Trattorian Characters

This page is essentially a depository for information on Trattorian characters too minor to merit their own page at the moment, but who nonetheless deserve a description of some sorts on the wiki. As canon accumulates, some characters will become significant enough to earn their own page.

• Helpful hint: To link to a character on here, use [[Trattorian Characters#Character name as exactly appears here|Character name as you want it to appear]]

Characters With Their Own Pages

Kaiserin Siri (deceased)

Kaiserin Siri (deceased)

Scientists

Chief Scientist Dr. Ong

Dr. Ong represented Trattoria at International Olympiads for Biology and Chemistry in her high school years before earning three Ph.D's in Biology, Chemistry, and Nanotechnology. A versatile scientist, Dr. Ong flitted through the various departments before finally settling on the Engineering Department, where she felt she could best utilize her broad skill set. Her greatest achievement was creating the Miracle Cure in collaboration with Dr. Pang and Dr. Venter, manufacturing the crucial nanobot components. She was also instrumental in engineering the supercoolant system in Project Adstrum, better known as the star-destroying weapon mounted on the Lagrange-class dreadnought. Thus far she has managed to win four Nobel Prizes across a variety of areas, three of which were in collaboration with Dr. Pang, and rivals even Trattoria's foremost experts on biology and chemistry.

Dr. Ong has taken upon herself the secondary duty of chairing the Ethics Committee, believing that Trattoria's "anything goes" attitude towards research is hazardous and unproductive. As the one who informs scientists of disciplinary sanctions, pay reductions, and even citizenship revocations, Dr. Ong managed to earn the moniker "Angel of Death" among many resentful researchers.

Once a close friend and scientific collaborator of Dr. Pang for many decades, Dr. Ong sought to reconcile their relationship even after his use of the Space Mafia. Her true motivation for joining the Ethics Committee was to quash evidence against Dr. Pang and thus protect him. Things came to a head after Dr. Hikima's unauthorized leak of Dr. Pang's mafia involvement, costing the latter his opportunity to become Chief Scientist. Dr. Ong continues to regret her inability to stop Dr. Pang's demise and became the Chief Scientist of Trattoria after the events of the Council of Scientists Arc.

Department Chair Dr. Herndon

Dr. Herndon, a Rhodes Scholar and a holder of three Ph.D.'s from TTI, Caltek, and Bloxford, managed to climb to the top of the hyper-competitive Trattorian Physics Department by earning three Nobel Prizes in Physics. A reserved and studious scientist, Dr. Herndon keeps his head low to avoid the cutthroat antagonism pervading the Physics Department. He shared a relatively close professional relationship with Dr. Liang as a fellow physicist, abetting the latter in all her crazy schemes and experiments.

Department Chair Dr. Yue

Dr. Yue has won several Nobels in his tenure at the Chemistry Department and has Ph.D's in quantum physics, organic chemistry, and computer science from Trattorian National University and TTI. An expert in quantum chemistry and proteomics, Dr. Yue specializes in protein modeling and design. He is responsible for much of Trattoria's work in artificial proteins and their use in novel biochemical synthesis pathways, an essential tool for Trattoria's nanotech and biotech industries.

Department Chair Dr. Long

Dr. Long holds several Ph.D's in evolutionary biology, computer science, and organic chemistry and has won four Nobels in his career at the Science Department. His work mainly deals with using artificial intelligence algorithms to model evolution and natural selection such as by accounting for deviations from the Hardy-Weinberg principle. As Department Chair of Biology, he works closely with BlueGene Inc. in order to ensure genetic stability and sustainable evolution within the Trattorian population.

Department Chair Dr. Chandrashekar

Dr. Chandrashekar is well-known for her unnaturally good luck. Ever since she got acceptances to all eight Poison Ivy League colleges, Stanford, MIT, and TTI, it always seems her metaphorical dice roll crits. This has earned her the moniker "Lucky Devil" and caused her to be the target of several assassination attempts. These always fail and often in a manner extremely and unluckily harmful to the perpetrator.

