Dramatis Personae: Part 2- The Federated Minervan Republics and the Interbellum Period

LORE: SELECTED FMR FIGURES OF THE INTERBELLUM PERIOD (2470-2523)

Jun 27, 2023

INTRODUCTION

This list of characters is meant to familiarize WAYBOUND readers with some important people who appear throughout WAYBOUND's Interbellum Period, the story arc that covers the time between 2470’s Maybe War and the Fools' War (as it later came to be known) of 2523-24. It may be updated as more characters are introduced in stories and should not be considered a complete list; just a sampler platter of particularly noteworthy people who will likely appear in stories. I will add to this list as I think of them, so it may not comprehensively survey the diverse backgrounds of people involved in the politics of this time.

ON BIRTHDATES AND SUBSTRATES: “b.” (“born”) indicates an organic human. Organics are the kinds of humans you are used to. The average organic lifespan in the 25th and early 26th century is between 120 and 140 years. “i.” (“initialized”) indicates a synthetic human. Synthetic humans are fully sentient and sapient artificial intelligence based on the full simulation of the digital image of a human brain— or by the current generation, a composite image of several, and have been considered legal equals with organics since the end of cataclysmic social unrest in 2101. Synthetics will, invariably, become more and more computationally complex as they live longer, and this will cause heat generation at the microscale that will destroy their core hardware at or before 34.0481 years (2³⁰ seconds). Transferring to a new core is a risky process, and even when it does work, has exponentially diminishing returns, resulting in a maximum lifespan of just over 51 years.

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FEDERATED MINERVAN REPUBLICS

A NOTE ON THE STRUCTURE AND GOVERNMENT OF THE FEDERATED MINERVAN REPUBLICS: The FMR is a democratic republic that grew out of the organizing structures used to coordinate the geographically (and in many cases, ideologically) disparate cells of rebel groups operating prior to and during the Minervan War for Independence. It consists of a unicameral legislature called the Consensus that sees each full Republic send a directly elected Chair alongside multiple indirectly elected Representatives (elected by a Republic's Council, Parliament, or Congress) as well as one randomly selected layperson who must also be confirmed by popular vote within their Republic. While all full Republics are equally represented in the Consensus, not all Representatives are equal— only two of the delegations' Representatives may vote in all matters, the directly elected Chair and the randomly appointed Lay Representative. The other Representatives are all specialized to craft policy in one domain— effectively making the Consensus an exceptionally large Cabinet formed of many committees of what are ostensibly supposed to be experts. The executive functions of the government are vested in the Office of the President of the Consensus, which is effectively a separate executive branch in all but name, with the titular President, a popularly elected figure serving as the military's commander-in-chief, while the First Representative of the Consensus, a more traditionally Prime Minister-like position, is elected by their colleagues— though both share in the duties of head of state and government and fall under the Office of the President. However, the President of the Consensus also holds the distinction of being head of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, and is empowered to define and lead the nation's foreign policy (though in recent Presidencies have also exercised a great amount of influence over domestic policy). They are elected in six year terms, though a general referendum on whether or not to hold a General Recall referendum for the President is held every three years. They are seldom, but not never, successful. There are no explicit term limits, but there has always been an incredibly strong cultural norm against running for a third term, and no President has ever done so— the only instance of a President ever serving more than two terms was due to a popular movement that narrowly elected the candidate against their will.

Prior to 2472— the ‘Year of Four Presidents’— the President of the Consensus was appointed by a combined vote of the Republics’ Councils, Parliaments, or Congresses. However, as the Minervan system has developed from a guerilla insurgency’s organizing schema into a proper, popularly representative government, more democratizing reforms have become increasingly desired by the voters; the chaos caused by the death of President Hwangbo in a freak accident in early 2472— namely, the lackluster successors elected by the Republic governments and the repeated scandals associated with them— resulted in one of the more popular reforms being adopted, the direct election of the President by every Minervan citizen, starting first with President Goldsmith in 2478.

