Ethan Stone is a web site operator.
Stone - and that was how he was invariably addressed, not Ethan or Mr. Stone, just Stone - served a good number of years in the military, seeing things that would disturb any decent person. When he left the service he needed something drastically different, something that would allow a "deep cleanse of his mind". He found that in two things.
The first was a Professorship of Peace Studies at West Fleet University although he was honest enough with himself to chuckle at the idea. He hardly considered himself professor material and his study was not so much about peace as it was "a personal war against the arms industry".
The second was a web site he created and maintained called NotFutile.com, established to expose the actions and sometimes motives of the global arms industry. It quickly gathered a cult following and became the hub of anonymously leaking information.
It was the second that brought about the first, really, because the fandom especially among the younger adults, that running the site created gave him a reputation that prompted the Vice Chancellor of the small college to offer him a position in the hopes that it would attract more prospective students to the campus and it decidedly did just that. His very handsome features atop a physique that still retained its military honed state made him attractive enough to adorn the school's newspaper frequently and his teaching of pacifism and non-violence resonated with the students.
Stone's history is an impressive one with a year at Cambridge at 17 studying Maths followed by a second year specializing in Far Eastern languages. Instead of continuing his education, though, he abruptly joined the Army and went into the hardest division they had, the Parachute Regiment. After a year there he went one huge step up in severity by applying to the SAS and getting accepted with high marks. For over half a decade he served with distinction.
Then came Kosovo and the unfortunate mission attached with a band of rebels less interested in freedom than in mayhem. Despite his strongest efforts to rein in their violent tendencies, some went rogue and when innocent civilians were massacred by one commander, Stone found and killed the man to keep others from dying. For the sake of the Service and to keep a very unpleasant truth from being learned, Stone was "allowed" to resign.
Sick of the carnage and worried he might have learned to like it a bit too much, Stone took the other road and worked to become a "peacenik". He became good at it. He knew, though, that should he have to stop being a pacifist, he still remembered how to fight.