recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Duyver relations with Cadia

Duyval is convinced it has a special relationship with Cadia. Many of the successes of the Duyval Imperial Guard have been shared with the Cadians, and some of them have even quite legitimately been the Duyvers saving the Cadians instead of the other way around like it usually is but shh. Cadian media is popular on Duyval, and the Duyver animated classic Doctor Van Deuzit series is exported to Cadia in turn.

Cadia has no idea who these guys are and every time their armies interact a fresh batch of Cadians get a fresh batch of headaches having to re-engineer ways of recording their dumb little ranks and weirdly-spelled names in the Cadian war files. Nobody on Cadia realizes Doctor Van Deuzit is a foreign cartoon either.
Inquisitor Templar

Simon Templar is an orphan. The name he was given as a child was not Simon Templar, but it did, he assures, start with S.T. - his initials have always been the same. He was raised in an orphanage, you know, the ones they send war orphans to in order to raise them up to be commissars. Warphanages, there's no shortage of them around the Imperium.

The way they raise them to be commissars is to make them grow up all fucked-up and incapable of human connections so they don't feel bad about all the atrocities they'll need to commit. It would be horrid to make somebody do such awful things and let them feel bad about it, so instead just make them not feel bad about it, and then it's all fine in the end! But Simon was sort of naturally good at it or something anyway - he could've had two functioning parents and a cottage by a lake and still grown up without object permanence or a native sense of empathy; he saw how to survive and he let himself be sly, learn to twist as needed. And indeed he did grow up to be a commissar and do a bunch of atrocities about it!

But he'd also been an inventive and curious child, and they'd had books in the warphanage, and he'd read a lot of them and got quite idealistic in some ways, very encouraged - you like a *devout* little warphan, to commit atrocities upon religious foundation, after all. He ended up *too* idealistic, though, and too able to think for himself; he did not yet question the necessity of the atrocities but he did question many other things about how society was working vis-a-vis how the Emperor would like His people to exist, silently within his heart.

He was also, it must be said, very self-centered and desirous of positive attention; entirely accidentally, from first principles, in order to keep people liking him, he learned how to reproduce something almost entirely similar to a concept of empathy via conscious effort, which has proven very useful to him every time he's remembered to do it ever since.

So off he went with his head carefully packed with homebuilt empathy-substitute and his heart full of devotion to the God-Emperor of Mankind, Watching O'er Us From His Golden Throne, and he did a shitload of atrocities and finally started to question those, too.

Later, Simon became an Inquisitor, because that was a more effective way to enact the Emperor's will than commissaring. The intermediary steps you need not trouble your pretty little head about. Look at how pretty his ship is!
Internet

"the Cadian internet" refers to social media sites specifically

"the internet" as referred to in this article comprises all intergalactic communications. on a single world their internet can work just like ours does but to communicate between worlds, or between ships, or otherwise across the vast reaches of space, you're getting into psyker bullshit.

essentially, the internet is being sent around by a bunch of mindwiped psykers who sing 56k modem noises together in a song that passes through the warp into the ears of another bunch of mindwiped psykers who will then repeat the song for other bunches to hear throughout space. and on your ship you have a little 56k choir who can transcribe the parts of the song that were for your ship, and add parts that you need to send into their outgoing song.
Fruit Inquisitor

The Fruit Inquisitor (Ordo Malleus) works in a very ornate office in one of the tallest buildings in Central district, Grouen Duy. This important Imperial representative (the only Inquisitors Duyval has ever produced) lords over a tiny army of local Produce Inquisitor's Acolytes, whom small children in outlying neighborhoods usually believe to be the Fruit Inquisitor In Person.

The responsibilities of the **local grower** are to conduct regular inspections of all produce on all plants assigned to their care; to cull any produce which displays signs of the mutant or the diseased; and to bring said culled produce promptly to the local Produce Inquisitor's Acolyte, and provide also all information which is requested regarding it.

The responsibilities of the **Produce Inquisitor's Acolyte** are to visually inspect the produce, sort it appropriately, and record and report on details of the produce's origins. Some produce is destroyed immediately, some warrants further investigation immediately, most is simply sorted by type and sent to be processed into army rations. Details are recorded including not only the farmer and plot but the specific plant from which this suspect fruit came forth. Spreadsheets are compiled weekly and sent up the line to the Inquisitor.

The responsibilities of the **Fruit Inquisitor** are to interpret these spreadsheets and investigate and deal with sources of recurrent or particularly virulent or dangerous influences upon the produce. Perhaps a certain physical location is producing dangerous mutations due to a flaw in the glass shielding overhead, letting in influence from space overnight. Perhaps a certain farmer is carrying on heretical practices to increase fecundity of his plants, thus inviting more mutations within them as well. Such are the Vegetal Mysteries being solved by a person dressed like this shit
Hirondel

The *Hirondel* is Simon's personal vehicle. It's a sort of Italian supercar type of thing; it's rather small and almost all of it is engine, leaving only a two-seater bobsled-style cockpit for pilot and optional navigator. In overall shape it resembles most closely a pub dart, its "fletching" composed of iridescent strings stretched along Gothic buttress-type frames, with the cockpit placed at the wide part of the dart where one's fingers grasp it. Much of it is framed in black metal; the remainder of the body is painted a slightly-sparkly azure blue.

