Selene H. Veer was a Mage Princess during the twilight of The Mage Imperium and was the Chief Artificer of Hybern, representative of the Conclave of Sidenia until she became a fugitive.
Personality
Veer is not known for being an especially warm person. She is also very direct, preferring to cut to the point.
Despite her apparent coldness, Veer is well-known in the academic world for being overly enthusiastic for sharing information. Her role as the Chief Artificer would lead many to expect that she would keep her discoveries secret, as to empower her employers with exclusive weapons and knowledge, but Veer has always pushed back against this. As a result, she has seen much criticism and on at least one occasion nearly faced being fired over publishing papers that lead to an enemy force improving their own technology.
Additionally, Veer dislikes the fact that she has prosthetic limbs and often hides them under long, flowing clothes.
History
Early Years
Veers grew up in an upper-middle class household. Normally, the position she achieved later in life would be beyond the reach of someone from her lineage, but her genius and aptitude for the sciences led to many grants and the eye of some higher-ups in society. The grants allowed Veer to attend Academy at the Conclave of Sidenia at the young age of 14, which allowed her to pursue physics, and later Etherics.
Early Adult Life
As Veer learned more and more about Etherics, she began to specialize in Teleportation. She quickly found herself paving the way in her field. As she became more and more well-known, she received more and more funding. Eventually she was able to construct her first teleporter to test her theories. Her fortune was short-lived however, and in her arrogance she tested her teleporter with her own body in front of a general scientific body. It is not known if there was something wrong with the device itself or if it was a misconfiguration, but Veers accidentally teleported her torso and head, but none of her limbs, across the room, much to the shock of the witnesses.
The money and time spent building artificial limbs and recovering from the injury and trauma led Veer to fall nearly into obscurity. It would be almost 10 years before she resumed her research.
Recovery & Comeback
For the first year of her recovery, Veer's mechanical limbs were being manufactured, so she was left bedridden. During this time she feel into a deep depression and refused to talk to most anyone about her situation. However, while in this vulnerable state, an advanced prosthetics company sent a representative attempt to conduct a deal with Veer. It is not known why she refused, but Veer cites the offer as the reason that she fervently believes that all scientific research should be made available to the general public in a reasonable time-frame.
Veer came back into academia in full force. She quickly found the lack of progress while she was out of commission deplorable and practically became a shut-in while she conducted her research. Teleporation technology soared to new heights and became more and more practical for use by the Imperium. Veer claims that her research is the reason the related field of Transmutation became a widely-accepted legitimate field in less than a century, but professionals in the field claim otherwise.
Rise to Chief Artificer
Fugitive
After her participation in the Dwarven terrorist attack, Veer was brought up as a suspect in the ensuing trial. While it was not proved that she had anything to do with the attack, she was declared an outlaw on unrelated sedition charges. She immediately fled and wound up in the employ of Lady Astrid Keith.
During her time partnered with Keith, Veer became simultaneously a researcher, a bodyguard, and a best friend to Lady Keith. The two wound up participating in several operations before Keith died and Veer dropped off the grid. It was also during this time that Veer developed her magnum opus.
She briefly resurfaced a decade later to help ready her work for its completion. With her tremendous old age setting in, Veer decided to augment her body even further, something that she had been known to be reticent about in the past. According to records kept by Anselm Trobe, he performed several operations on her: implanting mechanical organs, implanting part of a dwarf's brain, and grafting part of a psionic brain. The results were noted to have almost sent her into permanent madness, but Veer survived the surgeries with her sanity "intact".
Incidents
Dwarven Terrorist Attack
- Main article: Mage Imperium II#The Dwarven "Terrorist Attack"
Fearing that the wedding between Prince Himel Brahm and Princess Lena Adlith would cause The Imperium to come down hard on The Hybern Sector and disrupt her research, Veer and Lady Astrid Keith organized the assassination of the would-be newlyweds. Keith also sweetened the deal with a promise of future funding for Veer's research. Though it was never proved in court that Veer was involved in the incident, she later documented the events that took place that day.
There were two ships en route to the location of the wedding: the one holding the engaged couple, and an escort ship. Veer teleported onto the escort ship and quickly sabotaged the ship's engine before teleporting away. Very few people in the universe could have performed the calculations necessary to execute such a long-range teleportation, but Veer claimed very little effort was required in the endeavor.
Next, Veer teleported a small group of Dwarven mercenaries and a couple of thugs lent by Keith to the main ship. They met some resistance, but slaughtered everyone in their path, importantly including Brahm and Adlith. All the while, the main ship attempted to bombard the Dwarven vessel, commanded by Veer. So, Veer ordered a temporary retreat before moving back into teleporting range. Veer chose a distance that was a middle-ground between the safety of the Dwarven ship and the likelihood of success for the teleporter, but failed to return several of the mercenaries to the Dwarven ship. Fearing that the ship would be destroyed if it maintained its proximity to the wedding vessel, Veer ordered a retreat and performed the much easier and less exact teleportation of the remaining Dwarves into The Aether, where they promptly died. The mercenary ship got away, leaving no witnesses as to Veer's nor Keith's involvement in the incident.
Ehrlai An'Drosse's Soiree
- Main article: Mage Imperium II#Four Betrayals at a Wedding
While Veer was not physically present at the soiree held by Ehrlai An'Drosse in celebration of a wedding, it is known that she was in a small nearby space vessel. Present at the event itself was Lady Astrid Keith, who was planning to arrest An'Drosse with Veer's help. At a certain signal, Veer teleported in a small squad of armed guards just as Filimon Connel attempted to arrest Keith. Unfortunately for Veer, the teleportation killed two members of the squad instantly, leaving Lady Keith with relatively little protection as a firefight broke out.
After Lady Keith's bodyguard, Duncan, was wounded and the fight began to fall out of their favor, Keith requested Veer to teleport Duncan out before herself. Logs of the call show that Veer briefly attempted to argue with Keith, wanting to teleport her out first, but ultimately respected her wishes. While preparing to lock on to Keith with the teleporter, Veer could only watch as her best friend was gunned down by the An'Drosse guards.
With all hope lost, Veer successfully teleported out Lady Keith's daughter, Petra Keith, who was also present at the event, and flew away, but not before attempting to kill the man responsible for Keith's death; She teleported in a bomb, but in her haste the teleport was imprecise and the explosive was not close enough to An'Drosse to be lethal, and instead killed several partygoers and Filimon Connel.
The Holden Reversal
- Main article: Mage Imperium III#Destroyer of Worlds
The Planet Buster that Veer spent two decades working on finally came to fruition. Working with the Imperial Navy, the weapon was tested using 5 separate bombs on 5 separate planets. Veer personally calibrated the bombs and watched from space as the planets blinked out of existence and wiped away a great many Kirvan platoons.
Trivia
- Veer is a Jesus character.