Auz
Spoopy Scary
Baklava
Silverwind Blade
Race: Turian
Gender: Male
Class: Soldier
Age: 42
Homeworld: Oma Ker
Appearance:
Ardan is a powerfully built and burly turian who has been conditioned by a lifetime of military conditioning and his own drive to strive for peak physical fitness. Standing at 6’05” (182cm) and weighing around 208 pounds (94 kilograms), he maintains a strict military-style fitness regimen, situation permitting, and a mostly regulated diet that permits few luxuries. His carapace is indented and marked from scars from years of combat experience and entirely too many close calls with shrapnel, he’s fortunate to still possess all of his limbs and digits and both of his eyes.
His face is covered by one of the Oma Ker colony markings, a dark blue that sometimes gets lost in the pale grey tone of his carapace when in darkened conditions, a constant condition on Omega. The entirety of his fringes are coloured, and a singular symmetrical line runs down his face, just under his pronounced cheek plates and across the bottom of his chin, and the left and right sides of his rectangular, serrated nose are similarly coloured. Much like his personality, it can be subtle until you begin to notice it, then it becomes very difficult to ignore.
His eyes seem to compromise between his tone and markings in that they are a pleasant blue-grey that are narrow and skeptical, if not outright distrustful, of people outside of what little close circle of friends and acquaintances he has left. Were it not for his perpetual predisposition to sneering and otherwise being dour of disposition, he could possibly be poster material for the Hierarchy recruiting vids, but those days are long behind him.
Psychological Profile:
Ardan Parvius is a classic example of a man whose entire life and beliefs were shaken to the core and responding in a less than ideal manner. Where he was once assured of the Hierarchy's supremacy and how it was a turian’s duty to fight until the enemy could no longer do so or there were no more turians left to fight, the fact that the humans breached galactic law and had put the turian military to shame during the Relay 314 Incident and the subsequent coddling the Council gave humans eroded the once ironclad faith Ardan carried in the Hierarchy. Now aimless and unsure of where his place is in the galaxy after coming from a strictly regimented society where all facets of life are assured, Ardan has had a degree of difficulty adapting to his new circumstances as a gun for hire on Omega. As a result, he is a bitter, sarcastic, and largely apathetic individual who lacks the direction or purpose that once defined him.
This has led to several career changes, an ill-advised and doomed marriage and little, if any, friends. While he is still boastful and confident to people he meets, several aspects of Ardan's personality are like a puzzle that has been dropped; several pieces don't fit where they should and the whole package isn't quite coming together. Nonetheless, he is still an extremely capable individual with several decades of combined military and mercenary experience and a talent for getting the job done. While his personality might put him at odds with his comrades, having some form of structure and leadership in his life may be exactly what he needs to get himself back on track and reclaim some sense of the purpose he had once had.
Adran is also a compulsive snacker, and a bag of nuts or other salted treats are never long away from his person. He enjoys collecting handguns and military paraphernalia as they remind him of a simpler, much happier time. A childhood toy, a stuffed volus, is one of his most cherished and sentimental belongings that now sits on a shelf in his apartment along with several other personal effects.
He possesses a degree of animosity and resentment towards Citadel Space and he harbours a lingering prejudice towards humans for being unwelcome newcomers to the galactic stage that demand far more than their station would permit, krogan for being warmongering savages that would try to conquer the galaxy the moment the genophage is lifted, quarians for being nomadic freeloaders who were more than capable of finding a new homeworld or colony in their 300 years of exile, and batarians for being utterly hostile to innocent lives and their practices in slavery and torture. However, as an operative, Ardan is capable of looking past his prejudices and working with members of most species in the galaxy and he has an easier time seeing individuals as exceptions to the rather unfortunate rule.
Despite his more self-centered approach to life and apathetic nature, Ardan still believes in order and the duties a turian must perform, and a lot of that means sticking up for people who cannot stick up for themselves and to preserve innocent lives. He has on numerous occasions risked his life to protect a non-combatant, regardless of species. While he is very much a typical product of Omega, he still adheres to a personal code of conduct.
