During the 9th Black Crusade led by Abaddon the Despoiler, Imperial General Lucretia Frunze so distinguished herself in the ferocious battles on Antecanis IV that the High Lords of Terra granted her a Warrant of Trade, and she established her own Rogue Trader house.
Although Lucretia Frunze came from a long line of Imperial nobles, her family wasn't particularly wealthy. However, with their contacts and Lucretia's reputation, they secured an ancient star galleon called the Nomine Imperatoris to be her flagship. With a staff mostly recruited from her subordinates in the Imperial Guard, Lucretia Frunze headed to the newly opened Acheron sector to seek her fortune. She was quite succesful, plundering the ruins and remnants of the xenos and blazing new warp routes into the sector. The seat of House Frunze was eventually established on the frontier world of Curzon, which has since grown to a burgeoning hive world at the center of a great web of commercial links.
The Warrant was inherited by Lucretia's daughter Electra Frunze, who succesfully continued her mother's work in consolidating Imperial rule over the new sector. Electra established the family tradition of sending younger children to be educated in the Schola Progenium, as a memorial to her mother's service in the Imperial Guard and a token of the family's unquestioning loyalty to the Imperium. Several Frunze scions have ended up in the Imperial Guard as both officers and Commissars, as well as in the Ecclesiarchy, through this path.
Another legacy of Electra's time is House Frunze's feud with noble house Rufius. House Rufius, originally a naval family, was one of the first Imperial noble houses to gain a foothold in the new sector, and have remained a powerful influence ever since. No-one remembers what the disagreement between House Rufius and House Frunze was, but it seems to have started in Electra Frunze's day, and the ill will between the two houses has gone on ever since. As House Rufius were a major investor in the Sancrist colony and traditionally provide its lieutenant governor, this has made visits to Sancrist slightly tense for House Frunze, and encouraged them to develop their own contacts in the Aradec Confederacy.
Electra was in turn succeeded by her son, Arminius Frunze. Arminius was a highly devout man, who spent a great deal of his youth in the Ecclesiarchy before inheriting the Warrant. As a Rogue Trader, he focused on converting newly rediscovered human worlds to the Imperial creed. He was joined in this endeavour by his closest friend from his days in the Ecclesiarchy, a firebrand missionary who was later canonized as Saint Mettius of Acheron. Their missionary efforts were so succesful that a race of foul xenos set out to thwart them. Arminius Frunze and Saint Mettius were captured by treachery and brought to the xenos homeworld, where they were put to death.
The Warrant of Trade now passed to Arminius's daughter, Octavia Frunze. She was furious at her father's murder and set out to make the xenos pay. Using her family's connections, she was able to buy a Lunar-class cruiser that the Imperial Navy was decommissioning. She gave the ship the name Nemesis, and set out for the xenos homeworld. The Nemesis and her consorts destroyed the xenos navy, and Octavia led a strike team to the planet to recover her father's body. The Nemesis then conducted an orbital bombardment that laid waste to the whole planet, wiping out the xenos. The name of their species and everything about them except their treachery has since been forgotten, even the name of their homeworld: it is now known as Corpus Sancti, in memory of Saint Mettius's martyrdom in the name of the Emperor.
By the time Mordecai Frunze inherited the Warrant of Trade, the star of House Frunze was on the wane. The Nemesis was still the most famous ship in the entire sector, but the other Rogue Trader houses were overtaking Frunze in influence and, increasingly, wealth. Mordecai was a secretive man who was determined to reverse this decline, but he took no-one into his confidence and led the Nemesis on increasingly mysterious missions into unknown systems. His solitude and dedication only deepened with the death of his wife and only child in a tragic accident, and the Nemesis was gone for longer and longer, with the family's finances falling further into disarray.
Mordecai died in unclear circumstances in 943M41, somewhere in the Desolatio Thanos. His body was brought back to Vestigium Hanini by a prize crew on a raider the Nemesis had captured; the whereabouts of the Nemesis itself remain unknown. Because Mordecai Frunze's direct heir was dead, the Warrant was inherited by his young nephew Laurenz Frunze, at the time a student at the Schola Progenium. Young Laurenz now faces the formidable task of restoring the fortunes of House Frunze.
No comments:
Post a Comment