+ inload: Dernledger and Threack +

+ A brace of cards: the Eight of Cups and Four of Suns +

+ Painting Dernledger and Threack +

+ Still WIP, the plan is for these two to represent the citizenry of the regiments roaming around the burning city. I thought a messenger would be interesting – a bit more derring-do than a typical soldier of Cepheus, and making him an officer gives him a little clout. +

+ Starting from a fairly chocolate-box image of a redcoat, I've dirtied and bloodied him up. His hair is unkempt, his headdress missing; but he's kept the starched collar. Details like this hopefully make it clear that Cepheus is more than a little anachronistic. Dernledger is a man of the dark ages, equipped with a space-age ray gun and dressed in a modern-day tech update of a Napoleonic uniform. New Romantic/Punk make-up should help him settle into the grim 80s darkness of the far future, too. +

+ I couldn't bear to alter Threack, as the Bob Olley ogryns/ogres are some of my all-time favourite models. I'd love to get hold of the other club-wielding version sometime, to add to the group. +

Between the wellborne and the masses, stand the aspirant couthclass. Tradesmen successful enough to need work no more, kirkmen and women of the Ecclesiarchy, those whom fortune has propelled to wealth or influence, and the officer classes of the wellbornes' throngs.

Dernledger, Estafett of the Bekenner's Muster is chasing desperately after such status. Loyal to the Throne above the King (and as such, happy to have transferred his oath from the Cyng-in-exile to Sciriusc) and to the House of Bekenner, his regiment's sponsor and commander, below that; he is ultimately pragmatic in his pursuit of respectability.

The Bekenners, a formerly influential wellborne house with close ties to the Ecclesiarchy and dotted Cephean Missions, have found much of their base of power shifted as the Domiciler's Quarter suffered a collapse – both economic and literal – in the eighth month of the war. The Sun King was gracious in extending his patronage to the Muster, feeding and arming the impoverished soldiers before desertion wracked the Regiment. Of course, this 'generous' action is little more than an exertion of power. By subtly humiliating the House of Bekenner, the Sun King strengthens his own hand and binds yet more of the City's wellborne and their militia to his service...

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Dernledger himself is a typical couthclassman, a second son who has achieved a minor role – a posting as a petty officer with little true command – and jealous of losing what little influence he has amassed, and paranoid of the surly conscript messengers under his command. He carries a precious and rare laspistol, handed down within the Muster for decades, though the war in the City has meant this has had more use in the past year than in the previous ten.

Like his men, the Estafett finds himself daily poorer, grubbier and more unhealthy as the war drags on. Tasked with delivering orders and news through the roughest areas of the city, he and his men have become experienced urban fighters, able to work mounted or unmounted, and utterly ruthless. His experience is typical of those without independent means, and unwilling to accept that he has hit the doldrums.

His discovery of the fact that the majority of the messages and missives are simply scrawled notifications of deaths amongst the muster has done little to soften his saturnine demeanour.

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Dernledger is usually accompanied by his Necessary, Threack – the name is a Cephean diminutive meaning 'force'. Unusually, his service tattoos indicate he is an ex-guardsman auxiliary from the Somatos system [+noospheric inloadlink embedded+] – likely one of the many Regiments Brachyllas has produced over the centuries. How he has ended up in the City is anyone's guess, but it is likely he was an indentured gift given to the House of Bekenner by a visiting General or local Priest. Despite tribes roaming the distant Cold Flattes, ogryns remain rare and popular novelties amongst the masses of the City, and having one 'on staff' is a feather in the cap of the Bekenner Muster.

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