Nar Trig: Swordmaster of Ginaz

Nar Trig was a Swordmaster of Ginaz and a follower of the school of Jool Noret, a squat, swarthy fighter with dark hair, broad shoulders, and powerful muscles. A descendant of settlers who had fled Peridot Colony when the thinking machines overran it, he carried a hatred of the machines that shaped every turn of his life. Through the closing campaigns of the Butlerian Jihad he fought beside his friend and sparring partner Istian Goss, but where Goss held to the discipline of the Ginaz school, Trig drifted toward the fanaticism of the Martyrists and, later, the Cult of Serena. That hatred finally consumed him at Zimia on Salusa Secundus in 88 BG, when he challenged the sensei mek Chirox, the very machine that had helped train him, and died under its blade.

A child of Peridot Colony#

Trig was descended from human settlers who had fled Peridot Colony when the thinking machines overran it. His parents were among those who returned to attempt the colony's rebuilding, but their son chose a different road. Guided by his hatred for the thinking machines, Nar left for Ginaz and entered the mercenary training academy there as a trainee.

On Ginaz he trained in the school descended from Jool Noret, and among the trainees he found a friend and constant sparring partner in Istian Goss. The two rose together toward the rank of Swordmaster, though the differences between them were already present. At the graduating ceremony, each new Swordmaster of the Noret line received a coral disk bearing the name of the guiding spirit believed to fight within him. Goss's ceremony declared that he carried the spirit of Jool Noret himself. Trig received his disk like the others, but its secret would not come out for years: the disk was blank. No guiding spirit had been named for him, and he fought carrying nothing but his own anger.

Service in the Army of the Jihad#

The first mission Trig and Goss undertook together was on Honru, assisting in the rebuilding of that world. While they were stationed there, three combat meks were discovered in a sealed storage depot. The two Swordmasters disabled the machines, and a crowd of Martyrists obliterated what remained of them, an early glimpse of the zealotry that would later claim Trig entirely.

In the months after leaving Honru, the pair served with the Army of the Jihad in one of its bolder operations, attacking and boarding two giant Omnius battleships. The vessels were seized intact and converted for human use. Further military strikes had been planned, but the Omnius Scourge had killed so many soldiers that the campaigns were cancelled, and the two mercenaries spent most of their remaining service in rescue and recovery operations, salvaging what the plagues and the war had left behind.

The parting on Ix#

On Ix, Trig and Goss encountered a mob of Martyrists who had salvaged pulse-swords and other weaponry left over from the liberation of Ix and the second battle for that world. The Martyrists claimed the guidance of Saint Serena and declared their intention to strike at Corrin, the last stronghold of the machines. It was during his time on Ix that the truth of Trig's blank coral disk was revealed; the Swordmaster who had graduated beside a man carrying the spirit of Jool Noret had never been granted a guiding spirit at all.

Where Goss recoiled from the mob's fervor, Trig found the Martyrists' fanaticism reasonable. The two friends parted ways on Ix, Goss continuing his service with the reluctance of a professional soldier, Trig walking deeper into the movement that promised to finish his lifelong war against the machines.

The Cult of Serena#

The years that followed marked Trig visibly. His dark hair became shot with lines of gray, his rugged features roughened, and a long burn left the left side of his face smooth and waxy. When the Cult of Serena absorbed the Martyrists, Trig became part of the Cult, and through those years one memory in particular would not leave him: his past training under Chirox, the sensei mek of Ginaz. Chirox was a captured combat robot that had been reprogrammed to train human fighters, and it had helped forge generations of the academy's mercenaries, Trig among them. To the Cult, such a machine was a sacrilege that could not be suffered to exist.

Trig forged a message inviting Istian Goss and Chirox to come to Zimia to receive honors. The real purpose was to bring the machine within reach so it could be destroyed. When Goss and Chirox arrived on Salusa Secundus, no formal committee welcomed them, only an angry mob of Cultists intent on purging the whole city.

Death at Zimia#

Against Goss's calls for reason, Trig challenged Chirox to a fight. The sensei mek and its former pupil fought, and Trig managed to cut away one of the machine's arms. Chirox at first avoided harming him, but Trig's words and actions forced the mek to a decision. Chirox stated that it had killed only one human in its existence, Zon Noret, and that death had been an accident. Then it decapitated Trig, saying: "This is deliberate."

Trig's death in 88 BG, shortly before the Battle of Corrin, infuriated the mob even further. Goss defended the machine against the Cultists who meant to destroy it, but Chirox, unwilling to let anyone die on its behalf, permanently shut itself down. The Swordmaster who had spent his life hating the thinking machines thus ended it at the hands of the one machine that had taught him to fight, and his final act helped destroy it after all.