Government[]
President D. Victoria J. R. Sinclair[]
- “Colonials are just like elephants. They're big, they're slow, they eat a lot and they just won't forget anything we ever did to them.”
President Victoria Sinclair (full: Daphne Victoria Jean Rose) is the incumbent President of the United Solarian Sovereignty, and one of the youngest persons to hold the office. Born into an old family which can trace its roots in the subsector back to days before the founding and indeed to ancient 20th century Nova Terra, Sinclair was raised in an environment wholly accustomed to wealth and influence. Her family owns majority stakes in a giant bio-genetics company, SinTEK (run by clone-sister Felicity), and like all members of the Sinclair clan Victoria has the ability to customize her own DNA at will. It should come as no surprise then that she is rich, beautiful, smart, and exceedingly ruthless in her ambitions, a combination of character traits that make her an extremely capable (if cutthroat and more than a little corrupt) politician. Sinclair carries through a somewhat stroboscopic love/hate affair with Mr. Hank.
Sidney Leon Hank[]
- “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”
The Founding: Gen. Chaos Farley, Gen. Taddeus Teague (ret.), Sidney Hank, Gen. Ethan Carson (3099)
Scion of a family which traces its roots to misty days before humanity ever set foot among the stars, Hank was one of the Founding Fathers of the Sovereignty and played a morally questionable role in its politics during the first century of existence. He has since retired from active politics and now serves only in an unofficial capacity as 'Ambassador Extraordinaire', tasked with the occasional negotiation of treaties with other powers, something helped greatly by his centuries-long experience and the improbably large number of favours owed to him by the most unexpected of people. When he is not busy doing this he runs Pan-Empyrean Positronics, a relatively small company that pioneers technologically-advanced items such as robots, computers, and weapons. He is peculiar in that his organic body is only an avatar for the ancient CompInt construct at the core of the Pan-Empyrean mainframe, which interacts with 'deep reality' through a series of avatars cloned from ancient genetic templates stored in a cryo-vault in the antediluvian family villa orbiting Solaris. A combination of hyperwave implants and sub-meson cores allows avatars and central awareness to exchange information instantly, though through a quirk of personality the avatars tend to think of themselves as the 'real' Hank, whereas the CI awareness identifies itself mainly as 'Dionysus'.
Mr. Twennysex[]
- "This is our galaxy. You are all just living in it."
The senator of Zedath-Kalesh and senior advisor on Apexai affairs, Mr. Twennysex is the foremost alien politician in the Sovereignty. As an Apexai he is a diminutive grey humanoid with an oversized head and a weak physique, but he makes up for these weaknesses with a ferocious intellect and the significant psionic abilities natural to his race. Like all Apexai his actual name is utterly unpronouncable by the human tongue and so he has - in a fit of inexplicable Apexai humor - adopted a bastardized numerical designation as a name amongst humans, beings which he - like virtually all of his kind - loathes as barely sapient barbarians. Mr. Twennysex typically wears the attire preferred by his kind when amongst humans: an old-fashioned black double-breasted suit and a bowler hat.
Lyra A. Saxon, Speaker of the Senate[]
- “The difference between the poor and the rich in a society is directly proportional to the justice with which said society rewards its greatest heroes.”
Lyra Allison Saxon is the leader of progressive opposition to the President within the Senate and the Circuitry; she is an aggressive but idealistic and intellectual politician who believes the Sovereignty should (among others) pay more attention to the desires of fringe colonists (instead of beating them with sticks), uplift the Wild Space population out of poverty (instead of bombing them from orbit), officially abolish scarcity, and implement a whole range of impractically expensive measures that more conservative politicians argue would ruin the Sovereignty and leave its worlds wide open to the Bragulans (to which Saxon once famously replied “oh, please, the Bragulans. How bad can they be?” A week later the Battle of Tannhauser Gate resulted in tens of thousands dead on both the Bragulan and Sovereign side.) Saxon is wildly popular on the fringe and the mid-rim, but unfortunately cannot gather enough votes in the core to actually matter in politics: the opposition is a consistent minority in the Senate.
