Setting:Cloudburst/People

Lord Sector Cloudburst, Rhemortho Quintus

"Hate is a fine shield, but don’t mistake it for armor. It can strengthen your arm, but if you wear it around you at all times, there will be nobody nearby when you need them but enemies. I have so, so many enemies."

The burden of shielding worlds from the encroaching darkness of the void is a hard one to bear. The leaders of Imperial Sectors vary widely, but by the time a politician has ascended to such high rank that they command a large portion of the Imperium, harsh reality has generally weeded out the lazy and the overambitious. Rhemortho Quintus serves as the Lord Sector Cloudburst, and at least nominally leads the Administratum delegates to Cloudburst Circuit outposts.

Quintus is the second of his family to ascend to the position of Sector Overlord after his father. He is a ruthless but pragmatic man, as he must be to survive the overwhelming political pressure exerted on him by his subordinates for resources to fight the Glasians.

Politically, Quintus is a Celeste animal through and through. He has a taste for luxury, a taste for fine women and food, and is actually a passable target shooter, by the standards of Cloudburst nobility. His responsibilities weigh on him more and more as the strategic situation in the greater Imperium deteriorates. He has taken to spending long days away from the noise of Cloudburst’s maze of tunnels in the resort towns of Celeste, trying to destress. This has not helped his popularity, especially in the face of the mounting threat of the Seventh Glasian Migration. The dozens of worlds that depend on his leadership often find themselves fending off unrest without direction from him.

This is not to portray him as incompetent. He is simply not prepared for the absolute turmoil in which the Imperium finds itself in these dark times, with Chaos, Orks, and far more pressing at the walls. Quintus is a capable and experienced administrator and bureaucrat, and has excellent human resources instincts. One thing he is not is a military leader. He has some logistical skill, but when the time comes to undertake any consequential military action in the Sector, he leaves nearly all of the work to Lord Admiral Maynard and Lord General Senioris Xoss.

Quintus does not have any sway in the Inquisitorial Palace of Cloudburst, despite his position. This is, of course, a reality all Sector Overlords must someday come to accept, but Quintus has even less control over the Inquisition than most, thanks to the fact that the Inquisitorial Palace is in another Subsector entirely from his own palace on Cloudburst. When he does need to interact with Inquisitors, the Maskos Palace sends somebody to find him, and they have developed an unnerving habit of simply appearing in his personal quarters or starship.

Quintus does have his own ship, but rarely uses it for more than travel from Cloudburst to Celeste. The vessel is a Magnifico Star Yacht, which he bought from the Grand Anchor after their breakers prized it from a Space Hulk captured by House Crusher. It is not rated to fly with a Navigator as it has no Throne for them. If ever he needed to evacuate the system, he would need to do so aboard another ship. The yacht, which he has named Moon Glitter for some reason, serves as a convenient meeting place for visiting dignitaries, especially those who may not pass the strict background checks needed to land in the sealed tunnel network of Cloudburst.

Despite his cool interactions with the Inquisition, the other institutions of the Cloudburst Sector receive him more gladly. He gets along cordially with the Blue Daggers’ Chapter Master, Lord Ranult Arden, and is at least somewhat friendly with Lord Fabricator Beraxos. He does not see eye-to-eye with Cardinal Drake, whom he sees as being profligate with the Ministorum’s wealth, and who sees him in turn as being stingy and aesthete. The two men are cordial in public, however. Ironically, the only other Adeptus leader in the Sector with whom he gets along quite well is Lord Marshal Oolan, in whom he sees an overworked kindred spirit.

Quintus lacks military experience, but he has worked extensively with Navigators in the past as they are assigned to vessels in the rapidly expanding Battlefleet Cloudburst. Because of the paucity of Navigators and Astropaths in his Sector, Quintus has gotten to know several new arrivals well, and he privately agrees with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica that the sector needs more, quickly. The Tyranids have bypassed his Sector so far, but there is no real chance of that staying the case indefinitely, and psykers are the only ones who can get out warnings of imminent Tyranid movements quickly enough to respond.

So far, Quintus has had few direct challenges from the Glasian Migrations. Their invasion of Celeste occurred before his parents met, and the aliens have not returned to challenge his home system’s defenses head-on. He is one of the Sector’s loudest proponents of a radically expanded Battlefleet and support network, and his control of the Sector’s purse strings has ensured that their flow of new ships and men has gone uninterrupted. However, there are logistical and monetary concerns that his position can’t address, such as how nearly every shipyard in the entire Sector is already making ships as fast as it can be done without errors. Throwing more money at the problem can’t make servitors and serfs craft faster. However, it can buy new shipyards, and Quintus has seriously considered buying pre-fabricated ship cradles from Fabique in Naxos to expand Celeste’s orbital yards.

The Quintus family has only ruled the Sector for eighty years. His place on the throne came about as the result of an arranged marriage by the Ordo Famulous between his parents. The Quintus family was one of the top three landowning families in the entire Celeste Subsector, so their name was well known in the Sector even before his ascension. However, the previous Cloudburst Sector ruling family had fallen from grace after several well-publicized abuses of Ecclesiarchal resources and the monumental mistake of ordering the Blue Daggers to suppress a rival family, which neither the Ministorum nor Astartes tolerated. The Colliard family promptly shrunk to insignificance as their economic ties evaporated overnight. Rhemortho’s father, Blanchard Lumierre Quintus, assumed the throne, but died seven years later of a heart defect.

In appearance, Quintus is every inch the Imperial politician. Like many high nobles in the Sector, Quintus dresses to impress, regardless of cost. Every stitch he wears, day in and day out, comes from the prestigious Flaxweave Foundry on Thimble, as befits a man of his station. His clothing of office integrates a small Conversion Field, just in case. He carries with him his master-crafted dueling pistol, even though he has not had to draw it in defense for over a century. The threats to a person in his position are numerous, and it pays to be prepared. He also carries a heavy stave of office, decorated with Thimble silver and Nauphry gold.

Emilie Rastimos, Chief Inquisitorial Astropath and Adept Choirmaster

“The Warp talks. Did you know that? Not the things that live there, no, the Warp itself. It hisses when we fly through it. It laughs when we curse it. It opens its arms and its mouth and its legs when we die. Oh, don’t be so dramatic, it’s the literal truth. Don’t believe me? Go look at the faces of Navigators after a day of hard work and tell me nobody’s been talking to them.”

The whispered secrets of the Inquisition are entrusted to as few people outside the holy Ordos as possible. Lightspeed is a cruel mistress, however, and the Inquisition needs to send messages as much as the next branch of the Imperium. When a message needs to be sent from the Maskos Inquisitorial Palace, Chief Inquisitorial Astropath Emilie Rastimos orders her seven subordinates to do it, if she doesn’t do it herself. Rastimos is a cold, eerie woman, with the lack of eyes that characterize most of her order. She never leaves her spire in the Palace, although with an apartment as luxurious and well-appointed as hers, few would. She oversees the conclave of seven Astropaths in the Palace, each of whom has the highest levels of security clearance a psychic can have in the modern Imperium. When the need arises for her to weigh in on matters psionic or the Inquisition needs her expertise on a task, they come to her. This is her own arrangement, and it allows her a specter of control over her fate that she knows to be illusory, but finds comforting nonetheless.

Rastimos is not happy with her position. Like most psykers in the Imperium, she finds a gram of self-loathing coloring her decisions, especially under stress. The Imperium is a horrible place to live, and a worse place for psykers. As an Astropath, her final sight was the Emperor, cracked and withered on his Golden Throne, shivering with power and agony as he took her eyes away.

Something about that, and growing up in the psyker-fearing populace of Cloudburst, broke her spirit. Whatever she saw as the Emperor gilded her soul, it instilled in her a sense of utterly immutable loyalty, and a depressed sense of resignation. She, moreso than even the most Radical Inquisitor in the Palace beneath her feet, thinks Mankind can’t win its millions of wars, not unless a miracle comes.

She is only forty-five years of age, but her responsibilities and hideously painful Sanctioning have rendered her seemingly older. She dresses in a smart black robe of office with a powerful psy-crystal staff of office, a focal artifact imparted to her as a gift from fellow psychic High Inquisitor Lerica. She and Lerica have the closest thing to a friendship that their positions allow. Conversations between them would give the opposite impression, though, as they are silent, and consist of Lerica staring at the metal plate Rastimos has affixed over her eyes while Rastimos stares back.

Lord Fabricator Lister Beraxos, Lord of Cognomen and Liege of ABX202020

“The Machine God inspires us. The Omnissiah directs us. The Motive Force propels us. There is power in knowledge. We’ve all heard the words. How many people stop to think about them? I mean really think about them? What they mean, why they’re so important? Nobody. Nobody but those of us who will get everybody we know killed if we misinterpret them.”

The Lord Fabricator of Cognomen, the Archmagos Executor of the Cloudburst Sector, Cloudburst Circuit, and Northern Oldlight Exo-zone, the Liege of ABX202020, and the Fief-Lord of Foraldshold, Lord Lister Beraxos could make a fair claim to being the most powerful man in the Sector. From his indestructible archaeotech labyrinth in the darkest dungeon of the Castle of the Forges, Beraxos sits at the center of the spider’s web of Techpriests and Tech-adepts that are all that keep the Sector from sliding into anarchy.

He does not give this impression. Unlike Lerica, Quintus, Drake, Maynard, or even Arden, Beraxos is a believer in the lack of need for ostentation. Beraxos eschews any flashy garb or raiment. For an average citizen on the streets of any planet he doesn’t rule, Beraxos looks incongruously like an ordinary Techpriest, albeit an old one. He wears his face unadorned by gadgetry, his robes are oil-stained and loose, and he only has four visible mechadendrites.

Beneath this unremarkable exterior lies the mind of a genius. Lister Beraxos is one of the most intelligent, ambitious, and dangerous men in Cloudburst history. He does not look like a tank because he does not want to. He does not dress like a fop because he likes it when Drake underestimates him. He has so few visible augmentations because his augmentations are designed specifically to look like human flesh, and he has the bare-skinned face of a junior Techpriest because the pseudoflesh mounted on his state-of-the-art facial augmetics is a work of art itself.

Beraxos is more than an administrator, a director, or a priest. He is a master manipulator, and has more connections in random places across the Sector than most of its resident Inquisitors. His responsibilities are heavy and getting heavier, but he would rather die than let his stress show visibly. He is determined to shoulder the burdens of ruling over the Cloudburst network of Forge Satraps and outposts, by himself if at all possible.

Somewhat similar to Quintus, Beraxos is the first man in his family to ascend to a position of high rank. Unlike Quintus, Beraxos loves it. Lister Beraxos is a name that history shall have etched into its metal pages, he confidently believes. He is loyal to Mars, unshakably so, but to his subordinates, that looks more changeable than it really is. He likes to keep his options open, or appear to, and that makes him hard to predict.

In these times of Ending, when the Imperium teeters on the brink of wholesale societal collapse, the Mechanicus benefits from men like him whether it can bear admitting that or not. Beraxos has done more to preserve and expand Cognomen than any Lord Fabricator it has had since the day it was founded. By his order, whole fleets of Explorator vessels ply the hot gas of the Circuit, collecting knowledge and power for his hoard. The laboratories of Cognomen churn daily, producing data and results. Even if some are retreading ground that Mars laid down millennia ago, that does not discourage or redirect him.

Mars rarely reflects the loyalty of its subjects. This is a sad but true state of affairs that has persisted across the breadth of post-Isstvan history, when trust in the Imperium died forever. Even the most loyal and pious Forge Worlds, Lucius and Voss Prime, rarely enjoy the full support of the entire Martian catalogue of ancient blueprints and STC data.

Of course, Mars doesn’t have all of the ancient blueprints and STC data, but even that which it does possess is rarely doled out generously. Some Forge Worlds older than the Unification Wars don’t have the means to build the Baneblade, a twenty-one thousand-year-old tank. Time and again, Beraxos and his predecessors and subordinates have begged for blueprints, designs, artifacts, anything to alleviate the burdens of defending and providing for the people of Cloudburst, and with the notable exception of their permission to make the Legion Congelatio, silence has been their reply.

Beraxos has had enough of silence. By his order, the Forge World has begun building a Knight World satrap, ABX202020, in the nearby system of ABX2. Beraxos has authorized the creation of weapons based on recovered archaeodata from the Cloudburst Circuit without waiting for a reply from Mars, and has even begun ordering his Explorators to begin conquering pirate bases in the Cloudburst Circuit and the dense nebulae between Cloudburst and Drumnos, in anticipation of needing more defenses in the region later.

The acquisition of knowledge, firepower, and bases is hardly in opposition to Martian doctrine, naturally, so there is little question as to whether Mars or the Inquisition would complain too much if he were in contact with his superiors, but Beraxos knows full well, as all Techpriests do, about the importance of ritual and protocol. He is simply not going to wait any more for a yea or nay on building a force of Knights, he is not going to wait for approval to enslave the pirates he captures and work them to death in his mines, and he has stopped caring to pause for a Solar response before producing non-standard Dreadnought designs for the Blue Daggers.

