Name: Garrett Augustine Cole (No
known relation to Banshee)
Callsign: Snow
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Appearance: Somewhat tall and wiry, as befits his growing up and life primarily aboard spacecraft and orbital installations.
He's lucky enough to be blessed with a certain rogueish handsomeness, and to his fortune, losing an eye at a younger age didn't detract too much from this, neither did his hair turning white due to his spacer genetics. He has worked hard to keep his musculature from degrading in low-gravity environments, which has left him with a swimmer or runner's sort of build. Despite the regular reliance on wearing spacesuit helmets and breathing masks, he shows his rebellious streak by keeping his hair longer than 'standard' and maintaining his 5'o'clock shadow of a beard.
His normal form of dress outside of AUG piloting or spacesuits tends toward casual, rugged, reliable clothing; often vest-shirts under a work-shirt or checked shirt over cargo pants or jeans and boots or sneakers. Loose, comfortable, and practical.
His left eye is covered by a patch, hiding the scarred-over empty socket, and he has scarring on the same side of his body beneath his clothing.
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Personality:Garrett is somewhat an affable, approachable sort of man. Often with a rogueish smile on his face and a gleam in his eye, he likes to talk with colleagues and friends, and has quite a sense of humour. He finds it easy to laugh at himself, and his teasing and gentle poking of fun at those around him is how he shows he likes them and respects them. He is very open with his feelings and thoughts, and will quite readily admit to his liking of others; after all, his experiences with life and how fleeting it can be, due to combat or the harsh accidents of life in space, show how quickly people can be gone without having the chance to say what's meant.
This does cut both ways; he also has little trouble in calling a spade a spade, and will not waste his time and energy on pussyfooting around people who rub him up the wrong way, or who deliberately set out to make others miserable, be they individuals or groups. Equally, he has little time or energy for manipulators, liars, or those who betray trust; again due to previous experiences.
Despite his facade of easy-going, laid-back humour, he is more than capable and aware of his surroundings and events, and perfectly capable of taking this seriously when need be, and bringing his skills to the fore, and can be ruthlessly effective in combat, and while does not relish taking lives, will do so when the need arises with little regret. In his mind, those who choose to fight do so knowing the consequences of their actions, up to and including death.
Garrett is especially merciless and fierce when fighting against would-be tyrants, enslavers, or dictatorial types. He hates to see people pushed around, and will not only fight to defeat them, but do everything to leave them in ruin, humiliated and knowing exactly who they crossed and why they were taken down.
He has very complex opinions and thoughts about both UEC and the LTS. While he agrees strongly with neither or their actions, he knows and has experienced that both are made up of people, all of whom are varied in their own opinions, and that there are a wide array of people just trying to live their lives on both sides, regardless of their affiliations - the reality of life is more complicated than Black and White, or Right and Wrong. However, he strongly opposes the militancy of the LTS and the self-proclaimed royalty of its' leader, but finds the bureaucracy and monolithic idealism of the UEC problematic as well.
Skills:Spacer: Garrett grew up aboard interstellar and interplanetary ships, learning how to live in low-gravity environments. He has an instinctive grasp of low-gravity and zero-g movement, and the minutiae of living in space environments (safety procedures, shipboard procedures, routine duties, maintenance, etc). He is well-attuned to the dangers of everyday life in space and aboard ship, and the challenges that come with it, as well as the culture and society of those living in space.
Affable: Approachable, jovial, and sociable; Garrett is someone who is easy to trust and open up to. He enjoys the company of others, and quickly makes friends and keeps them. He is good at forming connections, albeit more personal than professional. The 'heart' of a group, Garrett can often be a mediator and a conscience in a situation.
Improviser: Often a lot of the ships and stations Garrett and those like him grew up on were kept working however possible - after all, when it's your life, as well as your livelihood on the line and you're billions of miles from the nearest source of space parts or rescue, you make do. As such, he has picked up the knack for improvising in situations. Be it finding new uses for tools and parts or coming up with clever ways to use what is at his disposal in combat, or some other situation, he has a talent for 'making it work', even if its' just a short-term solution until a better one comes along.
Iron Constitution: Thanks to his Spacer genetics, Garrett is particularly hardy against a lot of common illnesses and maladies. At some point in his family tree's past, some form of genetic tinkering must have occurred to make the family better suited for working in space and the resistance to the closed environments that spread illness so easily, as well as the damage to the body from prolonged living in space. Garrett holds onto these genes.
Claustrophilia: The opposite of Claustrophobia; Garrett has no issue with being in his AUG's cockpit, or in the cabins and corridors of spacecraft or other vessels and vehicles for long periods of time, having experience it as most of his life.
Flaws:Spacer Build: Despite his dedication to compensating for it, like most Spacers, Garrett does still suffer from some physical weakeness connected to his growing up in a lower gravity environment. His bones and muscles are a little more fragile than someone who grew up planetside, and he can be injured with more ease. Likewise, while he is resistant to
disease, he is vulnerable to effects of weather and planetary temperatures, such as cold and heat variations, due to the steady conditions aboard ships and stations.
