Name: Shas'la T'olku Mont'yr and DX-4 Technical Drone Monat. To the T'au Caste, Mont'yr 004482
Age: Old Enough
Gender: Female
Race: T'au Fire Caste Warrior
Appearance: Of the various subraces that make up the T'au, it is the Fire Caste that is the most similar to humanity. Standing at around 5'9" tall, and with the muscle and bulk to put an Imperial conscript to shame, to the T'au, Mont'yr's femininity would be obvious. Female T'au have a more distinctive facial construction than males, lacking the 'slit' in their forehead and with a ridge that looks distinctly nose-like, these features are completely lost on the humans that she spends much of her time working with and fighting alongside.
Mont'yr's hair, a dark, bluish-black colour is shaved down and pulled back at the top into a single long braid, which she spends no small amount of time making sure is clean and that there are no stray locks slipping free. Having left her Sept behind many years ago, her armour having been long since damaged to the point of uselessness, she instead wears a set of Imperial Carapace armour, the shoulder pad extended and with the symbol of T'au crudely stencilled on. The last remnant of her heritage is her drone- a broken down DX-4 named Monat (literally 'Freedom of One,') and her helmet, too battered to provide any real protection, but kept for posterity.
Personality: What kind of person Mont'yr was for most of her life was not really her, she would argue. Although she personally never made the connection between not being around ethereals and her mind being freed, she would never go back to her old ways again. In truth, freedom is all she's really hunted for, freedom of her mind, from her life, and from her orders. Being a mercenary suits her- she can always switch employers when things get too overwhelming.
Her other outlooks on life,
all of her other outlooks on life, are secondary to this one pursuit of freedom. Having taken up lho-sticks a year into her time in Imperial space and with a perpetual frown towards the Gue'las who she both barely tolerates and is barely tolerated by; a lot of her viewable personality can simply be summed up as 'standoffish.' Every now and again though, a crack in her outer exterior opens however, giving glimpses and hints as to what's underneath.
History: Raised with the rest of their La'rua from almost the moment her mother gave birth to her, nothing from Mont'yr's upbringing would suggest that they would become a traitor to the Ethereals, their sept, and their entire race's way of life. Training, growing, bulking, that was her life ever since she was able to walk, studying at academies and undertaking field training that a Cadian child would find many similarities with. Never questioning the Greater Good, never doubting her leadership, she would earn the rank of Shas'la along with the rest of her La'rua, the invisible lines of T'au bureaucracy having already mapped most of the rest of her life out.
She was to be dispatched to the Damocles front, to fight against the Imperium's threatening presence, and if she survived, she would be rotated back to T'olku, to create the next generation of soldiers, before returning to the front once more. A typical life for a typical fire warrior. Then, everything went wrong, and in a sand-struck city, the air thick with las and plasma fire, she felt, for the first time in her life, independence.
Unbeknownst to her squad, they had been surrounded and cut off. Not an ethereal was left alive for miles around, and as the control they had exerted over the soldiers worked its way out of their mind, they found themselves different- the same people with the same faces, but with an altogether clearer view on life. To Mont'yr, it was exhilarating, intoxicating... Different. Trapped in a blown-out apartment complex, the few remaining squad survivors would spend time talking and looking out, waiting for their Kau'ui to return, to direct them to guide them once more.
Instead, what they saw was painted red battlesuits blasting their way across the streets, red devilfish swimming along highways, and red-armoured T'au soldiers efficiently driving back the Gue'las that their own Kavaal had so struggled against. Emerging out of their hideout, they would find that their saviours were not the loyal T'au, but instead those freethinking and independent minded soldiers considered traitors even in a galaxy full of traitors- Farsight Enclave Warriors.
Re-joining the fight and falling back into line, all the squad but Mont'yr felt at ease once more. To Mont'yr though, something had changed. The orders that she had felt so natural responding too earlier now chafed at her. Her mindset was different, her outlook was different, and as she left the planet and returned to the Enclave's homeworlds for the first time, she couldn't stand the thought of continuing her life under the disseminated commands of Shas'o's.
Barely a day after landing on her new planetary home, she would be departing, her weapons and a DX-4 Technical Drone her only memories of her people and life.
Skills:
- Superlative Shot: Fire Caste Warriors are trained in ranged combat from the day their hands are dextrous enough to manipulate a pulse rifle. Amongst Gue'las, only the finest of snipers can hope to match Mont'yr when she has enough space to swing her gun around.
- Scrappy: Even on the outskirts of the Imperium, Xenos must live a difficult and dangerous life. Navigating this for any amount of time is almost guaranteed to make a grizzled veteran out of even the most pathetic of Water Caste ambassadors.
- No-Psyell: Mont'yr, like all T'au, is almost totally psy-inert. Although a fireball can hit them, mind control will fail, daemons will gloss over her presence and trying to psychically contact her will merely make her tap her communicator, confused at the strange buzzing noises coming from it.
Equipment:
- Pulse Carbine: A highly efficient, short-barrelled plasma rifle, capable of sending concentrated and highly lethal blasts of superheated energy at whatever is foolish enough to stand in her way. Mont'yr has long since run out of standard issue power cells for the gun, but with Monat's assistance and a cack-handed wiring job to make any Fio'la scream in despair, it now runs off of a back-mounted hellgun power pack. Normally, the under-mounted grenade launcher would fire photon grenades and/or markerlights, she has no need for the latter and no supply of the former, and thus instead uses it to fire Imperial stun grenades. It didn't even require any modification, much to her confusion.
- Ceremonial Blade: A traditional fire caste melee weapon, designed more for looks and because of their hunting heritage than because of any actual tactical doctrine. Nonetheless, it has seen an uncomfortable (for Mont'yr) amount of use in recent years, and thus is kept sharp and in an easy-to-draw location.
- DX-4 Technical Drone 'Monat': Without lifters, thrusters or even much processing power, one might mistake Monat for a circular pile of scrap, but make no mistake that they are the single reason Mont'yr has managed to stay alive for so long outside of T'au space. A companion, technical assistant and trusted ally to Mont'yr, should Monat's true identity as an honest-to-the-Emperor AI be discovered, it would be quite likely that even a Rogue Trader would kick it and her out of an airlock at the earliest opportunity.
- Stub Automatic: A large, bulky, noisy ballistic handgun. Mont'yr doesn't like it, but even she must admit that having a gun she can find ammunition for without needing to ask DX-4 for a step-by-step guide every time she requires a reload is a boon to her.
Miscellaneous: Anything you want to mention but haven't been able to cover yet.