Inquisitor Solace Bastille

[Lucidum]

Here is my first Inquisitor Character for a Ordo Malleus Warband I'm working on. :3


Inquisitor Solace Bastille
Istvaanian Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus

Solace is Left-Handed

WS   BS   S   T   I   Wp   Sg   Nv   Ld
87   81   61   73   80   93   82   89   88

Equipment: Gauntlet-mounted rotary autogun (in left arm gauntlet on armour) with 4 reloads of silver bullets, Force Halberd, Medi-Kit, 2 Blind Grenades, 2 Psyk-Out Grenades, Bonded Ceramite-Reflective Carapace Armour (Value 6) on all locations but head; armour is adorned with pentagrammic wards; Scrying Monocle with range finder, infra scope, auspex, and bio-scanner; Psy-Tracker.

Special Abilities: Leader, Acrobatic, Jump Back and Catfall.

A fierce female inquisitor with a strange past, to understand Lady Solace Bastille, one must first understand a man named Bastone Sol. Bastone Sol was raised in a Schola Progenium facility on the Hive World of Clove, and by the age of 11 it was clear that he was no ordinary Imperial devotee. He was fiercely proud and pious, his faith in the Imperium of man and the god-emperor unshakeable. However, his talents did not lie in military discipline or religious congregation, however; but in cunning, subterfuge, deceit, impersonation, and manipulation. He would oftentimes coerce fellow orphans into fulfilling his own ends- such as obtaining artifacts or tomes from the restricted Progenium libraries, just so he could research them more thoroughly to fulfill his seemingly boundless curiosity for example.

His most known exploit, one that has become legend among the Schola Progenium drill-abbots of Clove involves a time when the young orphan coerced a female orphan of similar age to give him her clothing. Dressing as a female orphan, and fixing his hair and appearance to mimic a young woman, he infiltrated the women's quarters of the Progenium facility. In fact, the particular orphan he had impersonating was the chosen disciple of Abbotess Londa of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, a Sororitas elder who kept an eye on potential recruits from Ecclisiarchy facilities throughout the galaxy. Perfectly mimicking the girl's behaviour and appearance, Bastone Sol was inducted into the Order of Our Martyred Lady, and became an Adepta Sororitas Battle Sister, a fact that to this day the Adepta Sororitas are embarrassed to admit. Upon his return to the Progenium Facility, it was recorded that the Battle Sister he had been representing had been "Killed in Action," though more likely it is that he was discovered and returned to Clove so as to avoid any official admittance to allowing a male orphan into a solely female Ordo Militant. Questioned by his fellow orphans and drill-abbots alike on his whereabouts and reason for covertly joining the Sororitas, he answered that he simply "wished to learn from the best the Imperium had to offer."

His eccentric, deceitful-yet-devotional methods attracted the attentions of the Officio Assassinorum, and his skills in impersonation and subterfuge caught the eyes of the Callidus Temple in kind. Though being male is seen as a handicap among Callidus Assassins, as female specimens bond more completely to the Polymorphine drug used to shape-change; Bastone Sol committed himself fully to the teachings of the temple, learning all the skills of deceit and assassination, skills which his natural talents only amplified. As the first half of his training came to an end, however, he submitted a personal request to the Temple Masters- that he be allowed to undergo a rare procedure in order to best allow him to proceed with his training, and best serve his devotion to the Emperor of Mankind. Acquiescing to his request, the Temple Masters allowed him to travel to the forge world of Belacane, which was near to his Schola Progenium Homeworld. He was to undergo submersion in Polymorphaline, a substance derived from Polymorphine, only much more concentrated. Polymorphaline allowed for transformation at the genetic level, and a permanent transformation at that. Under the care of Magos Biologis Genetors on the Forge planet, Bastone was submerged in the substance for two years, the Polymorphaline altering his body, moulding and reshaping his flesh, bone, and blood into that of a voluptuous, slender, sensually beautiful woman, the better to serve the Officio Assassinorum and the God-Emperor. Now, truly able to harness the power of Polymorphine in his new female guise, Bastone Sol became Solace Bastille, Callidus Assassin of the Officio Assassinorum.

