Emily Clausen

Second-Officer Emilia Clausen

Emily Clausen was one of the twenty-one Aeternums, or immortal humans, aboard the SFFS Provenance as it cleaved its way through the stars to Postantera, and was an important advocate and leader of the Postanti colonization effort. While she did not survive to see the fruits of her labors in a colonized, if disunited, Postantera, her legacy survives in her fiercely loyal followers.

Personal History

Emilia was born to Anders and Ingrid Clausen, both elite members of the ruling family of Valhalla, a sky colony and capital of the planet Venus. Her early life was shaped by the commercialized, casino-filled city she lived in. She had been tutored privately from a very young age, and had shown a passion for programming, public speaking, and leadership. Her parents pushed her heavily towards the latter two, and by the age of fifteen she had already been put in control of some of her family's gas mining monopolies. Using controversial tactics like lowering pay, aggressive advertising, and effectively banning certain trade unions, she managed to double the profits of her casinos, tourist attractions, and stores within her first year. Emilia expanded her family’s trade empire over the next decades, gaining more and more authority as time went on. She built new casinos, gained a monopoly on the garment industry, and pushed out smaller businesses. At one point she even got into a gunfight with an angered, bankrupt storeowner whom she had forcibly evicted. She suffered wounds and was hospitalized, but Aeternums can shake minor injuries off with time. What she never forgot was the bullet she had buried in the man’s chest, and the faces of his family as he bled to death in the next room over. She later expressed regret at this period of her life, but her reputation among the working class of Valhalla was permanently stained, while her family couldn’t be prouder.
Soon after she turned eighty-two, her father along with several thousand Valhallans perished in a gas leak while he was visiting an atmospheric gas harvesting plant on the outskirts of the city. With his death, the role of Supreme Doge of Venus was conferred upon her for the time being, until a new Doge could be appointed by traditional election. Her first order of business was to hold a state funeral for the deceased. To the surprise of the attendees, who had expected her to use these deaths as a political tool to become the permanent Doge, she gave a beautiful and apolitical eulogy. She barely even mentioned her unpopular father, and instead delivered a genuine, heartfelt speech honoring the thousands of working people who had tragically died. Millions who watched online throughout the system were brought to tears. The common folk of Venus still remembered the awful things she had done in her corporate life, but she made it clear that her Dogeship would be different, and that she had truly changed her ways.
For four Ventian months, Emilia held the title of Regent Supreme Doge of Venus while a bitter election raged on in the cloud settlements. More than anything she wanted to get away from Venus. Her amazing oratory skills and her wise leadership had led the planet through tough times and done much to soften the people’s view of her, but she detested her world. Emilia began dreaming of starting something new, something perfect, far away from the corruption and decadence of Venus that she had grown to hate. Much to the dismay of her extended family, Emilia decided to resign from every corporate position that was granted to her and started exploring options for leaving. Once a new Doge was chosen, she stepped completely out of the public eye.

Joining The Starfleet

The Starfleet for United Humanity had a base in Valhalla and started to advertise the Great Exodus and their need for qualified pilots and officers to journey to other star systems. Emilia saw one of these ads on the holographic billboards and immediately went to the base to sign up in person. Amazed and confused, the Starfleet accepted her request to be a leader on any ship of her choice due to her political experience. After several years of training and intense judgement by family members, Emilia chose the SFFS Provenance as her ship of choice because the crew was to be made up of mainly mortals, the company of which she’d begun to prefer over that of her Aeternum peers.
Onboard the SFFS Provenance, Emilia was given the job as second officer, second in command only to Thomas Crane, an Aeternum whom she clashed with often due to his lax sense of morality and his tendency to neglect his duty. After her time in Valhalla, Emilia had had enough of corrupt, lazy leaders. She was assigned sector two of the ship, which had 20,000 mortal humans to start with. These mortals and their descendants would grow to be her loyalist of followers and stick with her through thick and thin. She spent the majority of her time helping, conversing with, and advising her crew. Emilia made a habit of befriending humans, and when they inevitably died, she would ensure their bodies would be treated with respect. She personally gave eulogies at many of their funerals. Despite her warm feelings towards her people, however, she didn’t always act towards their happiness. Even now, millions of miles away from Venus, Valhalla still haunted her. The people she’d trampled to make her fortunes, the people she had bankrupted, the people whose souls had been crushed in her family's slot machines: these people’s ghosts still kept her awake into the darkest hours of the ship’s artificial night. She would never let such a depraved place exist under her watch again. She forbid her people from drinking, gambling, and sometimes even simple card games.
Emilia never cared much for the other Aeternums, who she felt focused too much on the ship and not enough on its inhabitants. She always attended meetings and important Aeternum events, but left as soon as possible to return to leading her followers. She did as much as her job description required her to do, and would not stop until she had gotten it perfect. Often, she would get into impassioned arguments with other Aeternums when they did something wrong. She was a rigid leader by choice and a perfectionist by nature; if something didn’t meet her standards, it was to be thrown out and attempted again, no questions asked. While some other Aeternums admired her leadership and work ethic, only the immortal Joseph Reed, administrator of the ship’s various religious communities, ever truly became her friend. Her allegiance was to her followers, and them alone. At times, when Thomas showed a lapse in judgement, she would ignore her rank and try to order even him, her superior, around. This led to many a conflict, and eventually, the civil war that would kill her.
When the SFFS Provenance eventually crashed, Emilia did not hesitate to point out the captain’s error. She let out the resentment that had been festering for hundreds of years and delivered the most passionate, angry, and vitriolic argument anyone present had ever heard. Thomas, naturally, was indignant, as were his followers. However, some of the Aeternums had themselves harbored doubts about Thomas, joined Emilia, and it escalated into a war. Arming their followers with salvaged weapons, the two sides clashed. Thousands of humans and seven Aeternums died in the fighting. Included in those numbers, unfortunately, was Emilia.