It's built-to-order but not bespoke; there are others just like it in different colors with slightly different options out in the galaxy, although most of any given year's production run ends up crashed, because they're very hard to handle. Obviously Simon stole this one, but its original owner would have just crashed it anyway, so it's better off in his hands.

As stated above, the navigator is optional, but wiring the pilot into the controls via standard jacks is *not* considered optional for flying this make and model of personal hypercraft. Simon and Roger are both intensely pleased with themselves for always flying it by the seat of their pants - Simon doesn't even have jacks - but Simon is always pleased with himself and Roger feels it the more intensely w/r/t flying the *Hirondel* solo and wireless. He would never brag about it but every time he flies the thing he secretly hopes somebody's Noticing It.
Roger's Office

Amidships there is Office Space, and those members of the Inquisition who have actual tasks and jobs that require an office (Accounting, for instance, is very important) are to be found there. So are a lot of unused rooms - Chad builds things in them. At the central plaza of this Office Space area, where the elevators are, there is a lobby five stories high - the nicest offices have windows that look out into it. And opening into this lobby is Roger's office.

It's big; there's a retractable wall, like a built-in folding screen, that can separate it into one larger and one smaller room, but it's not like Roger has a secretary or even his own servoskull PDA, so he just has this big open office. He has a desk with a big red phone on it, and more filing cabinets than he needs; personnel files for the currently-active roster of acolytes are kept in them and he physically moves the files around to keep track of who's assigned where when there are Things Happening. In one corner of the room there are two chairs, rather generic waiting-room types of chairs scrounged from around the office space, and a table, and a single hanging light bulb which is a joke because this is where performance reviews and shit are held.
The Inquisitor's personal digital assistant

Simon Templar rarely carries a phone, and when he does it's a fresh burner. Even Roger is only given the number once in a blue moon, always for explicit tactical purposes. Of course every time they go down to do ground crew on a world with cell service they're all going to be getting fresh burners on the local network anyway - nothing is ever cross-compatible between planets, and nothing works on the ship but the ship's own wifi service. But even on the ship the best way to get in touch with Simon is to go through his PDA, which happens to be Sebastian.

What you have to do (even if you're *Roger*) is text Sebastian, and then he may very well choose to hassle you about why exactly you need to talk to Simon, and what about, and how long will it take, and where are you right now, and then eventually he actually goes and tells Simon about it.

Sebastian also keeps track of any dates and times Simon asks him to; he keeps a contact list Simon has dictated to him; he and Simon speak in their own private code and the contact list is also kept in that code and then the data is further encrypted and stored only on Sebastian's own internal workings. Sebastian is very good at quickly putting himself into and out of airplane mode in order to manipulate how he is recorded and his wifi actions monitored by ship systems. Sebastian sometimes records video and/or audio feeds in the same way when Simon feels the need for recorded evidence of something. Sebastian *loves* all of this. He adores that his current Inquisitor (he served another before Simon; he may perhaps have come with the ship, although via that Inquisitor rather than via Praxis herself) speaks code with him, and allows him to serve these extremely sneaky functions.

Oh, and if *you* are summoned and Sebastian goes to find you to deliver this summons, he absolutely milks the knowledge that most humans hate being called into the office for an unexpected meeting and he refuses to say why and he just enjoys that they feel like they're going to get in trouble when he himself knows damn well what is really going on and they don't and they hate it and it is fun for Stian.
Haas

At 5'10, Haas de Boer is the tallest man anybody he's ever met in Schutten Duy has ever met before, and every one of them has told him so since he was 16. From Vloer 2 and the son of comfortable low-level bookkeepers for one of the East Factories, he never would have fit behind a desk and you can't go being that big and tall and *not* go be a war hero with it for the glory of the Imperium and your neighborhood, so, you know. Army. He angled to get as much medical training there as he could, figuring somebody would need it and also he's big and could probably carry at least one or two of his brothers to safety some day?

(Then again, anybody can carry *one* person. Even Sander managed to carry Brekt, even after it was unnecessary anymore.)

But it turns out he can carry two or three of his brothers, actually, and carrying just one of 'em around piggyback style is hardly worse than carrying his army pack *without* a Duiker sitting on it, and within like an hour of meeting them they're all used to how tall he is and it's no longer a thing people talk about very much, except when it's actually relevant.
Halo

The Halos are the Saint's group of particular friends, and what they do is crimes, socialism, and socialist crimes. Simon will on rare occasions involve his Halos in one of his own personal private jewel heists, but mostly what he wants them for is the socialist crimes: the Halos are the ones who are in on the secret mission, the thing where the Saint is trying to bit-by-bit bring the current Imperium more in line with what the Emperor truly wants it to be, as Simon understands it.

