Juan Fernandez O’Malley

Juan Fernandez O’Malley is the son of a wealthy Cuban plantation owner of Irish descent. His grandfather, Patrick O’Malley, made his money from the slave trade and retired to his own plantation near Cienfuegos on the southern Cuban coast. Patrick married well and, apart from an unknown number of mulatto children, had three sons who followed him in to the sugar business. Juan is his third grandson and resembles his grandfather most out of all the other descendants. Juan also had Patrick’s maverick streak and, after scandalising Havana for a while, went off to study engineering at University in New York.

Eventually he returned home and after a few years, with a few scandals, decided that Earth was not enough for him. He was fascinated by flight and knew the one place to experience it was by travelling to Mars. He had no desire to go in to the sugar plantation business and his family was quite happy for him to take his foolish antics elsewhere.

Arriving at Melas in the Belgian Coprates he travelled over the Eastern Desert by sky galleon to absorb as much of the local culture and languages as he could. He finally arrived at Villa Real just after Spain had taken control in 1885 and immediately offered his services to the colonial government. His engineering knowledge and personal wealth gained him the captaincy of a newly constructed Santo class screw galley and he went on from there.  Captain O’Malley is almost forty years of age in 1889 and is tall, lean and unusually pale for a Spaniard with deep brown eyes that he claims the ladies find irresistible. He has a happy carefree demeanour about him and likes to joke with his men. He has no interest in politics or soft hearted morality and is rather self-absorbed at times. Money has never been a problem for him and he cannot understand other people who are fixated on it; fame and glory are the things he seeks most. Along with his native Spanish he speaks fluent English and is passable in Koline and Memnite.

 Illustration by Pino44io, please do not use without permission

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