But Solace Bastille's story does not end here. For after 3 decades of serving the imperium as a dedicated, ruthless, and latently talented assassin, word of one of the most truly pious and devout of the Assassinorum's operatives, reached the ears of the Inquisition. An Ordo Sicarious Inquisitor surveying the temples caught wind of the newly-female Solace Bastille, and, upon testing and mind-probing her constantly to assess her talents and her faith, concurred that she was an ideal acolyte for the Inquisition. She was taken from the Callidus Temple by order of the Ordo Sicarious, and trained even further in the deadly arts of various fields of warfare. Now a member of the Inquisition proper, she used her talents for stealth and deception, as well as the shape-changing boons of Polymorphine, to further the Inquisition's ends, working for various inquisitors of all 3 ordos. The man who was to be her true mentor was an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor by the name of Paragon Von Lumis, who inducted her into his personal retinue, utilizing the former assassin, former Sororitas' skills at combat, trickery, and infiltration to disrupt Chaos Cults, Daemon Worshippers, and any other enemies of mankind that they came across. After only a year, the Conclave was petitioned and Solace Bastille became a full inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus.

Though her own personal views have changed over the course of her life, her faith in the Imperium and the Emperor have always maintained true. She is identified as a Radical Istvaanian Inquisitor, as she truly believes that the only way mankind can survive is by weeding out the weak, enforcing a 'survival of the fittest" mentality. She knows that Chaos, the archenemy, is the truly greatest test of man's resolve, and through nigh-unending conflict against corruption and damnation, the human race will persevere and evolve. To this end, she oftentimes uses questionably ethical procedures in her work, although never under any circumstances wielding the powers of chaos as renegade inquisitors might. She has often used her influence within the Officio Assassinorum to assassinate Chaos Cult leaders, many times sparking outright conflict between the Cult and the world it infiltrates, thus forcing the ordinary citizens of the imperium to fight, and in her mind evolve, to better defend themselves from corruption. Interestingly, due to her own trans-gendered nature, she believes that, of the sexes of mankind, women face the most adversity, and are often downtrodden and underestimated, making them the more "evolved" and "survivable" of the two. This view often skews her perspective somewhat, although it is more of a personal belief than a code she enforces on others or shows outright.

Solace Bastille is a lithe, slender woman with white hair, a side effect of the Polymorphaline that made her what she is today. She has dark green irises and strangely sharp teeth, similar to those Space Wolves marines demonstrate- perhaps an indication of her original, yet now unknown, birthplace. She has a scar over her left eyebrow, a remnant from one of her early assassination missions that did not go as smoothly as planned. In combat, as a full inquisitor, she wears a suit of ornate Bonded Ceramite-Reflective Carapace armour that covers all but her head. Her left gauntlet mounts a rotary autogun loaded with daemon-killing silver bullets. The armour is inscribed with pentagrammic wards- inscriptions of the Liber Daemonicus that protect her from the warp-entities she has committed herself to destroying. Underneath her armour she wears her Callidus Assassin SynSkin, which serves to protect her partially from the elements and gas weapons. Her armour suit fits over the SynSkin, and is crafted to resemble the Battle Sister armour she once wore as a male. She also wields an ornate power-halberd, a symbol of her rank and a potent weapon against nearly any foe. Perhaps her strangest piece of equipment is her scrying-monocle, an eyepiece that contains various scanners and auspexes to assess her targets and provide vision-overlaid combat data. She retains all of the skills learned at the Assassins' temple, as well as other picked up over a long life of warfare and training. She is considered by some to be the pinnacle of all that it means to be an inquisitor; even the more puritanical factions acknowledge her expertise.

[Inquisitor Cade]

Some really great stuff here. The exploits in the scola, the sex change and the feminism are all very nice ideas. A hugely original character.

