Roger Swift was the son of a factory worker, and grew up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood near an industrial area of London. Having watched his father toil for a relative pittance, Swift developed a strong distaste for the blue-collar life. He applied himself to his studies and attended college on an academic scholarship, where he completed a pre-law degree. Law school followed, and within a few years he was working his way up the ranks of a prominent London law firm. Swift found the day-to-day monotony of his job to be just as frustrating as, if more financially productive than, his father's labors, and his restlessness drove him to find excitement in his off-hours. He became intrigued by games of chance, and found that his keen intellect and his experience in dealing with dishonesty on a daily basis gave him a bit of an advantage as a poker player. Swift's immense ego was ultimately his undoing as a gambler, as he found himself unwilling to cut his losses on occasions when his skills weren't enough to overcome bad luck, instead trying to win back his money for hours on end as he dug himself deeper and deeper into debt. Having run afoul of several of London's most notorious loan sharks, Swift found himself forced to repay them by using his connections to provide assistance with their legal problems. As he became more and more involved in the criminal world, it was only a matter of time before his activities forced a conflict of interest with his work; after his association with a crime boss was brought to light during a case, he was disbarred and found himself out of work and still deep in debt. He went to work for one of the loan sharks, taking bets and providing legal advice. Swift was in the process of working his way up the ladder in the crime syndicate when he stumbled upon what would eventually become the Principality of Alea.

Swift rarely leaves the platform, preferring to conduct his business affairs by proxy. A skilled negotiator with an advanced understanding of both law and criminal activities, Swift possesses as wide a range of contacts and informants as anyone in the world. His business ventures range from the quasi-legal (online gambling, adult entertainment) to the most blatantly criminal (assassinations, terrorism, and arms dealing). He maintains a small but extremely well-trained private army aboard the platform, made up of a mixture of thrill-seekers recruited from the ranks of special-forces groups around the world, and wanted criminals living on Alea to escape prosecution. Swift is a below-average physical combatant, and recognizes the dangers in sharing his home with some of the world's most dangerous people: his offices and living quarters, as well as the server rooms and master controls for the platform, are off-limits to non-essential personnel and can be sealed off from the rest of the station (as can the power and water systems, which can be operated remotely from the master-control room). He and Whitehall are also the only Alean citizens allowed to carry weapons aboard the platform; all other weapons are distributed (and collected upon returning) by an armory on the helipad and are not permitted inside the facility.

I wanted this character to feel like a shady businessman, so I went with the open-shirted look and tried to choose colors that wouldn't really go that well together, but would be visually interesting. I was glad to finally have an excuse to use one of those great Ric Olie heads.

Little is known of Whitehall's past: his expertise in digital communication has allowed him to erase nearly all information about his life prior to his emergence as Swift's Minister of State for Technology. He possesses a working knowledge of most programming languages and designed both the systems and security for Swift's operations. Whitehall monitors and maintains the digital arm of Alea, which has become something of an obsession: he has not left the platform since his arrival, and rarely even ventures outside the main building. His social skills are all but non-existent, and even those who he works most closely with know almost nothing about him. He is extremely impatient and has a surprisingly violent temper.

This guy was fun to work on. I don't get to play around with different body types too often, so making a heavier figure was a challenge. I knew I wanted him to be wearing cargo shorts, so the Kwinn legs were a given. Once I realized how beefy and unathletic the RoC Heavy-Duty chest was, everything else fell into place.

A former South African "recce," Cross was dishonorably discharged for reasons that were not disclosed (and which he refuses to discuss). He spent the next decade as a mercenary, relishing the opportunity to engage in combat without the restrictions that come with military service. Eventually, Cross became dissatisfied with the caliber of criminal he was working for: he resented his employers' lack of understanding of strategy and tactics, and felt that his skills were not properly appreciated. On an assignment to raid a weapons cache, Cross and his men encountered a team of Swift's mercenaries who had been dispatched for the same purpose. The two mercenary groups exchanged fire, and the resulting battle left Cross the only survivor. Leaving the weapons behind, he tracked the other mercenaries' path back to their extraction point and hijacked the waiting helicopter. After interrogating the pilot, Cross realized that Alea would make an ideal refuge from the wide variety of enemies he had made during his time as a soldier for hire. Upon arriving, he requested an audience with Swift, who quickly recognized that Cross could be of great use to his efforts. Cross quickly became Swift's most trusted mission commander and now spends most of his time planning and coordinating Alea's more combat-oriented endeavors, as well as training the citizens between missions.

I wanted a very simple, clean design for this guy. It might be too simple and too clean, but I kind of like it. I had planned to use the head for an enemy military leader for a while now, and this seemed like a good opportunity to put it to work.

A diverse group made up of former military personnel and wanted criminals, the Alean "army" carries out the missions that require less stealth and more firepower (smaller or more covert operations are carried out by less-conspicuous operatives). The citizens of Alea are always on call for military service, and the primary condition of their continued stay aboard the platform is that they can only refuse missions if they are physically unable to perform the necessary duties. They are selected for missions based on their abilities and strengths, and are given long breaks between assignments.

These guys are LBCs in the purest sense: the only real modifications were replacing the feet and sanding off the Cobra symbol on the chest (other than a bit of detail painting on the shotgun-guy's vest). They're exactly what I pictured when I started looking for parts, though, so I'm OK with the lack of serious effort required to put them together.