Jax Lynn (Commonly Jacqueline Lynn) is a human mutant, and currently part of the entourage of Inquisitor Marco Skoll of the Ordo Perditus Carthaxian.
Physical stats[]
- Date of Birth: 513965.M41
- Place of Birth: Hyran IV
- Gender: Female
- Height: 170 cm / 5' 7"
- Weight: 61 kg / 135 lbs
Physical appearance: At first glance, it is immediately obvious that Jax is a mutant. While she has escaped the afflictions of asymmetry, atrophy or other such traits so common within with the mutant underclass, it is impossible to miss the five and a half foot prehensile tail jutting out from the base of her spine, and her mottled skin and blood red eyes make their own contributions to her rather unique appearance.
However, her most striking abnormality only becomes apparent when she is injured. With a healing rate several orders of magnitude beyond the human norm, even gaping wounds can heal in mere moments.
She is actually a little less than nine months older than her master Inquisitor Skoll, but her physical appearance is one of a woman barely out of adolescence. Due to her mutation, she has absolutely no scarring or lasting injuries, enhancing the illusion of her age.
Her blonde hair is usually abnormally long - while nowhere near the magnitude of her cellular regeneration rates, it grows considerably faster than that of a normal human, at around six inches a month. However, as, like normal human hair, it does not heal, she is occasionally seen with far shorter hair if she has suffered particularly serious injury in recent months. When at its "normal" length of several feet, it is generally kept in several "pony-tails", held together by drilled-out brass casings.
Jax generally wears relatively unassuming and hard wearing clothing, with little attachment to any particular items. This is often worn under a hooded cloak, as Imperial social rules would normally dictate.
History[]
Jacqueline was born on Hyran IV, a world known for a genetically tolerable, but heavily downtrodden mutant population. She was born considerably premature, with her impressive cellular generation rates showing up even before her birth. Relatively little is known about her parents (who were mutants themselves), as the records on Hyran only ever assign numbers to mutants, and children are usually separated from parents very young. But given the harsh treatment of mutants on Hyran, a mutant was lucky to make it past 20 years of age (with offspring, if any, usually being had at ages most humans would consider highly underage), making it almost certain that both are long since dead.
Given the exceptionally high mutant death rates, Jacqueline's own survival is probably only due to her near immortality. She, like her peers, was treated as expendable enough for tasks as suicidal as cleaning rad chambers, fixing unguarded and running machinery, as well as the heavily feared task of starting the Ellis tubes. It was not unknown for mutants to simply go missing in the night, with widely circulated rumours of experimentation.
Understandably, there were regular attempts to break free of the mutant hovels. On a good day, the guards would chase and recapture escapees, returning them to the hovels after a considerable beating. On a bad day, they would simply shoot the fleeing mutants. It was on her fourth escape attempt that they decided to just gun down the escaping pack of mutants. She was shot twelve times before her wounds finally overcame her regeneration, collapsing to the floor dead.
Much to her own surprise, she woke up two hours later. Stripped entirely naked, and half buried under a pile of her dead fellows, she quickly came to the realisation of what had happened. After her death, she had been loaded aboard one of the many trucks that took mutant bodies for incineration. As most of these trucks were loaded by other mutants, it was frequently the case that they would "recycle" the clothing of the dead.
Her body still a mess of healing tissue, she forced her way out from under of the heap of bodies. It was her misfortune that while the facility was largely crewed by other mutants, her escape was instead noticed by one of the armed guards. The fight between the two was incredibly short. While completely naked, yet to fully recover and facing off against an armed, armoured and trained guard, Jax's natural agility, strength and toughness allowed her to easily overpower the guard, crushing and snapping his neck with her tail
Without hesitation, she fled, using a laspistol stolen from the guard to blow through a drain grate and escape via the hive's sewer system. Evading her pursuers by part luck and part agility, she eventually managed to make it into the "civvy zones". Having never been outside of the mutant zones before, she had no idea of what to expect, and was cruelly introduced to the fact she could expect exactly the same as she had in the mutant zones when she was set upon by a group of drunken juves.
However, it happened that not everyone in that area of the hive that day was local. In the interests of fencing the cargo from another one of his smuggling runs, Arden Holf, better known to his clients as "Icebreaker", had been moving between various gang leaders. Drawn by the noise of the fighting, he arrived to find Jax lying in a pool of blood, with several others disappearing into the distance. Initially unconcerned, he initially discarded it as simply another murdered mutant, before suddenly realising that she wasn't actually dead and the knife wounds were closing up before his eyes.
