Name: James Whitney
Age: 31
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Crew Position: First Mate
Appearance:
James is not a conventionally attractive man. He is in good condition, and stands taller than most, but these assets are counterbalanced by a host of unbecoming features. His hair is short and tangled, his face unfamiliar to a razor and boasting the resulting untidy stubble as a result. His nose has been broken more than once, and his eyes are too narrow for his liking. His skin is pale from years of shipboard living, and it pockmarked with burns and scratches his fingers are the result of his work: dexterous and clever, worn, scraped and dirty. His medium build, though being in good health and physical capability neither lends him the air of impressive danger valued by those outside the law, nor the lithe attractiveness that would aid his pursuits of the fairer sex. He wears plain clothes, victim to that common pitfall of solo spacers, a certain disregard for the state of one's attire. He wears heavy boots near everywhere he goes, and when the cold takes him his prized woolen trenchcoat, given to him by his father, keeps him warm.
ht: 6'2
wt: 170
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Biography: Born to a spacer family, Jim grew up between stations, seeing little of his father but otherwise enjoying a normal childhood. As he grew older he, for reasons including such disparate facts as his reading of Earthen political philosophy and a particularly firebrand ex-girlfriend, took the usual teenage disrespect for authority and went further, finding himself among circles which care little for the rule of law. He did not attend college, rather pursuing his interests [which largely consisted of women, drinking, firarms and grav-ball], finding work where he could.
A pair of events propelled him towards the occupation of smuggling: his father dying, leaving his ship and the ailing family business to his only son, and nearly being killed during a robbery that involved himself and several of his friends. Hard up for money and needing to pay his father's debts, he decided to tread a fine moral line: he began taking lucrative, less-than-legal jobs, always trying to avoid taking action that would directly hurt innocent people. He quickly became unfortunately acquainted with the law, and began to enjoy the adventurous life of a smuggler, carrying everything from drugs to animals to fugitives all around space, though eventually managing to transition almost entirely to arming honest civilians and the less privileged members of society, a business both lucrative and entirely in line with his outlook.
The life of a smuggler forces one to take risks and become known to the criminal element, both he did with considerable precociousness. He became known as a low-level, reliable worker, and became friends with the more agreeable shade of criminal circulating space. He found partners and lifelong acquaintances among his fellow outlaws, and met a bevy of interesting people. It was at this time he met Lin Chang, over the years becoming good friends despite their differences.
Unfortunately for James, despite nearly a decade of good luck keeping him out of the hands of the law, he fell prey to a police sting, and though escaping with his life, lost his ship and all the possessions and cargo therein. Emptying his accounts to pay for lost cargo, he found himself destitute, and turned to Lin Chang to provide an honest living, having lost much of the enjoyment he once felt at defying authority.
