Inquisitor Goldeneye & warband.

[Inquisitor Goldeneye]

Some time ago I posted pictures of my warband with promises of stats. and background to come.

Then I got distracted by ... things.

However, I'm back now, and I have here the background and stats. for my oldest (indeed my first) character; Inquisitor Erasmus Goldeneye.

Do bear in mind that this is a character I have had for the better part of a decade, and his history has grown and developed over the years (his background now stands at a whopping 5200+ words!).

So, strap in and prepare yourselves for a level of self-indulgent rambling seldom seen outside of the D.V.D. extras on an M. Night Shamalan film as I present:-



THE INTERMINABLE EPIC SAGA OF ERASMUS GOLDENEYE!





Name:-
Erasmus Goldeneye.

Age:-
Exact age unknown, approximate chronological age 124. Physiological age around mid-forties.

Affiliation(s):-
Ex Ordo Malleus, currently working with the Ordo Xenos. Known/ suspected to hold Recongregator sympathies.


Appearance:-
Height 6'1". Lean build. Some augmetic implants. Light brown hair greying at the temples. Eye colour gold/ slightly luminescent due to mutation, usually hidden behind tinted glasses.


Character:-
Arch pragmatist and highly resourceful, not in the least averse to radical or underhand methods. Very much a 'belt and braces' man, he dislikes over-relying on any one asset and always has a backup plan.

Often cold and distant, Erasmus likes to keep his cards close to his chest. His worn, deep-lined face is usually set in a well practiced patrician mask, which makes him almost imposable to read, and his voice is soft and level, betraying nothing about his emotional state except in the most extreme circumstances.

Virtually unflappable, hardly anything seems to upset his equanimity or shock him in any way; if he is showing any signs of panic, then there is probably something worth panicking about!


Equipment:-
Typically wears a hooded cloak with a mask across the lower portion of his face, and usually employs a cuirass of standard carapace armour.

Seldom parts with his customised laspistol, designed to squeeze every last shot out of it's power-pack, and fitted with flash-suppression systems.

Also often carries the power-sword 'The Blade of Usher', formerly a daemon-sword which he had exorcised, then fitted with the power-field generator from his former mentor's sword, which was destroyed in battle.

Always making sure to carry a sturdy combat knife, he almost invariably backs this up with a cunningly concealed knife made form materials not readily detectable to most common scanners. Also concealed about his person are a set of lock-picks which he fashioned himself as a youth, and has improved and augmented over the years.

He is usually followed by a pict-skull, which records constantly, has a holographic projector for playback purposes, and a radio-uplink to his ship, 'The Oath'.


Background:-
Next to nothing is known about the circumstances surrounding the birth of the mutant infant who would go on to become Erasmus Goldeneye.

What is known with reasonable certainty, is that approximately 124 standard years ago, down in the forgotten bowels of Uridasea hive primus, a gang of scavenging mutants discovered a tiny infant, surely not more than a few months old, wrapped in swaddling clothes, abandoned on top of a long-defunct heating duct. Their less-than-gentle examination of the baby yielded the likely reason for it's abandonment as the little creature opened his eyes to reveal twin orbs of sparkling, luminescent gold.

Rather than consume their tasty little prize right there and then, the mutie band made the fateful decision to take it back to their base-camp, and enjoy the morsel cooked. Upon their return, however, the baby was immediately seized by the mutant chieftain, who clearly thought that he was the only one worthy of feasting on the sweet, succulent flesh of a (nearly) human infant.

Unfortunately (for the chieftain) he decide to test exactly how plump and juicy his stolen snack would be by pinching it's leg. Hard. Hard enough, in fact, to break the skin with his long, jagged, claw-like nails.

The child was already highly distressed at the rough treatment it was receiving, and at the spike of pain as the huge mutant drew blood from it's leg, the tiny infant instinctually lashed out with the only weapon at it's disposal. Twin bolts of cascading warp energy blasted from it's eyes, and left the mutant chief a torso with a smouldering crater between his misshapen shoulders.

Before the mighty carcass even slumped to the ground, the ex chief's second in command (and, of course, deadliest rival) had snatched the baby from the nerveless grip of his former master, and declared himself the new chieftain. When a rival of the would-be chief began to voice his dissent, the wily mutant turned the infant on him, and viciously sank his thumbnail into the back of the squirming, bawling creature.

Again bright flares shot out, this time leaving the challenger's shoulder a smoking ruin, and the mutant himself shrieking on the floor.

For the next five or six years, the new mutant chief used the poor boy (to whom he referred, in his unlimited imaginativeness, as 'Goldeneye') remorselessly. Employing him as a living weapon, first carrying him into battle, and sticking him with a wickedly long, sharp pin to achieve the desired result, then, when the boy was old enough to walk, keeping him on the end of a heavy chain and barking commands at him in the guttural local mutant dialect, brandishing the pin as an unspoken threat to ensure compliance.

However, the young boy began to grow rebellious. It would take more and more severe threats and beatings to force him to comply with his mutant master's orders, until one day, after a particularly brutal beating, young Goldeneye staggered back to his feet (a clear show of defiance in and of itself), spat the blood from his mouth, and, without a word, blasted his master from his feet. He didn't stop; he couldn't stop himself, the boy just kept pouring more and more raw warp power into the already-dead form of his tormentor, tears sizzling in the relentless stream of destructive force blasting from his eyes, reducing the charred body to a blackened skeleton.

He gathered up his chain (still attached to his heavy, iron collar), turned on his heel, and simply walked out of the camp.

No-one tried to stop him.

Over the next few months the young boy lived feral. Subsisting on pretty much anything smaller and weaker than him, or anything he could steal during his occasional forays in underhive settlements and camps. He eventually managed to remove his collar by endlessly worrying at the hinge with small rocks, and sharpened pieces of metal.

One night, as he was sneaking away from one of his raids, hands full of pilfered goodies, he stumbled into what must have been an abandoned hive-spider nest; a fairly well concealed hollow in the ground at least seven feet across. The boy was no stranger to the more dangerous fauna of the underhive, and the spider which made such a nest must have been huge, but he had confidence in his abnormal abilities to fend of all but the most determined of predators, and besides, the nest looked to have been empty for some time.

He polished off his ill-gotten food, and lay back to sleep, feeling reasonably secure in his hidden location. As he laid his head down, though, he noticed something among the long-forgotten fragments of spider-egg cases; a whole egg, nestled in amongst the little moulted spider-skins and soft, translucent egg-shells.

Had Goldeneye not been contentedly full for once in his short, hard life, he would have peeled it open, sniffed it for rot, and gulped it back in one and that would've been the end of it. As it was he picked up the tomato-sized, squishy little sack, and cupped it contemplatively in his small bony hands. As he stared at it, he discovered a curious thing:- the more he looked, the more he could see beyond that which he could normally perceive. He concentrated on the object and he actually saw the very faint radiance of potential life, a tiny, tiny spark of vital force within. The egg had obviously been abandoned by the mother spider for some reason, and had become dormant, as hive-spider eggs are wont to do. Surely, if he kept it somewhere warm and dark it would revive? He'd seen it happen many times, when uphivers thought they had discovered a clutch of inert spider eggs, only to take them back to their nice, warm homes, and store them in a box somewhere, then when they go to fish out a tasty egg a few days later, they get a face-full of furious, wriggling, biting baby spiders instead! Plenty of laughs to be had there!

Already excited at the prospect of having a tiny life in his own hands, Goldeneye removed an outer layer of the filthy rags in which he wrapped himself, and with it he swathed the little egg, all the time watching the miniscule spark, willing it to grow.

Over the next few days Goldeneye could see the vital essence swell and grow brighter, see the nascent life come closer to being, and the first ripples of instinct and dim sensation quivering across the nerve-cluster that passed for the thing's brain.

He found, if he really focused, he could influence these 'thoughts', like blowing on water to change the ripples on it's surface, only... not really like that at all, but it helped the child to visualise it as such. He grew to like the inside of the embryonic spider's mind; it was a calm, simple place. A safe place.

The boy was almost disappointed when, about a week later, he was awoken by a soft, yet persistent chewing sound. He hastened over to the corner of the disused duct in which he had spent the night and pulled back a fold of the cloth which held the egg. A small hole had appeared in the side of the shell, and two long, translucent-white legs poked through, wiggling spasmodically as multi-part jaws worked to enlarge the opening.

