Member
Cian Flynn [KEE-an FLIN]
Race
Human
Age
28
Sexuality
Heterosexual
Gender
Masculine
Appearance
Cian has the mug of a pit-fighting Varren, without the bright, excited looking eyes and the almost elated seeming expression of its maw. His hazel eyes rarely seem to betray anything other than a hint of anger or sadness and with the gift of time one might notice he never seems to fully smile.
The left side of his face is marred by scarring, his cheek especially is criss-crossed, with one scar beginning at the edge of his mouth and ending at around the top of his ear. The other most noticeable blemish starts just under his nose and ends in the midst of his jawline. He has other scars on his face but they’re somewhat less noticeable. One faded going through his left eyebrow and another that runs from his top lip down to his chin.
He is unpredictably formidable physically for his rather average height, having spent the years following the Reaper War packing on weight in muscle and training his body to its genetic edge. The consequential thick muscle on his torso, arms and legs have made his stature somewhat rectangular looking.
In terms of clothing, on-duty Cian obviously mostly just wears the standard Intervention uniform, though he isn’t thrilled about it. Not exactly a rules and regulations kind of guy. Off-duty he still prefers to wear the old street fashion of Earth. Dark coloured hoodies, leather jackets, jeans, boots and trainers. His style tends to be pretty nondescript.
In combat Cian wears a full suit of Hahne-Kedar armour. It is almost entirely black with the single exception of a violet stripe running the length of the left arm pieces.
Height
5’10
Weight
186lb
Personality
5’10
Weight
186lb
Personality
Cian would consider himself a realist. Unfortunately reality for him has always been brutal and unforgiving with the rare occurrence of compassion or love being the only things that have stopped him from becoming a fully-fledged psychopath. He has an array of negative traits. He’s violent, stubborn, asocial, ignorant of many social things and has a tendency towards temperamentality. On the other hand he’s prone to politeness, surprisingly open-minded and considerate, mentally resilient, intelligent, calm under intense pressure and seemingly fearless.
Things are not always as they seem though. Cian may appear calm and act borderline fearless in most circumstances but this comes at the great cost of being constantly on edge. Relaxing for the man is an incredible effort that these days he can only really achieve when he’s alone in a room with his back to the wall, facing preferably it's only entrance. Feeling this way has had a profound effect on almost everything in his life. He struggles to relax around others so doesn’t form relationships easily. This in turn has negatively affected his social, familial, love and work life. Sadly it has also saved his skin on countless occasions, even before he was a soldier.
Ultimately Cian is a warrior who wants to feel and act more like a person, but for his entire life so far he has relied on the defense mechanisms that make that difficult. For him there was never a difference between his work and home life, and his work life almost always included violence. Trying to split the two for him is a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
Rank / Role / Specialty
Alliance Navy Lieutenant - Marine Infantry - Armourer’s Apprentice
Equipment
M-96 Mattock
M-6 Carnifax
M-27 Scimitar
Omni-Blade
Skills
Alliance Navy Lieutenant - Marine Infantry - Armourer’s Apprentice
Equipment
M-96 Mattock
M-6 Carnifax
M-27 Scimitar
Omni-Blade
Skills
Close-Quarters Combat: It isn’t much of an exaggeration to say Cian has been fighting his entire life. When he was young he wasn’t very good at it and often got his ass kicked as a result. With repeated experiences he began learning a thing or two though, especially after his crazy elder brother got tired of ending his fights for him and taught him the basics of fighting instead. With a few years under his belt of honing the techniques that seemed to work and a ton of actual fighting experience due to the rough estate he grew up on, Cian soon found himself quite efficient at street fighting. He was usually able to quite easily take down an opponent or even two as long as he wasn’t overly outsized, outnumbered or outgunned.
