OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Further flesh out the Shadow Knights. This character will also serve as a frenemy, foil and possible antagonist to Kaida and her group.
Image Credit: Here. 'The Warden' by Shamiana. Found on deviantart.com.
Role: Revolutionary understudy, organ grinder, lethal bureaucrat.
Permission: N/A.
Links: Kaida Taldir, Eldorai, Qadiri, Vashyada, Sciiac Guardians, To Hell and Back, Kar'zun, Eldorai Exodus, Twin Exiles, Xioquo, Siobhan, Firemane, The Angelii, Kaeshana, Emissaries of Illyria, Chapter of the Black Trade, Starstriders.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Age: 86. Eldorai develop and age at a slower pace than the average human, so she is in fact young for her species.
Force Sensitivity: Non-Force-User
Species: Eldorai.
Appearance: Eldorai female of below average height for her species. Her face has a prominent scar, running across her left cheek to her lips. Has hazel eye and the usual Eldorai pointed ears. Her face is framed by red hair that reaches to her shoulders. Her left arm was left permanently injured in childhood. Thus it is shorter than her right arm and lacking in flexibility. This is probably the result of being hit, at the age of twenty-one, by a passing speeder. In terms of attire, Stylena prioritises practicality over fashionability, preferring practical boots or flat shoes to painful high heels. She likes wearing scarfs. Her garments are meant to last and thus do not make use of extravagant fabrics.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Name: Stylena. Born Alesia Pathyra.
Titles: Magister of the Court of Providence, Responsible Secretary of the Committee of Rationalist Security.
Loyalties: Eldorai, Court of Providence, Blades of Reason, Shadow Knights, Cadera Naeyra.
Wealth: Ostensibly low, but she has managed to sequester a large amount of 'extraordinary funds' to be held in 'trust' for her usage for 'security matters'. She is smart enough to invest most of it rather than waste it all on expensive items for herself, as the Shadow Knights have a strong case of Tall Poppy Syndrome and frown upon over displays of wealth. The money is useful when she needs to purchase or secure someone's loyalty. Plenty of people appreciate luxury articles such as Corellian brandy, cigarras, jewellry and foreign holomovies.
Notable Possessions:
- Copy of 'The ABC of Rationalism'.
- Copy of her article 'Rationalism or Slavery'.
- A piano.
- Collection of her poems.
- Adjudicator pistol.
- X7-B Checkmate Holdout Disruptor
- Fluent (reading/writing and speaking) Eldarai (High and Common), Galactic Basic. Her Basic has a strong Eldarai accent. Can speak Huttese.
- Bureaucratic administration and personnel management.
- Pleasant singing voice. Prefers singing church music, gifted pianist. Talent for mimicry.
- Skilled in spycraft, small arms and explosives due to long time in the underground.
- Stylena is a well-learned autodidact and always seeks more information.
- Gardening
“This one believed once, now they believe in nothing but progress. Efficiency and progress are hard masters, and might she not be consumed by the machine she has created?” - Brak'Vrasz.
"You know, they are fooling us, there is no Goddess. If the Goddess existed, she'd have made a more just world."
"Kaeshana was ceaselessly beaten for her backwardness. She was beaten by the corsairs; she was beaten by the Firemane capitalists; she was beaten by the Imperialists; she was beaten by all - for her backwardness. For her military backwardness, for her cultural backwardness, for her political backwardness, for her industrial backwardness. Such is the law of the exploiter - to beat the backward and the weak. It is the jungle law of the galaxy. You are backward, you are weak - hence you can be beaten and enslaved.
Now she is a dead world. Her children are scattered. We are the only ones who have thrown off the twin yoke of royalism and imperialism. But our ships are old; our resources few; our people fractious. We are fifty or a hundred years behind. Can this backwardness be overcome? Citizens, it must be overcome. We must ceaselessly struggle. Either we succeed or we go under."
- Stylena
Stylena is a strong believer in the power of violence to attain political and personal goals. Years spent in the underground have shaped her into a harsh, vindictive and ruthless woman. She pursues her objectives with single-minded zeal. The violence she metes out is far from mindless though. Her faith in it does not stem from madness or sadism, but a ruthless political calculus combined with an extreme suspicion of her fellow beings. Stylena is a highly organised, indefatigable woman with a strong work ethic. She is capable of working extraordinarily long hours - sixteen hours a day.
