Ardan is a powerfully built and burly turian who has been conditioned by a lifetime of military conditioning and his own drive to strive for peak physical fitness. Standing at 6’05” (182cm) and weighing around 208 pounds (94 kilograms), he maintains a strict military-style fitness regimen, situation permitting, and a mostly regulated diet that permits few luxuries. His carapace is indented and marked from scars from years of combat experience and entirely too many close calls with shrapnel, he’s fortunate to still possess all of his limbs and digits and both of his eyes.

His face is covered by one of the Oma Ker colony markings, a dark blue that sometimes gets lost in the pale grey tone of his carapace when in darkened conditions, a constant condition on Omega. The entirety of his fringes are coloured, and a singular symmetrical line runs down his face, just under his pronounced cheek plates and across the bottom of his chin, and the left and right sides of his rectangular, serrated nose are similarly coloured. Much like his personality, it can be subtle until you begin to notice it, then it becomes very difficult to ignore.

His eyes seem to compromise between his tone and markings in that they are a pleasant blue-grey that are narrow and skeptical, if not outright distrustful, of people outside of what little close circle of friends and acquaintances he has left. Were it not for his perpetual predisposition to sneering and otherwise being dour of disposition, he could possibly be poster material for the Hierarchy recruiting vids, but those days are long behind him.

Born on the turian colony of Oma Ker in 2138CE, Ardan Parvius was the second born son to Varvius and Octaana Parvius, a turian artillery officer with the 78th Artillery Regiment and a fighter pilot with the 16th Flotilla respectively, giving the Parvius family a rather distinguished military pedigree and yet another cemented piece in a storied family mosaic. From a young age, Ardan learned of his family’s legacy and place in turian society on both his parents’ knees and grew up knowing that his parents could perish any day answering the call of duty. Because their service often took them across Citadel Space, Ardan was constantly on the move and all but assured to follow in his parents’ footsteps in becoming a career military man.

While his older brother Casius would enter his mandatory 15 year public service position as a police officer on Palaven, Ardan joined the military in 2153CE and after basic training he was enlisted in the 105th Combat Engineering Corps due to his high scores in mathematics and sciences. Ardan had elected to pursue a career starting off in the enlisted ranks for what he saw as a more exciting and fulfilling career path; he had no interest in commanding regiments or fleets, but rather proving himself on an individual level with more hands-on skills and combat experience. Perhaps, with time and promotion, he would earn his commission, but he did not wish to pursue an officer's rank without first establishing himself under his parents' legacy. For that reason, he elected not to enlist in either of his parents' units; Ardan wanted to be his own man.

Keeping in touch with his parents’ units via Extranet packets on an allotted biweekly basis, Ardan’s career took him across Citadel space, joining in larger military exercises on turian colony worlds and joint exercises with allied asari and salarian units, leading to friendly rivalries with the 105th’s counterparts from the other Council militaries.

While most of his career was training and rising up the rank structure, reaching Corporal after 2 years of service, Ardan did see combat on remote worlds, engaging with pirates, turian separatists, and others operating outside of galactic law. His unit, being a combat engineer regiment, was largely responsible for establishing base camps, building defenses, and laying area denial weapons like landmines and turrets to deter the enemy. At the earliest opportunity, Ardan took Sapper and underwater demolitions training, wishing for an opportunity to bring the fight to the enemy.

These skills brought Ardan into specialized strike teams that acted in support of the infantry regiments and were used to destroy bunkers, breach buildings, and sabotage enemy infrastructure and vehicles. For his role in destroying an enemy artillery emplacement ahead of the main assault, Ardan was given the Banner of the 105th to carry on parade for the next month and several commendations from his superior officers. This would be the height of his career, as the next year was relatively peaceful without any major combat deployments until word came of an unknown alien race activating the dormant Relay 314. Soon, Ardan Parvius two months after his 19th birthday, would be deployed to Shanxi in what would be the largest military deployment of his career under Captain Orodis, a distinguished career officer with undeniable pedigre.

