Recaps

Lynn explained that he sent Toothy and the Orks to Dead World A to establish a controlled, ongoing war with Rena’s swarm, letting the Orks multiply and the Tyranids gain biomass. He left the story with Toothy bound for the planet under strict orders to avoid the sleeping Necrons beneath its black pyramid.

• Rena questioned Lynn about sending Toothy to the dangerous Dead World A, and Lynn explained that its barren landscape could become an Ork breeding ground.
• Lynn proposed that Toothy’s Orks and Rena’s swarm fight controlled wars, allowing both to grow while the swarm harvested biomass.
• Lynn recalled telling Toothy that he should establish a base far from the black pyramid before fighting the swarm.
• Lynn warned Toothy and his subordinates not to approach the black pyramid or explore underground ruins because powerful enemies slept there.
• Toothy vowed to obey Lynn and departed for Dead World A aboard a transport ship.

Dominic and Lynn oversaw the complete destruction of the Ork infestation on Dorito, then discussed plans to restore the planet’s farmland. Dorito was left ready for rehabilitation, with its first harvest expected in at least a year.

• After Imperial forces eliminated Dorito’s significant Ork bosses, Dominic ordered the warships to bombard the planet with incendiaries for seven days.
• Dominic deployed robots and Servitors to burn the surface for nearly a month, eliminating the remaining Ork spores.
• Lynn thanked Dominic for helping clear Dorito and take on the work of restoring its farmland.
• Lynn explained that fertilizer, planetary dispersal devices, and agricultural machinery would prepare the soil for planting within six months, with the first harvest due at least six months later.
• Dominic left the restoration arrangements to Governor Kerry.

At the victory banquet on Dorito, Lynn learned from Rena that a strange plague had broken out in Brevis’s Underhive. He secretly ordered measures to contain it before the fleet returned, while keeping Dominic unaware.

• Dominic celebrated the victory on Dorito and announced that the fleet would return to Brevis the next morning.
• Rena told Lynn that an abnormal plague in Brevis’s Underhive caused fever and cough before turning infected people into aggressive cannibals.
• Lynn recognized the outbreak as a likely Chaos threat and warned Rena that its hidden incubation period and the panic it caused could help it spread.
• Lynn ordered Rena to contact Butcher, have the Dark Division locate infected people, and direct Priest to form a secret Plague Cleansing cult.
• Lynn told Rena to keep the Genestealers’ connection to him and the plague response hidden from Dominic.

Lynn returned with Dominic’s fleet to Brevis, where a spreading plague in the Underhive threatened the city and the Imperial tithe of recruits. Dominic summoned Lynn to demand an explanation as the outbreak worsened.

• Lynn rejoined Dominic at the victory banquet and concealed that he had been handling fleet supply matters.
• Dominic led the fleet back to Brevis, where crowds celebrated his and Lynn’s return; Lynn noticed signs that the plague had begun spreading.
• Lynn arranged a bronze statue of Dominic, while the plague continued to grow beneath the city’s celebrations.
• A week later, more than ten million Underhive residents had become infected, and Lynn’s administration sealed the routes to the middle hive and upper city.
• Dominic summoned Lynn, worried that infected recruits could spread the plague through the Imperial Navy, and Lynn explained that the outbreak had become impossible to contain.

Lynn briefed Dominic on a plague that could spread through inorganic matter and on four heretical sects destabilizing Brevis's Underhive. Dominic left Lynn to handle the crisis while insisting that Brevis remain functional enough to provide its Tithe recruits.

• Dominic ordered Lynn to bring the plague under control to protect the year's Tithe recruits.
• Lynn explained that the virus spread through multiple routes and infected people despite intact protective suits, leading Dominic to wonder if it was linked to the Lord of Pestilence.
• Lynn described the Redemptionists, Chaos Ascendant Sect, Calamity Sect, and Doomsday Sect, which were spreading violence and undermining epidemic prevention in the Underhive.
• Lynn said he had mobilized garrison units and Vanguard forces but lacked enough personnel to control the vast Underhive.
• Lynn concealed his and Rena's Plague Cleansing Cult from Dominic.
• Dominic told Lynn to handle the crisis as he saw fit and demanded results, while prioritizing Brevis's survival and the collection of three billion Tithe recruits.

Lynn decided to expand the Plague Cleansing Cult to identify healthy recruits for the Tithe while containing the plague, despite the risks of Dominic discovering his methods. The cult spread through the lower city, screening civilians and burning those already infected.