Without thinking, Goldeneye stuck the tip of his finger into the hole, and helped tare open the soft shell. Realising what he was doing, the boy drew back his hand in alarm, but, contrary to his expectations, the hatchling had not even tried to bite him. He had fully expected that he would be forced to destroy the spiderling when it hatched, but, as he had felt the spider within it's shell, so the tiny beast felt the human child's presence, probing in it's proto-mind, and had become accustomed, linked, even, to the boy. It was also apparent that this psychic contact had taken a physical effect on the animal's development, as it, like the child, had eyes of gold.

With his new friend, the boy continued his life of scavenging and theft, but he yearned for the human contact he knew, as a mutant, would always be denied to him. Sometimes, during low-light, he would sneak into the settlements, and hide in alleyways outside drinking dens to listen to the carousing and merriment within. Other times, he would hide outside the chapels and shrines, listening to the beautiful hymns and devotional music from midnight prayers. It was from these songs of ancient imperial saints that the child chose a new name for himself; Erasmus, and one for his arachnid companion; Mordakai.

Doubtless the young mutant would have continued his isolated life until some accident, underhive predator, or observant night-watchman with a sharp aim put an end to it, were it not for a chance encounter.

The young mutant liked to roam a large area in search of easy pickings, reasoning that this minimised the chance of pushing his luck too far by targeting the same community too often. Part of what he considered to be 'his territory' descended into the deep underhive, down bellow even the smallest hiver settlement. There were no uphivers from whom to steal down there, and many dangers (mutant gangs, vicious, predatory beasts and the worst of the worst of Uridasea's outlaws), but Erasmus knew of a place, a partially collapsed dome, sealed off by rubble. Within this dome, if one knew were to look, there was a bounty of fungus; bio-luminescent growths of staggering size and beauty, most of which, more importantly, were edible.

It just so happened that, unbeknownst to the boy, his secret collapsed dome had been discovered by a group of escaped pit-slaves. A recent minor hive-quake had opened up a larger, more noticeable entrance than the one used by the youngster, and this band of fugitive cyborgs had moved in.

Erasmus was surprised, to say the least, when, during his foraging within the dome he heard a voice from behind him.

"Hey, kid!"

The boy leaped up from his crouch and span around, staring down the long room in which he had been enjoying a quick bite of the fungus he had collected for himself. The place was dimly lit from a handful of barely-functional light-plates in the high ceiling, and, apart from a few pipes and a couple of rusted-out husks of old machines, empty.

Standing in the doorway at the other end of the room were two men, tall and broad, made strangely asymmetrical by the huge, industrial bionic implants crudely grafted to their bodies.

Erasmus knew from memory that the door was not the only potential exit; at any minute he could simply dart into the nearby air-vent from which he had entered. Confident that he could escape at any moment he chose, he decided to engage them.

The one with the massive industrial drill where his left arm should be, and a head which seemed to be almost entirely metal spoke again, with his vaguely tinny-sounding voice; "Kid, you from around here?"

"What's it to you?" The mutant replied.

"We're just lookin' for a guide; someone to show us where to find food and water. If you could show us where you got that fungus in your hand there we'd be real grateful." The hulking half-machine indicated the lump of glowing, pink fungal flesh in Erasmus's hand and held up a small pouch of indeterminate material, shaking it. It jingled softly.

The boy had seen merchant's guild credits before; small, oval tokens of metal with intricate designs stamped on them. Even a ragged mutant urchin like him would be able to trade them for a hot meal and maybe even a real bed for the night, at one of the smaller, more lawless underhive settlements.

He briefly considered the risks inherent to getting within arms reach of these men, and weighed them carefully against the tacit promise of hot food in his belly for once; real hot food rather than rat entrails still warm from the kill.

"If you like. Follow me." He said.

As he got close enough for them to get a good look at him the other pit-slave (who sported a pair of powerful, but clumsy-looking lifting claws instead of arms, with internal muscular-skeletal reinforcement rods clearly visible beneath his skin) drew back a pace and spat on the ground.

"Throne!" He exclaimed. "Look at his eyes! He's a damned dirty mutant!"

"Yeah, I'm a witch too. One wrong move an' I'll zap you like a rat on a 'lectric cable!" Said Erasmus, relishing the mixture of fear and revulsion visible on the organic portions of the lifter-slave's face as the cyborg made a stab at the sign of the Aquila with his hydraulic clamps.

The drill-armed slave interjected: "Calm down, Ul, we've dealt with muties before, right? They're no worse than anyone else this far down, and only slightly uglier."

He turned to Erasmus: "And you; if you're a witch, maybe you can magic us up some supplies so we can get back to camp, eh? No? Well then, I believe you agreed to show us to where some might be found, c'mon, chop-chop."

"By-the-by," he continued as they filed out of the room "I'm Jorg, an' that's Ulysses."

"I," said the mutant child, with a needlessly dramatic flourish "am Erasmus Goldeneye, and this ... is my sorcerous minion, Mordakai." He waved a hand towards the ceiling and, on queue, the spider (by this point roughly the size of a small rat, and sporting a black, bristly carapace) dropped down on a white, sticky thread to the boy's head-height, causing Ulysses to start and spit once more, and Jorg to smirk quietly to himself.

After showing them to one of the larger growths of fungus, a huge, hanger-bay like room, filled with fungal spires some 80 feet high, casting weird yet wonderful light all around them, Goldeneye was tossed a couple of credits as promised, but decided to follow them back to their camp anyway.

In truth Jorg was the first person young Erasmus had ever met who had treated him as anything other than vermin, and the child was reluctant to return to his near-total isolation.

The slaves, he discovered, were a mixed bunch; some were condemned criminals, others (like Jorg) were merely debtors to the merchant's guild who had been unable to repay their debts, and had been sold into slavery so that the guild could recover some of their investment.

As the days went by, Goldeneye continued to hang around the pit-slave encampment. First showing them other fungal deposits and functional power cables where they could charge their implants, then, as time wore on, helping out around the camp, they began to teach him standard Low Gothic (or at least Uridasea hive primus's version of it). Slowly, the young mutant boy was adopted by the gang as a sort of mascot. Erasmus, for his part was simply glad to at last have found some kindred spirits; after all, escaped slaves were probably one of the few people as hated and hunted as he was, and, as he shared in their fireside merry-making, he could not help but feel that at last he belonged.

As the years rolled on, and the boy passed into adolescence, he began to participate in raids on uphiver settlements and the territory of rival gangs. Goldeneye quickly earned a reputation, both for a fearless, merciless combat style, and for reckless stupidity; the slave-gang's ad-hoc medic joked that if they saved up the bullets they pulled out of Erasmus, they would never run short of ammo. In later years, on the rare occasions when he reflected back on his youth in Uridasea hive, Goldeneye would refer to this as his 'learning when to duck' phase of development.

For all his boasting (and he did a lot) he was always very reluctant to use his psychic abilities in battle, for doing so brought back extremely unpleasant, half-buried memories, often in the form of nightmarish flash-backs. However, when his back was against the wall, his 'Evil Eye' (as it became known amongst the pit slaves) saved his life more than once.

Even with his reluctance to use his warp-spawned gifts, Erasmus found himself drawn to explore the subtler side of manipulating the warp. Rather than simply 'opening the taps' and loosing a blast of raw warp energy, the burgeoning psyker found that, if he focused his mind on people as he did with Mordakai, he could perceive their thoughts, too. The minds of human beings were at once much brighter and far duller than that of his pet. The special bond he had formed with the spider over years of near-constant telepathic contact, not to mention psychic exposure during the arachnid's embryonic stages of development, had created a special bond between the young man and his pet, enabling their minds to work almost as one. Yet the thoughts and feelings of people were so much deeper and more complex. This made them considerably harder to influence or even read with any accuracy, and even the most cursory of telepathic examinations took infinitely more concentration and control than merely spraying energy bolts around, or communing with his hairy little companion.

As Goldeneye approached manhood a powerful wanderlust began to stir in him. Though he was reluctant to leave the bosom of his adoptive family, he could not overcome the urge to explore the world beyond his immediate surroundings.

So it was that, at around the age of 17, he bade farewell to Jorg (who had been something of a father to him) and, Mordakai at his side, quietly slipped out of the camp.

