Ever delayed, yet never ending, the tale of the Techpriestess continues from >>96383431

>In the months that followed, the fleet of the Von Nassau-Mendoza dynasty plied the pilgrimage routes of the Segmentum Tempestus, slowly making its way towards Holy Terra. At the vanguard was the 'Pitiless Blade' under Salafié's command, now stripped of the iconography of Chaos and looking almost as it had when it first launched into Imperial service before the Age of Apostasy. Behind it loomed the vast bulk of the dynasty's flagship, the 'Argentum Omnipotens,' accompanied by myriad escort craft and light freighters that darted about the capital ships like a shoal of fish.

>Each port of call brought with it the promise of countless millions of cheering peasants crowding city squares as they vied to catch a glimpse of the "avenging angel of the Omnissiah." No doubt, the Rogue Trader's propagandists had done their job well, and as he arrived on world after world with his red-robed mistress in tow, the Trader was keen to capitalize on the trillion-Throne investment that had manufactured Salafié's legend and spread it to the masses.

>From the darkened reaches of the Caligari Sector to the fortress world of Praetoria, from the great fleet docks of Bakka to the continent-sized cathedrals of Ophelia VII, the Rogue Trader paraded his mad Techpriestess through Imperial society. Heralded on each world as the benefactor of this newly-minted hero of the Imperium, the Trader inked contract after contract at near-extortionate terms with local merchants eager merely to be invited to the nightly receptions where they might hear Salafié drunkenly recount for the fifth or dozenth or hundredth time how she had vanquished a Chaos lord and cast him out into the vacuum.

>For a time, the Priestess was even content with this arrangement. For a time...