Kathura Optimus

**Ketor Kathura Optimus**, also known as **Ketor Kathura the Ninth**, **Kathura the Miracle Worker,** the **Sword of the Empire**, **the Conqueror of Ur-Tesar**, and colloquially as **Kathura Optimus**, previously as **Kathura Tesaricus** and **Kathura Vigilus Rex**, is an Orbitritan Aoshanti military and political leader and the King Consort of Queen Tainatra of Vigila. He is one of the most talented and decorated astronaval officers of the modern era, forces under his command having won such victories as the Second Grand Battle of Chi Lucolia and the Battle of Vigila. He is currently serving as the Aoshanti Empire's Master of the Fleet.

Kathura was born the favored son and heir to the second most powerful noble family of Orbitritum. He was groomed for command from a very young age, fighting in the First Concourse War as a junior officer aboard the original *Spetum*. In 16 BNE, he married Tainatra, the heiress to the Kingdom of Vigila, and became the father to her children. He fought in the Second and Third Concourse Wars as a high-ranking member of the Ascendancy Astronavy, although it was not until the fall of the Ascendancy that he began to shine as a military leader.

The military achievement which first demonstrated his abilities as an admiral, the Battle of Vigila, occurred in 18 NE, nine years after the fall of the Ascendancy, pitting the remnant forces of the Reformed League against the power of Ur-Tesar. Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, Kathura defeated the Tesar and conquered their whole territory, setting the stage for the return of the Reformers to galactic prominence. The troubled Shesta Campaign damaged his reputation and standing within the Reformed League, but he was nonetheless awarded a seat on the Emperor's council and given command over the combined imperial astronavy upon the formation of the Empire.

His reputation recovered and rose to new heights during Arboros Campaign of the Fourth Concourse War, when his fleets decisively defeated the Grand Alliance.

## History

### Early life and career

Kathura was born on Orbitritum the heir of a powerful Orbitritan noble family. In Orbitritan society, the Kathurans were second only to the Karathons in importance and the two families were often connected through marriages renewed every few generations.

Everything Kathura did as a fledgeling prepared him to become an outstanding astronaval officer. He attended a circuit of cadet schools which taught him military discipline and rigor. He studied strategy, war, statecraft, and manners, though he was psionically deaf, which led many of his contemporaries to assume that he would not achieve anything of note. His family bought him a commission in the Orbitritan Astronavy as a junior officer aboard the Orbitritan flagship, the original *Spetum*, at nineteen years old, just before the breakout of the First Concourse War. He is reported to have served with distinction in his role throughout the war.

#### Interwar Period and Marriage to Tainatra

After the war, in 17 BNE, Kathura journeyed to Vigila. His father had just been named Veritas III's personal envoy to Vigila. The issue the elder Kathura was supposed to solve: the marriage of King Aurelius of Vigila's daughter, Tainatra, to a son of the imperial family. Unknown to the Orbitritan court, the elder Ketor Kathura had his own plans. Upon arrival, he learned of the young princess' personal resentment towards the imperial family, borne of one of the peace terms imposed on Vigila in the peace treaty which put an end to the First War: she was not to marry Remus of Titian, whom she favored.

The elder Kathura is said to have orchestrated and sabotaged introduction after introduction to Karathon prince after Karathon prince, perhaps with the knowledge and cooperation of the princess, until finally in 17 BNE he presented his own son, Kathura — and the meeting went perfectly. When the princess finally relented a year later to entertain Orbitritan suitors, the younger Kathura was among those she saw. Ultimately, he was the one she chose. They were married in 15 BNE and had their first child, a fledgeling girl they named Tainatra, in 14 BNE. At the same time, Kathura was appointed a member of the Senate. He was given command of his first battleship in 9 NE and was given the military rank of Dux in 3 NE.

