The Nephilim Sisters

Lilith and Lotan Nephilim, the Twin Princesses of the Irenton Empire, are the leaders of the faction of Imperial Loyalists aboard the Eater of Worlds. They were rescued as babies from the shattered world of Sirius VI by their adoptive father, Emperor Nicholas, and trained up into arbiters of his will and ultra-fanatic warriors for his plan, in order to command the Emperor's future flagship: the Eater of Worlds. Considered to be some of the most important Imperial Radical figures, their decision to split with the other Loyalist factions after the Battle of Mars and the eventual establishment of the government of the Imperators caused shockwaves and would lead to them being declared traitorous terrorists.

Though they did not know it, their separation from the Imperial government had been orchestrated by Emperor Nicholas as a vital part of his plan. Using his Shadow, Zero, as a proxy, the records of his plan were stolen from the Eater of Worlds and taken far away, whilst tensions were stoked between Haisan Uluvan's Retribution Command and the Loyalists aboard the Eater of Worlds. When the War in Heaven came at last, and Emperor Nicholas had returned to the material universe, he would call upon the vast Radical reserves of the Loyalists for the final battle.

Early Life

The twin eggs of the Nephilim sisters were found on the planet Sirius VI, as the Shadow of Sundered Star reached the system at the head of the Perseus Acquisition. As Imperial forces brought the world to order, ending the world's corrupt and useless government, with consummate ease, Emperor Nicholas descended into one of the planet's sprawling slums, searching, as he was, for the twin eggs of the women he had seen so many times in his visions of the future in the Great Experiment. Try as he did to secure all of the eggs in the abandoned nesting site, only two of them survived: the twin eggs. They were quickly transferred to the IESS Hand of Fate, Nicholas' flagship, where they were born and cared for by the ship's medical complement. When their name-day came seven standard days later, Nicholas declared himself the father and that their names would be Lilith and Lotan Nephilim.

The two were naturally psionically gifted, and became far more powerful than the average psionic through Nicholas' excellent teaching ability. However, they had the natural limits of ordinary mortal creatures, which Emperor Nicholas resolved to rectify soon. The standard day before their fourth birthday, Emperor Nicholas cast them into the Mindscape, the realm of dreams, and allowed them to be spiritually altered by it. He pulled them out again only moments before they would have been subsumed entirely. This experiment, however, was a complete success, Lilith and Lotan had been rendered not only immortal, but so powerful were their souls that their very skin had visibly shifted to a cerulean hue.

Their training and education continued until they were fully grown, where they were recruited into the Imperial government to serve as advisors and representatives. One of their first tasks was scouting out recruits for the Emperor's newly formed Black Guard, and Lotan would often be found meeting with members of the Red Knights - Nicholas' first personal guard force - essentially acting as their representative in the Emperor's council; whilst Lilith was a strong proponent and supporter of the Black Guard, having a strong bond with her sister Cecilia, the Sentinel-General. As the Black Guard expanded rapidly, the Red Knights began to voice louder and louder their contempt and scorn for the Black Guard and Cecilia, whom they believed were usurping their position at the Emperor's right-hand, Lilith and Lotan's relationship became strained as a result.

Many Knight-Captains, several of whom were friends and confidants of Lotan, would be executed by the Emperor for a number of slanderous accusations against both him and Cecilia. Lotan's position in the Imperial council came under threat from the beginning of the 42nd Century, with several members of the so-called "Brides of the Emperor" - an all-female corps of close advisors and confidants to Nicholas - advocating for her to be removed from advisory roles so long as she continued to associate with treasonous members of the Red Knights. Lotan, however, doubled down, violently defending both her honour and the honour of the Red Knights, strongly insinuating that Cecilia - and the rest of those who sided with the Black Guard - were traitors to the Emperor. Her sister was horrified and declared support for a petition to the Emperor to have Lotan step-down from her positions and be placed under house-arrest unless she publicly denounce those treasonous Knight-Captains.

With the importance of the Perseus Acquisition, the Emperor was unable to confront Lotan personally, but did contact her aboard the bridge of his flagship. He demanded to know what it was she had done to earn the ire of not only her sister, but the entire council. Lotan's response was immediately hostile, believing the Emperor had already made up his mind on what was to be done, and that Cecilia had influenced that decision. The Emperor surprised the officers on the bridge with him when he did not respond with fury, instead simply declaring that Lotan was to be removed from all governmental and advisory positions and placed under house arrest on Arcadius' moon until further notice.

