#rlf

So Walter probably isn't the only person buying/using old gen augmented humans but it's been fifty years, he's running low on potential hounds. But, I think he started with the handful of gen 1s he could get- Sulla was successful at both buying his freedom and then staying alive- and worked his way through the available people. Walter doesn't try to get his hounds killed- they're expensive to replace- but it still happens to most of them. The handful that have survived have mostly stuck around on Rubicon for a least a few years before finding a way off planet.

Related- Walter has only been worried about his hounds having a (stolen) callsign within the last few years- for most of the time hes been operating on rubicon it hasn't been that necessary for dealing with just the rlf, dosers, and sometimes the pca when he needed to

so into the rubicon liberation front headcanons/rambling

Between him using the Mind Beta core and Allmind's list of potential release candidates I put Rokumonsen as a gen 3 augmented human- he's a previous hound of Walter's who managed to buy himself free, but didn't manage to make it off planet/wasn't successful enough as a lone mercenary to keep himself going. He has fought against the RLF before as a hound, but Little Ziyi found a starving guy in a beat up AC and dragged him back to the base and no one's gonna poke into his history too far (they do know. RLF knows about Walter and his hounds and that they're active. Not any of his specific goals, just that he's a mercenary handler interested in Coral). Ziyi is the RLF's 'little sister' and she's not, like, Spoiled spoiled. But she is a little bit- anyone else dragging a random, beat up and starving mercenary home was gonna have some problems trying to do that but Ziyi mostly avoided that.

Rokumonsen kinda went from 'dude that doesnt talk to anyone and flinches if you yell near him' to. Haiku reciting, Japanese obsessed guy he is. He fills the 'any mercenary can do this' jobs the RLF have- if it's not something they need Raven or one of the coral warriors for Rokumonsen usually gets to do it. (Personal headcanon is he's ethnically Indian and speaks Urdu and taught himself Japanese).

If one of the coral warriors dies, the RLF usually has other folk trained to use ACs that will fill the slot, but it takes a bit to make everything official. Little Ziyi was not planned to be a coral warrior, at least not as young as she is, but The RLF is taking a beating right now and they didn't have a choice. Ring Freddie was also just a backup pilot for a long time, but. Needs must, and he'd been volunteering for a while to help Dolmayan. He has been a coral warrior longer than Ziyi or Durham, part of why he has a much nicer/upgraded AC.

Which. Ring Freddie is a lot more attached to Dolmayan than Dolmayan is to him. Dolmayan does care for him! Just. Freddie's got an unhealthy attachment and Dolmayan isn't turning it away. Freddie is the first paramour/partner/whatever Dolmayan's had in a long time, and just having him does help Dolmayan to some degree, just. Guy is fully aware a lot of people have died directly because of him, and no 'if we weren't doing this they would have died anyway from the PCA/corporations taking over the planet' is gonna help him.

Durham is more suited to a construction setting than an AC but one of his jobs is motivation- guy's a huge ham, he's good at it for the folk who aren't sold on the RLF. He's a very recent Coral Warrior and isn't even as used to it as ZIyi.

Flatwell and Dolmayan are the longest standing coral warriors at this point- Dolmayan has seen. Many, many many people die, mostly to the PCA, some to doser factions, recently more and more to corporations moving in. He's pretty numb to it at this point. Flatwell... cares, but. I like to think he's ruthless- he sees the way from where they are to where he wants them to be and his goal is to get there. Corporations moving in and causing problems have forced him to change plans and tactics.

Back to Ziyi, actually- she's been raised piloting ACs, but she is the most recent Coral Warrior and she has a less than great AC because she's mostly kept away from combat, at least as much as Flatwell can. She isn't his daughter, but she's not not his daughter, and she does get some preferential treatment. She and Arshile are good friends- they have a promise to both stay alive until the planet is liberated. In the liberator ending she's given a quickly fixed up Steel Haze while Rusty's out with Steel Haze Ortus.