Martias and the Angel

The story of Martias and the Angel may only be around 100 years old but it is an important and defining one for the Celestine Ascendancy. An epic and true story of love, conflict and revolution it explains the history of the Ascendancy and how The Glisal Guardians came into being.

The Celestine Ascendancy

At the end of the 40 Year Empire War, the Celestines, like Song, were devastated. They were exhausted physically and economically and lacked the will to prevent what quickly became a corporate takeover of their civilization. Within three decades of the end of the war, the Celestines were effectively ruled by a cabal of competing keiretsu - allied groups of large companies with interlocking relationships and shareholdings. The century that followed saw these keiretsu, some of whom were rumored to have ties to Syndicate Space (in particular the massive Wayland Astrotech), embarked on a development binge on Glisal II, the capital of the Celestines, and ruthlessly plundered its environment of resources, destroying it.

Though always a wealthy area, much of the Singing Citadel's more outsized testaments to personal glory and wealth were constructed during this period to house the executives of the companies that make up these keiretsu. An increasingly large portion of the Ascendancy's wealth was filtering upwards to these already fantastically-wealthy individuals, while the populations of Scrapston and the near-anarchic Subnet swelled.

By ~880 A.E., when the Angel of Scrapston made her first known appearance, the disparity in wealth in the Celestine Ascendancy had become truly acute. The middle class had all but disappeared, and life for most people was scratching out an existence in whatever short-term low-paying jobs they could find while the sky palaces of the masters of finance and production loomed over them.

We need to back up some to tell that story, however.

Love

In the year 874 A.E., there was a young male [[Nusrizan]n Special Forces squad commander in the Song military named Martias Arrarax. He was a highly-dedicated young star in the special forces, and was married to a young, gentle, and brilliant Nusrizan social scientist named Kimera Santuren, who specialized in applying theories of plasma dynamics to the behavior of large groups of people. They'd been deeply in love since they were barely adults and had been married only 18 months. Kimera was absolutely devoted to Martias and maintained few other friendships, preferring to spend her non-work time in the apartment they shared together with or without him. She was well-liked by most, but was distant, and didn't spend energy on deepening her relationships with anyone but Martias.

As Martias' well-deserved reputation for efficient ruthlessness grew, he was quickly promoted, and was one of the youngest-ever made a Lt. Colonel. He cut a dashing figure and was deemed worthy of media coverage by the then-Lord Commander, a Decheeran named Tangadon. He frequently appeared on the commsphere in interviews, holovids, even in virtual pornography. He reveled in this exposure, and in his reputation as a balls-to-the-walls operator who struck fear in the hearts of those who may be on the receiving end of his gaze.

Kimera, however, grew despondent. The laughing, tender-but-strong man she'd fallen in love with was slipping away from her and turning into a monster. She tried everything to get through to him. She sweetly asked if there could have been a way to accomplish his latest mission with fewer civilian casualties, all the way up to the emotional ladder to sobbing and screaming at him in despair.

One of her research assistants, a female Amaian named Tasa Stromos, on a project looking to calculate what cultural inputs are required to effect a range of results given a known initial state, noticed that Kimera wasn't herself, and offered to buy her a root wine. Kimera rarely socialized but felt as if she no longer had anyone to talk to, so accepted. Over a root wine, and then another, they talked. They smoked a little leesa - the dried skins of tiny grubs favored by the Nusriza - and talked some more, well into the night.

Subsequently, they would occasionally go out together again, with colleagues or without. Slowly, the walls Kimera kept around her began to come down, and her conversations with Tasa became more than conversations, and they fell in love.

Kimera blossomed. It was the first time in her adult life that she'd felt like this for anyone but Martias, and it awakened a side of her personality she hadn't known existed. Suddenly, this shy, retiring scientist was out learning to pilot a personal starfighter, was learning Ir-Vothiam, the traditional martial art of the Jin, was going spearfishing on Delphi with Tasa and her Amaian siblings, and was going to salons full of the most interesting people who exposed her to ideas that were subversive and filled her with excitement. She felt as if she had found a part of herself she'd never known but had nevertheless lost and was now recovering.

