This is a CLOSED RP

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen again.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein, The Rolling Stones

















AmongHeroes: Dr. Gavin Brock

Derren Krenshaw: Antoine Eadoré

Dotcom: Deli Beltran

idlehands: Owen Reece

Igraine: 1SG Abigail Larson

Justric: Robert S. Bach

KuroTenshi: Connor Douglass

Lillian Thorne: Stella Albright, DVM

RoadRash: William "Big Bill" Cothran

For anyone interested who just happens to find us? So sorry but this is a closed RP, and the people who will be participating already know who they are.

And finally, thread up! I'll be updating with all the pretties as they come along, but for all of you who requested a thread to chat and post up the CS's? tah dah! And after this post here, I'll post a CS for my character that can serve as a template for anyone who might still need one. Long or short, it really doesn't matter at all - just something to introduce your character to the rest of us!

From a photograph affixed to the interior of 11-year old Michael A. Davis’ stasis bed. Written in a neat, precise script on the back, ‘Christmas Day in Red Wing, 2029’

Name: 1SG Abigail "Abby" Jane Larson

Occupation/Crew Position: Military Police Supervisor/Security Specialist

Age: 34

Background: The youngest of five children, and the only girl child at that, Abby grew up in Red Wing, Minnesota, alternately protectively spoiled and playfully tormented by her older brothers: Alan, Aiden, Aaron and Alexander. The matriarch of the Larson clan, Anne, was a high school secretary and her father Alistair, a combat veteran of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was a captain on the Red Wing Police Department.

The happiest memories of Abby’s childhood were of the summers and winters spent on the Minnesotan lakes. Swimming, waterskiing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing and even ice fishing, the Larsons spent weeks at a time with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, basking in the warmth of a genuinely loving family. Athletic, outgoing, and eternally full of mischief, Abby raced in her big brothers’ footsteps, bedeviling teachers and frustrating her parents (in the most charming way) all through grade school, and then on into high school.

She saw no reason for that to change when, during the summer of her senior year, the dirty bombs of 7/4 were detonated in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Abby gently, but irrevocably, set aside her parents’ dreams she’d settle down to become a teacher, or maybe a nurse - anything sensible really - when she enlisted in the US Army as a military policeman, the day after Aaron and Alex. Her first tour of duty after basic was in the combat zone of the Korean Peninsula. Abby emerged from the other side of that conflict wiser, and sadder, and knowing her family had expanded to hundreds of brothers, and even a few sisters, for whom she’d gladly give her life.

Aaron and Alex returned to civilian life after the China Seas, but Abby did not. She’d found her place, a calling and a sense of purpose, having a hand in protecting the people and things she held dear. Abby liked being an MP, and she was damn good at it.

That hard-won and early maturity though, didn’t necessarily extend to every corner of her life. Sometimes Abby was tempted to jokingly claim that marrying her squad leader SGT Ned Davis, a year after settling in at her first CONUS duty station, was probably the most spectacularly awful mistake she’d ever made - but that wouldn’t be entirely true. No, not that she’d made bigger mistakes before or since – she hadn’t. But if Abby hadn’t indulged just once in being young and dumb, there would be no Michael Alistair Davis - and even with all the good already in her world, that boy was the very best.

The mistake of marrying a hard-drinking, womanizing asshole was a quick enough fix three years after it started (even without taking up any of her brothers on their enthusiastic offers to come kick his ass). But with a little boy to raise almost entirely on her own, Abby doubled down on her determination, she’d do everything in her power to give Michael a world worth living in.

Promotions came, and schools, her time put in as a drill sergeant in Fort Leonard Wood and, of course, deployments. Abby had just come off her second back-to-back unaccompanied tour, when she got what ought to have been a shit assignment at a pissant post in Wyoming. As First Sergeant for an MP company at a testing range, there wasn’t an awful lot to do but ensure the roadblocks were up during missile launches and the right people were waved onto base; that the roads to “the Mountain” facility an hour away were well-patrolled and clear of unauthorized personnel, and that bored soldiers didn’t get up to too much trouble in their down time.

