Hodierna

Comtesse Hodierna des Trois-Villes (a.k.a. La Lionne Rouge)

Hodierna is the third daughter of Baudouin d'Châtillon, the younger sister of Melisende and Haalis, and the older sister of Ioveta. Famed for her beauty she was the muse to many poets and troubadours of both Ka'dheshe'a and Outremer. She was married to the administrator of a Gue'vesa settlement within the Damocles Marches but was widowed shortly afterwards by an Imperial Assassin. Stricken with grief, she forswore her womanhood and took up arms, fighting for Outremer alongside a squad of Chevaliers d'Outremer known as Les Fils de la Lionne (Gothique: the Sons of the Lioness).

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Extraordinarily fit and athletic; a fearsome and powerful warrior devoted to her craft.

Facial Features

Exquisitely beautiful, so much so she was the inspiration for many troubadours and poets.

Specialized Equipment

Fights using a chainaxe and storm-shield, with a power sword as a sidearm, and wearing gilded power armor. The power armor is a forbidden-fusion of T'au and Imperial technology, and is so sophisticated it augments her already-formidable physicality to the point she is able to fight alongside Astartes.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Birth and early life

The third daughter of Baudouin d'Châtillon and Morphia, Hodierna was born and spent her youth in the Gue'vesa settlement on Ka'dheshe'a after her father's exile from Outremer. Her childhood was a happy one surrounded by a loving family. When the Astartes Hugh was himself exiled from Outremer, he came to Ka'dheshe'a and pledged his loyalty to Baudouin as Le Vrai Roi of Outremer, and became a particular protector of the four sisters, devoted to their feminine delicacy because of the preaching of Ghibbelin.
Even while young, Hodierna was recognized as a great beauty and many poets and troubadours - following the artistic traditions of Normandy, the home planet of the d'Châtillon family - composed many poems and ballads to her loveliness. In the tournaments Baudouin introduced to Ka'dheshe'a, her favor was regarded as the highest honor a warrior could have bestowed on him.
Over the years the settlement grew and became more powerful as Gue'vesa joined it. With the T'au Empire's weak influence in the Damocles Marches Gue'vesa cities traded with it and even began to ally with it in preference to the T'au Empire. The T'au could not endure such a thing and even though Farsight was prosecuting his war against the Orks, a Fire-Warrior force fell on the settlement and - despite a valiant defense by its militia - fell.

The Recapture of Outremer

Her parents were killed in the fighting and Hodierna and her sisters were only saved by the personal intervention of Hugh, who spirited them away and vowed to serve and protect them. Transferring his loyalty to Melisende in particular, his Astartes led an assault on Outremer, killing Fulk, Arnulf and the clone of Renaud d'Châtillon and establishing Melisende as La Reine d'Outremer.
Desiring to cement her power and influence, Melisende pressed her two eldest sisters (Ioveta was not of age yet) to marry to make political alliances. Over the years, Hodierna's beauty had only grown - now mature, the youthful loveliness of her childhood had blossomed into the full-flower of perfect womanhood. Strong and genetically-pure on her father's side, and exotic and beyond alluring on her mother's, she was an irresistible beauty and many powerful Gue'vesa administrators sent lavish gifts with envoys who negotiated in the Haute Cour for her hand.
But Hodierna was no empty-headed beauty - like her elder sister she had a shrewd political mind, and she used her distracting charms to manipulate her opponents to her advantage. Despite the beauty famed across a dozen or more worlds spread over a vast gulf of space, she nevertheless retained a pious humility and a canny devotion to her sister's fledgling kingdom alongside her own desires. If she were to be sold, she would be sold for a high price and to someone she herself would wish to buy.

