[b]Name:[/b] Leidolf Lutzen. [b]Race:[/b] Larestan. Larestans are artificial abhumans with a resemblance to Terran canines, such as wolves and dogs. [b]Augmentics:[/b] In addition to the standard array of officer cybernetics, Captain Lutzen has an implant visually reminiscent of an eyepatch which occupies the space of his right eye. This actually allows him to see and alternate through the cameras outfitted to his vessel, giving him excellent situational awareness. It is outfitted with an emergency system somewhat akin to a surge protector that dims or cuts the feed if it receives input that could be harmful, such as staring directly into a star or other such intensely bright visuals. [b]Rank:[/b] Captain. [b]Alias:[/b] TBA [b]Physical Description:[/b] A somewhat tall lupine-like individual with a black pelt and yellow eyes. He wears a Royal Navy officer coat as well as a peaked cap bearing the insignia of the service. Though it is against regulations under normal circumstances, he has achieved a concession allowing him to wear some of his medals from his old service, the Kaiserliche Weltraum Marine, alongside those issued by the Royal Navy. [b]Personality:[/b] Captain Lutzen prefers inelegant, straightforward solutions to problems. He is particularly fond of head on attacks, and is prone to impatience when it comes to carrying out more sophisticated maneuvers. “No captain can do wrong if he puts his ship alongside the nearest enemy” is a quotation close to his heart. As a result, his poor vessel is very frequently subjected to repairs. He is abundantly energetic, impulsive and somewhat eccentric. It is this slight mental instability that fuels what the more generous term his “bravery.” He also at times has a rather tenuous grasp of the Kingdom's lingua franca, and is prone to mistakes. Lutzen is also somewhat vain. His hotheadedness sometimes is exhibited off the battlefield as well. His ocular cybernetic is in fact a consequence of one of his many duels he participated in during naval academy. "At least I came second," he reassures himself. [hider=Part One: Racial History] During the height of human domination of the galaxy under the Arcturian Empire, Heimbach-Karlsson, an industrial megacorporation, received imperial authority to colonize a sector of the galaxy. While technically part of the empire, they enjoyed a great deal of autonomy. Central to these holdings was the Larestan system, much sought after for its abundance of resource rich planets. The megacorporation devised artificial laborers designed to inhabit and work the surface of the Larestan worlds. With the humanocentric mentality of the Empire at the time, it would have been frowned upon to have made them exact duplicates of humans for the sole purpose of slavery, so they additionally aimed to differentiate them from mankind and thereby sidestep legislation by creating a wholly new subrace. Through combining canines and humans, they produced what they termed the Hundmenschen (though they're more commonly referred to as Larestans by the rest of the galaxy.) With the collapse of the Arcturian Empire, Heimbach-Karlsson also fell into decline. With this, the Larestans grew opportunistic. For too long they had suffered under the rule of masters who viewed them as only intelligent tools, and they saw this as the time to seize control of their own destiny among the stars. Their occupiers were demoralized and weakened after the wave of disasters that had brought the Empire to its death. Furthermore, the bulk of the fleet was committed to defending the Heimbach-Karlsson core-worlds, and so the skeleton force left behind to safeguard the Larestan system were in no position to hold onto the worlds. The formation of the first independent Larestan nation was thus inevitable. With their own culture they developed over the centuries of human domination being too transient and nebulously defined to base their new society upon, a lot of it was instead built off of emulation of their former masters. They were at first the Kingdom of Hundestaat, and as they flexed the muscles of their mighty new warmachine, owed greatly to the remnant industrial infrastructure left behind by their own masters, this expanded into Imperial Hundestaat through the dark ages. Haughty with their hard earned prosperity, they turned an imperialistic eye towards the territories of their closest neighbour: The Kingdom of Far Valyrius. While powerful, their arrogance was to prove their undoing. Five years before the far more prolonged war against the Arian Jihad, Larestan Kaiser Larrstein II was so confident of victory that he ordered the bulk of his fleet to smash through, straight to the Far Valyrius homeworld