Lupus Havelock

Full Name: Lupus Havelock
Known as: Hack
Rank:
Gender: Male
Birthdate:
Height: 6'0"
Build: Gaunt
Eyes: Vibrant Green
Hair: Copper - Closely Shaven
Skin: Milky
Appearance:

Career: Explorator
Origin: Void Born
Birthright: Stubjack
Lure of the Void: Renegade - Free-thinker
Trials and Travails: Press-Ganged - Unwilling Accomplice
Motivation: Renown
Connections: Void Born
Public Reputation:
Ship-board Reputation:

Imperator et Mortalitas

Lupus Havelock was born aboard the hulk designated Imperator et Mortalitas, the son of a pair of third generation colonists of the limping carcass that was their home. Living in those cramped corridors, the three of them were part of a small society clustered around the launch bays of one of the many accumulated wrecks. The great airlocks were almost entirely stationary, their machine spirits quiet, sleeping, only roused to action with great ceremony, devotions of the machine cult and holy unguents & oils. The empty launch bays were the hubs of that society, but none lived within them, for things would come up from the dark places, things from within the hulks bowels, sporadically attracted to that press of humanity, and when they came the open places were death. Families would seal the bulkheads to their homes and pray devotions to the Golden Throne as inhuman sounds passed beyond their doors. For weeks at a time many of the sections would remain sealed, the brave dashing from one sealed home to another. The launch bays empty, only the things and the dead filling their vastness. It was during these times that Lupus learned to wield a gun, and during these times, like all others of the vessel, he kept it close, sleeping with the weapon in his arms lest the things find a here-to-unnoticed vent or crawlspace and enter their home. For such was the way, and each time when the things receded and the bulkheads were unsealed the numbers of their community would be thinned.
Guns were not all he learnt in his first years, how to scavenge something useful from the assorted debris of his home, a fierce independence which stayed with him for many years and the basics of the skills that would define his life. The devotions of the Machine Cult came to him easily and his long, slender fingers were a great asset to the many rituals of supplication the many restless and unsettled machine spirits needed. Ritual and technology came easily, but nothing came as easily as that first stitch, staple or suture. When he was called upon to bind a wound with more than just rough, torn fabric. To cleanse it, and close it. The first limb that was removed to save the whole. Here again his long fingers suited him, allowing him to reach inside wounds, draw out the offending piece of flesh, or metal or bone.
All was done without training, without any actual skill, rough and ready surgery in the dark, metal, coffin that was their home. He was no physician, merely a layman with luck and perhaps the beginnings of skill. His duties to the Machine Spirits and the Cult took most of his time, but now and then he would be on hand when injuries occurred, and he would act.

A Chance Meeting

Late in Lupus' 15th year, a ship of the Navis Nobilite approached the Imperator et Mortalitas. After a tense few moments of silence, the static on the communities vox was broken. Communication between the vessels made it clear that the Navigators vessel required repairs. A deal was made and the Starship launched transports, the community gathered as the great launch bay doors were opened, adepts of the Machine Cult taking special care in their benedictions and blessings of the machine spirits within. As the shuttles arrived, landing machinery moved for the first time in countless generations, the exultations of the adepts and the blessed incense filling the recycled air. Work crews from the community met the landers, and with Lupus among them they boarded, hauling their requisite equipement and returned to the grand vessel of the Navis Nobilite. There they set to work, ushered rapidly through the stately halls and twisting gantries of the ship. The repairs were minor but extensive, taking a number of weeks, with shuttles passing between the great hulk and the starship, with more workmen and machinery as required. Trade between the crews was also carried out, with many of the small luxuries taken for granted on a travelling vessel fetching a high price amongst the meagre possessions & old technology of the community.
During his time working across the Navigators vessel, Lupus often found himself free from the scrutiny of his elders, and curious & brazen in his early adolescence he would often leave his assigned task, or quarters to explore the great vessel he was visiting. On one such venture, he came across the a group of fine corridors, an area where the Navigators themselves lived. His inquisitive nature overruled his natural unease & caution and he followed the corridors in question, tucking himself out of sight at the slightest hint of approach. It was in this careful confidence that he came across a small, void born, child, finely dressed and obviously an inhabitant of the ship. Almost colliding with the young girl in his surprise, he saw the marks of her birthright upon her face, the closed third eye in the centre of her forehead and the dark, starless void in shining forth from her others. Though she was barely more than a toddler, the sheer impact of her gaze shocked Lupus, the void was his home, but reflected in those young blank eyes was a void he had never seen, a vast emptiness he could barely conceive of. Serafina was the child's name and the fickle hand of fate or perhaps the Emperors will would bring them together once more, over a decade in their futures.

