Oliver Ademar was born in the dust-choked sprawl of Pankrati Prime, a frontier world where the air tasted of rust and regret, and survival meant scrapping in the underbelly arenas for scraps of glory. At twenty-eight, he carried the marks of that life etched into his skin: a jagged scar snaking from his left temple down to his jaw, souvenir from a vibro-knife duel gone sour, and callused hands that spoke of years gripping improvised weapons before ever touching a lancet control yoke. His frame was lean and wiry, forged in the low-grav pits where pankrati fighters learned to dance with death, standing at six feet with shoulders broad from hauling scrap but hips narrow from dodging blows. His hair, cropped short and dark as engine oil, was perpetually dusted with the fine red grit of his homeworld, and his eyes—sharp hazel flecked with gold—held the wary glint of a man who'd seen too many betrayals under flickering neon.

He dressed like a survivor turned soldier: scuffed void-leather jacket over a reinforced jumpsuit patched with salvaged armor plates, the insignia of the Karrakin Cavalry College—a stylized charging karkis beast—pinned crookedly to his collar, as if even now he couldn't quite believe his invitation there. Boots, heavy and mud-caked from sim-training fields, thudded with purpose, and around his neck hung a tarnished locket, the only relic from a mother lost to a corporate raid. Oliver's voice carried the guttural burr of Pankrati slang, words tumbling out with a rhythmic cadence like the hum of overclocked reactors, laced with curses that could curdle synth-milk.

What drove Oliver wasn't the polished dreams of core-world nobles, but a burning need to claw his way from the gutter to the stars, to command a lance that could shatter the empires that had crushed his kin. Invited to the Cavalry College after a viral holo of him piloting a jury-rigged mech through a pirate blockade—barely eighteen, he'd turned a hauler into a makeshift destroyer—he arrived with nothing but grit and a chip on his shoulder the size of a battlecruiser. But the college's marble halls reeked of entitlement, where scions of old houses sneered at his 'feral' tactics, their sim-scores handed on silver platters while he bled for every point. Prejudice walled him out: whispers of 'pankrati trash' echoing in the barracks, instructors docking him for 'unorthodox' maneuvers that had saved lives back home.

Undeterred, Oliver doubled down, haunting the training bays till the servos whined in protest, forging alliances with misfits like himself—a defected engineer from the Smith-Shimano dynasty, a haunted vet with ghosts in her cockpit. He pushed his AT-04 Kludge, that patchwork beast of a mech, to limits that would fry lesser pilots, integrating pankrati flair: fluid, brutal strikes blending martial arts with ballistic fury. It worked because talent like his was raw plasma—unrefined, but hot enough to burn through the ice of classism. Rivals fell in mock battles, grudging respect earned drop by bloody drop.

Yet conflicts gnawed at him like rust-worms. The college's cutthroat politics pitted him against a noble-born rival, Elias Voss, whose envy twisted into sabotage, rigging sims to humiliate the upstart. Internally, Oliver wrestled the beast of his past—flashbacks to arena bloodbaths fueling a rage that sometimes overrode caution, nearly costing him a limb in a live-fire drill. And deeper still, the locket's secret: coordinates to a hidden pankrati cache of forbidden tech, tempting him to betray the college for his people's uprising.

In the end, as war drums beat across the galaxy, Oliver graduated not as a polished knight, but a lancer tempered in fire—leading a ragtag squadron into the breach against Harrison Armory incursions. Victory came pyrrhic: Voss's treachery exposed, but at the cost of his engineer's life, leaving Oliver scarred anew, piloting onward with a hollow triumph. He wanted the stars, but they demanded his soul in trade, and in the cold void, he wondered if the climb had been worth the fall.