Staffan Sentzke

Template:Character Infobox Staffan Sentzke is an Insurrectionist of Swedish ancestry, operating as one of the largest arms dealers on Venezia during and after the Human-Covenant War.

Biography

Early life

Staffan was a factory worker who lived in Alstad on the Outer Colony of Sansar with his wife Lena and daughter Naomi. He and his wife were proud of their brilliant daughter and hoped that a small colony world like Sansar would have enough to offer her when she grew up. On September 10, 2517, just five days from Naomi's birthday, she was abducted by ONI and replaced by a flash clone. Staffan and his wife became frantic when she did not arrive home after school. As councilman Jakob and the community searched throughout Alstad, Staffan headed to New Stockholm hoping to find her at the expensive toy store located there. Having no luck finding her, Staffan returned home. The following day, his wife received a call notifying her that Naomi had been found five kilometers from New Stockholm.

Staffan was relieved to have Naomi back but quickly noticed her abnormal behavior. He gave Naomi her birthday gift early and later planned to craft a doll house for her. As months passed, Staffan saw no improvement in Naomi's behavior and insisted that the clone was not his real daughter. Two years later, in March 2519, the flash clone died, and after being told their daughter had fallen victim to genetic disorders, Staffan's wife sterilized herself to avoid having any more children and ultimately committed suicide in September. After this, Staffan began insisting that his daughter's abduction was a government conspiracy.

Criminal career

Staffan later found other families who had lost children the same way. One parent named Andrew Remo, a crime boss from Herschel, befriended Sentzke and the two went on to become anti-UNSC colonial rebels. Staffan eventually left Sansar on a large mining freighter before it was glassed by the Covenant and went to Venezia, where he met a woman named Laura, married her and had a son, Edvin, and a daughter, Hedda. They lived in the heterogeneous city of New Tyne, a sanctuary for human and non-human dissenters and criminals.

By 2553, he was still active in the Insurrectionist movement on Venezia. During Kilo-Five's investigation of Insurrectionist activity on the planet, he was spotted in the company of a T'vaoan pirate named Sav Fel. Sentzke later visited Fel at his home, located just five kilometers outside New Tyne. There they discussed the transaction of Pious Inquisitor. As payment, Fel demanded particle beam rifles, dropships, and plasma pistols. Sentzke stated that he would first need to see the ship and test its ventral beam. Fel told him the ship was in another system and that he planned to show him something extra when he saw the ship. Sentzke then returned home to inform his son Edvin that Fel had indeed acquired a battlecruiser. Sentzke was determined to use the warship to attack Earth in order to finally learn the truth he so wanted to know.

Later, Staffan and Edvin met with Fel on Weymouth Island. Sav Fel transported them to his ship in a shuttle and then took his ship to where he had hidden Pious Inquisitor. At Staffan's request, Fel agreed to demonstrate the battlecruiser's energy projector on a desolate world. When the ship arrived at its destination, Shaps III, the vessel's eccentric Huragok caretaker, Sometimes Sinks, told Sav Fel that he couldn't use the ship's energy projectors since there were Forerunner artifacts on the surface. Sav decided to put the Huragok in the brig while they tested the energy projectors, although he was worried that the Huragok might reconfigure the locks. Sav Fel then activated the ship's energy projector, at which point Sometimes Sinks accessed the ship's broadcast system and began wailing, upset that they were destroying the Forerunner artifacts on the planet. Sav Fel sent Dhak to go quiet the Huragok. After the firing was complete, Sinks drifted back unto the bridge distressed about them damaging the ruins. When Sentzke decided to test the beam himself, Sinks hovered at his side and began making pleading noises. Not wanting to upset the Huragok, Sentzke allowed Sinks to aim the beam elsewhere to avoid damaging any more ruins and then proceeded to glass a portion of the planet. Satisfied with the ship, Sentzke completed the deal with Fel and kept Sinks as the ship's chief engineer. Grateful of Sentzke's consideration for Forerunner artifacts, Sinks deemed him as a true Reclaimer.

Pious Inquisitor

Main article: Skirmish on Pious Inquisitor

After Malcolm Geffen and Vasily Beloi of Kilo-Five infiltrated the Venezian militia, Sentzke quickly learned that the two supposed UNSC deserters had experience with operating Covenant technology and took them to see Pious Inquisitor. However, Sentzke and his son Edvin came to doubt the two Marines' cover story after an attempt by an unknown party to seize control of Pious Inquisitor using Venezia's FTL communications relay, and Sav Fel's disappearance — although the latter was not the work of the ONI agents but the Kig-Yar Chol Von instead. Staffan had Mal and Vaz taken prisoner and attempted to force the truth out of them through torture. Vaz accidentally revealed that he had more information about Naomi than Sentzke had told him; he referred to the child's replacement as a clone, which Sentzke had never done. Craving to learn more about his daughter's fate, Sentzke moved Vaz to a different location and interrogated him personally.

