Serena Duvalier

Serena Duvalier, aka The Pirate Witch was a terrifying force in the Interfaith Colonies founded by the survivors of the Missionary Fleet. Her warning to every colony she attacked was the same, "Obey and serve me! Those who do so are spared. Do not deny me, or I shall eat your sun!"

A bizarre and unlikely threat, but, through a new mastery of anti-photonic technology she was able to make good on the threat, insomuch as she could produce vast anti-photonic fields that would prevent any light reaching a colony, effectively plunging the target world into perpetual night. Most colonists thought she did not have the power to maintain this trick and she could be made to leave, but as crops began to wilt and nights grew colder and colder, her armies would come and start to kill and destroy without mercy. Though all resisted, some for longer than others, no targeted colony ever failed to comply.

Using a mixture of African magical and mystical legend, she mystified and enslaved the worlds she found, building her armies and building her power with confusion and superstition. Never allowing rest or time to think, her psychological warfare and forced labour regime was ruthless, skilfully applied and absolutely inescapable.

Her armies were an unworldly shade of chalk-dust white, caused by Duvalier's induction process where every new soldier was exposed to a blast of an anti-photonic beam of her own design; its purpose, to permanently erase all skin-pigmentation. They, each and every one had started out with dark skin, but Duvalier's tactic was critical to her success. Duvalier knew that now more than ever, after the savage attack the Culmai colonists had used to repel their attempt to settle there, that fear and resentment of white skin ran bone-deep in the colonists of the Missionary Fleet.

Serena Duvalier ruled by terror, but she had her favourites: hand-picking girls, and sometimes boys, from conquered worlds to be her maid-servants. They too would have the colour blasted from their skin, all except for one special girl.

Duvalier loved to rule, but she had a final goal in mind, to build her army, build her fleet, and ultimately to return to Culmai and exact revenge on the PPB. Her family had traveled aboard the colony ship "Shango" which had suffered immense damage in the one-sided battle which saw the Abraham destroyed with all hands. Some 17,000 people died aboard the Shango, with many others succumbing to horrific injuries in the days and weeks following their narrow escape. Watching her father, Benson Duvalier, take days to die in agony gave Serena a purity of purpose that drove all of her actions thereafter.

Her end is mired in myth and rumour, but, once she was gone her hold over her followers fell away quickly, as if waking from a horrifying fever-dream. And, when the last of those who remembered her reign went to their graves, they were not entirely sure it had happened at all.

One family remembered, though. The Garretts, themselves talented and knowledgable in manipulating anti-photonic technology, after the death of Duvalier, they gained access to all of her secrets, and devised a means of reversing the process of whitening the skin of Duvalier's chosen slaves, soldiers and servants. Duvalier's other technology proved to be advanced and innovative, allowing the Garretts to develop incredibly effective new drive systems that revolutionised FTL travel, building a business empire that, ironically, eclipsed the empire of Serena Duvalier, and that still stands strong as the Focus Protectorate approaches its fourth century.