The feared Omir Sarikusa (born YC47) is the current leader of the Blood Raiders Covenant. He is an Amarr with some Caldari ancestry, reportedly born in the region of space known as the Bleak Lands from the liaison of an Amarr noble and a high-class escort. He usurped command of the Blood Raiders in YC84 and has since transformed them from a rabble of independent sects into one of the most powerful pirate organizations in New Eden. He remains one of CONCORD's ten most-wanted and sits at the top of similar lists in the Amarr Empire, Khanid Kingdom, and Ammatar Mandate.
Early Life
Much of Omir's early life has been shrouded in secrecy, misdirection, and mythologization. The Blood Raiders and Omir himself have alternately claimed he was a virgin birth from Empress Consort Sabiana, a sefrim sent by God to transform the worthy, a former Holder who saw the light and converted to the Sani Sabik faith, or simply a commoner who gained power and seized control of the Blood Raiders through violence. To what extent his followers, and Omir, believe the mangled stories is up for debate.
Investigators from CONCORD, however, have pieced together an incomplete, but apparently-factual picture of his years prior to becoming leader of the Blood Raiders. It seems likely that Omir was born early in YC47 to a high-class escort named Manda Sarikusa. Manda, who had a Caldari father, was reportedly exceptionally beautiful and plied her trade among the rich and amoral members of Amarr nobility who lived at the edges of what was then considered lawless space.
Manda claimed Omir's father was an Amarr noble named Vodalus Momia, a third child considered unlikely to receive much inheritance from his father. At the time of Omir's birth, Vodalus had joined the priesthood and acknowledgment of a child with a prostitute would have brought extreme shame on both him and his family. Because of this, Omir never met his father, and Manda was forced to raise him alone. She continued to work as an escort, often leaving Omir in the care of other prostitutes who were not working.
From early on, Omir reportedly displayed sociopathic tendencies, often getting into fights with other children, having a callous disregard for life, and committing petty crimes for seemingly no reason. Records indicate that, as a child, he was arrested numerous times for shoplifting random items and once killing a man's pet slaver hound by feeding it coffee (slavers being highly allergic to caffeine). However, his punishment for these incidences seems to have been light, with his mother using her earnings from prostitution to pay the victims off.
In YC64, Omir apparently stabbed and killed an older child. Knowing that she could no longer protect her son through bribery, Manda gave him a large amount of money and sent him away into the Blood Raiders-controlled territory of the Bleak Lands, where she had served many clients in the past.
Entry into the Blood Raiders
Omir quickly fell in with one of the fractured Blood Raider cults which was based out of Sahtogas. In the early years, he served mainly as a runner, but his violent tendencies quickly endeared him to his superiors. He became an enforcer for the sect, brutally torturing those who earned its ire. Eventually, he was serving as the personal bodyguard of the sect's leader.
By YC75, Omir had been inducted into the highest mysteries of the cult and was considered a high priest. This gave Omir control of his own ship, which he used to raid not only nearby Amarr Holders, but other Blood Raider sects as well. Omir's bloody and ruthless raids gathered him much loyalty and followers among the cultists in the area. Under the direction of his superiors, Omir cowed the other Blood Raider sects and forced them to submit to his cult.
In YC80, Omir conducted a raid on an Amarr monastery in Myyhera, which housed five thousand monks and ten-thousand slaves. The slaves, who were all controlled via Vitoc, were slaughtered wholesale, while the majority of the monks were captured and taken to blood farms. Only a small number of monks were killed in the assault, among them Vodalus Momia. It is unknown if Omir was aware of his father's presence prior to the raid, or if it was simply a coincidence.
After this raid, however, Omir became more defiant against his superiors. He often conducted unauthorized raids and became more open and brash with his affiliation with the Blood Raiders. A failed assassination attempt against Omir in YC83 was apparently carried out on the orders of the sect's leadership.
In response, Omir engineered a coup against the Blood Raiders. His years of carnage had earned him a fearsome reputation, even among the other Blood Raiders, many of whom supported his usurpation of the leadership. Omir named himself the chosen messiah of the Blood Raiders, claiming to be a "perfect being" to which all Sani Sabik aspired.
Bloody Omir
By the end of YC84, Omir had successfully eliminated all rivals within the Blood Raiders. He immediately conducted a purge on the organization, having anyone showing a hint of disloyalty blooded. Though this purge drastically lowered the number of cultists, it meant every one left was thoroughly loyal to Omir and his beliefs.
