Justin Hunka
| Justin Hunka | |
 | |
| Physical information | |
|---|---|
| Species | Human |
| Race | Mishalanese |
| Gender | Male |
| Biographical information | |
| Date of birth | 1681 AN (55 AN years) |
| Allegiance(s) | |
| Service/branch | |
| Years of service |
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Justin Hunka, Mishalanese born Perfectus of the Kalgachi Grouping of Forces and of the 35th Army within the Central Banner Group of Benacia Command.
Biography
Born in 1681 AN, a decade after the Kalirion Fracture, Justin Hunka was a native of the Severnaya Gubernya as Mishalan was known during the period of rule by the Unified Governorates of Benacia. The allegation of Amokolian ancestry initially disadvantaged his father, seeing him expelled from a teaching job in Rikstadt (St Riksburg) and obliged to make a living as a janitor for a washing machine assembly plant. His mother engaged in a number of unsuitable professions before taking a position as a cook in a mess hall of the Black Legions cantonments in the bailiwick.
The transfer of sovereignty over the Severnaya Gubernaya to Elwynn in 1685 AN brought an improvement to the conditions of the family. Justin's father now claimed Ocian ancestry in an effort to improve his standing with the new rulers of Mishalacia.
The Second Elwynnese Civil War (1692–1696) saw Justin's father impressed into service with the Union Defence Force. His records were lost during the chaos of the Scouring (1695), and he is believed to have perished during the final offensives of the war on the Amokolian Front. Justin was himself forcibly taken into the ranks of the UDF in 1696 AN. The immediate aftermath of the civil war had seen a near total collapse of the government and society, and no questions were raised about forcing men as young as fifteen into service, as the UDF was simultaneously having to make good on wartime losses as well as combating partisan resistance, endemic desertion, and a spate of mutinies. On the plus side for Justin, service with the UDF meant that he would have guaranteed access to rations at a time when northern Benacia was assailed by near universal hunger as the summer of 1696 never came and the logistics network of an entire civilisation was poised to collapse.
Justin's mother disappeared during the immediate post war period, believed by family members to have fled to Tellia, albeit possibly to have suffered the fate of many who attempted to venture onto the roads during the years of the Great Famine.
For the majority of his time in the UDF, Justin was attached to regiments within the LII Combined Arms Corps. The victors in the civil war were effectively an army of occupation in Upper Elwynn and the UDF was frequently obliged to act as a "fire brigade", responding to outbreaks of localised violence that the Elwynnese Landstorm was unable to contain. It was during this time of bandit hunting that Justin first began to attract favourable attention from his superiors. It was noted with appreciation that he had a knack for being able to prevail upon Elw peasants to confess their futile attempts at hiding away foodstuffs from the requisition parties sent out into the rural bailiwicks. He also developed a reputation for being able to smoke out partisans by judiciously setting fires in barns and farm houses, sometimes risking enemy small arms fire to cleanly cast a Florian cocktail through a window. He had advanced to the equivalent rank of a sergeant in the UDF by the time of its amalgamation with the Black Legions in 1703 AN.
His proclivities would see him transferred across to the Land Forces Inspectorate of the Benacian Union Defence Force, the corps responsible for training and discipline within the consolidated formations of the newly combined militaries of Elwynn and the UGB. His first posting would be to the 21 Inspektionsregementet, where duties would include organising the impressment of new recruits and the placing of blocking detachments behind line infantry and auxiliary units tasked with clearing out resistance strong points. His conduct during such actions would see him earn a commendation from the Magisters-Carnifex, on the strength of which he would attain a promotion to opratzan, essentially the equivalent to the rank of warrant officer in 1708 AN.
