@WatchTheC You're more than welcome to apply. Especially seeing as I cannot post until the 20th of next week, due to final exams, I can't see the RP getting so far that you would not be able to jump in easily. And the idea for your character's profession sounds quite sensible, considering the nature of the mission, and like it will add some further diversity to the current 'cast list', so I'm more than happy to give you the go-ahead to make a CS on that premise.
Sorry I'm being a lazy procrastinator, promise I'll post my character sheet sometime after I finish it at 3am.
Edit: Apparently fucked up when drafting in Pastebin, and I lost my half finished sheet. Oh well, good practice. Also, are yall staying in touch for this RP on discord or something?
Alright, so I haven't all the way finished yet but basically everything is there or can be fleshed out without too much thought. I'm going camping the next couple days so I can't sit around and type a couple thousand words to complete this. Anyway here's the mostly finished version, feel free to tear me a new one if this guy is a shite character.
Basic Information
Name: Russell McCoy Nicknames: Russ, Curls Gender: Male Age: 31 Ethnicity: Caucasian Nationality: American Occupation: CARAPACE Lead Diver, Former Shipwreck Hunter and Deep Sea Repair Diver
Appearance
Physique: Decently in shape, given to his many misspent days on the Florida beaches. Has what could be described as a less chiseled swimmer’s build
Height: 5’10’’
Weight: 175 Lbs
Hair: Warm, dark brown curls, and a close-cut beard
Eyes: Hazel. Has near perfect vision uncorrected
Skin: Evenly tanned from his days out on the water, has some freckles on his face and shoulders.
Scars / Markings / Etc: Some minor work related scars along his arms and chest, but nothing that would impair any functions. Has a small tattoo of Moby Dick on the inside of his forearm, in the style of old ink engravings.
Clothing Description: Fits with his relaxed and free spirited personality, usually involves slim jeans, sneakers, and some type of fishing, band, or other tshirt. Secretly wishes sunglasses were more acceptable aboard the ship.
Inventory
ID Badge
A small poster with a mockup diagram of the San Miguel
UN Issued Laptop for the duration of the voyage, has some personal files on there but is hardly ever used.
Various pictures of him with family members and close friends, including some after his discovery of the San Miguel, and one of his late dog Bucky.
A 1:1,200,000 scale (around 7 feet tall) terrain map of the Mariana trench, along with more focused selections of key points along the trench printed out on separate papers.
UN-provided diagram of a CARAPACE suit that may or may not be missing from the engineering bay
Has a lionfish framed above his desk.
Identity
Personality: WIP Strengths: WIP Weaknesses: WIP Likes: Music: One of his deepest passions. Russell listens many genres, from blues and psychedelic rock classics of the past to the thrash metal revival of the 30’s. Dogs: They’re called man’s best friend for a reason. Relaxed people: To Russell, too many people seem to caught like a rubber band between the ever more demanding and frantic modern life. Russell likes to find people who can appreciate calm and don’t sweat the small stuff in life. The Ocean: Russell, despite his extensive experience in marine education, likes the ocean for more of a nostalgic quality: the fond memories of his childhood at the beach or catching fish with his father. WIP
Dislikes: Dispassionate, logical thought: Compared to other crewmembers on the Howard, Russell’s education amounts to little more than a sunbelt-sprawl bumpkin with some lucky life experience in a relevant field, something that humbles him compared to his coworkers on the ship. However, some part of him feels like these people have taken an unnatural path; intellect over intuition, logic over natural thought. Russell has always been somewhat religious, and is not quick to dismiss things that would not seem connected to the spiritual, but more importantly, has a strong connection to few bits of nature he can find in the concrete plains of Florida and beyond. To him, logical, material thoughts are those that have choked off and cut down this simple, and his mind, necessary, connection from mankind to nature. More but WIP
Fears: Blindness: Given the importance of sight in his life, even the idea of being blind, be it physically or simply in the dark, lights embers of unease in Russell’s stomach. Something about not knowing what could be in front of his very nose sets his nightmares in motion. Suffocation: Although more of an obvious fear, seeing as it directly relates to his mortality, the prospect makes Russell uneasy. On the rare and upsetting occasion that a fellow diver had drowned, seeing their blue, twisted face reminds him of the agony of such a painful death. Depths: Obviously a more secret fear, given his life as a diver, the deep depths of the ocean unnerve him more than most other places on Earth. When working on oil rigs and transoceanic cables, Russell would sometimes turn off his CARAPACE lights, if only for a moment, and be engulfed in the weightless, Stygian darkness, almost like a tiny spec in an infinite, starless sky. That feeling of “smallness”, which would often trigger philosophical thought in some, only sets his mind on what unspoken things could be hiding in the enormity of our seas. Perhaps a permutation of his fear of suffocating and blindness, the only twisted comfort of being on the Howard is that the pressure would crush him before he could undergo any slow, painful death. Or so he hopes.
Biography
Russell McCoy was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, the middle child to his young-yet-weary mother Haley and similarly exhausted father James. His family could be called “gentrified white trash” - nobody in his household tried to buy meth in front of Payday loan outlets, but the McCoys never enjoyed the golf-course margaritas, beach house style life of some of their richer ‘friends”. They were always in a sort of uneasy limbo: his father worked frequently transitory positions at fishing equipment stores across the state, with his mother picking up odd jobs in whatever town or city came up along the road. Unlike many other parents of their status, though, they treated their 3 children with warmth, despite coming home from their frustrating jobs in the humid air. Russell and his siblings were always the most trusting and honest out of their childhood friend groups, and were quick to make close ties with much of the kids in his questionably-staffed daycare. Yet even with having these emotional bonds readily available, Russell in particular had no problem retaining his identity, and has since stayed fiercely independent even when having plenty of friends to lean on when in need.
