Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Lord General Senioris Charles Xoss==
{{Topquote|Silver knives, hot laser, brass bullets. That’s the way! Let Arden and Lerica plot their plots and hatch their schemes. Give me aliens to shoot and good men to lead, and I’ll punt these birds right in the cloaca, every time.|Charles Xoss}}

As is usually the case in a full Sector of the Imperium, one or more Lords General command the ground military assets of the Sector. In the case of Cloudburst, there are two: Charles Xoss and Howard Halwart. Charles Xoss is the senior by dint of many years of rank, and he operates from the Cloudburst Secured Tunnel Network, only a stone’s throw from the Overlord’s Palace. An officer of his stature rarely leaves their command center most of the time, of course, thanks to the difficulty inherent to replacing them, but Xoss is old enough that he wouldn’t leave anyway.

Xoss is high nobility of Cloudburst, and in fact is a distant relative of Sector Overlord Quintus. His military career started at twelve, when he enrolled in the Cloudburst Junior Officers’ Program. He followed an unremarkable trajectory for advancement in the Imperial military hierarchy until the age of fifty, when the Planetary Governor of Celeste appointed him the Flag Marshal of the Celeste PDF. However, in M41.814, twenty regiments of Celestial Guard Rifles rose to the Astra Militarum for a passing Crusade into the Naxos Sector, along with a regiment of Cloudburst Defenders and five regiments of Thimblan Argent Swords. The combined infantry assets of the force needed a single officer to serve as their high commander, and Xoss volunteered to transfer his commission from the PDF to the Guard to serve as that commander.

Four years later, Nurgle had whittled the full ranks of the Cloudburst Sector’s contribution to the Crusade from two hundred sixty thousand down to fourteen thousand, but Charles Xoss was a hero for saving even that many from the nightmarish meat grinder of the Imperium’s never-ending battles against the armies of Nurgle. He had shown unflinching courage, consistent and even-handed discipline, and creative tactical thinking in his opposition to the Plaguemaster. The enlisted men of the crusade force mustered out or joined combined regiments, while the surviving commissioned officers returned to praise and thanks from the Cloudburst hierarchy, and General Xoss’s career rocketed to greater heights.

After the crusade ended, the newly-minted Lieutenant General in the Imperial Guard took to commanding the regiments of Cloudburst Sector troops assigned to patrolling the border with the Drumnos Sector. After only a few short decades, the Dark Winds pirate gang, which had swollen to a full-size rebellion against the Imperium, launched an assault on the Cloudburst Sector’s southern edge. The combined forces of the Battlefleets Drumnos and Cloudburst, alongside several elements of the Cloudburst Mechanicus, counterattacked against the Dark Winds and crushed them entirely. Lieutenant General Xoss was among them, and led a combined force of Septiim and Clegran troops in ground actions in support of the Skitarii of Cognomen. Although radiation poisoning mysteriously laid several of his troops low, Xoss succeeded in corralling the Leman Russ Annihilators the Dark Winds fielded, and crushed them when they tried to withdraw. Xoss was promoted to General, and became the new leader of all Imperial Guard forces on Cloudburst’s southern and Exo-zone border.

After that, Xoss went on rejuvenat treatments to extend his life, and eventually rose to the position of Lord General Cloudburst after the death by liver failure of his predecessor, Lord General Grummon. The newly appointed Sector Overlord promoted Xoss to Lord General after consultation with the Overlords of the Subsectors. Xoss moved from Celeste to Cloudburst proper and settled with his family into the warren of secured tunnels under the moon’s surface. Shortly after that, tragedy struck. His ship, the Cloistered Hate, disappeared into the Warp and got trapped by the whorls of aetheric space. When he finally emerged, he was only one day older, along with the rest of the crew, but eight hundred years had passed. He eventually settled into a command position after some bureaucratic wrangling, and has steadfastly refused to leave the Celeste system since.

Xoss commands the growing ranks of the Cloudburst Astra Militarum from the tunnel network, in a custom-designed command structure built into the walls of the tunnels. Because of the natural time delay in all inter-system communications, even psychic ones, Xoss can’t direct his forces at any tactical or operational level from these tunnels, but they do allow him to keep a rough count of active-duty personnel in the Sector at most times. Of course, during the ramp-up to the Glasian invasions, the military contingents of some planets rise dramatically, which requires that he keep track of it, as their commander.

Beyond his command duties, Xoss is technically required to serve in a field command position if the Celeste system itself ever comes under attack from a force large enough to require the mustering and deployment of its full Imperial Guard and PDF defenses. However, in a practical sense, this is both highly unlikely and unpragmatic. Xoss is an ancient man, and even juvenat treatments can’t hide the fact that his body can’t endure much more prolonging. Besides, even Leviathan and Capitol Imperialis superheavy transports have fewer command and communications options than his own home tunnels.

Because Xoss has command authority over all Imperial Guard forces in the Sector, he is often consulted when a planetary government requires advice or approval from Sector Command to raise a regiment. His decades of service as the supreme commander of the Guard in Cloudburst have granted him keen insight on the needs of a regiment when they face specific foes or obstacles, and he lends his knowledge to whatever System Overlord or Planetary Governor needs them as required. Of course, not all martial assets in the Sector answer to him. The Navy, the Blue Daggers, the various Mechanicus forces, and the armed enforcement wings of the Arbites answer to their own leaders. Xoss’s forces are the most numerous by far, of course, and unlike Arden or Maynard, he bases from Cloudburst itself, and thus is sometimes called on, fairly or not, to serve as the representative of other Imperial institutions before the Sector Overlord.

As a part of his chain of command, his forces ultimately answer to both Quintus and the Master of the Administratum Ultima, but the Segmentum Fortress is too far away for it to exert much direct control in such a backwater, and Quintus has no military experience. Xoss, therefore, must decide which threats in the Sector require the full attention of the Imperial Guard. He is aided in this by the senior staff of Coriolis, where much of his force stages between missions. The government of the Septiim system also aids in this. Xoss can, on behalf of the Guard, ask Lord Admiral Maynard for the use of Maynard’s troopships, to transport Guardsmen and their gear to wherever they may be needed, and can also authorize the hiring of mercenaries, although Cardinal Lamarr has already snapped up most of them in the Sector.

Xoss is the loudest proponent of a crackdown on Lamarr. He detests the old Cardinal for so openly flouting the Decree Passive, and has all but begged Lady Inquisitrix Lerica to do something about it. His word, more than any other, has compelled Oscar Havermann to follow up on Lamarr’s actions. However, he is now so busy with the raising and training of troops to prepare for the Seventh Glasian Migration that there is no real chance that he will be able to do something about Lamarr in person.

He gets along better with other senior members of the Sector’s hierarchy. He and Ranult Arden have a polite relationship, while he and Maynard are at least distant friends. He does not like Lerica very much, but she scares the hell out of him, and Lord Marshal Persinius Oolan trusts him to keep the aliens from the walls long enough for the Arbites to do their job.

Because of his advanced age, Xoss doesn’t actually enter battle any longer, but when he did, he did so with an arm-mounted bolter on his left arm and a master-crafted hotshot laspistol in his right hand, which he could holster quickly if he needed a free hand. He also carried a dueling saber he never needed.