Inquisitor Mercy Chizoba

[Herald]

Having recently got back into sticking bits of metal together I thought I should write up some background for them so here's the first one, Inquisitor Mercy Chizoba of the Ordo Malleus.

Inquisitor Mercy Chizoba, Ordo Malleus

   When the monks from the isolated St Menda's Rest monastery on the semi-feral world of Therno found a young boy wondering the plateau on which the monastery was located they would never have realised that the half starved bundle of rags would one day become an Imperial Inquisitor. He appeared to have lived a carnivorous existence competing with the wild jungle hounds for the flesh of the animals that lived there. His teeth were pointed, his hair ragged and filthy. For reasons known only to himself the monastery's abbot decide to take the young boy on and educate and civilise him. Scripture was drilled into him, the Emperor had saved him from savage ignorance to fulfil I higher goal he was told. Swelled by such a sense of mission the boy became fiercely devoted to the Emperor and the scriptures. After a while though he became restless in essence he was still an animal and felt caged within the monastery's walls and began to despise the monks and their regular beatings. It was clear that if the Emperor meant him to fulfil a higher purpose it was not in the isolated monastery. Five years exactly after he had been rescued by the monks he fled their hospitality.

It is likely he would have disappeared into obscurity with no way to leave Therno were it not for the arrival of a certain trader named Giss Skell. Skell was a slave trader who picked up the most promising savages for the pit fights on Jairo Prime and Thernoan's had a reputation as talented fighters. When he came across Chizoba in the depths of the jungles he was fascinated by this seemingly cultured savage and his devotion to the Emperor. Capturing him Skell intended to sell him to Jairo nobility as an oddity to grace their drinking rooms. The savage, animalistic nature that had allowed Chizoba to survive his formative years, however, had not been beaten out of him by the monks. Locked in a cramped cell with three other Thernoan's it reared to the surface and when Skell returned to the cell he found Chizoba surrounded by the bodies of the other three daubing the sign of the Aquila onto their flesh in blood. Skell realised he would make a much greater profit selling him to the Pits than he would selling him to the nobility.

In the pits he was a success his natural brutality and unshakeable faith in the Emperor winning him many fights and supporters. The scrawny boy found by the Thernoan monks was transformed his body filled with stims and muscle implants which bulged under his skin. In all this time his psychic potential remained latent and unrevealed but that was not enough to save him when the Blackships arrived. He was plucked from the pits after a running fire-fight between the Blackship troopers and the pit guard whose masters were reluctant to let him go. He was fortunate, however, in two regards. Firstly his natural savagery allowed him to survive the horrors of the Blackships and secondly he was deemed to useful to waste. After much probing and testing it was discovered that he was a natural daemonologist and hence of great interest to the Ordo Malleus who swept upon him in an instance. He was sent to the Schola Psykana on Rith II where he was trained while being carefully monitored by several Ordo Malleus Inquisitors.

It was much to their dismay that he was snatched early from the Schola by Inquisitor Von Stracham a rabid monodominant with little respect for psykers. Von Stracham used Chizoba as a shock weapon against the forces of Chaos, pumping him full of combat stims and releasing him against cults to use his combat prowess combined with his powers to rip the heart out of them and destroy any daemons. Those who had been monitoring his progress were horrified fearing the drugs would damage his valuable talents and his sharp mind. Von Stracham's intolerant approach had made hi many enemies and so it was an easy task for Chizoba's shadowy sponsors to have him conveniently removed and Chizoba, a far more promising resource, was transferred as an acolyte to Inquisitor Kruger a moderate Almathian who was himself a talented psyker. Here Chizoba's talents were carefully nurtured but he could not shake off his addiction to the combat stims he had been using since his days in the pits and it continued to be a cause of concern. Nonetheless he was a talented student with sharp investigative skills, solid, if unspectacular, control over his powers and a fearsome combatant when it was required. He served Kruger for thirty years learning how to best combat the daemon. On Miano he purged the Cult of the Ninth Star while carefully keeping his actions hidden from the radical Inquisitor Forselle who was attempting to track the cult through Chizoba and hence gain access to their heretical texts. Later he used his powers to protect the Lord Governor of Bliegan from a warp spawned creature during an assassination attempt. His promotion was sealed by his four year campaign to collapse the Muran Cartel which was running a trade in warp tainted food produce into the hives on Brestad. At the conclusion of this he was promoted to full Inquisitorial rank in the Ordo Malleus supported by his master Inquisitor Kruger, Lord Inquisitor Vitus Jupiter and surprisingly the Xanthanite Inquisitor Reubel.

