Omniverse One

Inspired by Comix and a desire to focus more on individuals that will appear in my fiction or at least play a significant role in the setting, I have created the Persons of Interest thread. Ideally, this thread will add flavor to the setting while establishing who major political, arcane, and economic figures are. If you have any recommendations or criticism, I'm quite happy to steal your ideas take advice.

The Errynt Twins

“Listen up, Rangers.” All conversation in the room ceased as a pair of officers entered. Lieutenant Commanders Silvia and Andrew Errynt looked remarkably similar, standing six feet with dark reddish-brown hair grown out even farther past regulations than was normal even for Special Forces Rangers. Like the other eighteen men and women in the room, they were dressed in generic civilian clothing. Andrew Errynt took a drag on his cigarette and continued. “We’ve got confirmation from Hathcock and Medvedev that the target just arrived. It’s time to move out. We want to make this subtle, so we’re forgoing dropships in favor of ground insertion—rolling in close and legging it the rest of the way. Hathcock and Medvedev’s teams are on standby to provide sniper cover. I’ll be leading the assault team. Silvia will be leading the security team. You all know the plan. We don’t expect anything worse than the usual diggers with rifles. Get your gear and mount up. We’re rolling out in two minutes.”
Silvia looked over at him as the room emptied. “Are you looking forward to finally getting this bastard?”

“You know I am.” Andrew gave feral grin. “After we get him the only one left is the man paying us. Do you think he knows there’s a bounty on his head?”

“I doubt it. He gets wrapped up in his own little world sometimes. Just remember to wait until after we complete the contract to make your move.”

“Me? Shoot too soon? You wound me, dear sister,” Andrew said, gesturing dramatically.

“Only because I care,” Silvia said. “You did a good job coming up with this operation. Neither of them will know what hit them.”

“Just so long as the assault team doesn’t break the goods we’re being paid to deliver.” Andrew glanced at his watch. “Time to roll out. Keep an eye out for us. Good luck and good hunting.”

“Likewise yourself.”

History

The Errynt twins were created in the aftermath of the Eidolon War. Their father, Lord Alexander Errynt, had lost numerous siblings and cousins to the family profession during the war, and he was determined that if some of his children were going to go into the Errynt Rangers, then they were going to be given every possible advantage he could muster to ensure they survived the experience. With this in mind, he commissioned Saevenok Bioconstructs Co. to produce a pair of twin homunculi that would be given the best physical augmentation money could buy. Three years and almost a billion rona later, a pair of the highest-quality first generation homunculi every made were born (an admittedly small population). Though minor celebrities in the bioccultic research and engineering community, the Errynt twins, like most first-gen homunculi, escaped notice by the general public.

As the children of a pair of billionaires, the Errynt twins grew up in extreme luxury, limited far more by their parents’ Spartan tastes than any economic constraint. On the other hand, as the youngest of the Clan Lord’s children they were expected and groomed to serve in the Errynt Rangers. Consequently, while they received the high-end academic education that would be expected of their status (both studied arcanics at one of the top universities in Tyrre, and were thoroughly corrupted by the Republic’s hedonistic academic culture), they also received a considerable amount of weapons handling and some of the same indoctrination Ranger recruits were put through. By the time they actually entered the Rangers’ training program, they were better weapons-handlers than most of the instructors.

After being flogged through Ranger school and OCS, the two ended up assigned to two different Ranger battalions (Silvia to the Wolfhounds and Andrew to the Laughing Men), fighting in separate conflicts for several years, including the 1749 Biopolis Campaign and the 1749-1750 Daemonsiege of Nova Edessa. However, they spent a comparatively short time in the Ranger battalions before passing Special Forces qualification and being assigned to the SF teams.

