Isaac Icarus

“They call it the city of tomorrow. In most cities around the world, the only people who ever look up are the tourists. In Arendur, everyone looks up.”
-Isaac Icarus
== Youth ==
"What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks 'Where is my share?' A man creates. A parasite says, 'What will the neighbors think?' A man invents. A parasite says, 'Watch out, or you might tread on the toes of the gods... '"
-Isaac Icarus
Born in Guilddon, Isaac Icarus' mother died giving birth to him. He was the first and only child of his father, who never remarried. Irwin Icarus was a gunsmith who worked in the Tinker's Guild, and Isaac learned the trade at his father's knee. Though he was a skilled gunsmith, Irwin chiefly known for refusing to make weapons for the powerful Thieves' Guild - values he tried his utmost to pass on to his son. 
When Isaac was ten, his father's principles finally caught up to him. The thieves' guild elevated Floyd Harden, a member of the Tinker's Guild who envied Irwin Icarus' success. With the help of the thieves, Harden murdered Irwin Icarus and planted evidence that Irwin had stolen his designs. Young Isaac managed to escape, and took his father's prized revolvers with him. 
Isaac Icarus took the wrong lesson from his father's death; namely that his father had been too naive, perhaps even too weak. Isaac observed how all of his father's business associates neither lifted a finger to help him, nor stood up for his reputation. He observed how the monarchy and the law did nothing to punish the perpetrators; they were all corrupt and in the pockets of the thieves' guild. He observed how Floyd Harden, a mediocre and grasping man, rose up through society despite his ruinous business practices and many debts, squandering his stolen money. Icarus concluded that he would only be able to make in the world on his own strength, and that no one could really be trusted. He vowed to avenge his father, and show the world that the son was tough enough to teach the true meaning of ruthlessness. 
Icarus worked in a series of odd jobs for a couple of years, all the while honing his marksmanship. Eventually, opportunity came to him in the form of helping out a wealthy private detective with a bone to pick with the thieves' guild. Eager to spill blood, Icarus fought with the thieves' guild in the streets, and word spread about the young gunslinger determined to avenge his father's murder. It was around this time that Icarus challenged Floyd Harden to a duel; Harden declined in amusement, mocking the boy's youth. Eventually, the tide would turn, as Floyd Harden's debts caught up to him and the thieves' guild began to grow annoyed with having to chase after young Icarus and his dogged employer. Floyd Harden's handlers threatened to withdraw their backing unless he accepted Icarus' offer of a duel, and so Harden reluctantly did so. It was a public and highly publicized affair taking place at high noon. Both men flouted the rules and fired before the count, but Harden fired first - wounding Icarus - and therefore Icarus' immediately, lethal reply was excused. Icarus was fifteen at the time. 
Icarus was able to clear his father's name and inherit his father's business, but years of Harden's financial malfeasance had run it into the ground, and Icarus ended up saddled with his debts. By the time Icarus managed to escape his creditors, he was forced to sell his father's company to a bigger competitor, only had access to a trust fund established by his mother (who had been independently wealthy), which was specifically for his education. Icarus spent the three years before his schooling working for different members of the Tinker's Guild, where he learned a lot but made a little, for young and penniless as he was, he had to work on the terms of others. The next phase of Icarus' life was spent at the Royal Academy, where he studied engineering and earned many academic honors. It was also at this time that he first met Tolumvire, then called Maximilian Tatham, a student of the arcane and the President of the Royal Academy Student's Union. Max Tatham had no reason to remember Isaac Icarus, who he only had a brief run-in with once, but Icarus remembered the brash and ambitious young mage, with whom he would later cross paths. 
After his graduation, Icarus decided that his prospects in Guilddon were worthless, and decided to strike out to new lands. He took an extended voyage to the Final Empire, where he settled in the newly founded settlement of Arendur - the land where people created new lives for themselves, and fortunes were made and lost. 
== Robber Baron ==
"In the end what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No, a man chooses, and a slave obeys!"
-Isaac Icarus
Isaac Icarus, a young and ambitious man with a mind suited for engines and machines, quickly rose to wealth and prominence and became Arendur's first major industrialist. It was he who designed Arendur's trains, and grain harvesting machines, as well as the aquerbuses used by the Arendurian Army. By the time of the Great Crusade, Isaac Icarus's business empire was a force to be reckoned with, such that he was considered the first among equals and de facto leader among the city's merchant class. He was approached by Tolumvire of Arendur at the start of the Arendur-Ragnarok War, and tasked with modernizing the Arendurian Army and creating great and terrible engines and weapons for the battles to come. During the fall of Arendur, he organized the evacuation, saving hundreds of lives.
Following Tolumvire's exile, Icarus expanded his holdings, making a profit from his government contracts and operating with greater impunity. He began the utilizing slave labor, and created an assembly-line model of production that no competitor could hope to match. Upon his return from exile, Tolumvire would note that Icarus had grown more powerful and self-assured then ever before, and that he had ceased to answer to any authority. Though he did not trust him, Tolumvire appointed Icarus to his ruling council, naming him Minister of Industry and Commerce. He would go on to be named Arendur's second representative to the Holy Council, alongside Tolumvire himself. In one particularly bizarre turn of events, Icarus' identity was stolen by an unnamed gunslinger, who managed to masquerade as him for a short period of time. The two would duel in the Tower of the Illuminated, and Icarus would find himself cursed to inhabit the body of an ogre. He would flee Arendur, and survive the destruction of the empire. 
