Richard Orsino Ackermann-Sullivan

Richard Orsino Ackermann-Sullivan is the eldest child of Clotilde Ackermann, previously one of her lead staff officers and now a Rear Admiral in charge of one of the weakest and newest of the numbered fleets in the Republic.

Clotilde left him shortly after he was born, to be raised by his great-grandparents while she served with the Navy. He felt abandoned and resented his mother early on in life, for leaving him alone on Haven in the austere northern industrial city that defined his childhood. For the first ten years of his life he only saw her a few times- during holidays and a few bouts of mandatory vacationing here and there. His first experience living with her as a family came about when she married the famous Jardini poet emeritus Orsino Sullivan when he was eleven. For a brief time, the family traveled with her on postings from world to world and he was able to enjoy having a mother and father- not particularly bothered when his family became hyphened and his middle name was changed to honor his step-father.

Life was good, for a time. Having already had a pleasant if somewhat lonely childhood in the care of aging great-grandparents and a few great-aunties living with them and now suddenly the teenage son of a couple with two very young daughters, he found himself ignored and left to his own devices. Craving attention, he found himself engaging in all of his mother's worst habits: traveling out after curfews, philandering and going drinking with the other military youths. He even fathered a daughter at a young age, although he was not aware of it until much later on in life.

The fragile family life they had disintegrated when his step-father committed suicide, with his half-sisters sent off to boarding schools of their choosing while Clotilde dedicated herself fully to her work in the revanchist factions of the military and took a distant posting with the 7th. Eventually he joined the military and became a model officer, rather like his mother. Far less personable and adroit, he compensated to a degree by striving to fit in and align himself to the interests of the time rather than standing on principle and getting himself in trouble: an ardent revanchist and reformer in the company of his fellow 7th Fleet staff who nonetheless secured a political marriage to the young and charming Eutropia La'Reinnes, despite the objections of his mother and the disgust of his fellow officers.

His career hit a stumbling block with that decision, resulting in him being held at Sub-Commander for some time until the La'Reinnes intervened and had him made a Captain on his own mother's fleet staff. His work during the anti-pirate campaigns of that administration eventually saw him promoted out to Rear Admiral, in charge of a fleet of his own. Then, the political crisis began to strike Jardin one after the other, with the secession of the La'Viennes and the repeated coups and betrayals in the high command struck, leaving him in a most precarious position indeed...

• Virtue: A hard-working everyman.
• Vice: Possibly-Oedipal gloryhound.
• Rank: Rear Admiral
• Allies: Clotilde_E._Ackermann, the Ackermann Faction, the La'Reinnes (via his wife Eutropia)
• Enemies: I don't even know who's side I'm on.
• Goals: Good god. At this point, maybe just survive?
• Foreign Policy: In relations between two sovereign states, the exchange of violence is as much a part of the vocabulary as words themselves. Principle is a thing that is acted upon or halts action only in the most primordial of circumstances, when appearances are greater ends rather than means. We should not trust the Empire to respect our borders, or sovereignty or to uphold promises of friendship with our Republic even in these dark and terrible times. They will act in their own self-interest.
• Religion: I am not a brave man. Death scares me, and the unknowable that follows scares me more: I cannot lie to hide my fear nor will I put up the pretense of overcoming this fear. I go to church, I pray and I receive the sacred sacraments for the sole reason that I am afraid of death, and what follows. God? Angels? Souls? I do not know any of these to be real and scripture does little to soothe my mind.
• Class: In a democracy, men can be friends and equals. Wealth may create inequality and great wealth may threaten our democracy, but a fragile and transient freedom is better than the supposed stability of the Empire. There, men are masters and men are slaves and no true love or friendship can exist between them. Hierarchy casts a shadow over all relations, and is absolute.
• Economics: Our economy was once the envy of the Empire, despite its greater territory and military power. We all lived like the nobility, because our human wants and needs fueled a vast engine of finance and industry that made it so. A thousand years of war have sucked the marrow from our bones, and made us imagine ships instead of chaises, guns instead of gourmandises.

Skills:

Attributes and Skills

Attributes

IQ: 5

Wits: 5

Charm: 3

Cunning: 3

Durability: 5

Physical Action: 3

Skills

Horse Trading 2

Chummy: 1

Legal 4

Bureaucracy: 4

Legal: 1

Speech Giving: 1

Plotting 2

Ship Command

Helmsmen: 0

Gunnery: 0

Leadership: 0

Squadron Command

Maneuver: 4

Formation: 1

Command: 1

Fleet Command

Maneuver: 5

Formation: 2

Command: 2

Allies and Crew

Lieutenant Basina Araceli

Richard's now nineteen year-old daughter who serves aboard his flagship, whom he has been watching over in secret for most of her career due to a promise made to her now-deceased mother. A spirited young woman who unfortunately takes too much after his grandmother and has been aggressively climbing ranks as a junior Naval officer. Has had a few bad run-ins with the Revanchist Party Youth Brigades.