Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Lord Subsector Delving Miles laDremankine==
{{Topquote|The darkness rises against the Aquila’s endless light. I see it every year. I can read the projections of my mines and refineries, you know. Every year, a bit less goes to luxuries and a bit more goes to warships and such. How much longer can we hold shut the gates of hell?|Miles laDremankine}}

For somebody with no military experience, Miles laDremankine puts on a heavily martial air. He has never served because of his extensive genetic defects, but he does not allow that to stop him from pretending he is a soldier’s soldier at every chance he thinks he can get away with.

laDremankine is a dwarf, and has served as the Lord Subsector for forty years. He and Lord Ranult Arden work together to arrange the defense of the Subsector during the centennial Glasian assaults on Septiim, and sometimes other worlds in the Subsector. He is also in charge of coordinating the immense shipments of rare metals from Delving to Cognomen and Thimble, as well as serving as the figurehead of the Delving militaries.

And what a figurehead he is. When he goes about in public, he wears a custom-designed military uniform he has never earned, and carries a shockingly expensive master-crafted Hellpistol he can barely draw. He also visits all of the weekly strategic meetings of the planetary Marshal and High General (in charge of the SDF/PDF and Guard, respectively). He has memorized the entire Low and High Gothic radio code and alphanumeric response code, all of the PDF and SDF current landing aircraft codes, and the names of the thirty highest-ranked Blue Daggers. He is on speaking terms with both Lord Inquisitor Hueng and Lord Admiral Maynard, and has a recall of the ships and Captains of the Subsector Battlefleet Delving that puts some of its actual officers to shame.

Lord General Xoss once remarked, well out of earshot, that it was not laDremankine’s vigor or brains that kept him from proper military service, but his stature. Precisely why laDremankine so favors the military, Xoss does not know, nor does he especially care. In reality, laDremankine has told nobody, and there is no one incident or event that contributed to it. He is simply fascinated by the military and its stylings, and he finds the subject endlessly educational.

As one could imagine, the upswing in interest the military has enjoyed during laDremankine’s tenure is no bad thing for Subsector Delving’s many valuable assets. To be sure, Battlefleet Delving and the Blue Daggers are better equipped now than they have ever been, and laDremankine has been carefully polishing and refining the mechanisms of government in the Subsector in anticipation of the lean times for decades. His love of the armed forces does not blind him to the very real possibility that the Glasians might actually score another victory some day, and he has taken some preparations to ensure a loss on that scale does not cripple the Subsector forever. This level of pragmatism soothes the working relationship between himself and Arden, who has little patience for the slowness of the Imperial bureaucracy.

As Subsector Overlord of the Delving Subsector, laDremankine is at the focal point of the incessant resource needs of the rest of the Imperium, and the precarious ecological balance his planet has to endure for its people to survive. He spends enough time on his military matters that he has not been able to divert his full attention to the ecological repair and improvement of Delving. If he spent no more time on military affairs than he needed to, that would be easier to forgive, but as it stands, many Delving civilian and Administratum leaders have begun to question if this obsession of his has led him to distraction.

To be fair, Delving has many concerns. The Glasians hit Delving in the Third Migration, and the planet’s civilian population took a horrific pounding from the aliens before the Blue Daggers and the Cognomen Skitarii drove them off. After that, the Delving Guard became the primary concern for the planetary government. It took two hundred years, but eventually, the Delving Guard rose to a level of competence that ensured that it would only be dependent on the Daggers for the direst circumstances.

Thanks to the enormous vulnerability of the Delving terraforming machines, which no other Mining World under Administratum control in the Sector needs, most of the Home Guard are tied up in asset protection instead of garrison duty. Overlord laDremankine tours these facilities as often as he’s able to do so. He has attended the dedication ceremonies for several Delving Guard regiments raised to fight in the Circuit, and after he finally realized he wouldn’t be able to accompany the Delving regiment raised to defend Oglith, he couldn’t be talked out of his room for a day and a half.

As befits a martially-obsessed person of his status, laDremankine carries a dueling pistol and his Hellpistol at all times, and sometimes even wears a flak jacket to work.