>>96411914
>Backstory:
Annelid was born in the press-gangs of Gathis IX, a low-gravity mining world where Longshanks mutations were common. Her family were indentured to the ore-fleets; her father broke his back under grav-stress, and her mother sold her children into off-world service to pay the guild’s debts. Annelid’s height and dexterity made her valuable to voidships that could afford abhuman crews. She was taken by the Glory of Wrath, a Rogue Trader’s frigate notorious for long warp-transits and brutal crew losses. In the ship’s pressurized decks, her Longshanks physiology suddenly became an asset. She could climb bulkhead gantries, pull long spanner-wrenches across inaccessible engines, and man gunnery stations designed for two ordinary crew alone. But her fellow voidsmen never let her forget what she was. “Spider,” they call her. “Stilt-bitch.” They draw the sign of the Aquila when she enters the mess, warding her away with muttered litanies. She laughs it off, but alone, she keeps tally-marks scratched on her bunk rail; each one a prayer that her death comes quietly, in fire or vacuum, and not at the hands of her shipmates.