With his interest aroused, he pulled the buck naked and excrement encrusted mutant girl to her feet, wrapping her in his long duster coat. Carrying her back to his drop ship, the Vesuvius, he waited for her to regain full coherence, before showing her the first hospitality and kindness she had ever received from a normal human. After allowing her to wash, clothe and eat, he eventually convinced her to relate the story of how she had got into the alleyway.
After listening to her story, he made her an offer. She could leave immediately if she wished - alternatively, he had uses for someone with her abilities. Knowing that refusing left her on the streets of Hyran to fend for herself, she took him up on his proposition. Over the following years, she slowly adopted the role of being another of Arden's bodyguards (although many would argue that "thugs" was more appropriate for some of them), her ability ensuring always survived, regardless of the situation. With time proving her reliability and forming a strong bond between the pair, it was little surprise that Arden eventually chose her to act as his second-in-command, training her over several years in the art of piloting.
When Arden was recruited by Inquisitor Skoll, she followed. Introduced to the work of the Inquisition by first-hand experience of the infamous Rugis operation, she was eventually one of only nine individuals who escaped the Caverns of Genesis, and would later save Marco's life during the Gercshcliff breakout.
She has continued to follow the Inquisitor in more recent years, playing parts in such events as the Tannhauser Gate investigation, and most recently, the Tigguo Cobauc election, where she assisted in several "secondary" tasks for the Inquisitor.
Unfortunately, despite Marco's efforts to suppress the tales, rumours of her resurrective ability have started to spread through the Carthaxian Conclave, and have caught the ear of more than one Thorian - if the secret to her resurrections could be found, then surely it would be capable of restoring the Emperor?
Personality[]
Jax largely has an energetic personality with a hint of fieriness, and can be somewhat impetuous at times, her behaviour often as youthful as her appearance.
As one might expect of someone who the system has treated so harshly, Jacqueline can be bitter about the Imperium. Her part in Inquisitor Skoll's entourage is not driven by any perceived "dedication to duty" (as motivates some), but rather out of a fascination - as well as the fact that his authority provides her considerable freedom from restrictive mutant laws.
Jax does not see her regeneration of something to be proud of, and usually tries to avoid drawing attention to it. She maintains an utter refusal to needlessly injure herself, and only ever deliberately chooses to take injury under extreme circumstances.
While she makes some efforts to conform to the affectations of a more civilised society, Jacqueline has never really got the hang of formal conversation - combined with her accent, her attempts at it usually sound very unnatural. A slightly weak grammatical grasp means her normal dialogue gives her the vague (and somewhat correct) air of being uneducated.
Jax's incredibly tough childhood has made her an exceptionally hard worker (not working hard enough was punishable by shock prod, or in extreme cases, death) prepared to give her all even when things might appear dire.
Now long since used to both attempts to humilate her and being considerably more damage resistant than most clothing, Jax has a very relaxed attitude to her physical modesty, although certainly prefers to be dressed.
Beliefs[]
Jax has little, if any, faith in the teachings of the Ecclesiarchy. While she avoids actually conflicting with Imperial religious doctrine and accepts the existence of the universe's many gods, she has been irreligious for decades, merely making enough pretences to avoid earning the ire of the faithful. She refuses to speak on the matter of what lies beyond death, although the mere shadow of this knowledge has considerably haunted many of the telepaths who have ventured into her mind.
Abilities[]
Straight up, Jacqueline is by a long way the least skilled of the "combatants" in Inquisitor Skoll's employ - while borderline competent in both close quarters and at range, she has never really applied herself to further improving.
However, her body has some of the most powerful regenerative abilities recorded by the Imperium, able to flawlessly heal any non-fatal wound (including dismemberment) in only seconds or minutes. Even fatal wounds appear non-terminal, as on several occasions since her birth, she has recovered from a state that in a normal human would be considered medically dead. To date, no limits have been found to what injuries she can heal, although she herself doubts that she could survive decapitation or incineration - although given some of her other feats of survivability, neither of these carries any real certainty. It has been speculated that her regeneration draws from the warp (for she frequently appears to breach the mass conservation law), and that her ability to keep mind and soul without a living body is psychic in nature, although no test has ever confirmed she has any psychic potential.
However, regardless of the origins of her power, she has no ability to control her healing (including an inability to slow or stop the process), although the process can be speeded by manually removing foreign objects, straightening broken bones and other similar "first aid".
Other side effects of her mutation include a somewhat greater physical strength than her build would suggest, a nearly limitless stamina, and the development of an exceptional intricate network of motor neurons - as a result, she has naturally very high physical agility (assisted, to some extent, by her tail) and almost total ambidexterity.
