𝕻𝖗𝖆𝖊𝖙𝖔𝖗 𝕲𝖆𝖎𝖚𝖘 𝕭𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖔𝖗
"𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲. 𝐁𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐫𝐞, 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐝, 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐚 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐫𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐞𝐧?"Age: 30
Gender: Male
Unit: Army Group A
Rank: Imperial Legate/Strategos
Role: Staff Officer
Allegiance: Dominion
Equipment:
- Custom Remus 5.7mm, gold-plated, ivory grip
- Han Jian
- Dominion Army Dress Uniform
- Imperial Governor Exosuit (as seen in the photo above)
Appearance:
Praetor Gaius Bellator is a lean, young man, standing at 5'7". He may not seem much compared to his taller contemporaries, but he shares the same features of the Bellator family, with pale skin, an Asiatic eye shape, a strong jawline, and a broad nose. He doesn't look very imposing at all to the commanders of the other army groups, but to those lesser than him, from him radiates an air of imperial authority. His posture is always rigid, with him standing tall, chin up. Some might see him as condescending at first glance. His deep brown eyes make him look like an ever-scheming statesman, nearly cold and unfeeling. Because of this, he also emits an air of mystery.
Personality:
The Praetor is a quiet and reserved man, but that doesn't mean he lets his authority get pushed around. He is iron-fisted, iron-willed. Despite his silent nature, however, he communicates with his officers in important matters constantly, but refuses to speak to anyone regarding personal matters, and tends to keep emotions to himself, sometimes to the point that some even question if he was a Human or a mere machine with a single purpose. He sees the individual lives of his men as important, but their collective lives as mere statistics; he is unafraid to sacrifice for the greater good, but only for the greater good, for he believes that the ends would eventually justify the means. The only two emotions he ever showed were amusement and lividity, nothing more. He shows a deep disdain for disorder and illogical reasoning. Despite this, he is a masterful orator, painting with words. He has a tendency to contradict himself, however; he is lazy for the most part, but when the battle comes, he organises and checks everything himself and makes sure that everybody does their duty. The Praetor is also very duty-oriented. To him, that is the meaning of life: duty to something. For him, his is duty to nation. It is this sense of duty which has made him a respected commander, serving as the role model for his soldiers.
Despite this, he has a sense of justice and mercy, but his judgement isn't so easily clouded by compromising virtues. He is also a bit of a lover, but he's never shown it to anyone, as he never lets his emotions get the best of him.
History:
The Praetor was born to a poor line descending from one of John Bellhouse's ancestors in the edges of UDSN space, on a poor planet known as Philippi. His mother and father were both labourers, but the young Bellator, once named Kai Bellsyze had other plans. Originally, the young man wanted to be a lawyer, graduating with flying colours in law school, as well as graduating from the mandatory military training. As he grew older, however, the military caught up to him, and he became a distinguished officer and orator, before his planet capitulated to the Dominion without a fight. So far, he had been living a fairly regular life, having been removed from the military for being an officer. At the age of 22, however, that changed, as the so-called Reclamation began, in which the entire population of Imperial space was scanned for people related to the Bellhouse bloodline. Kai's family was discovered, and subsequently awarded. Though his father lived, it was Kai who was given the title of Count Bellsyze. However, he was subsequently allowed to use the name of Bellhouse, but instead opted to rename himself Gaius Bellator, just like his distant relative, Emperor John Bellhouse, who was later baptised as Ioannes Bellator.
His military training was noted once again. Usually, regular soldiers would have been reprimanded or arrested for a short period of time, but Gaius was the exception. Instead, he was promoted to be a captain immediately. Some saw this as an easy way out for a noble like the Count, but when Gaius showed his genius in strategy after proposing a plan to his superior in a time of need, he was further elevated, and became recognised as a military genius. He was elected to be a Commissar, continuing to show his prowess in strategy time and time again in the various crusades against the UDSN. This short, young man was therefore nicknamed the Short Commissar. His opponents disdained him, and he was eventually ordered to command a ragtag group of partisans and volunteers in one of their campaigns against the Internationale, with his opponents hoping to eliminate him. By the end of the campaign, he had made for himself a strictly-disciplined battalion of proper soldiers, and had made himself even more popular, before eventually rising above the rank of his opponents. He had all of them subsequently executed for committing treason against an Imperial Family member.