== Personality ==
"I once bought a forest. The parasites claimed that the land belonged to the gods, and demanded that I establish a public park there. Why? So the rabble could stand slack-jawed under the canopy and pretend that it was paradise "earned." When the Senate moved to nationalize my forest, I burnt it to the ground. The gods did not plant the seeds of this paradise - I did."
-Isaac Icarus
Courteous and composed, Isaac Icarus kept his own counsel. He shunned fame, and was never particularly close to the rest of the merchant class, who saw him as aloof and ambitious. Icarus was a solicitous host and guest, with a gift for putting others at ease. Rarely, his composure would crack, revealing a cold-hearted man consumed by ambition and greed. In truth, Icarus trusted no one, and used others as tools. His superiors he would flatter, his equals he would ignore, and his inferiors would suffer under an iron fist. 
== War of the Philosopher-Kings ==
"There is something more powerful than each of us: a combination of our efforts, a "Great Chain" of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our "own" interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket - or a pistol to your neck."
-Isaac Icarus
Determined to seize his previous holdings, Icarus and the followers he had accumulated following his exile would return to New Arendur. Icarus would offer his services to the Illuminated, who needed all the help they could get. He would rebuild his business empire, and was one of the fiercest advocates for entering the War of the Philosopher-Kings. As he had with the Great Crusade, Icarus produced armaments for the Arendurian Army, and forged many engines of war. It was said that Brennen of Alara once remarked save for himself and Rick of Aglazdere, there was no better artificer alive, and that if he ever sacked Arendur, he would take Icarus captive. 
== After the War ==
"Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Forester's Town, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Church, 'It belongs to the King in Yellow.' 'No!' says the man in Reich, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... New Arendur, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, New Arendur can become your city as well."
-Isaac Icarus
Icarus would go into hiding in the bowers of Arendur after the war, and the Hexenjägers put a bounty on his head. His business holdings were seized, but as time passed, the Office of the Gauleiter decided that it had more pressing problems to attend to. Icarus would re-exert control upon his mines and refineries, building many scientific devices for which the Hexenjägers were grateful. It was said that Isaac Icarus, by now so aged and riddled with cybernetics that he was more machine then flesh, was behind the design of the bridge to Forester's Town, several of the guns in the Department of Munitions, and the half-century dirigible renovations. 
Isaac Icarus supports Lucille Montgomery's unsuccessful coup after she uses her connections and his money to gain access to cloning magic, to restore his original youthful body. 
== The Great Awakening ==
"We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us."
-Isaac Icarus
Isaac Icarus remains in New Arendur as an enemy of the state. He would half-discover, half-create a Ghost in the Machine and implant it in the Arendurian train during his initial state-sponsored repairs of the engine. In secret, many of his close associates would make pacts with Icarus' mechanical god, creating a force of warlocks opposed to the Church and to the gods as a whole. In time, Icarus would make contact with the Godhunter, promising his support. 
Icarus' work would pay off when the train, carrying Leo Calixtus and Helga Answith as passengers to Forester's Town, threw itself off the tracks into the sea, sending both to their deaths. Icarus would sweep into power as the Warmaster of the Long War. Though he would disband the College of Cardinals, the remaining priests would meet in secret and elect Isaac Outterridge as Pontiff Constantius I. No one ever bothered to call this so-called Pontiff by his regnal name, for the battle of the two Isaac's was too amusing to pass up. 
Icarus never intended to openly rule, and distained the administrative state. As a condition for becoming Warmaster, he vowed that he would serve for one year or until the war's conclusion, whichever was longer, and that at the end, he would be permitted to write a new constitution for the country. 
== The Icarus Constitution ==
"What is the greatest lie every created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? The War of the Philosopher-Kings? Dictatorship? No. It's the tool with which all that wickedness is built: altruism. Whenever anyone wants others to do their work, they call upon their altruism. Never mind your own needs, they say, think of the needs of... of whoever. The state. The poor. Of the army, of the king, of the gods! The list goes on and on. How many catastrophes were launched with the words "think of yourself"? It's the "king and country" crowd who light the torch of destruction. It is this great inversion, this ancient lie, which has chained humanity to an endless cycle of guilt and failure."
-Isaac Icarus
There was much speculation about what form of government Icarus - who had served in every administration in Arendur - envisioned for his people. Some thought he would return to the city's roots and bring back the council, with its members drawn at random, while others thought he would re-institute the senate. Others thought - not without reason - that Icarus would devalue all institutions in favor of free enterprise. 
Ultimately, Icarus' proposed government resembled pre-Tolumvire Arendur, the system in which he had prospered, slightly tinkered with around the edges. Icarus was no utopian and thought that Arendur had truly fallen when a succession of rulers tried to create the city in speech. 
And yet Icarus did not believe the New Arendurians possessed the spirit of free enterprise, and he thought they would squander freedom. For their sins in accepting the Church of Transcendental Theosophy, they would have to pay dearly for freedom. Icarus wanted to be overthrown, and for the people of Arendur to be plunged into tyranny so brutal they would rediscover their spirit. He knew who would do it, and he knew what would cause them to do it. 
When Isaac Icarus began to rebuild the Tower of the Illuminated, he was swiftly deposed by Caleb Carscallen, the Knight of Arendur, with the help of Julius Nepos Machel, the General of the Arendurian Army. And so did Arendur's first military dictatorship begin. 
Whether or not Icarus had been killed, imprisoned, fled, or hid was a matter of great contention. 
Category:Arendur
Category:Artificers
Category:Shield Campaign
Category:Warmaster
Category:Mages
Category:Monarchs
Category:Lawful Evil