Name: Arnst Urbach "Uri" Moralos
Nickname: Uri; Comrade Uri; Old Man Red
Age: 136
Birth Date: 25,573 CE
Gender: Male
Planet of Origin: New Shanghai (Kepler-186f)
Race/Species: Human
Height: 5'9''
Weight: 180lbs
Physical Description or Image:
Social Class: Minor bastard Noble
Titles: (Nominal) Duke of the Tianju Dominion, Chairman of the Cygnus Communist Party
Occupation: As a member of the Imperial Nobility, Arnst ruled the Tianju Dominion as a vassal of the Emperor. However, in practice, he holds little to no power, as the matters of the Dominion is governed by the Cygnus Supreme Soviet (while technically it is Tianju's legislative body). Arnst however is the chairman of the sole party that forms the Supreme Soviet (along with several independent seats), the Cygnus Communist Party, and thus he holds a considerable influence over government matters. He is also a well-known philosopher.
Hobbies/Pastimes: Writing, Smoking, Chess
Talents/Skills:Religious Beliefs: Atheist
- Orator: Arnst had a way with words that could easily convince other people to follow his views.
- Engineer: He is well-versed with engineering and technical operations of various machines, including starships, due to his education and years serving as a Chief Engineer in the Imperial Navy.
- Commander: He is also well-experienced with leading fleets and commanding armies, having participated in several battles during his military career.
Personality:Biography: Arnst Urbach Moralos was born on New Shanghai, one of the earlier-settled planets of the Empire, to Heinz Emmerkar, a Noble of the steward House of Emmerkar, and a common lowborn, Shifa Moralos. His father Heinz was the heir apparent to Rutiger Emmerkar, the Lord-Steward of the Tianju Dominion, a position only second to Grand Duke Jia Xizhou, one of the Emperor's vassals. As a child, he was not taken into the Emmerkar Station (the space station that acts as the court of House Emmerkar), but instead settled with his mother in a particularly good, and expansive mansion in the shores of Yifu Bay, one of New Shanghai's prime real estate regions.
- Charismatic: Arnst is a great orator, and he could easily give speeches that could align a lot of people with his views. His greatest advantage is unlike other members of the Nobility, he could easily blend down with the common people - and almost all of his staffs are composed of commoners. Arnst is also a skillfully cunning man, being able to mold situations and plan scenarios beneficial to him.
- Frugal: While nominally governing over one of the Imperium's most wealthy dominions, Arnst did not live lavishly. Instead, he dresses like a common worker and did things normaly a commoner would, such as smoking, drinking, and other things not befitting of a Noble. He owns very little personally compared to other Nobles, because the revenue collected by the Tianju Dominion went into the Supreme Soviet instead of him.
As he was a bastard, Arnst did not enjoy the same position Lord Heinz's trueborn children holds in court, but he was well-educated and enjoyed a prosperous early life regardless. He also often attends the Court in Emmerkar Station, and even the Grand Duke's court at Tiāntánghépínggōng (Palace of Heavenly Peace), the capital of New Shanghai. He was once an excellent student, particularly in the field of philosophy, mathematics, and engineering. Arnst had the privilege to read the "Communist Manifesto", an ancient Terran essay that dated back to the days of Old Earth - the magnum opus of two enlightened Terran philosophers - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The essay's contents are extremely outdated, but the message stays the same. Regardless, Arnst at first did not take the essay seriously, treating it as just another piece of prized ancient literature the librarians of Gudài Zhīshì Kù (Vault of Ancient Knowledge) - one of the Imperium's largest libraries - loved to research. At 22, Arnst graduated from the Imperial Technical College with a physics specialization (that includes creating and maintaining the Asimov Shield) and enlisted in the Imperial Navy.
