We're told left right and center about the treachery and vile nobility of Malfi, but anyone know of any descriptions of everyday life. I have a team of acolytes going there and can't decide on how to present the planet.

I've done up an introductory blurb, I'll post it up in the fan fiction section after a bit of editing and spellchecking

Edit: That said, its a massive project to detail it all and I'm only about a third of the way though

I've introduced a cathedral, a seedy casino, and a few members of the local nobility into a story I'm working on. If you're interested in any of those, I could dig up the descriptions for you.

Yeah, I've done quite a bit, although not much with the nobility.

I set a long running game there in an isolated hive on the south pole.

This is the intro bit I wrote for it, if thats useful.

Vision from space

“You approach Malfi from the nightside, the whole sphere seems to glow with a spider’s web of yellow light, there are only a few sections of natural dark, Malfi is a veritable Ecumenopolis.
A vast array of orbital docks and manufactoria dominate low orbit, a million system ships bustle about, shields flare as Malfi’s extensive ring of debris and flotsam collide with ships and the low orbit docks”

Re-entry

The ship’s shuttle takes about an hour to negotiate its’ way to the orbital dock, once there the Acolytes disembark and are escorted along with scores of other people, they have their passports checked and sent on to the Quarantine section.
As part of normal proceedings the Acolytes are given vaccination shots and are expected to be quarantined for a month before being allowed onto Malfi. Quarantine is a serious concern, Malfi has a huge population and disease and be devastating. Naturally then, the Quarantine officials can be bribed. (Ordinary +10 Bribery test) Cost is 100 per person minus 10 per person for each degree of success). If they do not bribe, or fail they must spend a month in Quarantine, with no contact from the outside. Of course, they could show their Inquisitorial credentials…
Once they have negotiated Quarantine, the Acolytes are directed along with a number of other people through the labarythine spaceport to a shuttle service heading directly for Gorgonhive. They are warned “The weather conditions at Gorgonhive are deteriorating; the shuttle will still run if you will sign these waivers”. If the Acolytes choose not to chance it, they are diverted to Hive Perseus and take the Trans-Syrtis Carriageway to Gorgonhive. This adds a week to their trip.

The shuttle trip is rough, through the window you can see the shuttle heading for a vast circular storm near the southern pole. Once under cloud cover, gale force winds slam the shuttle sideways and it is struck by lighting several times, each time the light dim and oxygen masks drop from the ceiling. Pass a Challenging Toughness test to not throw up. Through the window, Gorgonhive itself can now be seen.
“Visible as glimpses through the blinding rain and flashing lighting, Gorgonhive juts like a rotten black tooth through the intense white of the glacier below. The Hive forms a single monolithic peak, a black spike protruding above the glacier, it sits on the cliff edge of the continent, the Glacier rides over the lower half of the hive and dump icebergs over the edge, hitting the freezing sea over a kilometer below.”
The Shuttle heads for a set of blinking light on the upper western side of the Hive, there are a few hair rasing moments as winds threaten to smash the Shuttle into the side of the hive, however the skilled pilot directs the craft into the iris-shuttered opening of the spaceport.

Gorgonhive Spaceport
The spaceport is partially open to the elements; freezing rain lashes down into the landing bay, soaking the Acolytes in freezing water before the Landing bay iris clinches shut. The Acolytes and other passengers are quickly escorted into the warm Spaceport.
Once out of the spaceport, the Acolytes board a tram which spirals its way down to their level through the Arteria at a disconcerting pace. They get off in at the Stack Gamma-Crimson station. The Hive stack towers above them; it is a city in its own right.

Hive Stack Gamma-Crimson Section 61 – Apartment Q12
The Acolytes have lodging booked for them in Hive Stack Gamma-Crimson, Section 61, Apartment Q12. The lodgings have a 12 month lease paid in advance.
Apartment Q12 is a cramped two bedroom apartment with minimal amenities (power, running water,gruel-tap, cook-plate), it smells of mildew, the fluoro lights flicker and the lino in the kitchen area sticks to your feet. It has a single large window in the main room overlooking the market and concourse of Stack Gamma-Crimson. Behind the Stack you can see the massive trapezoid shape of the Magon – Augeneer Complex Gamma. The walls are thin enough to listen through and the door has a simple lock (Routine (+20) Security test to pick).
(If the Party is too large to fit in one apartment, then adjacent apartments will have been booked).
The Acolytes should report for work at Complex Gamma the next morning.

