Developing That Protagonist: Lacann Pell

I'd been tinkering here and there with that story fragment I posted two weeks ago. Here's a bit I did about the character I featured:

Lacann Pell is a man from a frontier world with mandatory military service for all men. He's 38 years old at of this story, and spent most of the last 25 years as a solider specialized as a scout and infiltrator. He has some experience in covert operations and diplomatic missions, mostly to support or suppress insurrections. Most of the men he entered service with died in the last war, a galaxy-wide conflict that's resulted in the known galaxy falling under the rule of a usurper tyrant, and his world backed the losing side.

He's on this mission because elements within the winning side already plot rebellion against the usurper, so this is meant to be a mission to garner assistance to that end. Some of his countrymen, seeking to curry favor with the usurper, have already disavowed Lacann and his surviving brothers-in-arms (now scattered and dispossessed). This disavowal threatens his family, especially his wife, and he lacks the means to protect them on his own; in return for his part in this mission, the senator he's working with will aid him in saving his family from his enemies at home.

He's a fit adult man, standing about six feet tall and classically Greek in his mien: think black hair, shoulder-length and tied back in the field; eyes black as his hair. He speaks laconically, preferring to keep silent unless necessary, and efficient when he does speak- this is the sole tell of his education. His long years in military service and martial training forged in him a degree of emotional control that's kept him alive when others died, a fact not lost on those familiar with him.

His skills include one traditional boyhood sport: slinging. He keeps a homemade sling wrapped around his body somewhere whenever dressed, and when he's home he teaches slinging to the boys in his village.

Quote: If.

I have a habit of naming characters in a manner that reminds me of the core traits, a shorthand, and this is no exception. Lacann's now got a motivation for doing this thing and seeing it through. Complicating this? Not hard, but "Hostiles intercept Lacann's scouting mission." is a bit on the nose, and so I think we can do better than that.

That's what the deuteragonist can do: complicate this good and proper. Next week.