Joseph Manse

Joseph Manse was a terrorist who lived during the late Sixth Age. As leader of an internet fan group, he used crowd-funding sites and word of mouth to raise a huge amount of capitol, ostensibly to build a themed destination resort space station. Using the project as cover, he constructed a large, armed fleet, with the intentions of attacking The Caucuses on Gleskel Core.

Early Life

Joe was born on Eutra Colony, an experimental prototype community owned by the Gudersnipe Foundation. As a child, Joe was severely overweight and preformed poorly in school(even by Eutra standards). He had a very strong gift for mathmatics and could read much beyond his age level, but otherwise received failing marks in every subject. Even those subjects he was strong at he often did poorly in, due to failing to turn in assignments or not taking tests on time.

As a teenager he began to focus more heavily on extra-curricular activities than academics, founding and running several clubs at the school. He grades went from passing a few subjects to passing none, as he placed all his energy in his leisure activities. He was a fan of many different fictional works, and his clubs were all based around these.

At eighteen, he was formally dismissed from school as a student, but allowed to continue running the clubs(Eutra colony was designed as a money-less utopia, so he was not being paid). Teachers at the school described him as charismatic, driven, and an efficient organizer. His club activities were restricted to just two hours a day as part of after-school programs, but he was known to spend anywhere from twelve on up to eighteen hours a day, setting up activities and gathering supplies.

However, at the age of twenty-three, Joe was accused of inappropriate behavior with several of the female students at the school, and summarily dismissed from Eutra Colony. Finding himself now in a regular GS Town, Joe did not fair well. While he was certainly well-familiar with the concept of money, he had not completed his education and had no marketable skills. He very quickly became homeless and acquired a drug habit(such substances being completely unavailable at Eutra Colony). To supplement his addiction, Joe began selling drugs, was caught, and deported from Foundation-controlled territory before he'd turned twenty-four.

Life Outside Foundation

Now living on an Alliance member world, Joe found his life quite a bit easier. Specifically, he found that the police force was considerably under-funded and that the punishments were much less severe, and quickly pulled himself out of poverty by dealing drugs.

Joe was caught several times but escaped or delayed prosecution long enough to organize and close several highly profitable deals. With the money earned, he was able to re-locate to the Chintaka Consortium, which had no extradition treaty with his previous home. Chintaka was formally considered a member of the Alliance, but it's government was essentially a puppet-state. The military controlled most of the region, and various gangs and crime syndicates controlled the rest.

On Chintaka

Surprisingly, the now twenty-seven year old Joseph Manse did not entwine himself with the criminal underworld of Chintaka. He had a considerable sum of money saved, and used it to rent a very modest apartment on the outskirts of a major city. His goal during this time, he later said, was to regain the perfect life he once had as a youth at Lutra colony("perfect" in this instance meaning "being fed and clothed and allowed to devote all of his time to various TV and movie franchises he loved, without having to do any real work").

His drug habit continued, and is believed to be a major factory in his later actions.

Joe seldom left his apartment while living on Chintaka, ordering things and being mostly immersed in the online communities surrounding his favorite fandoms. He eventually took over management of several, showing the same dogged determination and rugged work ethic that could have made him very successful if he'd ever applied it somewhere useful. Within ten years, he was earning a very comfortable living managing these communities, and decided to re-locate yet again to a region of space where he had more fans.