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Entry tags:
INITIATIVE NPC APPLICATION
» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Your name or your nickname, or what you would prefer to be called.
Current AGE: If you would like to disclose; this is optional.
Player TIME ZONE: So that other players will know when they can contact you, if you'd like to provide it!
Personal JOURNAL: Your personal Dreamwidth journal.
IM & SERVICE: Your preferred instant messaging service and your username.
Player PLURK: Your plurk account, if you would like to provide it.
Current CHARACTERS: Any characters that you already have in-game.
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Your character's name.
Character JOB: Their job and duties within the Initiative. You may find a list of job options, as well as a post for setting-based questions about playing an NPC, shaping their character, or anything else you may need to know, right here.
Character HISTORY: This does not have to be a full biography! This is the section where you prove to us that you're informed enough of the setting to be able to play a character from it. We're looking for a combination of the important events of this character's life (such as what led them to learn about and then work for the Initiative, their feelings regarding their practices, mission, and the Transports, etc), and a natural weaving-in of Exsilium's setting. This is not meant to be a test, and if you have any questions about the setting, we are happy to help you better understand it on this page! This is the most important section for an NPC app, and the one we're paying the closest attention to.
Character PERSONALITY: This does not have to be as detailed as what we look for in canon and original character apps, and so we have lowered the minimum paragraph count to 2. We are still looking for fully realized and realistic characters, and you are welcome to write over 2 paragraphs if you'd like, but the emphasis of this application is on understanding of the setting.
» SAMPLES
First PERSON or Third PERSON: You may provide both First and Third person samples if you feel it demonstrates a better feel for this character's voice, but only one or the other is required. We are looking for a unique character voice here, and it is up to you whether you would like that to be descriptive prose, or a Network-style announcement or broadcast. It is also acceptable to provide First Person as a private log or diary style entry, which wouldn't be intended for other characters to see or respond to.
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
Anything else you feel is necessary.
Here is the form with HTML, in case you'd like to post it in a journal entry:
PLEASE POST YOUR APPLICATION TO THIS PAGE IN ITS ENTIRETY, NOT AS A LINK.
APPLY ・ ARRIVAL ・ CALENDAR ・ CANON UPDATES ・ CHARACTER CONTACT ・ DIRECTORY ・ DROP&HIATUS
FAQ ・ GAME CHANGES ・ HOUSING ・ JOBS WITHIN EXSILIUM ・ LOCATIONS ・ MISSION REQUESTS ・ MISSION SUGGESTIONS
MODERATORS ・ PLAYER CONTACT ・ RESERVE ・ RULES ・ SUGGEST ・ TAKEN ・ WORLD INFO ・ WORLD HISTORY
Player NAME: Your name or your nickname, or what you would prefer to be called.
Current AGE: If you would like to disclose; this is optional.
Player TIME ZONE: So that other players will know when they can contact you, if you'd like to provide it!
Personal JOURNAL: Your personal Dreamwidth journal.
IM & SERVICE: Your preferred instant messaging service and your username.
Player PLURK: Your plurk account, if you would like to provide it.
Current CHARACTERS: Any characters that you already have in-game.
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Your character's name.
Character JOB: Their job and duties within the Initiative. You may find a list of job options, as well as a post for setting-based questions about playing an NPC, shaping their character, or anything else you may need to know, right here.
Character HISTORY: This does not have to be a full biography! This is the section where you prove to us that you're informed enough of the setting to be able to play a character from it. We're looking for a combination of the important events of this character's life (such as what led them to learn about and then work for the Initiative, their feelings regarding their practices, mission, and the Transports, etc), and a natural weaving-in of Exsilium's setting. This is not meant to be a test, and if you have any questions about the setting, we are happy to help you better understand it on this page! This is the most important section for an NPC app, and the one we're paying the closest attention to.
Character PERSONALITY: This does not have to be as detailed as what we look for in canon and original character apps, and so we have lowered the minimum paragraph count to 2. We are still looking for fully realized and realistic characters, and you are welcome to write over 2 paragraphs if you'd like, but the emphasis of this application is on understanding of the setting.
