Gylan Magnatius

Status: deceased

Second Republic Human. Industrialist and Elite. Paranoid Recluse. One of the writers of the Enigmus Collection Transcripts.

Background

Gylan was born on an advanced corporate world called Vayu (named after the Indian deity of the air).  It was set up as a paradise by one of the major zaibatsu corporations. His mother was a marketing executive for this corporation and took care of her family well.  He never knew his dad.

Vayu was a world (now lost) that boasted cities built in the sky, using cutting-edge anti-grav technology and lightweight synthetic construction materials.  The corporate families lived in these sky cities while the workers and laborers lived on the ground in sub-standard cities and towns.

Gylan never knew his father.  His mother, Coliope,  refused to talk about him.  At work, she was boisterous and out-going personality but at home, she was reserved and cold.  She rarely spoke to Gylan unless she had to.  This left Gylan quiet and reserved, doubting that his mother even wanted him alive.  She was a very devout follower of the early Church of Celestial Sun and imposed a very oppressive environment for Gylan.

At an early age, his mother gave him a gift she said was not from her.  She never revealed whom it was that gave it to him but he suspected it was his real father.  It was a small air-bike that had a special feature – a self-aware computer.  This bike, named Pheonix, became his treasured belonging.  He took it to places all over the sky cities, performing aerial tricks with local kids.  The self-aware personality also taught him many things through out his childhood, like a father figure would.  He became very close with the artificial intelligence, finding it easier to bond with than people.

It was when he decided to venture down to the Lowlands that it got him in trouble and nearly killed.  Fortunately his mother had put a tracer device on the bike and used it to send corporate marines out to save him from a difficult position with some thugs.  He made it out without a scratch, but the thugs did not.  His mother in turn, destroyed the air-bike. All that remained was his ignition key that he kept around his neck.

During one of his extravagant birthday parties that his mother’s assistants put together for him, early in his adolescence, another mysterious gift appeared.  This time it was an android, named Cadmus, with the same artificial intelligence as Phoenix his air-bike.  He was overjoyed to have his friend back.  He was also given collectively by his mother’s assistance a genetically engineered dog with wings, named Griff.  This was one of Gylan’s fondest memories.

The android helped Gylan develop his athletic abilities in aerial-baseball.  He developed a strong talent in the sport.  During one outing at the practice zone, a vehicle pulled up and weapons fire erupted from the window.  The android stepped in the way of the fire, saving Gylan.  However, the android did not survive.  His mother was distraught about the attack, revealing in her hysteria that the two attempts on his life were not coincidental.  Something about Gylan made him a target.  She did not elaborate on what but implied it had to do with his father.

Unwaveringly, Gylan found college a chance to get away from his mother and her oppressive world.  He found that he was inheriting some of her characteristics including her coldness and paranoia.  He hoped that college would change that.  Pursuing a degree in business as well as developing a talent for game design, he also joined the college aerial baseball team.

Gylan always felt like he was being watched – shadows outside his windows; strange looks in crowds.  It began to have a severe effect on his college career.  His athletic career collapsed after an injury, and not long after he graduated, his mother died.  He inherited a considerable amount of wealth and because his mother had risen to CEO of the corporation, he inherited a controlling share of a major technology corporation.  He used this to explore his interest further into robotics, aerial sports and game design.

As time went on, however, he became more and more reclusive and paranoid.  Things his mother said haunted him.  He never learned to trust anyone, completely.  While pursuing his interests, he built himself fortresses and hired bodyguards.  However, he slowly became distrustful of the bodyguards and start replacing them with androids.  This was true for all but one, a man by the name of Brock Nagorus Samsonius, who befriended Gylan and remained loyal to his death.  Brock was a genetically engineered soldier retired and left to his own devices after a corporation was done warring in some unknown corner of the galaxy.  He was discarded, like scrapped robot. Perhaps because he saw Brock as just another type of robot manufactured and discarded, Gylan took him in.

Brock was tall man, towering over most.  He was skilled in martial arts and melee weapons.  He specialized in the use of a throwing hand blade, a rare weapon he learned to use from a master of a long lost art.  Gylan admired its uniqueness and his ability with it.  He arranged for Brock to be supplied with many varieties of hand blades.

One year, while exploring alien worlds with Brock on a remote Ukari colony world, scouting it for a new location of yet another mansion fortress, Gylan encountered a village of Ur-Ukari.  The Priestess of the village seemed to know something about Gylan and implied it every time they crossed paths.  He attempted to draw more out of her only to receive angry fits of rage and condemnation.  Eventually, she turned to him and “cursed” him “to eternity.”

The Ukari curse only fed further into his paranoia and developing psychosis.  This was further fanned with his secret visit to Cueball.  Only recently discovered, Gylan had heard about it through some secret channels he had and was one of the first to actually visit before the huge crowd of scientists settled on it.  His visit drew him to the Colossus, where he had visions.

These visions continued after he left Cueball and lead him to write the manuscripts of the Enigmus Collection and create the artifacts. But it also drove him to insanity.  Brock helplessly watched his best friends decline into madness.  But he remained loyal as he had no where else to go.

Something drew Gylan to be obsessed with Egyptian burial techniques, perhaps by the similary the Colossus has to the Egyptian Sphinx.  Gylan knew he was dying months before it happened.  His Egyptian obsessions and as part of the instructions he said he was receiving from Angels of the Celestial Sun, he built his tomb amongst the ruins of Cueball.  He paid the right people to keep it quiet and built it underneath the ground with the help of his army of androids and Brock. It was all done in secret after carefully laid planning, and much preparation work.