His life at this point could be described as ... interesting. During his time with the pit-slaves he had fashioned for himself a pair of goggles with darkened lenses, which enabled him to 'pass' as human and freely move about the underhive settlements he had previously only entered as either a ragged shadow, sneaking through the night, or a fearsome raider with a gang of violent cyborgs at his back.

He made his living like any other underhive denizen with no house or guild allegiances; mugging, pick-pocketing, petty theft and, occasionally, some light mercenary work as 'hired muscle'. These activities were made somewhat easier by his psychic abilities; clouding the mind of his intended target improved his larcenous success rate, and a so-called 'wyrd-for-hire' could command a price well worth the danger of revealing ones nature as a psyker to others.

He also spent his credits like any other underhive low-life; drink, gambling, women and other, less savoury activities.

Erasmus honed the combat skills and applied the hard-learned lessons acquired from his time with his augmented mentor, and learned some new tricks into the bargain. He became adept at evading capture, escaping bonds, picking locks, cheating at games of 'chance' and at least a dozen methods of avoiding paying for his round.

However, these riotous, hedonistic times could not continue indefinitely, and, four years later, the arrival into Uridasea's orbit of an Inquisition black-ship heralded an abrupt change in Goldeneye's life.

All over Uridasea, half-a-dozen or so landing shuttles arrived at each hive, all of them bearing the Inquisitorial seal on their hull, and a cargo of sinister men in enclosed storm-trooper armour, heavily armed and wielding strange, ancient scanning devices.

The first Goldeneye knew of the arrival of the Inquisition snatch-squads was when one of them kicked in the door of the room in which he was sleeping off the previous night's excesses, and dragged him naked from his bed.

Three shots from a hellpistol were emptied into the head and chest of the shrieking whore with whom he had spent the night, and before Erasmus was even fully aware of what was going on, a portion of the foul-tasting, anti-psychic compound impregnated wafer known as 'The Host' was jammed down his throat by leather-gloved fingers, and a heavy cloth bag was thrown over his head and secured tightly around his neck.

Half-choking on the disgusting wafer, head swimming from the psychic-nullifying chemicals it contained, and almost strangled by the cord around his throat, the young man could do nothing as his hands were bound behind his back and he was dragged, naked as the day he was born, tripping and stumbling all the way back to squad's extraction point.

Eventually the shuttle docked with the black-ship, and Goldeneye, still blinded by the bag, was hauled upright and dragged through seemingly endless corridors before being brought into the hold where the psykers were held for the duration of the voyage.

Almost immediately, he regretted not putting up more of a fight; futile (and even dangerous) though it would have been to do so, it would still have held at least the smallest chance of avoiding the hell into which he was now flung.

Quite apart from the usual stench which results from confining a large number of people into a relatively small place for a protracted period of time, this particular space-bourn dungeon-room had been designed to hold psykers; as such it was equipped with a psychic dampening field.

Goldeneye was still recovering from the effects of The Host, and the added oppressive, foggy, woolly-headedness engendered by the suppression field left him with the distinct impression of being suffocated. Not only this, but the field was set merely to disrupt the powers of lota to eta level psykers rather than blank out psychic perception altogether, and it did very little to quell the palpable aura of fear and desperation radiating from hundreds of psychically-attuned individuals.

More blows from rifle-butts and booted feet soon coaxed Erasmus into the hold, however, where a manacle was clamped around his ankle and, over the pitiful wailing and moaning of the other detainees, he heard his escorts stomping out of the room.

As soon as he was reasonably sure his captors were gone, he lay on his side and wriggled his hands round under his legs and past his feet; hands bounds in front were a lot more useful than hands bound behind.

He found that, unsurprisingly, the manacle on his ankle was attached to a chain. However, it was at least long enough that, even with it draped over his arm, he could still stand upright.

Erasmus began to explore the cord that still held the bag about his head, with a view to unpicking the knot which held it there; a task made considerably more difficult by the woozy, concussed feeling of the dampening field. Eventually, though, the cord came loose, and he was able to remove the bag and look upon the nightmarish vista which surrounded him.

The room was almost pitch-black, with just enough illumination coming of the tiny, blinking lights set at odd intervals on the ceiling, to make out a vast, low, room, stretching of into the gloom in almost every direction. Vaguely human shapes filled the murky false twilight, some moving around, others dead still, their outlines growing more and more indistinct the further away they were. Although the anti-psychic field made it imposable to focus his witch-sight properly, he could see a huge, indistinct, roiling sea of vivid psychic auras sprawling out far farther than his mundane vision could see in this light, one indistinguishable from the next to him in his subdued state, so that they all seemed to run together into one horrifying, amorphous mass of terror and misery.

The mutant psyker found himself near one of the walls, with a large, heavily reinforced-looking door just visible. Through this door, at irregular intervals, a group of four storm-troopers would enter with some pitiful wretch, bagged and bound, held between them. The harsh, unexpected flood of light when the door opened always drew gasps and cries from the prisoners (or, at least, the ones who had managed to remove their black bags), and the realisation of the horrors which awaited them always drew shrieks, and pathetic pleas from the new inmates.

His thoughts began to turn to the possibility of escape; due to his nudity the troopers who abducted him had, understandably, felt no need to search him. Cavity searches and other such high-security measures were not standard on mid-level psychics, as most of them could barely form a coherent thought in the suppression field, let alone any kind of elaborate escape plans. Even if they had performed invasive searches and tests, it was unlikely that they would have found the small set of lock-picks which Goldeneye had hidden in a false dermal pouch on his inner-right wrist; it had cost him a good deal to have installed on his arm, and a long time to find an underhive doctor whom he would trust to do such a thing well enough to be worthwhile, but it had helped him out of sticky situations before, and it might just do so again now.

He had noticed that the room was filling up; when he had been chained up there had been no-one between him and the door, but now there were only a few empty sets of manacles left. He had a feeling that soon they would be underway, and although he had no idea were they were going, he knew that it was not somewhere he wanted to be.

The dampening field made concentration of any kind difficult, but, after several tries, Goldeneye managed to get his leg-iron open. Immediately, he set about exploring his environment. Feeling his way along the walls, he found that the door through which he had entered was one of four, with one in the middle of each wall, and that these doors were the only way in or out of the room. While there were air-ducts and some strange holes in the floor, they were all far too small to admit anything larger than a rat.

Then inspiration struck; icy-cold water started to gush unannounced from the ceiling, drawing sharp yells and fresh shrieking from the inmates. Suddenly the purpose of the holes in the floor became clear: They were sewage holes, designed to have the waste of all these prisoners flushed into them by the water, thus saving the need to 'muck out' the captives.

Through the stifling haze of the field, Goldeneye began to formulate a plan of escape. First he did some exploring of the ceiling (fortunately it was low enough so as to be just within reach if he stood on his neighbour, who was either catatonic or possibly dead). He managed to lever off one of the ceiling panels and pull himself up to have a good root around inside. As he suspected, the tiny, claustrophobic crawlspace had no exit other than the hole through which he had come and a tiny vent consisting of two rows of holes in the wall, which looked out onto the corridor (presumably to prevent a build-up of condensation round the water pipes) but, experienced as he was with pipes and cables, the final pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Once he was satisfied that he could achieve the results he wanted he sought out prisoners who, like himself, had managed to shake off the worst of the stupefying effects of the field (only a small fraction of the prisoners overall, but still, some 50 or so individuals).

"Hey, friend." He said to each in turn; "I have a plan to get us out of here."

To those who seemed receptive to the idea he continued:

"First, we need to block up as many of these waste-holes as we can. Anything'll do, use your shirt, that's it!"

"Next I'm going to try and force the water on. This place will start to fill up, and they'll have to let us out, to drain it. Once were out of this room, I'm sure we'll be able to use our powers again; we'll just rush the guards, there's no way they can stop us all at once!"

Sure enough, once the room began to flood, the door was flung open, and a swarm of hellgun-toting storm-troopers rushed in to begin unlocking the prisoners, and frog-marching them out into the (now also partially flooded) corridor.

As Goldeneye had suspected, the psychic powers of the prisoners did not, in fact return to them. The field had simply been extended to cover the surrounding areas of the ship. Still, when a voice shouted "NOW OR NEVER; GO FOR IT!" most of the would-be escapees (judgment clouded by the mind-numbing effect of the field) still rushed for the guards, and were, of course, mown down with merciless efficiency.