» SAMPLES
First PERSON or Third PERSON: You may provide both First and Third person samples if you feel it demonstrates a better feel for this character's voice, but only one or the other is required. We are looking for a unique character voice here, and it is up to you whether you would like that to be descriptive prose, or a Network-style announcement or broadcast. It is also acceptable to provide First Person as a private log or diary style entry, which wouldn't be intended for other characters to see or respond to.
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
Anything else you feel is necessary.
PLEASE POST YOUR APPLICATION TO THIS PAGE IN ITS ENTIRETY, NOT AS A LINK.
FAQ ・ GAME CHANGES ・ HOUSING ・ JOBS WITHIN EXSILIUM ・ LOCATIONS ・ MISSION REQUESTS ・ MISSION SUGGESTIONS
MODERATORS ・ PLAYER CONTACT ・ RESERVE ・ RULES ・ SUGGEST ・ TAKEN ・ WORLD INFO ・ WORLD HISTORY
no subject
Player NAME: Nishi
Current AGE: Old as balls
Player TIME ZONE: US MST
Personal JOURNAL: thegame
IM & SERVICE: Gtalk and yournewoverlord
Player PLURK: YourOverlord
Current CHARACTERS: Rosette Christopher
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Vennett
Character JOB: Temporal Programmer, or as he calls it "translatin' whimsical bullshit into something useful."
Character HISTORY: Vennett is a third generation Exile, and grew up listening to his grandmother's vehemence, a complicated thing half filled with longing to return and utter enmity for being cast out of the UE in the first place. His parents both worked in masonry, a steady job with more hard work than profit, so meals were generally more sparse than sporadic.
With no education, no direction and no urge to simply resign himself to what the future seemed to be, his younger years were filled with a pointless, targetless anger. The most he tends to ever speak about it these days is that he isn't proud of a lot of what he did. In his later teens, he found profit and some personal interest in scavenging the remnants of civilization in the form of old electronics and mechanical parts. First in the city itself, then further and further out, venturing to the less settled areas where other scavengers were harder, and more desperate.
When they had the luxury of doing so, he liked to puzzle out not only what their gains did, but how they worked, though he had little talent or know how in refurbishing and repair (They were too valuable to risk playing around with, anyway.) To him, it was like looking into another, almost foreign world of mystical convenience and naivete. Science fiction found by staring at in the past.
His life made a dramatic turn around when he met soon to be wife, an Initiative liaison who worked with junkers, scrappers and scavengers for salvageable parts (while a great deal of the true prizes, technology wise, are stolen from the UE, working with what can be found and bought here when possible is far less expensive in resources and lives.) It was rough and tumble romance starting with neither of them liking or trusting each other, and ending with falling sloppily, stupidly in love.
Even with that, he didn't really buy the practicality of what she was doing, and it took some time and convincing for him to take a job with them. He originally signed up to be an operative, doing what he did now in other times and places, but his aptitude scored ridiculously high in abstract concepts and detail oriented perception.
He was pulled into one of the focused education programs and after a lot of grousing and bitching, even he finally admitted that he maybe kind of even liked it. Working with eccentric loonies, crackpot radicals and suits clinging desperately to the cold comfort and PROCESS aside, there was something he really loved about taking a vague concept, almost nonsense in its making, and pinning it down into something real, practical and useful. It was a bit like hardcoding philosophy, and he's prone to break into happy rants about the intricacies of his job.
And he IS phenomenal at his job. Habits that he's adopted in setting up the background of missions have become the policies for other programmers. He treats every scenario as not so much a set of coordinates, but like a potential battlefield, using the data from the time specialist to work out where, how many and who from the when. Not to mention, there's not a great chance of success if some poor mook gets transported INTO a wall.
He leaves behind his wife and his three year old daughter to join the mission, at his wife's 'strong' insistence.
Character PERSONALITY: With crude and coarse vocabulary and a square-faced, thick build, Vennett looks like, sounds like, and acts like a thug or a bruiser. He's never bothered with any more education than he strictly needed for his job, and he's honestly never liked or trusted other people, so a job working away from them was fine by him. He especially resents the Transports, hating the fact they can't do it themselves (and that it's not him doing it). That these privileged, powerful people are the ones that they pour ridiculous resources into their 'fancy' living. As such, he will be very slow to trust, and extremely snappish at disrespect.
