Terel Salkar

Terel Salkar

Biological
Full name:	Terel Salkar
Born:
Birthplace:	North Chorras, Chorras
Sex:	Male
Race:	Human
Hair:	White, balding
Eyes:	Blue
Height:	5'5"
Weight:
Personal
Marital Status:
Family/Relationships:	{{{family}}}
Religion:	None
Title:	Speaker of the Chorran Senate; Former Councilor from Chorras Prefecture of the Upper House of the Guardian Parliament; Former Councilor from Chorras Prefecture of the Post-Reform Guardian Parliament
Nicknames:
Hobbies:
Known skills:	Psychokinetic and Psychometabolic psionic ability; Salkar is also a surprisingly effective legislator, in spite of his highly abrasive personality and seeming lack of any sense of tact or diplomacy
Favorite color:
Inspiration:
Motto:

Terel Salkar is a career politician from Chorras in the Gate Dimension. No one is sure exactly how old he is, but he was at least in his 60s during the Syndicate Wars, which would make him well over 100 years old now. For as long as most can remember, Salkar and his family have been prominent members of the leadership in the Chorran prefectures. He has been a leading voice of leadership in the Conservative and Progressive Parties, and a voice of dissent against the Guardian Royal Government.

For much of his life, Salkar has managed to keep secret his potent psionic ability; he is a strong user of both the Psychokinetic and Psychometabolic disciplines. During the Guardian Civil War, Salkar was forced to make use of these abilities to defend himself and several other members of the Chorran Rebellion's Senate. He has since publicly admitted to being a psionicist, and has hinted that his mastery of the Psychometabolic discipline is the secret to his superhuman longevity.

Salkar is one of the longest-serving and most experienced legislators in the Web of Worlds. Over the couse of his political career, he served in the Pre-Restoration Chorran Senate, won a seat in the Upper House of Guardia's Parliament from Chorras prefecture, was elected to the post-reform unicameral Parliament from Chorras Prefecture in 2321 and was a founding member of the Chorran Rebel Senate during the Guardian Civil War. Post-Civil War, he resumed his Pre-Restoration seat in the newly re-established Chorran Republican Senate, although there have not yet been Senatorial elections.

History

The earliest accounts of Terel Salkar being involved in Chorran politics go back to the early years of the reign King Corinius Laicus Guardia in the 2230s. Then, as a young(er) man, Salkar was a member of the Chorran Senate, and was one of the proponents of a policy of isolationism in defiance of the Tech Syndicates that held de facto power over the Kingdom of Guardia. Long before Derik Pendouris was even born, Salkar was the original "firebrand," known for his confrontational temperament and propensity toward profane and personal insults, he made few friends among his peers, but his constituents kept voting him into office time and again.

Syndicate Wars

In 2260, after King Corinius' death, the Trann Syndicate made its move. Agents under direct orders of the Director of the Trann Syndicate, Natba Ashtear, assassinated both Director Jareth Pendouris of the Arris Syndicate and Governor Carter Telric of Chorras. In the chaos following the Governor's assassination, Trann Syndicate forces invaded the Chorran mainland under the pretenses of maintaining law and order.

As the Syndicate Wars began in earnest, and the Trann, Arris and Proto Syndicates battled each other for control over the remains of the Kingdom of Guardia, the Chorrans struggled against the Trann Syndicate's occupation. The Senate, operating in the shadows, rallied rebel fighters against Trann, but to no avail. In 2273, a desperate Senator Salkar reached out to the young leader of the Arris Syndicate, Jareth's son Doan Pendouris, and begged him for help. Doan agreed to the alliance, and made a personal pledge to Salkar that he would force Trann to abandon its positions in Chorras by any means necessary. Doan fulfilled that pledge in 2274, using the momentum from the Arris Syndicate's victory at the Battle of Bangor to push Trann out of Chorras. For the rest of the war, Salkar and Doan were allies, and the Chorrans fought alongside Arris Syndicate troops to eventually win the war.