The next seven years were spent largely on detached duty with a small team of operatives, working for Rufus Saevenok and a number of other upper-class individuals. The twins’ striking appearance was sometimes detrimental in the street-level operations the SF teams were usually involved in, but let them blend right in to most high societies, where supernatural beauty was less uncommon—that it also made it easier for them to indulge in their hedonistic tastes than serving in a line unit didn’t hurt either. They were involved in the disintegration of one of the most influential of the Vulcadian Faust Cartels when they killed Sandor Rezan, the Cartel’s leader. This unexpected twist stained their reputation somewhat, and they returned to the SF teams to take part in “standard” operations. They shot up through the Teams’ ranks, displaying a solid grasp of small-unit and special operations tactics. With the 1st RSF team CO being killed in action and the 3rd RSF team CO retiring in rapid succession, both were promoted to command of a team within weeks of each other.

Personality

Silvia and Andrew Errynt are the product of a multitude of conflicting influences—the privilege of the ultra-rich, the pressures of growing up as genetically-engineered super soldiers, the hedonism of Tyrran intelligentsia, and the Spartan attitudes of professional soldiers standing foremost among them. Indeed, how they behave is often a question of which mask they chose to wear. They can shift smoothly from urbane patrician to cynical mercenary to bloody-minded berserker depending on which is called for. All things considered, they are astonishingly well-adjusted, though sometimes there are hints of madness beneath the surface.

The Errynt twins have a demeanor and attitude born out of their contradictions. They combine the cynicism and occasional crassness that might be expected of career mercenaries with a certain degree of sophistication that jars with their occupation. It is their occupation that has taught them the value of maintaining a friendly mask even when dealing with people they find contemptible, but they do not suffer fools gladly if they don’t have to. They tend to regard many of their employers as immoral or amoral bullies and tyrants who are solely redeemed by the often worse nature of their enemies. Despite their career choice, the Errynt twins are genuinely friendly, if sometimes aloof, people who enjoy their job because it lets them hunt down some of the most unpleasant people on the planet.

Silvia and Andrew are shameless hedonists. To put it very simply, the Errynt twins like nice things. Nice clothes, nice food, nice guns, nice lovers, nice cars. About the only nice things they don’t like are nice people, because they have a tendency to judge them for being professional killers. Their hedonistic attitudes are the consequence of Spartan parents, youthful rebellion, and exposure to Tyrran islander culture (which is considerably more liberal than Arran, where the Errynt Clan originates). On the other hand, a combination of their culture background and the ministrations of the Rangers’ ethos have given them a more understated and traditional hedonism. Both look down upon the widespread drug and alcohol abuse they encountered among their fellow students (not helped by the fact that they could drink their peers under the table and feel merely tipsy, thanks to their unusual biology). Even their profession feeds their hedonism to some degree. They are both self-admitted adrenaline addicts and can display terrifying bloodlust in combat. Both will freely admit that their decisions to remain in the SF teams rather than pursue a career in the Ranger Infantry battalions is that an SF officer can still expect to see direct action on a regular basis while a Ranger infantry officer may not (the higher pay doesn’t hurt either). The Errynt twins were bred and raised for war, and it shows.

Their career as professional soldiers has influenced the way that they think at least as much as their upper class upbringing. Most notable has been the indoctrination of aspects of the Rangers’ ethos, mitigating and eliminating assumptions of superiority. They tend to be vehemently anti-political, often to a fault. They regard politicians and bureaucrats with a degree of contempt that often turns around and bites them. They also do their best to overlook the political nuances of whatever situation they’re in, as it tends to make their contracts look unpalatable. While the Errynt twins have reasonably well-developed moral compasses considering their occupation, they tend to first and foremost divide the world into people they care about and everyone else. The people they care about are limited almost entirely to the Errynt Clan and to their subordinates in particular.

Ultimately, it can be said that the Errynt twins are something of a throwback to aristocratic military elites, but they may also be among the first of a new wave of augmented humans. Andrew and Silvia know where they stand on the issue, which has saved them from the existential angst that plagues some more conservative homunculi and soul-forged individuals.