Those walls around him aren't as strong or impenetrable as they look, and he grudgingly starts to warm up to anyone who he simply deals with on a regular basis. His assistants often found that asking about his daughter was the fastest way to get a bright mood out of him, as he'll tell stories about her arranging play blocks like she's the next world engineer, and bound to open up the next wonders of their time. The same goes with him explaining the intricacies of a mission, he comes most alive in the planning phase, when everything about it is almost a war game with a slice of calculating the planet's tilt at that particular moment.
At the moon base, it will be a far more focused fire. He brought only two changes of clothes and a framed photo. Hardly anything to live on, but instead: schematics, reams and reams of paper, information and accounts of events, video feeds and players and scratch paper, but also one of the greatest prizes of his youthful adventures - a coffee machine and a precious, if small to moderate supply of ground coffee beans. It will be very difficult to ever catch him A. Sleeping. B. Without toxically strong coffee.
He's more than willing to give any asshole attempting to steal his coffee a black eye. He doesn't give a damn who you are.
» SAMPLES
Third PERSON:
When Vennett came home that evening, two things boded terribly. The first, was that his daughter, Julia wasn't in sight, the second was that Leslie was sitting at the table, facing the door he came in through with a certain ice-cool composure. He squared his shoulders and closed the door behind him. He knew these grounds, he's waged this battle before, but this time, he knew what the first shot was going to be over. Wretchedly enough, it didn't make him feel any more confident about winning.
"Hey… what's with the frost, love?" Vennett lifted both of his hands, pulling his up as wide of a grin as he could manage under the circumstances.
"I hear you were offered the post for the operation." She folded her hands, one over the other, a deliberate, graceful movement, like a queen's.
"That were classified."
"It certainly was." He didn't have an answer to that. She continued on, regardless. "You turned it down."
"I did." He answered, throat suddenly feeling dry. She didn't comment, merely stared at him, almost blandly. There was a focused anger in her face, lined it with a severity he hadn't seen in years. "Look, I've run it through and run it through. It ain't chances in ten, it ain't chances in hundreds, but there's millions of 'em, different possibilities, factors, variables.. refinin' that's what gonna take months. There's no smart shot here, Les. It'd be different like if it was."
"So you're giving up?" Her hands clenched on the table. "Just like that?"
"That's slag an y'know it! I'm t'leave you both here and go sit on some rusted can onna rock and hope wild fucking shots in the dark by some outworld freaks make something better an' not piss all worse?" He'd always found anger easier than misery, and his temper was quick to turn to it. "I'd just rather-" Be here tonight. He rubbed at his face, frustrated beyond words as she cut him off.
"Rather just turn tail, hide and hope that if someone else messes it up, you'll never know about it!" She yelled back. She was a tiny woman, slight and fair skinned. But when she got red like that, for all of his size, he found himself stepping back, wincing at the words.
"It's not-"
"You've always wanted to go play hero with it! Been sick with it! Now here's a whole city! A whole cause to save and you turned it down?!"
"Les! I-"
"Get out!" She planted her hands on his chest, and shoved with all of her might. "I don't care where you hide from what's going on! But it won't be in my house!"
"LES! Listen!"
"GET OUT!" It was almost a wail, the grief in it followed by her throwing the nearest thing- a manual, at him. He ducked and stepped back for the door as she put her hands on a stool, and rushed through it as she lifted it.
She slammed it hard in his wake.
He stood there, numb and a bit shaken, the words she'd thrown at him hit hard enough to bleed, and worse, he couldn't find any way to deny them. If there was a way.. even if they wouldn't even remember doing it… He wasn't going to have this last memory be a fight.
"Lessy…" He said to the door, forehead resting against the cheap particle board. He didn't try the knob. He knew better. "Les… I'd need m'things, right. Borrow the brewer, maybe."
Moments passed, enough for him to worry she wasn't going to answer. That that really was it.
The door swung open with some force, Leslie standing there with the same storm on her face, tears streaking it. "Don't. Say. A. Word." She warned, biting off consonants as she spoke. She disappeared back into the apartment, returning with a packed suitcase - presumably done earlier - and pushed it into his hands. Her expression softens, a moment. She gets up on tiptoes, and grabs him by the neck, pulling him down to kiss her. "You can argue with me tomorrow."
"And Julia…"
Finally, Leslie smiled, "You know her, if you keep her up, she can sleep through anything." She was crying again. He has no idea how he wasn't, as her voice choked up. The shove, this time, was gentle. "Get going."
