Highborn

"Some things can be taught, others acquired by simple exchange of coin. What is truly important, though, is carried in the blood."

- Viola Del Sheen, Matriarch of the Del Sheen

The Noble Born of the Imperium forms the wealthiest and most powerful elite. A breed apart from those they rule. Many noble houses span the stars in an intricate web of kinship, marriage and political alliances that ensure their power and influence go on, even if the fortunes of a single world fail. Products of careful breeding and cultured refinement over centuries (or even millennia), the lineage they hold in their blood is the history of the Imperium itself and they are the finest that humanity has to offer—or so they would have you believe at any rate. Nobility of birth has never been a guarantee of character unfortunately, for every example of true enlightenment or greatness there are dozens of capricious and self-obsessed men and women who prove, by their base failings, that measuring superiority by birth alone in the Imperium is a lie. Worse still than the dissolute idlers and petty tyrants are those whose dark inclinations spill over into heresy and true malignancy, often for no better reason than boredom or a sadistic love of power. It is this last supremely dangerous group that the Inquisition watches for, and combating such powerful and well-resourced heretics is one reason the Holy Ordos draws from the nobility’s own ranks to find some of its servants.

Life as a Noble Born
From almost their first breath, those born to the high nobility are schooled in the role they must play and how they must play it. Their fine education covers not only the ins and outs of history, commerce and power-politics, but an education in the fine-points of taste and etiquette: how to wear a mask of one’s own choosing, how to give an intended slight, how to curry and mete favour, the defence of honour and how to comport oneself in all situations are all lessons deeply ingrained. In some great families, these arts have darker nuances yet; the correct use of poison, a well-executed betrayal and the employment of assassins, all being among them. Connected, socially skilled, highly educated and able to move in the high circles of Imperial society, those of noble blood are frequently as ruthless as they are charming and as dangerous as they are well mannered, making for skilled infiltrators and subtle Acolytes.