Xanthite

"Eradicate Chaos? Hah! One might as well try to eradicate one’s own shadow. Do not presume to enforce a simpleton’s philosophy upon the Emperor’s Inquisition. Bury your head if you must, but my eyes are open yet."

- Excerpt from the sixth trial of Inquisitor Lichenstein

To the Xanthite, the warp and its denizens are things to be enslaved rather than denied. To them, Chaos is no less an enemy that must be fought and defeated, but one ultimately that should be tamed, bound to humanity’s will and put to use in the Imperium’s service. Born from the paradoxical position inherent in the role of the Inquisition, Xanthites believe it is the Inquisitor’s sacrosanct freedom to understand and even wield that which is forbidden in order to better combat it. Xanthism remains perhaps the most insidious and most ominous of all doctrines, and the Xanthite movement itself arguably the most ancient, powerful and above all the most dangerous of all the Inquisition’s Radical factions. Indeed, to some the words ‘Radical’ and ‘Xanthite’ are synonymous. When a Puritan Inquisitor ponders the Xanthite, with their dark lore and darker secrets, they see an enemy a thousand times more dangerous than any twisted mutant, debased heretic, or crazed witch—and fundamentally they are not wrong.

Xanthites by no means advocate the furthering of Chaos and its dark works, but see it as a tool that is already in use by the Imperium, not yet realised to its full potential. Warp travel, Astropaths, Navigators, Space Marine Librarians, abhumans in the ranks of the Imperial forces; all these bear the mark of Chaos, but nevertheless further the goals of the God-Emperor, himself one of the most powerful psykers to ever have existed. The Xanthites cite these as example that there is no question as to whether Chaos can serve Humanity, it is just a matter of to what degree. As a result, Inquisitors of this faction often use daemon-weapons, Chaos-tainted artefacts, psyker-retainers, daemonhosts, and forbidden grimoires in their quest to understand and exploit the boundless power of the warp. Many have achieved mastery over the psychic discipline they have trained in, and it is unusual to find a Xanthite with no psychic ability whatsoever.

Many other Inquisitors, be they Puritan or Radical, consider the Xanthites to be walking along the edge of a precipice, arrogantly tampering with powers no mortal mind can fully comprehend, and with catastrophic implications should they but slip for a moment. But despite the appalling dangers the Xanthites court, they are nevertheless one of the oldest and most heavily entrenched philosophies of the Inquisition, and their number includes not only some of the most learned and politically influential Inquisitors, but also some of the most personally powerful individuals whose true strengths and mastery of the dark arts are seldom guessed at until they are angered or directly challenged. It is indeed a courageous or foolhardy Inquisitor that dares challenge a true Xanthite directly and unaided, let alone a cabal of their number operating together in fell purpose. Instead, those that would challenge the Xanthite creed must do so with caution. More often it is the case that several Inquisitors must make common cause to expose a Xanthite that they believe is guilty of crossing the line into outright heresy. They must bring irrefutable proof before a full Conclave in order to gain justice, and even then the outcome is never certain.

The Trial of Zaranchek Xanthus
Xanthism is one of the oldest philosophies of the Inquisition. It is named after Inquisitor-Master Zaranchek Xanthus, brought to trial and eventually executed as a heretic in the early 32nd millennium. Xanthus was accused by a cabal of Inquisitors who had united to accuse him of Chaos worship. Although he professed his innocence strongly and with great dignity, he was eventually burnt at the stake, and many of his Acolytes and former apprentices were hunted down by the purge that followed. Throughout his trial, Xanthus maintained that despite the many malefic relics found in his possession and the vast repository of dark lore he had amassed, he had remained pure, both in spirit and purpose. He admitted that he did on occasion utilise the forces of the warp and the powers of Chaos to achieve his goals in the Imperium’s service. By virtue of his rank and record, Xanthus’s trial was held by the Great Conclave itself, and regardless of his eventual conviction, his skilled oratory, undoubted eloquence, and unwaveringly firm stance that such power could be harnessed without spiritual corruption found resonance in many who listened. His ideas were to be picked up on by other Inquisitors in the following years, and within a century a core of self-professed “Xanthites” had become a vocal and controversial minority within the Inquisition, and one that risked being rendered excommunicate en masse for their views.

