Julian Cyrus
Julian Cyrus is a veteran GuardCorps zeo pilot that has served in the Palingena and Novageon heliospheres as a strike team leader and executive command officer. Sporting dozens of physical augmentations and prosthetics to compensate for wounds suffered over his 30-year career, Cyrus is affectionately known as the “Rustbucket.”
A devoted believer in Hegemony ideals, Cyrus is known for enforcing rigid codes of conduct meant to turn his soldiers into exemplars of the strength, unity, and camaraderie granted by strict order. The Starfall Strategia GuardCorps formation has credited Cyrus’ impeccable esprit de corps with keeping several of his units cohesive and effective in the midst of the chaotic Battle of Gehila, as well as winning over neutral colonists during the Mazur Rebellion.
Cyrus pilots a UnS-62 Soldat Tactical Zeoform (nicknamed “The Contraption”) due to its reliability and simplicity. He prefers to lead his troops from the rear, where he can keep a wide view of the ever-changing battlefield. As a tactician, Cyrus prefers complex maneuvers that rely on close coordination and synergy between units. To accomplish this, he is known to rely on the Soldat’s Rapid Battlefield Command Module, despite its age. As a commander, Cyrus’ concern for his soldiers comes first—he views every soldier as an asset whose worth grows with experience, and is unwilling to throw their lives away.
The only stain on Cyrus’ record is the Tyra-Kiso Uprising, an urban pacification operation meant to quell a militia uprising allegedly led by Pact-affiliated agents. After making slow progress through the city to minimize his forces’ casualties, Cyrus’ superiors sought to speed up progress by calling in an Obliqua mercenary team led by Tempala Gita, who quickly led a detachment of Cyrus’ teams in an assault that destroyed several militia strong points at the cost of many of Cyrus’ inexperienced zeo pilots.
Though the mission was a success, Cyrus was reprimanded for being “overly cautious and indecisive” by superiors, while his soldiers were shaken by command’s willingness to trade high casualties for results.