Although having quite such a resilient aide is valuable to an Inquisitor, it is not without its problems. It has been shown that she has complete recovery from mind scrubbing, able to recall "wiped" information in its entirety only hours after the process. Combined with the extreme difficulty (if not impossibility) of killing her, it means that entrusting her with sensitive information is a potentially huge security risk. There has also been one occasion on which there was a massive effort to recover her body from other parties before her "talent" asserted itself.
One obvious shortcoming of Jax is that she is visibly a mutant - with most Imperial worlds heavily restricting mutants, she is frequently unable to perform solo missions. She also has only marginal resistance to most psychic attacks, her regeneration offering little immediate defence against anything other than biomancy.
While Jacqueline is relatively intelligent, her less than privileged youth provided very little (if anything) in the way of education. She has taken to improving this situation over the past few years, although there are still sizeable gaps in her knowledge.
Given several years of training, Jax is a competent pilot. Although capable of piloting larger craft, her expertise is largely in smaller craft - usually atmospheric or short range spacecraft.
Equipment[]
Jacqueline's primary armament is a pair of matching stub-autos. She carries plentiful ammunition for both, supplied from a back mounted rig designed to allow her to reload each with only one hand. Although an inefficient combination of combat weapons, this doesn't hugely bother her, as her combat often focuses more around suppressing and distracting any opposition rather than eliminating them. In the event that she does end up in hand to hand combat, she prefers to engage in incredibly short ranged pistol fights rather than master any melee weapon. Although she does carry a concealed knife, it is used as an escape tool - should she should become trapped or bound, her regeneration makes simply severing the limb in question a viable option. She normally does not wear any form of armour - while the protection would undoubtedly increase her already impressive survivability, she prefers the freedom of movement. Jax also carries a number of scrolls that detail her service to Inquisitor Skoll. These are something of a necessity, as her regeneration does not allow her to be branded or tattooed with sanctioning marks – something she would be loathe to accept, even were it possible.
Known Associates[]
Jacqueline's closest friend is Arden Holf, with the two having held a firm companionship for decades (although both deny that there is, has been, or will be any romantic relationship). However, the former smuggler is aging, and has long refused any form of rejuvenat. This has proven something of a dilemma for Jacqueline, with the conflict between respecting her friend's decision and the knowledge that their friendship can only last so much longer. Having been with Arden for decades now (and having been his second in command for much of that time), she is also familiar with the entirety of the crew for both the Ynys Mon and its drop-ship, the Vesuvius.
Jacqueline is on good terms with Inquisitor Skoll, maintaining one of the stronger friendships that the Inquisitor has with his staff (excepting his partner, Silva). However, Marco remains cautious about the immortal - no Inquisitor can completely trust anyone, even less one who cannot be killed if they turn traitor.
Having had several years to get to know each other, Silva Birgen and Jacqueline are usually on fairly good terms, although they do occasionally fall out with one another. Silva's general distrust of mutants (caused by the events of Thrupp V) is one of the most common points of contention between the two.
There is little bond between Jacqueline and Giovanna Ciris. The Arbitrator's heavily ingrained views of "purity" mean that it's only really on the Inquisitor's orders that she works with the mutant at all, and Jax has little love for the Imperial law the Arbitrator staunchly stands alongside. While Giovanna is somewhat distant around most people anyway, she has generally avoided contact with the mutant as far as possible, although there are some signs the two may be slowly becoming a bit less cold towards each other.
Other Information[]
- Jacqueline's name was originally just Jax (her parents weren't that inventive, or indeed literate) - it was only after people repeatedly misheard her name that she took on the name of "Jacqueline".
- Being manhandled, particularly if by her tail, is practically guaranteed to get her angry.
- Her metabolism means she is almost incapable of becoming intoxicated. As a result, she usually doesn't bother trying.
- One of the few occasions she has worn armour was during the Tannhauser Gate operation. Subsequent examination of the modified Storm Trooper armour she used revealed she survived least 237 hits.
- Due to years of experience altering clothing to account for her tail, Jacqueline has become rather good at sewing.
Quotes[]
"I owe the Imperium nothing. I don’t fear you. I don’t need piles of coin. But you respect me - and damn, you're more fun than slavery.” - Jax in response to Inquisitor Skoll's questions about her loyalty.
Street Preacher: "The Emperor sees the mutant! The Emperor abhors the mutant!"
Jax Lynn (under breath): "Just my luck that the Emperor feels the same way he does."
- When passing a preacher in a hive street.