Of course there's only war, you know, and that's unavoidable, but the example of the Praxis itself helps show that it's possible to carry on ten wars at once without doing fascism on your own people at the same time. What's the point of failing to lose a war if the misery you inflict upon your own side is just as bad? The damage any given Commissar commits upon the Imperial Guard in any given year is at least as bad as the damage that was wrought by dear Roger's old CO when he went heretic. Simon has ideas, and Simon sees ways to change things at least on a single planet at a time, and Simon gets his friends to help him do those things.

The phrase "Halo" isn't a secret, it's thrown around all the time, but it's presumed to just be the term Simon uses for his group of particular friends, without any inkling of like what he uses them for extracurricularly, you know

Roger is and will always be chief Halo. Yarrow is one. Thijs is almost one. Diarmid isn't but his bestie might be and Diarmid has definitely been used as a sort of mule to get Halo work done without him knowing a single thing about it. (He's far from the only person thus employed over the years.) Pat is not a Halo lol - she tolerates and indulges Simon's ideas, she doesn't even *disagree* with him, she just isn't moved to action by his ideals the way he is. She is moved to action in a Halo-adjacent manner sometimes only by her affection for her intense, handsome weirdo of a boyfriend.
The illegal cheese

The only form of life native to Duyval is a fungus with a consistency and flavor oddly similar to a creamy semi-soft cow's-milk cheese. A beloved foodstuff which is grown in every duy, it is **an illegal heresy** to export it to any other location in the Imperium due to its being aggressively invasive in every other place it's ever been allowed to grow. Duyver space-pirates sometimes smuggle it out wrapped in red wax like babybel and disguised as purity seals.
Simon (40k)

These are the known facts about Inquisitor Simon Templar:

He is a trimly-built, lithely muscular 6'2, remarkably handsome, with tanned-looking skin and dark hair and piercing blue eyes. He is an orphan; he served as a Commissar at one point prior to his Inquisitional service. He is truly dedicated to his vision of the Emperor's ideal Imperium. He loves sparkly things like a corvid does. He has remarkably little object permanence, and a makeshift, conscious conscience he had to build himself out of twigs and first principles. He has an almost tangible aura of charm, and command, and propriety, even when his actions are directly contraindicating that last item. He is horridly fond of shaggy-dog stories and of puns, and of whimsy when he's the one who's come up with it. He drives or pilots without any regard for mortality; in general he wears his life with sprezzatura.

He encourages all acolytes to take up swordsmanship; he invites people to duel in the hallways. He keeps a personal museum full of j00ls and sparkly objects, which any acolyte can book a chance to view. He sits in laps and calls everyone pet names and ruffles anyone's hair, including civilians and fellow Inquisitors. He burns with purpose and he rattles like a firecracker when there's no immediate purpose to turn to. He hate-reads Cadian Pinterest. He wears rubies in his hair. Everyone falls in love with him at least once, surely. Pat will never marry him, and he will never ask Roger to marry him.
Riding in a van IIa

read the first part here: riding in a van II

Roger's gone in and out of the atmosphere on this ship half a dozen times by now and he knows he's right when he says this is normal. He was also speaking the truth about freaking out about it anyway. There's a mercury thermometer in the cockpit with him and a gauge on the dashboard with a bauble floating in some liquid which somehow represents the craft's overall operating temperature. Neither one leaves the green-marked zones but he's sweated his hair flat against his forehead as he's pressed into his seat.

The passengers have never done this before and Chad says, sounding cartoonishly chipper, "I *absolutely* feel like we're gonna die, who's with me? This fucking rocks." He's sweated twin lines of mascara down his face, alongside his nose, not quite symmetrically.

Then it stops. It's been, as Roger promised, about five minutes, and the temperature abruptly returns to normal and the g-forces pressing them into their seats dissipate and they're just riding in a van as normal for an instant, until the feeling of floating in their harnesses kicks in.

The cockpit has a window. Roger still has the speaking tube in front of his mouth when he says an involuntary "Yo. Wow."

J reaches out to snatch at the passengers' speaking tube. "What."

"No, sorry," says Roger, "it's just, this system's really pretty, you guys."

"Tell him that's gay," commands Chad, who can't reach the tube from his seat.

"Doctor Rodriguez says that's gay," J obeys dispassionately.

"Tell Doctor Rodriguez *he's* gay," Roger says petulantly.

"Doctor Rodriguez can hear you," J notes, dispassionately.

"Aren't we all gay?" Annie asks, confused.

"LIStEN," says Roger. "*Anyway*, like you should already know, this is going to take about six hours, and - "

"Ask him if we can unbuckle yet," says Chad.

" - now that we're out in space, you can unbuckle and float around in there if you want to. Try not to kill each other, and if I see any weather I'll have you buckle back in. There's a hidden cabinet in the back and I got you guys some of those squeezey applesauce things in case you get hungry, they're in there. The head's under the hatch with a star on it, right by the door you climbed in. Guess where the pilot gets to piss, you guys."

"Is it your pants," J inquires dispassionately.

