Anastacia Ternovnik

Inquisitor Anastacia Ternovnik

An Acolyte and Interrogator under Jessica Stark, and later an Inquisitior in her own right, Anastacia was the lover of Danforth Laertes and defended him and his sister during their trial for the execution of Daneel Cygnus. She was declared missing, presumed dead, during the fall of Cadia.

Physical Description

Apparel & Accessories

As Acolyte and Interrogator, wore the traveling- or hunt-dress of a Vostroyan noblewoman. When promoted to Inquisitor she wore flak armor in the Vostroyan huntsman's style under the hooded black robe of the Ordo Malleus. For personal weapons she used a Vostroyan power saber and dueling laspistol.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Vostroya and Early Life

Anastacia was born on the planet Vostroya in the Segmentum Obscuris. During the Horus Heresy the Emperor commanded all worlds still loyal to the Imperium send troops to defend it against the Warmaster's Traitor Legions. Vostroya refused, arguing it could better serve by continuing to devote its efforts to weapons manufacture; conscripting so many of its workers would render it incapable of sufficient munitions production. After the Heresy this was met with uncommon mercy by the Imperium, yet the people of Vostroya have forever after sought to atone for their sins by promising to provide every first-born child to the service of the Imperial Guard.
Anastacia's family - high-ranking Techtriarchs - were no exception. However, her mother's first-born child - a son - died within minutes of birth, denying her family the ancient penance for their planet's perfidy. Her mother was consumed by grief - not by the death of her child, but her inability to make recompense to the Emperor. She strove quickly to become pregnant again and within a year did - the resulting child was a daughter, who she named Anastacia, meaning "Resurrection" in the ancient language of the Vostroyan-branch of the Imperial Cult.

Infant Anastacia by Nightcafe AI (postwork)

Her mother was obsessed with paying her womb-debt to the Imperium, and Anastacia was raised from birth for her future duties in the Regiments; as the scion of a noble family she would be enrolled as an officer, and as soon as she could walk she was trained in marching and drill, taught marksmanship and fencing, leadership and logistics. By the time she was eight-standard years old she was drilled and disciplined as any cadet twice her age, a precocious and serious ice-maiden with a military bearing that would have been comical were it not for her unsmiling demeanor.
Her training had been private, provided by her family's security personnel - retired and invalided pensioners of the Vostroyan Firstborn regiments - but once she was eight she became eligible to enter the officer academy and train for enrollment in the Regiments. Eagerly, desperately, her mother took her to the induction office and presented her - but the adjutant on duty refused her. Anastacia was a second-born child, not first - and only first-born children were eligible to pay the womb-debt. No matter how her mother wept and begged and cajoled, the adjutant would not, could not be moved - the ancient agreement between Roboute Guilliman and the Techtriarchs of Vostroya was sacrosanct and inviolate; only first-borns could be accepted.

The Schola Progenium

Young Anastacia by Nightcafe AI (postwork)

Anastacia's mother could not accept the news; she gave way to hysterical despair, screaming and howling as she threw herself violently at the adjutant and refusing to be calmed. She was forcibly subdued, sedated, and imprisoned in the academy's brig. The military police recognized her as the wife of a Techtriarch and informed her husband, who came to the academy and tried to sooth her - but it was impossible. The guilt of failing to provide a child for the womb-debt had broken her mind and driven her insane. A more-compassionate people might have treated her with gentleness and patience, giving her therapy and understanding to nurse her back to health, but it was not be on Vostroya. She was committed to a lunatic asylum, and when her husband protested he was arrested on charges of aiding the feeble minded.
With one parent deemed insane and the other under arrest, Anastacia was declared an orphan and enrolled in the Schola Progenium - ironically, she would serve the Imperium and most likely in the Vostroyan Firstborn, only as a Commissar rather than an officer. Having been raised with an iron-clad sense of her duty, the importance of strength, and a disdain for weakness she was unmoved by her predicament. The only emotion she felt was contempt for her mother's failings and her father's fall from grace. She resolved to not only survive and succeed, but prosper and thrive in the Schola - and, for four years, she did just that.

The Inquisition

Jessica Stark by Nightcafe AI (postwork)

The Schola Progenium is an isolated, insular world-within-a-world - the progenae are sequestered by the Drill-Abbots and know little of what passes outside the academy walls. So when the dour Inquisitor Jessica Stark came to the Schola and demanded to see Anastacia, she initially divined nothing of the older woman's reasons or how she came to know her name or even existence. Nevertheless, Anastacia answered the summons and presented herself before the Emperor's left-hand without delay or objection.
Stark interrogated her for long hours without respite, food or water and without betraying (or so she thought) any intelligence as to what she might want. Anastacia endured the questioning without complaint but also not without guile; in the intervening years she had become a young woman - very young, but a woman nevertheless - of great skill and ambition and filled with the promise of more. She knew her potential, and quickly divined the Inquisitor's purpose - Stark was looking for an Acolyte; perhaps one who could rise to the level of Interrogator and be a potential successor. But even as she understood this she was wise enough to keep her mouth shut.
For her part, Stark was impressed - this child on the cusp of womanhood was suitable raw material to be molded into at least an Acolyte and probably more. When challenged about her family's failings - her mother's insanity, her father's compassion - she deftly denounced their weakness and distanced herself from it. "So you reject them?" Stark asked. "You would not want to return to them? If you were, say, given your manumission from the Schola, if you were emancipated as an independent minor ... where would you go?"
Anastacia smiled and played her hand. "With you, Inquisitor."
And so Acolyte Anastacia went to Cadia.

Cadia

"This is Cadia, you silly fool! Cadia! Right on the doorway of Chaos! Right in the heart of everything! The seepage of evil is so great, I have a hundred active cults to subdue every month! This place breeds recidivists like a pond breeds scum. This is Cadia! This is the Gate of the Eye! This is where the bloody work of the Inquisition is done!"

— Inquisitor-General Neve

Relationships

Anastacia Ternovnik

Lover (Vital)

Towards Danforth Laertes

5

5

Honest

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Danforth Laertes

Lover (Vital)

Towards Anastacia Ternovnik

5

5

Honest

---

History

Met in 40984 and served Jessica Stark as Acolytes and Interrogators together. They were antagonistic at the beginning but became friends and then lovers over the years.

Life

40967 40999 32 years old

Circumstances of Birth

Only-child of a Vostroyan High-Born, surrendered to the Inquisition in lieu of fulfilling the ancient pact

Circumstances of Death

Killed during the fall of Cadia

Birthplace

Vostroya

Place of Death

Cadia

Spouses

Siblings

Sex

Female

Eyes

Blue

Hair

Blonde

Belief/Deity

Imperial Creed

Aligned Organization

Inquisition

Character Prototype

Anastacia's appearance, habitual dress (and even some of her history) were inspired by Taylor Swift in the video for Ready For It.