Editing Nobledark Imperium Notable People (section)

== Duke Severus XIII ==

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If one were to look up 'Rogue Trader' in the Encyclopedia Imperialis in the days of the first Duke Severus, you'd probably see a picture of the man next to the entry. Roguish goatee, incredible style that was both elegantly modest and imperiously flashy at the same time, slim filigreed shuriken pistol in one hand and gilded power sword in the other. Nevertheless despite all this worldliness and political acumen, Duke Severus I willingly placed himself away from the Calixis Sector. This was because he had two things his descendant didn't have: self-awareness and a realistic sense of proportion. As skilled an adventurer and Rogue Trader as he was an administration was his weakness, and his Seneschal was as eager for a quiet life as the Duke was. And so Duke Severus I settled down in a small realm far, far away from the rat race of Calixian politics with a harem of nubile xenos and spent his last century 'energetically relaxing', as a biographer delicately put it.

And that was the way things were, the 'Severan Dominate' being nothing more than the charming village to the Calixis Sector's big city. The Dukes and Duchesses Severus were content to live the sedate lives of the idle rich, their traditional sense of noblesse oblige and wise, reliable investments allowing them to gently build up the realm. For generations, this was the way things were, and it seemed the way things would continue.

But then came Duke Severus XIII.

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To all outward appearances, the Duke is nothing like the tyrant outside forces claim him to be. Handsome, well-spoken and intelligent, he exudes the kind of vibrant vitality that people imagined his famous ancestor would have possessed. When he speaks of caring for his people, it isn't with the transparent, self-congratulating false modesty many other Imperial nobles would, but with a genuine sincerity and emotional weight. When he speaks about making the Severan Dominate a major player in the sector- no, the galaxy!- he does so with a visionary's fervor and a prophet's zeal. In a fairer, kinder universe, the Duke would have perhaps met Oscar and Isha, impressing them with both wit and wisdom. He would have had the resources he needed to turn the Dominate into something wonderful, maybe even something that a time traveler from the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion wouldn't have felt out of place in, if a little provincial.

At the very least, his parents would have had more children.



The Severan line had a curse laid upon it, a gene-weapon used on the first Duke by a vengeful Dark Eldar prince. While the Priestesses of Isha did their best, they couldn't fully mitigate the weapon's effects, and the Severan line was ever under threat. Indeed, every member of the Severan line was born prematurely, and that was just counting the survivors. Duke Severus XII and his wife were especially unlucky, with only Romulus Augustus Nepos, Duke Severus XII surviving his childhood. They weren't bad parents, or even inattentive ones; indeed, they were too much so. They spared no expense in raising their child, with no expense spared for their son's tutors and toys.

They did try to rein him in, even as a child. They withheld rewards until Severus XIII did his homework, and his father made sure to foster a connection between his son and their people. However, they were both only human, and while their son did grow up caring for his people, it was tainted by his growing narcissism. Even so, he appeared to be the perfect son and ruler until he gained the throne upon his parents' passing.

Things seemed optimistic at first; if anything, it seemed like the dawn of a new Golden Age for the Dominate. The new Duke sold off most of his family's finery, even nationalizing most of his family's traditional holdings, all to help fund revitalization projects for the Dominate. New spaceports, mines, factories, farms and the like began to sprout up all over the Dominate. New Guard regiments were raised, and given the best weapons the Dominate could supply. Yet in all the revitalization, the cracks began to appear.

The Duke wanted the best, and the best he would have- even if it was impractical. For example, he wanted only the most prolific, the most lucrative produce from his agri-worlds, but his advisors told him that the soil on the Dominate's agri-worlds wasn't suited for the Biologis' finest works- and that was not taking into account the cost. As productive as the Dominate's new mines were, they just couldn't provide the yields needed to supply the new factories. And yet, whenever the Duke's advisors brought such matters up, the gregarious, good-humoured young man they were so used to dealing with seemed to disappear, replaced by a man who alternately brooded and sulked, or exploded in frustrated rage at an unfair universe.

While it is generally useless to speculate on the Duke's mental state as things are currently, from what few reports made it out of the Dominate before it seceded, Imperial psychologists and seers have theorized that the Duke's narcissism has manifested in some kind of manic self-identification with the Dominate, with the man seeing the realm as an extension of himself. It would certainly explain his rambling, raving message to the Lucid Palace, so uncharacteristic of the man, in which he accuses the Imperium of 'bleeding him dry' and 'tearing at his flesh'.

Diplomatic overtures were rebuffed, but if the Duke had left it at that, the Imperium might have been content to leave him be to negotiate with the next ruler of the Dominate; it wasn't a large realm, after all. Even when it was stable it was seen as the rightful resting area of one of the Angevin Crusade's greatest heroes. It wasn't even tithed that much; apart from the Black Ships, only a single world contributed significantly to the greater Imperium in the form of a few Guard regiments.

