Name: Benidal, late of House Marcorne<br/><br/>Race: Navigator (Abhuman)<br/><br/>Age: 35<br/><br/>Sexuality: Straight<br/><br/>Appearance: Very tall and thin, with long, flexible fingers.  Very pale skin with no hair, making his space-black eyes even more distinctive. He has an eclectic wardrobe that changes in color and style from day to day, but two things always remain the same – a plain black sash with marks where buttons were torn or cut off, and the tight black leather skullcap that he wears constantly, in bed or out of it.<br/><br/>Position on the ship: Navigator<br/><br/>Equipment: Hellpistol, vibro-knife.<br/><br/>Reason for being on the Ship: He needs to Navigate. It’s in his blood and genes, the only place he’s really at peace. It also means he’s safe from the untold multitudes of people who would happily slaughter him horribly for being a mutant.<br/><br/>Bio: House Marcorne was not a giant, but nor was it a gnat. Its leadership was always seeking to increase their standing, though, and so it was arranged that one of their sons would marry the daughter of a larger, much more powerful House, entertwining the larger House’s inherent skill at finding the fastest warp currents with Marcorne’s knack for predicting and avoiding mishaps that others might fall prey to. The young Benidal Marcorne was chosen as the offering for this political and genetic alliance, but he did not want to go. Despite all his upbringing, teachings, and isolation, he had managed to meet and fall in love with a ‘normal’, a pretty girl who owned a tailoring shop near the House compound. She loved him too, despite his aberrant nature, and he promised that someday his wealth and influence would lift her out of the relative poverty she labored in. But the impending marriage would doom that promise – as an imprisoned husband in his wife’s household, he would have no influence and all, and no wealth beyond what he was given. In a rush of ill thought, he tried to leave, flee his own family and escape with his mundane love. Of course, it was not to be, as there was no way one man could evade the resources of an entire Navigator House. He was caught, the girl was murdered before his eyes, and he was brought for judgment. His crime was unforgivable – in one action, he had insulted a much more powerful House, risked the stability and survival of his own, and shamed the entire race of Navigators by daring to consort with a human. The punishment, it was decided, would be exactly what he wanted; if he enjoyed the company of ‘blinders’ to his own kind, then he would spend the rest of his unnatural lifespan amongst them, forever cut off and exiled from Navigator society. It was meant to be a death sentence, as no Navigator could live long without protection and support in a galaxy where countless people hungered for their deaths even as they depended upon them. He had clandestine access to a small account that would be replenished at regular intervals, but those few who knew about it immediately began placing bets on how many months it would be before the withdrawals stopped.<br/><br/>Six years later, they were still coming. With the ultimate motivation at hand – survival – Benidal learned very quickly how to conceal his true nature from curious eyes. It was really as simple as discarding all the paraphernalia of the Navigator’s trade, though this in itself was an act of will. Without the shiny uniform (replaced by a ragged assortment of clothing) and trademark headband marked with the Navigator’s Eye (instead an unadorned skullcap), he was no different than any other odd-looking human. Through luck and experience, he learned to fight, becoming proficient both at knife-fighting and unarmed combat,and quite skilled at shooting. He was still no match for an expert combatant or someone obviously superhuman, but he had one final weapon for those situations. It was widely known that meeting the gaze of a Navigator’s Warp Eye was instant death for anyone but another Navigator,and Benidal had learned to use it as a weapon when there was no other option. No one, even the most drug-hyped mugger, expected the removal of his skullcap to reveal a third eye, and invariably their gaze was drawn to it, even if for only a moment – which was all that he needed. It was still a last resort though, because the feedback created from that momentary connection as his victims died was something he hated experiencing once, let alone over and over.<br/><br/>He travelled for a time, drifting from planet to planet on his relatively meager allowance, avoiding places where people likely to recognize his true nature would congregate, instead immersing himself in the common folk who would tear a mutant to pieces without a second thought. He was always missing something, though, but what it was he didn’t know until a chance encounter with a smuggler in a bar, espousing under drink how he could make a fortune by running guns to a planet at war against itself, but was afraid he’d get there too late to sell. Two days later, one slightly shell-shocked captain and a crew more concerned with money than mutants found themselves with their own personal (temporary) Navigator, something reserved for the richest and biggest ships. They made record time indeed, cutting the captain’s time estimate in half and making everyone happy – Benidal most of all. He had found what he needed to make him happy, and began to ply his trade again. Only criminals or smugglers, the people least likely to talk about him and attract dangerous attention, but he didn’t care as long as he could Navigate. Now living from commission to commission, making his regular withdrawals from his allowance account but immediately depositing it in another account of his own creation, he ended up on yet another backwater planet hunting a new job when he met the Rogue Trader Avorn. Here, at last, was an opportunity match made in heaven, so to speak – the relative safety of a Rogue Trader’s commission would protect him from whatever assassins his jilted bride’s family might still have hunting him, and the services of her own personal Navigator would allow the risk-loving captain to pursue even more profitable ventures. The fact that she was exceptionally beautiful didn’t hurt either.<br/>