Even her detractors admit that she works like a horse. Although she avoids doing so in public, in private she uses coarse language. She is not a good orator. Her speaking style is simple and clear, without flights of fancy, catchy phrases or platform histrionics. But her speeches are not memorable. However, her lack of showiness and down-to-earth language can make her seem more trustworthy, especially among lower class people who have good reason to be suspicious of pretentious intellectuals using fancy phrases.
Stylena's mannerisms are often coarse and she has been described as rude. But she can be very charming in a rough way. She is what is generally called a people person, able to charm, flatter and intimidate. She is rather good at imitating others' voices, which she sometimes uses for comedic effect. Her years in the underground have followed her to build up quite a following and she is very good at reading other persons' intentions. At social functions, she is a good hostess. She also makes a big effort to ensure that her supporters have good accommodations, access to resources and so on. These traits mask a vindictive, suspicious spirit. The underworld of revolutionary politics Stylena experienced as a younger woman - a world of secrecy, intolerance, conspiratorial intrigue and glamourised violence - meshes well with her own ambitions and talent for intrigue.
In her youth Stylena was supposed to become a priestess. It is quite accurate to say that while you can take the seminaran out of the seminary, you cannot take the seminary out of the seminarian. At least in her case. In a way she is a Rationalist fanatic. She may be an atheist, but she is hardly a secular leader in the conventional sense. Indeed she once compared the Blades of Reason to a military-religious order of sword-bearers. They must die and kill for their rationalist faith in the inevitable betterment of the Eldorai race, making sacrifices with a fervour equal to that of the religious slaughters and martyrdoms that were performed in the name of the Goddess Ashira. She despises the Church, but divides the world in Good and Evil, Light and Dark, just like its believers do.
Rather than otherworldly rewards, her creed promises progress and - eventually - perfection on earth. She calls it science, but in many ways it is the mirror image of the orthodoxy of her childhood. To her, a devout acolyte of Rationalism is characterised by iron discipline and faithful observance of all the party's rituals. As Stylena is fond of boasting, 'we Rationalists are people of a special cut'. But despite her radical beliefs, she does not lose sight of her own personal advancement.
Despite being such a radical, Stylena still has conservative views on a number of issues. For example, she's opposed to interspecies relationships between Eldorai and non-Eldorai. By contrast, she supports equal male rights, though she is a bit patronising about it. Her relationship with Taegan Faewarin, Cadera's emancipated, politically active husband, is very poor and the two loathe each other. Stylena is married and has a 'matriarchal' attitude at home, expecting her husband Naeral Adlana to defer to her. This has been the cause of marital quarrels. Stylena has a daughter called Sorisana and has adopted a Forsaken orphan named Lyrandrar. When she was due to give birth, she walked to the hospital to show Rationalist modesty. Typically in conservative Eldorai society, the husband would take care of the children, but Naeral wants to pursue a professional career. This is not unusual, as the Blades expect male members to work. So the children are mostly being raised by a malee nanny.
Stylena is no scientist, but a proponent of using the power of science and technology to improve the lives of sentient beings. While conservative Eldorai disdain droids and cybernetics, seeing both as perversions, she supports use of them. She once wrote a holojournal article attacking the hypocrisy of conservative clerics who urged young Eldorai to fight for the motherland, but then branded them as unclean if they used mechanical protheses to replace limbs they had lost in combat.
The Magister can be a rather attentive boss. She has a habit of going to the apartment of every senior subordinate. She comes bearing gifts, checks the heating and reads bedtime stories to their children. But she is also vindictive and blunt about the fact that a revolution goes hand in hand with bloodshed.
Stylena is still fond of singing the Ashiran hymns of her youth. She has a pleasant singing voice. She also takes pleasure in cultivating roses and mimosas. She's also a voracious reader of literature and an avid holofilm buff. Stylena is loyal to her chief, Cadera Naerys, but extremely ambitious. She has a strong rivalry with Trokana, an important Rationalist military commander. Trokana is light-years ahead of her rival in oratory and eloquence and a superior soldier, but also shamelessly vain and a less savvy politican. She is also Force-Sensitive, which fuels Stylena's jealousy.
COMBAT INFORMATION
Weapon of Choice: Small arms, explosives, minions. Always carries a concealed holdout blaster.
