Muryia Mordu

Muryia Mordu was a Caldari officer who retired from military life to found Mordu's Legion after the First Gallente-Caldari war.

Early Life

Muryia was a Deteis born on Hakonen III. It was clear that he was to have a significantly augmented path to greatness. The son of a Chief Risk Officer for Ishukone and a Senior Tech Officer initially under her charge in the Caldari Navy, his parents' contribution to the State in the ongoing Gallente-Caldari War meant they were able to afford quality medical assistance during his mother's pregnancy and for months after delivery.

Muryia's education befitted a child that demonstrated an aptitude as both an academic and a leader. Regularly identified in school reports as focused, strategic, hungry for knowledge, loyal, liberal and meticulous, Mordu also managed to earn the respect of his peers despite his dominance over many of them in the competitive environment of Caldari schooling.

One significant blot on his record came in his thirteenth year, when he managed to put another boy in hospital with significant spinal injuries during a high tackle incident in a high profile contact sport preliminary final. The injured boys parents made an official complaint and intended to take the matter to the courts, saying that Muryia's actions had been entirely deliberate, and that there had been incidents between the boys before. Mordu faced expulsion, and while a subsequent campus investigation was inconclusive, his reputation as a ruthless enforcer reportedly haunted him throughout his youth and reputedly led to his insistence that he act with honor (albeit often without mercy) in his subsequent dealings with his enemies.

Muryia's parents were approached before his mandatory military service to confirm what they already suspected - his military service would extend far beyond common conscription. Mordu was officer material, much like his parents, and as the war with the Gallente continued, adepts such as he were invaluable to the Caldari war machine's longer term efforts.

The First Gallente-Caldari War

Muryia's first active duty also resulted in his first service medal. Dispatched as part of a reinforcement to a besieged fleet trying to extricate themselves from a protracted engagement in Iyen-Oursta in the Gallente Border Zone. As a crippled Caldari presence attempted to remove themselves to Perimeter. Several wings were sent in to protect their extraction, with Mordu being on one of the first ships to come to their aide. His ship was the last to leave the system, itself severely damaged. The only target for several moments, the vessel bore the full brunt of the Gallente forces as it approached the gate. Only an ensign, Mordu had raced to the side of ship's captain after a hit wounded and killed members of the bridge crew. He immediately applied compress to a life-threatening wound to the throat of his superior officer and proceeded to relay orders as the ship fled. It's said that at some point the ship's captain had lost consciousness, though the orders still kept coming.

As Mordu gained promotions and found increasing numbers of crew under his command his missions typically involved assignment to fleets providing orbital support or extracting ground forces during planetary engagements throughout Verge Vendor and Placid. Shortly after becoming a captain, it was his efforts in Intaki in YC8 that he was to earn the most renown.

Extraction from Intaki V

After several exchanges in the Woenckee and Viriette constellations, the Condor under his command was attacked over Intaki V. Mordu and the other crew that had managed to survive the ship's destruction and their own subsequent descent to the planet were marooned on the surface. To Mordu's apparent displeasure, he was informed that due to increased enemy presence following the exchange, rescue was going to be denied until orbit could be secured. Preparing themselves for an extended stay, they managed to rendezvous with the soldiers they had been sent to extract. They had then set about trying to dig in, blend in and secure passage off the planet themselves. After a deal soured with a local criminal contact, the men were sheltered by sympathetic Intaki for a short time before the Caldari Navy came for them. It was likely this experience that not only ensured Mordu's future career path but in many ways changed his perspective on his own dispensability, the darker side to his own character, particularly when in mortal combat, as well as his capacity to engage with others on a blunter and more human level rather than a structured and authoritative one.

While his continuing command in the field earned him recognition as a brilliant young Caldari officer, Muryia also gained the reputation of engaging in what those under his charge came to refer to as a "whiskey session." This tradition was a legacy of his time on Intaki V. Sometimes an honor, but on some occasions the death knell of someone's career, to be invited into Muryia's quarters as he sat reviewing reports of an evening to find whiskey and two glasses meant that you had gained particular attention. What usually started with a review of recent performance would become a less formal as the hours wore on. If you lasted till morning, you could end up being promoted or entrusted with a particular duty. If you left within minutes, you'd likely be facing a transfer soon after. Reports held that Mordu did this in order to test his troops' ability to function while under duress from exhaustion and drugs, though several people who've participated in this kind of session have later been quoted as saying that Mordu simply likes his drink.

Muryia was also said to be more open-minded than other Caldari officers, who generally tended to xenophobia towards non-Caldari races. A boon of his upbringing amongst the more liberal ideals inculcated by those loyal to Ishukone, coupled with his experiences on Intaki V, Mordu demonstrated that he was increasingly of the opinion that class or rank did not determine the character of the person, nor the level of expertise they possessed.

