Geoffrey Tolwyn

Admiral Sir Geoffrey Tolwyn is a fictional military officer in the universe of Wing Commander. Frequently he is a direct or nearly direct superior of the viewpoint character, Christopher Blair (and somewhat adversarial as well). Admiral Tolwyn first appears in Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi.

Youth and Young Adulthood
Admiral Tolwyn is a relatively young man, forty-three years old as of the beginning of Wing Commander 1. The only son of a British baronet, Admiral Tolwyn grew up from a very young age as part of the last remaining vestige of nobility in the world. He was born in 2612, during an era of relative peace. He attended the Confederation Navy Academy and graduated during a time when many in the Confederation were questioning the very necessity of the armed forces and when Confederation senators were looking to bolster their votes by cutting "wasteful" military programs; all during the slow, steady build of tensions between the Confederation and the Kilrathi Empire. Tolwyn was assigned as a special operations officer straight out of the academy after a run-in with a Senator over a controversial bill to close the academy in which Tolwyn brought up ugly personal motives for the senator's blockage of a new starfighter program to replace the aging "Wildcat" medium fighter.

Beginning of the Kilrathi War
During the Battle of McAuliffe, Ensign Geoffrey Tolwyn was a fighter pilot in the cockpit of a Wildcat, with barely five hundred flying hours under his belt. He managed to survive both of his sorties, including a battle against the then-Crown Prince of Kilrah (who committed ritual suicide because of his shame at being defeated by a "mere human"). After that battle, Tolwyn was promoted to Lieutenant and given command of a frigate.

Rise to Flag Rank
From 2639 to 2654, Tolwyn rose, rocket-like, to prominance in the Confederation Navy, rising from Lt. J.G. to Commodore in the 15 years. His driven nature was as much a hindrance as a blessing, however, and he developed as many enemies in the Admiralty as friends; some of whom blocked his ascension to Rear Admiral for a number of years. Finally his chance to prove himself as a force commander came on the Tiger's Claw 's cadet cruise of 2653-4, where he commanded the carrier and its battlegroup (and its load of student-pilots) through a number of harrowing engagements with the Kilrathi. After the completion of this task, Tolwyn was promoted to Read Admiral and command of 14th Fleet.

==On the Concordia=

In 2656, Tolwyn's flagship, TCS Concordia, a Confederation-class dreadnought, was commissioned. Now with a ship, Tolwyn's command was shunted to 3rd Fleet and to the front lines of the war.

War's End
In 2669, the Behemoth project was tested. Its major weapon, a superconducting particle beam cannon, was perfect and destroyed the target planet (Loki VI). However, a Kilrathi spy in the fleet leaked the weak points in Behemoth's defenses to the enemy, and a massive bomber strike on the weapon destroyed it, and Tolwyn's hopes. Fortunately, General James "Paladin" Taggert's Temblor Bomb program was there to pick up the slack and save the war for humanity. As a result, Paladin was elected to the Confederation senate after the war.

Peacetime Tolwyn, the SRA and the Black Lance Conspiracy
After the end of the Kilrathi War in 2669, Admiral Tolwyn, burning with humiliation from Behemoth ' s destruction, was assigned to the Strategic Readiness Agency and promptly converted the agency into his personal fief. He was brought into the Agency's two-decade-old Black Lance project and found that he had a personal skill for malappropriating funding from other projects to fulfill the Black Lance's agenda. Tolwyn's fanatical personality had found his ultimate fulfillment: the "perfection" of humanity into a fighting force unparallelled in the galaxy. By 2674, the biogenic plague intended to destroy the unworthy was prepared and test runs were made against planets in the Border Worlds, but before the plan could fully unfold (which included war with the Border Worlds), Colonel Christopher Blair - operating with Border Worlds forces - uncovered Tolwyn's plot and revealed it to the Senate in an impromptu but impassioned speech. Tolwyn was arrested and arraigned on charges relating to crimes against humanity.

After being found guilty on all charges stemming from the Black Lance conspiracy, convicted and stripped of rank, Geoffrey Tolwyn committed suicide in his prison cell on the eve of his execution in 2674, believing he had failed humanity.