Redmond Venter

"A long time ago, I might have been able to choose a different path for myself. But that time is long gone. I've lost too much now, and taken too much away as well. I know my duty, and I'm loyal to my end, to my purpose. From here to the end, I'll be whatever the galaxy needs me to be. Whatever you need me to be. There is no higher cause than ours. No matter what darkness awaits me, I'll meet it head on. And whatever happens, I will see your will to the end."

- Redmond Venter to Arthur Onegin

The galaxy knew him as a man of many faces. To his enemies, he was a heartless traitor, a butcher, and a war criminal with no sense of honor. To his allies, he was a hero, a crusader against stagnation and corruption, a rallying figure for the forgotten and marginalized. To those few who considered themselves his friends, he was a complicated, solitary man, torn between his duty to higher causes and his own private convictions. But for all the accolades and vilification, the Insurrectionist leader Redmond Venter remained a solitary individual, his inner feelings hidden from all, including himself.

From humble beginnings as an urchin on, Venter rose to prominence during the as a member of the Hound Unit, a covert UNSC black operations unit. After his friend and mentor was disgraced and stripped of his position, Venter assumed command and led the unit during its efforts to curb the activities of the rogue Project FREELANCER. After seeing himself and his comrades used and cast aside by the military, a disillusioned Venter defected to the after the end of the war. He fled to the rebel stronghold of where he and his childhood friend Gavin Dunn helped fan the flames of the secession movement sweeping across the disgruntled colony. During the UNSC's subsequent invasion, Venter proved himself a capable field commander as he led a resistance unit against the government forces. It was during Mamore's doomed struggle that Venter came into contact with the deserter Simon-G294. He became teacher and mentor for the young Spartan, though "Stray" would eventually become disillusioned by Venter's brutal methods and turn on him violently. The defeat on Mamore cost Venter much, and in the years following the failed secession he was reduced to leading small elements of Insurrectionist cells as they languished under the domination of the criminal empire known as the Syndicate. But Venter retained his ambition, and when kindled by the ideals of an old friend he set out to alter galactic history by any means necessary, even if it meant sacrificing what little he had left.

"i Just Want To Belong Somewhere"
"Ugh, the Venter kid again? I thought we'd seen the last of that one. Just put him in the room he was in last time. Don't bother going over the meal schedule with him, he's been here enough times he should know the drill by now."

- Sindi Rush, administrator of New Alexandria Community Care Center

He didn’t know who his parents were or where he came from. No one cared to find out and certainly no one was interested in helping to take care of him. He knew his own name only because it was printed on his incomplete identification records. As a boy Redmond Venter’s earliest memories were of drifting from one care center to another, a rut in Reach’s social support system. Without any proper documentation to attribute his citizenship status, the young orphan was little more than annoyance to the various administrators forced to handle his welfare paperwork. With the personnel at the care centers irritated at simply having to clothe and feed him, much less educate him or find him a lasting home, “Red” Venter spent his early years isolated and alone, little more than baggage to be shuttled between housing facilities. Never in one place long enough to make lasting friends, he became a quiet boy who never spoke up and instead submitted to whatever his irritated caretakers told him to do. However, the solitary orphan did have one spark of rebellion: he took to stealing books from the care centers, reading them during the long days spent waiting to be processed into his next temporary home.

This mind-numbing cycle of endless transfers continued for years. The young Red endured it in silence, keeping himself to himself and occupying his time with absorbing books and the occasional pilfered ‘net broadcast. As far as Reach’s welfare system was concerned, Red had no future worth looking forward to; the boy himself found nothing in his dull, stagnant life to refute this sentiment. He had no aspirations other than to get through his next meal and get back to his quarters, where he could read in peace. But though he saw no way out of the welfare system, Red grew increasingly restless within the care centers. He developed a violent streak and began picking fights with the other children and then sneaking out of the center to wander the area until he was certain his infractions had been forgotten. One day, following a particularly nasty scrap with a girl who had stolen one of his books, Red slipped out of a care center in and set out to wander through the metropolis’s busy streets. He had not gotten far from the center before he stumbled into a group of older boys in one of the area’s wealthier residential districts. When the youths refused to leave him alone, Red lashed out at them. He was outnumbered in the ensuing scuffle and in order to break free from his attackers he bit one of the boys on the arm, drawing blood. The injured boy’s mother was attracted by the commotion and she immediately contacted the New Alexandria police. Red fled the scene and, knowing that his face had surely been recorded by local security cameras, feared returning to the care center. Instead he wandered further into New Alexandria. Before long, he was hopelessly lost and could not have returned to the center even if he had wanted to.

