Name: Tecca Nina
Age: 51, if she was counting correctly.
Gender: Female
Race: Human psyker
Appearance: Tecca Nina is quite an imposing figure, and through her value to the Imperium and consequent rejuvenat treatment seems much younger than her true years. Tall and slender, she is pale-skinned and in possession of dark hair down to her shoulders, a combination of traits that many men would find highly attractive - were it not for her eye sockets, empty and permanently seared black by the scorching light of the God-Emperor's soul that once coursed through her. For politeness' sake, she tends to cover the hollows with a black blindfold bearing the symbol of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica on its front in pale blue, a neat and tidy covering for a gruesome disfigurement. Additionally, she wears long black robes that cover her body, themselves bearing both the symbol of her Adepta in pale blue on the front, the Imperial Aquila in white on her back, and the Aquila again in white on the hood.
Privately, these items of apparent cloth in fact double as protection from harm. Woven into them is a mesh of thermoplas cells that stiffen when subjected to kinetic energy and heat, dissipating that energy and keeping her safe from harm whilst remaining quite lightweight. Additionally, to those who might somehow think she is easy prey and are not deterred simply for being an astropath, she carries on her person both a hellpistol and a mono-edge sword, evidence of her importance as the master of Edmund Livingstone's Astropathic Choir and indicators of her own lethality if provoked.
Personality: To say Tecca Nina is a severe woman is not exactly incorrect. The life experiences of a psyker once their powers awaken, and especially an astropath, are rarely positive in nature; hers have shaped her into a woman who will not tolerate being made light of by anybody, as in her mind she has gone through too much and come too far in spite of the odds stacked against her to allow such a thing. Consequently, those of higher rank than herself who disrespect her are generally treated with coolness, the bare minimum of civility required and no more, whilst those outright beneath her who do the same will receive naught but passive-aggressive insults, or indeed outright warnings if they go too far - never threats, though, because a threat is uncivil, and implies the possibility that you won't follow through when push comes to shove.
To everyone else, though, she does her best to be helpful, understanding, and occasionally even kind. The God-Emperor's mercy works in strange ways - those who are most harmed are often most belittled, a circumstance she is personally well-aware of, and whilst she does not look back on her past with fondness or indeed grace, it has informed her quite a bit. Thus, she tries to show empathy to those in need, even the rare alien that the Imperium has seen fit to welcome into its fold, albeit tinged with pity and stern recommendations for the many. It is but rarely that this folds to naught but empathy, almost always for her fellow sanctioned psykers such as the small choir she now leads, and to them she truly does act graciously, for it is a crushing sort of kindred that they share.
Her relationship with the God-Emperor is... complex. Every psyker soul-bound to Him experiences the process in different ways if they do not die outright, from indescribable sensations to an enlightening discussion with Him. Some even expand their faith as a result, becoming the self-proclaimed Transubstantial Initiates that irk the Ecclesiarchy so. Nina falls into the somewhat broader category of astropaths who merely experience agony, though the sensation was certainly indescribable, and as a consequence she is of two minds. Was it necessary? Certainly; even her particular strategies would not have worked forever. Did it help her? Arguably; having a shard of the Emperor's soul tied to hers has certainly kept it safe from harm. Is she less enthused with Him as a result? Entirely - but then, she can hardly blame the God-Emperor directly. His agents are far more culpable as sinners, after all. To that end, when she does talk about her faith in Him, she tends to keep her statements modest, largely espousing kindness to others as she herself displays, if only to offset but slightly the cruelties both necessary and needless of the Imperium's more questionable servants.
That being said, to the heathen, the heretic, and especially the witch, she of course has nothing but contempt. Even now, coming to terms with a traumatic past has been a cripplingly hard task that often keeps her up until the late hours, but she at least accepts that the sanctioning process and the Soul-Binding that blinded her was a necessity to keep her safe from worse things. They who would avoid either or both, and ultimately they who would act against the God-Emperor Himself, are unworthy of His grace; at best to be directed to the Black Ships, at worst to be eliminated and forgotten, for that is the greatest kindness one can do them. Most xenos also fall into this category, but she is at least able to acknowledge that if her employer has taken them on board, there is likely a good reason for it.
Relationship to the Dynasty: Tecca Nina has spent the last few years working in the astropathic choir of one of the ships of the Falcon-Cook family; it is fair to suggest that time has been an interesting one. It transpires that her power as a psyker is yet to be fully realised, or so it seems to her; aside from anything else, her skill in astrotelepathy has been tested time and again, pushing her to the forefront of the choir, and ultimately into the position of leading a fresh choir under Rudyard once the Warrant of Trade passed to him. They are large shoes to fill, but Rudyard has been highly accommodating thus far, helping to make them feel much smaller in a way that is steadily earning her gratitude and respect. This has done wonders for her confidence in a fairly short timeframe, but to say she is not still haunted would be entirely incorrect. In many aspects of her being, she still has a very long way to go.