• Lynn confirmed that Dominic had little interest in the lower city's plague and concluded he needed to find another 2.2 billion healthy recruits for the Tithe.
• Lynn ordered Rena to activate the Seeding plan and expand the Plague Cleansing Cult a hundredfold within three days by accelerating Genestealer growth.
• Rena used potent hormones to mature Genestealers in artificial wombs, producing short-lived fourth-generation hybrids suited to recruiting and brainwashing believers.
• Within a week, the Genestealer population grew dozens of times over and the Plague Cleansing Cult spread across the lower city, offering food, water, and plague screenings.
• The cultists moved healthy civilians to quarantine zones and persuaded infected people to gather before burning them with promethium.

Lynn oversaw the mass screening and burning of infected people in Brevis, while Luna gathered evidence of his reliance on Genestealers and prepared to use the Plague Cleansing Cult against him. The chapter ended at Brevis Prime Hive’s starport, where undercity residents were being forced into the Imperial Tithe and sent toward the Astra Militarum.

• Butcher reported that five hundred million people had been screened and moved to quarantine zones, and Lynn ordered the process accelerated as the infection spread.
• A plague-infected informer sent a report about Kerry Von and the Plague Cleansing Cult to Saint Garus Castle, then walked into a corpse pit and burned with the evidence.
• Luna reviewed reports linking Lynn to nonhuman forces and decided to use the Plague Cleansing Cult as the first fuse in her plan against him.
• Enforcers herded undercity residents into lines at Brevis Prime Hive’s central starport to fulfill the Tithe and join the Astra Militarum.

Dominic cautiously accepted the first billion conscripts from Brevis in quarantined batches, while Lynn arranged for a small number of infected recruits to fall ill later and make the losses seem ordinary. Meanwhile, Luna’s agents escaped the boarding lines but followed her instruction not to report the Plague Cleansing Cult directly to the Imperial Navy.

• Dominic ordered five million conscripts placed in quarantine transports and monitored for three days before accepting more.
• After the first quarantine showed no symptoms, Dominic decided to process the billion recruits in twenty batches, observing each for forty-eight hours.
• Lynn explained to Rena that he had ordered Butcher to mix a few newly infected people into each batch so later illness and limited deaths would not arouse Dominic’s suspicion.
• Luna’s black-robed agents slipped away from the boarding lines and hid in an abandoned warehouse district near the starport.
• When one agent proposed reporting the Plague Cleansing Cult to the Imperial Navy, the leader refused and repeated Luna’s instruction to let the truth be discovered firsthand.

Rumors of the Plague Cleansing Cult spread through Brevis's starport as soldiers discovered its followers among the conscripts boarding the Tithe Fleet. Bishop Venka ordered a mass screening and torture-based interrogations, which revealed a vast cult in the undercity and left him suspecting Governor Lynn had known about it.

• A corporal caught recruits making the cult's prayer gestures and ordered them executed as heretics.
• Soldiers found more suspected followers among the conscripts, and rumors grew that the Plague Cleansing Cult had spread throughout the undercity.
• Bishop Venka learned of the rumors and ordered Ecclesiarchy guards and starport security to screen all conscripts.
• Interrogators tortured captured believers until some confessed that the cult's followers numbered in the tens of millions and that its leaders' identities were unknown.
• Bishop Venka suspected Governor Lynn had either been overwhelmed by the plague or had knowingly allowed the cult to grow, and vowed the matter would not end there.

Bishop Venka accused Governor Kerry Von of allowing the Plague Cleansing Cult to spread among Brevis’s tithe recruits, and pressed Rear Admiral Dominic to intervene. After reading the interrogation records, Dominic suspected the cult had appeared only recently, since Kerry had never mentioned it before.

• Bishop Venka left an interrogation room and decided he needed Rear Admiral Dominic’s authority to investigate the Plague Cleansing Cult and Brevis’s governor.
• Venka confronted Dominic, accusing him of neglecting the recruits’ religious purity and demanding that he question Kerry Von.
• Dominic defended the governor’s loyalty and asked Venka to explain his charges.
• Venka presented interrogation records showing that thousands of recruits prayed to and thanked the Plague Cleansing Cult for food and medical aid in the undercity.
• Dominic read the records and recalled that Kerry had previously named four other heretical sects but not the Plague Cleansing Cult.
• Dominic suspected the cult had emerged recently rather than being deliberately concealed by Kerry.