Will there come a reckoning for Lister Beraxos? Maybe. Until then, he holds his head high, knowing that he is doing more for Cloudburst than Mars ever has. Privately, Beraxos knows he is crossing lines. He does not allow his subordinates, even his planned replacement Archmagos Lucana, know how much he hates defying the letter of the law. His belief in Mars and the Machine are not purely doctrinal; Beraxos is a philosophical man, and he knows how easy it is to allow justification for acts to become excuses for acts. He confides in nobody, but he can feel the weight of his silent defiance pressing on his mind as he sits alone in the Cogitation Chamber of his Castle. It may also be, he has admitted to himself, that Mars has far bigger problems. Perhaps their silence stems from severe distraction, not rudeness.

His other responsibilities sometimes blessedly intrude on his moody introspection. As Lord Fabricator, the process of transforming Cognomen from the isolated patch of grass it used to be to the unthinkable powerhouse of a true Forge World falls under his purview. Beraxos spends fully half of his waking hours on the task of overseeing the expansion of the shipbuilding capacity of the Sector, and much of the rest directing the millions of laborers and Tech-adepts under his authority to improve and multiply the manufactorae and forges of Cloudburst’s few industrialized worlds. Beraxos himself hates fighting, and would rather run and live to run another day than risk himself in battle. He hasn’t been to a world that isn’t Cognomen or Celeste in eighty-four years, and doesn’t intend to unless Solstice needs him to fill in for its leadership in an emergency.

If the Techpriesthood of Stygies were to learn of the secret lab that he and Paris are building to study Glasian technology, they would scramble to aid him, and he has pondered telling them, perhaps in exchange for the Leman Russ Vanquisher cannon blueprints they have hoarded. The problem there is that he would never be able to start building them without other Forge Worlds noticing and asking questions, and he is simply not as enthusiastic about the potential of Glasian tech as Paris is or the Stygies Techpriests would be. He is fully prepared for Watch Station Peacekeeper to be a complete write-off.

Beraxos believes in maintaining positive relations with the subordinate groups of the various Mechanicus military forces. Among the forces of Cognomen Subsector alone, he counts PDF, Guard, Navy, Basilikon Astra, Explorators, Skitarii, Secutarii, Knights, Electro-Priests, Titans, and his own personal bodyguards. The full count of Sector-wide Mechanicus martial assets includes Legio Cybernetica Imperial Robots and the Ordo Reductor, as well. On paper, the conventional Astra Militarum forces answer to the Subsector Overlord, but since the Subsector Overlord essentially answers to him regarding the disposition of his forces’ equipment and transport, Beraxos could quite possibly give them orders. He isn’t stupid enough to try, of course, as that would shake Mars from their distraction faster than anything else could, and if they didn’t kill him, the Inquisition would.

Still, he treats his colleagues in the autonomous or Martian branches of the military with respect and distance. Thanks to the extensive reforms instituted after the Schism of Mars, he can directly command very few forces himself. Ultimately, the future of his interactions with Mars comes down to their reception to the revelation of the existence of House Matraxia. If he were to create his Knights House on Cognomen itself, he could point to Mars and say, correctly, that Mars already has a Knight House – Taranis – so he would hardly be breaking precedent. He chose to put the House on ABX202020 because he can exert control over who comes and goes to the system, and so that they have room to grow and flourish. However, to anybody who sees this, it would look like a guilty party covering up knowing misconduct. Beraxos is between a rock and a hard place, and he lives with it every single day.

Beraxos does not share the distaste that most of Cognomen feels for Robots. On the contrary, he would like for Cognomen to gain a Cybernetic Legion, just as Fabique, Syracuse, and Solstice already have. However, he knows that Cognomen’s rise from a provincial parking lot to the powerhouse of the Galactic North is already moving too quickly for some of his neighbors. There are also a lot of demands on the time and resources of Cognomen, not the least of which being building a Titan Legion and Knight World more or less from scratch. Building a Cybernetica Legion at the same time might require more sanctified Techpriests than he can actually devote to so many tasks concurrently without diminishing his all-important industrial output. Once ABX202020 is up to its full power and the many thousands of factories, hab blocks, seminaries, and nutrient recyclers he is presently ordering built on Cognomen are online, then the number of people the Techpriesthood will induct shall be large enough to focus on Robots. Until then, House Matraxia’s Knights and Legion Congelatio’s Titans will have to be enough.

Beraxos eschews battle and carries no visible armaments, although his augmetic left arm has a hidden Needler inside it, and can split open to disgorge two daggers that are made of a special polymer and do not show up on radar or metal scans.

Lady Inquisitrix Cloudburst, Ordo Xenos High Inquisitor Cassandra Lerica

“Hope is a medicine. If you take it when you need it, and you take the right amount, it can save your life. It can make you stronger. It can help you survive. If you take too much, or from the wrong place, or when you don’t need it, it kills you. Never forget that.”

The Inquisitorial presence in Cloudburst is as old as Imperial colonization, but its current footprint is new. Inquisitors visited Hapster and a few of the smaller border worlds that Cloudburst absorbed after its creation, but there was rarely much reason for the Inquisition to linger when their work was done.

Now, things are different. Now, the Inquisition holds court over all manner of dangers and distractions to the mighty Imperium, and they do so from the Palace of Maskos, under the watchful eyes of Cassandra Lerica.

Lerica butchered her way up through the ranks of the Ordo Xenos. Her ferocious cruelty towards practitioners of the Cold Trade in xeno artifacts in the Cloudburst Circuit was the stuff of legends two hundred years before she became the leader of the Ordo Xenos in the Cloudburst Sector, or the Lady Inquisitrix Cloudburst one hundred years later. In her time before sitting on the Black Bench at the Court of Precedent in the Maskos Palace, Lerica reveled in taking to the field, alongside the Deathwatch or not, and bringing the electric agony gauntlets she wore to the faces of smugglers and heretics across the breadth of the Circuit. Now that she is Lady High Inquisitrix Cloudburst, she is unable to pursue the Cold Trade as she once did. She has a few random items of xenotech under lock and key on Dascomb, in the hopes of studying them for a sign of having been reverse-engineered from pre-Age of Strife human cultures, but generally eschews all xenotech beyond this.

As her responsibilities grew, Lerica grew more and more disillusioned with her hands-on approach to punishing violators of the Emperor’s laws. Luckily, she found herself interested in the mechanics of running large-scale infiltration and coordination missions, and her natural psychic power helped her considerably. She used her powers and her rank to direct covert actions personnel from her retinue and the Officio Assassinorum to bring down Cold Trade and proselytization groups that dealt in alien lies.

Finally, after her two hundredth year in the field, the death of her superior allowed her to rise to Lady Inquisitrix of the Ordo Xenos in Cloudburst. Along with this responsibility came the role of Inquisitor of the Chamber in the Watch Fortress Dascomb. Her extensive experience in the field, battling those who salvage the debris of the alien empires the Deathwatch destroys, lent her some credibility in the eyes of the Watch Commander, and she has served as the Inquisitor of the Chamber ever since, even after becoming Lady Inquisitrix Cloudburst.

In adjudication, Lerica strives to present a face of reason and temperance, even given the vigorous disputes among branches of the Holy Ordos in the Cloudburst Sector over how best to distribute resources to endure the Glasian and Ork menaces. The most obvious distraction for the Cloudburst Inquisition is the fact that each Glasian Migration leaves behind gigatons of material from their ships, corpses, and vehicles. While most Imperial citizens follow the edict not to tamper with or collect such things, Imperial Guard troops sometimes take relics as trophies, which has led to more than one death. The competing interests and cabals within the sector conclave also spar for limited resources for their own projects. In this regard, Lerica definitely shows favor to the Ordos Xenos and Malleus, despite her best intentions. The lesser Ordos and the Hereticus grumble about this at times, but they would be hard-pressed to find greater consistent threats to Cloudburst than the Glasians and Orks, and the personal attention of Tzeentch.

Lerica does not like Rhemortho Quintus. She sees the Sector Overlord as being unprepared for the dangers of his job, and possibly unable to make the call to abandon a world if there is a chance that the Glasians will take it. Her suspicion has never been tested. She has never hidden her contempt, but she also does not act on it; she understands the need for unity in the face of the Glasian and Ork menaces. She has a bit more patience for Lord Fabricator Beraxos, since he shares her disgust for the corrupted Glasian technology that each Migration leaves strewn about their home Sector, and has so far obeyed her standing order to dispose of it to the letter.

Lerica has considerable psychic skill. Like most Inquisitors with psychic power, she has never needed Sanctioning before the Throne. She stabilizes her psychic power with psybernetic implants in her cheeks and neck, which allows her a wide assortment of extra-sensory perception abilities. Her weapons of choice are a digital melta and two master-crafted hotshot laspistols, which she can charge from the feeds in her artificer power armor, or with independent power cells she carries on her carapace armor. When aboard Dascomb, she prefers a silver robe over silver noble’s attire, replete with hidden Teleport Homer/Recaller.

Lord Inquisitor Oscar Havermann, Ordo Hereticus

“So many people haven’t a clue what heresy is. Heresy isn’t having thoughts, beliefs, ideas. It’s about refusing to change thoughts, beliefs, and ideas. Change them to the correct way of thinking. That way is the way of the Emperor. What else could possibly matter?”

Oscar Havermann scares the living daylights out of his own colleagues. As the former Chief of Witch Hunters for the Ordo before his promotion out of the role, Havermann is the most experienced and decorated psychic-tracker in the entire Cloudburst region, and his own psychic power aids him immensely in this regard. Given how low the psyker birthrate in Cloudburst is, any sign of non-Sanctioned psionic activity in the Sector is fairly easy to detect. Before his promotion, Havermann used his Fast Clipper Banelight to skip from system to system, capturing hedge sorcerers and killing out-of-control psyker youths.

Since his promotion, Havermann oversees the efforts of the whole cadres of Ordo Hereticus personnel in the Cloudburst Sector. His second, Jerome Paltmitier, fields far more often than Havermann does, now, and Havermann is just slightly too professional to resent that. Havermann does not like having to spend so much time in the Palace in Maskos. He would greatly prefer being in the field, doing what he does best. Instead, he must spend time in meetings with Lerica, Heung, and Kimihira, arguing about precedence and money.

One task he does relish is interrogation. Havermann is a relentless and penetrating interrogator, able to ferret the slightest heresy out from the most misleading of lies. The fact that so many worlds in Cloudburst are primitive, and have only the vaguest idea of what the Emperor actually is makes this challenging. Is somebody collected from a primitive world’s population actually a heretic, or simply poorly educated?

This is where his psychic power comes into the fore. Havermann is superhumanly skilled at detecting lies. He can read minds and body language like a book, except for when faced by the most skilled dissemblers. Havermann has caught Imperial Navy officers, a Mechanicus Magos, and even members of the Adeptus Arbites in heretical thoughts, and has sent them all to the stake.

There is no person in the galaxy that troubles Professor Unarvu more than Havermann. The two have never met, but Unarvu is a realist when it comes to the odds of his meticulous planning surviving contact with Havermann’s power and cruelty.

Havermann is whip-thin and tall, with long black hair and cybernetic eyes he can cause to glow on command. He dresses in a black overcoat with a black waistcoat over a red business outfit from Thimble, which lends him a darkly, even theatrically threatening mien that only somebody with his appearance could pull off. He has no outward signs of his psychic gifts, which makes it all the more surprising when he uses them. In battle, he employs concealed armor to its fullest advantage, wearing it under his clothing, and prefers the use of a Power Sword and Hellpistol.

Lady Inquisitrix Mizuki Kimihira, Ordo Malleus

“You know what I’ve noticed about aristos that consort with daemons? They all regret it eventually. Not the peasants, not the middle classes, just the nobles. Even if it takes a while, even if it kills them, they all regret it. I used to wonder why, but I think I know now. They fear egalitarianism. In the Warp, after I kill them, they’re no more powerful or important than any other dead soul. They’re just food or sex toys for the next hungry spirit to pass by. They regret losing the power they had in life.”

Among the daemon-worshippers of the Cloudburst Sector who actually make a study of their opponents in the Imperial government, there are none they fear more than Mizuki Kimihira. She has been a quiet, contemplative, thoughtful, and unavoidable force of order and law in the Sector for over two hundred years. She uses a variety of technologies and psionics to maintain her aging flesh, and has essentially trapped it at the age of forty, but even if she allowed more of her age to show, it would change nothing about her capability. Kimihira is, without question or doubt, the single most powerful psyker in the Sector. She is at least a mid-Beta on the Imperial Assignment Scale of Psionics.

Conventional human science does not hold a place for a being of her combination of self-control and psychic power in its present evolutionary model of humans. This is not to say she is wholly unprecedented, even among Inquisitors, but the relative lack of psychic humans in Cloudburst does make her power’s presence all the more conspicuous. She is an outlier, of the sort that the changing times have made ever more common of late. Imperial medicae suspect that humanity is becoming more psionically-active, and people like her may be the proof. No academic paper would reference her directly, however, as no person in Cloudburst outside the Adeptus Arbites, Astartes, and Inquisition is aware of her power, save Chief Rastimos. However, files on her have been made available to both the Segmentum Conclave and the Adeptus Custodes.

Kimihira is more than a potent psyker, however. She is an experienced and capable hunter of daemons. Clad in her silver-plated Terminator armor, armed with Power Halberd and Blessed Rotary Cannon, and outfitted with enough explosives to level a building, she often does not need her retinue of psykers, sharpshooters, and priests to assist her in purging a daemonic cult from the spires of Thimble or the rolling forests of Celeste. When she does bring her retinue with her, she usually relies on her combat bodysuit and collection of psi-reactive knives and pistols instead. In addition, she is a master telekine, easily able to flick a truck onto its back with a single wave of psychic power. Her subordinates have orders to knock her out or even kill her if she ever loses all control of her power. Her custom Terminator armor also contains a concealed needle system built into the neck guard, which can slip a sedative into her bloodstream in the incident that she loses control.