Notable Skills and Assets

The Errynt twins, aside from familial connections to one of the wealthiest individuals on planet, actually have relatively few personal assets. They own a collection of antique and historically significant weapons and all the usual things to be expected of well-paid mercenaries with expensive tastes. However, beyond that they own little of significance and show no interest in acquiring anything. The only things that stand out are a matched pair of heavily enchanted custom-made handguns that Alexander Errynt had commissioned for them. These weapons have garnered a minor amount of notoriety, and several collectors have offered large sums to anyone who can acquire them.

They are however, veterans of the Errynt Rangers’ Special Forces teams, with everything that implies. Both possess superhuman weapons handling skills and are quite competent with small unit and special operations tactics. Moreover, both are cosmourges of good though unremarkable skill. They rely on standard metaclockwork assistance and arcane foci for complex techniques like teleportation and image crafting. Between them, they command nearly eighty elite special operators, many of whom regard their father as the nearest thing to a living god. And of course, they have themselves: a pair of highly augmented individuals worth more nearly as much as a small dreadnought airship. Their combination of arcane and combat skills makes them among the most personally dangerous individuals on the planet, rivaled only by other combat homunculi, heavily soul-forged individuals, and archmagi.


The twice-dead corpses of a half-dozen minor Lysmerian cadaveri nobles were strewn across the interior of the Duke Nicholas Sarcophage de Sartre’s magnificent ballroom. Most clutched weapons of some kind, though in several cases the arms that wielded them were quite far removed from the well-dressed torsos they belonged to. Necromorph armsmen were rushing in to defend their master from the pair of suddenly hostile guests that had turned the ballroom into an abattoir. The Duke himself had retreated to the mezzanine and thrown up the arcane wards that lined the upper level the moment his celebratory ball had started to go horribly wrong. He was a brilliant archmage, like any good Lysmerian noble, but battle was a weak point for him. He had already slammed the attackers with his most powerful psychonomic charm, but, instead of reducing them to a pair of drooling idiots like it should have, it had simply rolled off their own wards.

De Sartre flinched as a thaumaturgically charged bullet tried to pierce his wards. It failed utterly, and the shooter switched her focus to the necromorphs on the ballroom floor. Arcanic charms made the handgun rounds strike like machinegun slugs, shattering skulls and severing limbs. Her male companion stepped forward and vanished in the thunderclap of teleportation, only to reappear in the midst of the armsmen, a sword borrowed from a fallen noble slicing through them like they were made of cobwebs. It took only seconds for them to massacre the armsmen like they had the nobles.

“Andrew, my love, I thought the plan was to let me get close to de Sartre before we started carving these people up. You know he’s a sap when it comes to a pretty woman with a pulse.” the woman said. De Sartre had thought her the living child of a minor political ally. That was obviously not the case. He took a moment to admire her all the same—a shame that such beauty would be wasted on the living. Her form-flattering white-dress was untouched despite the carnage, and his arcane senses told him it was laced with a number of enchantments.

The swordsman, a mirror image of the woman, laughed and tossed aside his borrowed weapon. His white suit was just spotless as the woman’s dress, despite having been even closer to the center of a maelstrom of gore. “My fault entirely, my dear sister. I may have overstepped our host’s hospitality when I decapitated his son.” Andrew glanced up at de Sartre. “How does that work exactly? I’ve always been curious. I mean, since you’re dead you obviously can’t have children, and I know you try to cadaverize aspiring nobles before they have a chance to spoil…never mind.” He glanced back over at the woman. “I think it’s time to go, Silvia. His desiccation up there has probably called in the rest of his armsmen, and they probably won’t be as surprised as this bunch. And our wards are about to burn out.”

“You’re right, of course, my dear brother. I was just waiting for you to finish talking.” Silvia blew a kiss at de Sartre. “Until next time, your grace.”

De Sartre mustered some of his courage. “Who sent you? The Church? The Saevenoks? The Cartels?” He put some subtle psychonomic weight behind the question, hoping to make them more pliant—if their wards were really weakening, then something clever might slip through. The mindbending magic skittered off the same wards that had foiled his earlier attempt.