He would be later given command of Intaki officers who had chosen to defect from the Gallente Federation to join the Caldari cause for independence. Made up of a mix of navy and ground forces, Mordu was given the rank of Brigadier General with the formation of this brigade and charged with the continuation of a combination of fleet movements and ground skirmishes in enemy territory.

He immediately took a liking to the Intaki under his charge, and vice-versa. Together, they formed one of the more revered fighting units in the Caldari Navy during the last years of the war with the Federation, and their achievements were hailed as modern military legend.

After the conflict ended in YC12, Muryia shocked many when he retired from his military life. The Intaki under his command were invited to stay in Caldari society and granted accommodation in Waschi City on Kamokor IV.

Waschi Uprising

Over the many years that followed a nationalist movement took root on the planet, centered on this city specifically due to the proportionally large presence of the Intaki residents. Many were the subject of victimization and xenophobic attacks, incidents which went unchecked by local authorities as well. Eventually a full blown uprising against the Caldari government began in YC32 when Caldari authorities attempted to bring the city to order after almost daily violence. Intaki were being forcibly removed from their homes and brutalized. After several deaths the Intaki war veterans called upon the assistance of their old commander to quell the Waschi Uprising. Muryia Mordu agreed to help his fellow soldiers and formed a mercenary group which consisted mainly of these Intaki war veterans. While they had all retired from active service, they assisted Caldari authorities to crush the uprising with the same efficiency that had defined them during the war, and started referring to themselves as Mordu's Legion.

Due to Muryia's leadership the group's performance was noticed by authorities. For their assistance in quelling the uprising, the Caldari Navy offered Mordu and other leaders of the mercenary group reinstatement and official position within the Navy. Muryia and his men declined, instead announcing that Mordu's Legion were now freelance military contractors.

Recruitment and Allegiance

While Mordu made it known that the Legion would accept all races, he also went to great lengths to make it know that he was not interested in welcoming navy rejects, green recruits, disciplinary issues, enemies of the state or people of questionable morals. To accept his amnesty was to reject your allegiance to your past political constraints. Trespassers, spies, and would-be vigilantes looking to settle old scores were executed by firing squad and sent back to their respective nations in flag-draped caskets. Muryia only wanted the best trained, most disciplined and most honest. He made it a habit of meeting with every recruit personally, if not overseeing their initial interview himself.

For a time, Mordu gained a reputation for poaching members of the Caldari Navy who had come to particular attention, such as battle-tested Turek Mayon and logistical genius and rising star Teston Hrinz. Both men encountered Muryia Mordu shortly before they were about to receive significant promotions, Hrinz aboard his shuttle while enroute and Mayon at a bar in the Caldari Navy Assembly Plant in Perimeter while he was waiting to be seen.

Despite it straining relations in some quarters, Mordu always maintained close ties with the Caldari State, and long-standing members of the Legion who retired where offered Caldari citizenship upon retirement. The Legion also gained access to high-end Caldari military gear, as well as frequent contracts from both military and corporate quarters.

While Mordu demonstrated clear allegiance to his parent corporation, he frequently accepted work from all the megacorporations, though with some preferential treatment. He was known to be accepting a great deal of contracts from Kaalakiota, for example, both before and after the ousting and exile of once-CEO Haatakan Oiritsuu, whom he was known to have a particularly fiery love-hate relationship. It has been rumored that his son Arian, himself a member of the Legion, was the product of a union with her, but this has never been substantiated. It's more likely that he is one of the reasons their relationship grew to be so bitter.

Becoming a Capsuleer

Mordu was cloned shortly after the creation of the transneural burn scanner interface after being approached directly by Otro Gariushi in YC104. Despite concerns about his advanced age and the transplantation of his consciousness into a younger clone body, through force of will, the application of wealth, and the gracious cooperation of Ishukone scientists, the procedure was a success.

It has been noted that Mordu's cloning resulted in an increase in his eccentricity and peculiar brand of humor. Said to be connected to complications that arose as a result of his advanced age at the time, he has himself dismissed any concerns as to his behaviour as a result of a new lease on life he had gained. Always a man who believed in integrity and speaking one's mind, Muryia notably became even more expressive, occasionally offensively so. He also started wearing more garish attire, including a wide variety of hats. Allies in the Legion would attest that this was to cover up his custom implants, which featured prominently along the sides of his scalp and behind the ear. There were suggestions that his costuming was instead the clearest symptom of irregularities in his behavior, alongside an increasingly blacker, warped sense of humor and a tendency to refer to conversations he'd had with those that he'd murdered, even long after their deaths.

