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Medicae-Inquisitor

Started by Xtan, June 29, 2013, 06:20:10 PM

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Xtan

Inquisitrix Jennifer August

In her own words:
QuoteSanctus Erit Recordatio Moriana.
I was born the only daughter of a Commissar, they tell me. She couldn't raise me, so I was given to the Schola Progenium. I have very little memory of my childhood. For the most part, they wasted it trying to beat the willfulness out of me. I was always... different, even then. Harder to control, and able to bend people to my will. To see a grown drill-abbot run errands for a Schola brat must have been a sight.
Of course, this knack of mine was what got me noticed. The black ships came to our world, and the strange child who seemed to hypnotize her instructors drew their attention. I was thirteen at the time, just coming into myself, and told I was to serve the Emperor on Terra. I saw little issue with this as I left.
The black ships were hellish. I have no real recollection of them, and this is as well.
I remember first setting foot on Holy Terra. It was beautiful, like nothing you've ever seen. To set foot on that world remains the single most humbling event of my life. If you've not seen it, you have no idea of the grandeur of the planet.
Sanctioning seems now to be almost a dream. I find it hard to remember what was real, what a vision was, and what was my own imaginings. I recall, I saw the Emperor in a vision. A tiny, tired old man, sat back in His throne, the tubes emerging from his His body seeming to bind Him in place. In that moment, I knew that I would do great things for Him.
I entered service in the Imperial Guard.  I was assigned to the Medical division of the Valhallan 3rd rifles. I was to be a nurse, using my ability to control others to manage panicking casualties. The Valhallans taught me medicine, too. I swiftly became a competent doctor, and rose in the ranks. By the age of twenty-two, I was leading my own team of medics. I remembered my time on Holy Terra, and always resolved to serve Him on Earth on the battlefield.
On Krassis IV, I encountered the zombie plague for the first time. A rebellion in service of the Great Enemy had started raising their own casualties as fighters. The Valhallan casualties began resurrecting as well, and slowly we were ground down by the waves of dead fighters.
It became apparent to me that the reanimation was caused by an infectious agent. In this war, it therefore became vitally important to prevent contamination. I created a series of protocols for dealing with casualties that prove very effective at curtailing the spread of infection. Of course, those that became infected I kept isolated, studying the effects of the sickness so that I might learn to treat it.
The campaign against the walking dead lasted four years. In the last year, I became aware that agents of the Emperor's holy Inquisition had become involved. As the war drew to a close, a number of us were interviewed by acolytes. I drew a certain amount of attention for my handling of the contaminated. After a series of grueling and, frankly, terrifying interrogations, I was told to accompany the agents off world.
I was employed as an acolyte by an Inquisitor Hector Cade of the Ordo Sepulturum. He was, they told me, investigating the spread of various warp-spawned plagues across the sector. His agents frequently came into contact with these plagues, and my task was to monitor agents returning from the field and see to their mental and physical health. In time, I was promoted to a field-agent myself, accompanying teams of acolytes into quarantined zones to gather information and tend to my fellows. After a successful mission into a dying hive, I was again promoted, put in charge of a team of new recruits.
I think this time really made me who I am now. The pressure of covert missions had a tremendous effect on me: all that was week was burnt out of my psyche, and my will was sharpened to a razors edge. I gained a reputation amongst my peers for clinical efficiency. In time, I was given greater responsibility and more freedom to use my initiative- my mandate essentially being to find things that my master would find interesting.  As my station increased, I found my psychic abilities grew to match. I became able to reach inside another's head and take control of them, wearing them like a second skin, and learned to override my enemies homeostatic systems, causing their body's self-regulators to turn against them.
By the time I turned forty, I had been made an interrogator. By now I had been granted a measure of trust by my master. He was, I learned, a member of the Ordo Malleus, and a Thorian by disposition, using his position to investigate the links between the warp and real-space in the hope that one day the God-Emperor might be returned to the flesh. His investigations into the zombie plague had been fruitful initially, but in time I saw that he was tiring of it, and had little time for extensive medical study. He handed the investigation over to me, and gave me access to many of his notes.
This was to prove another turning point in my life. As well as his notes on the warp-plagues, I also found a number of old writings dealing with obscure theological and philosophical matters from the early days of the inquisition. I read, and learned how the Inquisition had always had a faction dedicated to reviving the Emperor. I recalled my vision of the emperor, decades ago. He seemed old, decaying, and bound to His throne. I admit, I almost felt pity that a god such as He should be chained to the mortal realm in such a way. After many days' prayer and reflection, I understood the task of my order- to release the Emperor from His throne.
