Player Name: Gen Plurk Handle: betcher Player Status: New Player Other characters: N/A
Character Name: Mita Ashyn Fandom: Warhammer 40,000 Character Journal: immaterium OU, AU, or OC? AU If canon, canon point: N/A PB: Tuppence Middleton
Setting Background:
An additional year has passed since the conclusion of the novel, which ended with a massive cliffhanger and the knowledge that Mita and Sahaal are going on a cross-galaxy road trip to reclaim his rightful place as the leader of the Night Lords.
Mita has been teaching Sahaal how to navigate the 41st millenium, providing a human perspective on things, as well as being a a valuable front of knowledge on things that have changed in the last ten thousand years. They've been hopping from world to world, signing on with pirates to provide them passage to key locations, searching for ways for Sahaal to gain influence, and generally staying alive and avoiding the attention of the Inquisition, who may be hunting them down.
History: Link here The AU is a continuation of where canon ends, so directly after they leave Equixus.
Personality:
Interrogator Mita Ashyn of the Oder Xenos has been described as a woman “enslaved to her ambition”, a description that wouldn't be entirely wrong. She was once the respected prognosticator of an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, aiding her mistress in rooting out the influence of the alien and uncovering ancient conspiracies and plots that would do harm against the Imperium of Man. She was greatly respected in this role, and although she was lonely, she loved what she did and felt like her accomplishments made up for what else was lacking in her life.
As a "psyker", she is one born of millions capable of tapping into the warp to materialize a range of psychic powers. But psykers are generally despised and feared in the Imperium, as the warp is the fabric of the closest thing to literal Hell in that universe, filled with daemons that would sometimes explode out of psyker's brains and kill everybody in the vicinity, or corrupt them into mutant hellspawn. Being a psyker is like being a beacon to the thirsting creatures of the warp, and to stand out too much is to risk attention from the Chaos Gods.
She found purpose in her service to the Inquisition, and recognition. She travelled worlds, dismantled Hruddite demagogues, was given accolades and personal manservants and automatons that had no other purpose but record her visions, and luxurious psycho-reactive incense to aid her in her scrying. But the life of an Inquisitor is a dangerous one, and when her mistress died, she was unceremoniously shuffled off and released from her service. This was a change of circumstances that she had extreme difficulty adjusting to, as she was prideful in her own way.
She was eventually picked up by Inquisitor Kaustus, somebody who did not appreciate her talents as much. Her new colleagues gave her no respect, barely acknowledged her, and she was on the absolute bottom of the totem pole. Not just because she was new, but primarily because she was a psyker. She was mocked both to her face and behind it, the subject of gossip and social stonewalling, and it generally was the worst workplace ever. Kaustus didn't care about her, and relegated her to more of an afterthought.
In his service, she changes. She desires glory, and experiences a growing resentment and embarrassment in being ridiculed, and having her visions be disbelieved. She’s wrapped up in insecurity, paranoia, and rage, around a core of determination and loneliness. Her main driving purpose was originally to attain the heights of status she once reached. Feeling as if once she achieved something impressive enough, she would gain their respect.
This eventually declines to resigning herself to understanding that they would never respect her simply because of her abilities, but clinging onto the idea that at least the God-Emperor loves her. She might have no friends, no allies, systematically hated by every citizen of the Imperium, forcibly taken at a young age to enroll in the Scholastia Psykana, and not a single person in the universe who would miss her if she died, but at least the benevolent Emperor who sits on his Golden throne a galaxy's width away, loves her.
Which is a sentiment that kind of shatters once she meets Zso Sahaal.
Zso Sahaal is a murderous, psychopathic torturer of a Space Marine who is on a deeply personal selfish quest - the figure she's culturally conditioned to have nothing but utter hatred and disgust for, the figure she spends the majority of the book trying to hunt down and kill - and she sees herself in him. She sees his mind, and deeply relates to him, in a far more meaningful manner than anyone else she's ever encountered in the Imperium.
