- Alfendi “Tung” Tungsten
- Species: Darnathi (Appears Human)
- Height: 12’8”
- Age: 470 (Appears to be late forties)
- Rank: General
Tungsten is a mixed blood who got lucky in many ways. The majority of his family reflect commonblood roots, but Tungsten somehow ended up with pure highblood traits. It’s unknown whether his parents arranged for him to end up that way, or he got a lucky turn, or one of the gene doctors decided to enhance his highblood traits. But whatever the cause or reason and despite his mixed lineage, Tungsten can easily pass for a pure highblood. (With the darnathi obsession with genetics, it was never a question that his parents were not his parents.)
He was named after a highblood writer his mother was fond of (Much to the writer’s chagrin once General Tungsten started making a name for himself), and was mentored by a mixed blood general who taught him to respect those weaker than him and learn from the past. He filled Tungsten’s head full of stories, so much so that even now Tungsten has a soft spot for collectables with stories and keeps a vast array of trinkets that have tales and memories attached to them, including a piece of Ferric the Rustbringer’s final sword from his final battle as a memory to find gentler methods to win his own battles.
Tungsten learned how to battle with his words and quickly developed a knack for getting on someone’s nerves without saying anything overtly insulting. People were used to an aggressive and brutal highblood. But Tungsten developed a quick wit and diplomatic manner rarely seen in his kind. People close to Tungsten shortened his name to “Tung” not as a term of affection, but to note the general’s apparent silver tongue.
His silver tongue did get him in trouble when he began to flirt with a particularly powerful empath. In Tungsten’s attempt to show that relationships didn’t need to be arranged like many of the ruling highbloods seemed to think, he fell victim to empath abuse and ended up having to order the permanent sterilization of the empath to break the partial bond that had formed between the two before she could fully overwhelm him. To help him recover, Tungsten took on a therapy pet, an overly maternal and doting Dolphoria named Temper.
Tungsten is trained to fight and keeps his body in prime shape, but most of the highblood’s battles are fought on the negotiation table. So skilled was he, in fact, that he managed to secure a ship and crew for a cancelled expedition to earth to join the first colony ship to Aukate. Tungsten was chosen to lead three ships and captained the flagship, with Commander Malachite and Commander Cinnabar captaining the other two.
Although his mission is technically conquest, all Tungsten truly seems to want to do is settle on this strange new land and get along as well as he can. He has an odd obsession with befriending Darius Steele, much to the former General’s chagrin. The truth of it is that Tungsten sees commonbloods as people who need his protection and he desperately wishes to push the message that he is not like Titan. But all Steele sees is a highblood getting far too friendly with him.
Tungsten’s only weakness is that he has a taste for the finer things. He keeps a private stock of darnathi plants to distill into drinks and tanks of rare and exotic fish usually reserved for fine dining on Alvarni. He has also developed a taste for mangos and, to Steele’s further chagrin, the local tea. Blends made by Artemis hold a particular fondness for him.