Mordu's cloning was ultimately justified as his being an asset to the Caldari cause and a chance to experiment with the cloning of a significantly older subject. It became clear, however, that a deal had been made between the CEO of Ishukone, once a member of the Guristas, and Muryia Mordu. In the years leading up to the death of Otro Gariushi in YC110 Mordu's Legion performed several key operations against assets of the hated Guristas. Based on intelligence provided by the Ishukone CEO, these precision strikes were led by a much more youthful figure who the Legion still referred to as 'the old man'. Subsequent recruits to the Legion assumed that this title was a reference to Mordu's patriarchal concern for his men.

Contract lost with ORE

In YC 106 Orion Mashel, the reclusive CEO of Outer Ring Excavations, had a personal and heated meeting with Muryia Mordu, which resulted in the mercenary commander storming out. Mashel's reputation as a recluse meant that this visit to his headquarters attracted media attention, as well as the eyes of New Eden. Several days later, Mordu's Legion was seen mobilizing on a large scale, reportedly under the direct command of Muryia Mordu himself. The taskforce then penetrated deep into Serpentis Corporation space, avoiding all conflict with Serpentis forces as they orbited an installation in the heart of their territory and utilized an unknown device against a chemical storage facility. They then promptly left without any damage to their own assets, and were pursued by Guardian Angel forces responding to the incursion. Several Legion ships were reported destroyed in skirmishes that followed despite Mordu himself and the bulk of his fleet returned to headquarters unharmed. In an emergency meeting that followed, Mordu organized defensive pickets around ORE facilities to safeguard against further retaliation by Serpentis and their Angel Cartel backed forces. Many other Legion forces were left marauding in the Fountain region, proving to be a thorn in the side of the Serpentis. A week later the Serpentis and Cartel forces began a campaign to push the Legion forces out of Fountain, which eventually succeeded as Mordu yielded the field. The Legion's actions unsettled many factions including several prominent capsuleer alliances, all of whom publicly demanded answers from the mercenary group. Mordu, not being a man who appreciates having his motives questioned, gave none.

Following this, tensions clearly rose between the Legion and ORE, leading to the opinion that the incursion into Serpentis space was against the wishes of Mashel, or that Mordu himself opposed the campaign and was pressured by ORE. Serpentis capitalized on the souring relationship and announced their buyout of large portions of ORE shares, even as as reports of a hostile annexing of 4C-B7X filtered out despite a communications blackout. Both the buyout and the events of what some referred to as the "Serpent's Massacre" put the Serpentis Corporation in a position of control over ORE policy, likely contributing to the decision to revoke the Mordu's Legion contract for protection. In exchange this buyout secured ORE assets against further hostile interference from Serpentis and their allies among the Angel Cartel.

Intaki Prime and Ishukone

Following Caldari occupation of the Gallente systems, designated as a contested zone under the CONCORD Emergency Militia War Powers Act, in YC111 the Caldari Providence Directorate held a blind auction for the administration and development rights to the systems under their control. Intaki was the only system awarded to the Ishukone Corporation. In a deal with the Mordu's Legion and the Intaki Assembly, both corporations moved in to provide security and commercial shipping services to the planet's governing authority.

This was revealed to be a mutual business deal between Ishukone, the Legion and the Intaki Assembly, who retained rights under Gallente laws to franchise both services as they saw fit. Muryia Mordu had leveraged his close ties with both partners, and while security had been traditionally handled by the Federation Navy, in March YC112 the Legion arrived in the system with Ishukone commercial ships, who themselves had taken over commercial shipping from FedMart. Despite the auction results having been announced the previous year, until this point no movement had transpired on Ishukone's part. Furthermore, the system control had been retaken by the Federal Defense Union militia a week previous. The FDU were spurred to action over the reports and large conflicts took place over the contested planet. This was followed by a plea from the Intaki Assembly for a cease fire, directed at the FDU, as they declared both corporations to be "present in Intaki at the specific and un-coerced request of the Assembly." Later that day the Federation Navy attempted to reassert control over the system by sending a fleet under the control of Admiral Gouenette. The fleet was refused entry at the Intaki stargate in Agoze, and the Intaki System Command informed the admiral they were "neither required nor welcomed." While Ishukone are prohibited from sending any armed military ships to operate in Intaki, the Mordu's Legion are given full authority to police the local space and were given full military access, subject to civilian oversight by the Intaki Assembly. All of the negotiations involving the Legion in this deal where attended by Muryia Mordu himself, and there has been a great deal of speculation as to how many of the meetings that took place where done in back rooms rather than minuted board rooms subject to official oversight.

Battle of Pike's Landing

Muryia Mordu was personally involved in the conflict that occurred in Amamake, in Heimatar, centered around the Pike's Landing battlefield on the temperate planetary surface. A large element of Mordu's Legion forces jumped into orbit around his Wyvern-class supercarrier, all within close proximity to the Amarr fleet that had infiltrated the system. Collisions occurred as well as losses when an Avatar-class Titan fired it's doomsday weapon, obliterating several Mordu's Legion interceptors as it attacked a Republic Fleet carrier.