Following 2478, in the event that the President of the Consensus is incapacitated, killed, or otherwise rendered incapable of fulfilling the duties of the office (except where removed by popular General Recall, which fully replaced the Vote of No Confidence in 2478), succession is handled by a secret list of named successors from within the Consensus, nominated by the incoming President at the start of the term, who are not allowed to be informed of their nomination unless they are to be called up to finish out the remainder of the term. Several copies of this list are kept sealed by various government depositories, and checked against each other in the event of their use. This is intended to ensure that a President's policy platform will continue even in the event of their death, and that the intent of the voters will be upheld, as a successor will ideally mirror the politics of their President.

There are seventy-one full Republics on Minerva itself, with an additional 37 on Minerva's two habitable moons, Odysseus and Aegis. However, among the FMR's many colonies, a vast majority of the colonies are not represented as full Republics but as what are instead called “Unitary Republics”, which are only empowered to send a delegation of the two general-voting Representatives, on account of their not exceeding the population threshold to be considered full Republics. An additional nineteen full Republics exist within the colonies, for a total of one hundred twenty seven full Republics, and an ever-growing number of Unitary Republics.

The three major political blocs are informal gatherings of parties and political activism organizations nicknamed based on the colors of the Minervan flag: Olive, Orange, and Gray. Olives are regionalists broken into two categories: pre-2478, the larger of the two were plain old Olives, which is a label applied to politicians and activists who have been actively captured by the regional interests of their Republic, and support the use of the Consensus and the Federal government's power to benefit their economy, prestige, or standing. Pan-Olives, who are the predominant strain of Olive politics post-direct election, are politicians and activists who support devolved government with more power in the hands of the Republics. Oranges or 'Rusties' are politicians and activists who support greater federalization and concentration of power within the Consensus and the Federal government. Grays are primarily concerned with the wellbeing of military personnel and veterans; while militarism is rarely an unpopular concept among Minervans, the Grays are considerably more militarist than the other two blocs; though they are greatly committed to the occupational health of servicemembers. They are frequently associated with the membership and leadership of the Collective Security Servicemembers’ Union, a labor union that represents Minervan military personnel. Prior to 2472, the term Gray was largely used as an adjective to describe a politician with a keen interest in the military and its servicemembers, but following the tenure of President Amelie Nwajiobi, the restriction on the Collective Security Servicemembers’ Union members from running for office was lifted, creating the modern conception of a Gray politician.

Olives are primarily represented by a range of local Republic political parties and organizations, and relations between pure Olivist (sometimes referred to as Localist) and Pan-Olivist parties is ‘rarely sunshine or rainbows’, as put by President Hwangbo Lorena. Pan-Olivism, however, is represented by Populi, a coalition of local Republic political parties who have become more ideologically active and seek to devolve Federal power. Oranges are the best organized and are more of an ideological union than one of practical affairs; they have long been represented by Federation, which is widely considered the most party-like Federal political party on Minerva by outside observers. Grays are represented by a coalition of interest groups led by Collective Security, the political wing of the Collective Security Servicemembers’ Union. The Collective Security Union is the labor union that represents the members of the Minervan Armed Forces; it arose from a brief standoff in the early Republics that led to the nascent government committing to paying the pensions of all who fought in the Independence War in the face of a large, disgruntled protest movement by veterans.

The capital city of the Federated Minervan Republics is New Ruacnoc, a city in Monteverde Republic (MNT) and named for the city of Ruacnoc on Mars. New Ruacnoc is one of the four oldest cities on the planet, and was one of the hotbeds of the Independence Movement and the first place where the Consensus was convened.

