If there was ever a man born for his job it was Van Morgan, he was a natural motivator and had a keen eye to spot a person’s ability and their thresholds.
He was a risk taker, he loved the thrill of life but most of all loved service.
Naturally he joined the armed forces as soon as he was allowed, he was an exemplary student, he studied hard and trained even harder, he motivated his peers and drove his team from within.
He served through 3 campaigns, each very successful with Van’s unit the best of the Special Forces, they survived through the extremes of the elements and pain thresholds of the charts.
Unfortunately for Van though, he was captured on a solo mission of this last campaign and during his capture he was tortured to give up information, as Van’s team were so heavily motivated by this man they refused to let him suffer at the hands of the enemy and planned a magnificent rescue, one that Van would be proud of. They managed to rescue Van and destroy all of his captors but not before they had removed one of Van’s legs, 2 fingers and one of his eyes.
The military though didn’t want to lose Van and he didn’t wish to retire so they placed him where his guidance and experience could reap the most benefit, Van was made a drill sergeant.
Van was the meanest looking drill sergeant in history, two fingers missing on his right hand (the trigger and the bird), an eye patch (he refused the painful ocular implants) and a cybernetic leg.
But he was a natural, he could see the good in people.
One of his fondest students was what you would commonly call a clutz, young Private McNeil would get himself into such a tangle with things, but he’d try so hard, Van had a soft spot for him.
Van gave him a nickname, he called him ‘Wrench’ and private McNeil was told it was because he was tougher than tough nuts but really Van called him that because he was as dumb as a wrench but a useful tool. He told ‘Wrench’ to go to the motor pool for his chance at service, so ‘Wrench did just that.
She always knew how things worked, it was like she could communicate with machines and troubleshoot any issue that arose.
She had no formal training it was pure instinct.
Jammie started life as in the shadow of her mother, a pinup model for the autonautical industry and Jammie was to follow in her footsteps but growing up around all that machinery instead of the normal kids toys her mind developed in a way like no other, it was like being able to speak a different language, machine language.
At age 6 Jammie was already repairing discarded machines that people thought were ruined beyond repair, Jammie just had this innate ability to analyse the issue and rectify it. She didn’t understand how to build things from scratch but would analyse a constructed machine and be able to understand how it worked together.
This is the only education that she had so it was natural for her to seek out a future away from society but where she could use her skills to keep her alive.
Being the engineer on a pirate vessel was the perfect role, nobody would question her judgement and she would be the most valuable resource on the ship.
Jammie would spend her entire adult life on the oceans serving several captains, her favourite of which was X-Beard (ten beard), he was a Scottish descendent of the Picts, a natural warrior with a strong sense of family. X-Beard became the most feared pirate in the European seas after he plundered ‘the Starters’ unsinkable vessel and beheaded 4 of the gang, he kept the quirky engineer as she had a loyalty to the machine and not the captain which he knew was a priceless commodity and would make a perfect addition to his crew.
The boy that played in the rain, a true Francanamese named young boy, became a pirate.
He dominated the seas in his stealth boat, he was the most feared pirate in the European waters, as his vessel was mad entirely from plastic and had non reflective matte paint it was nearly impossible to spot and when running in silent mode on the Dyson bladeless propulsion system it would travel swiftly and silently across the seas targeting unknowing cruise ships and bulk container tranports, these were easy prey as they had no human controllers.
Michel had a band of 5, no more and no less.
Michel (the Captain)
Bunk (his cabin boy)
Chef (the galley man)
Artill (the weapons expert)
Jammie (the engineer)
They called themselves ‘the Starters’
If he had a choice, he’d have the old France back, the one he heard tales of that had been passed down from generation to generation, in his mind they needed a new revolution but his people had such low population numbers due to centuries of ‘breed out’ performed that it meant that the French were really a people that no longer existed, gone the way of the New Zealanders and the Australians, now known only as Indonesia.
Dmitri knew nothing of the world though as all he knew was the ways of the French aristocracy, he longed to be a simple baker in a Francanamese Bread Shop selling pork rolls but his conscience wouldn’t allow him, he was French after all.
He performed the only task that he could to keep the French legacy alive, to train these ‘invaders’ in the ways of the French aristocracy, which in itself was tarnished as it hadn’t progressed or developed at all in over 400 years.
Dmitri was a bitter person and his job didn’t help, he could see he was trading away his history but his patriotism to the greater nation and the fact that he couldn’t get any other employment meant he had no choice.
He remembered the young boy from his neighbourhood Michel Truong and how he used to play in the rain, Dmitri was never allowed in the rain.
Dmitri would often find himself envious of Michel but then his inner pride would take back control of his emotions.
Dmitri decided that he would not place this burden upon another soul and decided to have himself sterilised so that he could bare no offspring.
Upon Dmitri’s passing the authorities sent a sample and a request off to Jairo’s facility in Brazil.
Dmitri was reborn.
His legacy lives on.
Back in the year 2222 the then French nation decided that it needed a more significant place in the Asian market. To try to set this up they looked at several possibilities but eventual fell upon Vietnam as there were strong ties to their past and a good history between the two nations. Over the next 20 years they developed the first ‘Marriage of Nations’ on Earth, this is where the two economies merged, the Franc and the Dong became the new currency called ‘the Francong’ and the nation became known as Francanam and the people as the Francanamese. These changes were also implemented into the French Provinces of Quebec and New Caledonia. Francanam had become an instant player in the world economy, they had the power and prestige of the French combined with the dogged tenacity of the Vietnamese. The existing French aristocracy always thought that they’d have dominance over their ‘lesser’ countrymen but after the first 150 years they would see themselves reduced to less than 5% of the population. The aristocrats couldn’t breed like their Vietnamese brothers and became the absolute minority. They only place they still controlled to a certain degree was the diplomat roles as they were more readily accepted by other Europeans, but this too change in the next few decades, the Vietnamese language had gone the way of Latin and French was the dominant tongue.
Mathilde was born and raised with the ultimate goal of being the Francanamese Ambassador to the US, she was multi-lingual (as all diplomats needed to be) and was schooled in Paris, from the age of 6 she was schooled in the ways of the office, her mind was based on strategy and bullshit, the two key factors of any diplomat.
Her etiquette teacher (a descendent of the French aristocracy), Dmitri (from Paris himself) taught her the correct manner for all things from high tea to military nous, she had to learn to carry herself like a true Frenchman with, poise, arrogance and a disdain for anything that didn’t better the proud nation(s) of Francanam.
She nailed it and the Francanamese nation maintained a strong footing in the most complex nation on Earth.
