Post by sam on Jun 22, 2010 16:08:32 GMT -5
Name:Samuel Viner
Nickname:Sam
Gender:Male
Sexuality:Straight
Age/Birthday:25/April 1st, 2440
Race:Human
Place of Birth/Home Town:Flint, Michigan/Earth
Character Portrayal:
Hair:Light Brown
Eyes:Hazel
Height:5' 10
Individual Features:
First, there are the boots.
Well, sometimes they're boots. Other times they are slippers. Or socks. Or running shoes. And then occasionally they are full-bodied armor. It all depends on what Sam needs at the moment. Rare, expensive, and totally unique, the boots adapt to what Sam needs at the moment. It's advanced technology, and one that very few people can figure out. Not that Sam would let you analyze his boots in a million years. He loves the things. He never takes them off. Of course, the armor they produce is fairly inefficient - a bullet or simple ray gun would probably break it, but, really, the boots can be quite useful when one has to run fast and/or have split-second protection in a surprise attack.
And the weapon of choice.
Which is a small, standard-issue police ray gun. Settings: stun, maim, and kill. Particularly powerful? No, but it's deadly accurate and can cause mild harm to most beings. The kill setting is pretty deadly, also, but Sam is not too fond of killing people.
He's also been known to use a Tazer, tranquilizer gun, and myriad other weapons - whatever seems appropriate at the time. As long as it's small enough to be hidden on one's person he'll take it.
General Appearance:
Sam is fairly old fashioned in appearance, as humans go. He's no giant at 5' 10", but he's in good health and has fantastic reflexes. His light brown hair is kept short, in what could almost be called a military buzz but is not quite, and frames startlingly hazel eyes - more green than blue and quite distinctive. he's not pallid, but not tan, either, often with a flush to his skin that suggests exhaustion. His eyes are heavy-lidded, his nose long but aquiline, rather like a beak, and his cheeks gaunt. His feet are too long for his body, but don't for a second mistake it for a sign of clumsiness - he's learned how to survive the tough streets. He rarely struts or shows off, even though he's in the law enforcement, and in fact prefers to go plain-clothes any day. The outfit just makes one stand out too much for his liking.
He's well-muscled, but no powerhouse. The thing he's best at is probably running - he can go for a long time (and has often needed to) at top speed. His dress is usually crisp and clean, but unpredictable. Due to a certain fondness for the bottle (after all, in his line of work, who doesn't need a drink?) he can often show up to work more than a little rumpled. In the rougher parts of the galaxy he dons a disguise, more as a safety precaution than anything. Not that anyone would recognize him. He tries really, really hard not to be recognized. Unfortunately for him, however, he's a rather memorable character. After all, when's the last time you saw a perfectly average human being walking along the street? The only staple part of his gear are his (rather unusual) boots, although they do seem to change a little bit... and a weapon of some sort. Preferably one that can hit someone from a long range.
His gait is unhurried at rest, frantic at speed, his legs longer than his stature would suggest. He wears contacts (technologically enhanced, of course - can show transparent images that may be useful and aid in aiming a ranged weapon.) and has a standard police implant (a small device inserted directly in the aural centers of the brain - undetectable by most scanners, and used for communication purposes. It melts at any sign of beams that would reveal it, and therefore allows the officer to remain undetected - although breaking his line of communication). Other than this and a few false bones where his own have been broken in the line of duty, Sam is remarkably unaltered. Usually he is to be found wearing the form-fitting and skin-blending Kevlar bullet-and-ray-proof-suit of the police officer - but as this is detectable, not always.
Family:
Melissa Viner (66) - Mother, currently lives on Delta Prime
James Viner - Father, died at 70 on Delta Prime.
Friends:
None in particular
Enemies:
None in particular
Job:
Tactical Officer
Personality:
The first impression most people get of him is temperate. For the most part, although he seems a little bit off keel. He can be quite mercurial and explosive at times, but in the face of danger is remarkably focused, calm, and in control of himself. This makes him invaluable as an officer. He's not exactly courage itself - he won't go running off on a mission impossible with some million to one chance that he'll return, but he will do whatever it takes to survive. Those who work under him learn to respect him, even if he seems a little off. A little unbalanced. Troubled. And maybe he is, but he refuses to acknowledge it in any way. Which is one of the reasons he's rather afflicted with drinking, cursed, one might say. But he tries to pull himself together enough to get through every painful day. If he has a job, however, he is as straight and focused as an arrow.
He's not rich - mostly because he's a beat man and therefore so low down on the police spectrum and so far away from its corrupt core that he really and truly believes that his job is to stop crime. In fact, he's fairly deluded about the fact that there is corruption, and if someone came up to him and told him that his organization was evil he'd probably punch them in the nose. If he was in a bad mood, which he often is. He can often have a temper when tired, angry, or drunk, and can fly off the handle, although he does try to keep himself calm and keep his pulse slow. Sometimes he succeeds. More often he does not. Enemies beware! He'll be after you forever, even if he has to dog you for his whole damned existence. Vengeance means rather over much to him, one of the reasons he can be a little rash.
At heart, though, he's an extremely dedicated and loyal cop. Even though the pay is low and some of the jobs have been filled now by robots, he desires no other job in the world. In fact, when offered a promotion he would probably reject it. He likes being in charge of his little squad, his rag-tag forces patrolling the street, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Despite being an authority figure, he does have a huge anti-authoritarian streak, and hates being under a brash or misunderstanding higher-up. One could say he doesn't like to be dominated in any way, and refuses to lose. He's stubborn and willful, but in all just a simple old wholehearted beat cop, weary of the world and of everyone in it, and seeing the propensity for evil in all of man (and alien) kind.