Eventually, he reached the rank of Legate, or Divisional Commander, at the mere age of 28. It was here where his golden age truly began. He was placed in command of the popular 7th Tank Division of the 10th Tank Army during the Carolean Crusades initiated by his distant relative, Charles Bellator, son to the Emperor himself. It was on Planet-0182, when, upon landing, the 10th Tank Army was immediately cut off from the rest of the Army Group when a logistical error dropped them off nearly a hundred kilometres away from where they should have landed. None of the Army Group's armies and reserves could come to the rescue, seeing as they were being besieged and pressured on all sides. Instead of going west, the 10th instead opted to connect to the massive river to their rear 5km away. The 3rd Division was sent to accomplish this, while Gaius' 7th was ordered to prepare an offensive. The enemy attempted to envelop the 10th by capturing a mountain with the use of a division, but this effort failed when Gaius sent a hundred MT1 'Mountain Goats' supported by a thousand infantrymen to take the hill in advance. By the time the Internationale got within range of the MT1s and the towed artillery, the bombardment had begun. Thinking that an entire enemy division had taken the mountain, they retreated. However, they were immediately cut off from the rest of the UDSN army, and were forced to surrender. The UDSN army which had sent for the division responded slowly with an attempted attack on the leftmost pincer of Gaius' division, but by the time they reached the supposed location of the Imperials, they had gone. They had strayed too far, and were again bombarded by the same unit Bellator had sent to the mountains. They tried to fire at the mountain, but the Imperials had dug in. Disorder spread through the Democratic lines, and some units began to retreat contrary to the orders of their general to continue pushing on to the foot of the mountain.
Gaius took advantage of this rout, and spearheaded an attack by his reserve Caesars on the retreating forces, once again making an entire unit surrender bloodlessly. A portion of the UDSN forces arrived at the foot of the mountain, but were unable to climb. Thinking that the enemy couldn't have made it to the mountain's eastern slope, they attempted to go through there. At first, there was quiet, when the last remaining 17,000 men of the enemy's attack force had reached the slope. They were forced to line up against the foot of the mountain, thinning their lines. Like a vice, a massive force came crashing onto the enemy front and rear; the mountain unit and the rest of the division had attacked simultaneously. Then, the reserve Caesars crashed onto the southern end of the enemy row, ending the lives of 17,000 men in an instant. The enemy army collapsed when the 3rd Division attacked from the river to the enemy's flank, taking three cities without resistance, consolidating their positions. The 8th and 9th Divisions, which have so far not seen any action, penetrated through the area of least expectancy: a small seemingly insignificant village by a mountain. This surprise gave way to a dilemma for the enemy, for the village had direct routes to more cities. The 7th exploited this dilemma by suddenly appearing at the rear of the enemy. In a single day, the 7th had travelled more than a hundred kilometres. They were utterly unprepared, so the enemy attempted to make use of a scorched earth policy by destroying their own infrastructure. The plan never came into fruition, as the guard tower the engineers took cover in was captured by orbital drop troopers, who surrounded all 1200 men inside. When the 7th arrived a few hours later, all 1200 men surrendered, and the 7th continued on, unopposed as the rest of the UDSN army had already mobilised against the 8th and 9th. From day to night, the 7th advanced without stopping until the sweep to some of the central cities eventually made the entire enemy army collapse under its own weight.
However, that was nothing compared to what he did next. After relieving the pressure on the flank of the rest of the Army Group, they linked up and solidified their positions. The entire Army Group linked up with four other Army Groups on the Western Front of the continent, and formed a thousand-mile-wide front, from the southern end to the northern end of the continent. The UDSN attempted to solidify their own lines by bringing in static guns, which they emplaced parallel to the Imperial lines. Two months later, however, the 10th Army began to do its job. In the northernmost reaches of the Imperial lines is a dense frozen forest, much like the Terran Siberia. Scouts reported snipers in the forest. The construction of static emplacements were slow. Calculations made by Bellator told him that his initial attack would cripple the enemy for an entire week, but it would also cripple his forces for three days. He would not allow such a leeway for the enemy to manoeuvre.