"With a precision that she struggled to maintain, she peeled back the layers of this echo-enemy - a perfect but fading replica of the Night Lord's mind - and found a forest of emotion, buried deep beneath layers of time and denial, that shocked her. Ambition. Uncertainty. Frustration. Loneliness. Suspicion. Paranoia. Power.
It was a thing of such sadness, such loneliness, such suspicion and guilt and paranoia, that it almost tore her heart apart. Pain, rage, ambition, sorrow. Distrust. Isolation. Bitterness. His mind was like a reflection of hers, magnified a billion times."
Her biggest flaw would be how she is thoughtless in how she affects people with cruelty. She leaves a random, leering bounty hunter's brain haemorrhaging in her mental attack to find a specific piece of information that he might have, because "her own objectives outweighed everything now." Which is pretty morally Not Okay, but generally par for the course with the authority that is granted from working with the Inquisition.
She uses people she also cares about, although she feels shame at doing so at the same time. She finds a fellow outcast and unlikely ally in Cog, a slow-witted mutant human who adores her. She encourages his attention without the intention of reciprocating, and judges it a fair price to pay for securing his personal loyalty. She passively 'allows' Cog to sacrifice himself and use his body as a meat shield to protect her, which distances her from the guilt she feels. But she still cares enormously about him and reaches out her psychic presence to calm and reassure him at times of distress. And when he is murdered in front of her eyes, she lashes out with a psychic attack to avenge him, despite it being a potentially fatal mistake.
But her biggest strength would be how she is also an excellent and resourceful investigator, and isn’t afraid to take great personal risks in chasing after her target. She goes against the wishes of her Inquisitor in pursuit of what she believes is the right thing to do when it could get her executed, which is quite a brave thing to do. She's also very intelligent and well-read, having access to forbidden knowledge not available to the wider public.
More neutrally, she's stiff and slightly formal in most social situations, unless she's impatient and doesn't have time for it. She doesn't hesitate to be discourteous when there's a genuine need - i.e. sprinting through a police station yelling for the captain because she knows the location of the next attack - but she's still generally slightly proper in her interactions.
In the AU, which continues for a year after the conclusion of the novel, she's had more experience with travelling the galaxy with a Chaos Space Marine. She's more suspicious and willing to do more ruthless things in order to stay alive and hidden. But at the same time, she's also freer with her emotions and power, and more resourceful. This translates more to practical knowledge, as her core personality and motivations remains unchanged from the end of the novel. She has a stronger grip on her psychic powers, and is more confident in their use and herself.
Canon Powers: - Precognition: She's able to enter trance-states and receive visions of what the future potentially holds. It's usually very vague, dream-like and impressionistic, often being more confusing than they are helpful. - Telekinesis: She's able to send blows of force in combat, though it's more a result of instinct in battle rather than deliberate power. She was able to send a thrown dagger spinning away, and smash inch-thick ceremite power armor, though she had almost-impossible difficulty with raising a lever on the other side of a room. - Telepathy: Can sense people's minds, and read their thoughts and emotions. She can also delve deeper into people's minds to seek specific information, but that usually does a lot of irreversible damage to their brains. - General psychic sensitivity to psychic events and phenomena.
Freebie Powers: She's sensitive to discordant psychic ripples in the fabric of reality, which generally materializes as shivers down her spine or bleeding from the eyes and ears and screaming, depending on the severity and nature. They'd have to be deliberately psychic in nature, like maybe a horrible ritual happened in the room she's standing in and she gets the creeps. Or if it was happening as she was in that room, she'd be really grossed out beyond witnessing the ritual. Stuff that happens further away, she'd only pick up on it if it was incredibly bad and on a mass scale, and only as a vague bad-feeling dream.
Power Selection: Native Superpowers
Game Powers:
Animus Motus - Telekinesis
Range is limited to line of sight.
About the force of a strong war hammer swing from a muscular person, lifting or moving up to 90kg.
It's difficult to use it outside of combat instinct, and wrangling finicky, small actions with telepathy (e.g. lifting keys off a hook) is extremely difficult and takes time.
Empathitor - Mental invasion
Range of about ten meters.
She can sense the presence of people's minds in visual range, and read surface impressions.
