Kesh

Miskal Arkus (Uncle)

Kesh is a Kaldorian human currently traveling with Veritas and Iota.

## Origin

When Kesh was a boy he was fascinated with the stars. His childhood dream was to travel them, becoming some kind of astral renegade, unfettered by morals and the brutal hierarchy of Kaldorian life. His beloved uncle, Miskal, fueled his childhood fantasies, giving him old fiction books of what life in the stars was supposedly like, helping him put on little shows for his parents in which Kesh would become some dashing explorer and Miskal would be some alien monster Kesh needed to defeat, helping him hone his art skills to draw pictures of what a Kaldorian imagined life out there to be like. He idolized his uncle; his parents did encourage his creativity but they were slaves to the Company just as everyone else on Kaldor seemed to be. Miskal taught Kesh to follow his dreams, telling him that maybe someday he’d be out there chasing those stars seen dashing across the sky at night.

Kesh's devastation as he found out that the Company had banned all space travel was immense. This is when his faith in the Company began to waver.

Knowing he couldn’t explore the stars he set his sights on the deserts. The next best thing to being a spaceship captain, he figured, was being a Storm Mine pilot, traversing the vast expanse of the Blind Heart in search of lucanol. Of course, it lacked some of the adventure, the rebellion, of his space-faring dreams, but it was plausible with the state of Kaldor. Yet again, his uncle fueled these ambitions, Miskal was a Storm Mine pilot himself. Of course, Miskal didn’t have to earn that position, he was married to a member of the Founding Families and got his pick of the top jobs from it, but Kesh didn’t know that at the time. It would have crushed his dreams further to know how difficult it really was to achieve his goals.

His parents discouraged him from becoming a Pilot, they knew of the corruption in the higher ranks and that a lower-middle-class citizen such as himself had little to no chance of getting such a prized position. Instead, his father put him to work helping him in his Voc repair-shop, something Kesh loathed. In his mind, Vocs were symbols of the upper class, they carried out industry and the whims of the rich, while the workers like Kesh just repaired them. He felt that humans like him and his father having to repair Vocs for the upper-class meant that they were in some way inferior to the labor robots.

For years he still held on to that dream of becoming a pilot, up until Selection Day. Kesh knew everything there was to know about the workings of mining trips, he could tell sands containing keefan from sands carrying zelanite, he felt that he was was more qualified than anyone else in the room. The Selection test was a breeze and he fully expected to be apprenticed to his uncle or some other veteran Pilot, but at the end of the day when the Assignment Voc read out the names and Selections of the group it turns out that Kesh had been assigned to the Kaldor City Company Security Division.

That job was torture for him. Sitting in a claustrophobic office facing the very Storm Mines he once dreamed of piloting was maddening. He began to close himself off from other people, especially his workmates, and became a generally disliked person for his stoic yet passive-aggressive front. Of course, there was one benefit of working at the Security Division. He met Ander Poul. The two became fast friends; Kesh appreciated having someone else out there for him. Plus, Poul was an undercover operative on certain Storm Mine missions and so Kesh was able to relive some of Poul's experiences through his stories. It wasn't what he really wanted but it was a good second-best.

Unfortunately, nothing good can happen to Kesh and at the same time that he was bonding with Ander was also the time that Taren Capel was experimenting with Vocs. In one of their demented rampages one of them killed Miskal, Kesh's uncle. The same uncle who had almost singlehandedly guided him through his youth. He was furious. More than furious. In retribution he used his benefits of working in the Security Division to get into places the average Kaldorian isn’t allowed to be. He dismantled and reprogrammed as many Vocs as he could get his hands on, making their programming harder for a future Taren Capel to take control of. He wanted revenge on Taren Capel but there was nothing one man like him could do, preventing a future occurrence of killings was the best he could do.

Of course, Poul and Kesh's saga doesn't end in sunshine and roses. There wasn’t much information on the accident officially released, but with Kesh being in the Security Division he was able to gain access to more confidential files. He found out that Taren Capel was on the Storm Mine that Poul was undercover on. Kesh was jealous that Poul was assigned the mission instead of me not just because it was a Storm Mine mission but because if it were him in Poul's place he would have taken his revenge on Capel and ended his sorry existence once and for all. Instead of working towards Capel's demise, Poul had gotten Grimwade's Syndrome and his mind had snapped.

He had lost everyone at this point. His uncle to the aforementioned rogue Voc, his mother to a Flier crash, his father to a malfunctioning assembly line, and now his best (and only) friend to acute robophobia. Poul wasn't dead, sure, but with his condition Kesh's apathetically emotionless front almost induced panic attacks and they couldn't be around each other any longer. Poul's robot-related security duties all fell on Kesh now and his usual somewhat-interesting corporate subterfuge was replaced by repairing malfunctioning Vocs, resurfacing many a bad memory about his father's workshop.

When he was at wit's end a light shone at the end of the tunnel. Two mysterious figures showed up to his door and whisked him away on the dream of a lifetime. Leaving his dull monotonous life behind he now travels the cosmos with Veritas and Iota.

## Strengths

Good with cybernetics and mechanicals of all kinds. He can usually think his way out of tough situations. Has a stronger emotional fortitude than other humans due to his years of apathy.

## Weaknesses

Incredibly ill-equipped for most situations. Growing up in such an isolated atmosphere he grew to be a master-of-one, any sort of skills outside of his work environment shunned and discarded. Anything outside of his comfort zone is extremely difficult for him to pick up on.