okay, more questions

What is the thing that Nero has done that he's the most ashamed of?

Which of the companions in his retinue does he like the least and why?

Is he a back, side, or tummy sleeper?

He still beats himself up for failing an assassination on his Crime Lord, whom he served as an assassin in his youth before becoming a Crime Lord himself. The mistake was stupid and led him into the claws of the Inquisition. He goes back to that day in his memory, replaying different scenarios over and over again. He had enough experience to do everything properly, but he was still young and impulsive, letting his emotions get the better of him. Nero can’t forgive himself for this shameful failure and keeps it to himself.

I’d say Argenta, but she didn’t spit on his expensive carpet, and she didn’t make him collect papers on different planets and wait 16+ hours in the Administratum like a pleb, she also didn’t lie looking him in the eye like Jae did.
His hostile attitude towards Jae is based on his experience with women in the criminal world. They are dangerous and unpredictable, especially if they are beautiful.
However, when he needs company to drink with, Jae is the best of companions.

His condition makes him insomniac and a sleepwalker, but when he sleeps, he does it on his side. Sometimes he unconsciously clasps something to himself, fighting in his dream, and so on.

Thank you so much, Mird for the questions! 🖤✨

Alright, I'm very interested in how Nero's romances work! I remember that you said that the relationship with Marazhai is supposed to be the main thing, but I wonder if that has changed? Do they have a "sharing is caring" situation with Kibellah, a poly romance, a complicated jealous relationship, or something else? And how do all three of them feel about it?

Complicated question as well as their love triangle, and it just requires the wall of text… Thank you for this one!! 🖤✨

Kibellah and Marazhai hate each other for sure, Nero blindly loves and trusts them both, but differently, making things complicated for everyone.

From Marazhai he needs brutal lust and the ecstasy of pain that kills his own nerves with overstimulation, making him completely numb to the pain. The head becomes quiet too, no thoughts, no voices, just void and the feeling of freedom. And after all the tortures Marazhai inflicts on him, Nero faints and actually resting physically and mentally when his heart barely beating.
Nero accepted his role in Marazhai’s dominance game, assuming that was the Dark Eldar’s love language. All he has to do is keeping Marazhai happy and Nero gets what he wants. Though, Marazhai doesn’t mind sharing his living toy with anyone, knowing that his pet will eventually come back to him like a moth to the light. He only becomes angry and jealous if his pet neglects feast for long.
Things might have been different if Rogue Trader’s mental state in Commorragh had been better.

Marazhai cannot satisfy Nero’s need for physical contact, such as tender hugs and kisses, so Nero comes to Kibellah.

In his relationship with Kibellah, he plays a dominant role where he can’t properly relax in the moments after their intimacy, overthinking that Kibellah only sleeps with him because he is her Domin and her body and will belong to him. He can’t talk to her openly about it because he doesn’t know how, given her initial devotion to his title. Nero tests and observes her faith in the Undying One and her feelings for him, waiting what will undermine first.
Until then, he is just happy to finally have someone he cares about. He feels nothing but pure love for her anyway. He is willing to do whatever his Princess of the Void wants, even if it means sewing his eyes or spilling his blood for her rites. And Kibellah feels the same mutual feelings, but she is confused herself. Besides, she’s definitely not happy about being forced into poly romance with a xeno…
Kibellah feels confused in this love triangle, protecting her Domin from whom he doesn’t want to be protected and she can’t do anything about it. Hopelessly watching her Domin and filthy xeno hide in the captain’s chamber. Heartbreaking for both mon'keigh…

what does/did Nero think of Theodora once he had met her?

What is his alcoholic beverage of choice (you can use a real-world one if you want)? If he doesn't drink (although he seems like the type), then what would he drink when he wants something fancy?

Is there a piece of his main outfit that has any particular special meaning to him?

His thoughts were chaotic at that moment, from “It’s impossible for me to have a relative. They must have mistaken me for someone else. We don’t even look alike”, “I can’t believe I have a relative…”, “I can’t remember where I’ve seen her before, although her face looks familiar to me…”, to “I should get rid of her first, then the other two blondes”. Voices suggested killing her immediately and eating her eyeballs.

Being far from fastidious when it comes to alcohol, Nero consumes all brands and types. His liver can withstand any poison, even such as the Adeptus Amasecus’s local hooch. It takes many hours of drinking before he actually gets drunk. He’s also the type who gets calm when he is drunk. Sometimes depressed.
His favorite drinks are classic Amasec, Tranq, Wildsnake, Rahzvod, Jeneza and Doomberry.
He drinks Doomberry and Tranq more often than any of his other favorites. He always carries a flask of Doomberry (or Tranq) with him.

