Apollo Mojave

**Apollo Mojave** was a Utopian; he was universally respected and admired for being able to "describe Utopian thought in words the rest of us could understand."

## Biography

Apollo served as a de facto ambassador for all of Utopia. He was also a *familiaris* to Emperor Cornel MASON. He was a friend and ally of the Mardi bash.

## Physical Description

Apollo is described to have long, blonde hair. His face was often covered by his Utopian visor, and his body often shrouded by his Utopian Griffincloth cloak.

Apollo's Griffincloth is a simulation of his anticipated war. It makes invisible those whom Apollo did not expect to survive the first year of the war - including himself (others include Mycroft, Saladin, and Bridger). Others, whom Apollo did expect to survive, appear in their anticipated war-time uniforms (Cornel MASON in a commander's uniform, and Heloise in nurse's garbs).

## War Plans

In collaboration with the Mardi bash, Apollo intended to start a war with the intention of softening the potential impacts of future wars. Specifically, Apollo had forecast that a war would be fought in two-hundred years over Utopia's completion of the terra-forming of Mars. While Apollo believed that humanity could potentially outgrow violence and conflict (perhaps in the next five-hundred, or thousand years), he did not believe that avoiding an inevitable conflict over Mars in two-hundred years was possible. He therefore thought it necessary to have a moderate, medium-term war in the meantime, for two reasons. Firstly, the Mardi bash had concluded that it was the intervening periods between war which determined the next war's ferocity. If that were true, it would be preferable to have a war sooner, after three-hundred years of world peace, rather than later, after five-hundred years of world peace, to avoid potentially cataclysmic disaster. Secondly, three-hundred years' of world peace had long extinguished veterans and first-hand accounts of war; a new war was necessary to teach the world how to fight again.

In *Seven Surrenders*, Mycroft Canner reveals that Apollo's war plans are articulated in his copy of the *Iliad*. The book was originally believed to be one of Apollo's creative projects, a modern retelling of the Trojan War. After Apollo's death, Apollo's *Iliad* is left to Mycroft, who is tasked with completing the work as a part of his penance. While the *Iliad* as a creative work is partially true, Apollo's *Iliad* is said to contain targeting procedures, plans for how to start and end the war, predictions for how world powers would behave, and strategies that Utopia could use to fight. As a creative work, Apollo reimagines Troy on the Moon. The war is fought in giant, humanoid space robots, robots which are capable of tremendous power but can only be utilized by a handful of pilots on either side. Mycroft explained that this would give real meaning to individual choice in the war; that the war would not be faceless like the Church War, but instead would have a place for real human dignity. Mycroft later gives Apollo's *Iliad* to Bridger: *"nothing in history was so clearly meant for someone!"*

Apollo's war planned the Masons, allied with Europe, to fight against the Mitsubishi, allied with the Humanists, over Mitsubishi land-grab disputes and burgeoning Masonic population spikes. Apollo intended the Cousins, Gordian, and Utopia to remain neutral, but most importantly the Cousins - Apollo underlined their humanitarian capacity as a hive as critical to curtailing the war's devastation.

## Death

As the Canner Massacre rampaged, Apollo was originally being evacuated to Luna City. However, Mycroft and Saladin tricked Seine Mardi into believing her protective custody was complicit in the murders, leading to Seine ditching her protective custody and her subsequent capture by Mycroft and Saladin. Under the duress that his love would die, tortured and alone, Apollo gave up his seat to Luna City to Tully Mardi, instead pursuing Seine, knowing full-well that it was a trap. Apollo died "in battle" with Seine at the hands of Mycroft and Saladin. Mycroft says that the four of them fought a "battle" of competing futures - the first and last true "battle" of Apollo's war. Mycroft insists that this battle was pure, with both sides fighting for something they truly believed in; that the rest of Mycroft's rampage were indeed murders, but not Apollo's.

Apollo's body was found with all four limbs amputated, his genitals sexually violated, with well-chewed bits of his own cooked flesh inside his intestinal tract. A cyanide pill, out of reach, was found in the gutter a few meters over. Also inside Apollo's stomach was a placebo pill - identical in appearance to the cyanide pill in the gutter and in Seine's stomach. Apollo's cause of death was exsanguination (Mycroft later recalls that tourniquets placed on Apollo's stumps were insufficient to stop the bleeding).

Apollo is interred in a dedicated monument in Romanova. Apollo's monument, marked by a large sculpture, was made to memorialize him after his remains proved too hazardous for Utopia to send to Mars as organic dust, and then being denied burial in the Pantheon. The sculpture, while depicting his trademark visor and cloak, relies on momentum and reflection to distinguish Apollo's unique figure.

Felix Faust prevented Apollo from being buried in the Pantheon, supposedly in an attempt to prevent Utopia from being humanized, and "less-strange" than Brillists.

## Facts and Other

Apollo would frequent a pub in Liverpool, at least once a month. Despite continual demands of his time, Apollo always made time for his pub - he claimed that he needed to feel human, to be connected to humanity, if he were to claim to be acting on humanity's behalf. *"Beer breaks barriers"* and Apollo would drink with others and play dominoes. Before pursuing Seine, Mycroft, and Saladin, Apollo appeared at the pub, crying.

Apollo drew "first blood" of his own war by stabbing Cornel MASON (not yet Emperor) in the shoulder with a pocketknife. Apollo said that if he were to wound MASON, he would want to do it honestly, by his own hand.

Apollo is Cornel MASON's unrequited love (*"Some men are built to love many times. Some only once. Caesar used his once, not on Madame, not even on his Empire. But on Apollo."*). Apollo's lover was instead the Humanist Seine Mardi, who, as far as Mycroft or MASON could tell, was not uniquely special or talented in any particular way.