The effect of gunfire pouring into their midst, however, had the effect of galvanising many of the other prisoners into action; screaming like banshees and running in all directions. Some joined the suicidal headlong rush at the guards (some even getting close enough to be dispatched with well-practiced bayonet moves), many tried to run past their captors (a handful actually managed to get away), and some, still in a state of bewildered confusion from the field, simply ran around like headless chickens, shouting and waving their arms like lunatics.

Added to this the water still cascading from the prisoner hold making the metallic deck-plates as slippery as an ice-rink, and the scene was one of absolute bedlam.

Goldeneye turned away from the vent through which he had given his inflammatory cry. It had worked perfectly. He lowered himself back down into the prisoner hold. Once the psykers had been evacuated the other three doors had been opened as well to help drain the room, but of course, they would be guarded in case a prisoner attempted something just such as this.

With a large riot breaking out, though, all nearby forces were being called in to subdue the inmates, and Goldeneye simply jogged out through the door on the other side of the hold.

And was promptly captured by the reinforcements who, naturally, were moving in from other parts of the ship to take the places of the guards who had been called in to deal with the riot.

Still, the mutant's resourcefulness and ingenuity under trying circumstances so impressed the ship's presiding inquisitor (one inquisitor Cyrus Xerxes) that, upon arriving at the scene of the incident, he immediately ordered a stay of execution (the standard penalty for any psyker who attempts an escape), and decided to take a very special interest in him.

Normally a potential psyker with a physical mutation (however minor) would be highly unlikely to be selected for Scholastia Psykana training, and would almost certainly go straight to the throne. Cyrus, however, pulled some strings, and had the young psyker trained and tested by a high-ranking contact within the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.

Upon completion of his training, Goldeneye was added to the personal retinue of Inquisitor Xerxes, and, many years later, at the age of sixty-three was sponsored by him for entry into the Inquisition proper.




Inquisitor Goldeneye:-


Ws     Bs     S      T      I      Wp     Sg     Nv     Ld
64      70    53    55    75    82      76     81     78


Equipment:-


Robe armour on all locations (including head)

Carapace armour on chest

'The Blade of Usher' (counts as a normal power sword)

Customised laspistol (Laspistol from the revised armoury W/ heavy military mag., stealth barrel, 16 Mt. lasing chamber, Thacian-pattern discharge generator, standard grip & frame.)

Knife

Concealed plascore knife (placore rules as per 'Shadows of Deceit' article.

lockpicks (allow for picking mechanical locks (obviously))

Pict-skull (uplink with ship (sub-luminal comunications only) holographic play-back.)



Abilitys and psychic powers:-


Leader - Goldeneye learned to command well under the tutelage of Inquisitor Xerxes.

Force of Will - Having been in deadly fire-fights since before he could walk, nothing realy frightens him anymore.

Escape Artist - Erasmus is very good at getting out of places he doesn't want to be, and into places he does! (Goldeneye halves the difficulty of picking locks and (at gamesmaster's discretion) may test to escape bonds/ restraints.)

Look Into My Eyes ... - Due to the unique nature of his mutation, the psychic centers of Goldeneye's brain are directly wired to his optical cortex, the upshot of which is that most of his psychic powers are routed through his eyes. (Goldeneye must always have eye contact in order to target anyone with his telepathic powers, even if it is not specified as necessary in the rule book.)

Mesmerism - "Look into my eyes, don't look around the eyes, look into the eyes." Snap "Your under."

Mind Scan - As in the rule book.

Suggest - As in the Recongegator source book.

Telepathy - As in the rule book.

Warp-Sight - Goldeneye has mastered the old Astropath's trick of perceving the universe through it's warp-shadow. (I have some house rules for how 'Warp-Sight' works, I can post them if anybody is interested.)

Wyrd Gaze of Death - A little trick Which Goldeneye has been able to do since early childhood with little or no effort.

Familiar, Mordakai - If Mordakai is on the battlefield, then he functions as Goldeneye's familiar as described in the rule book.






Phew! I think that's about it. Congratulations to anyone who waded through the whole thing

I'm a little worryed that his stat line is a tad high, and that he might have too many psychic powers, so Comment and criticism is very welcome (on his background also!)


Hopefuly there should be more characters (hopefuly with consderably more concise backgrounds) up soon.

[Ynek]

Well, if nothing else, it's at least an entertaining story which has obviously had a lot of effort put into it's construction. I read through the whole thing without getting bored, so you must have done something right.
I did, however, feel that the idea of the wandering psyker child, accompanied by a fully grown hive spider (perhaps using the new Goblin Hive Spider for a miniature) as his familiar, would probably have made for a more intriguing and interesting character. However, that's just my personal opinion. I've always had something of an affection for the weird and wonderful characters that lurk in the dark places of the Imperium.
Hmm. I'm really tempted to do a scary feral hive-child now...
A lot of people seem to have Inquisitors 'save' psykers from having to go through the Blackships for processing. I can't help but voice my appreciation for the fact that you've avoided taking such an obvious and unimaginitive cop-out. So, in short, that's good.

Now, a few suggestions:
Rather than having him learn low-gothic by listening around hiver settlements, it would probably make more sense if he simply learned the mutant dialect (which is probably a simpler form of low gothic, akin to today's "clique" languages, such as 'ebonics', 'street' etc.) from his mutant masters, and later had it 'corrected' to proper low gothic by the escaped cyberslaves that he teamed up with, or perhaps later, when he went on his hedonistic walkabout around the hive. I just feel that this would make more sense, as picking up a language simply by hearing it is unlikely. Without a context, such as being told "word X in English = Word Y in French" etc. It is very difficult, and unlikely to be done by simply listening to conversations from a distance.
I also don't know much about familiars, but I always thought that they were created artificially as a form of servitor whose mind is artificially linked to their owner. For instance, Inquisitor Coteaz is connected to his psyber eagle through it's technological implants. However, considering how little we know about hive spiders, it could be possible that they present some sort of psychic communication to their young to help them to identify their mother upon hatching. Much like a young crocodile recognising the first thing it sees as it's mother, perhaps Mordakai thinks that Erasmus is his mother... But that's just me going into uber-rationalisation mode.

Now, onto his rules:
Normally, I would say that any stats of higher than 80% will take a considerable proportion of the character's time to maintain. A weapon skill of 95, for instance, would mean very little else goes on in the character's life other than fighting, and practicing fighting.
However, in this instance, I'd say that his statistics are high, but acceptable. As a psyker, one would expect him to have a high willpower statistic, and his physical stats probably represent the fact that when you live in the underhive, if you aren't strong, you're dead.
Although I'm normally a bit reluctant to give characters power weapons, you seem to have offset this by giving him (fairly) light armour all over.
I like the lockpicks and plascore knife. They're nice little characterful touches.
If you're interested, a character in a friend's warband has warp-sight. He uses it as a standard psychic test, and half of however much he passes by is the radius in yards of how far the power extends. In short, he is aware of everything within that radius, but not aware of what they are doing.
For a character such as Erasmus, this might be a touch too powerful, however, as it would effectively make him aware of everything of almost everything on the table without much risk. Instead, perhaps every turn, he takes a psychic test, with a difficulty equal to double the distance that he is trying to perceive. (So if he were trying to perceive everything within 20 yards, he would suffer a hefty -40 difficulty modifier. If he fails, he perceives nothing at all.)

[Inquisitor Goldeneye]

Thanks Ynek!

I think you're right about the language thing, and Mordakai was later given the psyber modifications to become a familiar proper, but that will be covered when I post his stats. and what little of his background hasn't been covered in Goldeneye's story.

I'm currently having some computer promblems (I'm posting this from the public library) so I probably won't be able to make any more posts here until that over-priced paperweight gets back from the witchdoctor's.

Back in a couple of days (fingers crossed!)

[Inquisitor Goldeneye]

Sorry about the dreaded double-post, but my computer is fixed now (and therefore hopefully won't keep cutting out for no reason), so I can post another of my warband characters (also I've ammended a small point in Goldeneye's background, as suggested by Ynek, and slightly reduced his strength and toughness (Goldeneye's, I mean, not Ynek's.))

So, time now for a member of Goldeneye's warband, thus validating the title of this thread. Specifically, Mordakai; the Inquisitor's familiar. Modakai's background is partially covered in Goldeneye's, so hopefully this will be a bit less of a slog.

Without further ado, then; Mordakai, ladies and gentlemen:-







Name:-
Mordakai.