But for Abby, this assignment was just the breath and space her little family needed most. This was a post where she could be home for Michael when school let out, and help him with his homework. She could take him to baseball practice, and sit in the bleachers most every weekend like every other Mom, cheering her son's team. Abby could even put in for leave over a holiday or two, to visit her family in Red Wing.

She could have never imagined the singular importance of this duty assignment, any more than the rest of their world could have anticipated The Change.

Name: Owen Reece

Occupation/Crew Position: pilot of a mining craft

Age: 39

Description: About 6 feet even and around 200 lbs, having put on a few since getting out of the army, he is built solid and strong. Pale gray eyes, brown hair and a dimple when he smiles on his right cheek. He has a farmer's tan from the time he spent outside.

Background: Reece was born in a small coal mining town in southern West Virginia, to a family with a long history of mining that stretched back centuries and across an ocean. When he was in high school, he took a job with his father and uncles down in the mines. Though technology made it safer, there was no escaping dark, enclosed space of the mines. He worked, played football, got into trouble and managed to graduate high school.

Without money for college he did as many young men do in poverty stricken places, he joined the military. In the army, he became fascinated with helicopters and thought it a nice change to be up in the air rather than underground. He became a warrant officer and piloted Blackhawks in rescue, recon, transport and security missions. By age 21, he was a lead pilot and spent ten years flying for the Army. He retired earlier than he would have liked after his helicopter was shot down on a rescue mission and he lose half his crew and injured his back which required surgery and titanium rods. His flying career was over and rather than going home he went out into Colorado, where he had been stationed. He blamed himself and wallowed in the misery of being haunted by the men he failed to get to safety and the young crew that had died, including WO Lisa Kelly, a bright young woman with a love for her job and a new husband and one of his crew chiefs, a young man who came from a poor urban background and had become an unlikely friend to the redneck pilot. He mourned the loss of his career and the love he had for flying, belieiving he would probably never have the opportunity again.

Solace he found in a whiskey bottle and a wife he hardly saw serving him with divorce papers. He had married her early in his army career when he was training in Ft. Rucker, Alabama, believing she was pregnant with his child. Shortly after their union, she miscarried. It was downhill from there, but Reece had made a committment and hoped it would work out. Eventually, they both preferred when he was deployed and he found himself signing up for anything that would take him away from home. They had no children and he suspected she cheated on him a number of times and found he did not care when she left. It had been a marriage out of the fact she had wanted to be married and Reece was away on duty most of the time.

Reece had to spend weeks in recovery after surgery but once he was let go, he retreated into the wilds of Colorado. He spent weeks hunting and fishing, hiking and being alone. He grew out his hair and beard, hiding the last traces of his former Army life. Finally, in need of funds and feeling better, he got a job with a mining company and went back to his roots. Rather than coal though, he was mining for gold. Once the romanticism wore off he found a higher paying job in the line of natural gas mining where he became an expert at the running the drills.

When the Change began, the wacko eco nuts in the area belonging to a radical environmental group called Green Guardians began to blame the fracking and oil/gas drillers and there were incidents of violence between them. Owen Reece had caught a couple of them trying to destroy his multi million dollar machine and ended up beating one of them badly, enough to land him in jail. Luckily for him the judge was sympathetic and likely owned stock in the company and had let him off with probation. His company was forced to fire him because the incident recieved bad press, despite the fact the GG had committed vandalism. Out of work and his back always hurting, he found his options limited. A proud man who hated to ask for help, he got a job delivering pizza to make ends meet until a chance encounter with an old friend. A former fellow pilot, WO Troy McMahon who now worked for a place known cryptically as the Mountain, offered Reece a job. It would take him back into mining and perhaps even flying. The pay and benefits were incredible and there was a chance they could fix his back nearly as good as new. Reece jumped at the chance and within the week, was hired and moving his meager possesions and his pickup truck to Wyoming. (WIP, facts subject to change)

Personality:

Owen Reece is a born rascal, a joker and a man who loves his vices. He is generally rough humored and friendly on the surface but it takes awhile for him to trust anyone, until he has judged their worth by their actions. He is free with his opinions and cares little for things like rank, learning in the army that bars and stars on turds didn't make them any less a turd.