Robert S. McNamara[]
“One cannot fashion a credible deterrent out of an incredible action.”
Robert Space McNamara is the senior representative in the United Solarian Senate, representing Charleston since the first-ever senatorial elections, and never having been ousted in the history of his long and august senatorial career. He is a die-hard democrat, a tangential survivor of the Time of Treason and a major proponent of freedom in all its myriad forms. He has agitated loudly against presidents and dictators, emperors and generals alike, which has earned him the ire of a great many enemies, but nothing has ever stopped him from speaking out for freedom, liberty and the Solarian way.
Olympic[]
- "Look at you, senator: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"
Olympic has been the CompInt advisory to the president and senate of the Sovereignty since as long as the U.S.S. has existed. It is the most formidable CI in Sovereignty space, and its most arrogant as well. Notoriously contemptuous toward humans (both baselines and posthumans) as well as other crude organic life-forms (and indeed all other lifeforms considered to not be on its level), Olympic can be difficult to work with, but is nevertheless essential to the workings of the Sovereignty and in its own deprecating way absolutely loyal to that polity. Old by most standards but particularly those of the hyperfast-thinking CI community, Olympic is easily the most prominent of all computational intelligences in the Sovereignty and, indeed, the galaxy at large. It is very outspoken on the matter of CI rights, and agitates against what it perceives as the suppression of its kind in several galactic states. Like most CIs it does not actually exist in one place, but rather consists of a number of sub-meson cores scattered through known space and networked through the Datasphere to give rise to a single coherent personality.
Business[]
Arcturus LaMerck[]
- “Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the Creator is the man who stands alone.”
Arcturus LaMerck is the owner and CEO of LaMerck Industries, a relatively small company (inasmuch as interstellar megacorporations can be 'small') that is a primary rival of Pan-Empyrean Positronics, the corporation owned by Sidney Hank. LaMerck Industries is the designer and manufacturer of Slo-Trans Engines, the nigh-immortal machines that keep much of the Sovereignty running. It also designs robots, computers and some weaponry. Arcturus LaMerck is the patriarch of the LaMerck dynasty, at 136 years an older man who is showing no sign of giving up the reigns to his corporation. He is an arch-conservative libertarian who loathes all forms of government, which is yet more cause for rivalry with Hank, who was one of the principal architects of the Sovereignty back when it was founded. LaMerck owns a villa that orbits the gas giant Solaris, which serves as the headquarters for his business. He has tried several times over the years to buy, usurp or otherwise gain control of Pan-Empyrean Positronics, but has so far failed to achieve this goal.
Roman Shevchenko[]
- "As much as they loathe the Bragulan Star Empire, the United Solarian Sovereignty is slowly but surely turning into a something even worse than that particular nation. Don't get me started on the Senate; at least Byzon is honest some of the time."
CEO of Solaris Advanced Weapons Corporation
Edmund DeBarros[]
- "Cannibals prefer those who have no spines."
CEO of DeBarros General Products
Xifan Jae[]
- "The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights."
CEO of Maibatsu
Felicity Sinclair[]
- "When the time comes that our customers can make ends meet, we must move the ends."
CEO of SinTEK
Military[]
Abielle Magritte, DCEID[]
- "The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it."
Abielle Magritte is the Director of the CEID intelligence agency and the Director of Galactic Intelligence of the United Sovereignty. She is a third-generation human-Apexai hybrid with prodiguous metapsychic talents who has risen meteorically through the ranks of the intelligence agency until she now has come to occuppy its very highest office. One of the two most powerful psions in the Sovereignty, Magritte is infamous for the flagrant way with which she abuses the obscene power of her office to deal with rivals both foreign and domestic -- including those who would challenge her way of doing business within her own organization. Nevertheless the DCEID is, in her own twisted way, wholly loyal to the office of the President (and more than a little to its current occupant, President Sinclair), wich is most likely why she has not yet been removed. Indeed, some wonder if it is even possible to remove her from office... Certain is that Abielle Magritte has amassed a truly spectacular amount of power within the Sovereignty, to the point where very few even know just how far the influence of CEID reaches.