Age:-
Exact age unknown, approximate age 118-117


Affiliation(s):-
Familiar (and pet) to Inquisitor Erasmus Goldeneye


Appearance:-
A hive spider belonging to one of the many species native to the underhive of Uridasea hive primus. Leg-span approximately 8 to 9 feet. Black carapace covered in thick, fibrous hairs. Large 'death's-head' marking on top of abdomen. Golden eyes. Cybernetic modifications including foremost left leg, left pedipalp, and left side of what may be considered its face.

Character:-
As a spider it is difficult to discern what (if any) kind of 'character' Mordakai may possess. However, he is known to be mistrustful of anyone he does not know, and enjoys dark, confined spaces.


Equipment:-
As a spider Mordakai cannot use any equipment, although he does have a pair of sharp, hollow fangs capable of delivering a fast-acting neurotoxin, and a pair of spinnerets which secrete a substance not unlike that used in imperial 'Webber' type weapons. Combined with the psyber-implants which enable him to act as Inquisitor Goldeneye's familiar, this makes him a very effective tool with which the inquisitor can perform live captures of investigative subjects.


Background:-
Discovered as an abandoned egg by the Inquisitor during his feral childhood in the underhive, Mordakai was the very first subject on which the young psyker practiced his telepathic abilities. Possibly due to this early psychic exposure, the spider formed a kind of empathic bond with the boy, and became as much a friend as a pet, accompanying him everywhere throughout the duration of his time in the underhive (think 'the archetypal boy-and-his-dog type scenario', but with more legs).

When Goldeneye was abducted by an Inquisition black-ship Mordakai was fortunate not to be in the room from which his master was taken, or he surely would have been killed attempting to defend him from the storm-troopers. Luckily, before commencing his revelry the previous night, Erasmus had safely shut up his beloved pet in a small shed next to the boarding-house/ brothel (there being not much distinction between the two in the underhive) at which he was intending to party the night (and what credits he had scraped together) away.

Although the animal sensed the shock, panic, and confusion of his owner at being dragged from his bed by armed men, Mordakai was unable to break down the door which confined him (being only the size of a small dog at the time), and by the time it had found another way out (a hole in the roof had been improperly mended, and the patch of metal gave way easily) Goldeneye was long gone.

Severed, for the first time in it's life from the empathic link with the human (at first by the anti-psychic 'Host' Goldeneye had been forced to ingest, later by sheer distance), the spider panicked in the way animals tend to do when faced with the unknown; it hid.

The psychic connection had brought many advantages to both parties; Erasmus, through his pet, gained access to animalistic senses and survival instincts, whereas, with a human brain from which to 'borrow cycles' the arachnid had become far more intelligent than any ordinary spider (although this is not quite as impressive when one considers that an ordinary spider lacks any anatomical feature which could be accurately described as a brain; nevertheless the spider had, at times, demonstrated a level of intelligence roughly comparable to that of an above-average dog).

Robbed of this contact Mordakai reverted to more primitive behaviours; once he had recovered from the initial shock of losing his life-long link he crawled out from the space under the foundations of the boarding-house where he had squeezed himself and scurried off into the gloom of the underhive night.

Exactly what transpired for Mordakai over the next sixty years or so may never be known; certainly even with the psyber-modifications, Goldeneye's link does not extend to retrieving memories which, in any case, would simply be a blur of sounds, shapes and movement.

What is known is that at during the course of a prosecution, Goldeneye pursued the trail of a fleeing subject right back not just to his home planet, but to the very hive-city in which he had spent his nightmarish childhood.

The Inquisitor privately dreaded being forced to return to the foetid cess-pit from which he had been hauled by the long arm of the Inquisition, and which he had spent a long time desperately trying to forget, but the trail clearly led to Uridasea hive Primus's stinking, rotten underbelly.

Knowing that, even after more than six decade's absence, he was still the best qualified to lead the hunt through the underhive, he forced himself to personally head up the team to capture (or more probably kill, as it was unlikely their quarry would allow himself to be taken alive) the fugitive heretic.

The instant he stepped out of the hive's vast, vertical mass-transit elevator and into the poorly-lit upper reaches of the underhive, all the old memories came rushing back to him; all the horrors he had buried, and the night-terrors he had suffered right into early adulthood because of them (it had taken a deep, painful psychic probe by his Scholastia Psykana instructor to finally purge him of those awful visions, and to stop him waking up screaming in the middle of the night).

The chase was long and dangerous; their prey, a daemonologist and former cult-leader by the name of Crowley, who had narrowly escaped the purging of his warp-worshiping cult, was cunning and still powerful in his own right.

Goldeneye lost several of the men he had brought with him; some to the heretic, using his chaos-gifted powers and some to the hazards of the underhive, but, eventually, Goldeneye cornered his man in an underhive fungus-farm, of the kind common throughout many hive-worlds.

This particular farmstead was in a deep, lonely part of the underhive and, consequently, the inhabitants had fortified their home as much as possible, resulting in a large compound with enough weaponry inside, and sufficiently strong walls to single-handedly see off any roving mutants or outlaw gangs.

Crowley had managed to trick his way inside using his natural charisma, and then slaughtered the unfortunate inhabitants, before re-animating their corpses with his warp-magicks to man the compound's defences.

The Inquisitor no longer had the manpower to storm the farmstead with any guarantee of success, but he daren't leave such a powerful sorcerer to his own devices for as long as it would take any reinforcements to arrive.

Having called in his current position and situation to the Arbites cruiser which had brought him to Uridasea, Goldeneye was resignedly planning where best to make his most-likely suicidal attack in order to give it the best possible chance of success when he realised that he felt a familiar presence.

For the past few months the farm which was now under siege had been terrorised by a particularly large and dangerous hive spider. It had eaten all five of their dogs, a couple of farm-hands and worst of all, the two goats the farmers kept for fresh milk. Traps had been set and night-time watches kept, but the spider seemed to be unusually cunning, and always eluded them, for, unbeknownst to the farm-folk, this particular spider had spent a large part of it's formative years psychically bonded to a young mutant boy, and even without his direct presence, that kind of protracted psychic exposure leaves it's mark. Although by no means as bright as he had been when linked to Erasmus, Mordakai still retained a small spark of cunning far above others of his species.

Lurking in the dome-support beams some four-or-five hundred feet above the farm, where he spent the full-light hours in the torpor-state which passes for sleep amongst his kind, Mordakai was also alert to the return of his near-human companion, not forgotten after all those years. Slowly, as the psychic bond between them began to return unbidden (but most certainly not unwelcome) by either of them, a flood of new sensation flowed through both minds.

The Inquisitor quickly realised that he now had a new, potentially useful asset, and began to formulate a new plan of action.

Meanwhile, his long-lost pet decided to take matters into its own metaphorical hands, and began to lower itself directly towards the roof of the farm-house on yard after yard of high-tensile spider-silk.

Throughout the hive, the lights which illuminated the insides of the vast domes began to either dim or shut off altogether as the hive entered 'Low-Light' automatically in approximate synchronisation with the planet's natural day/ night cycle.

Partially due to the cover of this abrupt, artificial twilight, and partially due to the unusual angle of his approach, none of the cultist's meat-puppets perceived the huge (for Mordakai was now easily seven feet across, leg-tip to leg-tip) spider gently alighting on top of the building which contained their master.

Although the human thoughts and motivations of the Inquisitor were far too complex and abstract for Mordakai to understand, even with his bond restored to full strength, as he crawled across the metallic roof he was still able to comprehend that there was an object inside here somewhere intensely desired by his counterpart.

A bedroom window, just large enough to squeeze himself through, provided a way in for the intrepid arachnid. Fortunately, the bedroom door was slightly ajar, so he was able to simply push his way past it virtually without a sound. He came out onto a landing overlooking a large, central room, which, judging by the looks of the long, heavy table which had been shoved against the main door, would have been the room in which all the farmers and farm-hands sat to eat together at the end of the day. Not that Mordakai was aware of this, of course; even had he been capable of comprehending such concepts his attention would still have been drawn to the figure in the centre of the room.

Standing in the middle of a series of circles drawn in human blood, and embellished with all the usual, eye-watering symbols one would expect of a warp-ritual, stood Crowley himself; spattered with blood, holding in one hand the disembowelled corpse of a small infant, while making a big show of ritualistically drawing out the tiny entrails with the other.

