Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Harek abn Alnasr, Clan Ahad, Lord Subsector Thimble==
{{Topquote|By the threads of my looms are the Emperor’s armies clothed, by the sweat of the brows of my citizens do they soar over the land, and by the work of my hands, shall my family rule in the Emperor’s name.|Harek abn Alnasr}}

Thimble is the most heavily populated Imperial world in the Cloudburst Sector, and economically the mightiest. Its silvered spires soar high over the baked earth outside, and its foundries and looms feed the economy of the Sector like no other world save Cognomen. Clan Ahad has presided over the Sector for over a thousand years, and its leadership has enabled the planet to rise nearly to the level of productivity it had between the fall of the Terran Federation and its own collapse.

Lord Harek is responsible for much of its growth. His combination of ruthless economic exploitation and expansion, and his family’s personal wealth, have fueled much of Thimble’s growing export business. The planet exports aircars, clothing, and some household goods, as well as various industrial goods and alloys.

Clan Ahad has been able to push Thimble’s power throughout nearby space. Their policy for colonization is aggressive; both of the moons of Thimble are undergoing extensive construction at Harek’s order. Harek is pouring his money into his own project; namely his resurrection laboratory.

Harek is obsessed with living long enough to see his clan’s vision for the Subsector come to fruition. Working with an army of Hereteks and mercenaries, he led the roundup of over thirty thousand scavs and underhivers from Singer Hive, which he traded for all manner of illegal mind-transference and cloning technology. In the secret laboratory he has built on the moon Iocanto, his servants are crafting him a genetically-identical body, one that is essentially him at the age of 20. When his current body ages beyond its limit, he intends to transfer his memories and his mind to that body, and return to the public eye as his own grandson.

Aside from these Heretek servants and a few members of his immediate family, nobody yet knows of his plan. Certainly, Overlord Quintus does not know what Harek is doing. If Lord Beraxos were to learn of what Harek is doing, he would have the Overlord’s execution warrant printed and ready for Inquisitorial approval in hours. Harek knows this, and has taken every precaution to prevent anybody from learning about his plan.
The damnable part is, he thinks, that there is no harm in what he is doing. If the technology works and produces a clone that is free of outside influence or risks, then why should it be illegal? It is because he can’t think of an answer that he assumes that there is no answer. In reality, the Heretek level of understanding of the cloning technology is at best tenuous. It is quite possible that whatever happens during the mind transference will destroy the body’s neural system. Of course, the group has neglected to inform Harek of this.

Beyond his ‘dynastic’ ambitions, Harek abn Alnasr is a model Imperial Subsector Overlord. The people who enjoy the benefits of hive life adore him, while the proles find him amusing or annoying, if they think of him at all. He periodically showers the upper hives with gifts largesse, but mostly couldn’t be asked. His ties to the military are those of duty alone; he has never served in the military. He leaves much of the running of the system’s affairs to his subordinates as he focuses on the larger concerns, such as the rest of the Subsector’s preparations for the imminent arrival of the Glasians. Although the Thimble Subsector does not contain any worlds that the Glasians are going to hit in the Seventh Migration’s first wave, the possibility that the aliens succeed in destroying a world and then move to a Thimble Subsector system, as they did with Chlorit and Coriolis, means that the Thimble Subsector still must be protected. Of course, the invasion of the Orks of Squiggothrider into the Rampart system also drew the attention of the Navy. Lord Harek has diverted every ship he thinks the Subsector can spare to the defense of the Rampart system from further alien incursions.

Lord Harek has an uncomfortable relationship with the Inquisition. Of course, they can never learn of his mind transference lab, but he also has more political power than the majority of nobles or even Overlords in the Sector, thanks to his colossal wealth and the fact that he controls the only Hive World in Cloudburst. The enormous shipyards of the Spindle system allow his world to manufacture ships and metallurgical goods in a volume that can change the course of a small-scale war, purely on the basis of their volume. However, while High Inquisitrix Lerica is in a position to disregard the undeniable good that Harek’s industrial work has done for the Imperium, lesser Inquisitors tend to watch their step around the canny Overlord.

As a product of the same Highborn schools and academies as most other Thimble nobles, Harek had an early grounding in politics, economics, religion, history (at least the sanitized version taught to Imperial Highborn), and at least a grounding in warfare theory. However, Harek quickly proved to be a voracious reader, and he fairly gobbled up knowledge about the system, about its past, and most especially about the ancient labs on its moons.

Harek has had a few notable interactions with the Deathwatch. As the system in the Subsector with the largest volume of civilian shipping (at least until Cognomen finishes its expansions), the Spindle system has had numerous problems with alien pirates or infiltrators. On four occasions since M41.822, the Deathwatch has sent Kill-Marines to the Spindle System to either hunt down alien troublemakers or advise Clan Ahad on how to do so. Notably, one of these Kill-Marines was current Master of the Defenses Arthur Molliere. One of these visits happened while Harek was Overlord, and another happened two years before his elevation to the role.

As perhaps befits a Heretek, Harek has wildly different public and private levels of defense. He seems to carry no more than a ceremonial dueling pistol, and even then, it is usually in the hands of his second and bodyguard, Niles Lancaster, one of the few people who knows of his secret lab. However, he has a highly illegal precision laser blaster built into his prosthetic left wrist, and carries a hardened polymer blade under his trousers on both legs, neither of which will show up on a metal detector or smell wand.