George McClusky

Captain Daniel Graves was a human. Born in 2525 to Zachary Graves, the nephew of infamous traitor and rebel commander Howard Graves and his wife Francine, the young Daniel came into the custody of his grand uncle when he stowed away aboard a rebel freighter bound for during the  attack on his colony.

While in, Daniel became a rabid supporter of the rebel cause, and close friends with Nathaniel Wright. In 2543, Graves enlisted in the Victorian Republican Army as a Lieutenant. Although he was proud to be serving the cause, the young officer was disappointed to find his duty consisted of uneventful patrols and various other monotonous duties, interspersed with periods of leave to visit Tisson City.

In, Graves experienced his first combat against the on the colony of. During his first mission, Graves botched his part of the operation horribly, ending up with heavy burns on over 75% of his body, as well as other wounds. Evacuated to a rebel base deep inside one of the planet's jungles, Graves was placed into cryosleep, where he remained for nearly a decade.

Awoken from cryosleep in 2562, Graves was worked on by rebel medics for nearly two weeks before he had recovered enough. After three more weeks of recovering fully, Graves became part of the rebel enclave he had recovered in. Enraged at the UNSC for violating what he saw as the sovereignty of a planet, Graves became one of the group's most effective solo operators, although his actions as a commander left much to be desired.

By 2570, after eight years of combat, Graves was becoming war weary, his once fiery zealotry dampened by the true horrors of war. In 2579, after a failed coup on the colony left hundreds dead on both sides, Graves, sick of the war, took a from a fallen rebel, and attacked a fireteam of SPARTAN-IV's, wounding two of the supersoldiers.