Idira Tlass

"Only losers who are afraid of their own gift lose control. Or idiots who never figure out what they are before it's too late. Or little kids who want to play around with their shiny new toy. If you don't know the limits of your abilities or you're always bouncing around in your own head, that's a recipe for disaster."

—Idira Tlass, Unsanctioned Psyker

Idira Tlass is an Unsanctioned Psyker who is a skilled diviner in the service of the Rogue Trader House von Valancius in the Koronus Expanse of the Segmentum Obscurus.

History[]

The life of a psyker is, on the surface, enviable by those who would wish for the power to conjure forth anything one can imagine. Wielding such a gift would make for untold fantasies become realistic possibilities. But it is wise to temper such glorification of the psyker with the grim reality they face as social outcasts, dangerous liabilities and immaterial beacons to horrors from beyond the ken of Mankind. And if you are an Unsanctioned Psyker, operating outside of the approval of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, the dangers are all that much more prevalent and real.

Idara Tlass is such an Unsanctioned Psyker.

She grew up an orphan among her fellows, learning to make use of her powers while fulfilling the role of advisor to those warlords who dominated her planet, a world blighted by a spiritual degeneration as its people drifted further and further from the Emperor's light. Idira managed to achieve some manner of mental stability and control of her powers through sheer force of will, as well as a timely intervention of various chemical and cybernetic augments provided to her by the same warlords she served. Even so, every solar day brought with it a new host of uncertainties and confusion that drifted in from the door left cracked ajar to the horrors of the Immaterium in her head.

Before her arrogance and bravado crumbled away, however, she met and took up the opportunity presented to her by a chance encounter with then-Lord Captain Theodora von Valancius. After a violent farewell to her original patron following Theodora's assassination during a Warp incursion on the von Valancius flagship, she took up the mantle of diviner for her new Rogue Trader and has since then served the Lord Captain as a vaunted psychic advisor skilled in the discipline of divination. Idira provides counsel on both matters of the Warp and what possibilities the future might hold.

Loss has always been the constant companion of psykers, whether it be within their personal life or beyond. But those who seek to buck their fate often find it a more intimate companion than the rest. Even more so if they are determined to avoid the feared Black Ships and the sanctification rituals of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica on blessed Terra. And for the majority of her life, Idira has been content to live free of the constraints placed upon the Imperium's Sanctioned Psykers, or worse, be judged unfit, her life sacrificed to the Emperor to fuel the psychic beacon of the Astronomican.

But there has been no greater loss to date than that which she felt when Theodora von Valancius, her Lord Captain, was assassinated.

Idira was the one who Theodora relied upon to find all the unseen paths, to foresee all possibilities that might benefit or threaten her and her dynasty, from the smallest to the largest things imaginable. But for once, Idira was unable to discern that which might come at the cost of her Lord Captain's life. Now she must live knowing that whatever fate befell Theodora, she both never saw it coming and was powerless to do anything about it.

Now, grappling with the ever-increasing clamour of the voices in her head, Idira must navigate through the mire of uncertainty that the new Lord Captain brings with their every step. Is she good enough to see through the veil? Can she do what she failed to before? Would Theodora ever forgive her for having the gall to contemplate moving on to serve a new patron? All these questions and so few answers.

What answers she may be looking for must come from the new Rogue Trader, someone who might be able to see through the bluster and jaded edges that others among the retinue turn their nose up at and call apocryphal, heretical even. But can the ghosts of Idira's past and the shadows of her future be overcome?

Only fate knows for certain.

As an Unsanctioned Psyker, Idira has access to a greater portion of her psychic ability than most of the sanctioned can boast, albeit at the cost of worse mental stability than would be acceptable in the Astra Militarum for a battle psyker.

Personality[]

Native to a violent planet forsaken by the Imperium where those gifted with psychic ability were but assets to be employed by whatever warlord happened to commandeer them, Idira received a form of education and cybernetic augmentation meant to help control her powers. But she never received the formal education, training and spiritual trials that the Astra Telepathica subjects its would-be students to to help them learn to rein in and better control their powers, especially to prevent Daemonic influence or possession.

Add to this a rather unorthodox and less than pleasant set of interactions over her life with her fellow Humans and the institutions of the Imperium, and you arrive at an unorthodox worldview that others may disagree with. As such Idira pursues many paths that would be considered heretical by most servants of the Emperor.

Having lived as hard a life as she has, enduring the endless whispers from beyond the cracked door looming in her head, seeing the endless weave of eternity spread out afore her, there is little room left in Idiria's heart for dalliances or trifles beyond camaraderie and genial companionship.

Idira Tlass will not respond to any romantic advances.