Andrew Errynt laughed again. “We’d hardly be good hired thugs if we just told you. It has been a lovely evening, your grace, though in the future I recommend that you find more talented sycophants.” He gave a sarcastic salute to de Sartre and offered his arm to Silvia Errynt. “Shall we go, my dear?”

Lovely!

So, high-fallutin' genetically engineered badass aristocratic noble-mercenary hedonistic cultured and refined killing machines? With a penchant for fancy shmancy erudite bantering? Very nice. You should tell all sorts of badass stories with them in the middle of it, ruining all sorts of people's shit. Man, poor necrowizard, they killed his son and killed all his little necromorphs, and just waltzed away. What terrible guests!

I may have overstepped our host’s hospitality when I decapitated his son.

There are the guys from Wolfhounds, no?

Yeah. Sort of. I should get around to updating that at some point. College has been slowing me down.

I really (really) dig this character archetype - sticking rich, high-society predators into special forces is not a mix you see that often in fiction, and these guys play it up to the extreme.

What happened to their "father", Lord Alexander?

He's still around, though semi-retired.

Yvolva, Genius Loci

History
Like all genius loci, Yvolva’s origin is shrouded in mystery. The issue is not helped by her long isolation and often distorted perception of the passage of time, so she has been forced to be content with claiming to be “very old”. Given what little scientists know of genius loci, it is safe to assume she is at least thousands, and possibly tens of thousands of years old. However, regardless of her actual age, her meaningful interactions with human civilization have been limited to the past century and a half. While she has long had small tribes of primitive humans living under her influence, she did not encounter people from a technologically developed culture until 1609 (present date is 1763).

First contact came in the form of a group of explorers looking for valuable resources deposits inside Yvolva’s domain (consisting mostly of mountainous forests). Yvolva ended up absorbing them, more or less by accident. This introduced her to the concepts of industrialization and technological development. Unlike the Biopolis (one of the handful of other genius loci to play a significant role in human civilization), Yvolva’s reaction to these concepts was almost entirely positive. She made several attempts to duplicate their equipment, but was ultimately unsuccessful, and ended up sending avatars out to procure industrial technology and scientific knowledge from regions that already possessed it.

While initially reluctant to deal with a genius loci, very soon a number of businesses (particularly from Outremer) were dealing with Yvolva. Her international relations were unsteady at first, and the Aurian Church continues to remain distrustful to the present. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for Yvolva to acquire recognition and sovereignty over her territory, helped along by the fact that most of the land was coming from Aztlan or tenebrous nations. Yvolva has been building up her industrial base and engineering the creatures under her control to be more applicable for around eight years now. Her economic and political power is still relatively small, but her avatars are becoming more common in major political centers of the world.

Personality
Yvovla’s personality is fairly inhuman, although more human and relatable than most genius loci (who tend to fluctuate between ignoring humans and trying to kill them). Scientists have speculated that she was strongly influenced by some of the individuals she absorbed, as indicated by her use of gendered pronouns when referring to herself (most genius locorum do not possess any sort of human gender identity). However, the motivation behind her actions remains essentially opaque. She has given little explanation of why she is different from other genius loci beyond an ill-defined curiosity.

Yvolva is more intelligent than all but the most intelligent of humans, but not dramatically so. She is, however, a superhuman multi-tasker, and is evolved to handle a number of sensory inputs that would drive most humans insane. Consquently, she can learn far faster than humans, though her actual problem-solving ability is not radically superior except insofar as she usually has more applicable information than a human would in an otherwise identical situation.

She tends to be ruthlessly pragmatic and unsentimental, and often has difficulty comprehending human emotional reactions to issues such as betrayal, although she has gotten better. This has made it difficult for her to procure allies at times, as what she offers is rarely worth the risk that she will betray them if a better offer is made by someone else. Her improving understanding of human psychology has made it easier for her to keep allies and avoid alienating potentially friendly parties.

On the other hand, she also tends to be quite curious about the function of the world and of human society, which has gone a long way towards improving her comprehension of human motivations as well as giving her an encyclopedic knowledge of several fields of science and arcanics. One of the primary responsibilities of her avatars is to retrieve new knowledge and information.

