Azazeal's archive

[Azazeal849]

Still a few to go...

GINA WRIGHT

"Am I going insane? Am I the only one here without a ****ing death wish!?"



Featured in: Field Trip (retconned), Austere, West Hills Haunted High, The Reborn (spin-off).

Gina is the only one so far without a title, and there's a reason for that. She is just a regular Leicester girl, with no special skills beyond hockey training and the first aid courses she took to try and help her career as a paramedic, who is trying to keep things together after her mum broke up with her dad and moved them to America. She's also a contender for unluckiest person in the universe, as since then I've thrown her into a zombie apocalypse, a town full of body-snatching ghosts, and a school with every classic horror character imaginable. The first plotline I have retconned as it never got off the ground, but I took the liberty of tying the latter two together into one ongoing plot so I could further Gina's character arc.

I really like writing for this character, and mostly it's because she's the most ordinary. It's intriguing to explore how normal people react to extraordinary situations, and hopefully win through with just their own courage and wits. As a side effect I've had to write straight-faced drama through some pretty silly premises (for instance, trying to convince a newcomer that they are in danger by showing them a classmate who's been transfigured into a tree), but the human issues Gina ends up dealing with are real enough, and deserve to be taken seriously. The depth of character I've ended up cultivating for her keeps me coming back to write, and I imagine she'll be kicking about RPA for some time yet. Even if Gina herself sometimes frequently ends up railing against the crazy people and crazier situations she finds herself dealing with.

Trivia: While talking about this character, it would be rude not to mention G and her fantastic portrayal of Gina's mum Jenny in Austere. Though the original RP was never finished, hopefully we can find out just how the two of them resolved their differences in the reboot that AliceMalice15 has occasionally dropped hints about.

I have included two profiles for Gina, since I'm not sure yet if The Reborn is going to be part of her "canon" backstory for future RPs.

Spoiler: Gina's profile (start of West Hills) 

Full Name: Georgina Wright

Nickname: Gina (though her mum still insists on "Georgie")

Age: 18

Birthday: 6 April

Appearance: Georgina is 5'8, with strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes. She has an oval face and quite soft features, with big eyes, a narrow nose and a small mouth. Being ginger (and from the UK, which is not exactly famous for its sunshine) her skin is quite pale. Lately, a lack of sleep has left her looking tired and washed out, which she does her best to hide with make-up.

Personality: Gina is an outgoing and cheerful girl when she's not chronically tired, which is a lot of the time nowadays; since the events in Austere she has suffered from insomnia and nightmares. She does however have a high capacity for counting her blessings and trying to get on with things, which has kept her going so far. She tries to think before she speaks (mostly a backlash against her mum, who is the exact opposite), and doesn't have much time for petty teenage politics. She used to love nights out, but no longer has the time or the network of friends. She isn't a violent person (as she'll tell you, hockey is about controlled aggression), and in fact has a strong desire to help people. She has been taking voluntary courses with the St John's ambulance service since she was 14, and is a qualified first aider.

Likes: Hockey, running, indie music, vodka and red bull (she takes a very northern approach to getting drunk, i.e. no half measures).

Dislikes: Tea, cigarette smoke, the West Hills school uniform.

Habits and Hobbies: Gina enjoys sports, specifically hockey, and was on the local team back in England. She likes to unwind by listening to music, or running (though lately this is more an attempt to tire herself out so she can actually sleep). She is a fan of indie rock, and her favourite bands are Muse and Kasabian. She tends to subconsciously play with her hair while speaking to people.

Favourite Class: Biology, gym.

Least Favourite Class: Music. She loves listening to it, but has no knack for playing it.

Bio: Georgina is the only child of a middle-class family from Leicestershire in England. Her northern accent occasionally gets her misidentified as Australian by Americans, a fact that never ceases to amuse her. Unlike the traditional British stereotype she prefers coffee to tea and actually has rather nice teeth.

Gina’s parents are separated, which went about as smoothly as could be reasonably expected until her mum pretty much jumped at a job opportunity in America, and of course Gina had to go with her. This caused a lot of friction between Gina and her dad on one side and her mum on the other, and Gina and her mum were barely on speaking terms when they moved to the small town of Austere, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Austere wasn't a normal town. Gina doesn't speak about what happened there (who would believe her if she did?) but it has left her with trouble sleeping, and she still suffers from occasional nightmares. She is also a lot less incredulous about the supernatural than she used to be.

Gina and her mum moved out of the town after only two months. Perhaps the one good thing to come out of their brief stay was that it got the two of them talking again, and Gina's mum has promised to sort something out with her ex-husband so that Gina can actually start seeing her dad again. Gina knows that such a thing is still going to be difficult (they are still on opposite sides of the Atlantic after all), but she is hopeful.

