General Napier Flight

By Once In A Blue Moon

• September 24, 2017

Age: 44

Gender: Male

Species: Pegasus

Appearance: <p> A pale green pegasus pony with a light yellow mane. </p>

Cutie Mark: <p> A sabre, point forwards and edge down, with a single pegasus wing extending upwards from the hilt. His talent is for quick and aggressive action, thinking on the fly and always moving - be it in a bar fight or with three regiments of guard on the Equestria-Griffonstone boarder. </p>

Personality: <p> Though hot-headed and impulsive in his youth, with the fight that earned him his cutie mark being far from the only one, Napier Flight's aggressive inclinations have been tempered by age, experience and more than a few injuries. Despite this he retains a highly proactive mentality in almost everything he does, from his duties as captain of the royal guard to his enthusiasm for buckball.  </p>

Backstory: <p> Napier Flight almost didn't joining the Royal Guard. Drifting from job to job, never lacking in ability but unable to find something to really commit to, it was only a chance encounter with a recruitment officer that sold him on going for a commission as a challenge that persuaded him to join the Royal Guard at the age of 20. His early progression was stop-start, his superiors unwilling to trust his often reckless approach to warfare despite his obvious talent, but it was in the boarder conflicts with the Griffon Kingdom that was to be the making of the then-Lieutenant Flight. The Griffon warbands ran rings around the slower-moving Equestrian regiments, who repeatedly came off worse in the first two years of the intermittent conflict. It was here that Lieutenant Flight finally learnt that his decisions had life and death consequences for the ponies under his command, and it was with this renewed focus that he truly began to excel.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   </p> <p> Learning the ways of his griffon adversaries, and adapting his tactics to best leverage the superior discipline and technology of his Equestrian troops, Lieutenant Napier Flight achieved repeated success against the griffon raiders devastating the Equestrian supply trains, earning him the moniker 'The Sabre'. Abandoning the conventional unified fighting force approach, he used his pegasus troops to pin the mobile griffons in place whilst his earth- and unicorn-pony troops could move in and crush them. By the time the boarder conflicts had finally been resolved eight years later, Flight had become the second-youngest  captain in the Royal Guard at only 36 years of age, and had set about reforming the long-stagnant Royal Guard into a modern fighting force.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              </p> <p> In the years since, he has risen to the rank of general and focused on reorganising and restructuring the Royal Guard - a political fight as much as a military one, and one that Flight never truly won. Both his critics and his advocates claim that he is forming the Royal Guard into his own image, one focused on aggressive and mobile warfare by well-coordinated units rather than the disciplined, unflinching battle lines of combined EUP regiments that had won countless wars in Equestria's long history.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              </p> <p> Though he has done his best to retain his fighting edge, Flight can feel the effects of age slowly wearing him down. He remains a formidable fighter, but he knows that he can't remain on the front lines much longer and he longs to lead his new force to a decisive victory and validate his reforms in the face of his detractors before he retires from active service.  </p>