yrae | Character 100-ish 079: Commander Sadiqi (Reply)

And to the second-most obscure name in the box, 'Commander #2'. Halfway though the commanders I think. I almost put the Advisory Panel in the box, too, but there are already too many in there and I don't even have a starting point for their character, so. They can come later, after the Character 100-ish. For now...

I had to give him red hair so he didn't look quite so much like the main character in a first-person shooter.

NAME Commander Sadiqi
WHO IS THIS PERSON One of the men in Empress Shizaaqa's Commanding Circle in the Assiraz army
GENDER Male
AGE 42

BRIEF BIO Sadiqi is from a very military family, so he was born and bred, literally, to lead Kazin's strongest army. His father and one grandfather were in the Commanding Circle of their day, and the other grandfather rode a black horse (meaning he was the absolute top in fighting ability, like the Raykinian King's Own only there are more of them), so Sadiqi and his brother both had the pressure lumped on them from an early age. As you can probably guess from the hard-bastard fps-dude face, Sadiqi took to the pressure pretty well. He knuckled down and spent his youth training and reading and learning and living war.
So Sadiqi became the then-youngest commander in Assiraz history at 26, and was probably looking set to be the next general until Zakaariss came along and blew all that out of the water. Though he had been watching Zakaariss' rise through the ranks, it still seemed to him that the young upstart had come out of nowhere--with nothing like the family prestige behind him that Sadiqi had--and didn't deserve the tactical mind the gods had given him.
At some point a big war happened that called at least a couple of the commanders away from Assiraz City, which is a pretty big thing since by the time they reach that rank they tend to just give orders from the back. Honestly I wouldn't put it past Zakky to have orchestrated the whole thing to try and get rid of a rival but who knows, that might be beyond him. In any case, Sadiqi found himself back in the action again, and took a sword to the eye. Incredibly he survived, but he's lost the eye. For anyone else, that would mean instant retirement, but General Misbah, along with the other commanders on the mission with him, all pledged to Shizaaqa to allow him to stay. Shizaaqa allowed this, and so there he stays, though he's just about given up any hope of making general now.

CHARACTER Single-mindedly focussed on war and battle. He rarely cracks a smile, disdains alcohol or anything else that dulls the mind, and is pretty much oblivious to any advances the ladies might make on him. A very religious man, he serves his god and goddess before the empress, though he doesn't make this public knowledge.

POINTS OF INTEREST

Sadiqi keeps a pair of crossed long kris blades above his desk, the symbol of Ulzaq, god of war.

Sadiqi has fathered two boys and a girl, though he's not particularly fatherly to any of them. The boys are both currently in army training themselves and Sadiqi drives them as hard as his own father did.

Once, he tried to hire a hit on Zakaariss and take out his rival, but Zakaariss just took out the assassin. Two months later the battle that took Sadiqi's eye happened, so. Read into that what you will.

He's not dead. I feel this needs mentioning since I used Sean Bean as his reference and I think there's a bit of likeness in the undamaged side of his face. So yeah, not dead.