Angelique De Falk and the Caixian Malleus
Perhaps the most famous Xanthite Inquisitor in the history of the early Calixian Conclave was Angelique De Falk, a woman whose great cunning and implacable intelligence marked her out from her days as an Acolyte of the Ordo Xenos as a rising star. De Falk, newly raised to the rosette, was one of a number of Inquisitors assigned to the fledgling Calixis Sector in the middle of the 39th millennium in the aftermath of the Angevin Crusade. This period, known to Calixian histories as The Great Founding, was far from an untroubled one, as war and anarchy still blighted the area. The subsequent mass colonial expeditions from the overpopulated worlds of the distant Segmentum Solar and from nearer afield in the troubled Mandragora and Gehenna regions created serious problems of their own. The newly born Calixian Conclave soon had its hands full weeding out the corrupt chaff from the good wheat in the new population and helping manage the difficult transition from High Crusade to stable civil rule. De Falk took to her duties with bravura and won for herself considerable fame within the Conclave, smashing cult after cult, battling human renegades and mutant uprisings. In particular, De Falk is credited with exterminating one of the last hellish nests of the warp-worshiping Yu’vath, a xenos race that had bitterly contested the Crusade’s latter stages. It is recorded to have caused some acrimony when De Falk crossed the floor to join the Ordo Malleus, leaving her erstwhile comrades in the Ordo Xenos somewhat aggrieved to lose the famed and influential Inquisitor to what was at the time a political rival.

She quickly mastered the arts of the daemonhunter and rose swiftly with the ranks of the Calixian Malleus, demonstrating a mastery of occult lore that swiftly had Inquisitors of far longer service seeking her aid and council in matters of the infernal. As time progressed, however, she demonstrated increasingly Radical Xanthite leanings. Rumours began to circulate that she was able to command dark warp spirits at will, and that she had replaced her left eye, lost in battle with a Chaos Magus, with a baleful orb torn from the skull of a half-daemon thing worshiped as a god amid the steaming jungles of Fedrid. Her successes against malign forces, however, only grew in number and scale, as she and her Acolytes cast down the first and most terrible flowering of the Cult of Baphomael on Scintilla. By her own hand, De Falk destroyed the black beating heart of the Nightmare-Hulk Spectre of Winter, which had terrorized Imperial shipping since it was first sighted during the voyages of Solomon Haarlock.

After two centuries of service within the Calixian Conclave and a track record that arguably has never been equalled by her successors, Angelique De Falk was the leading power of the Ordo Malleus in the sector. She always refused to have the fact officially acknowledged, and she declined the appellation of ‘Lord’ which her peers repeatedly offered her despite her growingly sinister reputation. During this long tenure she acted as mentor to more than a dozen Acolytes raised to the Inquisitor’s rank in their own right, only ensuring a strong strain of Xanthism in the Calixian Conclave to this day. De Falk’s successors, in turn, produced other legends. These include Requis Corina, the first to battle the Pilgrims of Hayte and halt the Bloody Solstice on Malfi; the infamous witch-master Inquisitor Soldevan, who slew the psi-abomination of the Bloodmind on war-torn Malice; and the malignant Kul Harkness, perhaps the most suspected and feared of the current Calixian Xanthites. But her gravest test and the act that was to grant both glory and infamy within the Inquisition was yet to come.

The Three Daughters of Atropos
In 799.M39 the hive city of Atropos on Solomon, a citadel with a population of more than 100 million, went mad in a single night. The culmination of a nightmarish plot long in the making, this terrible night of insanity and wanton murder was the work of the Master Sorcerer Alrac the Broken. Long a foe of the Calixis Sector, born beyond the Emperor’s Light, founder of a dozen cults, and author of the thrice-cursed grimoire the Liber Noctis Eternem, Alrac had come to Solomon to kill this vital Imperial world in order to pay off a dark pact struck centuries before with the hellish forces beyond. As the death toll rose steadily into the tens of thousands and Atropos tore itself to shreds, violent chem-storms engulfed Solomon, and madness began to leap from ship to ship in orbit. With every drop of blood shed, Solomon tipped toward the Chaotic destruction of a full-blown warp incursion on a planetary scale. At the centre of this whirlpool of violence, Alrac took the high-prelate’s throne in the gore-spattered Cathedral of Saint Morgana at the pinnacle of the Hive Spire and began his ascension to daemonhood as the gates holding back the warp began to shatter.