After two cold, hungry days of wandering the city streets and back alleys, a bedraggled Red was discovered by a thief and con-artist named James Felson. Outcast children like Red were not an uncommon sight on the streets of New Alexandria, and Felson had organized a large group of urchins into his own private gang of thieves. Lured in by promises of food and shelter, Red quickly became a part of the gang, known to local residents by the colorful name of "Felson's Filchers." Felson saw great potential in his newest charge and took it upon himself to groom Red for a leadership position within the gang. Red, for his part, was simply grateful for the chance to belong to something bigger than himself. He had no qualms about thievery; the gang's clandestine activities proved to be more exciting and fulfilling than anything he had ever felt in the centers. Before long Red was a key member of the gang, venturing out with them for nearly every one of their "jobs." The Filchers' standard tactic was to stake out residential areas and target wealthy citizens. Felson, a skilled hacker, would disable electronic security measures before sending his charges in to canvass the houses for anything of value. Red and a handful of the older children—known as "Bigs" to New Alexandria's urchin population—acted as the crew's vanguard, entering the buildings first to make sure they were deserted before the younger children were allowed to descend on the house. When not out on jobs, Red and his fellow Bigs were charged with helping Felson administer the gang, relaying their boss's instructions to the younger children and maintaining order when he wasn't around. Red took to all of these tasks with enthusiasm, happy to finally have a purpose in life besides simply living from day to day. Felson was deeply impressed by his new charge and took it upon himself to personally tutor Red in the secrets of survival on the streets. The master thief was the first adult to ever pay the young orphan any heed, and Red looked up to Felson as both his boss and teacher.

The Filchers were not the only gang competing for food and job opportunities in the New Alexandria alleys. The ongoing had brought Reach a new era of economic growth through endless defense contracts and employment opportunities. However, the war had also brought wave after wave of refugees fleeing the alien onslaught and with these newcomers came thousands of creditless vagrants and urchins. For Felson's Filchers, this meant that they needed to be on the lookout for any hint of competition. Felson, who was growing rich through the black market sale of his gang's "earnings," ensured that the right New Alexandria police officers were bribed into complacency. On the streets, it fell to Red and the other Bigs to recruit new members and scare off any who would not clear out or fall into line. Although Red—now adept at street fighting—saw nothing wrong with knocking sense into children his own age, he was not fond of administering beatings to younger orphans and he often settled for simply chasing urchins off when they crossed into Filcher territory. One pair of orphans in particular, Judith Ives and Gavin Dunn, proved to be quite persistent at antagonizing the Filchers. The two of them had particularly irked Felson by turning down his offer to join the gang, and Red and his fellow Bigs were under standing orders to "beat the fucking daylights" out of them whenever possible. Although Red was loath to disobey his boss, he limited himself and the other Bigs to running Gavin and Judy out of the area. After the two young orphans, well-versed in New Alexandria's streets and alleys, outwitted the Bigs on multiple occasions, Red and the other Filchers elected to spare themselves further embarrassment by ignoring Gavin and Judy entirely.

With the exploits of his gang of child thieves more successful than he had ever dreamed possible, Felson grew bolder in selecting neighborhoods for them to strike. His ambition growing, he targeted a wealthy penthouse and trusted his gang with an elaborate scheme to loot the building. As some of the younger gang members created a distraction, Red and more of the young thieves slipped inside after Felson remotely disabled the security. However, once inside they discovered that a family was still inside. The other Bigs overpowered and restrained the husband and wife, but Red made only a halfhearted effort to apprehend their young daughter and did not pursue when the girl ran off. Unfortunately, she went and alerted the building's security guards who in turn contacted the police. Felson and his gang barely escaped the scene, and several of the Filchers were apprehended in the ensuing police sweep. His grand scheme ruined and the future of his gang in jeopardy, a furious Felson blamed the fiasco on Red, who had loyally fessed up to the error that had led to the disaster. Branding him a failure, Felson drove a stunned Red out of the gang's hideout and instructed the other Bigs to make sure he never came back. Shocked and betrayed not only by Felson's rejection but by how easily the rest of the gang had turned on him, Red lingered in Filcher territory, frightened and unsure of where to go. A group of his former friends happened upon him and, as per Felson's orders, attacked him as they would any other trespasser. Outnumbered and hesitant to fight people he still thought of as family, Red was quickly overpowered by the other boys. He was only saved from a savage beating when two other vagrants came to his rescue: Gavin Dunn and Judith Ives, the two urchins the Bigs had never been able to catch.