"No, I brought a Gatorade bottle."
Jens

"The first time I ever laid eyes on this guy I thought, he's got the cheekbones of a commissar" - Sander

Rules exist for a reason. Rules are written in blood. Jens' parents worked as safety inspectors so of course he grew up a rules-follower. He was not popular in school.

He would never snitch on his brothers. For one thing it would get all of them in trouble including him by association, that's part of how this army brotherhood works, for another snitching on your own brother is worse than breaking a rule, morally speaking, and for three, there's rarely somebody handy to snitch them out to anyway. All he can do is disapprove. "Don't gimme dem fuckin' disapproving cheekbones," Sander says to him, as if his cheekbones can have expressions.

Disapprove and lead by example, which doesn't really make any of them follow, but does help keep them all alive for a while. You'll note that they were split up and Jens wasn't *there* that they finally lost one of themselves. After the bond is broken Jens is left adrift; Sander's in the Inquisition, Haas and Duiker have each other, and Jens has been planning himself a career in the army since his childhood. He's got two older siblings, it's Right for the third kid to go. He signs back up. He hits his timing just right; he meets the right people in the right place and time to end up at a very different special sort of commissar training facility.

Because here's the thing, right, the usual deal is that your soldiers do not wish to march into certain death, so you have to like kill 10% of them to motivate the rest. But over on the Death-world of Krieg they're growing these absolute maniacs, these miniature UNITS who just want to lemmings their way into the enemy for religious reasons, and in that case the commissar's job is to convince these guys to hold off and only lemmings their way into it when it's deemed dramatically appropriate and not just because somebody from another battalion got lost on the way to 7-11 and called for backup.

So now Mister Commissar-Cheekbones is in fact a Commissar and it's turned him into some weird strict-but-caring Officer Dad and Sander makes fun of him over Skype every single chance he gets. Twice Jens has gotten drunk after a rough military engagement and thought that maybe he should've let Sander suck his dick one of the many, many times Sander offered over their time as battle-brothers. Actually talking to Sander again banishes any such thought instantly
Yarrow's Quarters

main page: Yarrow (40k)

Located pretty near to Simon's, and adorned with a "No Solicitors" sign which Roger impulsively stole from a house during a ground crew operation, having momentarily forgotten that Yarrow can't read nor would he be fully in on the joke when Roger later gave it to him as a sigil of protection against unwanted visitors common in rural Cadian culture among others

### front room

The front room is strung with various types of party lights, and has throw pillows and blankets piled around, and contains, for furniture, a folding card table and two mismatched chairs, all three items Simon brought into the room himself from elsewhere around the ship. There's also a shelving unit, one of those stack-of-hollow-cubes things, which has assorted baskets and containers within it - these items also brought in by Simon. The items *within* those containers were all brought in by Yarrow. A vase full of feathers. Many, many little rocks. Shells and bones. More little rocks. A chipped ceramic tile. Seaglass. Some larger rocks.

There's art on the walls in the front room, too, again things Yarrow saw and thought were pretty and brought back with him. It's varied. A landscape painting (looks like a place he liked back home). An abstract ad for an Elysian brand of gun oil (pretty colors). A photo of a Duyval actor famous for portraying a live-action adaptation of Doctor Van Deusit, depicted out of character for a screen magazine the Quartermaster had lying around in his office (the guy is hot). Another ad, full-page midcentury magazine piece with a housewife pondering loaves of bread (the bread looks really tasty). Some Impressionist scenes (the people look like they're having fun). A photo of dandelions (dandelions are cool). A Rothko ("it's just good").

### shrine space

Inside the built-in wall niche Yarrow has placed a stone sculptural icon of the Emperor. The smooth, dark blue-grey stone reminds him of the mountains of home, a numinous place that it's suitable to tie to the idea of the Emperor's eminence. He failed to summon these specific words when explaining it to Sam, but Sam got the idea, and is thus the only person besides Yarrow himself who is privileged to get it.

### rear room

There's more of the same kind of mix of art in the back room, where the big four-poster goth-ass bed has two sets of curtains, one light-blocking and one wispy. Sometimes a guy only wanna feels a certain amount of closed in, yanno, and that amount can vary. This is the most private space of his quarters and only himself and Sam and of course Simon are allowed within. He keeps his radio there when he's not using it in the front room, and anything else he wants to keep-in-particular, too. Most of it fits within the big Narnia-style wardrobe provided standard alongside the goth-ass bed.
Grouen Duytjes

The duytjes of Grouen are the most rural you can get on Duyval. Fruit and veg and garden plants are cultivated within Grouen Duy proper, but cereal grains require acreage, too much to practically enclose. Living under the open sky like that is going to make people weird whether they're isolated or not, and they're going to be somewhat isolated for practical reasons just to have enough space for their fields, so it's safest for everybody if they're as isolated as possible (that way the weirdness the sky gives them won't spread). The farm duytjes are spread out on long spur lines of the railroad, far off into the vast plains (where Killen is also, but the duytjes are no nearer Killen than Grouen).

