Ashes of the Stars [Space Travel Sci-Fi]

[Vulgarth1]

Name: Ricardo (Rick) Sombra

Age: Thirty-seven

Role: Pilot

Appearance: Rick Sombra

Background: Ricardo was born in the Alpha Centauri system, on the planet Mengsk, orbiting Alpha Centauri A. He grew up, like everyone else, trying to avoid the fate of his father, forced into service for the local warlord as cannon fodder. Through some blind streak of luck that Ricardo seems to have inherited, he managed to not be killed in the relentless conflicts, raids, and skirmishes that marred the surface of the eastern continent, Dibella. Ricardo's mother had died while birthing the child, so as he grew, Rick was often left on his own, scraping for miniscule amounts of money and food to supplement the scraps that his father either was given or managed to loot from the dead.

It was a mean existence that only got meaner when the warlord was toppled. In quite the vicious coup d'etat, he was assassinated by a teenaged Blaster who'd been raised for that singular purpose, a ploy many years in the making. Ricardo was about the same age, and he was looting the bodies in the aftermath of the battle, though as he passed over the no man's land that had formed on the outskirts of the shanty town Rick lived in, he stepped on a landmine that blew off his leg, shredded his left arm up to the mid-bicep.

The end result of the blast was a kid missing two limbs, living in a filthy shanty town. He wasn't given much chance of survival what with all the diseases, short life expectancy, and raging gun battles every other week, but despite it all, Rick survived. Still, he had no way to work and was completely useless in the eyes of many, putting the stress of providing for both of them squarely on the shoulders of his father.

One day, after an unusually pleasant sleep, Rick woke to find himself wedged in a shipping crate on a freighter. As he found out once he had been let out of the container, his father had given information about the warlord's defences to a rising, rival warlord in exchange for sending his boy off-planet to hopefully escape their life. After docking, though, he was dumped unceremoniously on the sister planet of Trios and left alone. Apparently the value of the information hadn't progressed as far as giving him a place to stay, though it was more likely the rival warlord had just twisted the terms of the deal a bit. Either way, Rick was now sitting in a spaceport on a strange planet with no possessions save the clothes on his back.

For the next two years, he managed to beg and scrounge food, sometimes running messages and other such things for people. Passing secret love letters and things like that. With his slow movement and the pity parties he got on account of being crippled without his crutch, the teen was never caught. Once, as he was around seventeen years old, Rick managed to gain the pity of someone rather rich indeed after passing along a bribe to one of the customs officers at the spaceport. While he wasn't entirely legitimate, the man was certainly an grateful and overly-compassionate sort, and he arranged for the teen to be fit with black market cybernetic prosthetics. A new leg and a new arm later, Rick was a cyborg and he was hired as a proper courier. He was taught to fly and eventually to smuggle, dodging customs becoming the source of his daily bread. His skills were honed over the next two decades, until 2232, when he began to pilot ships for the scavengers and the dealers who sought out and sold the rarest of items, such as Deutrion-powered batteries.


Themes: Piloting*(S)
Vision(H)
Weapons(C)
Computers(D)

Upgrades:
Shields(5S)
Exo-Thrusters(6S)
Energy Scanner(5H)
Assualt Rifle(7C)
Cyberwarfare Suite(4D)

[Chamomile]

Okay, Rick works, though I hope he appreciates his charmed life (except the part where he stepped on a landmine, at least).

[Vulgarth1]

Naturally. :P

[Chamomile]

We're now waiting on an engineer and our captain. We have an engineer in the works, but I'm not counting him in officially until he's got an actual sheet up, and the captain is a role we really can't do without. I've thrown up a signature that will hopefully help advertise a bit more.

[Vulgarth1]

Here's hoping we get a Captain before too long! I'm looking forward to this.

[Pottle]

I dunno if I'd want to be the Captain long-term. But I can throw together a CS for one in a minute and then if anyone else wants to become it later, and I don't want to be it anymore, then I'll just kill him off or something.

[Vulgarth1]

Then let's hope someone shows up soon!

[Chamomile]

Kek. If we had a captain, we could start now, even with just three people. Our engineer does seem to have gone missing, but that's not critical.

[Vulgarth1]

But who will give 'er all she's got? : p

EDIT: While we wait, mind if I ask something? Seeing as I picked the fighter upgrade, does that mean I can fly air support during missions, or will I be required to remain on-board the ship? Scanners don't run themselves after all.

[Chamomile]

Scanners do, in fact, run themselves. Computers are pretty slick in 2236, not to mention it's explicitly true that our uplink to the ship is pretty much perfect, so you can run them from anywhere unless you're specifically jammed or in the middle of some kind of wackyon particle storm.

Air support is an option, but only in missions where it would actually make sense. Most of the missions I'm planning out right now don't involve the kind of major ground battles where air strikes would actually be effective. If, for example, we're breaking into a building, trying to capture a single person, or looting some place for pre-war artifacts, bombing things is just not helpful anyways. As a general rule, it's expected that the entire crew will go on most of the missions in person. Fundamentally, you're all mercenaries and there's a reason everyone and their dog has access to the assault rifle upgrade.