Further notice came at last in 4209, when the Red Knights were forcibly dissolved in an event known as the Reddening. Lotan had secretly met with a Knight-Captain two days earlier, where she was informed of the Red Knights' suspicions that a Knight-Captain had betrayed them and the Black Guard was preparing for an attack. When news reached her of the attack she was furious, demanding that the Emperor be informed so as to protect the Red Knights. To her horror, she learned that Nicholas had authorised the attack, though he had been initially opposed by Cecilia until she was ordered to go ahead with it. At the end of the short period of warfare, she was visited by Nicholas, Cecilia, Lilith, and a contingent of Black Guard. The Emperor declared that, now the Red Knights were destroyed, Lotan would be permitted to re-join the Imperial council, provided she understand the weight of what she had done and apologise to Cecilia and the Black Guard. Lotan, knowing that even after all the Red Knights had done to her, Cecilia was still willing to protect them, apologised to Cecilia, admitting she had been wrong about the Black Guard's intentions.

Lotan was subsequently freed from her house arrest and slowly re-integrated back into the Imperial government and council. Both the twin sisters, as their relationship slowly repaired, would prove themselves to be masterful administrators, organising the logistics of the Imperial military as the Perseus Acquisition continued.

Of all the Emperor's children, Lilith and Lotan would be the least loyal - though that is only compared to the fanaticism of their siblings. They would often question the Emperor's stranger-sounding decisions, and almost always would be proven wrong in their assumptions. They, though they would never admit it, quickly came to fear the Emperor.

Lotan would come to visit Iskal IV on a personal mission - honing her reconnaisance skills as part of the Imperial war on the Estin Republic. There she chanced upon a ruined chantry, and within a large, black bell, lying on the ground. She found herself compelled to approach and as she did saw visions through the eyes of the Emperor. Before she could reach the bell, her will returned to her, and she sprinted from the ruined building, eyes and ears bleeding as she did.

Centuries later, after long decades of combat and infrastructure building in conquered territories, the two were called to Arcadius. Meeting with Sentinel-General Cecilia and a contingent of the Emperor's Black Guard, they were transported to a secret project, in orbit of Tylus I. Whilst the Emperor was away on campaign, Lilith and Lotan were beholden to the vast skeleton of his flagship: The Eater of Worlds. Lilith almost joyously leapt into work, gathering the vast resources and labourers necessary to complete the project in secrecy; Lotan, meanwhile, became almost immediately obsessed with the warship.

Lotan remained almost solely within the Tylus system, especially as the project advanced. Lilith, meanwhile, went further afield. A few years after discovering the Tylus project, she founded the Auspicious Choir, a group of elite loyal to Emperor Nicholas' vision and will. Amongst them was Lucius Kaal, Expeditionary Fleet Commander - with authority over the entirety of the Empire's away fleets. Whilst the Emperor's duties and experiments started to become even stranger, Lilith would massively expand her political influence - staying close and loyal to the Emperor's will, or, at least, her vision of it. Many members of government would be arrested for lack of loyalty - Emperor Nicholas either not noticing or, more accurately, not immediately caring. Once, Lotan had earned the ire of the Emperor, now, it was Lilith's turn.

Millennia later, the Insurrection Wars shook the Empire. Duke Alastair had tens of thousands of allies present across the levels of Imperial government. In response, Lilith initiated a series of purges, increasingly wider in scope. Whilst the purges started off in absolutely good faith - targeting only the sympathisers and Insurrectionists - they quickly lost that veneer of mere Radical loyalty; Lilith used the chaos of Insurrection and paranoia around spies and sympathisers to break the back of the political groups that opposed her and her vision. The final straw came when forces under Lilith's command entered a meeting of many of the 'Brides of the Emperor' advisor group, gathered in the Imperial Palace to discuss Lilith's purges, and arrested the members with the intent to execute or imprison them. As Lilith went to receive the message of completion from her dispatched officers, she instead discovered the Emperor, who emerged from the terminal and threw her across the room.

Lilith's forces had been surrounded in the Palace by the Royal Guard, and were then arrested by Fusiliers under orders from the Emperor himself, with his advisors being freed. The Emperor's fury was palpable, and his hand was only stayed by Lilith's position as his adopted daughter. By the time the recalled Lotan arrived on Chronove, the Emperor was in a meeting with his advisors, genuinely considering having Lilith executed as an example to government officials - a message that no one was beyond reproach and that absolute loyalty would never benefit the corrupt. Lotan, in a passionate defence of her sister, reminded the Emperor of how she herself had received his mercy and become better as a result. The Emperor, after many of his advisors had capitalised on Lotan's impromptu speech, capitulated and allowed Lilith to live, but insisted there be a punishment - reminding Lotan her crime was merely an insult, not systemic corruption and the murder of many loyal officials.

