Editing Orelius Pylae (section)

=Background=
Orelius Pylae was chosen young in the Jovian shipyards according to arcane Mechanicus guidance. Specialist training and highly refined implants gave the tech-priests an agent, a bonded emissary that they could use as a face for negotiation where the pure, cold light of logic might fail in the face of fleshly confusion and weakness. Unfortunately for them, Orelius was not the perfect servant that his implants should have belonged to - he was too much of a free-thinker, too curious, to be acceptable. Of course, this conclusion could not be reached until Orelius had worked a political web around the necks of his masters by virtue of his station, both benefiting the Mechanicus with his dealings and proving too competent at their art to simply dismiss out of hand. As soon as he reached the rank of Magos (arranging the fastest possible series of tests for himself and then proving more than their match), logic dictated the answer for the uncomfortable Adeptus: commission as an Explorator, which Orelius accepted gladly.

Thus the troublesome tech-priest was rid of the disapproval of the Jovians. He hired on with the first ship to leave the shipyards, a vessel granted to a newly-founded Rogue Trader dynasty at the behest of the High Lords of Terra.

Travelling far and finally reaching the Koronus Expanse in search of treasures beyond compare, the Volk dynasty met an early end on treacherous shoals - leaving Orelius, having survived a voyage of decades through realspace in a shuttle escaping the Volk flagship's doom, in need of a new Captain to follow.

The strangest thing about Orelius is his appearance. He looks almost nothing like a tech-priest, being neither hunchbacked nor having part of his face replaced by a metal grille. His robes are well-kept rather than shabby, his staff not overburdened with cogskull iconography, and - most strangely - his expression fluid and often jovial. Indeed, his bald head, lengthening but indeterminate years, and featureless, shining mercury eyes have in the past had him mistaken for a sorcerer by primitive cultures.

And that's the second strangest thing about Orelius - he nearly always seems to be laughing, although it's not always clear at what.