Changing schools, and whatever happened in Austere, didn't do much for Gina's grades - a more mundane problem that has come back to bite her now that she and her mum have moved again. Gina is a bright girl; not brilliant, but hard-working, and she knows she needs to step up her game at her new school if she wants to get a university place and study to be a paramedic, a goal that she is stubbornly sticking to despite everything. As such she just wants to focus on her work. Easier said than done, of course.

Spoiler: Gina's profile (Reborn spin-off) 

Full Name: Georgina Wright

Nickname: Gina (though her mum still insists on "Georgie")

Age: 18

Birthday: 6 April

Job: Student, first-aider, and impromptu ghost hunter.

Appearance: Georgina is 5'8, with copper hair and blue eyes. She has an oval face and quite soft features, with big eyes, a narrow nose and a small mouth. Being ginger (and from the UK, which is not exactly famous for its sunshine) her skin is quite pale. She has a gauze pad taped to the side of her neck, and is doing her best to hide it with her shirt collar. Before her first teleport she was wearing a West Hills school uniform and had a pair of sharp, sterling-silver scissors hidden in her sleeve.

Personality: Gina doesn't think of herself as a leader, but she is surprisingly adept at filling the role in a crisis. Her preference is to plan, think and keep a group together, though she can easily get stressed worrying about the details. She has a strong desire to help people, and can be determined when it matters most. On the other hand, past experiences can make her suspicious or even paranoid, and she often has trouble sleeping.

Socially she is an outgoing and cheerful girl, at least when she's not stressed, which unfortunately is a lot of the time nowadays. She tries to think before she speaks (mostly a backlash against her mum, who is the exact opposite), and doesn't have much time for petty teenage politics. She also tends to push back against confrontation, though usually not with direct violence (as she'll tell you, hockey is about controlled aggression).

Likes: Hockey, running, indie music, vodka and red bull (she takes a very northern approach to getting drunk, i.e. no half measures).

Dislikes: Tea, cigarette smoke, ghosts (which she habitually refers to as "Them").

Habits and Hobbies: Gina has been taking voluntary courses with the St John's ambulance service since she was 14, and is a qualified first aider. She enjoys sports, specifically hockey, and was on the school team back in England. She likes to unwind by listening to music, or running (though sometimes this is simply to tire herself out, so she can actually sleep). She tends to subconsciously play with her hair while speaking to people.

Bio: Originally from Leicester, England, Gina moved to America a year ago following the breakdown of her mum's marriage. Dealing with this change and the separation from her dad have been almost the least of her worries, however. Until quite recently, if you had said "supernatural" to her, the first thing she would have thought of would have been Sam and Dean Winchester. This was before her move to Austere, Pennsylvania. Gina doesn't often speak about what happened there, but it has left her with trouble sleeping, and she still suffers from occasional nightmares. She and her mum tried to put it behind them, moving again and enrolling Gina in West Hills school for her final year.

Gina is a bright girl; not brilliant, but hard-working, and originally she wanted to study medicine. This goal has been somewhat curbed by West Hills turning out to be the American Horror Story of boarding schools. Gina and a group of fellow students were involved in a deadly five-way playoff against a ghost-summoning headmistress, a vampire, a mad scientist and a sociopathic half-vampire classmate before Gina herself was ripped out of her canon universe to serve as one of the Multiverse Travellers.

[Azazeal849]

For the old Warseer crowd.

TECH ADEPT RAECHEL KUSCELIAN

"So I am going to survive two weeks? Is that long enough to get a derogatory nickname?"



Featured In: To Cleanse The Stars, Sins of Ambition (retconned), The Silent Forge (part 1), The Silent Forge (part 2), Penitence

When I decided I was going to do an Adeptus Mechanicus character, I thought I'd break the mould a bit. For those of you who don't know the Ad Mech from 40K, their go-to trait is usually "cold, calculating bastard" spiced with elements of the crazy scientist. As a chemical engineer myself, I've made an interesting observation about the people I work with: although engineers get stereotyped as hidebound and socially awkward, many of the ones I know are quite social and articulate, and while they are often sparing with their words in group conversations they tend to have a really good sense of humour. I decided to carry this across into my character. A couple of other core concepts I had in mind were a news article I had recently read about a young girl with a pacemaker, and a talk by robotics professor Kevin Warwick I had attended a few years before (and particularly, a throwaway line where he admitted to "looking at something as simple as a TV remote and being embarrassed that (he) couldn't see in as many spectra as it could" - a sentiment that struck me as just so very Ad Mech).