Professionally, Dr. Chandrashekar is well-regarded as the inventor of the incredibly strong forcefield shield used on droidekas, Lancelots, and gold-bots. This development got its start from an accidental but fortunate sign error that happened to resolve some field equations she was working on at the time. Now the Department Chair of Engineering, Dr. Chandrashekar holds three Nobel Prizes to her name.

Director-General Dr. Dempsey

Dr. Dempsey holds Ph.D.'s in electrical engineering, particle physics, and computer science, and has worked with particle accelerators since his time at TTI and Princeton. Entering the Engineering Department, his big break was serving as the spokesperson for the successful Liang Boson Search Experiment. Dr. Dempsey then became Director-General of all operations at the Soledad Fermion Super-Collider and the Orbital Soledad Fermion Collider. As such, he has ultimate control over collider operation and beamtime scheduling as well as approval discretion regarding particle experiments. This lends him great power within the particle physics community.

Director-General Dr. Mikoto

Dr. Mikoto was a Nobel laureate in Chemistry and Director-General of the Trattorian Energy Commission. After accidental exposure to BB-C-W-09982, she unwillingly gained level 5 electrical esper powers. Dr. Mikoto then murdered Department Chair Dr. Yuan, although Dr. Liang chose to cover up the incident to further her plans. This backfired when Quantumsurfer Colette manipulated Dr. Mikoto to attack the CEO and headquarters of the Viérre Glass Corporation on the homeworld, causing a massive public relations disaster for the Science Department and the BBB. She was subdued and contained by Trattorian Recovery Force-00015 in light of the incident.

Lab Director Dr. Miyako

Dr. Miyako graduated summa cum laude in her year from TTI and went on to earn Ph.D.’s in mathematics and physics under a Fulbright scholarship. Although technically a physicist, Dr. Miyako’s passion lies mainly in mathematics. She has taken a particular interest in normed division algebras and Cayley-Dickson constructions, such as her doctoral thesis on showing that the space of norm 1 zero-divisors of the sedenions is homeomorphic to the compact form of the exceptional Lie group G2. Her work with octonion calculations for supersymmetric M-theory and Schwinger analytic continuations in quantum field theory qualifies her as one of the few people capable of understanding Dr. Liang’s Theory of Everything- consequently, she plays a major role in the Black Box Bureau’s leadership. Her other work includes successfully solving the Yang-Mills existence and mass-gap Millennium Prize Problem and positing an (ultimately incorrect) theory of everything using the 248-dimensional simple exceptional Lie group E8. She has earned a Fields Medal and two Nobel Prizes in Physics and her current professional interests include the Riemann hypothesis and Birch & Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.

Government

President Kuroki

Once a Lab Director for weapon design projects in the Engineering Department, Dr. Kuroki retired to a comfy desk job of being a Trattorian Navy Admiral. She ran for election to the presidency after the overthrow of Siri, winning due to her background as a former scientist. She has since taken a very passive role in administering the country, opting to simply monitor its various sectors for aberrations in performance and take reactionary measures.

Legislature

Speaker Fonténe

Dr. Fonténe studied under a dual JD-MBA program at Harvard University before earning Ph.D.'s in econometrics and information technology from TTI and MIT. He became a partner at a private Trattorian law firm, Kump, Kasting, & Krane LLP, specializing in the tax code and collecting billions. He then decided to devote himself to the public sector, eventually becoming the Chief Attorney of the Legal Department. After retiring from the position, Dr. Fonténe finally decided to try his hand at the legislative process, running for election in Trattoria's 1st District and winning. He was elected Speaker of the Legislature and thus presides over the plenary body. Dr. Fonténe has strongly supported reforms of the Trattorian tax code, including the lowering of corporate and capital gains taxes.