Skills:
Equipment: Nina's gear is mostly basic but highly functional, focused on quality over quantity in a way assisted by her relatively privileged position:
Miscellaneous: There are a wide variety of directions Tecca Nina's powers could develop in the future, setting aside her ongoing advancement of the Telepathy and Voidfrost disciplines. Most are derived either from her soul-bond to the Emperor, namely the Warp-banishing Theosophamy and divinely-inspired Soul Ward, or from the usual mentally-charged disciplines of Divination and Telekinesis. Technically speaking, however, nothing explicitly prevents her from taking them in more offensive directions via Pyromancy, Biomancy, or perhaps even stranger options, though it is likely these would not be strictly optimal choices given her position.
It is also worth noting that the damage done to her flesh and nervous system by the Soul-Binding ritual is such that standard bionic replacements could not hope to restore either her vision or her hearing. However, such augments capable of it do exist - they are expensive beyond standard measure, and so heavily engineered as to be works of unparalleled artifice in most circumstances, but not unattainable for a Rogue Trader whose fortunes trend toward the stars...
Age: 51, if she was counting correctly.
Gender: Female
Race: Human psyker
Appearance: Tecca Nina is quite an imposing figure, and through her value to the Imperium and consequent rejuvenat treatment seems much younger than her true years. Tall and slender, she is pale-skinned and in possession of dark hair down to her shoulders, a combination of traits that many men would find highly attractive - were it not for her eye sockets, empty and permanently seared black by the scorching light of the God-Emperor's soul that once coursed through her. For politeness' sake, she tends to cover the hollows with a black blindfold bearing the symbol of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica on its front in pale blue, a neat and tidy covering for a gruesome disfigurement. Additionally, she wears long black robes that cover her body, themselves bearing both the symbol of her Adepta in pale blue on the front, the Imperial Aquila in white on her back, and the Aquila again in white on the hood.
Privately, these items of apparent cloth in fact double as protection from harm. Woven into them is a mesh of thermoplas cells that stiffen when subjected to kinetic energy and heat, dissipating that energy and keeping her safe from harm whilst remaining quite lightweight. Additionally, to those who might somehow think she is easy prey and are not deterred simply for being an astropath, she carries on her person both a hellpistol and a mono-edge sword, evidence of her importance as the master of Edmund Livingstone's Astropathic Choir and indicators of her own lethality if provoked.
Personality: To say Tecca Nina is a severe woman is not exactly incorrect. The life experiences of a psyker once their powers awaken, and especially an astropath, are rarely positive in nature; hers have shaped her into a woman who will not tolerate being made light of by anybody, as in her mind she has gone through too much and come too far in spite of the odds stacked against her to allow such a thing. Consequently, those of higher rank than herself who disrespect her are generally treated with coolness, the bare minimum of civility required and no more, whilst those outright beneath her who do the same will receive naught but passive-aggressive insults, or indeed outright warnings if they go too far - never threats, though, because a threat is uncivil, and implies the possibility that you won't follow through when push comes to shove.
To everyone else, though, she does her best to be helpful, understanding, and occasionally even kind. The God-Emperor's mercy works in strange ways - those who are most harmed are often most belittled, a circumstance she is personally well-aware of, and whilst she does not look back on her past with fondness or indeed grace, it has informed her quite a bit. Thus, she tries to show empathy to those in need, even the rare alien that the Imperium has seen fit to welcome into its fold, albeit tinged with pity and stern recommendations for the many. It is but rarely that this folds to naught but empathy, almost always for her fellow sanctioned psykers such as the small choir she now leads, and to them she truly does act graciously, for it is a crushing sort of kindred that they share.
Her relationship with the God-Emperor is... complex. Every psyker soul-bound to Him experiences the process in different ways if they do not die outright, from indescribable sensations to an enlightening discussion with Him. Some even expand their faith as a result, becoming the self-proclaimed Transubstantial Initiates that irk the Ecclesiarchy so. Nina falls into the somewhat broader category of astropaths who merely experience agony, though the sensation was certainly indescribable, and as a consequence she is of two minds. Was it necessary? Certainly; even her particular strategies would not have worked forever. Did it help her? Arguably; having a shard of the Emperor's soul tied to hers has certainly kept it safe from harm. Is she less enthused with Him as a result? Entirely - but then, she can hardly blame the God-Emperor directly. His agents are far more culpable as sinners, after all. To that end, when she does talk about her faith in Him, she tends to keep her statements modest, largely espousing kindness to others as she herself displays, if only to offset but slightly the cruelties both necessary and needless of the Imperium's more questionable servants.
