Player: Sulaco

Character Name: Capt. Agni Vasudev

Age: 23

Sex: Male

Species: Hybrid

Height/Weight: 5'10 / 190lbs

Social Status: UniClass

Physical Description:  
Average in height, yet possessing the well-rounded, lean, gymnastic build typical for a Minister. In movement, Agni's actions lean more towards feline fluidity and grace, quietly enforced by the strength packed into the rolling muscles gliding beneath his silky pelt. Unlike some UniClassers whose species blend can be identified at a glance, Agni is clearly the result of a far more complex ancestry which might prove impossible to discern through appearance alone. Close examination suggests an uncertain mixture of ring-tailed lemur, snow leopard, and Eastern dragon, yet this is all accented by hints of yet even more species. Even then he never really kept track of his full genetic makeup, instead preferring to shed all forms of vaguely purebred categorization to simply identify himself as a Hybrid.

Dominating most of his sleek pelt is a very light shade of grey, dotted with snow leopard-pattern spots along his outer thighs, hips, back, shoulders, and upper arms. Starting at his jaw and then covering down his chest, belly, inner arms, groin and inner thighs, is a softer coating of pure white fur. His digitigrade feet appear rather draconic, though are jointed similarly to primate feet, having opposable thumb-like digits capable of grasping and object manipulation, making him practically quadradextrous. Tipping the digits on both his feet and paws are a set of white, extremely sharp, semi-retractable claws. Both his paws and feet are white on their pads, while the rest of their surface is covered in dark red fur, which smoothly blends up his forearms and calves into the rest of his snowy coloration. Swaying behind him is his long, fluffy, grey-ringed tail, which, like an artist's freshly used paintbrush, ends in black fur tipped in dark red.

Agni's muzzle is dark grey in color, matched by similarly dark patches streaked from his eyes and down his cheeks, both of which have a snowflaking of white freckles on his cheeks. Also sharing this dark grey hue are his large ears, each of which are marked with a white crescent on their back. Contrasted against this is his mane of soft, fiery red headfur, the back portion of which is kept tied in a fluffy plume spraying out from the back of his head, while the headfur on the front half is allowed to loosely feather over his forehead and face. By most beauty standards Agni would be considered a fairly handsome young male, but behind all this, even in his most seemingly lighthearted moments, the grim, unblinking gaze of the Ministry, the calculating stare of a masterfully-conditioned killing machine, never truly leaves him.

Agni smokes one or two cigarettes a day, and can be sometimes seen with one held in the corner of his muzzle.


Utility Whites (pictured above):
Usually worn when in garrisson, training, or when off duty. Consists of an off-white leotard, fingerless training gloves, and a pair of leggings thinly padded on the shins and knees. When not engaged in physical training, Agni usually wears a cover on his head, marked with the encircled lightning bolt-sword typical for Ministry Marines. A name print on the left breast of his leotard simply reads: "VASUDEV". His Captain's rank insignia is displayed both on the collar of his leotard and on his service cap, if he's wearing it.

Marine WhiteGear:
While serving in active duty, Agni's figure is entirely covered in the predominantly white biomechanical armor of the Ministry's Marine Korps. Like any active Minister, his head is covered by a helm crafted to fit his skull, made up of several component pieces which can be removed individually while leaving other parts in place if need be. The face and muzzle plating holds the usual built-in gas mask, comm-set and vocoder, which transforms his normally soft voice into the harsh, androgynously mechanical growl of the Ministry. His feet are protected by a pair of gauntlets, allowing him full use of their grasping capabilities as well as their sharp claws. His hands are also mostly armored, with small, constricting slots at his fingertips to allow for use of his semi-retractable claws, and on the shoulderguards and over his left breastplate is the black imprint of the Ministry Marine Korps insignia, with a simple 'V' emblem below it denoting his unit. Slowly swaying behind him with a mind of its own, Agni's long tail is encased in a sleeve of armor, scaled with segmented plating on the top, and muscle-like nano-fabric underneath to complete his full-body protection protection. Beneath his WhiteGear, the only things worn on him are a pair of leggings and tight fingerless gloves, a pair of small, dark-grey polyamide sport briefs, and a snug-fitting vital signs-monitoring collar hooked up to his WhiteGear.

When activated, the IFF shield installed on Agni's WhiteGear might be noticeable in the form of occasional crackles or ripples of energy should rainwater or snow land upon it, and bathing his WhiteGear in a faintly amber haze that gives a liquid-rippling effect if ever struck by bullet-velocity projectiles. Experienced eyes could possibly identify Agni as an officer, due to the fact that he is armed primarily with a pistol and vibrosword, whereas the rest of his Ministers are more heavily armed.