Legislator Nakahara

Dr. Nakahara is the Senior Legislator for the 5th District, which contains Soledad. A retired Department Chair of Biology, Dr. Nakahara won two Nobel Prizes and a Fields Medal. In her time as a scientist, she advanced theorems on vector spaces to further develop the multiple co-inertia analysis used in multi-omics and comparative genomics. As one of the Legislature's leading authorities on science, Dr. Nakahara chairs the Legislative Committee on Science. Her colleagues regard her as pleasant and polite, and she constantly promotes scientific interests in her legislation. She, along with her 5th District colleague Legislator Feng, also supports liberalizing Trattorian policies such as qualified foreigner naturalization and lifting bans on or decriminalizing activities such as chewing gum, alcohol, metal music, and public displays of affection, believing these policies will bring Trattoria closer to pure meritocracy. She also advocates for removing the Trattorian soldiers entirely either through mass murder or slavery. Despite the Trattorian Legislature's official "nonpartisan" nature, Dr. Nakahara is the leader of an informal caucus of "Meritocrats" who supports the aforementioned platform.

Legislator Kamishiraishi

Dr. Megumi Kamishiraishi is the Junior Legislator for the 23rd District, which contains planet Mirai. Before entering politics, Dr. Kamishiraishi was a scientist in the Engineering Department who developed naval superweapons in the dockyards of Mirai. She became the director and spokesperson for the public research arm of Project Weedkiller (later declassified as Trattorian negative strange-quark planet-buster bombs) and was noted by Lambda Corporation for her beautiful voice. Lambda recruited her to become an anime voice actress instead, and she starred as the lead in several notable "artsy" anime such as 3 Million Meters Per Second and Garden of Numbers. She eventually decided to run for public office, leveraging the fame and name recognition she got from her anime work while primarily campaigning as a former scientist to appeal to Trattorian voters' meritocratic ideals. The combination proved potent and won her a seat in the Legislature.

Dr. Kamishiraishi emphasizes serving her constituents in the 23rd District more than other prominent Legislators, since Mirai isn't considered among the "top tier" of Trattorian planets in importance. Thus she primarily advocates for policies that would increase Mirai's shipbuilding business, including naval wars, but is otherwise in the liberal wing of the Legislature on other issues. She grates under corporate influence but nonetheless usually comes around to voting for their interests if pressured enough. She was recently the deciding vote on the Trattorian Non-Aggression Pact with M-Throne Empire, launching her into a national spotlight and branding her the target of many corporate lobbyists.

Legislator Wood

Dr. Trinetta Wood, once a biologist, is now the Senior Legislator of the 43rd district, and calls the Yokomo Habitation Ring her home. She was a major proponent of automating the military, and was responsible for the creation of the Mechanized Operations Division as a prototype of such. She eventually went on to sponsor the Army Automation Appropriations And Authorization Act (A6), a landmark law that repealed centuries-old prohibitions on military robotics dating back to the AI Rebellion 300 G.R.'s ago to the delight of companies such as Sun Engineering Corporation and Misaka Analytics.

Legislators Ramachandran and Minase

They are the Legislators of the 50th District of Trattoria, which includes the Commercium system on the outermost border of Trattoria. Most trade and foreigners pass through this system for inspection. The amount of smuggling, illegal immigration, terrorism, and mafia activity that Commercium residents have to put up with on a regular basis from being Trattoria's gateway to the rest of the galaxy has resulted in them electing the two most xenophobic, racist, and socially conservative Legislators in Trattoria.

