The war room of the Korthane Hegemony did not smell of blood, smoke, or steel. It smelled of polished cedar and aged parchment.
Unlike the Sovereign Imperium, which was built on the brutal, kinetic reality of the forge, the Hegemony was built on the absolute, freezing perfection of the law. The high command did not shout. They did not bang their armored fists on the table. They spoke in measured, terrifyingly precise sentences, presenting data to the oldest living god on the planet.
The Arbiter stood at the head of the massive obsidian table.
He wore the immaculate, flowing white robes of his office, completely unadorned by medals or armor. His mere physical presence laid a crushing, suffocating weight across the entire room. He didn't need to shout to project authority, because his authority was a physical law of the universe. When the Arbiter entered a room, disorder simply ceased to exist.