From the Personal Records of Inquisitor Vissidus Cerrick

Hive Primus Palacial of Malfi is a towering nest of vermin, a many-spined beacon of calumny and heresy seen dimly in the heat-fogged distance across kilometeres of manufactory slabs, tower mills and Guild Incorporate serf habs. The Fendus Spires, adopted by the Ordos mission upon this vile and humid hiveworld, are too far from the black heart of governance for convenience, too close for comfort. I watched the plasma torches atop the Cathedra Magnus after nightfall, like a constellation at this distance.

The spores that carry the sickness ride the condenser plumes and nullrail cars from hive to spire. Calumny and heresy without, cowardice and radicalism within.

The lesser Inquisitors and Adepts Militant of the mission have all but turned from the vigil over heresy to the prosecution of mutation in the Malfean depths, and Inquisitor Bal Rustifar blesses their actions in his eagerness to show worth. He has no idea of the fool he has become in the eyes of the Conclave. Mutants in the waste processors! Transgessions against the Emperor's divine form in the underspine wastes! Upon Malfi, the greatest stinking sore of heresy in the sector! He is the crullander who lies still to hunt fleas upon his shaggy hide, because it is easier than hunting meat that bites, runs or hides.

Rustifar thinks I come empowered by Lord Inquisitor Caidin to judge him, and seeks to bury loyal Gellidias in virtuous report after virtuous report of mutant blood cast about the underhive. The dataslabs pile high, and Gellidias' candles burn low. Let Rustifar continue; I see no reason to disillusion him. I consider it a kindness to a fellow monodominant, strayed from the path. I will be the glint of the ax that as yet still waits to fall.

But of course, it is not Rustifar the Mutant-Scourge I am here to judge. It is my oldest friend amongst the Malfean Concordance, Inquisitor Christophan Weyl. Christophan, what is it you have done within this ferrosteel pit of intricacies and venom? You always were uncomfortable with the absolutes of monodominant doctrine, but you were the last adherent of Concordance philosophy I would have suspected to be swayed by transparent arguments for radicalism.

The methods of the Archenemy only succeed at first the better to lure in the Emperor's faithful. There can be no blurring of the line, for to step across is to become the Archenemy's weapon.

Christophan knows I am here. The first lesson learned upon Malfi is that there are no secrets in a sheaf of secrets, not even within the Ordos. Yet he has not come to me - which means he knows why I am here. So I wait, and review much that is known upon Malfi that neither Christophan nor the mutant hunters saw fit to pass on to Ordos datavaults and librarums.

-

The intriquers and heretics-in-waiting of Malfi pass vox-scrolls and pict slates back and forth incessantly, furtively and openly. The nullrail cars and bannered ferrosteel vaultways are choked with the passage of servitors and heralds, oppressive in the murky heat. Blinded Intermediates and Second Couriers call their services from every waypost, and vox thieves can be hired in the darkened alleys and underworks. No missive proceeds upon the shortest path. The simplest negiotiation of greeting between Guild Incorporate supplicant and Hive Primus Palacial guide can require months.

I have dispatched Gralte and Serridias to watch Inquisitor Rustifar's latest mummery of mutation beneath Hive Surtus. I fervently hope the distraction will engage all parties involved; I tire of Rustifar's posturing, and neither Gralte nor Serridias suffer hive-noise well.

To Christophan, then, and the cryptic vox-scroll brought to me by an Ecclesiarchy skull-servitor pressed from its duties as censer-bearer into the role of courier. It was Christophan's voice: "The best way to catch dustviles in the librarum, old friend."

The best way has always been debated, and debate we did over quistel and roast tubers aboard the Vast Magnificance some years ago; upon the ceiling with a dartgun, or to coat the librarum with hooked spiretwine and wait for the dustviles to hook their own snouts. He on the side of the spiretwine, and I for the dartgun.

From what I have learned, Christophan believes himself to have laid spiretwine across and throughout the dust of Hive Primus Palacial. I believe he has slid into radicalism, or worse. The distasteful truth of it is that Christophan has formented a cult - faux-cult, perhaps - of his own intricate design, reaching into the Mechanicum, the Administratum and the Malfi governance of the Eminence. Attractive as a flower to the insects of corruption, its principle members set in their ways through the use of psykers, and how the insects have flocked! Christophan's assumed identity and puppets are the whisper of the day, his Brotherhood of Antiquarian Ways the target of secret envy and quiet aspiration.

