LOWEN AINSBROUGH, Vers Orbital Knight

Full Name: Lowen Rosenthal Ainsbrough
Nicknames: Low; Rosen; Ain; Lord Ainsbrough; Count Ainsbrough; The Mutt (by Knight critics); The Mad Count of Vers
Age: 24
Birth Date: 02/01/1990
Occupation: Vers Orbital Knight, pilot of the Ortygia; Count of the Ainsbrough Family
Affiliation: VERS Empire

Gender: Male
Hair Color: White
Eye Color: Violet-Blue
Height: 5' 7"
Weight: 133 lbs


    Lowen is a very fierce personality type, both in how he expresses himself as well as his general mannerisms, much like his father. His pale and fragile appearance is nothing but a shell of what some of the other Orbital Knights call a cold-blooded killer. He retains a strict devotion to his ideals, and has a tendency for dealing in absolutes. Any task must be completed in full, no matter what consequences may arise from doing so. A rather new addition to the Orbital Knights, he also finds himself constantly competing with the other Knights in order to prove himself.

    Loyalty is something that Lowen values and holds in high regard when observing others. Though rather withdrawn, when Lowen does manage to open up to another person, he tends to build a strong relationship with said person. There are very few people that can truly say then are on a “friend” level with Lowen, with almost no one really knowing anything about him other than his relatively simple family heritage, though the meager alternative overview Lowen tends to give is enough to suffice in most cases.

    Broken is a good word to describe the young Count as he is on the inside. A polar opposite of his outward demeanor, Lowen himself is a very broken young man with a tragic past and big shoes to fill. He frequently experiences night terrors that keep him up for nights on end, which lead to exhaustion and eventually a short temper. Lowen’s past has also left him with mental and emotional scars, causing him to break down over time. Deep down, Lowen is increasingly hateful of who he his - a young man pushed beyond his natural limit, forced to carry out the will of ignorant, hate filled men. It is this hate that fuels Lowen’s desire to change, and even moreso his desire to eradicate the Royal Family and bring peace to an oppressed Mars.

    As a result of his past, Lowen is enveloped in a tightly closed shell. He is very untrusing of others, and for very good reason. Because of this, he has a tendency to only take things with a grain of salt - remaining skeptical of everything until he sees the truth, in which case he’ll apologize for not believing. If someone is able to get past Lowen’s shell, he will almost always take what they say to him at face value. Because of this, Lowen believes beyond a shred of a doubt that this will be his downfall - someone will enter his life, become very close to him, and betray him. The end result, of course, being that Lowen becomes even more untrusting and closed up than ever.

    Because of the troubles Lowen experienced during his upbringing, he can be very sympathetic towards other people depending on the situation - particularly those who have faced hardship - especially Martian refugees on Earth. It’d be easy to say that he could sympathize with every Martian in that regard, however he cannot. As with most things, Lowen also fears that his sympathies towards people may lead to betrayal. Overall, Lowen is nothing but a young man with a broken interior - choosing to keep a strong, outward appearance. He is driven to bring the people of Vers the life they deserve.



    Despite initial feedback from his other Knight peers for being younger than most Knights (and by extension Counts), Lowen is held in slightly high regard for being a miraculously gifted tactician. He is capable of producing unpredictable strategies in situations that require nigh-lightning quick thinking. This is due to his time in isolation prior to stepping up as his father’s heir, where he spent much of his free time studying the art of war and strategy. Due to this, Lowen is an priceless asset to the Orbital Knights for his ability to overcome of near impossible odds, which also makes him a dangerous enemy.

    As previously noted, Lowen spent a great deal of time alone in which he studied various aspects of war - particularly tactics. He has also revealed to some of those serving under him that he has read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” cover to cover several times out of sheer boredom and continues to do so, where the last few times were spent “dissecting it word for word”. His isolation also led him to delve in to physics, a field his mother was quite familiar with prior to meeting his father. Lowen sometimes uses this understanding to assist him on the battlefield, making somewhat accurate predictions, and thus countermeasures, based on his opponents movements.

    He has proven to have a good sense of delegation and command for those that work under him, capable of delivering quick, precise and easy to follow instructions when the situation calls for it. However, given his reputation he is generally disliked, though the general feeling of trepidation that accompanies serving under him is something he uses to his advantage. Fear can be a force to be reckoned with, and it's one Lord Ainsbrough uses very well when needed.

    Lowen is also a deep thinker, a careful listener and an intent observer - possessing the ability to notice and draw deductions from seemingly trivial details is incredible and that is his main tool whenever delving in to political matters and sometimes combat. He practices the mnemonic device known as the Method of Ioci, also known as the memory palace or mind palace technique. Using this memory aid, Lowen is able to remember incredibly important information at a whim by entering what he commonly refers to as the “broom closet”. This has made Lowen an interesting proponent and opponent on political matters, though he tends to use it to remember small things - names, dates, a person’s favorite color - nothing is really out of the question.



    Lowen hails from the Ainsbrough Clan, prominent in status and heavily involved in VERS politics. The original Count Ainsbrough, Vis, was a man with a deep and well received history for his time in service of the Emperor. His mother, Annemarie, was a well known Terran Physicist who studied the properties of Aldnoah in order to help the Empire fully understand what it was, and what - if anything - it did other than provide the Empire with power (initially against her will). An only child, Lowen’s upbringing started off relatively easy and it seemed he was in for a scott-free life of spontaneously indulging in whatever he really wanted.

    Spoiled was Lowen, at least from his mother. Anything the son desired, it was provided to him. Of course, this was never able to go to his head, as the Count would make sure to balance out Lowen’s privileges with strict duties to be taken care of each and every single day. He was to be tempered and presentable to the rest of the Empire, he was to stand out - he was the heir to the Ainsbrough Clan. As such, Lowen’s childhood and adolescence was to be filled with scrupulously thorough lessons and intense physical training.

