Devorguille Skota

Devorguille Skota is the middle daughter of Lord Inquisitor Malleus Skotus and his long time lover and Astropath Cuma Sybbyl, both of whom think their daughter is a Black Ship Command and Control officer. In fact, she is an Astral Agent, a covert operative of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.

Early Life
Devorguille spent her first years with her sisters at House Skota's various palatial residences on Venus and Earth. Her parents, while not total strangers, did not play much of a role in her life. Her affections were chiefly given to her caretakers and her sisters Kymbeline and Aidana.

Scholastica Psykana
Devorguille's childhood ended abruptly as her psychic gifts began to manifest in puberty. All three daughters were screened by a Psykana officer. Devorguille was assigned a zeta rating on the twenty-four point scale and transfered with her elder sister Kymbeline to the grim and haunted 'City of Sight' headquarters of the Scholastica Psykana.

The Ordos of the Inquisition immediately claimed Kymbeline for themselves but the Master Adepts of the Astra Telepathica succeeded in securing Devorguille for their own purposes.

Personality
If she hadn't been born a Psyker - and a high Terran aristocrat - Devorguille would have made a great actress. As it is she uses her dramatic talents with skill and enthusiasm to live the cover identities that are an integral part of her work as an Astral Agent.

Appearance
Devorguille has inherited her mother's deep brown hair and the lavender grey eye color Cuma had before the Binding burned them out. In feature Devorguille favors her father however with a thin, angular face, long lidded eyes and straight but prominent nose.

Her style of self presentation depends entirely on which of her several covers she is currently using but her primary persona makes full use of her aristocratic status as well as her official rank of Adepta Senex and assignment as a Comand and Control Officer of a Black Ship. 'Lady Devorguille Skota' of the Adepta Astra Telepathica wears elegant black gowns, the golden jewelry and fancifully styled wig of a Terran noblewoman to which she adds the Adeptus' winged eye emblem and carries the usual psyker staff.

Adeptus Arbite Magistrate Teriza Donez is one of Devorguille's favorite covers. It has the advantage of giving her direct access to local Arbite and Law Enforcement assets as well as automatically intimidating just about everybody she comes in contact with - but in a different way than her primary identity. Donez has perfectly genuine Arbite credentials, if anybody bothers to check which they normally don't. She wears her hair long and brown, her figure set off by her smart Magistrate's uniform.

The Lady Commodine Coelius-Vindices-Verus de Centauria is another favorite cover. Devorguille can play her as an aristocratic drone with more money than sense, or as poweful, sinister and dangerous, Both aspects can be very useful in penetrating aristocratic cliques and intrigues which all too often prove to have Chaos cults behind them. Lady Commodine wears her hair blond. In her aristocratic airhead mode she wears extreme and less than becoming fashions. In her dangerous incarnation she affects a lot of sleek leather and furs.

Merchant Ship-Master Davne Occlusus is a small player always looking to break into the big game, flashy and unscrupulous she can easily be inveigled into schemes of a criminal or even treasonous nature.... or so plotters against the Emperor's rule think. She wears her black hair loose and wild and her 'uniform' is pretty wild too with black leather coat and leggings and a froth of frilly petticoats topped off by a tricorn hat all fringed with fluttering streamers of parchment from numerous purity seals.

Lystra Moraldis is a covert agent - who she works for varies according to place and the needs of the mission - but she is always seductive, persuasive and always seems to be a step or two ahead of everybody else. Lystra has black hair like Captain Occlusus but sleekly styled, and dresses in elegant black. Both the shipmaster and the spy affect cigarette holders.

Abilities and Traits
Devorguille's assignment falls midway between those her parents, Skotus a Delta and Sybbyl a Theta. Their middle daughter is a Zeta. Like her father she is a talented biomancer and fully trained in the combat applications of her powers but she is also a sensitive telepath and a gifted clairvoyant - gifts inherited from her mother.