Kimihira hates having to lord over the Ordo Malleus, especially since she has so few chances to slip away and fight the good fight. She and Havermann get along well, although her relationship with Hueng is more acrimonious. She respects Lerica’s centuries of experience, but ultimately would prefer to return to the battle. To the profound annoyance of Herman Rothschilde, she has never bought into his worldview that Cloudburst is doomed and on the verge of total collapse. While she readily admits that the Sector’s aristocracy is entirely too concerned with appearance – and so is the Ministorum, for that matter – she thinks his gloomy worldview is just pure laziness. Every time she has ever brought the glowing tip of her psychic-enriched Force Halberd down on the heart of a sinner or deviant, they have promptly disintegrated, after all. If Rothschilde would just shut up and get back to work, she has told him bluntly, some of the problems he insists can’t be solved would evaporate.

Some of her own subordinates whisper that she is in some degree of denial about the extent of the problems facing the greater Imperium. Kimihira herself would insist that she is aware of them, probably better than most, and prefers attacking them head-on to letting them fester. This has not served her well in her role as the Lady Inquisitrix of the Ordo Malleus Cloudburst. Some of the younger, more politically-minded Inquisitors of her Ordo think her to be too easily distracted to serve as their leader. None have yet acted on this, but if she continues her blithe disregard for the political realities of the Conclave, the status quo may change. As it stands, she rejects the various factional labels of the Inquisition, saying they provoke disunity in the ranks when unity is the only thing that can provide a means of finding defense against the sheer volume of foes Humanity must now overcome.

Given her distaste for the political and philosophical factionalism of the Inquisition, one could be forgiven for thinking that she rejects philosophy in general. That would be an unfair characterization of her mindset. She is a profoundly philosophical person, but her philosophical mindset directs towards the understanding of the presence and extent of the Emperor’s vision in the lives of His citizens, not the balance of power of its government. Fully one third of the daemon cults she has encountered in her centuries of service have arisen from the ranks of nobles of Celeste, Maskos, and most especially Thimble. She has seen over and over how often the idleness of the philosophically dead Imperial nobility leads itself to thoughts of a better life in the Warp’s thrall, and how often those responsible have tricked themselves into thinking they will somehow escape the fates of the billions of other humans around them.

Kimihira is not of noble birth herself, but she does not oppose the feudal system of the Imperium to such an extent that she would ever try to take action against the system itself. Overall, she simply finds it too susceptible to corruption. She and Paltmitier have taken down entire witch covens by themselves, all of them founded from the lesser scions of Noble families and Rogue Trader houses. She has worked with the Grey Knights on only two occasions, simply because they are so rarely called to the isolated Cloudburst Sector.

Lord Inquisitor Xi Gian Heung, Ordo Xenos

“Cost? You ugly shitter, you think you know about cost? Throw a ship the size of a moon into a star without touching it! Then we’ll talk about cost! Bring me my Throne-damned gun!”

Xi Gian Hueng holds the distinct honor of knowing more about Glasian biology and technology than any other person alive knows. The relentless, coarse-tongued cyborg warrior has been physically present for three Glasian invasions, more than any other person outside the Blue Daggers. He is the only one of the four senior Inquisitors of the Conclave Cloudburst with no psychic talent, but he doesn’t need it. His custom Power Armor and collection of esoteric human and alien weapons are more than enough to bring him victory. He has worked with the Deathwatch and the Blue Daggers dozens of times, usually in pursuit of alien forces in the Cloudburst Circuit, but sometimes in the harder-to-navigate Exo-zone to trailing. Hueng is a practical man, and unlike several of his peers in the higher Inquisition, does not mind his relegation to more directorial positions as he grows older. He still takes to the field at times, and usually does so at the personal behest of his superior, High Inquisitrix Lerica.

Hueng has somewhat more time available for his own research and investigations than he might normally. The position of Inquisitor of the Chamber for the Deathwatch of Watch Fortress Dascomb is traditionally held by the highest-ranking member of the Ordo Xenos in Cloudburst, and two times out of three that makes the Lord Inquisitor Xenos the Inquisitor of the Chamber. However, Lerica did not forfeit her position when the Senate of the High Lords offered her elevation to Lady Inquisitrix Cloudburst. This leaves Hueng time to oversee his subordinates more directly.

His coterie of acolytes, Throne Agents, and Interrogators are the bane of the Cold Trade, the moving of alien artifacts through Cloudburst. Thanks to the unfortunate proclivities of the nobility of Thimble, he has stationed a team of his acolytes there permanently, where they make their services available to the Arbites.

Hueng’s hate for the Cold Trade seems hypocritical to those who encounter him, given that nearly fifteen percent of his augmetics and weapons are alien in origin. Indeed, both his favored wrist-mounted las-lances and his thyroid-replacing augmetic are Jokaero products. However, Hueng is also a man of limitless willpower and self-restraint when it comes to the actual use of alien technology, whereas the Highborn of Thimble have levelled buildings in their overzealous use of alien weapons in their sporting duels.

This is less of a distinction than any Arbitrator would admit in a court of law, but Hueng is long past caring about the contradiction in his worldview. He has brought entire alien pocket kingdoms and small-scale Ork incursions to heel by himself, and has fought shoulder to shoulder with the Deathwatch against the Glasians before. As is the case with so many Inquisitors, he ignores contradictions in his own personal conduct if the result is a demonstrable improvement in the Imperium. Of course, as a hard-bitten old cynic, what constitutes ‘improvement’ may consist of a return to order, even if the order is just the quiet of the grave, or a terrified silence.

Hueng isn’t without compassion, but hundreds of years of hard work have burned it out of his demeanor. Hueng made the call to destroy the Space Hulk Inescapable Approach rather than attempt to salvage it, despite over two hundred Imperial Navy sailors still being trapped aboard. Hueng also led the purge of the freighter Calliope after a passenger smuggled out a transmission that there were Genestealers aboard. Thanks to the invasions and Migrations of the Glasians, he has had to send entire cities to the pyres after they were exposed to the Warp energies of destroyed Glasian ships.

He is also the loudest opponent of Watch Captain Paris’ plan to build a bunker for Glasian tech on Lorelei, deeming it to be too large a risk. Paris counters with his own argument that the Glasian tech is too potentially valuable to destroy if parts of it are provably uncorrupted. Ultimately, although the Deathwatch is the Chamber Militant for the Inquisition’s Ordo Xenos, individual Inquisitors do not have the authority to override a Watch Captain’s decisions without a substantial body of evidence, which Hueng cannot produce.

Still, Paris isn’t blind to Hueng’s centuries of experience. He has acceded to the gravity of the circumstance, and added additional automated defenses and failsafes to the facility, which has neither made the locals feel better nor assuaged Hueng’s worry.

Of all of the Lords Inquisitor in the Sector, Hueng thinks he has the hardest job, and has occasionally even given voice to this opinion. He may even be right, but the rest of the Conclave has little patience for such an attitude. Hueng is less popular than Lerica outside his Ordo, not that he cares.

Lord Inquisitor Eric Stoldst, Ordo Sicarius (presumed Xenos)

“What a pretense we have, we of the Inquisitive nature. How easy is it to see our power and assume we may kill whomever we wish? Ah, but the Emperor was no fool, and he saw that such things were possible. How fortunate are we, that I watch the watchmen?”

Inquisitors are a secretive bunch, even among their own ranks. Secrets and knowledge have power. Their misuse or overabundance can bring ruin to innocents, wreck carefully laid plans, and inspire heretical thoughts in undefended minds.

Among the Ordos of the Inquisition, there are few more secretive, yet more purposeful, than the Ordo Sicarius. As one of the newer permanent Ordos Minoris, and also the most limited, it has a mere handful of trained members outside Terra, where there are several thousand.

The Ordo Sicarius oversees the dispatch of Imperial Assassins. The Senate of the High Lords of Terra keeps careful watch on the Assassins, and for good reason. However, at times, Assassins are needed to correct the balance of Imperial justice, and when they are, the Senate authorizes the Grand Master of Assassins to dispatch a killer to see the task done. The Ordo Sicarius keeps careful watch on both the administrative and deployment functions of the Officio, to ensure the Officio doesn’t repeat the mistakes of The Beheading.

Stoldst is one of the rare Sicarius Inquisitors who is not stationed on Terra. As part of his responsibilities, he both keeps a weather eye on any Assassins in the region, and also directs promising Culexis candidates to Terra for screening and training. This is typical for Sicarius Inquisitors in every Sector, if they have one. The Ordo Sicarius sent an Inquisitor, and a Senate-appointed Lord Inquisitor at that, to Cloudburst, where he has been posing as a Lord Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos for seventeen years.

The committee of Lords Inquisitor, consisting of Hueng, Kimihira, Havermann, and chaired by Lerica, knows perfectly what he really is, and they are the only ones. Even the Deathwatch is presently under the assumption that Stoldst is simply an exceptionally scholarly Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. He has deceived them, at the behest of the Senate itself, in order to comb through the Sector’s history and present turmoil, looking for any signs of rogue Assassins.

Cloudburst is the perfect place for a Traitor Assassin who has not sold their soul to Chaos to hide. Its planet clusters are far enough apart that travel between them without a Navigator-guided ship takes weeks, its military capabilities are expanding at a lightning pace, and its borders are in constant flux. Beyond that, there are dozens of small criminal organizations and one or two very large ones where a genuine Imperial Assassin could ply their trade and raise little suspicion, while living like a king. Most importantly, however, the Sector has far bigger problems. The Glasians consume the attention of the whole Sector, and the Astronomican’s projection range continues to shrink.

Stoldst has his suspicions, and he believes that one of the higher-ranking members of the Free Corsair Coalition is a former member of the Vanus Clade, the branch of the Officio that handles indirect assassination. Of all the clades, however, theirs is the hardest to detect, especially in contrast to the thrashing violence of the Eversor or soul-melting hate of the Culexis. If Stoldst were right, it would help explain why the FCC has been able to expand so quickly: they have an infocyte aiding them in finding holes in the Imperial defenses. Stoldst has been covertly sending aid and money in the direction of the task force Lerica has assembled to take down the FCC, and the task force’s members are none the wiser.

Stoldst, naturally enough for a Sicarius, rarely enters battle himself, but when he does, he relies on his absurdly oversized Iron Halo and Adamantium-plated Power Armor, which cost fully seventeen times the price of a baseline suit. When fighting the armor-piercing rounds of a Vindicare, or the razor-sharp blades of an Eversor, such things are necessary, after all. His weapons of choice are a custom Hotshot las-rifle with underbarrel grenade launcher and a set of twin Power Gladii. He also carries a variety of Stunner and Concussion grenades, as well as a bag of potent Phosphor bombs – in his experience, a fire is one of the things that even professionals need time to adjust to mid-battle.

Inquisitor Jerome Paltmitier, Ordo Hereticus, Chief of Witch Hunters

“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.”

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.

Inquisitor-Captain Lord Gwiddon Thomas Walsh, Rogue Trader and Lord Inquisitor, Ordo Hereticus

“Who says power corrupts? I’ve been fighting for the Emperor for three hundred years, and nobody could call me corrupt.”

If Lord Cloudburst Quintus and Lord Fabricator Beraxos are the two most powerful men in the Cloudburst Sector, the third must be Walsh. Holding the position of both a Lord Inquisitor Hereticus and a Lord Rogue Trader with a Greater Warrant of Trade, Walsh can travel anywhere he pleases and do almost anything he wants in the pursuit of the defense of the Imperium. He has the arrogance to match his station, and wealth beyond the reckoning of most humans. Walsh is one of only five individuals in Cloudburst history to ever level the command of Exterminatus towards a world, specifically the alien hellhole of AHG131 in the Circuit, for the crime of using planetary-scale brain networking technology looted from ancient human ruins.

Walsh has been a Rogue Trader longer than an Inquisitor. His parents and older sister died in the catastrophic reactor failure of their vessel. Luckily, the family’s original Warrant of Trade was in the family vault on Celeste at the time, and so he was able to prove his ownership of the Walsh ancestral business.

Naturally, some whispers of suspicion fell on the young Thomas Walsh that he was responsible for the loss of his family, but those faded away after four decades of meteoric shifts in the family’s fortune. Walsh made himself absurdly rich, by staking claim after claim on routes between the Sector and the Circuit, and by finding staggeringly rare archaeotech treasures for the Adeptus Mechanicus out in the Oldlight Exo-zone. Even before he caught the eye of Inquisitor Gorli and she subtly added him to her network of informants, he had laid two small alien kingdoms to waste and begun the process of adding a new world to the Imperium.

Walsh would sometimes disappear into the darkness of the Circuit with no more than a single Frigate packed with as many supplies as it could carry, stay off the grid for a year or more, and then return with vast riches and tales of adventure. It was his ship, the Gilded Nobility, which sunk the notorious pirate Redbar Skullswipe and halted his Ork fleet in its tracks. Walsh was there on the day that Inquisitor Lerica condemned the entire Hivrekk species to extinction and threw their asteroid hive into a black hole.

