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“So far from the light of the Throne, it is easy to get lost in the darkness.”
— Inquisitor Vownus Kaede
Inquisitor Vownus Kaede is a noted scholar, philosopher and an optimist. He is also a skilled swordsman, irreverent scoundrel and a self-righteous reprobate. Named after the rogue hero of Catuldynus’s epic verse allegory The Once-Pure Hive, Kaede has spent most of his life living up to his namesake’s legacy. Originating somewhere, “East of Sol and West of Macragge”, Kaede signed on with a free captain at a young age and has never looked back.
The details of his elevation to Inquisitor status are hazy and change every time he tells the story. The only point that remains consistent is that he was once a member of the Ordo Xenos, before finding his true calling as a Witch Hunter. Regardless of his chequered past, Inquisitor Kaede has been a respected member of the Tyrantine Cabal for over a decade. Though he is nominally of Puritan leanings, Kaede is a skilled psyker who fanatically believes in the psychic future of the human race and is willing to casually commit almost any atrocity in order to safeguard it.
He and the martially inclined acolyte bands he employs spend a great deal of time travelling between Calixis’s subsectors chasing down rumors of hidden witches. Kaede absolutely detests Rykehuss’s methods and takes a great deal of pleasure in spiriting promising young psykers out from under the Witch Finder’s pogroms. Inquisitor Kaede appears exactly the way Imperium citizens picture a Witch Hunter. From his wide-brimmed hat, to his Inferno Pistol, to the ancient short-bladed force sword named “Slight Jest” that he bears at his side, there is no mistaking his appearance and what it implies, which is exactly what Kaede wishes. To Kaede, the Tyrant Star prophecy is a delicious mystery to be unlocked.
Little does he know of the enemies he has cultivated, particularly in the obscure Libricar faction, who have marked him for death. In recent months one of his notoriously militant Acolyte bands was drawn out and ambushed while investigating a Heretek cult in the Sinophian hinterlands. They were slaughtered to a man, and the hot-blooded Kaede has vowed to avenge their deaths---little realizing the true nature of the culprits responsible or the trap being laid for him. Nor is his the only name on the Libricar’s death list.