From a young age, Russell seemed to be constantly in nature, be it running around and swimming in the sprawling beaches, trying to find new bugs or lizards in the dry scrub brush, or bringing home the occasional tortoise he dragged out of its burrow. And when the streetlights would go out or a house some streets down was robbed, he would often stay glued to their TV into the late hours of the night, watching the exotic sights of the underwater world on nature channels.
It was in the year before graduating middle school that brought the first true shades of a darker reality into Russell’s life. His older sister, Maggie, had been at a seemingly ordinary high school party until she took some sips of a warm beer, and awoke several hours later in the backseat of her very concerned friend’s car, unharmed yet understandably afraid. That moment served as a cynical awakening for Russell, and like a stone into the mirror of his safe and innocent life. At his parent’s urging and his own newfound dissatisfaction with life, he began spending less time outdoors and seeking socialization, and took to trying to learn new skills in the comfort of his home. It was here that Russell started working on and repairing spare parts of his dad’s fishing equipment, simply seeking to pass the hours and calm his restless hands. This desire led to him discovering another one of his passions: guitar - something he became so attached in the coming years to that he often felt like it was a part of his body.
By his sophomore year in highschool, Russell’s grades began to greatly suffer. He would often come in late or skip his later classes to get to the beach earlier, or come home to play guitar or repair some of his dad’s shop equipment. Any psychologist or other “book-smart” person would blamed his frequent moving or socio economic status, but to Russell, the sheen of childlike optimism still clung to the world, and the problems of tomorrow could never affect him today.
During his junior year, his father moved yet again, this time Jacksonville. In his free time that summer and many hours skipped from school, Russell got a diving certification, and quickly became part of the skilled repair divers working under the colossal hulls of carriers and cruisers at the city’s Navy base. Realizing his son’s aptitude for tasks outside of the classroom, his father seeking out jobs for his son at his business and for fishing tours with richer customers. Remarkably, Russell managed to attain barely passing grades at school, perhaps because some of his teachers realized his aptitude for learning skills not taught in class.
Russell’s school woes caught up with him upon graduating high school. He was essentially trapped in state, with community colleges serving as his only prospect for continued learning, and stuck in a select few fields of diving and fishing. He began taking ocean-related courses at the college, all the while taking odd jobs, gigging with bands, and the occasional deep-sea diving job prospect. Classes at the college ended up going well for him, finishing as one of the top in the subject for his class, and with the help of some of the spare change he and his father accumulated, they took out a loan for a decent fishing boat and began making daily trips out onto the water.
In the next years, however, the decades of his father’s hard work began to take a toll on his body. The strength in his arms deteriorated, something which the few doctors cheap enough to see couldn’t pinpoint the cause of. With his father effectively out of work, the McCoys became strapped for cash, and Russell had to become a full time manager of his father’s life works.
What happened next, if you asked Russell, was in no part any of his doing. Many of the magazines written romanticized him as a “treasure hunter of old”, the personification of finding lost treasure. Yet Russell, humble as always, simply tells the tale of a windless day in June, 2052, where he and his crew dropped their fish finder somewhere in between Miami and the Bahamas. Pulling up the feed, they saw the characteristic shimmer of fish scales- except these fish weren’t moving. Donning his scuba, Russell dove down to find the sandy plain littered with gold doubloons.
The discovery of the San Miguel shipwreck turned the McCoy’s simple life into a frenzy, with reporters seemingly living outside their door while many long lost family members showed up to ask for part of the cash. Despite being in US waters, the Spanish government immediately sued for full possession of their colonial treasures, worth almost 2 billion in value, with the Andean nations joining in to seek their share of the Incan gold taken as Spanish colonies. Realizing the lawsuit was expected to last decades, Russell did something most would consider inconceivable with such a large fortune- cut a deal to take a few million for him and his family, and leave the rest to be divided in between the suing governments.
Russell could have easily retired here and lived an ultra comfortable life, but this moment marked a perfect opportunity to open the doors to careers outside his gilded cage in the Sunshine State. He was recruited to join an ultra-selective deep sea diving initiative, training in the then-cutting edge predecessors to the Howard’s CARAPACE suit. The next few years moved in a blur, with Russell feeling the pressure of the demanding training and later the demanding lifestyle of deep-sea diving, travelling across the oceans to repair underwater infrastructure.
It was when he was stationed on a Norwegian oil platform that Russell’s patience with a frantic modern life was seemingly running out. While he angrily mused of becoming Amish in the frigid rain, he failed to notice the arrival of a UN helicopter and the well dressed man who stepped out of him. That man, Russell would soon learn, was the spokesperson for the UN Environment board, seeking for Russell to join a talented crew aboard a cutting edge research vessel. Eager to finally help the environment with his skills, and arguably one of the most qualified for his position as lead diver, he boarded the helicopter bound for Brussels to new horizons.
Languages English: Fluent Spanish: Somewhat less than fluent
Relationships
Relationship Status: Single Family: -Mother:Haley McCoy, alive -Father: James McCoy, alive -Sister: Maggie McCoy, alive -Brother: Adrian McCoy, alive Opinions of Other Researchers/Crewmembers:
