Intro of Wilfried

Wilfried Hermansson, son of a newly-appointed Imperial Governor, had been granted the singular honor of serving as commander of the Von Ulm Honorary Guard, a token regiment assigned to the light cruiser Ignis Aeternus. The commission, sealed by the Administratum and blessed by the Confessor-Abbott of his father’s court, was meant as a mark of dynastic prestige and Imperial favor.

Reality proved less magnificent.

For the first time in his life, Wilfried left the world of his birth and set foot aboard a voidship. He had expected the splendor sung of in courtly tales: glittering decks of adamantine, vistas of endless stars. Instead, he was confined to a cramped passenger cabin, the air stale and heavy with recycled tang. The bulkheads groaned, the lumen strips flickered, and the odor of oil and sweat clung to every surface.

Three weeks passed in such dim confinement. The vessel that bore him was meant to deliver him to the Ignis Aeternus before the Day of Founding, yet delay dogged every step. “The warp is fickle,” his man-servant muttered apologetically when Wilfried demanded explanations. Warp was fickle, and so were the schedules of Imperial voidmasters.

At last the transport broke free into the Calixis Sector and made orbit over Scintilla, the teeming capital-world. Even disembarkation proved an ordeal: half a day lost among the labyrinthine concourses of its starports, halls bristling with servitors and petitioners, Administratum clerks shouting directives in a hundred tongues. Finding the correct embarkation gate for his assigned shuttle demanded all the patience he could muster.

Now, at last, Wilfried is on his way. The shuttle lurches as its thrusters ignite, its hold packed not with Imperial nobles but with a handful of weary crew returning from furlough, a harried Imperial courier clutching an Imperial mandate, and a priest collapsed in drunken stupor. Such is the Emperor’s truth: no honor comes without tedium, no elevation without humiliation. The young son of the governor steels himself; soon he will stand upon the decks of the Ignis Aeternus, amidst the banners of House von Ulm, and prove himself worthy of the title bestowed upon him.