As a sidenote, other WhiteGeared or otherwise HUD-equipped Ministry personnel will notice Agni's unit, name, and rank projected over him in their HUD. But like all Ministers, Agni carries a pair of attachable name and rank tags which he can clip onto his WhiteGear, in the unlikely event of a power loss or damage to the HUD.

Dress Whites:
For formal functions, Agni can be seen in Ministry full dress, which consists of white fabric accented by hints of grey, and black trimming. Covering his top is a high-collared, double-breasted coat lined with buttons at his neck, then down his chest and ending in a long rectangular loincloth-like flap which extends about to his knees. Over his heart is a set of various medals and ribbons detailing his wide range of campaigns, achievements, wounds, and so on. Abelt snugly is bound around the waist section of his coat. His leggings are similarly white, neatly tucked into a pair of grey buttoned spats which are worn over his footgloves. Topping his head is his service cap.

Worn at his side during such formal occasions is a scabbard holding his vibrosword.


Background:
According to Ministry records, Agni was born in the hybrid ghettoes of the feline Colony of Neo-Kambuja. When Colonial oppression against hybrid minorities increased after Einheit City's entry into the Species Wars, Agni's threatened community was one of those reached by Ministry rescue efforts. While Agni was brought onto one of the last overcrowded vessels amidst a storm of Neo-Kambujian artillery fire, it is assumed that his biological family were left behind or killed by the feline city-state's military before they could reach the ships. To date, Agni only has vague memories of those terrible nights in Neo-Kambuja, and does not eagerly bring it up in conversation.

While the Species Wars hammered at the city's walls, Agni, along with many other displaced young hybrids who showed high military potential, grew up in the Ministry's juvenille academy. Rather than being simply adopted by a traditional parent couple, it was decided that it would be more ideal for him and others like him to be raised by the Ministry in a manner which would instill a more martial mindset at an early age. Family became a word of ambiguous meaning to him as the distant memories of his biological parents were slowly replaced by academy instructors and squad leaders. Unnatural or even unsettling as this might sound to those bound to the chains of primitive instinct and undeveloped purebred thought, Agni never once felt wronged by the nature of his upbringing by the Ministry, and if asked about it today, would say that he was made better for it.

This jump-start of sorts into the Ministry's martial lifestyle made it possible for him to be recruited into the Ministry a few years earlier than the normal minimum age requirement, as a prerequisite for the Ministry sub-department he'd later be assigned to. Agni excelled in his basic training as his platoon's Guide and Honor Graduate, and was selected as one of the few graduates to advance as a Ministry officer candidate at Officer Training Batallion. After completing further training to secure his officer's commission, Agni continued on to his technical school training to serve in the Ministry's small, skyship-based Marine Korps. With the war still raging well into his mid teens, Agni's education and training was completed and the young hybrid was assigned as a junior officer to V-Unit, a Ministry Marine Korps platoon stationed on the skyship cruiser Ma'at. V-Unit's primary duty was that of any other marine unit; close combat, shock-troop tactics, and ship-to-ship warfare, which often entailed boarding and counter-boarding combat in order to capture enemy skyships, or prevent the Ma'at's capture by hostile boarding parties.

The extremely high-risk nature of the Ma'at's specialization coupled with a long streak of unfortunate coincidence made it one of the most dangerous duty stations in the Ministry, and considered somewhat of a cursed, misfit unit. More than a few brushes with death and several harrowing events over the course of his many missions while serving in V-Unit gave Agni firsthand experience with the Ma'at's grim reputation. While most of the Ministry was hugely successful in defending Einheit City over the course of its involvement in the final decades of the Species Wars, its already small, highly elite Marine Korps had some of the highest casualty rates due to the tremendously dangerous nature of its mission, and the Ma'at was seen as one of the most ill-fated postings of all.

This unfortunate pattern was put to the test in 26 ECE during the Battle of Rabashad Secundis against the canine empire of Yerushalem VI. In an attempt to weaken the Obsidian Throne's share of the siege upon Einheit City, the Ministry battleship Nidhöggr, accompanied by several fighter squadrons and two cruisers, the Thoth and the Ma'at, were swiftly dispatched to the Colony of Rabashad Secundis. The primary objective was the Colony's shipyard, which was a key staging point for Yerushalem VI's Imperial Armada. At that time, most of Yerushalem VI's fleet that wasn't laying siege to Einheit City was occupied with fighting the Feline Coalition colonies and fending off hordes of maurauding Kossaks and reptilian Turranic Raiders from its supply lines, hence resistance was expected to be only moderate, and the vastly superior speed of the Ministry skyships would ensure a rapid escape before enemy reinforcements could respond. No support from the Einheit Civil Militia's sky fleet was requested, since it was determined that their numerically superior yet older skyships would only slow down the Ministry ships.

