Regus Marek

Regus Marek is an Imperial Psyker and Astropath, sanctioned by the Imperium to act in said capacities aboard the Rogue Trader vessel ‘The Derwent’. He currently still serves in this role under Lord Captain Abraxas Dolohare.

Early Life

Born and raised upon the temperate and well-civilized world of Elysium, Regus lived a life of material comfort as a child. Despite a relatively mundane upbringing amongst a family of mid-level bureaucrats, he entered adolescence with a well-entrenched liking for mischief and quackery. By the age of eighteen he had convinced his own parents that he possessed an uncanny ability to read the Imperial tarot with unflinching accuracy- a talent that they eagerly had him exhibit during the many parties they held for their betters. On one such occasion Regus’ parents happened to be entertaining a member of the planetary governor’s junior staff who, so enamoured by the skill with which Regus conducted his readings, offered to employ the young prodigy full-time as one of the governor’s own courtiers. Convinced that he had struck gold with what amounted to an elaborate con, Regus eagerly accepted. In spite of the apparent amazement he induced in those around him, the young psyker still fully rejected the notion that he possessed any genuine psychic ability.

The Black Ships

During his service to the lord governor, Regus maintained his belief in his own total lack of genuine talent. He largely whiled away his days indulging in every vice available to the premier entourages of most civilized Imperial worlds, taking a particular liking to rare wines and rarer women. Every so often he would make a large show of conducting tarot readings, all of which continued to ensnare and beguile his audiences. This cycle of indulgence and self-presumed faux-mysticism perpetuated itself for just over five years, until finally the inevitable occurred and the Black Ships of the Imperial Inquisition arrived to claim their long overdue tithe from the planet. Confronted with the fact that he would soon be taken captive by the Inquisition and well aware of their reputation, Regus made an attempt to convince the planetary governor that he was in-fact an imposter and no real psychic at all. Although the governor apparently believed Regus, so incensed was he by the apparent hoax that had fooled him for the past few years, he decided to ship the young psyker to the Black Ships regardless. Though Regus’ actual psychic ability would have more likely than not attracted the attention of the Inquisition regardless, he took the actions of the governor as a personal betrayal and from then on harboured a special hatred for the nobility present on so many Imperial worlds- a hatred that persisted well after the realization that he was genuinely possessed of psychic talent.

As with the innumerable other wretched souls who find themselves shackled aboard the nightmarish Black Ships, Regus suffered greatly at the hands of the Inquisition. The journey to Holy Terra alone lasted over a decade- during which Regus regularly came close to the brink of insanity. When the ship bearing his shattered self arrived at Terra, he welcomed a quick death as one of the thousands of souls sacrificed to the God Emperor. Instead the Inquisitors aboard the ship selected Regus for training as a sanctioned psyker, an apparent ‘reward’ for his mental fortitude in clutching hold of enough scraps of sanity to keep him lucid and free from the taint of Chaos. So it was that when he was herded into the Emperor’s throne room he left with his soul intact- a fragment of the God Emperor’s own essence forever bound to his own being- all at the cost of both his eyesight and a free future.