Navis Nobilite - Navigator Duels: Navigator houses are highly secretive and highly competitive organisations. They jealously guard the knowledge of safe Warp routes from each other. A house's fame and fortune depends on its ability to safely guide vessels through the Warp and the reputation for doing so that it maintains.The greater the reputation, the more influence and wealth its clients possess. The Navis Imperialis, the Space Marine Chapters, Rogue Traders and other Imperial adepta seek the services of the most reliable houses.Each house's reputation is dependent on the Warp route charts it has recorded and amassed over millennia and each house protects these charts from their rivals. The various houses employ entire private armies and servitor security systems to protect the data secured deep within the bowels of a major Navigator house's headquarters. Still, various individuals and organisations still occasionally attempt to steal from rival groups, even if few actually succeed, and many houses employ agents skilled at such subterfuge.Rival houses also employ more insidious means of undermining each other. In the loftiest spires, palaces, and courts of the higher echelons of Imperial society, whispered rumours and hints of dark secrets can bring one Navigator house to its knees and raise a rival in its place. The sullied reputation of a single Navigator can stain their entire bloodline.Sometimes, however, when back-room dealing and silent wars are not enough, one Navigator house openly challenges another in some fashion. In certain sectors, such as the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse, this often takes the form of Navigator duels -- a contest between two massive organisations, settled by two individuals. Though the exact origin of Navigator duels is unknown, the practice of using them to settle disputes between houses became common in the Calixis Sector during the rise of the so-called Elutrian Confederacy.During this time, Navigator houses associated with the Elutrian Confederacy, such as House Typhon, claimed that they alone knew the true path to perfection. The champions of this movement began calling for Navigator duels to prove their supposed superiority. When the Elutrian Confederacy was disgraced and House Typhon fell into ruin, the traditions that they had established for Navigator duels remained prevalent in the region and are still used to settle many of the disputes between the Navigator houses of the Calixis Sector today.First comes the formal challenge -- Navigator duels are public affairs within the secretive realm of the Calixis Navigator houses and a family loses much face if it does not accept the challenge. This, and the fact that the loser is expected to pay a hefty fine of money, resources, and knowledge to the winner, means that duels are never issued for frivolous reasons.After the challenge has been issued, each house then has a number of days to select a champion to upkeep their honour and choose a second to act as witness and potential replacement. It is considered a great honour to be chosen as a duellist and a chance for a young Navigator to increase their standing among their family and other Navigator clans. The location of the duel is remote, such as an abandoned spire, the bridge of an empty voidship moored in deep space, or a windswept mountaintop on a wilderness planet.The only witnesses are the duellists' seconds. The Navigators prefer to cloak themselves with an aura of mystique, and also prefer that no one outside their secretive society witnesses the full force of their powers.The duel takes place with careful formality. The participants bow to each other and then slowly uncover their third eye. At a prearranged signal from the seconds, the duellists unleash the full force of their powers, locked together as they gaze unflinchingly into each other's Warp Eye, enduring the horror of the boiling chaos of the Empyrean. It is a duel of physical and mental strength, as each tries to subdue the other with their horrific gaze, and can last solar seconds or hours.The first to succumb on bent knee yields victory to his opponent. The duel is rarely to the death, for the lives of most Navigators are precious even to their bitter rivals. Even so, one or both duellists might face long solar months of recovery, their minds wracked by the strain.When the duellists return to their respective houses, the seconds report the results of the duel and a representative of the losing house must attend a feast in the victor's honour, where they formally sign over the promised compensation. Their house suffers a loss of face and a besmirched reputation, which may have vast repercussions in the wider Imperium.