The final punishment the Emperor decided upon was designed by his Court in the Throne World. The middle finger on Lilith's left hand would be severed by the Emperor's power and cast into the Abyss of the Throne World - where it would deliver blessing or agony depending on the power of the Emperor's Heart. Lilith, who had never truly known pain, was screaming in agony in her assigned cell for weeks, her wound not healing, and the excruciating feeling of her finger being infected with Abyssal energies wracking every neuron of her body. After her agony, the pain suddenly ceased, and her wound healed instantly. In the Throne World, a new creature was formed, a vast and grotesque hand, which crawled up the Lord Tree and displayed an ability to commune with it and the Emperor's Heart, from which it grew as a seed. The Emperor would gift the new creature a small fortress of its own, and attendants to direct its strength. In time, he would come to forgive, but not forget.

As the Insurrection Wars drew on, the situation started to seem desperate. The Emperor called upon Lotan and the Eater of Worlds, and Lilith and the Auspicious Choir, to travel with him to the Imperial Warbase on Mars, to set the trap for Duke Alastair that would lead to the Battle of Mars. Initially, the battle was in hand for the Imperials, but the sudden death of the Emperor threw everything into disarray, with both the Nephilim sisters being knocked unconscious by the Emperor's psionic death cry. By the time they awoke, the galaxy was entirely different - the Eater of Worlds and its complement were the only things left in the system; the Imperials had fled deeper into the Core, and the Insurrection were chasing after them - the Retribution War would soon begin in earnest.

Life

On the death of the Emperor, Lilith was knocked unconscious by the pure psionic power that his death cry released. She awoke a week later to a silent system, with even the Insurrectionist forces having fled for the time being. The Eater of Worlds had, apparently on its own, repulsed an Insurrectionist boarding attempt, with the remaining Fusiliers having woken up a few days before Lilith. After being informed by a general about the situation, she locked herself into the Observatory to think. When she emerged a month later, both she and her sister Lotan agreed to move the Eater of Worlds out of the system, to somewhere safer in interstellar space whilst they planned their next move. It took the combined psionic might of Lilith and Lotan to move the massive vessel.

Whilst the Retribution War raged elsewhere in the galaxy, the Eater of Worlds and its loyal crew hung silently in space. Neither Lilith nor Lotan could continue using their powers so strenuously to move the ship again. They gathered a conclave of psionics, who would all gather their powers to move to the nearby Centauri system, once there they would attempt to either hunker down or locate more psionics to move the ship further. The movement of the giant vessel took nearly a year, though eventually they arrived in the system.

Centauri was under minor Insurrectionist occupation, consisting of little more than a few battalions of reservists. The Eater of Worlds, with a complement of well over 5 million soldiers, launched an invasion to bring the system back into Imperial order. It took little over a week for the Insurrectionist forces to be utterly destroyed, though the population did continue to resist their new occupiers. Fortunately for the Imperials, one of the system's planets: Centauri A-VI, was host to a large hive of Salik, powerful psionics who could be persuaded to board the Eater of Worlds. As the Salik were brought aboard, Insurrectionist forces began to arrive in system. With the Eater of Worlds finally able to showcase its full power, Lilith directed the new psionic conclave to begin leaving the system, whilst her sister Lotan orders the destruction of Centauri A-V, in an attempt to both fuel the vessel and scare off the Insurrectionists.

With Centauri A-V destroyed, the Insurrection fleet began to waive off, with several vessels outright fleeing from the battle front. The bulk of the Insurrectionist fleet held off, remaining beyond the range of the Eater of Worlds' vast mouth, allowing the Loyalists the chance to summon a rift storm and evacuate the system. Over the next decade, the Loyalists moved from system to system, collecting resources and loyal soldiers, as well as fighting Insurrectionist forces where they could. Beyond a few rumours of the Emperor's mighty starship traversing the stars once again, nothing was known of their actions amongst the other loyal Imperial commands.

With the end of the Retribution War, reports of the capture of Chronove and the re-establishment of the Imperial Governance reached the Loyalists, who convened an council to decide their next move. The council quickly decided to make its way to Chronove and install Lilith and Lotan to their rightful positions of power. The two boarded a barge and made for Chronove, realising that the Eater of Worlds would take too long and likely activate the system's defences. They arrived on Chronove 4 days after the end of the Retribution War, to find forces of Retribution Command - which had yet to disband. Given the natural aggressive reaction of the loyal soldiers, as well as the fact the Loyalists were entirely unknown to them, a battle quickly broke out. The well equipped, trained and engineered soldiers of the Loyalists easily dispatched of the platoon of Fusiliers, though not before they requested reinforcements. As Retribution Command's soldiers descended upon them, and with the Centre of Imperial Governance surprisingly empty, the Loyalists retreated.

It was another week before they tried again, travelling by barge again to Chronove, though they were identified by Imperial vessels before they could land. The vessels identified them as traitors, forcing them to retreat again. The two did not make another attempt, though Lilith did attempt to contact Haisan Uluvan after recognising his name from an official Imperial broadcast, she was met with silence.

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