Personal
When 'dressed to kill' Devorguille most often wears a cowled stealth suit usually accessorized with a scrying helmet to boost her already impressive clairvoyant abilities, a double barreled bolter pistol and an ancient force blade. She also owns and occasionally wears a suit of power armor adapted from the designs used by Sisters of Battle, its aritificial strength making it possible for her to wield a heavy bolter gun and eviserator chainsword.

Ship
Devorguille's ship is named the Venus Victrix. Like her mistress the ship's appearance and character can change with just a few cosmetic touches, from Astra Telepathica transport to Luxury yacht to tramp merchantman, and more.

The small, by Imperial standards, ship is almost entirely run by cybenetics which are in turn controlled by Devorguille through technopathy. It carries only two additional human crew; a tech-adept of the Legio Cybernetica and the Navigator without whom it is impossible to travel the void.

In addition to the ships' own armament it carries a maniple of Castellan battle robots, another of Crusaders and a third of Battlefield Surveillance drones.

Family
The Adeptus Astra Telepathica engages in a covert breeding program using its senior adepts as donors in an attempt to produce Psykers under controlled conditions and train them from birth - in the hope that this will improve their stability and control over their powers. Devorguille is the bio-parent of four children, three of whom she has acknowledged and given House Rights:

Galatea Skota
Galatea is an Astropath Transcendant working for the Rogue Trader Machares whose fleet is exploring the dangerous Veiled Region in Segmentum Pacifica. To say she leads an uncomfortably interesting life would be a considerable understatement. Fortunately that is exactly the kind of life she wants to lead. She is aware of her connection to House Skota and has actually met her Aunt Aidana but isn't much interested in her birth family. Her loyalties are to the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and Kiril Machares in that order.

Brother Angelus
He is the only one of Devorguille's children who has not benefited from being a recognized member of a noble house. He was taken as one of the Grey Knights when about thirteen. Like his battle brothers Angelus' memory of his identity and past life have been completely wiped. Interestingly he has worked with both his mother and his half-brother Devon and regards them as the closest things to friends any Grey knight can have outside his Chapter. They in turn have found him much the easiest and pleasantest Grey Knight they have ever had contact with. However none of them suspect their relationship.

Devon Skotus
Sanctioned Psyker attached to the Logis Strategos, the Intelligence arm of the Adeptus Administratum. He is Master-Prefectus of a unit of investigator/interrogators consisting of two Logis Ordinates, a second Sanctioned Psyker and a Tech-Adept specializing in forensic analysis. Given his creche upbringing Devon naturally enough has no conventional family feeling but he quite likes his biological mother Devorguille and his Grey Knight brother Angelus as people. And he has found membership in a Terran Noble House extremely useful in opening certain kinds of doors.

Rukh Skota
The youngest of the four she is also the only one of Devorguille's children not to have inherited her curse, a fact which became apparent at puberty. Normally she would have been transferred to one of Holy Terra's several Schola Progenia but as Devorguille's acknowledged child she had a family to go to instead. She is having some difficulty with the abrupt transfer from the stark and disciplined Adepta creche to the luxuries and stresses of a Noble house. She has yet to meet her mother or any of her siblings but is positively surrounded by other kin.

Navagatrix Nia Tahammey
Nia and Devorguille have both enjoyed a privileged upbringing combined with the outcast status of a quasi-mutant this gives them something in common that has led to an unusually friendly social relationship. Nia most decidedly prefers not to get involved in Devorguille's cases but has on occasion been persuaded to stretch the point - especially if it doesn't involve any inconvenience to herself like leaving her luxurious quarters aboard ship.

Nia is old enough to have developed the ability to both see and manipulate future events through the warp which compliments Devorguille's clairvoyant powers.

Tech-Adept Madak Caffarel
As an adept of the Legio Cybernetica Caffarel much prefers cybernetic drones to humans, even augmented humans. He is fully able to indulge this preference aboard the Venus Victrix where the 'meatbags' are outnumbered by drones at a ratio of a few hundred to one. Devorguille practically never sees him and they communicate primarily by comm and occasionally by messages passed by drone.

By
"Of course you can talk to me, which me do you want?"

- Devorguille Skota