Weird wheatboys out there in a hard-won patch of cultivatable tundra

the words Grouen and Duytje both have distinct regional variations - in Killen and Schutten they pronounce Grouen as "Growen" but in Grouen itself they say something close to Gru-een but you can just say Green and it's absolutely close enough. For duytje, you get a word that rhymes with mighty over in Killen, and they say it just like Ditch in Schutten; in Grouen it's ditch but with a long i as in fine or duy. duytch. you can say grueen duytch or you can say green dutch and honestly the locals'll probably accept either as being at least better than a killener says it
Malachi

**name:** Malachi

**alias:** The Professor

**occupation:** Natural Philosopher

## a physical description?

tall, hapless, with long wavy hair often worn up in a bun with useful things like pencils and knitting needles stowed away in it. wardrobe is a little bit "bertie wooster on safari" - puttees and sturdy boots, sensible sweatervests and a loose pleated-yoke Academic Gown.

## biography

### early life

The natural son of a relatively notorious space pirate and a rich but ultimately unimportant planetary governor, Malachi was shoved away into the ivory towers of academia as soon as he was old enough that they'd take him. He's semi-acknowledged, and his academic vows probably leave him distant enough from political intrigue for his birth order not to matter.

He was raised in the rhythms of ecclesiastic academia, the tolling bells to time the prayers and readings, the silent meals taken in the same hall as the monks. His semi-acknowledgement meant he was too high-class to be placed with the tithe-scholars, who were being trained to be rote monks serving in the ecclesiastic halls; his "naturality" meant he had no particular external focus to guide his studies, unlike those who were supposed to be becoming more marriageable or something; he was perfectly happy with the life he saw before him of continuing to study through his academy's collection of ancient texts. His particular interest has always been bestiaries. He wrote a concordance of several of them at the age of nine.

### praxis event

Simon Templar had something he wanted to do at a wedding of somebody who happened to be a half-sister of Malachi, and by sheer coincidence he just happened to feel like taking a book out of a library and this was the closest one, and wouldn't you know it they struck up an acquaintance and well, long story short Simon got to do his thing and Malachi got to go on a ship and do FIELDWORK wherever the ship may go in the future ~

### on the praxis

Malachi is technically not an acolyte. He is in no wise *employed by the Inquisition*. He is solely aboard the *Praxis* as a personal friend of Simon Templar the private individual. This is legally important and distinct.

He takes little trips down to planets to do his independent studies behind the lines whenever they can accomodate him; unfortunately he does require a babysitter since he will hyperfocus on one weird beetle and then mister-magoo directly into danger in its pursuit.

## see also

* Malachi's Quarters
* The Natural Philosophy Club

1. ↑ i.e., bastard; however it is entertaining, isn't it, how the phrase implies that his legitimate half-siblings are somehow *un*natural?
2. ↑ "Yes, this is my son; no, I don't want any responsibility for him. Thank you for your concern"
The Natural Philosophy Club

one of the Praxis Social Clubs

One of the meeting-room areas of the ship has been granted for use as the Natural Philosphy Clubroom. Malachi has moved a beautiful glass-fronted specimen cabinet out of his own quarters and into the clubroom, which has also been fitted with seating and a stack of lap-desks so people can choose to take notes during meetings while sitting on the comfortable sofas.

Contributions to the specimen collection, which encompasses animal, vegetable, and mineral, and also includes items hung on the walls and one very large taxidermied animal which hangs from the ceiling, have come from Mal and Chad amongst the named Owlcharacters of the Praxis, and several others who are not owlcharacters and more who are background extras.
Brekt

Brekt Smit was the third kid of a second-vloer family and always just assumed he was gonna die in the army so like whatever. Sander and Jens both tried to be his bestie and he kinda liked Sander better because Jens is so uptight but then Sander would inevitably do some dumb asshole shit so like, ugh whatever. He got killed by a chaos monster in a subway tunnel in the first 40k thing I ever wrote, and Sander never had sex with him.
Weird cocoa

Slightly more caffeinated than coffee, with a flavor that's not really anything like cocoa but is closer to a white chocolate cocoa than to anything else. They *call* it cocoa on Duyvel (they *spell* it kookoo) and the Quartermaster calls it "veird cocoa" so that offworlder acolytes will hopefully brace themselves and not complain to him after the fact that it "tastes weird."
Elysia

Elysia has a lot of islands and a lot of coastal temperate rainforests and a lot of the more usable inland space is being used for corporate offices because the planet's government offers very favorable tithing computations. It's basically Delaware, but looks like the pacific northwest. In addition to the corporate offices the planet has an unnecessarily high number of wilderness adventure theme park destination campsite places.

There's a mutation for having dead ass full on wings as a human being which sprang up on Elysia and while they have to get licenses they are usually permitted to live
Diarmid's Private Island

For tax reasons, Diarmid's father passed down to Diarmid the ownership of an entire island on some vacation planet somewhere, which is a terrible thing to have happen to you when you live in the closest thing the Imperium of Mankind has to a hotbed of socialism.

## political things

obviously there's all kinds of shit to be fleshed out later due to rampant inequality but right now this article is about

## diarmid's concept of fishing

"How's the fishing?" Roger asks. "I mean it's an island, right? We could rent a boat and go fishing."