He did, feeling like everything but a hero.
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
The accent is bullshit, made up and not based on anything. I figure it's far enough into the future to hodgepodge new dialects. If this doesn't work or it's too heavy, let me know and I'll revise it.
ACCEPTED
➥ HOVER OVER the globes to join the communities: ➥ FILL OUT the forms on these pages, with canon listed as NPC: ➥CHECK HERE for your character's housing assignment.
➥REPLY TO THIS COMMENT with your NPC journal to be granted access, and then—
➥CHECK HERE for NPC information.
as i keep editing this...
Player NAME: Jean
Current AGE: 21
Player TIME ZONE: EST
Personal JOURNAL: vendingmachine
IM & SERVICE: AIM: vendingmachinedd
Player PLURK: cakejustice
Current CHARACTERS: Sollux Captor
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Lowell Orwin
Character JOB: As Temporal Engineer, he'd be the one in charge of the Transporter's hardware, making sure it runs properly and probably being That Guy Who Pushes The Button when people are going out on missions.
Character HISTORY: Lowell was born in England twenty five years ago, or well, Exsillium as it is now. His family originally descended (some 300 or so years ago) from Scotland, but were exiled to Exsilium in the year 3012. They were the lucky ones. The Orwin family, during the initial rebellion, had split in two directions. Lowell's great-great-great parents had chosen to accept being exiled to Exsilium for the sake of preserving their lives. The rest… well. "They may take out lives, but they'll never take our freedom" is a cliched, but accurate summary of what happened to the rest of the Orwin family. Lowell's surviving ancestors, despite their "betrayal" by not fighting their exile, were still proud Scots. They were determined to keep their culture alive and thus have kept the tradition of teaching their children (and their children's children, etc) to speak the Scottish language and when speaking English, to do so with a Scottish accent rather than the traditional English one. This is a bit of a sticking point though, because wow what a weird accent, and sometimes Lowell will speak in a English accent to fit in better. His younger and older sisters (he, being the awkward and only male middle child) however have no problem with constantly using their Scottish accent regardless of the circumstances. However, Lowell lacks the courage that they possess, and he knows it.
Getting a good education was also really important to Lowell's parents, and so his parents pushed him and his sisters hard to learn as much as he could. And while many subjects of high paying jobs didn't catch his interest- engineering did. He's very intelligent, despite the meager schooling he's acquired due to Exsilium's lack of resources, and his sisters, Blair (older) and Matilda (younger) did similarly well. Lowell was known as a bit of a troublemaker as a kid for snooping or getting into things he shouldn't have, due to his curiosity. It was during a bout of his curiosity when he was eight that lead him to get into trouble with a group of older boys who saw fit to essentially beat the shit out of him to teach him to keep his nose out of everything. It worked the first time, Lowell going home and sneaking up to his room to try and fix his face as best he could without his parents finding out. It took some effort, but he managed to get through the experience without further incident.
The problem started when said gang of older boys decided they liked beating up kids who didn't squeal on them. It took to the fourth time for someone to actually interfere. Another older boy named Maxwell had noticed the third time Lowell was being beat up, but hadn't done anything at first. It wasn't until the gang of boys had threatened Lowell's books that he had actually given them a reaction; those books were expensive and ones in relatively good condition were hard to find. They had started to tear out the pages, and Lowell flipped out, swinging fists wildly and aimlessly, punching a boy in the stomach hard enough for him to drop the book. That's when all things went to hell, and Maxwell stepped in. From that day on, the two boys developed a friendship that would reach bro status.
The two are from very different worlds. Maxwell was more like the other boys in their age group who was more willing to try and steal things from the local stores to see if he could get away with it, a behavior that Lowell would rather keep away from. But something in Maxwell inspired him to consider Lowell like a little brother and to thus be his protector. The two would hang out most days, Lowell often with some small booklet to study while they were hanging out, and partially to help educate Maxwell. The latter had dropped out of school years ago in favor of getting a job, more out of necessity than to not learn. They were balanced with each other, Maxwell there to protect Lowell physically, and Lowell there to hear out Maxwell when no one would, because of his difficulty controlling his emotions.