His first order of business was to reverse the Blood Raiders' long standing policy of targeting children in their raids. Instead, he declared clones to be of the purest blood, and his raiders began to target cloning facilities and individuals who had been cloned. Because the capsule and clone had not yet been joined at that time, these raids primarily hit medical facilities where clones were stored for experimentation and organ harvesting, putting a strain on the area's health care.
Omir reigned with a bloody iron fist, turning the formerly-fractured Blood Raider sects into a unified and powerful organization. Within a few years, they held defacto sovereignty over several systems in the Bleak Lands. Even CONCORD considered the areas the territory of the Raiders. The Blood Raiders were annually responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the region, and their influence was such that they were able to send patrols to locations as distant as Aridia and Devoid. Holders in the area pleaded for protection from the Empire, or the right to raise their own naval forces to protect themselves, but were frequently denied by the Emperor.
As his infamy spread, Omir's name became a boogeyman for Amarr children across the Empire. The Empire declared him its most-wanted heretic, though it was unwilling to provide the military resources to assaulting the Bleak Lands and capturing him. For over two decades, Omir's rule in the Bleak Lands was unchallenged.
In YC106, Omir ordered his followers to collect Jove body parts, which they completed a week later.. The true purpose of this macabre order was left unclear, though popular sentiment was that Omir wished to use the parts in some sort of ritual.
Ouster from Bleak Lands
In YC107, Omir released a statement to news agencies that he was responsible for the kidnapping of Eckarine Mitumi-Hnolku, the wife of a Caldari scientist who had defected from the State and gone into hiding following his development of a cure for Vitoc addiction called Insorum. Mitumi-Hnolku reportedly had a copy of the Insorum prototype, which was now in the hands of Omir and the Blood Raiders, causing massive unrest in the Empire.
Two weeks after the kidnapping, Omir launched a strike on the Empire by releasing the Insorum prototype over the planet Mabnen I. The prototype released the slaves from their Vitoc dependency, throwing them into a frenzied revolt, resulting in the deaths of thousands. Omir released another statement, vowing that this attack was only the first step in the Blood Raiders' new interest in bringing the Empire to its knees.
However, Omir's assault came at a harsh price to the Blood Raiders. Emperor Doriam II vowed to eradicate the Blood Raiders and drive them out of the Bleak Lands. He unleashed the full might of the Amarr Navy on the Blood Raiders and authorized a historic alliance between the Amarr Navy and loyalist capsuleer organizations in assaulting the Raiders' capsuleer allies. Early fighting saw major victories on both sides, but the size and might of the Empire eventually won out. The Raiders were dealt a crushing blow and were soon after driven from the Bleak Lands.
Omir managed to escape in the fighting and relocated the majority of the Blood Raiders and their assets to Delve, where they paid off local capsuleer alliances and established new stations and sovereignty.
Later Reign
Despite the loss of the Bleak Lands and retreat to Delve, Omir retained his feared reputation in the Empire, with even children singing gruesome rhymes about his eventual return. Omir continued to send his raiders to assault portions of the Empire, including fighting in the Bleak Lands to reclaim old homes.
When Doriam II was assassinated, Omir released a statement claiming CONCORD was far from discovering the truth of the matter. This statement led many to believe that Omir was behind the death, though the failure of the Raiders' leader to ever claim this would appear to be out of character.
Regardless, following Doriam II's death, Omir was able to make contact with Dochuta Karsoth, the Court Chamberlain who assumed leadership of the Empire until a new Emperor was crowned. Omir found a kindred soul in Karsoth and the two conspired to keep the Empire leaderless and eventually bring its corruption and downfall. Karsoth turned members of the Empire's nobility and sent them to the Blood Raiders, while Omir had the Blood Raiders assault the Empire in a manner that furthered Karsoth's aims.
However, Karsoth was eventually exposed following the return of Jamyl Sarum and fled to the Blood Raiders. Eventually, the Khanid Kingdom launched attacks on the Blood Raiders and captured Karsoth. Omir, disgusted with the former Chamberlain's failures, cut ties and did nothing to prevent him being executed.
In YC109, Omir learned of the location of Jamyl I's superweapon and made plans to retrieve it for the Blood Raiders. He sent Antar to locate and capture the device, with plans to booby trap it so that either the Blood Raiders would have it or no one would. However, Antar was foiled when a Thukker ship captained by Kotan convinced the Rogue Drones guarding the weapon to destroy it.
Following this failure, and the loss of any immediate ways to realize his grand plans, Omir has maintained a relatively resigned stance. He continues to rule the Blood Raiders, but he has not made any sweeping declarations or grand plans in several years.