Octus
Octus Meruit, né Grish bjin Arlana, was born on the Devious Heir, a ship belonging to a minor Rogue Trader who sailed without writ or charter, smuggling artifacts between worlds. He recalls little of his youth, and would forget it entirely but for the damned markings it left upon him: an unsettling mien, violet eyes, and a persistent limp caused by a childhood spent in low gravity.
Octus does not remember exactly what happened to the Devious Heir, and he does not care. There was a great commotion, some emergency, and a woman — probably his mother — grabbed him from bed and thrust him into an escape shuttle with a few other children. These survivors drifted in the Void for a time, perhaps a few days, before they were recovered by another vessel and deposited at one of the orphanages of the Schola Progenium on Scintilla.
Life at the Schola was difficult for Octus and his fellow survivors. The hive world did not initially agree with their physiology. Their bones and muscles buckled under the gravity; the bright lights hurt their eyes; the passage of time confused them. Other children mocked the Void-Born for their frailty and ignorance, and many of them caved to this pressure in various ways. For his part, Octus became a shrinking, silent thing, shy and unobtrusive. Yet his silence was filled with rage and indignation. He hated the other children and from the shadows he plotted their debasement.
Vengeance came in time: through creative eavesdropping he learned of two students’ contraband operation, and on this he blackmailed them into becoming his informants. The secrets grew exponentially thereafter, years of hidden perversions and misdemeanors and humiliations, until all the children at the Schola feared Octus for what he could do to them with one well-placed whisper.
After ten years at the Schola, Octus was recruited into the Adeptus Arbites. In hindsight, it is perhaps obvious that his teachers were watching him, aware of what he was doing if only in a general sense, for he possessed few outward qualities that would recommend him to service as an Arbitrator. Nevertheless, once Octus realized what such a position entailed, he applied himself to his training and his studies with previously-unseen eagerness. He even changed his name.
Octus graduated high in his class, commended by his trainers, and was appointed a trooper under Justicar Scythia, whose purview was the less-glamorous but always-interesting inchoate crimes: unlawful attempts and intents and agreements. Under her command Octus thrived, ferreting out illegal trade conspiracies, embezzlement of tithes and taxes, smuggling operations, treason among the nobility. He relied on snitches and listened for gossip and was quick to turn on any who foolishly considered him a confidante. With a gleeful smirk he buried himself in the putrid machinery of government and commerce, and was greatly shocked when he was informed by his commander that his services had been requested by Inquisitor Zane Castis at the Tabularium Bibluvio.