The Duke didn't see it that way, obviously, and he made his displeasure clear when he actually assaulted the Calixis border. Whether this was deliberate, or a border skirmish gone hot, isn't known, and at this point it isn't important. The Imperium was threatened, and now it will respond.


Today, Duke Severus XIII is on the surface at least, as urbane and cultured as ever, speaking with genuine regret over what he sees as the culmination of his efforts to preserve the integrity of his realm and the prosperity of its people. But even the slightest side glance would show the fear on his advisors' faces, the bags under their eyes, their stress-paled skin. And it only takes one look into the Duke's eyes to see the madness that has finally taken over.

The Duke's narcissism has made him blind to many of his realm's deficiencies, and of those he does allow himself to see, he sees them as minor problems, easily corrected- after all, he is the one correcting them, of course they'd be simple! His ego is also why the Dominate (he has long since failed to see a distinction between himself and it) doesn't seem to take the Imperium 'seriously'. All their talk about massive Ork Beasts, Black Crusades, empires of the walking dead- what rubbish! Why, if the Imperium could withstand such adversities, that would make it a greater realm then the Dominate, and there is nothing greater than Duke Severus XIII, first of that name!

Indeed, to the Duke, the sheer overwhelming force the Imperium is bringing in response to his secession is clearly the desperate attempts of a failed state to hold onto power and project stability lest others secede, rather than the sheer amount of military power the Imperium is able to throw around when it isn’t preoccupied with a Black Crusade, Beast WAAAGH! or major Hive Fleet. And the fact that such a force hasn’t simply drowned the Dominate in a tide of bodies and ammunition shows the Imperium’s response is in reality that of a paper tiger, rather than the fact that Segmentum Command would rather convince Dominate worlds that they'd be better off counter-seceding and rejoining the Imperium than simply crush the rebellion beneath a jackboot, if for no other reason than to avoid turning more productive worlds into battlefields and wastelands and avoid spending centuries crushing minor rebellions if they tried to retake the worlds by force.


There are a few things that have managed to penetrate his mental shell, though. The first is the fact that the war seems to be harder than he thought it would be. Of course he knew it would be difficult, why else would he stockpile supplies before announcing his secession? But the fact that the Imperium seems to be making progress, as slow and agonizing as it it, is something he finds intolerable. It's certainly no fault of his, nor his generals- even his most pessimistic advisors admit the Imperium is taking far greater losses than the Dominate, especially now that the Duke has brought in the alien mercenaries. Why, one particular Prince of the Eldar pirates he's hired seems to be brimming with joy every time he sees the Duke, which hardly seems sane if they were losing. The only explanation is that the Imperium is much larger than the Duke had surmised, which was also impossible, because that would make it greater than the Dominate.

And then there is Ohmsworld.



Unlike the Dominate's other industrial worlds, Ohmsworld was a Hive World long before the Severan dynasty came along. Its Guard regiments form the basis of the Dominate's military, just as Cadia serves as a model for the greater Imperium. And of all the worlds in the Dominate, it was the only one to remain loyal to the Imperium when the Duke seceded. The veteran Guardsmen sent there to train the new regiments being raised there organized a coup against the Duke's forces. Whenever the Duke speaks about Ohmsworld, it is with quiet, menacing tones. The Duke's advisors think it is a result of seething hatred, not surprising in a narcissist being refused.

The truth is far different- the Duke is terrified. Oh there is hatred, of course, but it is a hatred born of fear.

His spies have reported that the reason the Ormsworld Guardsmen rebelled was because they said they wouldn't be able to survive without the support of the Imperium proper. Veteran Guardsmen, who must have surely known that their hive world wouldn't be able to survive without the food supplied from Dominate agri-worlds, who wouldn't be able tio fight without the Dominate's forge worlds supplying it, still turned their faces from the Duke to side with the Imperium. Facing this fact, the Duke also had to face another- for all his learning, for all his skill, he had never ventured beyond the Dominate's borders. Hell, he'd rarely ventured beyond the confines of is homeworld. 

The Guardsmen of Ormsworld however, have, and whatever they have seen or experienced has convinced them that surrounded and undersupplied though they may be, it is still preferable to suffering alongside their Dominate, along side their Duke. For Duke Severus XIII, treachery is one thing- he can understand why petty, lesser men would envy him and thus try to betray him. Indeed, that is what he tells himself and others during his waking hours, and in the light it's easy to convince all who would listen.

But when he tries to sleep, he is kept awake by one single thought. He knows it is irrational, he knows it is impossible, yet it keep him awake all the same.