Dominic investigated Bishop Venka’s accusation that the Plague Cleansing Cult had infiltrated the recruits, sending Sergeant Major Hoffman to gather information without force. Hoffman learned that the sect had sheltered plague survivors and worshipped the God-Emperor, but its hidden leader and headquarters remained unknown.

• Dominic told Venka he would investigate the cult but warned him not to disrupt the Tithe handover.
• Dominic ordered Hoffman to question recruits informally and find out the cult’s origins, leadership, practices, and god.
• Hoffman befriended recruits in their rest area with cigarettes and watered-down ale, then asked about their experiences during the plague.
• The recruits said masked cult members provided food and water, identified infected people, and persuaded them to enter the fire rather than spread the plague.
• The recruits said survivors joined the cult for shelter and protection, worshipped the God-Emperor, and knew its leader only as the Priest.
• Hoffman left the recruits cigarettes and departed without learning the cult’s headquarters or the Priest’s identity.

Dominic investigated the rapidly expanding Plague Cleansing Cult and received a secret letter claiming it had ties to Brevis’s upper-city power structure. Suspicious of both the cult and the letter, he suspended his intelligence teams’ operation and decided to verify the claims himself.

• Dominic ordered an intelligence squad to investigate the Plague Cleansing Cult’s leaders, headquarters, and ability to identify infected people.
• A guard delivered Dominic a sealed letter from someone using the name Elton Voss, who warned that the cult had deep roots in the upper city and urged Dominic to investigate alone.
• Dominic dismissed the letter and ordered three intelligence squads to infiltrate the western lower city discreetly.
• After reconsidering the cult’s unusual growth and the sapphire ring’s strange chill, Dominic told Karen to suspend the teams’ operation while he verified the claims himself.

Dominic verified that the mysterious ring was a harmless psychic-shielding device and wore it before secretly entering Brevis’s undercity in disguise. Meanwhile, Lynn realized Luna was using the Plague Cleansing Cult to force him into a choice that could expose his ties to the Genestealers or ruin his governorship.

• Bishop Venka purified the ring, and the Tech-Priest identified it as a xenos-made psychic shielding device with no harmful features.
• Dominic put on the ring, which made psychic perceptions and scans slide past him.
• Dominic disguised himself as a lieutenant colonel and traveled with two Sisters of Silence toward the undercity of Brevis.
• Butcher told Lynn that Bishop Carven’s men had arrested over a hundred recruits suspected of cult ties and that rumors linked the cult to the governor’s office.
• Lynn identified Luna as the source of the rumors and recognized that her scheme could expose his Genestealer connection or prevent him from meeting the Imperial Tithe.

Lynn countered Luna’s trap by making Paul Serra the apparent link between the Plague Cleansing Cult and recruitment, while Dominic investigated the cult’s monastery in the lower city. Dominic uncovered signs of corrupted doctrine and watched the cult sort civilians into quarantine and incineration routes.

• Lynn told Butcher to frame Paul Serra as a man who colluded with the Plague Cleansing Cult to meet his recruitment quota, and routed contact with the governor’s office through Paul.
• Lynn ordered Rena to restrict the core Genestealers’ movements and reduce the apostles’ activity, accepting slower screening for now.
• Dominic and two Sisters of Silence used the sapphire ring to evade psychic detection and enter the No. 331 Plague Cleansing Monastery through a ventilation duct.
• Dominic noticed distorted Imperial Aquila reliefs and heard an apostle twist familiar Ecclesiarchy teachings into praise of purification by fire.
• Dominic watched apostles screen civilians and send those deemed clean toward quarantine while directing the infected through a door leading to an incineration chamber.

Dominic investigated Monastery No. 331 and discovered that the Plague Cleansing Cult rigorously screened and disposed of infected people, while his holy relic detected traces of Nurgle’s corruption. After secretly collecting a skin sample from an apostle, he and the two Sisters of Silence moved on to the cult’s frontline triage camp in a severely infected district.

• Dominic observed the monastery’s strict screening procedures and saw infected people swiftly taken to the incineration chamber.
• Dominic’s holy relic pendant burned when infected people arrived, consuming one layer of its sacred parchment and confirming traces of Warp corruption.
• Dominic estimated that about half the people screened were infected and stole a flake of skin from an apostle before withdrawing with the two Sisters of Silence.
• Dominic sealed the unusual gray-purple skin flake in a sampling tube and set out for another location.
• Dominic reached the Plague Cleansing Cult’s frontline camp, where apostles screened survivors behind a defensive line and rejected those who failed.

Dominic learned that Brevis Vanguard troops were cooperating with the Plague Cleansing Cult on the orders of a credit-seeking lieutenant general, but he could not determine whether Kerry or Kerry Von was involved. Meanwhile, Luna watched her plan to steer Dominic toward a conclusion about Kerry Von falter and resolved to regain control.

• Dominic overheard Vanguard soldiers say their forces were cooperating with the Plague Cleansing Cult on a lieutenant general’s orders, and that the cult might be discarded after its recruitment work was done.
• Dominic questioned whether Kerry knew of the arrangement and whether the mysterious letter was meant to implicate or clear him, then withdrew with the two Sisters of Silence.
• Luna watched Dominic’s movements through a crystal ball and saw that events were straying from her plan to make him blame Kerry Von.
• The crystal ball’s images went dark, and Luna worried that her effort to drag Lynn into the abyss was slipping out of control before insisting that she still controlled the game.

Dominic and the Sisters of Silence discovered that Brevis’s supposedly safe resettlement zone was a guarded enclosure holding thousands of traumatized refugees. A powerful psyker began reshaping the refugees’ perceptions with a sermon, and Dominic realized the crowd was under psychic influence.

• Dominic followed the secret letter’s third set of coordinates to a Level One Safe Resettlement Zone beneath the lower city.
• He found thousands of plague survivors surrounded by armed apostles in master-crafted Power Armour.
• A bald woman in purple-and-gold armour entered the plaza and used her presence to silence the refugees.
• The woman called the plague and its horrors the God-Emperor’s trial, and told the survivors they were chosen as pure seeds.
• Dominic recognized the woman’s words as psychic influence that was reshaping the refugees’ perceptions.

Dominic discovered that the Plague Cleansing Cult’s effective plague response and recruitment drive were led by Genestealers using Psychic Power. He left Brevis questioning the Imperium’s absolute rejection of Xenos, despite recognizing the danger of cooperating with them.

• A woman used Psychic Power to turn plague survivors into believers who volunteered to serve as Tithe recruits, and Dominic watched the crowd kneel in devotion.
• Dominic asked the Tech-Priest to analyze skin flakes recovered from the convent.
• The Tech-Priest identified the sample as belonging to a fourth-generation Genestealer hybrid, likely a guard protecting higher-ranking cult members.
• Dominic realized the Genestealers had contained the plague, reassured victims, and provided the Imperium with recruits.
• Dominic struggled with whether the Imperium should use or cooperate with the Genestealers, but feared they would eventually betray Brevis.

Dominic wrestled with whether to expose Lynn’s Xenos allies, while Lynn sensed Luna was maneuvering to turn Dominic against him and prepared to act. With Toothy’s Orks and Rena’s Tyranid swarm growing stronger through their controlled war, Lynn considered them his safeguard as Leo St. Garus arrived.

• Dominic weighed launching an investigation against preserving Brevis’s fragile stability and had not made his decision.
• Lynn noticed increased Ecclesiarchy scrutiny, missing Tithe Fleet intelligence detachments, and Dominic postponing meetings, and suspected Luna was directing suspicion toward him.
• Rena reported that Toothy’s Orks had multiplied, occupied the western desert, and developed flesh-based technology while fighting her swarm.
• Rena said the controlled war was strengthening both forces, and Lynn recognized them as protection against Dominic or the Inquisition.
• Lynn decided to stop waiting and eliminate the source of the conspiracy as Leo St. Garus knocked at his door.

Lynn and Leo planned a strike to kill Luna, whom they believed threatened the St. Garus Family with Chaos. Leo’s forces raided Saint Garus Castle, but the assault team found eerie runes and unsettling whispers beyond the second-level blast doors.

• Lynn told Leo that Luna’s activity around the underground laboratory had increased, and Leo confirmed she was staying in a secret chamber on the third underground level.
• Lynn devised a plan for Leo’s troops to surround the castle and reach Luna through an old western passage; Leo named the operation “Duel of two kings.”
• Leo’s private troops sealed the castle’s entrances and escape routes while the assault team advanced underground.
• The assault team silently cleared the first underground level and blew open the blast doors leading to the second.
• The team found ghostly blue runes covering the passage walls, a strange fragrance in the air, and whispers that unsettled their minds.

