Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Rogue Traders (section)

====Rogue Trader House Howe====
The Inquisition is entrusted with oversight of all but one of the branches of Imperial governance and life.  Even the Adeptus Arbites are ultimately answerable to the Inquisition, although naturally not often.  The obvious exception is the Talon of the Emperor, those martial offices that are part of the Sisters of Silence and Adeptus Custodes, who couldn’t care less about Cloudburst.

Thus, the Inquisitorial authority extends over all of the Sector unimpeded, and a portion of it is currently fixed on Rogue Trader House Howe.  The House is presently under active investigation by the Ordos Xenos and Hereticus for all manner of debauchery and crime, with the lead suspect being the imminent Warrant holder and scion of the House, Waldeon Howe.  Waldeon is a product of the House’s extensive ties to the Celeste nobility.  He is a hedonist and a brute, who despite his obvious intellect simply cannot countenance not being the most powerful person in any given room.  He has real talent for business, for battle, and for certain artistic pursuits, but he has no tact or restraint.

Out in the Circuit or Exo-zone, of course, that could be a major advantage, but in the Sector proper, it is a huge liability.  The current Warrant holder, Lawrence Howe, is on the verge of death, with his many cybernetics and augmetics on the verge of final failure.  He is not fully conscious, and may be wholly oblivious to his grandson’s mania.  The Inquisition has given up informing him, since he seems not to respond, and has now focused their efforts on the task of investigating Waldeon’s antics.

So far, they have uncovered strong evidence that at the very least, he is engaging in copious acts of the Cold Trade.  The Trade is the traffic of proscribed xeno artifacts to buyers in Imperial space.  For centuries, the current Lady Inquisitrix Cloudburst, former Ordo Xenos High Inquisitrix Cassandra Lerica, was the bane of the Cold Trade in the region.  She pursued its participants with chilling precision and wrathful zeal.  However, since she has had to shift her attention more and more to the affairs of high office and her ad hoc leadership of the Deathwatch overseers, she has had understandably less time to pursue the Trade and its buyers.

Thus, in the absence of the cat, the metaphorical mice play, with freighters occasionally slipping up to a ton of xeno artifacts into the wrong hands.  Lerica’s replacement, Lord Inquisitor Hueng, has far bigger concerns, and simply doesn’t care as much about the issue as he does about the Glasians.  This doesn’t mean that he devotes no effort nor subordinates to the problem, it is just not his priority.

Meanwhile, the House Howe is getting filthy rich.  Unlike other Houses, they do not focus much on a large fleet.  Instead, the House has begun to prepare for massive expeditions into the border region between the Cloudburst Circuit and the Oldlight Exo-zone.  There is no physical boundary between the two, so it is somewhat nebulous.  This is made literal since the area is in fact a giant nebula.  There are whispers on Emissicius that there are entire star systems in the border nebula that are just waiting to be plundered, and worlds where ancient Imperial forces under Lion El’Jonson and Leman Russ assaulted the northern holdings of the Rangdan xenoforms.

The Inquisitors tasked to observing House Howe is aware of these rumors, but for now is inclined to let Howe explore the region.  If there is nothing to be found, then the House will be weakened, and more vulnerable to Inquisitorial action.  If there is, looting it all will take time, and by the time the House Howe forces return, the purge of their ranks may well be over in their home territories, leaving the Howe fleet leaderless for Inquisitorial co-opting.

House Howe is not openly criminal in its actions, however.  They do maintain several wholly legitimate manufacturing and printing companies, as well as multiple stolen pirate ships they have stripped and repurposed as freighters.  Most of the House’s legitimate income stems from the sale of goods to worlds that are undergoing colonization or terraformation, many of which were discovered or colonized by House Howe ships.