Dramatis personae of Astral Frontier
(Blah, blah, using character designs from other videogames as visual aids so people can get a sense of what the characters look like.)
Bertrand Herrera
The founder and CEO of Herrera Futuristics, Bertrand Herrera is a good man with a good hard and a desire to see humanity grow and develop in new ways, even after Second Impact. Inspired by the resolve the citizens of the LS Colonies and their determination to rebuild after the battles against the Irgelions nearly destroyed their homes, he set out to make sure his then-budding company would give back to humanity in general.
Though he is a weapons developer, Herrera invests heavily in helping deep space exploration and in fact hand-picked Julia to be the company mascot due to his belief that, if mankind were to grow and step out into the frontier of the galaxy and beyond, it needed to see enemies of the past could still live and coexist with them. Julia, as an Irgelion, could do just that.
He currently is married to Elizabeth Shun and has two children, Kyle and Rachel.
(Bertrand Herrera with his wife Elizabeth)
Herbert Phillips
The vice president of the Gaia Vanguard-producing firm Danconias Phillips, Phillips himself appears to be a fairly average man. Friendly around people he's familiar with, shy otherwise, he seems very much to play second fiddle to Fransisco in every way and merely wants to see his company thrive in the cut-throat world that is weapons development.
This is a lie.
In reality, Phillips is a deeply troubled man, and extremely xenophobic. Terrified by the multitude of alien lifeforms that all attack Earth for various reasons, Phillips would like nothing more than to wipe them all off the planet, have humanity dig in its heels, and never go into space lest we draw even more attention to ourselves. He is a low-ranking member of the organization Thaumata, founded during the first days of humanity encountering hostile life forms and dedicated to the survival of humanity above all else.
The Irgelion attack was the best of days for Thaumata, where they were at their most powerful, legitimate, and influential. However, in the years since the organization has been on the decline, led astray, as Phillips sees it, by the mismanagement of the Inner Circle of Thaumata, the founders who are now nothing more than weak old men who lack the vision or direction necessary to revive the crumbling organization.
Phillips, however, believes he has both, and the drive to see it happen for the good of humanity...
(Phillips)
Bairoft Giryilel
In the past, Bairoft was the youngest ace pilot of the Irgelion armada that came to the Earth Sphere, racking up a massive number of kills in his personal Talleth. However, the conflict came to an end with the surrender of the Irgelions, in spite of his best efforts. He is one of the few Talleth pilots to remain in the Earth Sphere, most of them instead opting for the long way back home, and he had hoped to initially mount a resistance and destroy humanity in an act of vengeance. Much to his horror though, Bairoft found that most, if not all of his former comrades only wished to assimilate into human culture and try to start living their lives again.
Currently, Bairoft lives a double-life. Unlike other Irgelions, Bairoft's human identity (Kenneth Dasshel) is not synonymous with his Irgelion identity. Kenneth Dasshel is just a pencil-pusher in a dead end job, often calling in sick and making nothing for himself. Bairoft Giryilel, however, is a scourge of the outer colonies as a space pirate, waging a war on human/Irgelion relations. Surprisingly, in spite of their xenophobic stance, Thaumata no only secretly supports Bairoft, but Bairoft is a member of the organization. He is the ever-present alien threat they need, the counter-example to Reilev Kidoreaon and the possibility that Irgelions can live with humans. They also provided Bairoft with a special glove which uses low-voltage electrical discharges to suppress the muscles in his right hand. This allows Bairoft to rapidly pick up numerous skills at once, removing the flaws in Irgelion muscle memory while reinforcing their strengths.
... However, in spite of it all, Bairoft is very much a shell-shocked man. As he's realized, there are not enough Irgelions in the Earth Sphere left to maintain the population for more than maybe two or three generation and humans and Irgelions cannot sire offspring together. Coexistence, in his eyes, is pointless. Likewise, he expects that soon enough, all memory of him will be forgotten by Planet Irgel. As such, Bairoft has resolved to become immortalized the only way he can: not through offspring and not through his fellow Irgelions, but by becoming an enemy of humanity, killing as many of them as possible and die in such a way that he knows he will never be forgotten by the people he hates.
Julia and he have an unusual rivalry that predates their first encounter on the battlefield. While Bairoft hates Julia for calling out for a futile coexistence between the races, Julia hates Bairoft for killing so many people and not letting go of a war. Their animosity only grows on the battlefield, each of them wishing to bring an end to the other.
After his first defeat at the hands of Julia and the Corona, Bairoft begins using the Alexandria, a next-gen Gaia Vanguard that mimics the Corona. Following its near-destruction, Bairoft rebuilds its entire body using recovered Irgelion technology, transforming it into the Great Wall.