Ardan’s first meeting with humans ultimately ended up being a long-range firefight where him, his fellow sappers, and the infantry they were attached to spent hours shooting at distant muzzle flashes. The first time he saw a human up close was the corpses of the line they had overrun, and he found the humans to be unnervingly similar in appearance to asari. Thinking they were some distant cousin of the asari, Ardan spent most of the conflict paranoid about the humans having powerful biotic capabilities which they seemed to be holding back as some kind of strategic gambit to hit the turian forces should they overextend their supply lines. The human forces were quickly overrun and the planet was soon under turian control. A month long occupation followed, luring the turian garrisons into a false sense of security.

When the 2nd Fleet broke through and hit the turian positions, the once dominant turians found themselves on the defense and constantly losing ground to the fresh and vengeful human forces. Ardan fought hard and scored kills against human armour, including two Grizzly and three Mako tanks, before being ordered to retreat. Very nearly defying orders, Ardan and his unit reluctantly left the planet to regroup with the fleet.

When they found out that turian casualties at that point were higher than the humans, Ardan demanded his commanding officer convince his superiors to organize a strike force against the human supply lines and disorganize their forces before they could regroup and dig in to prepare for another invasion. Although rebuked for his insubordination, Captain Orodis nonetheless began to coordinate and organize an advance strike force with the Fleet with the blessing of high command. However, before the turians could counter-attack, a ceasefire was called and it came known that the Council was negotiating with the humans, the asari leading the efforts, further lending credence to Ardan’s suspicion that humans might be their distant cousins. Furious with the resolution of the conflict and how the turians, the most powerful military force in the galaxy, was forced into a treaty with the humans after suffering heavier losses was a scar that was, in Ardan’s eyes, an unforgivable embarrassment.

For the first time in the sapper’s career, Ardan started to think that maybe the turian Hierarchy had grown soft and would not be prepared to meet its peacekeeping mandate if its response to future threats was equally flaccid and spineless. Were the turians not the ones who had single handedly stopped the krogans during the Krogan Rebellions? Ardan asked the Spirits for guidance, the spirit of the Hierarchy, of his Regiment, of his family, and he found no answers or comfort. Finding out his mother had lost a leg after being shot down in the conflict did little to steel Ardan’s resolve, and after watching the televised treaty being signed between human and turian representatives, most insultingly of all the Hierarchy agreeing to pay war reparations, was too much for Ardan. After 4 years of service, well short of the mandatory 15 years of public service turian culture demands of all citizens, Ardan deserted from the military, disappearing from the public eye for some time.

It was an easy enough break for the turian; quietly arranging transportation weeks ahead of his next leave and not offering any overt signs of his true intentions, Ardan spent his next leave traveling to the very edge of Council space under the pretext of wanting to see "the frontier of civilized space", Ardan's grand escape into the Terminus Systems and out of the reach of the Hierarchy was a salarian-run freighter that didn't ask many questions as long as a large enough sum of credits was dangled in front of their noses.

The next time anyone from the Parvius family heard from Ardan was when his brother Casius received an Extranet packet from an unknown source that turned out to be Ardan letting him know he was safe and in the Terminus Systems some three years later, putting as much space between him, humanity, and the Hierarchy as possible. Ardan managed to get a few more messages back and forth with Casius, who was now serving as a hastatim, and now acting as an emissary between Ardan and his parents. The former soldier disappeared for quite some time, only trying to contact his family once every few months.

Casius, understandably disappointed with his brother's recklessness and willing destruction of his career, was livid with Ardan, but found it impossible to stay entirely angry with his brother. After all, they had always been close in their younger years, and despite their family often having long periods of time between contact thanks to their separate careers, they were still close. Ardan didn't want to try and face his parents, and so Casius acted like something of a messenger for him. The brothers drifted apart given the time and space between them, and one of their final transmissions came with a simple warning; "You cannot come home, or I will be legally obligated to bring you in, Ardan."

The last time Ardan tried contacting his family in over ten years, where his message went unanswered.

Ardan didn't take long to arrive at Omega after his departure, hoping to make a new life for himself far from what her perceived was a corrupt and ineffectual galactic government.