Specific pieces of information are extremely difficult to pick out. The deeper she digs to find it, the more damage it does to the target's mind. Since this can be weaponized, I would limit the effects to not cause death, and say that the damage also reflects to her mind as well.
While in their minds, she can launch a psychic attack of sorts. More like a rummage around that is deeply uncomfortable. Described as a "swipe of immaterial force" that injures people's minds, or "daggers of thought". It affects people' biological functions, like forcing sleep, briefly confusing them, or knocking them into unconsciousness.
Precognitor - Divination
She's able to enter trance-states and receive visions of what the future potentially holds
They are vague, confusing, and sometimes not very helpful. Sometimes they're expressed as metaphors or imagery that only becomes clear once the situation has happened.
In these visions, she can swoop around the happening as an astral observer.
I'm not entiiirely sure how this will work in-game, and whether there will be many opportunities for this to come into play. But I'm willing to roll with whatever, and this power just not working on occasion or giving anything helpful.
Non-Powered Abilities:
Martial arts - she's quite adept in hand-to-hand combat, but not an expert. Somebody specifically trained in it could probably beat her, but she can easily take on three muggers in an alleyway.
Investigation - working with the Inquisition to root out conspiracies and plots makes her a very adept investigator. She's quite observant, and makes leaps in logic that quite often pan out.
She's great at predicting how people will act, which might be a holdover from her being in people's brains so often.
Survival skills - she's definitely trained in them, but she hasn't ever really had to use them. She has the theoretical knowledge of what she has to do when trapped in the wilderness, but little practical execution.
Setting/Suitability:
I think I'd like her to make some friends that don't judge her for being a psyker, and friends who are not awful for her morals. She would want to help out in this quest, and maybe eventually redeem herself as somebody who is morally conflicted.
[Mita stands there for quite a while, staring thoughtfully at her younger self and biting her cheek.]
[Even as a child, she had that look in her eyes. She recognised it. At the time she believed with all her childish heart that the Emperor loved her, and that would be enough. But even then she had a burning desire to prove herself worthy of the respect of her peers and the tutors.]
[None of it matters now, of course. She knew now how worthless that endeavor was. And all she needed was herself.]
People will hate you. [She states, finally.] People will despise you. Girls not even ten years of age will spit on you, boys will kick you. The people meant to keep you alive will look the other way when you are injured. They will sabotage you, whisper things behind your back. There will be one or two who recognise your value, but they will die and you will never be more than that. You will not find your home in the Imperium of Man.
[She smiles thinly, her eyes bright.]
You will find your home elsewhere. With the dregs of society, with the heretics and fools. Freed from the shackles of Imperial dogma, you will find your potential to be so much greater than you had thought.
The Emperor does not love you. And it is much too late for that.
Additional info: Mita will be bringing a small normal dagger, and be wearing her usual ragged clothing that isn't unusual in any way.
NEW PLAYER APP | Mita Ashyn | Warhammer 40k
Player Name: Gen
Plurk Handle: betcher
Player Status: New Player
Other characters: N/A
Character Name: Mita Ashyn
Fandom: Warhammer 40,000
Character Journal: immaterium
OU, AU, or OC? AU
If canon, canon point: N/A
PB: Tuppence Middleton
Setting Background:
An additional year has passed since the conclusion of the novel, which ended with a massive cliffhanger and the knowledge that Mita and Sahaal are going on a cross-galaxy road trip to reclaim his rightful place as the leader of the Night Lords.
Mita has been teaching Sahaal how to navigate the 41st millenium, providing a human perspective on things, as well as being a a valuable front of knowledge on things that have changed in the last ten thousand years. They've been hopping from world to world, signing on with pirates to provide them passage to key locations, searching for ways for Sahaal to gain influence, and generally staying alive and avoiding the attention of the Inquisition, who may be hunting them down.
History: Link here
The AU is a continuation of where canon ends, so directly after they leave Equixus.
