Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Master of the Administratum Maskos Samantha Lowenthal==
{{Topquote|This is my ancient home, sir. Do not disrespect it. I said do not! Rogue Trader you may be, but I am an Overlord, and if ever you dare levy troops from my factory workers again, I shall have you fed to my lions. What, you don’t have your own lions? Hmm.|Samantha Lowenthal}}

Samantha Lowenthal is old money in the Maskos high society. As a descendent of one of the families that originally supported Missionary Maskos himself, her family has been in the public eye of the people for as long as history records. Thanks to that publicity, and no small amount of economic finagling, the Lowenthal family has been able to remain a constant presence in the Imperial nobility and merchantry for thousands of years.

Lowenthal is the ninth of her immediate ancestral family to ascend to Subsector Overlordship. Like many of her predecessors, she has refused to divest her family of its many, many businesses, although she does begrudgingly allow the Arbites to routinely inspect her family’s finances to make sure her decisions do not overly favor her own interests. Lowenthal is fabulously wealthy, moreso than one would suspect an Overlord of a system founded and named after a Missionary would be.

She is also ruthless, prideful, and a bit self-conscious about her position. Her rank as a Subsector Overlord may be secure, but Cloudburst is hardly an auspicious or prestigious posting compared to Drumnos or Naxos. Still, Lowenthal presents herself like a queen.

Some Governors and Overlords are very much bureaucrats, but Lowenthal is a classic Imperial aristocrat. To her social inferiors, she is a towering figure, as are her children to a lesser extent. However, every time she decides she is the most important person in the Subsector, High Inquisitrix Lerica arranges for some tiny, near-invisible reminder that the Inquisitorial palace of Cloudburst is a few hundred miles away, and full of people with far, far greater power.

Lowenthal is a product of the times. Politics on Maskos tend towards the dynastic, but the upset caused to the surface by the Glasian Migration (or First Glasian Migration, as it now called) led the people to demand a strong new leader. The existing Subsector Overlord, Marco Pazzi, stepped down after the people nearly rose up in arms in outrage at the state of the planet’s defenses. The new Overlord, voted in by the Sector Overlord and his Council, was Lowenthal’s ancestor Julius Lowenthal. Julius sent the fullest force of his family’s business interests to the ravaged surface of Maskos, rebuilding and fortifying what remained, and earned his way into the people’s trust. As centuries wended their way past, the collective wealth of the Lowenthal family expanded and expanded, until the family was both the wealthiest in the system, and its ruler. The family also bears extensive scrutiny from the Ordo Famulous of the Adeptus Sororitas, and most of its marriages are arranged by the church. While the Lowenthal family members do not always appreciate it, this has prevented inbreeding or any strains of the psyker gene manifesting, and has allowed the family to stay in power uncontested, despite the violent nature of the Cloudburst Sector’s recent history.

Samantha is not a psyker, but as the hostess of the local Inquisition, she does have some dealings with psykers as employees or guests of the Inquisition. Chief Rastimos keeps the Inquisition’s business their own, and does not rely on Maskos’s own Astropathic Choir to messaging, but periodically the Inquisition does make requests of Maskos assets the Overlord is not in a position to deny.

Lowenthal also sees much of the power of her family as a birthright, and treats it as such. She finds it personally offensive when other nobles ask for favors, as if it would ever be anything other than a business or political transaction in her mind. She has no military experience, and does not carry a weapon as a matter of course.