Nicholas Ulan

Captain Nicholas Ulan was the son of famed rebel commander Major Jonathan Ulan. Born to Ulan and his wife Julia in 2547 aboard the rebel flagship Revolutionary Fervor, he only stayed aboard the ship for a short period of time, before his father took him and his mother to the frontier of , for them to stay in a rebel settlement on the frontier of the colony, away from the UNSC.
Although he rarely saw his father, the junior Ulan had some video correspondence with the Major. However, in 2552, he and his mother received a message from him stating that the elder Ulan would have to do one more thing, and that he would be back to them soon. Later that year, the Second Mamore Insurrection broke out, which, despite not having an immediate effect on Nicholas, would affect his upbringing.
After almost two years of waiting, Nicholas asked his mother where his father was. In response to his question, Julia made up a string of lies, saying that Jonathan had a few more things to do before he could come back to them. For years more, Nicholas accepted this lie, until, in 2562, he overheard a rebel militiaman in the settlement speaking about the tenth anniversary of Ulan's death. Confronting his mother, Nicholas demanded to know what had really happened to his father. 
In response to this, Julia told him the true story of what had happened to Ulan, albeit skewed in a more positive light. Enraged at the UNSC, and at the agents of the military project codenamed Freelancer that his father was fighting, Ulan intended to carry on his father's will. Joining the militia, he quickly rose through the ranks to become a lieutenant at only nineteen through the legacy of the Ulan family.
As he continued to work in the militia, Ulan was told more of the horrors of the UNSC from rebels who had fought in the Second Mamore Insurrection, and eventually became a firm supporter of the policy "ends justify the means" policy against the UNSC. By the time he was twenty, Ulan had been assigned a unit of his own, and that same year, he left the settlement with his unit to go on a campaign against the UNSC.
For a period afterward, Ulan launched a campaign against the UNSC on the planet, attempting to get them to leave the colony and allow it to become independent. Despite the UNSC's best efforts to neutralize Ulan, he continued to escape them. Postponing his return to the settlement after the campaign for fear of UNSC retaliation, Ulan gathered up his troops, and hijacked a civilian freighter, loading it up with provisions before quickly leaving the planet.
As the group roamed around the colonies, they became infamous amongst the UNSC for their ruthlessness, and Ulan had a bounty placed on his head due to his actions. However, in 2578, after he had a run in with freighter captain Gavin Dunn, Nicholas changed radically, and went to the frontier colonies in an attempt to keep order and some good for the colonists in the name of the Insurrection, although his ultimate motives of freedom from the UNSC were never far from his mind.
==Biography==
===Early Life===
====Childhood====
Nicholas Ulan was born to rebel Major Jonathan Ulan, and his wife Julia in 2547, aboard the former's ship, the captured UNSC destroyer Revolutionary Fervor. Soon after Nicholas' birth, his father brought him and his mother to a rebel settlement on , with the intent of keeping them safe. Although Nicholas only had sporadic video correspondence with his father, he still viewed him as a hero, his mother's teachings about him being Nicholas' only way of knowing anything deep about him.
In 2552, when Nicholas was six years old, he spoke to his father for the last time, this time in person, where the latter said he had to do something, and he would be back soon to live with the two after he did it. As the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, Nicholas finally asked his mother where his father was. However, his mother, not wanting to damage Nicholas' delicate psyche, made up a lie about how he had to do a few more things, then he would come back. Believing this untruthful statement for a while, Nicholas continued to in later periods, not out of actual belief, but more of not believing his father would not be coming back.
====Second Mamore Insurrection====
Later that year, the Second Mamore Insurrection broke out on the planet. Although the settlement itself, located far on Mamore's frontier, was not directly affected by the combat, many of its citizens and soldiers took up arms and went to fight. Ulan, too young to comprehend what was going on, was not affected immediately by the Insurrection, however, the impact and hatred it left on soldiers who would later train Nicholas would change him in the long run.
====Teenage Years====
As Ulan began to grow up, he was urged by his mother to help out in the settlement, which had lost a large group of its population due to the Second Mamore Insurrection, especially in the militia. Joining the settlement's militia, Ulan originally helped with manual labor and other mundane duties, something he despised having to do, but did anyway due to the expectations of his mother and his other peers.
Ulan's teenage years would also change him in a very major way, as he learned the true fate of his father. While he was helping in moving crates of supplies for the militia in 2562, Nicholas overheard a miltia NCO mention to another fighter that it was the tenth anniversary of Major Ulan's death. Finishing up his shift, Ulan went straight home, and confronted his mother, asking and pleading her to tell him what had really happened to his father. For two days, Nicholas continued this, until she finally relented and told him about his father's whole story, his grudges against the UNSC and a defunct military project known as Freelancer, his intents when he left, and his death according to those few who had survived the operation.
===Insurrectionist===
====Training and Early Years====
Still holding his father as a hero, Nicholas decided to follow him, with the intent of carrying out his will, by joining the settlement's militia. After a short, three week period of training, he became a fighter of the Insurrection. Although the first year was fairly uneventful, Nicholas became a squad leader in his second year, and a Lieutenant his third year in the militia, due to what many suspected as being the son of a man who was considered a hero amongst the rebels there.
With these new responsibilities thrust upon him, Ulan stumbled on multiple operations, causing him to become depressed for a period of time, disappointed in himself, feeling he had failed his family's legacy. However, after a period of adjustment, Ulan finally came into his own, and his depression melted away, replaced by an almost singular dedication to fight the UNSC that many, including Nicholas himself, would describe as "completely blind". This approach of wanting to destroy the UNSC, no matter the cost, was cemented by the accounts of many of his comrades who had fought in the Second Mamore Insurrection, and despised the UNSC for it.