Presidents of the Consensus of the Interbellum Period

Hwangbo Lorena1 (b. 2396) [Seongnam, Minerva (SEO)]- The most beloved President in Minervan history, Hwangbo Lorena of the Seongnam Partido Ulideul Daonlathach (PUD, an Olivist party) was first selected in 2458 from the Chairship of the Commitee on Public Health and Health Services in the middle of a massive deadlock between Orange and Pan-Olivist coalitions within the Consensus. Having gained the respect of her other Olive, Orange, and Pan-Olivist colleagues for her effective dealmaking as head of the Commitee on Public Health and Health Services during the budget crisis of 2447— and for being the person to unify the Republics’ disparate healthcare services under her brainchild, the Federal Department of Health Services’, newborn banner— and for her prompt and successful containment of the El Morro outbreak of neo-NerveANA cyberplague in 2453, Hwangbo was the right person for the job of unifying a Consensus that was far from anything resembling its name. Well liked by the public for her laconic demeanor and sharp wit alongside an uncanny ability to work across party lines, Hwangbo was least popular among the Pan-Olivists who saw her as an Orangist in all but party affiliation— and in many ways, they were right. By 2470, one year before the end of her second term, the outbreak of the Maybe War thrust an already beloved leader into the crucible of war. While neither side can truly be characterized as having ‘won’ the brief confrontation, the Federated Minervan Navy inflicted heavy losses to the UN-UNC in several dramatic battles, including the two Battles of 61 Cygni. This huge propaganda coup turned a beloved President into a wartime hero, and led to her selection to a third term in 2471— the only time in history— under public pressure. On January 18, 2472, in the first year of her third term, Hwangbo Lorena tragically died in a slipspace accident traveling to a conference on disease control, where the ship carrying her intersected a civilian passenger liner during realspace influx, leading to a loss of many lives aboard both vessels. This sudden accident would mark an inflection point in Minervan politics, the Year of Four Presidents.

Andre O’Brien (b. 2418) [Kilkenny, Minerva (KIL)]- Elected under unusual procedure— by the Consensus instead of the Republics— as Acting President following an emergency session of the Consensus on January 18, 2472, and confirmed by the Republics one and a half weeks later, Andre O’Brien was thought by all to be the safe bet. O’Brien had been a key ally of President Hwangbo in the Consensus’ Commitee for Procedural Review, assisting the President with ensuring her policy platform could be crafted to navigate the gauntlet of Pan-Olivist Consensus Representatives seeking to strike it down at every turn, even helping modify Consensus rules on debate to speed its implementation in the strengthening of the Minervan Inter-Republic Health Services System. Unfortunately for all involved, the Consensus’ bet on O’Brien would very quickly prove to have been a blunder— as despite the fact that the Orangist O’Brien attempted to reconcile with the Pan-Olivists many times, his “ill-wrought screeds” and his facial expressions often ridiculed as ‘overly dramatic’ and ‘funny-lookin’’ [sic] annihilated any goodwill he had gained as the last President’s overshadowed right hand, and turned a mystical wise man of the Consensus into an object of mockery overnight. On top of public unpopularity, he was derided by Consensus Representatives as “belligerent”, “impossible to work with”, and “hung up on the dumbest things”— even criticisms leveled by Federation Party allies and the First Representative, Jacqueline al-Mizzi. After just over four months in office, O’Brien was brought to a Vote of No Confidence on April 25, 2472 following a brief physical altercation on the floor of the Consensus with his Pan-Olivist rival Denzel Santini and removed from office, marking up to this point the shortest tenure a Minervan President had ever attained. After his time in office, he became the Miguel J. Hesp Distinguished Visiting Professor of Political Science at his alma mater, the University of Kilkenny, where he would serve out the remainder of his years.

Denzel Santini (i. 2435) [Ziguinchor, Minerva (ZIG)]- The most prominent opponent of O’Brien, Denzel Santini was again elected— the same day his predecessor was removed— under the alternate procedure of Consensus election and Republics confirmation called for when a President had either died, been incapacitated, or been removed before the adoption of popular voting for Presidents. A charismatic leader, Santini managed to rally off a surge in Pan-Olivist sentiment and capitalize off the unpopularity of President O’Brien to undo some of the centralization pushed by President Hwangbo and O’Brien in the first weeks of his administration. However, this very quickly caused a collapse of the Health Services System after leveraging Pan-Olivist allies on the Committee on Public Health and Health Services to abolish the Inter-Republic Health Board, which was seen by Pan-Olivists as a dramatic overreach of Federal power. This sudden abolition of the Board caused a similarly sudden shutdown of the coordination infrastructure that the various Republics had just finished the years-long project of centralizing their hospitals— and their supply chains— on. The system was taken offline on Monday, May 9th, 2472, causing later that week what medical professionals called “Black Friday”— after it was then realized that few hospitals actually had any accurate count of the stock of several critical medications, blood plasma, and other crucial resources. After initially being lauded by other Pan-Olivists for having ‘given the healthcare system back to the Republics’, and surprising Orangist adversaries for not completely abolishing the Federal Department of Health Services, as it had been before President Hwangbo, the resulting collapse of the healthcare system destroyed any goodwill the charismatic, affably wisecracking Santini had gained with his opponents and much of what he had with his allies, especially after a bank run began the next Monday. As the Minervan economy spiraled into economic trouble, daily protests outside the Consensus building in New Ruacnoc caused a Vote of No Confidence on the 46th day of his Presidency, June 10th, 2472.