During the conversation, it became clear that the Marine knew far more than Sentzke had even expected him to. However, they were interrupted by the arrival of Kilo-Five's rescue party; namely, Sergeant Lian Devereaux and her Pelican Tart-Cart. At Vaz's insistence, they apprehended Staffan and took him aboard Kilo-Five's ship, UNSC Port Stanley. To his surprise, he was soon allowed to reunite with his daughter who now served with Kilo-Five. Although furious and disgusted at the UNSC's treatment of her, Sentzke concluded that he would be satisfied as long as Naomi was allowed to decide whether to remain in the UNSC or accept his offer to retire and join her family. Due in part to her Spartan indoctrination and sense of duty, Naomi chose the former.

Shortly afterward, Kilo-Five were able to locate Pious Inquisitor, which had already been boarded by Chol Von's Kig-Yar crew. However, Sometimes Sinks only followed Sentzke's orders and had placed the ship in lockdown, forcing Kilo-Five to take Staffan along as they entered the battlecruiser. Once aboard, Sentzke revealed that he intended to escape in order to avoid his otherwise likely fate of life imprisonment by ONI. He asked Vaz to take care of Naomi, and promised to end his campaigning against Earth in return. With the rest of Kilo-Five advancing toward the bridge, Chol Von set the ship to violently self-destruct. While Kilo-Five evacuated to their own dropships, Sentzke took a Spirit from the shuttle bay, intending to use the Covenant dropship to escape.

However, Sentzke remained in close proximity of the battlecruiser until he knew for sure Naomi had escaped aboard one of the ONI dropships; unbeknown to Kilo-Five, the Spirit had been fitted with a slipspace drive by Sometimes Sinks, which would allow Sentzke to make it to a minimum safe distance even though the dropship's conventional engines could not. Assuming Sentzke had no chance of surviving the explosion, Vaz told the AI Black-Box to send the ONI file on Naomi's kidnapping to Sentzke in the hope that he would manage to relay it his family and prove his theories right. While sending the files, BB personally appeared in Sentzke's Spirit. Immediately noticing the slipspace drive and deducing Sentzke's true intentions, the AI indicated that ONI would never cease hunting Sentzke if they knew he had survived. However, out of both sympathy and trust that Sentzke would stay true to his word and leave Earth alone, BB wiped his memory of the incident immediately afterward; this left Kilo-Five and ONI to assume that Sentzke had been killed in the explosion.

Both Sentzke and Sinks survived and following the incident, he sent Vaz an anonymous package containing a planetarium lamp and a chair for a dolls' house, both of which he had planned to give Naomi for her sixth birthday decades earlier. Despite this implicit evidence that Sentzke was alive, Kilo-Five chose to honor their agreement and forgo informing the rest of ONI.

Personality and traits

Although regarded as a terrorist, Sentzke is a hard-working, loving, and caring family man. He enjoys spoiling his granddaughter Kerstin, building her a dollhouse in his workshop during his spare time; he had intended to give a dolls' house for Naomi decades earlier. Despite his new family, he was never able (or perhaps unwilling) to move on from Naomi's disappearance and was tormented by the matter for decades. His new family, even his son Edvin, never appeared to truly believe his theories, which further fed his frustration and even occasionally made him question his sanity.

Sentzke had an intense hatred of Terran authorities and the UNSC, and was willing to go to extreme lengths to force them to tell him the truth. In his own line of work as a rebel and arms dealer, Sentzke displayed a ruthless mentality which stood in stark contrast to his family life. He learned many of these qualities from his friend Andrew Remo, whose preexisting skill set and disregard for authority (byproducts of his criminal career) were an important contributor in transforming Sentzke from the ordinary citizen he used to be into a notorious insurgent.

Trivia

• Staffan's reaction to encountering Naomi's flash clone is consistent with the symptoms of Capgras delusion.
• Staffan is the only Spartan II parent to know what happened to their own child.

List of appearances

• Halo: Glasslands (First appearance)
• Halo: The Thursday War
• Halo: Mortal Dictata