That being said, to the heathen, the heretic, and especially the witch, she of course has nothing but contempt. Even now, coming to terms with a traumatic past has been a cripplingly hard task that often keeps her up until the late hours, but she at least accepts that the sanctioning process and the Soul-Binding that blinded her was a necessity to keep her safe from worse things. They who would avoid either or both, and ultimately they who would act against the God-Emperor Himself, are unworthy of His grace; at best to be directed to the Black Ships, at worst to be eliminated and forgotten, for that is the greatest kindness one can do them. Most xenos also fall into this category, but she is at least able to acknowledge that if her employer has taken them on board, there is likely a good reason for it.
Relationship to the Dynasty: Tecca Nina has spent the last few years working in the astropathic choir of one of the ships of the Falcon-Cook family; it is fair to suggest that time has been an interesting one. It transpires that her power as a psyker is yet to be fully realised, or so it seems to her; aside from anything else, her skill in astrotelepathy has been tested time and again, pushing her to the forefront of the choir, and ultimately into the position of leading a fresh choir under Rudyard once the Warrant of Trade passed to him. They are large shoes to fill, but Rudyard has been highly accommodating thus far, helping to make them feel much smaller in a way that is steadily earning her gratitude and respect. This has done wonders for her confidence in a fairly short timeframe, but to say she is not still haunted would be entirely incorrect. In many aspects of her being, she still has a very long way to go.
Born on the civilised world of Arteus III, Tecca Nina's early life was not precisely remarkable. Her family was middle class, they worked middle-class jobs for the Imperium, she went to a middle-class school, and under most other circumstances, Tecca Nina would have found herself a similarly middle-class job to work in until her old age. It was therefore unfortunate that one day, in her early- to mid-teens, she began to hear and see things at the edges of her senses - never coherent, but always distressing, and somehow goading in the process. What they goaded toward eventually became clear, as one day whilst being confronted by a bully, she lashed out with her mind, a blunt fist of psychic power knocking the girl unconscious against a locker in full view of a lot of terrified students and teachers. Not three days after that incident, she was taken into custody by squads of black-armoured individuals who would cuff her round the mouth if she so much as whimpered.
The next thirty years of her life could be accurately described as "Hell".
Seven or so years were spent in what could more or less be described as the worst jail in existence. The relative freedom of expression her planet supported was a myth in that grey bunker, as were any other rights the people supposedly had; instead, Nina was kept in a bland grey outfit, in a bland prison cell, utterly isolated from others like her, those who were kept in this place for the sole crime of possessing psychic powers. The guards, at least, had no interest in the prisoners save when they tried to use their powers, promptly being beaten into submission, or in too many cases shot dead and incinerated, but at the same time, they refused to account for the prisoners' needs beyond food and water, a state of affairs that was especially gruelling for a pubescent young girl for reasons that need not be elaborated on.
Socially, therefore, most people in there were not well-adjusted, if she even had any idea about their personalities at all. Nina had only a couple of friends throughout that time, the first a forty year old in a nearby cell who had developed in secret a form of telepathic communication. That friendship lasted all of three months before he was discovered and killed - arguably for the best, considering that every time she used her own abilities, the whispering in her mind grew stronger. She learned the cause of this a couple of years after that, when she grew daring enough to develop her own form of telepathic connection with the thirty two year old two cells over from hers. Their communication lasted a week before he admitted that he'd felt something probing at his mind lately, attempted to convey an image of what it was, and suddenly had his psyche ripped asunder by a monstrosity that Nina herself barely avoided being targeted by too. After seeing what it had twisted the man's body into as the guards carried away the evidence, she no longer attempted to train her abilities.
She was, of course, lucky. She could have spent much longer in there. Instead, the Black Ship arrived not too long after she turned twenty- or was it twenty one?- and took her and every surviving psyker in for transport to Holy Terra. This took ten years in total, and somehow, inexplicably, wound up being an even worse prison than the last - one made of black metal lit by red lamps, a hellish combination that played havoc with her vision; one where the silver-armoured guards standing at every juncture seemed to physically crush her whenever they passed by, even though she knew she was lucky enough to never be subjected to their wrath personally; and yet they and others didn't ignore her, but rather dragged her and others away time and again for the sake of unspeakable testing, probing, and punishing of both mind and body, processes that would have left any sane person traumatised, let alone the psychological wreck she became as the whispering and imagery grew ever more pronounced when the silver guards weren't present.