Combat Function: Stylena is a rear echelon figure, not a frontline fighter. The years she's spent in the underworld have made her skilled in the use of guns, vibroblades and explosives. However, her damaged left arm poses a notable handicap in combat. It also reduces her dexterity. Being an Eldorai she's more agile than a human and has excellent senses, but she is also less strong and has a lower pain threshold. Sensitive hearing is an advantage because she can pick up on noises others might miss, but also leaves her more vulnerable to high-pitch frequencies such as those emitted by sonic weapons.
Strengths:
- Eldorai racial strengths. More agile than a human and has excellent senses.
- Underworld figure. Experience in using guns, subterfuge and disguises. Fights dirty.
- Not a warrior. Stylena has some paramilitary training and plenty of experience as a bank robber and bandit, but she largely occupies a bureaucratic role.
- Damaged left arm poses a handicap in combat and reduces her dexterity.
Stylena was born in a remote border province of Kaeshana. Being born in the rural south-western settler colonies placed to watch over the Kar’zun reservations, Stylena grew up poor. Her mother was a common soldier, while her father was a washerman. Growing up in poverty, Stylena felt a near-constant need to prove herself. She was often bullied by other children. Her mother, embittered by her forced retirement after sustaining a leg injury and what she considered to be unfair treatment by her superiors due to her low class origins, was an alcoholic and often beat her daughter to discipline her.
Stylena grew up bitter and resentful. Her father was a religious man and motivated her to pursue a career as a priestess. For someone with her low class background, this was one way to rise out of poverty. The Angelii would have been an option if Stylena had been a Force-sensitive. So Stylena was sent away from her home town to study in the provincial capital. There she was enrolled at the spiritual seminary. It probably helped that one of her mother former comrades had joined the clergy. She was also ennabled by a rare scholarship that allowed her to study at a reduced rate. Here she joined a couple hundred trainee priestesses who boarded at the seminary. Stylena was academically succesful and gained high grades. She also wrote poetry. Five of her poems were published under a pseudonyme in a local newspaper. Thematically, they concerned themselves with topics such as nature, land and patriotism.
However, as she grew older, Stylena lost interest in her studies; her grades dropped and she was repeatedly confined to a cell as punishment for her rebellious behaviour. Her teachers complained that she'd declared herself an atheist, chatted in class and refused to show priestesses the appropriate respect. Attempts to teach her discipline only seemed to make her more rebellious. Stylena joined a forbidden book club while at school. This exposed her to heretical literature that had been banned by the government. One of them was the pro-revolutionary novel 'What Is To Be Done'. This book had been called a handbook for social radicalism, for it promoted the ideas of the Green Ribbons, a militant egalitarian movement. She was also influenced by the renowned scientist and scholar Galliena Gallia, who had been imprisoned and burnt at the stake after proclaiming the heretical belief that planets other than Kaeshana held intelligent life.
She also read the writings of the renowned biologist Charae Darwai, who'd claimed that Eldorai and humans shared common traits and origins, and the banned scriptures of Arryn, a heretical preacher who'd postulated that Ashira had both a divine and a mortal nature. At night, Stylena attended secret workers' meetings, getting in touch with 'Dark Eldorai' revolutionaries who advocated the violent overthrow of the regime, though they differed on what kind of system should replace it. Her disdain for the authorities, especially the church and nobility, intensified. Stylena displayed courage when the town was attacked by slavers.
She helped shepherd fellow students to safety. Confronted by slavers, she was severely beaten and sustained scars that would stay with her for life, but saved by the arrival of the militia and regular soldiers. However, her secret activities did not remain unknown and she dropped out, though the school encouraged her to come back. Doing odd jobs, she devoted herself to becoming a professional revolutionary. For a while, she found employment as as a weatherwoman at the meteorological observatory of the provincial capital. Attracting a group of young women around her, she organised secret meetings of workers and peasants. The security police was aware of her subversive activities and attempted to arrest her, but she was canny and managed to elude them, living off donations from friends.
Remaining underground, she helped organise a demonstration, which turned into a bloody riot. She continued to evade arrest by using aliases and disguises. Her path led her to the New Green Ribbons rebel movement. Her militant rhetoric made some rebellious peasants believe she was an agent provocateur, but she gained notoriety by organising a public demonstration that led to a bloody riot and the storming of the local prison in a rural town. The militia opened fire on the demonstrators, killing more than a dozen of them. Stylena had made the final step to becoming a militant. She and her supporters armed herself with weapons stolen from the armoury.
