//------------------------------//
// Prologue: Recruitment 
// Story: Of Xenos and War 
// by Snake Staff 
//------------------------------//


++Lunar-class Cruiser Kyne’s Fury++
++3.794.873.M39++


An old man stared out at the stars. Those tiny pinpricks of light in the cold darkness of space, faintly visible now through a scratched, dirty panel of transparisteel. Many of those lights, the old man knew, were systems full to bursting with the loyal subjects of the God Emperor of Mankind. Others held only so much stellar dust and barren rock. Some, he knew, had been destroyed eons ago, the light of their final moments simply having yet to reach the space he occupied. Still others contained only horror and suffering for the children of mankind. It was those final systems that kept the old man so busy.
Inquisitor Tas Rovini of Ordo Xenos turned his gaze away from the bottomless, strangely hypnotic depths of space with a slight grimace. He’d allowed himself a moment’s rest, but no more. Still, the moment felt entirely too long. His ocean-blue eyes returned their focus to the text on his desk. An ancient Munitorum report displayed itself on a dataslate, long since sealed from the common record, but preserved for the Inquisition by the efforts of Ordo Scriptorum. The language was typical Administratum fare, but the incident described was far from ordinary. According to the report, dated 719.M36, several Imperial planets on the edge of Segmentum Obscuras had issued cries for help, prior to total silence. 
Inquisitor Rovini examined the brief report for the fifth time before pulling another file onto the screen. This one, an Inquisitorial investigation carried out approximately six years after the planets had last been contacted, noted the unusual fate of the Imperial worlds. All traces of life had been utterly eradicated in a manner not consistent with any known form of Exterminatus. No evidence could be found of Warp taint, and no known xenos in the sector employed such a method. The Orks were anything but subtle in their crude war-making efforts, and the Eldar raiders known to occasionally molest that region of space had never shown a propensity to annihilate all living things on over a dozen Imperial worlds. The investigation had ended inconclusively when the Inquisition suddenly found its resources strained by the Despoiler’s 5th Black Crusade and the subsequent surge of Chaos-inspired uprisings across the galaxy. The fate of a few minor planets at the edge of the Imperium had quickly become unimportant.
Now, more than three thousand years later, Inquisitor Rovini was dedicating much of his time to sorting through ancient records, trying to gain some sense of this adversary that he had been warned of. With his reports from the curious little xeno survivor to use as comparison, he was making some degree of headway. The maze of Imperial bureaucracy was incomprehensibly vast, but certain things could be found by those who knew how to look. Now, perhaps if he just-
The Inquisitor’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of buzzing on his desk. “Ah, yes, of course. Kylara is here.”
With a small curse at time for slipping away so damned fast, Inquisitor Rovini pulled up Kylara’s reports of the last several months and sat back in his chair. With a full head of neatly-combed white hair, matching thick mustache, and a face most would describe as friendly, the Inquisitor had little difficulty dealing with subordinates face to face. He pressed a control to unseal the locked door, and bade his Acolyte to enter.
The door slid open momentarily. Interrogator Kylara was first through. An olive-skinned, green-eyed woman of average height, her hard face, perpetual scowl, and prominent cheekbones, in conjunction with her station, leant her an air of menace to all who knew what she was.  Behind her were a pair of grey-armored Inquisitoral Stormtroopers, hellguns in hand. Between the two, barely reaching up to their waists, was the reason for her long absence.
A small, purple xenos stepped into the room in dutiful sync with the men around her. Though her equine ancestry was obvious from her form, her horn, wings, enlarged eyes, and shortened muzzle made her xenos nature equally as apparent. For a creature that had so often vexed the Inquisitor with her insane panic and painfully slow interrogation, she seemed relatively calm at being escorted into his presence. Though, he noted, she still flinched away from the shadows, holding closely to the brightest areas she walked through.
Kylara led the small procession straight to her Inquisitor without hesitation. She strode directly up to his desk and halted, arms folding behind her back, head bowed in a gesture of respect. She waited patiently for the troopers and xeno to arrive behind her, then simply stood still and awaited direction.
“At ease, Interrogator.”
Kylara lifted her head. “Yes, my Lord. I came with the xeno, as ordered. What would you have of me?”
“For the moment? I wish you to wait. I will want to hear everything in person, but first I would speak to this one.” He gestured slightly to the xeno. “Alone.”
Kylara blinked in surprise. “My Lord, is that… wise?”
Inquisitor Rovini raised an eyebrow. Kylara was not normally the sort to question orders. Precisely why she was so useful. “I can assure you, Interrogator, that I shall emerge from this meeting intact and ready to hear your full report. Now please, I do not appreciate my time being taken without my consent. You have escorted our prisoner here as I asked, now kindly wait for the few minutes until I have need of you again.”
“But, sir… Your safety may be compromised.”
“Interrogator.” he said in a tone just a fraction lower.
