Member
Shin Ghost Note
Atrophy
Kamen Evie
Blaze GammaI understand there's a lot of concern about overlap and i am afraid this will likely not help lmao. Even still I started on this dude when the ooc went up and just took a bit finishing so I figured i'd throw him up and see what the consensus was then change as potentially needed.
 _______________________________________________ D A T A Full Name - Reid Waston Designation - Ranger Species - Human Age - 31 (b. 2152) Origin - Earth, Local Cluster Classification - Soldier Unique Specialization - Gunman/Duelist/Designated Hitter - P S Y C H E A Simple Man, Making His Way In The Universe Many mercs have a reputation as being bombastic and boastful, not so with Reid. Withdrawn, guarded and taciturn, Reid carries himself with a constant air of professionalism. Rarely raising his voice or betraying much of any emotion even during times when, by his own admission, he’s upset or pissed off. Reid does his utmost to give nothing beyond quiet confidence, with very little patience for the eccentricities of both the galaxy and the people within it. A Few Credits More Pragmatism is, more often than not, the key aspect that separates the successful from the dead in Reid’s experience. While always having a somewhat apathetic moral compass - seeing little difference from shooting someone in the back than the front - Reid’s experiences since flying solo have hardened him considerably. As he is essentially a fugitive, Reid takes great care to cover his tracks, watching his own back and prioritising his needs far beyond others, lest he risk imprisonment or death. He’s no wanton criminal, but has very little qualms on making morally dubious decisions if the need truly arises. The Last Outlaw As mentioned, Reid is a man who often finds himself exasperated at the bizarre and often hypocritical ways of most civilised people in the universe, particularly those involved in galactic governments. While not above taking jobs involving these types out of necessities sake, Reid is notably more sarcastic and bitter when forced to do so, a disdain rooted in him from childhood as part of his gang. He bears a distinct grudge for the Systems Alliance in particular. On the flipside, he is remarkably tolerant towards most alien races, if just by human standards at the least. He is also sympathetic towards the poor and downtrodden but has long since had any altruistic ideals kicked out of him. E Q U I P M E N T M-15 Vindicator A popular rifle in the Terminus Systems, favoured by assassins and elite mercenaries for its precise firing and handling. Firing in five shot bursts and boasting excellent stopping power without effecting recoil, enabling it to do hefty damage to targets with the right aim. Reid's particular model is painted black and fitted with a percision scope to extend the rifle's range, along with a textured grip should his hands get... wet, during a fight. Reid occassionaly refers to it as his "Winchester". M-5 Phalanx An Alliance created heavy pistol designed to be used in closer engagements and ideal for hitting armoured or shielded targets, fitted with a laser sight for better accuracy. While high in recoil, its sheer stopping power gives it an edge over most “hand cannons” and works well with Reid’s sharp aim and tendency for single shot quickdraw firing. Mk.14 Grenades Disc shaped cluster grenades that can be thrown directly to glide through the air or be lobbed overhead in an arc. They can adhere to flat surfaces and be detonated at any time once thrown via the communications gear built into the attacker’s armour. They will detonate automatically after ten seconds. R E C O R D Eldfell-Ashland Raid In 2168 at roughly 2pm, an Eldfell-Ashland Energy Company building in the state of Illinois was hit in a daring raid. Infiltrated by a small group of insurgents who subdued highly trained security operatives and fried the camera systems, concealing their identities while they drained an undisclosed amount of credits from the building's network and internal accounts. In the following months, random, obscenely large bonuses were deposited into the accounts of several low level manual workers, families of company accident victims and many others who’d had negative dealings with the corporation. The perpetrators were never officially found, but it was the first of many such heists carried out by a young Reid as a member of Holden’s Company. Korlus Spring Cleaning The junk world of Korlus has long been something of a punchline among galactic circles, with its garbage laden landscape and high crime rate. Undeterred, the Korlus Tourist Bureau had tried several different ways to rebrand the planet, from slogans to public image campaigns. Unsurprisingly, none of these worked. What did provide results was their contracting of several mercenaries to clear out as many gangs and other scum as possible, paying a bounty for each noteworthy problem dealt with. Though many heeded the call, none made more of a “killing” than an unnamed mercenary in a cowboy hat, eradicating numerous would-be gangsters and turning in so many bounties that the campaign ended in under two months, more-so due to the colonies losing more credits than they were gaining from potential travellers. Though operating under a pseudonym, Reid’s peculiar get-up, the high number of people on Korlus and his bodycount very quickly made many take note of the merc, establishing a reputation in the Terminus Systems as someone that got things done. Valdez Bounty A crew of pirates had been forming in the Terminus Systems, attacking multiple colonies and eventually graduating to corporation shipments. Their leader was a human named Valdez