You’re still not sure whether to wince or smirk at the honorific 'Mama Snake', which still doesn’t translate correctly in your head. The veteran rebels have been addressing you by it, a mixture of your name and a bastardised familial title, for months now. You understand now that it doesn’t literally mean ‘Mama’ or ‘Mother’, at least not in the traditional human sense. Night Night once mentioned off-the-cuff that there is a vaguely matriarchal tone to it that, carrying an aura of authority but not actual command. Corpo, the Savis Signaller from Banshee Squad, added that it is reminiscent of the influence that den-mothers could hold over the extended House without themselves having a particular rank or title.

The informal appellation and deference absent authority is the stellar opposite of the Company’s crystalline hierarchy structure. Your Lieutenant in the past encouraged you to take advantage of it, but began to lose interest when it didn’t clearly carry a position of actual enforceable authority that could explicitly exert authority over the rebels that you were training. And the respect that Karaxshc shows you is hardly universal either, and will again vary rebel to rebel. He is a member of Alexander Hail’s ‘Red Hand’ faction, a sect of the rebel cause that makes up a large portion of the elite seasoned corp of jungle fighters that the League of Dis can call upon. Like their founder, your guerilla protégé with a whole armoury of axes to grind with slavers and their ilk, the Red Hand is the most persistent voice for aggressive military action against the Savis Legions.

Many of them just want to kill as many of their former masters as possible, and those that aren’t willing to fight can get the Void out of their way as far as they’re concerned. None more so than their de-facto leader, Alexander Hail.

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