Rohan
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Rohan is a character who serves as one of the protagonists of the 2025 IDW Publishing ongoing comic series Starship Godzilla. As captain of the S.S. Mechagodzilla, Rohan leads his band of spacefaring mercenaries on dangerous missions across the galaxy.
Personality
A mercenary of dubious character, Rohan is hardheaded and pragmatic. When a baby kaiju began wreaking havoc aboard the ship, Rohan decided it would be best to kill it, albeit with some apparent remorse, rather than give it a chance to prove that it wasn't actually hostile as Ayan suspected. More significantly, he has openly chosen to work for the Xilien Empire despite their hostile takeover of the galaxy and enslavement of kaiju, concealing his association with them from the rest of his crew by any means necessary. However, he later revealed his guilt to Ayan over this arrangement after she discovered this, admitting that he despised the Xiliens, but felt unable to protect his ship and his crew without their financial support.
Though generally unscrupulous and deceitful, Rohan has demonstrated noble attributes on multiple occasions. Notably, when the Xilien mining town was collapsing during Gamagera's rampage, he ordered all of the town's residents to board his ship to evacuate them. He similarly rescued Frey and her fellow anti-Xilien rebels at Ayan's urging despite his fear of being caught by the Xiliens. As a whole, he often tries to take care of his crew and do what he believes is best for them, though it is precisely for this reason that he has chosen to work for the Xilien Empire.
History
- Starship Godzilla #1–6 (2025–2026)
Starship Godzilla
"Chapter One: Comet Salt"
Captain Rohan and his first mate, Ayan, carried out a daring heist to acquire an unknown package for an enigmatic client. As Rohan was cornered by alien adversaries, Ayan arrived to help him subdue their foes before locating the package, which they discovered to be rare kaiju eggs in an incubator. After an alarm was triggered, Rohan and Ayan fled to their rendezvous point with the latter having strapped the incubator to her back. Though they found themselves surrounded, their vessel, the S.S. Mechagodzilla, arrived shortly thereafter, saving their lives.
Sometime later, as the ship flew through space, Ayan sheepishly informed Rohan that she had accidentally left the incubator door open to allow the ship's cat, Ralphy, to get closer to the warmth, during which time one of the eggs hatched and escaped the incubator. Rohan subsequently placed the vessel on lockdown as he, Ayan, and the Simian Lif attempted to locate the kaiju hatchling. While arguing over what to do with their target once they found it, the baby kaiju dropped down before them and sprayed a stream of acid from its tail that Rohan barely avoided, only for the acid to pierce the hull of the ship. Fortunately, Ilsa remotely sealed the breach from the flight deck, narrowly preventing Rohan and the others from being sucked into space. The creature escaped once again due to Ayan's intervention, as she became determined to spare it from the others' wrath.
Despite Ayan's insistence that the creature was merely scared, Rohan ultimately sided with Lif and believed that the monster posed too great a risk to the ship to be left alive as they descended an elevator to the ship's lower levels. After Ilsa informed them that the creature had breached the flight deck, Ayan stopped the elevator and raced through the bowels of the ship to beat Rohan and Lif to it. By the time Rohan and Lif arrived to the cockpit, Ayan had already pacified it before smugly telling them she had been right about its true benevolent nature. In the aftermath, Rohan shared a drink with Ilsa before the latter informed him that she had deduced the identity of his buyer. Despite sharing Rohan's concern that they shouldn't tell Ayan, Rohan nevertheless silently drew his weapon on the unsuspecting Ilsa and pulled the trigger.
Starship Godzilla #2
After crash-landing on a gambling planet, Rohan met with Gen, Ayan's grandmother and true owner of the S.S. Mechagodzilla. Rohan detailed the repairs they needed to make, at which point Gen told him she would locate the parts they needed if he placed bets for her on a high-stakes game called fishing, which revolved around attracting kaiju to the planet. While Rohan's bets did not go his way, the game soon attracted the attention of King Ghidorah, a particularly powerful kaiju. After Ayan sent a distress call to Rohan to inform him that she was being targeted by the three-headed dragon while seeking parts for the ship, Rohan ordered Lif to create a distraction, prompting the Simian to start a fight with another gambler, allowing Rohan to breach the control station and fire a projectile at King Ghidorah to lure it away. With the parts gathered successfully, the crew repaired the ship and departed the planet without further incident.
Later, Rohan contacted his client, deferentially apologizing for the delay. His client merely informed him that she was waiting.
"Chapter Three: First Date"
On an Xilien-controlled mining planet, Rohan argued with Ayan as he prepared to deliver the kaiju eggs to their client, as Ayan believed something was amiss. Rohan, however, shut her down and ordered her and the rest of the crew not to leave the ship before he departed. Rohan traveled through the town with the incubator, eventually turning down an alleyway and meeting with Xilien patrollers who led him to meet with Admiral Elvira, his client. Elvira promptly had her men pay Rohan for the kaiju eggs to conclude their business, briefly reminiscing over their childhood friendship in which she claimed that Rohan used to follow her everywhere. Rohan confessed that he hardly recognized the town and expressed concern over the Xilien mining operations destabilizing it, but Elvira dismissed him and shared more details of their operation, telling him that their progress was due to captive kaiju Gamagera.
