Aran Tau (regnal name Aran V) (31 October 1885 – 10 October 1961) was emperor of Antares from his ascension in October 1927 to his capture in August 1961.
Aran led Antares through the Centauran Wars, most notably reversing his father Kalvin II's doctrine of benevolent conquest, which led to the brutalisation of civilians during the later stages of the war. Later, he would lead Antares into the Forman War, where they would ultimately be defeated by the Compact.
Aran is part of the House of Tau which rules over Antares and is the son of Emperor Kalvin, gaining the throne in 1927 midway through the Columban Campaign. Aran would continue further from his father's goal of uniting Centaura, launching campaigns into Hydra and Libra. Aran would be the last Emperor of Antares, after the dissolution of Antares as a state post-Forman War.
Early Life[]
Aran was born in Ananteria at the royal residence. Emperor Silvius declared a month of celebration in the newborn prince’s honor, pleased at his line of succession being secured.
Despite wishing to steer his son away from being interested in war, Prince Kalvin failed to do so. Those close to the family attributed this to a reluctance to recount his own traumatic experiences in the 1875 Aquilan-Antarean War, leading a young Aran to learn about war through the perspective of books written by Imperial historians and from his grandfather, Emperor Silvius II. The old emperor adored his grandson and happily tutored him in the ways of leadership, believing an Emperor’s lessons should start young. He also regaled Aran with war stories of the Pistris Plains War of 1853-1855 and how his regiment won several battles against the Cetans. The fact that Antares was ultimately defeated in the war was glossed over, as were any unsavory elements of the fighting.
In 1893, his mother Alma passed away after a sudden illness. Aran found his father too busy and locked away in his work to comfort him, while his grandfather was there to support him through his grief. He swore to himself that he would not raise any of his children the way his father did. Aran also eulogized his grandfather at his state funeral when Silvius II passed away in 1898.
Aran had a close relationship with his brother. Andrew was a happier child, having been too young to fully experience the grief of losing his mother, and was thus dependent on Aran to share his memories of her, which Aran was happy to do. Andrew was also adventurous and wild, a stark contrast to Aran, whom their governess considered stern and focused. Aran often found himself keeping his brother in check, while Andrew, in turn, provided a fresh perspective or a voice of empathy whenever the Crown Prince found himself lacking it.
With the completion of his schooling in 1903, Aran hoped he could join the Imperial Army. However, his father, now Emperor since Silvius’s passing, denied his entrance to any of the Imperium’s military academies. This denial furthered the rift between the two, with Kalvin expecting Aran’s gratitude for sparing him from what he imagined would be a long conflict, while Aran believed his father was infantilizing him. Kalvin struggled to articulate his experience with war to his son, instead falling to frustration and simply demanding Aran listen to him.
Having failed to convince his father, Aran matriculated at St. Felix University, a prestigious institution just north of Ananteria and his mother’s alma mater. After a year of bouncing between interests, he ultimately concentrated on theology, where he studied under the esteemed yet controversial professor Akeron Kannon, known for tying Astranist theology to Antarean supremacism. Kannon was a favorite of the military establishment, and through his connections, Aran was able to befriend many young officers and cadets who would go on to serve in the Centauran War.
Marriage[]
Not long after the Pistris Plains War, Emperor Aran III began negotiating a potential alliance with the Corvus Confederation. After his passing in 1873, his successor, Silvius II, continued these efforts, maintaining a grudge against the Cetans for their humiliation of Antares in the war and their subsequent annexation of the Andromeda Islands. Instability in both Corvus and Antares in the late-1870s to early-1880s and the subsequent annexation of South Corvus in 1886 briefly stalled negotiations. Ultimately, a series of agreements were made, one being a betrothal between the young Prince Aran and a princess from the House of Khorin. Princess Anna Khorin, born in 1887 to Crown Prince Oliver, was deemed suitable. The Khorins also offered a considerable dowry. Half of the profits and mineral rights in South Corvus would go to Antares when they eventually reclaimed the region.
In early 1905, shortly after the start of his second year in university, Aran was summoned to the palace to meet several guests. He was introduced for the first time to his betrothed, Princess Anna Khorin. Aran found Anna to be charming and pretty, and she, deeply religious, affirmed in turn that Antares was meant to unify the continent and usher in a golden age of peace. Although he wished to spend more time with his betrothed, Kalvin Tau was adamant that the wedding be swift, privately telling his son that they had to work quickly. Aran and Anna were married just three months later in Ananteria.
