Portrait of Lady Vor’Cle by the esteemed Malfian artist Jil t’Succubus.

RPG/Campaign: Rogue Trader (Warhammer 40K RPG)

Lady Essiala Ariathia Sorjiik den Morgenstern ban Vor’cle is the Navigator Primaris of the void-ship Gloriosa Lux Misericordiae Imperialis, a role she has held for just over a standard decade. She is a bookish and reserved woman, wearing her noble bearing as a mask to conceal her terrors and inner loneliness.

Her full backstory lies below.

Voyages with Lazarus Voidghast

Child of Vor’cle

Essiala is a scion of House Vor’cle, an ancient and vaunted House of the Navis Nobilite that eschews sector and planetary politics in favour of broad-ranging interests and connections throughout the Imperium of Man, including at the very heights of power. Vor’cle Navigators guide ships of nobility, adepta of the mighty Adeptus Terra, Rogue Traders, and even the dreaded Inquisition. The House maintains its own fleet of void-clippers – fast courier voidcraft that crisscross Sectors, Segmenta and even the Imperium itself bearing information too dense, complex or secure to risk astropathic communication, as well as individuals wishing swift and unobtrusive transport across the stars.

The keys-and-book sigil of House Vor’cle

She was born on one of these void-clippers, the lean and ancient Morgenstern, and is a child of an esteemed and stable gene-lineage that has been free of genomic instability for over a millenium. Children of the Sorjiik lineage tend to a greater height, leanness of build and paleness of skin than even most void-born, with many also possessing entirely black eyes well-suited to finding even the fainest of lights in the darkness of the void. Essiala shows all these traits and, like many children of her line, prefers her quarters set to lower local gravity and dimmer lumination than ship standard.

House Vor’cle is less hidebound than many great magisterial Houses of the Navis Nobilite who might rely on their breeding and connections to secure contracts of navigation. The Vor’cle instead educate their scions and inculcate a deep curiosity about the universe into them. They in turn record everything that they encounter on their long-ranging travels across and beyond the Imperium and send their reports back to the House archives, where they may be used to further the obectives of the House and its allies. This cavalier disregard for the virtue of ignorance has led to multiple long term feuds between the House and factions of the Ecclesiarchy.

Apprenticeship and Dark Encounters

Decades of scholarship and apprenticeship taught Essiala well the lessons of her House. She served as a Navigatrix Tertius and learned the practicalities of navigation aboard multiple ships with distinction and no issue save for a short-lived daliance with a bright-eyed void-mistress that ended when Essiala ascended to the rank of Navigatrix Secundus and was assigned to the void-ship Revenance.

Her years aboard the Revenance took her into the Halo Stars beyond the frontiers of the Imperium. She saw strange aetheric phenomena and curious alien ruins, decimated remnants of fallen civilisations far older than that of Man, and steered the ship through terrible warp storms to find safe refuge in the light of the Astronomicon once more. An incident occured on one voyage where she had the honour of steering the ship while the Navigator Primaris was recovering from injuries following a skirmish with Orkish pirates. The ship’s Gellar field, likely suffering some minor damage in the prior engagement, fluctuated during a turbulent ana-surge within the Immaterium and something attempted to coalesce through the cracks into the Navis spire.

A shapeless darkness with a voice of ash and burning violet eyes appeared on before Essiala and begged for her to open disable the safeties on the Aciens Horrens, the heavily warded portal through which the Navigator views the Immaterium, and allow it inside. It offered power, knowledge, all the sweet temptations fit to lure her into obeying its pleas. She refused and, in a moment of righteous anger, tried to turn the power of her Third Eye on the blasphemous thing. The entity simply laughed in amusement and departed, leaving her with words.

“Such fire you have. And such fires you will see Beyond. Three and three and all will burn as bright as you. May they consume you by delightful degrees.”

The warp entity from the Revenance incident, who still haunts Essiala’s dreams

Essiala found herself marked and shaken by this dreadful encounter. All food tastes of ash in her mouth and her dreams echo with the three-eyed entities mocking laughter. In response she threw herself into studying all she could find about such blasphemous foes, so that she might face and destroy the entity if she encountered it once more. And to this day she takes great care to maintain a personal shrine to the Emperor in her quarters, praying to Him on Earth and all His Saints each morning after a night of fitful, restless sleep.

Navigator of the Gloriosa Lux

The incident on the Revenance earned Essiala her elevation to the rank of full Navigatrix, after sufficient psychoexamination and deep testing to ensure that the entity had left no taint upon her soul. She was assigned to fulfil House Vor’cle’s contract of navigation with the Void-ghast Dynasty, an ancient rogue trader family now fallen from the heights of their past glories, and she assumed the duties of Navigator Primaris aboard the Void-ghast’s only true void-ship, the Sword-class frigate Gloriosa Lux Misericordiae Imperialis.

Lady Essiala worked well with the Gloriosa Lux and her Lord-Captain Eleazar Void-ghast, steering the vessel on nearly a dozen expeditions into into the wild space of the Koronus Expanse and bringing her home safely each time. Each voyage brought new wonders and new terrors, and always the subtlest hints of some meaning behind the words and the sinister laughter haunting her nightmares.

Lord Eleazar’s sudden and unexpected death upended everything. Gloriosa Lux was forced to return to anchorage, spending nearly a year in limbo waiting for the heir to the Dynasty, the Writ of Trade, and the Lord-Captaincy to be found. Essiala spent the time reading, writing notes for future memoirs, and attempting to make sense of her dreams. She could feel a pattern forming, though it was still too diffuse and subtle to fully grasp.

Finally, after interminable politics and delays of transit, Lazarus Void-ghast was declared Lord of the Dynasty and the Gloriosa Lux Misericordiae Imperialis has set sail once more into the Koronus Expanse…