Salen Dune

―Salen's motto, as well as his last words

**Salen Dune** was a bastard of House Izar, a spacer extremist and the founder and supreme commander of the Hanseatic League, a spacer extremist terrorist organization that supported, and later governed, the Hanza Republic during the Great Galactic War. A spacer by choice, not by blood, Dune dreamed of establishing a spacer superpower that could match the might of the United Colonies and the Herschel Nations; as a show of force, in 2435, Dune's League detonated an antimatter bomb on the surface of Luna, an attack now called the "Lesson". Dune subsequently led the League during the Great Galactic War; his skills as a military commander masked his inability to govern civilians, and soon spacers who had once supported him turned against him, uniting most of the Spacers Legion with the Stellar Alliance against the League. Dune was subsequently asssassinated with the help of his own relatives in House Izar, effectively destroying the League and the Hanza Republic.

Dune remains a controversial figure in the Settled Systems; many hail him as an exceptional commander who wished to advance the rights of his people, while others revile him as a bloodthirsty, merciless war criminal whose ambitions caused the deaths of billions.

## Overview

### Personality

Few men in recent history have left as great an impact on mankind as Salen Dune: a master orator, manipulator, propagandist and strategist, he was a natural leader who, almost single-handedly, changed the political landscape of the Settled Systems forever. Although born a terran, he cast aside any bonds with Earth or its people when he embraced the identity of a spacer, one who would unite his people whatever the cost. His personality was magnetic, capturing anyone remotely sympathetic to his cause; this allure was a deliberate effort, cultivated over years and aided by his intelligence and deep understanding of other people's fears and desires.

Dune worked tirelessly to create a learned, wise, generous and charismatic public persona, one that could engage crowds of thousands and organize rallies using words alone. When not public speaking he would personally command his Hanseatic League on patrols and mercy missions while always making efforts to attract attention and build a saintly image for himself.

However, away from public eyes, Dune was deeply hateful, narcissistic, prideful, malicious, deeply manipulative, cruel, sadistic and arrogant; he saw his allies as pawns that he could use for his grand plan, and was more than willing to dispose of them if they no longer served a purpose. He rallied his people into frenzies with rousing speeches and violent rhetoric, including his most infamous motto "death is no disgrace", sending them into battle while caring little for the social cost of his orders. He would rarely allow retreats, even in the face of defeat, preferring that his people die than surrender to the enemy. Viewing dissent as tantamount to treason, he kept the populace in line through a series of purges, extrajudicial killings, raids and organized riots; he would orchestrate false plots against himself to justify eliminating any opponents or threats to his regime, and he ultimately ruled as a totalitarian dictator. Under Dune's rule, the Hanza Republic effectively became a military state where most of the populace contributed to the war effort in some way.

Among Dune's most effective traits was his deeply manipulative nature, deceiving, coercing and seducing many parties with promises of power, prize, or even salvation to further his agenda. His leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others, thus fostering distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power.

Dune's leadership became increasingly disconnected from reality as the war turned against the Hanza Republic and the League, with the military's defensive strategies often hindered by his slow decision-making and frequent directives to hold untenable positions. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that only his leadership could deliver victory. In the final months of the war, Dune refused to consider peace negotiations, regarding the destruction of his regime as preferable to surrender.