Marcus Ransom

Marcus Ransom, son of Pendragon Andrei Ransom, was himself reguarded as a hero in his own right. Though his life took a dramatically different path, he eventually stood beside his father and recieved the highest honor the Alliance can bestow: Favored of the Pendragon.

Early Life

Marcus was born in Arindell and raised in Stormwind Keep. He was an inquisitive child, who early-on showed a great aptness for the art of conversation. He was often able to converse at an adult level, which made him well-liked by his father's inner circle. Being the son of a Pendragon, he had close interactions with all of the Slayer Dragons, as well as many high-ranking members of the military and heads of state from all over the Alliance. Of particular note were the early relationships he forged with members of the Gudersnipe Foundation. These Foundation representatives(many of whom were hundreds of years old and graduates of Gudersnipe School) were impressed by this young boy's ability and his interest in the broader matters of the Multi-Verse. Due primarily to their interest in him, Marcus was granted free use of the GATE network and unlimited access to GSNet.

Later Life

When Marcus came of age, he began to travel, exploring the far-off corners of the verse. Eventually, he set off for a world called Altronis, which sat on the edge of Alliance-controlled space, but had not been visited in many eons. Altronis was formally a part of the Alliance, but had severed all ties during the Ninety-nine-years war, and had not been heard from since. It was far from well-traveled shipping routes and was cut off before the Foundation extended network of the GATE into Alliance territory. Marcus bartered for the use of a small FTL-capable ship from one of his old Foundation friends, and booked passage via freighter as close to Altronis as he could.

When Marcus arrived, he discovered the plant's atmosphere to be thick with pollution, and thought at first it's population had been wiped out by war. Upon attempting to land his ship, he suffered a catastrophic engine failure when his Ion vacuum drive inhaled radioactive isotopes and was irreperably damaged. Being the workhorse that it is, the ion-vacuum drive got him safely to the ground, but his ship would never fly again.

Exploring the world, Marcus discovered Altronis to indeed be populated, and in fact quite densely. The entire planet was under the control of a handful of mega-coprorations, and had no standing government to speak of. Instead, the companies simply ran everything as a corpocracy, with little thought or effort given to individual human rights. The average citizens lived short life spans, survived on inadequite food, and were largely little more than pawns of the societal elite.

Furious with this arrangement, Marcus first tried to signal for help. His ship's sublight engines were damaged beyond repair, but he still had nearly every other system intact(it is reported that the ship's only lavatory was also damage in the emergency landing). First, Marcus contacted his father, who offered to send rescue, but said there was nothing to be done for Altronis. The planet was soveriegn soil, and according to Alliance Law, the Alliance was not allowed to intervene in it's affairs. Further, they had not signed any of the much later treaties reguarding human rights and Alliance-wide laws. Altronis was one of the "grey area" planets: the Alliance could not intervene on behalf of the population.

Then, Marcus turned to his old friends in the Foundation. His request made it as far as the Blind Counsel, but unfortunately, the Foundation was also unable to intercede. As a soverign nation and member of the Alliance, Altronis could not be invaded without officially declaring war on the entire Alliance, a move the Foundation was simply not willing to make for obvious reasons. However, the Chorus was sympathetic to their plight, and promised the Foundation would practice it's standard brand of "non-interference".

Revolution

Backed by a crack team working out of Gudersnipe School, Marcus built up a resistance movement. His only help from the outside world came through his communications array; where experts on technology, espionage, and insurgency techniques helped Marcus build weapons and equipment to thwart the corpocracy. In particular was a system Marcus named "N-Dimensional Travel" with allowed his small band of rebels to move over vast distances while being completely untraceable.

Marcus used his ship as the heart of the operation, with it's power plant and computer systems helping him organize the rebellion all over the globe. With the Foundations help, the rebels were able to modify local computers and create a fully-independent communications network, one encrypted to such a degree that the local corporations simply did not have the technology to crack it.

The rebels sabotaged nearly every aspect of industrial operations, except for those vital to maintaining the food supply. Since the corporations lacked any kind of law to enforce, they were left with only "company policy" to which most citizens refused to subscribe after a given company had been blown up. One by one, the mega-corporations were broken apart or left in shambles, until the citizens gained enough independant power to organize democratic elections. Their first act was to appeal to the Alliance and Foundation for outside aid, a request that was immediately granted.

Altronis officially became an Alliance Member World and was made a part of joint-space. The Gudersnipe Foundation helped extensively rebuild the economy, as well as relocating nearly a third of the population to a new colony world in order to ease the strain on Altronis' already taxed ecosystem. Only after his work was done, Marcus agreed to return home to Arindell for a visit, where he stood beside his father. The Foundation would never formally admit to it's part in supporting the rebellion, and instead Marcus was praised as having single-handedly brought about the massive reforms. And, in truth, Marcus deserved the credit; none of it could have happened without his extraordinary character and strength of will.

Later Life

Marcus returned to Altronis and married Nicole Iaggi, a local, whom had been one of his lieutenants during the revolution. They had a son together named Nathan.