Kasballica - Kasballica and the Adeptus Arbites: On many Calixis Sector worlds the Kasballica's operations merit barely more than a slender dossier in the Adeptus Arbites Detectives' bureau stacks, worlds where their ambitions are devoted to nothing more than co-ordinating a shadow industry of tiny crimes whose aggregate wealth flows upward through Kasballica patrons into the local prince's coffers.As long as they restrict themselves to mundane squabbles with the planetary authorities, such networks are ignored by the Adeptus Arbites, except when an enterprising Detective-Espionist might cultivate them for informants. At a number of hotspots throughout the sector, however, Kasballican operations have grown big and assertive enough to push into Arbites territory, infringing on the operation of the Imperium in ways that cannot be ignored.Out toward the rimward stars the increasingly brazen piratical enterprises coordinated by the Kasballica of the Periphery sub-sector have stretched the Precinct fleet thinner and thinner still. The Kasballican princes of Merov, Lo, and Grove's Fall have been collaborating on a ramshackle but vicious fleet of their own, terrorising Imperial trade coming back into the sector from Port Wander and specifically targeting vessels that have crossed the Kasballica Mission on Footfall.Some of the fleet is run directly by the princes, some of it is made up of hapless Imperial merchants who could not repay Kasballican backing for their own ventures in the Koronus Expanse and have had their choice laid out for them -- the risks of turning corsair themselves to work off their debt, or the certainty of Kasballican retribution.The Adeptus Arbites' Lord Marshal Goreman and Marshal-Commodore Mhal would dearly like to strike out directly at the Kasballica Mission on Footfall but have not yet been able to muster the resources away from the rest of the sector.Along the spinward border a multi-directional war between several Kasballican princes has escalated well past the usual petty exchanges of crude assassinations and small-scale sabotage and grown to the stage where stable Imperial governance is being disrupted and orderly tithe collections threatened.The crash of the Hexenwide, an in-system barge loaded with radioactive fuel whose disintegration in the lower atmosphere of Sozomen's Last Stand irradiated hundreds of thousands of hectares of plantation-land, has been firmly linked to the opening of hostilities by Ghonan Dyexx, the Kasballican prince of Bront. The reprisal raid, a showy affair that rampaged through Bront's upper capital hive city, was designed more to stir up savage riots and labourers' insurrections, and was eminently successful, paralysing the hive city for a solar month and badly damaging Dyexx's personal holdings.Since then the princes of NDO-K4, Cantus, and Mosul have all joined in the war in similarly spectacular fashion. Given their preferences, the Vanguard High Precinct command would tell the planetary governors to grit their teeth, tighten their belts, and bear the trouble while the Kasballica thinned out each others' numbers and forced each other into the open, ready for a mop-up.But the chorus of complaint from the governors and the Administratum has goaded Goreman into demanding a quick and permanent end to this, and so Arbitrator contingents are being drawn from all over the High Precinct to come down on the Kasballica with overwhelming force.To trailing, at Haddrack, Arbites Detectives are carefully infiltrating the governor's court and the Departmento Munitorum to try and track Kasballican efforts to manipulate the Astra Militarum tithe for the nearby warzone at Protasia. The Kasballican Princess Ignetta of Haddrack has involved herself on two fronts -- using none-too subtle bribery and coercion on the planetary authorities so that the Human tithe falls heavily on the planet's two major northern continents, while her own main power base across the three southern continents remains strong, and ensuring that a number of Kasballican agents personally loyal to her are shoehorned into command positions in the Astra Militarum tithe.Ambitious and optimistic, Ignetta is looking forward to the day when the Haddracki regiments take Protasia and claim it, and the new Imperial settlers will be led by her own catspaws and establish a new Kasballican fief subject to her control. The Arbites have not yet tarnished that optimism by launching into righteous prosecution against such a shameless crime in violation of Imperial law, but the case against her is almost complete and the day of reckoning is not far off.