The Three-Cities

She chose a powerful Gue'vesa administrator, the son of a former Astra Militarum officer. His father had unified his shattered regiment when it was abandoned by Inquisitor Kryptman's pragmatism, assuming command when senior officers refused to accept the reality of their situation and were killed by the T'au. He had sued for peace, having each one of the three battalions of his regiment found a city which he organized into a federal civic body politic known as the Three Cities. The T'au accepted his adoption of the title Count and - recognizing the value of acknowledging Imperial norms - supported his hereditary leadership. His son was brilliant and ambitious, eager to continue his father's work. An alliance between the Three-Cities and Outremer offered advantages to both, but such a marriage was not Melisende and the Haute Cour's first choice. But Hodierna's heart had been captured by her handsome suitor's virility, charming courtship and the attention he lavished on her and she would not be gainsaid. Seeing just how much in love her younger sister was - and perhaps realizing Hodierna would marry with or without it - Melisende gave her blessing and Ghibbelin performed the marriage rite.
For a few years, Hodierna was happy. Her husband was devoted to her and she to him. Together, they built the Three-Cities into a thriving civilization, trading and allying with xenos and Gue'vesa settlements. Although strong-willed like all the daughters of Baudouin, she did not challenge her husband's authority over his father's settlement and was content to be his helpmate and advisor, rather than co-ruler. In this, she displeased Melisende who would have preferred her family to control the Three-Cities more closely. But, despite disagreements, the two sisters did not fall out and the Three-Cities remained allied with Outremer, although La Reine and the Haute Cour exercised little and shrinking influence over them as the years passed and they sought allies outside the Outremarin sphere of influence. Children did not come, but Hodierna and her husband were not worried - they had time, or so they thought.

The Assassination

Not all of the forces of the Damocles Crusade had withdrawn following Kryptman's order. Some - like her father-in-law's regiment - had been abandoned. Others, like the Outremarin, had chosen independence. But others had remained, continuing to fight for the Imperium that had abandoned them, directing their rage at betrayal into hatred of both the xenos and what they saw as traitors to humanity.
Hodierna never found out who sent the Assassin to kill her and her husband, but it had to be a senior commander of the Imperial remnant because a member of the Callidus Temple would accept a target from no-one else. Using all her skills and indoctrinated-knowledge, and adopting a dozen disguises with the help of stolen costume and the shapeshifting drug polymorphine, the Imperial agent breached the security of the Three-Cities capitol building and slaughtered three senators, a dozen senior aides, and countless security, administrative and household personnel. But her primary targets were Hodierna and her husband, and she made her way inexorably through the palace to their bedchamber.
But while the Assassin was skilled and knowledgeable, there was a void in her intelligence - Hodierna was not there. She was in the gardens with her sister Melisende. La Reine d'Outremer was enjoying a private visit to the Three-Cities, accompanied only by Édouard, La Main de la Reine. They had been in Hodierna's private apartments within the palace only hours before, enjoying an intimate meal before a walk in the gardens just prior to Melisende's departure. During the visit, Melisende and her Hand had walked throughout the capitol, admiring art, making informal visits with diplomats, and reviewing the Three-Cities' military forces. Worse, just prior to sitting down for lunch Melisende dismissed Édouard so she could talk privately with her sister without the trappings and pomp of office. He had left them alone in the dining room, going to a secured vox suite to communicate with Outremer.
It only minutes after they left the table that the Assassin struck, passing through the security Melisende and Édouard had reviewed not three hours before as if it was not there. The Hand was not there to protect them, and had Melisende and Hodierna dawdled over their meal both of them would have been in the Countess' suite when the Assassin struck, and both Outremer and the Three-Cities would have been deprived of their rulers. As it was the commotion and screams of horror echoed through the palace and the dire news was conveyed to Hodierna by a panting and panicked page.
Reacting with the flame of emotion and not as a ruler needing to preserve the government for her people, Hodierna ran for the palace, ignoring her sister's impassioned cries to stop. Desperately, Melisende summoned Édouard and begged the page to have soldiers sent after her sister.

Death in the Bed Chamber

She was too late. Hodierna run through the palace corridors painted in blood and stripped of guards in an orgy of scientific slaughter, her long stride outstripping the armored slowness of the soldiers sent to protect her. She stopped only to snatch up a pistol from a fallen officer and then burst into her bed chamber.
Her handmaidens were dead, efficiently murdered and their bodies strewn where they had fallen. Her husband was there, pointing his ceremonial sidearm at his identical twin, his own identical pistol pointed back! One of them was the Assassin and the other was her husband, and Hodierna had no way to tell.
She was an intelligent and quick-witted woman. She knew an Imperial Assassin would not waste time with pretending to be her husband by word-play, clever tricks and the parroting of gleaned information - such a thing was reserved for cheap holo-dramas. If she demanded answers from them, intimate secrets only she and her husband knew, she knew the Assassin would use those precious instants to kill them both. She was under no illusion about the utter determination and preternatural speed of the left-hands of the Emperor.
All of this went through her mind in an instant. Her decision was made almost before she was aware of it and she fired, twice. Her aim was true and the two figures - her husband and his doppelganger - went flying back as a bolt round tore each of their heads apart.
Overcome by the realization of what she had done she fell to her knees in sobbing horror. She did not resist when her sister reached her and gently lifted her to her feet, leading her away from the bedchamber she had shared with her murdered husband.