Amelie Nwajiobi (b. 2413) [Groton, Minerva (GRO)]- Elected again under the alternate procedure on June 10, 2472 following the Vote of No Confidence that removed President Santini, President Nwajiobi was given the herculean task of righting the ship of state alongside First Representative al-Mizzi. The two quickly got to work, rapidly re-introducing the policies of Hwangbo and O’Brien. Nwajiobi had held a rather strongly Olivist track record in the past, using much of her early career to fight for the mining interests of Groton Republic, and was responsible for funding the construction project of the San Juan Orbital Elevator, one of the many space tethers used to additionally harvest ilmenite and moissanite from the rings of Minerva; however, during her last ten years as a Consensus Representative and the Chair of Groton’s Consensus Delegation, she had tempered her views into being much more compatible with the regional interests of the other Republics, especially catalyzed during the War to call for national unity in the face of the threat faced by the UN. The grievous injuries suffered by her brother at the Battle of Krüger 60 left him without the use of his body below the neck and further pushed her into becoming a strong proponent for servicemembers’ compensation. She would recieve an “A” rating from the Collective Security Servicemembers' Union, notably hiring much of her staff from their ranks, and also lifted the restrictions preventing members of the CSSU from running for political office. During her administration, her policies towards veterans included augmenting pensions with stimulus spending intended to target veterans and veteran-run cooperatives, starting an economic recovery program that also served to be the nascence of a new form of militarist politics on Minerva dedicated to advancing veterans’ and servicemembers’ issues in the public eye, the modern Grey movement. Despite suffering a sex scandal early in her tenure that nearly resulted in a third Vote of No Confidence in one year, her supporters in government, media, and the general public decried her Pan-Olive adversaries’ investigation of her affairs with multiple interns and staffers as a “witch hunt”, though tell-all memoirs about the scandalous happenings within the Nwajiobi Presidency were common tabloid shelf material for the duration of her Presidency and long after, with the final fallout of the scandal resulting in three divorces, including her own, and two marriages— one of which led to another divorce. She would serve out the remainder of Hwangbo’s term, avoiding recall and solidifying herself as a popular, if occasionally controversial, President— the greatest of these controversies her commitment to implementing a popularly elected President by the end of Hwangbo’s original term, which was widely considered by Pan-Olivists to be an untenable concession to Orange interests, and considered by Nwajiobi and al-Mizzi as a necessary precaution to avoid another year of instability and chaos, and to placate a decidedly furious Minervan populace.

CAPT (ret.) Xiulan Goldsmith (b. 2407) [Canaveral, Minerva (CNV)]- The first popularly elected President and a veteran of the Maybe War, Captain Goldsmith served as the commanding officer of the MFRS MOUNT XIUGULAN (B091), a MARIANAS-Class (B075) Fast Battleship. Upon leaving the service an accomplished captain with a distinguished record, he begun to raise funds and political support for a Consensus run, aligning himself with the Orange politicians of the Federal Party, seeing unity as the only way to forge a strong Minerva capable of facing the challenges of the modern world and blaming the Pan-Olivist agenda for having impaired Minervan military readiness on the Frontier. Elected to the Consensus as Representative for Defense in the mid-2470s, Goldsmith became well regarded as a leading light in the ideological aims of the Federal Party as a strong proponent of centralization initiatives and managed to keep his nose clean of scandal— making him a popular and uncontroversial President outside the realm of some Olivists and all of Pan-Olivist politics, though it should be noted that Olivist parties begun to fade in relevance following the institution of direct election.