As he aged the combat in his life quickly got far more serious, most often involving firearms or other illegal street weaponry. As a result fist fighting and the like kind of fell by the wayside in favour of learning how to actually shoot a gun straight. He wasn’t great at shooting at first. Actually, he wasn’t even good. He was a quick study though and he had more than enough motivation to see himself through the learning. He also had something most other street hoodlums didn’t. Book knowledge. He’d always been an avid reader and as soon as it became relevant he began reading books on small unit tactics and combat. Everything from ‘The Art of War’ to the Irish Republican Army’s ‘Green Book’. This gave him a massive tactical advantage over most other gangsters and he out-thought them despite his poor practical skills. This was likely the main reason he lived long enough for his shooting to improve.
He never really stopped his reading on the topic and up until the start of the Reaper invasion he was learning and applying new techniques to resolve the occasional turf squabbles that cropped up. This was invaluable in the invasion itself and over the months of heavy fighting he applied many of his tried and true methods to overcome the Reaper forces' superior numbers. A lot of strategies were soon proved almost completely inert when applied to the alien force, but those that weren’t were life savers many times over. Cian wouldn’t have survived his teenage years on his skill alone and he certainly didn’t survive the Reaper War without a ludicrous amount of luck but knowing certain tactics and having the experience to apply them sure didn’t hurt.
It wasn’t truly until after the Reaper War when things had calmed down and Cian found himself in the Alliance Navy that his hand to hand training really picked up again. The Alliance trained him as part of their Marine Corps Martial Art Program (MCMAP) as often as they could. He trained on Earth before he left, on spaceships as he travelled and on whatever Alliance base he found himself stationed on in space the training went on. His old skills soon returned and he slowly developed an array of new ones, going from a basic if talented brawler to being proficient at a dozen Human martial arts styles as well as a couple of alien ones. He was now a capable soldier, able to do everything from near harmlessly subdue a non-compliant person without causing much injury to lethally dispatching an enemy soldier. With new access to military documents and training he began reading up on a substantial amount of classified CQB tactics and mission debriefs and gradually became both a better shooter and strategist.
For a while Cian believed he had reached his peak. He couldn’t imagine getting much better at hand to hand fighting, shooting or strategy and not at all due to a lack of confidence. He had become extremely good at all three. He knew it, his co-workers knew it, his superiors knew it. He’d even started to become a tad arrogant about it, but realistically he was one of the better human soldiers. Very few he’d met could fight or think as well as him when it counted. This arrogance lasted until he entered the N7 Special Forces program, which quickly made him feel like Icarus. Compared to everyone else at The Villa he was average at best. These were some truly talented, seemingly born soldiers. The best humanity could offer. What Cian learned during his five N-designation courses is largely classified, suffice to say pre-N5 Cian wouldn’t last ten seconds in a fight with the weapon the N7 drill instructors and trainers there gradually moulded him into.
Powers
Adrenaline Rush: With peak-possibility reflexes (for a human) and the help of both combat focused narcotics and movement-prediction technology Cian can seemingly slow down time, at least for himself. This has a rather lengthy cooldown however as the narcotics can have serious ill-effects if ingested too frequently.
Fortification: Basically just emergency armour shielding. Takes tremendous energy for the armour’s battery pack to do, so also quite limited.
Carnage: An armour-piercing explosive round. Usually does a fair amount of shrapnel damage due to whatever poor bastard it hits equipment exploding at whoever is in his vicinity.
Armour Piercing Ammo
Frag Grenades
Biography
Cian was born and raised in South London. His dad resided in various prisons more often than at home growing up, with three separate long stints before his son had hit adulthood. It’s not worth going into what the prick was like, suffice to say Cian, his siblings and their mum quietly preferred it when he was incarcerated and in the opinion of the concerned majority he didn’t die soon enough.
His mum was a typical south London mum for his area. Tough because she didn’t have much choice, somewhat nurturing but not coddling, overall a decent enough parent but too many odds stacked against her with not enough help in reach. What little goodness Cian sees in himself he attributes to her.
Cian was the middle child of five siblings, and they more than anyone else made him who he is. By the time Cian was fifteen his older sister Violet and older brother Sean had already gone partially down the road of their father and were already into a life of street crime. Violet was intelligent, ambitious and cunning. Sean was violent, ruthless and more than a little unpredictable. Together they took the local gangs by storm. Not long satisfied with working under any of the local leaders Violet and Sean split off, taking almost half their original gang with them and forming their own. This split the local gang-controlled drug industry in half and immediately caused more than one gang war to break out.
