Personal Log of Severus Stig

Log 170330

Assembling outside of the morgue, our party goes over what transpired and what artifacts we have acquired from the dead man's belongings. Among them is what appears to be an ID-key to the man's dwellings. It seems we have a choice in where to continue the investigation: the deceased's home to investigate for more clues pertaining to his life, or his work for insight on his death. Some debate is made; I make the argument that because the man had perished at his work that perhaps there is more inherent danger there than a domicile where there would be people around and relative safety. It was agreed upon, and we made our way to the transport to head towards the apartment complex he had lived in to prove how incorrect I had been in my safety assessment. We arrived at a towering yet unremarkable apartment complex, no different from the millions I had seen on other hive worlds. I could tell the feral-worlders were taken aback by the absurd dimensions of the place, and at one point I thought I saw a flicker of challenge in the assassin's eyes, as if he wanted to scale the featureless side. I would hope that thought was abandoned once he noticed the walls rose above the cloud line and out of sight. We entered the lobby and I noticed nothing out of the ordinary; filled with the usual lower-class denizens of a burgeoning hive world, spending their times mulling about with no sense of purpose or reason. There was a lift in the back of the lobby where people were boarding. We waited for an empty one to arrive for us to embark on, and using the dead man's key, took the lift up to his floor. Judging by the speed of the carriage and the time it took, it was likely several thousand floors above the ground.

Upon reaching the destined floor, we found in the hallways two guardsmen blocking the path with a concrete barrier between us. Our adjudicator greeted them and explained we were investigating a murder on behalf of the inquisition, however the two men seemed hesitant and uneasy. One man began to tell us we had no authority there, and that the situation was being handled, while the other turned and began heading towards what I could assume to be our dead man's residence. We pressed the guard, claiming our credentials sincere (I myself indicating towards the skull servitor in our possession) but the guard refused to budge, becoming slightly agitated. Our adjudicator thanked him for his time and turned around. Upon turning, he quickly motioned to us in a way that I could only interpret as, "I am going to shoot this man," likely insinuating that he was not in fact an imperial guardsman. Unfortunately, it seemed that the guard had picked up on this as well, and there was a brief moment in which we all tried to get the jump on one another.

The panicked guard picked up his rifle and threw it at our soldier, who quickly ducked out of the way. The assassin, noticing the other fake-guard had begun to quicken his pace, threw a knife to slow him down, but missed and hit the wall. The psyker attempted a different strategy, slowing the man down by forcing his body to convulse under the immense power of the warp. I suspect our psyker to be one with little experience however, because his action also triggered a rip into the immaterium that exposed all of us around him to a brief glimpse into the horrors that were held in that dimension. I shrugged it off - I have seen worse in my time on Lathe-Hadd - and pulled my pistol out to fire a shot into the nearest guard's left leg. I also sent the skull servitor to scout ahead where the other guard had collapsed, however I had forgotten it did not trust me yet and withheld any information it was gathering. I will need to remember to ask for its permission when we have a moment's rest. After all of that commotion, the adjudicator finally had grabbed hold of his shotgun and spun around to face the false guard, pulling the trigger at point-blank range and sending the poor fellow flying backwards, missing a large chunk of his abdomen. It was thankfully a large enough hole where while he was falling, the skull servitor behind him passed right through and was undamaged.

StigLog170330 (last edited 2019-09-07 20:11:06 by Rowsdower)