Abelard, introduce him.
Cailan hates this stuff so much, but it has to be done: introduction. I’ll keep it short and simple, I swear.
I lied.
Fundamentals – Who is Cailan?
Cailan Orvess is a 34-year-old human Voidborn with pyromantic abilities, a sharp mind and a burning passion for music. Before he was given (he would probably call it “forced into”) the title of Rogue Trader von Valancius, he studied ancient technology as an Archeotech Operative. He strongly suspects that he was assigned this profession as a means to have him near enough to keep an eye on him, but far enough away not to disrupt others with his strong opinions on matters that don’t concern him. But he’s good at it, it pays the bills and it’s not like he has a say in the matter anyway. Right?
Family
Left of his family are only his mother, Mariana, and his older brother, Aurelius – a charming individual you’ll hear more about. Though Cailan once considered himself close to his family, he would not say so anymore.
Backstory
Cailan’s psychic awakening happened shortly before his 16th birthday. It wasn’t traumatic and it wasn’t dramatic. It just so happened that he couldn’t set things aflame until one day he suddenly could. Since rules are mostly meant for others, he embraced his new abilities, found them fun in lots of ways and quite useful to impress the guy he fancied at the time. Surely nothing bad would come from this.
So, the bad thing that would of course come from this had a name: Aurelius Orvess. Cailan’s brother was at the time an aspiring inquisitional acolyte, always on the lookout for opportunities to get his name known by the right people to boost his career. As a loyal servant to the Imperium it was, naturally, his duty to report his younger brother’s new powers to the authorities.
Needless to say, Cailan didn’t get the boy after all.
During his journey on the Black Ship, he was made to be part of an unauthorized experiment meant to test the effects of a hallucinogenic drug on psykers. This led to uncontrollable pyromantic outbursts and horrible lifelike nightmares that haven’t left him since. The experience changed Cailan fatally. Where he was mischievous, outgoing and energetic before, he now became withdrawn, cynical and tired.
After his sanctioning, he was trained as an assassin, specializing in long-range combat as a sniper, and later assigned as an Archeotech Operative. And that’s what he did for years to come, until he was summoned by Theodora von Valancius as a potential heir to her Rogue Trader house.
Personality
Because of his experiences, Cailan is now closed off, sarcastic, distant, and distrustful. He locks away his needs and emotions to leave no room for further hurt. The only way to read him is through his eyes, which glow when he feels agitated or excited – a birth defect he hasn’t yet found a way to get rid of.
Cailan is also highly intelligent and efficient with everything he does, which quickly earned him a formidable reputation. His usefulness also grants him a certain degree of much-needed protection. Otherwise, his unflattering opinions about the Imperium would have earned him much more repercussions than they did. He distrusts institutions and obeys orders only reluctantly. His loyalty is to carefully selected people, never ideologies.
Cailan’s willingness to cooperate can be bought, though. Not with money, but with something that caters to his curiosity. He is driven by an unrelenting thirst for knowledge that others can and have taken advantage of.
But for all his smartassery, curiosity and creativity, Cailan is mostly this: terribly lonely.
Hobbies
Cailan has a very effective coping mechanism: music. He’s a passionate musician who uses rock music as his only means of accessing the emotions he otherwise keeps tightly buried.
He is a skilled singer, guitarist and pianist, yet finds himself drawn to other instruments as well. Before his sanctioning, he dreamed of performing across the universe and sharing his music with others.
Three favorite Fun Facts
Cailan has synaesthesia, he perceives sounds as colors. For example, Marazhai sounds like a deep royal blue to him.
When flustered, Cailan has a habit of blurting out unsolicited trivia.
He's a cuddler.
Three favorite Unfun Facts
In combat, Cailan relies almost entirely on his skills as a sniper and uses his pyromantic powers only in desperate situations. The experiments on the Black Ship left him uncertain of his abilities and he has difficulty controlling his fire once it’s unleashed.
Cailan suffers from recurring nightmares in which he stands knee-deep in viscous, murky water inside a red room. The only way out is a barred hatch, sealed shut. Over countless nights, he came close to escaping only once before the thing lurking in the tunnels below dragged him under.
Cailan has a deep-seated fear of the dark, also stemming from his experiences before his sanctioning.
Romance
This will be expanded further in a separate post, because finding the right person at the right time is so important for his character development. But to keep it short (because that has worked out so far…):
Cailan is deeply, irrevocably in love with Marazhai. It starts as a crush on Grantis, becomes love after Commorragh, and develops into devotion by Act 5.
Mechanically, Cailan is on the domination route, but he’s the worst dom there ever was. He doesn’t want to degrade or genuinely hurt Marazhai, and so he doesn’t. His boundaries in that are a carefully held balance between Marazhai’s enjoyment and his own principles of treating the role play as just that: a role play that has nothing to do with Marazhai’s actual standing.
In fact, Marazhai can play him like a fiddle and becomes the sole center of Cailan’s attention. But he also becomes his anchor and a safe place for him to get to know himself again. Throughout their partnership, Cailan becomes increasingly open and funny again, his songs grow happier and the nightmares come less and less.
It’s all wonderfully sappy.
Ending
After the events of Rogue Trader, Cailan spends several years ruling over his dynasty and basking in Marazhai’s presence. When it becomes time for the latter to build something of his own again, Cailan provides him with a beautiful (and expensive; and illegal) Drukhari vessel as a parting gift to start his Corsair fleet and terrorize the galaxy with. Marazhai, in turn, gave him a custom-made rifle based on a Dark Lance as a parting gift of his own.
Eventually, after some more years of ruling, happy reunions, and tearful partings, Cailan ultimately decides to do as he should have from the start: he places the fate of his dynasty in the capable hands of the Werserians and joins Marazhai’s Corsair crew, where he’s finally free to fulfill his younger self’s dream: traveling the galaxy, playing music for himself, his lover and his crewmates.
