The Conclave

                         Nycus Sivas


Nycus Sivas was born on the Hive World of Stahl IV to a working family. Early in his life he proved to be adept at adapting and improving upon technological designs. It went unnoticed until one day while working at an arms manufactorum his boss caught him fiddling with a lasgun he was assembling and demanded an explanation. He told him he improved the power 3 fold on the gun while maintaining the same ammo consumption and proved it by shooting a six inch hole through a metal plate with the same thickness of carapace armor. The boss then sent the lasgun to the ad mech who were impressed by the boy's talent. He then began work for ad mech producing radical firearm designs which some were successful but others were seen as way too ambitious. It all came into a halt when an accident with testing caused the deaths of five servitors and two tech adepts which led to his dismissal. He managed to get off the world through a rogue trader and he began to sell his radical designs to mercenaries. He then joined the Cithaeron Mercenaries which provided him with a place to work giving him people to test his designs.


WS    BS     ST      TG     IN      WP    SG      NV    LD    SP
43    64     49      51     65      66    83      62    51    4

Equipment: Destabilizer, Laspistol with one reload, Knife, Flak armour on chest and abdomen, Advanced Bionic right eye

Special Abilities: Ambidextrous

Destabilizer    Type     Range     Mode    Acc    Dam    Shots    Rld     Wt
                          Basic   E/30max   Single     -5     3d6         3       (3)     45

The Destabilizer ignores armor all armour except for power armor and follow the rules for shock weapons. Firing is a risky action a if failed a d6 is rolled

1-3: the user is hit by the gun and all effects are dealt on them, the gun is destroyed
4-5:The energy is discharged and hits the nearest person in 30yrds if no one is in range it discharges harmlessly and the shot is wasted
6:the shot is wasted with no effects

The Destabilizer is an experimental electrical gun developed by Nycus, it has a very short range but it by-passes armour and has nasty effects on the target.

QuoteThe boss then sent the lasgun to the ad mech who were impressed by the boy's talent had him servitorized for tech-heresy.

Seriously, though, the "prodigal technical whizz who becomes a tech-priest" theme is not only a horrible cliche*, but doesn't stand up to examination in the Imperium.  Lasguns may be comparatively simple to manufacture, but their inner workings are incredibly complex and improving them as described would require more than "fiddling" on the assembly line.  Moreover, an Imperial citizen who fails to do his job and prefers to "fiddle" with arcane technology is more likely to be flogged.

The Ad Mech does, exceptionally, recruit from outside its own ranks.  But not under circumstances such as this.  They are much more likely to observe subtle distinctions in the way that thralls perform their technical duties: catechisms enacted with more fluidity and confidence than is normal in a non-initiate, or a choice of emphasis that suggests a more thorough understanding of the hidden meanings than normal.

R.

*Graham MacNeill does it in Mechanicum, which should be more than sufficient warning.

duly noted now even looking at it i'm not too impressed by what i wrote yesterday, i shall write something, much more appropriate (evil laugh)

Quote from: precinctomega on January 13, 2010, 08:21:56 AMLasguns may be comparatively simple to manufacture, but their inner workings are incredibly complex and improving them as described would require more than "fiddling" on the assembly line.

I'd argue that if anyone could just casually fiddle with the workings of a lasgun and triple its efficiency, then the AdMech would have found the same solution long ago.

A few percent might be had out of long and hard work, but not 200% out of the tinkering you could do on an assembly line.

Quote from: 1337inquisitor on January 13, 2010, 05:48:46 AMIt all came into a halt when an accident with testing caused the deaths of five servitors and two tech adepts which led to his dismissal.

They wouldn't care much about the servitors, and while the tech adepts would probably result in some form of punishment (likely demotion to some lesser post), the AdMech don't just dismiss anyone who would know as much as he did.

In my mind, if you merely "leave" the AdMech, it's because they can't find you to kill you.

(So, perhaps he ran after the accident, believing it better than whatever fate a trial might have in mind for him. Maybe this was because the weapon he was testing was actually rather heretical, and he knew that if any investigation were to look into it, he'd be servitor material.)

QuoteThe Destabilizer ignores armor all armour except for power armor and follow the rules for shock weapons.
The Destabilizer is an experimental electrical gun developed by Nycus, it has a very short range but it by-passes armour and has nasty effects on the target.

It's usually a rather good idea to avoid writing "ignores all armour" in a weapon profile.

Completely ignoring armour requires something quite spectacular, and electrical weapons are not that holy grail.
If they've got insulating armour (flak being an example), then they'd be offered some protection by that. If they've got conductive armour, well, they've then got the benefits of a Faraday cage (same reason why you can be in a car that's struck by lightning and be absolutely fine).

Neither the Xenarch Death Arc or any of the Shock weapons (both electrically based) ignore any armour at all. They're a little less consistent when it comes to the Electric Blood alien ability, but meh.
Heck, one of my characters has armour that actually offers additional protection against electrical weapons. (She regularly has run-ins with Arbites/Enforcers, so she finds the protection against shock weapons very welcome.)

Mechanism of ignoring armour aside, let's look at this from a game-play perspective.
3D6 damage that armour doesn't affect - it's already a rather nasty weapon due to that alone, but then you've plonked shock weapon rules on top of it all. That's not exactly very fair, even with the Risky Action as a bit of a counter.