Most of all though, she had Tasa. She had thought she had known what love was with Martias, but this surpassed in depth and passion anything she had felt before.

But, while this is the modern age, and while relationships between any combination of genders are unremarkable, love, commitment, and betrayal are universal concepts.

Flight

During the Beckian Uprising in 876 A.E., Martias was on a mission to crush a major cell of these terrorists. They'd embedded themselves in a large living complex in Song City, surrounded by sympathetic locals, and rather than risk his troops, to whom Martias was loyal to a fault, he decided to simply destroy the entire complex with explosives. That was the complex where Tasa lived, and she died in its fiery collapse.

Seeing Martias in the holovids, standing heroically in front of the building where the lover who had been the key that unlocked who she had become had died, at his hands, caused something in her to crack. When Martias came home after his debriefing, she was angrier than he'd ever seen her. She raged at him, throwing himself at him in a desperate attempt to stab him with a vibroknife, but he was a trained warrior and she wasn't.

He disarmed her, but her sorrow-driven fury didn't abate. He did his best to understand why she was so angry about this - yes, many people who had committed no crime had died, but this was hardly the first time he put mission results and the safety of his soldiers first and foremost. Why was she so upset this time?

Eventually, he grew fed up with her weeping and had her committed to the care of a psychiatric hospital where, he hoped, she would recover in a matter of a few days. Of course, she didn't, because Kimera felt as if everything that represented this new life she'd found had been ripped away from her by this....hateful murderer. And why was he there in the first place? Who had given the Order? The Song Dominion had killed her lover just as surely as Martias had.

Kimera knew that Martias wouldn't easily relinquish what he deemed his, and so she formed a plan. She didn't let her despair and anger wane, and so was kept at the psychiatric facility for days, then weeks, then months, and finally, she'd been there for fourteen months. Martias would come to visit her, but she had nothing but bitterness for him, and as time went on, his visits became less and less frequent. On the rare occasions he took to think about why Kimera was so scornful towards him, he failed to comprehend the truth, for how could he know? He had plenty of opportunity for female company given his fame, and he took advantage of those opportunities.

The hospital she had been committed to - the Enero Home for Healing - was built on a high cliff next to a small river (constructed, of course, as everything in Song City is) whose non-potable water was upstream from a wastewater processing plant.

One afternoon, in late 878 A.E., she had been wheeled out onto a balcony by a staff member, to take in the air and the view. Accustomed to her apparent depression-induced passivity, the staff wasn't closely watching her, and she suddenly leapt out of her chair, sprinted to the short fence at the edge of the balcony, scaled it, and flung herself over into the river.

Enero staff immediately scrambled a response team and alerted Song security. Together they searched the river banks for her body, but it was never found. It was assumed it had been dragged by the current into the wastewater treatment plan and ground up in the first stage debris grinder that rendered any large objects in the water small enough to pose no threat to the machinery further inside.

Martias was told of her death, and it would be unfair to say he shed no tears for her, but they were the tears of a man briefly grieving for a part of his life that was already in the past.

Of course, Kimera wasn't dead, at all. Contrary to her carefully-crated appearance, Kimera was not an invalid, laid low by her grief. What had been raw, hot pain had been transformed by the hammer of time into cold, purposeful anger. Being the wife of rising star Martias Arrarax had its perks, and the staff at the Enero home was more amenable to her requests than they were to ordinary clients. She had charmed a nurse and convinced him to pass a message to the outside, to one of Tasa's sisters with whom they'd spearfished - Saytia Stromos.

She asked Saytia to do three things for her: get her a micro rebreather, leave a stash of clothing hidden for her, and buy an open-ended, password-protected transport ticket attributed to a fake identity. After several weeks and a hefty bribe, Saytia was able to do so. Between the excellent swimming skills Kimera had developed with her Amaian lover and the micro rebreather she had been able to conceal, she survived the river and was able to exit it just before the treatment plant. From there, she found her nearby cache of clothing, quickly changed, and quickly made her way to Song City's space port. She acquired her ticket using the password she'd given Saytia and boarded a transport for the Y'saari Covenant's Alpha Station, near their Voidgate, at the northern edge of their territory.

