Name: Tigranes

Gender: Male

Age: 34

Former Occupation: Former PDF Sergeant, and before that a miner.

Former Rank/Position: Sergeant

Mental and Physical Traits:

Tigranes considers himself, before anything else, a loyal and obedient servant of the God Emperor, these values were insistently impressed upon him during all of his life, and even now he sees no reason to doubt them. This notion of blind obedience to higher authorities was somewhat shaken by the events that lead up to his life in a Penal Legion, but Tigranes is still a servant at heart, and unlikely to challenge authority or disobey orders. And though not actually happy to be in this situation, Tigranes tries his best to not resent his lot in life, and instead rationalizes this as merely a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of the God Emperor

He makes up for his lack of mental prowess with physical one. A lifetime of hard, menial work and the years fighting in the Haykan civil war have made him strong and used to hardships and privations. Likewise, his years serving in the Haykan PDF have left him accustomed to a disciplined and harsh military lifestyle. And before that, his years working in the mines have left him with a familiarity for tunnels, sewers and enclosed spaces.

Appearance:

A short and stout man, Tigranes' skin is tanned from the days spent under Hayk VII strong sun. His arms are strong and hairy, with an old faded tattoo of his previous PDF regiment on his left one. His reddish hair has started falling down so he shaves it, his forehead is large, contrasting with his beady brown eyes. While his large nose is slightly crooked to the right. His upper lip is covered by a thick mustache that is better groomed than the rest of him by a fair margin. In general his body has its own share of minor scars and scraps gathered over the years



History:

Tigranes was born in a serf family in the world of Hayk VII, in the lands of Baron Menotius. Like his father and grandfather before him, Tigranes received no formal education, instead he was simply trained to work in the valuable golden mines of the Baron. A task he took with heart once he came of age. After all, as a serf, it was his duty to obey the commands of his lord, just as the baron obeyed the duke and so on until one reached the God Emperor himself, who lorded over all of Mankind from his Golden Throne on Terra.

His life would've likely proceeded without greater excitement or changes, just like his forefathers before him, if not for political machinations far beyond his knowledge or understanding in the refined halls of power of Hayk VII. The death of King Miranes X threw the planet into a bloody civil war. Tigranes overlord, Baron Menotius threw his lot with the late King's eldest son. As a result Tigranes ended up being conscripted by the Haykan PDF.

The young miner went to war firmly believing that his cause was just and the Emperor smiled upon King Miranes XI and his servants. The years of brutal combat and the callousness of the officers did manage to tear away his initial naivety, but nevertheless he persevered in his views. After all, how could he, a illiterate conscript, assume to know better than his commanders? Men and women of refined breeding, education and bloodline?

Tigranes eventually managed to reach the rank of Sergeant, attrition and his own blind obedience to his superior's orders earning his the position. However, he never advanced beyond the rank thanks to his complete lack of formal education, lack of initiative and connections. Not that he minded that too much, in his mind he wasn't fit to being anyone more important than that anyway.

The war continued on and on for years, usurpers and would be kings rising and falling with each moon. Tigranes managed to survive battle after battle, weathering both enemy fire and the callousness of the commanding officers to their own men, not that he saw it like that at the time. Eventually, Meronius XI managed to break the stalemate, seizing the capital and pushing back all other claimants in a series of brilliant offensives. Then the Inquisition showed up.

For as it turned out, Meronius XI had been dealing and consorting in secret with Xenos and Heretics to fund his war effort. With Inquisitorial stromtroopers and Sororita companies landing on Hayk VII and the Ecclesiarchy's official condemnation, Meronius' war effort collapsed as his allies abandoned him and his soldiers deserted en mass, Tigranes included. The war ended in four months with Meronius cousin, one of the last remaining opponents to his rule, crowned as queen.

While the new government busied itself with cementing its position and the Inquisition purged the native nobility, the question arose of what to do with the literal armies of prisoners that had once served the Heretic King. Since Meronius' heresy had been kept a secret and most of his men deserted him soon enough, mass executions were ruled out in favor of more merciful punishments. In Tigranes' case, his involvement with several massacres and bloody reprisals against civilians was enough to condemn him, and so when offered a chance to redeem himself in the Penal Legion, he eagerly took the offer.

Name: Shiah Cuze [shy-ah cue-zuh].

Gender: Female.

Age: 27.

Former Occupation: Narcotics cook.

Former Rank/Position: Supplier of the Deathrow gang.