Diarmid focuses on putting crayons and colored pencils into the wee backpacks they're handing down the assembly line of acolytes, here in the back rooms of the quartermaster's office. "Placecamewi'aboat," he mumbles.

"What was that?"

"Place came wi' a boat," Diarmid admits, pained.

"You *guys*," says the acolyte on Diarmid's other side loudly, "Diarmid's *private island* CAME WITH A BOAT, TOO. Hey, Diarmid, did you get a private jet to match? Oh, shit, did it come with a *van?* Diarmid, did daddy give you a literal castle, Simon will *die* - "

"'s got a mansion on it," Diarmid says, shoulders hunched a little, feathers tight against the kiteframe of his wings.

"The boat is *great*," Roger cuts in, "we'll take it fuckin *fishing* eh."
Skyping with the Inquisitor

Thousands of psykers somewhere die screaming every time you make an unnecessary Skype call in this setting, which is grim and dark and wherein there is Only War. It's legit so hard to do this kind of comms between different locations in space. The ship has her own wifi and everybody onboard can be Somewhat Online amongst themselves, she gets into Cadian datastreams fairly often so the dedicated few can still manage to be Extremely Online, but she's in the Inquisition so her circumstances are special.

But sometimes Simon has to make business calls and then he goes into the big fancy Inquisitorial Office with its extremely expensive real-from-a-tree wood panels with real gold insets instead of just gold leaf and a nice clock which coincidentally frames the back of the Inquisitor's chair and is thus perfectly behind Simon's head when he's sitting in view of the camera.

His selection of acolytes and the ways they act on screen are always chosen to send the appropriate message. Some historical examples include:

* Roger in full Cadian drag, staying in parade rest just beside Simon's chair the entire time. Nils wearing a cute little schlubby-wool standing-collar capelet in the favoured peachy-pink, and a large pearl necklace, and perfect white gloves poised perfectly upon the desktop, all entirely motionless until and unless such a time as Simon tilts his head charmingly and says "I believe my acolyte wishes to speak," at which point the low honeyed-husky voice with precisely-trained Duyval diction emerges with perfect poise.
* Yarrow, just the usual normal Yarrow with his braided mohawk and aggressive leather jacket and many tattoos and dark scowl, slouched resentfully at Simon's left. Roger at Simon's right, also slouched resentfully, in full Cadian drag but also smoking a joint on camera.
* Nils in the cute Jackie O outfit again but now poised upon Simon's knee, gloved hands folded with full propriety upon their own crossed knees. Roger on the arm of Simon's chair, steadied by Simon's arm around his waist.
* A relatively businesslike combination in the foreground, but in the background Diarmid and his massive distracting wings are visible as he stuffs his face with Grimbitz and coffee from the table placed at the back of the office specifically to tempt him into naturally ruining the call.
* Nils businesslike at Simon's right. Diarmid in a horse-girl t-shirt at Simon's left. Roger hovering at attention just behind Simon's chair, in a location he's got carefully figured out where he isn't blocking the rays of the clock. Diarmid has been encouraged beforehand to participate in the coming call, for entertainment purposes.
* Just Roger, but Simon's in *his* lap on the big chair.
* Just Roger, but Simon's in his lap, but also Roger is in full Cadian drag and entirely gotta-kill-a-guy stern warhammer sergeantry despite this and so is Simon being utterly grimdark businesslike.
Duyver Death Cult

This is **NOT** ancestor worship because you are **NOT** worshipping anybody! No gods here! Not heretical!

HOWEVER, it is incontrovertibly known to be true that ghosts exist, and as such, if you keep saying a dead person's name you will keep their ghost's attention. Having the attention of a strange ghost is bad but having the attention of the ghost of somebody who knew you when they were alive is good, actually, at least if they liked you while they were alive, because their ghost will continue to like you and will probably do you favors and shit.

**Inside the duys**, this cult tends to appear only at the holiday that coincides with Halloween; the veil is thin, ghosts are easy to talk to, and at this time you write the names of your personal or family ghosts and leave them out a little snack to eat. The following day you eat the snack yourself; the ghosts ate the ghost of the snack, there's no need to actually waste the physical food.

**In the Duyval Imperial Guard,** this cult takes greater precedence as they are nearer to death. Imperial Guardsmen across the Imperium have a fairly high mortality rate, but Duyvers don't die any more often than average; however, their society really isn't set up to welcome soldiers back into the duys, so most who leave do not return. As soon as you join the guard, you're "as good as dead;" your relatives won't be putting you down on the snack list at Halloween until somebody writes them an official letter about it, but the idea that you've symbolically died is leaned upon in military death-cult initiation.

