Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Watch Captain Roganuharu of the Celestial Knights==
{{Topquote|No, I do not know when I will go home to my Brothers. It’s all right, though. This Sector is worth defending. I have brothers with whom to train and pray, I have foes to butcher. I have my faith and my arms, and a good ship to carry me. No, it’s not home, but life is good here, and I shall stay.|Roganuharu}}

Captain Roganuharu is the present third in command of the Deathwatch in Cloudburst and the Captain of Watch Station Discus.

The Celestial Knights and the Blue Daggers are neighbors in the dark reaches of the nebula that created their home Sectors. Because of their proximity, there are extensive interactions between the two when one joins the other’s Sector Deathwatch. The Deathwatch has a far smaller presence in the Naxos Sector thanks to the extensive presence of the conventional military there. The Celestial Knights contribute regularly and generously to the Cloudburst Deathwatch. They believe, perhaps fairly, that the presence of the underdefended Sector to their trailing would not ablate a true threat on the scale of a Black Crusade or a genuine Waaagh!, and that a threat like that would plow through Maynard and Arden and hit the Knights in the back. Given the attrition rate and constant contamination threat posed by the Pox Ring and other Chaos-infested stellar formations in Naxos, the Knights simply can’t take the risk.

Enter the Watch Fortress Dascomb. Roganuharu is a Watch Captain at Dascomb’s largest off-shoot, Watch Station Discus. As a member of the Knights, Roganuharu was a Sergeant in the Seventh Battle Company (one of the notable deviations from typical Unforgiven formations is their lack of traditional Reserve Companies). While serving with his parent Chapter, Roganuharu displayed a particular aptitude for the use of exceptionally heavy weapons. While nearly every Marine in a Chapter spends at least some time using Special- or Heavy-type weapons such as lascannons and missile launchers, Roganuharu has a true skill with them. He successfully sniped a Dark Eldar Jetbike moving at eighty-six kilometers per hour from half a klick away upwind, immediately catching the eye of his Company Captain during his time in the Devastators. That by itself would not have been terribly remarkable, had he not performed the feat with a mortar. Subsequent decades of service showed it to be no fluke. He displayed near artistic levels of precision with a heavy bolter and the lascannon. He eventually moved over to the Seventh Company as a Tactical Marine, but kept his heavy bolter to serve as a squad heavy weapons trooper.

Eventually, he and his company went into a gruesome battle against two competing forces of Chaos. The Rusted Legion of Nurgle and the Splintered Eyes of Tzeentch descended on the hapless and much-maligned Agri-world of Lardox 5 in the Naxos Sector, and the Seventh flew to stop them from destroying the vital livestock ranches there. Roganuharu realized that both cults would stop to fight each other if there were no immediately obvious Imperial presence between them, even if both groups happened to be pursuing the same overall operational objective. He and the half of the Company assigned to his leadership adopted maximum-range engagement tactics, sniping at enemy leaders with anti-tank weapons from absurd distances out of camouflaged nests. If the Chaos forces noticed his troops, the Knights would seed their area with traps and mines and then run for distance, if the Chaotics didn’t, they would just start killing each other.

This worked for a time, but eventually the Splintered Eyes realized what his forces were doing. Their leaders waited until the other half of the Company under Captain Leodhardt were stuck in place fighting the Rusted Legion, then drove their own forces directly at the area that Roganuharu’s ambush sites surrounded, gambling that the Knights had a cache there for resupplying between attacks.

Roganuharu was caught flat-footed by this bold maneuver, but managed to rally his forces to attempt a bottlenecking of the encroaching Chaotics while his serfs and Techpriests hastily repositioned their cache. The grizzled Sergeant only managed to move half of his troops into position before the Splintered Eyes came within maximum range. The two forces engaged each other, but to Roganuharu’s disquiet, the Splintered Eyes did not react at all to the sudden opposition. He had merely confirmed his location to his enemy, and they were risking massive casualties to take the chance that they could push through to end the threat his demi-Company posed once and for all.