Doan's Restoration

In 2300, after forty years of conflict following the death of King Corinius and the end of the Laicus Dynasty, Doan proclaimed himself the heir of the Line of Guardian Kings and ascended the Guardian Throne, marking the end of the Syndicate Wars. It was clear that Doan's goal was to restore the Kingdom of Guardia to its historic territorial borders, which would have included basically everything in the Gate Dimension except for the continent of Medina and the El Nido islands.

The Chorrans, of course, had a problem with this. But they were still decimated from the conflict and in no position to pick up on their own again without Guardian help. Doan and the Chorran Senate worked out a compromise: Chorras would remain part of the Kingdom of Guardia as a semi-autonomous collection of five prefectures (Chorras, North Chorras, South Chorras, Cyrus Village and Port Toma) for a period of ten years. During this time, the Chorran prefectures would have membership in Parliament, pay Guardian taxes and offer conscripts to the GDF and GRN. In return, Guardia would undertake a massive public works effort to help Chorras "get back on its feet," repairing damage and building new infrastructure to help Chorras recover from the war.

During this time, Salkar ran for and won the Chorras prefecture seat in the Upper House of Parliament. He ran under the aegis of the Conservative party, which had, up until that point, been a largely leaderless collection of libertarian-leaning liberals who offered token resistance to the more well-established Royalist party.

The Broken Promise

By the time 2310 rolled around, the Guardian government showed no sign of relinquishing its hold on the Chorran territories. This was in part due to the fact that tensions were running high between King Doan and the Medinan dictator, Ozzie XI. Chorras, being just across the water from Medina's major port at Coast Town, was at risk of being invaded again if it came to war between Guardia and Medina, so Doan took the more pragmatic route and instead of preparing Guardian assets for a departure from Chorras instead dug in and fortified the Chorran coastline.

Salkar was, naturally, outraged, and took to the floor of Parliament to rail against the tyranny of King Doan. He rallied the Conservative party around his leadership and tried to pass legislation that would force a Chorran secession from the kingdom, but the Royalist party rallied around King Doan and the cause of "keeping the Kingdom whole." Chorran independence would, thereafter, become the major cause celebre of the Guardian Conservative party.

KMT War

War with Medina did, indeed, break out, but not until after the Gate Dimension joined the Web of Worlds in the year 2311. (technically, this would be the second time that Gate joined the Web of Worlds, though the first time the entire dimension was under the space-time influence of Queen Zeal) After the Kingdom of Guardia joined GACA, Medina forged alliances with Caidin's Ticondera and Kusader's Kuvalla in a bid to challenge the Grand Army's growing post-Great War influence. With Ticonderan and Kuvallan support, the Medinans struck out, launching an invasion of Chorras.

Salkar once again found himself part of a Chorran resistance movement, fighting to free his homeland from the Medinans this time. He lamented that the damage caused by Ozzie's invasion would only serve to delay Guardia's fulfillment of Doan's promise.

Derik's Reign

In 2312, yet another roadblock cropped up on the way to Chorran independence: an OmniSent assassin ambushed Doan while on a diplomatic trip to Medina. While Doan survived the attack, he was incapacitated, and his son Prince Derik became King-Regent. Derik showed as little interest as any other Guardian in restoring Chorran sovereignty, always claiming that he had better things to worry about (like, for instance, giant ants from space, which attacked the Web of Worlds while Derik was on the throne). After the Hivan War, Doan abdicated, and Derik was crowned King of Guardia in 2313.

Salkar continued to lambast the Guardian Royalist establishment from his place in Parliament, and continued advancing measures for Chorran independence at every opportunity. The relationship between Derik and Salkar was significantly worse than with Derik's father. Where Doan had established a history of working with Salkar, and had actually come to Salkar's rescue in Chorras on multiple occasions, Derik seemed to view Salkar and the Conservatives in Parliament as more of a minor annoyance than anything else.

