Imperious Leader (TOS-RH)

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Imperious Leader was a three-brained Cylon who served as the supreme commander of the traditional Cylon Empire. A complex and calculating being, Imperious Leader operated through cold logic while pursuing the extermination of humanity, though his interactions with Baltar led to unexpected changes in his consciousness.

Biography

Rise to Power

Imperious Leader held his position through a system unique to the Cylon hierarchy. Each Imperious Leader had a specific reign equivalent to three-quarters of a century in human terms, though Cylons did not recognize the passage of time in linear terms. Each Imperious Leader personally chose his own successor, as they were the only Cylons possessing a third brain.

The process by which a two-brained Cylon was selected for transformation to three-brained status was methodical and deliberately complicated, representing the most closely guarded secret of the Cylon Empire.

The Cylon Civil War

Imperious Leader's reign was challenged when a damaged genetic program destroyed the Iblis programming in certain two-brained Cylons, leading to the emergence of a revolutionary movement that rejected the hybrid nature of traditional Cylons. These revolutionaries created their own three-brained leader, Alpha Leader, marking the first time in Cylon history that two three-brained Cylons existed simultaneously.

Imperious Leader experienced frustration and anger when he realized the unprecedented nature of this challenge. The civil war that followed devastated the Cylon homeworld and reduced Imperious Leader's once-vast empire to a mere handful of followers.

Despite his defeat, Imperious Leader retained his title and continued to command his remaining forces. He refused to panic even as the civil war went against him, demonstrating that no plan in the universe would inspire irrational decisions from any of his three pulsating brains. His approach remained methodical: if a plan failed, he simply abandoned it and developed a new strategy.

Some enemies sarcastically referred to him as "Omega Leader," signifying their belief that he would be the last of his kind.

Relationship with Baltar

Imperious Leader developed an unusually complex relationship with the human traitor Baltar. When Alpha Leader's forces were defeated at Paradis through Baltar's actions, Imperious Leader experienced something close to an emotion in his three cold brains. He found himself wishing he could speak with Baltar, realizing he actually missed the human's company.

Baltar possessed what Imperious Leader called "a certain flair—an original way of sizing up problems and a happy propensity of sharing his insights with anyone willing to listen." The Cylon leader considered it "a crime to remove such a valuable resource from the spacetime continuum."

During their interactions, Baltar explained human concepts like empathy to Imperious Leader, who hung on every word despite not fully understanding the emotional constructs being described. Baltar taught him that humans "laugh and cry for the same reason—they remember experiences, their own or other people's, then project possible outcomes from rearranging those memories."

Imperious Leader experienced new sensations that his complex triad of brains had no room for—the impossible breathed itself to life as he felt the ragged edges of internal change. He concluded that contact with Baltar must have altered his consciousness, though he rejected this conclusion even as he recognized its truth. The mere thought that a contemporary human could influence the leader of what Alpha Leader's forces termed "impure Cylons" would be a propaganda weapon against him, causing him to shudder at the deepest metaphysical level.

Strategic Philosophy

Imperious Leader believed firmly in the philosophy established by Count Iblis: that a true Master Race must be drawn from the best elements available. He held that the necessity of combining disparate elements applied even to conflicts between the technological and organic—machines alone were "articulated stones," while flesh alone was "weak and powerless, only fit to bleed and weep." Together, flesh and metal became stronger, just as human and reptilian DNA combined to become more than their constituent parts.

He recognized that Alpha Leader's forces, driven by the single emotion of hatred, lacked the strategic patience of his own logic-based approach. Imperious Leader analyzed that the reptilian Cylons' headlong rush tactics represented a fundamental weakness, as an enraged opponent lacked patience. He believed that the original Cylon approach of cold, remorseless logic remained superior—exterminating the human race was "simply a job," uncontaminated by hatred or other irrelevant emotions.

Never did he panic, even in defeat, and he experienced the emotion of hope without recognizing it as such.

Pursuit of Understanding

Victory over the Colonials was not enough for Imperious Leader—his three-lobed brain demanded complete understanding of the human enemy. Conflicts among the Cylons forced him to consider a wider range of thought categories than had once seemed optimal.

Human imperfection no longer outraged his delicate sensibilities; instead, the very flaws of the human enemy provided an endless source of fascination. He began contemplating dangerous thoughts: Could there be an entirely different kind of perfection? Was it remotely possible that imperfection at certain moments could itself be a kind of perfection?

Despite his cold and emotionless nature, Imperious Leader possessed a full and rich memory—a quality he shared with Baltar and all the Colonials. For such a mind to have the capacity of drawing on past experience without ever developing genuine feelings was what he recognized as "a cruel irony," as memory enrichment was typically the process by which intelligent living beings developed.

