Duke of Lubin

The man who would come to rule the city of Lubin was born on the other side of the world in Chicago, Illinois. His father was native of Lubin and a veteran of the Polish armed forces in the West who emigrated to Chicago. Maurycy, or "Maury" was he was known to his English speaking friends, was his father's oldest son. A physically strong and intellectually gifted young man, he suffered from a turbulent home life, his father unable to keep a job due to alcoholism and increasingly extremist political beliefs. Maury avoided service in Vietnam by studying electrical engineering at the University of Washington, then spent five years as a Lieutenant in an army signals unit. Retiring from the armed forces, he worked for the Chicago Police department and then as a line manager at a friend's car factory. When the war began, he was returned to service and found himself shipped to Germany as an signals officer in an Illinois national guard unit.

Maury's ability to speak Polish brought him to the notice of senior command, and he worked as a liason with several Free Polish units, but supplies assigned to his unit began to go missing. The collapse of the NATO offensive meant he was never formally investigated, but the Marauders who he had been selling weapons to were unable to protect him. Luckily for Maury, he was in the area of his father's home town, and he soon found he had cousins in Lubin who were able to protect him. He was accepted as a local by the clannish townspeople due to these family links. Working with a group of former Polish army officers he put together a coup that overthrew the city government and proclaimed himself the Duke of Lubin. Several of his cousins have privileged positions in the town administration.

The Duke has been in control of Lubin for over a year now and has seen off several Marauder threats. He proclaims himself a Polish nationalist but his main goal is to expand his territory. He has managed to acquire several former Polish and American tanks that he intends to outfit into an armoured unit, but he lacks sufficient fuel and spare parts, which he intends to obtain from the NATO supply depot in Glogow. He is sincere when he says he has no wish to conquer Glogow, at least not in the medium term - he is more likely to move against Boleslawiec, correctly surmising that whether the Marauders or the People's Republic win the siege, they will be vulnerable in the coming year. Maury's main motivation is greed, but he does have a genuine charity towards his family members, supporting several cousins who he met only recently.

The Duke, as he prefers to be known, is a short man with olive skin, short black hair flecked with grey and intense green eyes. Despite his small size he is physically very powerful and enjoys boxing in his spare time. He likes to wear a suit with a tie clip depicting his family's coat of arms (actually a forgery, his family were petty traders who never had a title). He does not usually go about armed. He speaks Polish fluently but with a notable American accent.