When a soldier dies but the rest of his Five Guys remain, the deceased's name is permanently tattooed upon the survivors' arms, thus tying his ghost to them physically.
Duyver wildlife

there is no native wildlife of any type except for the illegal cheese

the following are locally-evolved descendants of shit that came in with the humans

### catweasels

looks like what it sounds like, a cat x a weasel. cat face, long weaselly body with very slinky spine, acts like a cat

### pigeons

these are very round poofy omnivorous birds that mostly eat baby rats
Nils

**name:** Nils Niemann

**job:** tactical psyker (telepath)

**homeworld:** Duyval

**age:** 20s

**pronouns, for the record:** none, if at all possible. they/them if you absolutely must

## a physical description?

Nils is around 5'5, which is fairly tall for a Duyver, and a fellow Duyver would likely describe Nils' build as "lanky" despite this not being an adjective most offworlders use for people of such a height. Hair is a soft light silvery tone, cut in a flapperish style that frames a strong jaw and lipstick applied surprisingly precisely for a person without eyes. Nils has a Duyvy-ass ashy-grey pallid skintone, with a dusting of marks that pass (especially at a distance) for freckles below where eyes once were.

Nils has no gender and the ideal impression Nils would have upon normies is to make them wonder whether they are perceiving a very mannish girl, or a young man in a dress. Nils' voice is un-genderable, soft and husky with precise diction (in, still, a Duyval accent); Nils' wardrobe is entirely peachy-pink femme shit, and Nils is always bedecked with tasteful jewels (unless instead the jewels are gaudy on purpose).

## biography

### early life

Nils was born in Killen Duy. Formative years of youth were spent in the Undervloer; eventually Nils was raised from a sex worker to a ~courtesan~ by the grace(fully loaded wallet) of one of the job-creator barons of Killen's black towers, who gave Nils (among other things) finishing-school lessons which are still quite evident in Nils' combination of high-class deportment with undervloer word choices.

Then it turned out Nils is a psyker. Off to the Black Ships! The baron paid somebody off to try to keep Nils safe through this experience, which Nils thinks is funny since first of all lol that the guy actually cared so much and lol that the guy believed his little bribe would matter? Anyway now Nils doesn't have any useful eyes, because "the veil" (it's Nils' own flesh) has grown over them, presumably to prevent Nils from seeing harmful things in the Warp maybe? Doesn't matter why, matters that now Nils has to piggyback on other people's perceptions in order to check how Nils' hair looks.

### praxis event

Simon hadn't been actively thinking about the need for a utility psyker who could casually mindread and lie-detect and so on, but when one who could do that *and is a cute little Duyver* turned out to exist, clearly the ship needed this for her onboard Duyver collection

### on the praxis

Nils has become friends with Doctor Rodriguez, who is generous with use of his eyes. Nils has assisted Simon in many things and loves to sit in on an interrogation. Nils and the Quartermaster have reached a level of mutual familiarity and comfort wherein they will make fun of each other for being from different Duys. Nils owns a grand harpsichord. Nils is doing great.

## psyker bullshit

Nils is an astropath and you cannot meaningfully prove otherwise, by which I mean Nils can be used as a wifi hotspot despite never having been officially mindwiped and reformatted for internet use
Killen Duy

The Black Fortress of Killen Duy was the first duy built on Duyval. It has the appearance of an impossibly large crenellated box, with boxy crenellated towers at each corner and at intervals all around the curtain wall. It rises from the flat windswept plains of central Duyval; from the towers of Killen the lights of the Yard can be easily seen at night.
Duiker

Duiker's mom and sisters say he was born clumsy. Duiker doesn't really think he's *clumsy*, as such - the problem is he's always focussing on *something else*. He has a scar on his forehead from walking into a table, when he was young enough to be table-edge tall; he remembers it, and he remembers he had been watching the family catweasel, Cheezit, instead of looking at the table, because Cheezit was about to jump up and try to get into the air vent again like Ma had been hollering about earlier, but then before he could say anything he ran into the table. They'd had to go to the doctor and everything, and when they got home Cheezit was in the vent again after all.

And it's always something like that. It's so much worse in the Guards, where there's *so much* you need to be paying attention to all the time. His brothers pay attention for him, though only Haas really gets it. Doesn't make fun of him, and makes Sander (it's always Sander) shut up so Duiker doesn't have to make it an even bigger deal by "getting mad" himself.

He was late to muster the day they got their hand assignments, of course, because he'd had his eyes up toward the little signs pointing to where to go and not had his eyes down toward where he was walking and so he'd knocked into somebody and dropped all his stuff three times, and by the time he *did* find his new brothers they were starting to look for *him*, and so his first glimpse was Haas looming huge over everybody and peering through the crowds in search of Duiker himself but not knowing it was Duiker he was looking for on account of not having met Duiker before. They looked right at each other and *Duiker* guessed that it was one of his brothers looking for him because he was running late and *Haas* just kept looking, and as soon as Haas had looked away Duiker's brain and body caught up to one another for just long enough to agree that the guy was very large and ought to be climbed like a ladder, and then thinking about that made Duiker trip over his own feet one last time.

So that was a meet cute.

