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One thing I have never quite got, Alizebeth is a blank, and she also worked as a hooker for four years? How come she haven't been killed by a john Deadwood-style during those four years?
Being a blank basically means you are disliked and often just killed, and being a blank hooker means that a john who ain't a really nice person to begin with should technically be even unnicer.

I think you're confusing the generic blank with a pariah.

She was also hooking on near lifeless iceball, so any sex is going to be an improvement, and she was not exactly raking in the money.

OP has a good point. One doesn't imagine murdering prostitutes is a deeply ingrained social taboo in the Imperium, generally speaking. Add in the revulsion they engender, especially at close range, and you have a pretty sensible recipe for a missing person report.

only a psyker would be able to detect a blank from any normal human right?

My interpretation of being a blank is that people generally gets revolted by you. Or they dread you for no reason. And say a person comes in and wants to punch you in the face due to that aura you project. The psyker on the other hand will just start to have bad reactions to the blank like having convulsions, barfing and such.

It says in the beginning of the Eisen books that people have been generally "put off" by her for her whole life. But that doesnt mean that the blankness makes people want to kill her. It just makes them social outcasts.

Some people like angry, degrading, revulsion filled sex. It would also depend on how she turned tricks, there is a difference between being a street walker and working in a brothel. Either way, there will always be punters looking for a certain thing that gets them their kicks.

Yes. I always interpreted the "blank" thing as someone socially unwelcome. Someone you wouldn't want to have over for dinner or introduce to your parents.

Assuming that - as a generalization - low-tier hookers aren't this sort of person, and someone you "wouldn't want to be around" in a respectable environment, it would look like a natural place for blanks to drift to. Being "outcast" already, they have nothing to loose, socially, by getting into the disreputable, seedy parts of society. Inversely, being outcast no matter what they do, they have nothing to win by trying to shoot for something "respectable".

 Beaviz81 wrote:
My interpretation of being a blank is that people generally gets revolted by you. Or they dread you for no reason. And say a person comes in and wants to punch you in the face due to that aura you project. The psyker on the other hand will just start to have bad reactions to the blank like having convulsions, barfing and such.

Bequin is a more sophisticated type of character; Dan Abnett sometimes produces more nuanced versions of background than is usual. Bequin is beautiful, talented, and a power psyker managed to fall in love with her. This is not exactly a revolting Gunner Jurgen or antisocial Wystan Frauka, but Bequin is if anything a more effective anti-psyker weapon than either of those two are. I think?


A blank is the opposite of a psyker. What the pariah gene means to a character should be the opposite of what the psyker gene means; and they pysker gene means inexplicable significance. If a character doesn't have strength, literacy, social status, or wealth, he shouldn't be able to affect the world very much and toil in plebian obscurity. However, if he has psychic power, he can wake up one morning, take over the city, provoke Imperial forces to fly across space, face down space marines, and otherwise drastically change the lives of millions of smarter, more influential people.

Bequin is the opposite; she has everything going for her in her personal characteristics, but she can't make it work for her. Running the Distaff demanded a lot of talent, and attracting a very eligible inquisitor shows she was very desirable. None of her talent or desirability ever turned into anything. The Distaff was entirely for someone else's benefit, and her romance never happened. She was promise unfulfilled.

So in this figurative sense, a pariah is totally able to attract sexual partners, is just never amounts to anything; sex is not an earth-shattering accomplishment, especially when it is anonymous and commercial. A psyker is someone who is way more influential than he should be, and a pariah is someone whose promise goes unfulfilled. Prostitution the the perfect example, because often sex is linked to elaborate courtship, heartache, and demonstrations of reproductive fitness like professional success, but prostitution debases the value into a much less complex or momentous transaction.

She was also found on the "off season" on the ice ball world so I doubt those men were picky. She also said he was never really liked anywhere and she moved around alot because of it.

Last I checked there are 'degrees' of blankness just like there are 'degrees' of psychic power (they're on the same scale, in fact, Alpha being a very powerful psyker to Omega being a very powerful blank). So Culexis assassins and Necron Pariahs and such might be grade Chi, Psi, or Omega blanks that make people fundamentally disturbed by being there, Bequin could be a Tau-grade blank who just makes people feel like there's an itch they can't scratch and isn't easily identifiable except by a psyker. Jurgen was a blank, remember, and it just manifested as a bad smell around him...

Bequin was a powerful Blank, she went down trying to tackle a Titan for God's sake with her power, and without serious power you don't do that without some serious molah. Can have evolved of course, but I'm iffy there.

As for Jurgen, well most blanks fail to develop their social skills it seems. Bequin might have been helped in how pretty she was, people was put off about her, but not so much that they saw her as something evil I guess, and she was smart enough to re-locate a lot to prevent people from eventually see her as something that could just be the aforementioned missing person-report.

Key word being that Bequin went down trying to tackle a Titan, she wasn't nearly powerful enough to manage the feat, and more or less died as a result.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Key word being that Bequin went down trying to tackle a Titan, she wasn't nearly powerful enough to manage the feat, and more or less died as a result.

Right an active power is a very common thing for people without great powers to have. I forgot that we were living in the same reality as Charmed, and I'm one of the Innocents.