Auali'i Keao

Best remembered as one of the main figures in the Kono'iwae Revolution and co-founder of the Kono'i Commonwealth, Auali'i Keao was born to a life of relative privilege. Hatched by the regional administrator of Okahinia, and raised to become a local administrator herself, Auail'i received a classical education and was fluent in Waiu'an, Bjerian, and Huswat by the age of ten. She attended a private school and university in Bjeria, where she first encountered the writing of the Ohoulian anarcho-socialist Rangi Hamuera, who was, herself, inspired by romanticised tales of pre-colonial Keʻao Waoki.
In her diaries, Keao wrote that, after reading Hamuera, she dreamed often of a land she felt she half-remembered; one that was free of kings and empreors. She expanded on this idea, desribing a communal paradise in which a unified humanity raised their young together with no regard for class or species. Despite her desire to return to a 'primordial, casteless community', Ke'ao Waoki had been a tribal kingdom before the Bjerian conquest, though with a much less stratified society.
After graduation, Keao joined the Bjerian military academy, graduating as an officer of the golden oak - a honour denoting academic excellence. She served in the Asmukala Guards, gaining several distinguished conduct awards and Marque of Imperial Honour. During her military service, Keao kept no personal diaries - or else she destroyed them - and kept her letters scrupulously clean of anything that might be construed as seditious, but his later diaries describe a deep and prolonged dissatifaction with military life and the hierarchy they felt had been imposed onto their people. In 5.832, aged 47, following a difficult moult, Keao retired from ative duty and took up a peacekeeping role on Ke'ao Waoki.
On his return home, Keao supported and encouraged clandestine efforts to restore the forest garden which had been destroyed at the orders of the Bjerian govenor, and that he had read about in Hamuera's None But Us. In 5.834, he proposed training up a local militia to act as peacekeepers on the island to reduce the need to transport troops from Bjeria during an upcoming assualt on the nearby micronation of Wahuhe. With permission granted, Keao began to staff his militia with the people who would become his trested lieutenants.
Within hours of the navy sailing for Wahuhe, Keao and his militia launched simultaneous assualt on the Govenor's mansion and the major port city of Auuiki. Keao's military training allowed him to predict the Bjerian response and counteract it and, by the following day, the revolutionaries had secured and fortified the island.
Keao maintained his hold on the island despite heavy casualties. Following the Bjerian withdrawl, he established a people's assembly to govern Ke'ao Waoki while Keao turned himself to the matter of defending what he had won. He leveraged his success to appeal to the disperate micronations of the Aeho'ai southwest chain, offering them military support and full autonomy in return for their support of the fledgeling Kono'i Commonwealth.
Keao never married, but continued an active political role well into later life, eventually securing the support of Pulamia, Puhuhia, Nalia, and Wahuhe. Sortly after signing the commonwealth treaty in Wahuhe, he fell ill with Napaleama Disease. He returned to Ke'ao Waoki, where he died aged 76.
Keao is commemorated as a local folk hero and his likeness is carved into one of the pillars of the Auuiki meeting house.

Species

Kana'ōnah

Life

785 861 76 years old

Aligned Organization

Kono'i Commonwealth