Equipment:
- Elanus Risk Control Services M-100 Grenade Launcher
- Kassa Fabrication M37 Falcon
*Omni-blade attachment, improved heat sink, optical sight - Elanus Risk Control Services M-3 Predator
*Hammerhead rounds, improved heat sink - Elanus Risk Control Services Medium Guardian Armour
Abilities:
- First Aid
- Fortification
- Proximity Mine
- Adrenaline Rush
- Concussive Shot
- Fragmentation Grenade
Bio:
Born on the turian colony of Oma Ker in 2138CE, Ardan Parvius was the second born son to Varvius and Octaana Parvius, a turian artillery officer with the 78th Artillery Regiment and a fighter pilot with the 16th Flotilla respectively, giving the Parvius family a rather distinguished military pedigree and yet another cemented piece in a storied family mosaic. From a young age, Ardan learned of his family’s legacy and place in turian society on both his parents’ knees and grew up knowing that his parents could perish any day answering the call of duty. Because their service often took them across Citadel Space, Ardan was constantly on the move and all but assured to follow in his parents’ footsteps in becoming a career military man.
While his older brother Casius would enter his mandatory 15 year public service position as a police officer on Palaven, Ardan joined the military in 2153CE and after basic training he was enlisted in the 105th Combat Engineering Corps due to his high scores in mathematics and sciences. Keeping in touch with his parents’ units via Extranet packets on an allotted biweekly basis, Ardan’s career took him across Citadel space, joining in larger military exercises on turian colony worlds and joint exercises with allied asari and salarian units, leading to friendly rivalries with the 10th’s counterparts from the other Council militaries.
While most of his career was training and rising up the rank structure, reaching Corporal after 2 years of service, Ardan did see combat on remote worlds, engaging with pirates, turian separatists, and others operating outside of galactic law. His unit, being a combat engineer regiment, was largely responsible for establishing base camps, building defenses, and laying area denial weapons like landmines and turrets to deter the enemy. At the earliest opportunity, Ardan took Sapper and underwater demolitions training, wishing for an opportunity to bring the fight to the enemy.
These skills brought Ardan into specialized strike teams that acted in support of the infantry regiments and were used to destroy bunkers, breach buildings, and sabotage enemy infrastructure and vehicles. For his role in destroying an enemy artillery emplacement ahead of the main assault, Ardan was given the Banner of the 105th to carry on parade for the next month and several commendations from his superior officers. This would be the height of his career, as the next year was relatively peaceful without any major combat deployments until word came of an unknown alien race activating the dormant Relay 314. Soon, Ardan Parvius two months after his 19th birthday, would be deployed to Shanxi in what would be the largest military deployment of his career.
Ardan’s first meeting with humans ultimately ended up being a long-range firefight where him, his fellow sappers, and the infantry they were attached to spent hours shooting at distant muzzle flashes. The first time he saw a human up close was the corpses of the line they had overrun, and he found the humans to be unnervingly similar in appearance to asari. Thinking they were some distant cousin of the asari, Ardan spent most of the conflict paranoid about the humans having powerful biotic capabilities which they seemed to be holding back as some kind of strategic gambit to hit the turian forces should they overextend their supply lines. The human forces were quickly overrun and the planet was soon under turian control. A month long occupation followed, luring the turian garrisons into a false sense of security.
When the 2nd Fleet broke through and hit the turian positions, the once dominant turians found themselves on the defense and constantly losing ground to the fresh and vengeful human forces. Ardan fought hard and scored kills against human armour, including two Grizzly and three Mako tanks, before being ordered to retreat. Very nearly defying orders, Ardan and his unit reluctantly left the planet to regroup with the fleet.