With such a record of working with the Imperium’s many institutions, it was no real surprise that the young Captain Walsh would fall into the orbit of the Inquisition. Hundreds of thousands of Inquisitors have worked with Rogue Traders in the past, to find lost human worlds, destroy dangerous aliens, navigate treacherous Warp Shoals and Gravity Tides, and even prosecute wars against the Emperor’s foes.

However, Walsh is in the rare position of being both an actively-serving Rogue Trader and an actual Inquisitor. This is not unprecedented, but it is highly uncommon. Most Inquisitors find themselves hunting down their fellow man to kill them for crimes against the species, while Rogue Traders spend most of their time flying about beyond the reach of Imperial law. Likewise, Rogue Traders’ tasks are to collect obscene wealth for themselves and bolster the Imperial economy by killing its enemies, looting its neighboring space, and retrieving lost technological relics, while Inquisitors are encouraged to avoid becoming distracted by personal wealth. Finally, Inquisitors have a limited remit to ignore certain Imperial laws, while Rogue Traders have been put to death – sometimes by Inquisitors – for ignoring those same laws.

However, Inquisitor Gorli saw potential in the Rogue Trader. Time and again, when he sent her snippets of information describing un-Imperial conduct amongst his peers in the Rogue Traders of the northern Segmentum Ultima, Gorli saw a distinct contempt for the members of the Houses that ply their work near the Circuit. Conversely, when he encountered other Traders who held themselves to a standard, Walsh’s tone was neutral, and strictly reported the facts, leaving his speculation and opinion aside.

That was the sort of behavior Gorli expected from a peasant, not a noble. In her experience, the higher the rank of a person in the hierarchy of the Imperium, the more likely they would be to think Imperial law no longer held to them. Gorli was intrigued enough to place him as a successor for herself if ever she perished on the job.

When she did so, rooting out the Cult of Blessed Whispers on Nauphry IV seven years later, Walsh assumed her Inquisitorial Rosette. Other Inquisitors, especially those who knew Gorli personally, reacted with disgust, especially when Walsh added Gorli’s ship and Throne Agents to his own assets. Walsh then disappeared into the Cloudburst Circuit, where he spends most of his time. Unlike many Rogue Traders, Walsh has no interest in having children, intending instead to leave his Warrant and title to his niece, and thus spends as little time in Imperial space as needed. Now, with a coterie of his own Agents and his network of Trader ships, Walsh plies the stars, looking for worlds to add to the Imperium, by word or by torch.

Ideally, at least in the minds of his Rogue Trader peers, Walsh would stay the hell away from the Imperium anyway. His colleagues and competitors mutter that no one man should have that much power, and that nobody who has come to his title by so many coincidental deaths should be able to act with near-total legal impunity. Regardless, Walsh now sees most of them as far beneath his station. While his council of master economists and marketers keep most of his financial assets churning without his personal oversight, Walsh has gradually redirected more of his attention towards hunting down heretics in the Houses of other Rogue Traders, which has shriveled up his support among his peers completely.

His largest foil among the Rogue Trader houses is a former Imperial Navy Captain named Madeline Prinz. She is the only Trader in the Sector with a pedigree shorter than Walsh’s but a larger fleet, and she has made it her mission to irritate the more powerful Trader whenever she can do it without attracting the ire of other Inquisitors.

Walsh’s personal philosophy commands him to pursue those whose thinking is too deviant to benefit the Imperium, and about the only organization in the Imperium with which he has positive ties with no acrimony is the Ministorum. He has brought Missionaries on every trip he has taken into the Circuit after the first, and makes sure to include the highest-ranking Ecclesiarchal personnel on his ship in most of his decision-making. Nobody knows whether this is an affectation or honest faith.

Walsh routinely enters battle alongside the mercenaries and soldiers in his service, even at the head of a full battalion at times. His preferred combat regalia is a suit of artificed Carapace armor, with a full set of Digital Needlers on each hand and a Storm Bolter custom-tuned for his physique. Walsh looks like a holo star and knows it, and he has gone so far as to make posters for his recruitment centers with his own face and dashing profile on it, which just irritates other Imperial officials even more.

Ultimately, Walsh is a confusing figure for the rest of the Imperium. He has lived through a life that most people would have killed for, but he apparently hasn’t. He has made enemies and rivals in the most powerful institutions in the Cloudburst Sector, even while employed by them. He pursues wealth and power with zeal, but no more zeal than he uses to hunt down his own colleagues when they disappoint him or betray his principles. He has pursued his colleagues and other human heretics and criminals with terrifying vigor, yet never raises a hand against his own rival.

He is an odd man, and a powerful one. Most other beings in the Cloudburst Sector and Circuit avoid him assiduously.

Inquisitor Noah Theron, Ordo Astartes

“There have been times when Space Marines marched into the Imperial Palace as liberators, times when they were there as conquerors, and times when they were there as a voice of reason, Throne save us. Of course I’m here to oversee them. How could we not?”

While the Blue Daggers are neither an ancient nor a wealthy Chapter of the Space Marines, they require oversight as much as any other. The Ordo Astartes is a very small Ordo Minoris of the Holy Inquisition, and most of its members base from Terra, but a few enter the Ordo after beginning their careers in the Ordo Militarum or Hereticus. Most of the Ordo Astartes are paranoid wrecks, who see plots by the Imperial Fists and other Segmentum Solar Chapters to overthrow the Imperium’s current leaders behind every action they take. Noah Theron is not. He is a cold, stoic, and impossible-to-frighten sentry that stands behind the ranks of the Daggers, always watching for signs of rebellion or heresy.

So far, there has been little to see. All of the leaders of the Chapter for the first several hundred years were well-trusted members of the Novamarines, none of whom had any heretical inclinations. Since then, as the Daggers took over from their progenitors, the Chapter has remained focused on their role. After the Chapter fleet reached the size needed to dispatch their overstrength Chapter across the Sector, the Ordo Hereticus of the Sector took a scrutinizing look at the Chapter to ensure that they did not overstep their mandate, but so far, no such action has occurred. When the last two Novamarine veterans and last nineteen Angels of Fury veterans die, the Chapter will have to be examined again, but there is no telling when that could happen.

Inquisitor Theron is a skillful investigator, which is why some other Inquisitors have asked him to his face why he is wasting time watching Lord Arden and his Marines. He could do far more good, they say, keeping Coriolis and Cognomen on the right track. He replies that the Adeptus Astartes have undertaken so many dramatic roles in the history of the Imperium that to not scrutinize them would be dereliction of duty. He claims very few Imperial resources in his task, too, so his presence is no drain on the Sector Conclave’s assets. He has but two Throne Agents and a single tiny ship, a star yacht named No Second Chances, and has no fleet or Guard regiments to his name. When he is not in Septiim, he is in the Delving or Maskos systems, keeping a keen eye on Dagger mission reports and the feeds of intelligence that flow into the Gargantuan.

He rarely enters battle, but he carries a chainsword and plasma pistol as his weapons of duty and a ceremonial sabre of office, and wears custom carapace armor for protection. This is obviously not enough to kill a Space Marine, but he also has a digital melta he acquired from a Jokaero and a potent needle pistol he keeps concealed on his person.

Inquisitor Herman Rothschilde, Ordo Malleus

“Cloudburst! What an apropos name it is, for this benighted cluster of stars! Wastrel worlds with wastrel guardians, shivering in the cold when they should be running towards a fire. Darkness is coming to Cloudburst, and its people are too lazy to evade it!”

In this Time of Ending, enemies beset the Imperium on all flanks. Times like these produce heroes, when the folk of the Imperium are thrown into the crucible of war. In times such as this, the greatest leaders and prophets of Mankind have arisen to lead humanity from the darkness.

Herman Rothschilde thinks himself one such hero. His colleagues think him a whiner. His subordinates worship the ground he walks on, and if any outside his immediate circle knew the full extent of his plans, they would burn him at the stake.

Rothschilde was a student at the Schola Progenum on Septiim Primus, and his instructors settled on the Inquisitorial path for him. As a boy, he was always asking questions, trying to learn things no classmate cared about, and trying to see the why of things when most people just cared about the how. His superiors rightly concluded that that was the correct mindset for an Inquisitorial prospect. He was elevated to the rank of Lesser Acolyte in the retinue of Lord Inquisitor Nolan in M41.831, and has served in the Ordo Malleus ever since. For the first forty years of his Inquisitorial service, initially under Nolan and later as an Inquisitor himself, Rothschilde was a profoundly Puritan Inquisitor; he was quick to bring down the silver blade on the slightest hint of daemonic corruption. However, after that time, things began to change. Slowly, Rothschilde felt more like the Cloudburst Sector was to blame for its own problems.

He loathes the Chaos Gods and the other beasts of the Warp, but Rothschilde now thinks that at least some of the problems that bedevil the Sector are caused by the Sector itself. Not in the spiritual sense, like the Titanshields Secutarii of Cognomen, but in the sense that so many of the Cloudburst Sector’s leadership is either too lazy to learn the risks of their roles, or too lazy to actually implement any meaningful improvements in the Sector or its defense against daemons.

Rothschilde thinks that the Sector’s current predicament, the Ork and Glasian invasions, are proof positive about his own personal views on the Sector. Beyond any machinations of the Great Enemy, Rothschilde hates how stagnant and unprepared the Sector is. After each Migration, the only institutions of the Imperial government that seem to prepare for the next ones are the Daggers, the Navy, and the Mechanicus. The Administratum just falls back into their lockstep routine, the Guard practically goes on holiday, and the Ministorum goes back to leeching the proles dry. The other Adepta barely even matter in the overall scheme of the Sector, even the Sororitas, who seem to view the Glasian Migrations as a minor annoyance and not the catastrophic threat they are.

However, among all the institutions of the Cloudburst Sector, there are none for whom Rothschilde reserves more scorn than the Adeptus Ministorum. Rothschilde hates the Ministorum, or at least its local branch. He sees the Ecclesiarchy as the ultimate problem for much of the Sector, and he has a whole laundry list of arguments he can recite to support his claim to anybody who will listen.

They deviate from the more restrained path of Sebastian Thor, but that is the least of his concerns. He sees how they vacuum up all of the money in the Sector that isn’t sewn into their parishioners’ pockets, and wonders what kind of defenses such money could bring. He has watched with growing disbelief as they have entirely failed to select a new Cardinal for Thimble, despite it having had a large enough population to justify one for hundreds of years. Septiim will be large enough to merit one in a few more years, and they haven’t even begun the process of selecting a Cardinal for the system.

The Ministorum is doing reasonable work in the Circuit and the primitive worlds of the Sector, but their indolence in the bureaucracy and the utter mess they made of Thunderhead are still crippling both. Cardinal Lamarr is so openly flouting the Decree Passive that it’s a miracle Havermann hasn’t burned him at the stake, or it’s evidence that Havermann is even more distracted than Rothschilde.

Almost as infuriating is the Ecclesiarchy’s complete inability to enforce their own strictures. Woldenbar, Haggar, and half a dozen other major Heretics in the Cloudburst Sector’s history have come from the Ecclesiarchy’s ranks. Rothschilde has learned of Lamarr’s fixation on Eldar and finds it confusing – there are no major groups of Eldar in Cloudburst.

With indolence and with impiety comes Chaos, and Rothschilde has fought the servants of the Great Enemy many times, usually on Imperial soil. Tzeentch’s machinations mean that there are few daemonic incursions in the Sector proper, so Rothschilde usually works on the border between the Cloudburst and Naxos Sectors. There, he has seen the armies of Nurgle trying to smash down the gates of Cloudburst. While fighting the Heretics and daemons they bring to the very edge of his home Sector, Rothschilde has seen hundreds of thousands of lost souls, clawing at the membrane-thin walls of Imperial defense that hold back the powers of Ruin.

He is now convinced, after watching Cloudburst do essentially nothing to prepare itself for what comes after the end of the Migrations, that Cloudburst is doomed to fail. In his mind, the walls are coming down; even if Cloudburst survives the Glasians (which seems unlikely to him), there is no way that the Sector will survive what comes next. He is, ironically, unaware of the Night Slaughter.

His beliefs have dragged him closer and closer to Radicalism. He does not think of himself as being a member of any of the political philosophies that dominate the Inquisition, but the closest to his personal worldview is the Isstvanian. Rothschilde has begun covertly instigating small-scale battles in the Cloudburst Sector, and lending aid to others who do the same. His hope is that if the Sector faces military challenges outside the Glasian Migrations, they will become more able to survive when the Migrations worsen or end.

So far, he has turned material from shipwrecks over to Orks to allow them to build more weapons, he has turned a blind eye to the actions of small cults on Thimble and Cassie’s World, and pressed arms on several mercenary groups that have shown willingness to side against the Imperium if paid well enough. He has also diverted a few uncorrupted Glasian artifacts to the Thimble Highborn houses, in the hopes that their internecine squabbles provide adequate training for the Thimblan Argent Shields.

He has plans to start shifting more resources, perhaps even whole Guard regiments, away from their current duties and into fighting these threats soon. The FCC and the Ork incursions are perfect for his plans. The irony that these wars are draining the Imperium of the very resources it needs to fight the Glasians is lost on him.