Cian himself, about to turn sixteen at this point, wasn't all too involved in that life yet. He still wanted to be as little like his father as possible and the best way he saw to do that was avoid crime, drugs and drink as much as he could. He’d seen what most people had seen at his age. A few shootings and dozens of beatdowns but for the former only as a spectator. This changed when members of one of the rival gangs his siblings were beefing with spotted his youngest brother and sister walking to school one day and murdered Michael, his brother in the street. Cian had always been extremely protective of his younger siblings and this event forced a complete psychological 180 for him. He went from eschewing any act that remotely reminded him of his father to almost channeling him. He harnessed all the hate, fear and anger he’d long suppressed and forced his regretful older sister and vengeful brother to give him targets for his warpath. Over the next several months he went from a relatively innocent sixteen year old to an eager and willing murderer.
It turned out Cian was a naturally gifted criminal. He had the combined traits of his elder siblings in that regard. The cunning and thoughtfulness of Violet and the knack for violence and ruthlessness of Sean, without the lack of forethought or unpredictability. Violet and Cian stalked their enemies and planned how best to carry out their killings and once enough planning had been done Cian with the help of Sean and other trusted gang members carried them out. Over the next year their pool of enemies dwindled as they were murdered, imprisoned or went into hiding. Occasionally a plan went astray and the Flynn brothers came out more than a little bloody but that was just the way of things, easily explained away by claiming to catch a stray on the block or being the victim of a violent mugging.
By the time the majority of killing had ended Sean had also been murdered and Violet and Cian were mentally and physically scarred shells of their former, relatively vibrant selves. With the death of her second child, Cian's mum had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized. Violet, now twenty one years of age and making a considerable amount of money controlling the local drug trade, adopted their youngest surviving sibling and tried to keep things as peaceful as possible for her sake. When that inevitably failed due to the business they were in, Cian was there to swiftly bury any problem, along with his best friend and fellow murderer George Woods. Over the years less and less problems came up though, as Violet and Cian learned more about controlling things and their reputation for warring grew.
Cian found himself in limbo, unable to go back to the person he was before he’d walked this path of blood but hating who he’d become.
By the time the Reapers invaded Earth Cian was 24 years old. Violet and him had expanded and by this point controlled most of the drug, gun and smuggling trade in and out of London. Between the turf wars, discreet trade deals, necessary hideouts and many front businesses they owned, Cian and his sister had become extremely knowledgeable in the traversal of London and how to use the territory to their advantage. This fact alone saved their lives innumerable times during the resistance.
As for all intents and purposes, the world ended Violet and Cian very quickly realized continuing to chase profit was pointless. Working to resist and survive however was as worthy a goal as it always had been. To that purpose they used the knowledge they had acquired over long years of fighting to turn what remained of their gang into a guerilla resistance force. Violet strategized as she had always done and Cian led the troops on hit and run raids and outpost movements.
Over the next year almost everyone Cian knew died. Sophie, his youngest sister, perished when Reaper forces hit a base they were staying at before they could move. Their mother too, as far as they could find out, presumably had died in the initial destruction. Very quickly those things became almost impossible to know for certain, but with what the Reapers did to captives the siblings almost hoped she had. George Woods went missing whilst leading a raid with everyone that accompanied him, and neither Violet or Cian heard word of him after. Aside from that the vast majority of their resistance force had been wiped. Things were looking incredibly grim. They were doing better than any two kids from the streets could have possibly hoped to, both strategy wise and in combat but against the Reapers numbers and power it was simply inert long term.
They were down to a force of maybe two dozen and teetering on the edge of going out in one last “fuck you” suicide attack when David Anderson came to London. Violet was a fantastic small-scale strategist, but Anderson was a genius with decades of experience under his belt. The man was quite literally a living legend. Slowly, things went from utterly hopeless back to just extremely bad, and extremely bad was within their comfort zone. Anderson had a way of making people truly believe they were more than they felt.
