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Quellcrist Falconer (nickname: Quell) is the nom-de-guerre used by Nadia Makita, a political activist/revolutionary who led the Unsettlement on Harlan's World. She is the founder of Quellism, whose followers are termed Quellists.
History[]
Quellcrist was born on Harlan's World, a planet settled via digitally stored personalities and clone banks sent through space in colony ships. After the initial Harlan family elite was thus established, the colony was augmented by individuals whose personalities were sent, purely digitally, by needlecast.
Makita studied demodynamics at Millsport University and published a controversial master's thesis, 'Gender Role Leakage and the New Mythology,' as well as three collections of verse in stripjap, which quickly attained cult status among the Millsport literati.
In the Winter of 0067, Makita left academia, reputedly turning down both a generous offer of a research post within the faculty of social sciences and literary patronage from a leading member of the First Families. Between October 0067 and May 0071, she traveled widely on Harlan's World, supported partly by her parents and partly through a variety of menial jobs, including belaweed cutter and ledgefruit harvester. It is generally thought that Makita's experiences among these workers helped to harden her political convictions.
By the beginning of 0069, Makita was publishing articles in the radical journals New Star and Sea of Change, in which a clear departure can be traced from the liberal reformist tendency she had evinced as a student.
Makita made her first appearance as a guerilla following the Kossuth belaweed riots in May 0071.
Quell wrote several books, most notably Poems and Other Prevarications and Things I Should Have Learned by Now. Her views ignited a revolutionary action against the ruling class of the planet, which is referred to historically as the "Unsettlement". She believed that all war is the result of unused male drive and the over-accumulation of testosterone in men, yet her own actions and views led to a great deal of violent action.
Quell was visionary regarding the importance of Cortical Stacks and the "resleeving" of consciousness with respect to revolutionary efforts. She proclaimed that the rebellion would prevail so long as its followers were patient - 20 years or 200 years, the difference being insignificant in the face of immortality.
"Technology has given us access to time scales of life our ancestors could only dream of. We must be prepared to use that time scale, to live on that time scale, if we are to realize our own dreams."
Near the end of the Unsettlement, Quell vanished following an attempt to escape from an overwhelming Protectorate force. She was last seen fleeing in a stripped-down jetcopter with her pilot, in the hope that the orbitals would ignore something so primitive. It is assumed shot down by the orbitals, although theories of her survival are rampant.