====Commander====
=====Secession=====
As a commander of one of the militia's units, Ulan led them on multiple successful small operations, as well as one major operation. The major op was in 2567, when Ulan and his unit, were tasked with eliminating UNSC forces that were preventing an uprising from occurring in an area that was figuratively one step away from full blown secession. With such a large military presence, Ulan and his men hid their more conspicuous weapons, but kept concealable weapons, and blended into the civilian populace of one of sector's towns.
For a month, they lived as a variety of occupations, with Ulan taking up a job as a hunter. By the end of the month, Ulan had hatched a plan that would throw the sector into secession, and drive the UNSC away. Stealing UNSC Marine Corps uniforms and equipment over the next two months, the rebels prepared for a "false flag" operation. Acquiring MA series rifles as well, they moved in on the town, and began beating and executing people who were, according to the disguised rebels, spies.
With an example of "UNSC brutality", the rebels quickly used it to instigate a large portion of the people to rebel. In the chaos, Ulan sabotaged the UNSC's effort to put down the rebellion, destroying convoys, assassinating commanders, and all manner of warfare designed to weaken the UNSC's forces. Despite early successes with the rebellion, Ulan's plan eventually failed, as the UNSC sent in many more troops, which put down the rebellion.
=====Cherbourg=====
Returning to the settlement, Ulan and his fighters were greeted as heroes, despite the ultimate failure of their operation. For his actions in leading the op, Ulan was promoted to Captain. Soon after his return, Ulan and his unit, which he christened the "Crimson Grenadiers", after his father's personal unit, left the settlement on a mission to simply cause trouble for the UNSC. 
With a group of heavily modified Spade pickup trucks to transport his troops, Ulan set off for the settlement of Cherbourg, which was under martial law after multiple rebellions had occurred. Observing the area, Ulan decided to draw the UNSC into a street to street battle within the confined spaces of the city, where their mechanized superiority would be of little to no use.
To carry out this plan, Ulan used all manner of tactics to try and bring the UNSC closer to destroy them, including taking a group of civilians hostage at one point in order to draw a UNSC unit into a trap set by the rest of his unit. For the next four months, Ulan and his unit caused the UNSC all manner of trouble, to the point where they mounted missions just to kill Nicholas.
=====Retreat=====
As Ulan's mission in Cherbourg became more and more dangerous for less gain, he laid out a plan for the rebels to get off Mamore, and rove around the galaxy, aiding various, in order to spread out their location, and make it harder for the UNSC to find them. Shedding their rebel fatigues and destroying their Spades, they took on the part of refugees from the conflict, their weapons hidden within bags and other storage implements. Slipping past security, Ulan and his fighters boarded a freighter, and hijacked it, punching in coordinates into the NAV computer for a rebel asteroid base in the system's asteroid belt. Running past the UNSC Navy picket around the planet, the freighter entered slipspace.
Entering the space near the asteroid, it was boarded by rebel privateers. Explaining his predicament, Ulan was allowed onto the base, not only by his need for shelter, but also by the iconic status his family name had taken on by the actions of both himself and Jonathan. While on the station, Ulan told his plan to the leaders of the station. After they agreed to aid him on his operation, the ship, rechristened the Pulaski, was outfitted with a battery of heavy guns, and modifications to allow it to stay on missions for long durations.
=====Colonial Campaign=====
With his capabilities firmly established, Ulan left the station, and began a campaign of terror against the UNSC. Moving around the colonies, he would raid unguarded convoys, and launch covert raids on UNSC facilities planetside. Taking on pseudonyms such as "Nicholas Pavlovich" and "Commander 31", Ulan attempted to keep his group's very existence a secret, preferring to allow other groups to take the credit for his attacks.
Although Ulan knew that the Outer Colonies and frontier worlds would be easier to conduct his operations on, he also knew that they would be the colonies most likely to support his cause, and so conducted most of his attacks on the frontier between the Outer and Inner Colonies, with some deeper within the latter. Ulan's campaign of terror focused mainly on attacking colonial infrastructure, such as bridges, power stations, and the like, although he was not averse to bombing civilian targets such as nightclubs to further his cause, or if there was a target he wanted to eliminate among them.
The most infamous of these terror attacks was the attack on a UNSC shipyard that left over one thousand personnel dead. Using a captured freighter laden with explosives, Ulan had a navigation AI fast grafted to the rebel cause ram it into the superstructure of the space based Fondor Shipyards, destroying it and setting back progress greatly on two 
=====Turning Around=====
Ulan's attitude towards the war against the UNSC would change in the spring of 2576. During the transport of a group of MAKO drones and other needed implements aboard the cargo ship Chancer V, Ulan met Captain Gavin Dunn and Zoey Hunsinger. As Ulan and the former conversed, Dunn appealed to Nicholas' following of his father's legacy, and convinced him to do good instead of seeking revenge, as he had been for the past few years.
=====Frontier Work=====
Taking the Pulaski to the frontier colonies, Ulan and his fighters began to work in a dual role, both garnering support for the Insurrection via peaceful means in smaller settlements, as well as weakening UNSC garrisons on the planet. Even though Gavin had urged him to stop his incessant violence, Ulan still firmly believed that the UNSC could only be brought down by that, only halting his attacks on civilians in order to gain their support.
==Personality==