Being cast as a disciplinarian with a background in bandit-hunting would serve Justin in good stead, as it secured for him a transfer to the Salb IV Aurangzeb, a formation of the Corps of the Black Legions within the BUDF. In 1708 AN, disregarding local protests, the Salb IV Aurangzeb of the Benacian Union Defence Forces, under the command of the Salbnan Daniyal Aurangzeb Kalirion-Osman, had entered the territory of Lepidopterum and established cantonments at its eponymous surface settlement and level administrative centre. The new posting would however oblige Justin to maintain a watch over legionaries who were of Agnesian ancestry, which is to say, for a man of Mishalan, men who were almost as alien as the Deep Singers outside the wire.
When he discovered, and summarily dealt with, a pair of Lach crawling through a gap in the wire on the perimeter of the legion cantonments, the salbnan was sufficiently impressed to recommend Justin for a commission. Such promotions from the ranks were not uncommon, as the Black Legions had a general preference for selecting experienced NCO's to serve as junior officers.
After a spell at Berht Klarænst, Justin would return to the legion in 1711 AN as a fiþnan (captain) for the 1st Cohort of the 5th Motorised Infantry Regiment.
His experience with the cohort during the War of 1712 was not altogether a happy one. The attempt to take the Upland Confederation by direct assault floundered in the face of competent resistance by the Black Brothers. Nonetheless, the troop of five Horjin IFVs under his command acquitted themselves well enough, responding to an attempted ambush by debussing their infantry from the armoured vehicles and aggressively deploying into a troop-level skirmish line in order to pin down and then out flank their opponents. The IFV's, remaining on the road, used their main armament to provide direct fire support to the legionaries as they completed their clearing action. It was not much of a skirmish, and the troop was obliged to withdraw after the main thrust unravelled. Nonetheless, it was enough of a success for Justin's name to be successfully put forward for promotion to Ahmst Tazstraneï when a vacancy for the cohort's tribune became available in 1713 AN.
He then, almost to his chagrin, found himself almost immediately seconded to the 1st Directorate of the General Inspectorate of Benacia Command. Placed in command of the directorate's provost regiment, Justin was once more back to the task of pursuing fugitives from the ranks, albeit now throughout the Central Banner Group's area of operations. As Justin's duties included routinely collecting deserters who had tried to slip into Shireroth, Kalgachia or Tellia, he found himself ideally placed to make assessments of their frontier defences. These memos were dutifully fed back to the Military Intelligence Directorate of Benacia Command.
He would swiftly find himself promoted to full tribune and appointed to the Benacian legation at Fastenborg Keep in 1715 AN under the guise of a defence attaché. Aside from attending meetings of the deconfliction bodies established under the Slavegate and Gloomburg conventions, Justin's main duties revolved around conducting assessments of levels of enemy preparedness for the Military Intelligence Directorate and representing the interests of the General Staff in the Pachadsberg Special Recreational Zone.
Being accorded relative freedom of movement within the surface realm of Kalgachia provided Justin with a vantage point from which to observe the general condition of the Garden. It rapidly became apparent that a kind of malaise was taking root in the country. This perspective, corroborated by various other sources, would ultimately encourage Benacia Command and the High Presidium of the Benacian Union to adopt a more assertive policy towards Kalgachia, leading to the Treaty of Oktavyan in 1716 AN.
The Pachadsberg Special Recreational Zone had been initially established by the Kalgachi with a view to averting Endsieg by fostering a culture of corruption amongst Benacia Command officers. However, with the change in the balance of power this dynamic began to rapidly shift, and Justin found himself acting as the front man for approaches by increasingly demoralised officers of the Kalgachi Defence Force who were looking for a suitable payday and some insurance against the uncertain future.
The suborning of the enemy officer class would play a quiet but integral part in the remarkable success that would be Operation Penitent (1717). The Jolly Concordat, engineered by the perennially enigmatic Mondo, succeeded in neutralising the last prospect of resistance by diehard elements in the KDF. Instead, these had been permitted to retire quietly into Bergburg or indeed literally underground, where Kalgachia was permitted to maintain the full semblance of sovereignty. Having expected to be obliged to participate in the desperate defence of Fastenborg until the arrival of relief forces, Justin had instead been privileged to witness Oktavyan surrender without a shot being fired.