The newlywed pair had three children in quick succession: Maya, born in 1906, Kaden, born in 1908, Ezra, born in 1909, and a fourth, Julian, born later in 1914. They hired Lady Valeria Bonham, a daughter from a respected family of landed gentry, to oversee their children’s education and upbringing. However, Aran knew how saddening it was to have a distant and seemingly disinterested father. Unorthodox for the time, he chose to take an active role in his children’s upbringing and interests as well. He tried his best to encourage his children to be happy while simultaneously pushing them towards greatness.
The 1912 Aeminiva-Ananteria Express attack where Anna, Kaden, and Ezra were nearly assassinated by a group of Cetan insurgents, shocked the Crown Prince. The fear of almost losing both sons to a single incident prompted the couple to have another child as a safeguard. Prince Julian was born in 1914 following a difficult pregnancy for Anna, after which doctors would caution the two against having any further children. Aran accepted this, deciding to prioritize his wife’s well-being.
Almost unheard of for an Emperor, Aran chose to let his own children marry for love. However, this decision is thought to reflect the fact that there were no suitable foreign candidates and because of his desire not to empower the more powerful domestic nobility, which were growing fabulously wealthy through their investments in industry, particularly war materiel.
Prince Kaden was often seen as the Emperor’s greatest headache. Aran struggled to help his son overcome his trauma from the Aeminiva-Ananteria Express attack, himself never experiencing anything similar. Prince Kaden relied heavily on his grandfather, who sympathized greatly with him and actively tried to undermine Aran’s efforts to push Kaden towards a military career. Aran’s later disappointment with Kaden caused him to take an interest in molding his grandson Luka into the ideal successor. He hoped Kaden could be persuaded to either listen to his own father or renounce his title as heir in favor of Luka.
Reign[]
Aran in imperial regalia
Aran would become emperor after his father's passing on October 29, 1927, at the age of 42, midway through the columban campaign. Understanding his father's vision in a rather distorted way, he would continue to set Antares' goal to be unification of Centaura, even accelerating it with more aggressive actions.
As part of Antarean imperial tradition, the children of the sovereign are to serve in military service. As such, Aran would coerce his younger son, Kaden to serve in the military as a lieutenant II. Kaden would serve in the imperial army, a decision he will despise further in the future.
Centauran Wars[]
See more in: Centauran Wars
After graduating from St. Felix University in 1907, Aran was assigned by his father to work in the Imperial Army Direktorate. The Emperor hoped Aran could serve as a liaison between him and the Supreme Kouncil when it came to military matters, and also believed Aran’s thirst for military service would be fulfilled while in the Direktorate. Instead, Aran was hurt to find a strong clique of officers who ostracized him due to his lack of military experience. He devoted himself to fitting into the culture of the Direktorate, wanting to be useful and liked.
The implementation of Kalvin’s Law was unpopular among much of the Direktorate and General Staff. However, Kalvin II demonstrated shrewd politicking by stacking much of the ministry’s ranks with loyalists. When Antares invaded Cetus in 1912, Aran saw his father as hypocritical for sending young Antareans off to fight in a war while preventing his own son from making a similar sacrifice for his nation.
After the Aquilan Scorch, the Emperor was ruthless in purging officers responsible for its prolonging. Many of the dismissed protested the Emperor’s decisions, claiming the order to maintain it for only a week was impossible, and that they were trying to protect their men. The event, later known as the Ashen Purge, marked the collapse in Aran’s respect for his father as a wartime emperor. He quietly returned to work, keeping his head down and making a note of the truly talented officers among the Imperial Army’s ranks.
Aran came to be at odds with Earl Markius, the Arbiter of Military Affairs, who was seen as a staunch believer in Kalvin’s ideals and uncompromising in disciplining officers for anything that seemed to run afoul of the Emperor’s wishes. After he ascended to the throne as Emperor Aran V in 1927, he demanded Markius’s resignation, replacing him with General Thaddeus Murdoch, who had served with distinction in Cetus and Aquila.
One of Aran Tau’s most controversial decisions was his involvement in experiments in Lacerta. Following the Kingdom’s conquest by the Imperium in 1920, the Archonate of Military Affairs reluctantly approved its use as a testing ground for weapons. In 1921, the Archonate also reluctantly approved the start of a biological and chemical weapons program. Emperor Kalvin ordered that only animals and criminals be used for the tests. However, Antarean forces creatively interpreted the regulations, claiming civilians were given due warning before their residential area was subjected to biological or chemical bombardment. By the time the old Emperor passed away, experiments were regularly occurring in population centers across Lacerta.
