Tuco and the Legend of Anno Dignitas
I’m sure you’ve all heard tell of the legend of Anno Dignitas. Yes, you know the one, that ancient realm of untold riches hidden away amongst the stars. That mythical kingdom so wealthy that their priest-rulers were able to construct great temples made from solid gold from which to worship the God Emperor. A fantastically prosperous colony lost to the Imperium of Man for many centuries. It warms the cockles of your heart to think of those tales of fabulous treasure hordes, millions of glittering gold coins, just waiting to be plucked from the cold void by a man with the wits and the nerve to discover them. Well my friends, old Tuco has a cautionary tale for you; ‘all that glitters is not gold’.
It all started back on Shard. We’d quelled the civil unrest that had recently been fermenting there through a mixture of extreme violence and straight forward bribery. Recipients of the former were nursing their wounds and mourning their dead and the latter counting their blessings. Things were quiet enough and young Varrick had decided to lead up a delegation to re-establish some of our old trading routes. Of course I suggested that I accompany him but after my recent foray into the world of diplomacy Darius thought it would be better if I, ‘remained behind, ever vigilant towards the threat of further dissent!’ Anyway, soon after he left our spymaster, Solar Gillam, came to me with the disturbing news that someone had spent the last several nights trying to gain unauthorised access to some of our most important water reservoirs including the palace’s own supply. Personally, I don’t have that much use for water. You’d certainly never catch me drinking the stuff and I very rarely take the opportunity to bathe in it. However, I know the others would kick up a fuss if the palace taps ran dry, so we set a trap for our would be saboteur.
Sure enough he tried again and we put the cuffs on him. I thought he was probably some bitter nut job that we’d missed when we were conducting mopping up operations against the rebel faction that we’d just stamped out. You know the kind of guy, some sad ‘you’ve killed my entire family, so I’ll have to poison you all’ type. Easy to spot, easy to shoot, a lesson to others, job done. However, he turned out to be nothing of the sort, which is where things started to get interesting. Gillam instantly recognised him as being one of the scouts that Varrick had sent out to survey neighbouring systems for potential resources, trading opportunities and the like. His name was Nestor and as far as we knew, this guy, his ship (the Baleful Eye) and the rest of his crew were still off-world digging around for loot. We also found out that he’d been changed somehow. Physically, his skin was tainted with a strange green pigment, invisible to the naked eye but which our tech boys had picked up when they began their side of his interrogation. They weren’t sure exactly what it was, or what it meant, but he’d certainly not had it done in a local tattoo parlour. Our resident head shrinkers then went to work with their box of telepathic tricks. All their usual mind flaying techniques had almost no effect. The only information they could glean was the word Argarok and the image of a strange, hideous mask floating in the sky. This was on the few occasions they came even close to penetrating his mind. To cap it all off, he’d been carrying some unusual melon like fruits with him when we’d arrested him. He let on to us that he’d intended to ‘infest’ the reservoirs with them. As I said to Gillam, ‘how does that old poem go?’
‘We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry thirsty roots?’
Well, to my mind my friends this spells only one of two things: chaos or the evil xenos taint. Either way we needed to stamp it out quickly before anymore of these green-skinned freaks could attempt an attack that might be more successful. The system that this scout had been sent to investigate was known as ‘the Wyrding’. It had a bad reputation amongst freighter crews for unexplained events and disappearances. Then again, where in the Koronus expanse doesn’t have a reputation like that? A security patrol sent word that they’d uncovered a drop pod from the Baleful Eye that we needed to see. When we got out there we saw more evidence of the strange flora that Nestor had been attempting to poison the water supply with. There was an entire tree growing inside the pod complete with vines and creepers spreading throughout the vessel. It was like a god damned jungle in there! I’ve heard of spacers taking pot plants aboard ship to make things seem a little more homely but even a Catachan wouldn’t go this far! We decided we’d need to go to the Wyrding ourselves to find out what was going on. My old business acquaintance the Warder was in system so we hired out his ship, the Red Ruin, to take us there. On the way to the Wyrding we decided to call in at a space station belonging to the holy Ordo Sepulturum, called Adventis Sepultura; inquisitors interested in bio weapons research and the spread of diseases. As we were dealing with some plant-based life form with infectious spores we thought they might have some useful information they could share.
The Warp treated us well on leaving Shard and were soon docking with Adventis Sepultura’s Aquilar station. The leader of the order, a man called Infinius Shae, received us and while he wasn’t immediately aware of anything that might be useful to us, he did grant us access to the station’s extensive archives. As I’ve said many times before my old friends, I’m not the Empire’s greatest reader, however Gillam and the Warder had some ideas of what to get the station’s scribes digging out. Sure enough they came up with some useful information. This is when we made the first link to the legendary colony of Anno Dignitas. Some ancient text or other alluded to the mighty Drusian adherent who founded the colony in his own name encountering a form of plant life like the ones we had seen. In illustrations of him he can be seen sitting at the base of a tree very much like the one we saw in the pod. I must admit my exact recollection of what was said next does get a little hazy here, as I was totally overwhelmed for some time by the tidal wave of pure greed that broke over me. Anno Dignitas! If the stories of its wealth were even half true we’d have more money than we could spend in a dozen lifetimes! We’d live like kings! Before we left the station we decided to visit Shae again. He’d shown us a Kroot slave he’d captured who seemed to react when we mentioned the word Argarok. We realised that there might be a connection between Anno Dignitas and a sister planet to the Kroot home world, Pech, which had been lost to them for centuries. Perhaps this Argarok and Anno Dignitas were one and the same place? We thought it useful to take him along with us and with some negotiation gained Shae’s consent.
