Ash Drania

A partially-complete portrait of Ash Drania, Commander of the Forsaken Fleet. Due to Ash's perfectionist desires, the artist creating the portrait died of old age before Ash was happy with it.

## Character

### **Language(s)**

Low Gothic, High Gothic, Slaaneshi tongue

### **Role(s)**

Commander of the Forsaken Fleet
 (currently)
 Imperial Navy Admiral
 (formerly)

## Physical Description

### **Weight**

46 kilograms

Once an incredibly talented Lord Admiral of the Battlefleet Ultima, now a devoted servant of Slaanesh and Commander of the Forsaken Fleet, Ash Drania is a feared void commander rapidly proving themselves worthy of gifts from the King-Queen of Pleasure. By necessity, she is self-confident and unwilling to give ground in an argument, especially to the Chaos Astartes with which she often interacts.

## History

### Birth

Ash's parents were some of the highest-ranking nobles from the planet Naire. As powerful political figures within the Imperium, when Naire came under attack from an emerging Ork Waagh! they were able to escape relatively unharmed. Ash's mother was pregnant with him at the time of the Waagh!, much to their dismay.

The callousness of Ash's parents, who abandoned the majority of their citizens to the Orks in order to save themselves, brought tensions within their fleet to a high, and when they tried to use most of their remaining rations on a massive party to celebrate Ash's birth, there was an uprising. The anger and despair of those slaving in the depths of the craft overwhelmed the guards, and Ash's parents were murdered. Ash herself, however, was entrusted to a family friend, who fled and left them with the Schola Progenium.

### Schola Progenium

Ash's experience within the harshness of the Schola Progenium was initially a negative one. Picked on constantly because of his gender and general ineptitude at most parts of study, Ash became more and more withdrawn, expressing themselves increasingly through art and covering her skin with tattoos. This only served to make them more outcast.

Once these habits were noticed, Ash was brought within an inch of his life by a Drill Abbot, through a combination of sensory deprivation, starvation, and extreme temperatures. Knowing that her success in life depended upon graduating the Schola Progenium, Ash threw himself back into their studies, attributing this new invigoration to a devotion to the Emperor, motivation by the Drill Abbot, and a renewed desire to revenge their parents.

In reality, Ash didn't care for her parents. They had died shortly after he was born, and they had no memory of them. She also secretly continued the tattooing hobby but supplemented it with exposing herself to increasingly extreme temperatures. The only thing she never dared do was return to the sensory deprivation chamber, the event having scarred them and been the subject of countless nightmares.

This newfound dedication to his studies meant Ash became increasingly integrated with their Progenium fellows. She discovered an aptitude for strategy, particularly in fleet combat, and found that they had a good spacial mind, able to picture whole battlefields in his head.

Eventually, Ash graduated from the Schola Progenium at the age of 18 into the ranks of the Imperial Navy.

### Imperial Navy

Ash can simply be described as having thrived in the Imperial Navy. They surprised her superiors and his passage from midshipman to lieutenant to commander took place over the matter of years.

Her most major battle came against a Slaaneshi warband above the corpse of her parent's homeworld, though she didn't know of this fact until much after. As the battle began, he was immediately awed by the way the fleet moved, never moving further than it needed to and dancing around zones of engagement perfectly. The Imperial Fleet's Captain was slain by a boarding party not long after the battle commenced, and Ash was forced to take command.

Ash rallied those that had survived. The ever-shrinking Imperial Fleet became hemmed in by the fast-moving Slaaneshi ones, and Ash was forced to acknowledge that they were facing an almost superior force. So, he came up with a plan. He ordered one of her weaker vessels to pretend to become dysfunctional and act as if its warp drive was on the verge of detonation. It listed towards the Slaaneshi fleet, guns deactivated, completely vox silent. As the heretics converged on the ship to board and capture it, it activated all of its weaponry, and Ash's contingent swung round to capitalise on the space left empty by the traitors. The Imperial Fleet surrounded that of the Slaaneshi, and crushed them mercilessly.

