the forgotten sin

The Forgotten Sin
Truly, Clegrans are blessed by their Emperor, the preachers claim.  Few are the mutants, none are the xenos, and many are the virtuous laborers; Clegran is a world of peace and productivity.  Yet it was not always so.  Legends among the laboring classes speak of a strange army that once trod the soil of Clegran.  According to the legends, which vary in place and time yet are consistent in theme, there was a time that a sinner of horrid power invited doom upon Clegran, so openly and brazenly that some think it must be exaggeration.  The sinner, the legends insist, was a heretic of colossal power, gifted with a dark energy and charisma that could make all that heard it believe that any thing that sinner said was simple common sense, and brooked no dispute in their certainty.  No dark gift of evil gods was this, but the power of a xenos relic discovered on the planet by the sinner, who took control of it and made himself a king.
The legends describe the sinner’s reign as being one of horrible normalcy; people who went about their daily lives totally unconcerned by the wrongness of their thoughts, as common sense to them was as madness to others.  Their master, the indoctrinated insisted to all, was simply the Emperor reborn, come to show them His love, and did so by telling them the truth.
The legends disagree on exactly how this sinner’s reach spread so far beyond the range of his voice, and how the Ecclesiarchy could have possibly allowed this to go on for as long as it did.  The legends all arrive at the same ending to the story, however.  One day, an army of strange men with paper-white skin and shimmering material like wind-glass on their faces appeared from inside the spaceports of the planet.  These strange soldiers, dressed in gold and black and armed with whips and pistols, descended on the hubs of the sinner’s reign, and began the work of dismantling the false Emperor.  How these strange soldiers, who talked to none in public and worked from buildings that rang with screams to the clouds above, were able to resist the common sense the sinner proclaimed, none can say.
The end of the sinner came when the strange men carried the sinner from his stronghold, surrounded by cowed crowds of mournful Clegrans, who could not understand what was happening to them.  He ranted and screamed, brandishing his heretical artifact, trying to make the strange men see sense, but they did neither speak nor listen.  They carried the sinner into a ship with sweeping wings like an eagle, flew him off into the darkness, and were never seen again.

Most Clegrans put some stock in this legend if they know of it, for the true servants of the Emperor are legion, and would surely be hardened against the lies of an impersonator.  The better-informed Adepts of the world, however, find it confusing.  There is no force under arms in the Greater Tri-Sector that matches that description, and no such an artifact has ever been found in Cloudburst.  Moreover, if mind control it was, it was poor; simply changing common sense provides no barriers against a future adjustment, mind-wiping, nor psyk-intrusion.  Still, the legend is so pervasive among the proletariat and easy to use as a cautionary tale against the influence of the xenos that no official effort to suppress it has ever been made.