Assets and skills
Yvolva is a minor industrial power and sovereign in her own right despite having functionally no internal human population. While her industrial technology is mostly low-tech and outdated by the standards of the modern world, she is constantly improving it. Most of that industry is light, being orienting towards the production of textiles and other extremely cheap consumer goods. The lack of need to provide anything beyond the basic necessities of life to her “labor force” has given her considerable advantage. An ever increasing number of consumer goods are stamped with “product of Yvolva”.

As a genius loci, Yvolva is a minor god within her domain (albeit one that functions differently than normal), and still quite powerful without it. She possesses extensive knowledge of arcanics, and within her domain is in the same league as the Aurian saints, the Maggot King of Lysmer, and the Obsidian Court of Aztlan. Outside, acting through an avatar, she would merely rank among the most skilled archmagi of all time, with an enormous reserve of arcane power to draw upon. In particular, she possesses a nearly unmatched skill with bioccultics (reached or exceed only by other genius loci, a bare handful of archmagi, and a few nature eidolons). Many of the inhabitants of her domain have been heavily altered to aid in her development programs.

As a sovereign, Yvolva possesses political clout, extensive wealth, and military forces. Her military consists of a mixture of mercenaries and engineered war-beasts either operation or functioning as war machines. It sees frequent skirmishes against Aztlan forces along the border of her domain. Her wealth is comparable to a wealthy tenebrous nation, though it goes considerably farther due to a lack of need to provide ordinary government services. In comparison, it makes her one of the world’s wealthiest individuals. Yvolva’s assets are thus far limited both by economic and military pressures, but they are growing and will likely begin to grow at a faster rate in the near future.

Wait, what? One of your persons of interests also happens to be an emergent nation-being? That's totally unexpected. So she's this all-powerful inhuman demigod thing who is also a place and a country?

What's a genius loci?

Google is your friend.

A genius loci is a living location, or the "spirit of" of a particular location. A 'genius' used to mean something akin to an instance of divine nature, rather than "really smart". So a genius loci would be an instance of the divine nature of a place. For example: if a place's "divine nature" was that it was a place of hope, then on a cloudy day there would always be a hole in the clouds, illuminating it.

Genius loci are also really good for horror stuff, as a twisted genius loci gives an excuse for all kind of stuff to happen that is not just creepy, but exists because it is creepy. For further enlightenment on more modern usages (and time wasting), take a look here.

Wait, wait, wait... she's a living nation-state with her own personality?! Dude, that's awesome. I'm wondering, though, how she actually builds industry with no outside help?

lasers
She can control the fauna, some of which has been engineered to function as industrial labor. She also sometimes hires outside help.

Not really all powerful, just really, really powerful inside the area under her control. But yes.
Shroomy, a recent example of a genius loci in prominent fiction would be Eywa/Pandora.


It's kind of like Monaco that way.

Ramses Guerrez

The Vox broadcast station was ill-maintained under the best of circumstances, which were never good in a central Megaea nation, even the comparatively peaceful ones like Trozen. The recent firefight that had swept through had riddled the shabby structure with bullet-holes, explosion debris, and scorch marks from extinguished incendiaries.

Nevertheless, it was a welcome sight to the tall, handsome man approaching it. Not only did it deny Trozen’s leadership another place from which they could spew their propaganda. It also gave him a way to address the people of Trozen and let them know that he had arrived. He gave a friendly nod to the two riflemen standing guard at the door—most of the men and women in his contingent were long time friends and allies. He had been regrettably absent from the storming of the station. He hated letting others take the lead for him.

Inside, he spotted the bodies of several the broadcast station’s private security. Two were sprawled in the middle of the corridor, and four more were slumped against the wall with messy head wounds. He stopped to spit on one of the corpses. “Dogs,” he muttered. Why anyone would risk death to defend Trozen’s tyrants was beyond him.

