Banks Emerson Randolph

## OVERVIEW

Banks Emerson Randolph was a politician and diplomat during the Equity Era. He is credited with the compromises necessary to iron out a functioning draft of the Equity Accords which effectively ended decades of scattered warfare and changed the political and social landscape of the world. He never married, but lived an active and fulfilled life outside of his profession up until his death shortly after the Council of Gweyd-Holis ended.

## EARLY HISTORY

Though little known at the time, Randolph was an orphan raised from the age of three in the confines of Madame Elliott's Orphanage, later to be known as one of the strongest Cutter Houses in Verdan City. At the time, it was merely a school and a sanctuary.  Official history is scant on details as to this period of Randolph's life, but it is strongly theorized that it was under the tutelage of the elf matron that Randolph found his love and penchant for tolerance and compromise.

His first public sighting came when he was only seventeen and caught in the background of a press conference for a local District Elector--an elected representative of one or more Verdan City districts--while serving as her assistant. She would later go on to say he was the brightest young man she'd ever worked with in a documentary made several years after his death.

## ELECTOR YEARS

Randolph came into the public spotlight fully at the age of thirty two when he ran for and won a position as a District Elector. He was young and hopeful, but reserved and even in his speech. As the people's representative, he served his districts well voted in their interests in the larger elections that select Verdan City governmental representatives. His voice carried with it a sound reason, and historians agree that it was his influence that drove the impressive desegregation efforts that elevated the slums he called home to some of the most industrious districts in the city. Though an Elector holds no real governing power, his voice was respected, and his hope and belief in the people he served stirred them to elevate themselves into the visions he imagined and painted in bright colors across his campaign posters.

He ran in and won four elections, each by a larger margin, and he still holds the single highest approval rating of any Verdan City politician.

## COUNCIL OF GWEYD-HOLIS

When things were at their worst during the peace talks and all seemed lost, Randolph was brought in as a last ditch effort to help find peace. He faced great opposition, both from the foreign dignitaries and his fellows from Verdan City, and his work towards compromise during the Council has sense become legendary, spawning numerous adaptations into vids for any and all demographic. His voice fluctuated between the soft voice of reason and the thundering voice of the gods as needed, and though he was young and relatively untried in the greater political sphere, he earned respect faster than anyone would have thought possible. In fact, reports of his success were doubted throughout the world until the Equity Accords began to filter through the world for the official signatures of the rulers of the nations of the world.

Still, Randolph made his fair share of enemies at the Council. His strong pro-desegregation stance was not popular with all delegations, human and non-human alike. No doubt he would have failed utterly if not for his unprecedented ability to find or create the benefit in cooperative living and working for those parties against his ideologies. At the end of the day, he achieved peace and an open legislation of citizenship for all species in all participating nations. It is too complex a topic to go into the alliances, treaties, and agreements in this brief history, but the web of legalese is indeed staggering to behold.

Despite the miracle achieved by Randolph, it is becoming more commonly agreed that the Equity Accords must be reevaluated, as tensions and strains are beginning to form along the treaty lines within its many pages. Still, none would question the sheer mastery displayed by Randolph in getting such an impossible document signed.

## DEATH

Three months after the official signing of the Equity Accords, Rnadolph was brutally murdered one evening in his apartment along with his girlfriend, an elf named Minnette Urfon. Officially, it was an isolated event and the Verdan City authorities were quick to arrest and execute the perpetrator. Rumors still persist, however, that the executed was but a scapegoat for a government who was unable to solve the murder of its own national hero.

The most believed theory on the street holds that the Triumph Golden--a street gang rumored to be founded as a hiding place for remnants from #jacob-cutter 's Cutter House of extremists--were responsible for the assassination. This theory is supported by two facts. First, that the Triumph Golden vanished almost immediately following the death of Banks Emerson Randolph, and second that Madame Elliott's joined the #cutters shortly after that.