"You fought well monsieur, but as you can see this day belongs to us." ~ Sky Marshal Corvus Ghent to Captain-General Ferdinand Ramago, the fall of Fort Neuefelsi, 3.5.47 IIIA.

THEME- (MAIN) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBe.....ature=youtu.be

http://youtu.be/ZjHw3pkrY-A (It gets pretty epic.)

(Optional, but it fits just as well) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ6IVN_Rf8k

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FINALLY! A commissioned picture of my dashing, guileful, resolute Raven character by the awesome master of avian anthro-artwork  JAEH

Sky Marshal Corvus Ghent.

Jeez where to start with this guy?
He's both a 'sona of mine and a major character within the fictional world setting I've been developing (with some help mind you!) for over a year now. Perhaps the most complex and intense character I've thought up and developed, Ghent is a serious force to be reckoned with in his setting.
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His original homeland, the island Kingdom of Sarpencia, was one of the few former members of a multi-national group called, the League of Monarchs that'd managed to avoid getting dragged into an escalating civil war that had been tearing the rest of the League apart over the last decade.

This did not last for too long and eventually Sarpencia was invaded by a particularly brutal dictator, the self titled, Grand-Generalissimo Mandrago Bursa.

Prior to his rise and the fall of Sarpencia, the wars between the former League city-states involved in the conflict had reduced one another to near total destruction. At this point there were well over a million dead, city-states that had existed for over several hundred years were reduced to ruins, and their infrastructures along with them. Millions of their surviving inhabitants were soon suffering from mass famine due in part to several of the 'bread-basket' states, which had once been a major source of foodstuffs for these peoples, closing themselves off as they were incapable of providing for anyone else but their own people at this point.

This condemned those other individuals to a slow and certain death by starvation. Fighting was still going on in many of these places, but it was more akin to the marauding of bandits than anything approaching the warfare that'd savaged these places years earlier. Then the unexpected happened.

Things got worse.

Mandrago Bursa had risen from the Captain of the Guard from one of those now starving nations, to the leader of a vast army he'd formed out of the destitute and displaced which soon struck terror into those who stood against them Although he was initially hailed a hero, Bursa's capacity for cruelty was only matched by his capacity for violence. He was later to be known as, The Black Legend.

After the fall of Sarpencia, the conquest of which had taken two months, Bursa had the leaders of those who'd resisted rounded up. The King as well as Ghent's father and older brothers in further addition to over a dozen other captured commanders and administrators were then executed publicly and en masse via machine-gun. Bursa had given the order personally.

The rest of Ghent's family was deported or sent to labor camps, Ghent himself however wasn't as lucky. For the next five years he was the prisoner in one of Bursa's most infamous Fortress-Prisons, Korsikopa. Those who were consigned to it's hellish confinements usually died within two years from either exposure to the extreme cold or exhaustion and malnutrition.

Ghent made it to five years, helped to organize a prison riot, captured the facility and along with hundreds of other prisoners then managed to escape aboard a docked cargo airship, Over the next few years the young man who'd escaped that day became one of the most successful and feared raider captains of the Sarpencian Corsairs.

Of key point to his successes, was Ghent's boundless imagination and talent for subterfuge and misdirection. His numerous methods of deception strategy, in a much later war than is mentioned here, would one day be legendary. Ghent's skills as a captain in tactics were by no means slacking either.

"The only way you'd know if it wasn't another damned ploy and you were in the real fight with that devil, was when you'd lost." ~ Captain Blake, a few years after his encounter with Ghent.

Later however he began to grow more and more emboldened to support a resistance group in overthrowing the tyrant Bursa. They were known as the Revolutionary Army and among the fact that they hated Bursa as much as Ghent did, he eventually became an ardent supporter of their ideas. He'd even managed to convince the Sarpencian Corsairs and several other raider captains and pirate groups (many of them came from aeronaval forces for the nations that'd fallen to Bursa in the past) to help end the tyrant's reign.

Although I'm heavily summarizing events here, eventually Bursa was defeated in battle (thanks to Conquista's grandfather), Ghent helped rebuild the Aero-Armada for the newly formed Revolutionary Republics and also helped to establish a means of safeguarding the new nation from some of their rather aggressive neighbors now that Bursa was out of the way.

When those foolish enough to do so tried to snatch up territory or raid into the Republic (sadly it wasn't and still isn't a recognized sovereign nation in the setting, so on a technicality these nations aren't going to war with them or really doing anything wrong in a legal manner), they'd find that not only did the Republic's have the Aero-Armada, which was still rather banged up from all the years of fighting, but that they'd also have to contend with the seemingly endless number of mercenary soldiers as well as help from citizen militias if they wanted to take anything worthwhile.

Now, over 20 years since the Republics were formed Corvus Ghent, Admiral of the Armada beforehand, is given a rank and title that signifies his nation's absolute trust in his ability to defend the Republics, it's lands and it's peoples. Sky Marshal, the supreme military commander of nearly the entire armed forces of the Republics.

There is however some sad irony in all of this, for Ghent's life was never meant to be that of martial leadership and military service unlike his father and brothers. He was to be a violinist, and apparently was (he's still pretty good mind you) something of a prodigy.

Sky Marshal Ghent's Anthem: "With our Sky Marshal" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaMbXDBOw3Y

Or how I imagine it would sound I should say. If you listen though, at the first part of the song it kinda sounds almost like they say his name even. Well to those of us who aren't used to hearing slavic languages all the time. ^^;

Wanna know how Ghent sounds? Kinda like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUDCg9bHzVg

Only a tad less gruff.

ARTIST  JAEH

Sky Marshal Corvus Ghent OC ©  UlricKessler


...also got a voice actor as well in the works, He knows who he is, x3