Mint Abawi (b. 2443) [Korangal2, Minerva (KRN)]- The most controversial President in history and considered by some to have been an argument against the direct election of Presidents, Abawi may also have been the most successful serial fraudster in history. The first (and thus far, only) President directly elected from the population writ large instead of out of the Consensus, Mint was a consultant to criminal defense firms in the Carraroe area who became entangled with the Goldsmith administration’s Cabinet and Justice Department. Some caught whiffs of the skeletons in Abawi’s closet early— some senior Justice Department officials wondered why the admittedly well-spoken, charismatic Abawi was so quickly rising in New Ruacnoc’s political scene so quickly without ever holding government office themselves. Capable of articulating almost any opinion— even the ones he didn’t hold— their impassioned speeches in favor of the Goldsmith administration captivated audiences the Republics around. A fresh, young face full of energy, Abawi was often at odds with Ichiro Griffin, Jr., himself a rising star in the Federal Party’s Consensus presence, who many believed resented Abawi’s meteoric rise in popularity. Beginning his campaign an outsider, few believed Abawi could capture the Federal nomination for President, let alone the whole election— but they did, and after a brief honeymoon period, Minerva had woken up to a new national nightmare. Abawi was a magnificent public speaker but a poor governing official, and it seemed to many that he used most of his time on his official schedule granting favors to friends or otherwise abusing the office— stalling the approval of several critical defense procurement bills and at one point even causing a government shutdown because he was too busy entertaining guests at the Presidential Residence at 1 Keystone or playing water polo, a sport in which he held a recreational league championship. After a new round of opposition research ran against Abawi, 2490 quickly became a year of scandal. The Federal Party-registered President was governing with a Pan-Olivist agenda and seen eating dinner with the leadership of Populi, and regularly would butt heads with his First Representative, Samantha Noguchi. Some even wondered if Mint would change parties. In May 2490, however, the Mother of All Scandals, as some came to call it, broke. Reports with several discrepancies from institutions Abawi was allegedly an alumus of were on every screen, all the time, for weeks. Abawi had not graduated law school, let alone the prestigious one at Santa Maria Assunta University— though a fire in the server room years ago had delayed the investigation started by a curious professor at the start of Abawi’s campaign. He was not a lawyer, let alone one qualified to do the consulting work he had conned his way into. He had cheated on the bar exam. He did, however, have a BS in mathematics from Nazareth Polytechnic, leading to many referring to them as “Mint Abawi, BS”. The only truths he had actually told about himself were that he did in fact work as a consultant to defense lawyers, and he was really a water polo champion. He had even lied about his hometown, claiming to be from Carraroe, Korangal Republic— a deception that had gone unnoticed until he called a submarine sandwich a ‘hoagie’— a faux pa that revealed his true roots in Memphis, Hanover Republic, after a local food reporter from Carraroe took personal offense that he had misnamed what was clearly a grinder. Abawi would not serve a full term in office— his term being cut short on August 2nd, 2491 after he was shot in the street going to get a sandwich in downtown New Ruacnoc by assailant Jack Kennedy, a dishonorably discharged Navy Lieutenant who had become disaffected against the government. Conspiracy theories abound that the military had a hand in— or in fact conducted themselves— Abawi’s attempted assassination, and are founded on the extreme distrust the upper echelons of the military and intelligence community held towards Abawi, which stemmed largely from worries over a clearly unreliable and mercurial commander-in-chief. Their validity is of much debate, even among otherwise aconspiratorial types. Abawi survived the attack, but went into a medically-induced coma the following day in a lifesaving medical procedure, as the bullet had grazed their brain. When the list containing his successors was to be unsealed, it was found to have been improperly filled out— and the only name on it was one that would cause a constitutional crisis: Samantha Noguchi. Due to the conflict of several elligibility laws— namely that the last person on the list had to take the job if no one else had, and that the First Representative could not become the President, nor could they resign early in order to become the President— Minerva was left for several weeks with no President until intervention from Noguchi and the Procedural Review Committee approved a one-time exception for a snap election due to the failure of the procedure to account for such a situation. Abawi would awaken from his coma on June 5, 2523— one day before the start of the Fools’ War.

