James Mechan

James Breya Mechan (formerly His Imperial Excellency, James B. Mechan) was the third Emperor of Ammerinia, reigning from 2025 to 2069. Following the events of the Great Imperial Crisis of 2069, Mechan defected to Manguardia (bringing countless vital secrets with him) and was brought on as Tûrvi-Kasch II's personal advisor.

During the Quky Incident of 2084, however, Mechan went rogue again and exposed Manguardia's false-flag operation, plunging the opposing GIN, KAA, and PGLP alliances into open conflict. Mechan's whereabouts by the time of X-Day were unknown, though he seemingly fled somewhere beyond the reach of Manguardia or Ammerinia after escaping the Manguardian capitol several weeks prior.

Early life & Imperial Air Force service
James Mechan was born on March 1st, 1998 A.W.E. Prior to being crowned Emperor of Ammerinia, he served as a GF-85 Firewing interceptor pilot in the Imperial Air Force from age 19 to 25, and became the youngest Brigadier General in the history of the Imperial military by the end of his service thanks to his performance in the Dakran Conflict, for which he was also awarded the Order of Terra.

Early reign
His selection as the new Emperor by the Council after Phelix Wright's death was highly controversial in the beginning due to his young age, but his leadership during the 10 Years War completely assuaged these concerns among the Imperial Council and enshrined him as a heroic leader in the eyes of the Ammerinian public. The early days of his reign would see widespread globalization of the Imperial economy in contravention of previous isolationism, as well as free trade and limited privatization of several heavy industries. While there was controversy regarding the impact of these loosened restrictions on capitalism in the Empire, Mechan at this point saw the benefit of the increased economic growth as amounting to a net positive in the end.

Under Mechan, the Global Imperium of Nations was formed in 2030, initially as a response to Von aggression, but it soon became a more longlasting defensive alliance of the other nations in the Ammerinia's sphere of influence.

Keigan Conflicts & Allyship
Mechan's reign in the following decades also saw the beginning of a close allyship with the Republic of Davinhia and President Davin Hue, working with the Republic and its allies in the Keigan Sea to repel the Second Ruswallian Insurgency and overthrow Jonathan Johnston's communist regime in Canwall in 2048 and 2050 respectively.

Meeting MORPHEUS
This period saw the beginning of the seeds of doubt being planted in Mechan's mind, however, as MORPHEUS revealed itself to him in 2051. The truth about the Ashlight Initiative and the real history of the Empire was only partially drip-fed to him by the AI at first in order to record his initial emotional reactions and judge whether or not his service would be more valuable if he was entirely clued in. Regardless though, a crisis of faith began to brew within the Emperor; "Do my actions as a leader truly have any meaning? What benefits to the common people are really provided by Imperial 'civilization'?" were thoughts that began to cross his mind more and more.

Great Imperial Crisis of 2069
In the early morning hours of September 29th, 2069, just as Emperor Mechan's personal VTOL transport was taking off when a nearby rocket impacted and rapidly dispersed a massive concentration of Chimera-AB gas that enveloped the entire Fort Rainer airbase as part of a large-scale attack against every Imperial military installation. As one of the cockpit utility hatches was still open, the pilot asphyxiated before the autopilot could wrest control and the transport crashed to the ground. Lord Marshal Atreus, who was travelling with Mechan at the time, was killed upon impact, and Mechan himself lost consciousness after being pierced by debris.

Mechan was swiftly evacuated and given emergency medical treatment under partial sedation. Imperial doctrine stated that the Lord Marshal would serve as regent in such extraneous circumstances, and since Atreus was dead, the next military official in line for the position was High Admiral Victor Michaelson. Mechan was deeply suspicious of Michaelson for his previous power-hungry behavior under his reign, however, and openly forbade him from assuming regency before being rendered unconscious for the medical operations.

The Imperial Court becomes split, as while the Council rallied behind Michaelson and agreed that Mechan was unfit to respond to the attack and lead in such a state, Mechan had a large and fervently devoted following both among his personal Imperial Guard and many sections of the military and concurred with his view of Michaelson as a power-hungry usurper. MORPHEUS resigned itself from the matter, stating that either potential victor of the power struggle would be able fulfill Ammerinia's further dominance.

A regiment of the Imperial Guard led by Colonel Jögen sought to put a stop to Michaelson's attempt to assume power and marched into the Imperial Military Command's main base, the Sanctum, where the new Lord Marshal was still held up. The Guard launched a massive assault once inside, killing most high-ranking military personnel on-site, though top-level officials such as Michaelson narrowly made it out. With their primary objective a failure, the Imperial Guard then overloaded the Sanctum's antimatter reactor, destroying the base and completely disrupting the Imperial Army's chain of command and communication.

