Backgrounds

Marina Pardalis

Marina was born to an almost feral tribe deep within the dominion of Chaos. Exposure to the Dark Gods happened almost from birth - she's never known another way, nor felt any need to be particularly devout. Her world was ruled by a cult of the Dark Mechanicus. As an agile and spirited child, she was taken by the hereteks to work as a grease monkey, climbing amongst the moving gears and gnashing teeth of the terrible machines to do tasks that adults could not easily reach. When she survived that long enough to start getting inconveniently large, she was noted as promising and funnelled into further training programs.

At first, Marina was schooled in the ways of technology, but she soon proved neither bright enough nor interested enough to learn well. However, she was fast and strong, and the Dark Mechanicus are always looking for willing bodies to turn into living weapons. Her claws were to be the first of many enhancements. She will happily recount the agony of that surgery to willing listeners, her broken mind having severed all emotional connections to that horrific experience in order to protect her. However, immediately after the surgery, she was deep in the throes of shock and madness. She did only a couple of jobs as the assassin she was meant to be. Further surgery was delayed by supply shortages, and she made good her escape before she could be forced back onto the operating table.

Since then, she has wandered aimlessly from world to world, space station to voidship. It took a few years for the cracks in her psyche to scar over and leave her functional again, but somehow she found a way to survive, finding her skills to be valuable and in high demand.

Laval

Laval was born within the Imperium, to a well-off family on a garden world. Though not rich by their planet's opulent standards, they were still fabulously wealthy compared to most citizens elsewhere. Laval's mother was a sanctioned psyker. When Laval's powers began to manifest, she did everything in her power to keep her daughter from suffering the horrors of the Black Ships and the sanctioning process. Laval was isolated in a country home while she learned to control her at-first sporadic and undirected telepathy, her mother watching the few trusted servants like a hawk. Though nobody came to take the child psyker away, rumours nonetheless spread, and at the age of 16 Laval was sent off-world to live with relatives until the scandal died down.

It was not to be. A reckless use of her powers to read a mind on a space port lead to a horrendous, if brief, tear in the veil, citizens fleeing in all directions and collapsing screaming in the streets. Still reeling from the shock, Laval was only saved from swift retribution by a nearby agent of the Lightbringers, who dragged her out of the public spaces and into a safe house.

The primary mandate of the Lightbringers is that wyches should help their fellow wyches, because nobody else will. Despite her Imperial background, they took Laval in, sheltered her and taught her how to better control and strengthen her powers. Having spent the latter half of her young life living in terror of Imperial authorities, and surrounded by messages of hope and acceptance of her magic, she converted rapidly and fervently to the worship of Tzeentch.

This is very cool. I would also be super interested in one for Vex, if you can handle the feels.

Vex Carrion

Vex was a soldier in the PDF of a peaceful planet, trained but never exposed to real combat. His powers first manifested during a training exercise, accidentally killing a fellow soldier who surprised him in the dark. Realising almost immediately that only death or worse awaited him if the truth came out, he fled into the night with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a sword on his hip.

His uniform marking him as an obvious deserter, Vex was forced to take shelter in the underhive. He fell in with criminals, working as a mercenary and abandoning job after job when his powers, sporadic and uncontrolled, betrayed him. His reputation as a wych grew to the point where he was constantly having to watch his back for arbites, church agents and concerned citizens trying to enforce the cull. So he bought passage on a voidship as a hired sword, and fled.

Over the next few years, Vex bounced from bad to worse, working for pirates, drug lords and worse in search of somewhere that would not drive him out when they learned of his powers. He practised tirelessly to learn control, but few people will tolerate an unsanctioned psyker regardless of their competence. He learned of the Dark Gods piecemeal, fragments here and there from the most unsavoury of his associates. Given that those sorts were least likely to persecute him as a wych, falling to Chaos seemed like the natural thing to do.

Having renounced the Emperor and embraced the Ruinous Powers, Vex found stable employment easier to come by. Drifting beyond the edge of Imperial space, he fell in with the Lightbringers, and finally found a place where he could belong.