Plunging through the storm like a bolt from the heavens came Angelique De Falk’s gun-cutter. It had been pure chance she had been in the outer Solomon system taking on supplies in preparation for a long journey to a distant Inquisition fortress. Ill-prepared for a major confrontation, she was accompanied only by a number of junior Acolytes in training and her personal staff. Although long past the prime of her life, De Falk’s mind was sharp and her power greater than ever. So it was that in order to save Solomon and countless Imperial lives, three of De Falk’s Acolytes gave themselves up to damnation aboard her ship in hurried rituals of terrible power. The gun-cutter smashed its way into the twisted cathedral to confront Alrac at the moment of his dark apotheosis, and De Falk and three bound daemonhosts of dreadful potency confronted the ascending arch-sorcerer. The details of what occurred in the battle have never been revealed, but it is known that Alrac was torn asunder at the moment of his triumph and Atropos scoured clean. De Falk’s shattered body was borne away by her last surviving sorrowful ‘daughter,’ and she was never seen again. Whether she lived or died remains a mystery.

Xanthism and the Ordo Malleus
Given its focus on the direct opposition of the daemon and the warp-worshiper as an organisation, not to mention its access to occult lore and artefacts, it is perhaps unsurprising that many (but by no means all) of the Xanthite faction can be found within the ranks of the Ordo Malleus. These Malleus Xanthites form a powerful minority within the Ordo, and while most are as dedicated to the Ordo’s mission as any other daemonhunter, their methods and concerns mark them out from their peers. In extreme cases, this has lead to covert warfare and strife between particular Xanthites and their brethren. These differences are put aside in most cases by the Ordo Malleus, as this notoriously insular division of the Inquisition is apt to close ranks and keep any discord or intellectual disagreement behind closed doors as far as the wider Inquisition is concerned. This seeming tolerance for the heretic in their ranks is the result of a number of factors, not least being that every Malleus Inquisitor has a close knowledge of the infernal and a schooling in the dark arts to some extent. As such, almost every member of the Malleus fundamentally understands—even if they do not agree with—the Xanthite position. There is, however, a point at which such tolerance ends, and that is the point of moral corruption. When a Xanthite (or any other Inquisitor for that matter) strays from the quest to understand and dominate the warp and willingly or not becomes the pawn of the Ruinous Powers—or worse yet, succumbs to the temptation to bend the knee to the Dark Gods in return for power and the promise of immortality—then the Ordo Malleus will turn on them with all its wrath. The Xanthite faction itself will be at the forefront of carrying out this retribution and is merciless in its pursuit.

Despite Xanthism at its roots being simply a matter of outlook on the daemonhunter’s part, rather than specific association, an important difference remains between Inquisitors who profess Xanthite beliefs and what some choose to call ‘True Xanthites’—men and women who have dedicated their lives and their wills to the absolute mastery of warpcraft in the God-Emperor’s service. Xanthites of this rank and power, usually long-serving veterans of the Inquisition’s war, often become sorcerers and daemon binders equal to any Chaos Arch-Magus or warp prophet. The names of these rare and appallingly dangerous individuals have echoed with equal parts reverence and infamy in the secret histories of the Inquisition and invest the word ‘Xanthite’ with such import and dread. Men and women such as Mokartus, Quixos, Angelique De Falk, and Zaranchek Xanthus himself, according to the Xanthites, embraced the darkness and were willing to risk the ultimate sacrifice in order to safeguard the Imperium—but by the judgement of others, they became monsters in their fall from grace.

