[b]Name:[/b] Gillam Belasko
[b]Race:[/b] Human
[b]Augmentics:[/b] In addition to the neural interface hardware attached to the base of the neck, Captain Belasko has received surgically-implanted synthetic eyes tethered directly to the optic chiasma. These pearly bulbs of iridescent crystal replaced his true eyes after he was rendered irreparably blind upon directly witnessing a nuclear blast during battle. 
[b]Rank:[/b] Captain
[b]Physical Description:[/b] Captain Belasko is an man of caucasian descent. Though he is in his late thirties, he appears ten to fifteen years older. Shallow crows feet radiate outward from the corner of his lips and eyes. While he has a thick head of hair cut short to the regulation 4 centimeters, the color has begun to drain from his head at an early age with grayed hairs intermixed with the brown. His iridescent synthetic eyes rarely blink for lack of need. His gaze is stoic and very seldom does it betray any sense of attitude or emotion.
[b]Personal History:[/b] Gillam Belasko was born on Adriatus in the Vos System to peasant parents. His childhood was fairly unremarkable and he feared his entire life would be wasted in ignominy. In his late teenage years, Gillam left his home and parents to enlist in the Naval Academy in a final bid to accomplish something more substantial with his life. Though he had only received a standard education, Gillam made it through the rigorous entry exams by means of diligent and exhaustive study. During his training at the Academy, the Empire enjoyed a period of peace. There was, therefore, no pressing need to generate new officers and so enrollment in the Academy was very competitive. In order to keep pace with the more thoroughly-educated cadets - often the sons of nobles - Gillam found it necessary to work twice as hard most of his peers to keep from washing out. Even in the face of stiff competition from his peers, Gillam maintained high marks. Gillam relished in twarting his spoiled peers in the naval combat simulations, though he always maintained a facade of order and composure as was expected of an officer. As he progressed through the Academy, Gillam found himself infatuated by the naval organization, it's bureaucracy and its rules. For outside the Academy, one's nobility or lack thereof determined one's lot in life. But here, merit and hard work were all that could be counted. It was here that his respect for the established order was cemented.

At the age of 21, Gillam Belasko surpassed the initial expectations of his instructors and was granted the rank of Lieutenant upon completion of his training. He was assigned as a navigational ensign to the [i]Hyperion[/i], a heavily armed Gothren class cruiser. His first tours of duty took Lieutenant Belasko on patrols to the Doldrums, where the [i]Hyperion[/i] hunted pirates prowling about the asteroid fields and escorting mining vessels. It was on his second deployment where Belasko saw his first taste of combat.

A distress beacon drew the [i]Hyperion[/i] to an ore freighter claiming to have detected an unidentified vessel lurking nearby. As the [i]Hyperion[/i] rendezvoused, scores of boosterpack-bound pirates scattered from their hiding spots among the asteroids and swarmed the cruiser. The [i]Hyperion[/i], wanting in point defense systems, was unable to repel the individual pirates. They landed upon the cruiser's hull and pried their way into the hangar bays. Before the marine contingent could don their vacuum suits for combat, the boarders managed to depressurize much of the ship, killing a substantial number of marines and crew.

All remaining hands were forced to defend the ship. The captain excluded Belasko from the fight however, citing the need for someone to steer the vessel to safety should the captain fall in combat. With Belasko and a skeleton crew left to man the bridge, the remaining hands on the [i]Hyperion[/i] took up arms to oust the pirates from their vessel. The fight went poorly for the crew, who were substantially outgunned by the heavily armed boarders. It was apparent to Belasko that the vessel would be lost if something drastic was not done. In a snap decision, Belasko made a 83 second hyperspace jump from the asteroid field that deposited the [i]Hyperion[/i] just above the swirling clouds of Artemon, the nearest of the Doldrum's gas giants. As the captain and his crew made a last ditch defense of the bridge bulkhead, Belasko plunged the [i]Hyperion[/i] into the tormentous atmosphere of the gas world below. The Lieutenant watched from the bridge screens as his shipmates fell to the pirate onslaught. As shells rattled off the bulkhead behind him, and his captain bled out, Belasko locked the bulkhead and then depressurized the entire vessel save for the bridge. As the cruiser sank deep into the heavy atmosphere of Artemon, a melange of hot, noxious gases inundated the ship. The vacsuits of the pirates, well suited for the void of space, collapsed under the intense pressure and the heat boiled the pirates alive in their suits. Within minutes, all hands outside the cruiser's bridge - be they pirate or crew - had certainly perished. Before the [i]Hyperion[/i] sank too deep into the crushing atmosphere, Belasko fought his way back into orbit and made his way to Far Valyria with only 6 of the original 400 crew remaining.

