Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Lord Chapter Master Ranult Arden==
{{Topquote|If the Glasians tracked casualties, my name would be their leading cause of death.|Ranult Arden}}

The Blue Daggers have been standing against the Glasians since before they were even called the Blue Daggers. Beginning in the aftermath of the First Glasian Migration, the Inquisition assembled Exigent Task Unit Cloudburst to fight off any recurrence of the threat, and so they did, one hundred years later. After the Second Migration, the Inquisition and the Adeptus Astartes representatives in the Officio Munitorum convened to establish a new Special Circumstances unnumbered Founding, one to protect the Cloudburst Sector in general and the Septiim System specifically. Their initial fourth-in-command was an ambitious Deathwatch veteran named Ranult Arden, and ever since the death of his predecessor, Augustus Alderoster, Arden has served as the leader of the Blue Daggers.

Arden started in the Novamarines, but he never felt quite the same strength of tribal affinity for his people on Honorium as some of his Battle Brothers did. Arden was an obsessive volunteer, and offered his services for every extra training mission or neuro-data load he could. He never felt strongly attracted to any of the specialist occupations, like the Chaplaincy or the Techmarine Brotherhood, nor is he a psyker, but he did qualify for Thunderhawk piloting and gunnery roles, and is a confirmed double ace in a Predator Annihilator.

When the chance arose to enter the Exigent Task Unit, he leaped at the opportunity, and joined at the left hand of his friend, Augustus. At the time, both men served the Novmarines in their Second Company, with Alderoster being its XO and Arden serving as the heavy weapons trooper in his Command Squad. When the Angels of Fury and Novamarines contributed their arms and Brothers to the task, Arden sat in command of the fourth of four units of thirty Marines each, breveted to Brother-Lieutenant to make it official.

When the Glasians attacked the asteroid base of the Task Force during the Second Battle of Septiim, Arden barely escaped with his life. He rallied other Brothers who had survived the madness of the space battle against the great Cylinder and boarded Assault Shuttles, then blasted his way into the device. He and the other members of his unit raced to the heart of the Colony Control Cylinder and blew it up with melta bombs.

Upon returning to his ship and escaping with a few Brothers still in tow, Arden was hailed by the Sector as a conquering hero, and with the death of two of the other three unit commanders, he was formally elevated to the rank of Brother-Lieutenant by the Novamarines. However, shortly after that, the entire Task Force became a new Chapter unto themselves. Augustus Alderoster, who held the line in the defense of first Celeste and then Coriolis, became the new Chapter Master, while he appointed his friend Ranult Arden to the rank of Captain of the First Company.

After Alderoster died in the Third Migration fighting the Glasians in orbit over Cognomen, the surviving members of the Council of Masters elevated Arden to become their new Chapter Master. He has served honorably since. By the time the Seventh Glasian Migration arrived, their technology and firepower had stepped up under Tzeentch’s gaze to pose an existential threat to the entire Cloudburst Sector. Alderoster had already begun the process of expanding the Chapter from a few dozen survivors with the gene-seeds of their fallen brethren into a proper Chapter, but Arden threw himself into the task with manic energy. He set a standing order for Apothecaries to institute monthly checks on each Battle Brother to establish the progress of their progenoid gland reconstitution, to harvest the gene-seed the instant they were mature enough to do so, and also flew to each Deathwatch Fortress to ever have had Blue Daggers stationed therein to collect any gene-seed they may have had.

Then, he began the process of further expanding the Chapter itself. He had always thought it a bit overly constraining to force the specialist branches of Chapters to such a limited size. Why, he asked, did Techmarine Brotherhoods need to limit themselves to such low numbers? Surely, the Chapter would benefit if it had dozens of Techmarines instead of twenty. If the Chaplain attached to a Company died in battle, would it befit the Company if there were no ready replacement? What of the Apothecarion?

Arden had no intention of Legion-building or defying the Codex, but in his mind, there was no real gain to be found in the arbitrary limitation of the specialist branches of the Chapter. The Librarius would always be understrength, there was no way around it; Cloudburst had so precious few psykers. The other specialist forces would suffer no such constraint. Other Ultramarine Successors complain about this at times, but Arden does not care.

Ranult Arden is not a man given to much philosophical introversion, but that doesn’t stop him from doing what he needs to do to defend the Cloudburst Sector. He does not have the trust issues that affect some other Chapter Masters, although he also does not hide his disdain for those Imperial officials who do not provide the aid his Chapter is due in the defense of the Sector. The leaders of the Septiim Adeptus Sororitas are chief among these.

In battle, Arden uses a suit of artificer armor and a Power Bastard. His ranged weapon of choice is a custom Combi-pistol of his own creation. The primary weapon is a Conflagrator Pistol, one of only a handful in Cloudburst. Its secondary attachment is a four-shot Heavy Stubber pistol, a gun that fires .60 caliber tracer bullets, with Mechanicus-grade Helix armor-piercing slugs. It’s a combination that he believes unique, and allows him both anti-tank and anti-infantry capability up close.