In a way, Raechel is both one of the easiest and one of the hardest characters for me to write. Easy because her mindset isn't far removed from my own: practical, inquisitive, and likes being around people and things that keep her creativity sharp. Hard because of the amount of research that keeps cropping up - she is a woman of applied science and technology, and when I'm quoting such things in the story I want to make damn sure I get the exposition behind it right. For all that, she can be quite an entertaining character to write; such as when she didn't see the point of explaining a Spinning Disc Reactor to another character and just told them that the rotation pleases the Machine God, or when her inquisitive naivete caused a more jaded character to instantly nickname her "Optimist" and spend the next 5 minutes psyching her out about how she was going to die. I also enjoy looking at the contrast between her and older, more serious tech adepts (who she loves to learn from, but sometimes feels suppressed by) and with more esoteric inquisition characters who tend to bring out her more human side. This conflict between her Ad Mech origins and the more "exciting" work of the inquisition is something I tried to explore more fully in The Silent Forge. It's not entirely finished - Raechel has a bad habit of joining RPs that die, a jinx that I hope will not apply to my upcoming Penitence - but I'll have another chance now that Atrum Daemon has renewed the RP for a second chapter.

My ultimate aim with Raechel (besides to show off some ChemEng knowledge) was to create a character who is recognisably a member of the Ad Mech, with the same secret knowledge and weird mysticism, but retaining a level of humanity and individuality that endears her to the reader. You RPA folks can judge for yourselves if I've succeeded!

Trivia: Her surname is a bastardisation of the lead singer's from Walls of Jericho. I also based Raechel's face on one of my old friends', with different coloured eyes and hair. This turned out to be a mistake as far as finding a picture for her was concerned, because not only is the red hair/brown eyes combination rather rare, my friend apparently also has a rather rare face shape. There was precisely one "actress" I could find to fit the bill, and even then it was a challenge to find a photo that didn't look too obviously model-y. Damn you Lily Cole!

Spoiler: Raechel's profile 

Name: Raechel Kuscelian ("ku-SELL-ee-an")

Faction: Adeptus Mechanicus

Role: Tech priest

Age: 13 Vostian (approximately 27 standard)

Appearance: Kuscelian is a tall, willowy woman with a round face and wide-set eyes. She has wavy auburn hair which she usually ties back to keep it out of her face while she works. She has several operation scars on her head from her tech-priest’s electrograft (which her hair has since grown back over) and another much older surgical scar on her left side.

Personality: Like most members of the mechanicus, Kuscelian doesn’t speak much without prompting and she doesn’t mince her words when she does. After getting to know others however she is much more likely to get involved in conversation, particularly if it involves debating her subjects of interest - without giving away any mechanicus secrets, of course. She does have a sense of humour (usually used to dispel her own tension) although it is somewhat underused around the Ad Mech.

Kuscelian has a strong loyalty to the machine cult, not least because its technology is what's keeping her alive. Since her short sprint working with inquisitor Sigrun Hypatia and her colourful retinue, however, she has been slightly torn between her devotion to the mechanicus and the knowledge of the Machine God offered by the wider universe. With her xenotech expertise and previous experience with the inquisition opening up a wider range of missions to her, she is determined to make the most of it.

Equipment: As a junior tech-priest Kuscelian remains largely unaugmented, having yet to require or earn advanced bionics (unless you count a simple cochlea implant in one ear, following an explosion incident in the Hypatia case that partially deafened her). Her primary asset is her electrograft, a combined storage medium and network uplink implanted into her brain. She is currently carrying a multi-role auspex, a survival pack and a Krieg-pattern rebreather. Her knowledge of weapons is mostly theoretical, though she has been keeping a lasgun from a dead skitarius close since the fighting started. She is also wearing an armoured survival suit, although it is currently compromised due to a las shot to the chest.

History: Kuscelian was born on Vost, a productive Civilised world in the Antilles sector, segmentum Obscurus. Hailing from a wholly unremarkable background, Kuscelian is the only child of two Ad Mech menials assigned to the Garm Reach manufactorum. Her association with the machine cult began almost from birth - she was born with a hole in her heart, requiring a pacemaker to keep her alive. This no doubt coloured her view of machines being necessary to supplement the inadequacies of flesh.

As a teenager Kuscelian scored above average in the manufactorum aptitude tests, and was separated from the other menials for further training. She spent 6 standard years on construction and maintenance rituals before being elevated to the rank of Tech Priest and receiving her electrograft implants. She has since been involved in research with the Divisio Xenologis, a branch of the Ad Mech dedicated to analysing alien tech with the dual objectives of finding its weaknesses and attempting to uncover the pure science behind the tainted alien designs, the better to understand and emulate the Omnissiah. This led to her assignment as Ad Mech liaison to inquisitor Sigrun Hypatia, during an investigation of xeno artefact smuggling on her home planet. All records of this investigation are highly classified, though it is known to have involved the death of her former mentor, magos Solisto.

With valuable experience of handling potentially dangerous unsanctioned tech, and of liaising with potentially dangerous Ordo Hereticus types, Kuscelian was headhunted by one of magos Tenarus' subordinates for the mission to the silent forge.

So far Kuscelian has been standoffish around her fellow priests, almost to the point of favouring the team's inquisitorial representative. She has also been suffering strange malfunctions of her memory implants, including flashbacks of the Hypatia case. Her last contact with the Truthseeker was a maser burst from a reactivated comms spire, detailing contact with heretek forces and pleading for immediate reinforcement.