Initially the operation went as planned with only light resistance from anti-aircraft installations and a few patrolling corvettes.. Until a large group of Yerushalem VI skyships de-cloaked from high altitude and released a storm of salvo fire and attack fighters above the ambushed Ministry group. The Nidhöggr's highly advanced armor and shielding was able to absorb most of the fire for a time, yet leading the ambush was one of Yerushalem VI's most dreaded vessels, The Emperor's Hammer, a sky-devouringly colossal Saarkin-Cho class dreadnaught which had terrorized the stratosphere for well over a century, and with an unbroken line of victories to its name. While a Ministry battleship's Architect-influenced hardware might have stood a chance in a one on one firefight with the Hammer, the vastly heavier dreadnaught was accompanied by tremendously superior numbers which the Ministry group could not hope to defeat, and attempting a retreat would have been similarly suicidal. The only hope for survival was a nearly mad one - destroy or capture The Emperor's Hammer

While the Ministry fighter aerodynes engaged the attacking Imperial fighters and the Nidhöggr unleashed Hel while drawing the brunt of enemy fire, the Thoth and Ma'at steamed forward to prepare for boarding. The Thoth, despite valiantly eliminating hundreds of enemy craft and shredding a path of stratospheric carnage in its final moments, was downed by several Imperial fighters kamakazi-crashing into it. Yet in its final moments as it fell flaming from the sky, the Thoth's crew succeeded in steering the doomed vessel enough to slam it into an enemy carrier during its descent, buying the remaining Ministry ships vital time.

The Ma'at's marines, V-Unit among them, succeeded in making contact with the enemy cruiser's hull and laser-sawing their way aboard. Furious resistance was met from the Hammer's own canine marines and crewmen, and the struggle to take the ship came at tremendous losses for the hybrids; Major Jennika Stronov, V-Unit's commanding Sturmführer, was among those many hybrids killed during the battle by a Yerushalemite Zweihander gunslinger-kommando. And so it was that 2nd Lt. Vasudev became Sturmführer. Despite the overwhelming odds in the skies over the burning city, the sheer cunning and co-ordination of the greatly outnumbered Ministry Marines granted them victory in capturing The Emperor's Hammer before it could destroy the Ministry air group, then turning its colossal guns upon its own accompanying ships and the Colony below, killing hundreds of thousands of canine civilians and military personnel in an apocalyptic hellstorm. Aside from securing the mission's objective of neutralizing Rabashad Secundis as a staging point for the Imperium Canidae, this act also captured a major piece of Colonial weaponry, which became a prized propaganda display for the besieged Einheit City.

For his key role in the battle, Agni, along with V-Unit's dropship pilot and his close friend, Eriksen, were personally congratulated and awarded a series of Einheit City's highest military decorations by Chancellor Kadesh herself.

Many battles later, Operation Boreas was ordered, bringing the Species Wars to an end. While the rest of the UniClass celebrated the closure to a centuries-old conflict which Einheit City was dragged into in the last few decades, Agni and the rest of V-Unit looked on in grim silence. Towards the final years of the Species Wars, the Ministry's Marine Korps suffered a roughly 65% casualty rate, with V-Unit being one of the few operating platoons, even with its own grevious losses. While V-Unit and the Ma'at conducted a few scattered post-war missions against ex-Colonial/Nightlander remnants, speculation in the Ministry's halls began to flow about the Ministry's Marine Korps being considered for disbanding and re-integration into the Ministry Legion.

In late 32 ECE, the Ma'at and V-Unit were ordered back to Einheit City to serve as a more local Quick Reaction Force, with the Ma'at to function as a mobile, aerial command post. Being so unaccustomed to cityside duty, the offensive, expeditionary-oriented Ministry Marines of V-Unit have encountered several obstacles relating to operating and living in Einheit City, to where there've even been murmurs of tension among the UniClass civilian government over the issue.

At present, the future for Agni, the Ma'at, and his V-Unit comrades is uncertain.

