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It was there that he met
Pontifex Severus Maximus, a man whose somewhat rough appearance did nothing to hide his ultimate faith in the Emperor. Both Magnus and Severus eventually found Lord-Captain van Droyt to be a bumbling imbecile: he ruined opportunity after opportunity to swell his own coffers and those of the Imperium, did not inspire his men to greatness or to further toil, and did not have the tactical or business acumen to run a Dynasty. How he got his Warrant remains a mystery - some came to suspect whether he had one at all. In one incident his malfeasance caused the loss of Magnus' legs to a sauromorph in a badly-bungled Cold Trade deal. So deep was his incompetence that, during a standard auspex-sweep of Deltonus VI, he actually managed to crash the
Wanton Adventure into the planet. It went down in a ball of flames and smashed into a range of hills. Magnus and Severus managed to escape before the impact on the Pontifex' Ministorum drop-pod. Through the heat-scorched armourglass they could see the ship's plasma core overload the Geller Field and discharge strange energies over the atmosphere, wrapping the planet in a localised warp-storm.
Landing many kilometres away, Severus and Magnus emerged from the drop-pod to find themselves surrounded by hundreds of savage and angry faces - the planet was inhabited, and the natives were not friendly! They would later discover that the drop-pod had landed on the marriage ceremony between the two largest tribes in the area, flattening bride, groom, and the tribes' collected dowries.
It was only an immediate display of Imperial wrath and Magnus' telepathic dominion which staved off the initial frenzied attack and gave the Pontifex enough time to begin bending the savages to the will of the Emperor. Within a week, Imperial authority had replaced the tribal leaders. Within a year, all the tribes on the continent had been converted from animistic land-worship to the proper veneration of the Emperor.
The essential groundwork laid for Imperial conquest, Severus and Magnus took an entourage and made a pilgramage over the hundreds of kilometres to the crash site of the
Wanton Adventure, hoping to salvage enough of its vox arrays to send a distress beacon - the warp-disturbances caused by the detonating Geller Field still blocked all of Magnus' astrotelepathic transmissions. Van Droyt had made a habit of recruiting ratings from penal worlds, and as they approached it became clear that such crew who had survived had quickly reverted to type: the shell of the
Adventure had been stripped and crudely hammered into a nightmarish town of bent and twisted steel, where the strong tortured the weak and honour and law held no meaning. Gulliver himself hung crucified over the main gates.
Though the Pontifex presented himself with the proper pomp and announcement as a bringer of the word of the Emperor, they were forced to retreat from the recidivists' jeers and gunfire. With half their initial party of loyal natives dead, the two forumlated a new plan. Over the next few months, the Pontifex' rhetoric whipped the now spiritually-united tribes into a righteous frenzy, and when they returned to the city of wanton lawlessness they did so at the head of an army of screaming savages. Telepathic trickery opened the gates, and in a righteous purge the army of the Emperor fell on the heretics and took the city in one bloody night.
The town secured, Magnus and the Pontifex were able to find and activate the distress beacon. Seven months later, someone responded to the call - Rogue Trader
Glorimond McKraken. Lord-Captain McKraken rescued the grateful pair and set about exploiting Deltonus VI, stripping it of what wealth he could find and taking slave-gangs to replenish his crew. McKraken was a harsh master, and after the uselessness of van Droyt, Magnus was pleased to be working for someone who knew what they wanted, and took it.
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