Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Inquisitor Jerome Paltmitier, Ordo Hereticus, Chief of Witch Hunters==
{{Topquote|If you could tell a Witch by sight, my job would be so much easier, but far bloodier. Some Witches know that they can’t shield their taint forever, but try anyway, and so in their hiding, do less damage. If every Witch knew they couldn’t hide, they’d just kill at random. Some do anyway, of course.|Jerome Paltmitier}}

The Cloudburst Sector may have an anomalously low psyker birthrate, but it still has one. Psykers are as dangerous when untrained in Cloudburst as they are everywhere else. To find Witches, the Inquisition needs a Witch Hunter.

Oscar Havermann vacated the position to become Lord Inquisitor Hereticus Cloudburst, and Jerome Paltmitier stepped in. Paltmitier is not psychic, but he does have a keen sense of perception, and he is almost as good at smelling a lie as Havermann is.

However, where Havermann relies on cold, sinister subtlety and psychic powers to get what he wants, Paltmitier affects brutishness. When he is pursuing a suspected witch, he quite deliberately projects the image of a calculating but thuggish brute, barely holding back violence, and placated only by honesty. When he is pursuing a known witch, Paltmitier behaves more like his true self: quiet, purposeful, and chillingly efficient. He is one of the most successful users of acting talent in the course of his duties in the Cloudburst Ordos, and he has repeatedly attempted to pass these skills along to his subordinates. Among the other Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus, Paltmitier is respected for his skills, but is also widely held to be unlikable and distant, with no real affection for any of his subordinates or colleagues. His skill and success rate in hunting witches speak to his century and a half of experience.

In battle, Paltmitier is an archetypal Witch Hunter, albeit better equipped than most. He wears a custom suit of Carapace Armor with a vacuum-sealable helmet in his pack, but usually goes about with the tall hat and black glasses so common to his Ordo. He uses a Power Sword and an Inferno Pistol, one of the few in the Sector, as well as a much larger Stalker-type bolter he master-crafted himself. It has a combi-attachment of a stake launcher, but the weapon is large enough that even the six foot four inch tall Paltmitier can’t fire it one-handed.

In fact, Paltmitier constructed many of the most powerful artifacts of the Witch Hunters of Cloudburst. He finds the Sector’s relative lack of advanced technology irritating, both because the Mechanicus has had ample time to fix it and because others accept it passively. In Paltmitier’s mind, there is no reason to accept a status quo that inconveniences those few humans with the power to alter their destinies.

When he is not hunting Witches, Paltmitier spends his time working in the Maskos Palace’s forge room with the few Techpriests who work there. There, he makes the custom bolter shells of his rifle and power packs for his pistol, inscribing them with silvered Ward-sculpt and runes. He has also made some custom weapons for his favored acolytes and Throne Agents.