Rolls: (
5 Wounds, 22 Divination, 3 Emperor's Blessing.)
Name: Tarkhal Daenncet
Generation: Voidborn (Oath Unspoken) - Adeptus Administratum - Sage
Concept: Excellent Bureaucrat / Master Acquisitionist / Gunslinger Extraordinnaire
Quote: "Yes, I have already filled the four forms in sextuplicate."Handedness: RightWounds: 12/12Fate Points: 3/3Divination: "Kill the alien before it can speak its lies."Description: Tarkhal is a pale, scrawny-looking young man of slightly above-average height. His face is thin and unimpressive, and his blue eyes provide stark contrast to his light brown, curly hair and near-ghostlike skin tone. He doesn't seem particularly strong or resilient, appearing to be the wimpy scribe in armor he's always been. Depending on the occasion, he wears his long light gray, steel blue-trimmed scribe robes under his (badly-fitted) armor and a large, nondescript cloak on top of everything in order to provide a measure of inconspicuousness. His backpack and pockets are usually full of either junk or useful items.
Characteristics: (25) Weapon Skill
(40) Ballistic Skill
(20) Strength
(35) Toughness
(35) Agility
(40) Intelligence
(35) Perception
(35) Willpower
(25) Fellowship
Skills:• Commerce (Int); (+20 Master of the Drunnels)
• Common Lore: Adeptus Administratum (Int);
• Dodge (Ag);
• Forbidden Lore: Archaeotech (Int).
• Linguistics: High Gothic (Int);
• Logic (Int);
• Scholastic Lore: Bureaucracy (Int);
• Tech-Use (Int).
Talents:•
Ambidextrous;
•
Jaded;
•
Quick Draw;
• Weapon Training (Las, Plasma).
Traits:•
Master of the Drunnels;
•
Master of Paperwork;
•
Quest for Knowledge;
Initiative: 1d10+3 (AB)
Movement: Half-Move: 3m / Full-Move: 6m / Charge: 9m / Run: 18m
Max Carrying/Lifting/Pushing Weight: 27.0 Kg | 54.0 Kg | 108.0 Kg
Aptitudes: Agility,
Ballistic Skill, General, Intelligence, Knowledge, Perception, Tech, Willpower.
Corruption / Insanity: 0 / 0
Experience: 0/1000p
Experience Usage:Skills: Dodge, (200xp); Forbidden Lore: Archaeotech (100xp); Tech-Use (100xp).
Talents: Jaded (300xp); Weapon Training: Plasma (300xp).
Inventory: [36.0 Kg Total / 36.0 Kg Carried (Part in the Backpack)]
Combat:• One set of
Imperial Robes;
• One set of
Poor Craftsmanship Stormtrooper Carapace Armor;
• One
Common Craftsmanship Whip;
• One
Poor Craftsmanship Plasma Pistol Ultima Ratio, and two Photonic Hydrogen Plasma Flasks; (4.0 Kg)
• • Description: The Ultima Ratio, or Last Resort, is a plasma pistol that seems to have gone thousands of years without maintenance and left to waste away somewhere dark, dirty and forgotten. Wisps of plasma are released as a small shower of extremely hot blue and purple sparks with each shot and the weapon seems scratched and ancient enough it should explode in the owner's hand as soon as it is fired. Despite all of the years of dereliction, the pistol is still a powerful weapon and the very fact it still works is a testament to human engineering.
...• One
Common Craftsmanship Laspistol, and two charge packs;
Utility:• One
Traveling Cloak (Common Craftsmanship Clothing);
• One
Backpack;
• One
Auto-Quill;
• One
Chrono;
• One
Dataslate;
• One
Glow-globe & Stablight;
• One
Medi-kit;
• Two doses of
Recaf;
• Two flasks of
Tranq;
Background: Tharkal never aspired to any of this; he didn't want to work for the Inquisition, nor ever be taken away from his home and only place he knew in the Imperium - the ship he was born in. To understand how the pale, awkward young man got dragged into the unpleasant situation he finds himself in nowadays, one has to look back into how things worked back home, amidst the labyrinthine hallways, giant enginarium and grand chambers inside of the
Oath Unspoken.
An unique and heavily modified vessel which shares many similarities with the Dauntless-class light cruiser, the
Oath Unspoken has been operating for millennia, at the very least since the Age of Apostasy, and serves as the flagship of the Anzaforr Rogue Trader Dynasty. A powerful vessel that has seen its fair share of victory and glories throughout the ages, it is now seen ferrying pilgrims and corpses from Desoleum to the shrine world of Thaur in order to atone for the dynasty's sins and possibly to fulfill its captain's secret designs.
It was within that colossal machine that Tarkhal was born to a couple of scribes, fated to be one just like them thanks to the crew's strict hierarchy and the system of inherited occupations that dominated the ship's society. Fifth son of Drauhr and Kathrenne Daenncet, he was part of a line of ship-born scribes that stretched for centuries if not millenia. The
Oath Unspoken's scribes carefully registered and stocked data, produced reports and filled data-slate after data-slate with acquisition routines and all manner of noteworthy dealings within and without the ship. His generous amount of older siblings meant Tarkhal could explore a little on his own, walking around the stacks of information that hadn't been moved since the time of their deposit from times forgotten. He spent much of his free time exploring rooms, chambers and maintenance shafts, growing up with the noises and smells of the ship. He played, he fell and he prayed he wouldn't find any hull ghasts wandering around.