When they found out that turian casualties at that point were higher than the humans, Ardan demanded his commanding officer convince his superiors to organize a strike force against the human supply lines and disorganize their forces before they could regroup and dig in to prepare for another invasion. Although rebuked for his insubordination, Captain Orodis nonetheless began to coordinate and organize an advance strike force with the Fleet with the blessing of high command. However, before the turians could counter-attack, a ceasefire was called and it came known that the Council was negotiating with the humans, the asari leading the efforts, further lending credence to Ardan’s suspicion that humans might be their distant cousins. Furious with the resolution of the conflict and how the turians, the most powerful military force in the galaxy, was forced into a treaty with the humans after suffering heavier losses was a scar that was, in Ardan’s eyes, an unforgivable embarrassment.
For the first time in the sapper’s career, Ardan started to think that maybe the turian Hierarchy had grown soft and would not be prepared to meet its peacekeeping mandate if its response to future threats was equally flaccid and spineless. Were the turians not the ones who had single handed stopped the krogans during the Krogan Rebellions? Ardan asked the Spirits for guidance, the spirit of the Hierarchy, of his Regiment, of his family, and he found no answers or comfort. Finding out his mother had lost a leg after being shot down in the conflict did little to steel Ardan’s resolve, and after watching the televised treaty being signed between human and turian representatives, most insultingly of all the Hierarchy agreeing to pay war reparations, was too much for Ardan. After 4 years of service, well short of the mandatory 15 years of public service turian culture demands of all citizens, Ardan deserted from the military, disappearing from the public eye for some time.
The next time anyone from the Parvius family heard from Ardan was when his brother Casius received an Extranet packet from an unknown source that turned out to be Ardan letting him know he was safe and in the Terminus Systems some three years later, putting as much space between him, humanity, and the Hierarchy as possible. Ardan managed to get a few more messages back and forth with Casius, who was now serving as a hastatim, and now acting as an emissary between Ardan and his parents. The former soldier disappeared for quite some time, only trying to contact his family once every few months. Before long, Ardan came to Omega, hoping to make a new life for himself far from what her perceived was a corrupt and ineffectual galactic government.
The next three years had not treated Ardan kindly, as trying to adjust to life on the largely lawless station was far outside of the orderly and lawful existence he had lead up until his departure from the military. He took up work with a building firm that needed someone with expertise in blasting rock, or tearing down old buildings, and for a while, Ardan found a humble calling that brought in enough pay to support a small one bedroom apartment in a mostly turian district, a mostly out of the way place with few amenities and beneath the notice of the gang warfare that seemed to sweep across the asteroid colony like clockwork. And so for years, Ardan somehow avoided making any meaningful social connections as his life was a routine and regimented cycle of work, exercise and training, and preparing to do it over again.
He had a few belongings to his name, including a small crate of things he’d managed to grab from Oma Ker before his defection, but it didn’t take long for him to realize that he needed more than his old service pistol for defense. Coming from a society where violent separatist groups were an expected part of life, living somewhere that was owned and run by street gangs was enough to make the turian realize that the quiet times wouldn’t last forever. His fears were validated when his company began to mine a new section of rock to expand a commercial district and discovered a strain of rare metals.
Knowing that it wouldn’t be quiet for long, Ardan quickly answered the call for a citizen militia to form by one of the more proactive members of the community, Regalus Vendaris, one of the community’s security officers, and immediately the community banded together and began running drills and training in anticipation for what came next. Within the week, a gang called the Crimson Fist arrived with a force of 30 men, who upon arrival declared that they were there to provide security for the new discovery. Anyone who had been on Omega for longer than a week know what that particular amount of double speak amounted to.
The gang was allowed into the community, uncontested, and unaware of the trap that was lying in wait for them. When the Crimson Fist arrived at the gates to the dig site, they were held up at the security gates and that’s when a firestorm erupted around them from the concealed militia; a section’s worth of ordinance was unleashed from the capable hands of military-trained turians who made short work of the Crimson Fist group, and from their bodies pried military-grade weaponry and technology to supplement their civilian and surplus arms, and the more pragmatic in the militia made arrangements with ethically-flexible doctors who needed the bodies for organs and testing purposes.
Ardan found a spark he’d been missing in his life for a few years; he’d missed the combat, the fighting alongside a fireteam. It felt good, he fight the pride and dignity seep back into his bones.
