Hagen von Seelenburg

Hagen von Seelenburg
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Profile
Origin	Rheinland
Occupation	Kommandant of the Volksfront
Affiliation	Bundschuh
Joined the Bundschuh	818 A.S.
Rank	Genosse, Kommandant
Born	February 2nd 784 A.S., Cambridge (Age 34)

Hagen von Seelenburg, (born February 2nd in 784) was a well known Hauptmann of the Red Hessian Army. He exclusively served at the Omega-5 frontlines and was feared and hated for his successful raids on corsair territory and for his ruthless treatment of prisoners. After a number of disagreements with Hessian High Command about Hessian expansion strategies, he deserted and joined the ranks of the Bundschuh where he serves today.

Youth

Von Seelenburg was born on an IMG transporter on the way to Cardiff shortly before it was attacked and destroyed in a Pirate raid. While he miraculously survived the attack, his parents did not. He and his older brother, Artur, were raised by his Grandparents, Benjamin and Lydia von Seelenburg. As they were poor miners, they couldn't enable Hagen to receive a proper education on a planetary school and home-schooled him instead before the guild provided an apprenticeship as miner when he was 16 and another one as shipper when he was 18. His older brother had already been an escort pilot for eight years when Hagen started his first apprenticeship. Artur was assigned his own fighter and would teach Hagen how to fly a small fighter craft in their free time when ever he came home from his escort duties.

Service in the Red Hessian Army

In the age of 20, shortly after the Nomad War, Hagen enlisted in the Red Hessian Army. He was convinced by a recruiter who encountered him in Freistadt’s bar. Only two days before, Hagen had lost three of his closest friends and coworkers in a Corsair raid - the last ones in a long series of tragedies. The recruiter had no hard time to convince the desperate and drunk young man to join other Rheinlanders and former miners to bring the fight to those he had learned to hate the most. He enlisted and was immediately transferred to Ronneburg base.
Von Seelenburg experienced an average career: He was promoted Leutnant in 807, Oberleutnant in 809 and Hauptman in 815.
He made him self known in both enemy and friendly lines as mercyless, devious and effective. He is especially famous for seeking and finding ways to outnumber and outgun enemies as high as possible by either luring them into an ambush or splitting up their forces by using various decoys. Many Corsairs curse him as a coward as he always retreated from battles that he found impossible to win, in order to minimize casualties. However, he never hesitated to fight until the bitter end when ordered to.
His deep hate for Corsairs resulted in numerous interrogations that he ended by torturing his prisoners to death. To him, it made no difference if the Corsair in front of him was a civilian or a combatant, man or women, adult or child. It were these murders that gave him the nickname “Schlaechter von Ronneburg”.
His promotion to Hauptmann and the resulting commandos he led, changed his view on the grand scheme of Hessian policies, though. He had to witness too many badly trained Hessian recruits joining his ranks and getting killed under his command every day as they were either unskilled children with no perspectives or old and exhausted miners.
It was then when he started to question both: the ways in Rheinland that created such pitiful fates and the Red Hessian leadership that didn’t care enough to keep the fresh meat away from the meat grinder.
Only a year after being promoted to Hauptmann, shortly before RHA leadership intended to promote him to Major, von Seelenburg started to openly criticize the long term strategy of the RHA to expand into the omegas and rather gain territory than overthrowing the government in Rheinland. He handed in numerous requests to be transferred to Vogtland and to be involved in engagements with the Rheinland Military. But his requests were turned down every single time as the RHA didn't intend to waste a specialist on warfare against Corsairs in Omega-5 by deploying him in Rheinland. Von Seelenburg grew more cynical and desperate with every further man that died under his command. In 818, von Seelenburg went as far as venting all his frustration by openly denouncing Admrial Meisnerr and his strategies during a cadre meeting on Vogtland with an angry rant and open threats. As a result, he was thrown into the brig for a month and demoted to Oberleutant.

Service in the Volksfront

As soon as von Seelenburg was allowed to fly an Odin again, he deserted in order to join the Bundschuh movement. This, of course, wasn’t a very smart move as the Bundschuh wouldn’t have hesitated to extradite him to their closest allies. However, Meisnerr saw an opportunity to create a win-win situation for everyone involved. He engaged in brief negotiations with the Bundschuh as he knew about their desperate need for experienced officers. The leadership of the party agreed to Meisnerrs terms, that included the free education of five Hessian space craft engineers in Luneburg’s University.
While von Seelenburg thought that he had deserted the RHA to join the Volksfront, he was in fact a bartered away asset.
Von Seelenburg was briefly tested by the Volksfront and promoted into the rank of Kommandant. His new command is a shift in both quantity and quality. As he was used to command tens and hundreds of unskilled pilots with lacking discipline, he now commands only four squads of 5 pilots each. All of them well trained, ideologically convinced and thus motivated. In the civil structure of the Bundschuh Pary, however, he is a mere Genosse. While only entitled to vote over the decisions of the Leadership, he still enjoys more participation into the faction’s policies than he did in the Red Hessian Army.
As the Bundschuh have, in contrast to the Hessians, very few members and resources, von Seelenburg still attempts to adjust to the faction's no-casualty and top-training policies as he got used to regarding his subordinates as weak pawns in a greater picture of operations.

Current Affairs

His current main task is to coordinate the guerrilla attacks on the Liberty Navy's supply convoys in the Borderworlds where he commands four fully equipped Volksfront Squadrons. Occasionally, he gets ordered to kill Infested Rheinlanders in swift search and destroy missions with only a hand full of equally skilled and experienced pilots.
As the current set of hit and run tactics he is ordered to execute is a contrast to the last years of his military affairs where he used to deal as much damage as possible until one of either sides had to retreat, he has a hard time to confess to him self that it isn't the way he ever used or wanted to command as he still is convinced to have joined the better cause for his new fatherland - and that it should make him proud.