Dr. Muthu Ramachandran on the right is the Senior Legislator. A former Legal Department Attorney notorious for his harshness in enforcing Trattorian customs and immigrations laws, Dr. Ramachandran was sued in Trattorian courts several times for murdering entire families of illegal immigrants and setting up "detention center" concentration camps during his tenure as 50th District Commissioner. Although Trattoria is naturally uncaring to the plight of foreigners, Dr. Ramachandran's behavior attracted criticism from even within Trattoria for his brutality and its potential ill effects on Trattorian diplomatic relationships. Nonetheless, this hardline stance elated 50th District constituents and resulted in his election as Senior Legislator. He currently serves as the Chair of the Legislative Committee on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Rem Minase on the left is the Junior Legislator. A notorious conservative firebrand in Trattoria, she makes even Dr. Ramachandran look moderate in comparison. In her former job as a physicist in the Science Department's Trattorian Navigation Commission, she was responsible for computing new FTL routes for Trattoria (often from the Commercium system). She is considered a computational genius even by Trattorian standards, crunching through the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner relativistic formalism and metric tensors like they were basic arithmetic. Dr. Minase has proposed some of the most outrageous bills in the Trattorian Legislature. These have included closing off all trade and immigration with the rest of the galaxy, authorizing a neutrina bomb strike to wipe out the entireties of Bavaria and Venice, restarting the AN-TA War, and withdrawing Trattoria from the Allied Nations after Mobfather Scratch won the Secretary-General elections - all of these bills failed, most by wide margins. She also sponsored a bill to assign the death penalty to same-gender intercourse, which passed, but was struck down by the Trattorian Supreme Tribunal in a rare move after a legal challenge (the Supreme Tribunal ruled the punishment for homosexual relations must be the same as heterosexual ones, which is jailtime and not death). She is also on record for supporting the designation of the Space Mafia as a terrorist organization and Venice as a state sponsor of terror. Dr. Minase currently serves as the Chair of the Legislative Committee on the Armed Forces.

Economics Department

Chief Comptroller

The Chief Comptroller is the mysterious leader of the Trattorian Economics Department and its Board of Governors. He machinated Siri's rise and the events in the Council of Scientists Arc to the benefit of the Economics Department. Rumor has it that he is the most powerful figure in Trattoria and the true source of the government's power.

Science Department (see "Scientists")

See "Scientists" section.

Foreign Relations Department

Chief Ambassador Xianghao

A conniving and manipulative sociopath even among Trattorians, Dr. Xianghao fought and backstabbed her way to the head of Trattoria's Foreign Relations Department. With a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Trattorian National University as well as foreign service training and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, Dr. Xianghao initially went to work as an investment banker at Goldman Sucks. She then left the firm to hold such highly desired posts as Trattoria's ambassadorships to the Assyrian Star Empire and the USA before finally ascending to the position of Chief Ambassador. Dr. Xianghao obsesses over her beauty, taking additional cosmetic pills, treatments, and plastic surgeries in addition to daily rejuvenating and age-reversing Miracle Cures.

Ambassador Sardana

Dr. Sardana is the Trattorian Ambassador to the USA, the second highest ranking post in the Foreign Relations Department after only the Chief Ambassador. Dr. Sardana graduated from Harvard’s foreign service program and earned numerous degrees including a Stanford J.D. and Ph.D. in Economics, a Berkeley MBA, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Trattorian National University. Dr. Sardana then served as the General Counsel for Pernault Financial Group’s operations in the USA before working for the Trattorian embassy in the USA. From there, he worked his way up to secure the Ambassadorship he had coveted for years.

Ambassador Bellamy

Dr. Bellamy is the current Trattorian Ambassador to the M-Throne Empire. She worked on a Ph.D. in Physics regarding applications of quantum entanglement to intergalactic communication. For this reason, she was chosen to serve as Trattoria's Ambassador to Praetoria before being promoted to her current position. She played a large and successful role in promoting the eventual ratification of the Trattorian Non-Aggression Pact with M-Throne.

Diplomats Wang and Dong

Dr. Wang, the diplomatic attaché to Yokomo station is far more levelheaded than her military counterpart. Her assistant, Dr. Dong, is less so.

Legal Department

Chief Attorney Suzuki

Dr. Suzuki is the Chief Attorney of Trattoria and leads the Legal Department. As such, he has the ultimate discretion in matters of law enforcement, bounded only by Trattorian laws and courts. He holds a J.D. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from TTI.

Armed Forces Department (see "Military")

See "Military" section.

