we figured we'd put up the character sheet / concept here, simply so that its available. 

[hider=Character sheet]
It had started innocently. Seven years ago, Morven Buchanan had joined the Milky Way Exploration Core (MWEC). She had, like most others joining, been eighteen years of age, finished with general education but not yet joined a breeding program. Even back then, there had been hundreds of colonies, some of them even large enough to be self-sufficient. Others were entirely dependent upon regular supply runs, like mining colonies. Shortly after joining, Morven had been sent to explore the deep reaches of the galaxy. First to asteroid fields and to map star systems, then later to the planets themselves.

Few who joined the MWEC tended to end up settling in one place long. In centuries long past, they were the ones who always had to see the far side of that next ridge, the tops of mountains, what lay beyond the horizon. Of course, today that horizon had been replaced by distant stars, but the wanderlust was the same. Morven had always been intrigued by deep space. During her education, she had focused towards that, so it came as no surprise to her family that she did as she did.

When she first heard of the construction of the gateways, she did not know what to make of it. Large sections of the Milky Way remained unexplored, so why explore other galaxies? Still, a small part of her found the idea of a different galaxy intriguing. But it would be years yet before even a single gateway was finished. The things were massive, the ships launched through them only a little smaller. Compared to the regular explorer vessels, they were behemoths. But then, from what she’d heard, those ships were one-way trips, so they had to be far more self-sufficient.

Morven thought the idea of such huge vessels strange. Fascinating, but strange. She was pretty much satisfied with her life currently. Her job took her all over the Milky Way, letting her explore all sorts of planets. Some were barren rocks where she only performed quick mineral analysis, others were lush with vegetation or molten volcanic spheres or frozen balls of ice. Few had the diversity of the Origin. She did not know when it happened, but seeing as she had been on countless different planets with more than thirty unique ecosystem types, it could have been many places. She did not even notice it when it first appeared, let alone give it any thought. 

No matter how many precautions exoplanetists like her took, cross-planet contamination was never completely unavoidable. The precautions needed on one world were not the same as on other worlds. Early on in the history of the MWEC, many worlds had been left barren because of contamination. A seemingly innocent and harmless organism carried from one world to another by accident, only to overwhelm the ecosystem of its new home. She only noticed it when it had spread to cover about a third of her right upper arm. A faint, weblike purplish rash. She thought nothing of it, taking a nanite restorer just to be safe. But after a month, the rash hadn't disappeared. In fact, it had only grown. Output data from the nanites claimed that there was nothing to fix. Morven thought that to be a bit strange, but decided that since she did not feel odd and the nanites claimed nothing wrong, then it probably was nothing. She chose not to give it further thought. Besides, she usually wore a sleeved uniform day and night, so she rarely saw it. 

About three months in, the rash had subtly spread. A thin webbing of purple veins along the inside of the arm. Nanite injections denied anything wrong and she still did not feel any different, so she continued more or less ignoring it. Company policy always stated that anything infectious or otherwise compromising was to be reported, but since none of the others on her explorer showed the rashes and she wasn't weakened, she had figured it did not qualify for either of those. Besides, reporting such would mean being taken off the duty roster.

Nine months in, the webbing, still faint, had spread over her upper torso and left arm. The skin on the inside of her right upper arm had begun to darken faintly, becoming slicker. Scans still indicated that nothing was wrong with her. She kept it concealed from everyone, not knowing what to make of it, but fearing that others would take it wrongly if unveiled. It had been centuries since anyone in her homeland had considered different to be a good thing.

Two years in, the change was even more noticeable. Her arms were covered in minuscule, slick purple scales and it was slowly spreading over her torso. For some reason, it kept away from her extremities and most of her head, but the webbing was faintly present along her neck and much of her lower torso and thighs. But even now, the scanners and nanites still found nothing different about her, and she did not feel any different deep down. If any different, she might have felt a little stronger, that analyzing things was a little easier. Not much, but enough to be noticeable to her.

