Zombiedude101

Mass Effect: Borealis

@DearTrickster @Zombiedude101@Hank

Serena will likely offer free upgrades and maintence on your arms and whatever mechanical thing you might need work on!

...she'll even do it quickly if you play chess with her.

@Rtron

I'd be wary about challenging Iosif at chess, heheh..

Mass Effect: Borealis

Hey @Zombiedude101...

We seem to have a bit of a color clash. You have Slate Blue while I have Medium Slate Blue. Kinda too close in shade...

@Sundered Echo

Sorry, didn't see this. I'll just switch to SteelBlue.

Mass Effect: Borealis

@Zombiedude101 Heyo, I was thinking if and when everybody arrives to Omega (assuming our dear GM's don't have anything up their sleeves) do you want to do a collab with me? I think Iosif and Dex have some pretty common ground. But if you have other plans maybe we can do it later on~

@DearTrickster

Sounds good with me.

Mass Effect: Borealis

"Yeah, we are. I'm the nav man. Name's Haze."

Iosif tossed a silent nod towards the navigator's general direction, making a mental note of the turian's name, 'Haze'. Then he caught wind of one of the others.

"That's right, human. You must be the token alien. I wonder if he'll suffice to meet our diversification quota,"

Iosif snorted at the respirator-bound turian's quip, amused by the notion. Up here, he was the alien. Well, not like that was a problem. Say what you would about turians; for all the rigid, orderly military structure that they were known for, he'd come to find that a lot of those who struck out into the freelance world had some serious smart-mouths - it seemed like this one was no exception. For the most part, he found it entertaining.

“Welcome to the bridge. You can give me your resume later, as of right now I’m going to need your help steadying this bulky beast. Thail’s gravity is going to be ridiculous.”

At that, his attention briefly shifted over to the pilot - who coincidentally shared the same taste in limbs - and nodded, before snapping back to the console before him. It'd been a while since he'd been behind the helm of a vessel of this size and so he was admittedly, a little rusty; nothing that a little co-ordination wouldn't have solved. Of course, it didn't help that the Borealis/Jalopy was far rustier than his slightly out-of-practice pilot skills and more difficult to manoeuvre, but a challenge like this would do him some good in the long run.

Professional as ever, he leaned forward and began plotting new information into the console, he did as he could to work with the pilot on manoeuvring around the gas giant - only barely paying attention to the ongoing discussion about Omega.

"As I told you, I have no desire to be shot. Now, unless there is anything else, I need to think."

From the sounds of it, none of them were particularly thrilled about heading back to that hive that epitomised the lawlessness of the Terminus Systems, though Iosif didn't exactly count himself among the skeptics. Sure, he'd had his bad days on this wretched hive of scum and villainy - losing one partner whilst the other betrayed the both of them among the shittiest of those bad days - yet he had no specific taboos about eing here. Worst case scenario, he ran into a few familiar four-eyed faces or a single, salarian face (though that wasn't exactly a bad thought), yet aside from that, as far as he was concerned this place was out to get him as much as anyone else, no more, no less. Still, he opted to raise his opinion on the matter, pitching in between manoeuvres.

"Could also see about docking near the Afterlife District, I guess. Technically it's neutral ground so long as the Queen's nest isn't kicked, might be worth seeing if there's any contracts to be picked up there, too."

Mass Effect: Borealis

And there's my post finally up.

Mass Effect: Borealis

Of all the things that Iosif had checked off on his 'expect the unexpected' register, this wasn't one of them. Well, it was half true - he'd harboured a few doubts about whether or not this Captain Luzai was actually going to follow through and upon seeing the rust-bucket that was the Borealis, he wondered whether this was part of some kind of elaborate scheme that salarians often liked to come up with - tricky bastards that they could be. No, what he hadn't expected was to find out he and the rest of this gathered crew had inherited the Captain's ship.

