Editing Setting:Cloudburst/People (section)

==Master of the Defenses Arthur Molliere of the Ultramarines==
{{Topquote|I am the bulwark of the Deathwatch. My Brothers are free to pursue the alien wherever they may hide because they know I have their backs.|Arthur Molliere}}

Arthur Molliere is in charge of the slowly expanding defenses of the greater Cloudburst Deathwatch, and it is a monumental task. His assets include a few Defense Monitors, a handful of permanently detached Imperial Guard troopers at various Watch Stations, two Astropaths, and the small fleet of trans-system warships in the Deathwatch armada. Individual ships answer to the Keepers that Dascomb assigns to command them, but Molliere decides their overall distribution priorities. As a former member of the command squad of the Master of Victualers for the Ultramarines, he has plenty of logistics experience, and he has worked extensively with the leaders of Cognomen’s Council of Magi to establish a deeper channel of supply between them and Dascomb.

Molliere is very much an Ultramarine officer. He has a more scholarly bent than some, but he values honor and martial pride more than anything else save skill. He studied logistics not only because his forbearer Roboute Guilliman did, but also because in his mind, it makes him a better soldier. As he rose through the ranks of the Ultramarines, he absorbed every speck of lore and extra training he could without deviating from his role in the Company.

Unlike most Deathwatch officers, Molliere actually asked to be added to the Deathwatch. The Ultramarines let him go with the understanding that he did not intend to depart forever. As he explained to Lord Calgar, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, the Chapter had allowed their overriding mission to protect the Segmentum Ultima to distract them. The Glasians had arrived before the Tyranids, yet the Ultramarines had never faced them. After the arrival of the Tyranids and reawakening of the Necrons, the Thirteenth had devoted the vast majority of their efforts to fighting those two specific threats, with obvious exceptions like the Second War for Armageddon.

In Molliere’s mind, the Ultramarines have allowed themselves to become blinded to the possibility that certain alien threats may hold the counter to certain others. The Necrons obviously hate the Tyranids for destroying not only their pool of slaves, but their pool of potential new bodies. The Tyranids know no hate, only hunger; while they harvest genes and biomass to create new forms for themselves, they never bother to adapt technology for themselves. In the Glasians, the galaxy sees an enemy that is fleeing the Tyranids, but also arming themselves with Chaos.

Therefore, to Molliere, the opportunity posed by engaging the Glasians, relentlessly and thoroughly, is enormous. They are the only extragalactic force the Imperium has encountered in untold thousands of years besides the Tyranids, and the only one the Imperium stands a fair chance of beating in their current state. What could the Imperium learn if they study how Chaos is able to control the Glasians utterly? What could the Imperium learn if they examine the tactics Tzeentch lets the Glasians use? What if the Ordo Xenos is right, and the Glasians are fleeing a successful Tyranid invasion; might that not offer the Imperium to see what a failed attempt at outlasting the Tyranids looked like?

He is less enthusiastic about the prospect of studying their technology directly than Watch Captain Paris is, however. Molliere’s interest in the Glasians stems from their unique origin and psychology, not their technoarcana, as much as he must admit that their plasma guns are simply better.

Master Molliere has proposed that an attempt be made by a blank or Pariah agent of the Inquisition to capture a leader of the Glasian invasion forces alive, for interrogation by the Ordo Xenos. High Inquisitrix Lerica thinks this is an idea worth pursuing only if it means that the planets of her Sector are not jeopardized. Of course, Molliere’s service in the Deathwatch is not based wholly on his desire to analyze the Glasians. Before he was Master of the Defenses, he was a Deathwatch Kill-Marine. He put his exceptional education and broad skillset to work in the Cloudburst Circuit in the company of Lord Trader Zutash. There, he saw first-hand dozens of worlds, Imperial and not, that could easily support the populations of all of the ships in the known Glasian fleet, untouched and uncolonized. As far as he’s concerned, this is just more proof of the Inquisition’s working theory that the Glasians are under Tzeentch’s control. If all they wanted was a new home, why would they skip so many potential ones in favor of the polluted and heavily-populated Cognomen, Delving, or Hapster?

In person, Molliere is a staid, respectful fellow, who emphasizes discipline in everything he does. He is a skilled ornithopter pilot, and his preferred wargear loadout is a custom Stalker bolter, outfitted with specialized multi-loader ammo slots he built himself. He also carries an anomalous weapon for a Space Marine: an Imperial Guard styled gas-propelled grenade launcher, with a breech-load and a custom grip and stock. He wears a standard suit of Mark 7 armor, plain and unadorned by ostentation.