There is one line he is not yet ready to cross, and that is engaging with the powers of the Warp directly. Rothschilde is not a psyker, but even he knows the risks of trying to use the Warp to his advantage. Thus, he has not tried to soften the guard against the powers of Nurgle, nor has he risen to actual sabotage of Imperial military forces. If he became aware of Professor Unarvu’s plans, he would probably try to stop them. He has also avoided using Chaos-tainted equipment from the Glasian Migrations.

The greatest threat to his continual use of his strategy is other Inquisitors, as is often the case for Radicals. If Oscar Havermann were to learn of what he is doing, the cruel Lord Hereticus would almost certainly kill him for it. If Lerica were to learn he has used some un-corrupted Glasian equipment in his arsenal, she would drag him in for censure.

Thus, Rothschilde walks a razor-thin line between sabotaging the Imperium and trying to strengthen it. His cadre of personal supporters and agents think him a genius, and undyingly complete his tasks in anticipation of his eventually being proved right, when the walls come down and the stars fill with the armies of Nurgle. In battle, Rothschilde uses a custom suit of Power Armor that interfaces with his cybernetic implants. He prefers the use of a Power Sword and Thunder Shield, but has made use of a bolter as a ranged backup when needed.

Inquisitor Lawrence deWalt Prang, Ordo Xenos

“If only humans were the only species that knew how plagues work. Throne, that would be so much better. But no, no, of course not. Eldar, Chaos, everybody uses bioweapons these days. So long as they do, I’ll be there, outsmarting them.”

Of all the Imperium’s servants, Inquisitors must face the broadest variety of threats. The sheer range of potential troubles an Inquisitor can see on the job is staggering to the uninitiated, and no one Inquisitor can possibly have the resources to contain them. As such, some Inquisitors dedicate themselves to cataloguing all of the threats they have encountered, to smoothe the path for their successors.

Chief among them in the Cloudburst Sector is Ordo Xenos specialist Lawrence deWalt Prang. Prang got his start in the Ordo Hereticus, investigating rumors of human experimentation by recidivist Hereteks in the Drumnos Sector. After becoming an Inquisitor in his own right, Prang followed whispers of similar activities to the Cloudburst Sector. After finding and apprehending his targets, Prang stayed in Cloudburst to learn what he could of the local Conclave’s knowledge of such things.

However, in little time, Prang learned that the true threat to Cloudburst wasn’t Hereteks (he is unaware of Magos Gabris’s experiments). The Inquisitor learned of the horror of Ghald, and the strange spores its mountains use to control the minds of any eukaryotes they encounter.

Prang was fascinated by the spores. As he investigated similar organisms, looking for parallels, he eventually found himself being drawn into the art of Xenobiology. Eventually, he switched Ordos entirely, and took up pursuit of his current mastery of counter-biological warfare.

Sadly, the field is wide open. The ever-more hoarding nature of the Mechanicus prevents their discoveries from percolating out to the rest of the galaxy. Prang has ample resources and decades of experience, but few other Inquisitors aid him in his research. By the direct and pleading request of the Subsector Overlord, Lady Lowenthal, he has moved his research into the belly of his ship, a remodeled Itus livestock barge, where he and a team of loyal Tech-adepts labor over his gene sequencers and plastic molders, seeking to learn how humanity’s enemies have made their weapons in the past. The Itus cannot travel through the Warp, since there is too high a risk that an enemy could steal it and use it as a bioweapons platform. He has had all of its Warp systems replaced with redundant life support systems, instead.

Every once in a while, other Inquisitors will come across something that they need from him, or perhaps wish to trade to him, and he usually cooperates as long as they don’t disrespect him or waste his time, which is also disrespectful to him. His combat ship, the Vitiae, has traveled the length of the Drumnos and Cloudburst Sectors, seeking remnants of ancient weapons and current xenos civilizations. On rarer occasions, members of the Astra Militarum have approached him directly to beg aid in overcoming new alien weapons, and when properly motivated, Prang may even take to the field alongside them. When he does, he wears a custom-built suit of Power Armor with extra redundant environmental seals, and a built in Heavy Flamer.

Rarely, Prang works with Magos Biologis members of the Cognomen Techpriesthood, identifying alien biological agents or sequencing their genes. He has even added some Techpriests from the Genetech school of research to his retinue at times.

Watch Seargent Haelven

“A thousand to one? Fools, that isn’t a ratio, that’s a countdown! Bring me more ammo!”

Deathwatch members, in general, are stoic and efficient figures. This makes Watch Sergeant Haelven of the Space Wolves all the more exceptional, for he knows not how to be either.

Haelven does not especially enjoy the lengthy periods of downtime between missions that many Deathwatch Killteams receive. There is not a moment that he is not preparing for more missions, whether by reading about the aliens the Deathwatch has slain in the past, training with his favored Power Axe and plasma pistol, or by sparring with the others of the Watch Station Dascomb contingent. His favorite activity is proceeding through the Sub-Freezing Assault Course, for which he set the station record, as it reminds him so much of home. Still, homesickness is not one of his faults. As the longest-serving member of the Cloudburst Deathwatch who has not risen to Captaincy, he is one of the very few members of the Deathwatch alive who has seen Glasians before – he is on his second Vigil, having served the first in the Sixth Glasian Migration.

Although his preferred weapons are for close-in fighting, he is quite proficient with Heavy Bolters, as well. Haelven is just as comfortable behind the stock of a Heavy Bolter as he is wrist-deep in an Ork or punting Glasians, but nothing excites him quite so much as clashing with aliens in hand-to-hand combat.

Rogue Trader Lord Crado Zutash

“Money, dear boy, money!”

Nothing turns the average Rogue Trader’s eye like a bit of wealth. Among Rogue Traders in the Cloudburst Sector and Circuit, Crado Zutash is the one viewed with the most envy by his peers. Zutash has a positively uncanny ability to find valuable salvage, from armor to whole starships. He has led expeditions into the darkness between Imperial worlds for over seventy years, seeking treasure and glory, and he has found both. Zutash sunk the notorious pirate Light Cruiser Robber with nothing more than his two frigates and some cleverness, only a few months before his father died and left him his Warrant.

Other Traders eye Zutash with a mixture of awe and suspicion, not because of any criminal conduct on his part, but because he seems to be able to perceive things others can’t. He has found ships thought lost for centuries in heaps on alien moons; he found and escaped the Eldar ghost ship Elrenoss, and he was the one who discovered the ruins of the Rak’gol warship Unglok on the edge of the Oldlight Exo-zone. Zutash has actually built up his fortune faster than Walsh has, despite Walsh’s greater connections. He is a frequent and welcome patron of the Grand Anchor; he has contributed multiple shipwrecks to their collection. Like most of the Rogue Traders in the Sector, Zutash has a single ship from which he commands his assets. Unlike most other Traders, he also uses a personal deep void platform to cache his treasures between missions, and stages his fleet from there. He also has a mansion on Celeste, as many Rogue Traders do.

Zutash is a heavyset man with a preference for expensive clothing, and never travels without an extensive retinue – warriors for the field, beautiful women around the home. He has clashed with Lord Sector Quintus on jurisdictional mediations between his own House and the Adeptus Mechanicus in the past, but he hasn’t forced the issue. He knows the Adeptus Mechanicus is too valuable in his own efforts to alienate completely. He doesn’t like Quintus, and the feeling is mutual.

Lord Zutash does get along better with one person: his son Fox. Fox is a treasure hunter in his father’s employ, and usually travels with him on his missions, learning the secrets of the acquisitions trade. The two men are inseparable, which is especially remarkable given that neither can remember who Fox’s mother is.

When in the field, Lord Zutash travels clad in a great Power Lifter he has reconditioned with what he earnestly hopes to be the flashiest possible gold plating job ever applied to a powered exoskeleton. He finds that it capably distracts potential enemies from the team of cameoline-clad snipers that usually follow some distance behind him. He usually arms himself with an Inferno Pistol and a Power Sword, just to show off that he can afford them.

The Zutash family is one of the oldest families among the Rogue Trader houses in the Cloudburst Sector, but it only became one of the richest after Crado took over. The house has been able to survive as long as it has because it had over one hundred smaller businesses bringing in wealth from the freight lines and Circuit Outposts. However, by the time Crado took the family Warrant from his own father, he recognized that that was not why his family had been gifted a Warrant. Rogue Traders are supposed to be bold and opportunistic explorers, not just merchants. He shook some ships loose from their other obligations and struck out into the voids of space, seeking glory. His story could have ended there, in ignominy or silence, but instead he returned seven months later, with a captured hoard of ancient technology secured in his holds, and his rise to power assured.

Zutash flies a number of ships when his quest calls for it, but his preferred vessel is the Endurance class warship Bargaining Position. He has given it expensive and thorough upgrades, from its armor materials to its engine power, as well as refrigerated cargo holds for perishables.

Archbishop Haggar of Oromet – Captured and executed

“Souls aren’t a currency, you twit. They’re worth so much more than gold or glory! Gold goes up and down in price, people forget gory, but SOULS! Oh, they are eternal, and they are all mine! To guide. Yes.”

No one human in history has ever caused as much trouble for the Cloudburst Sector since Horus as has Archbishop Haggar. The fiery, impassioned, secretly psychic preacher turned most of a planet against the Imperium, and set the stage for another to do the same centuries later.

Haggar’s roots on the planet ran deep. His father and mother were both employees of a large cathedral on the young colony, the largest in the system. When he was thirteen, his father realized he was psychic, but could not bring himself to turn the young lad over to the Arbites. Eventually, Haggar did away with his parents by means unknown, and entered the clergy, living off his parents’ wealth.

As Haggar grew, he sought out every scrap of lore about psykers that he could find, ostensibly to help identify them among his own parishioners. As he learned, he focused his power, and gained a level of control over them that few outside the Scholastica Psykana ever gain on their own. By the time he was forty, and had risen to become the second highest ranking member of the Ministorum in the entire system, he had gained the ability to influence the faces of Tarot cards.

After ten more years of practice, he had perfected his Tarot skills. A mastery of common sleight of hand and his own psychic skills allowed him to force his Tarot cards to display whatever images he wanted. It was time to make his move. Over the next few months, Haggar began working his way into position to succeed his superior, the current Archbishop. When the Archbishop died of a pulmonary embolism, Haggar naturally took his place. One year later, he made his historic announcement that he could read the Tarot. When local Astropaths disregarded that, knowing it was impossible, Haggar had already won. He began performing public readings, using a combination of his own psychic and sleight skills to force the cards to show whatever he liked; when he tried to read them naturally, the Emperor showed him only Death.

When a local Astropath challenged him, he used his card skills to force a broken card into the Astropath’s reading. When the Astropath finally noticed, the mob tore him apart for daring to accuse Haggar of falsehood.

Haggar’s story ended in battle. When the Inquisition gained news of the events on the planet from a surviving Astropath, Haggar used his psychic power to manipulate millions into coming to his aid. The Inquisition feared his pure, righteous power, he roared, and all who did not would fight for him! The flock he had cultivated for thirty years streamed to his side, and the lines were drawn. A gruesome siege followed, one that did decades’ worth of damage to the planetary capital’s infrastructure.

Eventually, after using white phosphorous and other non-conventional weapons to disperse the mad gangs of Oromet citizens, the Inquisition and a small army of support troops and Thimblan Argent Swords swarmed Haggar and captured him. They beat him into a coma and dragged him into a shuttle. When he awoke, he was sitting across from a man who made his brain hurt. The man, a blank in the employ of the Ordo Hereticus, tortured Haggar for information, and then threw him into space.

Thus in the cold and ignominy of vacuum did the life of Cloudburst’s worst Heretic end.

Lord Chapter Master Ranult Arden

“If the Glasians tracked casualties, my name would be their leading cause of death.”

The Blue Daggers have been standing against the Glasians since before they were even called the Blue Daggers. Beginning in the aftermath of the First Glasian Migration, the Inquisition assembled Exigent Task Unit Cloudburst to fight off any recurrence of the threat, and so they did, one hundred years later. After the Second Migration, the Inquisition and the Adeptus Astartes representatives in the Officio Munitorum convened to establish a new Special Circumstances unnumbered Founding, one to protect the Cloudburst Sector in general and the Septiim System specifically. Their initial fourth-in-command was an ambitious Deathwatch veteran named Ranult Arden, and ever since the death of his predecessor, Augustus Alderoster, Arden has served as the leader of the Blue Daggers.

Arden started in the Novamarines, but he never felt quite the same strength of tribal affinity for his people on Honorium as some of his Battle Brothers did. Arden was an obsessive volunteer, and offered his services for every extra training mission or neuro-data load he could. He never felt strongly attracted to any of the specialist occupations, like the Chaplaincy or the Techmarine Brotherhood, nor is he a psyker, but he did qualify for Thunderhawk piloting and gunnery roles, and is a confirmed double ace in a Predator Annihilator.

When the chance arose to enter the Exigent Task Unit, he leaped at the opportunity, and joined at the left hand of his friend, Augustus. At the time, both men served the Novmarines in their Second Company, with Alderoster being its XO and Arden serving as the heavy weapons trooper in his Command Squad. When the Angels of Fury and Novamarines contributed their arms and Brothers to the task, Arden sat in command of the fourth of four units of thirty Marines each, breveted to Brother-Lieutenant to make it official.

When the Glasians attacked the asteroid base of the Task Force during the Second Battle of Septiim, Arden barely escaped with his life. He rallied other Brothers who had survived the madness of the space battle against the great Cylinder and boarded Assault Shuttles, then blasted his way into the device. He and the other members of his unit raced to the heart of the Colony Control Cylinder and blew it up with melta bombs.