#### Second Concourse War

Kathura served on the western front commanding the second line of the Fleet of Solemn Vigilance during the Second Concourse War. The fleet was primarily assigned to defend Missionaria during the phony war between Karstedt and the Ascendancy and ultimately did not see action against the Karstmarine. He is rumored to have opposed the ceding of Nalhof, Lessos, and Lubin to Karstedt and instead favored war plans which involved an aggressive attack against it.

#### Third Concourse War

By the start of the Third Concourse War, Kathura was the leading Dux in the fleet of Solemn Vigilance, commanding the First Line and its second flagship. He became the fleet's Supremus (Supreme Commander) in 8 NE. Despite Kathura's many pleading communications to High Command, the fleet remained based at Distal and did very little except resist Karstmarine strike attacks throughout the entire war. The Fleet was finally recalled to Orbitritum when the combined allied fleet struck at Lindinis and Ur'uume.

At Orbitritum, Kathura advised a withdrawal from Orbitrita to the provinces of Aengelia, which were more defensible, but he was overruled and ordered to confront the overwhelming allied armada which spearheaded their invasion. He was defeated in what is considered to have been an unwinnable battle, losing the majority of the Ascendancy's last capital fleet.

Kathura survived the battle and returned to the Orbitritum ring with the fleet's few remaining elements. With high command in disarray and paying little attention to Kathura's diminished fleet, Kathura gathered together elements of the fleet, army, and government and organized a run on the allied blockade to evacuate as much of Orbitritum's documents, data, schematics, and personnel to Vigila as possible. He succeeded in getting most of his ships out, but was branded a deserter and a traitor by hardliners staying behind to defend Orbitritum to the very end.

### Post-War Period

The war ended in 9 NE when Orbitritum fell and Veritas III surrendered, though the war never reached Vigila, which Kathura had escaped to with his forces. There was talk of resistance, but when the Emperor called for cooperation with the new Lessoan-controlled senate, Kathura and the other princes of Aengelia submitted without a fight. They retained control of their lands and their seats in the Senate, unlike their peers in the western portion of the empire.

At first, the Reformers consisted a minority in the chamber and attempted to exercise influence due to their rank and station as lords of the eastern provinces, but they were systematically blocked by the Lessoans, many of whom sought to extract revenge for the Ascendancy's past crimes. By 14 NE, the Reformers stopped attending the Senate and refused to pay taxes, whether out of principle or because their economies, exhausted after thirty years of Ascendancy war taxes, could not afford to maintain the border garrisons which Naissus couldn't pay for.

#### Master of the Fleet of Vigila

After an initial period of waiting and despondence, Kathura spent this period concerned about the rising power of the Imperium of Ur-Tesar on Vigila's eastern border. He served as Vigila's leading astronaval officer and spent the 10's NE warding off Tesari raids, integrating the forces which he saved from the Battle of Orbitritum into Vigila's astronavy, and networking with the princes of the east to defend their territories from the raiding Tesar and a vengeful Senate. In order to do this, he had to solidify his position as monarch of Vigila, which was initially precarious.

A significant court faction looking to restore Vigila's pre-war independence attempted to sideline him, but through careful stewardship, dutiful maintenance of his relationship with his wife, and deftly taking advantage of the pressures and early defeats inflicted by the Tesar, Kathura succeeded in charting a middle path which saw the integration of the remnants of the Fleet of Solemn Vigilance with the Queen's astronavy, with the Queen as sovereign and him as Master of the Fleet.

#### Reforms and assassination attempt

This integration was significant, as it represented a departure from the doctrine of Orbitritan supremacy practiced by the Ascendancy, which did kept Orbitritan and provincials in separate units and did not allow provincial officers. Kathura's abandonment of this system came to define him, for good or ill, as a post-Ascendancy figure. He never publicly recanted the Ascendancy's racist policies, but abandoned them quickly when it began to be expedient to reject them. He was even seen endorsing marriages between Orbitritan and Vigilian officers, which to him seemed to come as no surprise, likely given his own marriage to a Vigilian, but greatly offended Orbitritan supremacists and Vigilian nationalists alike.