Personality:
Interrogator Mita Ashyn of the Oder Xenos has been described as a woman “enslaved to her ambition”, a description that wouldn't be entirely wrong. She was once the respected prognosticator of an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, aiding her mistress in rooting out the influence of the alien and uncovering ancient conspiracies and plots that would do harm against the Imperium of Man. She was greatly respected in this role, and although she was lonely, she loved what she did and felt like her accomplishments made up for what else was lacking in her life.
As a "psyker", she is one born of millions capable of tapping into the warp to materialize a range of psychic powers. But psykers are generally despised and feared in the Imperium, as the warp is the fabric of the closest thing to literal Hell in that universe, filled with daemons that would sometimes explode out of psyker's brains and kill everybody in the vicinity, or corrupt them into mutant hellspawn. Being a psyker is like being a beacon to the thirsting creatures of the warp, and to stand out too much is to risk attention from the Chaos Gods.
She found purpose in her service to the Inquisition, and recognition. She travelled worlds, dismantled Hruddite demagogues, was given accolades and personal manservants and automatons that had no other purpose but record her visions, and luxurious psycho-reactive incense to aid her in her scrying. But the life of an Inquisitor is a dangerous one, and when her mistress died, she was unceremoniously shuffled off and released from her service. This was a change of circumstances that she had extreme difficulty adjusting to, as she was prideful in her own way.
She was eventually picked up by Inquisitor Kaustus, somebody who did not appreciate her talents as much. Her new colleagues gave her no respect, barely acknowledged her, and she was on the absolute bottom of the totem pole. Not just because she was new, but primarily because she was a psyker. She was mocked both to her face and behind it, the subject of gossip and social stonewalling, and it generally was the worst workplace ever. Kaustus didn't care about her, and relegated her to more of an afterthought.
In his service, she changes. She desires glory, and experiences a growing resentment and embarrassment in being ridiculed, and having her visions be disbelieved. She’s wrapped up in insecurity, paranoia, and rage, around a core of determination and loneliness. Her main driving purpose was originally to attain the heights of status she once reached. Feeling as if once she achieved something impressive enough, she would gain their respect.
This eventually declines to resigning herself to understanding that they would never respect her simply because of her abilities, but clinging onto the idea that at least the God-Emperor loves her. She might have no friends, no allies, systematically hated by every citizen of the Imperium, forcibly taken at a young age to enroll in the Scholastia Psykana, and not a single person in the universe who would miss her if she died, but at least the benevolent Emperor who sits on his Golden throne a galaxy's width away, loves her.
Which is a sentiment that kind of shatters once she meets Zso Sahaal.
Zso Sahaal is a murderous, psychopathic torturer of a Space Marine who is on a deeply personal selfish quest - the figure she's culturally conditioned to have nothing but utter hatred and disgust for, the figure she spends the majority of the book trying to hunt down and kill - and she sees herself in him. She sees his mind, and deeply relates to him, in a far more meaningful manner than anyone else she's ever encountered in the Imperium.
"With a precision that she struggled to maintain, she peeled back the layers of this echo-enemy - a perfect but fading replica of the Night Lord's mind - and found a forest of emotion, buried deep beneath layers of time and denial, that shocked her. Ambition. Uncertainty. Frustration. Loneliness. Suspicion. Paranoia. Power.
It was a thing of such sadness, such loneliness, such suspicion and guilt and paranoia, that it almost tore her heart apart. Pain, rage, ambition, sorrow. Distrust. Isolation. Bitterness. His mind was like a reflection of hers, magnified a billion times."
Her biggest flaw would be how she is thoughtless in how she affects people with cruelty. She leaves a random, leering bounty hunter's brain haemorrhaging in her mental attack to find a specific piece of information that he might have, because "her own objectives outweighed everything now." Which is pretty morally Not Okay, but generally par for the course with the authority that is granted from working with the Inquisition.
She uses people she also cares about, although she feels shame at doing so at the same time. She finds a fellow outcast and unlikely ally in Cog, a slow-witted mutant human who adores her. She encourages his attention without the intention of reciprocating, and judges it a fair price to pay for securing his personal loyalty. She passively 'allows' Cog to sacrifice himself and use his body as a meat shield to protect her, which distances her from the guilt she feels. But she still cares enormously about him and reaches out her psychic presence to calm and reassure him at times of distress. And when he is murdered in front of her eyes, she lashes out with a psychic attack to avenge him, despite it being a potentially fatal mistake.