It was during this period I first learned the name Moriana. From what I could make out, she was a holy woman from the early days of the Imperium, who dedicated her life's work to seeing the God-Emperor returned to the flesh. The references to her, however, were scattered, and severely edited, and I could learn very little. My guess was that her teachings had fallen out of favour and her writing suppressed.
I had been working largely autonomously for my master for a decade and a half when I became a full inquisitor. I was in my laboratories, conducting a dissection, when he came to me. He said that my investigations had been monitored for some time, and I had been deemed by a small cabal of his colleagues to be capable of taking the duties of the holy inquisition. I was handed a rosette and advised to continue my current work under my own. Very little really changed, in all honesty.
Between then and now, what have I achieved?
I was almost immediately recruited to the Ordo Sepulturum; a minor Ordo dedicated to researching and combating various diseases that trouble the Imperium, most notably the Zombie Plague.
Early on in my career, I managed to locate one of Moriana's essays, in which she espouses the use of warp energies to free the Emperor so that He might become a true god, in the manner of the ruinous powers. Her work genuinely struck a chord with me, and a number of the techniques I have developed are inspired by the experiments she describes in this essay. I have researched the life of this woman, and learned how her radical views were rejected by her peers, resulting in her going into hiding. How ironic.
I have studied the sickness known as Grandfather's Rot. There is no cure for it, and there is no defence save for isolation. It is a creation of the plague god and, from what I can tell, a near-perfect disease. It rots both the victim's body and her soul. From interrogating bound demons, I have learned that as the patient's soul degrades, in the warp it coalesces to become a demonic tallyman of the ruinous powers.
On that note, I have learned to banish demons through the force of my will. This skill has been developed through years of practice against bound demons. I have had some little success in temporarily summoning demons into a vessel, although not reliably so.
I have continued my investigation into the Plague Zombie. I have learned a little of how to create, control and modify such infections. On a number of occasions, I have had my servants release this sickness against the enemies of the Imperium, with mixed success. Nonetheless, world of Vedullis Prime was re-taken a full decade earlier than expected, although imperial forces suffered as much as fifty percent casualties from my biological weapons. Deployment of such a biological agent is incredibly effective, but prone to spreading out of control. I have stopped my use of this agent until I can make the resulting creatures more controllable.
I have rooted out and destroyed well over a hundred chaos-worshipping cults, for the most part those worshipping the plague god. Where those cults have gathered some little knowledge, I have requisitioned that for my own research.
I have had extensive modifications made to my own body, implanting glands and organs into myself and replacing the weaker parts of my flesh. I can now shrug off most sicknesses as if they were a mere cold, and recover from injury in a matter of minutes. The need to consume large quantities of raw flesh is unfortunate, but tolerable.
My work as a medical researcher has been significant. I have developed a large number of tailor-made virus-based weapons that are employed by Imperial forces to this day. On a less dramatic note, I have saved three quarantined worlds from exterminates after creating cures to the diseases that afflicted them. I performed surgery that saved the life of Inquisitor Lehart in the field of duty.
I think most would call me a follower of the Horusian philosophy. I believe most things, no matter how foul, can be turned to humanity's service.  Look at my weaponizing of the Zombie Plague: a warp-spawned nightmare, harnessed and doing the Emperor's will! Isn't it a thing of beauty? It is my hope that the study of the warp will someday set the Emperor free from the throne that binds him, letting him fully ascend to godhood. When that happens, I believe that humanity would enter a new golden age, sweeping away all before them and truly conquering this galaxy as was always His plan. Whatever research, whatever atrocities I commit, they are justified in full if they bring that day closer.
Recently, the Cabal I have counted myself part of has become fashionably hard-line and puritan. After several weeks of malicious rumours about my work, my fellow inquisitors had the gall to batter down my doors and try to arrest me. I would not have minded, save that I was in the process of binding a little demon-child of the plague god into a body that I might interrogate. As the kill-team dealt with the demon, I made good my escape. Now I appear to be on the run, and they have the nerve to try to bring me in. No matter. It is a temporary setback. Ego operor Imperator invictos.