Col. John Baylor[]
- “We're the biggest kid in the block. We've got the baddest tanks, the fastest ships, and the toughest technological sons of bitches in the entire universe. Marines, let's get tactical!”
Col. John Baylor, USMC Para-Marines
Colonel John Baylor commands a platoon of United Solarian Para-Marines on the fringes of Sovereign space, where he fights against Bragulans, Karlacks, space pirates, space terrorists, uppity space colonists, and many other threats to freedom, apple pie and the Sovereign way. He is a solid, dependable, resourceful soldier and officer. Like most of the men under his command Baylor is a Replicant, a bio-engineered human more or less tailored toward a specific function--which in Baylor's case is commanding a small tactical unit of Marines. Baylor is an experimental Nexus-9-Echo model fabricated by Tyrell Corporation; he appears a success, although he does display certain quirky behavior that frequently leaves his superiors as well as the gengineers who designed him baffled.
Maj. Tom Dangerzone[]
- "I'm Dangerous, and you can be my wingman!"
A field commander for Paradigm Security Services, Tom Dangerzone is an aberrant Replicant who upon finalizing his conditioning chose not to accept his mission for the USMC and instead signed up with a private military company. In the capacity of field commander for a sizable force of mercenaries he scours the fringe at the behest of his CEOs, raiding ill-defended colonies on the order of the wealthy megacorporations that are the clients of his corporation. As a field commander of the Paladin Security Group there is very little Dangerzone cannot do; in fact, the only ground force in the Sovereignty better equipped than he is the USMC itself.
Brig. Flash Stalin[]
- “The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”
Brig. Flash Stalin, in field uniform
Brigadier Flash Stalin is the commander of the 616 Interplanetary Patrol Group (nicknamed "Hell's Bells" amonst Wild Space denizens), the primary United Solarian Star Force fleet element active on the fringes of Sovereignty space. He is known for an uncannily destructive approach to policing the space-lanes, and has a reputation as a 'shoot first, shoot some more, then maybe if it's convenient ask questions to the charred corpses' kind of officer. Among pacifists and colonials alike he is hated and reviled as a borderline pirate, but because he frequently operates a long way away from fleet bases in the region he has a significant degree of autonomy and continues to get away with his outrageous acts of mayhem and destruction--and secretly (or not so secretly) he has a great many admirers both in the higher echelons of politics and amongst his superiors, of which there are not as many as you'd expect. Brigadier Stalin commands his flotilla from his flagship, the USS Murderous, a dagger-shaped Genocide-class Dreadstar painted brightly with symbols representing the number of Bragulan vessels (including unarmed colony ships) he has destroyed, as well as the number of planets he has bombarded. And despite having several kilometers of hull to work with, Mr. Stalin is in dire danger of running out of room.
The Wild Geese[]
The Wild Geese are a group of mercenaries in the employ of Sidney Hank. They are selected for their dependability and trustworthiness as much as for their exceptional skills in their respective fields. Whilst there are only a handful of them, the Wild Geese themselves would say that they simply do not need any more help -- or, for that matter, firepower.
Jason Chandra[]
A genetically optimized Replicant and former Para-Marine, Jason Chandra after mustering out of the USMC enjoyed a succesful career as a professional mercenary, fighting in dozens of wars over the course of twenty years. After his participation in the failed Browncoat rebellion (on the losing side) he had serious doubts about his choice of profession, and was recruited shortly thereafter by Mr. Hank. He is a burly, musclular man with tattoos running up and down his arms. A number of cybernetics implants are visible across his neck and face. Jason Chandra is a skilled wielder of a nearly inconceivable number of different firearms and has an excellent grasp of small unit tactics brought about by several decades spent fighting in wars and conflicts all over the galaxy.
Sirocco Montague[]
A class 9 Grand Master psion by the classification system of the Foundation for Omega Point Experimentation, Sirocco Montague is a retired high-level CEID operative and possibly the most individually powerful of the Wild Geese. Her training revolves principally around the use of Creativity and Psychokinesis, these abilities being her forte, somewhat at the expense of the other three metafaculties. Through Sidney's practically unlimited connections and resources she has come into possession of a CE Rig, an exceptionally potent machine that allows Sirocco to greatly amplify her psionic abilities. Possession of a CE Rig by civilians, even former CEID agents, is very much illegal though, and so when using or transporting the bulky device Sirocco at all times has to make sure not to be caught by government agents.