Personality:

Agni is nothing more than a cog in the state machine.. And he utterly loves it. Years of conditioning within the Ministry has shaped him from the wid-eyed, shivering, terrified orphan waif he was upon his rescue from his Colony, into Sturmführer Vasudev, the Weapon. The only family he knows is his platoon, and his best friend is his WhiteGear. The Ministry is what gives him meaning in life, and it's not hard at all to notice that when interacting with him.

Like many Ministers, Agni carries himself with grim reserve, his eyes perpetually searching his surroundings or present company with a piercingly knowing stare. Generally he keeps his words polite, yet there's a noticeable streak of aloofness, perhaps even cynicism in his personality after his recent string of operations. To some degree Agni has begun to see the UniClass as soft and oblivious to the dire state of the world and Einheit City, thus requiring the Ministry more than ever to guard from the dangers of dissent, religion, and corruption. This doesn't necessarily prevent him from having positive interaction with civilian UniClassers, but it is a stark contrast from his fellow Ministers, whom he feels are the only people he can truly relate to... Perhaps to a fault even; there have been a few recent instances where Agni had to be cautioned for his behaviour towards civilian UniClassers while off-duty. Although Agni tends to view UniClass corporations and civilian politicians with a critical, suspicious eye, he does nonetheless manage to stay formal and business-polite with them.

Even though Agni tends to relate to other Ministers more than he does regular UniClassers, there tends to be a part of him that remains slightly reserved. Ever since Operation Boreas and the end of the Ministry's major Nightlands combat operations, V-Unit has been kept on standby in Einheit City, with only a few uneventful Nightlands cruises. Due to the expeditionary nature of the Ministry's tiny Marine Korps, Agni has had some issues with adjusting to cityside duty and the limited-scale conflict of 4th generation warfare. The enthusiastic, outgoing propaganda poster boy he was a few years ago while still riding his Nightlands campaigns is long gone, now replaced by something more grimly reserved.

On the matter of purebreds, Agni has practically no regard for outer class life and has admitted frustration from time to time that they even still exist, to where his broadly genocidal worldview is extreme even by Ministry averages. This would be sickeningly obvious if one were to have access to his service record; during the Species Wars, V-Unit was responsible for several mass executions of purebreds, military and civilian alike, with Agni being instrumental in most of the massacres, and often exercising his... "Innovative" ways of extracting information from prisoners. Of course, the obvious exceptions to his disregard for purebreds would be the ones who are determined, ideal candidates for hybridization, whom he regards with a mixture of pity and sympathy, but will nonetheless eagerly protect if need be.


Misc Info:

- Agni was one of the of the Ministers seen in "Evacuating Volingrad", a very well known and iconic photograph taken during Einheit's involvement in Species Wars by UniClass war photographer Anastasia Yezhov. The photograph depicts a Ministry drop ship rescuing hybrid refugees near the border of the purebred Colony of Volingrad, while under heavy attack. Agni is one of the Ministers visible in the foreground, using himself as a shield to protect a pair of hybrid children while returning fire, despite being obviously wounded. Due to his physical features being obscured by his Ministry armor, Agni is not visually identifiable in the photograph, though he is identified as the Minister in the publicly-accessible caption information about the photograph.

- Much like his role in the evacuation of Volingrad, Agni's vital role in the Battle of Rabashad Secundis and the capture of The Emperor's Hammer wouldn't be known to absolutely everyone, but anyone who's studied Species Wars history would have run across his name in articles about the battle, or perhaps in lists of Hero Of The People medal recipients.

Weapons & Equipment:

Shimago Motors XV-2 – Civilian vehicle. A small two-door sedan-sized sports aerodyne. Lightly armored, and has standard security features.

Marine WhiteGear (Ministry duty only) – Semi-powered biomechanical armor standard for Ministry marines, somewhere between Medium and Heavy levels of WhiteGear.

IFF Generator (Ministry duty only) – A small generator built into his WhiteGear. Provides a kinetic energy shield capable of deflecting small arms fire and bladed attacks. However like all bodily force fields, it renders firearm use impossible when it is activated, hence Agni's primary weapon being the Panzerfang vibrosword. The IFF generator itself is encased in a faraday cage, as a measure against EMP attacks.

Monoedge Combat Knife – Monomolecular-edged blade. Always carried.

Panzerfang Vibrosword (Ministry duty only) - Standard Ministry Marine blade; curved, monomolecular-edged melee weapon capable of cutting through even heavy armor when correctly used.

Holtzman Pistol - A heavy, selective-fire machine pistol. Fires 7mm sabots of depleted karidium, which detonate in a foreward blast shortly after impact. Always carried on duty, sometimes off duty.