Chief Mauhúar was the commander of the Red Hand mercenaries
Biography
The Mandrake Rebellion has been documented in detail thousands of times over; its causes, inception, key players, and the statistics of planets irrevocably lost to the scarrings of war. But for the Marauders it began with the ambitions of Romasko Holdings’ CEO Gavriel Mandrake and an insignificant planet named TCx87653c.
Marauders were to be used as pawns in the plans of the individuals who would go on to control the Council, and a set of conditions where they would be certain to rebel was artificially engineered.
They were to be put down, and then replaced by the already-conceptualised Enforcer Troopers. But the plan did not accommodate for three pieces in the game. The first was just how many Marauders would be gathered together to act as the touchpaper for rebellion. The second was Chief Mauhúar. The third was just how virulently eager for war Marauders are.
It was just bad luck that the coup’s plans came to fruition just after TCx87653c had been conquered, when 20,000 Orc Commandos were still present on-planet, and that Chief Mauhúar - commander of the Red Hand mercenaries - was among them.
The average Orc does not care for power beyond their immediate clan and are happy to fight and get paid. But there are some who want more. Of those, few have the capability or the talent to actually make use of that aspiration. Chief Mauhúar had that talent, and he also had tens of thousands of Orcs whose pay had suddenly stopped.
Mauhúar deserves describing. In Marauder society, devoid of religion or any proselytising figures to encapsulate how a Marauder should act, Mauhúar has been etched into lore. Mauhúar was said to be immense - almost as large as a Hulk, although there are no individuals still alive who saw him in the flesh. But more than this he was a tactical genius. Mauhúar took what he learnt under GCPS tutelage and improved upon it, took advantage of his race’s unique abilities the way no human commander could sanction – their unrestrained joy of battle, the utter indifference to loss of life on either side of the fight. Even today “What would Mauhúar do?” is a question often asked by Orc chiefs in a tactical predicament. Freed from having to slow down for human troops to keep up with the Marauders under his command, Mauhúar took to the galactic skies and set about shattering the GCPS.
Seen from afar, the planets falling to the Marauders spiderwebbed out from TCx87653c. Specs on the galactic map that shone with the light of human habitation flickered and died. The Mandrake sector fell, releasing tens of thousands more Marauders to Mauhúar, and then came the Sacking of Bovan. Hundreds of light years from Mandrake, Bovan was one of the first Fourth Sphere worlds colonised. Many of the core worlds relied on its ore. It had cities, industrial centres, and 500 million sphere citizens. The Orcs there had no known connection with Mauhúar or Romasko, and the uprising was as surprising as it was total. Bovan died, and the inner spheres woke up to the danger on their doorstep.
It’s questionable whether Mauhúar would have changed his plans if he’d known the Council had fabricated the Rebellion and had already made steps in creating what would be the Enforcer troopers. But even despite the Council’s plans, Mauhúar came perilously close to destroying the GCPS. Having sacked most of the Fourth and Third Spheres to the galactic west, only the undefended inner spheres were between Mauhúar and the core worlds. A last ditch defence was organised by the Council; a trap to lure Mauhúar and his forces onto a single planet, then destroy it with an artificially triggered supernova. This last stand came to be known as the Battle for Nihil Rex, and it saw the end of the rebellion’s threat to the GCPS, the near extermination of the Marauder species, and the death of Chief Mauhúar.
Though a century and a half gone, the Mandrake Rebellion left two indelible lessons; for the GCPS, that they were not indestructible, and for the Marauders, that they did not need to be paid by anyone else to fight.
Living legend?
Although Chief Mauhúars’ presence at the Battle of Nihil Rex was verified, it cannot be officially confirmed he died there. It would of course be impossible to identify a body from a system turned to dust after a supernova, but the fact is it cannot be guaranteed that the tactical genius who oversaw the Mandrake Rebellion was present at the time the planet was vapourised.
This slim possibility of his survival has led to an almost cult-like status for the Chief, with his outlined face becoming a symbol of rebellion for the downtrodden, disenfranchised or just delinquent teenagers sphere-wide. Several Orc mercenary commanders have even risen to lead large warbands claiming to be Mauhúar’s offspring, and on a few occasions even the Chief himself. So far all have met the same end at the hands of the Black Company, but without definitive proof, the Chief ’s cult of infamy will continue to draw admirers and imitators.
External Links
- Warpath Universe Sourcebook Digital Edition - https://www.manticgames.com/warpath/books-warpath/warpath-sourcebook-digital/
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