Post by HorusRe/Bila'reu on May 3, 2011 0:26:49 GMT -5
Character Name: Chance Goldmen
Name meaning (if applicable): NA
Species: Human
Clan: NA
Occupation: Soldier
Age: 30 (25 mentally - 5 years of cryosleep)
Gender: Male
Eye color: Brown
Hair color: Black
Height: 5'11"
Weight: Medium build
Physical Description: Chance is muscular but lean, with a scrappers build as opposed to a wrestler or body builder. He has dark brown skin, a shaved head, heavy brow, and he keeps a slight mustache and chin strap kind of facial hair. His body is a mosaic of scars and he bears several scars on his face as well. He tends to wear military fatigues, but he prefers his battle armor (as he feels safer when he is armored).
Background: Chance has spent the majority of his life alone, or at least he felt that way. Born to poverty level parents, in the vast working-class slums of Chicago, his father died of the illness before he was born. His mother was murdered by other desperate Chi-town residents when he was only a year old and he was taken in by his mothers sister. She raised him until she also died of the illness, when he was only ten, but during that short life the boy learned how to survive, to steal, and how to be violent and feral. He already had plenty of scars by the time his aunt died, had survived two bouts of infection-based fever (from stab wounds) and several stints of bacterial digestive infection. He was a tough child, hardened by too many near-death situations, and the draconian world of the Chicago streets. When he moved out into the slums to survive, though he was only ten, he was fairly well prepared for the harsh life that awaited him.
As any such youth must do, to survive, Chance joined a feral pack of young gang members. A gang that roamed a specific territory and called itself the Dead Gods. Chance lived by animal rules, the strong survived, and he learned early that those that didn't fight for their respect would receive no respect. He survived by conflict, by murder, by taking what he could get from anyone other than his gang. He lived by a gangland code of rules, with loyalty only to his gang, and even then only to those that earned a way into the gang. He respected no one other than his leaders, and actually gunned down a few security officers (private contractors, as the Chicago police had long since dissolved) before he turned sixteen.
At sixteen the young man barely escaped a war with a rival gang, seeing the majority of the Dead Gods gunned down before his eyes, and decided that his only option was to get military training. His intent being to return to his turf, take over the Dead Gods, and wage a military-style war against his rivals. So he faked his age, getting a false ID that started he was eighteen, and joined the army. He served as a basic infantryman for a tour of four years, and then re-upped as part of a specialized motorized airborne infantry brigade (getting his first taste of Hostile Environment Armored Trooper infantry - or HEAT Infantry) to another year as an active army soldier. In his first tour he saw heavy combat in Grenada, Nicaragua, and Egypt, a constant survivor of battles that saw heavy casualties, and added to his disturbing collection of scars. The whole time becoming more brutal, more savage, and more tribal in his viewpoint of his species.
It was in his last active year that Chicago was bombed by Canadian forces, as the wars over the last of Earth's natural resources escalated to nightmarish extremes, and the man had an epiphany. He realized his species was doomed to extinction as long as they remained on Earth. His way of life was vanishing, soon the human race would be nothing but motes of dust on a barren wind blowing through the crumbling remains of the human world, and no amount of stubborn and violent resistance to this future would help.
As the chaos escalated the soldier saw an opportunity. He was stationed at a heavy lift facility outside of Panama City, a launch site (at that point) dominated by a band of colonists bound for the moon of Polyphemus, some place known as Pandora. Chance had heard about this alien world, the failed hope for a doomed planet, but he really didn't know anything about it... other than it was a long way from Earth, and would be a place even a man like him could use as a new start.
He sabotaged some vehicles on his base, knowing that the troops there would assume it was an attack by Panamanian rebels, and in the ensuing chaos he went MIA with a HEAT suit, got sanctuary from the colonists, and left Earth behind not long after.
After five years of cryosleep, and five years to re-establishment of the old colony, and Chance Goldmen (former street thug, MIA soldier, and repeat criminal) has found a new life on Pandora. He keeps to himself and takes his role as one of the resident combat specialists seriously. He does his best in whatever other tasks he is assigned, particularly enjoying whatever time he is assigned to assist the mechanics and colony maintenance workers; but much like the resident doctors, engineers, and specialists, most of his time is devoted to his particular profession.