In the ship's society, knowledge of technology meant status. Even those menial tasks of simple, mindless repetition and routine involving ancient technical equipment were seen as mysterious and a notch above the rest; parents hoped their children would be technically-inclined and rise above the rest in order to be inducted into the service of the red-robed priests of the Mechanicus who controlled the vessel's heart. Hidden away amidst stacks of data-holding media and helping his siblings kill the kind of vermin common in such places, Tarkhal was a well of untapped potential that began developing without anyone's notice or permission, becoming a boon to his peers and a danger to himself in the process.
He was already a teen when, walking amidst the many cogitators and scribing machines located in his family's workplace, he noticed a little piece out of its place on a venerable data-conveyor. Closer inspection showed him more of the same pieces were out of place, and the plate shielding the machine's innards had fallen off, exposing its internals and possibly causing the problem. Without any chants and prayer or most holy Mechanicus incenses, he simply nudged the workings back into their place with a thin finger and put the plate back into place, making sure it was secured before leaving. Later he heard about how the data conveyor's efficiency had rose dramatically and a partial malfunction that had existed for decades had been miraculously fixed. Whilst the other scribes commemorated that fact, Tarkhal began exploring further.
In the years to come he began snooping around the surrounding areas of the ship as well, keeping a balance between his training and work as a scribe and his constant incursions into uncharted territory to examine and fix machinery. It didn't take long for him to discover the Mechanicus in the ship wouldn't take kindly to his methods and so he cultivated a measure of secrecy. Inoperable, damaged or crisp millenia-old tech fascinated him and he worked on fixing whatever he could whenever able to, his dreams growing until he believed in a future where he could not only study and fix, but also modify and actually improve on the technology he put his hands on.
The ancient vessel was a great place to study pieces of archaeotech and even find degraded but valuable equipment in case one delved deep enough into its dark recesses - as it was the case with the plasma pistol and armor he appropriated. He also had his share of scrapes with danger in those little expeditions of his - the depths of old ships are dangerous indeed, the various shadows that dance just at the edge of one's sight sometimes being all too real and too eager to take the life of anyone foolhardy enough to brave the darkness without appropriate gear and backup.
The young scribe's experience at his inherited craft meant he could find and acquire spare parts even from off-ship with little to no trail leading back to him, and many of those could also be purchased in the ship's Drunnels - the large open market serving well to anyone who wanted to buy material in secret amidst the crowd. People began leaving damaged pieces of tech lying around certain predefined spots to find them fixed or at least partially so. As his skills improved he began indirectly collecting payment in currency or favors, building a small measure of power within the ship and outside market. In time and he was aligning the sights of weapons as well as correcting their firing mechanisms, learning to fire quite reasonably well in the process. Episodes of near-childish glee as he quickly drew a pistol someone left for him to calibrate from its holster and pretended to duel with an invisible foe become common. It was likely a mix of his luck and maneuvering of paperwork that he wasn't caught; even if the Mechanicus had managed to catch wind of what he had been doing and started investigating it, he never saw any signs of it.
For all his attempts at secrecy, word still got out of what he was doing inside the bowels of the ship. It was during a stop at Desoleum that an Interrogator - Marin Desathak - found out rumors telling of a specter or a secretive individual that had been fixing items with speed and selflessness that was uncharacteristic of someone from the Mechanicus. Some people supposed it could be a rather eccentric tech-priest, but a few were certain it was someone from the crew who was probably on their way to being caught and disposed of by the red-robed priests. Interested in such theories, the Interrogator delved deeper into it and even decided to test the rumors by depositing a simple piece of xenostech - nothing more than a curio - in one of the spots. They found it again with a printed note saying it was working perfectly.
Having made their mind on acting on the rumors and seizing the minor tech-heretic, possibly for the Inquisition's own purposes, all that was left for the Interrogator was deciding on an approach. Following the standard procedure of dragging the target away to interrogate and torture them before forcibly enlisting them into the ranks of the Ordos' acolytes was a tried and true method, but it could create unnecessary resentment and Marin was a much more progressive Interrogator. Instead, they had men with obvious bionics and dressed in red robes capture and submit Tarkhal to psychological terror and tension... Followed by a moderate amount of interrogation and torture, the surgical instruments and drugs making him much more susceptible to what came next.
Tarkhal woke up lying on a comfortable bed inside a white, nondescript room and was told by a waiting Interrogator Marin that the scribe had been saved from death at the hands of the Mechanicus by the Inquisition - not an
actual lie if you looked into it the way the Interrogator did. In exchange, the tech-obsessing crewman was now an acolyte and would have to serve the Holy Ordos both due to his talents and to keep him safe from possible death at the hands of the Cult Mechanicus. Much like the Interrogator predicted, their method of recruitment was a success; Tarkhal felt deeply grateful for their "savior" and promptly embraced being under the Inquisition's wing, happy to repay the rather scary organization that had at the very least saved him from what he thought to be certain death.
Interrogator Marin proceeded to write a treatise on the benefits of such methods of recruitment to his peers while Tarkhal was allowed to fetch his dearest belongings before leaving the
Oath Unspoken, maybe never to return home.
Author
Topic: Dark Heresy OOC (Read 25646 times)