His career in the Imperial Navy was noticeably short, but noticeable. After serving eight years in the Navy he was sent to a mission in the Large Magellanic Cloud, where an extremely fascist regime had toppled the legitimate ruling government of NGC 1783 globular cluster, and led the Alien forces into a crusade to expel Imperial forces in the Cloud. He proved an excellent Chief Engineer and even held the position of Captain for several years, before being assigned into another ship. One thing that Arnst observed from this bloody war, though, is that neither the Fascists nor the Imperialists cared about their own people, or even their own soldiers. Countless Imperial colony-worlds lie in ruins due to the war; Imperial soldiers took all the energy cells and food from these worlds, and the civillians are left starving. The fascists are even worse; Arnst regarded them as the lowest of the low of all governments because they are, to put it simply, plain hypocrites. They indoctrinated their citizens, claiming that the fascist government is born from a socialist movement and supported by the workers, when in reality the fascist regime controlled a series of legal cartels in what can only be described as corrupt state capitalism. While Arnst emerged from the LMC campaign as a war hero, he was thoroughly disillusioned by the Imperium. This feeling would be exacerbated as Arnst joined more and more Imperial military missions throughout his career. While in the outside, he masked his disappointment by presenting a very loyal attitude to the Emperor, this is all but a facade.
Thus, after a full fifty years in Imperial Navy service, Arnst resigned from his position of Captain at the ripe age of 67. By this time, his father Heinz Emmerkar has ascended as the Lord Steward of Tianju Dominion (which consisted of a part of the Cygnus Arm and the regions nearby). He was never legalized as an Emmerekar, though, so he was not eligible to receive inheritances. Nonetheless, Heinz allocated a portion of the estates to him... however, when Heinz Emmerkar died a year later, his true-born brothers vie for the Emmerkar inheritance - which also consisted of parts of the Veil Nebula, one of the Galaxy's largest sources of mineral and dark matter. As expected of a bastard, Arnst lost the clash, and was relegated into a small holding - the Green-Star Station, which administers the NGC 6826 (the "Blinking") Nebula, a planetary nebula that supplies raw materials and ships for the Tianju Dominion.
As the governor of an insignificant nebula within the Dominion, Arnst had little to do and plenty of spare time after his resignation (and pension) from the Imperial Navy. He lived a modest life, sometimes receivinng state guests and his former comrades from the Imperial Navy who came to visit. He also spent a great amount of time with the workers at the NGC 6826 Central Shipyard, the Tianju Dominion's primary shipbuilding facility. During this time, he also studied Imperial law and philosophy, attaining a Lawyer degree after five years of education. He immersed himself in ancient Terran literature - visiting the Gudài Zhīshì Kù so often and collecting ancient Terran books - including the Communist Manifesto, which he read earlier during his younger years. As time goes on, Arnst's views became more pragmatic and radical, and he started to institute several reforms that would diminish the power of the Central Shipyard's executive board. Finally, he sacked the Executive Board outright in a revolutionary move - inspired by the Socialist ideals propagated in the Terran books, he stepped down from the director position and estabilished a council made up of workers' union representatives to manage the shipyard. As he was a bastard, legally he cannot inherit the dominions of his half-brothers... but Arnst never really cared about it. At least not until all this action angered the current Lord Emmerkar, his half-brother, and Arnst was ordered to restore the executive board or face imprisonment. Not wanting his new reforms to be sort-lived just because of the greed of the Emmerkar nobles, he ignored these warnings; appealed to the workers' unions for support, and publicly renounced the Emmerkar lords.
He stopped the supply of ships going to New Shanghai, and using his claim (as an illegitimate son of Heinz Emmerkar), marched into Emmerkar station with brand-new ships and seized it for himself. Threatened by an unruly vassal, the reigning Grand Duke of New Shanghai, Jia Wenzhou, ordered Arnst to abdicate, undo all the radical reforms he instituted, and restore his brother as the head of House Emmerkar. Arnst refused, and a power struggle ensued between himself and the Grand Duke. In the end, Arnst ousted and executed the Grand Duke and his House himself, and by the Imperial laws the Tianju Dominion passes to him by right of conquest. Arnst now found himself as legally the sole owner of a vast Dominion at the end of the Norma-Cygnus Arm - and most importantly, a tiny, yet important the Veil Nebula, one of the Empire's largest sources of raw material and industrial goods.
However, he never forgot his base of supporters that helped him overthrow the Grand Duke - the workers, artisans, and farmers of Tianju, whom he appealed for support, and whom he introduced the socialist ideals he had gathered from the ancient Terran texts. Shortly after, he consolidated his dominions and formed the Cygnus Soviet, the new governing body of the Tianju Dominion, free from the shackles of feudalism. While Arnst is still the nominal head of government recognized by the Imperium (as a Noble), in reality the Tianju Dominion is ruled by a council of Syndicalist labour unions, under the umbrella banner of the Cygnus Communist Party. So far, this relatively insignificant speck of Noble dominion, with its weird system of government and peculiar leader has been largely ignored by Nova Terra in general, but a profound change would soon arrive to shake the Imperium...