[Azazeal849]

For the RPA awards (how on earth did I get nominated for them?)

AULUS OVIDIUS

Shanaar: "You ****ing traitor!"
Ovidius: "No...****ing Namorian!"



Featured in: Eternum: Of Gods and Demons, Eternum: Blood of the Gods, Eternum: Rise of Kronos

A spy in the employ of house Marcius, Aulus Ovidius is not a man to influence the course of a war from the front line. However, it was he who brought news of the demon attack on the mages' guild, and he who Isis visited to warn the Namorian Empire of the necessity of making allies rather than enemies of the immortal Romans. Ovidius is less than enthusiastic about the idea of being a hero, or of being singled out by the goddess Isis, but he is loyal enough to the Marcius clan to accept his next mission: a journey to the desert land of Afragia, to try and tip the balance of power towards a potential ally.

Spoiler: Character creation 

Ovidius is more of a happy accident than a true PC. Rather like Shrk'Jaar (see page 1), he is a character who has grown beyond his original remit. I realised pretty quickly during Of Gods And Demons that there was far too much going on in the world for one or two characters to witness it all, and so I hit upon the idea of using "throwaway" characters who would just appear for a post or two in order to tell the story of some of the wider conflicts. A sudden loss of communication with an independent faction needed investigating, and since I had envisioned Marcius' wife as a shrewd political animal with ears to the ground and a network of all the right contacts, I created Ovidius the spy to go and investigate it. This he duly did and I didn't have any particular plan for him afterwards, instead just bringing him up whenever something interesting happened around the city of Emor, which was actually often enough to almost make him a fully-fledged PC in terms of screen time. Eventually I grew quite fond of the character and began to plan further ahead for him, ultimately sitting down to write him a dedicated subplot (which will play out in the sequel Blood of the Gods) as well as the character sheet you're reading now to cement his new-found PC status.

Here I ran into a slight roadblock: since he was a minor character, I'd never given proper thought to what he looked like. Eventually I settled on a fairly typical mediterranean (i.e. Roman Namorian) look, and I went back and retroactively added some description to the RP text, but the real fun came when I started looking for a suitable picture for the character sheet. Some of you may recognise Jon Snow from Game of Thrones as his "actor", who I picked not just because of the reasonably close match to Ovidius' description (although Kit Harrington is paler than I imagine most Namorians to be) but because of the several amusing similarities between their characters. Namely, he is the black sheep of his family, goes undercover among an enemy population, and has a girlfriend who constantly pokes fun at him.

Trivia: He is named after one of the default spies from Rome: Total War.

Spoiler: Aulus' full profile 

Name: Aulus Ovidius

Age: 26

Race: Namorian

Occupation: Mercenary, spy

Godly Parents: N/A

Appearances: Ovidius has classical Namorian features, with a narrow, aquiline nose and a broad forehead crowned with curly black hair. His olive skin is sun-lined but still youthful, and his eyes are dark and sharp, missing little and giving away even less. He carries a scar across his ribs where he narrowly avoided the Assassin at the mages' guild.

Personality: Ovidius is a man from the gutter and he knows it. He is aware of the nature of his work and so tends not to ask questions about it, but that doesn't stop him from having a roguish wit and an affable, easygoing nature. He is prone to wry humour and deadpan understatement. As the son of a freedman, he is more self-aware than most when talking to slaves. On the job he is cunning, quick-thinking and, to a point, brave, although he can recognise a situation where he is in over his head.

Background: Born in the shadows and with a natural affinity for them, Ovidius was practically made for a career of shady work. He is the son of a freed slave and grew up in the poorer districts of Emor, though he hardly rues not being born to a Namorian citizen whose word he would have to treat as law. He is mostly estranged from his parents, who approve of little, if anything, that he does.

Originally a mercenary in the field of spying and courier work, he did a lot of jobs for house Marcius and is now their sworn man in all but oath, taking most of his orders from the family mother, Lycinia. He is even involved with one of her body slaves, Suriyana (Afragia to her Namorian masters). Until recently they had only met through their mutual employer, but Ovidius had had his eye on the young slave for some time, and a silver lining of being injured several times in the line of duty was that he got a chance to talk to her. It was Suriyana who patched Ovidius up after he barely escaped the demon-infested mages' guild, and she who helped him remember the vision that the goddess Isis planted in his head, ultimately leading to an alliance with the Romans that saved Emor from a devastating siege. Ovidius was somewhat unnerved at being singled out by a goddess, but Suriyana (who, following the religion of her Afragian parents, was a strong patron of Isis) encouraged him. Enjoying each other's company more than Suriyana had expected (and as much as Ovidius had hoped) the two began a tenuous relationship.