Unrest had spread across the remote provinces of Kaeshana, as the New Green Ribbons rose up in revolt. Labelling the Star Queen an unjust tyrant, they declared that she must be overthrown in the name of the Goddess Ashira. Significantly, their leader was a royal pretender. For she claimed to be Aspasia, a scion of the Evora branch of the royal family, which had been ousted by Tirathana VI. In truth she was probably an army deserter and a demagogue. The usurper promised an end to oppressive taxation, freedom from exploitative nobles and 'forgiveness for all previous crimes'. Peasants would no longer toil the land for a lady or pay tithes to a corrupt Church. Every woman would reap what she had sown, from the highest lady to the lowest gutter rat. It is doubtful that Stylena believed that the pretender was of royal blood - or cared. Indeed she was already spouting republican rhetoric in those days. However, she sympathised with their social agenda.
The uprising was a brutal one. The pretender's make-believe utopia was played out against a backdrop of blood and terror. Her faux royal decrees unleashed a frenzy of hatred. Peasants rose in revolt, butchering the matriarchs, their families and hated tax collectors. Brigands, who claimed to be affiliated with whichever faction was ascendant, attacked travellers and raided settlements. The retaliation of the government troops was just as brutal. Even Stylena was shocked by how vicious the fighting was, but she soon embraced it. In these dark days, she made a name for herself as a political agitator, a bank robber and a guerilla fighter.
Amid the orgy of violence, she formed battle squads of partisans. They disarmed local police and troops, raided government arsenals, ambushed convoys and raised money through protection rackets on local businesses and mines and by expropriating landowners. They also performed a peacekeeping function in territories held by the rebels. When sectarian violence broke out, her battle squads stepped in. They launched attacks on pro-government troops, participating in a number of raids.During the course of the uprising, Stylena was involved in the capture and execution of Fausta Cadalthor, an Angelii and a scion of the powerful ducal house of Cadalthor, which had aroused the people's ire when Mylea Cadalthor brutally suppressed a peasant uprising caused by her oppressive taxation policies.
Ironically, Fausta had been one of the nicest members of the house. The revolt had taken the nobles by surprise, who'd dismissed it as banditry. But when the villa was sacked, Fausta was captured while heroically protecting her sister, who managed to flee. The matriarch of House Cadalthor refused to pay a ransom. Mylea tried to contact the rebels in secret to arrange an exchange and kill them after her sister was safe. However, the rebel leader had Fausta executed instead. Acting on Stylena's advice, every rebel lieutenant had to stab the corpse one by one to ensure their loyalty through the knowledge that the royalists would not spare any of them.
However, ultimately the rebellion was crushed. Whether Stylena participated in the final battle is uncertain, but she went underground shortly thereafter. However, she was betrayed and arrested. Stylena claims that she was tortured and beaten during her incarceration. This is very likely, though some detractors claim that she got preferential treatment in prison by agreeing to become a police informant. Regardless, she learned some skills that would serve her well in the future. She became well-versed in interrogation, retribution and denunciation. Many of the instructions she would issue to her minions years later were based on the practices of her own interrogators and wardens or were derived from her observations of prisoner psychology. She proved herself apt at discerning which prisoners were stool pigeons, traitors or double agents.
She made an escape attempt by digging a tunnel beneath her cell, but was captured and sent to a prison with tighter security measures. Attempts by the prison chaplain to make her see the light did not work out. Stylena was finally set free when Queen Silaqui III declared an amnesty for all but the most serious political criminals. This was a gesture of good will towards the Omega Protectorate, of which Kaeshana had become a member state, that was supposed to prove her credentials as an 'enlightend despot'. Many of those set free by this decree did give up their revolutionary aspirations or went into exile, where they tended to spend a lot of time debating in the cafes of Fondor and Corellia instead of actually doing stuff.
However, Stylena was not one of them, though she had been barred from politics and exiled to a remote corner of Kaeshana. Her stay in prison had only radicalised her even further. She had come to the conclusion that Ashira was a fraud. One of her cellmates happened to be a radical member of a group called the Blades of Reason and helped the young radical get in touch with them. The Blades were an atheistic, antiaristocratic and anticlerical secret society that stood in opposition to the Church and the Monarchy. While it embraced members of all social classes, it was dominated by soldiers and intellectuals. It propagated atheism, scientific advancement, land reform, nationalisation of big businesses and a republican form of government. Influenced by non-Eldorai viewpoints, the Blades rejected the idea that the Force is a Goddess-given gift. Stylena agreed with many of their principles, but stood out due to her low class origins. Many of the Blades were intellectuals, more accustomed to debate than action. While not a good speaker, Stylena spoke the language of the common Eldorai. Her militancy disconcerted several of the Blades, some of whom suspected she might be an agent provocateur employed by the 'Investigators of Ashira's Truth'.
