Littlejohn

Littlejohn
Species:	Homeworlder
Affiliated with:	Great Houses
Place of origin:	The Homeworld
First appearance:	The Short Briefing Sergeant's Tale
Appearances:	PROSE: The Gendar Conspiracy PROSE: White Canvas PROSE: And Today, You [+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"]

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Sergeant-Instructor Littlejohn (PROSE: Subjective Interlock, White Canvas) was a member of the Great Houses during the War in Heaven who gave briefings to newly-loomed soldiers. (PROSE: The Short Briefing Sergeant's Tale) On official business, he wore "imposing black robes". (PROSE: White Canvas)

On one occasion, he was dispatched to Vo'lach Prime to investigate the theft of a Gendar urn form the Vo'lach, which had been effected by a group of suspected interdimensional interlopers. Before leaving, the thieves had turned on one another, leaving behind two bodies; recognising one of them as a Firmament, Littlejohn contacted the 10,000 Dawns and was joined on Vo'lach Prime by the Arbiter of Knives, whom he cowed into helping with the investigation. They travelled together to Gendar proper and met with Virtuoso, the Gendar leader who'd presented the urn to the Vo'lach as a gift. Virtuoso, whom they both silently realised was an exiled Firmament in disguise, shame-facedly confirmed that the urn was no mere artefact but the key to a secret cache beneath the temple of the Goddess; she had sent it away from the planet out of fear that unscrupulous individuals would stop at nothing to get their hands on it, wanting it as far away from her and her charges as possible.

Hurrying to the cache in question, they found that it had already been opened and emptied; a third betrayed thief who'd survived and also followed the main thieves to Gendar, a rogue Firmament in blue robes, explained that in fact, the brains of the operation, Auteur, was none other than the Goddess herself, with her and her associate Gideon being responsible for the very existence of Gendar civilisation as a long con intended to give them a home base where they were worshipped as gods. The man in blue hinted that Auteur had a greater masterplan involving the destruction of the 10,000 Dawns, but he didn't know it in full, and refused to share the full of what he knew when he realised the Arbiter of Knives intended to take him in.

Trying to escape, he attempted to use his life-force-sucking gauntlet on Littlejohn, not realising what Littlejohn was; as he absorbed the "time" within Littlejohn, he found himself briefly hurled back to his birth from a cloning tank, so long ago. Littlejohn, aware of this escapade in time, was surprised to learn new Firmament were created through ordinary cloning tanks as opposed to anything more sophisticated. Returned to the present, the man in blue tried to the same trick on the Arbiter of Knives, which proved lethal. Littlejohn and the Arbiter parted ways as the latter returned to the 10,000 Dawns with the criminal's body; Littlejohn was not exceedingly upset at the trail having apparently gone cold, musing that "these things tend to come back around". (PROSE: The Gendar Conspiracy)

A short while later, his hunch was borne out when he was summoned back to Gendar to investigate a cache of prophecies of the rogue oracles which had been unearthed by local archeologists. He recognised one of the prophecies as being written in the language of the Firmament, his species' equivalent in the 10,000 Dawns, and contacted them The Firmament sent Lady Aesculapius, who came with her friends Graelyn Scythes and Archimedes Von Ahnerabe. They were able to decode the prophecies, but none of them knew what to make of them until the events they foretold, namely Auteur's scheme relating to the White Canvas, was already over.

After said scheme, Littlejohn represented his people at the Christmas Needle Agreement. Before the negotiations started, he was accosted by representatives of the Great Assimilation, who unsuccessfully tried to impress him with boasts of their nature as a multi-universal empire. He then walked up to Graelyn Scythes, who had helped foil Auteur, and congratulated her for the "marvelous job [she] did, giving that death-cult a black eye". Graelyn took this opportunity to hand over the gauntlet stolen by Auteur from their shared people as the basis of the entire scheme. Littlejohn examined it and noted with some relief that Auteur had at least taken good care of it. (PROSE: White Canvas)