Administrator Hung

The Yokomo Habitation Ring is the closest Trattorian settlement to United Systems Alliance space. As such, its Administrator has an authority second only to the Ambassador regarding issues between the two nations.

Military

Strategos

Chief Stratego Dr. Xia

Dr. Xia is the Chief Stratego of the Armed Forces Department, the highest military authority in Trattoria, and is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the Trattorian Technological Institute. Her interests include research on p-adic and interuniversal Teichmüller theory, especially in relation to the ABC conjecture, as well as playing the violin.

Enlisted

Colonel Axelrod

Shuvam Axelrod was drafted into the Trattorian Army after failing his AP Calculus BC class with a shocking C+, receiving dismal grades in his other classes as well. Trained in unforgiving boot camp at the tender age of 14 and subsequently deployed on suicidal, poorly-planned missions, Axelrod has known nothing but the most brutal of war for the majority of his life. His many years on the battlefield have earned him numerous scars and injuries, including the loss of his legs to Princess Killestia during Operation Regenbogen, but the Citizens on high have always refused to give him Trattorian medical care or medals of recognition.

During one operation where his commanding General fled from a deteriorating battle, Axelrod took charge himself and reversed the tide of the assault using what he learned from combat experience. Out of pragmatic effectiveness, the Joint Chiefs of Staff reluctantly promoted Axelrod to the rank of General- he was one of the only sub-citizens to hold a command rank (general, admiral, air marshall, commandant) in Trattorian history. Even so, the other Citizen commanders treated him with disgust and expel him from tactical meetings.

General Axelrod formed the BBB Trattorian Recovery Force 00411 along with Major Sports Fan. The team earned the nickname "Magical Girl Killers" for their peerless track record in terminating Bavarian mages, RARCom espers, and other sentient anomalies. He participated in a failed attempt to kill Quantumsurfer Colette.

In G.R. 2017, after a reorganization of the Trattorian Armed Forces Department that merged all branches of the military, almost all the Trattorian command staff was fired (as prior military command positions were often doled out as political favors to Citizens) and replaced with the current Trattorian Strategos. In the process, Axelrod was demoted back to the rank of Colonel as he was not a Citizen and thus ineligible to be a Stratego.

Colonel Tonk

Annalise Tonk was conscripted into the Trattorian Marine Corps and eventually attained the rank of colonel, the highest a sub-Citizen can usually obtain. She accumulated a substantial amount of debt and various cybernetic physical enhancements of dubious legality. She was primarily stationed on the Yokomo Habitation Ring in District 43 but was deployed as part of the initial response team to the antimortallium incident on planet Puerto Bella. Notably, she (temporarily) killed the Immortal Omega Shard, and was the only Trattorian survivor of the battle. She then entered under the secret employ of Dr. Miyako to retrieve the new antimortallium sample without the knowledge of the rest of the Trattorian government.

Major Sports Fan

Major Tyler Fenway, alias "Sports Fan", lost nervous control of his upper body in a fight with a RARCom electromaster esper. To compensate, he mounted a powered exosuit and took to using sports equipment as his primary armament. He, along with General Axelrod, form TRF-00411, the "Magical Girl Killers".

Agent Krugman

Agent Krugman and his henchmen are not technically on the official books of the Trattorian Armed Forces, as plausible deniability for the many appalling war crimes and minifig rights violations they are commissioned to do. As one of the most elite units in the Trattorian Armed Forces, Krugman loves nothing more than to sink his katana into other minifigs, and is feared even by his employers for his violent and insane unpredictability.

Corporate

Acelera Pharmaceuticals

CEO Dr. Venter

Dr. Venter is the founder and CEO of Acelera Pharmaceuticals, the leading pharmaceuticals company in the BrikVerse. A former Chief Scientist in the Trattorian Science Department and mentor to famous scientists Dr. Pang and Dr. Ong, Dr. Venter's big breakthrough occurred almost four decades ago when he discovered Miracle Cure with his two students, allowing Trattorians to live indefinitely and cure all diseases and injuries. The three of them won the Nobel Prize in Medicine that year, and some time after Dr. Venter left the public sector to found Acelera Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Venter has recently become somewhat disillusioned with his company, believing that Acelera should focus on innovating future products rather than militantly protecting patents on past ones. This has put him at odds with his COO, Dr. Nagato, who formulated the current patent-trolling strategy. A researcher at heart, Dr. Venter often leaves the business-side obligations of his job to his COO in favor of working directly in the lab.