After word reached Emor of the power struggle between the immortal Egyptians who had landed in Afragia, Ovidius and Suriyana were sent to pre-empt the kind of bloodshed which had occurred in Combrogia and Hercine. They plan to do this by covertly assisting the Egyptian leader most likely to be friendly to the Imperium. Flying there in Ann von Bayern's hi-tech dropship, they reached the Egyptian city of New Giza and successfully orchestrated the rise of the potentially friendly pharoah Ahsha. However, Ovidius and Suriyana's relationship fell through after Suriyana became disillusioned with their manipulating and betraying the immortal Egyptians. Upset, Ovidius has been trying to put Suriyana out of his mind after he returned to Emor and the service of the Marcius family. Dux Marcius quickly enlisted him for a dangerous mission into Emor to kidnap the emperor, who unknown to him has been mind-controlled by a demon.

Ovidius occasionally receives visions that the goddess Isis, although he is still uneasy with the idea of being one of the goddess' "chosen".

Faction: Namorian Empire (senate faction)

Weaponry / Armour: Ovidius carries a dagger, usually concealed.

[Azazeal849]

And we couldn't have Ovidius without...

SURIYANA

"And in the grand scheme of it, are you worth less? The gods know better than us who's worthy of their attention."



Featured in: Eternum: Of Gods and Demons, Eternum: Blood of the Gods, Eternum: Rise of Kronos

Suriyana is a character that came about through a self-imposed challenge. After using a throwaway line about fancying one of his employer's slaves to help flesh out a certain other minor character (see above) I decided to challenge myself to write a romantic subplot. It was something that I hadn't really done yet (despite making a blog about them); not because of any particular aversion to the idea, it had just never come up in-story. And so I created Suriyana - a foil to the quintessential rogue Ovidius, who could give as good as she got in their good-natured verbal sparrings that punctuated the quieter scenes of Gods and Demons. Despite her (hopefully) fairly distinct personality, I was very conscious about Suri devolving into just a satellite character for Ovidius and so I wanted to give her as much screen time of her own as possible. Fellow player The Bartender was wonderfully helpful for this, coming up with a subplot where another character begins to train Suri as a mage. She also has her own distinct part to play as a guide, translator and co-conspirator on the mission to subtly turn aside the Namorians' next potential foe - the Egyptians of old Earth (it makes sense in context).

One of the aspects of Suriyana's character that I feel that I have to tread carefully around is the fact that she is a slave. Although I have presented the Marcius family as benevolent masters (to the point that it instils a certain loyalty) I am under no illusions that this is the exception to the historical rule; although some slaves in the Roman Empire (which the Eternum Namorians are based on) lived better than lower-class citizens, many more were treated appallingly, especially the forced labour slaves on mines and farms. To whitewash this fact was not at all my intention, and I intend to balance my somewhat one-sided portrayal in Gods and Demons with some darker scenes in the sequel, if I get the chance. I would be particularly interested in getting feedback on the slavery subject from people who have read through Gods and Demons, so please do post below or PM me with any thoughts.

Trivia: You may notice that she shares a name with an Eldar character of mine, who has recently appeared in another RP. The Eldar actually came first (a character in my 40K Eldar army with an origin story that is detailed in an Inquisitor campaign over on Warseer), but as "Suriyana" is a slight modification of a traditional African name I thought I could get away with it.

Spoiler: Suriyana's profile 

Name: Suriyana (aka Afragia)

Age: 20

Race: Namorian-born Afragian

Rank: Slave

Godly Parents: N/A

Appearance: Suriyana is the daughter of two Afragian slaves, and inherited their deep brown skin despite growing up in temperate Namor. She has a delicate oval face with shrewd brown eyes and very white teeth, which she often flashes in a slightly lop-sided smile. Her hair is black and naturally wavy, and falls to her middle back when not tied up.

Personality: Suriyana is quick-witted and very sardonic, and she can match pretty much anyone blow-for-blow in an argument. The same quick wits make her level headed, and she tends to be mindful of long-term consequences rather than impulsive. Cautious and pragmatic, especially about her own situation, she hopes to buy her freedom some day but is proud enough to want to do this on her own merits rather than by anyone else’s help. She also does not want to risk the life of a fugitive that running away would bring, although she also has a (perhaps surprising) streak of loyalty towards her masters as well, since the Marcius family have - by and large - treated her kindly.

Background: Suriyana was born in Emor, to two Afragian slaves in the household of clan Marcius. As per Namorian law she too became automatic property of her owner, who gave her the slave name of Afragia in a simple reference to her ethnicity. She was gifted to her master's son Decius on his wedding day, as a body slave for his new wife Lycinia Marci (nee Caelesta). Lycinia soon recognised Suriyana's natural intelligence and started trusting her with other tasks such as courier work and basic nursing.