At what point in the slide from monodominant rigor does such an undertaking seem rightful? That the use of sanctioned psykers for such ends is the Emperor's will? I have considered this often in the past days. How little there might be to separate one such as I from Christophan Weyl, and yet such a gulf.

It is set in my mind that I must go to meet with Christophan, if he will not come to me, to settle my doubts one way or another. It would be easy to judge now and issue the Carta Diabolis, but if Diabolis he is, then it should be my hand to carry out judgement. The Emperor's will be done in full and true sight of heresy, or not at all.

Altough I don't have any visuals, I'd probably be inspired by Jordan's Wheel of Time saga where there is a people called Cairhienin. They live in a society based on french (pre-revolution)18th century nobility and feudal japan. Everyone is playing the Great Game, which is based on turning everything done and said to your advantage while giving nothing away. Thus getting any truthful information from an Innkeeper will probably be impossible without the right kind of bribes and Innuendo, or maybe secret favors. Whatever you said will be interpretet in the most conspiratory fashion possible.

And unlike other nobles houses elsewhere, this applies to all citizens, high and low.

As for the planet itself there is one or more Hives, thus a fairly technological society apart from the medieval society structure of serfs working in manufactoria for their liege lords. I imagine the nobility would have the most control in the Hives, in contrast to Scintilla where Corporations and trading houses has as much power as the nobility.

That's it. But since Malfi is such an important planet in the sector, I'll imagine it will be presented in an adventure model some day.

Friend of the Dork said:

I really like the comparison you've drawn of Malfi to Cairhien. That's about how I wrote it into my story.

Ophilia spoke with one of the confessors that served Goneril before she departed, who told her to stay vigilant against the sway of corruption. Malfi was a dangerous place, where heresy seemed to lurk around every corner, and sometimes it masqueraded as faith. Ophilia vowed that she would not let herself be fouled by the taint... [snip]

Landing on Malfi was no more enjoyable than exiting the Warp, but she did manage to keep her last meal inside her where it belonged. She had been given instructions to take lodging at The Arms and await word of the Cardinal’s arrival. His ship would send a message as soon as it came out of the Warp to give her an estimate of his arrival, and another by vox when he would be making the to the planet’s surface.

During the wait, Ophilia couldn’t help but feel suspicious of everyone she met. It seemed that everyone had some sort of hidden motivation, and they naturally believed that she had a hidden motivation, too. She felt like they were trying to read things into her words that she hadn’t said. It made her skin crawl. She remembered what the Confessor had said to her before she left Iocanthos, and she was quite happy to sequester herself in her room except for meals. She took her meals downstairs in the dining room, if for no other reason than to get a read on the staff and the clientele and assess them for potential threats... [snip]

When Ophilia made her way to the spaceport, she felt as if she were on the battlefield, only she didn’t know who the enemy was. She watched every other person there with extreme wariness. Her hand was not just on her boltgun; she had the weapon in her hand. If anyone had thought to challenge her, the sight of a fully armored Adepta with her weapon drawn was enough to disabuse them of the notion... [snip]

“Is this your first time on Malfi?” Barbosa asked some time after they’d finished their meal. He was taking his ease on the divan, sprawled out as if about to take a nap.

“What?” she replied. She had been re-arranging her belongings in her pack. “Oh yes, I’ve never been on Malfi before. But I’ve been here for a month now waiting for you.”

“So long?” he said. “Then you have my sincerest apologies. This blasted place is a festering sore in the galaxy’s gullet. I pray I won’t have to be here quite so long as you have already.”

Ophilia Midkiff said:

Ophilia Midkiff, is there some place where I could read the integrality of your story ? I'm looking for ideas and NPCs to steal...

Sorry for the OOS, folks. These forums seem to lack a PM utility.

Kyorou said:

Ophilia Midkiff, is there some place where I could read the integrality of your story ? I'm looking for ideas and NPCs to steal...

Sorry for the OOS, folks. These forums seem to lack a PM utility.

I'm posting the story on my LiveJournal as friends-only so I have a closed reading group. (Will be submitting it to the Black Library after it's edited and polished.) If you have or want to make a LiveJournal account, let me know what your username is, and I'll add you as a friend so you can read it.

http://twilightsun.livejournal.com

Just got Ascension, and you may me pleased to know (or may already know...) that there is a rather good datafax on Malfi within the adventure "The Red Wake". And yes, Ascension IS awsome and worth getting, IMO.