Immediately after that he heard a voice he would soon know quite well to be Sander's saying "Aw shit is dat our von? Aw dat *vould* be our von, our guy in de fuckin ditch - *IS YOUR NAME FUCKIN' DUIKER VOS?*"
3086's Quarters

3086 resides deep in back-of-house, down in the Duyver quarters. He occupies one or two rooms on each of the second through fifth floor of a building erected between several large conduits; a lesser conduit runs through his living space like a pillar, eight inches wide. The fastest way into his home, for himself, is to scale the wall and go in at the patio door on the third floor, but there are mundane stairs inside.

He rests on his uppermost floor, closest to the heart of the ship. It's something two-thirds of the way between a bed and and a docking station, leaning more toward the latter. In Duyver style, it's built into the wall; the doors retract automatically. He doesn't need to rest as often as unaugmented humans, which is handy in several ways; he pops in for little naps sometimes between tasks but only bothers with a real sleep every few days, mostly to satisfy the brain's need for REM (which can be triggered technologically, but like, a long sleep once in a while is nice if extremely quaint). This bedroom is sedately decorated in pale colors; the decor grows brighter as one moves downstairs in the apartment.

There's only a rudimentary kitchen space, down on the lowest floor of the apartment next to the space for maintenance of various other bodily functions (this is partly a bathroom, of course, and very much a Mechanicus maintenance space as well) - some storage, a water source, a microwave, an electric kettle. The main floor of the apartment is the second-highest, on the third floor of the building, with the outdoor patio served by ornate glass-and-steel doors. There's a sort of family room there with a variety of seating designed to accomodate a wide variety of body types and modifications. Above this, there's a second den with a pair of stacked cupboard-beds built into one wall so it's also the spare bedroom, and above that there's his bedroom.

The spare bedroom often houses niblings and/or potential future apprentices - 3086 is unmarried and childless but is part of a large family. The big, patio-having living room often hosts little parties, or rotary club meetings, or social guild get-togethers - 3086 is very active in many back-of-house cultural clubs and one or two of them have permission to hold meetings in the room even when he's working. (Similar satisfactions: feeding somebody something and leaving them alone to eat it and enjoy it; settling in for a nap while the cub scouts hold their meeting downstairs, knowing you've provided them a good time and you don't have to sit there and interact with them during it)
Human Boy

Human Boy is a god who has no bird-self. He came from a distant clan to ask to join the Celestial Flock one day. He said he was descended from the sun, which had hatched one day like an egg to produce his grandmother. The wise folk of the Celestial Flock knew that was nonsense, but he had brought a shard of his grandmother's egg as proof. It started to burn a hole in the nest, but the Pottery Maker put it inside a bowl. This is how the people came to have mastery of fire.
Praxis Acolyte Starter Kit

Recruitment onto the Praxis goes in two stages. First of all, Roger or one of the people he's appointed Team Leader on whatever Inquisitorial action is underway needs a person, finds a person, and gets the person to do the job they're needed for. This lasts for the duration of the action, and if they're still alive at the end of it, we move on to stage two, which happens once they actually reach the ship.

(If *Simon* picks them up they're still going to go to Stage Two, obviously!)

Thijs as Quartermaster is responsible for outfitting the recruits; he helps handle all the intake paperwork, too, although he makes the fresh acolyte do as much of it on their own as they can manage; he's just there to answer questions. On this very first occasion he'll even give them a pen to use.

They'll have their quarters assigned by Sebastian, the servo-skull, who will allow for input as to their preferences and then disregard it when he runs his little RNG to determine their room instead. If they want to move later, they can just talk to Thijs about it, he at least knows how to get things to happen even if they're not in his direct remit.

When they leave the Quartermaster's office, they will be in possession of the following:

* one set of sheets and bedding in the ship's default white-with-Inquisitorial-emblems design. There should already be a set on the bed but it won't hurt to have two and a few times the bed has been bare when the newbie got home and we don't want them to come back with a complaint immediately.
* two changes of clothes, if they said they needed them (they may have had time to pack before coming aboard). these clothes will be military surplus from around the Imperium; at intake it's likely to be plain-ass Cadian BDUs, but one can return at will and request a chance to dig through the bins for an additional outfit and assemble quite a variety of pieces
* a towel and a pre-packed little toiletries kit. Thijs is a Duyver so this includes moisturizers in addition to soap, razor, toothbrush, deodorant etc
* acolyte's choice of a black trucker cap or a black greek fisherman's cap, either presented with PRAXIS embroidered in plain white block letters across the front
* black satin warmup jacket with ribbed cuffs and waistband, with large Praxis symbol (Inquisitorial Barred I seal but the skull has a jaunty halo) machine-embroidered on the whole back of it and the name PRAXIS on left chest, velcro patch for optional nametag which is not provided at this time

## Other Things Many Praxes All Possess

If they were here last Throneday they received a very nice robe - imagine a masculine satin-collared smoking jacket met a marabou-trimmed negligee robe and they had a nonbinary child. The Praxis robe is velvet with satin trim, with the swoopy sleeves and drape of the marabou-trimmed dressing gown. There's nothing stopping any acolyte from adding their own marabou trim to it now.

After major ground crew initiatives Roger has somebody design a t-shirt and every acolyte involved in it gets one. There are also mission patches you can slap on the sleeve of your warmup jacket.