Major

Freckles dot Major's face beneath thin eyebrows and blue eyes, and his dark brown hair stays combed into a tidy part. During his army service he dressed like any Westalian private, in a gray-green military jacket over a white dress shirt, cinched by a brown belt above black boots.

Loyalty anchored Major's friendships. However often the group's war games stuck him on the losing Ostanian side, he never stopped respecting Loid or prizing his company. Even after the war cost him his home and his older brother, he held onto his optimism and pledged to stand with his friends against Ostania when the time came.

Major grew up in Luwen, in eastern Westalis, alongside his family and an older brother. He fell in with three other boys who, like him, dreamed of one day serving in the Westalian Army, and the group adopted military code names: the future Loid Forger became Advisor, the others Corporal and General, while he took Major. An abandoned army storage depot Loid discovered became their secret base, where they played cards and staged mock battles between East and West. Loid's knack for field tactics meant the Westalis side always won, so Major and General usually ended up playing Ostania.

Shortly before the town festival in Luwen, the four pitched in with the preparations, paid in candy. At their next gathering, Loid abruptly abandoned a planned war game to go help with the festival, and as his confused friends chased after him, a bomb struck the depot, the blow that started the Second East-West War of Unification. The boys never found Loid, and the bombings took Major's older brother.

Years on, Major, Corporal, and General joined the army as privates and unexpectedly ran into Loid at a posting away from the front. The reunion was joyful but brief; the trio shipped out the same evening, bound for the Roberts Campaign, puzzled when another soldier called their friend Roland. The rushed, reckless operation killed all three, and only their dog tags came back to Loid. Their deaths hardened his resolve to build a world where children never have to cry, and he still recalls them in quiet moments, including at Berlint's Winter Sheep Festival years later.