(Bairoft following the acquisition of his muscle memory-inhibiting glove)
Christine Diaman
Following Julia's "exile" from Herrera Futuristics and in fact it being quietly bought out by Danconias Phillips, a new mascot was needed for it. Eventually after tryouts were completed, Phillips selected Christine as Julia's replacement. Similar to Julia, Christine is very earnest about being a mascot and representing an ideal, however for her, the ideal itself is less important as simply representing something. In this way, Christine is a foil for Julia.
Christine also positively hates Julia herself due to Julia continuing to fight and use the Corona. Unable to understand Julia still wants to help support the idea of deep space travel, Christine sees Julia as just an immature girl who can't accept that she's not in the limelight anymore and she, Christine, is. Shortly after meeting and getting off on the wrong foot with Julia, Christine's loose lips (read: specific orders by Phillips meant to LOOK like loose lips) cause her to divulge that Herrera Futuristics has become nothing more than another facet of Danconias Phillips and that, in turn, Thaumata has its claws in Danconias Phillips, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield.
For Christine, Julia is the end-all, be-all rival. She loathes Julia and wants to put her in her place, make Julia give up piloting and just go and wither away somewhere. This rivalry is completely one-sided, however. Julia views Christine as nothing more than an annoyance, someone who doesn't even have the skills to back up all her tough talk.
And she's quite right, too. Christine is a terrible pilot and, whats more, finds even more fault with Julia because of it. Christine foolishly assumes that Julia's a better pilot because of her Irgelion muscle memory, even though Julia has practiced and trained much more than Christine. In fact, when she was just starting out, Julia was an even worse pilot than Christine, but a combination of experience and her usual can-do spirit have let Julia surpass her not-rival.
Christine's first machine is a new Prominence Armor, the HK-8675 Solstice, codenamed Hanging Gardens by Thaumata. Though lacking in weaponry, its portable and military-grade Kinetic Dispersal Unit goes a long way in protecting her.
Christine has since been apped and as such more information about her can be found out here.
(Christine)
Sara Francesca Valentine
The only thing worse than a psychotic is one that's also a tactical genius with few peers. Sara Francesca Valentine is one of the few that happens to be one.
Valentine's psychosis grew extremely apparent even in her early days in officer training at the academy. She was also extremely paranoid and distrusting of those who displayed a culture outside of what she was familiar with; a xenophobe on the purest level. Any differences to what she was familiar with set her off, and though there were attempts to rehabilitate her or at least make her less of a social pariah, they were only partially successful. That said though, she got some of the highest marks in recorded history at the acadamy, successfully completing allegedly unwinnable scenarios and then, on top of that, out-foxing the staff and even completing scenarios custom-tailored to beat her own personal style.
However, after damn-near murdering the first Spacenoid she ever met in a fit of insanity, Valentine was expelled and put in an institution. Only months later did the Irgelion invasion begin and the early battles began to prove very badly for humanity. Valentine was shortly thereafter released and put in an advisory position for the defensive forces, her tactical prowess quickly being proven even against the Irgelion forces and her xenophobia now finding a proper outlet: genuine aliens... ones who were nothing like her and whom she'd never have to tolerate or accept.
The Irgelion armada was eventually repelled by various factors, Valentine's tactical advise being one of them. However, during the final battle when the Irgelions surrendered following the orders of Julia's father, Valentine still ordered the fleet use the chance to kill them all as the alien forces began to stand done. Unfortunately for her, the hostilities were over and done with, and was forced to relent, though she forever regrets the chance to witness the deaths of tens of thousands of aliens all at once.
Following humanity's victory, Valentine went into hiding and eventually was inducted into Thaumata to become the commander of their forces. Though kept on a short leash, lest she kill Bairoft, she is one of the reasons why the dying organization still draws breath. In the years since, Valentine has also matured somewhat, growing more calm and methodical with her xenophobia, willing to let an alien live now if it leads to killing more in the future. In short, her tactical genius won out over her hatred of alien life.
She is the captain of the Thaumata flagship, the Gate of Ishtar. She still pilots, however, first using the intimidating Gaia Vanguard known as the Hagia Sophia. As befitting her name, Valentine uses a massive HFM axe with the machine rather than the intended beam saber. Later on, a Dendrobium-like add-on, known as the Byzantia, is created for the Hagia Sophia to dock with to increase its power.
