There are two characters of import in The Man From Empire, Osh Scimtar di Baryan (Osh or ScOsh), and Graciela Juarez.
ScOsh is the titular character, hailing from the Empire of Humanity, a multi-galactic polity that doesn’t even share our three-dimensional space, being offset and rotated in eleven-dimensional space from us. He is a Secundus, the second level of government official in the Empire, and a Second Order Guardian (The first tier of trained psionic power). He is roughly fourteen thousand Earth years old, and the product of a place where billions and trillions of psionic operants have been improving the science of their abilities for about 85,000 Earth years. But despite his achievements, he’s still something of a disappointment to his father, a Sixth Order Guardian, a Nonus – one level down from the Guardian – and a military hero going back almost eighty thousand Earth years. But as ScOsh explains, a relatively weak Guardian who is part of a rival family does not want to draw the attention of that family’s rivals, and sandbagging your abilities is the ‘unofficial sport’ of the Empire. He has capabilities he avoids displaying, one of which is he is near the top tier of a profession called social actuary that uses a set of rules called M’Don’s Equations but which have in fact been continually refined since postulation. The one thing ScOsh is known for is he was the most prominent social actuary other than M’Don’s son M’Drashin to predict the Ston Rebellion, which led to the Interregnum the Empire is finishing its recovery from. Given the nature of the scientific and political opposition to that position, it took a not inconsiderable amount of courage.
The viewpoint character is Graciela Juarez (Grace), a twenty-eight year old re-entry college student finishing her degree at UC Riverside. She works for a chemical manufacturing company during the day, finishing her degree mostly through night and online classes. She is an American of Mexican descent – her grandparents migrated north before it was illegal. She has a wild past; we don’t find out the full nature of what made her turn her life around in this novel, but it was written into her character from the beginning.
Grace and ScOsh don’t see eye to eye about much – they’ve been thrown together by circumstances. Grace eventually figures out what causes the differences of opinion; ScOsh already knows. This tension is an added dimension to the mission ScOsh is on – looking for a group of terrorists who caused a mass casualty event in the area ScOsh is responsible for, terrorists who are remnants of those who led the Ston Rebellion.
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