Pandora is a deadly world, the fauna being a constant threat to human colonization, and he is one of the best options for keeping the colony safe from those threats.
Unlike many of his peers Chance has adamantly refused to become a driver of an avatar, as he thinks humans have no right to pretend to be something other than what they are. As technology improves, and genetic modifications more practical, the colonists will be adapted to breath the toxic atmosphere. From then on they will have to adapt as a human race, not as a pretend alien. That he has a functional HEAT suit, one of the few in the colony, allows him to patrol the world scape without being an avatar driver, or using the bulky AMP suits that are remain a popular option even 150 years after humans were driven from the colony. He believes that making arms for an avatar is depleting resources that could be used for AMP's or infantry, so he constantly rallies against common use of the avatar technology. The more people use avatars the more they might identify with the aliens... and he knows all too well that sowing the seeds of division can lead to the failure of a community.
They may be the last of the human race, and he is not going to volunteer to watch his species kill itself again.
Of course he also has seen the illness follow humanity to the stars. Many of the colonists have been quarantined and several have died. He puts this to the back of his mind and fights, as he has always fought, to preserve his people.
Abilities: Trained in all military small arms, infantry tactics, and multiple environment survival skills. He knows logistics, communications, and equipment maintenance to a competent level. From his youth he knows many criminal skills, thievery, intimidation, and unarmed/melee fighting.
Strengths: Marksman with rifles and pistols. An expert unarmed and knife fighter, and well known to employ all dirty-tactics with high skill. Extremely tough, with high physical endurance and a very high threshold for pain and discomfort.
Weaknesses: Not the brightest bulb in the bunch, he tends to see the world in a very black/white way, with a distinct cynicism and low opinion of people in general. He works well in groups... at least those that simply obey the chain of command and either order him (if a "superior") or obey his commands (if lesser skilled individual). That said, he is highly antisocial and not at all a fun person to "hang out with". Chance likes to be left alone to do his work, he is a devoted laborer, and a dedicated soldier, but he is NOT a people person.
He is also completely opposed to avatar use. He looks forward to the day when they can cannibalize the (useless) equipment in the driving station, as well as put the medical supplies used to create avatars to another (better) use.
Banana? Yes. And "badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers!"
Note: The HEAT (Hostile Environment Armored Trooper) infantry suit is a medium suit of advanced/empowered survival armor, designed to operate for long periods in toxic/radioactive environments. It is armored against most small arms fire (up to .30 caliber at range and 7.62mm at point blank) and environmentally sealed. It recycles and processes a breathable internal atmosphere, pressurized and climate controlled, for up to five days continually. To prevent internal contamination and loss of pressure the suit also has an auto-sealing system, this will quickly seal virtually any puncture or short rend in the armor system. It processes body waste into drinkable water and has an intravenous nutrient system that can feed a soldier unable to get into safe shelter, for the same five day period. It is lightly empowered, so that long distance foot travel is possible (the suit bears its own weight as well as up to 200 pounds of gear and weaponry) and the soldier can use anti-armor weapons (such as a .50 caliber machine gun - the weapon that Chance usually carries) from a shoulder or hip fired arrangement (as opposed to a tripod or fixed mount).
The suit includes a limited sensor system (passive night optics, a short range air-density motion tracking system, a front echolocation imaging system), a fully integrated and variable HUD, an onboard medical monitoring computer, a short range (50 mile) radio system, and a long range radio/satellite communication system.
Due to the close tolerances of the exoskeletal system, and the needs of fitting the suit to a very particular body frame, only a user with a body type and shape close to the intended user could don a HEAT unit. This means, that without massive internal recalibration and remodeling, Chance is one of only a handful of colonists that can wear his HEAT unit. The suit has also been extensively customized to his particular needs, since landing on Pandora, so it is unlikely that anyone could easily use his HEAT system even if they could get it to fit without causing serious physical chafing and other maladies.