The next three years had not treated Ardan kindly, as trying to adjust to life on the largely lawless station was far outside of the orderly and lawful existence he had lead up until his departure from the military. He took up work with a building firm that needed someone with expertise in blasting rock, or tearing down old buildings, and for a while, Ardan found a humble calling that brought in enough pay to support a small one bedroom apartment in a mostly turian district, a mostly out of the way place with few amenities and beneath the notice of the gang warfare that seemed to sweep across the asteroid colony like clockwork. And so for years, Ardan somehow avoided making any meaningful social connections as his life was a routine and regimented cycle of work, exercise and training, and preparing to do it over again.

He had a few belongings to his name, including a small crate of things he’d managed to grab from Oma Ker before his defection, but it didn’t take long for him to realize that he needed more than his old service pistol for defense. Coming from a society where violent separatist groups were an expected part of life, living somewhere that was owned and run by street gangs was enough to make the turian realize that the quiet times wouldn’t last forever. His fears were validated when his company began to mine a new section of rock to expand a commercial district and discovered a strain of rare metals.

Knowing that it wouldn’t be quiet for long, Ardan quickly answered the call for a citizen militia to form by one of the more proactive members of the community, Regalus Vendaris, one of the community’s security officers, and immediately the community banded together and began running drills and training in anticipation for what came next. Within the week, a gang called the Crimson Fist arrived with a force of 30 men, who upon arrival declared that they were there to provide security for the new discovery. Anyone who had been on Omega for longer than a week know what that particular amount of double speak amounted to.

The gang was allowed into the community, uncontested, and unaware of the trap that was lying in wait for them. When the Crimson Fist arrived at the gates to the dig site, they were held up at the security gates and that’s when a firestorm erupted around them from the concealed militia; a section’s worth of ordinance was unleashed from the capable hands of military-trained turians who made short work of the Crimson Fist group, and from their bodies pried military-grade weaponry and technology to supplement their civilian and surplus arms, and the more pragmatic in the militia made arrangements with ethically-flexible doctors who needed the bodies for organs and testing purposes.

Ardan found a spark he’d been missing in his life for a few years; he’d missed the combat, the fighting alongside a fireteam. It felt good, he felt the pride and dignity seep back into his bones.

He blasted rocks for three more years.

Granted, he trained constantly with the militia and with the new influx of credits from the mining operation and the growing population of their humble community he could afford new weapons and arms that could even make gangs with mechs and armoured support hesitate to press their luck, but a few of the dumber or more risk-loving ones took their shots, and the results weren’t much better than the Crimson Fists three years prior. Ardan found himself away from the community more and more, taking side jobs as a gun for hire or to pick up needed supplies, and it was on these excursions that Ardan began to frequent a strip club at neighbouring Rhytheia District, the Blue Oasis, and it was there he met his first, and only, wife.

In a whirlwind romance, if one could call it that, Veetsha D’alyt, an asari, and Ardan got married a week after they met in a sketchy registration office and moved into a new apartment in Rhytheia District shortly after Ardan left his job with the company and the militia behind. His quality of life was better, and he found a more martial application for his skills, and they were seemingly happy for about three months when Veetsha up and left with most of their meager belongings. Ardan was left with little more than a recliner, the coffee table (sans seat), the built in vidscreen in the living room wall, and his collection of sidearms and the stuffed Volus plush toy he’d deemed worth saving as a memento of his home and life back on Oma Ker.

It was difficult for Ardan to come to terms with the reality of the situation; Veetsha never truly loved him, and their romance (if it could ever truly been called that) was a sham based on the exploitative personality of an asari stripper who had subscribed to Ardan's boasts and dreams of moving up in the hired gun game to financial success; when that success did not materialize quickly enough for Veetsha, she made plans to take what little Ardan had when he was away on his "big break", using the meager belongings and wealth he'd accumulated to pay her way to a better part of the station.

Perhaps it had started with genuine intentions, and perhaps somewhere deep down, Veetsha actually liked the down on his luck turian mercenary and his genuine affection for her, but the truth of the matter was he was likely nothing more than a client who had gotten too close to her and learned a harsh lesson about life on Omega and thinking that a romance that grew from financial exchange and entirely too much alcohol was built to last and genuine. As it turned out, the lawlessness of Omega was a bit more pervasive than Ardan had initially thought; his marriage wasn't legally binding and it was entirely possible Veetsha wasn't actually her real name; it would be impossible to track her down.

