Highborn - Highborn: The highborn, also known as noble born, are the elite of Imperial worlds, the nobles, princes, and lords of cities, star systems, and planets ruling over boundless populations alongside other equally-privileged noble scions.To be born into such a setting is to have been given the best that an Imperial planet has to offer, raised apart from the struggling ranks of Mankind and destined to take on positions of great import and power. This might be the finest pelts and grox meat of a Feudal World, or the most potent of narcotics and off-world delights on a mainstay Hive World. It is also to enter into a world of deadly politics and ancient feuds, where children grow up with terrible enemies and sleep knowing there are those that would cut their throats for a taste of their hereditary position.Highborn often live their lives apart from the rest of their world's society, sometimes never leaving the high castles, spire cities, and sky palaces far above the teeming masses. They are content in the knowledge that they are the instruments of Imperial dominance on their world and the voice of the Emperor to their people, and anything that would disrupt such a state is unthinkable anathema.Highborn are a breed apart from those they rule. Many Imperial noble houses span the stars in an intricate web of kinship, marriage and political alliances that ensure their power and influence go on, even if the fortunes of a single world fail. Products of careful breeding and cultured refinement over Terran centuries (or even millennia), the lineage they hold in their blood is the history of the Imperium of Man itself and they are the finest that Humanity has to offer -- or so they would have others believe, at any rate.Nobility of birth has never been a guarantee of character, unfortunately, because for every example of true enlightenment or greatness among the Imperial nobility, there are dozens of capricious and self-obsessed men and women who prove, by their base failings, that measuring superiority by birth alone in the Imperium is as much a lie in the 41st Millennium as it has been throughout Human history.Worse still than the dissolute idlers and petty tyrants, are those whose dark inclinations spill over into heresy and true malignancy, often for no better reason than boredom or a sadistic love of power. It is this last, supremely dangerous group, that the Inquisition watches for, and combating such powerful and well-resourced Heretics is one reason the Holy Ordos draw from the nobility's own ranks to find some of their servants.From almost their first breath, those born to the high Imperial nobility are schooled in the role they must play and how they must play it. Their fine education covers not only the ins and outs of history, commerce and power-politics, but an education in the fine-points of taste and etiquette: how to wear a mask of one's own choosing, how to give an intended slight, how to curry and mete out favour, the defence of honour and how to comport oneself in all situations are all lessons deeply ingrained. In some great families, these arts have darker nuances yet; the correct use of poison, a well-executed betrayal and the employment of assassins, all being among them.Connected, socially-skilled, highly-educated and able to move in the high circles of Imperial society, those of noble blood are frequently as ruthless as they are charming and as dangerous as they are well-mannered, making for skilled infiltrators and subtle Acolytes of the Inquisition.