After word reached Emor of the power struggle between the immortal Egyptians who had landed in Afragia, Lycinia Marci hatched a plan with the Earthborn Ann von Bayern to bring to power the Egyptian leader most likely to be friendly to the Imperium. Although she had no experience in subterfuge, Suriyana's heritage, her familiarity with the Egyptian gods and language, and her natural wits were enough for Lycinia to trust her with the mission. Suriyana was dispatched along with Ann and with Lycinia's trusted spy Ovidius, with whom Suriyana had adopted an intimate rapport. On the journey to Afragia, Ann took it upon herself to train Suriyana in magic - ostensibly for self-defence, but with an ulterior motive of adopting her into the Earthborn priesthood of the Rising Sun. This backfired however when Suriyana became upset with the immoral actions that their mission demanded, broke up with Ovidius, and shortly after disappeared to the Gates of Tartarus with queen Nesara. Anne, however, can still follow her actions through the familiar Qia'bul...

Faction: Namorian Empire

Weaponry / Armour: Suriyana is unarmed but knows some magic and is eager to learn more, assisted by a small avian familiar called Qia'bul.

[Azazeal849]

It's probably about time I put up another one...

MISSIONARY KIMBERLEY RAEDEN

"We destroy sorrows. We destroy daemons. We are the messengers."



Featured in: A Light In The Black (retconned), Shades of Grey

Treachery is a relatively common theme in 40K, and it seems that the majority of those traitors turned because of (or end up siding with) Chaos. One question I've occasionally asked myself when reading 40K stuff is, "But why do people join Chaos?" Granted, a lot of people get fed up with the oppressive Imperium, but if 99% of Chaos converts never actually benefited from the arrangement - which is how it sometimes seems - you'd think word would get out. Or that the Imperium wouldn't bother trying to keep Chaos a secret (then again, the counterproductive nature of some Imperial policies is a topic for another day). I also wanted to explore what sort of reasons people might have for deserting their Imperial loyalties outside the relatively standard cliches of "they were naive and stupid" or "they were already a maniac". I did touch on this in a previous RP, where a Khornate daemon opines that "the heart beats only for blood" and a Slaaneshi one counters that "there's no stronger force in the universe than love" (and then, because this is a daemon we're talking about, adds "and no force easier to manipulate"). But I wanted to take the idea further.

I created Kim so I could do a character study on the temptations of Chaos - not necessarily one that will end with her switching sides, but one that at least addesses why the prospect might be legitimately tempting to an otherwise "normal" human. As such, I designed her as an Imperial missionary turned inquisition agent who is going through a test of faith, with her duty conflicting with her own interests and morality (and, let's face it, it's not hard for the Imperium's methods to conflict with the morality of anyone who doesn't have the luxury of a completely detached view of utilitarianism). More specifically, I intended to use her as a vehicle for the age-old question of is it right to sacrifice a few for the many (or rather, can you live with yourself if you're the one who makes the call); as well as the slightly more personal question of putting your duty before someone you care about. Because ordinary human love is something that seems criminally under-represented in the 40K universe. You'll note that the exact nature of these conflicts isn't mentioned in her profile, as I intended to reveal them IC.

I have only used Kim in one RP so far, and I have to admit that it didn't really work (firstly because the RP unfortunately died before it could really get going, and secondly because the "Chaos" featured in the story was actually a Mechanicus tech heresy that Kim couldn't really relate to, thus limiting the scope for any "temptation"). I do however have plans to bring her back if an idea currently developing in my head evolves into something I can turn into a proper RP. If it does, I will probably attempt to run it concurrently with the upcoming Prophet In Silver and Penitence, so watch this space.

Trivia: My initial inspiration for Kim was, believe it or not, Lara Croft. Beyond that, I specifically designed a lot of Kim's attributes to go against the grain of "stereotypical" Imperial priests (who tend to be firebrand old men with giant chainsaws).

Spoiler: Kimmie's profile 

Name: Kimberley Raeden

Age: 26 (by the Terran calender)

Occupation: Inquisitorial agent, formerly of the Missionarius Galaxia

Appearance: Kim is 5'9, with a fit, slender build and hands roughened by her time on the feudal world Adhara, but she still retains a relatively youthful appearance. Her long assignment to a sub-tropical region of Adhara has given her a dark tan, which is gradually fading back to her natural pale. She has a strong, well-proportioned face and intense brown eyes. Her brown hair is usually tied out of the way in a plait or ponytail.

Equipment and Gear: Being a militant church, one of the survival skills the Ministorum teach their missionaries is how to handle firearms. Though Kim can accomplish more with words than guns, she takes advantage of the Inquisition's extensive armoury for those times when she is deployed for combat rather than infiltration.

Kim's primary weapon is a bullpup lasgun with an underslung grenade launcher. Naturally for a member of the Ecclesiarchy, her rifle grenades of choice are incendiary. Armour-wise she wears the standard flak vest and helmet of a common Guardsman. She has personally consecrated her armour and weaponry. Pouches on her belt carry her grenades and spare magazines as well as religious paraphernalia such as chalk and a small flask of sacred oils. She always wears a silver Aquila on a chain round her neck.