The flask is also important to him, as it’s not just his “meds container”, but a gift from his Right Hand, who was left in Calixis Sector to rule over criminal groups and keep an eye on things while Nero is in Koronus Expanse. Finally, it’s part of his main outfit.~

In general, I adapt the Criminal Lord’s outfit more suited to his personality at this moment, more torn details, scratches, chaos runes, symbolic meanings, references that are not particularly important to Nero, but can tell something about his character.

Finally I had a chance to talk about his love of alcohol, thank you, Mird! 🖤

Hi! Do you mind if I draw Nero for RT Appreciation week?

Hi! I don’t mind 🖤

Thank you for sharing your art and Nero with us. He really has become the quintessential chaos aligned RT for me and I absolutely love his design.

Thank you so much for loving him!
That’s really motivating and means a lot!

🖤🖤🖤

I hope I won’t disappoint you that he didn’t ascend to the Daemon Prince in the end (at least not in my main canon). That doesn’t stop him from wreaking havoc and mayhem in the Imperium as a Rogue Trader and still (forever) Crime Lord, making him one of the most dangerous freaks with power loyal to the Chaos and cultists

✨RT APPRECIATION WEEK✨

Thank you for sharing your beautiful artworks and your magnificent character! You're a wonderful artist, and I love how Nero can be a strange weirdo, hot bastard and absolutely hazard to society at once! And he is so inspiring to share my stuff as well <З

Thank you so much Hypno!
So right said 😭He turned out to be repulsive and savage, but at the same time Nero is beautiful in his imperfection and depravity with a bit of hope there is something bright in him… he’s indeed so weirdo. He means a lot to me personally and I appreciate the love for him!

🖤🖤🖤

YES! Please, share more about Jael!

RT APPRECIATION WEEK

I love Nero, he is the perfect mix of intimidating and pathetic. You have such a lovely style its captivating, I was immediately charmed by Nero the moment I laid eyes on him and his winning smile.

Only with Marazhai he can allow himself to be pathetic, Marazhai loves it, drinking his tears of pain. Or joy?… Two pathetic freaks…
Thank you! I appreciate you love my crime boy! 🖤🖤🖤

(RT Appreciation Week)

I can't even begin to describe how Nero makes me feel. He's such a cool character and not just because your art is inspiring beyond belief, I genuinely love his personality and his story of what I've seen of it and I cannot wait to see more. I want to throw this wet cat man at the wall and see if he sticks but I also want to wrap him in a soft blanket. I love him, your honor.

(Rats-and-Robots)

Thank you, Rats-and-Robots!! I’m so happy to know that my art inspires you! 🖤🖤🖤

Just right said… That’s exactly what I want to do when I think of my boy as well. I bet I have to tear him off the wall bit by bit before I can wrap him in a blanket. Or he’d bite me instead…

I hope to reveal more about him in the near future. Appreciate so much all your love to Nero 🖤✨

what is Nero's sexuality?

Does he practice any form of arts, crafts, or creative hobbies? If so, what and why?

You've mentioned that he suffers from insomnia and some of the ways he tries to deal with it, but on nights when nothing is working, what does he do to fill the time until "day" comes again?

Let’s call him a bisexual with a piquant taste.

He is a heterosexual when we talk about human beings. The human male is out of his sexual interest. He can flirt and solicit a man, grab him, touch him everywhere, imitate a sexual act, but he has no intention of actually sleeping with him, just making him feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. For Nero, it’s just a form of assault, intimidation and manipulation that he uses when he needs to show his dominance over someone.
He is usually more gentle with women. He is only attracted to voidborns or just pale, skinny ladies, if we are talking about real love, not just one-night intercourse.
Nero is a xenophile as well. He is attracted to Eldar’s body, and generally considers them to be perfect creatures. Tall, thin, pale, graceful and strong. He liked Urliet, for instance, but Nero respected her boundaries, giving her time to grieve and adjust to new surroundings. Eventually, he lost interest to her after meeting Marazhai. He did not plan to sleep with him, it just happened. He wanted to be friends with a Drukhari who could understand Low Gothic. But what happened is what happened, and now he is bisexual with xenos.
He’d probably sleep with a sslyth too.

Nero likes to dance. He learnt it when he was younger and it became his favorite way of expressing himself through his body. Nero’s walk sometimes looks like the dance movements.