Dr. Venter holds an M.D. as well as Ph.D.'s in microbiology, nanotechnology, bioengineering, and an honorary doctorate in organic chemistry.

COO Dr. Nagato

Dr. Nagato is the Chief Operating Officer of Acelera Pharmaceuticals. An experienced businesswoman, Dr. Nagato is responsible for Acelera's recent vigorous focus on intellectual property protection as well as the day-to-day operations of the company. She often disagrees with the more visionary Dr. Venter, with an eye for profit and shareholder interest over innovation.

Personally, Dr. Nagato hates interacting with other minifigs, and many of her colleagues note that her antisocial tendencies are far stronger than an average Trattorian's. She generally stays quiet in meetings and communicates largely through lengthy company emails and memos.

Dr. Nagato holds an M.D., Ph.D.'s in molecular biology and computer science, and an MBA.

CTO Dr. Nanami

Dr. Nanami is the Chief Technology Officer and the head of research and development at Acelera Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Nanami was once a Department Chair of Biology in the government Science Department, and holds an M.D. and Ph.D's in molecular biology, nanotechnology, bioengineering, and synthetic chemistry.

BlueGene Inc.

CEO Dr. Ayanami

A former lab director in the Biology Department, Dr. Ayanami eventually retired and was selected by BlueGene Inc.'s board of directors as its new CEO. BlueGene Inc. plays a vital role in Trattorian society, manufacturing, maintaining, and operating the artificial reproduction machines that conceive and birth all the nation's children. The company also maintains, in collaboration with the government Biology Department, the central genetics database of every Citizen's genome. This database is crucial in improving and determining the genomes of all future Trattorian children, as well as providing an API for anti-foreigner genetic security measures.

Dr. Ayanami's shuttle was shot down over a Valorian planet shortly after the Seven-Hour War. A battle ensued and the Valorians, led by Emperor Brikguy, succeeded in defeating the CEO's security forces and capturing her. Her release was brokered by Dr. Kruszewski in exchange for the return of half of the star systems that had been captured during the war (300 out of 600) and illicit Miracle Cure doses to revive Emperor Brikguy and Agent Domino.

Misaka Analytics

CEO Dr. Huang

Dr. William Huang is the co-founder and CEO of Misaka Analytics, a data storage, analysis, and execution company. Dr. Huang admits to having never liked school or the idea of traditional work at a big company, and sought to blaze his own path no matter the cost. Although he and some friends began the company as a humble startup in a tiny apartment right after graduate school, today the Misaka Database and its SQL interface in some way or another powers much of the back-end of the modern BrikVerse galactic internet, turning Dr. Huang into a multi-trillionaire. Nonetheless, Dr. Huang never forgot his roots and promotes an unusually relaxed company culture by Trattorian standards, with inspiration from the USA's Silicon Nebula. He encourages casual dress, office socialization, company recreational and sports facilities, substantial vacation days and sabbaticals, and most scandalously of all, going by first name basis. He has led a movement for increased open-source involvement by Trattorian tek companies as a way of giving back, and encourages his employees to "hack" on their own passion projects. Most ordinary Trattorians dismiss him and his idiosyncrasies as those of an eccentric tech trillionaire.