Four years in, the changes covered most of her torso and upper halves of her arms and legs. A webbing of purple veins spread out from the edges of the slick purple scales, but not far, and it had not progressed noticeably for nearly a year. The only change that she had noticed as visible to anyone else so long as she was dressed, was how her irises had turned from pale blue to pale lavender, and she had stopped needing sight correction implants. Not that they had ever needed to correct her sight much. Inside, she felt perfectly ok, but scans she had done using a custom-built scanner showed some oddness to her internal organs, as if they too had changed. Similarly, the bones of her torso had grown odd. She maintained the same outwards shape, but her skeleton was from what she could see quite different. Overlapping vertebrae, a web of cartilage between her thirty ribs and things like that. But whenever she tried to run nanite scans, they all showed that she was perfectly normal. It was perplexing to say the least.

She was just as flexible now as before, but her computer simulations all indicated that her chest was practically armor-plated inside. Morven knew without a doubt that she was different, yet all the advanced technology she could access claimed otherwise. Only her own, jury-rigged scanner showed anything even remotely out of the ordinary, for humans that is. The abnormal growth within her body showed up on the scanner as very natural-looking. The only difference was that it did not match human biological patterns. So long as the nanites claimed nothing was wrong, she saw no reason to have it checked up further at a medical center. The nanites would have found anything life-threatening, so since they did not find any, she figured it was nothing to worry about.

For some reason, perhaps due to a subconscious impulse or somesuch, she had decided that she did not want anyone to realize her changes. She knew deep down that she was no longer truly human, but she also knew that several governmental programs would find her very interesting to study. Too interesting for her comfort. Other than her enhanced skeleton and her scaly, purple skin, she had not yet noted any differences that were worth mentioning it. She did find complex calculations to be considerably easier take in her head and she knew she was a bit stronger than before, but neither of those were major things. Computers still beat her on the topic of calculations and robotics could still lift far more than she could.

When she was dressed, as she usually was, nothing of her changes showed. Nothing that could not be found in normal humans. Though taller than many, she was not abnormally tall, and her weight was fairly normal. She was considerably leaner than most her weight, but she knew well that much of the extra weight came in the form of bone rather than flesh or fat. Seven years after she had first noted the changes, she thought she was more or less finished with them. At least nothing had changed overtly recently. Her hands, feet and head remained human, but essentially every other part of her body had been covered in purple scales. Her bones had strengthened, in some ways partially overlapping in the joints, and her rib cage was a flexible, but solid cage of bone and cartilage. She was somewhat scrawny, but not so thin as to look unhealthy. She had by this time adopted a wardrobe solely of clothes that ensured none of her changes were visible. 

Shortly before she chose to join one of the Extragalactic Explorer Crews, her family had started pressuring her to join a breeding program. Apparently her parents wanted grandchildren. Morven had no interest in children at the time, so she looked for ways to avoid just that. Besides, joining a breeding program would mean that someone else would see her changes, and that she could not allow. Also, some part of her biology informed her that it was not time to reproduce. It soon became apparent that joining an EEC was the only viable solution to get out of participating in the mandatory breeding programs. Thus, that is what she chose to do.

[b]Name:[/b] Morven Buchanan
[b]Age:[/b] 25
[b]Gender:[/b] Female
[b]Height:[/b] 168 cm
[b]Weight:[/b] 63 kg
[b]Eye color:[/b] Pale lavender
[b]Hair color:[/b] Brown
[b]Skin color:[/b] hands, feet & head is pale northern European, rest is slick purple and scaled.
[b]Blood Type:[/b] E, nanite minimal. Her blood is distinctly inhuman, but scanners not calibrated to detect such (which is pretty much all scanners) will detect it as AB+ (universal recipient)
[b]Bodily modifications:[/b] She has no technological upgrades/implants of note, but her biological changes can to a large degree be defined as modifications. Most known vulnerable points in the human body are better protected, either by bone, cartilage or scales, or a mix of these. Her internal organs function better than those organs do for humans. Not much better, but a little.

[b]Clothes:[/b] Morven dresses in clothes that conceal her skin, but mold her body well, permitting freedom of movement. Sometimes uniforms, other times jumpsuits or similar. With her changes, she doesn't like displaying her bare arms or legs.
[b]Occupation:[/b] Exoplanet explorer/surveyor.

[b]Thoughts:[/b]
Thinking that she has exerted some subconscious control on whatever caused the mutation to prevent changes to visible limbs and parts of body. In time, that resistance may be worn down and the changes to her body could perhaps complete. The exact nature of her changes is a bit vague.

[/hider]