Civil War

During the war, Emilia had continued her disciplinarian yet kind style of leadership. She drilled her soldiers rigorously, but at the same time let them share in the spoils of victory and celebrate whenever they captured something from Thomas’s supporters. Over the course of the year, she won many battles, gained followers, commanded Aeternums and humans alike, and made friends and enemies of both. One of the most notable humans to live through the war was Emilia’s best friend, Victoria Rubeski. Victoria defected from Thomas in the very beginning of the war, and Emilia personally took her under her command. Using her knowledge of Thomas’s strategy and logistics, Victoria helped Emilia fight. The two grew close, and by the end of the war Victoria was Emilia’s highest general, ranking higher than even the other Aeternums in her army. After the end of the war, Victoria would go on to lead Emilia’s followers in her name. Her motto was “Do what Emilia would have wanted.”
Unfortunately, Emilia’s eternal life shaped out to be much less eternal than most assumed. After ten long months of fighting, the war was still raging, and both armies were tired. Emilia, not wanting to see her friends and allies die any longer, began to arrange a secret meeting with Thomas through trusted messengers. They met in person on the anniversary of the war’s beginning. Before she left to an undisclosed location, she announced the following to her army.
“Friends, soldiers, I leave you today not to win this war, but to end it. I have arranged a meeting with Thomas Crane. Only one of us will come back alive, and it shall be them who wins this war. Neither army is to fight after that, and each Aeternum on the losing side will lead their followers out of the mountains and never return. Do not try to intervene. If Thomas and his soldiers are the ones to deliver the news, then do not question it. Come tomorrow, the war will be over, and not a single one of you must be claimed by its evil grasp. Promise me this, my comrades -- if my blood stains the soil of Postantera today, let it be the last blood spilled on this new world! Let my wound be infected and black so that yours may be bandaged! Let the one casualty of the final battle of this war be the last casualty! Whatever happens, go forth, my friends, and thrive!”
She had phrased it as though Thomas stood an equal chance of dying that day as her, but in truth she had no intention of that happening. She’d killed before, she would not do it again. That day, the one-year anniversary of the war, Emilia entered a duel to the death with Thomas and lost. Thomas and his bodyguards carried Emilia’s body to her devastated and angry followers the following day, a bullet lodged in her left shoulder. As the casket was lowered into the red Postanti soil that Emilia had waited so long to reach, the crowd wondered who would give the eulogy, now that the greatest speaker on the entire world was dead. To the booing of the crowd, Thomas himself gave a short speech that day after the long, teary-eyed, passionate one of Victoria Rubeski. It consisted of a description of her death. When they had shaken hands and he had pulled out his gun, Thomas explained, she hadn’t even drawn her weapon. She had stood there, smiled, and told Thomas to hurry up.
Overall, Emilia Clausen had an astounding effect on the future politics and culture of Postantera, even though she died in the beginning of the colonization process. Today she is memorialized as a legendary figure, her name and her sacrifice still being honored by her followers, as loyal to her as she was to them.

Current Location

Postantera - Planet

Birthplace

Venus

Current Residence

Postantera (Deceased)

Gender

Female