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| - The Demarian Grayback Nimblefoot, a proud, and often restless, member of the noble clan Windracer, has had a long and quite colorful history. As the year 2650 opened, he had been serving in the Stellar Consortium Vanguard for almost 32 years, and had risen through the ranks to become squadron leader of a flight of Stinger fighters with the rank of Colonel. It was during this time that he forged a friendship with the Zangali Garunth, as a result of beating him during a bout in the Demarian Battlecage. This was a friendship that was to last for ages, as he was to find out later. Shortly after, a temporary assignment to space duty aboard the SCS Bunker Hill found him part of the expedition to find a lost polydenum transport, the Diamond Lil, which became the catalyst for his time as a ‘guest’ of the Hivers, on board the Hiver ship RKV Harrower. With a large group of similarly abducted Nalls and denizens of the Fringe, namely the crew of the cargo ship Courser, he found himself faced with a chilling choice: Fight, as willing soldiers of the Hivers against their enemy, later revealed to be the B’hiri, or fight as unwilling possessed shells. At first, his warrior pride overcame common sense, and he refused the choice, tearing limb from limb the Hiver possessed corpse of Abernathy, Fagin’s Majordomo who had also been abducted. Still possessed by the Hivers, the disembodied hand of Abernathy leaped onto Grayback’s right shoulder, tearing into his flesh with inhuman strength and began to drag him up to the conversion chamber, to face the same fate as Abernathy. Humilated, and feeling dishonored at his helplessness, he recanted, and was spared that fate. The scar is still with him to this day, which he considers a reminder of his mortality. The group went on to destroy the Hivers, with the help of the B’hiri. Shortly after the Hiver incident, Grayback was transferred to command the SCS Gettysburg, a scout assigned to patrol the Fringe border areas. While serving in this position, he took the to Val Shohob to witness the historic induction of the first Timonae into the Order of the Mystics, Orandius Jaxx. During the ceremonies, word came that a young friend of Grayback and the crew of the Courser, Kip Kaspar, had been abducted. Lifting off with the , with the Courser and a Nall vessel that had come to observe the ceremony trailing behind, an incident which was to set the course of history was about to befall him. Shortly after giving the order to jump into Otherspace, the drive malfunctioned, dragging the , the Courser, and the Nall vessel with it to the far edge of the galaxy, into the realm of the twin worlds Otheria and Kreton. Dropped into orbit around the small planet of Alonar, the 9th planet of the system, Grayback ordered the ship to land and led an expedition into a base they had discovered on the planet. There, they were to learn the fate of the planet they had found, as well as what lied ahead in the star system it had come from. The records had revealed that the planet had been blown into a distant orbit as a result of the nuclear detonation of the system’s 8th planet. The three ships resumed a course towards the coordinates they had found for Otheria and Kreton, only to be intercepted and summarily captured by a Kretonian battlecruiser. Once again Grayback found himself an unwilling ‘guest’ of aliens out for his blood. Taking a chance on the information they had found in the base on Alonar, the two telepathic members of their party, the Centauran Dahan and the Vollistan Volisaeus, sent a telepathic SOS to the Otherians. Luckily, it was received, and the resulting Otherian attack on Kreton permitted the group to return to their ships and escape, repeating what is now known as the ‘Gettysburg Effect’, to return home, unwittingly setting into motion the death of the Otheria/Kreton star, a fate which was to also befall Volshovir, the star of Val Shohob. Shortly after his return, Grayback was re-assigned to General Dimitri Volstov’s staff, ending a long tour of space duties. In time, the damage wrought to Volshovir reached its climax, and the star exploded, destroying Val Shohob. As the commander of the ship which was the catalyst for its destruction, Grayback felt deep remorse for the incident and consequently committed ritual suicide in the temple on Demaria, his payment of blood for his actions. Many thought he had perished, but then a surprising twist of events revealed the truth. Bright Horizons, a genetic engineering company on Sivad, was revealed to be a secret Consortium project to breed cloned soldiers. The scandal was revealed by, to the surprise of many, a clone of Grayback himself. The clone proved to be genetically enhanced, with the strength of a Zangali. Grayback 2, as he was dubbed, was killed during the martial law declared on Demaria by Volstov, who, after being revealed to be part of the scandal, was also killed by Colonel Remy Lebeau shortly after. Demaria seceded from the Consortium, with Pridemaster Dawnfur declaring himself Imperator. Sivad was shortly after rocked by the madman Laurence Montevedo, resulting in him pulling Sivad out of the Consortium and declaring himself ruler of that world. The bloody uprisings and the subsequent freeing of the planet all proceeded while a secret was buried beneath the surface. During a later ceremony on the planet, an explosion at the now abandoned Bright Horizons building revealed the presence of a hidden cryogenic storage facility. Inside one of these storage units, they found a beaten, bloody, but still alive Colonel Grayback. He had been ambushed and brought there by agents of General Volstov to be used as a genetic base for clones, and was kept in cryogenic storage, blissfully unaware of the chaos that had ensued during his slumber, as well as the suicide of what was now revealed to be a perfect clone of him self. After his ‘resurrection’, Grayback tried to resume his post with the Vanguard, but his experience had left him a changed kitty. Unable to fit back into the military life, he resigned his commission and took up a post as Director of the Consortium Bureau of Investigations. With the help of his longtime friend, the Zangali Garunth, he provided information to the ousted Battleclaw Sharpeye and his supporters, which resulted in the toppling of the restored, yet corrupt, Senate on Demaria. By this time, however, the winds of destruction which he had unwittingly set in motion began to blow into the known worlds, in the form of a Kretonian invasion fleet. Fleeing with Sanctuary on its bid to escape this destruction, he found himself in Hiverspace with the band of 50,000 refugees who had also escaped aboard the colony ship. For a time, he was lost an aimless, just surviving as were the others with him, until several incidents and complaints about the Vanguard remnants aboard handling civilian security prompted him to propose to the Senate the formation of a Colonial Police Department. They agreed, and he was appointed to the position of Chief of this new department, a position he was to hold throughout the ship’s journey. When Sanctuary returned to Realspace in the year 3000, he, like the other Demarians with him, was shocked to learn Demaria’s fate. It was during this time that he discovered that his old friend Garunth, who had not made it aboard Sanctuary in time, had left a decree that his descendents where to pledge their lives to him upon his return, as he found when he met Garunth’s descendant. Now, he had himself a Zangali companion, whom he brought with him as a personal bodyguard when he joined with the nobles on Gleaming Star to begin rebuilding the Demaria of old, eventually attaining the title of Battleclaw. It was during this time that one of his family members, Redtail Quicksilver, through a series of actions as the leader of Sanctuary’s security force, had brought dishonor to the Windracer clan. Following Demarian customs, he sought out Quicksilver and challenged him to a formal battle to save the family honor. They met in the Gleaming Star arena, where he defeated Quicksilver in hand to hand combat, banishing him from the city. As time passed, however, Grayback began to tire of the trappings and the formality of the noble life. His opportunity to shed it came when Pansheera, in Hiverspace, was discovered, and the nobles uprooted to begin anew there. He did not go with them, and instead returned to a life that he was more comfortable with. For the past few years, he has offered his services as a freelance investigator, and it is this vocation he performs to this day.
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