who’d quickly made a name for himself, earning a bounty from the corps who were sick of losing merchandise to his growing gang of outlaws. The bounty did little to solve the problem however, as despite his young age, Valdez was a prodigious shooter, killing upwards of twenty bounty hunters who’d been sent after him, each time in a one-on-one duel for the entertainment of his crew. Eventually, Reid caught wind of the bounty and decided to collect, tracking Valdez and his best men to a bar on Omega and challenging the man to a duel the following morning. The people on the station that fateful day still tell tails of that encounter, where Valdez walked out into the street for his twenty-first kill, only to be unceremoniously gunned down alongside his men, as Reid had decided to just shoot him with his sniper rifle from afar the second he was out in the open. Solving an almost year long problem in under ten minutes. C O N N E C T I O N S Brand Brand is an elcor merchant who lives on the Citadel, an unestablished but aggressive trader always trying to expand his client base. He and Reid have an uneasy but mutually beneficial partnership, where Brand will contact the gunslinger to offer jobs soon to be listed or any other interesting tidbits that come through his network. With a cut of the profits earned going to Brand, of course. The two have history, having met and worked together since Reid was a teenager in Holden’s Company, but their relationship is based more on mutual gain than any personal fondness. Even still, they are both consummate professionals who will, reluctantly, look out for one another, even if they tend to trade barbs when doing business. Papius Silo If there was only one person in the galaxy that inspired warmth and camaraderie in Reid Watson, it would be Silo. The turian was a late arrival to Holden’s Company, on the run for being, in his words, “a poor turian”. Though he’s still a pariah in turian space, his short tenure with the group means he’s a comparatively less wanted man and was able to leave easily when things began really falling apart, enabling him to settle somewhat comfortably in Omega as a smuggler. Though they mostly communicate over business, Reid has a genuinely friendly relationship with Silo, both for his usefulness and for being one of the very few members of the group who he feels didn’t betray him on some level. Papius will rarely offer jobs if he’s able but generally his use is in helping Reid get his hands on equipment out of circulation, without Silo’s help, Reid would have to risk himself a lot more to try and keep ahead with other mercs in terms of armaments. Holden Connolly Holden is a complicated figure in Reid’s mind. A former operative (though of what and at what level he wouldn't say), he is the man who essentially saved Reid's life as a young street urchin. Teaching the boy to read, write and most importantly shoot, while educating him about the galaxy and instilling his philosophies on life and the need to protect the weak. But, he is also the man who all but went insane as time went on and his actions seemed to have less and less effect on the progression of galactic civilization, seeing all the problems his group fought against only grow and become more ingrained into society. Eventually, Holden devolved into another thug with a gun, even leaving Reid for dead on more than one occasion, until deaths and bounties caught up with them on The Olympus and the group effectively disbanded, violently. After narrowly escaping Alliance space himself, Reid isn’t even sure if Holden’s still alive, let alone regained any of his sanity. But, despite everything, Reid holds a complicated - even hypocritical - opinion of his surrogate father, still admiring the man he was while harbouring a lot of resentment for who he became and the situation he left his “son” with. | Physical Details ◢ Reid stands at 5’11”, with the muscular build befitting of a mercenary and a head of messy black hair that reaches down to his neck coupled with a scraggly beard, all hallmarks of a stereotypical thug, or, more accurately, a man on the run. His face carries numerous scars of fights won and lost, emphasised more than they should be by the shoddy first aid work done on them. More striking than his scars are his pale blue eyes, a source of occasional ribbing in his life, likened to if someone "fucked up and put a child’s eyes on the face of a killer”. The most noteworthy thing about him to most however would be his gear. Dark brown stetson hat on his head, seemingly, at all times, coupled with a worn and tattered dark brown poncho and a breathing apparatus that hangs around his neck. Beneath this get-up however Reid wears more sensible medium-grade Hydra armour created by Aldrin Labs, fitted with a bandolier around the waist for emergency supplies. Though Reid’s choice of gear is another thing that inspires confusion and mockery, it does have practical applications. Such as his poncho concealing his weaponry and allowing to get the jump on someone has been a godsend more than once. Personal History ◢ Desperation has shaped Reid Watson. His father was an illiterate drunk and his mother a prostitute who died during childbirth, though Reid lived with his father for a short time, his debts and actions quickly caught up to him and he was found dead outside a bar when Reid was seven years old. Reid was subsequently sent to an orphanage, another casualty of Earth’s severe overpopulation. He didn’t last very long before running away and trying his luck out on the streets, resorting to petty theft and other unpleasantries to make it through the days. It caught up to him at the age of eleven, when he