He blasted rocks for three more years.
Granted, he trained constantly with the militia and with the new influx of credits from the mining operation and the growing population of their humble community he could afford new weapons and arms that could even make gangs with mechs and armoured support hesitate to press their luck, but a few of the dumber or more risk-loving ones took their shots, and the results weren’t much better than the Crimson Fists three years prior. Ardan found himself away from the community more and more, taking side jobs as a gun for hire or to pick up needed supplies, and it was on these excursions that Ardan began to frequent a strip club at neighbouring Rhytheia District, the Blue Oasis, and it was there he met his first, and only, wife.
In a whirlwind romance, if one could call it that, Veetsha D’alyt, an asari, and Ardan got married a week after they met in a sketchy registration office and moved into a new apartment in Rhytheia District shortly after Ardan left his job with the company and the militia behind. His quality of life was better, and he found a more martial application for his skills, and they were happy for about three months when Veetsha up and left with most of their meager belongings and left Ardan little more than a recliner, the coffee table (sans seat), the built in vidscreen in the living room wall, and his collection of sidearms and the stuffed Volus plush toy he’d deemed worth saving as a memento of his home and life back on Oma Ker. Ardan, not being one to flex his convictions, was back as a regular of the Blue Oasis a week later. This time, he tipped a bit less.
Without much else in the way of options, Ardan became a freelancer, often taking jobs that involved taking down smaller gangs and criminals with outfits that required a replacement set of hands, Ardan spent decades building up a name for himself as a man who could get things done to the point where he could start commanding a price. From clearing vorcha out from undercities to smuggling jobs to commando-style raids that called upon his expertise with explosives, Ardan was contented with his corner of Omega and more often than not, the turian wasn’t hard pressed to find someone who wanted to buy him a drink and offer him a side gig. When news came of his old community being overrun and Regalus dying heroically in a last stand, Ardan simply raised a glass for an old fallen comrade.
Such was life on Omega.
Strengths:
- Ardan is a very disciplined fighter, as is drilled into most turians from youth. He does not lose his cool in a firefight, and he will stand his ground until victory or death, or a sound tactical retreat.
- Courage and Ardan go hand in hand, and he is not afraid to stand up for his convictions on and off the battlefield. While some may see him as uncompromising, one could count on him to be unwavering in his commitments and see things through to the end.
- Demolitions expert, Ardan is professionally and has a hobbyist proficiency in all manner of explosive devices and has an intuitive knack for yield sizes and how to properly rig together an IED out of spare components, and his throwing arm is impressive; if a grenade can fit somewhere, he can almost certainly toss it in, and he has an uncanny knack for being able to range the trajectory of a grenade or rocket launcher.
Weaknesses:
- Ardan is very prejudiced, if not outright racist, towards humans, krogan, quarians and batarians. He is very slow to trust, let alone like, anyone from these species for a number of reasons. While he’s not petty enough to let it get in the way of getting a job done, on a personal level it is an uphill battle to earn his respect and admiration.
- Still largely a military man at heart, Ardan has had a difficult time adjusting to the lawless Terminus Systems’ way of life. He has a strict personal code of ethics he is very reluctant to cross, Ardan remains determined to succeed and forge his own path free of the Hierarchy’s regulations and treaties. The turian simply does not understand the finer points of life on the street and he often is frustrated at the lack of clean, simple military-like solutions in this region of space.
- Ardan is a very competitive individual whose pride will not let him back down from a challenge, often leading himself into dangerous situations what he handles recklessly. He believes himself to be one of the best, and while he does have the skills to back up his hubris, he does not take well to losing.
Misc:
- Right mandible twitches when Ardan is irritated or annoyed
- Ardan will often idly fiddle with whatever he is holding, he enjoys keeping his hands busy, and it is a coping mechanism when he’s nervous
- Ardan is a guarded personality type that will often cross his arms when he is in disagreement, if he is unsure of someone’s intentions, or if he remains unconvinced about decisions or course of action.