Ichiro Griffin, Jr. (b. 2432) [Nuevo California, Minerva (NCA)]- The snap election held in the constitutional crisis created by Abawi’s hand served to elevate longtime peacemaker Ichiro Griffin, Jr. from a spot on the Nuevo California Republic’s Consensus delegation as the Representative for Foreign Relations to the Presidency himself. The architect of the 2490 Landigal Summits on Arms Reduction, Griffin made it his mission to cut down on warship production in the UN and FMR in the 2490s and cement the peace that had endured since the Maybe War of 2470. Critiqued by Pan-Olivist opposition as soft on the UN, this was not enough to kill the charismatic, affable Griffin— whose well-assured air of quiet confidence made him untouchable in the media, despite the many attempts by his adversaries.

LCOL (ret.) Nia Baughan (b. 2453) [Nanshan, Minerva (NSH)]- An immigrant from Wales, Baughan entered the service of the Federated Minervan Republic Marine Corps out of college to the pride of her parents. Well regarded as a natural leader by her Marines, Baughan entered politics at their urging after her retirement in 2494. Maintaining the tenor of Griffin’s détente through her first term, she only reluctantly authorized the 2506 blockade-breaking mission to Akrotiri that would see the loss of the Minervan-flagged cargo ship C/S Siren’s Song (UN reg code F3-C71305) spark a skirmish between UN and FMR forces. She was responsible for having called off reinforcements to the FMR forces there at the first sign that it could escalate to war— but unfortunately for her, by the late 25-aughts the concept of peaceful coexistence with the United Nations and open immigration, once unremarkable, had begun to turn toxic to a politician’s longevity. Narrowly reelected in 2509, she was recalled in 2512 under perceptions that she was too soft on the United Nations.

Guillaume Riahi (i. 2474) [Aberystwyth, Aegis (ABY)]- Elected in the aftermath of President Baughan’s recall, President Riahi was the most hawkish President in recent memory. Pledging to stand up to a more interventionist United Nations and to re-establish Minervan strength on the Frontier in the face of James Liu’s administration, Riahi saw a rebirth of Minervan nationalism under his syncretic Gray approach to Pan-Olivist politics— compromising Pan-Olivist principles whenever necessary to strengthen the military, which wound up being fairly frequent. Nevertheless, he managed to hold down the support of Pan-Olivist members of the Consensus and of the public, and for the first time in a long while, wrest the support of the Collective Security Servicemembers’ Union away from the Federal Party and break the Orange-Gray coalition. Popular for a charismatic intensity and hard-nosed ‘tell it like it is’ approach, Riahi led the country through the Fools’ War at the end of his second term— a massive popularity boost until Minervan forces started losing. He had hoped for the election of 2524 to lead to the election of one of his close friends in the Consensus’ Select Commitee on Foreign Affairs, Noah Laulani, but a split in the pro-war vote along with the revelation of some inconvenient truths and the beginning of the Reclaimant Crisis threw the election to the more conciliatory Federal candidate, Emile Christenhusz.

Selected First Representatives of the Consensus of the Interbellum Period

Jacqueline al-Mizzi (i. 2433) [Nineveh, Odysseus (NNV)]- The power behind (and in front of) the scenes effectively holding the country together in the Year of Four Presidents, al-Mizzi’s firm statesmanship and unflagging resolve is credited by many with having navigated the crisis even in the face of an untimely death of a valued friend and colleague, having served as First Representative since just before the Maybe War. Managing to work alongside and around a series of three Presidents (and especially coming to blows with Santini), al-Mizzi managed to make backroom deals among Consensus lawmakers and both Republic and Federal level bureaucrats, ensuring some degree of stability. Heading up the response to Black Friday, al-Mizzi prevented a total collapse of the healthcare system from arising from the momentary chaos, and stabilized the financial system after the bank run began, and retired in 2475 once it was clear the situation had stabilized.

Samantha Noguchi (b. 2435) [Pelham, Minerva (PEL)]- Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Noguchi was considered by most a fairly unnotable and routine First Representative— not great but not horrible either— until she was saddled with babysitting Mint Abawi and preventing them from destroying the country, humanity as a whole, or both. Being the commander-in-chief of the Minervan Military turned out to be a full-time job that Abawi had little interest in, so when they turned their sights on domestic issues, the First Representative stepped up to defend her turf. Barely managing to hold the government together in the face of Abawi’s mismanagement, she nevertheless soldiered on until her true crucible was faced in the one thing she’d hoped for beyond all else— an early end to Abawi’s Presidency. Called upon as his successor but also legally barred from taking the office, Noguchi summoned all her dealmaking abilities to make a compromise that threaded the needle as tightly as it could— a one-time provision for a snap election, to prevent the original intent of the successorship system— ironically, the intent being avoiding assassination attempts, as no one would be able to tell who would be President next— from being undermined. She retired soon after, and never touched politics again— narrowly surviving a heart attack in 2523 after finding out Abawi had woken up from his coma.