There, she disembarked and entered the spaceport. While the Y'saari rarely permit outsiders to enter the vast majority of their territory, Alpha Station is a major trading hub and as it's largely unregulated by the Y'saari, provided the visitors and denizens don't disrupt Y'saari business, there's a significant underworld, which Kimera made contact with. She was able to pay smugglers to get her into the Celestine Ascendancy unnoticed, as she feared either being detained as a suspicious Song citizen trying to enter the Ascendancy or being identified and that information getting back to Martias.

She went to Litharge, the capital of Glisal II, the capital planet of the Celestine Ascendancy, and disappeared into the rowdy chaos of Scrapston, safe from Martias and free to move on with her life, unencumbered.

Survival

Since Kimera was legally dead, she had no Mark account, and if she had used it, Martias may have discovered she was still alive, and come looking for what he would still consider his. However, like many places with a population that included a significant number of individuals who didn't want to be tracked, an informal black-market economy had arisen, using physical chits that could be converted into Marks deposited to their account for 80% value by those specializing in money laundering.

Kimera had no plan now, other than survival, and she quickly found that was harder than anticipated. Scrapston was a hard place. Perhaps not as difficult to survive in as the Subnet, but not a pleasant place for Nusrizan woman with no resources and no on-planet friends.

She slept in dark corners initially, fending off advances by inebriated men of more races than she cared to count. She got a job working one of the small skiffs that plied the canals of Scrapston and earned enough to move into group housing with others who worked the skiffs and rafts. They were six to a room, but it was better than the streets.

She couldn't help but notice that all the wealth in Celestine society seemed to flow upwards, and sometimes she would sit and watch the pleasure yachts float back and forth above her, wondering if the wealthy and powerful on them ever looked down as those in Scrapston looked up.

Organizer

One day, two years or so after coming to Scrapston, a fire started in the poorly-maintained lift of the apartments she lived in, and they burned. Nobody died, but the landlord that owned the building was so wholly unconcerned at what could have been a major disaster for the inhabitants that she found herself in a loud and angry conversation about what to do to the landlord in retribution. She talked the group down, knowing that revenge would lead to security forces like those that Martias led in the Song Dominion coming and inflicting far more damage on them. The wealthy do not appreciate the poor standing up for themselves, and never have.

Instead, employing her deep knowledge of social dynamics, she convinced them to form a renter's association, hire a small-time lawyer, and sue the landlord. This would never have worked had their small complex been owned by one of the megacorps on Glisal II, but this was an independent landlord with a small business in a bad part of town. He was a bully and was used to his residents meekly falling in line. Once threatened with coordinated, if rudimentary, legal action, he folded and brought his apartments up to code.

Kimera was elated! While she'd nominally led research assistants in her job as a social scientist, this was the first time she'd -fought- for something and won. She'd made these peoples' lives better and safer, and she loved it.

She began to seek out more opportunities to help the downtrodden, wearing a disguise of a cloak, deep hood, mask across her eyes, and voice modulator. She worked by organizing and motivating those who had cause to work together to actually do so, against a common foe. She helped small groups of workers bargain for better wages. She worked to get resources for schools for the local children. She organized clean-up days so the environment they lived in wasn't so filthy and depressing. Slowly, she became a local celebrity in her trademark cloak.

She was able to hide her activities from her roommates for over a year, but soon enough the five others she lived with in their single-room apartment got suspicious and pressed her one evening about why where she went when she wasn't at work or at home. She confessed and as she was already a bit of a hero in their eyes for helping them force their landlord to make necessary repairs to the building they lived in, they felt as if they'd known all along, so much sense did it make.

the Guardians of Scrapston

They said they wanted to help Kimera, and so the six of them formed what they jokingly, at first, called the Scrapston Guardians. Along with Kimera Santuren, there was:

Acoh Phi - a male W'hoorn.

