A brief glance of Crime Lord Cain's perspective...

I couldn't collapse, yet. Jurgen was still in the room. I managed to come up with something for him to do and got him out of my quarters. Then I slowly, carefully, walked across the room to the bed, picked up one of the luxuriously furred pillows, revealing the hidden pistol I kept there. I lifted the pillow to my face, carefully silencing myself as I screamed into it. "FRAK! FRAK! FRAK! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? FRAK!"

After that, and curling up in my bed, hugging the pillow for about thirty minutes, I was able to stand up. Then I saw the ring sitting on the bedside table and nearly had a panic attack. Stealing it had been entirely reasonable, based on what I knew at the time, as it was obviously a digital weapon of some sort and being wielded by a servant of a psyker. Except I'd actually robbed an inquisitor.

Emperor on Earth, how had this gotten even worse? At least she hadn't noticed. I'd wanted to give it back, but never got a chance. I'm a hell of a pickpocket and thief, skills I learned as a boy sneaking around the underhive, but I still have to get close to be able to pickpocket something, or replace it and I hadn't been able to force my traitorously cowardly body into going that close to the inquisitor once she'd revealed herself.

I'd kissed her hand! What was I thinking?

At least she hadn't noticed the theft.

And she was helping with the war, or we were helping her, or something. Who knew with the inquisition?

This was an insane escalation. This had gotten out of hand a long time ago, but now it was absolutely absurd. I'd schemed, stolen and murdered my way into ownership of a bar, then stumbled backwards into leadership of two gangs when I accidentally interrupted their leaders attempting to elope by selling their followers out to the governor's men.

Unfortunately for them, they decided to murder the witness and kill me in my own bar! I'd been prepared for that, well, not that precisely, but I was ready if anyone tried to kill me there, had good security systems and a few trustworthy people, none of whom had survived the battle, which meant that I had a bunch of bodies and two gangs breaking down my door...

Some quick talking and I was somehow in charge of two gangs. The plan there was simple, buy a bigger, replacement bar, that wasn't full of corpses and holes and try to take my idiot followers legit. It came so close to working, before the Kingpin of this entire section of underhive decided to get himself into a fight with the psykers and their little buddies and pull everyone else in. By the time we finished that off, the Kingpin was dead, as was most of the other leadership and my instinct for survival and uncanny ability to make sure no one saw me hiding or running away meant that I was the only senior survivor.

Expansion was basically forced on me at that point, as every other gang out there assumed I was coming after them, so tried to get their strike in first. Unfortunately for them, by then I had Jurgen on my team. An assassin of truly astonishing lethality, I'd gained his unquestioning loyalty after revealing the noble family he served were actually Chaos-worshipping lunatics.

After that, all I had to do was stand back and watch him butcher them. With him on-side, I was mostly safe. From everyone but him. Besides his absurd combat abilities, he's also an Emperor-botherer of the first order and constantly on guard for any potential heresy. Which has driven me into more than one conflict, either with corruption, or some group that hints at actual heresy, or just something that was 'un-Imperial.'

But I couldn't blame him for this last war, that one truly was defensive, with these damn xenos coming out of the woodwork. And just as I was finally getting everything organized, here comes the inquisition! I had Chrissy to handle the gangers and military training. I had X-03, the equally Emperor-(not Omnissiah, hence his exile)-bothering techpriest to handle all the technical stuff. And Jurgen to handle killing people, while I just had to talk to people and be charming/polite. They read threats and double-meanings into everything I said, but it worked.

And now, not just xenos, but the inquisition. It was too much! And this insane plan. Find the patriarch, IE the xeno which was even bigger and meaner than the purestrains I'd barely survived and capture it.

That was...we were all going to die. If we were lucky. FRAK.

I needed a drink.