Vulnerable Nature: The same affable and open nature that makes Garrett open and approachable, also makes him vulnerable. It can be easy for him to be manipulated or led into vulnerable situations by those of a less-than honourable nature and reputations, often using this nature of his to provoke him or lure him or his allies and friends into danger.
Old Wounds: Despite his attempts to compensate for it and overcome it, something he does quite well, Garrett cannot completely compensate for his blind left side, and it can be possible to take advantage of it. Similarly, the other wounds he received in the same incident can sometimes still bother him with lingering aches and pains, and sometimes they slow him down.
Addictive Personality: While he's mostly a wholesome sort of guy, Garrett is unfortunately possessed of a nature that leads him into being easily addicted. Already a smoker, he also has a somewhat unhealthy relationship with alcohol and other 'hedonistic' experiences. His past traumas and experiences lead him to often seek refuge in excess to drown out the feelings and memories. He has luckily managed to greatly limit his interactions with hard drugs, but smoking, alcohol, sex and other, similar, highs are easily alluring and enticing for him, and he knows how easily he can fall into their grasp.
Agorophobia: A minor case, but nonetheless; Garrett's being raised and mostly living aboard spacecraft and stations has left him with a deeply ingrained discomfort of being in wide, open, and natural spaces. While it is not something that can completely cripple him, it can impair his judgement and well-being, and he will often avoid them. Cities and built-up areas do not affect him as much, but wide-open, natural places will certainly leave him uneasy.
Brief History:Garrett was born as part of the community of interstellar and interplanetary ship crews that plied the routes between colony worlds, orbital settlements, mining asteroids, and all points inbetween.
His immediate biological family were part-owners of a heavy freighter the
Cole, one of many that were part of a self-owned company that belonged to several generations of extended families who had determinedly forged their own moderate success among the stars as they spread out from Earth's embrace over centuries. The company was simply named 'Augustine', after its' original founder, which is where Garrett's middle name came from, as was the tradition with his 'clan' of Spacers.
Growing up in this setting, he was surrounded by the children of other families, and all of them were virtually raised together, parents taking on the task of raising children almost as a group, watching out for one another. As such, it was very rare for him to not have anyone around, and he became a very social person, raised with a lot of love around him.
From an early age, technology became an instinctual part of his surroundings, as did the everyday dangers of working in space. Accidents happened, and when they did, they were often severe. Space is an unforgiving place.
Garrett was in double-digits before he first set foot on a planet, and found it a strange experience, and almost agorophobic, compared to the places he was used to, and he maintained a sense of wonder about the vastness and variety of such places and the people from them.
His teenage years were uneventful; typical for any teenager, he had growing pains as he found his footing in a world much bigger than he was, and all the baggage that came with it.
It was when he reached his adulthood that things started to really change. War was everywhere. Already, the world he knew was shaken by earlier conflicts, and everyone knew more was coming. Reluctantly, his families' corporation were drawn into picking sides and preparing for danger among the stars. Wanting to do more than just be on the sidelines, Garrett put his training using an MA for cargo handling to work, and signed up to the security forces the family company maintained. His parents and siblings were proud of him, and he felt a sense of pride in his duty, and a love for his new MA.
Unfortunately, it wasn't to last.
On a run to deliver some urgently needed medical, food, and aid supplies to a colony world, the Augustine convoy was attacked by a UEC interdiction patrol. Ignoring the transport convoy's neutral status and the relief nature of their mission, the UEC's AUG's attacked. The convoy called for aid from the LTS forces surrounding the planet, but they were ignored.
Garrett and his fellow Augustine security MA pilots put up a valiant fight, managing to down some of the hostiles, but it was a losing prospect; military AUGs, fighters, and vessels against a handful of security forces and armed freighters.
Garrett could only watch as his family and all he had known were blasted out of the sky as he waited for his grevious wounds to claim him - and as the LTS cavenged the remains of the ships, taking the supplies that were left behind.
Left for dead, Garrett and the remainder of his Augustine comrades and family were eventually picked up by a passing group of Spacers. They took them in, but damage had already been done; Garrett's wounds had left him all-but crippled without medical attention, and the others of his group were on the brink of death.
Through their generosity, Garrett was healed, though it was a long process of learning to adjust, and training his body to do things in a new way. The others survived, in various states, slowly clawing back their health and well-being.
Lost and without a home, Garrett and his fellow survivors joined up with other spacers. The remains of his Augustine corporate family combined their assets with another group, that welcomed them with open arms. Driven by their experiences, they formed the Augustine mercenary company, dedicated to protecting Spacers from what happened to them, and bankrolled by Alternity Engineering, based on the Asteroid Alternity.
Since those days, he has joined with EINHERJAR to see if his skills might still serve the galaxy at large in this time of unsteady peace, and if he might find somewhere he can fit in. Garrett is still haunted by his experiences, and sometimes questions if his choice of life as a mercenary is somehow his way of trying to get revenge or fight the things that happened to him.
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