The Good: The Akhariv is the ancient founder of Ordhinu culture. According to the legends, he united the people of the planet Zavi under one banner to free them from the tyranny of foreign invaders from deeper within the Uroses Galaxy. Once the planet was free he was a kind and just leader, and established a tradition of pacifism within Ordhinu culture (which certainly did not last to the modern era). As a result of all of this, he is perhaps the single most beloved figure in Ordhu’s history and mythology, although some aspects of his have been questioned by scholars and historians, not least his very existence.

The Bad: The Enlightened Emperor Terro Auralex was the second regent of the Enlightened Empire. He was never intended to inherit the title, but the IOM (Independent Ordhinu Movement) attack that killed his father also claimed his elder siblings. He was not the religious zealot his father was, but he wasn’t exactly the wise leader or tactician that the times required, but he made up for it in his savagery. Any world that harbored the IOM, knowingly or otherwise, would be severely punished, often through a purging of their local governments and the implementation of a provisional government that was in essence little more than a puppet for the Empire’s will. Additionally, any lasting possibility for peace with the Democratic Systems’ Republic was thrown out, as he accused them of using the IOM as a proxy to undermine his authority and assassinate his father. His actions generally served to incense the DSR and/or inspire other planets to join the DSR. Unsurprisingly, he was eventually assassinated by a group that was inspired by the IOM little over a decade after his coronation, at which point his Empire was merely a shriveled shadow of what his father had built.

The Ugly: The Lady Gao Shokabe is another figure from Ordhu’s history. The youngest sibling of the Khariv, Gao was the head of her own large estate, and she held an important seat in the High Gallery, Ordhu’s house of nobles. Despite this, Gao was very bitter at the fact that she held a very low position in the line of succession, so she plotted to assassinate everyone above her. She knew that she shouldn’t do it all too quickly, lest anyone catch on to her plot, so she slowly, but surely, started eliminating her family members. As time went by, however, she became more conscious of her own mortality, both in terms of somebody taking her out or simply nature taking its course. Just as she was obsessed with becoming more politically powerful, she became obsessed with immortality as well, so she started to dive into experimental medical technology, alchemy, and even mysticism to find a way to prevent her own death. She started experimenting on her house servants, her subjects, and eventually subjects from other keeps, trying to perfect her perversion of nature. Of course, with such a body count piling up, this was all traced back to her, and the Khariv herself led a takeover of the Lady’s keep. The ensuing battle, which saw the release of the experiments as a last ditch effort to protect herself, finally killed Gao. Despite her crimes, tradition had her buried the Shokabe family crypt, alongside her family that she had assassinated years earlier. In the modern era, the Lady Gao is a bogeyman of sorts, with some urban legends telling that she indeed did achieve immortality, and someday will come after the descendants of those who usurped her for revenge.