Sekai Union

CEO Dr. Saionji

Dr. Saionji graduated with two Ph.D.'s in chemistry and geology as well as a Stanford MBA. She initially entered employment with the Sekai Union, a massive mining corporation that supplies Trattoria with precious metals and gems. Rising up through the executive ranks, Dr. Saionji eventually attained the position of Chief Operating Officer, from where she directed the company towards success and expansion into the markets of greater Nehellium. After the previous CEO was arrested during the 2004 BrikVerse Financial Krisis for insider trading, the Board of Directors elevated Dr. Saionji to the position. She has since expanded the Sekai Union's scope to become a multinational corporation, dominating the precious metals and jewelry markets of the G20 while guaranteeing a constant stream of gold and diamonds for Trattoria itself. She signed a partnership agreement with the Zupponn Mining Co. for mercenaries and splitting Green Transparent finds in Trattorian-influenced space. Among the wealthiest élite among Trattoria's wealthy population, Dr. Saionji prefers to wear a lamé dress woven out of extra-dimensional chrome gold.

Virgin Group

CEO Dr. Branché

Dr. Richard Branché is the founder and CEO of Virgin Group, the largest company in Trattoria. He experimented with entrepreneurship since he was 16, and started Virgin as a small and simple mail-order records company right after his Ph.D. in Applied Math. It has since expanded over the many years to become a sprawling holding group that owns more than 400 companies across a wide range of sectors including space travel, megastructure engineering, defense contracting, media and many others. Dr. Branché, a savvy entrepreneur and investor, has grown to become the richest minifig in Trattoria - an impressive feat in a nation consisting entirely of wealthy Citizens - with an estimated net worth in the high tens of trillions of Trattorian dollars. Some of his company's most well-known offerings include the Virgin Galactic spaceline, the Cauchy private shuttle, the Clairaut space yacht, the Stanford torus space stations that orbit many Trattorian worlds, and the many defense contracts Virgin Defense holds with the Trattorian Armed Forces Department. Dr. Branché and his financial advice and forecasts are highly regarded by the Trattorian investment community.

Dr. Branché participates in many extreme sports and other outdoors activities, including various attempts to break galactic FTL route speed records using experimental ships developed by Virgin Galactic. He also holds unusually liberal views for a Trattorian, supporting radical policies such as qualified foreigner naturalization, relaxation of restrictions on foreigners, and Trattorian soldier rights, and has even hinted at support for relaxing or abolishing the Ph.D. requirement for citizenship. He has stated on occasion that he named his company "Virgin" as a mockery of Trattorian prudishness. These controversial views often put him at odds with figures in the government and the public in general.

Senior Contractor Dr. Langlois

A senior contractor for Virgin Defense (a subsidiary of Virgin Group), Dr. Langlois is a mid-level corporate worker in Trattoria with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. She helps implement newly released technologies from the Science Department into weapon systems marketed and sold by Virgin Defense. On the way to the Trattorian-annexed territory of Valoros, her Trattorian Spaceways flight was shot down over Emprya. She was captured by some Danes and Peaches and was the object of an ongoing battle in the Denmark-Empryan War. Her current whereabouts are unknown.

Retired Characters

Former Dr. Kruszewski

A former Lab Director in the Chemistry Department, Dr. Kruszewski was once the Special Administrator of the Trattorian-occupied Valorian Annex, de-facto head of the Black Box Bureau, and a promising candidate for becoming a future Department Chair. These hopes were dashed when disguised Space Mafia and some peach pirates raided her shuttle for her laptop, which contained special level-5 clearance unredacted BBB reports. To defend herself, Dr. Kruszewski activated BB-P-Hg-23842, summoning unholy porcine abominations. The Space Mafia won and stole the laptop (which they delivered to their customer), the shuttle, and some valuables, mocking and torturing her in captivity before a Trattorian Recovery Force secured her. Afterwards, the Ethics Committee voted to revoke her Ph.D/citizenship for instigating a containment breach, abusing a Black Box, and losing a specimen to a faction of dubious allegiance, and a court sentenced her to 10 years in prison and exile.

