Ronval Rubat
'Rusty'
Ronval spent his early life on a non-descript desert world, studying to be a technician maintaining evaporators and climate control systems while developing an interest, and later an expertise, in the complex biology of the desert he lived in. However, with his family's limited means and the modest income of a technician, Ronval could not pay for travel and study to other desert biomes, and so he joined the GADF army for a stable career as an infantryman, intending to stay for a few years at most.
His patience and work ethic served him well and he was soon given specialist training, becoming a military technician and specialising in desert warfare. As the Alliance's military commitments expanded, Ronval was sent off to the frontlines with his infantry unit, proving to be a competent scout and tactical leader, earning the nickname 'Rusty'. When his unit returned for reorganisation, Ronval was assigned to a cross-branch special operations unit, RC-JOH (Recon & Command – Joint Operations Headquarters) that were assigned to miscellaneous independent missions deep behind enemy lines conducted without drawing on the limited Pathfinder manpower pool. Rusty put his skills to use, proving that even Infantry could be competent in such operations. It was on one such mission that would change Rusty's life.
In the midst of the war with the Imperial Civil War, Ronval's RC-JOH platoon was sent to sabotage a key supply base deep inside their territory. However, an unexpected Sith counter-attack pushed the nearest Alliance forces several systems back, stranding Rusty and his 'Dusters' deep behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and hunted, unexpected assistance from the local resistance movement, the Crimson Vipers, saved the Dusters, and Rusty quickly formed a productive working relationship with them. When the Alliance re-established contact with the Dusters, Rusty made the decision to change the parameters of the mission: they would train, arm and assist the local resistance to bleed the Sith dry on this vital world, and if possible to spread this assistance to other key systems. The plan worked, and over the next year the Sith were forced to divert ever larger amounts of garrisons to key supply centres away from the front with the NIO and GA. Rusty's unit was eventually surrounded in a heated engagement, but he managed to fake defection and betrayal, leading Sith-Imperial forces to what they believed to be resistance bases. Fortunately for him, the Sith-Imperial garrison commanders were engaged in an internal power struggle exacerbated by the war, and Rusty was able to take advantage of this to goad some of them into riskier maneuvres. Eventually, the bulk of the Sith armoured forces on that planet was ambushed and destroyed in a single engagement and the Sith surrendered to the resistance.
When Rusty returned to allied lines for debriefing, he found out that the actions of other RC-JOH units over the past year, while extremely costly and only of middling strategic value, had unexpectedly gained traction in the media and were becoming something of a publicity coup. As a result, the GADF leveraged this, using the survivors of the RC-JOH as PR faces to drum up the purchase of war bonds and support for the increasingly costly war against the Sith Empire. Thus Rusty was effectively semi-retired, becoming more of an ambassador to the home front, drumming up support for the war. This was when Rusty first came to the attention of the SIA: restless for real action, and unlike others who saw their job merely as a PR stunt, Rusty took his role of promoting the war against the Sith and oppressive ideologies seriously. His time behind enemy lines and this experience with the Imperial warlords had hardened him, and Rusty began to reach out to certain outspoken political activist groups, some of which acted outside legal boundaries. He began to use his platform to speak for some of them, advocating action against "anti-Alliance activities" both abroad and at home, and began to forge useful connections with these groups. Sensing opportunity, SIA quickly got into contact with him and offered him a transfer to the agency while retaining reservist status in the GADF, wishing to rope in these radical groups under the eye and, if necessary, assistance of the SIA. Rusty agreed, and when Project: FORESTER came online soon after, Rusty was one of the first to be assigned.
When the anti-Imperial Rebel Alliance was founded, Rusty considered joining, but his elevated public profile and key to internal FORESTER operations prevented SIA from allowing him to leave. Since then, Rusty has returned to the evaporator/HVAC business, occasionally called back into active service in the GADF for some missions, but he spends the rest of his time as a 'war ambassador' to the public and senate lobbyist as Vice-Secretary of GAVIN (Galactic Alliance Veterans' Information Network), and secretly as a lynchpin in the coordination of semi-legal direct action against Imperialist, Corporatist and pro-Sith organisations in the Alliance in the form of Project FORESTER.
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