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Some of you may remember me from about a year ago, when I signed up for this website to start making 40k fiction.
I got off to a good start with Treachery's Road, but I realized after doing it that I wasn't really sure what I was doing.
Then College exams came up and I had to put my writing to one side for a bit.
In that time, I thought about what I had been doing with Treachery's Road, and realized that perhaps I was being too bold, taking characters from the DOWII setting.
So, now that I'm back, I've decided to make a few changes.
The central focus of my stories is still going to be Benjamin Mordecai, but his story is going to alter drastically, a lot of characters have been discarded in favour of more realistic and entertaining characters.
I don't plan to post anything of significance for another couple of days, at most, but in the meantime, here's a "prequel", in the form of an extract from an Inquisitor's memoirs, that will form the basic background that Benjamin's story will be built on.

From the Memoirs of Lord-Inquisitor Havard Lamal of the Ordo Hereticus

The Exploits and Endeavors of Inquisitor Isabelle Lucent

I only knew Isabelle personally towards the end of her career, but from what I know of her, she was a caring and selfless woman, especially when it came to her allies and Acolytes.
The first mention of her was when she was young, in her mid-twenties, from memory.
She was an Interrogator to one Inquisitor Asmodial, a powerful and overall self-absorbed man.
Asmodial never showed any great care for many individuals, yet according to various sources he cared a great deal for Isabelle, enough to leave her his ship and Inquisitorial Seal.

Many doubted this young woman's talents, but she never cared overly much for the opinions of others.
She drilled herself and her retinue in vigorous combat and physique-building exercises, to ensure her team (Even the scribes, would you believe?) were at their best.

She carved a path all her own over the first few years of her career, making the Jurdani Sector her territory, and guarding it jealously.
The first of her retinue was a young Bridge Officer of the Imperial Navy located in the Sector, a lad by the name of Anton Gambit.
Gambit displayed great skill in hacking and infiltrating Xenos weapons and security systems, as well as exceptional skills as a pilot.

Isabelle's retinue grew over the next ten years, as did her reputation.
Her feats included, but were not limited too crushing the Ork infestation of Orestes, felling Ulath the Black Summoner on Brackl, and heading the defenses on Jurdani Primaris to halt the invasion of Hive Fleet Serpentine, an evolved tendril of Hive Fleet Behemoth.
The defenses at Jurdani Primaris consisted of local PDF, the 1st, 3rd and 12th regiments of the Jurdani Tygers, and a detachment of the Deathwatch, led by Brother-Sergeant Leondras of the Dark Angels.
After barely staving off the invasion, Isabelle and her retinue stayed behind for the following months to help re-stabilize the economy and help the planet back to it's feet.

It was during these months that Isabelle helped to quell the increasingly dangerous Hive Gang known as the Black-Watch.
Local law enforcement and PDF detachments had failed to route out the gang for years, where Isabelle and her retinue did it in a matter of weeks.
A few of the gang members displayed great aptitude in leadership, marksmanship and gurellia tactics.
Several of those accosted by Inquisitor Lucent were offered positions in her retinue; only two men, by the names of Benjamin Mordecai and Fenton Muir, accepted the offer.

Isabelle showed a particular interest in the two hive-gangers, a curiosity that most attributed to her own low-hive background, but many of her scribes describe the relationship between Isabelle and the two boys was that of mentor and apprentice, and at times, that of drinking buddies.
Much of Isabelle's time over the following five years was spent in a return to Brackl, fighting the Ork menace that had taken root in the jungles.
The primitives were led by an Ork technician who referred to himself as "Zap-Dakka Molotov".
Whilst the nature of Orks appears laughable to those who have not fought them, the comical nature of the Ork menace fades after fighting a five-year long crusade on a single planet.

Both Isabelle and her retinue came out of the campaign more hardened and scarred than even the Hive invasion had made them.
This campaign was where I first met Isabelle, and in the field, she inspired faith and devotion in those she fought alongside, something that I have never been able to do since my incident with the acid vats in Chirgon Hive.
After five long years of fighting, we managed to break the back of the Ork horde only with the intervention of Sergeant Leondras and his Deathwatch team.
Unfortunately, "Zap-Dakka" escaped, and has proven elusive to both myself and the Deathwatch ever since.

Two years after this incursion, a distress signal called Isabelle to Jurdani Secundus, where a cult known as The Church of Malice had risen up, and summoned Daemons into the lower hive of the planetary capital in an attempt to decimate the populace.
The incursion was quelled, and the Church was discovered to have it's roots in the upper-hive of Hive Medrogus on Jurdani Primaris.
Unfortunately, it was here that I worked with her for the last time, and also where she met her ultimate fate.

I remember having routed out the cult's origins after six months of questioning nobles and upper-city workers, and I rendezvoused with Inquisitor Lucent at the site we had tracked them too; a massive sewage plant beneath the city, converted into a monastery for the Church of Malice, who's operations were being led by a colossal monster of an Astartes, a Space Marine who called himself Uriah the Herald.

I have run numerous investigations, and I think it likely that this Uriah was the same man as Saint Uriah, who led the Star-sung Crusade to retake the Jurdani sector in the Emperor's name almost a thousand years before my time, but who mysteriously disappeared in the Battle for the Chantry on Jurdani Primaris at the Crusade's height.
I believed for a long time that it was Eldar influence which caused Saint Uriah to vanish, but evidently it was something much darker.

We stormed the institute with several detachments of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers, and Inquisitor Lucent engaged Uriah in single, personal combat amidst the the battle.
Uriah ultimately struck her down, and the battle preceded to turn against us as most of Lucent's retinue engaged Lord Uriah, who made merry hell of them.

Mordecai, one of the young hive-gangers Lucent picked up on the planet almost ten years before, was tending to her by the time I reached her, but we both knew in our hearts that it was hopeless.
I regret not trying to restrain the lad, but his anger was such that he charged Uriah armed with only a single Plasma grenade, which he detonated after pressing it to Uriah's head.
The boy killed Uriah, but at the cost of his own left arm.
With her dying breath, Lucent left the boy her ship, the Razor Descent, along with her Inquisitorial seal, and her wish for the boy to take her place as an Inquisitor.

I saw to the boy's medical treatment and the replacement of his arm myself, and informed him of Lucent's last words upon his recovery.
In his distraught frame of mind, I do not think he understood fully, and I believe only time will tell if the boy will be as good an Inquisitor as Lucent was.

You're British right? So what's up with "z's" where "s's" should be?

Tyragorn wrote:
You're British right? So what's up with "z's" where "s's" should be?

I can't speak for him but a lot of word processors default to English (US) and not English (UK).

Which doesn't explain the use of "flavour" using your explanation.

I'd just like to make it clear that I'm British, ignore the flag for now, an annoying assumption by Dakka Dakka.

Having just checked on Word 2010, English (U.K.) autocorrects 'favor' into 'favour' but does not alter 'realized'.

I would like to point out at this point that my grammar is not perfect.
You can't expect a person to get every single word right down to the most minute detail.
I'm also not great with Z and S, and I'll admit that I get them muddled up more often than not.
It's a fault, everyone has one, if not more.

 Castra Tanagra wrote:
I would like to point out at this point that my grammar is not perfect.
You can't expect a person to get every single word right down to the most minute detail.
I'm also not great with Z and S, and I'll admit that I get them muddled up more often than not.
It's a fault, everyone has one, if not more.

Calm down, please. You're 18 according to your profile, I'm the same age, seeing as you do write fiction, it isn't really a mistake. Such as typing "your" instead of "you're". I just don't like seeing English (not British English - seeing as there is only one type of English) being polluted.