    On the day of Heaven’s Fall, Lowen was with his mother on a trip to visit his grandparents. Only nine years old at the time of the event, Lowen often recounts the horror around him as everyone witnessed the Moon’s destruction and fall to the Earth below. He often goes off-record as stating it was easily the most terrifying moment of his entire life, to this very day. Frantic, Annemarie sent Lowen away with his uncle while she remained behind to tend to her own parents. He didn’t know how long he and his uncle drove for, nor did he know exactly how far they got. However, what Lowen does know is that the last thing he remembers seeing when he looked back to the city was a blinding flash, followed by an intense shockwave that blew the fleeing vehicle off the road.

    Smoke. Fire. Oil. All Lowen could take in as his blurred vision tried to fix itself was the smell of burning. As he finally came to, the nine year old came to realize the car was upside down in a ditch. He couldn’t see the roof above, which was obscured by a few inches of water. Struggling out of his seat belt, Lowen crawled from the wreckage and proceeded to crawl up the hill towards the road, having seen no sign of his uncle below. Upon reaching the road, he discovered the lifeless body of his uncle, looking towards the rising cloud of debris from the city as the faint sound of sirens echoed in from behind him. Everyone Lowen had was now gone - and it was all Rayregalia's fault.

    Following Heaven’s Fall, Lowen was kept in a refugee camp where he was to wait for family to come to get him or wait for news that his family had in fact perished. The camp was cold, damp even. Everyone was treated relatively well, with some known Martians treated rather poorly for their affiliation - past or present - with the Empire. It was seeing this that initially started spurring Lowen on a path where the Royal Family had to be removed from power, and by any means necessary. After almost a week, the officials overseeing the camp let Lowen know he would be placed in a temporary foster home and without much time to protest, he was shipped off.

    Life with the foster family was very plain, to say the least. His time at the local public school was nothing out of the ordinary, nor was it something worth remembering. While there, Lowen was met with anti-Martian ideology he had never seen before. He had been relatively sheltered from such interaction, and the result was a total shutout of his emotions. He became cold, selfless, a loner. He did his best to alienate himself from his peers, instead taking to more in-depth studies of self. Lowen meditated often, in the dark with silence, perfecting a technique known as Method of Ioci. It was all he needed to excel, and he did so. At fourteen, Lowen ran away from home in an effort to make contact with the Knights still in orbit.

    After being rescued by an Orbital Knight on Earth, Lowen entered what some regard as a “dark period” of his life, taking the reigns of the Ainsbrough Clan with ferocity. Upon becoming eighteen,Lowen was officially declared Count of the Ainsbrough Clan. Lowen performed his Knight duties well, earning the respect of many Knights as well as Emperor Rayvers himself. Lowen’ deductive abilities were a valuable asset to the Empire - and he knew it, using it to his advantage as he progressed in his political career. It seemed Lowen had found his place, his niche, so to speak. Things were going well and continued to do so, and Lowen’ notoriety grew. Taking a favorable shine unarmed sparring, Lowen started a small fight club-like sub organization within his Landing Castle, training the reluctant soldiers beneath him to become excellent fighters.

    Lowen would begin to plot against the Royal Family, and through careful planning and the right strings pulled, was able to concoct an elaborate plot to start fighting against the Earth and the Empire in order to “thin the herd”, so to speak. The plan was simple - have the Emperor’s granddaughter, Princess Asseylum Vers Allusia, assassinated. Rayregalia, being a simple man, would order the Orbital Knights to commence their attacks. So what then? Again, simple - a small faction growing beneath him, Lowen would lead this group in a coup d’etat of sorts against the other Knights who refused to join them.

    And so, Lowen began reaching out to the appropriate parties - people against the Royal Family, people looking to see Mars take on Earth’s own glory. A takeover of the blue planet was not an option, leading to Lowen reaching out to independents working towards the terraforming of Mars as well - albeit the latter not being privy to the assassination plot. The young Count had grown determined to see the Vers Empire in a more democratic light instead of under a tyrannical ruler - obsessed with nothing more than a supercomputer. The more the years went by, the more Lowen became more and more convinced that this was the only way things could go.

    Around the age of twenty-one, Lowen began to develop trademark symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The treatment from his father, the treatment he received both at the refugee camp and the foster home. Even watching as the Moon fell to pieces, the event that took his family away - all of the dark things. It all culminated in a massive emotional breakdown, and Lowen’s plan to remove the Royal Family from power becoming more of a vendetta than something he wanted to do for the people. It is something he continues to struggle with, the thin line between selflessness and selfishness becoming dangerously thin. This was also the year he became an “official” Orbital Knight, given the Kataphrakt known as Ortygia.

    Upon turning twenty-four, the time had come for Lowen’s plot to be put in motion. The word was given, and all of the tiny wheels went about playing the parts they were intended to. He kept track of each and every move on a chess board, giving each piece a title based on whomever had been assigned to it. While the Princess was in Shinigawara for a peace meeting, it began. A Martian mole, under the guise of a UFE soldier, blew up the escort vehicle that was carrying her. The result was exactly as intended - Rayvers called for war, directing the Orbital Knights to attack the Earth. There was no pity, no regrets. The Landing Castles began their descent in what would become known as Operation Earthfall. Lowen's Castle landed just outside of Tokyo, with him and his forces quickly wiping out the UFE resistance in the area. It was a boring fight to say the least, but it was something the young man shrugged off - not like he expected more.

    Lowen now continues working on the plot to oust Rayregalia, working with Martians and Terrans alike in order to fulfill his goal and bring peace to Mars once and for all.