While the exact motives of the Amarr, Gallente and Caldari fleet elements under the leadership of Mens Reppola that were present in the fray have not been made publicly available, it is clear that Pike's Landing was the common reason for their aggressive presence in Republic territory. Witnesses testify to furious fighting on the surface, and the presence of ships with the markings of Mordu's Legion. CONCORD is still investigating, but it has been suggested that the battle was connected to the development of cloned soldiers, particularly in light of Mordu's subsequent connection with the activities of cloned mercenaries alongside those fighting for the empires across New Eden.

Mordu's Private Trials and Challenge

In YC114, before the purges that were to eventually happen in the subsequent year, Muryia Mordu issued a series of challenges for cloned mercenaries. It became apparent that he had seen this new technology in operation in private trials and had been doing so since he had provided sanctuary to the first cloned soldier, who went rogue and broke away from his Amarr overlords. Mordu only confirmed that he had been privy to reports that detailed how cost effective and efficient they were proving for the empires developing the technology in a public statement, also stating that he wanted to see their results in action for himself. As these troops started entering into the freelance marketplace, setting up mercenary companies of their own and breaking away from the empires, Mordu challenged them to prove that "they're even one-tenth as good as my guys..."

The Legion has plenty of surveillance equipment and we're pretty well tapped in to the goings on in public mercenary contracts. I'm going to release a list of challenges...(L)et's see what these cloned mercs can do.

Aware that scores of independents who are willing and able to die and die again presented a threat to the Legion's standing, it was clear that the challenge was a way to both test them and incite infighting amongst the new outfits. It worked. Mordu backed up his promises with weapons, dropsuits, and equipment for the clone soldiers, who launched into public contracts in direct opposition to each other. Their exchanges not only demonstrated the power of the new order, but the violence they were capable of that would later result in their condemnation, most notably by Gallente President Jacus Roden.

Events on Caldari Prime

Following the events of Operation Highlander, a concerted effort by the Gallente Federation to retake Caldari Prime from the Caldari State, the planet was declared a demilitarized zone in a treaty by both sides. Following the destruction on the planet during the conflict, caused mostly by the remains of the Leviathan class Shiigeru titan crashing to the surface, the administration of the planet was divided into two districts, Gallente and Caldari controlled. Soon afterwards, Muryia Mordu issued a statement announcing that Mordu's Legion had been appointed as planetary security.

Ishukone and Material Acquisitions will remain in firm control of the Caldari and Gallente districts, respectively. We will provide regular, full reports to both them, the Chief Executive Panel, and Gallente Senate in order to preserve transparency and ensure we are providing fair and neutral oversight of the planet.

From their appointment as security the Legion received praise from both administrations for their handling of the civilian populace. While complaints against the Legion have been made for some instances of heavy-handedness, overall no major incidents have arisen. Documented cases of the Legion successfully calming or neutralizing outbreaks of violence state they have been both effective, and even-handed in their duties. Muryia Mordu would not have had it any other way.

Recent Events

As testament to the calibre of the research and development that those under his command have been conducting, CONCORD announced in YC 116 that three new ships had been registered for deployment by Mordu's Legion: A frigate class, the Garmur; a cruiser class, the Orthus; and a battleship class, the Barghest. Disclosed statistics for the ships displayed a preference for advanced missile technology and long range warp drive disruption, seemingly derived from both Caldari and Gallente technology. Testament to Mordu's policy of leaving allegiances to political powers behind, these ships have been designed to serve a professional peace-keeping force that has served to bridge the gap between Gallente and Caldari on more than one occasion. It was later revealed that the Legion had acquired the use of one of Ishukone's think-tanks, Kiiragustektaa, to help design a new ship, fitting to the needs of the Legion in their new role in Intaki in particular. Muryia Mordu's reputation as a keen negotiator and increasingly neutral intermediary are now evidenced by military assets born of cooperation and a desire for security rather than simple superiority in protracted conflict.

It's also no surprise that Mordu's reputation, as well as the recent actions of his Legion, have led to a swelling of his ranks. Their rapid response and clear willingness to get involved has earned them plenty of additional friends within the Caldari Navy and Megacorporation security forces. Recruitment activity is at an all time high as the Legion has been actively seen seeking new recruits among the disaffected soldiers in the current warzones. Fuelled by the recent turmoil following the dissolving of the Caldari Providence Directorate and Tibus Heth's regime, many Caldari soldiers have taken to joining the Legion, and Gallente military personnel who witnessed Mordu's Legion operate on Caldari Prime are also seeking to be led by Muryia Mordu.

See Also