b. 5211 d. 5289

As Interior Minister, Secretary of Enemy Relations and Spymaster General of the Ctjn Empire, Lucretius Hom revolutionized the field of espionage through the judicious use of multiply-nested cover psyches, full-body surgical mimesis and pharmacological amnesia. Hom’s deep-cover triple-sleeper agents were conditioned to be unaware of their own backgrounds, motives, activities and occasionally species, rendering them immune to the most sophisticated teleprobes and allowing Hom to amass the impressive cache of state secrets, surveillance footage and blackmail material that would make him a dominant figure in the Viridian security apparatus throughout his career.

Hom’s techniques spread along with his influence, a development that proved troubling as Hom became convinced his own ministry was seeded with unwitting Vermailian double agents. Realizing that even his closest confidants could be tank-grown spybrids with deep-memory implants, Hom began to orchestrate a delicate purge of the Viridian intelligence directorate, assassinating his subordinates through back channels and third parties. This provided little comfort, however, as Hom came to suspect and execute his replacement staff just as quickly. In 5289 Hom determined the only way to stem the tide of Vermailian influence was to assassinate his archrival and Vermailian counterpart Salvador Nacht, a task whose completion would have marked the pinnacle of Hom’s career had Nacht not been a rogue subpersona Hom had sectioned off from his own brain years previously as a means of gaining access to the Vermailian database.

The loss of Hom and Nacht proved crippling to both Viridia and Vermailia, as together they controlled sole access to over 4200 unactivated deep-cover agents who were now doomed to live out normal lives. The failure of both powers’ intelligence networks was of course ill-timed, but was only one of many factors leading to their subsequent mutual collapse.

—Recorder 3000-21