Under Aran’s purview, the Centauran Wars took on a markedly different tone. He loosened the strict rules of engagement that had governed Antarean doctrine for so long. Aerial bombardment of cities began in earnest in 1927 as a kind of prelude to the air campaign of Operation Kataklysm. Although many consider the early years of his reign to mark an age of cruelty in war, military regulations under Aran were essentially no different from those prior to the implementation of Kalvin’s Law. In fact, some of his predecessor’s rules against wanton cruelty were still kept, believing they helped with troop discipline and reduced rebellious sentiment in occupied territories. Certain regions of Lacerta remained an exception.
The death of his son Ezra during the Riaan Campaign in 1934 devastated Aran. The circumstances of the Prince’s death, gunned down while parachuting from his stricken plane, enraged Aran, who declared the defeat of Riaa’s heretical faith and dishonorable culture to be a paramount task of the Imperium. The officers serving in Riaa interpreted it as a carte blanche to do anything they felt necessary, resulting in a significant increase in civilian casualties. The post-1934 period is often described by historians as the era in which the Imperial Army showed exceptional cruelty compared to the wars of the past.
In 1940, Princess Maya, Aran’s oldest child and only daughter, was deafened by a bomb strike on her ship, the heavy cruiser AIS Vermikulus, during an engagement off the Riaan coast. Hurt and sympathetic to his daughter’s plight, Aran procured the services of Alina Popova, a deafness tutor from Ursa considered one of the world’s finest.
Throughout the rest of the Centauran War, Aran devoted his efforts to the Antareanization process. It was after the surrender of Centauri and the end of the war that he finally paid a visit to the north of the continent, where he was met with jubilant cheers. He gave a heartfelt address to all of those gathered, declaring that Antares, and civilization, had triumphed over barbarism. Aran also made a particular note that they had succeeded where even the mighty Librans had failed, conquering the whole continent and bringing Ursa, born from remains of the Rodinese Mandate, in as a subordinate partner.
Pre-SIC and Early Forman War[]
See more in: Aran Tau in the events of DEAD AHEAD
In the interim leading up to the Forman War, Aran maintained his focus on Antareanization, wary of the countries on the Hydran continent. He believed that the Solstice alliance between Antares, the Skorpii states, and Ursa would be more than able to deter aggression, but questioned what the ultimate relationship between the two continents would be. Aran recognized that the long war had drained Antares of much strength and resources, as well as devastated the infrastructure of the continent. He adopted a practical approach, determined to build a strong, culturally unified state. He believed, and hoped, that any war with the Hydran countries would be decades later at the earliest, and lifetimes at the latest.
The Second International Conference, planned for 1947, seemed the perfect place to solidify the new status quo. Aran entrusted the task of representing Antares’s position as the new master of the continent to his brother. He hoped that the Hydran representatives would be amenable to his conditions, which were that Antares would oversee the diplomatic and economic affairs of the Skorpii states, but that it would willingly engage in trans-Libran trade and commerce. He saw his brother off with great expectations, only to be met days later with the most horrifying news.
The assassination of Andrew and three other Antarean diplomats by an apparent Orionite awoke a righteous fury in Aran. He’d loved his brother, and losing yet another one of his family to an act of dishonorable violence convinced him that Antareanization was the only path to bringing moral governance to the world. In his grief, Aran also sought further religious guidance. Anna was with him through his dialogues with the Astranist clergy. Slowly, but surely, his public persona reflected a newfound belief that the suffering he experienced proved the worth of his cause before Scorpius. Aran’s public addresses before the start of the Forman War stated that the whole Imperium should devote itself to the war effort until Scorpius descended to bring about paradise for his faithful.
Aran participated eagerly in creating war plans against Libra and Orion, sending his son Julian, highly regarded as an expert in special operations, to Ursa, guaranteeing the Federation’s participation beyond the words of the Solstice Alliance. Though he was wary of the Imperium’s economic state, especially with the north still beset by partisans, he believed a first strike could devastate the morale and production of Orion, seen as the greatest threat.
Although the invasion of Orion ultimately failed, Aran considered it a diversionary effort from the Libran Campaign. He believed once Libra was secured, southern Orion could be seized alongside Auriga, effectively eliminating a major population center and seizing the Hydran continent’s breadbasket. Capturing Auriga, though the country was neutral at the time, was considered a priority as reports of famines across northern Centaura brought grave concern to Aran about a potential collapse in the region, leaving a weak point for Hydrusite operations should Ursa fail in its campaigns.
Late Forman War[]
Aran Tau in 1961
The Forman War ultimately did not progress in Antares’ favor. The Libran Campaign was beaten back while Ursan forces failed to defeat Hydrus. In 1954, yet another blow came to Antares when the Bear’s Blunder was revealed. The intercepted reports and footage, coming from a series of anonymous sources, conclusively showed that Ursan intelligence had been responsible for assassinating Andrew Tau and the other Antarean diplomats.
