The story of Saint Ubar Permaneo began with a murder. The Saint was born amongst the tribes that roam the Empty Continent upon the world of Sumer, nomads whose entire civilisation rests on the backs of their quadrupedal lizard-beasts. Each individual tribe rarely numbers more than a hundred people, and in such small gatherings there is little room for class distinctions save for the Sheikh and his first wife, who is called a Shaman and oversees spiritual matters. Ubar was not the Sheikh, nor was he of the tribe’s elite. He was a handyman of sorts, who kept the tribe’s water purifiers running through the most basic of Mechanicus rites, taught to him in exchange for a small gift of precious minerals claimed from the deep desert.

Far beyond the concerns of this simple man, events were moving that would set him on the path to sainthood and redemption. In the city of Khatep, far from the empty spaces, Sumer’s Governor had been ordered to raise a new regiment for the Imperium, to form a crusade and regain recent losses. Governor Imhotep, selfishly seeking to maintain his crumbling authority, decreed that instead of offering his entire Planetary Defence Force to the Guard, as was pious and traditional in times of crisis, he would send no trained soldier, merely a levee of citizens. Nor did he wish for his cities to be depopulated by mass conscription, and so he ordained that every son between the age of sixteen and eighteen should be formed into regiments.

The tribes, who had historically been exempt from tithes through their humble circumstances, were ordered to provide their own sons as well. It is known that Ubar had a son of seventeen, though his name has been lost to history, and, when he was ordered to send his son away, he begged and pleaded with the Sheikh for an exemption, for his son was learning his fathers skills and would be of great value to the tribe. But the Sheikh was a dutiful and pious man, and knew that it was the Emperor’s will that the tribe give their sons. For He is the Father of all Mankind, and must look beyond the needs of the individual, to meet the needs of humanity. Ubar was not a pious man, and in his wroth he slew the Sheikh.

His rage was meaningless, and his impiety was punished. His wife took her own life with his ceremonial dagger, rather than face the scorn of the other women. His son went to the Guard a bitter man cursing his father’s name. He was brought before the Sheikh’s son and heir, and the grieving young man sentenced him to the highest punishment that was in his power to give. Ubar would be banished, into the Thirsting Sea.

Within the shifting sands of the Empty Continent there lies a space even more inhospitable than the surrounding deserts and wastelands. It is a perfectly circular stretch of rolling dunes one thousand kilometres in diameter and within its bounds no life can survive. Nothing grows here, no clouds cover the sun, and there are no oases or water of any kind to provide relief to the weary traveller. Indeed, any water brought near to the sands seems to evaporate at a much faster rate. It is into this Thirsting Sea that the Tribe’s worst offenders are banished.

Ubar was brought to the edge of this desert, shackled and guarded by the Tribe’s warriors. His chains were removed, he was stripped of his tribal raiment, and he was cast into the desert naked, with no food or water to sustain him. History does not record how long he wandered in that waste, and the Saint’s own writings describe that time as having lost any sense of day or night. He wandered deeper and deeper into the desert as his skin blackened and peeled, his hair bleached and feel out and his feet were sliced into ribbons on the shifting sand.

It was as he neared the heart of this vast emptiness that Ubar first beheld his miracle. At the very heart of the Thirsting Sea rose a great pillar of rock, hundreds of metres high. As he drew closer, the shape resolved itself until it became an enormous plateau of jagged rocks, topped by the most verdant greenery Ubar had ever laid eyes on. As he looked upon this miracle, his spirit was invigorated and he pressed on heedless of his wounds and fatigue. The rock face was jagged, and Ubar used these protrusions to haul himself to the very peak of this plateau.

He wandered through paradise, passing birds and animals that were untroubled by his presence, having never before encountered humanity, and taking rich fruit from the low-hanging branches. At the heart of this wondrous place was a perfectly circular pool of clear water. Ubar walked into the deepest part of this water, until he stood at the centre looking up at the water’s surface. As he walked, his wounds closed themselves and his peeled skin grew fresh and thick. He emerged from this baptism aware of his sins, and dedicated his life to writing the wrong he had committed. He returned to join the crusading forces, where he was named Saint Permaneo.

