Characters of the Ecumene

The Ecumenical Jovian fleet has quite the colourful cast of characters including not just the observational forces, but also the Organizers and Mercenaries who round out the fleet

## Superiors

### Orluk Udranor

Orluk is the Overseer of the Jovian fleet and thus second only to Arakrast who heads the organizers of the fleet, though some would assert that Orluk does more of the day to day management. Orluk was born from the mating of two councillors in the usual disgusting slurry of water, eggs and gametes that the Udrazol use to make more of themselves and thus was considered to have predilection towards management duties from the very start. Orluk was deeply fascinated by the culture and the ideals of the Ecumene but as they grew older Udranor came to believe that the Ecumene was not following the professed ideals to their logical conclusion. There was too much in the way of favoring certain species deemed to have "innately ecumenical psychologies" and too much reinforcement of the already strong. The great reforms that did away with potential abandonment of the core ideals of the meritocracy in favor of the foreign ideals were a great start to realizing the true potential of the Ecumene, but they were only a start. To truly make the Ecumene live up to its potential, the Ecumene would need to become even more radicalized to the ideal of meritocracy. Having acquired a respectable post, Orluk maneuvered themselves into acquiring a position as a civilizating fleet overseer with the intent of rising high enough by any means to be able to present their ideals to the wider Ecumene.

## Mercenaries

### Ymtrast Nuraffi

The self proclaimed greatest hunter in the galaxy, Nuraffi has an enormous arsenal he can access through spacefolding, gathered through his long journeys through the galaxy and being so vast and diverse that it can be said that Nuraffi has at least a dozen weapons to counter any opponent. Having been born the monarch of his homeworld, Nuraffi grew bored with kingship but found, in the process of fighting many wars that he craved conflict; and so sought to travel across the galaxy and gather its greatest treasures to himself. Converting the populace of his world into his mercenary band he ventured forth into the stars. Using spacefolding technology to access just about any weapon or armor he needed, Nuraffi simply overwhelmed nearly every opponent he fought through sheer firepower and versatility and his arrogance quickly grew as he found few enemies were able to offer him a challenge if he took the fight seriously. He took those artifacts which pleased them into his own personal collection; acquiring not just weapons and armours but all manner of curious technologies, art pieces, literary works, films, games, and even naturally occuring but pleasing items that he would store away in his pocket dimension vaults. He would eventually come across the Ecumene and found their ideals to his liking and offered to work with them; assigning himself to the ambitious Arakrast and Orluk and their fleet while his ever growing band of mercenaries would spread across the Ecumene to help them wage their wars.

His worries that working with a fleet whose job was to assimilate primitives would be boring, but these were unfounded as he found no shortage of planetbound cultures with more fascinating things to add to his collection, though rarely was he ever pressured into taking a fight seriously enough to use his truest weapon; a device that utilized the methods of spacefolding to tear apart and distort spacetime in front of it; capable of destroying virtually anything and in his opinion the most powerful personal scale weapon in the galaxy. However, having essentially been born a winner from the start, the Alien mercenary's actual skills in battle are rather surprisingly unimpressive as he simply resorts to brute force and his eclectic arsenal to win all his fights. However, he dismisses the idea that anyone could find a way to counter all his tools out of hand, and finds the idea that an enemy might have the weapons or the abilities to deal with his primary strength; the enormity and power of his arsenal and his ability to use anything from it; and thus take his greatest strength to be absurd. Out of the Jovian fleet, Nuraffi is the one of the most dismissive of the potential of humanity considering them to be a "species of vermin and subsapients" and has, in virtually every conversation with a human, been incredibly condescending.

A Nerumian, Nuraffi is noted for being very handsome by the standards of his species, tall and lean, with gold and red crystals growing out of the sillicon based life form's rock like body at pleasing and symmetrical angles. Even by human aesthetic standards, Nuraffi has an artistic sort of appeal to his construction, like a sculpture. Naturally this only further bolsters Nuraffi's confidence in himself and combined with his status as a Monarch, Nuraffi has long been used to virtually always getting what he desired in life. Generally calm and collected, things going against him don't always frustrate or annoy Nuraffi, but direct challenges and insults to his pride are guaranteed to rile him up; particularly from those he considers too far beneath him to take seriously, to the point that against such an opponent simply ceasing to hold back would be a defeat in his own mind. Such venom is extended to Aira, whom he considers to be a "lab experiment not worthy of shining my boots." And it is unlikely he thinks very much else of the rulership or combat abilities of anyone else on Earth. A firm believer in letting the weak perish and focusing efforts on improving the strong, he finds the Ecumene to be very much to his liking, even to the point of hoping to rule it some day.