She was, of course, lucky. Luckier than most, anyway, for her wardmates never degraded into monsters, nor was her section of the ship ever forcibly cleansed with fire to erase a single threat. So, too, could her journey to Terra have taken far longer, and left her truly shattered rather than simply cracked, good only as fuel for the Emperor's dying soul. As it was, however, she remained on the cusp of sanity by tracking her time in there, precise mental markers that anchored her enough to let her keep some sense of self.
A worse fate lay in store for her. Not minutes after she first saw something resembling sunlight for the first time in nearly two decades, she and many others were marched back into an obsidian fortress by men clad in the same sort of black armour she'd first come to know as terrifying, and told that they were to be used for the Imperium's greater benefit, and that they would be trained to use their powers in the name of the God-Emperor, a process that would take a full five years before they were deemed ready. These five years were, thankfully, nothing like as awful as her time on the Black Ship, but to say they were easy was fallacious - her teachers were unreasonably cruel, even having been through the same nightmares she had, and every mistake she made in learning to apply her abilities was punished with beatings and restriction of "privileges" - up to, for the first time, both food and water if they were feeling cruel. All the while still being targeted by unspeakable whispering and imagery, somehow worse than before despite being in such a holy place. Again, she was forced to rely on her internal clock to keep her psyche intact, adding to it with strict and regimented creative activities of a sort - picturing a blank page in her mind, imagining herself writing upon it, and in time generating an entire fantasy trilogy that, when one teacher noticed it, was judged amateurish and naive. That teacher promptly copied the whole thing down word for word behind Nina's back, published it, and made a relative fortune on her efforts.
The exercises, however, did their job. Combined with the data from those tests performed upon the Black Ship, the examination of her talents in the Scholastica Psykana, and examination of her own coping mechanisms, she was unbeknownst to her graded at the level Zeta Secundus - decently strong, not quite capable of protecting her own soul from harm as a Primaris might, but nor a mere sheep to be sent to slaughter and soul syphoning with the massed Tertius psykers. At the end of those five years, she was taken into the core of the Imperial Palace, a golden twisting morass she could never hope to navigate alone protected by giants themselves clad in gold, to what looked like some sort of throne room, and forced to kneel in front of a corpse that she recognised as important for reasons that escaped her in the moment, alongside ninety nine other unfortunate souls like herself.
Not long after that, the God-Emperor touched her mind.
It is quite fortunate that the human brain contains no nerve endings directly, at least for the purposes of sensation. If it did, it would be likely that the electrical and chemical signals coursing through it would induce a constant headache at best, and an unbelievable agony at worst. For Nina, as with most of the astropaths-to-be, her Soul-Binding could not quite be described with realistic metaphors - the closest she could come would be to suggest that it felt very much like her brain had just been crammed full of said sensation-inducing nerve endings, and then shoved into an acid-filled blender with super-heated blades. To say it was pleasant, as some of them purported after the fact, was a strong statement. So too was calling it modest, or distressing. Even words like "excruciating" and "traumatic" were a little weak. If anybody ever bothered to ask, she would likely say it was the single worst experience she had ever had, before or since.
As it was, the teachers merely described it as "graduation". When she came to, she realised very quickly that, whilst the whispering in her mind and vague appendages in the corner of her eye were finally quelled, so too was literally everything else about her sight and vision - even though feeling remained, something made very evident when she was strapped down and the remnants of her melted eyeballs scraped out of their blackened sockets without anaesthesia. Nonetheless, she was practically crippled, and it took another month after that fateful event for her psychic-abilities to take over the role, translating the vibrations in the air into mental patterns she could recognise as sound, and the surfaces about her into images she could position herself relative to. Her telepathy even offered full colour awareness by the time the ship she was on found its way to her very first role as an agent of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica: a component in a major astropathic relay.
For most other astropaths, this would be where their story ended. Whilst a necessity for rapid information flow, the astropathic relays were constantly flooded with psychic messages from across the galaxy, and they were notorious for inducing the phenomenon called burnout: the crippling of an astropath's psychic powers, be it temporary or permanent, often accompanied by braindeath after however many years of replacing indecipherable whispers and visions with an indecipherable torrent of maddening ciphers in all forms. Only those of particularly strong will could hope to survive for any significant length of time.