(Valentine)
Victor Serpico
When Christine's mother ran for office in the Seattle Colony against an Irgelion, there was certainly a lot of press about it in the LS Cluster. Not only that, but a vicious series of negative ads and scathing rhetoric, enough that it was feared someone might just decide to kill one of the candidates. Fortunately this did not end up happening, but it didn't stop the Diaman family from getting a number of bodyguards assigned to protect them with the most notable one among them being Victor Serpico.
Serpico was a fairly friendly man and it wasn't long until the family thought him more than just a bodyguard. Christine especially grew close to him, and Victory affectionately gave her the nickname "Chrissy", which he still uses to this day. however, Victor was more than just a bodyguard, and was in fact one of the members of Thaumata who pulled the strings necessary for Christine's mother to win the election. He took the bodyguard position in the hopes that an Irgelion actually would try to kill her so he'd have a justifiable reason to kill them in return.
Serpico is a xenophobe like the other members of Thaumata, but he is much more subdued in his fanaticism. Unlike Valentine's murderous tendencies, Serpico is much more willing to simply wait and watch; pouncing on any Irgelion who ends up getting out of line and using them to prove humanity's inherent superiority over them. It's ultimately a passive-aggressive approach, with Victor displaying an affable smile until an Irgelion steps over the line.
Surprisingly, Victor is not as upset as one would think about Christine's shift in alliance and becoming Julia's friend. Make no mistake, he despises Julia, but he figures Christine's just making a mistake and he just needs to take the proper steps to get her back on the right path. Said steps naturally involving psychologically traumatizing Christine and attempting to destroy her friendship with Julia. Hey, it's all for a good cause, right?
Victor's close friendship with Christine also prevents him from ever really taking him seriously. Even on the battlefield and fighting her, he'll still see her as Chrissy and even tease her. Part of this is to throw Christine off her game since he knows her so well and knows what can set her off... but another part of it is that he genuinely does see her as the girl he's known for years. Needless to say, in the event Christine ever hammered it into his head that she was a threat and in his eyes a lost cause, he would stop just playing around with her. After all, the only thing as bad as an Irgelion trying to kill him is an Irgelion sympathizer.
Victor pilots a white Gaia Vanguard called the Porcelain Tower, built to his specifications. The machine is primarily melee-based, using an array of bladed weapons and razor filaments with micro-thrusters, all to allow the machine to be able to bypass the defensive systems on the Corona and the Solstice.
(Victor with a client)
Bertrand Herrera
The founder and CEO of Herrera Futuristics, Bertrand Herrera is a good man with a good hard and a desire to see humanity grow and develop in new ways, even after Second Impact. Inspired by the resolve the citizens of the LS Colonies and their determination to rebuild after the battles against the Irgelions nearly destroyed their homes, he set out to make sure his then-budding company would give back to humanity in general.
Though he is a weapons developer, Herrera invests heavily in helping deep space exploration and in fact hand-picked Julia to be the company mascot due to his belief that, if mankind were to grow and step out into the frontier of the galaxy and beyond, it needed to see enemies of the past could still live and coexist with them. Julia, as an Irgelion, could do just that.
He currently is married to Elizabeth Shun and has two children, Kyle and Rachel.
(Bertrand Herrera with his wife Elizabeth)
Herbert Phillips
The vice president of the Gaia Vanguard-producing firm Danconias Phillips, Phillips himself appears to be a fairly average man. Friendly around people he's familiar with, shy otherwise, he seems very much to play second fiddle to Fransisco in every way and merely wants to see his company thrive in the cut-throat world that is weapons development.
This is a lie.
In reality, Phillips is a deeply troubled man, and extremely xenophobic. Terrified by the multitude of alien lifeforms that all attack Earth for various reasons, Phillips would like nothing more than to wipe them all off the planet, have humanity dig in its heels, and never go into space lest we draw even more attention to ourselves. He is a low-ranking member of the organization Thaumata, founded during the first days of humanity encountering hostile life forms and dedicated to the survival of humanity above all else.
The Irgelion attack was the best of days for Thaumata, where they were at their most powerful, legitimate, and influential. However, in the years since the organization has been on the decline, led astray, as Phillips sees it, by the mismanagement of the Inner Circle of Thaumata, the founders who are now nothing more than weak old men who lack the vision or direction necessary to revive the crumbling organization.
Phillips, however, believes he has both, and the drive to see it happen for the good of humanity...