Habits: A long time smoker who had to give it up, he keeps a seemingly endless supply of toothpicks in his pocket for his oral fixation. He still drinks, having learned a long time ago as a teen how to make rot gut moonshine which was pretty much ubiquitous in the poor WV country he grew up in. He's a gambler, in particular poker, and has a habit of betting on the outcome of things no matter how trivial or deadly. He likes old music and frequently hums or whistles songs, his favorite on this journey being "The Joker" by The Steve Miller Band.

Scars/Tattoos: Surgical scar along his spine, about 8 inches long in his lower back; a large scar on his left thigh from the crash; various nicks on his hands and forearms from the manual labor he did most of his life. A tattoo on his left bicep with his old unit's badge and two memorial scrolls for his friends that died. Above it is n older tattoo of a skull with a crossed shovel and pickax behind it from his mining days.

Personal Items: His personal notebook, full of music files, some pictures, and a few games and books. A deck of well worn cards, a pair of dice, and his old dog tags. A smuggled bottle of Jack Daniels, an economy sized box of toothpicks, and a hunting knife that belonged to his father.

*phew*

Delilah Espinosa de Jesús Dominguez del Beltran aka Deli Beltran

An ebullient (epileptic) 21-year-old from Barcelona, Copernicus's proclaimed "Queen of Blowing Shit Up" hopes to find safety for the rest of humanity -- and redemption for herself. Loves people, dancing, sarcasm, and Nütella.


--

Secondaries: Both WIPs for the time-being

Maya Elizabeth Coleman

Jamaican-born and naturalized, Maya Coleman is the last in a long line of military pilots. There was never any other option for her but the Copernicus. She believes in justice, duty, and honor above self, and can't stand to see a job half done. She has no family aboard the Copernicus, which is just fine by her.


Ha-neul Bae Park

Ha-neul Bae Park, known in recent years as simply Park, was a reverend as a small church in Seoul, South Korea, for thirty five years before a mysterious and life-changing event prompted him to move to the States. He obtained his MD in psychiatry from Berkeley and opened a pro bono practice in Oakland, California. He was commissioned to the Copernicus as a therapist and psychiatric consultant.

Name: Antoine Eadoré

Gender: Male

Age: 29

Occupation/Position: Linguist and medical technician in charge of maintaining cryo beds.

Background: In movies, in books, sometimes even in the real world, you hear the words 'I didn't sign up for this'. Spoken in fear or disgust, usually by those of the military, it signifies a choice to give up, to refuse to accept whatever situation they have been placed in.

Antoine did sign up for it, for whatever might be thrown his way. He knew the military was his calling, even before he left his hometown of Saverne to attend the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. With a bright mind boasting a keen grasp of languages, and a steady hand adept at both suture and keystroke, Antoine distinguished himself within the university, and found a welcome reception from the French Army upon his graduation.

It was a marriage to outshine any other, the fresh-out-of-college med-tech distinguishing himself quickly as someone eager and willing to do the hard work that needed to be done. Close to six years he spent in the arms of his country's military, years spent to try and preserve the lives of those around him, brothers all. His tour saw him all across the globe, hours not spent fighting, patching wounds or sleeping occupied with learning and translating language after language as the years went on. It was hard work, it was thankless, unrelenting work, but if you asked him now, Antoine would still say it was some of the best years of his life.

Sadly, however, even good marriages can turn sour. In Antoine's case it came with the Change, with the sudden coming of a threat his beloved military knew now way to counter. It was then that he caught the eye of the lovely young lady that was science, standing guard within The Mountain.

