I was working solo back then. Twenty five years old. Two years out of the tutelage of Eruzet Charbernau, Old Fuss and Flamers. Tall blond and slender. Green eyed, literally as well as metaphorically, and possesed of that sense of invincibility that comes with being young and successful. I suppose in our bussiness success is relative. To be alive and (mostly) sane is success by almost any metric. Well, sanity is valued among at least SOME of our bretheren. I had at this time, successful prosecuted the Emerald Sky Cartel and the Sorority of the Mirrored Wheel on Mindinaw. I was a woman on the make, particularly as Old Fuss and Flamers was well disposed to me and would continue to live and scheme, despite taking on the nastiest heretics of the galaxy, not to mention her ten pack a day lho habit, for another two hundred years.

Of my Faction and political leanings I will say little save that it is a good rule of thumb to never trust any Inquisitor. Except me of course. I had come to Rüstringen following a pipeline of chaotic artifacts. The Wyrdsmith on Tuteonburg had been smashed a generation before but his works continued to circulate among depraved artits and dangerous dillitantes, changing hands as they spread their poison across half the subsector. I spent patient months following the trails of individual items, meeting and where necessary terminating the poor fools faciliting the trade. The more I dug however, the more I came to believe that the trade wasn't organized per se, but rather the result of a single powerful individual whose wealth and esoteric tastes were functioning like a whirlpool, sucking tainted material towards it's hungry maw. It was the rarest of things, a case of shit actuallyf flowing up hill.

My cover was easy to establish. The University of Porcelain granted me credentials as a Xenoarchaology with a gratifyingly minimal amount of pissing themselves after I flashed my rosette, and it was a topic I could speak intelligently on. You would think that specialist covers like this would be hard to maintain, but you would be surprised. The average cultist is dumber than a lobotomized ogryn, even those that shower and wear silk. It must drive the Runious Powers completely to distraction, they learn one little binding and suddenly they are Magnus the Red. Make a few cryptic comments, remember a few names and they will sit at your feet for hours. I drafted up a couple of papers on the Wyrdsmith, you can read them if you have access to the Ordo Sector archives. They are actually quite good, though so wrapped up in technical mumbo jumbo as to drive one mad. Why call it a knife when an elongaged poinard with characteristic channeling and and athemic properties will do. This twaddle quite established my reputation and after a few months of tromping around the outworlds I recieved an invitation to a discrete do at Chateau Auclair where, it was to be supposed, I could add my erudition to the affair. 

What a bunch of amasec soaked, potato eating, cologne drenched, misbegotten whore sons they were. I stood beside a pillar in an emerald green evening dress which I had tailored from academic shiek, which was to say it covered my cleavage with a net of lace rather than letting it flop around like the other ladies, and incoperated long white opera gloves for reasons which you presumabley need to be an academic to comprehend. There wasn't a great place to hide a gun, and they had scanners, but I had managed to bring in a few weapons. One was a pair of curved khukri knives that I had crossed in the small of my back, one was my mind, and the third was The Stone. Yes, you knew I'd get to it. More on that anon. I wore the Stone around my neck on a long gold chain, each link of which was micro engraved with a paper I had supposedly published. God Emperor protect me from Academia. 

The hall itself was beautiful enough. Rüstringen was, and is, known for its stone masons, and the Dancing Room as it was called was carved out of a blue white fozzilized resin, somewhat similar to amber. It gave the impression that the whole chamber might be made of glacial ice, though it was warm and comfortable as plaster would have been The most incredible detail had been lavished on it, every pillar packed to the brim with cavorting nymphs, humanoid spiders, sporting fauns and every other metaphor the artists could ejaculate to score a few more credits from the rich idiots who paid them. Religious iconography was at a minimum, although the entire domed roof was carved into the face of the Emperor, cunningly wrought so as to appear almost three dimensional and gazing down at the gathering. I have to say I didn't care for it, no doubt from directly beneath it was a marvel, but from the sides the Master of Mankind did appear a trifle constipated.

One by one I made the aquaintice of the 'great and the good' of Rüstringen. Mostly these were boozy attempts at flirting, easily defeated by the application of enough academic buzzwords. Once their eyes glazed I dropped in a few actual occult references to see if it snapped them out of it. Eventual each vicitim would make some excuse and stumble away in search of easier prey with less syllables and bigger breasts and I crossed them off my list. I was starting to lose hope of finding my man when the Stone alerted me to a slight stir at the door. A young man with a slightly crooked tie had entered the room. He made breezy small talk while heading towards the collection of artifacts which was the nights primary attraction. I had inspected them of course, been compelled to by several of my gentleman callers in fact. They were old and some where undoubtely Xenos in origin but even brushing them with my mind I was unable to detect any taint of Chaos. I made a few comments about pre-killocretian astetic traces and moved on. This young man seemed interested though, and though he accepted drinks and flirted with women, it didn't deter him for more than a few minutes. He stopped casually infront of a case containing a strange orb and I drifted unobtrusively closer. Something about him tugged at me and the Stone got warmer against me. It almost seemed as though we might have met before but that couldn't be the case. I never forget a face, I AM an Inquisitor afterall.