Seether

Seether was a primary antagonist in the video game Wing Commander 4: The Price of Freedom. Seether was his call sign, his actual name was not revealed in the game.

Seether was a product of the Terran Confederation's Genetic Enhancement Program. Early in his military career he served along Jacob Manley, and had perfected what would become one of his signature maneuvers, where he would release a mine in close proximity to his ship and jammed the throttle full when it detonated riding the shockwave the mine produced. Manley saw him perform this maneuver, and Seether was the only pilot he knew capable of doing that. Seether was quickly transferred into Special Operations and Manley never knew what happened to him.

Seether became part of Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn's personal Black Lance forces, serving as the second in command of the Black Lance. Following the Kilrathi War Tolwyn decided the only way humanity would survive and evolve was through continual conflict, and decided to provoke the Confederation into going to war against the Border Worlds. Tolwyn steered money and resources into the Black Lance, who developed the flash pack and the gen-select bioweapon.

Soon Seether was dispatched to destroy several Confederation civilian and military targets. After each target was destroyed Seether would do his mine detonation trick.

Seether met Colonel Christopher Blair on Nephele II. Blair stopped Seether from harassing a man and showed no fear at all when Seether pulled a knife on him and threatened to slit his throat. Shortly afterwards Blair and Maniac left for the Confed Orlando space station, as they approached the base Seether destroyed it, killing over 3,000 civilians in the process. Seether radioed him to let say that he was acting on behalf of the Border Worlds.

The Confederation had Seether assigned to the TCS Lexington along with Captain Hugh Paulsen - where Blair was serving under Captain William Eisen. Paulsen and Seether had planned to arrest Captain Willian Eisen for uncovering crimes occuring within the Confederation, but both Eisen and Blair defected to the Union of Border Worlds before that could happen. Seether tried to get information out of a captured Border Worlds pilot on the location of Eisen before murdering him in cold blood on the flight deck of the Lexington.

After Blair destroyed the Lexington to enable to the BWS Lexington to escape Seether executed Paulsen for failing to stop Eisen. Seether continued the program of harassing both Confed and Border Worlds targets, murdering a large number of innocent people in the process. Seether committed genocide on Telamon when he dropped the gen-select bioweapon on the planet, killing over 90% of the population that did not have the preselected genetic profile Tolwyn was looking for.

When Blair discovered that Tolwyn was behind the entire Black Lance conspiracy both Seether and Tolwyn pursued Blair back to Earth to stop him from reporting to the Senate what he had seen so that the Senate would vote for war. Seether found Blair in a fighter and the two engaged in combat. Despite his genetically enhanced nature Seether was defeated and his ship was destroyed. When Blair crashed the Senate hearing where Tolwyn was delivering his report, Tolwyn defended Seether as excellence personified, to which Blair responded that Seether was dead. Blair was able to convince the Senate to not go to war against the Union of Border Worlds. Tolwyn was later found guilty of war crimes and committed suicide before he could be executed.

Trivia

 * Seether was portrayed by the American actor Robert Rusler, who played another starfighter pilot - Lt. Warren Keffer - in Babylon 5. Rusler played Rusler in the live action video segments of the game and also provided his voice in the fighter segments of the game.


 * In the game the player can choose not to defect to the Union of Border Worlds when Captain Eisen does. As a result Blair remains on the ship for a couple weeks and witnesses Seether murdering an unarmed prisoner of war.