The Eight Stars of the Black Hole Ketosis

Hank's family had been in the ore refining business on the planet Quickshard for as far back as he knew. His father ran the company, and his father before him, and before that who knows: who keeps that much history?  Taggltopp was a semi-precious beige stone used in costume jewellery. Its value was in quantity over quality, the fashion in this galactic segment was to wear overdone neck pieces studded with hundreds of taggltopp  'gems'. Rank after rank arrayed in rows. Hank's company, Quickstrip Inc, was the sole refiner on Quickshard, and had exclusive access to all the manufacturers on the nearby worlds. Taggltopp refining was nothing special. The basic business nous of Hank, and his father before him, and his father before him, was that you sell at a fair price: not too high, not too low. Too low, you are not making enough profit, especially after the mineral excise you send to Marquet, the planetary governor. Too high, and people will start to wonder if there are oth

The planet The planet Oewldwarld had been long abandoned, its only current sentient life being a few stray mutated things, and "sentient" was describing them generously. Many people in the Imperium and beyond had visited Oewldwarld in its glory days.  A tourism "hunting" style world, travellers from far and wide traversed its green fields and fought skirmishes among its grey buildings. The opportunity of war was endless - anyone who wanted to fight there, could. Anyone, of course, that could afford the landing fees. Now days it is a barren place, and almost none walk its surface. People still often talk about how great Oewldwarld was, and how they wish they could go back there. Nothing prevented this, of course. The landing fees were long gone, and it was reasonably easy to reach with existing star maps that people had. No defences stopping them landing. Not even anyone governing it right now to say they could not approach. Yet it remained one of those place

Eight stars drifted in gigantic circles around the black hole Ketosis (designation Black Hole K), their orbits slowly degrading over the aeons. Eventually they would be consumed, but the generations that will witness that event will have nothing in their histories about those who were there today. Inquisitor Berlin had been investigating reports of whole cities gone mad in the planets in the Circle system, populations devolved into blood, lust, disease and madness. Within his great cruiser was a ground force of elite Grey Knight terminators, but he felt it wise to bring in outside help for this mission; warriors of a more disposable nature. There were no local guard to speak of, merely militia, and even so they would prove too frail for the task at hand. The Astartes also had no significant presence nearby, bar for one small outpost. A veteran chapel; a space station orbiting a barren world, where the most decorated of the Novamarines would take pilgrimage to reflect on the glory of t