However...

I'm very much against having a fully fledged ossicio assassinorum assassin being inquisitorified. The assassins are more than trained. They are mentally conditioned to follow orders unquestioningly, literaly without question. They aren't required to think for themselves.
What's more assassins are owned by the temples. The idea of an ex-assassin inquisitor is akin to an ex-space marine inquisitor.

I'll hold off the stats for now, and wait for other comments, just to be sure that I'm not wrong about the assassins.

[Lucidum]

*snerk* inquisitorified?

And true, the idea of an ex-assassin inquisitor is an extreme rarity, and I did have my own hangups about the idea, but I thought it would help to A) tie the characters Istvaanian ideals in to the main backstory, and B) explain the sex change more; consider that Solace sacrificed everything, including her original sex, to better serve the imperium. That kind of devotion would be the type that catches the eye of the inquisition.

[Kaled]

Although female Callidus assassins make better chameleons than the men, this has been said to be as much due to the female psyche as anything to do with their body.  Presumably he already has the psyche to make him a Callidus, so would changing the his body at a genetic level really produce a significant improvement in his ability to use polymorphine?  If such a procedure were normally possible and had a significant effect then why wouldn't the Callidus Temple use it on all of their male initiates?  I'd have written it up as an experimental prodecure, probably one with side-effects that maybe don't manifest until later in life (i.e. about now).

[Brother_Brimstone]

The stats seem to tie into the stats for such a character, as outlined in the assasin article, but it seems to me that you've just found their only weakness (i.e. low-ish Leadership, and perhaps a lower armour value than some), and just eliminated it.  I know you have a fluff reason for this, but gameplay-wise it just seems a bit like 'anything to make the character as powerful as possible'. However, as people said in the debate about stat levels, I don't know the level of your gaming group, or what sort of games you play.

Finally, I find it somewhat hard to believe that the battle sisters simply admit people without any form of biological test. Even if he was mimicking a girl *really* well, there are... certain things.... he simply could not mimick, and considering how elite the battle sisters really are, it would seem odd to me that they would simply say 'there you go, you're in, we aren't going to bother with any medical examinations etc... Here's a sword and a gun, go fight!'.

[MarcoSkoll]

Um...

I'm going to be brutally honest and say I just don't think this works. You seem to have tried to take the character through as many Imperial institutions as possible, and it doesn't really make sense.

I'll overlook the whole "hiding as a woman" thing, because he and she were both physically young, when sexual dimorphism hasn't fully hit home. But I still doubt it would last long.
A successful long term gender imitation takes work and training - and in the untrained cases, it's usually women pretending to be men, rather than vice versa - men are generally bad at imitating women's voices and movement.

However, he just wouldn't have made it into the Sororitas. They might have taken him for inspection, but he would have been found out long before he got anywhere near being inducted. Probably would have been shot for deception and corruption at the time.

If he had made it into the order, when he was found out, he would just have been killed. Given the horrendous trouble the Eccelesiarchy would have got into, they'd just erase all evidence, including the perpetrator.

Male Callidus assassins aren't impossible. They're rarer, but they can exist. If he'd made it that far, he would have been good enough, and such a procedure would have been unnecessary.

I don't particularly like the idea of assassin into Inquisitor. As Inquisitor Cade says, they're designed to follow orders, not give them.
A Callidus is the most likely case given their naturally higher degree of autonomy, but given the extreme rarity of Offico assassins and the importance of their missions, the fact that one would be permanently seconded to an Inquisitor is unlikely. Other assassins certainly, but Offico Assassins are very much a case of "on request only".

Personally, I think the background is inherently flawed as a result of how many times and how much it asks the reader to suspend disbelief. The best I can really say is "needs work, and a lot of it".

My suggestion if you want an assassin Inquisitor would be to start with a Death cult assassin, who received a certain degree of generic Assassinorum training (as suggested as possible by the LRB), who later gets taken up as an acolyte - although you'll need to well explain why the Inquisitor decided to thus promote them.