of Throne. Of all the things the Larestans had inherited from their former human masters, the idiom of "don't put all your eggs in one basket" was not one of them. While it was an impressive force, they were easily encircled, out maneuvered and consequently annihilated by the far more tactically astute Royal Navy. Not a single Larestan soldier managed to set foot upon any planet belonging to the Kingdom of Far Valyrius. The Valyrius-Hundestaat War ended only six months after commencement, and with catastrophic losses for Imperial Hundestaat. Extremely demoralized, civil discord and even rebellion broke out on nearly every planet within their borders. Their economy went into a free fall as their industry strained and collapsed under the weight of their horrific losses. Kaiser Larrstein II was forced to abdicate, and the new civilian government surrendered to the Kingdom of Far Valyrius only a day after being formed. Their warmachine was so badly bloodied after their failure that this eventually was followed by Hundestaat declaring vassalage to the Kingdom of Far Valyrius. With their new status as a vassal-state, their territories and even the remnants of their military were incorporated into His Unapproachable Grace's. Larestan personnel and vessels served under the banner of King Odyssius XVII in the war against the Arian Jihad. While a few examples stood out and served with distinction, the majority of them proved to be quite apathetic, poorly motivated allies.[/hider] [hider=Part Two: Personal History]Captain Lutzen is a veteran of both the Valyrius-Hundestaat War the later Arian Wars. In the Valyrius-Hundestaat War he served aboard the Kaiserliche Weltraum Marine vessel, the Linienschiff [i]Lohengrin[/i]. Though he participated in earlier skirmishes, his true defining moment in that war was during and after the apocalyptic Battle of Throne (It actually took place a considerable distance away from the planet, but it is erroneously remembered as occurring just above the planet in Larestan historiography; a popular misconception formed as part of a wave of “lost victory” literature that emerged after the conclusion of war. Lutzen's own self-acquitting memoirs, titled “Why Didn't You Listen?”, contributed to this notion of the war being something that they were only a hair away from winning.) In the middle of the fiercest fighting the battle saw, Captain Lutzen and his ship Lohengrin forged ahead, straight into the Royal Navy formations. With his adversaries stunned by the audacity of this attack, he and his crew managed to inflict some serious damage during the surprise, but themselves sustained many blows. Captain Lutzen maintains that it was during this attack that he managed to score a few hits on the King's flagship, [i]Ancestral Right[/i], but these claims remain unfounded. Either that or the damage he inflicted was only negligible (the ship's logs do report one communications antenna blown away around the time that Captain Lutzen was in range, after all.) He proved to be a further thorn in the side of the Royal Navy as, when the battle finally appeared to be truly lost, he fled from the area, beginning a long pursuit that went back and forth across Valyrius space. Though there was little Lutzen and his crew alone could do to change the tide of the already lost war, the King's Admiralty were determined to capture this straggler vessel as a symbolic conclusion to the war that was now eluding them. When he received word that the Kaiser had abdicated and his nation was to surrender, he, with incredible reluctance, beamed a message to his pursuers. In it, he not only complimented the Royal Navy on being “great fun”, but also announced his own capitulation and the surrender of his vessel. Captain Lutzen and his crew were taken into custody, as with the rest of the defeated captives of his disgraced nation. When Hundestaat formally became part of the Kingdom, Captain Lutzen and his crew were pardoned and pressed into service in the Royal Navy. His crew is even today mostly comprised of Larestans, though with many humans and other races loyal to the Kingdom also serving aboard his ship. In the Arian Wars he was able to spare the [i]Lohengrin[/i] from its intended fate of being disarmed and held as a monument of the Kingdom's victory over Hundestaat. Desperation compelled the Kingdom to use anything available to them, and so Captain Lutzen was reunited with his mighty [i]Lohengrin[/i]. Besides, the common lineage of Hundestaat and Valyrian vessels to those of the Empire made it much easier to adapt the [i]Lohengrin[/i] to the Royal Navy's infrastructure and logistics than the vessels of other alien races that had sworn allegiance