Lucius Kray (died 430 IE) was the constable of Dagar Township in Amargosa‘s Central Plains. He had an assistant named Saja.
Prior to the Gelt Incursion in 429 IE, Kray campaigned unsuccessfully to form a “Citizen’s militia” to combat some unspecified enemy. A veteran of the Polygamy Wars, he believed either an uprising of radical settlers or another core world attempting to poach colonies might plunge Amargosa into war. Most met his warnings with skepticism. It did not help Kray had contempt for Amargosa’s parent world, Mars and for Earth, seat of the Compact. He called the Compact “a piece of paper designed to keep Earth and Mars at peace.”
Shortly before the incursion, Kray met Marcus Leitman, who represented a GMO startup called JunoCorp. Leitman claimed the old-line GMO entities monopolized the market with their regulations and “code of ethics” to lockout new companies. In exchange for looking the other way on skipping permits, Leitman offered to secretly arm Kray’s militia. He sweetened the deal by implying an alien invasion might occur soon, pointing to the disappearance of the terraforming project on Farigha and the sudden silence on Gilead. Kray took the deal and agreed to let Leitman sell creeper spores to the farmers of Dagar Township. As a show of good faith, Leitman left a cache of KR-27 rifles in his bat wagon.
With gusto, Kray and his assistant Saja used te weapons to recruit for his citizens’ militia. He invoked memories of the Polygamy Wars, of which he was a war hero, as well as past instances of “colony poaching,” where one core world forcefully seized the colony of another. Through a ringer in crowds, he also warned of invasion by aliens, perhaps Orags seeking revenge for the extinction of their Neanderthal ancestors on Earth.
(Editor’s note: There are no known instances of Orags seeking revenge against Homo sapiens as the transplant to their homeworld occurred some fifty thousand solar years earlier.]
When regular shipments of weapons began, Kray recruited the entire township into the creeper vine scheme. Residents who did not go along with the plan were coerced or, in one case, burned out of his farm. He setup training sessions in remote areas of Dagar Township and in unclaimed and secluded spots north of the Townships. The militia obtained weapons supplies from Leitman’s allies through the city of Riverside. The weapons were replicas of the military-standard KR-27, lacking the corporate logo of weapons manufacturer Taiyang Huo.
He had a wife named Brendie, whom he married during the Polygamy Wars. However, he idly wondered if he could make his deputy, Saja, a sister wife by taking her to Deseret.
Kray traveled to Riverside for a conference where Marcus Leitman introduced him to Rajeesh Chakresh, the city executive. Chakresh sympathized with Kray and facilitated weapons shipments through Riverside.
After the conference, Kray began converting the Founders' Mine into a base of operations. During the construction process, an explosion trapped ten people in the lower levels. Kray ordered the section sealed despite the trapped people. He informed his followers that, when Amargosa fell, they would have to do much worse to survive.
With prompting from Leitman, Kray attempted to gain custody of JT Austin. Leitman implied Kray would face retribution from Tessa Dasarius if anything happened to her son when Kray could have prevented it. His efforts were unsuccessful.
Kray was forced to speed up his timeline to fortify the Founders’ Mine when John Parker informed him that GMO companies, Martian authorities, and OCD would investigate the the spread of creeper vine to his township. After the argument, Saja made plain her desire to replace Brendie after the invasion. Kray resisted her advances, telling her their time would come.
Kray’s suspicions were confirmed when Governor Croix informed him that Gilead had gone silent. While Croix wanted to prepare the farmers to sell their crops to other core worlds, Saja suggested accelerating the evacuation to the Founders’ Mine. That same night, however, the Compact Attorney for Amargosa issued a warrant for Kray’s arrest. He was flown to Lansdorp and questioned directly by Governor Croix. Croix informed him that no evidence existed that Marcus Leitman had ever been on Amargosa despite Leitman visiting Kray in his cell an hour earlier. Someone freed Kray hours before the Gelt Incursion began. Saja drove him back to Dagar Township to wait for the invasion.
Once the invasion began, insurgents loyal to Kray rather than the Compact, began attacking other settlers and refugees to steal supplies. They invoked a fictitious “Emergency Civil Order Act.” Official resistance invoked Section 11 to execute the leaders.
Farset delivered JT Austin and Lizzy Parker into Kray’s hands the morning after their wedding. Threatening to kill Lizzy to ensure JT’s cooperation, he forced the couple and Farset to go with Saja and another armed insurgent to find a Navy pilot named Cui Yun, the mysterious woman called Suicide.
As the resistance attacked the Founders’ Mine, he murdered Tomas Ramirez and took JT Austin prisoner. There, he revealed to JT that Dasarius Interstellar, the company owned by JT's mother, owned JunoCorp. JunoCorp’s employee, Leitman, met with several Gelt outside the Compact and arranged the invasion of Amargosa, as well as Farigha and Gilead. When JT pointed out that Leitman also helped create Kray’s militia, Kray began beating him and took him hostage against the Navy arresting him. When cornered by Col. Diana Jovann and backed up against forces led by Suicide, Kray threw down a camouflage grenade and fled the mine. He later hid out in Riverside, which had gone into blackout following the invasion.