Mental and Physical Traits: Cunning, clever, creative and capricious are the four C's that best describe the mind of Shiah. She was raised in the school of hard knocks and is brimming with so-called 'street smarts'. Despite the lack of any formal education she's achieved a high degree of skill in manufacturing the many illegal substances consumed by the Imperial citizenry and its armies for both pleasure and performance and has a talent for creating generally useful stuff from a box of scraps and some duct tape. These abilities weren't exactly conducive to saving her from the life of a hive ganger, of course, and she's used to having to watch her back and dealing with the Imperium's worst scum at every corner -- and she isn't exactly a sweetheart herself.

Appearance: Shiah is of middling height with the characteristic bone-thin, knife-sharp build of a hive ganger. Having partaken of her own produce perhaps once too often, it shows in her gaunt face and sallow skin, detracting from her otherwise good looks. Shiah has an expressive, angular face with large, almond-shaped blue eyes, pursed lips, arched brows and prominent cheekbones. Scars and syringe marks are commonplace on her body, but most are concentrated on her arms and legs. Last but not least is Shiah's hair, which is bleached in an alarming shade of bone white and cropped in a short pixie cut.

Wargear:
Lascarbine
Explosive Collar
2 Mono Knives
3 Frag Grenades
3 Krak Grenades
1 Flak Vest & Flak Helmet
Imperial Guard Penal Legion Prisoner Uniform
1 Inhaler
1 Gas Mask
Poor Weather Gear
Rucksack
Basic Tool Kit
Mess Kit & Water Canteen
1 Weeks' Rations
Blanket & Sleep Bag
Rechargeable Lamp-Pack
Micro-Bead
Ident Tags ("Dog Tags")
Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer

History: Born in the slime-slums of the industrial meatgrinder also known as Kahketton III, Shiah Cuze was doomed to a life of hardship and misery from her very first breaths. Both of her parents were drug-addicts and hive gangers, resorting to all manner of petty crime to survive. The primary gang that was active in their turf was the Deathrow gang, named after an archaic practice on ancient Terra in which convicts sentenced to death were not immediately summarily executed but instead had a lengthy appeal process available to them. As a name, it was a constant reminder of the harsh injustice (in their eyes, anyway) the Imperium of Mankind carried out everywhere in the grim darkness of the far future.

Growing up, Shiah was always attracted to the power and value of the narcotics used by her parents and the other hive gangers and slumlords she was surrounded by. The amount of credits and favors the cooks were able to curry with the Deathrow gang and the others in the underhive was alluring, and in a dangerous world it seemed like the easiest way to guarantee her safety. Nobody wants to kill a skilled cook, considering they were few and far between. She was already begging and pleading with the cooks to be allowed to apprentice under them before she even hit puberty. It paid no fruit for a long time and Shiah had almost given up on the idea when she was finally accepted by Old Man Gornar on her sixteenth birthday -- as it turned out,
the cooks had all seen her potential from a young age but agreed not to let her make any drugs until she 'turned of age'. Not all morals had eroded away from the fabric of the underhive, apparently.

Shiah took to it with enthousiasm. She worked hard to remember the recipes, improve her techniques, understand the use of the chemistry equipment involved, and followed the black market price fluctuations closely. She was the first to predict the rise of Koma's popularity, a new drug that induced a near-comatose state and extremely vivid erotic hallucinations in the user, and urged Gornar on to produce more of it.
When the quality of her Koma exceeded that of Gornar's, not long after Shiah's twenty-first birthday,
the Old Man realized he had nothing left to teach the clever and creative girl and he set her up with his contacts in the Deathrow gang before retiring into obscurity.

What followed were the five best years of Shiah's life. Working as the main supplier for the Deathrow gang gave her status and power within the underhive that her parents -- both dead from overdoses by now --
could never dream of. She grew in confidence and the rough edges of her personality developed into sharp edges; she reacted poorly to criticism, doling out harsh punishment for even the slightest of perceived transgressions, and her simmering greed turned into obsessive avarice fueled by the large and steady influx of credits from her produce.

She was at the apex of power when she tried to broker a supply deal with an upperhive death cult known as the Eviscerated Spine that became her undoing. The death cult turned out to be a front for an Inquisitorial investigation that aimed to roll up the Deathrow gang. Shiah was arrested and given a choice; betray her comrades or die. Shiah immediately gave up everything she knew without hesitation, much more concerned about her own life than that of the other gangers. For her cooperation she was sent to a Penal World instead of being executed, where she awaits the next chapter of her life as the regret over her choices grows every day.