Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Lord Admiral Walter Maynard==
{{Topquote|How does a region of space so empty cause me so many Throne-damned problems?|Walter Maynard}}

Born on the L5 Lagrange station of the planet Septiim Pentius, Lord Admiral Maynard has arisen over one hundred years of work to command the entire naval contingent of the Cloudburst Sector. He headquarters from the warship Vulpes Ferrum, stationed in the Celeste system and presently on duty in the Hapster System.

Maynard is a grumpy, cynical, and thoroughly unlikeable man, who has nevertheless managed to rip the claws of the Glasians and Orks off the necks of the Cloudburst Sector’s innocents once already, and will do so again. So he proclaims, although his contribution to the defense against the Sixth Migration consisted of, at most, fighting off a few fires in the hangar of the Cruiser on which he was stationed as a First Loaderman’s Rate. His early career is one marked by roundly indifferent performance on his part, and indeed he probably would have languished in obscurity and retired young, had chance not knocked on his door.

When he was thirty-one and serving as a Senior Lieutenant in the service of Battlefleet Nauphry, his Captain gave Maynard a chance to impress him by negotiating a complex asteroid belt in simulation. Maynard promptly left the simulator and brought over another junior officer who had far more aptitude than he for solving such three-dimensional puzzles. Amused but irritated, the Captain then posed to the Senior Lieutenant a series of theoretical problems in the ship’s fighter contingent to solve, and found himself impressed despite it all when Maynard chose to hand them off to the ship’s Junior Commissar and Flight Boss instead.

As Maynard rose in rank, his true skills showed through. Despite his demeanor, Maynard is a genuinely exceptional personnel manager, with skill at quickly analyzing the root of interpersonal squabbles and cutting through pretense and posturing. His skills as an actual Navy officer are nothing to scoff at, either. With nothing but a single Frigate and a Cobra Destroyer, he assaulted and obliterated the notorious pirate Commodore Barzeblood when he slunk from a drubbing in the Drumnos Sector with three ships. Maynard’s ruthless ambush and use of the different ranges of the main guns of the two ships he had at his disposal are still displayed as a study template in the Nauphry and Hapster War Colleges.

Later, Maynard rose to command a four-ship formation of the Sector Fleet, consisting of his own Sword Frigate and three more. He excelled at using the ships’ identical weapon loadouts to form perfect defense perimeters when transitioning them from deep-space formations to asteroid sweep formations, and no convoy he has defended has ever lost a ship to Ork Freebooterz.

However, while he is a perfectly competent fleet officer and skilled Captain, his true strength is his eye for talent, and he knows it as well as every one of his subordinates. His officers would throw themselves out of airlocks to prove themselves to him. Unlike Lord General Halwart, he doesn’t mind aristocratic families offloading their less interesting children on him with purchased commissions, since he knows how desperately the Navy needs both men and money. However, he outright refuses to offer them special privilege, and has weeded several into dead-end careers by simply giving them every chance to fail.

Without family or any intent to retire, Maynard is a man undistracted. He does drink, but never to excess. He does eat gourmet foods in a carefully-designed dining hall on the Vulpes Ferrum of his own making, but never enough to throw off his humours. He does lash out at subordinates, but only when they have cost him blood and treasure. Ultimately, his staff stand between awe and resentment of him at any given time. He is impossible to like, easy to disappoint, and sometimes offers gleams of such brilliant manipulation of assets and fortune that it overcomes all his flaws.

It is hard to gauge how the man behaves outside of command positions, because he hasn’t left the Vulpes Ferrum in over a year. He has stayed on its decks to command the defenses of the Hapster Subsector for four years, first on the hunch that the Glasians would hit it again, then in certainty. He is perhaps the loudest advocate of the piratical nature of the Battlefleets Rampart and Delving, and even gives his approval to Lords Trader and Privateer Commodores who ask for permission to steal pirate ships. In his mind, the fact that Lords Trader and privateers don’t serve him directly is a minor one. After all, if they fail to defend the Imperium when the walls close in, wherever shall they spend their money?

Maynard knows well that Watch Captain Roganuharu and Lord Trader Zutash are both preparing to take major action against the Free Corsair Coalition as soon as possible, and plans to stay well away until the dust settles. He thinks both men naïve if they think they stand any real chance against Langdon Reith.

The old Lord Admiral hates Admiral Reith. To him, Reith is emblematic of everything wrong with the Imperial Navy. The two men are so alike that such an opinion is stinging to Maynard himself, but he believes it fervently. Reith had a chance to make the Imperium far better, and chose instead to rob it. True or not, Maynard thinks Reith to be lazy and self-entitled. Officers who have actually met Reith disagree, but Maynard’s mind is made up: Reith could only have broken from the Imperium so young if he had planned on coasting through Imperial Navy service until greed got the better of him. The irony of the master Human Resources manager having such a blind spot to the true strengths of his most hated enemy is lost on both of them.

For his part, Reith hates Maynard right back, although neither man has ever even seen the other. Reith fears Maynard’s growing fleet, which is swelling with fresh and refurbished ships at a rate that actually equals Reith’s own, despite Reith’s lack of bureaucracy to wade through. Of course, Maynard has more shipyards.

Maynard carries his silvered sword of office and a dueling pistol he has never drawn. He is not a fighter, he insists, but a thinker.