Tarkah Ark Elnire

His title “Baron Adjutant” can also be read as “Chief Arsekisser”, but no one would ever dare say that out loud. Of the many Rodinian noble houses and their respective lords that serve the Great House of Thezumai, he’s the greatest arsekisser of them all. His endless millennia of brown-nosing and ruthless execution of the Thezumai family’s ambitions and policies has earned him his place as the right-hand and mate of its vile Matriarch, Nyza Thezumai.   He’s a total sociopath, and cares only for serving and pleasing Nyza, including helping in what appears to be her ambition to (extra-constitutionally!) become Rodinia’s next Imperial Majesty. Outside of his interactions with her, members of the Thezumai house and its allies, almost everyone is treated with inherent elitist disdain as he wields the title of ‘Baron Adjutant to Thezumai’ like a stifling spiritual aura, bullying, humiliating and intimidating others with little potential for pushback.   Other members of Thezumai loyalist houses on the other hand are initially taken in with his warmth and charisma he shows toward them, and initially find it bizarre that he has such a toxic reputation. They can often quickly find out however that he has the potential to turn in an instant; going from your best friend to having you exiled to the most humiliating post he can think of. This tends to be the extent of his punishment of subordinates who either fail him too many times or who display insubordinate behaviour. Killing a fellow Rodinian is boring; humiliating them is much funnier.   Members of rival Great Houses and their vassals are shown the bare minimum of respect as the competition they are, and the Imperial Government of Rodinia is treated like an impotent bureaucratic roadblock to him. He doesn’t care about the impact of his actions or words on others, and cares little for whatever conventions he breaks outside of those within the Thezumai socio-political ecosystem.   Outside of Rodinia he’s even worse. Wielding a Rodinian’s godlike power and abilities with no oversight and effective free reign, it’s not hard to imagine the kinds of things that go on. If other Rodinians are like peasants in his eyes, then non-Rodinians are viewed like insects. He refuses to walk on the same ground as them, calling them and their planets filthy; nor will he breathe the same air as them, claiming the stench is unbearable and going so far as to use Psikinetics to recycle the same breath inside his lungs. He is a staunch enforcer of the obnoxious classist etiquette the old empire imposed upon their subjects. Examples of the kinds of interactions he demands of non-Rodinians whilst carrying out his mission outside Rodinia are:  

• "All Rodinians no matter their rank, station, title or age, must be addressed as either My Lord, My Lady, My Liege or Your Excellency, or the plural thereof if multiple Rodinians are to be addressed.
 
• The name of a Rodinian may not be uttered by a non-Rodinian without that Rodinian’s explicit consent. Rank, station or title must be used instead, where known.
 
• Unless invited to do so, do not touch a Rodinian or enter within a three metre radius of them.
 
• Unless invited to do so, do not make eye-contact with a Rodinian.
 
• Do not interrupt a Rodinian when they are speaking, or otherwise speak out of turn. Do not speak to a Rodinian without first addressing them as My Lord, My Lady, My Liege or Your Excellency."

  The fact the empire has been dead and gone now for over half a million years, and that no one (fortunately) remembers this self-aggrandizing nonsense outside of Rodinia, doesn’t deter him. He’s quick to demonstrate exactly how it was forced on people, and why it was subsequently followed. He kills as and when he pleases, in whatever numbers are sufficient, to get what he wants, such as information on his target: Quixos. It’s an approach he used himself back when he was a governor in the empire, and the excessive nature of it summed over many such other instances of abuse contributed to the public’s opinion of the empire significantly deteriorating.   He’s a remnant of an older paradigm that lost the political battle to non-interventionist thought, and he represents the worst aspects of the Interventionists side regarding foreign diplomacy. He is why it’s so hard to rebuild any trust in the idea, as for every Quixos, Ossian or Zaera that want to help people with the struggles and dangers of life and the universe, there’s a Tarkah or Nyza that want to make it all about them, be worshipped as gods, exercise unlimited power, take what they want, and ultimately satisfy a perverse resentment and disgust at what they view as inept, stunted, inferior lifeforms. Nyza’s ultimate ambitions involve Rodinia escaping the impending Big Rip of the universe by harvesting the lifeforce of countless living beings; an ascension to godhood upon a frenzy of genocide, in other words.   They are dangerous, megalomaniacal, and cruel, and it can’t be overstated how they can never, ever, be allowed to regain control of Rodinia’s political and military power. The crimes they would commit would be incalculable, and in all likelihood the atrocities would start on Rodinia itself as it plunges into civil war and purges. If they won, life would be over for everyone else. It would be a failure state that wasn’t thought imaginable – that Rodinia, meant to have been the sole and just superpower guaranteeing the existence and freedom of everyone else, could itself fall into tyranny and become a threat to the cosmos.   It’s unusual for someone of his social stature to leave Rodinia or directly take charge of a mission, but it’s one of some importance personally given to him by the Matriarch. Tarkah’s mission is to capture and return Quixos Thezumai to his mother, Nyza, so he can be brainwashed into becoming her trustworthy and easily controllable heir to rule House Thezumai, whilst she returns to the position of Imperial Majesty.