The Red Lioness

She did not remain numbed by grief for long - perhaps not long enough, some might say. Her hatred of whoever sent the assassin eclipsed all other emotions and reason, and she was overcome with rage towards the Imperial remnant who had stolen her happy existence and tried to deny her subjects freedom from the Imperial yoke. She did not waste time in mourning, setting aside her black widow's-weeds in what some in the court murmured was unseemly haste. Her anger was so all-consuming she neglected her duties as Countess of the Three-Cities, leaving a power vacuum the ambitious leaders of the three settlements sought to exploit. If it had not been for Melisende dispatching diplomats backed by the weight of Les Chevaliers to bolster her sister's authority it is likely the Three-Cities would have imploded into civil war. As it was, the situation stabilized and the Three-Cities were brought into closer alliance with Outremer.

Hodierna in gilded armor

Hodierna paid little attention to the political struggle and was now Countess only in name. She spent her times in the gymnasiums and warrior academies of her realm, disciplining her body and honing her warcraft. She disdained the delicacy of the feminine, shearing her hair short and dressing in practical fatigues and armor. She trained with a fanatical devotion, soon surpassing her teachers and turning to the Chevaliers her sister assigned to guard her for further education. Her favored weapon was the chainaxe, a brutal tool more suited for butchery than honorable combat, but in her once-delicate, now-calloused hands it was a fearsome weapon of war that left dozens of servitor-drones dismembered in the training cages.
The change in their Countess did not go unnoticed by her people and they began to refer to her by a new name - first it was whispered but then, when she heard it and accepted it with a grim smile, it was openly given; The Red Lioness they called her. In Gothique, her childhood tongue and language of Outremer, she was known as La Lionne Rouge.
Finally satisfied with her skills and ready to bring bloody vengeance to her enemies, she commissioned battleplate from the foremost forge of the Three-Cities. She would have prized form over function, being happy with a suit of bare ceramite and plasteel, but the armorers could not bring themselves to so debase their beloved Countess, not spoil the loveliness she retained despite scorning it. The forged her battleplate of the most exquisite design, gilded and decorated with motifs of lions, and incorporating forbidden xenos knowledge into a piece of heretek machinery they desperately offered to protect the Countess they loved more than any dogma.

Les Fils de la Lionne

The Chevaliers Melisende had assigned to impose peace on the Three-Cities were, like all their Battle-Brothers, profoundly influenced by the theology of Ghibbelin who preached it was the duty of the hyper-masculine Astartes to serve the feminine, especially in the persons of les Quatres Reines, the four daughters of Baudouin. The central focus of devotion had always been Melisende, but each of the four sisters had been lauded by the Bishop and so it was the Astartes serving as her bodyguards came to venerate Hodierna. Feeling her rage and grief as keenly as if it were their own and taking her crusade of vengeance as their oath, they styled themselves Les Fils de la Lionne (Gothique: the sons of the lioness) and fought alongside her.

Sexuality

Heterosexual, but sworn to celibacy after her husband's death

Mental Trauma

Lost her father and mother to a T'au attack, and was forced to kill her husband to save herself from an Imperial Assassin.

Social

Family Ties

Daughter of Baudouin d'Châtillon, niece of Renaud d'Châtillon, younger sister of Melisende and Haalis, elder sister of Ioveta.

Religious Views

Adherent to the Imperial Creed (officially the Ghibbeline sub-cult, but as one of the objects of the cult's devotion it is uncertain how closely she holds to orthodoxy).

Speech

Raised with Gothique as her native tongue and High Gothic & Gothic as formal languages. She spoke the creole Gotthikós during her time in the Three-Cities. Since her husband's death and close alliance with Outremer she has reverted to Gothique, although occasional T'au loan words creep into her vocabulary.

Divine Classification

Reine

Church/Cult

Ghibbeline Cult

Honorary & Occupational Titles

Comtesse (Gothique: Countess) - the title of the ruler of the Three-Cities, rendered in her childhood tongue. Informally known as Reine (Gothique: Queen)

Birthplace

Ka'dheshe'a

Parents

Baudouin d'Châtillon

Morphia

Sex

Female

Eyes

Hazel-green

Hair

Black, shaved at the sides and swept back into a ponytail

Belief/Deity

Imperial Creed (Ghibbeline Cult)

Aligned Organization

The Three Cities

Other Affiliations

• Outremer

Known Languages

Gothique, Gothic, High Gothic, T'au

Character Prototype

The portrait above is of Zahra Elise, a model.