We arrived in the Wyrding and saw for the first time a strange celestial phenomenon known as the Mask of Iscariot. This was clearly the hideous mask in the sky that Nestor had been talking about. We knew now that we were on the right track. Searching the system we found two points of interest. The first was a pair of ancient warp gates. Kluck, our Kroot mercenary, was very animated about these claiming that their homeworld Argarok had both been revealed to them and taken away from them by warpgate phenomenon. Secondly, we found a jungle moon that might host the life form we’d encountered on Shard. I’m telling you that sweet smell of money seemed to be getting stronger with each intake of breath! We were just about to make planet fall when the Warder relayed to us that a distress call had been received from the Aquilar station. I’ve always said that the Emperor helps those that help themselves and we should carry on with our own work of finding Anno Dignitas, nevertheless Gillam and the Warder felt we had to return, so our progress on grabbing the loot was thwarted for the moment. On returning to the station we could see that we were too late and the order had been overrun. We returned aboard to see if there was anything worth taking but alas all we found were some books from the library. Shae and a couple of others had also managed to save their own skins by hiding in priest holes, leaving their colleagues to be butchered. As I say, the Emperor looks after those that help themselves. We found out that the raiders who turned the place over were a bunch of Rak’gol, a race of very bad tempered, very large reptile/insect creatures. I’ve fought a raiding party once before on a burnt out freighter near Port Wander. Not much to say about them save they have 8 limbs that can function as either arms or legs and that they greatly prize the taste of human flesh. Try not to get into hand to hand to hand combat with them or you’ll end up being an entree.
Having taken the survivors on board the Red Ruin we returned to the Wyrding only to find the Rak’gol had beat us to it and were busily firing drop pods into the orbit of the jungle moon. Well, that made Tuco’s heart miss a beat, let me tell you! The very thought that those eight legged freaks could snatch the money from right out under our noses is a chilling thought. I mean do those things even have a need for money? What could they spend it on? We had no chance of taking on their mother ship with the Red Ruin so we went in quietly with the gun cutter. We followed their raiding parties which were converging on the ancient hulk of a crashed star ship. Perhaps a treasure ship from the days of the Anno Dignitas?! Well old Tuco wasn’t about to let those bastards walk away with the dollar no matter how well armed they were (pardon the pun). Luckily for us though, they started bickering amongst themselves and a firefight broke out from which only the biggest and meanest one emerged. It climbed on to the hulk to be met by the rest of the human crew of the Baleful Eye. What was obviously strange was that it pretty much ignored them and disappeared in to a pool on the top of the hulk. We followed it up and ran into the crew also. They were clearly in the thrall of the plant organism and tried to infect us. We were having none of this and pretty much started shooting from the outset. No goblin fruits for us! This set off a defensive reaction on the plant’s part by it growing warriors from pods to attack us. Soon we were facing both human and Rak’gol opponents attacking like a pack of zombies. At this point Gillam and I had a difference of opinion on tactics. He thought it best to gun it out with the zombies on the skin of the hulk. Personally Tuco has always fought smarter rather than harder. Hell, we could be up here all day wasting ammo on the things! You want to kill a snake you cut off its head! My old grandmother taught me that back on Luther McIntyre. And she’d killed more snakes than a mongoose! Anyway I followed the route of the Rak’gol and entered the hull. I found some weird alien plant, blob head honcho that I proceeded to try and kill. I’d brought some anti plant grenades for that specific purpose. What did I say about fighting smarter not harder! Unfortunately, I didn’t bring enough, so I had to make a tactical withdrawal until Gillam turned up with enough anti plant bombs to finish the job.
Well, my friends, now I hear you saying another cliff-hanger Tuco but you must have made a fortune. What was that hulk carrying, rubies as big as a man’s fist? Emeralds like pigeon eggs? Archeotech weapons worth a king’s ransom on the open market? Not a penny my friends. Just an empty burnt out hulk. So, basically all we made on this job was whatever we can make on those lousy books we grabbed off the station. My confidence in a big payout is low I have to tell you. Where in the Emporer’s name is the Dignitas loot?!?! To make matters worse when we got out of the hulk again we found that the Red Ruin was engaged in a stand up fight with the Rak’gol mother ship and we were in very severe danger of losing our ride out of there. However, the cavalry arrived in the form of a gigantic human battleship armed with a nova cannon that built the Rak’gol a whole new life in Hell. To begin with, we thought it was an Imperial navy ship drawn by the distress call from the Aquilar station. Surely a vessel of that size and capability couldn’t belong to anyone else? However, our saviour introduced himself as a Rogue Trader known as Helmut Vandire. He said that he not only owned this system but Varrick’s also. That’ll no doubt please young Darius when he hears about it. Me? I’m hoping to move into the fruit and veg business. Surely something on this godforsaken rock must be worth something?
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