COL (ret.) Alonzo Hesp (b. 2459) [Kilkenny, Minerva (KIL)]- In office for the outbreak of the Fools’ War, Hesp was a Gray politician that maintained close ties to his friends from his service in the Federated Minervan Republic Marine Corps, several of whom were Generals by the time of his First Representativeship. A distinguished public speaker and a fiscal conservative except on matters of military procurement, Hesp found favor among the narrow Pan-Olivist plurality of the pre-Fools’ War Consensus, and was voted in as a compromise with the Grays to support the Populi party’s agenda. A figure hated among Orange politicians for his policies and his blasé snark, Hesp was removed in a Vote of No Confidence in 2524 in the onset of the Reclaimant Crisis.

Political Figures

Dr. Newroz Mannerheim Psy.D. (b. 2452) [Canaveral, Minerva (CNV)]- A prominent advocate for disarmament and détente, Dr. Mannerheim pursued psychology and research into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after her older brother, a Sailor in the Federated Republics Navy, returned home from the Maybe War of 2470 a shell of his former self. Determined to help the veterans who had seen war and to ensure no one else would have to as well, she became a well-regarded psychologist and authored numerous studies and books before being snatched up by one of the Cabinet members of the Goldsmith administration to act as his personal advisor on veterans’ mental health, before finding herself the youngest member of the Goldsmith administration’s Cabinet as the Advisor for Veterans’ Issues, and in the first year of the Griffin administration, President Ichiro Griffin, Jr. appointed her the Special Ambassador for Arms Control, where she negotiated the 2491 Landigal Protocols on Arms Reduction alongside her UN counterpart Marcus Akinsanya. She remained Special Ambassador for Arms Control into the 2520s, and while the position has become increasingly toothless, she has only become more emboldened and determined to make peace where others only see the possibility for war.

Military Personnel

ADMN Keo ‘Maestro’ Hughes (b. 2372) [Seongnam, Minerva (SEO)]- The architect of Minervan naval strategy and the father of the Fleet Logistics Office, Admiral of the Navy Keo Hughes gained a reputation as an ‘untouchable old bastard’ and commissioned the design of the uniquely Minervan Forward Repair and Resupply Vessel (FRRV), the backbone of his strategy of the Unrelenting Offensive. By being able to create a flexible logistical chain that could repair and replenish ships without returning them to friendly territory, his ‘Grand Orchestra’, as the Navy began to be dubbed due to Hughes’ knack for immaculate planning and penchant for micromanagement, would be able to play on despite whatever the UN could throw at them in the event of total war. Nearly retiring a Rear Admiral due to his insistence of remaining head of the Fleet Logistics Office— which under his supervision became the most powerful piece of the Navy’s bureaucracy— Hughes was quickly before retirement promoted to Admiral of the Navy against his will in a tribute to the man who had singlehandedly reinvented the Minervan Navy.