These are the three miracles of Saint Permaneo. He crossed the Thirsting Sea without need of food or water, a journey of many months. He found the Oasis at the heart of the Thirsting Sea and his wounds were healed. Finally, he returned across the Thirsting Sea, again without food or water, before walking on bare feet to the city of Dhofar, two thousand kilometres from that oasis.

Saint Permaneo, in, The Saints of the Segmentum Tempestus, by Archbishop Lemuel Matthijs (Dohan Publishing House, Iram, Sumer, 3 350 245.M38)

The City of Iram had been built around the ancient plateau at the heart of the Thirsting Sea. To avoid the depletion of the city’s water supply by the Sea’s strange quirk, Iram had been built atop a great disk that ringed the plateau, raising the city three hundred metres above the desert floor. This titanic structure was supported by fifty enormous pillars, that had been buried into the bedrock beneath the sands. It was these structures that gave Iram its name; the City of the Pillars. Atop these monumental structures were three platforms stacked vertically, with twenty-five metres between each, creating a three-tiered structure within which the population of Iram thrived.

The highest tier was the only one exposed to the desert sun, and held the most prestigious of Iram’s institutions: its colleges. When Saint Permaneo had been martyred, the Ecclesiarchy had decreed that a city should be built around the site where he first ascended, to serve as a school for future generations of priests. Iram was a Doctrinopolis, a University City dedicated to religious schooling, and its highest tier, save for the spaceport, held dozens of colleges both great and small, as well as the Cathedral built to the north of the plateau, from which a narrow footbridge bridge lead into the Oasis itself.

On the lowest tier dwelled the menials deemed necessary to supporting the city, and those deemed necessary to support the menials. This was a city in its own right, with slums, bars, shops and all the other trappings of humanity. It was here too that the mundane corruptions of society could be found, restricted drugs, prostitutes, gambling dens and betting shops. And yet it was this literal underbelly that worked the great water purifiers, who kept the power on in the city itself and who cleaned the homes and halls of greater men.

The middle tier was therefore set between the sinful and the virtuous, and its composition reflected this dichotomy. It was here that the more valuable Imperial citizens lived, the university staff and those students without the means to afford a room in the colleges. Nestled in one small segment of this tier, above the power plant and beneath the spaceport, dwelled the enclaves of the other Adeptus: the Administratum, the Arbites and the Mechanicus, each admittedly necessary but barely tolerated in what was firmly an Ecclesiarchy city.

Within this tier also resided those non-Imperial figures deemed necessary for the survival of Iram. Within walled compounds, the emissaries of merchant families and cartels plied their wares to a city that survived on imports. In a discrete but well-regarded café, whose bay windows looked out of the city’s perimeter into the open desert, a meeting was taking place between one such merchant and a priest who seemed to be more muscle than man, in spite of his obviously advanced age.

Confessor Sacharine lifted the almost comically undersized teacup between his thumb and forefinger, and looked at the merchant sitting across the table from him. The young woman, appearing to be in her late twenties, could only be described as lithe. She practically lounged in her gilt chair, and her rich red bodyglove, not common fashion on Sumer, gave her an exotic, foreign, sensuality that he supposed was the entire purpose of such an outfit. There were two possibilities, he remarked to himself, either she was a high-ranking member of the Harkon Trading Guild who relied on her charms, rich blonde hair, and painstaking flesh-sculpting to maintain her position or she was a courtesan sent to negotiate on their behalf. The former would be preferable, if a more dangerous negotiator, for the latter would show that the Harkon’s believed the priesthood to be the lecherous fools that far too many assumed they were.

Sacharine sipped from the tea, remarking that it was a fine beverage as befitting one of the second tier’s most reputable establishments, and looked to the merchant’s bodyguard. The singular was unusual; he himself was flanked by two penitent-soldiers and his retainer, a scrappy teenager who struggled under the weight of his immense Eviscerator. Rather than bring a small retinue of guards, as was common, the Harkon negotiator had brought only a single man, either a sign of naiveite given their recent arrival in the city or a deliberate gesture of confidence and strength. Their guard was unmistakably a former Guardsman, and wore the shemagh and fatigues of the infamous Tallarn Desert Raiders, so he was inclined to presume the latter.