The revelation sent shockwaves through the Imperium, shattering the morale of countless people who realized they had not only been fighting a war based on a lie, but that their own ally was responsible for it. Aran and Anna were further mortified by reports that their son Julian had gone missing in action in Ursa. Later, they would learn he had been assassinated by Ursan troops in the middle of a training exercise just after the revelation of the Blunder. Following this revelation, Aran’s anger against Ursa extended towards Ursans living on Antarean soil. Alina Popova, his daughter’s deafness tutor, was not spared from his anger, disappearing on his orders despite Princess Maya’s protests.
Kaden’s defection to the Compact in 1956 robbed the Emperor of the last of his wits. The rapid collapse of the Riaan front following the Compact’s landing was one he had long dreaded. Aran ordered his troops to hold the line in Columba, declaring that Antares would make the Compact pay in blood for every inch of Skorpius’s land they trampled. After discovering Maya and her husband Vincent had been helping Kaden’s wife correspond with him while avoiding typical military censors, he had them thrown into prison.
In what many consider an act of madness, he also declared that whoever killed his wayward son would become his heir, having lost all of his other sons and believing his daughter disloyal.
Aran continued to pray, begging, pleading for salvation to come now. He raged against the world and the wrongs it had wrought upon him, from the loss of his children to the fact that he had dragged the Imperium, his family’s legacy, into a war they were now certain to lose. Anna’s words could no longer comfort him, although he stayed by his wife’s side for the sake of appearances. The great conquests of his father slowly but surely became lost to them, starting with Columba, then Grusa, Vega, Corvus, and into Cetus and Aquila, where, at the very least, the populace fought for the Imperium in surprisingly greater numbers than even he’d anticipated. In the end, in June of 1960, Compact forces stepped onto the territory of the Antarean heartland for the first time.
On August 11th, 1961, as the final defensive lines of Ananteria fell, the surviving members of Antarean General Staff and Supreme Kouncil were evacuated to a bunker complex in the countryside. Compact forces did not learn of the evacuation or the exact location of the complex until the 28th, resulting in them laying siege to the Imperial Manor and the Kouncil Building, which were fanatically defended by surviving Kustodes Viatoris in a delaying action.
With the discovery of the bunker on the 28th, the Compact moved swiftly to surround the region, preventing any possibility of further escape. Probing attacks against the perimeter over the next several days eroded away the defenders’ numbers and morale. Of the approximately 1,200 troops and Kustodes Viatoris participating in the defense of the complex, less than five hundred were suitable for combat when Orionite commanders made the decision to storm the complex on the 5th of September.
When Compact forces reached the bunker, they were surprised at the lack of resistance. They broke through into its halls, where they found bodies upon bodies, all clearly killed in a gunfight. After finding a few survivors locked in rooms, they learned that a struggle had broken out between loyalists and a group that wished to turn the Emperor over to the Compact to end the war once and for all. The Compact agreed to work with these defectors, who provided valuable intelligence on the bunker’s layout.
Despite the information, a brutal room-by-room battle ensued that saw hundreds killed as the last loyal Antarean troops turned hallways into killzones and ambushed Compact troops around corners and from ventilation shafts, Aran Tau, disheveled and raving, was found on the last floor of the bunker preparing to fight to the last before he was tackled and restrained. His wife was found among another group of women and children hiding in a drinking water cistern on the far side of the complex.
Post-War and Death[]
Due to the continued presence of fighting in Ananteria, Aran and Anna were instead transported to Kharon, which was comparatively far quieter. There, the pair was separated, with Anna being placed under house arrest in the Tau’s ancestral home alongside hundreds of noble and other prominent women. Aran was placed in a holding cell in a repurposed police precinct serving as the headquarters of the local Compact garrison.
Aran was not present for the signing of the Antarean Instrument of Surrender on September 17th, instead remaining in his holding cell in Kharon. He saw his last surviving son, Kaden, for the last time on that day. Their exact conversation was not recorded or transcribed, but witnesses would say Aran was the first to speak, rebuking his son’s decision to side with the Compact and mourning what would become of Antares after the surrender. Kaden’s rebuttal was that their ambitions were unrealistic and that Aran had paid the price by losing all of his sons and his legacy.
The Kharon Trials for Antarean leaders were a series of court martials conducted under the auspices of Orionite military law between September of 1961 and January of 1962. Because a tribunal of such a scale had never been carried out before, the authorities were careful in crafting a situation to legitimize it. The prosecution relied on the legal technicality that upon the Antarean Instrument of Surrender being signed, Orion assumed control over the Imperium’s military, whose branches classified as local security forces for the occupation and therefore subjected to Orionite laws.