The Splintered Eyes used wicked sorcery and mobile mortar units to hem the Knights into an open field, with their supply cache and hastily-moving reinforcements beyond, and started shelling the Knights relentlessly. That may have been the end of the Knights, had Roganuharu not had two key advantages: most of the troops he had with him were Devastators, which he could field like few others, and a full squad of Assault Marines, with unparalleled maneuverability.

The Splintered Eyes mounted the hedgerow to push the Knights deeper into the field and expose them to line-of-sight guns, and the Assault Marines suddenly landed among them, hacking away with Power Weapons and plasma pistols. The front line of the Eyes simply disintegrated under the fierce and unexpected counterattack. After a predetermined length of twenty-five seconds, all of the Marines suddenly engaged their Assault Packs and leaped high, just as the barrage of shots from the Devastators’ heavy weapons arrived to cut down the surviving Tzeentchians before they could rally. Roganuharu personally led a counterattack under their cover fire and vaulted the hedgerow just as the Assault Marines landed again, several meters deeper, in the very thick of the gibbering Tzeentchian hordes.

With the Devastators now unable to fire, they sprinted out of cover for the hedgerow, while the Assault Marines and Tactical Marines formed two parallel, moving lines, pushing forward into the Tzeentchian hordes in tandem. The Tzeentchian troops had raced full-out to endure the barrage of Roganuharu’s long-range fire; their troops were tired and they had brought few vehicles. As such, the simple cultists fell by the hundreds as the Assault Marines pushed away from the hedgerow, and the Tactical Marines pushed behind them in the same direction. When the Devastators arrived at the hedgerow, they added their own fire to the mix, shooting over the heads of the Assault Marines into the pressed ranks behind them.

When the heavier mutant troops caught up to the main body of soldiers, the Assault Marines leaped clear, and the Tactical Marines added their fire to the Devastators to thin the herd. This time, however, they had no advantage of surprise, and even Marines need to reload. The Tzeentchians rallied and pushed into closer combat, drawing Roganuharu and his squad into hand-to-hand, never his strong suit.

As the melee worsened, Roganuharu’s helm HUD showed his casualties mounting. He fought like a man possessed, however, and after four tense minutes of non-stop slaughter, the Tzeentchians broke. When the reinforcements from the other half of the demi-Company arrived, they massacred the Tzeentchians.

When the final tally came in, fourteen Marines were dead, eight more were wounded, and over four hundred Tzeentchians lay defeated, with another two hundred running. Four Chaos Space Marines lay among the dead, with another two confirmed crippled. With the majority of their fastest troops defeated, the other Tzeentchian forces were little threat to the Nurglites and Imperials, who managed to mop them up without too much more difficulty. Roganuharu was, naturally enough, earmarked for promotion.

However, ever since the Glasian Migrations, and their Tzeentchian sponsorship, came to the attention of the Knights, when they first helped the Navy and Carcharadons drive the aliens off of Septiim hundreds of years ago, the Knights have had a tradition. Because of the relative youth of the Blue Daggers (which the Knights tactfully refrain from discussing overmuch) and the fact that the Cloudburst Sector is grossly underequipped for such a burden, the Knights have kept eleven Brothers in the Deathwatch of Cloudburst ever since their first establishment. No Knight has ever risen to Watch Commander, since few Celestial Knights are willing to spend so much time away from their Nurgle-battered home, but Roganuharu may be the exception to the rule. He has been serving in the Deathwatch for over forty years, and as a Captain for four, and as the Captain of Watch Station Discus for one. As such, he is actually at the top of the list to command should Domack die suddenly and without a clear successor.

Roganuharu was offered a position in the Vigil only a few short years after the fateful battle between his own men and the Splintered Eyes. The Inquisition under Lerica has an eye for talent, and his ability to modify plans on the fly and exploit the composition of his forces for maximum effect are obvious benefits for a Deathwatch Kill-team. Because Kill-teams operate without an officer to command them on the large majority of missions, they need to be able to take orders from Brothers of roughly the same rank as all other people on the team. Beyond that, if a Sergeant is assigned to a Kill-team, he must overlook the rivalries of the Chapters that compose his force allotment.