There are many ways to fill the sleepless hours, such as inviting Kibellah or Marazhai into his chamber. After Marazhai’s “feast”, Nero is likely to faint.

When Nero is not in the mood to mutilate his body, he reads books about the Warp and xenos in his chamber. He annoys Heinrix by coming to his room, or Nero chooses the Interrogator’s room to read sitting on his bed.

He may consider walking around the voidship, having a small talk with Ravor, looking at the stars alone and smoking, or having his subordinates entertain him.

Thank you, Mird, love your questions 🖤

Had I little question after the last post. What kind of relationship does Nero have with other crew, like Ravor (with them both being insomniacs) or Jocasta?

He finds comfort being around voidborns, like Ravor and Vigdis. Nero appreciates that Ravor speaks little but the truth, without even trying to filter his speech and lick his Lord Captain’s boots. Nero respects honesty, even if he is an inveterate liar. People like Ravor and Einrich remind him of his trusted men in Calixis Sector.

Nero doesn’t like Jocasta. Her loving gaze at his scars, licking her lips, and the fact that she heard what he had endured, made him shrink in disgust. Sauerback reminds him so much of the guards who used to taunt and beat him in the prison cell for fun after the main hours of torture. He abuses her loyalty, eventually he tolerates her because she is useful.

Thank you for the question, it rarely happens to mention side characters and Nero’s relationship with them 🖤

Today I bring you memes! Tomorrow? Who knows xD

Oh damn :DDD All is so true!
It made my day! Thank you, Hypno 🖤✨

I absolutely love your Rogue Trader and your artwork in general! Thank you so much for blessing my feed (on multiple platforms!)

Could I beg for a crumb of some cool unknown factoids about Nero? Some tea you may have wanted to share but haven't had the chance?

Any small, formative moments from his life before becoming the Rogue Trader? Any guilty pleasures he's had from Before(TM) that he indulges in now? Any new interests that could only come in the wake of having a Rogue Trader's wealth? Or anyone from his past who might have beef with him (or wants to cozy up instead?)

...What's his favorite color?

<3

Aw, thank you so much, Euphony!
Love your art too! 🖤🖤🖤

Some of my favorite facts I always wanted to mention~:

• His tattoos on his left fingers reads “Nero” in chaos runes
• He hates Inquisitors, the only exception is Bronislaw Czevak, whom Nero admires as a role model.
• Nero is ambidextrous.
• When over-stressed rocks himself to and fro, and if he can, hugs himself.

Small formative moments in Nero’s life (besides Shadow of Torment):

• After being separated from his family and finding himself among pirates and smugglers, he quickly learned that sometimes being aggressive, stubborn and forceful doesn’t pay off. Especially as a weak small child.
  Any measure is good if it helps to achieve the goal, to win someone’s favor or simply to survive another day, even if it means being submissive, swallowing the pride and feeling a moment of shame when playing a favorable role. He was a hooligan, aggressive, but a bright voidborn kid to understand that and pretend someone else to win another day. Nero also learnt from his new surroundings that sometimes you are a tool, and sometimes you use the tools.
• He was ashamed of the scars on his face after the tortures in prison, and even after they had stopped bleeding, he continued to hide them under bandages. They reminded him of his failure and the part of his sanity he had lost. His attitude to the scars changed when he realized that they worked to intimidate and admire those who came to know what happened to him. Now he wears his scars with pride, as a mark of his endurance and his strength to overcome anything. The scars made him more assertive. But jokes about them still make his blood boil.

His guilty pleasure is collecting vials of blood for his makeup. Before becoming a Rogue Trader, all blood belonged to his enemies. He and his men wore bloody makeup as a trophy. Now it’s not just that, it’s a sign of affection. Nero wears Kibellah’s or Marazhai’s blood on his face.
Another guilty pleasure, Nero sleeps naked and even when he has insomnia he stays naked…

He got more people who would like to see his head on a plate rather than to cozy him up. They are no longer a threat to him after he became a Rogue Trader, and they all remained in Calixis Sector.
After becoming a Rogue Trader, he realized that he no longer had to fear being sent to the Inquisition for committing any heresy his heart desired. Everything has its limits, but he cannot resist abusing his new noble status by openly collecting xeno artifacts, or seeing what happens to a planet in his protectorate when he orders mandatory blood sports every other day.

His favorite colors are purple and green 🖤

Thank you Euphony for the questions. They made me think deeply for a while🖤

what is something that you as the writer know is true about Nero, but he doesn't have the self-awareness to realize?

