Hector Rowe

Hector Worthington Rowe was the founder of the Rim Worlds Republic.

When the Outer Reaches Rebellion broke out, Hector was an undergraduate at the University of Thebes on Alexandria. He volunteered for the Alexandria Militia in 2237 and served as a sergeant in the during the four month siege of his beloved university. Although the defence was ultimately unsuccessful, losses on both sides had been high and the Terran troops, short of supplies, withdrew in 2238.

Following the war, Rowe grew obsessed with taking revenge on the Alliance and formed a quasi-political club amongst veterans of the war that quickly became a paramilitary force. In 2244 Rowe and his followers left Alexandria, seizing several Skye jumpships to transport them to the nearby world of Lucianca which was still home to an all but abandoned Alliance garrison.

Slipping past the Alliance in defences in the guise of a relief convoy, Rowe caught the 350-strong 151st Altairian Fusiliers completely by surprise. Having personally executed their commander and executive officer, he then organised kangaroo courts that condemned the surviving soldiers to death by torture. Over half the garrison had been put to death before one of the Skye jumpships managed to escape and spread warnings of the atrocity.

Realising that he could not return, Rowe butchered the remaining prisoners and departed with their equipment and remaining ships. The small force supported themselves by raiding various fringe worlds for supplies and women before jumping past the Dark Nebula and locating a habitable world that Rowe named Apollo and from which he founded the Rim Worlds Republic.

Despite its sordid beginnings, the Rim Worlds Republic prospered under Rowe for more than half a century until he was ousted by a popular vote of no confidence organised by his third son Maxwell. Hector Rowe took his own life within months.

Bibliography

• The Periphery