Victorious, Ash was rewarded for their role in the battle, and was granted the role of Captain. Famous as the 'Victor of Naire', her path to status and significance within the Imperial Navy was clear. However, the battle had awoken an obsession within him. He was determined to find out as much about the Slaaneshi as he could, under the guise of "learning your enemy." The first signs of corruption began to take route.

### Heresy and the Foretoken

As Ash rose through the ranks, so did the proportion of their skin covered in increasingly complex and colourful tattoos. After the Lord Admiral of Sector Naire was slain, Ash was on the verge of claiming the position, when one of her rivals accused her of heresy. She was confronted in their chambers aboard his flagship, the Battleship *Vaerli*, by an Inquisitor, but before she was slain the King-Queen of Pleasure, Slaanesh, deemed them suitable of her patronage, and gifted him with several gifts to save his life. Ash killed the Inquisitor and commandeered her own vessel. She made use of the confusion to cripple the most powerful ships in the fleet as she fled into the warp.

While in the warp, she found their tattoos begin to write and change colour, and a fledgling tail began to grow. Ash revelled in these new sensations, feeling his mind grow and already sensing the benefits of patronage from the God of Pleasure.

Ash travelled through the warp, occasionally dropping into real space to raid and gather supplies. Gradually, her fleet grew, and the *Vaerli* became ever more corrupted by Slaanesh, its very walls screaming in pleasure during a battle. Eventually, Ash and her fleet encountered forces from the mysterious and elusive Foretoken. The Foretoken Astartes informed the fellow servant of Chaos that they were in need of a Fleet Master. Ash considered the offer, and eventually accepted, following the Astartes to their homeworld and becoming their Commander of the Foresaken Fleet.

## Personality

Ash is as stubborn as she is unrelenting, unwilling to back down even in the face of Heretic Astartes. He views themselves as the ultimate power aboard their ship and takes no complaints or disagreements from anyone beneath her.

Ash cares little for things in the past. In his mind, if something has happened, then it is over and should be forgotten. They live almost entirely in the moment.

She is completely devoted to Slaanesh and the pursuit of strategic perfection, as well as the cacophony of senses and experiences that so many Slaaneshi devotees aspire to.

## Appearance

Ash would be short, even for a human, and relatively slim. Their skin is covered in thick, ever-changing and writhing garish tattoos, to the extent that it is painful to look upon. Her hair is dyed in the same iridescent, psychedelic colours.

As a result of near constant warp-exposure and Slaanesh worship, Ash has a long, sinuous tail that has replaced her legs and given her an extra half-metre in height. At the end of this tail is a barb. He has small horns emerging from his temple, each of which is incredibly sensitive to touch and the fluctuations of the warp.

## Abilities and Traits

Ash is, first and foremost, an incredibly skilled void commander. They have the incredibly useful ability to create an accurate mental picture of a battlefield in his head and predict enemy movement and react to them. She is constantly trying to perfect them.

As a worshipper of Slaanesh, Ash is very sensitive to all sensations, with hyper-enhanced senses and reflexes. Their skills in close combat are mostly due to their Slaaneshi gifts.

## Mutations and Gifts of Chaos

* **Ever-changing skin** - The pattern of colours on Ash's skin changes and warps constantly, often appearing garish to those not dedicated to Slaanesh.
* **Eyes** - Ash's eyes have split and multiplied. Each one is independent, granting them an impressive field of view.
* **Horns** - The horns on Ash's head are not just decoration; they can feel the tides of the warp. Ash will often stand near psykers or places of great torment just to feel how the warp is moving near them, as she describes it as being incredibly pleasurable.
* **Snake** - From the waist down, Ash possesses the body of a snake. This was one of his earliest gifts, and the scales are incredibly sensitive.

## Equipment

* **Bolt Pistol**
* **Power Whip** - A power knife attached to the end of a chain-like whip.
* **Carapace armour** - Merged with Ash's skin.

## Relations

### Allies

* Slaanesh worshippers
* The Foretoken