Upon returning to his ship and escaping with a few Brothers still in tow, Arden was hailed by the Sector as a conquering hero, and with the death of two of the other three unit commanders, he was formally elevated to the rank of Brother-Lieutenant by the Novamarines. However, shortly after that, the entire Task Force became a new Chapter unto themselves. Augustus Alderoster, who held the line in the defense of first Celeste and then Coriolis, became the new Chapter Master, while he appointed his friend Ranult Arden to the rank of Captain of the First Company.

After Alderoster died in the Third Migration fighting the Glasians in orbit over Cognomen, the surviving members of the Council of Masters elevated Arden to become their new Chapter Master. He has served honorably since. By the time the Seventh Glasian Migration arrived, their technology and firepower had stepped up under Tzeentch’s gaze to pose an existential threat to the entire Cloudburst Sector. Alderoster had already begun the process of expanding the Chapter from a few dozen survivors with the gene-seeds of their fallen brethren into a proper Chapter, but Arden threw himself into the task with manic energy. He set a standing order for Apothecaries to institute monthly checks on each Battle Brother to establish the progress of their progenoid gland reconstitution, to harvest the gene-seed the instant they were mature enough to do so, and also flew to each Deathwatch Fortress to ever have had Blue Daggers stationed therein to collect any gene-seed they may have had.

Then, he began the process of further expanding the Chapter itself. He had always thought it a bit overly constraining to force the specialist branches of Chapters to such a limited size. Why, he asked, did Techmarine Brotherhoods need to limit themselves to such low numbers? Surely, the Chapter would benefit if it had dozens of Techmarines instead of twenty. If the Chaplain attached to a Company died in battle, would it befit the Company if there were no ready replacement? What of the Apothecarion?

Arden had no intention of Legion-building or defying the Codex, but in his mind, there was no real gain to be found in the arbitrary limitation of the specialist branches of the Chapter. The Librarius would always be understrength, there was no way around it; Cloudburst had so precious few psykers. The other specialist forces would suffer no such constraint. Other Ultramarine Successors complain about this at times, but Arden does not care.

Ranult Arden is not a man given to much philosophical introversion, but that doesn’t stop him from doing what he needs to do to defend the Cloudburst Sector. He does not have the trust issues that affect some other Chapter Masters, although he also does not hide his disdain for those Imperial officials who do not provide the aid his Chapter is due in the defense of the Sector. The leaders of the Septiim Adeptus Sororitas are chief among these.

In battle, Arden uses a suit of artificer armor and a Power Bastard. His ranged weapon of choice is a custom Combi-pistol of his own creation. The primary weapon is a Conflagrator Pistol, one of only a handful in Cloudburst. Its secondary attachment is a four-shot Heavy Stubber pistol, a gun that fires .60 caliber tracer bullets, with Mechanicus-grade Helix armor-piercing slugs. It’s a combination that he believes unique, and allows him both anti-tank and anti-infantry capability up close.

Lord Commissar Beleph Dour

“My stalwart warriors, know this: one day, this Sector will flood with terror. Daemons will walk in the daylight and scourge the innocent. When that happens, we will be there, unshakeable and proud, and we will smite them to the ground.”

Nearly all Imperial institutions are under siege in these decaying times. The edges of the Imperium are crumbling away, and Cloudburst sits on the very edge itself. Cloudburst and the Imperium need defenders, people who can and will put their lives on the line to protect it.

One such man is Beleph Dour. Born to a family of Imperial Navy officers, the Schola Progenum system picked him up when the ship on which his family served was lost in battle against pirates. Dour entered the Commissariat, and displayed a natural skill for logistics, discipline, and higher learning that suited him well for the task. Eventually, Dour became the Regimental Senior Commissar for a regiment of Thimble Argent Swords.

While serving the Swords, Dour caught the eye of Lord Inquisitor Cloudburst Vahnden, an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor who was first assembling the Night Slaughter. The Night Slaughter only took the very best of troops from the Thimble military, those who did not have any sort of disciplinary problems or families to miss them. Thus, while the presence of a Commissar for morale or oversight would be helpful, the Commissar in charge of the Night Slaughter’s training would not need to worry as much about refusal to follow orders or other common Imperial Guard problems as they would in the Argent Swords.

Dour was a natural choice, and took over the training of the Slaughter. Because of their non-standard hierarchy, mission goal, and training circumstances, the Night Slaughter are led by their Senior Commissar instead of a flag officer. The Slaughter has not yet fielded, although Lady Inquisitrix Malleus Kimihira thinks that will change soon. The foundations of the Imperium are eroding away, and nowhere is the problem more obvious than the outer frontiers of human space. Dour shares Kimihira’s belief that the Night Slaughter shall deploy soon, but has kept up the cryo-preservation routines and secret manufacturing that has characterized the entire Night Slaughter’s history, just in case.

Because of his responsibilities, Dour has few chances to do anything other than his job. As one of the very few members of the Night Slaughter who is allowed to leave their secret underground base and go to the hives, Dour does infrequently get to enjoy some leave, but he takes the chance to do so less and less as time goes by. As the Night Slaughter grows, he has more to oversee.

On a personal level, Dour lives up to his name. He is quiet when off-duty, and he is slowly sliding into the habit of drink, but he is still smart as a whip. Thanks to his juvenat treatments, he has lived for over two hundred years. There will come a point after which they no longer work, but until then, he serves as the longest-presiding member of the Night Slaughter, bar none.

Dour carries a master-crafted bolt pistol and Power Sword as his personal arms, and is rated on all variants of the Guard standard truck, groundcar, and Sentinel.

Admiral Langdon Reith

“Work with aliens? Why not? If they like money, they come work for me. Everybody else does, sooner or later.”

There is no living enemy of the Imperial Navy in Cloudburst that angers them more than Langdon Reith. To the Navy, Reith is a slap in the eyes. He was one of them, a naval officer, before he turned to crime, consorting with aliens, and eventually full-scale military insurrection.

Langdon Reith grew up on Septiim Primus, in an unremarkable family he has outlived. The young Langdon eventually completed school and joined up with the Imperial Navy Officers’ Corps, becoming a Junior Lieutenant after passing the Nauphry War College with few distinguishing points. His record shows that he had relatively few noteworthy accusations and accolades in his time in school, with his only real area of excellence being academic topics like history and mathematics.

After graduation, Reith served as a lesser officer in the personal staff of Morlo Vakker, the Captain of the Imperial Navy Destroyer Wildstar. Reith worked his way up to Lieutenant Commander in just a few years. The Inquisition and Imperial Navy Intelligence do not know whether Reith planned his crimes from the start, or if he plotted them later. Whether he intended to betray the Imperium immediately or not, he was surely laying the groundwork for his schemes by the year M41.884, when he purchased several juvenat treatment supplies, enough for four or five life extensions, out of his own pocket. Retroactive investigation reveals that Reith had begun saving every coin he had, and even taking out loans, to purchase the juvenats by then. Reith did not behave any differently at that point, at least in the eyes of his superiors. However, by the turn of the century, he was engaged in the preparations for his theft and defection.

History shows that unknown people murdered the Commissar assigned to the Light Cruiser on which he was serving at the time, Kyrsten Lannisdottir, only one year before he stole the ship. The records at the time indicated that the murderer had cut her throat while she was sleeping. No other person on the ship had had a key to her room, to prevent just such an occasion, but there had been no forced entry into her quarters. The Ordo Militarum now suspects that Reith may have asked the ship’s Security Man at Arms to make him a key so he could kill Lannisdottir himself, which may explain why said Man at Arms did not put Reith down when he began his barratry.

That is the point that sticks in the craw of so many Imperial survivors of that theft. The loss of the Light Cruiser Missileer was not a mutiny, nor a boarding action. Reith convinced the other officers to steal it with him, as well as several senior Petty Officers and the ship’s Navigator. It was a true barratry, and he accomplished it only by murdering the ship’s Captain and Second Officer, leaving himself as the First Officer to command the ship uncontested. He flew the vessel into the Cloudburst Circuit and began raiding Imperial shipping between the outposts there and the Sector proper.

Reith commands the Free Corsair Coalition as his personal fiefdom. Officers who please him and obey him undoubtingly receive command of his few capital ships, although he does ensure that only skilled officers are given the chance. He does not tolerate disobedience, and while he allows the Escorts in his fleet to select their own Commanding Officers from the ranks of senior staff aboard each one, he retains the ability to override that choice at any time. As the Flag Admiral and founder of the FCC, Reith can assume command of any vessel he pleases in the fleet, but he doesn’t bother doing so since conquering Zlodziei.

His personal staff are an eclectic mix of former Imperial officers, freelancers he has hired, bodyguards, his logistical officer/quartermaster, and Ortam Lesarien. Reith has enough of an ego to think he can continue his defiance of the Imperium indefinitely, but not enough of an ego to attempt to do so uninformed or directly. He simply doesn’t have the firepower or supplies to fight the Navy head-on, and if he keeps operating within what is ostensibly Imperial territory, sooner or later they will come after him. He relies on his network of spies, informers, and mercenaries to avoid Imperial attention and keep him informed of targets. He still has enough rejuvenat treatment chemicals to perform another life extension, but he will eventually need to steal more if he wants to continue surviving past that.

His advisors have a clear rank hierarchy, but the ones that accompany him at any given time are the ones he needs. When he doesn’t have them in his personal company, his advisors stay in their temporary workspace on the Dead Lights space platform, which trails in the wake of the planet Zlodziei by three light seconds. Reith himself sleeps in his quarters on the Inescapable, which he has conditioned as a combination tactical review chamber and private casino. When the Inescapable is not afield, he keeps it docked on the Dead Lights, where he entertains guests, usually officers from other pirate groups he is trying to lure into his service.

The Dead Lights has few weapons, relying instead on its distance from Zlodziei to protect itself. Reith does not want to commit any more resources to it as long as the fleet is trying to keep itself mobile. He has attached a few small shipbuilding modules to Zlodziei’s existing orbitals, of which the locals only had two, but he is ready to sink them at a moment’s notice if the Imperials are in position to steal them. His largest asset, however, in terms of impact on his organization, is Imperial herself.

Twelve years before the FCC conquered Zlodziei, a woman approached Reith during a raid he was conducting on the Imperial freighter Flying Money. Without firing a shot, she managed to outmaneuver his guards, his crew, and the entire boarding complement of the Inescapable. Reith was standing on the bridge of his ship, watching the feeds as his men stormed the freighter, when Lixivium Dill simply stepped past the bridge guard in a moment of distraction and cleared her throat.

Five minutes later, Lixivim Dill was the new Chief Strategist of the FCC, and the Coalition had gone from being just another ambitious gaggle of pirates to being the prime threat to Imperial border security that isn’t a tainted alien bird. Dill explained to Reith that she was a Vanus Assassin, which Reith had never even heard of prior to her joining him. The Vanus Assassins manipulate others into killing for them. They have put down rebellions against Imperial authority simply by turning various anti-Imperial factions against each other. Lixivim Dill is not Reith’s new friend’s real name, but rather an anagram of her kill count, which is one of the first things she told Reith.

Reith isn’t stupid enough to think that somebody like that can ever be truly controlled. Dill doesn’t want an open war against the Imperium of Man any more than he does, but that doesn’t mean her ambition isn’t as high as the skies and just as endless. Dill is the fourth in command of the entire Coalition, after Reith, his brother, and Lesarien, and Reith knows that she could bypass and kill all of the others if she wishes to rise in rank.

However, Dill is running from something. Reith does not precisely what it is that makes Dill sometimes spontaneously look over her shoulder, but he has a sneaking suspicion that it is a fellow Assassin of greater skill and loyalty. He hasn’t pressed the matter, however. Dill’s casual demonstration of skill has made it abundantly clear to him that she could have killed him any time she wanted, and the Officio Assassinorum isn’t foolish enough to send an Assassin of lesser skill to kill her or him when the time comes for that. If what she fears is another Assassin, only fate knows how it will end.

Reith is not a man of idleness. Although he doesn’t look particularly dangerous, he does have one huge advantage in combat, one that he has employed more than once in boarding actions. Reith has a variety of cybernetic implants, but they are stolen Cognomen implants and augmetics, not the clunky, metallic ones of most Forge Worlds. As such, they look like normal flesh, even while in use. He has a Refractor Field built into his back that powers off a power generator he keeps hidden in the ammo bags on his combat uniform, meaning that shots at him simply do not kill him. Between that and the emergency air phial he has built into his ribcage, neither being shot nor spaced can kill him as quickly as they could a normal human. The Imperial Navy has attempted counter-boardings against his ships more than once, and two separate naval armsmen have reported a fatal hit on him that he found noninjurious at worst. For his part, Reith hates Admiral Maynard right back, and thinks him the one man in the Sector that might actually be able to stop him.

Away from the troops, Reith is a larger-than-life figure. He drinks, he smokes, he gambles, he beds whores, he keeps up with pistol and Power Cutlass training, and he addresses his bridge crews with loud roars instead of clipped pronouncements. He is an even six feet of height, and dresses more like a Rogue Trader than his Imperial Navy roots would suggest.