Udu Yaagah - a female Shen.

Bemmorr Stass - a male Tukkav.

Rein Friso - a male Nath-el, Inka's brother.

Inka Femke - a female Nath-el, Rein's sister.

Individually, together, and in groups, the six of them began organizing the residents of Scrapston to make their lives and the environment around them better. For a time, it went fine. Kimera stayed masked, while the others, who were natives, did their work in the open. As the months went on, others joined the Guardians, and it swelled into a local movement.

The Guardians soon attracted the attention of the security forces of some of the small corporations poor enough to have to locate in Scrapston. The executives of these companies did not look upon the work the Guardians were doing with favor, for they were the power in Scrapston (and indeed, corporations effectively ruled all of Glisal barring the Subnet) and an organized populace could challenge their monopolies, ridiculous prices, and extortionate loans.

Conflict

The security forces of two of the corps - Northfarer Inc and Liu Shipping Consolidated - broke up an organized neighborhood cleaning day with clubs and sonic disruptors, and in the process, Rein Friso suffered internal injuries. The Guardians tried to get him to a local hospital, but the corporate security forces surrounded it and blocked them entering. Rein bled out while Inka held him in her arms, crying.

Many of the Guardians wanted to go to guns at that point, but Kimera refused, saying that that would be playing into the hands of the corporations. Instead, she and the Guardians ramped up their activities. Kimera began giving speeches in the streets, calling the residents of Scrapston to band together with them for their own welfare as well as that of their children. Their budding legend grew, as did the Angel of Scrapston's.

Inka, however, had other plans. Her brother had been slain, unprovoked, by Northfarer and Liu Shipping. She and some hot-headed extremists in the Guardians retaliated by blowing up the residences of a Director of each company and were caught on surveillance scouting the area ahead of time.

Northfarer, Liu Shipping, and several other local corps had now had enough, and Kimera's objections that the Guardians completely disavowed these actions failed to be persuasive to them. They captured Inka and dozens of other Guardians, whether involved or not, and executed them on the spot. The Guardians were furious, enraged, and were ready to light the world on fire.

Kimera was devastated. This wasn't what she had wanted. She had just wanted to make peoples' lives better, but this had gone all wrong. She tried to figure out what compromise she could have made, or how the Guardians had done wrong, and saw nothing.

She examined the situation from every angle, through the lens of her social scientist brain. She saw the corps that ruled Scrapston. She looked beyond it and saw the megacorps that dominated the parts of Litharge that mattered, and the rest of Glisal II. She ran scenario after scenario and in the end saw no choice. Things had gone too far - to retreat would be to be eliminated. She would do what she must.

She gathered Acoh, Udu, Bemmorr, and several others in secret, and together they plotted a revolution.

The Glisal Guardians

The Scrapston Guardians renamed themselves to the Glisal Guardians - the name change reflecting their new ambitions - and set about executing on those plans. Spies were infiltrated, alliances were made, weapons and supplies were carefully gathered in storehouses around Litharge.

When it began, it began, the whole planet took notice. The Guardians hacked into one of the major commsphere streams and broadcast an open challenge to the world. The Angel appeared on screen, hooded and masked as always, and said to the world,

"For too long, your corporate masters have ground you beneath their gilded heels. For too long, the fate of the Celestine Ascendancy has been in the hands of these merchants of suffering. They have thrown you the rotted scraps from their exalted tables, telling you to be content with your lot, that you deserve your lot, while they deserve theirs.

We are the Glisal Guardians. We are going to snap the chains that hold you down, and together we will bring the corporate world to their collective knees. No longer will we serve them. It is time for them to serve all of us. It's time to rise up and fight for what is ours!

Even now, we move among you. Watch for our signal. You will know it when you see it. Be ready, be vigilant!

Join us, my friends. Join us, and together we will topple the pedestals they have put themselves on and drive them into submission!"