to the king. Though he never did anything quite as audacious as his lone ship charge right into a mass of enemy ships in the Battle of Throne, his predisposition for recklessness continued to show itself time and time again through the Arian War, where he frequently got into vicious brawls with enemy ships and refused to retreat, even when odds were drastically stacked against him. The one instance of Captain Lutzen personally issuing such an order in the course of the war was during an engagement with the HRS4 [i]Arian's Dream[/i], which even then was only after, in his words, "Taking our best whack at cracking it." While he is undoubtedly a credit to the service, it is believed this recklessness is what has stalled his career, as expanding his authority over even more lives is generally held to be a rather bad idea. [/hider] IC Sample: TBA Ship Name: [i]Lohengrin[/i] Ship Type: Kaiser Larrstein I-class Linienschiff. Semi-Sentience Profile: It is actually a replication based the superficials of Captain Lutzen's own personality, as befitting his zest for vanity. It ultimately comes off as a cartoonish adaptation of the man, however. Being a semi-sentience, it is by no means a thorough or even accurate copy, lacking his intellect, knowledge, and so forth, but Captain Lutzen makes for one hell of a Yes Man when it comes to Captain Lutzen's needs. ("Talking to yourself is often the only way to get the answers you're looking for, after all!") Escort Ships: [hider=Escort Ships] All four are Carcharodon-class fleet destroyers. [i]Siegfried[/i], commanded by Neville Astroth. [i]Siegmund[/i], commanded by Isabelle Nue. [i]Sieglinde[/i], commanded by Rolf Hesselrig. [i]Greg[/i], commanded by Strake Lawson. [/hider] Ship Details/History: The [i]Lohengrin[/i] is the second of the five Kaiser Larrstein I-class battlecruisers Imperial Hundestaat constructed before its defeat and incorporation into the Kingdom. Though they were referred to as Linienschiff ("battleships") in the Hundestaat Kaiserliche Weltraum Marine, this was more for propaganda. Kaiser Larrstein I-class ships are actually a Hundestaat adaptation of the Arcturian Fisher-class battlecruiser, a ship that straddles the line between HRS3 and HRS4 (though is often considered HRS3 for convenience.) The Fisher-class were intended to be close-quarters brawlers and have most of their armament situated in broadside mounts. A balance of suitable protection and speed was aimed for in order to help it close in on the enemy and outlast them. Similar to the Dratha-class, which is in some respects its big brother, the Fisher-class has next to no hangar capacity. The Kaiser Larrstein I-class variation actually does away with hangars entirely, aside from a small launch for reconnaissance craft, as well as other utility vehicles. The Larestans never particularly warmed up to the idea of carriers and strikecraft. While they had both, they generally preferred outfitting ships with heavier cannonries. Beneath its three decks of broadside batteries are port and starboard facing torpedo tubes, as opposed to the more commonly encountered forward facing ones. Additionally, it has several center-line mounted turrets for medium range combat, but these are primarily for pursuits and to soften shielding as the Lohengrin closes in to bring its heavier broadside guns to bear. - Complement: 5,000 crew. While Hundestaatian AI is not as advanced as some other examples encountered in the galaxy, it does allow for a higher degree of automation than their Royal Navy's counterparts. - primary weapons/fleet function: The [i]Lohengrin[/i] is outfitted with an incredible amount of cannons arrayed along its sides. In fact, the original Fisher-class had only two gun decks. The Kaiser Larrestein I-class added a whole new deck on top of the original two. The lower two decks carry the heaviest armaments, and the top deck houses an array of smaller, more rapidly firing guns. All guns can traverse, elevate and depress, albeit to a limited degree. The [i]Lohengrin[/i] was intended for fighting on the most immediate front-line. It is outfitted with strafing thrusters to help it adjust distance when lining up to unleash its characteristic devastating broadsides. The bridge is built on top of a unique turret-like mounting, allowing it to traverse about 180 degrees. - Muhreens: No assault shuttles to speak of, and no marines, but the ship does have a contingent of Navy Troopers to thwart boarding attempts and for general security purposes. - "Strike"craft: A small detachment of 5 [i]Palantir[/i] Unmanned Reconnaissance Drones, as well as a host of utilitarian vehicles, most of which intended to perform minor battlefield repairs.