[Archive] Inquisitor Silas hand (VO)

Ordo Hereticus

Inquisitor Silas Hand


Inquisitor Silas Hand was born on the planet Isis IX in the Polaris sub-sector. Due to his frequent travels through the warp while executing the duties of an Inquisitor, Silas's exact birth date cannot be confirmed, and his age is estimated to be between 200 and 700 years.
History

Silas Hand caught the attention of Inquisitor Lord Enoch during the purging of the Schola Progenium facility where Silas was raised. Enoch found in him a successor that could continue Enoch's legacy and was taken in to his retinue as an interrogator. Hand gained new skills rapidly while working for Enoch and steadily rose in the ranks of the Inquisition.

Silas came to the attention of the Ordo Hereticus due to his breaking of the heretic Confessor Argon and uncovering the Cult of the Exquisite Corpse.

Now fully introduced to the Ordo Hereticus, he has since led many successful investigations and purges and been credited with the apprehension of at least 7,000 heretics. Counted among these heretics is the entire 419th Khorinthian 'Korsairs' Imperial Guard Regiment, with Inquisitor Hand himself applying the Seal of Heresy to the regiment's excommunicated commanding officers. These officers were incinerated before a crowd of half a million Planetary Defence Force recruits as a warning against heresy.

Later in his career, Hand sat on the Crusader Council of the 3rd Cleansing of Canis Majoris, and gained deep insight into the workings of the Ruinous Powers. Such was the depth of his insight that some concerns arose with regards to how Hand came to possess such intimate knowledge. Nevertheless, the Ordo Malleus thought otherwise, and he was soon brought before the Masters of the Ordos Malleus, despite the aforementioned accusations of knowing more of Chaos than should be normal of one bearing his station.

It is said that any Inquisitor is an agent of The Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition first and foremost, and that his affiliation to any given Ordo must always come second. During his work with the Inquisition, Hand found himself increasingly desiring to kill the daemonic, seeing the malefic influence of Chaos behind all the cases he investigated. He soon joined the Ordo Malleus and severed his links with the Witch Hunters forever.

As a Daemonhunter, Silas Hand came to know things no sane man would willingly seek, and served the Imperium with a zealous drive that made him stand out amongst the ranks of the most holy Inquisition. Unfortunately for Hand, accusations of taint followed him closely, and whispers lingered that he delved too deep into the powers of Chaos. Furthermore, it was revealed that there were three instances of contact with a Warp entity known as Grimspyre. In each case, the Inquisitor was bested by this entity but eventually survived these encounters, suggesting the possibility of having his life deliberately spared as part of some devious plan on the part of the entity.

The last mission of Inquisitor Hand was the investigation of Sister Ephrael Stern, who was reported as being tainted by Chaos within the Convent Sanctorum. Hand was seen with his retinue heading out for Ophelia VII where Sister Stern was residing. He found no signs of taint in Sister Stern and the investigation subsequently took him to Parnis, the planet Sister Stern came from before being suspected of being tainted by Chaos. Hand is suspected of uncovering the true allegiance of a highly-placed member of the Navis Nobilite during the voyage to Parnis aboard the Hammer of Thor, a vessel seconded to the Ecclesiarchy by the Imperial Navy. There is, however, no hard evidence of what occurred during this voyage. It is believed that a creature of Chaos possessed the vessel's Navigator and brought about the destruction of the entire ship when it was detected. Inquisitor Hand and a number of Sororitas accompanying him are known to have escaped the destruction of the Hammer of Thor, touching down on the surface and continuing the investigation. Whatever occurred there is speculation but it is known that Inquisitor Hand and his retinue perished on the planet at the hand of some Warp entity, presumably the Keeper of Secrets.

Livre 1 : The Screaming Cage - La Cage Hurlante

Ephrael Stern, une Séraphine de l’Adepta Sororitas est retenue prisonnière à l’intérieur des murs du Couvent Prioris sur Ophelia VII. On apprend qu’elle est détenue en isolement suite à des événements pour le moins mystérieux sur Parnis. Alors qu’elle est en train de graver des symboles étranges sur les murs de sa cellule, une Sœur attente à sa vie. Ephrael bondit et l’abat mettant au grand jour l’emprise démoniaque de son agresseur. Par la suite l’Inquisiteur Silas Hand débarquera dans le Couvent pour enquêter et comprendre pourquoi un démon de Slaanesh a voulu prendre la vie d’Ephrael..

INQUISITOR SILAS HAND & SISTER EPHRAEL STERN

CLASSIFICATION: VIOLET/DELTA

DATE: 706.M41

AUTHOR: -Invalid security classification-

SUBJECT: Inquisitor Silas Hand Sister Ephrael Stern

RECIPIENT: Inquisitorial Representative, Senatorum Imperialis



Inquisitor Silas Hand,

As requested by you, our divinely appointed representative to the High Lords, I have compiled what information I am able regarding the case of Sister Ephrael Stern and Inquisitor Silas Hand.