[Inquisitor Cade]

I'd maybe suggest that (s)he was picked up by an inquisitor at the very early stages of training as an assassin, before any permenant conditioning was applied but after combat skills and genenic compatability with polymorphine  were teasted, ending up with an unexpected side effect...

What are your thoughts?

[Lucidum]

Hmm...mostly negative responses...I dunno, maybe I tried a little too hard to define this character. Maybe one too many things in the background story...

I honestly didn't give any thought to the assassin-stats like low armour save and leadership on this, I was rather using the Inquisitor randomized stats (i.e., for an Inquisitor character) with skills that resembled those of assassins without going overboard and using like 20 different skills. Power-wise, I don't have a gaming group, so I was just going with what I felt worked. The armour and weapons were meant to work so I could use the Daemonhuntress model, one of my favorites in the line.

Perhaps I just have to change the background...maybe the son of a wealthy planetary governing-family, who has a history of bearing daughters which are raised by the schola progenium and subsequently inducted into the adepta sororitas...the son being somewhat the shame of the family for being born male. So he, having the wealth and influence of such a powerful family at his disposal, undergoes an experimental and rare treatment (as described originally), and becomes a sororitas and later an inquisitor in the name of his family?

[MarcoSkoll]

Can I ask about the importance of this character being transgendered? It's obviously important to you, and knowing why might help us give more useful advice.

[Lucidum]

I myself am somewhat, kinda-sorta maybe transgendered, and exploring gender rolls and interactions through my characters and writing is important to me. I like to represent myself through my warhammer characters, and so I have a trans-ish character for each race I play, usually all through different means.

[Brother_Brimstone]

I find absolutely nothing wrong with your desire to play a transgendered character, so please don't think that that is the issue which i'm trying to get at, but what i really think SHOULD be emphasised is that the induction of a male (even an ex-male) into the battle sisters is heresy! Not just the sort of 'you see it as heresy, i see it as an interesting experiment' heresy, but the sort of 'this needs to be condemned in the name of the emperor!' heresy.

It's not just unusual, or quirky, or odd, or a bit of a strange situation, it's the sort of thing that loses lives. The battle sisters are an elite group, and they don't just admit anyone. Even if you have him undergo the gener reassignment THEN join the battle sisters it still begs the question - WHY is the son/daughter of an aristocrat being picked up by the battle sisters? How did this come to be? WHy does he/she want it so badly?

IMO, the easiest way forward would be simply a rich aristocrat becoming an acolyte (through some means of your own determining) and then using their welath and status to switch gender before or after becoming an inquisitor - but i really think the whole battle sister thing is barking up the wrong tree.

I'm not trying to ruin your fun, just trying to help you bring your personal vision to the 40k universe in a way which fits the background.

[Myriad]

There is quite alot of good material in the character background, but in a way there's too much.  The switch from assassin to inquisition is quite unlikely without some trigger.  It might make more sense if he'd switched gender as part of his inquisitorial work (maybe to conceal his identity).

The character is also pretty heavy in play terms - I'd take a look at the equipment and see if you can trim it down a bit. 

[MarcoSkoll]

Fair enough - that's a solid enough reason to go with the idea.

I don't know how much the Imperium necessarily supports transgender citizens, but I generally work on the principle that as long as you worship the Emperor, serve the Imperium you're human and don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong, then they're not too concerned about things like sexuality or such like.

There was a discussion on Warseer - about homosexuality I think, but the point translates somewhat - where  Gen. Steiner (at least, I think it was him) made the perfectly valid point that the Imperium is not short of live bodies. Even as it is, I think Imperial population is rising. If some proportion of the human race doesn't breed, for whatever reason, it's not like they're going to be short of humans without it.

With their much less sexist society anyway, I tend to reckon many prejudices common today don't exist in 40k. If anyone argues, just say it happened on one of the more moderate planets.