Naturally, the man looked considerably different through the eyes of the spider than he did through the eyes of a man, but Mordakai still recognised the essence of the thing he had sensed his master desired, and noiselessly crawled up over the landing railings, down the other side, across the underside of the landing, down the wall of the room and began to creep across the floor towards the infanticidal heretic.

The man had his back turned towards the silently stalking spider, and in any case, his mind was entirely focused on the summoning ritual at hand, so he was taken utterly by surprise when a great weight crashed into him from behind with enough force to bowl him clear across the room, baby-carcass and viscera flying from his grasp.

Crowley was on his feet in an instant, eyes burning with malevolent, red warp-fire. He saw the huge hive spider, standing there in the middle of the ritual circles (now hopelessly smudged), staring at him with eight golden eyes. The furious Chaos-worshipper tried to summon a great blast of raw warp-energy to obliterate the animal, but, for some reason, he couldn't quite focus. Then his vision began to swim, and he felt a numbness, beginning in his extremities and rapidly creeping up his limbs. Crowley clasped his now nerveless hand to the small of his back as he began to sag to the floor; he just had time to see it covered in his own blood before he passed out altogether.

Mordakai waited patiently for his prey to succumb to his venom, then scurried over to the unconscious form and, as his instincts instructed him, wrapped it thoroughly in yet more spider-silk.

Outside, Goldeneye had realised something was happening when he felt Mordakai's stalking instincts kick in as the arachnid spotted his target. He was just ordering his remaining men into position to take advantage of any possible distraction, when suddenly, all the animated corpses on the walls of the compound dropped their weapons and fell to the ground, as dead as they should be.

The Inquisitor had his men breach the compound gates with krak grenades, and charged through in time to see the massive form of a very familiar-looking (albeit considerably larger than the last time he saw him) hive spider dragging a large bundle of webbing towards him.

Goldeneye was overjoyed to have one of the few good things about his childhood back after all this time (not that he showed it publicly, of course), and, to make the most of their special bond, he used his contacts in the Adeptus Biologicum to have Mordakai fitted with a suite of sophisticated  implants. Partially to increase the spider's already augmented intelligence in a manner not unlike the 'Bonehead' procedure used on some Ogryns, and partially to enhance the psychic bond between them, enabling Erasmus to transform his pet fully into a psychic vassal; a familiar.

Currently Mordakai is the Inquisitor's almost constant companion (when circumstances allow), and exhibits the approximate intelligence of a lower-order primate (at least, when near to Goldeneye). He has been known, in the Inquisitor's direct presence, to demonstrate near-human levels of abstract reasoning, although how much of this is the spider thinking for itself and how much is Erasmus acting through it is impossible to tell.






Modakai the Psyber-spider:-



Ws      Bs      S       T       I       Wp      Sg      Nv      Ld
52       0       80     78    44    0/100    12   0/100  0/100



Equipment:-


Mordakai does not have any equipment as such, but his fangs count as the 'talons' mutation (i.e. a short sword, although he may not use them to parry), and each successful attack with them delivers a dose of 'stun' poison, which acts as described in the rule book.

Also his ability to secrete webbing counts as a web-pistol which may only be used in close combat.

His carapace counts as armour 5 to all locations.




Abilities and psychic powers:-


Familiar of Goldeneye - If Inquisitor Goldeneye is on the battlefield, then Mordakai counts as his familiar as described in the rule book.

Non-Sentient - For all his enhanced intelligence, Mordakai is still an animal (this gives him the 'nerves of steel' ability as he is inured to the noise and confusion of battle, and cannot comprehend the concept of a 'near miss', it also means that he cannot attempt to opperate machinery, open doors or anything else that an animal shouldn't be able to do).

Spider-Climb - Mordakai treats vertical surfaces and ceilings as open terrain and never needs to test for climbing a steep slope. If he is wounded whilest using his 'Spider-climb' ability, then he must pass a toughness test modified by the amount of dammage he took (after armour), or fall off, taking fall damage as normal.

Stealth - spiders are naturally very stealthy animals (there is a -30% penalty awareness tests to detect Mordakai).

True Grit - As in the rule book.

Slow Regenerate - Over time Mordakai can recover from the most greivous of injuries, even re-growing lost limbs (during a campiagn, if Mordakai incurs any perminant injuries, then after every battle roll a D6 for each perminant injury he has received; on 6 it has healed).





Right, that's it for today, as before any comments or critcisms, either on the stats. or the background material, are very welcome. I'm currently typing up the background for my astropath, which should be ready some time tomorrow or the day after; then it's three down, thirteen to go ... plus support characters ... urrrrrgh, I'm going to be some time, aren't I?

Oh well, better get cracking, then.











Edit:- In order to avoid a tripple-post, I'm just going to slip my astropath's profile in here.




Name:-
Celestine Altizimus


Age:-
26


Affiliation(s):-
As an astropath Celestine in nominally answerable to the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Formerly assigned to the imperial Cobra-class escort vessel 'The Fist of Mercy'. Currently serving under indefinite assignment to Inquisitor Goldeneye.


Appearance:-
Height 6 feet exactly. Hair colour auburn (head shaven and treated to prevent hair re-growth, in order to avoid hair interfering with astropath plugs), numerous, non-standard long plug-cables attached to her skull give the impression of metallic 'braids', often tied back to resemble a 'pony-tail' when not in use. Eye colour originally vivid green (now grey-white due to effects of soul-binding). Naturally lean build, often described as 'willowy'. Widely considered to be very attractive; high cheek bones, large almond-shaped eyes, delicate features and a somewhat triangular face leave her looking vaguely 'elfin', an effect amplified by her slightly pointed ears.


Character:-
Although her terrible experiences with the Blackship, the soul-Binding and more recently the things she has seen and done during her time working for Inquisitor Goldeneye have left their marks on her, she is still a remarkably optimistic, cheerful young woman, who makes friends easily.


Equipment:-
Celestine almost always wears the standard green robes of her office, with a hole cut in the back of her hood to enable her plugs to hang freely. She has far more plugs than are normal for an astropath, many of which pertain to the various non-standard uses to which she is put by the Inquisitor.

Although arming a blind woman would not ordinarily be productive (or even safe), Miss Altizimus's psychic gifts mean that she is able to wield the ancient stubber she uses with considerably greater accuracy than that achieved by most sighted marksmen. In order to protect her delicate wrist from the recoil of the weapon, she wears an augmetic bracing-glove on her right hand when in the field.


Background:-
Alien abduction, although by no means a common occurrence in the Imperium of Man, is far from unheard of. In most cases, though, it happens as part of a mass abduction, as with the notorious slave-raids of the so-called 'Dark Eldar', and usually the unfortunate abductee(s) is(are) never seen or heard from again.

It is unsurprising, then, that when a young girl of nineteen returned to her rural home late one night, disorientated, confused, and talking of 'bright lights and strange, inhuman beings doing weird, intrusive things to her', her parents naturally assumed that she had simply been out drinking with her friends, and had exceeded her limits.

They beat her for staying out so late and for her drunkenness, and sent her to bed.

Several weeks later, when it became apparent that she was pregnant, they beat her again for her loose morals (in spite of her protestations of innocence), and, when the baby came, they passed off their daughter's child as their own to save her the embarrassment and stigma of having a child out of wedlock.

Although the parents were mindful of their daughter's tale of inhuman interference, the child (a girl) grew up to be a fairly normal human woman, with no signs of any kind of xeno taint about her. She was, perhaps, a little taller than average; slim and graceful (quite unlike her plump, clumsy mother), and with just the slightest suggestion of points about the tips of her ears (another trait that certainly didn't run in their family), and she was a little odd maybe, demonstrating an uncannily accurate intuition from time-to-time, but, as far as they could tell, she was entirely human.

Much the same thing could be said for her own daughter, when she had one, and, in time, her grand-daughter, too.

Eventually, on Svetlana's World (a busy, agri-world type planet in a system right on the border between Ultima Segmentum and Segmentum Solar), the great-grandchild of that mysterious girl was born, and named Celestine Altizimus.

Celestine's family had lived slightly apart from their neighbours for several generations. Their house was on a small, low hill on the outskirts of a rural settlement which serviced one of the smaller hydroponics towers; the men folk worked in the tower itself, and the women ran the village and its affairs.

