Colonel Hal Maddox, BlackOps Commander – Steal this Enemy

In his forties, Maddox has striking brown eyes and short, brown hair with grey just starting to touch his temples. He is very fit, and can run many of his marines into the ground. He lives in his camouflage fatigues, with only the change of patterns (desert to forest to city and back to desert) varying from day to day. He carries a sidearm at his waist, with a combat knife opposite. He also has a holdout pistol in his boot.

Maddox is direct and to the point. He eschews small-talk and protocol and gets“right down to it”. He uses sharp hand motions to emphasize his points.

Maddox is very much an ends justify the means kind of man, dedicated to serving “his people”. Of course, he has so divorced that from any individual or group that this is almost meaningless. He is a dedicated servant of the state. Maddox holds most civilians in disdain, thinking them fat, lazy, undisciplined slobs.

Maddox is the only child of a prominent marine family from the capital, and his posting to the academy was assured. His parents died while he was in the academy and he has never married, nor pursued any relationships outside the corps. He is totally focused on his career, and his goal to make the state as stable as possible. If he has to break a few eggs (or step over a few bodies) along the way, he’s fine with that.

After the academy, Maddox quickly distinguished himself, exhibiting a combination of stealth, marksmanship and dedication. On an early mission to rescue several businessmen from a group of terrorists, he fired his rifle through one of the businessmen to kill the terrorist leader. His cold, calculated manner caught the attention of the director of covert operations, and it was then that his career really took off.

Maddox lives to serve the state, to eliminate all its foes “foreign and domestic”… especially domestic. He despises terrorists and dissidents of all stripes, including those who disagree with policy, or call for change, or limitations to the government’s powers to pursue or destroy its foes. Maddox won’t be bothered with things like due process or the rights of the accused. He has been called to eliminate certain lower ranking politicians, and has had no problem with that, seeing them as a cancer on the society he serves. This didn’t bother him. By the time an order comes to him, he is confident that it is justified.

Maddox commands the 22nd Special Drop Troop, a special operations regiment consisting of a battalion of spec ops troopers, a battalion of air transport assets and their own Corvette, the Shadow Falcon. These are the men and women that the government calls upon for all its dirty tricks and black ops against other citizens. Whether it is a terrorist cell to be taken out, hostages to be rescued, or anything else, the 22nd will take care of it, usually in a lethal manner. The legality of it doesn’t enter into the equation for Maddox, and he doesn’t lose any sleep over the things that his command is called to do. It is all in the service of the state, and that’s all that matters to him.

Maddox seldom takes to the field himself, limiting himself to the operations command center of the Shadow Falcon or his combination office and cabin just off that command center when his troops are at work. But when not “on-duty” he can be found in the firing range or the gym of the Shadow Falcon honing his skills, and he is still a very lethal man. Woe to the opponent that he feels justifies his personal attention.

Author’s note: I created Col. Maddox for my Battlestar Galactica campaign, but he ought to fit easily into any space opera campaign, or with a minimum of tweaking, into another genre.