Admiral Fleur

Dr. Fleur once worked as a well-to-do neurosurgeon at a major Trattorian hospital (as Miracle Cure is prohibited to foreigners, the medical tourism industry thrives in Trattoria). At some point, however, constant exposure to foreigners and their divergent culture drove Dr. Fleur mad, convincing her that killing foreigners would be more fun than treating them. As a Trattorian Citizen, she claimed an armchair Fleet Admiralty position. She distinguished herself through her tactical gusto in eradicating the enemies of Trattoria and received a promotion to Chair of the Trattorian Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest position in the Trattorian Armed Forces.

After the restructuring of Trattorian military command in G.R. 2017, Dr. Fleur retired to take up her prior work as a neurosurgeon once again and live an ordinary life as a Trattorian Citizen.

Deceased Characters

Department Chair Dr. Yuan

Despite having won multiple Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Dr. Yuan is somewhat overlooked on the Council of Scientists for having only two Ph.D.'s/doctorates. The Council usually assigns the hard and unpleasant work to him. As a consequence, he constantly seeks a successor to replace him so he can retire. He died when Dr. Mikoto electrocuted him to death, although the incident was covered up as a Yellow Electric Rat containment breach.

Chief Scientist Dr. Liang

A prodigy even by Trattorian standards, Dr. Liang graduated summa cum laude from the USA's Harvard University at a precocious age before dual-enrolling in a Trattorian Teknological Institute math/physics Ph.D. program. Upon graduation she was still too young to legally participate in many internship programs, so she pursued another Ph.D. in computer science to fill up the time. After finally starting her career as a Trattorian physicist, she published a proof on the universal existence and smoothness of the Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics equations, receiving the million dollar prize as well as a Fields Medal as recognition. She then freelanced on various projects until her colleague Dr. Yang encouraged her to apply herself to the disorganized, desperate mess that was brikverse particle physics at the time. Dr. Liang worked on the problem for months, before finally uniting quantum mechanics and classical relativity into a single Theory of Everything, founded upon the existence of the Liang boson. After the Trattorian Soledad Fermion Super-Collider detected statistically-significant evidence of the Liang boson, Dr. Liang won a Nobel Prize in Physics and became the new Chief Scientist by unanimous vote of the Council of Scientists. She established the Black Box Bureau with the intent of creating a more mathematically-elegant universe, and currently focuses her efforts on Project ℝ^m.

As a person, Dr. Liang is quite friendly and approachable compared to her colleagues. She lacks the typical arrogance of other Trattorian scientists of rank, and treats her subordinates with patience.

Her secret establishment of the Black Box Bureau and the incidence of several public containment breaches led to a hearing by the Legislative Committee on Science regarding her activities. She then attempted a coup of the Trattorian government which failed and ended in her death at the hands of a Comptroller.

Department Chair Dr. Pang

A graduate of Harvard Medical School and holder of Ph.D's in Biology and Organic Chemistry, Dr. Pang has earned a legendary reputation in the Trattorian Biology Department for winning six Nobel Prizes in Medicine. He once collaborated with Department Chair Dr. Ong and former Chief Scientist Dr. Venter to invent the Miracle Cure together. He was also tasked with synthesizing an antidote for Rainbow Transparent, which he successfully completed. Disgruntled at what he perceives to be an under-appreciation for his achievements, Dr. Pang despises the current Chief Scientist and eyes the position himself.

Dr. Pang is unscrupulous and ambitious, with numerous investigations opened by the Trattorian Ethics Committee regarding potentially stolen or fraudulent research. The Ethics Committee does occasionally uncover connections with the Space Mafia...accusations which are swiftly silenced.

Dr. Pang was a close friend and scientific collaborator with Dr. Ong for many decades, starting from their research on Miracle Cure and other Nobel-winning discoveries. Dr. Pang grew exasperated after Dr. Liang's appointment to Chief Scientist, however, and turned to the Space Mafia to help him obtain the position. Through the events of the Council of Scientists Arc, Dr. Pang came close to his goal but ultimately failed due to a reporter's leak of his mafia associations and activities. Having lost the public's and Legislature's support for becoming Chief Scientist, Dr. Pang committed suicide despite Dr. Ong's pleas.