lucrative white glove traffic which allowed her to finance Vaz'kor small army and a few of her charity work. Or the several holo-vid of her performing "favours" for wealthy patrons of her theater we've leaked across the galaxy. Yet even if those holo-vids are mostly real, it hasn't damaged her saintly image one bit. I can only explain this with a word I've heard from many people who've met her "genuine". Even those who swore to kill her have acknowledged that she is annoyingly sincere in her belief. She is open about who she was and wants. It either leads to people hating her or somehow developing affection for her. Every time people learn about a new flaw of their leader, it makes them feel like she is one of them and they revere her even more. A quality that explains a lot of her success with the witless masses of the Underhive and even some youth in the nobility who believe her message is a new path to save the Empire. Which makes her much more dangerous, because it's very hard to convince them she is a heretic possessed by demons (Emperor do we try).

She is worse than any Tyranid Hive, because she corrupts the mind of our citizens instead of their flesh. We need to crush her and her ideology.

I'll send you another report when I have made further discoveries.

Emperor protects

Sincerely,

Acolyte [PURGED]