The breakup was dealt with quickly, Antoine wrapping himself within the arms of mad experimentation before the ink had dried on his discharge papers. He eagerly jumped at the offer to learn how to maintain and operate the cryo pods that would preserve his species, and it was without a second's hesitation that he accepted the offer to participate in one of the many studies going on. An attempt to accentuate the gifts in already-gifted persons, the scientists claimed if they succeeded he would be able to learn any language spoken near him faster than one could believe.

And it worked! The experiment, the drugs did all they had been promised to do and more! The intricacies of language, already easy for him to grasp, were rendered so very simple to him now. How perfect it was for the job he would need to perform on the Copernicus, and with the afterglow of time spent with his new mistress still fresh in his mind... how could things get anything but better?

Name: Dr. Gavin Brock

Occupation/Crew Position: Synthetic Biologist and Bioengineer

Age: 41

Appearance:

Gavin stands at 6’-1” tall, and possesses a muscularly athletic build that belies his academic occupation. His eyes are a deep blue, and his hair is a mixture of dirty blond, strawberry red, and the first strands of a peppery gray. His skin is fair, and his shoulders, chest, and neck are covered in freckles. Gavin possesses no defining scars or other deformations, and the only adornment upon his skin is a small sparrow tattoo upon his left shoulder.

Background:

Gavin Brock was born on the British Crown dependent Channel Island of Jersey, just scant miles from the northwestern coast of France. He had a comfortable and privileged childhood, afforded from his father, Dr. Allan Brock II, running a successful medical practice in the Jersey capital of St. Helier. Gavin’s mother raised him and his younger sister, Marley, full time, home-schooling the children until they were ready to enter college.

At only a year apart in age, the Brock children were very close. Their connection was undeniably strong, but it was far from the only thing the siblings shared, as it soon became apparent to that the brother and sister duo were both highly intelligent. Upon completion of their equivalent Secondary School years, Gavin accepted a full-ride academic scholarship to the California Institute of Technology with the intent of studying biology. Marley entered London’s King’s College a year later to follow in her father’s footsteps, and pursue a career in medicine.

The next decade was a whirlwind of triumph and opportunity for the Brock siblings, with Gavin completing his doctorate in synthetic biology and bioengineering, and Marley finishing medical school with a promising future as a specialist in virology.

Fate allowed Gavin to pursue his calling with abundant success, as his research led to several minor breakthroughs in the field of human genome manipulation, and genetic precursor treatments for cancer. In short order Gavin was being called the most influential scientist in his area of study, eventually even being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions in cancer research.

Marley achieved her own level of success, though she did so in a less conspicuous manner. With her specialty in virology, the youngest Brock took her skills to the poorest regions of the world, working with the World Health Organization on combating disease.

Even through all the demands of achievement, the Brock family somehow managed to stay close--especially Gavin and Marley. After his work with cancer research, Gavin even promised his sister that he would focus his efforts upon disease prevention in the Third World, and that he would eventually even join her on the frontlines of humanities war with sickness.

In truth, Gavin kept this promise, though in a way he never could have fathomed. With the coming of The Change, and the New Kind, the Brock siblings found themselves on a battlefield they were not prepared for. As Chile and South America became embroiled with the chaos and death of The Change, Marley was deployed in the contingent of doctors and scientists from the W.H.O. that were sent to try and get some sense of what exactly humanity was facing.

Gavin, on the other hand, was held back from the initial wave, being forcefully sent by the British government to the international research and testing facility known as The Mountain. With little choice, and with no knowledge of the well-being of his family, Gavin joined the research team within The Mountain, and began in earnest to try and chip away at the titan that was The Change.

As the months progressed, news of the world outside of the stone halls of The Mountain were growing ever darker. The progress into The Change, and the New Kind, as the research team had come to call them, was infuriatingly slow. All that was really achieved was discovering that humanity had never before witnessed anything like the biological Armageddon that was The Change, and as such, had almost no power to combat it.

