"Rannick believes you're capable of great things. Either way you'll settle a wager."
- —Darius Melk to the latest recruit to join Inquisitor Grendyl's warband of Acolytes at Atoma Prime.
Sire Darius Melk is an unscrupulous Imperial noble who serves Inquisitor Grendyl's warband of Acolytes as an intelligence analyst and spymaster.
Darius Melk, whose formal title is Sire Darius Melk XIV, Lord of the Quartervest, Holder of the Endless March, Warden of the Crux Mortem, Thrice Decorated for Bravery by Lord Dolmar Martialis, is an unscupulous and greedy scion of House Straxamus, an Imperial noble house. He currently serves as an Acolyte of the Ordo Hereticus in the retinue of Inquisitor Grendyl. He is engaged with the rest of Grendyl's warband in scouring the Nurglish Chaos corruption from the lower levels of Hive Tertium of the Moebian world of Atoma Prime. He operates like the rest of the warband from the mobile headquarters they have set up upon the requisitioned Rogue Trader frigate Mourningstar.
Melk is essentially an intelligence analyst for the warband. His responsibilities include collating and analysing reports from reconnaissance teams, Grendyl's Wyrmwood deep cover agents and loyal citizens of Hive Tertium who risk their lives to deliver vital intelligence about the plans and actions of the Cult of Admonition and the Traitoris Militarum of the Moebian 6th Regiment. Melk identifies priority targets, enemy supply lines and transitory weaknesses in the Heretics' growing forces.
Melk also runs the Requisitorium aboard the Mourningstar, where other Acolytes can come to carry out contracts that usually obtain something useful for Melk in return for the right to purchase unusually powerful weapons and other wargear that Melk may have "acquired" elsewhere.
History[]
Darius Melk is an unscupulous nobleman of the Imperium who did see combat as a younger man on Cymballa V. While he now serves the Inquisition, Melk is happy to use this position of power to better himself, particularly in the pursuit of profit. The Sanctioned Psyker Sefoni, for instance, knows that Melk uses the Acolyte teams of the warband who carry out combat missions in Hive Tertium against the Heretics to also spend some time searching for something valuable in the underhive, though she does not know what this is.
Melk has an ascerbic personality and greatly dislikes any individuals who do not show him the proper deference he believes he is due as a nobleman. This includes some of his fellow senior Acolytes in Grendyl's retinue, including Sergeant Major Vincent Morrow and Flight Lieutenant Gillia Masozi, who he feels do not follow the proper "protocol" for dealing with their social superior. He also has a tendency to dismiss anyone he believes will not be useful to him in pursuing his own personal quest for private gain.
One person on the Mourningstar he does seem to get along with, however, is Commodore Alice Hallowette, the Mourningstar's purser who also runs the Commodore's Vestures shop where she sells high-end vestments to Grendyl's Acolytes on the side. Both Melk and Hallowette seemed to be joined together by their shared love of shameless greed and desire to use the Inqusition's activities on Atoma Prime for their own profit.
For instance, Melk often assists Hallowette in carrying out the various unauthorised missions she provides to Acolytes heading into Tertium's lower hive. She expects them to recover valuable technology from the Traitors which she can then sell for a profit on the black market. When Melk first found out about Hallowette's little side-scheme, he threatened to tell Grendyl about it until he was offered a bribe from the profits of the ventures to "look the other way." In truth, the side missions do not really disrupt the Inquisition's operations in Hive Tertium, as such for-profit activities are equally disruptive to the Heretics' goals.
Sire Melk also wants to use his growing association with Hallowette to arrange an audience with the Rogue Trader who commands the Mourningstar, Shipmistress Emora Brahms, as House Brahms is a wealthy and influential Rogue Trader dynasty that Melk wants to forge a connection with. Hallowette attempted to make the introduction at Melk's request, but Brahms refused him in no uncertain terms, telling Hallowette that she "didn't have time for social climbers." However, Melk is not yet ready to take no for an answer.
Melk appears to know the identity of the traitor amongst the major noble houses of Hive Tertium who has been assisting the Heretics in accessing classified data found in the Archivum Sycorax. This unknown traitor aided the Heretics in gaining access to the hive city's Throneside district's Archivum Comms-Plex 154/2f as well as deleting a portion of the records for Flow Control Hub Delta-12, both of which were intended to aid in the spread of the Walking Pox among the hive's lower levels before the authorities could do anything to stop it. He has hesitated to inform Grendyl of this information, claiming that he wanted to deal with the traitor in the "traditional honorable way."
Sources[]
- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (Video Game), Character conversations, Cut Scenes
- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - Tertium Vox Intercept I