As Lowell aged, his grades and initiative (lol) to learn engineering and physics had him noticed by an engineer in the Initiative Organization who had been looking for new recruits. Lowell agreed instantly, hoping the paycheck would help his family. While not exactly struggling, before his acquiring of a job with the Initiative, he has always been rather dead weight on the family. Blair had excelled at management positions, and is a property manager of several high renting buildings of which their parents now live, and was carrying most of the family's paychecks with her job. Matilda was very into music, but unfortunately that isn't a well paying job in an Exile community, and so she's been bouncing from job to job for a while, as had Lowell until the Initiative's offer.
He didn't really understand fully what he was signing up for, didn't know that working for some "top secret organization" was also going to involve time and space travel, and that he'd be working on a huge project that crossed multidimensional borders. The woman that had recruited him (Dr. Sarah Rose) eventually became his mentor, and he started working for the Initiative about 3310, only two years before the Transport program kicked off. All he really knew at the time was that the Initiative had plans to use time travel to change the past. Originally he had some doubts, that too much altering to the past could mess up the future, but as a low level assistant, he didn't have much of a voice in the outcome anyway. Eventually he rose through the ranks to a high level assistant, and despite his lack of leadership skills or ability to keep his head in panic situations, he knows the transporter machine inside and out.
As for Lowell's friendship with Maxwell, every day for years the two would spend every day together, but as time progressed, Lowell wound up ignoring Maxwell unintentionally. It'd start with small things. He'd get so wrapped up in his work that he'd forget that they made plans to hang out, and then he'd forget birthdays, and then he'd just not speak to Maxwell for months on end. They still spoke somewhat often, but given the nature of the Initiative's secrecy and intensive work, Lowell hasn't really spoken much to too him for the past few years.
It was only a short while before Black Code was issued that Lowell was sent up to the moon base to assure that the machine up there was in perfect working order. It was his first big "you're doing this on your own" mission, and he did well. He was pretty confident with himself, and had been arranging his trip back to the Initiative headquarters when the Black Code was issued. And well, he's been up there since. Quietly panicking. The whole time.
Several times he has sent out messages to his family, has even spoken to them via video communicator a few times, and the whole time unable to tell them why he was getting choked up every time they spoke. Lowell sent out similar attempts to communicate with Maxwell, after realizing that his sudden disappearance and lack of contact would have worried the other, but has not received any reply. He chalked it up to Maxwell being unable to find a communication device that worked, but the real answer is that while currently unknown to Lowell, Maxwell died in the bombing incident that happened a few months ago. It's for the best right now, the HR department decided, that he doesn't find out too soon anyway. While all citizens of Exsilium are expected to die in Black Code, and then later revived due to the work of the Transports, deaths that occur before the Black Code event aren't guaranteed to be brought back to life. And that kind of information would lead to Lowell's potential instability and jeopardize the mission. So keeping it on the down low is pretty important.
Character PERSONALITY:
Lowell is not used to being "in charge" of anything. He is the middle child in his immediate family and while he looks up to the head engineer like an idol, he is an assistant engineer at best. Suddenly being one of the last guys left, and somewhat in charge of fixing the situation that killed them all off? PANIC MODE, INITIATED.
It was a matter of coincidence that he was picked to be one of the chosen Initiative employees to survive Black Code. He had already been up on the moon base for a week, and his already deep knowledge of the transporter made him ideal for the job, despite his… anxiety issues and inability to remain cool under pressure. His reaction when first told of the Black Code situation was to violently stutter that he couldn't, and then once told of the significance that he, as an individual in the best position to do it, should do it, he numbly agreed. Once the transmission feed went off, he proceeded to punch the nearest available chair, tried to calm down by repeating to himself "I can do it", and then started to wildly throw his fists into the air and jump up and down in frustration. This only lasted a few minutes, thankfully, but he's had momentary breakdowns over the past week while waiting for the Initiative to give the orders to start teleporting people onto the Moon Base. He hasn't fully "lost it" yet but… when he loses it, he really loses it.
It isn't that he's so easily pushed to the edge. Lowell is typically a more relaxed individual, when huge pressures aren't coming down on him. Maxwell definitely helped in Lowell's education of "how to have fun and not be so uptight all the time" because that used to be a real issue for him. It took some timely reeducation that involved one late night graffiti, two skipping of school, and seven prank phone calls for Lowell to really enjoy just being a kid for a short while. Luckily, that stuck with him ever since, despite his workaholic tendencies. He likes to have fun like most people, although notably AFTER work has been fully completed for the day. He has a tendency to like some really ancient music (called "Fuchsia Floyd" or something), and is overall a pretty average guy with some major stress issues. It's a bit of surprise to him that he hasn't started going grey prematurely with how much he gets worried as of late.