However, Stylena soon resumed her career as a political agitator. While not charismatic, she was a good organiser, setting up cells for the Blades in various towns and organising the distribution of propaganda materiel. To raise funds, she organised the robbing of a large delivery of aurodium to the Royal Bank. Her gang ambushed the convoy with gunfire and home-made explosives. Several people were killed, but she and her gang escaped. After the heist, several Blades confronted Stylena and expelled her from the group, which had disavowed violence after Anya Venari took the crown as Star Queen Tirathana VII. Indeed, one of her comrades denounced her to the police.
The new sovereign was known to be a liberal, open-minded woman who wanted to modernise Kaeshana and put an end to religious persecution. Some of the radicals believed they could achieve their aims through peaceful means by working within the system. Disgusted, Stylena took no notice of the expulsion. Taking control of a local chapter of the Blades, she became the editor of a forbidden holojournal. She assembled a new gang, which attacked Ashiran militants and raised finances by running protection rackets and carrying out robberies.
The more pacific Blades were disgusted by her actions, but she found an ally in Aravae Elsatra, a former army officer who'd studied at the Protectorate's military academy on Fondor and been exposed to foreign ideas there. Unlike Stylena, Aravae was born into a middle class family. Her mother had even been ennobled, though a series of poor business decisions caused them to lose a good deal of their wealth. However, Aravae was a political radical who believed in decisive action. More of a theoretical thinker than Stylena, the two found common ground, although Stylena resented Aravae's patronising attitude. Taking control over the Blades' leadership committee in what can only been described as a coup after exposing her predecessor as a government spy, Aravae pushed them towards a radical direction. Stylena had to leave Kaeshana for a bit and go into exile because the security forces were hot on her heels. Indeed she barely eluded them. For a while she served as a conduit between Aravae and the Eldorai exiles community. She grew close to Cadera Naerya, an influential leader among the exiled Rationalists, who'd aided Aravae's coup.
Stylena returned during the Netherworld Event, which sent the Galaxy spiralling into chaos. Kaeshana exploded in paroxysms of violence. Countless people vanished into the Netherworld, religious fanatics declared that the end of days was at hand and that therefore the only way to avert hellfire was to regain Ashira's favour by purging the unbelievers and 'human monkeighs'. Nonbelievers were targeted by militants and the surviving Blades responded with violent action. The security forcess were caught in the middle, trying to impose order and keep the Matriarchy from descending into chaos. Suffice to say the radical militant got plenty of opportunities to occupy herself with illegal activities. Stylena took advantage of these violent upheavals, though she was injured during a shootout with Firemane soldiers while directing a raid on one of their arsenals. Aravae ended up killed during the crisis. Some suspected foul play, though the Blades declared that she had died heroically.
Stylena was one of the few senior Blades who remained out of prison on Kaeshana after a government crackdown forced most of their leadership to go into exile. For a while this made her the de facto leader of the Kaeshana branches, though her authoritarian, coarse mannerisms won her many enemies. Her few attempts at public speaking went extremely poorly since she lacked the charisma to excite a crowd. She was better at direct action and at organising things behind the scenes. Cadera returned from exile and became the Rationalists' new leader. Stylena had come under fire for her methods, but Cadera protected her and made her member of the Committee of Rationalist Security. Stylena was not regarded as a leader by her peers, but as an energetic troubleshooter who ensure the orders of the executive were carried out. This worked to her advantage because others tended to underestimate her. She maintained contact with distant cells, distributed funds and weapons and acquired influence over cadre management.
However, she grew frustrated with the Blades' lack of progress. After all the disruptions, most Eldorai wanted peace and stability, not revolutions. Moreover, the 'Dark Eldorai' were a terribly fractious bunch united mostly by opposition to the status quo rather than a coherent political programme. Some wanted a monarchy under a different queen, others an Ashiran or Illyrian theocracy, others a military junta or some form of republic. Some wanted to topple the government, others believed it was more worthwhile and realistic to seek out a new home in the stars. Amidst all this, Stylena found time for love, starting a relationship with a younger Eldorai male Naeral Adlana. He was the son of an Eldorai revolutionary who had mentored her. Exposed to revolutionary ideology early in his youth, Naeral was a bit of an activist himself.