Once more, Tecca Nina's tendency to develop psychological coping mechanisms saved her: this time, she simply found a way to turn off the part of her mind that was, for want of a better word, "human". Those in charge of the relay didn't want her to be human; they wanted her to be a wire. So, when she was in the immense choir that made it up, she was effectively no longer human, but a wire of thought and spirit, not taking in the messages passed to her, merely letting them move on through her being as fast as possible, and all the while maintaining that mental clock to draw herself back to when she was allowed a break, though by then she was assailed with reminders of her disturbing past so frequently that she often preferred not to revert at all. She burned out sixteen times in the first year before this mechanism took hold; once it had, she burned out once in the next six, and then only because she let that mindstate slip due to a bout of negative memory interfering with her focus.
This improvement did not go unnoticed. By now, she was in her early forties, and looked very much like she was in her late sixties, so major the toll of her life and powers had taken on her. It came as a great surprise, then, when she found herself recommended for work at a much less strenuous choir somewhere near the outer edge of the Imperium's holdings, and an even greater surprise when that work proposal came with a free rejuvenat treatment to ensure her ongoing service there. All at once, she reverted from looking and feeling like an elderly lady back to more or less her physical prime, complete with renewed hair growth. All this, however, would only serve to be the introduction for another trial entirely - granted, not one that would be at all comparable to the horrors she had faced thus far, but something difficult to overcome nonetheless.
At first, her approach into the deeper, less inhabited parts of the void left her wondering if her Soul-Bond was failing. Whispering she had thought banished for good returned steadily, growing louder the further from civilisation she went. It didn't take overly long, once she had taken up her position in the astropathic choir of that region, for her to recognise them for what they were: not the monsters of her past, but the dying screams and nascent dreams of aliens from far before her time, maddening to contemplate even compared to those other monsters of the Warp. They, after all, had at least some basis in human emotion. Nonetheless, her old coping mechanisms kicked in once again: shut down needless emotion, keep track of the passage of time, use the mind to craft creatively- this time, actually delving into and practicing her telepathic powers, to see what creative fashions she could use them in- all serving to keep her on track toward the eventual title of Astropath Transcendent... somehow, though, she found a sort of magnetic pull despite those mechanisms. Week after week, month after month, she kept being drawn back to contemplating, not the voices coming from the darkness, but the very darkness of the void itself, and this fascination manifested one day in the form of a deep chill filling her private quarters. After that, she found she didn't need to lose herself in her coping mechanisms anymore, though she continued to work on her telepathy where she could.
Again, this did not go unnoticed. Not long after this revelation, perhaps three years since joining the choir, she was requested by name by a member of the Falcon-Cook Rogue Trader lineage. A Praetorian family, the patriarch offered her a position in his own choir aboard his ship. It would be quieter still than the one she'd grown used to, and perhaps a touch more dangerous at times, but then excitement was part and parcel of the life of a Rogue Trader! Excitement, freedom, and of course wealth beyond measure, more than Nina herself might ever have access to in the alternate course of her life. Wealth, in truth, wasn't too impressive to her, but the freedom to expand her abilities, and perhaps see just how far they could go...
The next thirty years of her life could be accurately described as "Hell".
Seven or so years were spent in what could more or less be described as the worst jail in existence. The relative freedom of expression her planet supported was a myth in that grey bunker, as were any other rights the people supposedly had; instead, Nina was kept in a bland grey outfit, in a bland prison cell, utterly isolated from others like her, those who were kept in this place for the sole crime of possessing psychic powers. The guards, at least, had no interest in the prisoners save when they tried to use their powers, promptly being beaten into submission, or in too many cases shot dead and incinerated, but at the same time, they refused to account for the prisoners' needs beyond food and water, a state of affairs that was especially gruelling for a pubescent young girl for reasons that need not be elaborated on.
Socially, therefore, most people in there were not well-adjusted, if she even had any idea about their personalities at all. Nina had only a couple of friends throughout that time, the first a forty year old in a nearby cell who had developed in secret a form of telepathic communication. That friendship lasted all of three months before he was discovered and killed - arguably for the best, considering that every time she used her own abilities, the whispering in her mind grew stronger. She learned the cause of this a couple of years after that, when she grew daring enough to develop her own form of telepathic connection with the thirty two year old two cells over from hers. Their communication lasted a week before he admitted that he'd felt something probing at his mind lately, attempted to convey an image of what it was, and suddenly had his psyche ripped asunder by a monstrosity that Nina herself barely avoided being targeted by too. After seeing what it had twisted the man's body into as the guards carried away the evidence, she no longer attempted to train her abilities.