was caught by a family while attempting to rob their home. They subdued and prepared to hand him over to the authorities but a passing detective encouraged the family to turn the boy over to him so that he might ensure the boy would see justice. It was after the family were long gone that the detective revealed himself to be a conman named Holden, who would then take the young Reid under his wing. Reid was inducted into Holden’s Company shortly thereafter, a group of individuals who shared Holden’s anti-authority leanings and Robin Hood-like belief of creating a "better world", taking from the rich abusers to give to the destitute. Almost every current and future member would take the names of famous outlaws and revolutionaries to fit this vision. The gang quickly became a surrogate family to Reid, who took his own name and even dressed to resemble an old radio serial about a western hero who delivered justice, always enamoured by Holden's stories of such figures in history - even if fictitious. Alongside stories, Holden taught Reid how to properly read, write, hunt, shoot, and instilled in the boy a love of nature, freedom and appreciation for things beyond power or wealth. By the time Reid had become fully honed in his abilities, the First Contact War had long since ended and the group had secured more than enough funds to travel off-world. The initial years were promising, there was no shortage of corruption to plunder and no shortage of lost souls to join the cause, the Citadel races were too busy worrying about humanity as a whole to be concerned with a small fringe group and Holden’s Company weren’t picky when it came to which races a megacorp belonged to. But, eventually, humans settled in on Citadel space and more resources would be devoted to putting the gang down with each successful raid. More pressure would be placed on its members with each fallen brother or sister. Their leader, once steadfast and charismatic, became more and more insular as their “mission” seemed more pointless with each passing moment, for every building they cracked or good deed they did it never seemed to change anything. By the end, Holden’s Company seemed to devolve into taking from the rich and giving to themselves just to sustain their vision of a “better galaxy” for a little longer. Reid found himself arguing with his surrogate father constantly, his faith in their goals all but vanishing as it became clearer that their noble aspirations were just justifications to rob and kill and may well always have been. In Reid’s mind, they’d all become puppets, but only he could see the strings. Eventually, everything came to a head in 2177, during a raid on a luxury casino ship (“The Olympus”) moving through the Hades Nexus cluster. Being the “frontier” of Citadel space, their response was swifter than Holden’s Company could manage, already a shell of the group it once was. What resulted was chaos, strike teams boarding the vessel, multiple members of Holden’s Company dead, Holden himself allegedly shooting a civilian for no reason at all (though, even now, Reid would like to doubt he saw it happen exactly like that). Reid only got out by the skin of his teeth, hijacking one of the escape pods once it became clear it was every person for themselves. Information has been strictly tight-lipped about who exactly did and didn’t make it, only that the notorious Holden’s Company were “finished”. The following months were difficult. Finding civilization, scraping together the credits to run and hide out in the Terminus Systems, coming to the realisation that Reid was desperate and alone once again. The fall of his family hardened Reid considerably as he set about rebuilding some semblance of order back in his life. As one of the more noteworthy members of Holden's Company - some may say "the golden boy" - a bounty was placed on his head relatively quickly, it became just another thing to deal with. His need to always be on the move and stay off the grid constantly eat into the profits of his work, but he still fights on, hoping to earn enough to square his bounty. To become as "free" as he and his gang always claimed to be. Combat Analysis ◢ In a galaxy where people can harness mass effect fields or use the technology of the future to their advantage, one fact still remains true, with the right gun and know-how; you can kill anybody. While Reid may lack in biotic abilities and technical know-how, he is a wizard with a gun in his hands. Boasting lightning fast reaction speeds and deadly accuracy, he can switch from vicious hit-and-run tactics, keeping enemies in place with sustained fire or flushing them out with explosives, while drawing fire toward himself to always keep pressure on opponents even when outnumbered. Reid's time as part of a gang have also given him ample experience in analysing the strengths and weaknesses of allies and accomodate accordingly, while his time alone has honed his skills in self-preservation and survivability - always keeping on the move and controlling the pace of a battle as much as possible. Reason for Vacating Previous Situation ◢ Even by Reid’s standards, working with ExoGeni leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, but what other choice is there? He has nothing but disdain for megacorps but Reid’s time as a vague revolutionairy is long over yet his bounty still hangs over his head like a guillotine. ExoGeni and the work they’re offering is one of the very few chances to have both the protection and credits needed to work on becoming a truly free man. Besides, they know who he is after going through all the trouble to contact him, there's little room for scruples at this point. |