Lowell doesn't really tend to get close to people, outside of his family and Maxwell. As a boy who spent most of his time studying, friends weren't too high on the list of concerns, and considering the often depressing hobbies of boys his age (wandering into the borderlands, poking at dead things with sticks, experimenting with UE drugs…) he doesn't feel like he's missed anything. Technology soon became his good friend, and probably the closest he'll get to ever having an intimate relationship with someone. The level he cares for his tech and the tech that his job now employs him to take care of ascends that of any actual person.
» SAMPLES
First PERSON or Third PERSON:
...Hi.
[Lowell starts, squinting a bit at the camera propped up in front of him, precariously perched on a stack of binders and papers to be at the right heigh for him to broadcast from without holding it.]
I'm the assista-… Head, now. Head Temporal Engineer.
[He doesn't realize- and won't realize until after he's made the post, that he forgot to mention his name. He adjusts his tie briefly, takes a deep, slightly shaky sigh, and then steps aside from the camera frame to show the large and loud, humming Transport Pads.]
And this, as most of you are familiar with, is the Transport Pads. Also known as, your way out of here. No offense to Hydroponics, but food growth is slow and not enough to sustain three-hundred-plus people for an extended amount of time right now. And I know that… It's going to be hard to stay up here all the time. So you're going to want to use this baby to get out of here as much as possible. Which is … fine. But there's rules. One, you need to get your time and location cleared by the time specialists and programmers. Two, going anywhere takes up a lot of power. You f-
[He stops himself, like he's trying not to swear on video, but then sighs harshly again, and continues.]
You fuck it up, and you're putting the rest of us here without power for however long it takes for me to cool down the engines again. Which makes me exactly one hundred percent less inclined to let you go anywhere ever again. We're clear, yeah? Please don't make me repeat this again. I don't like public speaking.
[And with that, Lowell brings a hand to shut off the feed… and misses, pushing the camera off the perch of papers and binders, knocking it onto the floor and… still recording. Lowell curses and runs over to the camera and the last picture is his deeply concerned face as he finally turns off the video. Be grateful, because the next minute consisted of Lowell gently stroking his communicator and shushing it, promising the communicator he'd not do that again.]
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
FIXED SOME STUFF IN THE ORIGINAL APP but i will go into more on the personality section if it seems lacking to you guys.
ACCEPTED
➥ HOVER OVER the globes to join the communities: ➥ FILL OUT the forms on these pages, with canon listed as NPC: ➥CHECK HERE for your character's housing assignment.
➥REPLY TO THIS COMMENT with your NPC journal to be granted access, and then—
➥CHECK HERE for NPC information.
no subject
Player NAME: Tess
Current AGE: too old
Player TIME ZONE: PST/GMT-8
Personal JOURNAL:
IM & SERVICE: aim | glubtier
Player PLURK:
Current CHARACTERS: Feferi Peixes | Homestuck |
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Trish "Bird" Walker
Character JOB: Medical Specialist
Character HISTORY: Trish's maternal lineage was well established in Exsilium long before she was born, at least two generations prior, if not more, but her father was not quite so lucky. Caught up in what the United Earth government deemed a cartel scheme and carted off to island, he managed to soldier through the intense withdrawal, but was never quite the same for it. It left his immune system shot and left him the frequent victim of routine illness. Her mother helped him through the lengthy detox period and together they formed a strong, friendly bond. Their marriage was always one of convenience, a working relationship, but it worked for them, and there was never any lack of affection for their two children: Gabriel, and Patricia-- who refused to use her full name from an early age, preferring to go by Trish.
Growing up, her mother worked frequently, to make up for their father's inability to hold any semblance of a job, or what the city offered by way of jobs. It was long hours for while he stayed at home, kept house, and watched the kids. On the days he was too unwell to do that, Trish's brother, ten years her senior, would watch the both of them. She always got plenty of attention from her father, though, and where she was lacking in her mother's love, she made do otherwise. They didn't live lavishly, by any stretch. No one really did. But they lived well enough, and that was what mattered.