She was, of course, lucky. She could have spent much longer in there. Instead, the Black Ship arrived not too long after she turned twenty- or was it twenty one?- and took her and every surviving psyker in for transport to Holy Terra. This took ten years in total, and somehow, inexplicably, wound up being an even worse prison than the last - one made of black metal lit by red lamps, a hellish combination that played havoc with her vision; one where the silver-armoured guards standing at every juncture seemed to physically crush her whenever they passed by, even though she knew she was lucky enough to never be subjected to their wrath personally; and yet they and others didn't ignore her, but rather dragged her and others away time and again for the sake of unspeakable testing, probing, and punishing of both mind and body, processes that would have left any sane person traumatised, let alone the psychological wreck she became as the whispering and imagery grew ever more pronounced when the silver guards weren't present.
She was, of course, lucky. Luckier than most, anyway, for her wardmates never degraded into monsters, nor was her section of the ship ever forcibly cleansed with fire to erase a single threat. So, too, could her journey to Terra have taken far longer, and left her truly shattered rather than simply cracked, good only as fuel for the Emperor's dying soul. As it was, however, she remained on the cusp of sanity by tracking her time in there, precise mental markers that anchored her enough to let her keep some sense of self.
A worse fate lay in store for her. Not minutes after she first saw something resembling sunlight for the first time in nearly two decades, she and many others were marched back into an obsidian fortress by men clad in the same sort of black armour she'd first come to know as terrifying, and told that they were to be used for the Imperium's greater benefit, and that they would be trained to use their powers in the name of the God-Emperor, a process that would take a full five years before they were deemed ready. These five years were, thankfully, nothing like as awful as her time on the Black Ship, but to say they were easy was fallacious - her teachers were unreasonably cruel, even having been through the same nightmares she had, and every mistake she made in learning to apply her abilities was punished with beatings and restriction of "privileges" - up to, for the first time, both food and water if they were feeling cruel. All the while still being targeted by unspeakable whispering and imagery, somehow worse than before despite being in such a holy place. Again, she was forced to rely on her internal clock to keep her psyche intact, adding to it with strict and regimented creative activities of a sort - picturing a blank page in her mind, imagining herself writing upon it, and in time generating an entire fantasy trilogy that, when one teacher noticed it, was judged amateurish and naive. That teacher promptly copied the whole thing down word for word behind Nina's back, published it, and made a relative fortune on her efforts.
The exercises, however, did their job. Combined with the data from those tests performed upon the Black Ship, the examination of her talents in the Scholastica Psykana, and examination of her own coping mechanisms, she was unbeknownst to her graded at the level Zeta Secundus - decently strong, not quite capable of protecting her own soul from harm as a Primaris might, but nor a mere sheep to be sent to slaughter and soul syphoning with the massed Tertius psykers. At the end of those five years, she was taken into the core of the Imperial Palace, a golden twisting morass she could never hope to navigate alone protected by giants themselves clad in gold, to what looked like some sort of throne room, and forced to kneel in front of a corpse that she recognised as important for reasons that escaped her in the moment, alongside ninety nine other unfortunate souls like herself.
Not long after that, the God-Emperor touched her mind.
It is quite fortunate that the human brain contains no nerve endings directly, at least for the purposes of sensation. If it did, it would be likely that the electrical and chemical signals coursing through it would induce a constant headache at best, and an unbelievable agony at worst. For Nina, as with most of the astropaths-to-be, her Soul-Binding could not quite be described with realistic metaphors - the closest she could come would be to suggest that it felt very much like her brain had just been crammed full of said sensation-inducing nerve endings, and then shoved into an acid-filled blender with super-heated blades. To say it was pleasant, as some of them purported after the fact, was a strong statement. So too was calling it modest, or distressing. Even words like "excruciating" and "traumatic" were a little weak. If anybody ever bothered to ask, she would likely say it was the single worst experience she had ever had, before or since.
As it was, the teachers merely described it as "graduation". When she came to, she realised very quickly that, whilst the whispering in her mind and vague appendages in the corner of her eye were finally quelled, so too was literally everything else about her sight and vision - even though feeling remained, something made very evident when she was strapped down and the remnants of her melted eyeballs scraped out of their blackened sockets without anaesthesia. Nonetheless, she was practically crippled, and it took another month after that fateful event for her psychic-abilities to take over the role, translating the vibrations in the air into mental patterns she could recognise as sound, and the surfaces about her into images she could position herself relative to. Her telepathy even offered full colour awareness by the time the ship she was on found its way to her very first role as an agent of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica: a component in a major astropathic relay.