Salkar often opposed Derik and the Royalists in Parliament for no other reason than pure spite, and with his influence over the Conservative bloc that sometimes meant that the majority couldn't get things done. One of the more major battles that Salkar ended up losing (and which would come to haunt him later) was over re-districting the Denadoro region into its own prefecture, breaking it away from Dorino prefecture. Salkar opposed this measure on pragmatic grounds, as he suspected that the Mystic-majority populations that lived in Denadoro would vote out of some sort of allegiance to the Royalist party, and therefore send Royalist councilors to Parliament.

However, the Denadoro redistricting measure ended up being a rallying cry to anti-Mystic, human supremacist elements of the far right wing of Guardian politics (lead by noted shadow mage and Conservative Chorran councilor, Tibbius Shadow). Not only did Salkar and his allies end up losing this fight (after a Xenos assassin attempted to kill several members of Parliament ahead of the vote, before being thwarted by the Shield), but the fight itself served to presage the rise of the Xenos, the Defiler Army, and Rajaat.

When Derik rode off to Aryth with a GDF contingent to assault the OmniSent's underwater Atlantis base, Salkar said from the floor of Parliament: "I hope that godsdamned tyrant gets himself killed out there. That'd be a step in the right direction for all of Gate."

When Derik turned up missing and was presumed dead after the battle, Royalists in Parliament censured Salkar for his remarks, nearly provoking a brawl on the Parliament floor with outraged Conservatives solidly backing their leader.

Succession Crisis

With Derik's children too young to ascend to the throne, most assumed that Derik's widow, Queen Naraya Pandora, would become regent. But Salkar (still very, very salty over his personal feud with the Pendouris family) was determined to keep this from happening. Allying himself with Archbishop Meres of the Church of Spekkio, he worked in Parliament to oppose Naraya's rule. Claiming that giving Naraya the regency would be putting the throne in the hands of a foreign agent, Salkar put forward legislation that would give the regency instead to the Archbishop, who was "an upstanding and loyal Guardian, with only the best interests of the Kingdom at heart."

Normally, such an incendiary measure would be difficult for Salkar to pass on his own, since the Conservative party was still in the minority. But in addition to the Conservative bloc, Salkar was backed by an unusual alliance of traditionalist Royalists and members of the Nobility who were unwilling to allow the Kingdom to be ruled by a woman.

Once installed as Regent, Archbishop Meres did actually attempt to give independence to the Chorrans as thanks for Conservative votes backing his regency in Parliament. However, such a move still required Parliamentary approval, and the Royalists (rallied back together again by the former king Doan) continued to reject even the idea of breaking the kingdom apart. Unwilling to allow his alliance with Salkar to go completely unappreciated, Meres instead issued a Holy Writ, which officially made clear that the Church of Spekkio favored Chorran independence. While this did make Salkar a stalwart ally of Meres throughout the Archbishop's regency, it caused no end of problems for Meres in dealing with Parliament's perennial Royalist majority.

The Cleansing Wars

The Xenos and Rajaat's Defiler Army rose up out of human supremacist elements of Chorras, which put Salkar and his allies in a difficult position during the Cleansing Wars. From their hidden base in Chorras, the Defilers journeyed to El Nido to begin their campaign of genocide.

While Chorras was left physically untouched by the war, resentment among Guardians, Nidoans and Medinans lingered, especially in non-human populations. Many blamed Salkar's incendiary rhetoric during the Denadoro redistricting fight for stoking the Xenos' fires. As if that weren't enough, the war that some blamed directly on Salkar's salty tongue had taken the lives of two beloved members of the Guardian royal family: King Doan and Queen Naraya. What's more: the war had also cost Salkar his most powerful political ally, Archbishop Meres (who had been both killed and revealed to be a disguised yakra all along). Understandably, for a time after the war, Terel Salkar's political influence in greater Guardia was on the wane.

Derik's Reforms

When Derik returned (very much still alive) from his amnesiac sojourn in Aryth, he enacted the Charter Oath and the Reforms of 2321. As part of this reform, Parliament was streamlined: the old bicameral legislature was abolished, and a new single-house Parliament was established. Elections were held hastily later that year in what was described as a game of political musical chairs, as councilors ran against each other for the Constitutionally-limited two seats per prefecture.