Initial investigations into the case produced little more than an outline of a series of mysterious, yet somehow interlinked events. To summarise; Sister Stern, a Seraphim of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, returned from a mission to the outlying world of Parnis, the sole survivor of a 12,000-strong force. Her sanity was shattered by whatever she had witnessed there, and her Sisters feared she had come under the sway of Chaos. Inquisitor Hand was assigned to investigate the matter and purge the Sororitas convent of any sign of the Great Enemy he found. Though the influence of the Ruinous Powers was indeed uncovered amidst the Sororitas, it was not present within Stern, and Hand's subsequent investigations into the matter led him and Stern back to the world of Parnis. There the Inquisitor met his death, and Stern passed beyond our sight.

A Beta-12 date-probe executed at the Nemesis Tessera meta-repositorium indicates that Silas Hand was born on Isis IX, an Administratum charter world in the Polaris sub-sector. Although an exact birth date is unavailable, estimates age Hand at around 700 years objective, with a subjective age of approximately 200 years. Such a variance between objective and subjective age is clearly caused by the disproportionate amount of time the Inquisitor has spent in Warp transit travelling throughout the domains of Our Lord during the course of his vocation.

It is known that Hand came to the attention of the revered Inquisitor Lord Enoch – the Emperor watch over his immortal soul – during a purge of the Progenium facility in which he was raised. Lord Enoch saw in Hand a successor to his own legacy, for as we know, Enoch was well aware that his own end was nigh by this stage in his astonishing career. Both passive and invasive psycho-scanning proved Enoch correct, and Hand was inducted into the Inquisitor Lord's retinue as an Interrogator.

As an acolyte of an accomplished Witch Finder, Hand soon gained the skills that would see him elevated to the rank of Inquisitor Ordinary, and it was his breaking of the heretic, Confessor Argon, and the subsequent uncovering and purging of the Cult of the Exquisite Corpse, that brought him to the attention of the Masters of the Ordo Hereticus.

Within three years, Hand was fully inducted into the ranks of the Witch Hunters, serving under the Ordos Solar. Over a period of a century and a half, the Inquisitor led a great many investigations and purges, and soon had a sizeable staff of his own. Hand is officially credited with the apprehension of in excess of 7,000 condemned heretics, including the entire 419th Khorinthian 'Korsairs', applying the Seal of Heresy to the regiment's excommunicate commanding officers, then incinerating them before a crowd of half a million PDF recruits as a warning against heresy.

Later in his career, Hand sat on the Crusader Council of the 3rd Cleansing of Canis Majoris, and it was here that he gained his deep insight into the workings of the Ruinous Powers. Some have said he gained too deep an insight, yet the Ordo Malleus thought differently. He was soon approached by the Daemonhunter Inquisitor Lord Hephaestos Grudd and brought before the Masters of the Ordos Malleus.

It is said that any Inquisitor is an agent of The Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition first and foremost, and that his affiliation to any given Ordo must always come second. Yet Hand found himself increasingly drawn by the desire to smite the daemonic, seeing the malefic influence of Chaos behind all the cases he prosecuted. By joining the Ordo Malleus he severed his links with the Witch Hunters forever, and the rights granted by the Convocation of Nephilim were no longer his privilege.

As a Daemonhunter, Silas Hand became privy to knowledge no sane man would willingly seek, and served the Imperium with a driven zeal rarely seen, even within the ranks of the most holy Inquisition. Yet there were whisperings that he delved too deep. My searches reveal three instances of contact with a Warp entity known as Grimspyre. In each case, the Inquisitor was bested by this entity, yet survived, or else his life was deliberately spared as part of some devious plan on the part of the being.

And so my lord, the records of Silas Hand become vague with his involvement in the case of Sister Ephrael Stern. Following reports of the taint of Chaos at large within the Convent Sanctorum, Hand gathered his retinue and set out for Ophelia VII.

Sister Ephrael SternThe records of Inquisitor Hand's investigations are fragmentary, and if I may venture a personal opinion, my lord, it is my view that his judgment, and perhaps even his sanity were, by this stage, questionable, likely due to the influence of the entity Grimspyre. It is known that the Sororitas were initially hostile to his presence in their convent, and the circumstances of his leaving the Ordo Hereticus, though unclear from the records, may have something to do with this reaction, for as a Witch Hunter he would have been welcomed at the convent. At Hand's first meeting with Stern it is apparent that the taint of Chaos was indeed discovered amongst the Sororitas, though not in the form initially suspected, for it was not Stern but one of her wardens who proved to be under the sway of the Ruinous Powers.