What if he was wrong?

If one were to look up 'Rogue Trader' in the Encyclopedia Imperialis in the days of the first Duke Severus, you'd probably see a picture of the man next to the entry. Roguish goatee, incredible style that was both elegantly modest and imperiously flashy at the same time, slim filigreed shuriken pistol in one hand and gilded power sword in the other. Nevertheless despite all this worldliness and political acumen, Duke Severus I willingly placed himself away from the Calixis Sector. This was because he had two things his descendant didn't have: self-awareness and a realistic sense of proportion. As skilled an adventurer and Rogue Trader as he was an administration was his weakness, and his Seneschal was as eager for a quiet life as the Duke was. And so Duke Severus I settled down in a small realm far, far away from the rat race of Calixian politics with a harem of nubile xenos and spent his last century 'energetically relaxing', as a biographer delicately put it.

And that was the way things were, the 'Severan Dominate' being nothing more than the charming village to the Calixis Sector's big city. The Dukes and Duchesses Severus were content to live the sedate lives of the idle rich, their traditional sense of noblesse oblige and wise, reliable investments allowing them to gently build up the realm. For generations, this was the way things were, and it seemed the way things would continue.

But then came Duke Severus XIII.

To all outward appearances, the Duke is nothing like the tyrant outside forces claim him to be. Handsome, well-spoken and intelligent, he exudes the kind of vibrant vitality that people imagined his famous ancestor would have possessed. When he speaks of caring for his people, it isn't with the transparent, self-congratulating false modesty many other Imperial nobles would, but with a genuine sincerity and emotional weight. When he speaks about making the Severan Dominate a major player in the sector- no, the galaxy!- he does so with a visionary's fervor and a prophet's zeal. In a fairer, kinder universe, the Duke would have perhaps met Oscar and Isha, impressing them with both wit and wisdom. He would have had the resources he needed to turn the Dominate into something wonderful, maybe even something that a time traveler from the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion wouldn't have felt out of place in, if a little provincial.

At the very least, his parents would have had more children.



The Severan line had a curse laid upon it, a gene-weapon used on the first Duke by a vengeful Dark Eldar prince. While the Priestesses of Isha did their best, they couldn't fully mitigate the weapon's effects, and the Severan line was ever under threat. Indeed, every member of the Severan line was born prematurely, and that was just counting the survivors. Duke Severus XII and his wife were especially unlucky, with only Romulus Augustus Nepos, Duke Severus XII surviving his childhood. They weren't bad parents, or even inattentive ones; indeed, they were too much so. They spared no expense in raising their child, with no expense spared for their son's tutors and toys.

They did try to rein him in, even as a child. They withheld rewards until Severus XIII did his homework, and his father made sure to foster a connection between his son and their people. However, they were both only human, and while their son did grow up caring for his people, it was tainted by his growing narcissism. Even so, he appeared to be the perfect son and ruler until he gained the throne upon his parents' passing.

Things seemed optimistic at first; if anything, it seemed like the dawn of a new Golden Age for the Dominate. The new Duke sold off most of his family's finery, even nationalizing most of his family's traditional holdings, all to help fund revitalization projects for the Dominate. New spaceports, mines, factories, farms and the like began to sprout up all over the Dominate. New Guard regiments were raised, and given the best weapons the Dominate could supply. Yet in all the revitalization, the cracks began to appear.

The Duke wanted the best, and the best he would have- even if it was impractical. For example, he wanted only the most prolific, the most lucrative produce from his agri-worlds, but his advisors told him that the soil on the Dominate's agri-worlds wasn't suited for the Biologis' finest works- and that was not taking into account the cost. As productive as the Dominate's new mines were, they just couldn't provide the yields needed to supply the new factories. And yet, whenever the Duke's advisors brought such matters up, the gregarious, good-humoured young man they were so used to dealing with seemed to disappear, replaced by a man who alternately brooded and sulked, or exploded in frustrated rage at an unfair universe.

While it is generally useless to speculate on the Duke's mental state as things are currently, from what few reports made it out of the Dominate before it seceded, Imperial psychologists and seers have theorized that the Duke's narcissism has manifested in some kind of manic self-identification with the Dominate, with the man seeing the realm as an extension of himself. It would certainly explain his rambling, raving message to the Lucid Palace, so uncharacteristic of the man, in which he accuses the Imperium of 'bleeding him dry' and 'tearing at his flesh'.

Diplomatic overtures were rebuffed, but if the Duke had left it at that, the Imperium might have been content to leave him be to negotiate with the next ruler of the Dominate; it wasn't a large realm, after all. Even when it was stable it was seen as the rightful resting area of one of the Angevin Crusade's greatest heroes. It wasn't even tithed that much; apart from the Black Ships, only a single world contributed significantly to the greater Imperium in the form of a few Guard regiments.