Likes:
-Being armed
-Interstellar travel
-Coffee
-Company
-Having a job to do
-To drink
-Taking risks
-Playing the hero
Dislikes:
-Being bored - ennui
-Being alone
-Feeling helpless or being beaten
-Technology - he's clueless
-Being told what to do
-Being left behind
-Milk
Fears:
-Aliens
-Spiders
-Close/confined spaces - like a closet
-Being tied up
History:
Sam was not born on Earth. He has never been to Earth as of yet. No, twenty-five years ago he was born on a barely established satellite colony amongst humans. The planet had been uninhabited. But years of geographical efforts had paid off, and it could now support life. He was among the first of the planet's second generation, a child of an age of frontier-building in the further reaches of Earth, at the then barely accessible borders of the colonial range. It was hardly the technologically advanced world that was the middle colonies and Earth itself, and it would remain almost twenty-first century until subsequent improvements in space travel, including the carving of hyperspace routes, would allow for his home planet and even those beyond to be quickly and violently turned into thriving technological casinos, bits of haze to shield the eyes from the mass genocide.
So his early world was a simple one, but changed withing ten years of his life with the invention of computer-driven carving ships to create routes along which transport ships and pedestrians could travel quickly in hyperspace. (Actually, if you want to get technical, these had been invented long before their arrival was felt on Sam's home planet - due to the nature of travel in light years, to those traveling it seems as if it is quick, but to those who are stationary and not moving faster than light itself it takes much, much longer for the transport ship to arrive. Sam's planet, as a later colony and therefore more distant from supply lines at the time, took as many as five years real time (about three months for a cargo ship, a blink of an eye for a military cruiser) to reach).
With the sudden influx of ships, the original colonists either dispersed or stayed, but Sam's parents were tired of this simple life. Unlike himself, they had been born on the immensely advanced planet Earth, and yearned to be back in that environment. Their colonization had given them the means to move and to start a new life, both of them having been fairly poor to begin with. And so they boarded a ship and for barely three months were in space, before arriving on Delta Prime eight years ago. Eighteen-year-old Sam chose to attend police academy then, practically his only choice. The brilliant, raised among this technology and adapted, might go on to something more. But, as for him, he was behind.
The rest is, well, history. He passed police academy and spent years working the beat on Delta Prime. Due to the recent anomalies he was assigned, probably because the police force wanted to get rid of him for a little while, to the Venia crew as a tactical officer. This has worked out somewhat well for him, because he actually likes interstellar travel and feels useful every now and again. And, when he's feeling useful he's generally happy and sober. It's when he gets dumped on other planets that he lapses into old habits.
Random Facts:
RP Sample: (Kinda old...)
Oh! The rat-scuttle concrete alleyways! So out of place in such a perfect world, so dim, lugubrious, shaded thick and thin and with the latticework moving light that shone through worn fire-escape bars. Rats, those clever little intrepid warriors, slid and skid along away from his feet, diving into layers of trash. However they had come - hidden away in ships, perhaps - rats were rampant everywhere. Thousands of years had not changed them much, either, even with the introduction of genetic mutation. If anything, they lived longer and were harder to kill than anything. The fled now at the steady sound of feet, falling one after another, staggering, even. Sam grinned at the wall, before collapsing against the side of the alley and emptying the contents of his stomach among the riff-raff garbage lane. He stared at the mess for a moment, as if contemplating whether or not to just sink down into it now.
But, no. He was still too conscious for that. And after trying so damn hard just to forget it, too. He laughed at how beaten he was. It was drowned out by city noise , but rang in his ears long after. His head hurt. Come to think of it, his whole body hurt. Poor, poor, abused, useless sack of flesh encasing bones made of plastic, he thought, I think so little of you and take you so for granted. I'm going to die early, I just know it. He had seen death before, in the tail of his eye. Glimpses in mirrors and windows and ponds. People could live forever now! It didn't used to be like that... He didn't know how he knew this, though. The past was seldom mentioned beyond the creation of interstellar travel. Much less back into the eras where man had died as early as thirty years of age. Naturally.
We've damned nature though. The thought swirled up through a swill of emotion and sheer humanity that had taken hold of Sam. He was no longer aware of the fact that he was not part of this alleyway, that he was only himself amongst a stream of those who didn't and couldn't ever be him. Because all humans, he thought, were essentially the same. A lot of evil in a good-looking package. Some devil-fruit sent to tempt itself into it's own supremacy, to dominate all things with no care. Reflectively, Sam retched again but brought up nothing. He was empty. A hollow man. The wind could have picked him up and carried him like so many brittle leaves down along these noisy lighted streets. He left his alley to walk them.
His boots hugged tight across his ankles, fitting so closely that he could barely feel them, so that he could feel the road. He knew where he was more by the feel of the pavement beneath his soles than by recognition. Everything looked the same in these plastic cities. He wondered again if anyone was ever truly happy in a place like this. Somehow his primal soul, those genetically coded memories that harkened back to when man roamed his own and ate what he could kill, cried out for release from the fetters of this forsaken devil-city with its mist and its blind, stupid, corpulent masses of people. And aliens. Too many beings all mishmoshed and packed in too tight for anyone to fit in comfortably. Was anyone really happy? Was he happy?
No.
He laughed his way along the street, trying not to bump into anyone but failing miserably.
Rules: 'Ha! What are these things you call rules?'
