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Valarian Corban is based primarily on Malicant, although he has Slick Devlan's head and right hand.

His left hand, and the middle of his staff, are from an old Fantasy black orc. The rest of the staff consists of banner poles topped by one of the globbet things from the end of a Shokk Attack Gun.

Malicant's back is arched slightly, giving him a dynamic pose that makes him look as though he's in full swing with his eviscerator. This is a bit inappropriate for a weedy astropath though, so to make Corban look a bit more sedate, his upper body was angled forwards and the gap filled in with green stuff.

Note that his eyes are supposed to be blank! This is because astropaths' eyes almost always shrivel up during the soul binding, leaving near-empty sockets. This, unsurprisingly, is why they are blind.

Valarian Corban was born on Armageddon. He was identified as a psyker by the Blackship Vigilance and arrested at the age of 11. Fortunately he was deemed stable enough to be of use, and was sent to the Scholasta Psykana to be trained as an Astropath. Six years later, he underwent the Soul Binding with no ill effects save the usual blindness and hair loss, and was posted to the merchant vessel Pride of Tomilaro under Rogue Trader de Loque.

For ten years he served de Loque until one day, returning from a foray into alien space, the ship's navigator went inexplicably mad and killed himself. In desperation, de Loque forced Corban to use his powers to attempt to locate the Astronimican. It was futile and dangerous, and both Corban and de Loque knew it, but the Astropath had little choice but to obey the panicking Rogue Trader.

Almost inevitabley, warp entites - daemons, the same ones responsible for the death of the navigator - used the psychic energy being expended as a bridge onto the ship, and gleefully set about the terrified crew with shimmering claws, fangs and swords. Within minutes every human on board save Corban was dead. Corban himself was simply cowering under a control console on the bridge, eyes tight shut despite his blindness, wishing with all his heart for the daemons to be gone.

It was only after about half an hour that he realised the creatures were not attacking him. Slowly peering out from under the console, he saw leering, jeering flame-faces all around, occasionally flaring up as they snarled or gestured at him - but they moved no closer. Cautiously but gaining confidence, Corban slowly slid out of his hiding place, and sure enough the pack of daemons parted in front of him as he stepped out. Experimentally he prodded his staff towards one of them; it hissed and backed away. Trembling with fear and glancing about manically, he began edging his way towards the navigator's controls fifty yards across the bridge, all the way surrounded by a ring of immaterial monsters roaring and jibbering and cursing him at every step.

When he was within a few yards of his goal, he made a mad lunge for the warp drive engagement lever, yanking it back desperately. The Pride of Tomilaro's engines thrummed as it reappeared in real space, and with dreadful screams and tearing sounds, the purple flames that were Corban's view of the daemons were wrenched apart and dispersed.

Only two days later, Inquisitor Toshiro encountered the Pride of Tomilaro adrift near the navy base Kar Daniash. He boarded it to check for alien influence, only to find horribly dimembered bodies and Corban curled into a foetal position under the console on the bridge. Checking the black box and visual records, he discovered what had happened, and was deeply impressed with Corban's feat.

He took Corban aboard his ship and, after a few days, the Astropath had regained some semblance of coherence. Toshiro decorated him for bravery and offered him a position on his crew, both in recognition of his achievement aboard the Pride of Tomilaro, and in an attempt to help restore his confidence so as to make use of his obvious powers. Having credited Toshiro and his companions with saving his life, Corban gratefully accepted.

Since the incident, Corban appears to have developed the ability to project intense fear and terror onto others, perhaps a reflection of his own experience, and he is even regaining some of his hair. Toshiro has reported this to Inquisition Heaquarters on earth, and even now experiments are underway to determine whether deep psychological trauma can be used to open the door to hidden areas of the mind.

Notes

IX: For some reason I really wanted an Astropath character. The problem was, how do you make one that does anything other than sit there scanning things? To this end I came up with the idea of an out-of-the-ordinary Astropath, who had somehow developed powers beyond those normally possessed by them. Rather than simply say that the powers just appeared, though, I thought that having them brought about by a traumatic event was both more believable and more fun, and so a few minutes later the Pride of Tomilaro incident was born. This neatly does three things: provides Corban with more interesting stuff to do in the game, gives him a more colourful history, and explains why he has some hair when most Astropaths don't (the real reason being that the only head I had was Slick Devlan's).

I made the 'normal' Astropath powers Wyrd abilities because of the Soul-binding with the Emperor that Astropaths undertake, making them almost immune to possession. Corban's other powers, the ones that surfaced while he was surrounded by Daemons, are normal powers to reflect the more risky, Chaotic nature of the whole situation. He is courageous - he had to be not to be driven totally insane by the incident - but has been quite understandably jumpy and paranoid ever since. Because of this he has a good Leadership value, representing his reserves of courage, but a dreadful Nerve.