As you drop towards the surface, you can already see fires burning across Sanctity, and the darting lights of gunfire ripping back and forth between buildings in the city. Clearly, there is an attack against the palace; as you fly lower, you can see a sizeable force of troops, several hundred strong – presumably the League of Semyaza, given their lack of PDF or InSec uniforms – swarming through a breach blown into the palace walls. As you watch, a massive fireball rips through a building near the palace as one of the security towers is blown to pieces.
The League are not alone in their assault. Hundreds, if not thousands, of the ordinary citizens of Amaymon are following in their wake, wielding whatever weapons they can muster – in some cases nothing at all.
The palace garrison of Internal Security troopers are fighting back, firing the palaces' tower- mounted multilasers indiscriminately into the crowd, and a sizeable cohort of InSec troopers are meeting the assault blade-to-blade, trying to push them back to the breach in the walls.
There is some fevered activity on one of the security towers, and the tower's guns starts to spit multilaser fire skywards at the descending landers...
This is a full-blown battle that the acolytes are dropping into. Initially they will almost certainly wish to neutralise the tower guns firing back at them, which some focused fire from their Aquila's autocannons should be able to do, but this will swiftly draw the attention of more of the defence towers (and will sooner or later shoot down the surviving Aquilas). If they don't set down and deploy, then Captain Dawson will point out that the whilst their landers are a long way from being assault gunships, they do have over a platoon's worth of veteran grenadiers at their back to deploy into the fray.
This is a chance for the acolytes and their accompanying stormtroopers to really let rip with their military skills. Elements of the battle which the acolytes may encounter.
• A gun-tower has several dozen stormtroopers – not to mention a similar number of ordinary citizens - pinned down behind a low wall in the outer gardens, and the lawns between them and the tower is strewn with several dead League soldiers. Several of them were carrying demolition charges, but none of them made it to the tower.
• A reserve platoon of twenty InSec troopers is moving along the walls to catch the attackers in a crossfire. A scaling line fired up by one of the stormtroopers provides a way up to intercept them.
• If the swirling melee at the breach can be won, the massed citizenry will break into the palace, giving a vast – if ill-disciplined – force to support the acolytes. Charging the InSec lines from the rear should do it.
• The PDF command centre is being held by two squads of PDF troopers alongside the InSec force. They are well dug in, but a successful command or intimidate test will see the PDF recognise the Inquisition amongst the 'enemy' – realising this, they will change sides and support the acolytes as best they can. If they take the command centre and investigate the vox net, they will find the revolt against InSec is planet-wide. The vox transmitters, however, have been destroyed beyond repair, so there is nothing they can do.
• The most heavily protected area of the outer palace is the Chancery house – the entrance to the inner palace and the Ministry of Internal Security's headquarters - the ultimate goal driving the enraged populace. There will be dozens of InSec troopers protecting the
building, and ultimately Klaus Otto. Otto himself will fight, but will try to escape instead if he can (happily sacrificing his men)
If Otto is taken alive, it will take a hard (-20) Intimidate test by the acolytes – and in practical terms a ring of weapons-drawn stormtroopers – to keep the mob from ripping Otto limb from limb on the spot. Promising all sorts of Inquisition-based horrors awaiting him will help! If they fail, they will need to massacre a sizeable number of the civilians, and will end up having to fall back into the Chancery building themselves.
If they can keep things under control, they will be able to interrogate him. He is clearly scared, but is equally clearly even more terrified of Lord Iblis.
If asked why they were after the command centre:
“Lord Iblis – he wants the files. There's something there, something secret...I don't know. He said I couldn't understand; that it could break the Imperium itself. And all this time the damn thing was on the other side of the planet. No wonder we never found it. ”
If asked about Iblis himself – especially if the acolytes are under the impression Lord Iblis is a descendant of the man named in the files of the facility:
“He...he found me. Eighty years ago. He needed the governorship – needed the planet to be somewhere he could control absolutely, somewhere he could be safe, needed the resources of the PDF and the Ministry of Promethium to search the planet for the command centre. He gave me the Ministry. I manoeuvred the nobility into selecting a man they'd never even met in person. They never realised what he was. ”
If pressed about Lord Iblis' nature, Otto will simply respond:
“You have no idea what you're facing. He'll kill you and you won't even slow him down.” If able to escape, before or after interrogation, Otto will flee further into the palace.