Her relationship with her father was always close, and her imparted on her a lot of his skills. Where he might not have been able to work, he was one heck of a salesman. When they weren't able to buy something straight, he was usually able to barter for it. He taught her some of her favorite pastimes: how to play cards (including how to keep a pokerface-- which she never quite mastered, but came close) and how to do silly parlor tricks that would shock and amaze the less observant of her peers. He also gave her a work ethic. Strange and all, considering that he only held one or two jobs while he was alive, and then only for a short time each. But he would still get up every morning, make the kids breakfast, take them to the market, and soldier through the least of his illnesses. Even when she was young, she knew he was sick, but it wasn't until she was much older that she realized in retrospect just how often it was.
When her father passed away after a lengthy battle with pneumonia, she was only twelve. Life went on, but she would always miss him after that, even more so when her brother took over her care. For her first few teenage years, she was under her supervision. Gabriel had some interesting ideas about how a sister should act; he was way too into antique movies and books he found at the secondhand shops, and thought it would be just grand to try to get her in dresses and parade her around. Trish never was much for decorum. She would try on a few dresses, but ultimately found them stifling, preferring to stick to her brother's hand-me-down clothing. He tried to get her to take dance lessons from an older women three doors down, in exchange for help cleaning her place every now and again. She liked it alright, and for the few lessons she received, she did well. She was more interested in the woman's stories though, than what she had to teach about dance.
To say Trish fought with her brother over his "way" of raising her would be an understatement. It wasn't that she minded his attempts to get her to try new things, but the way he reacted when she didn't like them, and ultimately it was what drove her away from home. Five years of that was more than enough for her, she just didn't know how to get out. She had been chumming around with her father's old friends, at the markets, at the pawn shops, and they all had offers for her, if she needed help. But she wanted something more. She wanted to be able to send something home to her mother, to ease some of her burdens. Her mother who had taught her to cook and to stick her ground and to never tire of something that you felt strongly about, who for all she wasn't around, was still a good mother.
It was only a whisper when she first heard about it, passed between two strangers in the pawn shop where she had taken up some part time work, just to get out of the house for a while. Something something Initiative. Something something training something top dollar. It piqued her interest enough to get her sniffing around. Whether she found the Initiative, or the Initiative found her is up for debate. But regardless of who found whom, she wound up on their doorstep.
It was a close one. Trish didn't know the first thing about most of the jobs they were offering, but she was bound and determined to get one of them. During the interview, when asked why she had sought out the Initiative, she could only shrug. She wanted to help, she guessed. No, she was pretty sure she wanted to help. She wanted to do something with her life. And if she got paid in the process, hey, bonus for her. It was her wit and attitude that landed her the job with the Medical Specialist team.
Unlike most of the things she'd tried to get into during her teen years, she flourished under the leadership and guidance of the Initiative. Hand her the training, she'll take it. It felt good to be doing something for once, and the paycheck didn't hurt either. Brash though she was, she genuinely liked people, though she didn't get along with all of them. Her coarse mouth and bad habits got her in her fair share of office politics, but that's just the way of things. Some of her closer coworkers coined the nickname Bird for her, after her habit of whistling on the job.
By the time Transports started arrive, she'd already been with the Initiative for several years, and as one of the mainstays of the medical team, she was the first to register complaints. Who knew what kind of icky diseases they were going to bring in with them? The last thing they needed was an outbreak of a foreign contaminant that they had no cure for. They were already short staffed and short on supplies. It took a lot of convincing to get her to calm down about it.
For quite a while she was wary of them, and wary of treating them. It's taken nearly two years to warm up to them, some more than others, but she's starting to get there. Some of them are even weird enough to pique her interest. She's started to like some of them enough that she hasn't placed all the blame for the moon excursion on them. Only most of it.
There was at least a sigh of relief on her part when she was chosen as part of the team to go up to the moon. She knows that leaves her mother back down there, and so many of her coworkers. Well. And her brother too, but who cares about him, he's a gross jerk. She's doing her damnedest to put on a tough face about it, but sometimes in her bunk, it gets to her. She'll have to trust these transports if there's any hope of fixing things in time.
