Much has been made of the career of Lorian Aristedes—the Latarran Ogre, the Giant of Ceuta—both during his time in the Imperial Navy as a member of the Imperial Red Company, where he served as Chief Tactical Officer aboard the battleship Tamerlane, and to whom nearly all of Hadrian Marlowe’s naval victories during the Cielcin Wars must be credited; and later, during his time as Commandant-General of the Grand Army of the Kingdom of Latarra.

Born the bastard son of Grand Duke Maurice Candossa of Patmos on one of his personal guard, the lady-knight Lysandra Aristedes, Lorian was from birth plagued by an idiosyncratic genetic disorder that left him with brittle bones and hyper-elastic tissues, near-albinism, and a mature height of approximately three cubits. Despite these limitations, his family connections netted him a commission in the Imperial Navy, though the same limitations guaranteed that he would spend said commission riding a desk in the admiralty offices in the Eternal City on Forum. It was there that he met the Devil of Meidua—though how it was he found himself assigned to Tamerlane remains a matter of some speculation, with some suggesting that Lord Marlowe saw some glimmer of the young lieutenant’s genius, while others have gone so far as to suggest Strategos Beller saddled Marlowe with the young Ogre as a kind of joke.

Regardless, then-Lieutenant Lorian Aristedes found himself assigned to Tamerlane, and quickly acquitted himself well, rising to the level of Lieutenant Commander and the position of Chief Tactical Officer.

Young Aristedes was the only member of the Tamerlane’s officer core to survive the so-called Treason of Padmurak, excepting Lord Marlowe himself (whose concubine, the Lady Valka Onderra, also survived—though she held no official rank or title). He would be present at the Battle of Perfugium, where he assisted then-Commodore Bassander Lin in the evacuation of the colonists there. He was indicted for treason, conspiracy, and for abetting the escape of Lord Marlowe from Imperial justice, his lord having been convicted of assaulting His Imperial Radiance, William XXIII. For this, Lorian was sentenced to die in the labor camps on Belusha, the worst of the Imperial prison planets, whence he escaped after a mere twelve years—so the story goes—by instigating an uprising among the prisoner class, permitting him the cover necessary to steal aboard a transport craft.

There Lorian’s trail goes cold for many years. It is commonly held that he sojourned among the Extrasolarians for a time, making a name for himself as a mercenary captain—despite his infirmities. It is during this time he is believed to have fallen in with the Gallican Interfaced, a faction among the Extrasolarians remarkable for their neural implants and practice of mind-to-mind communication, often fighting as a single, gestalt consciousness distributed across many bodies. It is from the Interfaced that Lorian Aristedes most likely received his artificial nerve and bone implants, which—failing to cure his condition entirely—nonetheless ameliorated his symptoms and allowed for his improved and continued function.

His adventures with the Interfaced eventually led him to the nascent Kingdom of Latarra, whose founder—the Monarch Calen Harendotes—recognizing his name and history—awarded him a captaincy in the Latarran Grand Army. He won a great victory at Ceuta, for which he received the affectionate—if mocking name of the Giant, and elevation to the newly formed rank of Commandant-General, one of the twelve highest-ranking members of the Monarch’s forces. He campaigned tirelessly across the Norman Expanse, conducting operations against various Imperial holdouts—most notably at Almatana—as well as against Norman Freeholds, assorted Extrasolarian factions not aligned with the Monarchy, and against the Cielcin themselves.

It was at Eragassa that Lorian Aristedes faced his greatest trial, against a Cielcin scianda under the command of the Vayadan-General Teyanu, one of the Six Fingers of the Prophet, Syriani Dorayaica. Though Eragassa suffered horribly in the fighting, the Latarran fleet was nevertheless victorious, and Teyanu itself was captured and brought back to Latarra, a prisoner in its own cyborg body. It is said that Calen Harendotes kept the general alive for more than a year, and would dine with it, before the creature was ultimately executed in a triumph to celebrate the Monarchy’s annexation of the planet Monmara. Teyanu’s machine body was conveyed to the Eternal City on Forum as a gift to the Emperor by Lorian himself, a token of peace and friendship between the Sollan Empire and the nascent Monarchy, at the Great Council of ISD 17438, where Lorian Aristedes was once again reunited with his old friend and benefactor, Hadrian Marlowe.