But her biggest strength would be how she is also an excellent and resourceful investigator, and isn’t afraid to take great personal risks in chasing after her target. She goes against the wishes of her Inquisitor in pursuit of what she believes is the right thing to do when it could get her executed, which is quite a brave thing to do. She's also very intelligent and well-read, having access to forbidden knowledge not available to the wider public.
More neutrally, she's stiff and slightly formal in most social situations, unless she's impatient and doesn't have time for it. She doesn't hesitate to be discourteous when there's a genuine need - i.e. sprinting through a police station yelling for the captain because she knows the location of the next attack - but she's still generally slightly proper in her interactions.
In the AU, which continues for a year after the conclusion of the novel, she's had more experience with travelling the galaxy with a Chaos Space Marine. She's more suspicious and willing to do more ruthless things in order to stay alive and hidden. But at the same time, she's also freer with her emotions and power, and more resourceful. This translates more to practical knowledge, as her core personality and motivations remains unchanged from the end of the novel. She has a stronger grip on her psychic powers, and is more confident in their use and herself.
Canon Powers:
- Precognition: She's able to enter trance-states and receive visions of what the future potentially holds. It's usually very vague, dream-like and impressionistic, often being more confusing than they are helpful.
- Telekinesis: She's able to send blows of force in combat, though it's more a result of instinct in battle rather than deliberate power. She was able to send a thrown dagger spinning away, and smash inch-thick ceremite power armor, though she had almost-impossible difficulty with raising a lever on the other side of a room.
- Telepathy: Can sense people's minds, and read their thoughts and emotions. She can also delve deeper into people's minds to seek specific information, but that usually does a lot of irreversible damage to their brains.
- General psychic sensitivity to psychic events and phenomena.
Freebie Powers: She's sensitive to discordant psychic ripples in the fabric of reality, which generally materializes as shivers down her spine or bleeding from the eyes and ears and screaming, depending on the severity and nature. They'd have to be deliberately psychic in nature, like maybe a horrible ritual happened in the room she's standing in and she gets the creeps. Or if it was happening as she was in that room, she'd be really grossed out beyond witnessing the ritual. Stuff that happens further away, she'd only pick up on it if it was incredibly bad and on a mass scale, and only as a vague bad-feeling dream.
Power Selection: Native Superpowers
Game Powers:
Animus Motus - Telekinesis
Empathitor - Mental invasion
Precognitor - Divination
Non-Powered Abilities:
Setting/Suitability:
I think I'd like her to make some friends that don't judge her for being a psyker, and friends who are not awful for her morals. She would want to help out in this quest, and maybe eventually redeem herself as somebody who is morally conflicted.
SAMPLES
Prose Sample:
TDM thread
Network Sample:
[Mita stands there for quite a while, staring thoughtfully at her younger self and biting her cheek.]
[Even as a child, she had that look in her eyes. She recognised it. At the time she believed with all her childish heart that the Emperor loved her, and that would be enough. But even then she had a burning desire to prove herself worthy of the respect of her peers and the tutors.]
[None of it matters now, of course. She knew now how worthless that endeavor was. And all she needed was herself.]
People will hate you. [She states, finally.] People will despise you. Girls not even ten years of age will spit on you, boys will kick you. The people meant to keep you alive will look the other way when you are injured. They will sabotage you, whisper things behind your back. There will be one or two who recognise your value, but they will die and you will never be more than that. You will not find your home in the Imperium of Man.
[She smiles thinly, her eyes bright.]
You will find your home elsewhere. With the dregs of society, with the heretics and fools. Freed from the shackles of Imperial dogma, you will find your potential to be so much greater than you had thought.
The Emperor does not love you. And it is much too late for that.
Additional info: Mita will be bringing a small normal dagger, and be wearing her usual ragged clothing that isn't unusual in any way.