Darkness against Darkness
"…And I heard the voice in the midst of the thunder saying ‘Come and See,’ and I saw, And I beheld the Children of Men bearing terrible weapons while the eight-fold star was trampled at their feet, And the fourth seal shattered and the Beast did cower in new-forged chains, The Ancient Seraphs bore witness, their wings dipped in blood, and the lamentations were mighty as They That Can Not Die were cast down, And the Voice in the Abyss spoke again saying ‘It is Done’…"

- The Corrinto Propheticum, declared to be an extreme moral threat and suppressed, 744.M41

Xanthites believe that Chaos cannot be defeated in an absolute sense, for it is a reflection of humanity itself and therefore must endure as long as humanity does. However, those energies and powers created by its existence can and should be harnessed and even enslaved for the benefit of humanity, rather than left as an untamed hazard that preys at will upon the Imperium’s lives and the souls of its people. So rather than surrender to Chaos or hide away in fear, Xanthism holds it must be marshalled and controlled, much in the same way the mute energies of the warp already are harnessed by the Imperium to allow for interstellar travel, navigation, astrotelephathy, and in the manner that psykers are sanctioned and serve in order to benefit the human race. Some even go as far as to controversially hypothesise that this was perhaps the Emperor’s plan all along.

The Xanthite path is defined by three concerns when it comes to all aspects of the warp, its manipulation, and the power of Chaos: investigation, understanding, and application. Individual Xanthites can differ immensely in how they put this into practice, and the lengths to which they go in serve of their ultimate goal of harnessing the power of Chaos and the seething energies of the warp for mankind. The first step of the Xanthite ethos, investigation, is a natural consequence of the Inquisitor’s role and is given licence by the power and authority of the Inquisitorial rosette. This power and the fundamental strength of character are factors without which Xanthism would not be possible. The investigation of the malefic is also perhaps the most obvious reason that Xanthites are drawn to involvement with the Ordo Malleus—even if it was not their first or lasting affiliation— as the combating of daemonic incursions and the rooting out of Chaos cults offers the Xanthite firsthand interaction with the forces of the warp.

It is in the second step, understanding, where many subtle dangers lie. When a Xanthite Inquisitor or his Acolytes encounter malign forces, they prefer not simply to purge its presence, but also to learn and capture what they can from it. Chaos cults and warp-incursions, their nature, powers, and weapons are studied with a view to investing this knowledge into the Xanthites themselves where possible, destroying knowledge and artefacts only when completely necessary. Once these dark materials and lore are gathered and often paid for in blood, they must be then studied and measured, a project that can as treacherous and lethal as the fight to acquire them in the first place. To aid them in this task, many Xanthites value building a strong and tightly knit organisation of trusted Acolytes and agents who share their vision and possess skills of use both on the battlefield and in the librarium. Some Xanthite Inquisitors go much further than this, skirting the edge of true heresy by creating sects of their own or manipulating existing cults to aid them in the unravelling of ancient mysteries and the deciphering of arcane lore.

Current Conspiracies
"To slay a Xanthite, you must first become one…"

- Proverb of the Ordo Malleus

The Xanthites are a diverse group and one whose individual members are continuously subject to the pull of their own obsessive drive to master the warp, enslave the dark powers that threaten mankind, and turn them back on themselves. These obsessions may manifest in a myriad of ways, from the never-ending quest to expand their own knowledge and power, to the hunting down and destruction of Chaos cults and the appropriation of their dark secrets for the Xanthite’s own. Some Xanthites, particularly those who chose to conceal their Radical tendencies, conduct their business of the Holy Inquisition with diligence and zeal, but always with an eye toward their own hidden agendas; they do not shirk from using covert murder to achieve their ends. Other Xanthites care little if they are known as such, confident enough in the rightness of their position to follow it heedless of the opprobrium of their peers, while others have attained such levels of infamy that the fear of their name precedes them even in the Conclave. Regardless of their methods and goals, conspiracy and secrecy are ever the Xanthite’s watchwords where needed, and lies are always a favoured weapon—just as with the daemons they seek to bind.

Hayte, Suspicion, and the Rising Tide
The number of demonic encounters and the spread of Chaos cults within the Calixis Sector has increased at fearful rate over the last century, a fact that has not been lost on the Ordo Malleus or its Xanthite constituents. Given this rise in baleful activity, many of the most senior members and their trusted allies have come together in secret council on Maccabeus Quintus to discuss and debate this phenomenon and its possible causes and potential eventual outcomes. The conclusions of this council, which is believed to have met several times over the last three years, have not been made available to the wider Holy Ordos, or even to the Conclave Calixis, and despite their vehement protests the Tyrantine Cabal has been shut out as well. Some see this development, which has caused considerable acrimony, as an indication that the Ordo Malleus suspects some part of the Calixian Inquisition itself in the matter. No public charges have been made to this effect, and the Calixian Malleus refuses to be drawn into debate.