The Altizimuses had, over the years, garnered a reputation for being slightly ... 'off' in a way no-one could quite put his finger on. The men seemed normal enough, but the Altizimus women were definitely known for having an indefinable air of strangeness about them; perhaps it was the way they always seemed to be spot-on with their guesses and intuitions, or maybe it was how, whenever they were near, people tended to get a slight shiver running up their spines, or how, when they looked you in the eye, it felt as tough they were looking right though you, and the way they always seemed to be able to tell when they were being lied to.

Of course it didn't help that all the female members of the Altizimus clan were, without exception, tall, graceful and pretty, which engendered a certain amount of jealousy from the other women of the village, who were generally of stout peasant stock.

Perhaps the people of the village would have been content to simply leave the strange 'folk from the house on the hill' (as the villagers referred to the Altizimuses) alone, were it not for the latest addition to their family; young Celestine.

The girl seemed to exemplify all the qualities which set the Altizimus women apart from the others; if they were pretty, then she was beautiful, if they were tall, then she was statuesque and if they were slightly odd, then Celestine was outright unearthly.

More than once the girl had guessed what someone else was thinking; speaking aloud an answer to an un-asked question, or commenting on an observation or opinion unvoiced. People had started to avoid her, even the young men her own age (who were usually quite willing to overlook the strangeness of the female Altizimuses for their ... more tangible qualities) scorned her for girls who, although perhaps were more homely, didn't give them the feeling that someone had just walked over their grave with the most fleeting of eye-contact.

With mutterings rippling around the village, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to take matters into their own hands, and deal with the 'witch-girl' themselves.

In some ways, then, Celestine was fortunate that three months after her sixteenth birthday the Inquisition came to Svetlana's World in the form of a Blackship.

The morning the Blackship dispatched its snatch-squads to the planet's surface the Altizimus family were eating their breakfast, Celestine looked up from her scrambled eggs and stared at the windowless wall opposite her for a few moments, then, Rising from her chair she spoke; "Mother, Father, they're coming for me, I think it would be better if I go to meet them, I don't think I shall return."

Then she took her pink coat from the rack by the door and left before her baffled parents could either stop her, question her, or see that she was crying into her sleeve.

She walked down the little pathway from the front door of her home to the road, where see saw a large, black armoured van coming towards her; she waved to it as though flagging it down.

The vehicle screeched to a halt feet from where she was standing, four heavily armed men piled out and grabbed the unresisting girl, handcuffing her and covering her head with a black bag, then clamping a very heavy, lumpy-feeling collar about her neck. Someone pushed a button on the back of the collar and everything went black.

Again Celestine was fortunate; the activation of the null-collar proved such a shock to the girl's system that she passed out, thus sparing her the experience of a very uncomfortable journey first back to the shuttle-craft, and then to the black-ship itself.

Sadly, however, she could not remain unconscious for the whole two-year trip back to earth (via several other systems, of course).

As one of the more powerful psykers on board, she was placed in her own cell, and chained, hand and foot with very heavy chains of addamantium. The cell had it's own null-field generator, powerful enough to cut off her psychic abilities completely, which proved the worst of all the hardships she had to endure; being without her psychic gifts was very like suddenly going deaf or blind, and in some ways much worse.

She spent most of the first few months of her imprisonment in the corner of her cell, clutching her knees to her chest, and rocking back and forth, weeping to herself. She slept only fitfully due to the neural disruption of the null-field, and with the gruel-and-water diet she was close to breaking point by the time the terrible ship finally arrived at earth.

Celestine wept with joy as she was led down disembarkation ramp of the landing craft. The dreadful null collar was back in place, but now that they were at their destination, surely her ordeal was almost over?

Over the next few days she was subjected to the most intrusive, painful and demeaning examinations and tests imaginable, physical and mental. At the end of the testing she was returned to a cell almost identical to the one she had occupied on the black-ship, only colder and damper, there to await the results.

Millions of light-years away the data from Celestine's tests, along with the data from all the rest of that particular batch of psykers, was being analyzed. Possibly this task could have been done on Earth, but space and manpower on Holy Terra are at a premium, and besides, no-one has ever accused the Imperium of Man of possessing an efficient, stream-lined bureaucracy, or anything like.

This was just as well, in the long run, for in the very beating heart of the Imperium, it would have been almost impossible for any inhuman influence to act as an unseen hand; to switch the compromising data, revealing Celestine's xeno-tainted ancestry, with that from the tests of a pure, albeit considerably less gifted individual.

Two days after the heavy, metal door had slammed shut, leaving Celestine chained to the wall in total darkness, she heard the locking mechanism beginning the minutes-long process of clanking open. An armoured servitor came forward to undo her chains, and attach the null-collar once more.

Celestine was led this time to a room containing dozens of other emaciated, abused-looking people, also all wearing null-collars sitting in rows on long, low benches in front of a podium. She was shoved into an available seat and, after a few more broken-looking wretches were led in, a man in the robes of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica strode in to take up position behind the podium.

The man gave a very long and boring speech, Celestine was on the verge of blacking out from hunger and thus missed most of the finer details, but the gist of it was that they should all rejoice, as they had been found worthy of the chance to make amends for the sin of possessing their unnatural powers by using them in a lifetime of hard, dutiful service to the Emperor as astropaths.

To this end, the man had said, they would be taken to the chamber of the soul-binding, and their have their psychic essence enhanced with a portion of the Emperor's own power.

Some time later, as Celestine's skeletal frame was bound into the machinery for the ritual, the fat, greasy acolyte who was adjusting her straps glanced at her and grinned; "this may sting, just a little." He cackled.

Celestine ignored him, she was glad to finally, after more than two years, be free from any psychic restrictions (her null-collar had been removed as soon as she had entered the chamber), and besides, in spite of what she could sense from the acolyte about what he really thought of the ritual, she was sure it couldn't be any worse than what she had already endured.

She was very, very wrong.

The agonies she endured would certainly have caused her to pass out altogether, but the nature of the process was such that it pervaded her entire consciousness on every possible level, and was made that much worse by virtue of the fact that she was so much more powerfully psychic than those who usually undergo the soul-binding (ordinarily, of course a psyker of her abilities would have ended up as a trained battle-psyker or similar).

She could actually feel her eyes cooking in her skull as the blinding power cascaded through her.

As the ritual drew to a close and the pain gradually began to recede, Celestine became aware that there was something wrong. She couldn't quite put her finger on it at first, but as the unfathomably ancient machines powered down and the fat little robed man moved to release her, she noticed how much more ... real he seemed than his surroundings. Then Celestine realised that she was not 'seeing' him at all; she was merely sensing him with her newly-enhanced psychic perception.

At first she wondered if she were blindfolded; perhaps, during the ritual someone had slipped another black bag over her head, but no, she couldn't feel anything like that. As her hands were freed she raised them to her eyes, feeling for some impediment to her vision. It was only when she found nothing that she realised that the soul-binding had left her as it leaves all those who participate in it; blind.

However, although her mundane sight was gone, the terrific boost to her already formidable powers meant that, while the physical world would always be a blank to her from now on, she could see its shadow in the warp as clearly as the metaphorical light of day, surely she would hardly miss her vision with such a gift?

On the way back to the holding-cells Celestine bashed her head on three pipes and a low-hanging sign, walked into several closed doors, knocked her shins many times and tripped over some inanimate (and therefore difficult for her to perceive) obstacle or other more times than she could count. It would have been comical were it not for her pitiable condition.

This time she was removed from her cell after no more than a few hours. She was taken to what she assumed, from the smell of disinfectant and the aura of pain and fear, was a medicae facility. They sheared her long, auburn locks, shaving her head and smearing it with some kind of chemical gel which burned painfully, then she was put under anaesthetic. When she awoke, she was sporting a set of astropath's plugs in the back of her head; the plugs though which she would be connected to all manner of recording devices and psi-amplifiers.

After she, along with the other new astropaths, was herded onto a large subterranean monorail car which took them to a Scholastia Psykana facility, where they would receive their training.

The next three years were an endless parade of strict discipline and gruelling psychic training (for the others at least; Celestine actually found the exercises rather easy, and breezed past every test laid before her, although she did at least have the good sense to look as though she was struggling).

Although the living standards were extremely spartan each novice astropath had a proper bed (after a fashion) and regular meals composed of actual food (more-or-less), so compared to the living hell of the Blackship it was easy living indeed, and this, combined with the lack of artificial psychic restrictions placed on them and the ease with which Celestine was completing her training, meant that, for the first time in two years, she began to feel a little like her old self again.