With that, the Guardians cut the hacked stream off.

For a week, it was all people could talk about. The legend of the Angel of Scrapston had passed well-beyond Scrapston itself and she had instantly become one of the most famous figures on the planet, though her identity was still unknown to all but the highest-ranking members of the Guardians. When would the sign come? What would the sign look like? Many of the impoverished masses eagerly awaited it and declared their intent to join with the Guardians. Some of these were made examples of by corporate security forces, but this only served to turn sentiment more and more towards the Guardians and against the corporate world.

The Angel's Revolution

And then it came. In a single night, the Guardians assassinated Directors of 23 different corporations, sparing no keiretsu. They also blew up the Corporate Justice Building in the Raphite Towers after sending a credible warning that anyone still there at the wee hours of the night should vacate, in order to minimize casualties, and destroyed specific power substations, depriving many of the security forces of the largest corporations of power.

The symbolism was too obvious - the Corporate Justice Building was a massive building that housed a special legal system that any individual suing a corporation would go through. It was paid for by the corporations and was blatantly biased towards them. It was an object of derision at best and disgust at worst by the general populace. Its destruction was clearly the symbol they had been promised.

Crowds began to gather, and Guardians began to appear with weapons. Blaster pistols, laser rifles, plasmacasters, grenades, and so on. Kimera, Acoh, Udu, and Bemmorr each led major groups, but there were over two dozen groups of heavily-armed civilians led by Guardians.

They stormed towards various well-protected corporate HQs, and as they got closer, they encountered resistance. They took casualties, but they outnumbered the security forces, who were loath to start mowing down such large crowds of civilians. Their commanding officers might not have been, but to the ordinary soldiers, these people were the people they grew up with. They didn't hob-nob with the corporate elite. These were their people.

Now, Kimera played her trump card. While the upper ranks of the security forces were taken care of too well by their masters to consider rebelling, the lower ranks were treated poorly, and were often resentful about it. The security forces promised a good career, but once you signed up for your standard seven-year commitment, you found their promises didn't mean much. They were ripe for plucking by the Guardians, and many were turned. Many of those who were turned then convinced their comrades in the forces to join them.

All at once, the security forces that the Guardians had compromised focused their weapons on any who hadn't signed up, ordering them to drop their weapons or declare allegiance to the revolution and join them.

Together, the civilians and well-armed security forces, who counted B.E.A.S.T.s, engineers armed with drones, and even some nanoseers and furies among them, took the corporate HQs while news drones hovered, filming all of it and broadcasting it across the Ascendancy.

The corporations were now in a panic. Wholesale mutiny was not a scenario they'd contemplated or ever experienced, and they suddenly saw that their hold on power was more tenuous than they'd imagined.

The Lord Commander and the Corporate Council

Since Kimera had (as far as he knew) died, Martias Arrarax's star had continued to rise, and in 880 A.E. he used his fame and influence to successfully challenge for the Lord Commandership. Martias was now unquestioned leader of the Song Dominion and under he chose to prioritize an economic buildup that would eventually buy them enough of a fleet to perhaps expand Song territory.

When representatives of the Celestine Corporate Council reached out in 882 A.E. proposing an alliance of mutual benefit, Martias smiled. They played it casually, but he could read between the lines. His spies in the Song had been sending him updates on the Glisal Guardians, and he was mildly curious about the Angel, but his main interest was in the desperate situation the corporations suddenly found themselves in. They still controlled enormous resources, though the revolution on Glisal threatened to grow even further, imperiling that control as well.

What the Corporate Council proposed was a trade of Song military power to suppress this "trifling" rebellion in return for certain concessions on resource-rich planets on the edges of Celestine territory. Martias replied, allowing that he could certainly consider helping them in their time of need, but that the price was going to be oh, just a little bit more substantial than what they had offered.