Name meaning (if applicable): NA
Species: Human
Clan: NA
Occupation: Soldier
Age: 30 (25 mentally - 5 years of cryosleep)
Gender: Male
Eye color: Brown
Hair color: Black
Height: 5'11"
Weight: Medium build
Physical Description: Chance is muscular but lean, with a scrappers build as opposed to a wrestler or body builder. He has dark brown skin, a shaved head, heavy brow, and he keeps a slight mustache and chin strap kind of facial hair. His body is a mosaic of scars and he bears several scars on his face as well. He tends to wear military fatigues, but he prefers his battle armor (as he feels safer when he is armored).
Background: Chance has spent the majority of his life alone, or at least he felt that way. Born to poverty level parents, in the vast working-class slums of Chicago, his father died of the illness before he was born. His mother was murdered by other desperate Chi-town residents when he was only a year old and he was taken in by his mothers sister. She raised him until she also died of the illness, when he was only ten, but during that short life the boy learned how to survive, to steal, and how to be violent and feral. He already had plenty of scars by the time his aunt died, had survived two bouts of infection-based fever (from stab wounds) and several stints of bacterial digestive infection. He was a tough child, hardened by too many near-death situations, and the draconian world of the Chicago streets. When he moved out into the slums to survive, though he was only ten, he was fairly well prepared for the harsh life that awaited him.
As any such youth must do, to survive, Chance joined a feral pack of young gang members. A gang that roamed a specific territory and called itself the Dead Gods. Chance lived by animal rules, the strong survived, and he learned early that those that didn't fight for their respect would receive no respect. He survived by conflict, by murder, by taking what he could get from anyone other than his gang. He lived by a gangland code of rules, with loyalty only to his gang, and even then only to those that earned a way into the gang. He respected no one other than his leaders, and actually gunned down a few security officers (private contractors, as the Chicago police had long since dissolved) before he turned sixteen.
At sixteen the young man barely escaped a war with a rival gang, seeing the majority of the Dead Gods gunned down before his eyes, and decided that his only option was to get military training. His intent being to return to his turf, take over the Dead Gods, and wage a military-style war against his rivals. So he faked his age, getting a false ID that started he was eighteen, and joined the army. He served as a basic infantryman for a tour of four years, and then re-upped as part of a specialized motorized airborne infantry brigade (getting his first taste of Hostile Environment Armored Trooper infantry - or HEAT Infantry) to another year as an active army soldier. In his first tour he saw heavy combat in Grenada, Nicaragua, and Egypt, a constant survivor of battles that saw heavy casualties, and added to his disturbing collection of scars. The whole time becoming more brutal, more savage, and more tribal in his viewpoint of his species.
It was in his last active year that Chicago was bombed by Canadian forces, as the wars over the last of Earth's natural resources escalated to nightmarish extremes, and the man had an epiphany. He realized his species was doomed to extinction as long as they remained on Earth. His way of life was vanishing, soon the human race would be nothing but motes of dust on a barren wind blowing through the crumbling remains of the human world, and no amount of stubborn and violent resistance to this future would help.
As the chaos escalated the soldier saw an opportunity. He was stationed at a heavy lift facility outside of Panama City, a launch site (at that point) dominated by a band of colonists bound for the moon of Polyphemus, some place known as Pandora. Chance had heard about this alien world, the failed hope for a doomed planet, but he really didn't know anything about it... other than it was a long way from Earth, and would be a place even a man like him could use as a new start.
He sabotaged some vehicles on his base, knowing that the troops there would assume it was an attack by Panamanian rebels, and in the ensuing chaos he went MIA with a HEAT suit, got sanctuary from the colonists, and left Earth behind not long after.
After five years of cryosleep, and five years to re-establishment of the old colony, and Chance Goldmen (former street thug, MIA soldier, and repeat criminal) has found a new life on Pandora. He keeps to himself and takes his role as one of the resident combat specialists seriously. He does his best in whatever other tasks he is assigned, particularly enjoying whatever time he is assigned to assist the mechanics and colony maintenance workers; but much like the resident doctors, engineers, and specialists, most of his time is devoted to his particular profession.
