Jebediah Radec

Jeb Radec was born Marked. He grew up frustrated by the limitations on his future, and the apathy of the other Marked. At the age of twelve, he paralyzed a teenage boy in a street fight and was assigned to new colonization duty—one of the youngest ever to receive this rare punishment reserved for resistors of the regime.

When Radec was sixteen, he sabotaged a nuclear waste facility and escaped in the resulting confusion stowed away aboard an Imperium cruiser. Hundreds were killed in the fallout, most members of the Marked crew he had worked with. Years later, when Radec was questioned about the incident, he said, “I won’t fight for the freedom of any man who doesn’t have the dignity to fight for it himself.”

The Imperium hunted Radec unsuccessfully for several years.

When the Freedom Guard revolution began Radec was a smuggler on Teron. He quickly organized a mob to seize the capitol, capturing and executing hundreds of Imperium soldiers. Shortly thereafter, he was asked to serve as field commander for the voluntary army. Radec accepted, but made it clear that his motivation was not justice but vengeance. He refused to take prisoners.

Radec had remarkable success as a military leader. He fought on the front lines alongside his men, and they rarely lost a conflict. His military victories convinced the masses that the Imperium dominion could be challenged. “All empires fall,” he said. “You just have to know where to push.” The ranks of the Freedom Guard swelled.

Radec’s troops fought with barbarous ferocity, some suspected because they were more afraid of him than the enemy. When he lived well past the age of 25, many decided he was super-human. Though occasionally a Marked lived through their twenty-fifth year, they only gained a few extra months of life. Radec was determined to live until he had saw the Imperium defeated.