Keyton Monolith

**Keyton Monolith III, Duke of Aleppo** (September 1965 -) was a Libirachi secret service agent and spy who twice served as the Director of the Imperial Security Bureau from 2022 until 2033, as well as having previously held the role between 2015 and 2019 under the Presidency of Nathan Jackson. During Monolith's leadership of the Imperial Security Bureau, the organisation was vastly restructured during both of his two tenures and became one of the most powerful organisations within the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order. Upon his departure as head of the ISB, Monolith was created as Duke of Aleppo. From August 2033 onwards, Monolith served as Chairman of the Sino-Scandinavian Development Fund.

Born in 1965, Keyton Monolith grew up in a middle class family during the late Xi and early Zuma eras, before being recruited into the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) from secondary school in 1984 as a Lieutenant, before slowly climbing up the ranks to become a Loyalty Officer in 1993. Clamouring up the ranks to Agent status in 1995 and then in 1997 up to Inspector Major. Through the next decade, Inspector Monolith ended up serving alongside Inspector Lloyd George of the ISB until George's move to the central office of Imperial Intelligence in 2008, starting a friendship between the two men who would go on to shape the future of the Libirachi Empire's intelligence community. Monolith became a deputy director within the Imperial Security Bureau in 2010 with the election of democratic campaigner Nathan Jackson as president, and would go on to become Jackson's personal security representative.

In 2014, Keyton Monolith was appointed as head of a commission in the Ministry of Defence with the remit to design a proposal for a complete internal restructuring of the ISB; upon the publication of the commission's report in April 2015, President Jackson set about implementing the recommendations and began a process of passing legislation for the move following failed attempts to call a presidential election the same month. In August 2015, the leadership of the Imperial Security Bureau was centralised away from regional leaders into one nationwide executive led by a director; on August 15, 2015, Keyton Monolith was appointed as the first director of the newly restructured organisation. During the 2019 Libirachi Coup d'état, Director Monolith was detained by the Imperial State Council for his support of President Jackson. On September 27, 2019, newly appointed president Laura Fox removed Director Monolith from his position and a military tribunal sentenced him to 10 years in prison for acts of treason. During Monolith's sentence in prison, his successors as director dismantled many of the internal reforms made to the organisation and in November 2019, the Imperial Security Bureau was forcefully assimilated as a part of the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order (COMPNOR) after President Fox proclaimed herself as empress.

Following the death of Empress Laura Fox and the proclamation of her daughter Penny Fox as regent of the Fox Dynasty in May 2022, a significant ideological liberalisation within the government began to take place; as part of the regency reforms, Keyton Monolith saw his sentence commuted and was re-appointed as director of the Imperial Security Bureau. During the Libirachi Civil War, Director Monolith led Libirachi spying efforts against the Confederacy of Independent Nations and was crucial to the maintenance of Libirachi control over it's territory. After the capitulation of the Confederacy in December 2024, Penny Fox was crowned as empress and began to implement further reforms to the structure of COMPNOR, giving the ISB significantly more autonomy within the organisation. During the Wahngso Crisis in 2026, Monolith and other senior COMPNOR officials failed to predict the attempted coup led by Xi Jimping, 1st Duke of Beijing, and were subsequently side-lined within the organisation by Director General Lloyd George; as a result of the ISB's failure to effectively combat the attempted coup, the Vindicta was established as a parallel organisation under the leadership of Maximilian Veers and was granted most of the ISB's former protection duties. In August 2028, Keyton Monolith led a project to depose Viceroy Nadia Crestvick of the Russian Federation at the behest of Empress Penny Fox, and successfully organised a coup to install Vladimir Putin as the Russian leader. In 2030, ISB agents and the Canto Haven state security service Security Coalition joined forces to arrest Loxenian dictator Jax Esposita in Canto Haven, giving the Fox Dynasty and the Eurasian Union of States an excuse to begin an invasion of Loxenia and install it's own puppet regime. In July 2033, Keyton Monolith aided the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order's coup against President Damien Salamander.

Following the success of the 2033 Libirachi Coup d'état, on July 29, 2033 newly-elected president Karyn Voor signalled that several senior COMPNOR figures would be removed or demoted from their roles, in what was seen as a power grab by many Libirachi politicians. On August 1, 2033, Voor, in her power as chair of the Imperial Directory Board, formally terminated Keyton Monolith's contract as Director of the Imperial Security Bureau and appointed Win Myint in his place. However, Monolith was given the title of Duke of Aleppo and given the role of chair of the Sino-Scandinavian Development Fund as part of a gradual retirement from active influence and power within Libirachi politics; in his role as leader of the SSDF, Monolith continued to remain as an internationally significant geo-political player for the Fox regime.