RADM Kaylin Rama (b. 2453) [Buenasuerte Republic (BUN)]- A prodigious naval commander, Rama excelled in every way, including her retaliatory shootout with the UN over Akrotiri in 2506. Leaving only a handful of destroyers and frigates intact from the whole UN blockade, then-Captain Rama’s battlegroup, headed up by the MARIANAS-Class (B075) Fast Battleship MFRS MEDINA RIDGE (B101) decimated the UN forces (though not without losses themselves) in a thorough and rapid strike that to the UN proved that destroyer wolfpacks were insufficient space combatant groups against capital ship formations except in overwhelming numbers. As a Rear Admiral, Rama found herself in command of the Third Fleet aboard the MFRS FORT MCHENRY (C343), a MYEONGNYANG-Class (C272) Battlecruiser during the Fools’ War. Successfully siezing the Line of Contact for the FMR during the Tau Ceti Campaign, her Third Fleet ran significantly ahead of the planned timeline due to the successes they had enjoyed under her leadership. Faced with the choice to either pursue the scattered and defeated UN forces from Tau Ceti to Sol and begin the Sol campaign ahead of time, therefore upholding the spirit of Hughes’ “Unrelenting Offensive” doctrine, or following the letter of the doctrine, and waiting for planned reinforcements from the Eighth Fleet busy in UV Ceti A and the Twelfth Fleet in Lalande’s Star (Lalande 21185). Rama chose to push the initiative, and while initially capturing the critical logistical and repair facilities at Titan, UN forces had largely destroyed them to deny the Minervans use of the facilities. Choosing to call in her FRRV complement of the Third Fleet to the outer Kuiper Belt in anticipation of the heavy damage that her ships had taken in the battle, the seeming UN withdrawal proved to be a feint and several wolfpacks of UN destroyers, accompanying three carriers, destroyed the Third Fleet’s FRRVs at the Battle of 65-Alpha. Rama was left with two choices: withdrawing and abandoning the Sol offensive or doubling down and engaging the fleeing UN fleet at Europa. She chose the latter, trying to buy time for the Eighth and Twelfth Fleets to enter the system. It was not enough, however, and she perished at the Battle of Europa on December 17, 2523.

Private Citizens

Sifat Suri (b. 2466) [Baikonur, Minerva (BKN)]- The man, the myth, the tragic legend, Sifat Suri was the man who very nearly changed the face of Minervan basketball forever. Recruited by the Republics Basketball League’s long-troubled Toronto Vipers before he had finished college— an unusual move for a Minervan prospect— most were more surprised that he had not decided to leave Minerva entirely to play in the more prestigious and older National Basketball Association, as was traditional for Minervans who met the cutoff for ‘big men’. A 7’4” behemoth center who had grown up in the higher gravity of Minerva— the tallest recorded Minervan in history— with a grace and agility unseen even in smaller players, Suri held an immense tactical mind for the game, and led his hometown team to mediocrity from the absolute rock bottom of the league, let down by a supporting cast that ‘couldn’t beat a team of preschoolers’, as one commentator put it. Wearing No. 31 for the Vipers, however, Suri attracted attention from other players and other teams that wished to either trade for him or play with him, and by his fifth year in the League in the 2491 season, his star power had brought a supporting cast of talented players like Grant Curbeam (PG) and Marcus Francis-Brookline (SG) to Toronto, and for the first half of the season the 2491 “Miracle Vipers” utterly demolished their competition, posting a win percentage over .900. The year prior, however, the RBL had made a deal with the NBA to play an exhibition game at the midpoint of the 2491 season between the best ranked NBA and RBL team, regardless of conference. Concurrently with the Vipers’ miracle season, Earth’s Toronto Raptors were also enjoying an anomalously spectacular season, and the 2491 NBA-RBL Challenge Game soon became known as the Clash of the Torontos as the Raptors and Vipers squared off for national pride and bragging rights. Following the infamous game— which would merit an article in its own right and was called by Suri a ‘crime against God and basketball’— Suri tripped and fell down a flight of stairs on the way out of the arena and sprained his ankle and broke his wrist. While he recovered quickly from the injury, his play would never be the same following the accident, and he would retire after his seventh season. His number, 31, would be retired by the Vipers— and the shadow his legacy and his potential cast was so great that no other player dreamed of trying to wear the number regardless. Locked in a depressive funk for some time, he entered into an unfulfilling and controversial tenure in sports broadcasting, rife with hot takes and a hotter temper, two things Suri was not historically known for. He could not, however, stay a spectator to the game he loved, and in 2500 found himself the head coach of the Canaveral Astronauts, and once he started coaching he never looked back to any other career, winning the RBL Champions’ Tournament in 2506 with the Astronauts and once again with the Ziguinchor Roohawks in 2513. He returned to Toronto— where he says he wishes to retire— in 2515 and has seen some success as their coach, but remains chasing that elusive RBL title, locked by hometown pride to a team that has never been anything but mediocre if not for his own efforts.

From a Korean-descent family, and chooses to render her name in the traditional order. Her given name is Lorena and her surname is Hwangbo. This name is often rendered in the Western style as Lorena Hwangbo.

Claimed.