Abdul Ramadi

Abdul Ramadi is an infantry scout in the New Luna Militia who has served for about two years.

Birth and Childhood
On July 12th, 2987 Abdul Ramadi was born to working class parents in Beirut, Levant Province on Earth. His father Fayyad was both a certified dock welder and a framing carpenter, switching between working in both trades as work was available. His high level of proficiency meant that the amount of money that his family had was more than average, which wasn’t saying much for one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city. His mother, Christine Nouri was a florist who operated out of a very modest shop. He was born with two brothers, with a sister on the way after him. As a child going to the large public schools, Abdul always strove to be in the Lebanon Mountains and relished the end of the day when his parents would let him go with his friends out of the city on the public mag-train and play in the wilderness.

When he turned seven, Abdul joined the local ‘Scout’ group in his neighbourhood with a group of his similarly minded friends. Three weekends out of the month they would spend in the wilderness, learning different crafts and skills useful to living in the wilderness. They learned to track each other, to be especially observant and to respect their environments as much, if not more, than any technology that men had. He would continue to do this until he was thirteen years old.

His parents were of a moderately religious bent, though they did not force anything on their son. Fayyad was a Sunni Muslim who performed his daily salah (prayers) and taught his son about religious tolerance and the value of moral action in life. Despite or perhaps because of his faith, he was socially a very liberal person and allowed his son great freedom of action. His mother, a Maronite Christian wasn’t very religious, but she respected her husband’s faith. Abdul would later describe her to a friend as being, ‘Not religious but very spiritual.’ Abdul himself adopted very loosely the tenets of Islam, but took on an agnostically spiritual viewpoint that his mother held.

The Death of a Reality
After several years of public schooling, fooling around with his friends and learning carpentry from his father, December 3005 rolled around. December was always a very exciting time for the family – Christmas was coming, always something for merriment and the season was generally beautiful in Beirut. His father and mother had both saved up to buy a pleasure cruise in Earth orbit for two weeks before landing for Christmas. On the morning of December 2nd, the entire family boarded their cruise with their luggage, some important goods and not much else. It was with abject shock that, after a few days of exploration and partying (and for the 13 year old Abdul, much experimentation with the girls of his age aboard) that they were sitting on at the solarium pool, watching Earth, Sol and their planet’s gunstars float along when the surface was suddenly ignited by a massive light. Then another. Then another. Panic spread on the ship as President Blade’s last transmission was aired on the large holoscreen. The universe was with the Terrans, for once, in sympathies as man’s home planet was destroyed.

The ship’s captain made the decision to turn towards Luna, which was the closest planetary body and only place where they could ressuply. Lacking any real funds after their life’s savings were destroyed, the Ramadi’s landed in Lunar City as refugees. Life for Abdul would be very hard for the next year and a half. He was forced to live in a cramped apartment with his entire family, subsist on government supplied rations and think about his dead friends, the city of birth he would never see again and the mountains he grew up in, all gone. Fayyad had much trouble finding work that year, as Lunar City was in a building slump and work for contractors had been mostly filled out. Eventually he was able to scrape together a job at FLP government run shipyards, doing welding as he had done on Earth. Christine started to make custom clothing for resale which brought in some money, as well. When the family heard of New Luna in 3001, they were one of the first families to move out there.

Back Into Open Air
Settling back in open spaces, green grass, blue oceans and white capped mountains was the exact thing that Abdul needed around Greenville. Their time in apartment on Luna had essentially dismantled most of their xenophobia inherent to Terrans. After being cramped in the apartment for a year, he voraciously tore into the wilderness with new found enthusiasm, finished his high school education and worked part time when his father opened up his own business doing carpentry. He expanded his social circle greatly and committed himself to a very moderate form of Islam, thanking God for the fact that his family was now prospering more than they had at home. This didn’t stop him from enjoying the fine things in life, whether the occasional alcoholic beverage, smoke or woman. He had the temperance of willpower to keep all of these things under control, however.

A friend of his had him interested in the New Luna Militia from the time he came back into school. He reasoned that he was too old for Scouts and should move on to something more advanced and useful. When he was sixteen years old, the minimum age, he joined the reserves with consent of his parents who were happy to see their middle child doing something he enjoyed doing. He balanced his time between school, his friends, working as an apprentice carpenter for his father who built houses and training for the reserves.

Career in the NLM
Finishing school and getting his accreditation as a journeyman carpenter after several years of work, Abdul joined the NLM Regulars, specifically as an infantry scout. He was posted to the New Luna 1st Army, 3rd Battalion’s Recon element after a ‘refresher’ boot camp and further wilderness training course which he was subjected to. Working on the planet, his unit headed the apprehension or destruction of several arms dealing and criminal enterprises which had set up shop out of the cities in the planet’s far wilderness. Having seen limited combat already, he was committed to fighting the PANL insurgency in the jungles and mountains of New Luna and got his first taste of fighting both irregular and regular warfare. This has been the man’s war experience. He is far from a veteran and is still young, but committed to doing what he knows for the planet.

When it was announced his unit would be the only regular unit staying on the planet (alongside the 10,000 NLM reserves composed mostly of police officers and fire fighters who trained on weekends and did bootcamps throughout the year), he reaffirmed his faith in his God, his planet, his comrades and himself. He had to steel himself for the coming days.