‘These are our overheads for a year’s worth of operations,’ he spoke as he slid a data slate across the table and set his teacup back into its saucer, ‘as you can see, we hold a single event every day, a larger event once a month and even larger festivals on Saint Permaneo’s day, Sanguinalia Eve and Emperor’s Day. These are just the events with the most overheads, we permit an audience as we train as well.’

The Harkon negotiator, a Miss Cafferty, leaned over to collect the data slate in a way that deliberately but subtly emphasised her décolletage. Her effort was wasted on the stoic Sacharine, but he suspected that her evident skill was affecting his page, for the boy was weak and not yet committed to their Church.

‘Total expenditure over the course of the year of, on average, eight hundred and seventy-five units, not to mention natural wastage over time. Troubling overheads indeed, Confessor, but ones that are well within our means.’

In an instant her sensuality had disappeared and she had become a true stoic and a professional, exactly the sort of personality Sacharine valued. A common courtesan could not have been so flexible, and he recognised the effort that the negotiator was making. In mere moments she had judged and assessed him before modifying her approach to suit his individual personality. He could never admire someone so obviously unsuited to conflict, but her cunning was worthy of respect.

‘Those numbers would be within the means of any half-decent Cartel, Miss Cafferty,’

‘Please, call me Lara. This is hardly a formal setting.’

‘Very well, Lara. We have quantity enough through the Ecclesiarchy itself, what we want is stock of quality. Stock that isn’t half dead when it reaches us, and that can hold its own in the arena without wasting an inordinate amount of our training staff on expendable assets.’

‘Not to mention something that will draw the crowds.’

Lara smiled amiably, and Sacharine’s own lips curled upwards in amusement.

‘My concerns are purely theological, you understand. Our college’s rites must be respectful, and our students must bloody themselves on worthy opponents if they are ever to minister to the Imperial Guard. But you are right.’

He paused in silent contemplation, and Lara simply waited expectantly for him to continue.

‘There are thirty-six different colleges within the Doctrinopolis. Each represents some distinction in dogma or traditions, and each must compete for the patronship of the students. The College of the Purifying Blade may be one of the largest in Iram, but our reputation is dependant on the quality of training we can provide. Without mutants, deviants and sinners for our initiates to bloody themselves against, then our supply will dry up.’

‘Deviants and sinners are, I’m afraid, beyond our purview,’ the young woman continued, gesturing to her silent bodyguard who handed her a data-slate, ‘but mutants are something we can provide in abundance. The majority of cartels seek to specialise and monopolise. They latch on to one resource and consume or destroy the competition until they have total control over a single export. The Harkon Trading Guild instead believes that we must squeeze every resource we can from our holdings. It makes us less specialised, but it gives us greater flexability.’

Sacharine held up a hand to quiet the negotiator.

‘Spare me the pitch, if you please. My concern, and the concern of my College, is simply whether you can deliver what we seek.’

Lara Cafferty bowed her head, a gesture of submission designed to smooth over any bad blood, before reaching over the table to hand the Confessor the data-slate.

‘We import chromium and steel from Nova Iberia to the cities on Sumer’s other continents. We have also recently moved into trading Iberian water to Iram as part of that trade route. Both of those goods come through Hive Castle, Iberia’s only hive and main spaceport. Like most hives, Castle has an Underhive populated by mutant tribes. The mutants sent to you by the Ecclesiarchy are only those who were foolish enough to move above their station, if you’ll pardon the pun. The desperate dregs of mutant society.’

‘So, what do you propose?’