Subsequent examination of the vessel's corpse led Hand to suspect the involvement of a highly-placed member of the Navis Nobilite, whose true allegiance was evidently uncovered during the voyage to Parnis aboard the Hammer of Thor, a vessel seconded to the Ecclesiarchy by the Imperial Navy. Hard evidence as to just what occurred during this voyage is near non-existent, but it is believed that a creature of Chaos, having possessed the vessel's Navigator, brought about the destruction of the entire ship at the point it was detected. Inquisitor Hand and a number of Sororitas are known to have escaped the destruction of the Hammer of Thor, touching down on the surface and continuing his investigation.

What happened subsequent to the landing is a matter of pure speculation, and our Mystics have conducted innumerable readings of the Emperor's Tarot and held over a dozen auto-séances in an effort to gain some insight. Whatever occurred, it is known that Inquisitor Silas Hand and all of Stern's Sisters perished at the hand of a truly fell denizen of the Warp, believed to have been a Q'tlahsi'issho'akshami, a so-called Keeper of Secrets. So terrible was the final confrontation with this beast that Stern was the only survivor, and an area many kilometres across was laid waste in the final moments of the battle. Our agents have scoured the surface of Parnis for any further clue, and these will be forwarded to you at the earliest opportunity.

My investigations into the origins of Sister Ephrael Stern have proved equally as frustrating as those into Inquisitor Hand. I strongly suspect that my probe of the meta-repositorium was blocked in some manner, and I have tasked my most able lexmechanics with tracing the source of this obstruction.

Despite this, I have been able to determine that Stern was raised at the Saint Sabbat Schola Progenium on the world of Antigone's Harbour, though absolutely no trace as to her parentage can be found. In fact, it was while attempting to access information on the subject of Stern's bloodline that my data-probe was first blocked. The only previous occasion this has occurred in an investigation I have been a part of was the renunciation of the so-called Living Saint Jehialia of Khandis V, in which a strong Thorian faction amongst the beati's advocates sealed all records regarding her ancestry.

Regardless of her unknown roots, it is evident that Stern was singled out from an early age as a candidate for the Adepta Sororitas. The Arch Drill-abbot of the Schola Progenium submitted her for consideration, and one Sister Patricia of the Order of the Holy Seal accepted her, shipping her out on the next available vessel bound for Terra.

The records of Stern's period as a Novice indicate that she excelled during all the stringent trials and ordeals required of her, and she took the Oaths of Adherence along with five hundred other Novices at the Eclessiarchal Palace on Terra. At the completion of the night-long ceremony she was chosen to join the Order of our Martyred Lady, and dispatched to Ophelia VII.

Stern's service as a Battle Sister makes stirring reading my lord, but suffice to say that it was exemplarily. So exemplarily in fact that she was advanced to the rank of Seraphim in what appears to be a record time for this particular order. Three years later she was ordained as a superior just prior to undertaking a mission to the world of Parnis to investigate reports of a lost convent of the Orders Pronatus. As was the case four years later, when Inquisitor Hand led the Sisters back to that world, Sister Stern was to be the only member of the expedition to return, though when she was rescued her sanity had been stretched to breaking point by whatever had wiped out her force.

My lord, I have visited the blasted surface of Parnis, and though my own psi-level is rated no higher than the average subject, even I was able to detect the psychic after-stench of what had occurred there. My seers were rendered near senseless, so devastating was the level of Warp-real space distortion that had been unleashed. They raved as madmen of ghosts and daemons, Sisters entrapped within a screaming cage, of the coming of the scion of the Lord of Excess and of Chaos turned brutally against itself by a mortal thrice born.

Little more could I obtain from my servants, and so I ordered them to withdraw before the psychic pressure that permeates that place crushed them utterly. I have declared the world Perditus, pending your own decision on Exterminatus. No good can come of such a place, and I would urge you to consider it a matter of the highest import that it is rendered inaccessible for all time.

And so my lord, the case of Inquisitor Hand and Ephrael Stern is incomplete. I understand that senior members of the Ordo Malleus are hunting her, and in this regard I have linked Stern with the investigations of one Inquisitor Grinn. It is evident the Secret Masters of the Ordo Malleus consider her capture to be of the utmost importance, yet their thinking appears split as to her significance. Some regard her as a dangerous aberration, while others maintain she is Mankind's greatest hope against Chaos since the Primarchs. Whatever the case my lord, I am certain our investigations will uncover more, and that the saga of Ephrael Stern is far from over.

Your obediant servant.



Sister Ephrael Stern & Inquisitor Silas Hand, by Kev Walker,
from the graphic novel Daemonifuge.