More of his friends directed him up to a prepared broadcast booth with a waiting vox. It had been several months since he had arrived in Trozen, and it was long past time to unveil his presence to the people. He pulled carefully folded notes and a pair of glasses from his breast pocket, and started reading.
“People of Trozen, I am Ramses Guerrez, and I am here to free you.”

History

Ramses Guerrez was born in one of the wealthier of the Mylesian principalities to a middle-class family. He frequently suffered from minor illnesses as he was growing up, but nevertheless became an excellent athlete and acquired a reputation for aggressiveness and arrogance amongst his siblings and friends. Thanks to his family’s comparatively wealthy background he was able to access a wide variety of reading material, and was extremely well read in regards to politics and philosophy even before he began his higher education.

Guerrez attended university in Nova Edessa, studying medicine and dabbling in a number of other fields. During this time, he became increasing politicized and radical. This began to alienate him from his family, which in turn pushed him deeper into radical political movements. In his last years in Nova Edessa he became involved with the levellers, which resulted in him being arrested briefly for vandalism. He nevertheless completed his education more or less on time and began a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. His travels ranged through some of the world’s poorest regions, include Tenebrae and the nations of central Megaea.

When he finally returned to Mylesia, instead of going back to his home principality, he went to the much less politically stable principality of Varra, where he joined the organization of Luis Avila, another leveller revolutionary. Guerrez and Avila frequently clashed, thanks to their differing worldviews. Guerrez was enthusiastic, idealistic, and hard-line to an extreme, while Avila was much more restrained and pragmatic. Nevertheless, Guerrez was considerably more charismatic than Avila, and he eventually became the public face of the leveller movement in Varra while Avila focused on the operations and political aspects of the revolution.

After Avila’s movement successfully deposed and executed the Duke of Varra, Guerrez found himself involved in the political reorganization of the principality. In particular, he was heavily involved in land reform and rural education, in keeping with the traditional leveller views of the revolutionaries. He was also in charge of internal security for a time, during which he ordered or presided over the execution of several hundred political supporters of the old Duke. When word of this got out, his reputation in places like Altar, Tyrre, and Outremer was significantly soured.

After several years, Guerrez grew tired of post-revolutionary slog, and organized a group of old friends dedicated to spreading leveller ideas to other places. Avila gave him support where he was able, and his reputation as an expert of guerilla warfare enabled him to attract followers and gain a great deal of traction. To date he has instigated three major revolutionary movements and supported a half-dozen smaller ones, none of which have been successful and only two of which persist.

Personality

Ramses Guerrez is first and foremost a political man. Revolutionary political change is what drives him, and he is remarkably unchanged by his experiences. While he certainly a harder man for what he has gone through, he remains an ardent, passionate idealist, unlike his friend Luis Avila. He loves his friends and hates his enemies, and rarely finds an issue which he doesn’t have an opinion on. Guerrez’s passion and charisma are what have made him the center of nearly every group he has joined, and serves to buoy his companions when they might have otherwise given up. If there is one way in which his experiences have changed him, it is that Guerrez is a violent man. He tends to believe that many of the world’s troubles can be solved with the appropriate application of violence, and his comrades occasionally criticize him for being too quick to call for bloodshed.

Of course, constantly being the center of attention has swollen Guerrez’s ego to some degree. Those who spend much time around him will notice that he can be astonishingly arrogant at times, especially in regards to the fact that he views himself as highly intellectual. That he is more well read than nearly everyone he encounters does nothing to discourage this attitude. Many of his friends find this to be nearly intolerable at times, and Avila in particular has had trouble dealing with Guerrez because of this. While he undeniably intelligent, the question arises of whether he is quite as smart as he believes he is.

On the other hand, Guerrez can also be extremely open and friendly, even to people he despises. Given a few minutes and a room full of people, he can make friends with at least a few of them. Beyond his ability to casually befriend people, Guerrez has demonstrated on more than one occasional an extreme loyalty to his close friends and comrades, which has gotten him badly wounded in dangerous situations.