Personality: As the only child of a Ministorum preacher, Kim is strong-willed and self-sufficient by nature. Strongly indoctrinated from birth, it was perhaps inevitable that she would follow her father into the Imperial Church. Unlike some more firebrand preachers she wins over her flock with an approachable manner and a quiet, self-assured confidence in her faith. She can, however, spit fire and brimstone with the best of them when her blood is up, and is brave to the point of recklessness in the face of the Emperor’s enemies. Recent events have caused her faith to take something of a knock.

Kim is an intelligent and resourceful young woman, and not as hidebound as some preachers, which is why she was put forward for the Missionarius Galaxia. One of the first and most important lessons she was taught there was of the inevitable differences in dogma between worlds, and hence that there are not just one but many ways to worship the Emperor. As such, there is less friction than there might otherwise be between her and other members of her inquisitor's retinue.

Short History: Kim is a relatively new addition to the retinue, having been recruited just a few months ago. She is a former cleric of the Missionarius Galaxia assigned to the planet Adhara, which was recently rediscovered after being isolated from Imperial contact for 2000 years. After an unknown calamity, the Adharans had regressed to a pre-gunpowder tech level and splintered into dozens of isolated countries. The planet's religion had similarly regressed and mutated, and so the Galaxia dispatched missionaries to bring the world back into the Imperial fold. As the Adharans followed a matriachal system of governance, the Galaxia dispatched female missionaries to boost their influence, and Kim was among those chosen.

After 18 months of studying the local culture and how their religion might be adapted to the Imperial Creed, Kim faked her own death and returned in the guise of the Prophet of the New Word, upon which she began preaching the modified dogma that she and her sisters had agreed upon. This went well at first, until a new “prophet” appeared in the region. Calling himself the Deliverer, he preached that the gods were angry and demanded blood sacrifice. As the region was currently in the grip of a crop blight, his cult began to grow even more swiftly than Kim's. When he “proved” the gods' favour by demonstrating the ability to move objects without touching them and to conjure fire with his hands, Kim was worried enough to contact the Inquisition.

To her dismay, Kim found that the Deliverer's following had grown too large for her to oppose directly. So instead she professed interest in his teachings, hoping to infiltrate the cult and gather tactical information. Luckily for her, telepathy was not among the rogue psyker's powers and she succeeded. When the Inquisition arrived a month later, Kim gave them all the information they needed to bring the Deliverer down. After careful planning, the nascent Chaos cult was purged in a single night, and the other Adharans were cowed by this sign of “the gods'” wrath.

As an assumed heretic (and more to the point, presumed dead for a second time) Kim could no longer carry on her work as a prophet of the New Word. The inquisition however was impressed with Kim's courage and resourcefulness, and inducted her into their organisation. Aside from her job in data gathering and potential future training as an exorcist, Kim acts as the team's confessor and leads their weekly prayers.

[Azazeal849]

INQUISITION VERISPEX KELLY BLACK

"Bolter round to the head, right enough. Wasnae even subtle."



Featured in: Lucius Pembroke Is A Dead Man, The Replicants, The Prophet In Silver, Drowning for the Cure, A Wash of Black, Kaleidoscope, Penitence

Kelly initially appeared as a satellite character to her brother Marc, acting as an information contact and providing depth to his family-vs-duty struggle. As Pembroke spanned out into an increasingly developed series, I quickly began to feel that she deserved more screen time, although imposed limits on the number of PCs per player made it difficult. I managed to sneak her in for minor roles in A Wash Of Black and Kaleidoscope, before getting her the spotlight she deserved in the midquels Replicants and The Prophet in Silver. Hopefully people don't mix her up too much with the similarly named Kally who is a PC in the same stories.

In many ways, Kelly is a counterpoint to her brother. She has his sense of duty, yes, but she can actually switch off at the end of the day, which probably makes her more fun to be around. Perhaps more importantly, she is far better at taking a step back and looking at things more logically and objectively (which makes sense for a Scene of Crime Officer). Hopefully this dichotemy comes across in The Replicants, and I am looking to explore it further in future RPs.

One thing you may notice about Kelly is that her accent wanders up and down in strength between stories. This is because I thought that the language barriers of an interstellar empire deserve at least a passing acknowledgement, and I chose to indicate when Kelly and Marc were speaking in their "native" brand of Low Gothic with Edinburgh slang (because I live in the city, and like the local accent). I experimented with a few different levels of the dialect through various chapters in the series (with it reaching its thickest in A Wash Of Black) before realising that it was probably getting distracting and difficult to understand. I have scaled it back accordingly in more recent RPs.

Trivia: Kelly draws some slight inspiration from one of my own sisters. Like Marc, her original incarnation was in the Left 4 Dead fanfic Dead Origin.