Then the Cataclysm changed everything. A massive asteroid collided with Kaeshana. Some religious fanatics saw it as Ashira's punishment for straying from the old ways and consorting with foreign devils. Having been forewarned, the Eldorai and Firemane made a colossal effort to save as many Eldorai as possible. Firemane's warships were able to drastically reduce the asteroid in size. This mitigated the destruction caused by it. The vast majority of Eldorai were able to flee Kaeshana and settle on Tygara before the cataclysm. However, some had to be left behind. They were forced to eke out an existence in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The Shadow Knights arose out of the ashes, dedicated to protecting the 'Forsaken'. Feeling embittered towards the now Tygara-based Eldorai Matriarchy, they reached out towards rebel groups such as the Blades. Thus the Blades became part of the revolutionary bloc the Shadows strove to build. Members of the group took up arms as soldiers of the Shadows during the failed Kaeshana Rebellion. Stylena sensed an opportunity to gain influence. It may be a bit baffling given her past deeds, but she presented herself as a moderate who strove to build consensus among the Eldorai. The hardliners among them were disgruntled about allying with the Shadows, whose leader made it clear that freedom of religion would be enshrined in their constitution. Her rudeness antagonised idealistic exodites who had returned to Kaeshana to help their people. Stylena had no time for exiled intellectuals, defected royalists and exodites who had grown up outside of Kaeshana and made no secret of her antipathy for them.
Stylena became a troubleshooter, helping the Shadows acquire supplies to feed the dwindling population and try to rebuild Kaeshana's shattered infrastruture. She proved herself a skilled, albeit ruthless organiser. She worked closely with the Vaecali, a punitive, deterrent and intelligence organisation set up by the Shadow Knights. Her influence in organisational affairs and cadres in the Rationalist movement grew. She took advantage of this to set up her own patronage network, favouring women and men with blotched escutcheons because it made them dependent on her.
Around this time, Stylena and Naeral got married. The marriage was a simple affair without ceremony. Given the circumstances, there was not much of a honeymoon, since work soon called Stylena away. She was affectionate to her husband, but had a 'matriarchal' attitude at home. For a while Naeral worked as her secretary, but not wanting to be dependent on his wife and mindful of accusations of nepotism, he arranged a transfer to Cadera's office. Ironically, Stylena disapproved, despite officially supporting gender equality.
She also developed a rivalry with Trokana, one of Cadera's lieutenants. Trokana had been a late convert to the Blades of Reason, but made a name for herself as a capable officer and inspiring speaker. To make a name for herself and gain much needed supplies, Stylena went back to her criminal roots and organised a pirate gang, which carried out raids on foreign ships. This proved controversial, as while it produced short-term gains, it probably made outsiders more reluctant to provide aid for the Forsaken. Her raiders behaved in such a crass manner that some were court-martialled for corruption and Stylena was forced to yield control. To add insult to injury, Trokana was put in charge instead. In keeping with the Shadows' belief on responsibility, Stylena was punished for not keeping her minions under control. She did not forget this slight. She was able to redeem herself a bit when she played a leading role in unmasking infiltrators Archangel had inserted into the group. The Shadow Knights backed the Galactic Alliance and the Tygaran Alliance during the Kaeshana Rebellion, but were forced to leave the planet after Alliance forces withdrew and the First Order assumed control.
Stylena went with them. Her contempt for the Eldorai Matriarchy and its allies grew, for she regarded the retreat as a betrayal. However, she rose in rank, joining the Shadow Knight leadership when she was given a post in the Provisional Government. She was put in charge of the department responsible for supply, labour and economic security. Stylena was obviously no economist, but she had gained a reputation as an effective troubleshooter who could get things done. She also had smuggler contacts that could be useful. Moreover, the Rationalists wanted an energic representative who could be relied upon to push the agenda.
When the Shadows introduced a corporatist structure, her commissariat was reorganised into the Court of Providence, responsible for managing and representing the interests of manufacturers, agri-farmers and the like. She also become Responsible Secretary of the Committe for Rationalist Security, sitting on several key bureaus. Stylena is accruing power step by step, always mindful of presenting herself as a loyal student of Cadera, the 'mountain eagle of the Rationalist Revolution'. Time will tell whether she will be able to rise even further or her ambition will turn out to be her undoing.
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