The Sword, Our Orator!

The Sword, Our Orator!

FIRST ELEVATED FROM PATRICIAN standing in the mid-eighth millennium by Duke Tiberius Ormund, House Marlowe has ruled Meidua Prefecture on Delos for thirty-one generations. Prior to that the Marlowes were military patricians, officers in the Orionid Legions with blood harking back to Avalon and the Kingdom of Windsor-in-Exile. Julian Marlowe was strategos of the 117th Legion of Orion and proved instrumental in the defense of Duke Tiberius’s claim to the throne of Delos in the Second Aurigan War. For his service, he was elevated to the palatine caste and accorded the demesne of Meidua, then a fishing village of no consequence on a scrap of rocky upland. It was only later that the region’s uranium deposits were discovered. While under the reign of Lord Hadrian’s great-great-grandmother, the Archon Lady Sabine, House Marlowe’s wealth grew until its coffers outstripped those of House Kephalos. The Marlowes are distant members of the Imperial peerage both through their marriage into House Kephalos and more distantly through their ancient Avalonian connections and can be identified by their alabaster complexions, black hair, and violet eyes. Their sigil is a crimson devil rampant on a black field.

Lord Hadrian’s grandfather, the Archon Lord Timon, was assassinated in ISD 15861 by a homunculus concubine gifted him by Yuen Starcrafts, a starship manufacturer aligned with Delos’s exsul houses. They were outraged that Lord Timon had used his powers as the vicereine’s executor to secure a writ of monopoly for House Marlowe over all uranium mining in Delos System, destroying their profits. With the vicereine away at Forum, young Alistair was thrust into the role of system executor and into war with the exsul houses when they declared poine against the Houses Marlowe and Kephalos. The other houses had underestimated Lord Alistair, however, and were crushed at the Battle of Linon in ISD 15863. House Orin, the leader of the rebellion, was utterly destroyed, and system authority was more tightly concentrated in the planetary houses. For this and for defending her title, Vicereine Kephalos married Alistair to her youngest daughter, Liliana. Lord Alistair’s reign was hard but prosperous, characterized by the rule of law.