At the same time, another regiment of the Imperial Guard led by Colonel Müller sealed off the Imperial Palace in New Eden from the outside and released a recovered unopened capsule of Chimera-AB gas against the loyalist Imperial Council inside. The only Imperial Minister to survive was Skylar Banes, who was not in the Palace at the time. With the authority of the Michaelite Imperial Government in utter disarray after these Loyalist strikes, chaos spread.

Mechan came to sometime later and was appalled upon witnessing the actions of his Loyalists, and equally disgusted at the new Lord Marshal confirming his fears. Thinking back on MORPHEUS's words about how the Imperial hegemony would remain no matter what and everything he had seen on the ground during the Crystal Empire Crisis, he decided he had enough and swore to tear down the Empire he had helped to build. Mechan then commandeered a personal shuttlecraft and left Ammerinia, flying across the Concordia Ocean until finally landing in the hinterlands of Manguardia and immediately encountering an MPLA People's Protection patrol.

Going rogue & Meeting with NOMIS
Now deeply disillusioned with Manguardia and its thinly-veiled imperialism (of which the Quky Incident was only the latest instance), Mechan felt the nation he had left Ammerinia to destroy it with was no better than the Empire in reality. After seeing the Kommando assassination of the Afidatrovan Archon, Mechan confronted Tûrvi-Kasch II in his office, whereupon NOMIS revealed itself to Mechan by speaking through Tûrvi-Kasch's bionic eye. The centuries-old AI finally imparted the full breadth of the knowledge that was being kept from Mechan; that it and MORPHEUS had both been in conflict since the dawn of the modern age as reflections of the supposed fundamental necessity of government and hierarchy for their creators and their civilization, comparing themselves to gods and their heavenly courts. NOMIS gloated that in truth, nothing could fundamentally stop them as long as civilization still existed in some respect.

James Mechan sharply yet laconically responded "Then your heaven will fucking burn!"

No gods, no masters
Mechan was able to transmit documents and audiovisual proof chronicling the full breadth of the false-flag operation by Manguardia against Afidatrov to the Republic of Davinhia and were released following Tûrvi-Kasch II's refusal to withdraw Manguardian troops from Quky-1123. The Davinian military then orbitally bombarded the Manguardian positions, which Tûrvi-Kasch II spun as an act of aggression after claiming the evidence of the false-flag attack was forged. He then declared war on Davinhia, which was reciprocated by Ammerinia as the KAA and GIN shared a defensive pact, thus began X-Day.

Mechan, with the help of his allies among the Manguardian leadership, narrowly escaped the People's Palace and Crescentgrad after an intense shootout with the Supreme Leader's Desolator Guard. Where exactly he fled to afterward is unknown, but he was never found by Ammerinia, Manguardia, or their affiliates before the Great Cataclysm. Whether Mechan survived the apocalypse and collapse he helped cause is a mystery, but regardless, he got his wish with the alongside the total destruction of both civilization in general and electronic technology on the planet; both AIs were forever no more.

Physical Appearance
In his youth as Emperor of Ammerinia, Mechan maintained a fresh-faced yet nondescript appearance with short and utilitarian crew-cut hair, chiseled features, and a plain black military uniform adorned with traditional Imperial accessories underneath his cream overcoat.

His later years after defecting to Manguardia saw him completely abandon his previous carefully curated appearance and let his hair freely grow out to shoulder length along with a rough beard, although he still continued to wear his faded overcoat. Despite the ease of replacing the eye he lost in the VTOL crash, he elected to simply keep it covered with an eyepatch, which according to him was a way of reminding himself that he could never go back to his old ways.

He was outfitted with a number of military-grade bionic augmentations from his time as a combat pilot that enhanced many of his physical senses and abilities, as well as largely halting his aging beyond adulthood as was common for all heavily cybernetically enhanced individuals.

Personality
As Emperor, Mechan was known to be a hard-nosed and taciturn yet affable leader both in private and public, dutifully embodying the Empire's stated values and remaining fixated on running the nation all the time, often neglecting interpersonal and social pursuits as a result.

However, Mechan's attitude very much shifted towards the end of his reign both due to becoming aware of MORPHEUS's behind-the-scenes manipulation and seeing the effects of war, state power, technocracy, and capitalism on people's lives up close. After his injury in the Great Imperial Crisis of 2069 and defection to Manguardia, he became more stern and very cynical, hellbent on liberating the world and beyond from the Empire's technocratic capitalistic control.

This cynicism coupled with his experience of "the other side of the curtain" in Manguardia eventually turned Mechan against authority and hierarchy as a whole, however, and he developed a hatred for manifestations of authority. That being said, this animosity came from a fundamental place of compassion and selfless desire for all beings to be truly free, which blossomed in Mechan as he learned to stop suppressing his inner feelings and emotional expression as he was expected to during his time as a leader.