Mpanao Maxwell

Mpanao Maxwell, nicknamed ”Butcher Max” (born 1961) is the Chief of Staff of the Old Army, serving as the second command of the organization. He is infamous for his frequent brutality against South Ranomian POWs, best known for cannibalizing his victims and feeding them to his soldiers, or even forcing his men to prepare the food themselves in order to desensitize them into submission and cult-like loyalty. In many ways, he’s more influential than the leader of Old Ones Army himself.

Allegedly born in a bordello on the Newman-Boudon border, Maxwell grew up around various local shamans, as his mother had died days after giving birth to him. The shamans taught Maxwell how do read and speak English & Hantsa, how to walk, and how to fight and read. He took advantage of this by killing one of the shaman once he was 16 and hiding the corpse in a nearby waste silo. At the age of 18, he briefly joined a local boxing club in order to get into sports, but was disqualified after he was found to have loaded gloves, which he used to beat one of his opponents to near death. Once he was 20, Maxwell joined the recently established Old One’s Army, becoming an interrogator for POWs once Operation Razor had begun. During the conflict, he would establish himself as a brutal war criminal, often experimenting with his torture just to see what would happen. A notable example would be when his unit captured General Johannes Portal. Maxwell reportedly tied all of Portal’s limbs to 4 horses, before forcing them all to run in different directions, causing Portal’s limbs to be ripped apart. Further on into his career, his reputation reached the South Ranomians, who began to spill information whenever cause by Maxwell. He would torture them anyways just for his own entertainment, which had by now evolved into the cannibalism he is known for today. In 1989, Maxwell was briefly caltured by South Ranomian forces after his caravan was ambushed in Newmen, resulting in him being sent to a POW camp. The Ranomian forces there attempted to starve him until he died, but Maxwell supposedly kept himself famished by chewing away at the flesh on his toes and fingers every day, before escaping on the 18th night of his incarceration.

After Operation Razor, Maxwell continued his activity once Old One’s Army moved onto terrorist activity and kidnapping, the latter of which Maxwell played a key role in. From 1993 to 1999, Maxwell was allegedly responsible in as many as 400~ disappearances of White Ranomians in Boudon alone. During an OOA visit to Seambe in 2001, Maxwell infamously gave the then leader of Seambe, Sani Museke, a necklace of over 110 dog tags that belonged to South Ranomian soldiers as a gift. When reporters later questioned him about the necklace, he responded, ”A rope would’ve been too long.”