Unbeknownst to Rohan, Ayan had discovered and freed the captive kaiju in question, which began wreaking havoc on the mines and threatening to destroy the town. Rohan fled in the chaos and called Gen for extraction. As he arrived, he ordered the townsfolk to board the vessel for evacuation before boarding himself, narrowly making it on the ship before Gamagera arrived and engaged Mechagodzilla. After a brief bout, the ship left the planet once Ayan snuck back onboard, who asked her grandmother not to tell Rohan that she snuck out.
"Chapter Four: Return of the King, Part One"
On the mushroom moon of Nitrus 5, Rohan and Gen were working on ship repairs when Mechagodzilla abruptly took flight and flew off into space. The two raced to the bridge to find that Ayan was responsible for commandeering their ship and promptly reprimanded her. Ayan explained that she was responding to a distress call from Frey, an anti-Xilien rebel she met on the mining planet who was in the midst of trying to prevent the Xiliens from capturing another kaiju. Rohan balked at Ayan's efforts to interfere with the Xilien Empire's operations, though Ayan bluntly informed him it was too late to stay out of it as they exited hyperspace. They found themselves thrust into a great battle between Xilien and rebel forces, with the Xilien's target, SpaceGodzilla, in the middle of the fight attacking all parties. Rohan attempted to wrestle Ayan away from the controls to keep them away from the action, narrowly dodging SpaceGodzilla's beam, only for the blast to strike Frey's ship. Ayan pleaded with Rohan to rescue them, at which point he finally relented, unwilling to allow the crew to perish while he stood idly by, though he urged them to move quickly so they would not be spotted by the Xiliens.
Once all of the rebels were safely aboard, Mechagodzilla speedily and discreetly retreated to Tama 7's crystal desert, the location of the rebel's base. Once they touched down, Rohan ordered all of the rebels to leave his ship immediately, eager to get off the planet in case the Xiliens found it. After Gen realized Ayan left the ship with Frey, Rohan urgently searched the base for her to no avail, only to return to the ship just after Ayan discovered that they had stolen the kaiju eggs from Frey and the rebels who were seeking to keep them out of Xilien hands. Ayan warned her grandmother that Rohan was working for the Xiliens, only to realize too late that Rohan had snuck up on her from behind. As Gen warned Rohan that Ayan now knew the truth, Rohan reluctantly drew his blaster and fired.
"Chapter Five: Return of the King, Part Two"
Ayan later awoke unharmed, as Rohan's shot was only a stun. After she attacked Lif and fled into the bowels of the ship, Rohan contacted her and apologized for his actions, revealing that he had also previously stunned Ilsa after she similarly discovered the truth about his employers and sent her away in an escape pod with cash in a bid to keep her safe. Ayan subsequently discovered that Mechagodzilla had been intercepted and forcibly boarded by Xilien forces after they left Tama 7. As the Xiliens searched for her, Ayan berated Rohan and Gen for their betrayal and took the controls of the ship, attempting to fly off despite the Xilien restraints around their ship. Rohan pleaded with her not to make things worse than they already were, but Ayan refused to even consider negotiating with the "evil" Xiliens. Rohan and Gen confessed their guilt over working with the Xiliens, well aware it was wrong, but needed the funds that only the Xiliens could pay in order to protect their ship and its crew. Ayan remained unmoved and attempted to flee, only for Mechagodzilla to be ambushed by SpaceGodzilla, now under Xilien control.
Ayan was quickly captured and brought before Admiral Elvira on her vessel alongside Rohan, Gen, and Lif. Elvira then offered them enough cash to keep their ship running for years to come, causing the incredulous Rohan and Gen to question the offer. Elvira revealed it was her thanks for their help in allowing her to locate the rebel base, having followed an energy signature SpaceGodzilla left on Mechagodzilla after they rescued Frey and her crewmates. Rohan remained quiet after an Xilien guard shot Ayan in the arm for lunging at Elvira before meekly accepting her payment to prevent further bloodshed. The Mechagodzilla crew was then allowed to return to their vessel before the Xilien fleet departed for Tama 7. As Gen cauterized Ayan's wound, Ayan maintained her desire to fight back. Lif surprisingly sided with Ayan, admitting that he did not want the blood of all those rebels on his hands. The reluctant Gen warned her that if they crossed the Xiliens again, they would forever remain enemies of the Xilien Empire and would be on the run for the rest of their lives, but Ayan remained resolute, ultimately convincing Gen and Lif to stand with her. Ayan then pleaded with Rohan to join them, asking if he was willing to stomach letting hundreds if not thousands of rebels die on Tama 7 under his watch. Rohan quietly contemplated his next decision.
Gallery
Concept art
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Character sheet by Oliver Ono
Trivia
- Though Rohan appears human, series editor Jake Williams clarified that none of the cast of the series are from Earth, instead describing them as being merely "human-appearing".[1]
References
This is a list of references for Rohan. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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