After her training she was assigned to the Imperial Navy, to serve as a ship's astropath on-board a small, escort-class vessel named 'The Fist of Mercy'.

Normally, astropaths tend to live shortened, unpleasant lives due to the tremendous psychic strain of constantly projecting their minds across the incomprehensible distances between the stars. This often proves to be too much for those who are, after all, only of moderate talent to begin with, and who are only capable of astrotelepathy at all due to the artificial enhancement of the soul-binding. As a result, premature aging is common among astropaths, and few of them live much past middle-age.

Celestine, on the other hand was a powerful telepath to begin with, and the augmentation of the soul-binding ritual meant that she was easily able to handle the load of acting as the ship's sole means of super-luminal communication.

This came as something of a shock to the bridge-crew of The Fist, who were used to astropaths being subdued, withered creatures, withdrawn and often seeming on the brink of physical collapse, not the relatively cheerful (and, in spite of the marks left by her experiences, still strikingly attractive) young lady who greeted her new captain with a snap of her hand to her forehead, which baffled all present, until someone realised what the gesture was supposed to be and explained that only navel personnel were expected to salute.

Although psykers are usually treated with a mixture of distain and fear (especially by superstitious navy men), it is very hard to be disdainful and fearful (especially for female-deprived navy men) of a pretty girl with a smile on her face and a friendly word on her lips.

Having leaned to reign in her mental abilities, she was no longer the off-puttingly otherworldly girl of her youth, now she was a quite charming young woman.

Celestine was reasonably happy with her station in life; she got on fairly well with the crew, she had her own quarters (they were tiny, but she didn't mind that, it was the first time in five years she'd had a room to herself), and she found living conditions on board to be entirely tolerable. Once again, however, alien influences conspired to disrupt her relatively comfortable life.

It just so happened that not 8 months after the girl had been on board, her ship had an important passenger; an Inquisitor named Goldeneye.

Naturally such an august personage had been offered quarters on board a battleship, but had turned them down and instead specifically requested passage on board The Fist.

From the moment he stepped onto the bridge, the Inquisitor seemed to take an interest in Celestine; himself a psyker of some modest talent, he noticed immediately that she was far more powerful than the average astro-telepath. He was not surprised at this, however, as unbeknownst to any on board, she was his sole reason for being there at all.

Many years ago Goldeneye had been directly responsible for saving the lives of some 50 Eldar, including two Farseers, all from the Craftworld of Iyanden. Without his direct intervention (literally swooping down at the last minute in a landing shuttle and evacuating the aliens), they would surely have been slaughtered by a marauding army of Orks, which had cut them off from their brethren.

Being something of an expert on the Eldar he had managed to barter the multiple life-debts owed to him into something he valued much more; information. Specifically, he wheedled out of them the entitlement to ask a dozen questions with no restrictions on what he was allowed to ask, and which they would have to answer truthfully to the best of their ability and knowledge.

The aliens were, of course, as evasive as they could be within the confines of the oath they had taken, but even so, twelve very carefully phrased questions later Inquisitor Goldeneye was possibly one of the best informed humans alive on the subject of the true nature of the ancient Necron menace (a long-standing obsession of his), their relationship with the Eldar, and the origins of both.

The Iyanden Eldar were infuriated at being indebted to a lowly 'Mon-Kai', and incensed that he had dared to extract knowledge from them that they considered far beyond what he and his primitive kind needed to know, but what annoyed them most of all was that they were unable to retaliate against him without harming their own sense of honour. As a consequence, word had been disseminated amongst others of their race, and the Eldar had avoided any contact or dealings with the Inquisitor ever since.

It was a considerable surprise, then, to receive a communiqué from one 'Jack-of-the-Green' (a pseudonym used by an old Eldar contact from whom he had not heard since the Iyanden incident), calling for a meeting.

The xeno informed Goldeneye that he would be offered the chance to make amends for the gross insult he had paid the Craftworld of Iyanden and the Eldar race in general by performing a simple service for them.

It transpired that there was a girl serving as an astropath on an Imperial naval vessel, 'Jack' merely asked Goldeneye to make sure that she comes to no harm until they contacted him at some unspecified later date.

He gave the human her name and the name of the ship, then rose ginning that impenetrable mask of a smile of his and swept out into the night before the Inquisitor could ask any follow-up questions.

It was simple enough for Goldeneye to find the ship, and sure enough he could tell as soon as he set eyes on the girl that she was something special. After observing her for the duration of the voyage he had her transferred to his own ship 'The Oath' where she has served for the last 4 years.

Whether as a consequence of her boosted psychic ability or her xeno-tainted genetic make-up, Goldeneye discovered (during his own psychic examination of her) that Celestine's mental talents extend far beyond astrotelepathy; her warp-sight is such that, in warp-space she can perceive the great psychic beacon of the Astronomican, saving Goldeneye the need of dealing with the Navis Nobilite (his previous navigator having died of extreme old-age, leaving The Oath stranded at its last berth for the past year or so while the Inquisitor struggled with the bureaucracy and red-tape involved in requisitioning a new one).

This is not the only non-standard purpose to which Celestine is put, however; apart from occasionally being called upon to act as a 'psychic bloodhound', she is also used as a vital component in a last-ditch method of extracting information from torture-resistant subjects known as the 'Extrema Altitudine' probe. Using arcane machineries to harness the psychic power to send a coherent thought across the galaxy, and focus that power onto a normal human mind a few feet away, the probe shatters the mind of the unfortunate recipient, allowing Goldeneye himself to sift through the ruins of his mind free of the usual safeguards that even the most weak-willed individual will possess against telepathic intrusion.

The down side to this is first, that only shards of memory may be recovered in this way, potentially too small and fragmented to be of use, and second, that the probe usually kills the subject, leaving only a few seconds in which to root around in the rubble of his memory. As such the Extrema Altitudine probe is seldom used except for time-sensitive 'ticking-clock' type emergencies when there is simply not time to break the subject with safer, more conventional techniques.

Celestine herself intensely dislikes being used in this manner and will often beg the Inquisitor not to employ the probe, or the subject to reveal what they know. The Inquisitor does not object to these displays, as it is remarkably good psychology, and more than one subject has relented and confessed upon seeing the girl's genuine distress at what is about to be done to them. However each time she is employed in the probe, she grows to privately resent the Inquisitor a little more.





Celestine Altizimus:-



Ws     Bs     S      T      I      Wp     Sg     Nv     Ld
5        0     22    26   51     88      64     28     32





Equipment:-



Astropath/ Astrogator/ probe uplink plugs - No real in-game purpose unless the G.M. descides to design a scenario involving the requesite pieces of machinery with which she can interface.

Robe armour on all locations (including head).

Stubber (as from revised armoury w/ drum magazine).

Bracing glove on right hand (reduces recoil by one 'notch', so high recoil becomes considerable recoil and so-on).




Abilities and Psychic Powers:-



Astrotelepathy - Celestine can communicate with minds a billion light-years distant or just across the room (Counts as telepathy for in-game purposes).

Astrogation - Miss Altizimus can percieve the warp well enough to usefully orientate herself via the Astronomican (No in-game use for this power, but it bestows the the ability 'I Have Stared Into the Abyss' from the navigator archetype, but without the extra resistance to chaotic psychic powers).

Mind Scan - As in the rule book.

Psi-Track - As in the rule book.

Psychic Aim - Celestine uses her mental powers to home in on her target and unleash an unnaturally accutrate shot (Difficulty 10, persistant power, while 'Psychic Aim' is in effect Celestine uses her willpower as her ballistic skill).

Warp-Sight - As with Goldeneye (see above).

Blind - Celestine is totaly blind without her warp-sight (G.M. will determine the precise effects, but generally, she can do very little without her psychic vision, and what she can do mostly counts as a risky action).




So ... What do the Eldar want with Celestine?

Will Goldeneye find out in time?

Is she really part-Eldar?

Who was the old man with the false leg, and why was he so eager to show everyone the contents of his raincoat?

For the answers to absolutely none of these questions tune in next week for another thrilling installment of 40K suspense theater!!!


As always any kind of feedback on stats. or background is appreciated (as long as it's not a return to the whole 'no such thing as a part-Eldar' debate, which I believe we resolved when I posted the picures of my warband in the painting and modelling forum).

Up next, my telekinetic martial-artist, but it takes me a while to write these things so it'll probably be a few days.