If I remember the Thorian sourcebook correctly, I think the hyperpolymorphine used by Asaid Virenus (or however it's spelt) is described as a much more intense version of polymorphine, even up to the extent that the assassin can alter their genetic structure temporarily (with a physical sample). It's described as temporary because use for too long a period risks the change becoming permanently.
So there is some precedent for the Imperium having ways to alter genetic structures. The downside is that hyperpolymorphine requires a lot of stabilising drugs to avoid the body just degenerating into... unpleasant and uncontrolled shapes.

However, my suggestion for a possible backstory you could go with is that your character was a male Callidus early in their career who had managed to accept the drugs (just regular polymorphine). On one mission where they're imitating a female aide to their target, it all goes horribly wrong, and the assassin is shot with some unknown alien toxin that reacts with the polymorphine in his body.

The end result is that his altered form locks in place permanently. With the character's body just outright rejecting further use of polymorphine, they become of very little use to the Callidus temple - but it would happen that there is an Inquisitor with an interest in studying what has actually happened. Having the assassin transferred under their care, they spend many years studying the shifted (and presumably rather distraught) assassin.

How this leads on is up to you, but it's a reasonably plausible start to things - after all, if you combine a complicated drug like polymorphine with alien toxins, who knows what will happen.

My suggestion however is that you avoid making them "Assassin + Inquisitor" - if you just take those combat skills and bolt them on to an Inquisitor's mental statline, you'll have a character that's just unbeatable in all areas.
Given their feminine form, relatively low S&T would be a good start. It's clear you tend to use characters with higher statlines than I do, so I can't really advise you on appropriate values that far. I'd represent their combat prowess with the addition of a couple of choice skills, not by simply cranking up statlines.

I'd also avoid layering the character in quite that much equipment. An assassin would be subtle, rather than hefting around half an armoury. The plate armour, minigun, power halberd and handful of grenades really don't strike me as the loadout of a former hidden killer.

If anything, a former Callidus would probably keep to similar methods - avoiding giving away who they were until they had everything they needed to strike hard and fast at just the right place, bringing everything down in one.

[Lucidum]

Well I thank you all for the input. I guess I have some conclusions to make regarding my character.

As far as the "trying to be too many things at once" issue is concerned, I definitely agree now, and I think I've decided to split the character more-or-less into two characters, the hard-ass feminist Inquisitor and the transgendered callidus assassin in her retinue/employ.

Marco- as for your concerns on the powerful stats of the character, I'm not sure why she would be considered too strong (although definitely too much equipment), the stats were just a result of my D10 or D6 rolling on the randomized stat generator for an Inquisitor character in the rulebook...

But yes, the Inquisitor character needs to be less tooled up, and maybe stat-wise toned down to being an acolyte instead of a full inquisitor or lord.

The assassin will be in a new post on this part of the forum once I work out the details for him/her. I am kind of discouraged now because of all the negative feedback...

Fluff-wise, I think some of you might be a tad mixed up about how liberal or conservative the Imperium really is. Several of the Gaunts Ghosts books, specifically off the top of my head His Last Command states that women, at least in the Imperial Guard command ranks, are generally looked down upon- hence the likes of Lady Commissar Balshin, who's a hard core, rules-lawyering bitch if there ever was one.

Anywho....guess I've got some re-writing to do, although other options for including a transgendered character, for those interested, include a Tau Water Caste member who was part of an experiment "for the greater good" to take talented male tau and make them female, so as to assess how female-ness affects there perfomance, after Commander Shadowsun's successes as a commander.

Imperium-wise I was considering an eccentric Magos Biologis Genetor, who, perhaps a little too into his research, tested it upon himself in order to prove his theories on gene-manipulation or some such.

[Kaled]

Regarding stats, it'd be worth you reading the 'Conclave standard' thread (and to a lesser extent, the 'Few Questions' one in the Forum Problems area) to get an idea of the different approaches people take when it comes to character profiles. Almost no one randomly generates stats and few people use the sample profiles in the back of the rulebook.