If he could be granted one wish, no strings attached, what would he ask for?

Back in the day, before everything fell apart, did he have anyone he considered a friend?

He doesn’t realise how lucky he truly is. He doesn’t reflect on his dark past, only seeing it as a negative period in his life that destroyed him. That is what he believes. But, in truth, the Shadow of Torment made him a better person, stronger, mature and more relentless. Of course, Nero will never accept that. It’d be akin to forgiving the Inquisition and all the others who caused him pain and nightmares in reality.

He’d ask for healing his damaged head. There is nothing more desirable for him than serenity in his mind and body.

If before Shadow of Torment, I’d say no. If after, but before becoming a Rogue Trader, yes. ~

🖤 Thank you for the questions

Do you have any small facts already or something about Draka's relationship with Nero?

• Draka and Nero share more like a brother-sister bond, rather than a boss-right hand/bodyguard dynamic.
• Nero is calm in the Koronus Expanse because he knows that she won’t fully replace him as the new Crime Lord. She doesn’t want the responsibility he piled onto her shoulders. She hates it, but she does the job because it’s important to Nero, and he can’t trust anyone else.
• She gave him a flask and her lighter as gifts.

That’s all I can share for now. I appreciate your interest to her 🖤
I don’t think I’ll develop her very deeply. She’s doing fine as a secondary character whose only purpose is to flesh out Nero’s character.

tell me about two childhood memories of Nero's - one positive, one negative

I leave the interpretation of "positive" and "negative" up to you

Negative memory:

He doesn’t remember exactly what happened on the void vessel when he was five years old with his parents, or why there was fire everywhere and people were screaming and running. He also doesn’t remember why his mother disappeared from his sight, leaving him alone or what other horrors occurred. A sense of shock and fear washed over him when he discovered himself in a small, dark cell, shackled and completely alone. Mother, father or the God Emperor couldn’t hear him. He cried and screamed hysterically for hours until a stranger came and beat him to make him stop. He was still crying, but trying to do so silently. Nero remembers how it felt to be left alone, not knowing what would happen next. He still doesn’t like small rooms.

Positive memory:

One of the positive memories happened when he was ten years old. He was scavenging around for valuables or something eatable on the void station. He crept into a tavern, hoping to find leftovers on the tables or something valuable in a drunk merchant’s pockets. A cold trader who was drinking there caught him. Instead of shooing him away, she invited him to sit with her at her table. She fed and regaled him with stories about her trade adventures and encounters with xenos. As a farewell gift, she gave him some items that he could exchange for food and new clothes. He never saw her again in the tavern or on the station, but she made his small world slightly bigger.

So wonderful ask, thank you Mind 🖤

if Nero could seen one member of his crew (who is not Kibellah or Marazhai) naked, who would it be?

obviously Conviction doesn't fully exist as an actual system in-universe, but the decisions that he made to get him to his ultimate alignment - were they deliberate products of a conscious system of morality or ethics? Or were they a product of acting on instinct and what felt right at the time?

It would be Heinrix. Nero could have humiliated him by making him be naked and feel vulnerable. At least at the beginning of their relationship. Before they became friends, Nero saw him as nothing more than an Interrogator and torturer. He wasn’t Nero’s personal torturer, but he was still one of them.

Nero follows his own morals, which are based on his experience, beliefs and selfishness. Some of his decisions can be interpreted as merciful acts. For example, when he killed a young rebel from Janus, he saved him from being tortured to death. That is what he believed in. Another example is when in the Adeptus Administratum he didn’t take a ticket from an old man whose daughter had been wrongly imprisoned. In both cases, he remembered his own tragic experience. He showed mercy to the xenos, such as Malice, by releasing him from the Commissar’s cage, remembering that the xenos had saved his life. Malice was obviously pursuing his own goals, but that didn’t matter to Nero, who just wanted to repay the debt. Debts must always be repaid.
No matter how whimsical or twisted his purpose may be, he values the lives and deaths of people and xenos equally. However, some lives are more valuable than others. Nero decides. He allows heretics to board his voidship and occupy the lower decks, which he then turns into hunting grounds to satisfy one xenos. Similarly, he saves Footfall from starvation in order to prove his superiority over Winterscale and win the loyalty of Vladaym Tocara and the Kasballica Mission.
He performs spectacles in which people either see him as an example of faith and loyalty to the Imperium of Man or as a heretic loyal only to the Enemies of Humanity or Chaos Gods. In reality, they are all wrong.

🖤