Spoiler: Kelly's profile 

Name: Kelly Black
Age: 30 (at the time of Kaleidoscope)
Occupation: Verispex, qualified for both lab work and front-line scene of crime investigation

Family:
+ Father, Varrius Black, 52, enforcer - invalided out of active service by injury sustained during secessionist rebellion, now returned to duty in Decker Hive following augmetic surgery.
+ Mother, Cassandria Black, deceased - victim of Makita hive's Great Plague.
+ Brother, Marcus Black, 31, field agent - former enforcer detective, served with inquisitor Eran de Shilo before transferring to the staff of lord Immanuel Sidonis.

Physical Description: Kelly is average height, with shoulder-length brown hair and her mother's brown eyes. Her face is light-skinned and chiselled, given character by a long, straight nose and arched eyebrows. Her figure is more wiry than curved; her natural body shape has always tended towards slimness, and hive enforcer fitness regimes are a hard habit to break.

Personality: Kelly's logical, meticulous mind is a natural fit for verispex work. She has a gift for objectivity, and can usually be relied on to make quick, sensible decisions under pressure. She is a loyal friend, and losses can hit her hard. She carefully separates her work and personal lives, even in the inquistion, and is generally lively and talkative when off shift. She can however be somewhat elitist, especially about her work, and doesn't take slights or second opinions well from people she doesn't know closely.

Equipment: When she takes to the field rather than the lab, Kelly's equipment often varies by mission, but always includes a pict stealer and bio-auspex. Due to the dangerous nature of policing in an Imperial hive, the Makita Hive Enforcers ensured that even their Scene of Crime Officers were armoured and trained to defend themselves if necessary. Kelly still has her MHE-stencilled flak vest and Makita pattern autopistol, and is equally comfortable with a laspistol.

Background: Kelly Black was born in hive Makita on the planet Solomon, in the middle levels of one of the megacity's ancillary spires. Her home in spire 13 was removed from the hellish ghettoes of the underhive, but still a far cry from the upper tiers of the spire, never mind those of the central hub. Growing up with her strict, dutiful father after her mother died in a virulent hive plague, Kelly made do as hivers must. She was always close to her brother Marc, who was a year and a half older than her. Even in her rebellious teenage years Kelly was the "sensible" one of her group of friends, making sure they never strayed too far into the rough lower levels of the midhive.

The Black family had a strong tradition of serving in the Makita Hive Enforcers; with her father, late mother and eventually Marc all serving as front-line officers, Kelly shouldered her own responsibility and signed up as soon as she left school to help make scarce ends meet. With a good grasp of basic science but not enough technical aptitude to warrant the attention of the mechanicus, she found her niche in the MHE's verispex devision.

Even in the midhive crime scenes were not always safe, especially when a cultist uprising flared through the hive in 602. Kelly was fortunate enough to escape injury, but her father lost both legs to an improvised explosive. Although the Tzeentchian cult was crushed with the aid of the inquisition, something about it greatly affected Marc and he resigned from the MHE to work as a private investigator. Their father was furious at this apparent dereliction of duty, and Kelly was left in the unenviable position of caring for their father while also trying to act as a bridge to her estranged brother.

Kelly became caught up in the infamous Pembroke incident of 604 when one of the excommunicate inquisitor Massani's agents attempted to assassinate her as a known contact of Marc's, but instead killed Kelly's fellow verispex Sandra Farrel. Kelly was infuriatingly kept in the dark about what was really happening, but was safely evacuated to Decker hive. It was only afterwards, after the escalating incident led to the orbital cleansing of hive Makita, that Kelly and her father learned that Marc had actually resigned his detective post at MHE to take up undercover work with the inquisition. It is probably a testament to Kelly's objective nature, and her loyalty to family, that she only remained angry at her brother for a few weeks after the revelation.

The inquisition extended its offer of employment to Kelly as well, and with few prospects in Decker hive she accepted - in part because she didn't want to see Marc vanish on his own for a second time. She continued her verispex work under lord inquisitor Sidonis and handled the relative increase in field operations compared to lab work well, her analytical mind often proving useful in other aspects of the investigations. With a gift for separating her work and social lives, she bonded well with fellow agent Kally Sonder and others.

After a debacle over the planet Taleostei, Kelly was one of the lucky few who escaped on the rogue trader ship Mooncalf after lord Sidonis was possessed by the daemon Malfallax. This did not, unfortunately, spare her from the events that followed.

[Jarms48]

Hopefully people don't mix her up too much with the similarly named Kally who is a PC in the same stories.

I only confuse the names, not the characters.

[Azazeal849]

Well that's reassuring.

Still on my to-do list: Commodore Captain Elspeth von Scharn, Septimus Comorant and his team of Night Lord serfs, the various Eldar from Blocking Out The Sun, and possibly Britta Engel (and / or Lisa Asari) from Business Is War.

[dakkagor]

I'd like to see some of the NPC's from business is war. That game rocked.

[PaintSerf]

I'd like to see some of the NPC's from business is war. That game rocked.

Seconded!