Ramses Guerrez is a man carried through life by his own intensity. Despite the constant setbacks and horrors he has suffered and inflicted, he continues to drive himself and others forwards in pursuit of his ideals. While this has alienated him from some long time friends, it has never failed to gather him new allies.

Skills and Assets

Ramses Guerrez is a trained doctor, and as such possesses some knowledge of alchemy and bioccultics; mostly as they related to medicine, though he also possesses knowledge of alchemical explosives. He is also a fairly skilled weapons handler, having fought on the frontlines of the revolution in Varra and in a number of other places. He has similarly highly developed skills relevant to guerilla warfare, including wilderness survival and improvised cryptography. Guerrez is a highly experienced but not particularly talented guerilla commander. While he has demonstrated a solid grasp of tactics, his actual expertise in the guerilla aspect of guerilla warfare is questionable considering his track record (during the revolution in Varra, he was constantly overshadowed by Avila, and every movement he has been involved in since then has failed). More notably, Guerrez is a charismatic speaker and leader, and a skillful manipulator of media focus and public attention.

Nevertheless, Guerrez is the leader of a band (varying in size from twenty to two hundred at any given time) of veteran revolutionaries. They are for the most part quite loyal to Guerrez, and that is reciprocated. A few are nearly as experienced as Guerrez himself. Guerrez’s long time associated and friendship with Avila has also given him access to financial and military resources far beyond what he would normally have access to. While this flow of money and weapons has slackened off somewhat in recent years, it is still substantial. His nomadic, violence-filled lifestyle has prevented him from forming strong ties outside of his political associates and fellow revolutionaries, but it has made him a hero to the leveller movements around the world. He has little difficulty recruiting small groups of radical levellers to bolster his more permanent followers, but has limited access to resources outside the network of leveller radicals.

Guerrez makes his home in Varra, but he rarely visits the very modest house he has there, and his small collection of material possessions is limited almost exclusively to mementos and books.

Ramses swore as dropship engines screamed overhead. Most of his comrades had already been smuggled out of Trozen, but he and a few local comrades looked to be trapped by the hired thugs of the Saevenok Clan. He could even predict who he was facing off against. The Saevenoks’ favorite crew of mercenaries came from the Errynt Rangers. A quick glance out the window confirmed his guess. Special Forces Rangers were roping out of the dropships. The Rangers were clearly trying to make a show of it—they were clad in their traditional scarlet-and-black instead of more concealing civilian clothing or sensible battle-dress. They had to know he couldn’t fight back right now.

Still, it was no trouble to keep calm. This situation was nothing new He had evaded the Rangers before and he would do so again. More than that, he was going to get his comrades out as well. The Rangers wouldn’t catch him, and the only thing their showy display would get them was another humiliating failure to catch Ramses Guerrez.

Ten minutes of searching later, the Special Forces Rangers had turned up nothing but small recording device in the hotel room where Guerrez had reportedly been staying. The message on it was very brief.

“Well done, my inveterate foes. You nearly had me there for a moment. But just that. This day is one more time you almost caught Ramses Guerrez!”

GLOURIOUS REVOLUCION! VIVA ARRIBA AY CARRUMBA!!

You should expand more on this leveler movement of Ramses Guevararrez. It sounds interesting, and really I wonder how it works in this crazy magical world of gods and monsters and supermen that is Arcane Steel. I'd imagine they'd be a pain in the ass for both those Lysemer necromungers and those guys making homonculi ubermen. Where technomagic makes corporatocracies and great powers all badass, I'd imagine there'd be a sizeable population of despondent and dispossessed and pissed off proletariats who'd be in the mood for a good old REVOLUTION! Abhumans and enslaved cattle humans in Lysemer and all sorts of guys. Those Errynt Clan guys are just begging for some WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION FOR THE MASSES to get thrown in their faces.

I also like how you portrayed Ramses Guerrez as a very much imperfect character. Badass, charming, and all cunning and all that, but also very much a flawed individual. I wish his revolucion well! VIVA!