Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Inquisitor Herman Rothschilde, Ordo Malleus==
{{Topquote|Cloudburst! What an apropos name it is, for this benighted cluster of stars! Wastrel worlds with wastrel guardians, shivering in the cold when they should be running towards a fire. Darkness is coming to Cloudburst, and its people are too lazy to evade it!|Herman Rothschilde}}

In this Time of Ending, enemies beset the Imperium on all flanks. Times like these produce heroes, when the folk of the Imperium are thrown into the crucible of war. In times such as this, the greatest leaders and prophets of Mankind have arisen to lead humanity from the darkness.

Herman Rothschilde thinks himself one such hero. His colleagues think him a whiner. His subordinates worship the ground he walks on, and if any outside his immediate circle knew the full extent of his plans, they would burn him at the stake.

Rothschilde was a student at the Schola Progenum on Septiim Primus, and his instructors settled on the Inquisitorial path for him. As a boy, he was always asking questions, trying to learn things no classmate cared about, and trying to see the why of things when most people just cared about the how. His superiors rightly concluded that that was the correct mindset for an Inquisitorial prospect. He was elevated to the rank of Lesser Acolyte in the retinue of Lord Inquisitor Nolan in M41.831, and has served in the Ordo Malleus ever since. For the first forty years of his Inquisitorial service, initially under Nolan and later as an Inquisitor himself, Rothschilde was a profoundly Puritan Inquisitor; he was quick to bring down the silver blade on the slightest hint of daemonic corruption. However, after that time, things began to change. Slowly, Rothschilde felt more like the Cloudburst Sector was to blame for its own problems.

He loathes the Chaos Gods and the other beasts of the Warp, but Rothschilde now thinks that at least some of the problems that bedevil the Sector are caused by the Sector itself. Not in the spiritual sense, like the Titanshields Secutarii of Cognomen, but in the sense that so many of the Cloudburst Sector’s leadership is either too lazy to learn the risks of their roles, or too lazy to actually implement any meaningful improvements in the Sector or its defense against daemons.

Rothschilde thinks that the Sector’s current predicament, the Ork and Glasian invasions, are proof positive about his own personal views on the Sector. Beyond any machinations of the Great Enemy, Rothschilde hates how stagnant and unprepared the Sector is. After each Migration, the only institutions of the Imperial government that seem to prepare for the next ones are the Daggers, the Navy, and the Mechanicus. The Administratum just falls back into their lockstep routine, the Guard practically goes on holiday, and the Ministorum goes back to leeching the proles dry. The other Adepta barely even matter in the overall scheme of the Sector, even the Sororitas, who seem to view the Glasian Migrations as a minor annoyance and not the catastrophic threat they are.

However, among all the institutions of the Cloudburst Sector, there are none for whom Rothschilde reserves more scorn than the Adeptus Ministorum. Rothschilde hates the Ministorum, or at least its local branch. He sees the Ecclesiarchy as the ultimate problem for much of the Sector, and he has a whole laundry list of arguments he can recite to support his claim to anybody who will listen.

They deviate from the more restrained path of Sebastian Thor, but that is the least of his concerns. He sees how they vacuum up all of the money in the Sector that isn’t sewn into their parishioners’ pockets, and wonders what kind of defenses such money could bring. He has watched with growing disbelief as they have entirely failed to select a new Cardinal for Thimble, despite it having had a large enough population to justify one for hundreds of years. Septiim will be large enough to merit one in a few more years, and they haven’t even begun the process of selecting a Cardinal for the system.

The Ministorum is doing reasonable work in the Circuit and the primitive worlds of the Sector, but their indolence in the bureaucracy and the utter mess they made of Thunderhead are still crippling both. Cardinal Lamarr is so openly flouting the Decree Passive that it’s a miracle Havermann hasn’t burned him at the stake, or it’s evidence that Havermann is even more distracted than Rothschilde.

Almost as infuriating is the Ecclesiarchy’s complete inability to enforce their own strictures. Woldenbar, Haggar, and half a dozen other major Heretics in the Cloudburst Sector’s history have come from the Ecclesiarchy’s ranks. Rothschilde has learned of Lamarr’s fixation on Eldar and finds it confusing – there are no major groups of Eldar in Cloudburst.

With indolence and with impiety comes Chaos, and Rothschilde has fought the servants of the Great Enemy many times, usually on Imperial soil. Tzeentch’s machinations mean that there are few daemonic incursions in the Sector proper, so Rothschilde usually works on the border between the Cloudburst and Naxos Sectors. There, he has seen the armies of Nurgle trying to smash down the gates of Cloudburst. While fighting the Heretics and daemons they bring to the very edge of his home Sector, Rothschilde has seen hundreds of thousands of lost souls, clawing at the membrane-thin walls of Imperial defense that hold back the powers of Ruin.

He is now convinced, after watching Cloudburst do essentially nothing to prepare itself for what comes after the end of the Migrations, that Cloudburst is doomed to fail. In his mind, the walls are coming down; even if Cloudburst survives the Glasians (which seems unlikely to him), there is no way that the Sector will survive what comes next. He is, ironically, unaware of the Night Slaughter.

His beliefs have dragged him closer and closer to Radicalism. He does not think of himself as being a member of any of the political philosophies that dominate the Inquisition, but the closest to his personal worldview is the Isstvanian. Rothschilde has begun covertly instigating small-scale battles in the Cloudburst Sector, and lending aid to others who do the same. His hope is that if the Sector faces military challenges outside the Glasian Migrations, they will become more able to survive when the Migrations worsen or end.

So far, he has turned material from shipwrecks over to Orks to allow them to build more weapons, he has turned a blind eye to the actions of small cults on Thimble and Cassie’s World, and pressed arms on several mercenary groups that have shown willingness to side against the Imperium if paid well enough. He has also diverted a few uncorrupted Glasian artifacts to the Thimble Highborn houses, in the hopes that their internecine squabbles provide adequate training for the Thimblan Argent Shields.

He has plans to start shifting more resources, perhaps even whole Guard regiments, away from their current duties and into fighting these threats soon. The FCC and the Ork incursions are perfect for his plans. The irony that these wars are draining the Imperium of the very resources it needs to fight the Glasians is lost on him.

There is one line he is not yet ready to cross, and that is engaging with the powers of the Warp directly. Rothschilde is not a psyker, but even he knows the risks of trying to use the Warp to his advantage. Thus, he has not tried to soften the guard against the powers of Nurgle, nor has he risen to actual sabotage of Imperial military forces. If he became aware of Professor Unarvu’s plans, he would probably try to stop them. He has also avoided using Chaos-tainted equipment from the Glasian Migrations.

The greatest threat to his continual use of his strategy is other Inquisitors, as is often the case for Radicals. If Oscar Havermann were to learn of what he is doing, the cruel Lord Hereticus would almost certainly kill him for it. If Lerica were to learn he has used some un-corrupted Glasian equipment in his arsenal, she would drag him in for censure.

Thus, Rothschilde walks a razor-thin line between sabotaging the Imperium and trying to strengthen it. His cadre of personal supporters and agents think him a genius, and undyingly complete his tasks in anticipation of his eventually being proved right, when the walls come down and the stars fill with the armies of Nurgle.
In battle, Rothschilde uses a custom suit of Power Armor that interfaces with his cybernetic implants. He prefers the use of a Power Sword and Thunder Shield, but has made use of a bolter as a ranged backup when needed.