Lynn’s assault on Luna’s secret chamber stalled against waves of Tzeentchian cultists and daemons, while Luna prepared further defenses. With the Vanguard taking casualties and the Plague-cleansing Apostles nearing exhaustion, Lynn ordered reinforcements released to end the fight quickly.

• The captain ordered internal circulation as mutant cultists and Pink Horrors emerged, forcing the assault squad to halt and fight.
• Luna learned that Leo had sided with Lynn and summoned more demonic forces, vowing to oppose her nephew.
• Four two-faced sorcerers transformed mutant cultists into Chaos Spawn and unleashed more daemons against the squad.
• The Armiger Knight and Vanguard veterans held their positions as the attackers faced mounting pressure and casualties.
• Rena reported the squad’s losses and the Apostles’ dwindling psychic power to Lynn, who ordered the reinforcements released.

Rena ordered the Plague Cleansing Assault Squad to attack, and Rena Guyu led the Genestealers in a devastating assault through the passage. After destroying much of the Chaos force, the squad pursued the fleeing Tzeentch Sorcerers toward the secret chamber.

• Rena sent the order through the swarm network, bringing the Genestealer assault force out of hiding.
• Aberrants, acolytes, and Purestrain Genestealers joined the battle, stabilizing the defensive line and attacking the daemons and cultists.
• The three Genestealer magi reinforced the squad with psychic barriers as Rena Guyu advanced with them.
• Guyu used psychic threads to slice apart cultists, Chaos Spawn, Flamers, and other monsters, clearing nearly half the enemy force.
• The two-faced Tzeentch Sorcerers fled toward the secret chamber, and Guyu ordered the 88 Genestealers to pursue.

Guyu and the assault force entered the Warp-distorted labyrinth where Luna’s secret chamber lay, while Dominic responded to the halted recruitment handover by openly ordering an investigation of Lynn’s work. Dominic remained uncertain whether Lynn had been deceived or was collaborating with xenos, but resolved to kill him if necessary.

• The Plague Cleansing Assault Squad cut through Tzeentch’s forces and reached the entrance to the third underground level.
• The Vanguard captain warned Guyu that the level was a shifting Warp labyrinth called the Land Without Extension, but Guyu led the force inside.
• Luna’s chanting rose in the labyrinth as the stone door closed behind Guyu and the assault force.
• Dominic learned that the transfer of recruits had stopped and suspected Kerry had halted it because he knew about the investigation.
• Dominic ordered the Third Reconnaissance Squad to enter the lower city openly in naval military police uniforms and investigate the recruitment process.
• Dominic weighed whether Lynn had colluded with xenos and resolved to eliminate him if he had.

Dominic suspected Governor Kerry was hiding higher-level involvement in the Plague Cleansing Cult, but he waited to see what Lynn would do. Lynn visited Dominic, confirmed the first recruits were safe, and accepted responsibility for the undercity recruitment scandal without naming Paul Serra.

• An intelligence officer reported that the Brevis Vanguard had seized cult strongholds, arrested peripheral members, and that the governor's office had quarantined the remaining recruits for faith reviews.
• Dominic doubted that Lieutenant General Paul Serra could have supported the cult without approval from higher authorities, and suspected Lynn might be staging a purge to conceal his own involvement.
• Dominic told his adjutant not to investigate further and decided to wait for Lynn's next move.
• Lynn arrived the next morning looking exhausted and asked whether the first six hundred million recruits had passed quarantine checks.
• After Dominic said the checks had found no abnormalities, Lynn admitted responsibility for the undercity recruitment failures and asked Dominic to punish him, without mentioning Paul Serra.

Lynn Kerry admitted that he had allowed the Plague Cleansing Cult to help control the plague and screen recruits, and Dominic agreed to overlook his actions under strict conditions. They planned to eradicate the cult after Brevis delivered all three billion recruits, with Dominic eager to join the purge.

• Lynn Kerry confessed that he had permitted the Plague Cleansing Cult to assist with the plague and recruitment, accepting full responsibility for its spread.
• Dominic reassured Lynn that the first batch of recruits had passed Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Mechanicus screenings, and Lynn promised to screen the remaining three hundred million.
• Lynn warned that the unauthorized cult still threatened the Ecclesiarchy's authority, and Dominic agreed to tolerate its use temporarily for the war effort.
• Dominic ordered Lynn to avoid deeper collusion with the cult and to eradicate it completely after all three billion recruits had been handed over.
• Lynn invited Dominic to oversee the purge of the cult's undercity strongholds, and Dominic enthusiastically agreed to bring naval marines.