For most other astropaths, this would be where their story ended. Whilst a necessity for rapid information flow, the astropathic relays were constantly flooded with psychic messages from across the galaxy, and they were notorious for inducing the phenomenon called burnout: the crippling of an astropath's psychic powers, be it temporary or permanent, often accompanied by braindeath after however many years of replacing indecipherable whispers and visions with an indecipherable torrent of maddening ciphers in all forms. Only those of particularly strong will could hope to survive for any significant length of time.
Once more, Tecca Nina's tendency to develop psychological coping mechanisms saved her: this time, she simply found a way to turn off the part of her mind that was, for want of a better word, "human". Those in charge of the relay didn't want her to be human; they wanted her to be a wire. So, when she was in the immense choir that made it up, she was effectively no longer human, but a wire of thought and spirit, not taking in the messages passed to her, merely letting them move on through her being as fast as possible, and all the while maintaining that mental clock to draw herself back to when she was allowed a break, though by then she was assailed with reminders of her disturbing past so frequently that she often preferred not to revert at all. She burned out sixteen times in the first year before this mechanism took hold; once it had, she burned out once in the next six, and then only because she let that mindstate slip due to a bout of negative memory interfering with her focus.
This improvement did not go unnoticed. By now, she was in her early forties, and looked very much like she was in her late sixties, so major the toll of her life and powers had taken on her. It came as a great surprise, then, when she found herself recommended for work at a much less strenuous choir somewhere near the outer edge of the Imperium's holdings, and an even greater surprise when that work proposal came with a free rejuvenat treatment to ensure her ongoing service there. All at once, she reverted from looking and feeling like an elderly lady back to more or less her physical prime, complete with renewed hair growth. All this, however, would only serve to be the introduction for another trial entirely - granted, not one that would be at all comparable to the horrors she had faced thus far, but something difficult to overcome nonetheless.
At first, her approach into the deeper, less inhabited parts of the void left her wondering if her Soul-Bond was failing. Whispering she had thought banished for good returned steadily, growing louder the further from civilisation she went. It didn't take overly long, once she had taken up her position in the astropathic choir of that region, for her to recognise them for what they were: not the monsters of her past, but the dying screams and nascent dreams of aliens from far before her time, maddening to contemplate even compared to those other monsters of the Warp. They, after all, had at least some basis in human emotion. Nonetheless, her old coping mechanisms kicked in once again: shut down needless emotion, keep track of the passage of time, use the mind to craft creatively- this time, actually delving into and practicing her telepathic powers, to see what creative fashions she could use them in- all serving to keep her on track toward the eventual title of Astropath Transcendent... somehow, though, she found a sort of magnetic pull despite those mechanisms. Week after week, month after month, she kept being drawn back to contemplating, not the voices coming from the darkness, but the very darkness of the void itself, and this fascination manifested one day in the form of a deep chill filling her private quarters. After that, she found she didn't need to lose herself in her coping mechanisms anymore, though she continued to work on her telepathy where she could.
Again, this did not go unnoticed. Not long after this revelation, perhaps three years since joining the choir, she was requested by name by a member of the Falcon-Cook Rogue Trader lineage. A Praetorian family, the patriarch offered her a position in his own choir aboard his ship. It would be quieter still than the one she'd grown used to, and perhaps a touch more dangerous at times, but then excitement was part and parcel of the life of a Rogue Trader! Excitement, freedom, and of course wealth beyond measure, more than Nina herself might ever have access to in the alternate course of her life. Wealth, in truth, wasn't too impressive to her, but the freedom to expand her abilities, and perhaps see just how far they could go...
Skills:
- Astrotelepath - By far Nina's most notable skill is her aptitude in astrotelepathy. Though she sacrificed her vision, hearing, and much of her former self in the process of transformation- not all of which was due to exposure to the Emperor's soul, and none of which was pleasant to experience- what she has gained in return more than makes up for it. She experiences the world psychically now, as if she were in full retention of her former senses, and she can send messages across vast stretches of Imperial space in relatively short timeframes, a vital process for the Imperium's ongoing functionality, with even further distances made possible in the presence of an astropathic choir. Granted, sending even one relatively brief message is not nor ever will be a short process for any distance greater than orbital, especially with how much effort goes into encoding the most important and sensitive information packets to ensure prying Warp creatures and scions of heresy can't intercept it, but the capacity to do so at all is a rare and rightly-prized ability.
- Sanctioned Psyker - Beyond mere astropathy, Nina is a reasonably skilled psyker in other areas too, sanctioned as she is. All psykers can detect the soul-aura around an individual, so-called Witch-Sight, and may make use of it to elucidate certain pieces of information about them, though not much without explicit training. The majority of sanctioned psykers thus focus their efforts on learning to make use of a relatively selective pool of psychic abilities called a discipline, most practicing with one particular discipline above all others, and mastering two or maybe three distinct disciplines in their lifetime if they are exceptional; Nina may not even have had that much opportunity if she had never risen from the rank and file of the Astropathic Relay, for many astropaths in a choir never have the time to develop beyond their basic telepathic sending and astropathy.
