Character App:
Name: Castor Frontera
Age (16 at youngest): 33
Gender: Male
Rank: (Nothing higher than O-5) Comandante (O-4)
Appearance/Pic:
Nationality: Sapinese
Aircraft (From the list): Rafale M
Height (optional): 168 cm
Weight (optional): 85 kg
Likes (optional):
Dislikes (optional):
Biography:
Born in 1990 to a minor noble family in the city of San Fermin, Castor Frontera lived a comfortable and sheltered childhood. In his early years, he received a private education at the rigorous Durante Academy for Young Boys, and had a sterling record with the institution. During this time, both his father and his two uncles upheld the Frontera family tradition of volunteering for military service during times of conflict by joining the Sapinese military to fight in the Belkan War. All three men joined the Royal Sapinese Army at the onset of the Belkan War. All three men had spotless service records, gaining notable accolades in combat against the invading Belkan forces. However, his eldest uncle, Ricardo Frontera, gained national fame for his unit's heroic last stand at Aran. His Company's final stand in the city was deemed responsible for slowing the main thrust of the Belkan Advance by days, and was personally responsible for rendering an entire armoured battalion and supporting mechanized groups combat ineffective. For his actions, he was posthumously awarded the Kings Cross of Valour, Sapin's highest military honour, and his company received the Distinguished Unit Citation, permanently marking them as among other heroic units in Sapin's military history.
After the war, the Frontera family used their family's exemplary military service, particularly that of Ricardo Frontera, as a way of increasing their political power within the nobility. Thanks to the brutality of the Belkan War, many of the noble families lost entire generations of men during the defense of Sapin and the subsequent push into Belka, while those that did not commit their sons or patriarchs to the war effort lost credibility in the newfound military-friendly Sapinese political climate. These factors combined allowed the Frontera family to build a significant amount of power within the Sapinese nobility and government over the coming years.
In 2002, the Frontera family moved to a large estate just outside of Gran Rugido. In the words of Castor's father, it was a home more befitting of their station. Having been removed from his old home and friends in San Fermin, the adjustment was not seen as a positive thing to Castor. During this period, he was sent to the San Nicolas Private Institute to continue his secondary education. As his education continued and he was forced to interact with those of noble stature more and more frequently, he grew to silently despise them. He saw his family's power mongering and new lifestyle as a way to rob him of the things he had enjoyed of his hometown, his old "commoner" friends and their modest (by their current standards) lifestyle. The pressure of his family's exponentially increasing expectations would chafe at him for the remainder of his teenage years.
As he completed his education, he would make his first serious act of rebellion against his parents by shunning their wishes of sending him to the prestigious Cáceres University and instead enrolling in a public university in his old hometown of San Fermin. As punishment for this, his family would cut him off from them financially, forcing Castor to work through his collegiate education. In his father's words, "if you wish to pretend to be a commoner, than you shall live like one." He would end up working as a waiter at a local restaurant during his education, often times receiving generous tips thanks to the combination of his family name and good looks, and he was generally well liked by both professors and students at the university. He would graduate with a degree in Political Science in 2014, having taken many extracurricular courses in History as well. His fairly liberal education and isolation from the nobility enlightened him to new possibilities, and he began to hate the stagnation caused by Sapin's current corrupt system of government and the detachment the nobility possessed from the common people. He reluctantly returned to Gran Rugido and his family to take his place upon within the politics of the nobility, though he had the hope that one day he could work from within the system to right its flaws.
This would be short-lived, however, as High King and the royal family would be assassinated little less than a year later. With no clear heir, the newfound power vacuum and resultant political squabbling among the nobility led to the inevitable, a civil war. The nobility ended up split between the two largest and most powerful of the families, the House of Carrillo and the House of Olivares, with both families moving to make claims of rightful rule over the nation after the death of the royal family. During the outbreak of the war, Castor quickly upheld his family's military tradition by enlisting with the forces loyal to Carrillo family. To spite his father, who wished him to follow in his footsteps and join the army, specifically his uncle Ricardo's company, Castor enlisted with the Air Force.
Due to the ongoing war and the pressing need for pilots, his flight training was brief and incomplete. Regardless, he already had the makings of a great pilot, impressing his instructors with his tenacity and quick learning. In particular, he was lauded for his keen eyesight, being able to correctly identify aircraft from distances up to twice that of the average aviator in his class, as well as his quick thinking in the handful of mock dogfights he participated in during his training. He was cleared for combat as a flight leader less than a year after starting his flight training, roughly half of the normal time. He would be a part of the 19th Homeland Defense Squadron, which itself was under the 3rd Sapin Air Division commanded by General Nynsam.
He quickly rose to prominence within the 19th Homeland Defense Squadron due to his skill in battle, achieving his first kill during his first engagement over the small town of Cádiz, when most of the new recruits often had difficulty keeping their own planes in the air. His calm and reassuring demeanor helped to maintain the composure of the recruits in his flight, all of which survived their first engagement. His skill in combat only grew from there. Two weeks later, his flight was the first to intercept a formation of enemy bombers heading to a military staging area. During this engagement, his flight of four downed five of the twelve bombers and several of their escorts before other friendly air forces could arrive to finish off the remainder. He also took part in many other minor actions, such as providing aerial cover and close air support for ground skirmishes. His keen eyes made him particularly effective at close air support, and he earned his nickname of Águila on one such mission where he rained accurate and precise destruction upon enemy forces hiding in a heavily forested area that shared close proximity to friendlies.
