Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

==  Jago Sevatarian ==

This is just a preliminary draft that hasn't had all the details fully hammered out yet, recorded here so it doesn't get lost.

As opposed to being a Heresy-era figure, Sevatar was born in this millenium and is the current Chapter Master of the Night Lords. Born on Nostramo, which in this timeline is a Gotham-esque planet full of ancient derelict industry and an ancient, distinguished, but impoverished society whose only export seems to be Arbites agents. Not sure what happened to Nostramo's adamantium-mining industry. On the one hand, Nostramo was strip-mined so heavily that in canon during the Crusade era Curze's pod punched right through the planet's core and when the Night Lords tried to bomb the planet they accidentally turned it into an asteroid field. On the other hand, the chunks of Nostramo left over in canon were still so rich in adamantium that Rogue Traders were still mining them under the table in M41.

Sevatar is a showman as much as anything. He has encouraged his brothers to sculpt their armour in the form of monsters and broadcasts public executions for the masses to see. He isn't one of the broken children usually adopted by the chapter nor is he a mind wiped death-row prisoner. He actually joined the chapter willingly for no other reason than a sense of duty, which was pretty fucking unique in the chapter's history. So far as anyone can tell he was perfectly normal, happily married parents, brother and sister and ordinary extended family. And while he isn't sunshine and roses he isn't a sociopath or a psychopath. Why join the Night Lords? Because he felt his theatrical abilities would be most useful there. And they have been.

Curze committed atrocities and for every field of impaled corpses a dozen foes surrendered peacefully. Sevatar attempts to accomplish this with an imagined and staged awfulness. For sure he has done terrible things but not so many as people believe. If anything his reign has been the most bloodless in the chapter's history. Indeed, if you went back and tallied up all the numbers Sevatar has actually killed far fewer people than Curze ever did. Not that you would know by asking. If you go by the stories he is a rabid monster the likes of which would be fit to be the heir of Curze.

Part of this is when Sevatar does have people killed, he does it with such spectacle that it is almost as if it is worth a dozen lesser killings. Sevatar knows how people think. He knows how to frame something for maximum fear potential in both human and alien minds, like a horror movie writer. Sevatar sees himself as questioning, refining, and rejecting Curze's methods as needed. Many of the Imperium's foes don't feel fear in the conventional sense. Sevatar's ambitions are to change that.