Though a bastard and an intus in the legal sense, Cassandra Marlowe was born without defect, the only child of Lord Hadrian Anaxander Marlowe, formerly of Delos; and his concubine, the Tavrosi sorceress Valka Onderra. Born by haemogenesis more than a hundred years after the death of her mother, Cassandra Marlowe was styled and sequenced by Jaddian physicians at the behest of the High Prince Aldia du Otranto. How this feat was accomplished without the RNA retrovirals unique to the Marlowe genetic constellation is unknown, with many suggesting the Jaddians possess the means to confect the necessary retrovirals via reverse engineering, and others going so far as to suggest that Jaddian Intelligence obtained the necessary sequencing data via a data breach of Imperial systems. The most likely explanation, however, is that Jaddian genetic science has simply surpassed the art as practiced in the Imperium.

Before she was born, Cassandra was targeted for assassination by Jaddian Intelligence, believing that the cultivation of an heir apparent to Lord Marlowe would invite an international incident.

Lord Marlowe raised the girl himself, first at the Fort Manah military base at Islis Ulta where she was born, later at the converted ecological testing station on the lagoon beneath the Kauf Adar that Prince Aldia gave Lord Marlowe for his private residence. In her later years, the daughter of the Sun Eater would recount sunny afternoons in the parlor of the old house, sitting on the floor with her father, who would draw pictures for her of the places he had been, and tell her stories. A number of these sketches—most notably a portrait of Lord Marlowe with his concubine and their daughter, drawn for the girl’s tenth birthday—remained on Jadd following the Marlowes’ departure in ISD 17395, and now hang in an exhibit at the Museo du Oroto in the Jaddian Capital, Jaharrad.

Cassandra was enrolled in the Jaddian Fire School at five standard, and lived in Volcano House with the other neophytes, though she saw her father every day, and would often make the short trek down the mountain to the manse upon the beach.

As the only non-ethnic Jaddian in the Fire School, Cassandra had few friends. Her foreignness—and her father’s status as an exile, a political prisoner and honored guest—attracted that cruelty common to children everywhere.

Of that childhood, little is written. Per Lord Marlowe’s own account—and this is verified by the records of the Fire School itself—Cassandra Marlowe passed the Trial of the Heart in ISD 17395, at the age of 40. While the School maintains that the girl never ascended past the Ninth Circle of mastery, her achieving the Trial at so young an age is considered remarkable in itself.