Travin Rumanski
Travin Rumanski
- Biological: Born October 7, 14 WB, Scande
- Sex: Male
- Hair: Black
- Eyes: Brown
- Height: 5’ 7”
- Weight: 155 pounds
Personal
- Religion: Atheist
- Nicknames and Titles: General Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party (of the Dragon Dimension); “Our Leader and Teacher”; koyzha (boss); “The greatest of all men”; Travin the Terrible.
- Hobbies: The revolution leaves no time for hobbies.
- Favorite Color: Red
- Inspirations: Caidin; Vashilov the Terrible; Antarion
- Motto: “The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no interest, no affairs, no feelings, no habits, not even a name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed by a single, exclusive interest, a single thought, a single passion: the Revolution.”
Born in the ghettos of Scande, Travin managed to gain an edge for survival by teaching himself how to read. With cunning and brutality he rose to be the leader of one of the largest gangs in the slum of that city. A book from Figaro, Antarion’s A Just Social Order managed to find its way to Travin’s hands. Living in the squalor of the slums in a nation invaded seemingly every other week, Antarion’s description of the utopian socialist ideal fired Travin’s imagination. He fought a resistance movement against the Dark Wrath occupation aimed at bringing about a communist revolution. He realized that if he were to build the communist ideal it would need to be very, very well protected. After the Great War, the lands of Dragon had changed hands so many times it was uncertain who had a proper claim to them. So a new country was created, the Scandian League. A democratically elected body known as the Presidium was created, with one representative from each of the League’s cities. Travin was something of a hero for his resistance exploits, so he won the seat for the League. In a decision that they would come to regret, at the Presidium’s first meeting it was decided to create a secret police to root out Dark Wrath elements and gave control of it to Rumanski. The Presidium, however, was incredibly corrupt. Although they managed to secure some Gatian technology it is believed that the person in Gate responsible got the better end of the deal. Tasnican corporations looted what they could from Dragon. Many people were starving because the Dark Wrath had poisoned much of the League’s arable land. Rumanski earned a reputation as the only member of the Presidium who could not be bribed, the only one who spoke for the people. In fact, the Steel Workers’ Union elected him their president, despite the fact that Rumanski had no connection with the steel industry. The Steelworkers’ Union, along with several other unions, would form the All-Union Communist Party (of the Dragon Dimension). Travin was elected the party’s General Secretary; at the time, this was regarded as an administrative, ‘nuts and bolts’ job. He was included in the five-person Executive Committee for the Revolution. Most of the other members were intellectuals who had not been in the Dragon Dimension during the Great War. Several of them had written books on communist and socialist theory. They tended to look down on Rumanski, who still spoke with a gutter slang accent. Nonetheless, Rumanski was probably the mastermind behind the communist seizure of power in Scande in late 28 WR. Deciding that the other members of the Executive Committee were insufficiently committed to the revolution, he used his control over the secret police network to liquidate them. There were also divisions in the Executive Committee over whether or not to support Caidin in the KMT war; Travin won out and cast his support behind GACA, the first of several moves that would reveal the revolutionary’s deeply pragmatic streak in foreign affairs. By 29 WR, Travin Rumanski was supreme dictator of the Scandian League, and set about constructing a totalitarian communist state. He nationalized all means of production, which irritated many foreign investors. Travin viewed communism as a rock to build a strong Scandian League on, and promoted top-heavy industrialization and rapidly expanded the military. A major victory was being accepted as Scande’s representative in the House of Lords, essential recognize of his sovereignty in Scande. He gobbled up Gant in the Imperialist War, but for the most part Scande was isolationist. In this time Travin emerged as an anchor to the communist nations of the Web, forming the Communist Protectorate, which would include Damcyan, Hyliagrad, Ticondera, and the Merge League in addition to the Scandian League. The greatest test of Travin’s leadership thus far was undoubtedly the Leviathan War. Rumanski had clashed with Hannibal when the Esperians tried to colonize the planets of Dragon; eventually the Scandians decided that in the inevitable Fascist-Communist conflict they would do better if they struck first. Rumanski, surprisingly, left the better part of managing the war itself to his military commanders. One exception, however, was when he ordered Skalice to aid Desrodio’s disastrous Crystal campaign. Travin wanted to show commitment to his allies, but the delay allowed Halberg’s REF to launch its counterattack in the Esper Theater. Scande’s economy was pushed virtually to collapse by the strain of the Leviathan War. A large resistance movement formed for the first time, congealing around the Voice of a Free League. Travin reinforced control with a Crystal Golem known as the Hand of Travin and introducing new control procedures such as the Solidat. To secure his control in the short term, though, he needed more food. For this he made the unusual move of asking Tasnica for help. In the wake of the Leviathan War, communist regimes were toppling left and right. Any other leader who appealed to the Republic for help would have been viewed as “soft on the capitalists”, but Rumanski, the Web’s great hardliner communist, was clearly immune to such an accusation. Only Travin could go to Tasnica. The influx of food preserved conditions in Scande until grain shipments from Merge resumed. This brief period of détente was derailed by the actions of the New Wraith. However, after elections in Tasnica, it was resumed. Kenny Brackhaven became the first head of state from a non-communist country to receive the honor of a state dinner in the Scandian League. In the early forties, internal reconstruction largely completed, the Scandian League began more to support and acquire allies more deliberately and aggressively. Though this strategy paid off dividends like the revolution in Kuvalla, the expansion of the Merge League, and the founding of the Mysidian Commonwealth and the Orkish Tribal Union it also attracted the ire of previously ambivalent states like Eblan and Guardia. A running argument is whether Rumanski is a national unifying figure like Hosluft or de’Zama or simply a strongman, a warlord who has managed to briefly hold a country together. When he came to power, he promised to keep the people fed and to keep Scande from being invaded; both of these promises have been kept. Notoriously paranoid.