Pandora is a deadly world, the fauna being a constant threat to human colonization, and he is one of the best options for keeping the colony safe from those threats.
Unlike many of his peers Chance has adamantly refused to become a driver of an avatar, as he thinks humans have no right to pretend to be something other than what they are. As technology improves, and genetic modifications more practical, the colonists will be adapted to breath the toxic atmosphere. From then on they will have to adapt as a human race, not as a pretend alien. That he has a functional HEAT suit, one of the few in the colony, allows him to patrol the world scape without being an avatar driver, or using the bulky AMP suits that are remain a popular option even 150 years after humans were driven from the colony. He believes that making arms for an avatar is depleting resources that could be used for AMP's or infantry, so he constantly rallies against common use of the avatar technology. The more people use avatars the more they might identify with the aliens... and he knows all too well that sowing the seeds of division can lead to the failure of a community.
They may be the last of the human race, and he is not going to volunteer to watch his species kill itself again.
Of course he also has seen the illness follow humanity to the stars. Many of the colonists have been quarantined and several have died. He puts this to the back of his mind and fights, as he has always fought, to preserve his people.
Abilities: Trained in all military small arms, infantry tactics, and multiple environment survival skills. He knows logistics, communications, and equipment maintenance to a competent level. From his youth he knows many criminal skills, thievery, intimidation, and unarmed/melee fighting.
Strengths: Marksman with rifles and pistols. An expert unarmed and knife fighter, and well known to employ all dirty-tactics with high skill. Extremely tough, with high physical endurance and a very high threshold for pain and discomfort.
Weaknesses: Not the brightest bulb in the bunch, he tends to see the world in a very black/white way, with a distinct cynicism and low opinion of people in general. He works well in groups... at least those that simply obey the chain of command and either order him (if a "superior") or obey his commands (if lesser skilled individual). That said, he is highly antisocial and not at all a fun person to "hang out with". Chance likes to be left alone to do his work, he is a devoted laborer, and a dedicated soldier, but he is NOT a people person.
He is also completely opposed to avatar use. He looks forward to the day when they can cannibalize the (useless) equipment in the driving station, as well as put the medical supplies used to create avatars to another (better) use.
Banana? Yes. And "badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers!"
Note: The HEAT (Hostile Environment Armored Trooper) infantry suit is a medium suit of advanced/empowered survival armor, designed to operate for long periods in toxic/radioactive environments. It is armored against most small arms fire (up to .30 caliber at range and 7.62mm at point blank) and environmentally sealed. It recycles and processes a breathable internal atmosphere, pressurized and climate controlled, for up to five days continually. To prevent internal contamination and loss of pressure the suit also has an auto-sealing system, this will quickly seal virtually any puncture or short rend in the armor system. It processes body waste into drinkable water and has an intravenous nutrient system that can feed a soldier unable to get into safe shelter, for the same five day period. It is lightly empowered, so that long distance foot travel is possible (the suit bears its own weight as well as up to 200 pounds of gear and weaponry) and the soldier can use anti-armor weapons (such as a .50 caliber machine gun - the weapon that Chance usually carries) from a shoulder or hip fired arrangement (as opposed to a tripod or fixed mount).
The suit includes a limited sensor system (passive night optics, a short range air-density motion tracking system, a front echolocation imaging system), a fully integrated and variable HUD, an onboard medical monitoring computer, a short range (50 mile) radio system, and a long range radio/satellite communication system.
Due to the close tolerances of the exoskeletal system, and the needs of fitting the suit to a very particular body frame, only a user with a body type and shape close to the intended user could don a HEAT unit. This means, that without massive internal recalibration and remodeling, Chance is one of only a handful of colonists that can wear his HEAT unit. The suit has also been extensively customized to his particular needs, since landing on Pandora, so it is unlikely that anyone could easily use his HEAT system even if they could get it to fit without causing serious physical chafing and other maladies.
Better for the story than conforming to accepted data. The movie would have made far less cash if the Na'vi couldn't make a believable love interest or seem sexy enough to appeal to the pocket-mining demographic. heh heh