Nicholas Trano

Nicholas Trano

He has been openly denounced by officials within the CCD as a supporter of multiple terrorist groups, and is currently working towards a political career. He is the current Secretary of Human Powers in the President’s Cabinet, and is expected to announce his candidacy for the presidency in the coming months.

Background

Nicholas Trano was born on September 11th, 2013. He was one of the lucky ones. His father, Christopher Trano, was a Texas oil tycoon and previous competitor of the late Alek Brandon. His mother Jean Gunther was the elder Trano’s third trophy wife.

In the wake of a series of natural disasters, Christopher Trano’s fields became one of the nation’s few remaining major supplies of oil. He would’ve become a billionaire, the demand was so high. Sadly, he only padded his bank account with a few more millions before President Clinton signed an executive order to seize all the oil fields. Nicholas Trano would allegedly go on to describe her as a “commie bitch.”

The elder Trano, his wife and newborn son fled to the inner states, eventually deciding to settle in South Dakota. They raised their son in the relative safety of Aberdeen, then a small city which was rapidly growing into the economic powerhouse it is today as the rich fled from the coastal states. The early years of Nicholas Trano’s life were fairly uneventful, although he did progress remarkably in his schooling up until sixth grade. 

Around that time his parents went through an ugly divorce, and perhaps as a childish way of getting back at both of them he withdrew inwards, paying less attention to academic pursuits. However, he did do incredibly well in english and history classes despite his near constant failure to turn in homework, and incessant interruptions in the classroom. In his early high school years he gained a position on one of the town’s smaller news nets and contributed several well received articles under a pseudonym. His articles were unique, as they represented a conservative viewpoint that was fairly rare in the rich, mostly white town of Aberdeen.

Late in his senior year of high school, he chose to join the United States Navy, or what was left of it at the time, as he felt he would have a difficult time getting into a good college. He scored in the 93rd percentile on the ASVAB, and qualified for the Navy’s nuclear power program. However after a medical problem nullified his contract, he chose to do Mass Communications instead. Essentially working as part of the U.S military’s propaganda corps, by the end of his five year commitment he was quoted as saying he was “thoroughly disillusioned with the U.S government” of the time. 

In his words, he found that more often than not his job was to put a positive spin on failed military programs than it was to showcase his beloved nation’s military might. When his five years were finished, he got right out. He left the Navy as a Petty Officer 2nd class. With military experience, it was far easier than it would have been otherwise to find work on the major news nets. Eventually he settled on the Vulpes net as his primary place of journalistic residence. While most of his early years were spent on what he considered unfavorable jobs such as obituaries and investigative pieces on highly publicized crimes, eventually his opinion pieces got a decent following.

The Writer

Contrary to his witty, warm demeanor in person his articles on the news nets were a vision of brilliant, fiery demagoguery. In the rapid rise of the CCD, Nicholas Trano sees a repetition of history, and often wonders aloud when the Ascendancy will become “the next Stalin, or Hitler, or both.” Trano has been a vocal supporter of DARPA programs to develop “next-gen” weapons. He also urges a return to cold war tactics in regards to the CCD. Despite dozens of death threats, Trano continues to speak out against the rise of the CCD, and has been a vocal supporter of alleged terrorist groups such as the Minutemen and Asas Ghayara.

“…Containment worked. You can argue all you like about the morality of propping up two-bit dictatorships in third world countries, but it worked. There aren’t any communist countries left, because we made sure to topple every last one. I’m not going to say America’s always going to be the ‘good guys.’ The problem is that a lot of soft-hearted people in this country think our duty is to be those guys for the rest of the world. Our duty is to ourselves. In the badly paraphrased words of Ronald Reagan, we’re the last bastion of true freedom left on the planet, and if we fall there’s nowhere left to escape. We’re off balance right now, and Ascendancy’s got all the cards. To those people I say this: The only way to help the world is to help ourselves. Dictatorships crumble when the leader dies, and an empire the size of CCD isn’t built to last. We might not have the hard power right now to go toe to toe with the thousand pound bear, but we have more than enough soft power–SEALs, Delta Force, Rangers and who knows what else–to stab that bear in the paws enough times that it’ll stay in its den until it starves. Empires thrive on conquest, and the longer we deny them that conquest the better chance we have of preserving liberty…”

Nicholas Trano

Nicholas Trano is a weekly contributor to the Vulpes News Network, and he has used his incredibly popular weekly segment as a major sounding board for his political ideals. He often interviews important political figures on the show and uses his massive audience as a powerful voting bloc. When he throws his weight behind a candidate, that candidate has a major advantage. It is believed that his popularity will play a major role in the 2048 election, where it is believed he will be the candidate for Liberty First.

He is currently the publisher of several books which, while popular among his readers and those politically aligned with him, have been lambasted by more moderate and liberal critics as “a virtual civilian declaration of war.” When asked for comment on some of the criticism of his work, Trano released a statement on his Vulpesnet channel: “There’s been a lot of outcry over my last book, Freedom’s Last Stand, and I get it. A lot of people have become content with our position as the omega wolf of the world’s pack. When I advocate a return to our original position, people call me a war monger and a fool. Some people are satisfied with begging a dictator for scraps, I’m not. If you’re ready to stand up and live, then stand with me. If we keep lying down, we’re all going to die.”

