Archive Acknowledgement: Admiral Nathan G. Figueroa

As the man whose foresight is directly responsible for the formation of the Archive, as well as for whom it is named, Admiral Figueroa is the natural first choice for our "staff salute" section of the Register.

Nathan Granville Figueroa was born in Montuncion, Chiliguay on July 13, 1802, during the height of the First Philabrazillian War. His father, Luther Figueroa, was conscripted into the 17th Chiliguayan Formation Column only six weeks after Nathan was born, and was killed in the line of duty a mere five weeks later. Nathan was raised by his mother, Lorena Silvernail-Figueroa, until the age of twelve. Lorena died of an acute case of incubal yowling hack in October of 1814, leaving Figueroa an orphan.

He was admitted to the Morgan Herschaft Boarding School For Turbulent Strays, a private academy founded by the world famous sugar muffin magnate. Following six brutal years of corporal punishment, bushcraft and mandatory religious studies, Figueroa graduated as salutatorian. He proceeded to the Chiliguayan Armed Corps Academy, becoming a midshipman in the 9th Chiliguayan Sea Armada and serving aboard the littoral ironclad Matanza in 1824, under Captain Cristobal Acosta.

Figueroa progressed up the ranks dutifully and with little fanfare, making Lieutenant Commander by the time the Second Philabrazillian War broke out in 1831. It was during the initial assault by Philabrazillian naval forces that Figueroa became the famous war hero known around the globe today. Determined to gain back what they had lost in their decisive defeat at Rio Sao in 1805, agreed by most scholars to mark the official end of the First Philabrazillian War, the Philabrazillian naval sedan Muerte Súbita came equipped with a cannon that could seemingly project charged fibronium cannonballs, which had a devastating effect on the Chiliguayan armada. With half its crew dead and no superior officers above him, Figueroa set the Matanza on a suicide run for the Muerte Súbita, capsizing both ships in the resulting collision, but ultimately saving the armada by destroying the prototype weapon aboard.

Exonerated for his bravery and decisive tactics after he was rescued, Figueroa was granted a battlefield commission of Captain and given command the high-speed corvette Zephyr, equipped with the detachable bathycylinder Escurra. Figueroa and his men scoured the coastal floor for the remains of the Muerte Súbita for weeks, determined to retrieve the cannon from the wreckage. Their efforts would be in vain; the Philabrazillian naval forces had constructed a second prototype aboard the Hijo Híbrido, and ambushed the Chiliguayan armada while they were performing training exercises ten miles off the coast of San Santa.

Pushing the Zephyr to the very limits of its quickness, Figueroa joined the battle in the eleventh hour. While the Zephyr maneuvered deftly around the Hijo Híbrido, drawing its fire as it pitifully attempted to target the faster yet weaker ship, Figueroa sent a squadron out on the Escurra to cripple the ship's engines from underneath. The plan worked brilliantly, and the Hijo Híbrido was towed back to Chiliguay in disgrace.

Extensive study of the ship's main weapon revealed it to contain a type of hardware never before seen, one which utilized transmutation in its firing mechanism to change normal leaded cannonballs to fibronium. Not even the top alchemical metallurgists from Chiliguay could explain how the device functioned. Realizing that his country was facing a graver threat than anticipated, Figueroa pushed for military strikes deep into Philabrazillia to locate and capture the manufacturing technology responsible for such a destructive weapon. Unable to create a third prototype fast enough, Philabrazillia fell once again by 1832.

With the discovery that the Philabrazillians' work was derived from technology that appeared to be extradimensional in nature, Figueroa realized that the threat to not only his home country, but humanity itself, was too large to allow to run unchecked. He pressed both the Chiliguayan and Philabrazillian governments to pursue a more global role, less oriented in military might than scientific exploration, and within five years the first international summit on anomalous artifacts was held, bringing experts from the exotic faraways of Wamatu, the Grand Tsardom of Muscovy, the Kalmar Union and the Roman Empire. These talks were the first steps toward forming what would one day be known as the Figueroa Archive, an institute of alchemical study with branches in many countries, an employing field experts from all over the world of Lutum.