Still numbed by the loss of the Filchers, an injured Venter allowed Gavin and Judy to take him back to their hideout.

Personality and Traits
"Looking at him, everything he'd endured and everything he represented, I understood. This galaxy is hell. The strong eat the weak no matter what species they are, and the ones who refuse to fight are slaughtered just like all the others. We all do whatever we have to in order to win, and when the smoke clears the winners can justify everything they ever did when in reality they've accomplished nothing but the crime we call victory, paid for by the pain of the defeated. Our nature hasn't advanced a step beyond the Stone Age and men like Arthur who realize this simple fact must suffer far more than the rest of us."

- Redmond Venter speaking of Arthur Onegin, his former commanding officer

From his earliest days as a forgotten orphan within Reach's wellfare system, Redmond Venter yearned to be part of something larger than his own solitude. Much of his early life was spent seeking this out, first with Felson's Filchers, then with the Irregular gang, and again within the UNSC. Each time he believed he had found a lasting community, he saw it torn away from him by the workings of fate. This cycle came to a head with the decimation of the Hound Unit at the hands of Project FREELANCER. Embittered when the UNSC discarded his own unit and welcomed the Freelancers back into the fold, Venter defected to the Insurrection as a last resort, believing less in the movement's secessionist ideals than he did in his own desire for vindication against the government that had abandoned him and his comrades. However, the lasting influence of his friend and fellow Insurrectionist Gavin Dunn encouraged him to still seek out something akin to a family within the rebel cause. This urge drove him to attempt to adopt and train the child soldiers Stray and Emily on the battlefields of ; however, the burden of leadership against yet another insurmountable enemy drove Venter to ruthless lengths in order to continue the fight. Upon learning that Stray was a renegade, Venter focused his efforts on honing the young deserter's killing potential, without regard for the toll his methods were taking on Stray's mind. In the end, his need to carry on the fight led him to sacrifice Emily, which served to turn both Stray and Gavin against him. Betrayed by his protege and abandoned by his closest friend, Venter sank to even deeper levels of ruthlessness as he continued his service to the Insurrection.

A soldier at his core, Venter preferred taking the fight to the enemy directly rather than utilizing indirect politicking and scientific research. However, the demands of his position forced him to compromise his ideals time and time again until he was as much a project director for several criminally experimental programs as he was a field commander. Venter detested his role in programs such as Project Knight, but spearheaded them anyway because he believed them necessary to help further his cause. Although Mamore left him with little stomach to commit further atrocities in the name of the Insurrection, his loyalty to the ideals of Arthur Onegin gave him a cause worth sacrificing his very soul for. Few even had knowledge of his ties to Onegin, and so most of his enemies passed his ruthless tactics off as the actions of a terrorist warlord without a conscience. In the end, Venter cared little for the opinions of others as he strove to make his friend and mentor's dreams a reality.

Skills
"The knife isn't an extension of your hand, it's an extension of your will. If the weapon's part of your body, your body may or may not move. But if it's part of your will, everything between your will and your weapon will move to achieve your ends. And that is far more effective for staying alive."

- Redmond Venter to Simon-G294.

As a former member of the UNSC High Command's premier black operations unit outside of the Spartans, Venter is an incredibly capable combatant. Having undergone training in dozens of combat-oriented schools and courses, he is a peak example of combat prowess in an unaugmented human. Though an accomplished marksman, Venter's true area of expertise is close quarters fighting. Despite his lack of augmentations, he has proven his lethality against stronger and faster opponents including warriors and even. During one of the UNSC's many attempts on his life, Venter reportedly killed an entire squad of with only a combat knife. He would pass his brutally effective method of fighting on to many of his pupils, particularly Simon-G294.

During the fighting on Mamore Venter proved himself to be a capable unit commander, guiding a poorly armed and equipped guerrilla force in a devastating campaign against superior UNSC forces. Upon assuming command of broader, galaxy-wide rebel activities, Venter began to rely more and more on advisers and sub-commanders to help him keep focus on the bigger picture. Although untrained as a naval officer, Venter has guided his flagship, the stolen destroyer Red Sea, through several engagements against both UNSC and Covenant forces.