Editing The Way Back Home J-A (section)

===Biography===

Born to great wealth in the more civilized reaches of the sector, Jean-Allister became accustomed to power, privilege and the ennui that always seemed to accompany them. He spent his childhood getting into trouble at his servant’s expense and to his father’s chagrin. His adolescence was more of the same, despite his education he spent more time in his cups than his books and he continued to be a stunning disappointment.
As a young man his father tried to mold a true gentleman out of him and put his hobby of racing fighter craft through the streets to better use. At 17 years he was sent away to join the Imperial Navy as a Lightning pilot. A young hotshot before the service he didn’t find anything about a pilot’s life much to his liking. He was surrounded by men and women as good or better than he at the controls and there was no shortage of officers with an interest in his time. It was difficult getting used to taking orders from officers of lower standing than his own but the lash was not spared n his pampered flesh and he soon began to admire the discipline.

He rose to prominence and quickly became wing commander, while he was neither the best pilot, nor a preeminent bombardier he was clever and a natural leader once he took to the chain of command. He lead hundreds of sorties in those years against all manner of targets. Enemy ships, stations, ground attacks, escort runs, he lead them all and maintained an impressive 60% casualty rate. He had never been happier or felt more pride in himself. The tedium of nobility fell away, he was an Officer and a gentleman and he had no need to participate in the petty games of the civilian aristocrats. 
He married and had children, four sons and a daughter, and received a prestigious appointment aboard the ''Emperor''-class Battleship ''Merciful Envoy'' as its wing commander. It meant more paperwork and more time spent on logistics but that just made the times he could get back in the cockpit so much sweeter.

But then his life was ruined with a letter from his granduncle Mortimer. He had been chosen to bear the Writ as the 299th Marquis d’Menkaure. He couldn’t believe it, surely there was a mistake. He had served with distinction, a source of great honor to his lineage, why should they choose to waste him so? He would learn years later that his own actions as a youth had damned him, for it was misspent youth and of course poor luck that determined who would become Rogue Trader when the last one had to go on his Pilgrimage. 

His first duty as Holder was to attend his father’s funeral. By tradition he had shot himself with the very pistol Jean-Allister carries with him always, and on his 78th year, when the last emerald falls out of the Great Glass and the final gilded skull clicks into place he will return to his home and present the arms to his mother should she still live and she will then kill herself with the pistol as well before it is placed in the hand of the next Bearer of the Banain Warrant by the Patriarch.

That feels like many lifetimes ago to him now. Once again Jean-Allister is a civilian nobleman, bereft of purpose at times, ever aware of the doom that awaits him. He is moody, his heart heavy with his duties, and he sometimes vanishes for days into the Hall of Ancestors to pace among the dusty, shrived statuary listening to the ghosts of his ancestors. Each time he finds himself before the Great Glass, oblivious to the monks as they carry out their ancient vigil until he eventually wanders back or some pressing business forces Maximillian to insist he attend to his affairs. 
Regardless of the reason, when he emerges from that place he is a typhoon of a man, his renewed vigor carrying him onward.