Riot

Gwemoueb hweba jerk with a heart of gold.

Lenhwoue Koueleem-Hakwa is better known by his nom de plume, Riot.

He grew up wanting nothing, raised by the finest hired help and tutors money could buy. A precocious kid, he discovered an innate talent for music early on in his life and quickly rose to fame as a superstar performer, the larger-than-life frontman of a virtual band whose artificial performers he devised himself, playing out fantastical storylines through their music. Thronged by adoring fans, constantly touring, stage-managed by a discreet army of handlers, he grasped in his hands everything he thought he could ever want.

All of this came crashing down around him when the truth was revealed to him. His twin brother, supposedly deceased at birth? Sold off by his father due to his lishu potential and now entombed within a planetoid-sized machine in service to the strategic needs of one of the great anhwan-republics. His magnate father, perpetually away on business but always warm and supportive through the correspondence they exchanged? The merciless, icy-veined executive of one of the most hated quasi-legal gwemoueb hweba private military contractors, assassins of heroes and planetary oppressors in turn. And his hedonistic anything-goes lifestyle? A golden cage, exquisitely crafted to ensure he would never get in the way.

These revelations might have crushed someone less headstrong than Koueleem. To him, though, they served only to ignite an insatiable desire for revenge—but not only revenge: the chance to make for himself a name, a life truly his own. He spent an incredible amount of his father's money augmenting himself with every cybernetic enhancement the gwemoueb hweba had to offer, and an almost-as-extravagant sum hiring a rival mercenary company to break him out of the grip of his father's goons. His final concert was one for the books, and there are still diehard fans today who insist that the orbital drop troopers, the running gun battle, and the exploding star frigate above the stadium were all part of the show.

For a while he wandered, aimless and frustrated, still in possession of a huge sum of money but spending it wantonly on whatever caught his fancy. It took several misadventures and a few brushes with death to pound the notion into his stubborn head that he needed to humble himself and change—his old self would have called it the choice to adapt or to die. He has found himself trading gunfire with his father's mercenaries on occasion, but fortunately for him his father's focus is consumed by more pressing matters. These are, indeed, the years and months and weeks before the start of the cataclysmic War of Gall and Brushwood.

Riot is distrustful, often sarcastic, and still prone to bouts of unrestrained arrogance. He too often finds himself taking the opportunity to make a cutting remark or a low blow that he'll come to regret later. He still retains much of his dramatic stage presence and is not one to hold back his emotions. Naturally stubborn, he tries (but often fails) to compromise, not getting his way in order to not destroy the few friendships he's made. But on occasion the harsh persona he's built to protect his broken self dissipates for a bit, and he can be heartfelt and endearing, charming and witty.