Description:
Inquisitor August normally presents herself as a noble-born doctor or scientist, dressing in either in the fashions of the upper-classes when in company, or a simple surgeon's robe at work. Her hair is long and normally worn tied back in a braid, and her face has a tight, pinched look that betrays her age slightly.  She has the upright bearing associated with most Schola Progenium students, and speaks high gothic with a quiet, clipped tone.
Inquisitor August is 107 years old. She has undergone extensive rejuvenat treatment, and much of her original body has been replaced with transplanted flesh, so that she looks to be in her late thirties.
Currently, Inquisitor August is on the run and has no real retinue to speak of.



Stats:
Weapon Skill 47: Ballistic Skill 66: Strength 39: Toughness 50: Initiative 61: Willpower 92: Nerve 85: Sagacity 93: Leadership 72

Talents: Force of Will, Medic

Psychic Powers: Enfeeble, Blood Boil, Banishment, Enforce Will, Puppet Master, Mind Scan, Numb [Difficulty 5: The psyker blocks her patient's ability to feel pain, allowing them to keep fighting regardless of their wounds. This is a persistent power. Whilst it affects the target, that target ignores all penalties to their stats or speed due to injuries suffered and cannot be stunned by injuries save those to the head. However, for each time they benefit from this effect, the subject adds d3 to their injury total as the inadvertently worsen their injuries.]

Exotic Abilities: Regeneration

Gear (undercover loadout): Digital Needle Pistol (choke), Revolver, Cybernetic Lungs (average)
Gear (combat loudout): Digital Needle Pistol (choke), two Auto Pistols, Refractor Field, Flack Armor to chest, arms and groin, cloth armor to torso and legs, Medi-pack, Cybernetic Lungs (average), Gas Mask


For reference: We're using the tamer side of the lrb stats, and starting off with only our main characters- everybody else is being picked up in play. We're using a mix of free-form rp (dark heresy style) for the most part, with fights done in 28mm. Her figure's still WIP, and is based on the dark eldar Lhamian.
This character is actually based off an old Vampire the Requiem character of mine, who became somewhat notorious for her complete lack of restraint or ethics. Considering that in our first chapter she basically kidnapped 25 people and gave them space-dysentry to see what would happen, it looks like the tradition's being upheld.

Koval

#1
I'll look over the background properly a bit later*, but Force of Will is incredibly powerful -- she's stared down a zombie plague and many worse things, but does she warrant an ability that would cause her to shrug casually if a Great Unclean One entered reality? Have a look on the Carthax Wiki for slightly tamer alternatives; I suggest Strong-Willed or Jaded.

As for her stats, her Strength is alarmingly low (consider bumping it up to about 45), and you've got two stats in the 90s that I think need to lose about ten points each. I appreciate that she's supposed to be an evil genius and a powerful psyker, but you can represent that very easily with stats in the 80s. (Speaking of stats in the 80s, her Nerve stat suggests foolhardiness -- is that the case?).

You've also given her a rather nasty psychic power loadout; I accept she can probably justify most if not all of those, but she may not need all of them. I might lose either Blood Boil or Enfeeble.

Autopistols in the LRB are not known for being especially user-friendly, by the way; I suggest you use RIA versions instead, which are a lot more usable and allow you to make them into more than just generic guns.

Besides that, her gear looks fine, and Medic makes perfect sense.


*See Marco's post below, as he's just been through the background himself, and in a better way than my own attempt would've been.

MarcoSkoll

Well, I think you're owed a...

Welcome to the Conclave!

... first. And now we can move on to some critique!

My answers here might seem a bit in-depth. Should it sound like "OMG, all your stuff is awful", I apologise. I have a habit of remembering obscure details and tend to be quite rigorous about my assessment of them - in other words, I'm a total nerd.

QuoteHarder to control, and able to bend people to my will. To see a grown drill-abbot run errands for a Schola brat must have been a sight. Of course, this knack of mine was what got me noticed. The black ships came to our world, and the strange child who seemed to hypnotize her instructors drew their attention.
Don't belittle the Drill Abbots! There's a reason why nearly no psykers make it through the Schola.

They're not ignorant of the existence of psykers and being half priest, half trained soldier, they'd be perfectly capable of quickly identifying and dealing with a witch among their ranks - where "dealt with" varies between executing her on the spot for her impurity or keeping her in an induced coma until the next black ship arrives.

The idea that they keep doing her errands and none of them actually resist or notice each other behaving strangely is not likely. Not to mention her need to keep the other students in check. They'd notice too and, with the culturally indoctrinated hatred of psykers, they'd probably lynch her.

We are talking about an untrained psyker at this point - keeping several hundred students and dozens of Drill-Abbots ignorant and under control at this stage would make her stupidly powerful (way off the scale of what's suitable for a PC in Inquisitor).

I'd suggest changing this perhaps so that it was the Drill-Abbots that took action.

QuoteI was assigned to the Medical division of the Valhallan 3rd rifles. I was to be a nurse, using my ability to control others to manage panicking casualties. The Valhallans taught me medicine, too. I swiftly became a competent doctor, and rose in the ranks. By the age of twenty-two, I was leading my own team of medics.
Aside from my general groan that plots and characters so often seem to be magnetically attracted to the same few planets out of a million (namely the ones most often named in the canon, rather than original creations), her being being shipped to Terra, sanctioned, shipped off to another segmentum, become a physician qualified to a doctor equivalent level and then given a team in just the nine years since being taken from the Schola is unlikely!