Character PERSONALITY:
Trish has taken a long time to get where she is, and even at 29 years of age, she still has a lot of growing to do. Lewd to a point and with a knack for light sarcastic banterm she has a bad habit of being off-putting to strangers who don't quite get on board with her sense of humor. She tries to be jovial and put a joke into everything, but there have been times when it hasn't gone over so well for her. She does her best to just shrug it off, and for the most part, it doesn't bother her much. Someone's not going to like her, and she's not going to compromise and change just to make them happy. She owes them nothing.
Once you get past all that... you're still not in her circle. Growing up in Exsilium taught her to be wary of trusting others, but that doesn't mean she's entirely closed off. She's sociable, and will make friendly banter with anyone who will put up with her, but when it comes down to letting others in on her deepest thoughts and her past and everything else she holds dear to her, it can take a little while for her to really warm. But once you're in, you're in. She doesn't trust easily, but she does trust fully and completely. It might take a while to know it, though-- the combined lack of trust and penchant for sarcasm can be hard to read if you're not very observant.
Out of all her hobbies (and she has a great many) the only one she's really succeeded at is learning. She loves to absorb knowledge, and will learn whatever she can if she can get her paws on it, though she was never much of a book worm until she started working for the Initiative. She may or may not hold the record for most books checked out of the hold library in a single week. She has many other hobbies, but like most of the things she's tried to take up, has only managed to get herself to an intermediate level at best with most of them, if that. She likes to sing, and dance still (now that she's on her own and doing it for herself). She likes gambling, and she likes playing games for fun. She's still working on her pokerface, though. That is the one thing she is still determined to master.
Outside of her hobbies, while she's no wildchild, she does like to have her share of fun, and do her share of relaxing. She'll get her work done, always, but between everything else, she does like when she's able to enjoy the simpler things in life: a beer, friends, a nap. You name it, if it's self-indulgent, she'll indulge-- or at least day dream about indulging while she's stitching your arm back on.
While she may have trouble getting along with adults, she does a lot better when it comes to children and animals. She's not exactly maternal in the traditional sense, but she has a strong grip on her own moral code. You don't mess with kids, and you don't mess with animals. Besides that, it easier for her to show them the warmer side of her personality. A dog won't betray you, and a kid probably couldn't. It makes it that much harder for her when the Initiative brings in children, but that's a battle she has yet to take on.
She does have compassion for other adults as well, but like her trust, it's a lot harder won-over. Usually if you're bleeding pretty bad, she'll care. But true compassion is harder to come by. It's a good thing she's so dedicated to doing a good job, because otherwise it might get in the way.
She had a great deal of pride in her own moral code, but that doesn't mean it's infallible. It's changed many times over the years, and is likely to change again, but the one thing she won't budge on is her adherence to herself. She's made sure to document all the things important to her for those inevitable missions that leave her behind, sending them along with a trusted coworker. She knows their work is for the greater good, but sometimes it worries her-- at what cost will it come?
Overall, she wants to be an optimist, and to do right by others, but her upbringing taught her only realism-- sometimes there's hope, but other times, you have to make your own lucky breaks. [ Muffled sound of The Gambler playing in the distance. ]
» SAMPLES
First PERSON or Third PERSON:
ATTENTION ALL TRANSPORTS. ATTENTION ALL TRANSPORTS.
A full site lockdown has been initiated effective IMMEDIATELY. Unknown foreign contaminant has been detected within the base. All Transports are instructed to return to their rooms immediately and await further instruction. I repeat--
Wait, wait. I'm getting something here.
Okay, false alarm. It was just the jello from lunch. You're all safe... mostly. As long as you didn't eat it. If you did, I have some antacids, but there's a limited supply, and you might have to fight for it. Better yet, let me clear out some space for a wrestling match, and then we'll have some entertainment for the night too.
But really, I'm supposed to tell you that all of you, each and every one of you, and we WILL be checking identification so don't think you can send your buddy through for you, needs to come get immunized in the next week. It's one measly injection, and I can stick it in your arm or in your butt, depending on how frisky you're feeling. I'll even give you a colorful bandaid.
So do it. Right now. I expect to see all three hundred someodd of you in my hall in the three seconds it takes to walk to the door.
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
Birthday: JUNE 6TH. Sign: GEMINI. Age: 29 YEARS YOUNG. Favorite food: APPLES.
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