Monica Lanbrie, Canoness Superior of Celeste

“So you still have no desire to repent? Truly? I am saddened. No, not for you, but the Exsanguination Harness takes so long to clean after each use. I shall have to get one of the Initiates to do it. No, it’s too late now, you had your chance.”

All congregations need a leader. While the Cardinals of the Cloudburst Diocese, all two of them, could claim credit for that feat easily enough, the lay members of the flock of the Emperor in Cloudburst know the true exemplar of the Emperor’s divine will is Monica Lanbrie. She could make an honest claim to being the most overworked Sororitas in Cloudburst. Lanbrie’s own Sisters are among the best disciplined and most loyal people in the Sector, of course, but the Sisterhood in Cloudburst contains all of the Orders of the Sororitas at once. The Hospitaller, the Famulous, and the Dialogous are eternally busy, advising noble families and assisting Missionaries in the Circuit. Because of the lack of technological base and millennia-spanning tradition in her Order, Lanbrie must oversee all Sororitas activities in most of the Sector and the entire Circuit. Of course, there is another Convent in the Sector, so she is not without aid in this task, but it is still taxing.

This is made worse by the fact that her superiors throw away money like it’s going out of style. The Convent in which Lanbrie bases her operations is a magnificent piece of Imperial architecture, to be sure, and the overall state of the Sisterhood in Sector doesn’t suffer much, but the Ecclesiarchy in Cloudburst is almost shockingly profligate. Lanbrie feels genuine disgust for the sheer volume of wealth the Ecclesiarchy squanders on looking good. She is notably not taking action to rectify this, however.

Lanbrie has another obstacle most of her kin in other Convents does not. The Chamber Militant, her Battle Sisters, are somewhat underequipped. As much as Lanbrie would like to be able to blame this issue on Drake and Lamarr’s overspending, however, she can’t. This is instead the fault of the Cognomen armories, which have only barely been keeping up with the immense demand of Cloudburst’s rapidly expanding population. The fact that the Ecclesiarchy is quite stingy with the blueprints for their arms is not helping matters.

As the Canoness Extraordinary of the capital system of the Sector, Lanbrie nominally has authority over all Canonesses of equal or lesser rank in the Sector. In practice, her Sisterhood, like most, is as self-sufficient as possible, so this rarely comes up. Rarely, her Convent will play host to the leaders of Sisterhoods elsewhere in the Segmentum Ultima, and on those cases, she tries to be the best hostess she can, despite the circumstances.

Her Sisterhood is a potent force in battle despite their less than perfect weaponry stocks, and as part of her policy to never allow the forces of Doubt and Disbelief to creep into the sparse and hard-to-patrol Cloudburst Sector, Lanbrie simply does not allow her Battle Sisters to enter the fray without at least company-strength numbers, ever. This is expensive, of course, and when lone Sisters accompany Rogue Traders and such into the Circuit it may not be possible, but it does ensure that their casualties are low and their reputation terrifying. This is aided by the High Gothic plaque on the arch over Lanbrie’s office door, which reads “Redemption is not Forgiveness.”

Not all deployments of the Sisters go as planned, but so far, Lanbrie has a sterling success rate against the enemies of the Imperium at the edges of its territory. Her Elder Celestian units, codenamed Pike and Javelin, are without question the deadliest short-range combatants in the Sector outside the Blue Daggers (and Inquisitrix Kimihira’s bodyguards). Their record has no defeats, not since Lanbrie took over as their leader seventeen years before, and not one Elder Celestian squad has suffered a casualty in nine years. They make use of the rare Mars-built weapons which the Sanguine Soul has access to, including its master-crafted combi-bolters, which each Sister is allowed to customize however they wish (silver plating and custom grips are popular). On rare occasions, Lanbrie even leads them into battle herself, armed with a pair of master-crafted and heavily artificed Power Gladii, gifts from Oscar Havermann’s predecessor as the Lord Inquisitor Hereticus Cloudburst. For ranged battle, she instead makes use of a combi-bolter from the same pool as Pike and Javelin.

On rarer occasions, members of the Ordo Hereticus will come to her with secret missions. Usually this merely involves imprisoning individuals the Inquisition has already taken alive, which Lanbrie readily does in her secret prison, but sometimes it involves inserting specific Sororitas into the retinues of other Inquisitors or Rogue Traders. Lanbrie rarely refuses, because these requests serve two major purposes. Firstly, they allow her Sisterhood to improve their connections to organizations across the Sector, and gain prestige, wealth, converts, and equipment in exchange. Second and more importantly, they allow for the sight of the Emperor to reach incredibly powerful people, who might otherwise convince themselves that they are beyond it.

Lanbrie is a grandmother, which is a trait that few other Canonesses hold. Her grandchildren are both students in the Canon Academy of the Imperial Sacrosanct, a prestigious private school on Celeste. Lanbrie was a terrible mother, but age has shown her that family is something you can’t get back when you lose it, and so she has done her absolute best to make a place for her grandkids in her life.

Cardinal-Astra Drake, Chief of the Synod Cloudburst

“Faith is a beautiful, lovely, perfect thing, and thus must be protected. It must be shepherded and guarded carefully, nurtured when underfed and glorified when natural. It must also look good. Faith that isn’t expressed properly is just… it doesn’t mean as much, you know?”

The Archdiocese Cloudburst is exactly two people, and Cardinal Drake is in charge. Despite the population of Cloudburst Sector very rapidly creeping toward one hundred billion, somehow the Adeptus Ministorum has not yet seen fit to assign Cardinals to Thimble and Septiim. Until that happens, the Cardinal of Celeste is the de facto head of the entire Cloudburst Sector Ecclesiarchy.

True to his calling, Cardinal Drake is a leader of the faithful in the Sector and has been for centuries. He has benefitted from two juvenat treatments so far, but his DNA is now too degraded to accept another. Ever since he was a teenager in the slums of Civitavecchia, Drake felt the need to be in charge, and the need to direct and amplify the faith of others. Drake took to the Ministorum as soon as he was old enough, and followed the hierarchical path up through the ranks become the Cardinal of Celeste.

Drake embraced the trappings of office at once. Before he had even gained his present rank, Drake sank vast sums into beautifying several properties of the Ministorum, even those that had had significant investments already. There had already been a loud and costly trend towards expensive decoration and expression among the Celeste Ecclesiarchy, but Drake took it to new heights.

There are strong rules in place in the Ecclesiarchy about the pursuit of personal wealth. These date back to long before Drake, to the Age of Apostasy and the Reign of Blood and the Plague of Unbelief. Drake does not defy them, not in his mind. However, an impartial viewer would have some difficulty interpreting that claim as he does. The Ecclesiarchal protocols command Cardinals not to amass such personal wealth as Drake has spent, but Drake could point out his nearly-empty bank account and claim innocence. However, some parishioners have asked, is that a distinction without a difference? The Cathedral in which he lives is an extraordinarily beautiful, jewel-encrusted, heavily-guarded colossus, and he never leaves it. Does that qualify as having no personal wealth? He also has a ship of his own, with a Navigator he hired from Ecclesiarchal funds. Does that qualify as having no personal wealth?

To Drake, this is all distraction. In his mind, he does the work of the Emperor without hesitation or misstep. Even his critics admit that he does do an admirable job of inspiring the entire congregation of Cloudburst and Celeste. He bellows speeches and sermons about faith and deviance, about loyalty and heresy, and he does so with ironclad conviction and a strong voice despite his age.

However, off the pulpit, Drake is a terrible administrator. As a figurehead, he is capable, but when it comes to navigating the inter-office politics of the Ministorum, Drake is wholly inept. His aides and Deacons run nearly his entire establishment for him, while he imagines himself indispensable. More to the point, his age has grown past the limits of his juvenat treatments. He likely has only a few months to live, and has no idea save for a growing weariness when he rises from bed.

Drake is a friend to the Adeptus Sororitas inasmuch as they theoretically answer to him when outside their capacity as the Chamber Militant of the Inquisition Ordo Hereticus. However, Monica Lanbrie, the Canoness Superior of his home system, finds him distantly annoying, and she is more aware than most of his rising senility. The various measures that she and others have taken to remove him from most command positions have so far not tipped the man off to his predicament.

There are people far more vicious – or malevolent, depending on whom you ask – with their eyes on Drake. The Ordo Hereticus has so far tolerated his absurdly spendthrift lifestyle for the success it has brought the Cloudburst Ecclesiarchy in bringing in converts from beyond the Sector’s edge, but now it has reached a volume that is actually impeding the work they should be doing. The Ordo has not yet noticed his medical degradation, ironically because of the efforts of Lanbrie to hide it until he dies.

Drake has never been in a fight in his life, and does not carry a weapon or armor by habit.

Cardinal Lamarr

“NOOO!... Oh, Page. No, thank you… just the nightmares again. Do me a favor, my lad, order another patrol of the walls, would you kindly? The knife-ears almost got me that time.”

Cardinal Lamarr is the second of the two Cardinals of the Archdiocese Cloudburst and rules from the planet Jodhclan’s Paradise. Unlike his superior, Cardinal Drake, Lamarr concerns himself somewhat less with the aesthetics of the Ministorum, and more with its defense. More specifically, his personal defense first, and that of his homeworld second.

Lamarr began his life in the Ecclesiarchy in the Imperial Navy, as a member of the crew of the warship Titanclad. After hearing the Chaplain of the vessel administrate to the souls of two crewers who died in a munitions loader accident, he found himself moved to join the Ministorum, and partake of such a holy calling. He was a natural: an orator, a confidant, and a genuinely pious leader of men.

In no time, he had risen through the clergy of Jodhclan and entered a highly public position: that of the primary Confessor of the planetary administrators. While a man of lesser moral caliber or fewer ethics might have been tempted to use such a position and the abundant blackmail opportunities it presented, Lamarr did no such thing. With connections to the rich and powerful of his homeworld, a sterling record of discretion, a dazzling rise in personal power, successful military service, and a public sense of right and wrong, Lamarr seemed destined for greatness.

When the Cardinal of Jodhclan died, Lamarr’s superior, Serano Schneider, rose to fill the position. Lamarr rose from Confessor to the capital city to serve as Schneider’s underling, the Bishop of Durantsberg. After seventeen years, Schneider died, and to the surprise of roughly half the Bishops of the Sector and the weary acceptance of the other half, Schneider’s testament named Lamarr as the new Cardinal. With only one other Cardinal in the Sector, Drake rubber-stamped Lamarr’s ascension to the position, which he has held loyally ever since.

Unlike Cardinal Drake, Lamarr understands that wealth is not a perfect indicator of the level of piety. However, he has not actually taken any significant steps away from the use of the same garish, overwhelmingly decorated art styles for the buildings under his control. He has far bigger problems, in his mind. It is not unfair to claim that his job is far harder than Drake’s; Drake needs merely tend to the leaders of the Sector and represent Cloudburst on Terra, but Lamarr rules a world. Jodhclan’s Paradise’s name may be apt, but the planet still has billions of residents that need both spiritual and administrative leadership. In fact, Lamarr spends over eighty percent of his time at work performing leadership functions for the planetary government. The rest of the time, he is either recording sermons or performing them live.

However, he has also spent several hours per week of late indulging in a personal fear. Cardinal Lamarr is utterly terrified of the Eldar race. He is convinced, beyond logic or hope, that they will come for his world, and they will do so any day now. The work he has done to lead the people of Jodhclan is quickly shrinking in significance in his mind, compared to the overwhelming threat of the Eldar hordes.

So he imagines, because of Jodhclan’s Paradise. The planet is a place of magnificent natural resources, bursting with picturesque views, abundant food and minerals, huge energy generation and residential potential, and habitable neighbors in-system. The world fits all the criteria he can think of to fit the pattern of planet-thieving the Eldar have iterated hundreds of times in history.

Many tens of thousands of years ago, the Eldar Empire instituted mass terraforming (or Xenoforming, more accurately) of thousands of planets around the galaxy with abundant frozen water but no biosphere. Using their technosorcery to reshape the planets’ atmospheres and water to forms that resembled the tropical worlds on which their people’s empire was built, the Eldar named these slow-acting crustal rebuilding projects the Maiden Worlds. Since the collapse of the Eldar pantheon, the Eldar, especially the Exodites and Harlequins, have had far more pressing concerns, but the Craftworlders occasionally find the need for a habitable planet for some reason. Periodically, humans and other species that have taken up residence on these tropical paradises find themselves evicted at gunpoint from their homes, some of which humanity has been occupying since before the end of the Age of Strife.

Cardinal Lamarr is convinced that Jodhclan’s Paradise is one of these. He is convinced enough that a Council of Farseers probably couldn’t dissuade him at this point. To the end of protecting himself and his demesne from the xenos, he has decided to harden the defenses of the world as much as humanly possible.

The problem with that idea is that the Ecclesiarchy, of which he is a senior and public member, is expressly forbidden from collecting and employing ‘men under arms.’ Of course, the Adeptus Sororitas is an exception to the rules, since even Sebastian Thor understood that a defenseless Ecclesiarchy benefits nobody. However, Sororitas require decades of training, highly expensive equipment, and space-consuming vehicles. Likewise, Sororitas answer to the Inquisition over the Ecclesiarchy despite being under the Ministorum’s nominal control.

