Born in 3272 to a well-to-do family on Sothis A 5 Daniel James Totendost spent the earliest years in the rough backwater playing at the wide variety of activities a diverse socio-economic population can provide. When his father, a corporate recruiter for Sirius, received a promotion from division-level to sector-level operations they received a permit and were moved by the company to HQ. This was particularly hard on young Jim because he transitioned from a more easy-going primary school (typical of areas less advantaged) into a more robust, demanding, and strict corporate youth academy.

These first years on Sirius saw Jim struggle to adapt and he fell in with a lower stratum of individuals than his family’s position would suggest. Being made fun of for being a rough-around-the-edges son of a backward planet, and the crowd he fell into, lead to Jim lashing out and behaving in a way which would earn him his first criminal record at a remarkably young age. The subsequent experience of juvenile incarceration and public humiliation changed something within a now teenaged Jim.

Looking for an outlet, entering a secondary education program, and looking for redemption Jim poured himself into Thurston Academy’s ‘Tactical Studies’ tract. A combination of combat-relevant athletics, practical game theory, and history-leaning study helped Jim finally flourish as a young adult. His father watched his growth with great interest and, even though he’d promoted out of the recruiting field, he worked to groom options which fit what he saw as unique talents in his son.

Upon completion of Thurston Academy Jim, now a young man, was offered a Corporate Sponsorship to attend the Tianfei Academy, a tertiary facilitation school for individuals focused on corporate space-faring ventures. Jim Did well there and found that his diverse and somewhat marred background lent itself to dynamic leadership roles which helped the young man navigate a series of coursework which ran the gamut of galactic challenges. On course to graduate with honors Jim was approached by a newly established corporate venture established by Sirius which the recruiter called Zheng He Enterprises.

As a member of the ‘Forerunner’ cohort of corporate officers which would begin their careers within Sirius as members of this subsidiary Jim quickly found himself shuffled onto the sideline in favor of junior officers who didn’t make their new bosses look bad. Finding himself embittered by the turn of affairs he was quickly pulled into the smallest division of the new subsidiary by a man named Tristan Anders. Unit 242, as the division was called, was staffed solely Tristan Anders, had a special budget dictated by Sirius, and maintained a vague mission statement which gave Jim as the newest employee lateral freedom in which he’d carve a name for himself within galactic history that most would only see as [REDACTED].

The mission of Unit 242 was simply, “Expand the scope of Sirius corporate capabilities, information, and expertise through operation as independent pilots sponsored by a corporate benefactor who maintain that benefactor’s well-being as a core tenet of their operations”.