Moritz Hellmesberger

A long face and squared forehead give Moritz a severe cast, framed by black hair worn long and parted down the middle so that his ears stay exposed. Oval glasses and a roomy trench coat complete the look.

Captivity remakes him. His jailers shave his head and pull most of his teeth during an extended period of torture, and prominent scars running across his scalp and upper forehead hint that the abuse reached beyond the physical.

Cordiality colors most of his dealings. Newcomers like Matteus, and later Xavi, enter the movement with no questions asked, and he offers a sincere apology to Xenophon Harkimo for rough treatment the craftsman once suffered at dissident hands. His stated creed holds that the laborers of the Industrial City form civilization's true backbone and deserve a government wrested from the rich and handed to the people.

The polish cracks under pressure. Plans going wrong bring out rash, erratic behavior, and his temper flares whenever anyone questions his methods, supporters included. Beneath it all sits a selfish narcissist whose real hunger is revenge on everyone he believes ever looked down on him.

Contempt for the wealthy class running the royal government shapes his public program: overthrow it, free the citizens, and spread the wealth evenly. Judging the master craftsman Xenophon Harkimo a likely sympathizer, he resolves to recruit him willingly or otherwise. Followers accumulate, weapons pile up in secret, and the rebellion's leadership hides behind code names drawn from the calendar months, his own being August. The truth is uglier: Moritz once served the Royal Government in the Central until disgrace made him a criminal, a fall he blames on a superior's jealousy, and the movement exists chiefly to settle that score.

At the final meeting before the uprising, Matteus presents a Military Police officer, Xavi Inocencio, and August welcomes him in; nobody in the movement realizes both men are plants. On the appointed night his rebels kill the police stationed outside the city, his lieutenants fan out to seize key points, and the assembled fighters pledge themselves to his cause. At Xenophon's workshop he courts the foreman personally, insisting the movement has outgrown its violent past. Xenophon relents on condition that the captive workers and the girl Sharle go free, then refuses to actually accompany him, so August turns guns on the workers over Mai's protest and keeps Sharle close as insurance. The march toward the Military Police headquarters unravels when a young man on maneuvering gear tears into the rebels, and August flees with Mai and the captives as the real police close in. The news keeps worsening: Juli dead, März captured, the hideout compromised, the roads to the main gate sealed. He grasps too late that the city's garrison drew reinforcements from other districts. Cornered on the workshop roof before Captains Dafner and Bernhart and a battalion of soldiers, he seizes Sharle as a hostage, demands negotiated passage, and rounds on Mai as an incompetent fool when she tries to stop him. A sniper drops his last supporter, Mai dies moments later, and after kicking Xenophon off the roof he is wrestled down and arrested. In custody he rants that his followers dragged him down by failing to execute his plans perfectly, and Gloria coaxes a delirious agreement that jealous subordinates set him up.

Clemency never comes. Gloria orders him tortured and executed, yet Vice Commander Bauduin Bernhart evidently keeps him alive in secret. Years of abuse hollow Moritz into a madman fixated on Gloria, precisely the weapon Bauduin wants. When the Vice Commander lures her toward the capital, Moritz falls on the carriage and stabs her repeatedly in the chest. His howl of glee is still ringing when Bauduin shoots him through the head and leaves the corpse in the street beside hers.