Cian was on yet another raid one night when he came across a unit of soldiers almost overwhelmed by a horde of husks and cannibals. Using them as a distraction he flanked the reaper units and wiped scores of them out with grenades and crossfire, giving the soldiers themselves breathing room to regroup and get back into the fight. When quiet fell and the reapers lay dead and still the unit of soldiers took Cian and his men back to their Captain. One David Anderson. Impressed by the tale of Cian’s unit told by his troops and further truths of survival told by Cian himself, he offered to officially conscript Cian, his sister and their men into the Alliance Navy. He would give them equipment, intel, even other conscripts to lead eventually, when leadership skill was further proven. Cian had never been a uniform wearing kind of guy, but he knew to refuse such an offer would probably mean death for him and his sister, likely sooner rather than later.
Together they held out long enough for the Crucible to be deployed. Both Cian and his sister received numerous battlefield promotions, both ending up as Ensigns at the end of the war. David Anderson passed on along with Shepard, but to Cian he remains a living memory. A shining beacon in the darkness of what even men of war can aspire to.
After the war the only things Cian really had left were his sister and his hard-earned career in the Systems Alliance Navy. He didn’t see much point staying on Earth anymore. His sister was leaving to advance her own career and after awkwardly discussing their previous life with her they both quickly came to the conclusion that it had been petty, immoral and stupid. Nothing quite like a genocidal alien invasion and watching the near destruction of your homeworld to make you realize how ignorant it is to fight and kill over profit and territory measured in neighborhoods.
Saying an emotional and temporary goodbye to each other they both headed off-planet to get some ship-board and space experience. It turned out people like them were in very high demand. Folk who had fought the Reapers and not only lived, but thrived. Cian himself was put to both work and education. There were massive efforts to get the many Alliance conscripts up to snuff on all the things that fell by the wayside in the chaos of the war. As such Cian found himself split between studying on board the vessels he was assigned to and taking part in attacks against both pirate bases planetside and Cerberus space stations. Surprisingly he enjoyed both tasks more than he thought he would. Learning was fulfilling and killing slavers and terrorists was putting his illicitly gained skills to justified use.
After a couple of years of touring space Cian was quite deeply ingrained into Alliance life. Perhaps even comfortable with having an official, legitimate career. One of the greatest surprises of his life came at this time when he was called into a meeting and told by an Admiral that David Anderson himself had recommended him for the N7 program. It had obviously taken a hell of a long time to get to the point where telling him was anything close to a priority with everything going on. The top brass were also reluctant about offering any war time conscripts such a thing since so many were unpredictable and turned out unsuitable to Navy life long term. Especially people such as Cian with dubious at best, nefarious at worst backgrounds. Apparently having stayed in the service for a few years, passed dozens of educational courses and fought many battles was enough to ease their doubts in regards to him however. He gratefully and eagerly accepted, and anticipated his trip to The Villa in the near future.
In present time Cian has graduated to become an N5 with a future invitation to return for further training and risen to the rank of Lieutenant in the Alliance. His latest assignment has put him on loan to the Citadel and he has been ordered to report to the SSV-Intervention.
Affiliations
Thomas Flynn - Father - Deceased
Mary Flynn - Mother - Unknown
Violet Flynn - Sister - Alive
Sean Flynn - Brother - Deceased
Michael Flynn - Brother - Deceased
Sophie Flynn - Sister - Deceased
David Anderson - Hero - Deceased
George Woods - Best Friend - Unknown
Relationships
Not yet applicable.
Character Theme
SAMURAI - Never Fade Away
Thomas Flynn - Father - Deceased
Mary Flynn - Mother - Unknown
Violet Flynn - Sister - Alive
Sean Flynn - Brother - Deceased
Michael Flynn - Brother - Deceased
Sophie Flynn - Sister - Deceased
David Anderson - Hero - Deceased
George Woods - Best Friend - Unknown
Relationships
Not yet applicable.
Character Theme
SAMURAI - Never Fade Away