A Rising Politician

Nicholas Trano is a strong and vocal supporter of Liberty First, an ultra nationalist neoconservative party which is rapidly gaining ground in the U.S–due in no small part to Trano’s news net fame. Founded by the late Senator Rand Paul in the late 2020’s, their goal is to restore America’s place in the world, and at home. Trano, and the party, claim that the “old Republican days of demanding tax and spending cuts won’t cut it in today’s world,” and “The CCD is the thousand pound bear in the proverbial room,” says Trano, “and you can’t keep that bear out without some nice walls, or kill it without some nice guns.”

In the short term their goal is to increase taxes and invest heavily in the research and development sectors both for civilian life and military defense. They believe that America has little chance of matching a continent spanning empire in production, and instead plan to elevate their technological industry to new levels. While their economic policy may appear fairly liberal, they constantly refer to themselves as “die-hard constitutionalists.” Liberty First politicians have never voted in favor of any policy that contradicts the Constitution, and are actively (although slowly) working to kill the national bank.

Liberty First represents a new, moderate breed of American conservative. Their idealism has been tempered by an understanding of the harsh realities of the world. They claim absolute dedication to their nation, to the exclusion (and many opponents say detriment) of all others. Their stance on the CCD can be easily summed up with the words of their late founder Rand Paul: “Until the CCD can be counterbalanced, the American people remain under constant threat of tyranny. Thus, our goal is liberty from the CCD first, before complete freedom can be achieved.”

He was appointed special Secretary of Human Powers to the Cabinet of the President of the United States in 2045.

Nicholas Trano is currently the front runner for Liberty First’s 2048 presidential candidacy. However, he has not yet publicly expressed his willingness to run. Officials in both the American and CCD governments have been quite vocal in their worry that if a volatile political candidate such as Trano achieves office, further instability between the two titans will result. 

Channeling

Psychological description

He’s at least half-convinced he’s gone insane. After all, that’s the most sane interpretation of suddenly developing magical powers and discovering that the ruler of the evil half of the world has them too. Before touching the source he had already been dealing with a minor drinking problem, but recently it’s developed into full-blown alcoholism. A functional alcoholic, he hasn’t yet dealt with any serious repercussions from his drinking.

Appearance

6’0″ tall, 179 lbs with an average build. He has light hair and eyes and often wears glasses. His clothing choices are typically business casual.

Friends and Enemies

As a figure in the public eye, Nicholas has a wide swath of friends, connections, and allies across his network. One powerful friend is that of Evelyn Avalon, who was his little sister’s (Madeline) best friend. Madeline died from the Sickness where Evelyn survived. He wants to protect her where he failed in protecting Maddie.

While in Moscow as a special guest to the Kremlin Foreign Press Corps, he met and befriended a Native American Advocate and Lawyer, Jon Little Bird.

During his time covering the civil unrest in Dominance V, he shared a passionate romance with the CIA Agent on his protection detail, Julie Reed.

Nicholas was trapped in the airport waiting evacuation when the the insurgency in Dominance V turned violent. Jacques Danjou was the commander hired by the Custody to quell the uprising and extract the civilians and VIP’s from danger. The fighting at the airport escalated and in order to escape, Danjou enlisted Nicholas to use his power to aid in the Legionnaires on the ground. He fought for hours on the tarmac helping to hold back the fighting so that planes of civilians could safely depart. He was eventually shot and evacuated to Africa to medical intervention on Danjou’s private jet.

He harbors a strong hatred of Ascendancy. He also strongly suspects that Nikolai Brandon was himself the instigator of the disasters that circled the globe from 2020-2024, though he has not made that accusation public. It is Nicholas’ aspiration to be the only one to stand up to the Ascendancy.

He met Sage Parker online after Sage reached out to compliment his writing. Sage hacked into Nicholas’ computer and started a chat session. “Want to play a game?” It was a classic computer line from an ancient movie that still hit the AI world – a movie like it hadn’t been made in years. Sage used to send Nicholas random articles that he’d found when looking up what he’d been writing about. Sometimes Sage offered him different perspectives on the same subject and other articles that came through his dark web searches. Sage followed Nick everywhere through his career, through the miliary and then his career at VNN. He often deleted rude comments.

Nicholas was hosted by Privilege Takeo Onoda of Dominance IV while he was in Moscow. During that time, the Privilege bore the responsibility of showing off Moscow and building report with the foreigner. He never trusted Takeo.

Vulpesnet Articles

• Does Anyone Remember Shame?
• This is a Terrible Idea
• I Better Not be the Only One Surprised
• The Interview Went Well
• Time to Pick up the Pieces
• Interview with Little Bird Coming Up
• Interview with Little Bird
• Ascendancy Apologist: Dictatorship Welcome
• Brandon Fails to Convince
• Nobel Committee Proves its Obsolescence
• Breaking: Is Magic Real?

Rebirth

Nicholas is the reborn soul of Prometheus, the Greek Titan of Fire, known for his intelligence and being a champion of mankind.