Thank you so much Heroes, for all the pretties! Yes, he is the man with all the beautiful graphics because... Uh... Some of us just... Can't graphic. >.>

I figured we may start some time later this weekend or early next week, if that sounds all right with everyone, just so people have time to get their CS's up and mold them as far as they'd like before we begin. I know people have work and/or school and/or family obligations to meet (personally, I'm taking visiting family to tour Washington DC tomorrow). So does that sound acceptable to everyone, as a decent timeframe to begin ICly?

That sounds good to me :3

I'm still working on my CS (thanks Igraine for fielding my panicked PM) and gearing up for a painful final next week but even so I should be fine for starting. Just bear with me

That sounds great, I'm still working on my bio and brainstorming possible secondary characters but of course I'll wait on them until everyone is well established with their characters. Usually I just come up with them out of necessity anyway. I'm really looking forward to RPing with my old cohorts Kuro and Igraine and with everyone else I've not written with before. Lillian, we're both fish out of water in sci fi but it should be fun to stretch our legs in the stars!

All of those things y'all already said. Alladat.

Secondary Character



Ester Baum

Occupation: Horticulturalist

Age: 27

Appearance: 5'6'', pale skin, dark brown hair and eyes

Ester Baum, a descendant of German and Polish Jews that moved to Israel after WWII, grew up in the ever present threat of terrorism and civil war of her country, served in the IDF like everyone does for 2 years before going to college. Did some graduate work in Japan, learned to speak Japanese, along with English, Hebrew and Arabic. More often than not if she's not working, she's got her head down on her notepad, reading books stored on it or using the drawing program. Dreamed of going to the space station one day to experiment in growing plants in space and did her thesis on the subject (more details of that when I figure it out) and recruited by the Mountain to work on their program.

She's rather quiet and soft spoken, intensely focused on her work and fascinated by green things and their silent world. A woman with a gentle nature but a steel core, having grown up in a land of war and human suffering over what would come to be such small things, such as difference in religion and blood. Reflecting on that, after the Change happens and humanity is nearly wiped out and the fact she's from a people known for things like the Diaspora when they were forced to leave their homelands and went out into a hostile world to make their way and the Holocaust which wiped out so many. So she looks forward to the new Caanan, where humans might make a better world.

Ester is one of the lucky ones, her immediate family were all members of the project at the Mountain. After her recruitment she read the writing on the wall and managed to get her father who is a geneticist and her mother who is a pediatrician aboard. That was followed with her younger sister, Naomi and her brother in law, David. Her sister is a computer tech and her husband had military experience as well as mining. All of them were awake for the second shift, which Ester was supposed to be a part of but the wife of the pair that ran the horticulture project had a baby, there for did not go to sleep when it was planned. She stayed up to birth and care for her infant until she was old enough to sleep. Now Ester is on the third shift but she is not alone. Naomi is pregnant and cannot go into stasis with her husband and parents.

Ester and Naomi, who is 24, grew up on a kibbutz, a communal farm near Haifa, Israel. While her mother practiced in the nearby town, her father often was gone for long stretches, guest lecturing or working on projects in places like Tel Aviv, Paris, Cambridge, Berkley, and Tokyo. Though their parents were both professionals, they had grown up farming as did their parents before them. Rather than move their girls to the city, they wanted to instill a love for the land and the skills to live off of it, to appreciate hard work and what would be gleaned from it. Both daughters served in the IDF, where Naomi met David, her future husband. While Ester began work on her PhD in agricultural science, her sister got a good job in as a software engineer and David went into security for a mining company, eventually getting interested in that industry.

Where Ester is quiet, introverted and observant, her sister is talkative, outgoing and friendly. Their mother always called them her moon and sun and they have close if not always smooth relationship.

Naomi Ben Zeev née Baum

Occupation: computer software technician

age: 24

So I am determined to have a CS up today. I'm going with something like a veterinarian/park ranger sort. Details still fuzzy but clearing up.