The Council quailed, but seeing no other immediate option, they raised their offer, including guaranteed processed good shipments over the next 10 years and granting permission for the Song to establish exclusive tax-free trade zones near major spaceports on the worlds of Benu Wen, Kovalar, Jerzah, and Uycheon III, all racial homeworlds, for the W'hoorn, Shen, Nath-el, and Tukkav, respectively.

Martias considered, and replied, saying that this was a very generous offer, but he had other priorities right now and couldn't really afford to reroute them to the Glisal II. Perhaps if they inquired again in a couple of months?

The Council knew they were being taken advantage of, but their desperation gave them no choice. They offered all of the above, with the addition of a giant, outright payment of Marks.

Martias cordially accepted and sent in the special forces he had been a part of, then commanded. For the first time since the Empire War ended 150 years before, ships of the Song Dominion entered the heart of Celestine space. As orbital bombardment was not an option to begin with, Martias ordered the special forces he'd been a part of and then commanded in to battle the Guardians and their civilian army.

Squads of Dominion B.E.A.S.T.s, nanoseers, furies, and general assault troops stormed into Litharge, and began to hunt down Guardians and civilians, often indiscriminately. At first, the people of Glisal II didn't believe the news - the hated Song in their capital, murdering Celestine citizens? The corporate-owned news streams showed none of this, of course, but cameras are ubiquitous and it's easy to broadcast into the commsphere, so the news, filled with horrifying scenes, quickly spread across the planet and the entire Celestine Ascendancy.

The Corporate Council had gravely miscalculated. This wasn't the class of people whose ancestors had ever died in the Empire War, though this was the class of people who would gladly issue viciously anti-Song propaganda when it served their interests to whip the populace up into a xenophobic frenzy. Indeed, the elite of the Song and the Celestines occasionally even hobnobbed together at exclusive resorts in The Diamond Belt.

The Angel Ascendant

The ordinary people of the Celestine Ascendancy absolutely loathed Song. Time had not healed the immense cultural wounds that resulted from the crippling Empire War, and the long cold war since, punctuated by occasional small flare-ups. To see them on Glisal II, in Litharge itself, was too much.

The revolution spread across Glisal II and onto many other planets within the Ascendancy, and what military hadn't already joined now joined. The Ascendancy was on fire, and it was all Kimera could do to keep that flame focused, lest the passion and rage of the citizenry tear down their entire social order. That it was her ex (perhaps technically current) husband leading the assault did not phase her but added an extra layer of urgency to her need for victory.

Tomes have been written about the insurgent tactics the Guardians used, but those stories are for elsewhere. In the end, Kimera, the Guardians, and their allies defeated the special forces sent in by the Song, expelled them from their territory, and tore down the corporate order forever. Henceforth, corporations would be tools to be used to advance the interests of the people of the Ascendancy, not untouchable masters of the world.

Martias suffered one of the first and only defeats of his life and did not plan to let these Glisal Guardians and their Angel renege on the deal the Celestines under the Corporate Council had made with him, and escape retribution for daring to fight back.

Angel was scheduled to give a great victory speech before thousands of people, and she was nervous. She planned to unmask herself that evening, in front of the entire Ascendancy, feeling that with their victory, it was time to be one of the people, not a symbol in a hood and mask. She was also going lay out her vision for a new Ascendancy, of the people and by the people.

As she stepped up to the podium that evening, she gazed out on a crowd of half a million people, with billions more watching via commsphere. She couldn't believe how far she'd come and what they'd accomplished together. Her heart swelled as she thought of Tasa, and how her love had been the key that unlocked her potential. She missed Tasa terribly, and it was with her memory at the forefront of her mind that she slowly removed her mask and hood.

The Revenge of Martias

Martias, watching on the commsphere, gasped. Kimera! How? He quickly saw what had happened. That bitch had left him, and all those who knew him knew he'd been abandoned by her now. Worse, this turncoat harpy had led an army against his troops and defeated them. The cold hand of vengeance gripped his heart and he sent the order to sleeper agents he'd previously infiltrated into Litharge, armed with long-range personal railguns. Moments later, as Kimera was just beginning her speech, he watched with satisfaction as her head exploded.