Kray and a band of his militia traveled west in hopes of beating the main resistance to the Ban Ki-moon. The militia engaged in a skirmish just beyond the mountains near Lake Anaronda. The battle caused Suicide’s team to pause and regroup, giving Kray time to get to a fishing village and take a boat. Suicide’s team arrived in time to see him sailing off in the village’s only remaining seaworthy vessel. He reached the Ban Ki-moon, informing Lt. Cmdr. Maurice Boko, the ship’s acting captain, that he was military governor. Boko refused to recognize the claim, especially after Suicide arrived with the Gelt prisoner Tishla.
During the examination of Tishla, Kray demanded she be vivisected and made an example. Boko refused. When the acting captain did not yield upon the return of Suicide and Austin, Kray stabbed him. JT held him at gunpoint intending to kill him. However, Suicide seemed to order him to back down. He instead forced Kray to unbind Tishla. Austin then proceeded to beat and kick Kray in revenge for similar treatment when the resistance took over the Founders’ Mine.
By mid-430 IE, Kray had taken control of Riverside. He summoned Diana Jovann to a meeting, demanding custody of Laral Peteesh and the presence of Davra Andraste and Rey Yuwono. When Jovann arrived, he brought out a Gelt prisoner and injected him with the suicide toxin. The prisoner dissolved immediatley. He then injected Davra Andraste with it to no effect. During discussions with Jovann, he refused to acknowledge her authority but revealed he had summoned Laral Farad to the city to discuss a truce and to give Laral Peteesh to him as a gift. However, he also put a capsule of the toxin in her navel so that, when Farad inevitably raped her, they would both be killed. Jovann objected to a clearly illegal weaponization of another being. Kray revealed that humans had been using incendiary nanites to turn themselves into bombs. Jovann warned that Kray already faced several Section 11 charges.
Kray grew tired of Davra Andraste pleading for Peteesh’s life. He had her taken into custody and injected with the incendiary nanites to keep her under control. If, he promised, the liberation happened soon, he personally would deactivate the swarm, though Davra did not believe this.
Kray greeted Laral Farad upon his arrival. He presented a carrot – Laral Peteesh – and a stick – executing another Gelt prisoner with the biotoxin – to Laral. In negotiating, he informed Laral that he would use the biotoxin to kill as many Gelt as possible if Laral did not at least find a way to coexist with humans. Laral stalled.
Kray had Davra rearrested when she killed two Gelt Warriors who attempted to assault her. She escaped, but Kray had been summoned to the edge of Riverside to receive a message from Marcus Leitman. Via holographic recording, Leitman informed him that he had failed and would no longer be supported by Juno. Kray grew despondent. However, he found Davra trying to flee the city as he headed back to his headquarters. He threw her in the shed where he had been keeping Peteesh prisoner.
As the cease-fire broke down, Kray fled the city and setup camp in the shadow of a mountain north of the city. He contacted Laral Farad by hologram, making him believe he was actually in the room. When the signal faltrered, Kray triggered the clean fusion device given to him by Leitman. Riverside was destroyed. The mountain shielded him and his troops from the blast. He then broadcast a message to all of Amargosa that he was the acting governor of the planet. The Navy did not share his opinion.
When Eric Yuwono, Tyler Wat, and Boone were brought in as prisoners, Kray killed Wat, wounded Boone, and left Yuwono as a prisoner. He also took Davra Andraste hostage, promising to make her his plaything. When Northern Resistance mechs surrounded the camp, his ex-wife standing with them, he took Davra hostage, threatening to kill her unless he was allowed to leave.
Brendie Kray emerged from the line of mechs and ranted at him for abandoning him. He pled unsuccessfully for forgiveness. As this happened, Chapaan emerged and offered amnesty to anyone who abandoned Kray. She then pulled back her hood, revealing a fifteen-year-old girl. Davra slipped free, got his weapon, and began savagely kicking him. When her compatriots pulled her away, Lattus Tishla appeared and informed him of his war crminal status and that he would have no part in Amargosa’s fate. When she told him she had offered her own head in exchange for human lives lost, he growled, “Offer accepted, bitch!”, pulling a hidden weapon and firing at her. JT Austin prevented her death by leaping into the line of fire and grabbing the weapon as the bullets struck him. Chapaan then sentenced him to death under Compact, Gelt, and lycanth law. The lycanths, performing their form of execution, attacked en masse and ate him alive. Little was left minutes after he had been ripped apart and devoured.
Appearances: Gimme Shelter, The Children of Amargosa, Second Wave, Storming Amargosa