Catherine Dormax

Catherine Dormax
Catherine Dormax
Character Profile
Born 30 May 2540[1]
Died 2596
Affiliation House Dormax
Rank Colonel
Profession MechWarrior

Catherine Dormax was an officer in the Rim Worlds Army and later the Rift Republican Army of the Rim Provisional Government.

History[edit]

Catherine Dormax was a career military officer from a middle-class family. A competent tactician, she progressed through the ranks by dogged determination, and her sense of morality and fairness earned her the loyalty of the Seventh Amaris Legionnaires.[1]

In 2575, rioting had broken out at the Displass 'Mech plant on Apollo. A detachment from the Fourth Amaris Dragoons had been overwhelmed by forces calling themselves the Rim Provisional Government. First Consul Gregory Amaris reacted in his typical cold-blooded fashion, placing all of the planet under martial law and sending in the Seventh Amaris Legionnaires and Eighth Amaris Fusiliers to restore order at the 'Mech plant. Dormax found herself with direct orders to suppress the rebellion. Rather than the police action she expected and refusing to fire on her fellow citizens, she placed her troops in service of the RPG. Dormax then gave an impassioned speech to the Eighth, committing them to the cause as well. Dormax's act of defiance sent shockwaves through the Rim Worlds Army, effectively turning the situation into civil war.[1][2][3][4][5]

When the Amaris government collapsed, the Star League Defense Force detachment at Camp Cameron, previously on good terms with the local population, was suddenly isolated and surrounded by the hostile forces of the Rift Republican Army. Colonel Dormax commanded the besiegers in what turned out to be a three-year waiting game until RRA commandos crippled the sensor net and assassinated the garrison commander, Major Bruce Langmuir. Blind and leaderless, the new RRA assault in April 2578 overran the cadre, killing all but nine SLDF MechWarriors in the battle. Dormax declared them prisoners of war but extremists in the RRA militia executed the survivors before they could be taken into custody.[6]

Catherine Dormax was dismayed by the anarchy her decision to join the RPG brought. She was a moderate among the hotheads and idealists of the Provisional Government, narrowly escaping death in the succession of coups and countercoups among the rebel leadership, until eventually meeting her end when Star League coalition forces battled on Apollo between 21 March 2595 and September 2596.[3]

Legacy[edit]

Dormax's body was never recovered and for several decades after the Reunification War, a tale circulated that the ghost of Dormax would return to save the Republic from itself.[1]

By the mid-twenty-eighth century, one of the Rim Worlds Army's flagship Imperial Divisions had been named after Dormax.[7]

Notes[edit]

Dormax's first name is spelled Katherine in The Star League,[2] The Periphery,[3] Historical: Liberation of Terra Volume 1,[8] and sometimes in Historical: Reunification War.[9]

References[edit]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Historical: Reunification War, p. 61: "Catherine Dormax"
  2. 2.0 2.1 The Star League, p. 51: "Rim Worlds War"
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 The Periphery, p. 42: "Conquest of the Rim Worlds Republic"
  4. Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 17: "Rim Worlds Rebellion"
  5. Era Report: 2750, p. 16: "Preparations"
  6. Historical: Reunification War, pp. 130–131: "The Spark"
  7. Field Report 2765: Periphery, p. 18: "Imperial Divisions"
  8. Historical: Liberation of Terra Volume 1, p. 110: "Any Port in a Storm"
  9. Historical: Reunification War, pp. 43, 130–131

Bibliography[edit]