Ardan, not being one to flex his convictions, was back as a regular of the Blue Oasis a week later. This time, he tipped a bit less.

Without much else in the way of options, Ardan became a freelancer, often taking jobs that involved taking down smaller gangs and criminals with outfits that required a replacement set of hands, Ardan spent decades building up a name for himself as a man who could get things done to the point where he could start commanding a price. From clearing vorcha out from undercities to smuggling jobs to commando-style raids that called upon his expertise with explosives, Ardan was contented with his corner of Omega and more often than not, the turian wasn’t hard pressed to find someone who wanted to buy him a drink and offer him a side gig. When news came of his old community being overrun and Regalus dying heroically in a last stand, Ardan simply raised a glass for an old fallen comrade. Such was life on Omega.

It was around the time of the Skyllian Blitz and the subsequent assault on Torfan that Ardan came across the name and associated reputation of Kolya and the Achilles, which Ardan learned was named after a legendary human warrior whose apparent legacy was being slang for having terrible ankles and weaknesses. Despite his misgivings towards the young captain's species in general, any mercenary worth their carapace in the Terminus had to be able to set aside prejudices for lucrative jobs and keeping your name on people's minds as someone who is reliable and doesn't complicate missions due to their personal egos.

Deciding that Kolya's current focus of targeting pirates and other criminal elements that made a living preying on defenseless civilians, the turian reached out to Kolya to see if the captain had use for someone who was capable of single handedly taking down a frigate.

As it turns out that is a particularly transferable skill on Omega.

There's no military training more through and no culture with a deeply engrained sense of honour and duty instilled into its populace as you will find among the turians. Ardan is a product of strict turian societal obligations, an unwavering sense of duty, and years of armed service that despite his decades as a freelancer on his own terms has left him with an unrivaled sense of discipline and bearing that have lent themselves well in the numbers of skirmishes and battles he's found himself in over the years. Unflinching under fire and capable of carrying on with a calm and collected disposition, Ardan has found himself greatly at an advantage over less-experienced or trained enemies who strain under combat conditions. You can take a turian out of the military, but you cannot take the military out of a turian.

As such, Ardan's proficient and qualified with most every classification of small arm that you can find; if he hasn't seen it before, it only takes a matter of minutes before he's familiar enough with its inner workings to use it effectively, or service it. Qualified on service pistol, rifle, shotgun, and heavy ordinance, Ardan is a remarkably consistent shot with steady hands, thanks to his methodical approach to combat. While he isn't much of an assault trooper or a force recon specialist, Ardan makes up the backbone of any fireteam with precise suppressing fire and the ability to accurately launch a grenade through a head-sized hole at several hundred meters, a mixture of his own talent with such weapons and his targeting visor.

Additionally, Ardan is an exceptional demolitions expert. Much of his loadout for many missions is comprised of various forms of explosive devices from mines to plastic explosives, giving Ardan tactical flexibility to complete missions. Hot breaching is a favorite of his, as well as infrastructure sabotage. There are a number of buildings, structures, and material across the Terminus System that became little more than scrap after a visit from Ardan and whatever team he happened to be a part of at the time.

A large part of Ardan's training included emergency first aid, Extra Vehicular Activity, diving, driving, and survival. While he's likely not the best on any given team at more specialist tasks, he is more than capable of filling in voids in team composition and ensuring mission success, even if he has to improvise on the fly.

Ardan Parvius is a classic example of a man whose entire life and beliefs were shaken to the core and responding in a less than ideal manner. Where he was once assured of the Hierarchy's supremacy and how it was a turian’s duty to fight until the enemy could no longer do so or there were no more turians left to fight, the fact that the humans breached galactic law and had put the turian military to shame during the Relay 314 Incident and the subsequent coddling the Council gave humans eroded the once ironclad faith Ardan carried in the Hierarchy. Now aimless and unsure of where his place is in the galaxy after coming from a strictly regimented society where all facets of life are assured, Ardan has had a degree of difficulty adapting to his new circumstances as a gun for hire on Omega. As a result, he is a bitter, sarcastic, and largely apathetic individual who lacks the direction or purpose that once defined him.