Since then, it has been observed that several prominent Puritan members of the Ordo Malleus have become decidedly more distant to their colleagues. At the same time, known Xanthites and other Inquisitors with long-standing ties to the Malleus, along with their independent Acolytes and agents, have become vastly more active to those trying to track their movements—far from an easy task at the best of times. These roving groups of Radical Xanthites have been observed travelling to hotspots of daemonic activity as they flare up, often re-visiting the sites of older atrocities searching for wisdom in their ashes, appearing and disappearing suddenly, without recourse to wider Imperial authority, and occasionally riding roughshod over the activities of other Inquisitors. This has only worsened relations between the Xanthites and the rest of the Conclave. One example includes an incident on Carver’s Gate, when the warband of the militant daemonhunter Justinius Vorr clashed with the forces of the Witch Hunter Compt Pryce while pursing a secret cult of the Pilgrims of Hayte in the deep flood vaults of Bane City. Incidents such as these have done little to ingratiate the Xanthites with their Calixian brethren. Matters have worsened recently following the notorious Xanthite Inquisitors Harkness and Golgol’s activities on Landunder, which disrupted a covert operation of the Tyrantine Cabal. Their actions resulted in the death of Inquisitor Slake, a former pupil of the senior Spectarian Lady Olianthe Rathbone. Only the direct and unexpected intervention of the Puritan Lord-Malleus Ionfel, avowing that the two Xanthites were on the Ordo’s work, prevented Rathbone and her allies from declaring Harkness and Golgol Excommunicate Traitoris and sparking open conflict. Deep resentment still simmers over the matter, and Rathbone is known to have privately sworn her vengeance. Given Harkness’s past, this merely adds one more name to a long list of personal enemies, a list that up until now was believed to have included Ionfel himself.

Even now, many of the Xanthites of the Calixian Conclave seem to be moving in an unprecedentedly concerted, overt manner, and many other Inquisitorial factions harbour with deep suspicion and fear about what this unknown pattern portends.

The Seven Devils of Dread Calyx
Of all the dark lore that rests in the secure vaults of the Calixian Malleus, some of the most contentious and strange deals with the myth of the so-called Seven Devils of Dread Calyx, an ancient legend that still forms the obsession of many Xanthites to the present time. The region was first named in the writings of the legendary Rogue Trader Solomon Haarlock, whose thirteen voyages out past the edge of Imperial space in the late 36th millennium would define the Calyx Expanse as a realm rich in “Souls, Plunder, Wealth and Things Best Left Undisturbed.” Three millennia later, the Angevin Crusade would forge this region into the Calixis Sector. Haarlock’s writings spoke of the seven devils as beings of dark power, fiends who haunted this area of space, some as savage predatory beasts, some walking amid the cold stars and others worshiped as fickle gods by those mortals who fell inside their domains. These seven, Haarlock claimed, were connected together by a dark and terrible web of fate, and if all were brought forth at once, a key would be turned that would extinguish the stars themselves. Haarlock’s writings, filled with allegory and symbolism, have continued to strike a cord with the Ordo Malleus, particularly those of the Xanthite persuasion, and still echo through the sector’s histories. Those who have sought out the truth behind the legends are known to have discovered much of value in them, as well as great peril.

Today, the greatest authority on the myth of the seven devils and the malefic lore that surrounds them is Inquisitor Emeritus Andros Bray, Keeper-General of the Ember Archive at the fortress-asteroid of the Bastion Orpheus in the Maccabeus system. The aged Bray, a fiery proponent of the Xanthite ethos in his younger days and reputedly the longest-living servant of the Calixian Conclave, has long since retired from the field. However, he will happily expound on the subject to anyone the clearance to plumb the Ember Archives’ depths. He also makes it a point to show any would be seekers a shrine he keeps to those Inquisitors and their Acolytes lost or vanished on the quest to uncover the seven’s secrets. Among the memorials and reliquaries is the empty tomb of Morell Orpheus, the famed daemonhunter and onetime master of the Calixian Malleus, after which the bastion is named.

