Why are you always drunk when I talk to you, Admiral Von Shrakenberg?
Myriel Maximillien Aglié was a short, dapper-looking man with a penchant for expensive, finely tailored suits. He worked in the shadowy political backrooms of the Third Civil War, trying to put together a conspiracy of mundane humans to oppose the machinations of the many mages, werewolves, and vampires competing for power in the Earth Federation.
Early Life[]
He was born some time in the late 2100's in France on Earth, a younger son of an old and well-established aristocratic family of European mages. His brothers and sisters awakened as powerful mages at young ages; he never did. The disappointment of his parents, the teasing of his siblings and peers, and his own resentment of this failure completely beyond his own control fueled a pathological love-hate relationship with magick and all things related to it that would last his entire life.
Political Life[]
Shunted off by his family into the business world to give him something to do, Myriel bounced around the middle-management level of several Megacorps for several years, accumulating a fortune and trading on the influence of his family name in the Federation. When his cousin Aglié Onymalius rose to become leader of the Populist Union in the Federation Senate, his influence expanded greatly. He worked the political backrooms and corporate boardrooms as a power broker, bringing together powerful politicians and powerful businessmen for mutually beneficial influence peddling. But his own lack of powers kept him shut out of the inner circle of Technocracy mages who really ruled the Federation and controlled the major Megacorps, and his proximity to them kept him shut out of the top echelons of the mundane side of the business world. He dropped out of public view to plot his next moves in secret.
In The Shadows[]
He began to put together an underground, secret society of mundane humans who were fed up with the way Magick-users controlled all the levers of power and influence in the Federation. Men and women sick of dancing like puppets on someone else's strings, who wanted to be the ones pulling the strings for a change. The assassination of the entire Grand Council by Rashid King provided the sort of power vacuum and chaos he thought his group needed. He reached out to top leaders in Earth Fleet and the Light Infantry, espeically those with wealthy non-awakened family connections, notably to Erich Von Shrakenberg and Johanna Ingolfsson. He tried to use them to get close to Kristen Vorheis, then a top contender for the Marshalship or even as a new Chairman of the Grand Council, but the rise to power of Arthur Clarke put an end to those plans. Clarke's promotion of werecreature influence shut mundanes out of power even more thoroughly than previous mage-led governemnts had, and Myriel's secret society fell apart.
Behind the Scenes[]
He was named simply as Aglié after the character of the same name in Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. He was an attempt by Martin to bring Erich Von Shrakenberg's plot in a more poltiical-intrigue direction rather than simply remain a string of exploding spaceships. It didn't work, and the plot line was abandoned after two attempts. His Actor Avatar is Terry O'Quinn.