(Phillips)
Bairoft Giryilel
In the past, Bairoft was the youngest ace pilot of the Irgelion armada that came to the Earth Sphere, racking up a massive number of kills in his personal Talleth. However, the conflict came to an end with the surrender of the Irgelions, in spite of his best efforts. He is one of the few Talleth pilots to remain in the Earth Sphere, most of them instead opting for the long way back home, and he had hoped to initially mount a resistance and destroy humanity in an act of vengeance. Much to his horror though, Bairoft found that most, if not all of his former comrades only wished to assimilate into human culture and try to start living their lives again.
Currently, Bairoft lives a double-life. Unlike other Irgelions, Bairoft's human identity (Kenneth Dasshel) is not synonymous with his Irgelion identity. Kenneth Dasshel is just a pencil-pusher in a dead end job, often calling in sick and making nothing for himself. Bairoft Giryilel, however, is a scourge of the outer colonies as a space pirate, waging a war on human/Irgelion relations. Surprisingly, in spite of their xenophobic stance, Thaumata no only secretly supports Bairoft, but Bairoft is a member of the organization. He is the ever-present alien threat they need, the counter-example to Reilev Kidoreaon and the possibility that Irgelions can live with humans. They also provided Bairoft with a special glove which uses low-voltage electrical discharges to suppress the muscles in his right hand. This allows Bairoft to rapidly pick up numerous skills at once, removing the flaws in Irgelion muscle memory while reinforcing their strengths.
... However, in spite of it all, Bairoft is very much a shell-shocked man. As he's realized, there are not enough Irgelions in the Earth Sphere left to maintain the population for more than maybe two or three generation and humans and Irgelions cannot sire offspring together. Coexistence, in his eyes, is pointless. Likewise, he expects that soon enough, all memory of him will be forgotten by Planet Irgel. As such, Bairoft has resolved to become immortalized the only way he can: not through offspring and not through his fellow Irgelions, but by becoming an enemy of humanity, killing as many of them as possible and die in such a way that he knows he will never be forgotten by the people he hates.
Julia and he have an unusual rivalry that predates their first encounter on the battlefield. While Bairoft hates Julia for calling out for a futile coexistence between the races, Julia hates Bairoft for killing so many people and not letting go of a war. Their animosity only grows on the battlefield, each of them wishing to bring an end to the other.
After his first defeat at the hands of Julia and the Corona, Bairoft begins using the Alexandria, a next-gen Gaia Vanguard that mimics the Corona. Following its near-destruction, Bairoft rebuilds its entire body using recovered Irgelion technology, transforming it into the Great Wall.
(Bairoft following the acquisition of his muscle memory-inhibiting glove)
Christine Diaman
Following Julia's "exile" from Herrera Futuristics and in fact it being quietly bought out by Danconias Phillips, a new mascot was needed for it. Eventually after tryouts were completed, Phillips selected Christine as Julia's replacement. Similar to Julia, Christine is very earnest about being a mascot and representing an ideal, however for her, the ideal itself is less important as simply representing something. In this way, Christine is a foil for Julia.
Christine also positively hates Julia herself due to Julia continuing to fight and use the Corona. Unable to understand Julia still wants to help support the idea of deep space travel, Christine sees Julia as just an immature girl who can't accept that she's not in the limelight anymore and she, Christine, is. Shortly after meeting and getting off on the wrong foot with Julia, Christine's loose lips (read: specific orders by Phillips meant to LOOK like loose lips) cause her to divulge that Herrera Futuristics has become nothing more than another facet of Danconias Phillips and that, in turn, Thaumata has its claws in Danconias Phillips, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield.
For Christine, Julia is the end-all, be-all rival. She loathes Julia and wants to put her in her place, make Julia give up piloting and just go and wither away somewhere. This rivalry is completely one-sided, however. Julia views Christine as nothing more than an annoyance, someone who doesn't even have the skills to back up all her tough talk.
And she's quite right, too. Christine is a terrible pilot and, whats more, finds even more fault with Julia because of it. Christine foolishly assumes that Julia's a better pilot because of her Irgelion muscle memory, even though Julia has practiced and trained much more than Christine. In fact, when she was just starting out, Julia was an even worse pilot than Christine, but a combination of experience and her usual can-do spirit have let Julia surpass her not-rival.
Christine's first machine is a new Prominence Armor, the HK-8675 Solstice, codenamed Hanging Gardens by Thaumata. Though lacking in weaponry, its portable and military-grade Kinetic Dispersal Unit goes a long way in protecting her.
Christine has since been apped and as such more information about her can be found out here.
(Christine)
Sara Francesca Valentine
The only thing worse than a psychotic is one that's also a tactical genius with few peers. Sara Francesca Valentine is one of the few that happens to be one.
