“A fool and his sanity are soon parted, so I’ve often said...”
–Margrave Khoraliz, Faceless Trader and former Chartist Captain
Throughout the length and breadth of the Imperium are men and women who would possess that which is most forbidden to them, and there are men and women likewise determined to avail them of such items. While some collectors content themselves with objets d’art from Mankind’s distant antiquity, or tomes of ancient and often outlawed philosophies, others seek out items of spiritual significance. A few crave items wrought by the hands of heretics and blasphemers, while others desire the relics of long-lost alien empires. The more singular the artefact, the higher the price it can command, and the higher the risk in trading and possessing it, for to do so is to transgress against the most fundamental laws of the Imperium. In the Askellon Sector, there are many willing to break such laws, for the ruling families making up the Lords of Askellon have long considered themselves a class apart from the Imperium at large and only loosely subject to its laws. As the Pandaemonium closes ever tighter about the sector and the Adeptus Terra appear to abandon Askellon to its fate, even these ties grow ever less binding. It is perhaps an irony of the cruellest kind that even as the region’s damnation grows ever closer, its rulers seek to abandon themselves to ever greater transgression, as if deliberately averting their attentions from the horrifying fate closing inexorably around them.
The market in xenos artefacts is an especially illicit one, for any caught engaged in it in any capacity at all, whether buyer, seller, supplier, or broker, is guilty of a crime usually punishable by death or worse. The trade in these and other proscribed items is rarely spoken of openly, and so is known by a thousand euphemistic titles the galaxy over. In the Askellon Sector, it is known as the Faceless Trade, a reference to the fact that none ever admit to engaging in it, yet it continues nonetheless. The scale of the trade varies enormously, and Ordo Xenos Inquisitors have long suspected that the sector lies at the heart of a network that stretches far out into the trackless Wilderness Space surrounding it, exploiting stellar charts that may even pre-date the Imperium.
What abominable alien empires might be marked upon such charts remains a secret known only to the most senior of the Faceless Traders, and Ordo Xenos Inquisitors estimate from recovered examples that several dozen uncatalogued sources exist. These range from technological relics of unfathomable function wrought from gleaming alloys to primitive icons carved from stone and stained with the blood of aeons of sacrificial offering. Some are plainly mechanical, while others can only be appreciated as art. Some are clearly weapons, while others are imbued with
xenos-born psychic taint so heavy that to touch them is to invite insanity. Many are small in size and might even be worn openly as jewellery, eliciting a thrill of transgression in the wearer, although risking death should an agent of the Emperor knowledgeable in such matters lay eyes upon them. Others take the form of armaments of wildly exotic form and function, the wielding of which may be as dangerous to the bearer as to his enemies.
No Inquisitor can say how many private collections of xenos artefacts exist across the Askellon Sector, but some place it at several thousand at least. Such an estimate is based on a combination of pre-cognitive projection, readings of the Emperor’s Tarot, and evaluation of investigative archives. The majority of these collections are likely to be little more than a dozen objects secreted away and viewed only by the owner and his closest associates. Others, however, might be far larger, taking the form of vaulted mausoleums within which might be housed many hundreds of
utterly priceless and damnable objects. Access to such places is likely to be determined by status and bloodline, with only the most highly-ranked of the Lords of Askellon permitted even to know of their existence, let alone to view their contents.
Many such items might appear at first glance as entirely innocuous and harmless. A tiny bauble wrought in the form of some long-extinct alien beast once handled by a sentient being might function as a beacon which its creators can detect across light years of space, causing them to home in on a potential food source. Items worn as jewellery have on more than one occasion been known to meld with the wearer’s flesh, insinuating into the body before changing the wearer into some hideous simulacrum of the species that created it. Others might be hives for ravening alien viral strains that, when inadvertently activated, could wipe out entire planetary populations.
This danger goes a long way to explaining something of the astronomical value certain individuals place on items brought before them by the Faceless Trade. Life at the highest echelons of the sector’s aristocracy can lead some especially bored noble scions to seek out the most outrageous pastimes; in many cases, the more dangerous to themselves and to others, the better and more valued it is. In many cases, however, it is the simple fact of transgression that makes such items so desirable. A noble scion might deliberately stand before a thousand lesser-ranked sons and daughters of the aristocracy openly carrying an item as valuable as some entire planets. Every noble in attendance would know of the
crime and be utterly stunned, even seduced by the display, yet none would utter a word, to the bearer or to any figure of authority.
Such things are part and parcel of life on the very edge of the Pandaemonium for the lords of the sector, and as long as they crave the fruits of the Faceless Trade, there will ever be smugglers, brokers, and traders willing to charge them for it. The Unknown, the Cerulean Pact, the Edge Syndicate, the Ivory Masks, and others groups deal in satisfying this craving. Bartering with alien races and excavating lost ruins, they make available many items that should have been safely lost and forgotten. Rivalries between these groups is intense and bloody, with new territories and specialities carved up between them like the carcass of some gigantic beast between voracious predators. From season to season, as new delights are uncovered and new fashions emerge, the power of these traders rises and falls, as each seeks to dominate the desire for the illicit taste of the alien.
It is not only nobles who covet such objects, although their wealth certainly grants them access to more than their share. Many walks of life host their own outcasts who would seek power in forbidden places and knowledge from hidden sources. From hereteks to fallen savants, many are the fools who would seek to gain possession of alien power, and who find that power possessing them.