In March 2016, his flight took part in the decisive battle of Puerto Cielo, the largest aerial engagement of the war and one of the largest overall battles in scale. By this time, he was already an accomplished Ace who had kept his original flight of four alive throughout the entire war. Involving the entirety of the 3rd and 5th Air Divisions, as well as the 17th Strike Fighter Wing and the 22nd Naval Fighter Wing. The Olivares loyal forces had involved the majority of their air forces in the defense of Puerto Cielo, and the total number of aircraft in the air numbered well into the hundreds.
The engagement proved to be fiercer than anything beyond Castor's imagination, pushing his skills to the breaking point. After 20 minutes of near constant aerial combat, his flight was tasked with the interception of a group of low flying aircraft, thought to be strike fighters armed with anti-shipping missiles. However, this was the elite Abejorro squadron attempting to get behind the main group of friendly fighters. Mostly isolated from friendly reinforcements, the flight engaged the ace squadron heavily outnumbered. Despite downing three aircraft personally and forcing the Abejorro squadron to retreat under the cover of their reinforcements, Castor's flight would end up suffering its first losses, with two of its members succumbing to the skilled enemy pilots. Castor and his flight's element lead, now his wingman, were forced to let the squadron escape and return to the fray of the main engagement in order to shake the Olivares-loyal reinforcements.
After a grueling 56 minutes, including one refuel and rearm at an airbase taken over by Carrillo forces during the battle, Castor's aircraft was hit by cannon fire during a dogfight with an unknown assailant. Castor, rendered combat ineffective due to damage, was forced to retreat from battle to a safe airbase. As he was making his exfiltration, he and his wingman were jumped by a flight of four enemy aircraft. Castor managed to retreat from the airspace safely thanks to his wingman valiantly taking on the entire enemy flight, despite being fatigued and outnumbered four to one.
Castor would end up crashing on landing at Cadenza Forward Airbase due to the damage his aircraft suffered in battle, though he would be unharmed. He spent the remainder of the day waiting outside in the hopes that his flight's element lead would return. However, he never returned, and neither his plane nor remains were never found. At the end of the battle, Castor was personally responsible for downing 32 aircraft and his flight was credited with 76.5 cumulative kills. With his skill now firmly unquestionable, he gained the attention of General Nynsam. Nynsam, recognizing Castor's accomplishments, put him at the head of his own squadron within the 3rd Air Division. With the freedom to hand pick new members from the elite pilots under Nynsam's command, he created the 33rd Tactical Fighter Squadron, known as Lancero Squadron.
Lancero Squadron would become the core of the 3rd Air Division, gaining numerous victories and acting as the right hand of General Nynsam. On April 8th, 2017, Nynsam invited several of his most trusted officers into a private meeting, among them the now Comandante Castor Frontera. This meeting, which took place under the guise of planning for the final operation to crush the Olivares forces, was actually used to outline his plans to betray the Carrillos and seize power for himself. He had already gained the support of other generals in various branches of the Carrillo's forces, his plan was simple. They would move, little by little, a small strike group to reserve in bases around Gran Rugido. When they had the Olivares's terms of surrender, instead of relaying them to the "government" under the house of Carrillo, they would have their strike force hit Gran Rugido and forcibly remove the Carrillo family and all of their supporters from their seat of power in the Capital.
Castor would support this plan, having his Lancero squadron provide top cover for the strike force during the operation. Though conflicted about the potential harm that could come to his family as supporters of Carrillo, he knew that this was his chance to rid his nation of the corrupt monarchy and finally bring his people together. The Operation would be pulled off on July 8th, 2017 with no problems, with Castor's Lancero squadron getting a peaceful front row seat to the final dismantling of the Sapin Monarchy. Two months later, with the surrender of Carrillo-loyalist General Aritza's rouge battalion, the Sapin Civil War would end.
In the following years, Castor Frontera would become one of the poster boys of General Nynsam's new regime. He would be lauded as a humble man who gave up a posh life of comfort and power amongst the nobility to do right by the nation and its people. Meanwhile, with Sapin's need to rebuild its military after the devastating civil war, Castor Frontera and the aces of his Lancero Squadron would spend the majority of their time instructing new recruits, making sure that they would never have to face combat inexperienced and ill-equipped like he had. When the wars against Ustio and Ratio were declared, Lancero Squadron and the newly reformed Sapin Republican Air Force made short work of their opposition, quickly obtaining air superiority and facilitating the rapid advance of the Sapin military. They were seen as particularly indispensable during the initial fights against the veteran Ustio Air Force, which put up fierce resistance during the early stages of the war.
Eventually, after a short R&R period back home after the completion of the invasion of Wellow, Castor and his Lancero squadron was deployed to the Erusian theater, where they continue to serve with distinction.