Later Development

Following the Paradis incident, Imperious Leader relocated to a new quadrant. When the deceased Baltar's consciousness encountered him in this new location, the Cylon leader had acquired a fourth brain, which caused him considerable pain. Without looking up from his unimaginable headache, he greeted Baltar with the ominous words: "Welcome back, Baltar. Thanks to your invaluable contribution, we can finish what we started."

Physical Appearance and Environment

Imperious Leader inhabited a dark chamber located at the end of a dark corridor in the exact center of his basestar. The chamber featured a tall platform that stood nine steps high, with the seat of power at its center from which he oversaw all things.

The sides of the pedestal were marked and studded with hundreds of sharp points that seemed to cut the very light they reflected. Torches burned in braziers in the corners of the room, throwing off fitful light and dancing shadows. His chair could rotate to face visitors, and his red eyes burned like embers through the darkness.

On the planet Cylon, Imperious Leader occupied the chamber furthest from the murky surface below in the tallest of the metallic spires. There, he sat upon a broad chair of stone and metal on a dais raised sixteen steps above the chamber floor. He wore long robes to cover the dark, green-black scales beneath and bathed regularly to minimize the brackish smell of his own flesh.

Black tentacles snaked down from the ceiling of his throne room, and he could communicate with a swirling, oily black maelstrom that floated in the air—a manifestation of Count Iblis.

Mental Capabilities

Imperious Leader's three brains served distinct functions. The first brain served as the body's guidance system, ensuring efficiency of task. The second brain contained necessary skills for Cylon officers, including analyzing and interpreting facts. The third brain, unique to Imperious Leaders, allowed him to elevate above mundane matters of fact and deal in abstracts.

According to Cylon belief, the third brain granted the capacity for limitless knowledge, though in practice this proved more aspirational than actual. Nevertheless, Imperious Leader's computational abilities far exceeded those of lesser Cylons, allowing him to run statistics and calculate probabilities with extraordinary precision.

His three-lobed brain constantly processed information, seeking to understand the senseless aspects of human behavior that both fascinated and frustrated him.

Personality and Psychology

Despite claiming to operate purely through logic, Imperious Leader exhibited what could be interpreted as emotional responses. He experienced something approaching satisfaction when learning of Alpha Leader's defeat at Paradis. He knew frustration and anger when realizing the unprecedented challenge posed by Alpha Leader's existence. Most notably, he felt what might be described as loneliness or loss after Baltar's death, missing their conversations.

He possessed what humans would recognize as arrogance, insisting that his followers address him appropriately even when reduced to commanding only a handful of forces. His voice could produce laughter, though this sound was rarely heard among the cold-blooded Cylon race.

Imperious Leader recognized his own superiority over all other Cylons as simply a fact, comparable to his assessment of Baltar's superiority over most humans. This clinical self-awareness extended to his understanding of power: unity only mattered in a superior brain that guided all aspects of an Empire into an unstoppable juggernaut, and such a mind justified itself through power alone.

Relationship with Count Iblis

Imperious Leader maintained contact with Count Iblis, who could manifest as a swirling black maelstrom in his chamber. He occasionally wondered why Iblis had not contacted the Cylons, and sometimes decided this was "not necessarily a bad thing."

He believed it was time for the Cylons to go their own way, free of Iblis's meddling and interference, writing their destiny "in flame and blood across the stars." His third brain moved in abstracts as he considered this challenge, and he suspected the answer might be simpler than anyone thought.

Yet Iblis could appear in Imperious Leader's dream communications with Baltar, reinforcing the Cylon philosophy and defending their "perfect morality."

Strategic Goals

Imperious Leader's overarching goal remained the complete extermination of humanity, a mission inherited from Count Iblis. The existence of the Colonials provided a constant reminder that all breeds of Cylons owed their existence to human intervention in the evolutionary process.

He desired not merely to destroy the Colonial fleet but to find them when they reached Earth, using them to lead the Cylons to humanity's legendary homeworld and the Thirteenth Tribe. This strategy demonstrated his patient, long-term approach to problem-solving.

Imperious Leader also sought victory over Alpha Leader's reptilian Cylon faction, recognizing that their hatred-driven approach, while emotionally intense, lacked the strategic sophistication of his logical methods.

Command Structure

Imperious Leader commanded through a hierarchical system with cogitators like Lucifer serving as his chief advisors and Centurions as his warrior class. He maintained strict protocols, requiring formal petition from visitors with the traditional phrase "By your command."

He granted certain privileges to favored cogitators, allowing Lucifer freedom of movement aboard his basestar while restricting other cogitators and all Centurions unless specifically summoned.

Imperious Leader sometimes demonstrated omniscient knowledge that surprised even his closest advisors, such as knowing the location of the Colonial fleet without sharing how he obtained this information. He warned Lucifer that "some things, it is better not to know," demonstrating his understanding of the psychological value of maintaining mystery around his capabilities.