Name of Territory: (official:) Tianju (Heavenly) Dominion, (common:) Cygnus-Norma Soviet
Government: (official:) Star Feudalism, (common:) One-Party Socialist State
Capital World: Urigrad/New Shanghai (Kepler-186f)
Population: 668 Billion (60% Human/Augmented, 40% Alien)
Economy:
- Mineral Extraction: The Tianju Dominion, or commonly the Cygnus-Norma Soviet, hosted a part of the Veil Nebula, one of the Milky Way's largest and most productive star factories. As such, the Nebula is extremely rich in mineral and gas resources, providing a noticeable amount of the Imperium's natural resources production.
- Industry: A thin, almost straightly-aligned route of star systems exist in the Tianju Dominion, with its inner end forming the gateway of the Veil Nebula and the outer end the hyperlane route to the Galactic Center. Planets here have been the center of industry for a long time - from shipyards to machine factories, foundries, and many more.
- Trade: The Tianju Dominion connects the Norma arm with the Perseus Arm and the Galactic Center. New Shanghai (now Urigrad) is a quite bustling center of commerce and transit in the galaxy.
Culture: Much like pre-World War II Russia, the Tianju Dominion is a center of industrialization, and the worker, farmer, and miner collective culture is very strong. There exists all kinds of left-wing ideologies, some passed down from the age of Old Terra, some based on religion, like Zensunni; but the most common by all is the mix between Syndicalism and Communism, which is promoted by the Cygnus Communist Party - based on the works of Karl Marx, and of course, Uri Morelos. Overall, the culture is very diverse and immeasurable by any standards, as a planet alone quite often has more than a hundred distinct varieties of culture on its own. One thing that could be assured, though, is that the Proletarian revolutionary spirit runs strong in the population.
Social Structure: Far reformed from its feudal origins through a series of bloody purges, the Tianju Dominion is basically an one-party state controlled by the Cygnus Communist Party. Its social structure is highly egalitarian with no discrimination, based on whatever reasons (except for being a member of the "ruling class" is allowed. Its economy, which is semi-planned (capitalism exists and is allowed, but workers/trade union members must manage corporation, and most large companies is state-owned/state capitalism), is characterized also by egalitarian principles.
Territorial Size: The Tianju Dominion holds sovereignity over about several hundred stars as an Imperial vassal, of which half exists within the Veil Nebula. Eighty-six planets exists within its territory; of which only about twenty are superhabitable (one Gaia-class and nineteen Beta-class); four Gamma, four Omega, and six Cheti; the reminder are either Iota, Yota, or Zeta classes. The amount of natural resources present and noticeable industrialization allowed for the presence of about twenty-five space stations, of which about twelve are fit for "usual" human habitation. Numerous planetary bases exist within many of the Dominion's planets; some temporary, some with permanent habitation. An Omega-class planet, Nova Kazania, has been transformed into a semi-ecumenopolis about a hundred years ago, and hosted a significant amount of the Dominion's population.
Military and Security Forces:
- Soviet Army: Non-conscription; volunteers undergo training for a minimal of 2.5 years before serving as Enlisted (Private). Training and equipment largely based on the Imperial Army, with several modifications to suit the needs of the Dominion better. Specialized regiments include synthetics, stealth/infiltration, cyberwarfare, and xenomorph. Active personnel of 498 million; reserve personnel of 800 Million
- Soviet Navy: Generally the same as the Army in doctrine and organization. Modelled after the Imperial Navy with several modifications to suit the needs of the Dominion better. Marines and the Navy are two most important branches. Active personnel of 12 million, reserve personnel of 30 million (half of which are Marine personnel, and the Navy mostly ground and maintenance crews); 52,940 small drone/fighter/patrol ships, 1 Supercarrier, 3 Cruisers, 12 frigates and 38 corvettes.
National and Character Anthem: Stand up, all victims of oppression!