It was Reubel who subsequently almost ended Chizoba's career shortly after it had begun. He approached Chizoba about acquiring various artefacts from several Ordo Malleus vaults which he claimed he required for study. Chizoba, naively, was happy to oblige his sponsor not realising that he was part of a cartel including notorious radicals like Inquisitrix Jayla Laverne and Inquisitor Forselle who he had thwarted before. Over time the cartel blackmailed him further, mainly through his drug addiction, into acquiring more artefacts and texts. Slowly Chizoba began to realise he was being used and after witnessing the summoning of a daemonhost using one of the artefacts he had acquired he went to Inquisitor Molner, a former friend of his masters and exposed the cartel. Using his inside knowledge the Inquisitor's were declared Excommunicate Traitorous. Chizoba himself was only saved from severe sanctions himself because of the intervention of Kruger and Lord Vitus Jupiter on his behalf and because he gave up the names of many in the cartel. Disgusted with his own weakness and the way he had been used Chizoba returned to Therno and embarked upon a five year penance there to purify himself. The routine of self flagellation, prayer and hard labour cleansed his soul and renewed his faith, unfortunately it still didn't cleanse him of his drug addiction. When he left Therno he had the chainsword he had wielded since his pit fighting days consecrated by the abbot making it a potent anti-daemonic weapon. He also recruited the pariah and former dock worker John Benson who had been serving a penance there also. He intended then to hunt to the remaining members of Reubel's cartel but received a communiqué from Kruger who was on his death bed. He returned to his former master and pledged to him personally that he would make amends for his weakness. Kruger gifted him with an antique plasma pistol commenting that like Chizoba it was a "temperamental piece of kit". He also seconded Grendal Thantos, a Cydonian Death-Priest to him as part of his personal retinue but it is rumoured that Thantos also monitored him on behalf of Kruger and now, with Kruger dead, on behalf of Molner.

Now into his second century Chizoba is still desperate to make amends for his early failure and hunt down the remaining members of Reubel's cartel. He remains a powerful combatant due mainly to his body's muscle implants and the drugs he uses although he does have some degree of skill with his huge chainsword. His mind, while dulled slightly by his drug use, remains sharp and he is a capable psyker. There are rumours, however, that in his desire to make amends he has taken actions he should not have and is viewed with some suspicion by many of his peers especially as some of the artefacts and texts he acquired for Reubel's cartel were never recovered.  


WS   BS   S   T   I   Wp   Sg   Nv   Ld
72   52   56(76)   54   71   74   69   81   74

Equipment: Chrysanthos (anointed Eviscerator), plasma pistol, psyk-out grenade, short sword, Sub-dermal muscle implants (+20 strength), Injector with 12 doses of Psych-Slaught (Frenzy, +2D10 strength, +D3 speed, -d10 to mental stats), 2 points of armour on right arm.

Skills: True Grit, Dodge, Feint, Sanctuary, Strike Daemon, Vortex of Chaos.

[Aidan]

Got to say I'm impressed - that's a good character you've come up with. The profile is well balanced and, though fairly high in the mental stats, is perfectly reasonable for an Inquisitor who, though having gained much knowledge and experience, is stunted by stimulant use (I like that he has such an Achilles' heel). I would warn that no armour and an average {T} characteristic will make very vulnerable, however, particularly to fire (Dodge can only save him for a little while). You might want to think up something to keep him safer.

The story background is good too - original (don't know of any other wild-boy turned Inquisitor, but correct me if I'm wrong), and it doesn't have any glaring inaccuracies. And thank you for having Chizoba go through the scholastica psychana, even if his training was cut short by an overzelous monodominant (is there any other kind?). There are all to many inexplicably unsanctioned psykers out there. His bad history with the radical-run cartel all but begs to be used by GMs as a plot hook.

Altogether, a character who is capable but not too powerful, and has a rich background. Well done.

[Kaled]

One question - why would anyone promote him to Inquisitor if he's addicted to drugs that have a seriously debilitating effect on his mind?  Surely that would be a major black mark against him?  If he's not strong enough to throw off addiction to a mere drug, wouldn't people suspect he's also not strong enough to resist Chaos?  If the drugs effect his mental functions, I wouldn't trust him with near limitless authority and the power to destroy worlds almost at a whim.

[Flinty]

Humm...with Kaled here. I dont see quite what drawbacks this drug addiction produces in game play. He is open to blackmail, but does he ever go cold turkey in the middle of a fire-fight?

His stats seem pretty high for a Pit Slave who has had his system overloaded with huge doses of drugs which are normally associated with some very unpleasant side effects - most comabt stimms are/were designed to be forcibly given to disposable individuals with a very short life expectancy (flagellants, guardsmen etc), or taken by those with nothing/little to loose and probably no pension plan.

[MarcoSkoll]

I'd say that Kaled and Flinty both have good points that need to be addressed, but I've something of my own to bring up. I don't really like the wording behind a "natural daemonologist". As the rulebook describes, it's the toughest discipline, and it's not the kind of thing that will occur naturally - just like you don't get natural physicians.

Sure, you can get people who are naturally have the potential (by being intelligent, a good learner, a hard worker and having the interest in doing so), but it takes significant study and work to get from there to actually being skilled enough to be able to practise medicine.

To me, given the potential for getting Daemonology powers very very wrong (and dying horribly in the process), most daemonologists will actually have other powers as well - less risky abilities with which they developed their control of their talents, and thus acquiring the control needed to disrupt the boundaries between realspace and the warp without it just ripping open a daemonic portal or mutating everyone on the same planet.

If you will, take it like driving a car. Daemonology is rather like trying to set racing lap-times in a Ferrari - trying to get a learner driver to do that is practically guaranteed to cause a hideous and/or expensive accident.

Not that you can't have a daemonologist, but the wording implies an awful lot less work has gone into it than it should - any daemonologist will take decades before they can claim reasonable competence, and many will have gone mad in the attempt - so I'd do a bit of rewording there.