As it is, though, she is an adept when it comes to Telepathy, wielding both communication- and domination-style abilities for their respective roles of information relay and compelling others to act in certain ways, and has started to delve into the Voidfrost discipline that a number of astropaths find themselves dredging up when isolated from other human minds, with the capacity to shield herself from the void's icy grip in a bubble of air and warmth, plummet her own metabolism or that of a willing target into a form of life-preserving stasis, and even seek out and locate the minds of other sentient beings from many Void Units away, up to and including xeno races. There is evidence to suggest that she could progress much further still in these regions and perhaps others, if she gets the opportunity to continue mastering her abilities.
Granted, none of this comes without cost. Though she is soulbound to the Emperor, warding her mind and rendering her far more resistant to the whispers at the edges of her sanity, effectively inaudible by this time, whisper they nonetheless do - and every so often, the ward will be strained by over-enthusiastic use of her abilities and the resulting eddies of the Immaterium, generating a disturbing effect in the local environment. Ever since she first accessed her Voidfrost potential, this has almost universally manifested as a sharp but brief temperature plummet, seeding hoarfrost across every surface in a wide area about her. She remains ever-vigilant for more explicit Warp manifestations, however - rare as they ought to be, they are by no means impossible, and if worst comes to worst, old brainwashing is likely to lead to an almost-instinctive suicide attempt even so many years after leaving the Scholastica Psykana behind - assuming another crew member doesn't attempt to kill her first, that is. - Weaponplay - Naturally, it is rarely appropriate to wield psychic abilities recklessly, least of all those based on altering the mind directly. It is therefore a good thing that she has grown at least reasonably skilled in making use of both pistols and melee weaponry - far more direct is the damage of a pistol than an urge to run out of cover, and far less risky to make use of unless she runs out of ammo. Melee combat is rather more of a concern, in truth, but with proper protection and, occasionally, making use of her powers to support her in combat, she can usually get through a fight unscathed - assuming she's allowed into the fight at all, anyway.
- Trauma Response - Nina's past is one filled with the worst sorts of disturbances, most of which weren't even produced by her power directly. To say she has some serious PTSD is an understatement, and it is likely that this will affect her for her entire life; however, she has developed the means to at least withstand future horror as it comes, especially for long-term situations like prolonged torture and imprisonment. The major component of this at present is essentially to turn off her human emotion and relegate her response to logical and creative thought alone, rendering herself nearly unbreakable as far as further harm goes, but the first aspect of it, developing at some point in her teenage years, was to essentially keep an internal clock and calendar to track how much time has passed, and she has become very good at keeping track of time even under severe stress.
Equipment: Nina's gear is mostly basic but highly functional, focused on quality over quantity in a way assisted by her relatively privileged position:
- A hellpistol for ranged combat, good for 20 shots per hotshot charge pack, and with extra packs carried on her person when it runs dry;
- A mono-edged sword for melee combat, granted typically more of a last resort than intended for standard use;
- Thermoplas mesh armour, woven into her robes for protection;
- A blessed necklace charm in the shape of an Aquila, for purposes of faith and psychic focusing both;
- A void suit, generally stored on-ship in case she needs to head into the void unprotected by her powers;
- Various utility items: micro-bead for short-distance comms; chrono for timekeeping; flashlight and glowbulb for light in different circumstances; pict recorder for vid captures; dataslate for sending, storing, and receiving information.
Miscellaneous: There are a wide variety of directions Tecca Nina's powers could develop in the future, setting aside her ongoing advancement of the Telepathy and Voidfrost disciplines. Most are derived either from her soul-bond to the Emperor, namely the Warp-banishing Theosophamy and divinely-inspired Soul Ward, or from the usual mentally-charged disciplines of Divination and Telekinesis. Technically speaking, however, nothing explicitly prevents her from taking them in more offensive directions via Pyromancy, Biomancy, or perhaps even stranger options, though it is likely these would not be strictly optimal choices given her position.
It is also worth noting that the damage done to her flesh and nervous system by the Soul-Binding ritual is such that standard bionic replacements could not hope to restore either her vision or her hearing. However, such augments capable of it do exist - they are expensive beyond standard measure, and so heavily engineered as to be works of unparalleled artifice in most circumstances, but not unattainable for a Rogue Trader whose fortunes trend toward the stars...