‘There is a man on Iberia, a Michelangelo Borgia. In his youth, he was accused of running an extensive criminal network. Mr Borgia has offered to send his employees into the Underhive, to ambush and kidnap mutant warriors with obvious and dramatic mutations. We will ship those mutants to the Arena with the biannual water shipments we are already running, thus cutting down on costs. The whole process will be more expensive than your contract with the Ecclesiarchal Courts, but I guarantee an increase in quality.’

Sacharine leaned back into his seat, which creaked and groaned under his weight. He rested his hand beneath his chin, and his brow furrowed in intense concentration. Through it all Lara sat silent, knowing that this was the moment upon which the entire affair turned.

‘If you can offer this increase in quality,’ he began ‘then I am willing to accept your offer. However, I trust no legal indiscretions will result from the collection of the stock?’

‘We have already applied for and received permission from the Proconsul of Hive Castle. I assure you everything is above board. As for the quality, I invite you to judge for yourself. We have included a sample, free of charge, of one hundred mutants with next month’s water shipment. If they meet your standards, then we shall send an astropathic message to Nova Iberia and our head office on Odiham instructing them to increase the shipments to five hundred units, twice per year.’

‘And if they do not meet my standards?’

‘Then the shipment of one hundred is still yours to keep, and our business will be concluded without any bad blood on our part. The Harkon Trading Guild considers professionalism to be the ultimate virtue.’

The cage shook with the fury of re-entry, scattering the figures who cowered in irons. Five cages, each containing twenty mutants, nestled among immense storage tanks filled with water. The slaves had spent six months in the hold of this immense lander, sealed within the belly of an even larger starship, and before that they had spent a similar amount of time in warehouses in Nova Iberia’s port district as they were brought in over the course of many months by their captors.

The men who wandered the spaces between the cages, half glimpsed through holes in their tarpaulin coverings, were not their kidnappers. These men wore grey coveralls marked by an unknown insignia, and their only interactions with their cargo came three times a day: twice to feed them some oaten slop in a long feeding trough and once to hose the filth into the channels that ran beneath the cages. The men were not cruel, but their utter indifference proved more wounding than any cruelty could. They performed routine maintenance with the same detached familiarity that they displayed when feeding a hundred sentient beings.

All of a sudden, the buffeting stopped with a great jarring thud that scattered the few slaves who still stood. One mutant fell onto a woman seated near the front of the cage, staring out through a hole in the canvas. She shoved the young man away with a snarl, and the spines that jutted irregularly from her flesh carved a shallow gash across his feathered forearm. The whirr of the engines, which had been a universal constant since their descent began, slowed and stopped until the hanger was shrouded in an eerie silence. That silence was broken as, with a klaxon’s cry and strobing red lights, the great ramp at the front of the lander dropped open.

Incandescent white light forced its way into the cages, and the occupants screamed or covered their eyes. Their entire lives had been spent underground, and the harsh sunlight caused an almost physical pain. The young woman with the spikes, who looked to be in her mid-twenties and the prime of her health, was less effected than most, but still squinted her eyes until only the smallest part of the cursed light could get through. The remaining mutants simply huddled together for comfort; fine warriors reduced to the level of mere beasts.

The cargo was unloaded in order of importance, the hundreds of water tanks being hauled past the five cages before they were finally dragged out by the claw of a two-legged walker. As they were dragged out into the full light of day, the mutant woman looked out her tear in the tarpaulin and saw an endless stretch of desert, as far as the eye could see. A lesser mutant would have been driven insane at the mere sight of that emptiness, but the woman’s gaze instead quickly left the expanse and settled upon a strange man who was watching the cargo being unloaded.

He was obviously no stevedore; close to seven feet tall he bore a warrior’s physique, a shaved head and a long beard. He was dressed in a priest’s raiment, and by his side staggered a small teen who struggled under the weight of the largest chainsword the mutant had seen. This man strode up towards the covered cages, heading towards the mutant’s corner. She did not shrink back at his approach, and she met his eyes with a defiant glare as he lifted the tarpaulin to assess the woman like a butcher looking at new livestock. She refused to be intimidated, and was confused when a discrete smile appeared on his face. He began to mutter to himself.

‘Yes, you’ll do nicely.’