Raine Vlahakis

Raine Vlahakis is an influential Kaisan geographer, author, and libertarian political philosopher. "The Modern Geography," one of his earlier books, is one of the most fundamental texts within the field of geography. His work tends to focus on political geography and the intersections of geography and social structure. A large portion of his work has centered on colonized Vieluesse, and he spent a significant portion of his life living in Kriehehrdtia and participating in liberation struggles there.   Vlahakis is also a well-regarded founding member of the International Association of Revolutionary Socialists, part of the libertarian and federalist cliques. He has spent much of his life engaging in political struggle in one place or another, often fleeing political repression. Throughout his time in the movement, he has penned dozens of pamphlets and manuscripts, which have been particularly influential in the development of libertarianism in Jideran. He has spent the last decade-and-a-half in the Bierglaan, where he fled following the Kaisan Revolution of 1333. He has not been inactive, however. While in the Bierglaan, he has been hard at work organizing between the indigenous people and political refugees that define the free territory, dreaming of the moment they will be able to return to Kaisa and bring the revolution home once more.   With the Daffodil Revolution breaking out in the Republic of Kaisa, Vlahakis has been writing countless letters to other revolutionaries and articles on the political questions of the revolutionary struggle. He is looked to as a guiding figure within the SEK-ESK.

Description

Appearance

Many who meet Raine Vlahakis have remarked that he reminds them of a kindly grandfather. His hair is grey and unkempt, and he sports a full beard, giving him something of the appearance of a wildman. His eyes, though, are blue and wrinkled at the corners, with a mirthful glimmer. Once tall and broad-shouldered, an injury he received during the 1333 revolution has left him far less mobile, and while just as tall, his stature has become thin and wiry. He wears a thick overcoat and simple, often rumpled clothing underneath. He carries a hand-carved wooden cane and wears a revolver in a shoulder holster at all times.  

Behavior and Personality

A fiery and passionate man in his youth, Vlahakis has mellowed somewhat with age, though he has not become any less radical. Those who know him describe him as kind but with a sharp wit, unafraid to speak his mind and insult someone. A young comrade of his in the Bierglaan wrote this of him.

When I met him, he was sitting in an old armchair before the fire, a blanket over his lap. My friend had told me of their street fighting exploits in Loritania, and I had expected the man she described to be a figure pulled straight from an adventure story, all muscles and hardened jawline. Instead, old man anarchy looked the part of my grandmother with her knitting circle. It was yet another meeting over some proposal or other, and we ended up beside one another. Being new to politics and the movement, I was quiet. At one point, he turned to me and asked my opinion of something just spoken. I told him I wasn't sure, and he laughed and said I was smarter than half the people in the room.

Vlahakis has a unique talent in inspiring those around him and swaying anyone he talks to towards his point of view. Guards in the Kaisan prison he was held in said he was as well-spoken as anyone they'd met. One wrote in a letter, "He had me half convinced to take up the cause of anarchy myself."

Biography

Early Life

Raine Vlahakis was born in northern Kaisa, which is now the Occiman State, in a small town near the border with Lanpetia. His family was comfortably well-off, the owners of a small but profitable vineyard. He had a passion for adventure and exploration from a young age, when he explored the wilderness near his family home, despite the danger. After he finished with his primary schooling, Raine was sent to study in Kaisadroupolis at the University of Petroka, which contains a well-regarded college of physical sciences. While at university, Vlahakis studied geography and botany. He received middling grades in classes. His peers and professors described him as intelligent and articulate but ill-focused and inattentive.  

Political Radicalization

While in the city, Raine was confronted with the divide he saw between the propertied class and the working class. He joined the youth wing of the Democratic Society, an organization that was dedicated to the proliferation of republican ideals in Kaisa. He worked with them throughout his time at university and became a prolific writer in republican newspapers. Eventually, he made a break with the society, proclaiming his disgust with their "do-nothingness." He wrote in an article, "I regret to say but I have come to believe that the ideal world for some of these [society members] is one of the most abject brutality, that they can tut at from a respectable distance. None of them would lift a finger to carry out the beliefs they profess to hold dear."   During his time at the University of Petroka, Vlahakis' parents both passed away of tuberculosis. When he graduated, Vlahakis sold his family's vineyard and funded an expedition into the jungles of northern Eaorma, an area claimed as colonial territory within Kaisan Eaorma but still largely unmapped by Jiderani. During his journey, Vlahakis was confronted with the horrors of the Kaisan colonial project. He wrote extensively on what he saw, forming his first book "Political Geography and Empire," which coined the term 'political geography' as a distinct field of study. His expedition into the jungle itself proved disastrous, however, with nearly a quarter of the expedition perishing to disease and hostile fauna. For his part, Vlahakis gained a passion for political geography and continued his work observing and recording the ways political structures engage with spatial structures and vice-versa.

Sedition and Revolution

In 1321, he began writing for a libertarian newspaper in Lutarerdo, Loritania. He lived there for three years, until he was banished from the country in 1325 for seditious agitation. He settled in Coterait, where a flourishing workers movement was quickly growing. In 1327, when the International Association of Revolutionary Socialists was founded to organize revolutionary trade unions and other radical organizations, Vlahakis was among the first and most prolific members. His work within the organization helped to define its political direction. In 1329, Vlahakis moved to Kaisan Kriehehrdtia and spent several years traveling across eastern Vieluesse and writing on the political geography of the land, particularly the colonial territories. While there, he participated in the Schönntu Rebellion in 1330, organizing a small column of Jiderani political radicals, mostly libertarians and communists, that fought against Kaisan colonial troops alongside the indigenous rebels.   During the uprising, he was captured by Kaisan troops and transported back to Kaisa, where he was imprisoned for about a year pending execution. In 1332 CE, he was broken out of prison by a group of comrades and fled to Antiopa. He would return to Kaisa less than six months later as the Kaisan Revolution of 1333 began. A pivotal figure in the Kaisadroupolis Commune, he was badly wounded during the final days of the conflict. A group of friends smuggled him west into the Bierglaan, where he has lived since, continuing to write and exchange letters with other socialists and radicals around the world.