The Bray Lexicon
Andros Bray, in his long consideration of the legend of the seven devils, has formed his own list that he believes offer the strongest clues as to the nature of the entities involved. Compiled from concordances and evidence ranging from recovered cult relics, local folklore and divinatory prophecy, to the records of entities encountered at various times by the Inquisition. They are as follows:
 * The Voice of the Flame: The daemon Balphomael, lord of the dark fire, Scintilla/various.
 * The Dweller in the Depths: The Sightless Gaze, autochthonic entity, nature unknown, Spectoris.
 * The False Prince: Tychak Crowfather, spiteful, pre-crusade indigenous deity of the Ashleen, incarnate form slain by Saint Drusus, Iocanthos.
 * The Treader in the Dust: The Radiant King, legendary avatar of madness, Malfi/various.
 * The Eater of the Dead: Mord’dagan, supernatural beast of legend, godhead of the Saynay cannibal cult, Dusk.
 * The Empty Hunger: Astral entity/aetheric residue of extinct xenoform, attributed cause of lethal psychic phenomena, Drusus Shrine World/Sacris.
 * The Night Traveller: Nature unknown, also known as the kin-slayer, one that returns from where none has before and whose predicted coming will herald the End of Days.

Acolytes of the Xanthites
Xanthite Inquisitors favour building interlocking circles and cells of trusted Acolytes and agents who can be relied upon for their loyalty, dedication, and strength of will in the face of the onrushing and insidious threat of Chaos. As their activities often take them in the forefront of direct battle against very powerful and implacable enemies—including Chaos cultists, daemonkind and those corrupted by warp taint—the Acolytes of the Xanthite are expected to be self-reliant and martially inclined, and even the most bookish savant will be required to know how to defend himself and stand on the firing line when needed.

The most singular characteristic of the Xanthite Acolyte is their likelihood of possessing a deep knowledge of the arcane and usually forbidden daemon lore. These Acolytes use occult artefacts and even daemonically-infused weapons far more than their peers in the Inquisition. This knowledge is hoarded by the Xanthite Inquisitor, who chooses to teach his more trusted Acolytes in order to empower them to defend themselves. A chosen few within each Xanthite’s retinue may even be practising sorcerers, just as their master may be in turn. To many Inquisitors, this would be the most deviant of heresies and grounds for immediate destruction. This is not true in the Xanthite’s service, but to imagine that these occult Acolytes are given free rein is also be incorrect. The trust a Xanthite Inquisitor grants his servants comes at a price beyond the danger of destruction by those of another faction. Xanthites are often better placed than most to know when one of their own has fallen to corruption, and react accordingly with crushing finality.

Xanthites and the other Inquisitorial Factions
The Xanthites are an old, powerful, and heavily entrenched faction, shielded both by their own tightly-knit organisations and the wider secrecy and fear that attends their reputation. The influence that many Xanthites wield within the Inquisition’s structure—and particular within the Ordo Malleus—makes them by far the most politically potent of the Radical factions. Despite the sinister suspicions many have of their membership’s activities, Xanthites are the most tolerated Radical faction, if only grudgingly so, by the majority of their peers. Exceptions exist, of course, on both side of this divide, and many Puritans, particularly of the Ordo Hereticus, will never find common cause with a self-professed or even suspected Xanthite without the direst need. Conversely, some Xanthites take perverse pleasure in outraging their more rigid-minded colleagues at Conclave.

In terms of their relations with the other Radical factions, the Xanthites often maintain a measure of distance and disdain, ranging into outright antagonism toward such excommunicate splinter groups as the Phaenonites. The Xanthites’ own obsessions seldom leave room to give more than passing attention to the political infighting and squabbles of the other Radical factions—except where it directly affects their interests or seeks to challenge them. But if a particular morsel of occult lore is tangled up in the machinations of others, their fellow Inquisitors can find a Xanthite’s presence to be an unexpected and usually unwelcome factor in their proceedings. This general indifference is returned as antipathy on the parts of many other Radical factions. To the likes of inveterate intriguers such as the Recongregators and Istvaanians, the Xanthites represent a powerful and dangerous element of extreme unpredictability capable of upsetting their plans almost at will, while to the Libricar and other Puritan extremist groups, the Xanthite is the enemy within.