For a brief moment, he was almost tempted to see about selling or trading off his share of the ship whilst he could, cutting his losses there and then - yet something restrained him. Hell, he had to admit - one of the only reasons he was on Illium in the first place was out of a slim hope of finding that bastard Jedrah and putting one through the backstabbing salarian's skull. Yet he'd found no trace, nothing. Sitting on this world was a waste of time and potential credits earned - at least with a ship and a small crew, there was potential for profit.

By the time he’d made his way inside, hauling his own personal crate alongside him, it didn’t take long for them to hash a few things out; captain’s cabin was off-limits, they were going to give the ship a once-over to see if it was actually capable of flight and then figure out what the good Captain had in store for them before his untimely demise, then taking stock of what they actually had - fuel, supplies, the usual routine. As this was all done with, he made sure to get a good idea of who he'd be working with just one more time and gave them all a brief glance.

A few of his own - humans, that is. For the most part, he wasn't particularly interested, though the one wearing a tank top struck him as an engineering type - if only by the analytical way she was examining the ship - which was probably a good thing in the long run. Then came a few turians - one looked like they'd gone through the same cybernetics procedure as he had whilst another was, interesting enough, a sickly looking turian with a respiratory device and what looked like a supportive chair - a strange contradiction for a member species who's military strength and prowess was one of its main facets.

Other faces caught his eye; two asari (their biotics always came in handy) a lethargic drell, a krogan, the vorcha who looked like it had crudely tried to paint itself as a quarian (he made a mental note to keep both raw meat and salvaged tech away from them, in jest) and then an actual quarian - who strangely reminded him of Rael. Part of him missed that boastful quarian, even now.

When he finally saw the batarian, it made him grit his teeth for a brief moment with disgust and muscle-memory told him to reach for his sidearm. If there was any species that he held a particular prejudice towards, it was those four-eyed bastards and for all intents and purposes he had every right to. It wasn't the whole media portrayal of their kind by the Systems Alliance that had set him against their kind, or even when he was sent up against pirate crews whilst he served in the 21st Airborne. No, it was without a doubt the months he had spent in those shithole mines on Aratoht that had cemented his views of their kind. For all intents and purposes, this batarian was, if anything, a loose business associate, nothing more.

He shrugged at last and, free to do whatever for the time being, opted to drop off his things before he did anything else, Iosif headed to the cargo bay and sat out the take-off there, taking a couple of extra moments to make sure the lock on his singular crate was secure - last thing he needed would be the few belongings he had going missing because of something like an opportunistic batarian. On his way back through the hangar, he took a brief moment to give it another once-over, musing over the prospect of fitting a gunship in here like the one he once piloted, before he noticed the woman in the tank-top doing some work on a strapped-down buggy, listening to an elcor rendition of heavy-death-metal blasted out from her drone as she uncovered the remains of some long-dead alien vermin. It was funny, to say the least; soliciting a brief chuckle before he decided that a trip to the bridge would be far more productive than risking damage to his hearing.

Analysing his surroundings on the way, he couldn’t help but note that the apty-named Jalopy had certainly seen better days, even for a former Volus ship. Between the many patch jobs this ship had seen to accommodate a larger crew and the wear-and-tear it entailed, the name dubbed by the engineer-type fit so much that it actually made his cybernetic arm itch for the first time in a while, perhaps because it looked like staying onboard raised the prospect of losing yet another another.

Before he could dwell on that point any further, that particular train of thought was rudely interrupted by an explosion that rocked the ship, coming from the hangar if that shockwave was anything to go by and for a moment he wondered if the Jalopy had suffered a hull breach or something equally disastrous, before the intercom chatter that followed set his mind to rest. Well, kind of - the engineer’s sarcasm was appreciated, at any rate.

Just as he entered the bridge, the announcement of their course for Omega was blasted over the intercom. A novel prospect, he mused. He hadn’t actually stopped by the old haunt since his last partnership had gone to shit. Shrugging, he stepped inside and glanced around, quickly spotting the others occupying the place - all turians, conveniently enough. His gaze passed from one to another, one by one - two of them quickly got past him like before but he noted yet again the presence of the other two interesting cases; the unlucky hacker with the respirator and the anti-grav chair and the one with the cybernetic prosthesis, like him. Without much else to say, he threw each of them a nod and headed up to what he could only presume was the co-pilot’s chair, pulling up a seat and clearing his throat.

