Nyx “Victrix” Stanislava
House Motto: “In hoc signo vinces”
(“Beneath this sign thou shalt conquer”)
For a thousand years, the house of Stanislava has provided the armies and other military might for those who have the desire, or the will, to wage war in the name of the emperor. From minor planetary security forces, to the fill-size imperial juggernaughts that wage war on the enemies of man, the Stanislava family has been there, and has turned a healthy profit.
Nyx’s mother, Selah, was one of four children to the main head of the immediate family – Herodes and Aranrhod. Between these four children, there was an idelogical divide.
Selah and Atarah Stanslava were known by onlookers as the ‘Eagles’, which codified one of the factions, and were focused on the imperial creed of the family’s business – they were doing the Emperor’s work, and furthering the great cause of mankind in their deeds. Selah had three children – Aphesius, Faye and Nyx.
Adonis and Stasya, the other two children, formed the head of the other faction, the ‘Wolves’. Their motivation was that of greed and a lust for power. Adonis and Stasya, engaging in a relationship with each other (at some times quite openly), sired three children themselves – Natalia, Sarvus, Torian.
For decades, the four children, representing the two factions, managed to co-exist and function largely down to their parents, most importantly Herodes, who was very much a limiting factor on the part of the two sides of the interal fued that steadily was building. This stability was not to last.
Herodes was killed in action, fighting in the name of the Emporer. The wolves moved quickly in the aftermath of this family tragedy. They poisioned Herodes’ widow, Aranrhod, before she could adequately take control of the family following his head, and cut the throats of their two siblings – Atarah and Selah (Nyx’s mother) – while they slept. They burned Nyx’s father alive.
They then came for their children – one of them, however, had already forseen this.
Nyx managed to escape only with the help of Achillus, her childhood friend, after she foresaw the events that would befall the family. Unable to protect her parents or her uncle, she gathered her siblings, Faye and Aphesius, and fled the family manse.
Achillus, realising that she had manifested psychic abilities by virtue of the frost clinging on the walls of the small dwelling they were hiding in, arranged for her to be sent to the first available black ship, as at the time he was starting his training in the inquisition to become an interrogator by his mentor, an inquisitor in the Calixes sector.
As for her siblings, they went ground in the very military hierarchy they once presided over. Faye joined the imperial guard, Aphesius joined the navy. Both of them were protected by sympathetic officers of note and they were protected.
She went upon the black ships, she suffered and endured the harshes conditions on her journey to holy Tera. She survived the journey, and she became what she is today – renewed and imbued with the Emporer’s own light.
When she emerged, Achillus was waiting for her. He arranged for her to assume a new name – Victrix – and for her to go to footfall, mainly to protect her from her family. No-one, not even Victrix, could have predicted just how important she would become.
It was on her journey to footfall when she was lost to the imperium – her ship was attacked, be forces under the command of Martek, and she was captured by him.
A psycker was a valuable asset, her entourage was not. They were killed, and she was imprisoned by Martek in the hope that, when she was broken, she would become a useful tool to Martek, but he could not of known of the true measure of the strength of her will, not could he have known that she would not be imprisoned forever.
Her usefulness to the inquisition was soon to skyrocket.
GAMING TALES 