Broken Chains
Captured by Imperial forces in 487.M39 the Chains of Judgement began its life, ironically enough, as a renegade destroyer fighting against the encroaching Angevin Crusade—the Imperial invasion to conquer what would eventually become the Calixis Sector. Considered too small and poorly armed to be of immediate use to the crusade, it was offered to the Inquisition, to aid in rooting out heresy in the fledgling Calixis sector. The Chains of Judgement was repaired and refitted as a prison barge tasked with conveying heretics to Scintilla for specialised interrogation or long term incarceration.
The Chains of Judgement is based on the hull of an old Iconoclast destroyer, heavily modified and altered down the years. Over a kilometre and a half in length and almost half a kilometre at its widest point, it was a vessel with a crew of thousands. Much of the space once given over to weapons and munitions or to carry assault troops has since been converted into prison holds, and at any one time the Chains has the capacity to hold upwards of 10,000 prisoners, with special solitary stasis chambers reserved for the worst among them.
The vessel was also refitted with extensive interrogation/medicae chambers where Inquisitors could question their captives immediately after bringing them onboard. With so much space given over to cells, there was little left for a large contingent of guards and so the vessel has added security in the form of a complex system of gates and locks between each level as well as ‘no go’ corridors patrolled by packs of murder servitors, ensuring that should a prisoner somehow escape his cell he would not get far.
On the Chains’ last journey, the infamous Inquisitor Renthor took command. A harsh and dangerous man, Renthor was the Inquisitor responsible for capturing the Heretics and incarcerating them aboard the Chains of Judgement. With his capable second-in-command, Interrogator Crane, he ran the Chains with an iron fist.
Renthor also had a dark secret: he was a radical Inquisitor who used the fell powers of the warp to fight against the very forces he swore to destroy. His greatest weapon was a daemonhost named Karnak Zul, a daemon bound within the body of a human so that it could remain outside the warp and under Renthor’s control.
However, Zul hated its imprisonment and awaited a chance to escape. During the last voyage of the Chains, it compelled a weak-willed member of the crew to loosen the bonds that forced it to obey Renthor’s commands. Although still trapped within its human host, the daemonhost was free to rampage around the ship. In an orgy of destruction, it killed many of the guards in the main prison hold and unleashed the masses of prisoners contained within, starting a general uprising. It also slew the ship’s Navigator, the vessel’s pilot within the warp.
Zul attacked the armoury at the head of a howling mob of prisoners. During the fight, it confronted Inquisitor Renthor and mortally wounded its former master. However, before he died Renthor activated a set of binding wards he had inscribed on the deck of the armoury, binding the daemonhost in place. Then Crane was able to seal the armoury doors, trapping the daemonhost within.
Crane and his remaining Acolytes (his Alpha Acolytes or most trusted servants) locked down the ship and sealed themselves in the bridge. On the one hand, they were safe from the prisoners. On the other hand, if they dropped the ship out of warp, it might be years before another Imperial vessel responded to their astropathic distress call. Without a Navigator, they might end up anywhere, and in that time the prisoners might escape.
Instead, Crane and his Acolytes entered their stasis caskets, planning to remain there until the reserve generators could no longer support them. By that time, they hoped, the prisoners would all be dead, and they could reclaim the ship for the God-Emperor.
Zul remained trapped in the armoury. It took it decades to even learn the codes that would open the armoury hatches, by which time the prisoners had devolved into feral cannibals. It could tap into the ship’s cogitator systems, but could affect little meaningful change. In the end it was forced to wait, in the hope that something would change aboard the vessel.
As the Heretics awaken, the Chains has been a drifting derelict for centuries and its order and grandeur will have become a distant memory. While many of its safeguards remain in place, its crew is largely dead and gone and the vessel is coming apart under the stresses of long unshielded exposure to both the void and the warp. Even in its state of disrepair and decay, it remains a vast vessel with kilometres of corridors, chambers, and decks filled with the detritus of the Inquisition and the shattered remains of their captives; living, dead, and those trapped between the two states. Some of the crew have reverted to a feral existence, forming into cannibalistic tribes led by a “carrion queen.”
To escape the Chains and win their freedom, the Heretics must traverse its decks, climbing up from the depths of the ship to the bridge and control sections where they can either find a way off or guide the ancient prison barge to a safe harbour.