”I take it we’ll all be working together, up here?”

Verthaven: Days of Rain ☔ [COMPLETED]

Happy V-Day, folks.

Mass Effect: Borealis

So just to be clear, does the Borealis' hangar bay have room for a small gunship?

Mass Effect: Borealis

I'll get to work on my post when I get a chance. Valentine's Day tomorrow so might be busy.

Mass Effect: Borealis

Name: Iosif Shevchenko (Pronounced Joosif Shevchenko), (Alias: Lyosha)

Race: Human

Gender: Male

Age: 31

Class: Engineer, Pilot and part-time Navigator.

Appearance:



Standing a a rough height of about 5'11, Iosif possesses something of a wiry frame that's been honed by years of training and experience in the field, but is otherwise of an average physical complexion. Due in part to his having ventured out into the galaxy on his travels, his skin tone appears to have taken on a darker complexion than most slavs. Accompanying this are numerous faded scars of varying severity running across his torso, whilst across his back is a criss-cross of faded lacerations which resemble wounds caused by flogging. On the back of his neck is a faded barcode tattooed into the skin with several Batarian numerals and letters etched into the skin beside it. That aside, Iosif's left arm is clearly alien to the rest of his body: from the shoulder-down it appears that his arm is a cybernetic replacement, complemented with a synthetic white coating. Elsewhere, Iosif's pale blue eyes and the pronounced features of his face do well to point out his slavic heritage, with brunette-colored hair that's kept short with a crew cut whilst his jawline seldom develops anything more than a hazy stubble.

Background:

Backstory

Born in 2145, Iosif was the first-born son in a primarily academic family unit: his father was an R&D Technician who originally hailed from the Russian Federation before his assignment whilst his mother had spent her entire life on the red planet and had been a colleague of her future husband. A mere three years after his birth, the unearthing of a series of alien ruins and the subsequent wealth of research and technology which followed gave the family a dedicated assignment early on in life at Lowell City in Mars, which led to Iosif spending his childhood years within the confines of a residential facility for the families of the R&D staff with the frequently iterated expectation that one day he would follow both parents into a similar field.

This however only served to alienate Iosif from the pursuit of such a path and whenever he found the opportunity to spend time outside of the residential facility, he often visited the hangar bays and public sectors where cargo and transport shuttles most frequently landed and departed, as this granted him the opportunity to speak with the shuttle crews and the passengers aboard and learn more of the human dominion, taking interest in the idea of leaving the Solar System for other worlds via the newly discovered mass relays and FTL-technology. This interest piqued even further when humanity made first contact with alien life during the brief First Contact War before going on to be introduced to the greater galactic community. Drawn in by the appeal of seeing the wider universe, Iosif resolved to join the Systems Alliance Navy as a pilot when he was of age.

Naturally, his parents had already reserved a number of slots at various respectable educational institutions and with the influence of both mother and father he’d been all-but slated to attend, yet on his eighteenth birthday he ultimately followed through with his earlier resolve and announced his attentions to join the Systems Alliance, much to the chagrin of both parents. To them it was a mere phase, an immature notion generated by media depictions of exploring new worlds and performing epic feats of heroism, yet Iosif continued to stick to his guns until one final confrontation led to the two officially disowning their son rather than allow him to ‘throw their long-term investments away’.

Taking the first shuttle that he could to the Moon, Iosif enlisted at the recruitment center on Armstrong Outpost and began his pilot training over the course of the next two years. Unlike most, Iosif had aspired to pilot smaller craft such as the shuttles he often saw entering and departing from the hangars back on Mars, or gunships that were being used to patrol the newer colonies that humanity had established outside the Solar System. Once he’d completed his training, he was assigned to the 21st Airborne Division and soon saw deployment.