Kathura survived multiple assassination attempts against him, one of which resulted in a photonic blaster wound to the chest in 16 NE. The attempt on his life, referred to as the Elantian Cabinet Affair, turned public opinion decidedly in his favor. It also caused the Queen, previously hesitant to crack down on Vigila's hardliners, to fly into an uncontrolled rage and jail two members of her cabinet whom the Order of Unimanus discovered were involved with the plot to assassinate her husband. They were executed soon thereafter for treason and conspiracy against the crown. The actions of Vigila's secret police drove Vigilian nationalism underground.

### Crisis of 18 NE

By 18 NE, the Reformed lords had become fixtures at the Elantian Court on Vigila, guests of the Kingdom of Vigila. The situation in their provinces was getting bad and the problems facing them were mounting, leading to a general agreement that leadership for the Aengelian provinces was necessary to fill the vacuum left by an incompetent Senate and a muzzled emperor. They recreated the Reformed League between themselves, established a council, and elected Kathura as their Executor. They also assigned themselves military ranks and responsibilities. Most importantly, the Council of Nine recognized each holder of the nine Reformed principalities as the sole and legitimate owners of the territory and were committed to defending them if they were attacked or overthrown.

#### Battle of Vigila

Barely had this system been established that it received its first test in the form of an opportunistic Tesar invasion, undertaken in the name of preventing the rise of another Ascendancy. The Tesar went for the Reformed jugular, striking directly at Vigila. There, Kathura mustered the Queen's astronavy and all of the allied forces of the Reformed League principalities. Despite being outnumbered two-to-one and widely expected to lose, Kathura lured the Tesar into the main battery guns of Vigila's still-functioning *Spetum*-class battleships. Due to the superiority of their ships, their crews, and military intelligence, the Reformers shredded the invading Tesari fleet in what is considered to be one of the great military achievements of the modern era.

#### Conquest of Ur-Tesar

Kathura led the Reformed League in the subsequent campaign to subdue and vassalize Ur-Tesar. Drawing from the Ascendancy playbook, Kathura recruited his defeated enemies into his forces and entered Ur-Tesar. He demanded the surrender of Cormeum, which gave itself over to him without a fight and augmented his forces further. In this way, Kathura demanded the surrender of garrison after garrison and installed a client loyal to him in Cormeum. Ur-Tesar would pay to Vigila over the subsequent years an estimated 2 sextillion cubits in tribute, which the prudent monarchy stashed away in its coffers.

#### Reformed League Reforms

As a result of the campaign, the Reformed League established a decentralized system, an improvement upon their previous defense arragements, whereby every principality was responsible for financing, equipping, and crewing a battleship at Vigila. Vigila was charged with upkeeping five.

Kathura was forced to come to the aid of Karathon Pomarius (the future Veritas IV) in 19 NE to put down a Limitanei uprising in Pomaria, setting back the development of the system, but confirming Karathon Pomarius as the unquestioned lord of Pomaria.

### King of Abila

In 22 NE, after conversations with his uncle, Montor of Abila, Kathura succeeded in getting the old admiral to resign and leave the Kingdom of Abila to him. While Abila remained under the administration of its local aristocracy and the position remained mainly ceremonial, the union of the two crowns served to strengthen Kathura's position and that of Vigila within the Reformed League.

### Veritas Crisis

#### Shesta and the Battle of Havan

When Veritas III died in 22 NE, two crises unfolded simultaneously. First, the Naissian Senate was forced to decide who should succeed to the imperial throne. Simultaneously, the Senate dispatched one of its Lessoan generals, Ke'ron Armandus, to seize the province of Shesta from Honil's brother, Altisin Karathon, on grounds of non-payment of taxes and defiance of Cibalaean and Senate ordinances. When the Council of Eight convened on the issue at Vigila, Rotan, Honil, Brechstan, and Altisin pressured the League to levy its forces and reinforce Shesta, while a different faction sought to influence Kathura to avoid confronting the Republic and instead evacuate the province.

