Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==High Prince, Princeps August Cobus Matraxia==
{{Topquote|To the Throne do I offer my service. To my High Queen do I offer my loyalty. To the Machine God do I offer my obedience. To my species do I offer my shield. To the foe do I offer my hate. To my world do I offer my nobility. Finally, to my family, I offer myself, and may I lead you into battle until my eyes fail and my bones turn to dust.|Cobus Matraxia}}

By the metrics of Imperial success, Cobus Matraxia is nobody. So many worlds of the Imperium measure success by heretics burned, aliens slain, money accumulated, and other mechanisms that simply don’t apply to him. However, Cobus is no mere Menial or void crewer, destined for nothing of note. Cobus is the second-in-command of the Noble Knightly House Matraxia, and his lack of burned foes is indicative only of the low numbers of his House. As soon as the Martians let him off his leash, he confidently asserts, Cloudburst’s enemies will die in droves.

There may be something to Cobus’s confidence. Cobus is a Prince of ABX202020, and the husband of Remilia Matraxia, its High Queen. His combat performance skills equal hers in simulation, and he has made extensive use of the various training devices with which Cognomen has supplied ABX202020 to train his talents ever higher. Among the hundreds of simulated battles in which he has engaged while he awaits a larger pool of talent for his House, Cobus has improved his teamwork and coordination immensely.

Cobus began life as Cobus Dallde, a common laborer on Cognomen. He attended school and studied the Will of the Machine Spirits, as most children on Cognomen do, and eventually entered the labor force in a factory that built parts for the Legio Congelatio. However, when a position opened up above him, and he applied for it, his application was rerouted to the colonization effort for ABX202020. When offered a position as a member of the pilot colony for the planet, he accepted, and off he flew.

Upon arrival, he was selected by genetic screening algorithms as a potential Knight pilot, and to nobody’s surprise greater than his own, he was chosen as one of the first Nobles of the planet, by virtue of the Mechanicus not wanting to simply put their own people on the Thrones Mechanicus. It was during his training that he met his future wife and High Queen, Remilia Matraxia. Instantly smitten but wise enough not to show it straightaway, Cobus engineered every opportunity he could to be present for her, and the two of them eventually merged their houses, which consisted solely of themselves, into the new Royal Family of ABX202020. Of course, to hear Cobus tell it, his was a suave and charismatic wooing and courtship, but the new House did take Remilia’s name.

For over thirty years, Cobus has been obsessively pursuing training in his Knight suit. He passed his Ritual of Becoming on his first try, and although his skills are only average among the Knight pilots on ABX202020, his and Remilia’s scores drag the average up. The entire Matraxia family are now Knight pilots.

Of the six, Cobus is the loudest proponent of fielding the incomplete House now, before all of the prospective Nobles in the House are fully equipped and have mounts to ride. Knights are the ultimate mobile force multiplier, requiring a crew of only one and able to deliver firepower not far less than a Titan. With the greenskin hordes, the FCC, and the ever-annoying Glasians on the way, Cobus argues that House Matraxia should take to the skies and battle the foes wherever they may be found, regardless of their under-expanded force.

Cobus is a passionate and clever man, but he lacks his wife’s natural talent at statecraft, and he is less able to argue in parity with the Mechanicus overlords of his fiefdom. As a natural function of the Questor Mechanicus system, House Matraxia will eventually have to take on even more lesser nobles who may not necessarily be directly related to his own as subjects in their House, and he is not looking forward to that. Still, he understands the necessity of the expansion of the House. Unlike Remilia, he does not dread the day that the Inquisition learns of the secret of ABX202020. In his mind, the Inquisition are fainthearts when it comes to contradicting the Mechanicus. As the Princeps August of the House, he is in an awkward position, as about half of his subordinates are presently his children. However, other Knights are trickling in from other worlds.

Cobus wears his silver saber of office and no other arms, most of the time.