It was here that his training would pay off as Iosif manouvered his way through AA-vulnerable locations to ferry marines to-and-from their destinations whilst other operations saw him taking the reigns of the recently introduced A-61 Mantis Gunship.These next few years saw him develop his talent as a pilot, yet at the same time also saw him become slightly disillusioned with the Systems Alliance, if only for the fact that most of their resources were being thrown towards a few pirates and warlords, until it finally came to a head in late 2170.

During a routine patrol of one of the Alliance’s colonies in the Attican Traverse, Iosif’s gunship suffered catastrophic engine damage after a kinetic impact from an insurgent’s weapon and the subsequent crash-landing resulted in his left arm being pinned beneath the gunship’s mangled chassis, forcing him to undergo an amputation and later have the arm replaced with a prosthetic. Disillusioned with the idea of chasing after warlords, pirates and the occasional terrorist, Iosif took his medical discharge from the 21st Airborne without argument and opted to find a new occupation that met his own terms.

Recalling that his family had disowned him and otherwise unwilling to admit defeat, Iosif took to running private jobs to keep himself afloat, primarily hiring out to low-profile mercenary crews and PMC’s that weren’t particularly noticeable to the public eye.

Eventually, he crossed paths with and soon struck up a partnership with two fellow freelancers: Jedrah, a salarian infiltrator who’d deserted from military service in favour of the better-paying contracts found with freelance work and Rael’Dorvah nar Selai, a quarian who’d been exiled from the migrant fleet after causing the accidental deaths of six crew members whilst testing a hacking module which exposed part of the ship to an open vacuum. Together, the three made an unlikely extraction crew; Rael would be the one to head into the field, using his tech skills to hack his way through any obstacles and reach whatever goal they required, whilst Jedrah would provide covering fire from a distance. Meanwhile, Iosif would drop off and evac the two whilst also providing additional cover and fire support from a gunship when needed, making the crew ideal for clients who sought to acquire information or items of value from locations which were locked down tight. Iosif even began to regard the two with an odd sort of friendship, somewhat amused by the salarian’s matter-of-fact approach whilst growing fond of the quarian’s boastful rants and lectures of his supposed technical prowess.

Yet, during one contract in which a dossier containing blackmail material on a Citadel official was extracted, Rael also happened upon another dossier with an extensive amount of encryption barring unauthorised access. To a quarian, this was a challenge for sure but not impossible, so after a few days’ worth of extensive work he’d managed to expose the files with the majority of the information still intact. When the crew examined the files in question, they discovered a damning amount of evidence that would incriminate a number of private contractors - including several executives within a major corporation, with various connections to mercenary groups, criminal operations and the mysterious deaths of several people considered to be whistleblowers within the company.

Considering the implications of such information falling into the right hands, the three decided to sell it on to the Shadow Broker’s agents in exchange for payment which would have easily given each of them cause to take a long vacation from contract work. Jedrah established a meeting point and the two agreed upon it unanimously. However, treachery is often known to be a common practise in the freelance world: the date the transfer was due to occur, Iosif arrived at the meeting point only to find the quarian dead from a well-placed shot through the visor and suddenly felt the presence of another individual in the form of a gun placed against the back of his head.

In Jedrah’s own words, the betrayal was ‘nothing personal, a matter of simple business’ and that a third-party had made him a better offer. Whilst most would’ve faced a cruel, if quick death at this point, the salarian added insult to injury by stating that ‘out of respect’ for their previous business partnership, he had made an ‘arrangement’ for Iosif to live in a manner that he would profit from: enslavement, something he quickly realised after being marched at gunpoint into a waiting shuttle loaded with members from a known batarian slaving ring, some of whom Iosif had recognised from very brief encounters during his previous contracts.