Roganuharu may have been hired for combat skill and improvisational creativity, but he has ascended to Captain because of his personnel skills. He has worked with other Watch Captains to find ideal matches for Kill-team composition on many occasions. At present, he has gathered several of the most experienced Kill-Marines and Kill-teams to Watch Fortress Discus along with every ship he can find, in preparation for a special mission.

He is planning to send some of his ships and Marines to the worlds that the Glasians are about to hit, while sending his Kill-marines out in pairs or singly to silently board FCC vessels that raid the edges of the Nauphry Subsector and capture them, then either self-destruct them or fly them to Grand Anchor to get their IFFs changed. While some officers would question his use of the Deathwatch’s precious assets against pirates, Roganuharu is convinced that the FCC is about to use their position just outside the border of the Imperium to launch raids against its vulnerable flanks during the tumult of the Glasian Migrations.

Within the ranks of the Deathwatch, Roganuharu is a somewhat controversial figure. His record is sterling, and his nature professional and courteous, but his beliefs are anathemic to some of his subordinates. On the face of it, he is a perfect Deathwatch Captain, but his Chapter’s ideology is simply inaccurate, in the eyes of his comrades.

Like all Celestial Knights, Roganuharu believes that the Primarchs split and turned on each other during the Horus Heresy. He believes that there were seven Traitors, who turned their coats to Chaos and assaulted the Imperium to make Horus the new Emperor. He also believes that there were seven Loyalist Primarchs who did not, and remained in the Emperor’s service. The Celestial Knights merge the roles of Vulkan and Ferrus Manus into a single individual named The Smith, and Sanguinius and Lion El’Jonson into a single being named The Angel. Other Chapters find this perplexing and offensive, and Roganuharu has learned to keep his trap shut about it, to avoid provoking his comrades. He believes that Alpharius is just a myth, and Konrad Curze is nothing more than a boogeyman story collection the Officio Assassinorum and Inquisition spreads to keep Frontier worlds in line.

However, unlike most of his Chapter, he has not remained staid in his beliefs. As he serves on the multi-Chapter Deathwatch, alongside others who descend from the Lion or from one of the Smith Chapters, he sees increasing evidence that his Chapter is simply wrong. The Salamander and Iron Hand Marines in his Company have mutually exclusive worldviews in so many ways, even if they can get over it to work together. The Blood Angels and Unforgiven in his force couldn’t be more different. Even more than worldviews and traits, the different histories, homeworlds, and conduct of the Chapters his own Chapter tells him have the same origins baffles him.

It is hard for him to place his disquiet. The feeling grows worse when he sees how his own Chapter receives the brunt of so many jokes and disgusted glances from other Chapters. Worst of all is when his own parent Chapter, the Dark Angels, look down on his brothers despite their sterling service.

Roganuharu does not yet feel that he can speak up about these remarks and doubts. Initially, of course, his impulse was to deny that any such a mistake had been made. However, for over fifteen years, the highest-ranked Chaplain in Dascomb has been Gregorius of the Dark Angels, who has made his seething contempt for Roganuharu both abundantly clear and carefully detailed. No Space Marine Captain is fool enough to ignore the words of his Chaplain, and Gregrorius is more acerbic than most. At long last, after one hundred ninety years of life, Roganuharu is uncertain.

However, he has resolved to face the huge problems threatening the Deathwatch before taking it up with his home Chapter. He knows of ten other members of the Knights in his or nearby Deathwatch structures, and he intends to ask them their opinions eventually, once his current campaign against the FCC wraps up.

When he enters battle, Roganuharu wears one of only three suits of Cataphractii armor left in the Sector, armed with a Plasma cannon and chainfist. When the Terminator armor is not called for, he prefers Aquila armor and his Plasma cannon, wielded two-handed.