Upon arrival in the Far Valyria, Belasko was ordered to submit a detailed after action report concerning the incident in the asteroids. Immediately after submitting the report, officers of the Imperial Armada arrested Belasko and forced him to appear before a naval tribunal under Admiral Rutherford. For months, investigators combed through the relevant data extracted from the [i]Hyperion's[/i] semisentience core. Hours of footage from the corridor and bridge feeds were watched during the proceedings; the owner of the ore freighter was brought to the trial for questioning. After nearly a year of evidence presentation and discussion, Admiral Rutherford handed down his decision: Lieutenant Belasko was not guilty of either charge against him. However, the Admiral Rutherford expressed severe dissatisfaction with his conduct. Though he found that Belasko's actions in the asteroids and in the skies of Artemon were ingenious and necessary to ensure that pirates would not seize an imperial vessel as his late captain had commanded, Rutherford concluded that Belasko's actions were not in line with one of core tenets of the Armada's Code of Battle: that the crew fight to the last man to keep the ship. To this end, Admiral Rutherford issued a highly controversial punishment: that Belasko serve as the [i]Hyperion's[/i] captain under tours of extreme peril.

And peril the new Captain Belasko saw aplenty. Not long after the tribunal, the Arian Jihad broke loose across the imperial dominion. At the helm of the ship he had saved a year before, Belasko led the refitted [i]Hyperion[/i] into battle against the transhumanists. At the skirmish in the Nebula of the Crowns, Belasko wrought bloody carnage against an enemy carrier formation and sparing it's Dratha class sister ship, the [i]Aphelion[/i], from a surprise attack by a transhumanist frigate. At the Siege of Korogar, the flash of a nuclear detonation in orbit left Captain Belasko blind. Even so, the captain of the [i]Hyperion[/i] worked in tandem with the data gathered by the ship's semisentience and scored two kills against the enemy. As the war came to a close, Captain Belasko had demonstrated once again to all those who had doubted his ability.

All but one, that is.

In the course of the Arian Jihad, Admiral Rutherford, the man that had issued Captain Belasko this trial of penance, had gone missing in action. On patrol deployments, the [i]Hyperion[/i] stitched across the most remote corners Imperium, searching for Rutherford's flagship and the man that had given Gillam Belasko his opportunity to demonstrate his ability to demonstrate his capacity to serve the Armada with honor. It was Captain Belasko's determination to find the Admiral and demonstrate that the decision to confer the rank of Captain was not made in error, and he would not conclude his quest until the flagship was found and it's admiral reported dead or alive.

[b]IC Sample:[/b] (Pending)

[b]Ship Name:[/b] [i]Hyperion[/i]
[b]Ship Type:[/b] HSR2 - Gothren Class Artillery Vessel
[b]Semi-Sentience Profile:[/b]  (Pending, waiting to see how others portray theirs)
[b]Escort Ships: [/b]N/A
[b]Ship Details/History: [/b]Following the incident in the asteroid field, the [i]Hyperion[/i] was refitted to facilitate more effective solitary patrols. Four small point-defence turrets have been installed to allow it to repel boarding attempts more effectively. Even with these additions, the cruiser will still find itself ill prepared to fend off strikecraft squadrons. The crew capacity has also been increased, allowing for a more robust marine contingent. With a full two regiments of well-armed marines onboard, the [i]Hyperion[/i] is capable of launching surface insertions even against planets with light to moderate anti-orbital defenses. This offensive surface capacity was demonstrated spectacularly during the Battle of Gharash.
[b]- population:[/b] 654 personnel; 132 crew, 522 marines
[b]- primary weapons/fleet function:[/b] Two Heartseeker railguns (fixed), two Excoriator rapid-fire batteries (nearly-full range of motion), 6 torpedo tubes (each capable of launching eight torpedoes). Like most Gothren-class vessels, the [i]Hyperion's[/i] focus in battle is to screen enemy formations and score shots against high-priority targets from great distance.  The [i]Hyperion's[/i] semisentience is equipped to rapidly calculate accurate firing solutions for it's long range, high-energy Heartseeker slugs. At medium range, the [i]Hyperion's[/i] weapon of choice shifts to it's arsenal of high-explosive torpedoes launched from tubes on the dorsal hull. To defend itself and it's sister ships from enemy missiles and torpedoes, the torpedo tubes can also launch defensive countermeasures designed to fool or overwhelm missile tracking systems. Should enemy vessels break through into close range, the revolving Excoriator batteries are employed to [i]persuade[/i] enemy vessels to return to a safer distance.
[b]- marine contingent details:[/b] (pending)
[b]- strikecraft contingent details:[/b] (pending)