In short time, the slavers shipped him off to Aratoht to endure back-breaking labour in the colony’s extensive mines. The experience left him somewhat traumatised, due in part to the inhuman treatment and beatings that he often suffered at the hands of the batarian ‘masters’. Yet something drove Iosif to press on, a desire for vengeance or perhaps to spite the salarian who had betrayed him through escape. Over the course of several months, he learned the routine of the overseers and guards who kept the mines operational and whenever he was assigned work at surface-level near the shuttles, he took every available opportunity to note down when the shuttles arrived and departed and for how long they were left unoccupied. At best, it left him little time for resting between shifts and at worst earned him a rough beating at the hands of whichever guard had caught him 'slacking off'.

Eventually he figured out a blind spot where a certain overseer often stopped to slack off between shifts and drink, and so he took advantage of the batarian's laxed attitude towards work and used a handheld mining excavator to bash the slave driver's skull in. With that out of the way, Iosif quickly removed the overseer's ID chip and used the excavator to bury the corpse beneath a pile of debris, absolving himself of any blame in the case that it were discovered - the batarians would simply dismiss it as a cave-in. However, this was only the first phase of Iosif's plan. Now that he possessed the overseer's ID chip he could unlock access to the armory, though not for himself. Instead, he left a small rumour that one of the guards had 'accidentally' left the armory unlocked whilst drunk, and within a few hours about half of the slaves in that sector had taken up arms.

In the resulting confusion that followed as the batarians rushed to quell the revolt, Iosif used the same ID chip to access a maintenance closet and after retrieving a rebreather for the journey ahead, he climbed up into one of the maintenance ducts and began to follow the route he'd mapped out in his head over the previous months. A short while later he managed to reach the surface, noticing that only half of the usual guard had been placed on watch whilst the rest had been dispatched to handle the situation in the nearby mining sector. Of course, there was a shuttle available and practically waiting, an unoccupied slave transport which conveniently fitted the ID of the overseer he'd stolen the chip from, and after spying a gap in the guards' watch he quickly bolted for the shuttle and climbed aboard.

After that, starting the shuttle was fairly simple - the ID chip got him through the automated security system and within a few minutes he'd dragged the vessel up into high orbit, too late for the batarians to do anything planetside, though it soon caught the attention of the other batarians vessels stationed around the system. Without hesitation or any regard for how much remained of the fuel reserves onboard, Iosif slammed the shuttle into FTL and bolted for the system's relay. Before the batarians could cut him off, he'd managed to cross reach the relay and quickly jumped over towards the other one outside of the system, placing himself outside the reach of his assailants and giving himself a freedom he'd been deprived of for almost a year.

All in all, the incident left him with an open grudge against batarians and the practice of slavery that would never truly heal, whilst his former partner’s treachery had left him with a muted distrust for salarians that he found difficult to subside, and so with little other option remaining he made a return to freelance work, only to find the market had changed in his absence, with many formerly prominent contractors losing business in the wake of the Blitz.

Remembering his would-be partner's betrayal, Iosif grew determined in his resolve to act against the salarian even though he'd since disappeared on Illium. Paying close attention to the news and word-of-mouth throughout the freelance networks, it didn’t take long before Iosif saw a potential opportunity to enact his revenge and make a comeback at the same time. Pooling together the credits that hadn’t been scrubbed from his offworld accounts during his absence, he re-equipped himself and grabbed a shuttle to the nearest spot.

Weapon List WIP

Elkoss Combine M-8 Avenger Assault Rifle
M-6 Carnifex Heavy Pistol
Modified Elanus Risk Control Services M-3 Predator - the weapon has been trimmed down into a compact form, sacrificing performance so it can be concealed
Mark 14 HE Grenades
Equipment List

Elkoss Combine Cipher Omni-Tool
Handheld Welding Tool (This also doubles as a crude weapon when used in close quarters)
Elanus Risk Control Services Light Guardian Armor


Powers:

Power List

Overload
Incinerate
Cryo Blast
Tech Armor
Disruptor Ammo
Fortification

Talents:

Fitness
Electronics
Damping
Assault Rifle Training
Pistol Training
First Aid