Kylara lowered her gaze, almost meekly. “Yes, my Lord.” She turned and walked briskly back the way she came, armored boots clanking across the metal floor, a dark expression on her face. The stromtroopers were not far behind, though they glared hostilely at the small equine on their way out. The door slid shut behind them with another touch of the controls, and the Inquisitor and xeno were left alone.
The little equine xeno called Twilight Sparkle gazed up at the old man in behind the desk, her face curiously void of emotion. When she spoke a few moments later, it was in a surprisingly dull monotone.
“You’re monsters,” she said. Her tone was that of someone stating a fact, not making accusations. 
Inquisitor Rovini raised a curious eyebrow at that. Few talked to his kind like that and expected to live.
“You sustain your empire through cruelty, lies, and violence. You kill anypony – anyone” the xeno corrected herself, “Who tries to disagree with you, or to leave. You hate everything else in the galaxy. You’ve wiped out entire species just for existing. If you had found us first, you would have destroyed my kind just because we were there and not human.”
“Bold, to come here and say that to my face.”
“I’ve told you all I know. But I’m still alive. And your flunky there,” she gestured back at the entrance where Kylara had gone, “Has been letting me see real things since I woke up. She hasn’t been asking me for more. If all you wanted was my story, you would have killed me when I was comatose and helpless. But you didn’t. You want something more from me.”
“Straight to the point then?”
“I see little reason to walk on clouds about it.”
“And if I wished to?”
“You don’t strike me as the type.”
“An accurate assessment,” Inquisitor Rovini folded his hands together and leaned forward. “I find myself in the position of a man who needs as many resources as possible, as soon as possible. While some of my more fiery colleagues might… disagree with my methods, I feel that certain liberties of creed can be taken in defense of the God Emperor’s realm.”
“A lowly xeno is a resource now?”
“A xeno psyker of your power level could prove valuable.”
“You want my service.”
“Again, correct.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“That depends. Do you consider death a choice?”
“So quick to threats?”
“No. A mere statement of fact. You will leave this ship in my service, or you will never leave it at all.”
“Hmmm. You’re very confident for somepony - someone alone in a room with a powerful psyker.”
Rovini met the xeno’s gaze with an utterly unconcerned look. She couldn’t know about the concealed force field on his person, nor his teleportarium beacon, nor his specially consecrated armored robes, nor any of the other multi-layered defenses sequestered about his person.
A look of curiosity appeared on Twilight’s face. “What is it you want me to do?”
“Go where you’re told, and use your mind and powers in service to the Imperium of Man.”
“What’s my motivation?”
“Other than life? Revenge.”
“You’re going to fight those monsters.”
“Yes.”
“The ones that destroyed everypony on my homeworld.”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think I’ll believe you? What makes you think I won’t just run the moment I get the chance?”
“Tell me, where do you think you can run to?”
“Perhaps I can reproduce asexually. Perhaps I’ll start laying eggs all over some distant planet and repopulate.”
“You would already have done that, if you could.”
The little xeno gave what looked to be a shrug. “Fair enough.” 
“And are you truly prepared to allow the same xenos that killed your planet to escape any retribution from your kind? Now that you are the last?”
“Princess Celestia wouldn’t want me to join you. She’d say that you were horrible villains and murderers, and that to join you would be to lower myself to the same level the dark ones are at.” 
Twilight lowered her gaze to the ground. Inquisitor Rovini simply stared at her. For a moment, all was silence.
“But Princess Celestia isn’t around anymore, is she?”
The old man shook his head.
“Everything I knew is gone. Everypony I loved is dead – or worse. What else do I have, really?”
“You have the same choice everything else in this universe has: you can fight, or you can die. You may have a moment to consider. But do not try my patience; I have much more work to do.”
“I’ll do it,” said Twilight, without a moment’s hesitation.
“You pledge your allegiance so quickly?”
“Like you said, Inquisitor, I really can only fight or die. And I’m not going down without dragging everypony behind Equestria’s doom with me.” Then Twilight did something the Inquisitor truly did not expect – she smiled. “You’re monsters, but I need monsters to destroy them.”
“You may start by referring to me by my proper title. To you, I am “Lord Rovini”, or simply “My Lord”. Is that clear?”
“Yes… My Lord.”
“Good. Now, Interrogator Kylara’s reports speak very highly of your psychic potential. Still, I require proof of your abilities as a psyker – and your willingness to obey.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“A tribe of feral Orks has been a persistent nuisance to Imperial mining efforts on Carsius II. You will accompany a number of men there. And you will destroy the xenos scum.”
“Sir…” Twilight’s expression looked uneasy at the prospect of such a mission.
Inquisitor Rovini’s face hardened. “I have neither the time nor the inclination to coddle you,” he said sharply. “If you cannot handle such a simple task, there is no place for you in the Imperium of Man. So I’ll ask this only once: will you do as I ordered?”
Twilight’s face froze. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Seconds ticked by in utter silence. Them, just as quickly, it was over.
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Good. We shall speak again when the task is done. Dismissed.”