Valentine's psychosis grew extremely apparent even in her early days in officer training at the academy. She was also extremely paranoid and distrusting of those who displayed a culture outside of what she was familiar with; a xenophobe on the purest level. Any differences to what she was familiar with set her off, and though there were attempts to rehabilitate her or at least make her less of a social pariah, they were only partially successful. That said though, she got some of the highest marks in recorded history at the acadamy, successfully completing allegedly unwinnable scenarios and then, on top of that, out-foxing the staff and even completing scenarios custom-tailored to beat her own personal style.
However, after damn-near murdering the first Spacenoid she ever met in a fit of insanity, Valentine was expelled and put in an institution. Only months later did the Irgelion invasion begin and the early battles began to prove very badly for humanity. Valentine was shortly thereafter released and put in an advisory position for the defensive forces, her tactical prowess quickly being proven even against the Irgelion forces and her xenophobia now finding a proper outlet: genuine aliens... ones who were nothing like her and whom she'd never have to tolerate or accept.
The Irgelion armada was eventually repelled by various factors, Valentine's tactical advise being one of them. However, during the final battle when the Irgelions surrendered following the orders of Julia's father, Valentine still ordered the fleet use the chance to kill them all as the alien forces began to stand done. Unfortunately for her, the hostilities were over and done with, and was forced to relent, though she forever regrets the chance to witness the deaths of tens of thousands of aliens all at once.
Following humanity's victory, Valentine went into hiding and eventually was inducted into Thaumata to become the commander of their forces. Though kept on a short leash, lest she kill Bairoft, she is one of the reasons why the dying organization still draws breath. In the years since, Valentine has also matured somewhat, growing more calm and methodical with her xenophobia, willing to let an alien live now if it leads to killing more in the future. In short, her tactical genius won out over her hatred of alien life.
She is the captain of the Thaumata flagship, the Gate of Ishtar. She still pilots, however, first using the intimidating Gaia Vanguard known as the Hagia Sophia. As befitting her name, Valentine uses a massive HFM axe with the machine rather than the intended beam saber. Later on, a Dendrobium-like add-on, known as the Byzantia, is created for the Hagia Sophia to dock with to increase its power.
(Valentine)
Victor Serpico
When Christine's mother ran for office in the Seattle Colony against an Irgelion, there was certainly a lot of press about it in the LS Cluster. Not only that, but a vicious series of negative ads and scathing rhetoric, enough that it was feared someone might just decide to kill one of the candidates. Fortunately this did not end up happening, but it didn't stop the Diaman family from getting a number of bodyguards assigned to protect them with the most notable one among them being Victor Serpico.
Serpico was a fairly friendly man and it wasn't long until the family thought him more than just a bodyguard. Christine especially grew close to him, and Victory affectionately gave her the nickname "Chrissy", which he still uses to this day. however, Victor was more than just a bodyguard, and was in fact one of the members of Thaumata who pulled the strings necessary for Christine's mother to win the election. He took the bodyguard position in the hopes that an Irgelion actually would try to kill her so he'd have a justifiable reason to kill them in return.
Serpico is a xenophobe like the other members of Thaumata, but he is much more subdued in his fanaticism. Unlike Valentine's murderous tendencies, Serpico is much more willing to simply wait and watch; pouncing on any Irgelion who ends up getting out of line and using them to prove humanity's inherent superiority over them. It's ultimately a passive-aggressive approach, with Victor displaying an affable smile until an Irgelion steps over the line.
Surprisingly, Victor is not as upset as one would think about Christine's shift in alliance and becoming Julia's friend. Make no mistake, he despises Julia, but he figures Christine's just making a mistake and he just needs to take the proper steps to get her back on the right path. Said steps naturally involving psychologically traumatizing Christine and attempting to destroy her friendship with Julia. Hey, it's all for a good cause, right?
Victor's close friendship with Christine also prevents him from ever really taking him seriously. Even on the battlefield and fighting her, he'll still see her as Chrissy and even tease her. Part of this is to throw Christine off her game since he knows her so well and knows what can set her off... but another part of it is that he genuinely does see her as the girl he's known for years. Needless to say, in the event Christine ever hammered it into his head that she was a threat and in his eyes a lost cause, he would stop just playing around with her. After all, the only thing as bad as an Irgelion trying to kill him is an Irgelion sympathizer.
Victor pilots a white Gaia Vanguard called the Porcelain Tower, built to his specifications. The machine is primarily melee-based, using an array of bladed weapons and razor filaments with micro-thrusters, all to allow the machine to be able to bypass the defensive systems on the Corona and the Solstice.
(Victor with a client)