Name: Robert S. Bach

Gender: Male

Age: 31

Eyes: Dark brown

Hair: Dark brown

Occupation/Position: Neuro-Computer Interface Technician

Background: Robert, known better as Hob to his friends, has done it all. He's been on the stage as actor and musician, worked behind the scenes in art galleries and guerrilla theatre, busked on street corners from LA to NY, chalked sidewalk scenes right out of Mary Poppins, wrote short stories from a wide variety of genres, and sculpted a wide variety of projects from countless mediums (specializing in "found art".) The only trouble is... he hasn't been particularly great at any of it. Not that he ever actually failed at any of his artistic endeavors, Hob just never reached that level of greatness where he would be recognized by anyone outside a select circle. His parents and younger siblings were encouraging but never outright proud of him; they remained living in the quiet suburbia of Portland, Oregon as he galavanted wherever he found his muse.

The onslaught of The Change brought all of that to an end. At first, people threw themselves in any entertainment they could find in an effort to distract themselves, and in a perverse twist of events Hob found himself actually making money! That rapidly changed, almost as fast as the Earth itself. As more and more of the globe was covered, panic set in. No one had time for the arts anymore, at least not ones they had to spend money on! Hob's livelihood dried up, and so did the careers of his friends and acquaintances. Down and out, he found himself sharing an apartment with six other artists in Chicago and barely making rent. Outside, the crime rates soared; society was rapidly breaking down in the law of "take what you want."

So it came as no real surprise when, one night while trudging back from an unsuccessful gig, he was abducted by a bunch of men in suits driving a black van. Hob was almost resigned to whatever might come next: murder, rape, enslavement... What he had not been expecting was a job offer.

Taken to a quiet office in the middle of nowhere, he was informed that his imagination was needed for a special project of the government's. The requirements called for someone of extreme artistic ability and imagination, someone who could look at the world differently than the average person on the street. If that wasn't Hob in a nutshell, no one was! Only... the job in question was for a computer technician. Hob protested in honesty, fully admitting he had no experience with computers outside of using the internet from time to time and had only a vague idea of how one was even put together. He still remembered the recruiting agent sitting behind his desk dressed all the world like Mr. Smith from those old Matrix movies; the man had smiled like a jackal and uttered one word: "Perfect." It was then that it became more and more 'an offer he couldn't refuse.' Hob was bundled off to someplace he only ever heard referred to as The Mountain and enrolled in a series of training programs that made no sense whatsoever at first. At least, they didn't make sense until they came for him in the middle of the night for the surgery. Hob was never sure exactly how long it took, but in an induced coma he was forced to undergo a number of cranial surgeries in which rudimentary implants were installed. By the time he recovered, small silver disks rested on both of his temples.

Hob went into a rage, trashing his spartan room to his utmost before a counselor was finally called in to talk with him. Surprised at Hob's ignorance of the situation, the counselor dedicated himself to explaining exactly what the hell had been going on and what was being done to him.

Neuro-computer interfacing, it was called. It was the final leap into melding the human consciousness into the digital world. One didn't need to know programming languages or structures or any of it, merely had to have the imagination and force of will to create what they wanted in their heads. By extension of the terminals that were now wired into his skull, Hob was one of the very few humans who would ever be able to do so. The computer network on the new ark, the Copernicus, needed every person the military could lay their hands on to interface with it. His abduction and forced training had been regrettable but necessary, he was assured. Out of the nearly seven thousand people who would be aboard the Copernicus, only seventeen had the mental capacity and the imagination to act as these human interfaces, and Hob would be the eighteenth and last. As foolish as it might seem to tie humanity's last hope into such new technology, the benefits were too hard too ignore for the ship's designers: the neuro system was faster and more reliable, it took up less space, energy, and resources. So long as there was at least three technicians "plugged" into the network at any given time, the ship should not have any computer issues on the software (now "wetware") end. The rest was up to the maintenance crews to deal with the hardware.