However, word then reached them that the Senate had abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the formation of the Aoshanti Republic. Incensed, the Karathon faction immediately demanded that the former Reformed League provinces go to war against the Republic to reinstitute the monarchy, leading Kathura to pick the middle option: the Reformed fleet would burn to Shesta to drive off the Republic fleet.

The assembled Reformed battle fleet consisted of twelve capital ships under Kathura's command. The fleet arrived at Shesta and engaged the Repbulic fleet at the Battle of Havan in Alus of 22 NE. During the battle with the Republic fleet, Kathura was seriously wounded by a piece of shrapnel which struck his eye and thigh when his ship suffered a direct missile hit, leaving Honil Karathon in command. The Reformers succeeded in their objective of disabling the Republic super capital ship, but the attack cost them dearly and a Republic counterattack caused Honil to order a disorderly retreat which forced them to abandon many of their ships. Kathura was evacuated in critical condition to Aequum, where the shame of defeat and the threat of assassination again hung over him.

#### Injured at Aequum

In his absence, Tainatra led the Reformed League response to the allied mobilization against it. Kathura remained in Aequum, undergoing surgery after surgery to repair the damage done to his eye, brain, and thigh. Meanwhile, his rivals and allies in Reformed League councils spread dueling accounts of the events at the Battle of Havan. His political enemies blamed the defeat on him, while his allies blamed it on Karathon Pomarius. Even those who were at the battle gave conflicting accounts, and it was generally unclear what happened. Tainatra pleaded with him to return to Vigila, where it was safer (Aequum was within range of Republic forces stationed at Royaluum), but Kathura and his entourage refused and stayed put on the grounds that they did not want to open themselves up to further charges of cowardice. For the most part, he was sidelined from the decision-making of the Comitatensis and the remnant fleet at Shesta, which were firmly allied with Karathon.

#### Reformation of the Empire

When the forces at Shesta returned, it was triumphantly, with Karathon at their head. Karathon and the Reformed forces return to Vigila, where he was crowned Emperor after a lengthy war council, recreating the Aoshanti Empire for the second time in Kathura's lifetime. Kathura was said to have sat, mostly silent, during the meeting, and was made Master of the Fleet. By that point, he could walk again, though he did so sluggishly and with a limp which never fully went away. He wore an eyepatch to cover the scar tissue around where his eye was, and refused the insertion of a prosthetic eye.

Kathura participated in Karathon's Triumph at the beginning of Agria to open the Vigilian games, riding in a chariot behind the Praetorian Guard, next to the rising officer credited with winning the battle of Shesta, the young Aurelianus Macina.

## Characteristics

### Personality

Kathura was raised at the very top of the imperial hierarchy and groomed to be an officer from a young age. Unusually for his bloodline, Kathura was psionically deaf, which to many Orbitritans (and Aoshanti more generally) was a sign that he would not go on to achieve anything of significance. This stigma pursued him for much of his life. By the time of his late adolescence, he seemed to have come to the conclusion that the only path forward to him was to develop his capabilities as an officer relentlessly and outpace his competition through sheer merit alone, an approach with provided mixed results for him throughout his life.

While his contemporaries coasted through Ascendancy command on pedigree, social connections, and the minimum required competence, Kathura dedicated incredible time and energy towards mastering every aspect of command aboard a starship, and later a fleet. He was initially a fledgeling of great strength, endurance, intensity, emotion, energy, and arrogance, having developed a distaste and distrust for his contemporaries' gut feelings and prejudices, because he saw in real time (and focused on) how these prejudices served them poorly. He developed a stringently empirical ethic which wanted every hunch or argument substantiated with figures and data, which he imposed on those under his command.

