Franz Herschel

Franz Herschel is the primary antagonist of Front Mission 2. Having supplied the Revolutionary Army with the weapons they need to undertake a coup and utilize the FENRIR Project as a means of annihilating the OCU with nuclear weapons.

History
Franz was born in 2020 and was once a prominent executive in an EC Germany based wanzer maker named INTEGEHREN. Sometime in the 2090s an OCU Colonel named Pan Chang-Jang reached out to the company with a proposal: create an AI capable of piloting wanzers and conducting ground warfare without any humans and controlling a nuclear arsenal. This became project FENRIR; an orbital weapons satellite and a factory privately built inside OCU Aldoresh producing unmanned wanzers. INTEGEHREN received great investment from the OCU and Franz was pleased with the project. By 2094 however, the OCU suddenly withdrew support for the project due to the first Alordesh coup driving the corporation to bankruptcy. Herschel was infuriated and broken, having his life destroyed by the company's closing.

At this point Morgan Bernard reached out to Herschel and offered him a chance at revenge; the Grimnir transported Herschel to the abandoned factory in Alordesh and provided him a skeleton crew consisting of Glen Duval, Royd Clive, and Ryuji Sakata. From there Herschel made wanzers and weapons for Ven Mackarge's Revolutionary Army and in 2102 they began the Second Alordesh Coup D'etat against the Oceania Cooperative Union. Herschel used the conflict as a cover to then start building an army of unmanned wanzers for use by the still operational FENRIR Satellite. Pan Chang-Jang caught wind of this, realizing if Herschel or the Grimnir were discovered his sympathies to the organization would be revealed. To prevent this he dispatched Lisa Stanley and Sayuri Mitsuzuka to confirm FENRIR's activation and the Black Geese to assassinate anyone related or aware of the Grimnir's plot or FENRIR(Including Lisa and Sayuri, whom are only saved as per the efforts of Pike A. Reischauer who was already investigating Pang's actions). Herschel activated his army once the Black Geese killed Ven Mackarge knowing he was in danger. Meanwhile Walter Feng and the Strike Wyverns pursued Glen to Alordesh and fully intended to destroy any Grimnir presence. As OCU and USN forces closed in on the factory Herschel activated FENRIR and aimed it's nuclear missiles at each of the worlds super-conglomerates with the intent of accomplishing the Grimnir's ultimate mission. Ash and company raced against time, killing Royd, Ryuji, and ultimately Herschel himself before destroying the FENRIR AI Core, the factory itself, and deactivating the Satellite, causing it to later crash and eliminating the last trace of Integeheren in the world.