Those first days with Hadrian were pretty unpleasant. By the end of the second day the worst of the obscura withdrawals had passed. I suppose I should be grateful because the experience cured me of any desire to every try the drug again. It induces itching, sleeplessness and a number of other unpleasant side effects including paranoia. A little paranoia is a healthy thing, but when every time you turn around you find a two meter tall giant in blood red armor glaring at you, it gets to be a bit much. The astartes never deigned to speak to me, but it was clear he was suspicious of me. I took refuge as much as I could in Hadrian’s library, which although stacked with dreary instructional tombs about the virtues of blah blah by Saint Whatever, was at least free of murderous super humans. The psy blockers took longer than I expected to metabolize away which turned out to be an unexpected bonus. If you are at all familiar with me it won’t shock you to learn that my first impulse is rarely to be completely truthful. There are those who will insist that honesty is the best policy but I can tell you from a position of some authority that those people are morons. While I did my best to learn Hadrian’s lessons about protecting myself from daemons, I deliberately underperformed on his picting exercise, pretending to struggled to render the apple each time I attempted it. The blockers were somewhat helpful in this regard as they made the deception somewhat more believable than it might have been. 

 

Access to the ship was a pleasure. After being locked up for so long it was nice to be able to walk. The crew, irritatingly in some cases, seemed to be somewhat afraid of me, though whether this was due to the fact the knew I was a psyker or the fact I was travelling with an Inquisitor I wasn’t sure. Again, the fact that the astartes giant would seemingly appear behind me at random intervals did did not help my cause. I was able to make friends with the ships astropath, a lank haired young man named Caiphon. As astropaths go Caiphon was ok. We spent time drawing the Tarot and playing regicide on his ancient board as well as in other less cerebral pursuits. His amasec was terrible and I took the liberty of absconding with several bottles from the officers stores to improve his lot. Best of all not even an astartes would barge into an astropath’s sanctuary without cause and so I found some relief from his constant glowering.

 

My own quarters were in one of the passenger state rooms a few doors down from Hadrian’s office. It was furnished but very bleak as I had no possession of my own to fill the space. It did have a large marble bathtub though and I spent an hour or so everyday just soaking. My hair was a problem as we lacked any shampoo on board until, one day when I visited him, Caiphon produced a small bottle of scented soap and a turtle shell comb that must have been worth a small fortune. I suspect he stole them from the Navigator and if that was the case I was equally impressed by his thoughtfulness and his stupidity. In any case it gave me the tools to properly clean and brush my hair for the first time in I don’t know how long.