The crowd screamed and panicked, Martias smiled in satisfaction, and hundreds died in the subsequent stampede to escape. The people of the Ascendancy were beside themselves with rage, and when the assassins were caught, they were forced to spill the secret of whom they worked for, which they eventually begged to do. They were then summarily executed.

For the People

The surviving three co-founders of the Guardians - Acoh Phi, Udu Yaagah, and Bemmorr Stass - quickly established a new form of government for the Ascendancy. The Glisal Guardians would be dissolved or subsumed into this new, popularly-elected government. The people would elect representatives called, appropriately, Guardians, and these Guardians would then select, among themselves, one of their number to function as the Guardian Prime. While the Guardians have a range of powers within the Celestine Ascendancy, and the Guardian Prime has all of them, the GP is also able to assign various functions to whomever, whether they be Guardians or others, in order to assist them.

Elections were immediately held, and unsurprisingly, Acoh Phi, Udu Yaagah, and Bemmorr Stass were elected, along with two others, as the initial Guardians of the Celestine Ascendancy, and Udu Yaagah was chosen by them as the first Guardian Prime.

Udu, with counsel from the Guardians, nationalized nearly all of the corporations, shut some down, merged some, and then distributed the shares across the Celestine Ascendancy. Those families who had lost soldiers in the revolution received extra, but even former corporate overlords received their shares, which they accepted with no small amount of bitterness. Over time, of course, shares would trade hands, with some exiting their positions and others accumulating, but the ownership was so widespread now that the corporations were unlikely to be dominated by the few.

Although the use of Song troops by the Corporate Council was arguably the act that kicked off this new war, the assassination of the Angel of Scrapston, Kimera Santuren, founder of the Glisal Guardians, and savior of the Ascendancy, was the more immediate catalyst.

Udu, the first Guardian Prime of the Celestine Ascendancy, declared war on the Song Dominion, and thus began the third of the Empire Wars, known as The Litharge War (though of course most of the fighting took place in space, not in Litharge, which only saw action in the first incursion by Song troops to help the Corporate Council).

The Guardians of the Celestine Ascendancy today are:

Guardian Envoy / Guardian Prime - Clover Moonchild - A Human woman.

Guardian General - Lupisentia - A Shen Woman.<br/

Guardian Executive - Zoe Qaln - A Jin Woman.

Previous Guardians include:
Grek (Guardian Executive and Guardian Prime) - A Nath-el woman.
Shardclaw Dragonlord (Guardian General and then Guardian Executive) - A Ry'nari man.
Necerursh Osai (Guardian General) - A W'hoorn man.
Ata Aurazi (Guardian General and Guardian Prime) - A Shen man.

Kimera Santuren, the Angel of Scrapston, is considered the greatest hero of the Celestine Ascendancy today, and to have fought, or to have had a parent or grandparent fight in the Angel's Revolution, is something some never tire of telling tales of.

Epilogue

Even while prosecuting the Litharge War, Martias also devoted some resources to his legend. He had been embarrassed by what had happened, and felt his reputation was tarnished. Knowing that the story of his relationship with Kimera was going to get out anyway, he got ahead of it and his people released the story of their relationship, which of course painted Kimera as his unfaithful spouse who conspired with others to leave the planet, go to the Ascendancy, and incite a war against the Song.

Therefore, it was no surprise to anyone when Saytia, Tasa's sister who had procured the rebreather and other items needed by Kimera to escape, was charged with conspiracy against the state, as she was the nurse responsible for Kimera that fateful day, and the (former) director of the Enero Home. All of their families' assets were confiscated, and the individuals charged were sentenced to life mining Danalian redsalt with no trial, for the Lord Commander judged them guilty.

Martias Arrarax soon regained his former popularity as the people of the Song rallied behind him to fight the hated Celestines.

Martias was Lord Commander from 880 A.E. until he was assassinated while sleeping by a Fatar shapeshifter in 908 A.E.