When we were children and up to no good, my mother would tell my brothers and I that if we didn't cease our misbehaviour, the Inquisitiores would come for us in the night and spirit us away. Though we knew next to nothing of their true purpose, our imaginations conjured such terrible thoughts at this fate that more often than not, we would be quieted at least for a time.
She would not have been the first parent to use the threat of a bogeyman to try and inspire better behaviour in a child I suppose, and I imagine was far from the last. The threat served well enough when we were younger, but as we grew older and into the sense of invulnerability that comes with with adolescence, it faded in effectiveness for we felt there was nothing in this universe we could not face down.
Quite when my siblings would come to be disabused of this misapprehension I do not know, and to be honest I don't remember exactly when I realised just how tenuous a grip we mortals hold upon our existence in this galaxy fraught with threats to our survival. But I do remember the moment I came to appreciate that however fearful I had been of the Inquisition in my childhood innocence, it was not nearly enough with startling clarity.
It was early in my time with the Argyntum Stellae and we had come upon a world in ruin. I had not seen such devastation before and fortunately nor have I since. No stone had been left standing upon another and of the millions who had dwell'd there naught but ash and bone remained and a beacon had been set that declared it Regio Perdita. This in itself was disquieting enough, but as we made shift away from [REDACTED] and Maka'ala told me what this all meant, I remembered my mother's threats.
The entire population had been declared Excommunicate Tratoris at the word of Inquisitor Hasdrel Dieldra. Without trial nor appeal, the world was condemned to burn. Ordinarly, Maka'ala explained, such an action might have been undertaken with cyclonic torpedoes, weapons of such potency as to be capable of erasing the very existence of a world but he suspected that [REDACTED] had been left a graveyard to serve as a warning to the Segmentum, a promise of the fate reserved for those who stood against the orthodoxy of High Lords of Terra and the Inquisition.
Whether the death of [REDACTED] was effective in dissuading the secession of others or not I cannot say, but for me it was a stark illustration of just how poorly I had understood the Imperium into which I had been born and raised...
Illiatariu. C., Rememberancier Documantist Minoris. To Walk Among Demigods. A Treatise Upon The Nature of The Argyntum Stellae., Published 863.M33, Sector Heliopolis, Segmentum Pacificus.