Robert Cinnabar

On paper, Cinnabar is everything the empath initiative wished to create. He is the product of a highblood mated to a powerful darnathi empath. He even had the added bonus of being born an albino, which makes him particularly exotic and attractive to his race. Thankfully as he was heavily genetically engineered, many of the life threatening issues with albinism are not present in his genetic makeup beyond a sensitivity to sun. Cinnabar was also one of the lucky few children of an arranged marriage where his parents actually did love one another. His mother was a darnathi doctor who helped children that had mental trauma, and his father was one of the extremely rare mid-spectrum highblood empaths. Cinnabar’s test scores listed him as a mid level empath, but the truth is his parents deliberately avoided training him so he wouldn’t be at risk of getting caught up in the golden cage.

Cinnabar was always accused of making his accomplishments through favoritism and because of it developed a cold shell as his public persona. People not close to him see him as aloof and distant and sharp to discipline. But he’s also fair and does not hold his men to any standard that he does not hold for himself. This trait is further exacerbated by the fact that although he’s a highblood on paper, he does not have the physical size, strength, and endurance of one, so he feels he must excel at everything to prove himself. He even took up the ancient art of darnathi swordfighting, a form of fencing, to show his skill.

Cinnabar barely escaped Alvarni and his ship was the one that mostly had last minute refugees who were desperate for an escape before the purges began. Because of this his crewmen tend to have the least amount of discipline, but Cinnabar does his best to keep everyone in shape. He has also formed an odd friendship with Captain Malachite who makes a point of dragging Cinnabar out for ‘fun’ to local bars and trying to get the commander drunk as much as possible.