It takes a decade (or more!) to train as a GP in the modern day. Travel between Segmentums is years worth (we are talking many thousands or tens of thousands of light years), sanctioning is a few more years, add in some time for simple "hmm, you're a good nurse, you might be worth training more" and some time to move up to a team leader (particularly given psykers are inherently mistrusted).

There's probably at least ten years missing off that age, even if she's a prodigy. (Or she's plain lying to us about her age).

QuoteOf course, those that became infected I kept isolated, studying the effects of the sickness so that I might learn to treat it.
I can't imagine that went down well with the Commissars (or many of the others), given Imperial standard practice is the total incineration of anything tainted. How did she swing that one?
(Telepathy is not a great answer here, seeing as the Commisariat's counter-answer to trying that usually goes "HERESY!" and then "BLAM!").

QuoteI was employed as an acolyte by an Inquisitor Hector Cade of the Ordo Sepulturum.
There's a consistency problem here, namely the Ordo. See this later line: "By now I had been granted a measure of trust by my master. He was, I learned, a member of the Ordo Malleus, and a Thorian by disposition".

QuoteIn time, I was promoted to a field-agent myself, accompanying teams of acolytes into quarantined zones to gather information and tend to my fellows. After a successful mission into a dying hive, I was again promoted, put in charge of a team of new recruits.
This feels a little bit glossed over to me. It's not terminal, but we don't get any idea of what the actual reasons were.

QuoteAs my station increased, I found my psychic abilities grew to match.
I'm struggling for the wording here... but this has spontaneity problems to me, which result in jack-of-all-trades problems. The development of psychic powers represents a considerable investment of time and effort, hence why when I do a powerful psyker, it's generally the only thing they can do well. They haven't had the time to learn to become a crack shot, master shipwright and expert multi-instrumentalist; they've been forced into just expanding their potential, doing the roles their Inquisitor can't give to non-supernaturally powered people.

QuoteBy the time I turned forty, I had been made an interrogator.
My problems here just relate to what I said about her age earlier.

QuoteI had been working largely autonomously for my master for a decade and a half when I became a full inquisitor. I was in my laboratories, conducting a dissection, when he came to me. He said that my investigations had been monitored for some time, and I had been deemed by a small cabal of his colleagues to be capable of taking the duties of the holy inquisition. I was handed a rosette and advised to continue my current work under my own. Very little really changed, in all honesty.
A decade and a half isn't unreasonable, but would be quite a short time as an interrogator.

As for her promotion... it would be rather weird for someone to be made an Inquisitor in that way. Given the power of the position, it's a rigorous process that someone would struggle to be involved in without their knowledge - things such as interview and assessment before a panel from the sector conclave tend to get noticed.

QuoteI have studied the sickness known as Grandfather's Rot. There is no cure for it, and there is no defence save for isolation.
Although I accept she might be mistaken or incompletely informed, there are canonical defences and cures against Nurgle's Rot.

Rebreathers and sealed suits offer some protection, and powerful enough faith can act as both defence and cure (provided, of course, the disease has only progressed so far).

QuoteI have learned a little of how to create, control and modify such infections.
Given the nature of a warp-based plague, I'd suggest there are soooo many ways this could go wrong if a sufficiently powerful warp entity decided it wanted some fun!

QuoteI have had extensive modifications made to my own body, implanting glands and organs into myself and replacing the weaker parts of my flesh. I can now shrug off most sicknesses as if they were a mere cold, and recover from injury in a matter of minutes. The need to consume large quantities of raw flesh is unfortunate, but tolerable.
I kind of expected to see something like a De-tox gland in her equipment from the mention of her immune system.
As for the regeneration, although Dark Heresy adds the raw flesh requirement to one of the ways this trait might manifest, it sort of skips over the consequences of and reasons for this.

Someone that was eating several raw steaks a day would not look like the Lhamian - but that extra body mass would give them a store of resources to use when they needed to replenish blood, rebuild lost limbs and generally fix things.

I have a character with regeneration myself (who doesn't!), but that character's is partly warp based (although not psychic, as no conscious process is involved) to explain how she gets around conservation of mass. Well, at least the characters involved assume it is - they still haven't worked out how it works.

Personally, if dealing with a character whose accelerated healing was supposed to be an entirely physical process and they didn't have an arbitrarily large store of non-essential body mass to work with, I would use a somewhat restricted version.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

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