The Duke didn't see it that way, obviously, and he made his displeasure clear when he actually assaulted the Calixis border. Whether this was deliberate, or a border skirmish gone hot, isn't known, and at this point it isn't important. The Imperium was threatened, and now it will respond.


Today, Duke Severus XIII is on the surface at least, as urbane and cultured as ever, speaking with genuine regret over what he sees as the culmination of his efforts to preserve the integrity of his realm and the prosperity of its people. But even the slightest side glance would show the fear on his advisors' faces, the bags under their eyes, their stress-paled skin. And it only takes one look into the Duke's eyes to see the madness that has finally taken over.

The Duke's narcissism has made him blind to many of his realm's deficiencies, and of those he does allow himself to see, he sees them as minor problems, easily corrected- after all, he is the one correcting them, of course they'd be simple! His ego is also why the Dominate (he has long since failed to see a distinction between himself and it) doesn't seem to take the Imperium 'seriously'. All their talk about massive Ork Beasts, Black Crusades, empires of the walking dead- what rubbish! Why, if the Imperium could withstand such adversities, that would make it a greater realm then the Dominate, and there is nothing greater than Duke Severus XIII, first of that name!

Indeed, to the Duke, the sheer overwhelming force the Imperium is bringing in response to his secession is clearly the desperate attempts of a failed state to hold onto power and project stability lest others secede, rather than the sheer amount of military power the Imperium is able to throw around when it isn’t preoccupied with a Black Crusade, Beast WAAAGH! or major Hive Fleet. And the fact that such a force hasn’t simply drowned the Dominate in a tide of bodies and ammunition shows the Imperium’s response is in reality that of a paper tiger, rather than the fact that Segmentum Command would rather convince Dominate worlds that they'd be better off counter-seceding and rejoining the Imperium than simply crush the rebellion beneath a jackboot, if for no other reason than to avoid turning more productive worlds into battlefields and wastelands and avoid spending centuries crushing minor rebellions if they tried to retake the worlds by force.


There are a few things that have managed to penetrate his mental shell, though. The first is the fact that the war seems to be harder than he thought it would be. Of course he knew it would be difficult, why else would he stockpile supplies before announcing his secession? But the fact that the Imperium seems to be making progress, as slow and agonizing as it it, is something he finds intolerable. It's certainly no fault of his, nor his generals- even his most pessimistic advisors admit the Imperium is taking far greater losses than the Dominate, especially now that the Duke has brought in the alien mercenaries. Why, one particular Prince of the Eldar pirates he's hired seems to be brimming with joy every time he sees the Duke, which hardly seems sane if they were losing. The only explanation is that the Imperium is much larger than the Duke had surmised, which was also impossible, because that would make it greater than the Dominate.

And then there is Ohmsworld.



Unlike the Dominate's other industrial worlds, Ohmsworld was a Hive World long before the Severan dynasty came along. Its Guard regiments form the basis of the Dominate's military, just as Cadia serves as a model for the greater Imperium. And of all the worlds in the Dominate, it was the only one to remain loyal to the Imperium when the Duke seceded. The veteran Guardsmen sent there to train the new regiments being raised there organized a coup against the Duke's forces. Whenever the Duke speaks about Ohmsworld, it is with quiet, menacing tones. The Duke's advisors think it is a result of seething hatred, not surprising in a narcissist being refused.

The truth is far different- the Duke is terrified. Oh there is hatred, of course, but it is a hatred born of fear.

His spies have reported that the reason the Ormsworld Guardsmen rebelled was because they said they wouldn't be able to survive without the support of the Imperium proper. Veteran Guardsmen, who must have surely known that their hive world wouldn't be able to survive without the food supplied from Dominate agri-worlds, who wouldn't be able tio fight without the Dominate's forge worlds supplying it, still turned their faces from the Duke to side with the Imperium. Facing this fact, the Duke also had to face another- for all his learning, for all his skill, he had never ventured beyond the Dominate's borders. Hell, he'd rarely ventured beyond the confines of is homeworld. 

The Guardsmen of Ormsworld however, have, and whatever they have seen or experienced has convinced them that surrounded and undersupplied though they may be, it is still preferable to suffering alongside their Dominate, along side their Duke. For Duke Severus XIII, treachery is one thing- he can understand why petty, lesser men would envy him and thus try to betray him. Indeed, that is what he tells himself and others during his waking hours, and in the light it's easy to convince all who would listen.

But when he tries to sleep, he is kept awake by one single thought. He knows it is irrational, he knows it is impossible, yet it keep him awake all the same.

What if he was wrong?

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