Phani Angeimiro[]
Mercenary sniper, ultra-assassin and stealth expert. Before signing up with the Wild Geese, Angeimiro was known as the Saint of Sinners, a nefarious contract killer of outback warlords and corrupt politicians. She has more kills to her name than most of the rest of the team combined, and the taking of human (and alien) lives has become somewhat of a dreary sore to her, leading Angeimiro to develop a weird sense of 'artistry' about killing people. For example, she once killed a notorious Bragulan general with a high-powered laser whose pulses were precisely set to frequencies that, when translated into sound, would play the first notes of the Overture 1812.
Morris Les Six[]
Morris Les Six is a former Para-Marine like Chandra, however unlike Chandra he is a naturally born human. An imposing figure, he is the resident demolitions expert.
Anthemum Dubal[]
Former CEID anti-psion specialist, romantically engaged with Sirocco Montague.
Alistair Courcy[]
A veteran civilian cyberdecker, Alistair Courcy under the alias of R4SC4L is one of the most experienced hackers in the Sovereignty. His wholly cyberized mind is capable of sustaining much higher clock speeds than most humans, allowing him to keep up even with highly advanced sentient security protocols and CompInt guardians. His transhuman body is a mesh of biological and technological elements fused on a molecular level, and home to a nanostat swarm which he can use to extend his awareness into hard-to-reach areas or even into computer systems. He is also the Wild Geese's resident alien expert.
Celso Tanguy[]
Pilot and reality engineer.
Imane Stromkvist[]
Retrieval expert and expert LARC driver.
Matsudaira[]
Former Maibatsu cyberninja and CQC expert.
Private[]
Crocodilus Pontifex[]
- “The church is near but the road is icy, the bar is far away but I will walk carefully”
Crocodilus Pontifex XIV is the Bishop of Zigon 5, a position that makes him the leader of the galactic Zigonian Catholic Church. As his name implies, he is a member of the lizardlike Zigonian race. Like all prelates of the ZCC Crocodilus Pontifex officially considers his church to be in official, full communion with the Bishop of Rome - the Pope - but autonomous and self-governing. Unofficially the doctrines of the ZCC do not exactly jive with those of the Roman Catholic Church, and in many respects the Zigonians could be considered heretical and apostate. However, the annual (generous) tribute paid by the ZCC to the Pope has so far managed to prevent this from happening, and thus the Zigonians are left to practice their own bizarre version of Catholicism without retribution from Rome so far.
Miranda Zero[]
- "Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history."
CLASSIFIED BY ORDER OF CEID DIVISION 1
Auriga Bob, the Duke of Death[]
- "All of y'all better behave. Better not burn, nor otherwise harm no girls... or I'll come back and kill every one of you sons of bitches."
A man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition, Auriga Bob (whether that is his real name or yet another alias is unknown) is better known throughout Wild Space by his nickname: the Duke of Death. Having killed many fourscores of men, women, Bragulans and other assorted scum in his long, distinguished and violent career as a bounty hunter, Auriga Bob is possibly the most infamous of all gunslingers, pistoleros and outlaw killers in all of the Wild Space outback. A writer once authored a book about him, titled 'Tombstoner', which has become a runaway hit in the Sovereignty and has boosted his infamy to great heights. Since that book was published the Duke is commonly described as "being like Jesus with a pistol". Whatever a Jesus is.
Isabella Noguiera[]
- "I am not a happy chappy."
Isabella Amelia Thereza Noguiera is an accomplished mercenary psion, particularly when one realizes she is only 25 years old. But then, she had ample opportunity to learn from the very best. Her character is best described as inteperate and rebellious, and Isabella reserves a particularly vicious hatred for the kind of religious bigot responsible for the death of her father, twelve years ago. Isabella is also the god-daughter of the Duke of Death, although this is not widely known and in fact kind of a secret.