Tainted snow (40K kaaos)

[hullukoira]

From the night sky, the balefull glow of the Eye follows me...

They say you can trap the essence of Warp by holding a mirror up to a manifestation of Chaos, say, a mutie. The terrible, twisting power of the Warp will cause the image to etch itself in to the mirror, thusly making it, or say rather branding it, a fragment of the whole of Chaos.

The Eye whispers to me...

Chrystals will do the job also. Held up to a manifestation of Chaos, they will trap the essence, as the warped energy is caged by the multifaceted object. A tiny fragment of Chaos is then forever doomed to wander the innards of that labyrinthine mineral.

I can hear it, even above the freezing howl of the nightwind...

And that's what snow is. Chrystals, I mean. Tiny ice chrystals.

Hahahaha. The door is locked! Bang away!

And so the very image Eye of Terror, looming above us, is trapped into millions and millions of tiny icy shards, as the strong winds of the northern hemisphere drive the thin, ragged clouds hither and thither across the high skies of our home planet. And then these shards fall upon us. Tainted snow.

Tainted snow.

I arrived here some months ago, send by the Inquisition. I instantly noticed something amiss, awry, with the place and the populace. I took precautions. I purified my water and food with the rites of the Holy Emperor. I wore a rebreather outdoors. I installed air purifiers to my chambers.

Pray.

Oh yes. I started praying, daily.

Does it help?

Sometimes. It soothes, if naught else. Still, there was no taint in me, so it must have been working...

No taint? Really?

Be silent. The rabble outdoors is making enough noise as it is. But I digress. Now where was I?

The precautions...

Ah, yes. I took precautions and then started searching for a clue as to the source of the taint in this cursed place. It's very much like Cadia, here. The same sky, or almost. here, the navy lights are absent from the starscape. For now...
First, I checked the water. It had the taint. I inspected the wells. Interestingly, surface water seemed to have higher rate of tainting in it. The ground was cleaning the water.

But not well enough.

It was pure chance that I happened to check pristine snow for the taint. I was horrified by what I found. At that moment I knew from whence the taint originated, and how it got to the water. And to the populace.

The children like to play in the snow, do they not?

I wish you kept silent. I liked when it was just me talking to myself. But yes, the children love to play in the snow. They loved to throw snowballs at me, too, not knowing they were trying to soak me in the very essence of the Warp. Or maybe they did know. For children, they were certainly very determined to hit me with as much snow as possible.

Enough of the children. I know what you did.

Yes.

You will kill me.

Yes.

And yourself.

Yes. I am tainted too, now. Better thus to die, as the navy comes for the planetarty purge. It will be over soon. This will be my final missive to my masters at the Inquisition. They shall do as they will with it. However, I would like them to pursue the matter of tainted snow. The same could be happening in Cadia.

The cursed Cadia!

You might be right there. Hopefully not, as Cadia has always been under the watchfull eye of our Holy Emperor.

Don't say that! The name burns!

Burning is good. For both of us.

They're coming through the door.

Yes. They're coming. They want to babtize me in the melt waters at the foot of the icefall. I have kept them at bay for this long. But they are adamant. Still, it will not matter, not anymore. Even if I were to succumb completely to Chaos, I could not call off the planetary purge.

Enough. It is time.

Yes. It is time. Goodbye. Emperor receive my soul.

*****Sending message upstream*****