Marcello Sephardi had grown up on Crete. The grandson of a great Elder of the Corsair people. He had watched his family suffer for the Empire. He came from a great line of pilots and leaders. Famila Sephardi had once been on of the strongest in the Empire, and then his grandfather, Miguel, had joined his family into the Brotherhood and server as it's leader for many years. To this day Miguel was revered among the people of the Empire. But unlike his father, grandfather and several uncles and cousins, the Corsair life was not for Marcello. He had known it from a young age. Most Corsair boys dream of getting into a Titan and fighting for the glory of the Empire. Marcello never felt that desire.
He dreamed of the stars, but not as a path to glory, Marcello saw them as a path to freedom. A chance to get away from the expectations and assumptions that had followed him his whole life on Crete. He didn't have a typical Cretan upbringing. His was not a life of poverty and hunger. He grew up in Villa Sephardi, watching the Empire work up close. He always had what to eat and a secure place to live. He was schooled by tutors in tactics, avionics and electronics and astrophysics as well as philosophy, logic, spirituality and history. He learned to fly, and wasn't half bad. He had the genes of course, and the talent, he could have been up there, flying with the elite pilots of the Brotherhood if he had wanted, but he didn't care enough to practice. He just wasn't interested. His father and grandfather were at their wit's ends trying to figure out how to get him back on what they saw as the right path.
There was one last tradition of the Sephardi family that had been maintained through all the generations. Every Sephardi had built his own Titan and Miguel and Armando felt this last rite might just be the thing. Marcello was taken to the place, an old broken down compound in the mountains strewn with junk, there were a few small storage buildings and a hanger. Marcello spent a few months there building his Titan. He built it well too, every piece and circuit board was perfection. There was a certain serenity Marcello found there polishing the metal and soldering the circuits. The months he spent there in solitude, while not fun, were good for Marcello. Finally, the Titan was finished. He looked it over, felt the plates, checked the welds, went over every detail of the ship. It was perfect. The tradition was that before putting in the shields, Marcello would fly out to the nebula to collect artifacts before returning and installing the shields into the ship.
This particular part of the ritual had always seemed crazy to Marcello and he wasn't going to have any part of it. Installing the shields on his Titan, he booted up the Titan's systems fully. He knew he wouldn't be returning to Villa Sephardi anytime soon, and he knew he wasn't going to be following the Corsair way. He had made his decision, he knew what it meant. It was the completion of a process of disappointment that Marcello had started long ago and guaranteed his Father and Grandfather would always view him as a failure, and a stain on the family, but he knew he had to live on his own terms.
Setting a course for Kusari, Marcello set out. He sold his Titan for money, a fighter would do him no good. Finding a good deal on an old Anki he purchased supplies, outfitted the ship and took off from Roppongi a new man. He was off to find the solitude he so desired.