The rest of the 10th Tank Army stood east of the forest whilst the 7th entered, and as expected, the badly-placed artillery had, to a degree, crippled the 7th's fighting ability and made them stop by a river. The enemy, too, had been crippled; many of their guns were destroyed and had run out of ammunition, while the rest were ordered to form a solid line along the river, with thousands of infantrymen guarding them. The 10th, with even its leader now under the influence of Bellator, sneaked an additional two hundred tanks into the forest at night. By morning, the 7th unexpectedly forded the deep river without the use of pontoon bridges, and emerged on the other side, creating a beachhead on unguarded territory, watched only by scouts. Those scouts were subsequently executed on the spot, as two hundred fresh tanks forded the river, followed by the rest of the 7th. The beachhead allowed the rest of the 7th's ever-broadening spearhead to exploit the enemy lines, with the rest of the 10th following closely behind.
The penetration was not reported as the enemy's communications were cut. A fellow tank division, the 9th, worked hand in hand with Bellator's 7th. By the time the 10th had arrived further into enemy territory, the 7th's advance was blocked off by a heavy division consisting of roughly 500 tanks, outnumbering the 7th. To relieve some pressure on the 7th and the rest of the armies of Army Group A, the 9th and 8th Divisions of the 10th Tank Army chose to attack an enemy besieging the the centre of the Imperial Theatre. The 8th diverted their attention in two places, allowing the centre to push through the static line, while the 9th secured their defeat by attacking reinforcements from another part of the Theatre.
The enemy heavy tank division was ordered to attack the 8th and help the encircled enemy army to break free, while Gaius himself broke free from the enemy tank division's blockade. He would not allow the enemy to construct more static emplacements. An enemy motorised infantry division was sent to block his advance, with a grenadier division supposed to arrive a day after the motorised infantry division had stopped Gaius. The enemy's plans began to solidify before Gaius' eyes. While the enemy mechanised division was refuelling one midnight, Gaius surprised them. By UDSN calculations, Gaius should have been 20 kilometres away, but here he was now. While the enemies were sleeping, the 7th overran their camp. He took a further 10,000 prisoners that day. The grenadiers, upon hearing of this, were forced to retreat, or face the same fate as the mechanised division they were supposed to support. The 7th, now unstoppable, began to lose communication with the rest of the army, leaving behind crippled enemy units in their wake. Two weeks into the offensive, the psychological state of his enemies had degraded significantly, to the point that Gaius had taken an entire city with a feint and a simple lie. He was, however, forced to swing back when the enemy tank division that had blocked him earlier began to attack the 8th Division. The 9th did this, too, and a day later, the 7th and 9th made contact with the 500-tank-strong division, and decimated them in a two-pronged attack before the two divisions continued further into enemy territory. Soon enough, Army Group A was free to move. The static line was destroyed in a few days, freeing the rest of the Army Groups.
Two and a half weeks into the offensive, and the enemy had lost its bearings. What sealed the fate of their enemies on the continent, however, was Gaius' final push. He was given orders to perform a perilous swing into the rear of the enemy in the westernmost part of the continent. Initially thinking that he would be met with heavy resistance on his way, he found himself cruising silently along the wide green fields without resistance, save for a few desperate stragglers who either skirmished with the entire division, or surrendered. He learned from them that they were the only remaining men left guarding the outskirts of the two cities. The rest of the single division left to guard the cities had broken in two, and put up a final stand to defend the strategic rear of the UDSN forces on the continent. The rest of the divisions had apparently been ordered to support the enemy in the pocket Gaius' superiors were planning to create.
All 300 of Gaius' tanks arrived at the cities and besieged them. For 15 days, he besieged both cities without directly engaging them. On the 5th day, the southernmost city collapsed, starving and thirsty. He used this as his beachhead. The rest of the 10th Tank Army arrived just in time to clean up the mess. On the 15th day, half of Army Group A had come to exploit Gaius' lines, enveloping most of the enemy in a massive pocket. Only about 20% of the enemy managed to escape encirclement. The encircled were treated mercilessly by the Imperials as they didn't surrender. Three whole enemy Army Groups were crushed by the weight of the five-Army-Group pocket, and the 20% surrendered in a week after the collapse of the UDSN resistance on the second continent. It took a mere five and a half weeks.
Because of his actions on the front, he was promoted to Imperial Legate, and granted the title Praetor of Philippi. Since then, he has caught the interest of his superiors. With a million elite troops at his disposal, he made his name known and feared throughout the Dominion and the UDSN alike. Since then, he has been ordered to be part of the counteroffensive on the Segmentum Ceres, prepared to unleash the wrath of his Armies upon the UDSN.
