Althea Sabina Del'Rega

Althea shortly after being awarded a judgeship during the Gunboat Wars.

**Althea Sabina Del'Rega** was a legal liason, military advocate, judge, and finally Confederate Inquisitor who served the Thalranese Marches and the Fialta Confederacy. She weathered both the First Coalition War and the Gunboat Wars, serving first as an advocate in courts martial, and later as a judge in the same capacity. Considered one of the most brilliant jurists in the confederacy, her uncompromising loyalty to the ideals of confederate pluralism and steadfast support of the law placed her high in the esteem of the lesser princes. She was among the trailblazers of the Confederate Inquisition, though ultimately she betrayed the institution, feeling that its duty to the people of the Confederacy was undermined by the influence of the Fialta Imperium. Using her knowledge of the inquisition, she helped expose its injustices and proposed an alternative Union of Princes at the Princely Congress that was based on the fundamental rights of the Fialta and citizens of the Confederacy.

## Personality

Althea was a stern yet sensitive woman, firm in her belief in justice and the humanist role of the law. She was uncompromising in her loyalty to the law and in working within it to create a system of justice that offered fairness and equality of opportunity to its subjects. She loathed boundaries of race and religion, with a particular hatred for the institution of slavery.

In court and questioning she transformed into a merciless interrogator, tearing into witnesses during cross examination, using both her incredible talent for oration and methodical logic to rock her subjects to their core. Few could resist this offensive

## History

### Early Life

Althea was born to a family of modest nobility on Tar'Thalran. Her parents were both officers, her father a staff officer in the army and her mother the captain of a raiding vessel. With her parents and much of her extended family at their duties, it fell to her grandmother to raise not only Althea, but her seven siblings and several dozen cousins. In this chaos, Althea quickly stood out with an eloquence and intellect far above her other family members. As one of the oldest of the group, she took care of many of her siblings and cousins and displayed an unusual aptitude for making peace and finding equity.

Her grandmother recognized her talents and made sure she got the best schooling - even sending her away to learn international law and diplomacy at the Academy of Saldan.

### The Coalition War

When she returned from Saldan, the Thalranese had joined the Coalition War, and she patriotically volunteered to join the ranks. As one of the few truly internationally educated among the ranks, she was assigned to a newly created 'Coalition Affairs' division. She provided translations, was a battlefield courier (in which role she received several wounds including the distinctive one on her face), advised on Thalranese culture, and most importantly, represented her Fialta brethren in courts martial. Her impassioned performances impressed her counterparts, and she rose high enough in esteem that she caught the eye of Lily Hardy, the leading Aeldman admiral on the Thalranese front. Seeing a fellow woman in need of patronage, she took Althea under her wing. In this role as Hardy's advisor her talents flourished as her mentor shaped her sense of justice. She became well known across the Thalranese armies as an impassioned defender of racial and gender equality - and for her skillful mediation which saved the lives of a good many soldiers from deadly misunderstanding. To the disgust of some of her fialta compatriots, she was even friends with a number of orcs, long time enemies of the Thalranese.

### Gunboat Wars

*See also: Gunboat Wars*
The inter-war years passed productively for Althea, as she worked on cases in the broader coalition, blazing a trail through the mire of a hundred different local fialta legal systems. With a little help from an unorthodox aethericist recommended to her by her old Saldanese professors and a hashish-obsessed legal clerk with an obsessive attention to detail, she began to compile a database of the laws of the confederacy. As both prosecutor and defense attorney, she developed relationships with a number of investigators, particularly with a private detective named Constance Morovin whom she eventually hired on as a personal fact finder.

Unfortunately, this idyllic period was shattered by the onset of another war, this time with their former allies the Aeldmen. Althea returned to her position as a legal advisor in the Thalranese army, where she was offered a judgeship within the military justice system. In a twisted mockery of her position during the Coalition war, she often found herself the one sent to negotiate with the Aeldmen for the conduct of prisoners of war and parole. It was in this capacity that she witnessed firsthand the worst atrocity of the war.

#### The Tar Docks Incident

*See also: Tar Docks Incident*
During the blockade of Tar'Thalran, Althea took the lead on a mission of mercy - for months, she negotiated for the safe passage of sick and wounded off of the planet through the blockade to receive medical treatment outside of the combat zone. Finally, the Aeldmen seemed to relent and agreed to allow a convoy out of the planet. It was a trick, however. As the convoy was leaving, the Aeldman navy suddenly sprung into action and struck at the gate. The unarmed transports were quickly destroyed, their crew and passengers melted in the Aether. A few Dragoons landing ships made it through with the gate held open. Althea saw the burning wreckage crash back through the gate as she prepared to board her own ship, and only barely escaped to a nearby building as the Aeldman began to shell every Thalranese ship in the port. Dragoons dropped into the area to search for any supply dumps they could find and destroy them, killing indiscriminately as they went until the Thalranese army beat them back through the gate. Out of respect and remembering their past friendship, Hardy sent a DUOC team to secure Althea and her negotiating team during this catastrophe, and she was taken back to an Aeldman transport, watching in horror as her fellow Thalranese were massacred, burned alive in their ships or gunned down in the streets of the port.

Once again face to face with her mentor, her sense of betrayal was overcome only by the loss she felt as the old woman broke down crying upon seeing her. Althea quickly found out that Lily had tried to resign her commission rather than fight her old comrades - that she and her family had been threatened with death by agents of the Doge, who feared the PR disaster that the Hero of the Coalition War resigning in protest would bring. Hardy revealed that she was almost as much a prisoner as Althea was, here with rank but ultimately not in charge of much but speeches. They spent the rest of the war trying to make sense of things as the institutions they had worked to build dissolved in a hail of Aeldman gunfire.

Athea was released at the war's end, but never returned to the military. Dispirited, she applied to the general Confederate justice system and was made a circuit judge based on her previous qualification.

### Inquisitior

The years after the end of the wars proved strained for Althea, as she saw the unity of the coalition crumble and the respect for her position as a Confederate judge decline into oblivion. She completed her database, but it sat practically unused for years. Deeply unsatisfied, she used her contacts in the wider confederacy to place herself in contention for the newly formed Confederate Inquisition. Though some high up Imperials disliked her, she was well respected within the wider confederacy and was shortlisted by an influential Dalthadi group into the first group to be given the title of Inquisitor.