This has led to several career changes, an ill-advised and doomed marriage and little, if any, friends. While he is still boastful and confident to people he meets, several aspects of Ardan's personality are like a puzzle that has been dropped; several pieces don't fit where they should and the whole package isn't quite coming together. Nonetheless, he is still an extremely capable individual with several decades of combined military and mercenary experience and a talent for getting the job done. While his personality might put him at odds with his comrades, having some form of structure and leadership in his life may be exactly what he needs to get himself back on track and reclaim some sense of the purpose he had once had.

Adran is also a compulsive snacker, and a bag of nuts or other salted treats are never long away from his person. He enjoys collecting handguns and military paraphernalia as they remind him of a simpler, much happier time. A childhood toy, a stuffed volus, is one of his most cherished and sentimental belongings that now sits on a shelf in his apartment along with several other personal effects.

He possesses a degree of animosity and resentment towards Citadel Space and he harbours a lingering prejudice towards humans for being unwelcome newcomers to the galactic stage that demand far more than their station would permit, krogan for being warmongering savages that would try to conquer the galaxy the moment the genophage is lifted, quarians for being nomadic freeloaders who were more than capable of finding a new homeworld or colony in their 300 years of exile, and batarians for being utterly hostile to innocent lives and their practices in slavery and torture. However, as an operative, Ardan is capable of looking past his prejudices and working with members of most species in the galaxy and he has an easier time seeing individuals as exceptions to the rather unfortunate rule.

Despite his more self-centered approach to life and apathetic nature, Ardan still believes in order and the duties a turian must perform, and a lot of that means sticking up for people who cannot stick up for themselves and to preserve innocent lives. He has on numerous occasions risked his life to protect a non-combatant, regardless of species. While he is very much a typical product of Omega, he still adheres to a personal code of conduct.

Positive Traits

Disciplined
Reliable
Ethical

Negative Traits

Arrogant
Prejudiced
Belligerent

Comfortable enough lurking aboard a turian-made vessel (clearly, the captain has excellent tastes in craftsmanship and capability), Ardan was never a naval crewman and as such, the inner workings of anything without a gun bore and a targeting system is outside of his wheelhouse. However, as a veteran of both the Relay 314 Incident and a number of hired gun contracts, Ardan knows his way around most small arms and heavy weapons that are commonly flooding Omega's markets and finds himself rather indispensable as something of an authority on maintaining and operating just about anything a crew mate brings to "The Pit", where he serves as the de facto armourer between missions.

Being the mission demolition expert and someone who fusses over his gear like a teenager fusses over their first skycar, Ardan is loathed to think of anyone handling his expensive and immaculate combat inventory without his presence and as such has entrusted himself to give similar attention to detail to whatever weapons the mercenaries have at their disposal. Between optimization, calibration, cleaning and other small performance tweaks and refinements, Ardan is a big reason that a gun goes bang every time the trigger is pulled and old and neglected bits of hardware don't get jammed mid-deployment.

His prized Volus plushie and signed Blasto poster adorn this work space, and he has a drawer dedicated to whatever snacks he can pick up on shore leave.

Ardan has struggled to accept that the galaxy is changing with the introduction of humanity, and being unable to accept that his people's place in the galaxy has changed somewhat has haunted him ever since he was young. He was raised to believe that the turians were the stalwart guardians of the galaxy, and in his eyes the failure at the Relay 314 incident and the subsequent acceptance of humanity into the Citadel changed everything for him. Thinking his government as foolish, and the council as orchestrating the biggest shame in its history, Ardan's entire mercenary career and a life in the Terminus System has left him bitter and without purpose.

Ardan wants to feel the same sense of belonging and purpose that had once defined him and his convictions that he doesn't know why he clings to, but being surrounded by cutthroats and scum without a code of ethics and conduct have left him jaded and believing that the galaxy is rotten to the core. Regardless, he stands up for those who cannot stand up for themselves, and knowing that his individual actions can change the lives of even a few people is filling a part of that void that has dominated his spirit for years now.

He knows he will never be able to go back to his home or family, but he still feels this lingering sense of longing for simpler times and companionship that has eluded him. Despite his misgivings and personal faults, he holds onto his convictions and presses forward, holding out hope that some day he'll be able to look in the mirror and see someone he can be proud of.