Salkar, despite the ill-will he'd garnered for himself in the wake of the Cleansing Wars, managed to still be popular enough within Chorras prefecture that he held onto his seat in Parliament. Some within the Conservative party tried to challenge him for party leadership, but none could stand against Salkar's verbal abuse. And so he remained the main voice of political opposition in Guardia.

The Progressive Movement

In the elections held after passage of the Charter Oath and the Reforms of 2321, Khalid Morris ran for the office of Chancellor. This was a new experiment in Guardia, established by King Derik, and meant to strip away several of the executive political powers from the Crown and give them to a popularly elected head of the Royal Bureaucracy. Khalid's main opposition was Lord Enderik Penders of Arris prefecture, a staunch Royalist, member of the Nobility, and formerly the incumbent Prime Minister of Parliament before the Reforms abolished the old bicameral legislature. Khalid won handily, despite running with the minority Conservative party, and when he came into power he began to immediately change and re-brand the Conservatives into something altogether new.

Khalid renamed his party the Progressive party, and virtually all the old Conservative politicians accepted this rebranding. He expanded outreach to Guardia's non-humans, campaigned for Parliament seats in prefectures where the old Conservatives had never before dreamed of competing, and recast the party's mission to serving as advocate for Guardia's nascent democratic institutions and generally opposing unchecked power for the Crown and Nobility.

Salkar fucking hated Khalid with a salty passion that was unprecedented even for him. He went along with the crowd and became a "Progressive," but he continued fighting for an independent Chorras at every opportunity. He saw even less success than he did pre-Reforms, which disheartened him; he began to wonder if he actually had only himself to blame for the mess he was in, for the first time buying into the narrative that Salkar's fight over Denadoro had been a contributing factor to the Cleansing Wars.

Was he powerless? Was there nothing he could do? Was this now the Khalid Morris show, and had his time as great opposition leader and Chorran freedom fighter finally come to an end?...

Chancellory Election of 2326

When Khalid Morris made his first run for reelection, he was opposed by two major candidates: the Royalists ran Dr. Lois Zane, a political novice with deeply-held leftist convictions, and Terel Salkar bucked Progressive party leadership by running as an independent (under the now-defunct "Conservative" banner). Salkar campaigned largely on insults hurled at Khalid and King Derik, and wound up coming in third in the three-way race. Khalid handily coasted to reelection.

Chorran Rebellion

Governor Dregoth and Eli Cromlich eventually recruited Salkar to their cause, and he brought with him most of the Parliamentary delegation from the Chorran prefectures. Salkar gathered these councilors together, and with them he formed the Chorran Resistance Senate. They had little in the way of power next to Dregoth, but the existence of a Chorran Senate again was deeply symbolic.

Still, Salkar insisted that the Senate have a hand in making some decisions for the Chorran Republic during the rebellion era. In votes that were essentially non-binding, Salkar and his Senators approved the appointment of John Dario as General of the Chorran Resistance Army, approved Chorran citizenship rights for the Reptites of Giant's Claw island, and passed a resolution declaring Governor Dregoth's birthday a Chorran national holiday. All of these votes were voice-votes that Salkar recorded as "unanimous."

The Guardian Civil War

During the war, Salkar was most often found at the Old Senate Building in South Chorras. On one occasion, when GDF forces breached John Dario's lines, Salkar was forced to employ his psychokinetic abilities to defend himself and his fellow Senators. As the war dragged on, he became more and more skeptical of Dregoth's true intentions. When Dario and Eli Cromlich turned against Dregoth, Salkar urged the Senate to support them.

GATO and Post-War

The Civil War officially ended when King Derik backed a measure in Parliament to give independence to both Chorras and Porre. The Senate that Salkar had founded during the resistance became the official legislature of the newly independent nation, and Salkar named himself the body's Speaker.

He currently works alongside Governor John Dario in leading their new nation. Their relationship is frequently less than cordial.