Detective-Commander Jaanyi Doyenko

Detective-Commander Jaanyi “The Brute” Doyenko, Great
Precinct Master of Espionists, doesn’t like his nickname. He
doesn’t have to hear it very often, since only Lord Marshal
Goreman will ever use it to his face (usually when he wants
to get a rise out of him), but just the knowledge that it’s
universally used behind his back is enough to bring a scowl
to his craggy, chem-burned face. He understands why he has
it, of course. Anyone glancing into the quiet cloisters of the
Detective chambers will see Jaanyi Doyenko standing out like
a battle-tank in a procession of nobles’ sedan-chairs.
The eldest son of an Administratum Adept on Fenksworld,
he grew up aboard a giant convoy of land-trains slogging
back and forth between Nova Castilis and the hellhole of
Volg, carrying subsistence supplies, basic trade goods, and
cage-loads of condemned exiles. Jaanyi grew up strong,
brawny, and prideful. His mother was an Imperial Adept,
and he exacted the respect he felt his family was due from
the convoy labourers with his brass-knuckled fists. When
he was fifteen his family was killed in a scum-raid, Jaanyi
escaping from the massacre and disappearing into Volg’s
hellish warrens. There he spent five years living by his wits
and muscles while he hunted down and murdered all he could
find of the gang who had killed his family. Finally, he was
tracked down by bounty hunters on a surprising contract: the
Adeptus’ files had shown a son unaccounted for when Shima
Doyenko was killed, and they were following procedure by
recruiting him for the Schola Progenium.
One of the most difficult decisions Jaanyi ever made was
to walk away from Volg and his unfinished vengeance, but
inside his hulking body was a keen mind. He told himself
that here was a chance to carry his family’s name off
Fenksworld and into the stars, rather than give the scum the
final victory by sputtering out from chem-poisoning or dust
choke in this lightless Fenksworld sump-hole. His last act
before he clambered aboard the dune-crawler was to turn and
spit down the stairwell up which he had climbed out of Volg.
Then he put the place at his back forever.
Doyenko was an oddity at the Schola. He was already
years older than his eldest classmates and had endured a
lifetime’s worth of trauma and violence. There was talk
among the instructors of fast-tracking him into the military
streams, putting his proven capacity for violence to work as
a Stormtrooper or trainee Commissar; some even wondered
if he was too old for the Officio Assassinorum recruiters.
Doyenko knew where he wanted to go, however, and had
already made his contacts. When the Schola received a joint
petition from Doyenko and the Arbites recruiters for early
release from the Schola they let him go, and Doyenko was
already in training aboard the Arbites carrier by the time
they broke Warp for Scintilla. He mastered the basic training
quickly and thoroughly, and was soon back in transit for a
Chastener’s posting at Malfi.
That posting revealed Doyenko’s real and unexpected
gifts. His work hunting his quarry as a Chastener brought out
the chilled edge of his intellect and his intuition for analysing
people’s motives, relationships, and actions. After a couple
of rapid promotions up the Chastener ladder he transferred
into the ranks of the Detectives and for the first time since
his youth aboard the land-train he felt he knew where he
belonged. This was work he could really throw himself into,
unravelling Malfi’s baroque culture of intrigues and studying
its threads and shadows for threats and insults to the God-
Emperor’s laws. Doyenko’s work was invaluable in the timely
prevention of the Braquerade Coup, and as deputy to the Chief
Detective-Espionist he drew on his old skills to pose as a hive
scummer and infiltrate the Fourth Ashen Resurgency from the
ground up, exposing the layers of manipulation that led back
to its secretive masterminds. After the attempted assassination
of Lord Goreman’s previous Detective-Commander, Doyenko
was brought to Scintilla both to follow the assassin’s trail
back to its origin and to act for Detective-Commander
Ilkram during her convalescence. When it became clear that
Ilkram’s injuries would never permit her to return to her old
role, Goreman appointed Doyenko to the office and he has
validated the Lord Marshal’s decision many times over.
Jaanyi Doyenko is a great slab of scarred flesh packed into
an oversized regulation uniform. His face is heavy-boned,
usually unshaven, and pitted from long-ago acid burns. His
eyes are deep-set, dark, and unfriendly. His left shoulder is
packed with augmetics and he often fidgets with it, sometimes
even slipping off his tunic to work the kinks out of both
flesh and metal. He wears a brown Chastener sash as well as
his red Detective’s collar, and a solid-slug pistol in a thigh
holster. He is an expert with this and will often be found in
the Fortress gun-range, intimidating his colleagues with his
size, his glowering features, and the speed and accuracy of
his shooting.