Having no real choice, Hob finally capitulated and accepted his fate. He left the Earth behind, never knowing the fate of his family or any of his friends across the States. The only personal items he had were those things he was carrying when he had been abducted, the prize of which was an accordion that no one wanted him to play. He threw himself into the training sequences then. Where he could not longer create art with his hands, he began to do so with his mind. When he was logged into the ship's neurocomputer, he was part of a pantheon of gods and goddess who bent virtual reality to their will.

Which was when he discovered the next blow. The system was not a perfect escape from reality. It could induce any number of psychosis, and team members had to subject themselves to regular counseling and psychiatric sessions in addition to monitoring each other. Worse were the ghosts. When a technician disconnected from the system, a mental imprint was left behind, an echo of that technician that the next guy or gal would have to deal with. The ghosts couldn't cause any damage, but they could be incredibly distracting! They were the residual copies of surface thoughts, emotions, and memories of the prior techs, and they floated through the system until they eventually faded away. The stronger the thought, the longer it would linger. Personality conflicts arose out of this until some technicians absolutely refused to use the same terminal as certain others. Hob and some of the other technicians also have reported to counselors the fear that these memories and impressions were somehow consolidating to form an artificial intelligence deep within the computer's core, a possibility that the designers, hardware engineers, and counselors all believe to be impossible.

Now Hob is beginning to wonder what it means if he and the others are right... and what it means if they are wrong.

Name: Stella Albright

Age: 28

Occupation/Position: Veterinarian

Background: Raised by her grandparents in a small rural town in Vermont after her parents were killed in a car crash when she was almost four. She was in the car when it happened though she sustained little damage in the crash. The images of what she saw, filtered through a child’s lack of understanding, haunted her for years. She refused to speak for almost 2 years after the accident and would not look anyone in the eye. It was the animals that populated her grandparent’s small farm that pulled the silent, sad girl out of herself in back into the world. She had been marked for special services and her return to the world saved her from being type-cast as special needs.

She was a bright child and eventually pulled out of herself enough to make friends but it was always the animals that she connected most strongly with. She spent much time hiking the woods around her home and her grandfather, an avid outdoors man taught her to fish and how to survive in the wilds and all that he knew about animal husbandry. She excelled in school, particularly in sciences and volunteered in the local Vet’s office which services both large and small domestic animals. But it was when she went on a field trip to a wild life sanctuary that rehabilitated injured hawks and owls that she found a new passion. Volunteering every weekend she bike road the ten miles to the Sanctuary as long as the weather permitted until she left for school to study veterinary sciences.

Her grandparents passed away in her final year of school, almost exactly a week apart. Her grandmother simply faded after her grandfather was gone. Stella mourned but was not surprised by the chain of events and simply powered through her last semester. There was no call for her to go home with her grandparents gone so she pursued other opportunities and wound up working her way west slowly moving from state park to National forest etc, acting in various roles from Park Ranger to Veterinarian to Wildlife Rehabilitator.

Something of a cheerful Luddite she tended to live simply, using what technology she need to on the job, grateful for its ability to save lives but on her own in her private life she lived a simpler life, emulating the simple world of her childhood with her grandparents. She has a host of practical skills that harken back to a simpler time.

Immersed in her work she paid The Change little mind until things were so dire that to avoid it was to be blind and stupid. Even then she felt helpless to do anything about it, she was just a simple vet and it was so far away. Only then it wasn’t so far and there was still nothing she could do about it. She was prepared to go down with the ship, staying with her charges until the bitter end. But the end didn’t come in the way she expected too. Rescued in the last push by the people of the mountain her Wild Life Sanctuary was cleaned out and all its occupants, including the one vet who refused to leave was rescued.

(So I probably will tweak this some, but this is what I got at this point.)

I should finish my MC first...but I also want to recreate Ron Glass's character from Firefly, so...that's happening. (._. ) ( ._.)

Wow you can get a lot of materials from mining asteroids http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

Oh yeah Kuro, it would be an excellent way to get not a few very needed replacement elements/compounds - such a cool concept!

Wasn't gone today near so long as I thought today, so got the chance to catch up I hope with characters and all :)