Mercenaries do not have that problem. Cardinal Lamarr has gotten around his lack of legal grounds to raise an army by buying one instead. He has sent out contacts and invitations to nearly every mercenary organization in the entire Cloudburst Sector, Cloudburst Circuit, and even Naxos Sector, recruiting hundreds of thousands of men to Jodhclan. Technically, the Decree Passive does not prohibit members of the Adeptus Ministorum from hiring bodyguards or emergency security in the case of alien invasions, but it does prohibit the indefinite hiring of hundreds of battalions of men and artillery units to protect an entire planet from aliens who may not even know it exists. Lamarr has been stockpiling guns, troops, and pre-fabricated buildings for over eleven years. The only reason his hiring is stopping now is that he is running out of mercenaries. There are still mercenary groups that exist in Cloudburst, but they are either anti-Imperial or too small to bother with.

Lamarr is under investigation from the Ordo Militarum, a specialized Ordo Minoris of the Inquisition. However, he is unaware of this, and is still desperately hiring military assets from across the Sector and beyond to shore up his defenses. The people of Jodhclan are unsettled by this, although he has so far refused to deploy his troops against the citizens, so most give him the benefit of the doubt.

His paranoia manifests in other ways. Lamarr has collected a small circle of administrators, doctors, bodyguards, deacons, and subaldermen to himself that he feels he can trust absolutely. He has not informed all of them of his secret plans, but they are gradually taking over his responsibilities for running the planet, leaving him more time to plot the world’s defense. However, even a coterie of Imperial elites would have trouble securing a star system from an Eldar invasion, so Lamarr is spending more and more time learning Imperial history and military strategy, which is not helping the case for his loyalty in the eyes of his Ordo Militarum observers. Aside from his preparations, Lamarr is also now troubled by dreams. He has dreamed of the Eldar coming to take everything away from him, to the point that it is now costing him sleep.

Other officials of the Sector generally do not hold Lamarr in high regard. Oscar Havermann is a few months from acting openly at most, given that Lamarr’s authoritarian traits are worsening, and Lord General Xoss loathes him for drawing useful mercenaries away from systems that actually need them.

When not pursuing his obsession, Lamarr is a far better leader than Drake. Unlike Drake, he doesn’t mind getting his hands on the controls of the operation of his diocese. He has personally appointed dozens of the clergy in the Jodhclan command structure. When he needs to, he can be just as personable and kind as he was when he began his rise to power. He has never raised his hands in anger, and he has strictly pursued justice against those who have used their position to bring harm to the parishioners of Jodhclan. He wears a Rosary, but never bears a weapon.

Ortam Lesarien

“Gold is for idiots and the easily distracted. Give me sport! Give me challenge! Give me power! That is treasure, oh yes, true treasure. What can gold bring me that personal satisfaction and the terror of my enemies can’t?”

Even the pirates who work in the FCC are a bit leery of Ortam Lesarien. He’s an alien, for starters, and over eight hundred years old. He is also a psyker, albeit one who never uses his powers except in self-defense. Above all other factors, though, he is a pirate too, and has killed thousands of humans, both with his Wraithstave and his pistol, as well as the heavy cannons of his ships.

To everybody except Lesarien and Reith, his joining the FCC is a complete mystery. He has no stated motive, he detests most of the FCC’s officers, and he doesn’t give a damn about money. He and Reith know, however, that Lesarien is a creature of spite, thrill-chasing, and vengeance. Reith prefers this in his senior officers; he knows Lesarien has no interest in displacing him as the supreme commander of the Coalition. He also knows that the best Lesarien can offer to his organization is his own service. Lesarien’s exile from his own Craftworld precludes any chance of a takeover or reinforcement from Lugganath.

Lesarien’s childhood was as unremarkable as an Eldar’s can be, but his progress down the Paths of the Craftworld came to a screeching halt at once. He had been a member of the Striking Scorpions Aspect Warriors for only seven years before stealing a small ship and fleeing into the Webway after a battle against human raiders assaulting an Exodite world. He turned up four years later, clad in a strange mix of human and Eldar armor, and cutting a swathe through Imperial border shipping. As the Imperial defenses of the Drumnos Sector again hardened against pirates like him, after softening in the aftermath of the destruction of the Dark Winds, he found himself being pushed into the Cloudburst Sector. He had gathered a small crew of a few dozen Eldar Corsairs to his side by this point, but he burned through them quickly with his reckless disregard for the survival of his men, and ever-greater pursuit of thrills.

Eventually, the problems with such a lifestyle caught up to him. After a while, his name was mud with other pirates, who outright refused to work with him. His own refusal to take on crew from the ships he robbed and lack of overall direction meant that his crew dwindled below the number needed to maintain his ship. When the Imperial frigate Bloodhound cracked the superstructure of his ship in a skirmish near the Oldlight Exo-zone, it was the end of Ortam Lesarien’s career as a pirate captain. He managed to limp to the nearest habitable planet, where he put his ship in stationary orbit while he and his remaining crew considered their options.

Salvation came in the form of the pirate destroyer She’s One Of Ours, Sir, which stumbled across the Eldar ship while evading an Imperial Navy patrol. Lesarien boarded the ship with his surviving warriors and captured it, then escaped into the Warp, leaving the wreck of their ship behind to distract the Imperial patrol. Eventually, the She’s One Of Ours, Sir made port at one of the dozens of nameless pirate dens that pop up every so often in the Cloudburst Circuit. There, Lesarien abandoned the ship with the surviving Eldar crew. However, Eldar disembarking from a human pirate ship do not go unnoticed, and a representative of the FCC observed it. He contacted Lesarien and extended an offer of recruitment, and to the surprise of his own crew, Lesarien accepted.

Since then, Lesarien has learned to accept his limitations as a leader. His Eldar warriors, whom he is unable to replenish, form an elite corps of boarding specialists, with the psykers among them acting as force multipliers of immense potency in the largely low-psyker Cloudburst Sector. However, he is also stubborn, rude, callous, and greedy, and these are traits that are harder for him to accept. His subordinates among the humans of the FCC find him nearly impossible to talk to, since he likes to retreat into the linguistic complexity of Eldar compared to Low Gothic to escape conversations he doesn’t like. His Eldar subordinates are happier working for a human than they were for him, however, which has deflated his ego somewhat.

Lesarien has a level of trust in Reith that would shock his family on Lugganath. Not once in the decades that both men have been working together has Reith ever misled or lied to Lesarien, and always gives him a generous cut of the spoils of raids even if Lesarien has no use for it and usually gives it back to him. Ironically, the human Admiral is one of the few people for whom Lesarien has ever felt even the vaguest nugget of admiration. By contrast, Reith barely cares about Lesarien, and only keeps him on retainer despite his behavior because of his superhuman skill. However, Reith is also a skilled dissembler and hides his contempt well.

To keep potential foes from guessing his intent, he never carries the same combination of weapons twice.

Watch Commander Domack of the Imperial Fists

“Cloudburst Sector is my ward, my bastion. It is a bulwark against the never-ending darkness, and as long as I live, it shall remain as such, unless the Emperor Himself dismounts the Throne to order me to do otherwise.”

The task of securing a Sector or other large region of space against hostile aliens, and those who traffic in their goods, is arduous and expensive. Among the leaders of the Deathwatch, Watch Commanders are selected only from Adeptus Astartes officers who have earned the respect of the Inquisition and display aptitude for logistics and personnel management.

Of course, overwhelming combat power and skill are also a prerequisite, but nobody serves in the Deathwatch for long without displaying those things or dying in the process. The Watch Commander of Fortress Dascomb is an Imperial Fists veteran named Domack, and he has skill in abundance. He has served for well over twenty years as the Watch Commander, and will likely die in the role. Domack is quiet, calm, serious, patient, intelligent, resourceful, and impossible to read. Psykers and spies alike find his face and mind to be as blank as paper, even when trying to read him directly. Domack doesn’t take to the field as often as he did when he was a mere Watch Captain, but he keeps up with his training and education in the Dascomb Training Pit and Archive with unfailing promptness.

As a member of the Imperial Fists, Domack was a Tactical Marine Sergeant, the third in command of Fourth Company, when his squad and two Techmarines hot-dropped into the middle of a battle between Orks and Dark Eldar. The Orks were dismantling a Webway Gate out of boredom when the Dark Eldar suddenly launched out of it, attacking the Orks to protect their portal. The Imperial Fists assaulted both, and drove the Dark Eldar off by visibly aiming a field gun at the base of the portal. Had they fired, the shot would have collapsed the portal and stranded the Elder there, so the Dark Eldar raced towards the gun to destroy it. They did so while crossing in front of the Ork boyz that Domack had tricked into chasing him on his Land Speeder. The Orks ripped the Dark Eldar to pieces with their unexpected flank attack, and the Marines mopped up the survivors of both after destroying the Webway entrance.

This sterling performance of improvisation on the part of Domack earned him a recommendation to the Deathwatch. When the time came for a member of the Imperial Fists to don the black plate, Domack was one of three chosen, and went to Watch Fortress Dascomb. After four years of sterling work, he was elevated to command of the Kill-team of which he had previously been just another Tactical Brother. After four more years, he applied to become, and was accepted as, a Keeper for the Fortress. He still wears his Clavis, repainted to resemble a normal gauntlet.

Eventually, the old soldier became the High Keeper of the Fortress, but held the position for only eight months before deaths of two Watch Captains during a catastrophic mission in the Oldlight Exo-zone brought him laterally to fill the gap. Here he found his first actual feeling of being welcome. He had not enjoyed the somber, tense, boring life of a Keeper despite being an obvious natural for it, but as a Watch Captain, commanding thirty other Brothers on high-stakes missions with high tech gear and no room for error, he found the joy of battle rushing back in. He stayed as a Watch Captain for twenty-four years, before the sudden death of his predecessor, Watch Commander Julius Varstol of the Imperial Falchions, opened a position above him.

To his slight surprise, the Inquisitor of the Chamber, High Inquisitrix Lerica, elevated him immediately after consultation with him and his peers. Domack was taken off-guard by this because during his own consultation with Lerica about a successor, he had named Watch Captain Teega of the Hunting Hawks as his choice for the role. Lerica informed him that all four other Watch Captains, including Teega, and both the High Keeper and Lord Inquisitor Xenos Cloudburst had named Domack instead.

Feeling a hitherto unprecedented level of emotional upheaval, Domack accepted the post. To his continuing surprise, he has grown to be comfortable in the role. It combines the need for secrecy, poise, and trustworthiness of the High Keeper with the combat and command roles of the Watch Captain. He has personally selected all three of the current Watch Captains and the High Keeper, although all four were in the Deathwatch for at least eight years before he was promoted to Watch Captain.

As the Commander of an entire Sector’s worth of assets – arguably far more than most backwater Sectors like Cloudburst usually have – Domack has a massive workload. As he is both the Watch Commander and Master of the Vigil, which are also not the same position in most Sectors that have enough resources to split the functions, Domack simply does not have the time to go into the field that he used to. However, he has displayed a keen sense for potential trouble in the Sector that keeps him from being overwhelmed. Problems on the scale of the Ork and Glasian invasions the Sector is currently experiencing are larger than he can deal with by himself, and he knows it well.

In the face of the Septiim attack, he has sent a trusted Keeper and six Deathwatch Brothers armed with his secret responsibility. Like every Watch Commander since Fabique recommissioned Dascomb for the Deathwatch, he is entrusted with the terrible responsibility of enacting Exterminatus against the system should the worst come to pass. The Inquisition does not know whether Tzeentch hits the Septiim planets in every Migration because he thinks of it as a control for his experiment, or because it has some value they do not yet recognize. Regardless, the Inquisition simply does not trust Tzeentch to destroy Septiim like Chlorit if the aliens take any of its worlds. Also, Septiim has more habitable worlds in its system than any other in Cloudburst, but its defenses are massive and growing, so the odds of losing only one or two planets instead of all of them is high. What will Tzeentch do if his pawns capture such prizes? The Inquisition dares not learn.

As such, Domack is the most recent Watch Commander entrusted with the Sanction of Annihilation. It is a machine, built long ago on Mars, which contains a self-powering microtoroidal lattice electromagnet. Within, each microtoroid contains a few molecules of antimatter, and uses the interactions of energy and the magnetic fields of the adjacent microtoroids in the lattice to contain them all. The machine is no larger than a meter square, but contains within it over eighty-five kilograms of anti-protons, enough to liquefy the crust of a planet. It is one of only a tiny handful of Exterminatus weapons that humanity built, can build no longer, and can be carried by a Space Marine one-handed. The Inquisition’s Ordo Xenos Cloudburst has debated the use of the weapon, and concluded that a system of over ten billion humans falling to the beasts is simply not acceptable when destroying one planet to save the rest remains viable.

The Oglith invasion is a more conventional problem, involving a far more predictable foe, and in only one system. Domack has dispatched a cruiser, one of the Fortress’ few precious Strike Cruisers, with a Kill-team and several specialists aboard. It has not yet arrived, but the Cruiser’s resident Astropath informs him they shall arrive within a few more real-space days.

When Domack does take to the field on those rare occasions when he can, he arms himself with a magnificent relic: a pre-Heresy Tigrus Bolter, master-crafted and artificed to perfection, with an integrated low-light scope, bayonet mount, and combi-flamer attachment. He has a bayonet for it, a chainsword for close-in work, and a pack of frag grenades for when the enemy is fool enough to cluster up. The bolter is a relic of the Imperial Fists, and is Domack’s own personal weapon. The Techbrothers will be sorry to see it go.