Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Forgemaster Shokunin Asutori of the Bone Knives==
{{Topquote|Offending the Machine Spirits will get you killed in the field faster than anything else possibly could. How aliens fight after scaring theirs into submission, I will never know.|Shokunin Asutori}}

The Deathwatch maintains their own equipment whenever possible, just as a matter of pragmatism. The Adeptus Mechanicus’s reliability aside, Deathwatch postings are usually remote and dangerous. Routine resupply is expensive and impractical for most of their locales. Thus, the Forgemasters of the Deathwatch have to be more than solely veteran alien-killers. They need to be able to adapt their technology to circumstances – hard enough in the stagnant Imperium – and balance the technological needs of the thousand-plus Astartes Chapters. Some Forgemasters balance each Chapter’s varying ideas about technology and the Machine Spirits with precision and care.

Shokunin Asutori does not. He is as bull-headed and stubborn as a grox and twice as leathery. He is as flexible as the job needs him to be and not one inch more, and his policy about adapting xenotech to Imperial needs is about as yielding as a million-year-old glacier. He can be friendly enough to those who shut up and get out of his way, but if those options aren’t in one’s immediate plans, he is as tough as an Ork and roughly as forgiving.

Asutori has only been Forgemaster for eight years, and served as a normal Deathwatch Techmarine before that for seven. Normally, the process of selecting a new Forgemaster would arrive at its end in a far slower way, but there was no real choice in the matter. Two Techmarines of the Deathwatch at Dascomb were lost with their Forgemaster during a recovery mission on an Adeptus Astartes ship of unknown age found crashed into an Eldar corvette near Vasari’s Cruelty when the Eldar ship suddenly self-destructed. The vacancy demanded a new appointment, and High Keeper Vanados and Watch Commander Domack had to make the choice quickly.

Since then, he has filled the task of Forgemaster with talent, but he has left his fellow Techmarines in the dust. Asutori’s rapport with machines is not something learned, it is something innate, and thus hard to pass on to others. He works in silence, with his prayers to the machine spirits unvoiced and his instructions internalized. Other Techmarines and Techpriests watching him labor over weapons and equipment can only stare in awe, and at the end of his labors, he is often less able than they are to explain how he achieved his marvelous feats of artificing and manufacting.

This is no hindrance for those who use his advanced technology, of course, and his specialized bolter payloads are the bane of xenoforms across the breadth of Dascomb’s jurisdiction. The problem is that since he seems unable to pass on his skills, there is every chance that whomever replaces him will not be able to reach his heights of technoarcana. Asutori is aware of this and finds it a distraction. In his mind, he is not supposed to be a teacher. If others can’t keep up with him, that’s their problem.

Compounding the issue is that he has an at best inconclusive policy towards the use of xenotech. He admits that using salvaged xeno-weapons in an emergency in the field is probably harmless, but his protocol for bringing captured xenotech back to Dascomb is inconsistent. Often, he will stop whatever he is doing to examine recovered xenotech himself for any sign of corruptuous traits, further disrupting attempts by others to follow his work. Other times, he incinerates xenotech without even cursory looks. His policy, he insists, is unyielding, but he rarely shares exactly what that policy is.

In battle, however, all ambiguity fades. He is a monstrously skilled close-range combatant. He has outfitted all of his mechadendrites with arc dischargers, allowing him to engage up to five targets in melee concurrently using nothing but his back. He also carries two Power Handaxes of his own making. His ranged options include a bolt pistol, a plasma pistol, and a conversion beamer he refurbished himself. Eventually, he intends to integrate a Conversion Field into his harness somehow, presumably with his typical lack of documentation.