Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Lixivim Dill, real name unknown, official kill count 1667==
{{Topquote|I can kill with a whisper. I do kill with a whisper. The best kills are the ones I read about in the news a week later.|Lixivim Dill}}

Lixivim Dill is a codename, as are the names given to all Imperial Assassins. Some use combinations of numbers and letters, some use the names of the first few Imperial Assassins over and over in homage to their roots, but Lixivim Dill uses an anagram of the numeral of her kill count.

Dill started life in the gutters of Terra, but her cleverness and willingness to rob Imperial institutions to get by drew the attention of the Officio Assassinorum. Dill doesn’t remember a thing before her abduction, thanks to extensive hypno-conditioning. As with all Vanus assassins, she is trained as an infocyte. Her specialty is traveling the streams of data that cross most Imperial system and planetary data webs, collecting knowledge and fielding it against the enemies of Mankind.

However, fourteen years before the Thirteenth Black Crusade, Dill simply vanished from Terra. The Officio Assassinorum keeps up-to-the-minute track of all of their Assassins; those as experienced as Dill were permitted some leeway in accomplishing their missions, but were not allowed off Terra any more than a neophyte would be. Dill had traveled the galaxy many times before, coordinating Sector Commands to root traitors out into the open in rebellions, or covertly directing Planetary Defense Forces to overthrow Heretic cabals without overt Imperial influence.

This was different. The Officio Assassinorum dispatched personnel to find her, but she was simply gone. For two years, the Officio sent agents to places where they suspected Dill might have hidden. When the Ordo Sicarius learned of the Officio’s lapse, they were understandably disgusted and outraged. The Ordo dispatched Assassin-Acolytes to locate Dill, all of whom returned empty-handed.

Dill had prepared over two hundred false identities during the planning of her escape from Imperial leadership. To her mild chagrin, she only needed three to elude the Imperial pursuers. Over the next two years, she made her way out to the remote Cloudburst Sector, stopping only long enough to buy some camping supplies, a few guns, and a few sets of driving gloves, and to steal a Mechanicus dataslate from an unattended battery truck on Calathos.

When Dill arrived in Cloudburst, she immediately got herself a job on the freighter ''Flying Money'', which she had calculated was the vessel most likely to be highjacked by the Free Corsair Coalition. In no time, the FCC did indeed target the freighter, and disabled it after a brief exchange of fire. When FCC troops swept into the ship, Dill navigated effortlessly from cabin to cabin, staying out of the line of sight of the boarders. When the FCC encountered more resistance from the crew than anticipated, thanks to Dill arming several crewers before the attack with illegally-purchased slug pistols, they moved more troops to assist the boarders. Dill snuck past them effortlessly, and maneuvered her way into a cargo pod that the pirates were loading onto their own ship. When it stopped moving, Dill emerged from the cocoon of life support equipment she had made from her camping supplies, walked casually up to the CIC of the warship, walked in after setting off a bomb in an adjacent room to distract the guards, caught Admiral Reith’s eye, and cleared her throat.

After Langdon Reith’s bodyguards were done dogpiling her, Dill pulled out a dataslate packed with Mechanicus data, and a step-by-step breakdown of how she had accomplished her feat. Reith instantly recognized the implication of her information: she could have killed him with disgusting ease, but had come asking for work instead; it was a profoundly unsubtle gesture. It was more than enough to make the point.

Reith hired Dill to serve as his Chief Strategist, and so far, she has been a great investment. With her skills as an infocyte, she has been able to ferret out vulnerabilities in the Imperial and other human governments of the region, including some out in the Cloudburst Circuit that the Rogue Traders of the region have not yet found. Reith has successfully conquered a star system with her help, and his organization is now expanding so quickly that even the other pirate groups in the region are giving him a wide berth.

For Dill’s part, she has found the FCC to be suitable to her needs, at least until the Sicarius hounds draw closer. She knows there’s no real chance that the FCC can or even would try to protect her from another [[Officio Assassinorum]] killer, certainly not if the faint whispers of completely impossible sniper kills on Oglith are true. She and Mimic have never met, but she knows there is no way she could elude him forever. For now, Dill is focusing on evading Imperial attention, and expanding on her own plans.

The Officio Assassinorum, meanwhile, has compiled an extensive dossier on Dill’s activity, and paired it with her records from her Assassinorum mission listing. The Officio and the Inquisition are attempting to learn why Dill abandoned her post. So far, the best the Officio can come up with is that at some point in M41.984, Dill was exposed to something that damaged her mind or loyalty, and for the next two years, she plotted to flee Terra and pursue an unknown goal. Exactly why Dill snapped is open to debate. Her peers suspect a data daemon, her superiors suspect her hypno-condition broke down somehow, and the Inquisition believes her to come under the influence of a higher, corruptive power that seeks to control the Assassin for its own ends.

The Inquisition is increasingly worried about Dill falling to [[Tzeentch]]. Vanus Assassins are masters of data manipulation and long-range plots. Tzeentch is a plotter beyond his kindred, able to weave complex strategies and plans that span centuries or longer. The possibility that Dill may have been exposed to Chaotic corruption somehow, perhaps through a literal daemon or a scrapcode blast in data she was processing, is one the Inquisition can’t ignore. Terra-based members of the Inquisition are actively investigating this, sending Throne Agents and Assassin-Acolytes of the Ordo Sicarius to the Vanus Temple to examine her data material more closely.

Meanwhile, both the Officio Assassinorum and the Ordo Sicarius have initiated containment protocols. While the Officio lost track of Dill almost immediately, the Inquisition’s Lord Eric Stoldst is on Dill’s trail. He has not yet been able to confirm that Dill is present in Cloudburst, but he knew that this was a perfect place for a rogue Assassin to hide. The rise of the FCC was something Dill knew she had to risk if she wanted to flee the Imperium, and she could hardly join a pirate gang and just serve as one of the grunts. Her plan involves accumulating power at a pace an infocyte typically doesn’t sustain, and her alternatives were either find a pirate gang or a pliable Rogue Trader. Rogue Traders ultimately answer to the Imperium, however, so the FCC was a good fit for her.

Dill is not a member of the more combat-oriented branches of the Officio, but she does have extensive survival and self-defense training. In combat, she prefers to engage at maximum range, and slings a silenced slug rifle when she can bring it with her, although she is a perfectly capable martial artist as well.