Service to the Imperium

Quick to shoot at shadows, always slightly on edge it is perhaps surprising he was taken from his home as he was. Not killed with the majority. The Imperator et. drifted within the range of sensors from a local system Governor. Seeing the ancient technology that the hulk represented the local defence force was sent to cleanse it of any xenos or heretical taint. Whether the community within the hulk fired on the governors vessels or whether the captains of said vessels wished to remove any chance that the life-signs were dangerous is unknown to Lupus. Only that explosions rocked the hulk and in the confusion weapons were fired in return. It was only when a defence cruiser docked with the hulk and boarded her that it became clear what was occurring. Used to things in the dark and threats from within their home, overly edgy, the community fired on the boarders and it was only when the remains of the community was beaten back, corralled into the launch bays at gun point and subdued that any explanations were demanded of them, and any mercy given, when it was seen that they were loyal subjects of the Emperor. The mercy however was subjective. They were to be removed from the hulk, their home, and put into the Governors service. Those of able body who showed skill with a weapon were press-ganged into the systems legion or defence force, those without were sent… elsewhere.
Lupus, with his induction into the idiosyncratic version of the Machine Cult that had been present on the hulk, with a reasonable skill with a firearm, and with the general skills his upbringing had instilled in him, was drafted into the ground troops the Governor required in vast numbers to quell the rebellious regions of his system. Away from the void of space, imprisoned with the gravity of a world holding him in place, earth beneath his boots, and weather the like of which he had never seen. Thankfully he survived his first conflict, his canny, wary nature saving him a number of times when others fell. Proper induction into the rituals of the Machine Cult followed, and until he fell under the scrutiny of the Ecclesiarchy, for his slightly esoteric beliefs, he rose within them. Escaping accusations of heresy by being drawn to a new front in the Governors war, he cut off many of his old ties, falling in with the field medical units to obscure himself.
Shadowing the medical staff, engineering his position as an aide to any that might need him, he avoided the meat grinder that was action along the front, but he became witness and more & more involved with the charnel house that was the medical centre. As the injured piled up, he was called upon more and more to perform surgery he had little to no training to perform, and so he was forced to learn. His skills expanded rapidly, but often not rapidly enough, soldiers dying with his arms and overly long, slender fingers deep within their wounds, organs failing beneath his touch. Then the day came when the medical centre came under fire from enemy artillery, three of the trained doctors died and numerous orderlies & servitors were killed or damaged beyond usefulness. Those with any medical training were required, and Lupus was 'promoted' from aide to standing surgeon. He didn't leave the operating table for days, when he did it was to collapse from exhaustion, only to have stimms forcibly injected into his system and him carried back to the surgery. He kept working, trying to do what he could, but also trying to get away, to have a few minutes to himself. Eventually he tried to physically escape, almost succeeding in stealing a weapon and bargaining - at gun point - his way out of the medical centre. All he achieved was to be physically cuffed to the operating table, an armed orderly standing by with stimms or threats as required.

Return to the Void

Eventually the rebellion was quashed, eventually. The time spent in that 'prison' fostered a deep violent desire never to be restrained like that again, to willingly give up certain freedoms in service to the Emperor yes, but never ever to be so contained and controlled. Lupus Havelock had gained the training that matched his skills and his desire, and the ambition to use those skills to take himself further, beyond that of a lowly, insignificant cog in the great Imperial machine, to become something more. Taking advantage of the access to the medical centre he still had, and in the laxity that came with the celebrations of victory, he modified the records of a dead soldier and used them to gain passage on a ship out, back into the void, back to his home amid the stars.

Timeline
0-16 - Imperator et Mortalis (Met Astrea at 5 - 15 - when he came abroad to help with repairs of the Navigator vessel)
16-18 - Fought on the front lines
18-23 - Medical Aide
23-26 - Surgeon (Manacled to operating table)
26-28 - Free & Travelling (Becomes part of crew, after maiden voyage)

page revision: 30, last edited: 25 May 2012 14:22

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