Dubiously and controversially, both the Centauran and Forman Wars were retroactively declared as acts of mutinous violence against countries that had been at peace with the Orion Republic. The entirety of the Antarean military was charged with participation in mutiny, waging unlawful conflict, and treason by fighting against Orionite and allied forces. For practical reasons, nearly all enlisted personnel and junior officers had their charges summarily dismissed save for the most egregious offenders. Senior NCOs and officers were scrutinized extensively, with many being subjected to trial, including Aran.
Aran was recognized as one of the “principal leaders of the mutiny” by the Orionite occupation authorities and charged with responsibility for waging an unlawful conflict and allowing forces under his command to engage in criminal activities. His defense made the argument that he was not a serving member of the military. However, the prosecution pointed out that as Emperor, he held the position of General of the Armed Forces.
Although technically a ceremonial rank, the powers conferred upon him through it were deemed command authority, thus making him an officer eligible for court martial. With overwhelming evidence of his involvement in “mutinous activities”, Aran was swiftly convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. He was also demoted to the rank of Private and fined an exorbitant sum, paid for through an auction of his personal belongings. The money raised was earmarked by the occupation authorities for the reconstruction of Aquila.
Mere days later, on October 10th, Aran was hanged in an indoor gallows. His last words were not recorded, despite his insistence. The former Emperor’s body was buried in a cemetery built near Ananteria for Orionite casualties of the Antarean Campaign, specifically in Section Omega, an isolated part of the memorial containing the bodies of personnel executed for dishonorable conduct and other crimes carried out during the Compact’s invasion. Along with 71 actual Orionite personnel, Aran is among 29 Antareans buried at the site. His grave marker, austere and rarely cleaned by the cemetery’s caretakers, reads “PVT A. Tau”, with a small scorpion carved under the name to denote his Astranist faith in Scorpius.
Personality[]
Caricature of Aran
Aran Tau has brown hair, and sports red eyes; a characteristic shared with the Tau Family.
Very much detached from his father's original concept of ruling, Aran is more in-line with traditional Antarean emperors, advocating for aggressive military policy and having a lack of respect or care for the occupying territories, though this mellowed out in his later reign, and even he kept Army cruelty restricted to prevent wanton destruction.
When he was younger, Kalvin prevented him from joining the Imperial Army so he could avoid the brutality and pain of war that his father suffered. In reality, however, all this did was cause Aran to be out of touch with war and develop a "do whatever it takes" mindset without thinking of long-term consequences (as he never suffered in warfare), which greatly affected his strategy in the Centauran Wars. Additionally, this caused a immense and later permanent rift with his father, which also extended to Kaden to a certain degree, who idolized his grandfather.
However, despite his out of touch nature with warfare, Aran Tau is shown to be a rather good military leader in his own right, even better than his father. He picked Cervantes over Archer for the Columban Campaign, which finally saw Antares win over the Columban forces, showing Aran had a knack for choosing people accurately, and he also oversaw the rehaul of the Antarean Navy and its admiralty, likely further propelling them into excellency. His more aggressive nature compared to his father Kalvin may have also ensured more decisive results for Antares, though this is debatable with the near destruction of the Antareans and its allies at the hands of the NCA in Columba.
Unlike his father, who was quite neglectful of him and his brother Andrew (though not from spite or disgust), he was a loving family man who actively participated in the lives of his children. He tried to balance keeping his children happy while pushing them to their greatness, even allowing them to marry with love in mind.
Trivia[]
- As of the Tau family revamp, the new Aran Tau has significant differences from the old Aran Tau.
- The old Aran Tau was a man with little to no remorse associated, pressuring Kaden and Maya into dangerous military service. He also did not have a loving relationship with Andrew or Anna, with both fearing him and refusing to speak against him out of fear of retaliation. Additionally, Aran was, militarily, a wanton destructor, completely ruining his father's goals for Centaura and propagating destruction and mass genocides of people, especially in Northern Centaura, and was willing to pursue the Forman War out of fear of the Orion Republic's attempt of subverting Antarean continental supremacy (albeit with the justification fabricated by Ursan agents).
- With the new rewrite, new Aran Tau is much more humanized and his old shades are given context as a product of Antarean militarism. Unlike old lore, not only does he love Andrew and Anna, but he loves his children deeply, the first to allow their children to marry out of love. He is also nowhere near as warmongering, as the new Aran Tau stopped his conquests and planned on fixing and unifying the Centauran continent, only initiating the Forman War after the death of his brother in the Libratum incident.
Lore related to the world of Centaura.
