Ferik Jurgen

Ferik Jurgen is a Valhallan Gunner First Class of the Astra Militarum, aide to Commissar Ciaphas Cain, and a Blank, or psychic null. He was raised on the ice world of Valhalla and serves in the Valhallan Ice Warriors, the regiment to which Cain is attached. His nullity is the defining fact of his career. Psychic entities such as daemons and sorcerers are recorded as perceiving it before anything else about him, and it suppresses their powers in his vicinity. Other people register it as an unease they cannot place, usually together with his personal odour and unpolished manners, and most keep their distance. Jurgen is the plainest example in the Cain record of a Blank whose presence has direct tactical value.

Jurgen’s formal duties are those of an adjutant to a commissar. In practice he drives whatever vehicle is at hand, carries melta weapons, and looks after Cain’s immediate needs across many years of service. Cain is recorded as keeping him close for the protection his nullity gives against psykers and warp-born enemies, a value he is said to place above that of a full regiment. Accounts of the campaigns on Perlia and at Gravalax, and of a dozen further engagements, place Jurgen at the critical point when hostile sorcerers were about to gain the advantage. His arrival there ended the threat and broke the plans of those enemies. Amberley Vail, the intelligence officer who works alongside Cain, identified the significance of Jurgen’s nature early. She has maintained her interest in it since.

The main source for Jurgen is Cain’s own account, which presents him chiefly as a comic figure, loyal and unaffected by rank or danger. Other records suggest a considerably larger contribution: he is credited with preventing several outcomes that would probably have been fatal to Cain, and Cain’s long survival is attributed in large part to him. Jurgen remains at Cain’s side and is listed as active. Relevant contemporaries are Cain and Vail, together with the Valhallan regimental staff who served with them on Perlia and at Gravalax. Nothing in the recorded material suggests that Jurgen has sought advancement or a separate command, and the sources give no account of his life on Valhalla before enlistment.