The fall of the Ascendancy, the troubles within his family, and the turbulent times of the period between the Third and Fourth Concourse Wars appear to have humbled him. Being the target of a failed assassination appears to especially have affected him deeply. This period turned him from an impatient, strident, and demanding officer to a patient patriarch. He still operated on merit, but after the Battle of Vigila, the merit began to speak for itself in the form of a legend which coalesced around him. He learned the power of magnanimity, of remaining aloof, of keeping his thoughts and impressions to himself, of ambiguity, and of allowing events to unfold.

Despite these developments, Kathura seemed unable to let go of his obsession with his greatest defeat, the Battle of Orbitritum, which he would play again and again in wargames against an AI and against various opponents in the years after the fall of the Ascendancy. In 20 NE, eleven years after the battle, he invited a cadre of officers to replay it with him, and he astonished them by coming extremely close to winning.

### Command style

#### Planning

Kathura, in keeping with Ascendancy doctrine, was a meticulous tactical and strategic planner, known for centralizing information in his hands and needing to personally know details about every ship on an ongoing basis. In order to support this, Kathura worked his immediate staff to its limits and, once he gained the ability to organize his staff as he pleased, grew it into an efficient bureaucracy which could manage the flow of information demanded by his exacting style.

He pioneered and multiple fire drills and formations which maximized the effectiveness of a battleship fleet in combat and minimized the expenditure of ammunition. These drills became standard in the Pomarian Empire's fleet during the Fourth Concourse War and were frequently used by imperial commanders.

Kathura's approach heavily emphasized preparation, planning, and attaining perfect information prior to a battle. His strategies tended to be simple, brutal, and effective, and benefitted greatly from enemies underestimating him and the firepower he could squeeze out of his forces. He was at his worst when forced to improvise, when his centralizing tendencies and the rigidity of his drills handicapped his ability and those of his forces to respond quickly to developments. This could be plainly seen in the Second Grand Battle of Chi Lucolia, which was won through a brilliant strategic maneuver, but the battle itself was fought with rushed, improvised, and sloppy tactics.

#### Technological development

Kathura tended not to have a hand in the development of new ships and weapons, and in fact tended to resist all forms of innovation. In his view, the new warship types were untested and the established warships had years worth of experience and tactical knowledge behind them. In particular, he resented and resisted the carrier and its effects on the modern battlespace.

He considered the *Spetum* to be the pinnacle of battleship design, and any attempt to improve upon them, such as the *Spetum II*, would simply make them worse. He was proved right about the *Spetum II*, though the very same battle also proved the efficacy of carrier-based torpedo bombers used offensively.

#### Merit

Kathura's style demanded merit from his subordinates, and he had a tendency to resist the career schedules and informal markers of seniority (birth, psionic potency, connections) which were common in the Ascendancy in favor of promoting those whom he deemed to be the most meritorious. This heavily hampered his career. He had supporters and patrons within the Ascendancy command, but had just as many enemies, and his refusal and inability to play the political game meant that he never received desirable commands while serving under the Ascendancy.

## Stats

* PROFILE
* RENOWN
* CAREER

 **Master of the Fleet ★★★★****♔ King of Vigila****♔ King of Abila** | Aoshanti

Background
*Concourse Wars*

* Served as an officer in the Blade of the Ascendancy

Battles
*Third Concourse War*

* ≛ Battle of Orbitritum against the  Grand Concourse Treaty Organization - **DEFEAT**
* ≛ Break-out from Orbitritum against the  Grand Concourse Treaty Organization - **VICTORY**

*Crisis of 18 NAC*

* ≛ Battle of Vigila against the  Imperium of Ur-Tesar - **VICTORY**
* ≛ Conquest of Cormeum against the  Imperium of Ur-Tesar - **VICTORY**

*Veritas Crisis*

* ≛ Battle of Havan against the  Aoshanti Republic - **DEFEAT**

Duels
* Against  Nullir Izil during the Battle of Havan - **VICTORY**, 🏥 **INJURED**

## Family Tree

The following family tree is simplified and does not include all descendants or branches of the family. Only important and relevant characters are shown.