Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Lord Subsector Nauphry Matheus Soldati==
{{Topquote|My planet is bipolar, but by the Throne are we hitting our quotas! I say, do you think it would make things better or worse if I announced a formal competition to see who can open the most new mines in a month?|Matheus Soldati}}

Some Subsector Overlords rule through fear, others through inertia. Some rule through military glory, others the clenched fist of the law. Matheus Soldati rules through a combination of jovial nature, excellent breeding, the public support of the Ecclesiarchy, and complete denial of facts he doesn’t like.

Born and raised in a tropical island chain at the equator of the Nauphry IV demilitarized zone, Soldati lived his entire early life in the combination of unapproachable isolation, unfathomable wealth, and religious instruction that defines much of the Imperial nobility of the Nauphry Subsector. As a citizen of neither of the two super-nations that have rent the Nauphry IV surface and ecology in twain, he feels no particular attachment to either. In truth, he barely cares for the two nations, seeing them as being essentially inert in their ability to actually look forward to serving the Imperium. Playing their competitive edge against each other is all well and good for economic reasons, and it has certainly done immense good for the Nauphry shipyards and factories, but he finds them distasteful in the extreme.

However, Soldati has hid this well, as he should. As Nauphry IV has no Planetary Governor, thanks to its absurdly bipolar rulership, he is the de facto ruler of the planet as well as the System and Subsector governments. Of course, even his critics in the two nations begrudgingly admit that there is simply no way that even the best-educated men such as Soldati can rule so much at once. Thus, he delegates. Soldati has appointed over fifteen hundred Ministers and Lords Excellent to rule the system, Subsector, and parts of the planet in his absence, although they have limited power over Nauphry IV itself. To keep the rather large militaries of the system from exercising tribal affinity for one nation over the other, Soldati has also strictly enforced the harsh rules that separate troop levies from the places from which they were levied. Of course, these rules long predate him, but he has been downright forceful in his denial of the two Federocracies.

Perhaps because of his ironclad upholding of certain planetary laws, he has a somewhat more comfortable relationship with the various Arbites and Enforcers that cross his path than most Subsector Overlords. The Arbites enforce the Lex Imperialis, and couldn’t care less for the bipolar nature of local law as long as the Emperor’s Word is obeyed; the fact that Soldati has the same opinion has earned him the distant respect of the world’s Judges.

However, Soldati has no patience for the local and galactic-scale Guilds that operate much of the actual economic work of the planet. The constant urging of the two Federocracies has made it clear to the Guilds that they should have no time for failure. The Guilds have a penchant for putting tiny bureaucratic obstructions in just the right spots to bottleneck the industrial work that is the lifeblood of the Nauphry IV tithe payment, just to remind the governments in turn how much power the Guilds have.

In person, far from the shouting matches that characterize the Nauphry IV population and politics, Soldati is a jolly fellow, with a grandfatherly air and physique. He has a booming voice and an infectious smile, and when the planet’s not giving him an ulcer, he has found contentment in the glass-bottomed boats that sail around the island chain on which the Imperium bases its holdings. He has a wife and four children, and caries only a vox and pen-knife, never a gun.