Abraham Vaughn
"The way I see it, you can either work for a living, or you can fly spaceships. Me, I'd rather fly.”
– Len Morgan (Slightly Modified)Abe pilots the Auburn Liberty, alongside his AI co-pilot, Mary-Anne. He's got quick reflexes and a quicker wit, and spends most of his time flying freelance for one corporation or another all over the damn place. If Abe could have his way, he'd find his one, big score, buy a house in some secluded corner of paradiso, and spend the rest of his days telling stories to his sister's kid. Pity that the universe never gives him his way.
Basic Information
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Name: Abraham C. Vaughn
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Assumed Name: Abe Varker
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Nickname: Abe
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Age: 29 in two months.
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Gender: Male
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Ethnicity: Bit of Greek, lots of Russian, bit more of Polish, and a smattering of Irish.
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Sexuality: Heterosexual
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Crime: None. Abraham would take great offense at the implications of this question.
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Relation to Port Hope: Abraham is just another run of the mill Merchant Captain for the Inquisitors, running supplies and manufactured goods to and from space stations and planets in times which he boasts to be the "Fastest in the sector". Of course, to whom it may concern, Abe is willing to take on...less reputable merchandise, along with certain interested parties with deep pockets.
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Occupation: Merchant Pilot, Esteemed Transporter of Extravagant Goods (For the right price)
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Classes: - Navigation at the Entry Level
- Navigation at the Advanced Level - When Electronics Fail
- Navigation at the Advanced Level II - When You Have Nothing But The Clothes on Your Back
- Monarch-Class Freighter Piloting
- Monarch-Class Freighter Maintenance
- Circuitry: Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced
- Coming to Terms with Ship AI - A Crash Course Guarding Your Sanity on Long Hauls
- Survival in Space - Tips and Tricks to Extend Your Lifespan in Catastrophic Scenarios
- Ground-Based Survival for Travelers, Entry Level
- Ground-Base Survival for Travelers - 'Most Things Will Try to Kill You' Edition - a Four Week Video Seminar on Staying Alive When Your Ship Goes Down
- Gourmet Cooking - A Look Into the Food of Fifteen Cultures, No Matter How Briefly
NOTE: Many of these classes were taken during Abraham's time in the Vaughn College of Merchantry at Weber-Ross University, almost a decade previously. Currently he just asks Mary-Anne most of his questions.
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Skills: - Fast talking people into hiring him.
- Piloting ships of varying sizes and forms. His primary skill, and something he is very proud of.
- Bargaining. Lots of bargaining.
- Maintenance and general machining. Improvised Construction and General Building of Mechanical Things.
- Shooting accurately when it counts.
- Tracking down the last good drop of alcohol in a ten mile radius.
- Not dying on foreign planets. Not crashing into foreign planets.
- Hiding things. People, objects of value, himself...doesn't matter.
- Getting on the good side of any ship AI.
- Cooking. Generally involves fire.
- Putting out fires.
- Electrician Skills...the Auburn Liberty is a bit of an old ship.
- Learning Quickly: In his line of work, developing a good memory is almost as important as having good reflexes. Abe worked very hard to improve his memory from the disgusting pile of slop it once was.
- Other things Abe still isn't sure how he knows.
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Likes - Mary-Anne, Ship AI
- Good food
- His sister's family
- A Good drink
- A Good haul
- Alone time to write
- Ancient, ancient smooth jazz
- Less ancient cash
- Discovering a new place during his travels
- Meeting interesting people
- Adventuring on his own terms
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Dislikes - Mary-Anne, Ship AI
- His parents' stuffy attitudes
- Inquisitors being inquisitive on his ship
- Animal Cruelty in any form
- The color lime, specifically
- Brussel Sprouts
- Running out of fuel
- Running out of fuel halfway to Monada and having to send out a distress signal for six fucking days while hoping, praying that someone passes by, while Mary-Anne plays the same god-damn music for twelve hour intervals
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Habits: - Scratches his scruff when nervous.
- Consistently mutters to himself while in the pilot's seat.
- Twitches with excessive energy on rare occasions. It's harmless, mostly.
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Hobbies: - Writing: Abe dabbles in writing short fiction. It's his biggest pleasure, and he likes the feeling of creating entirely new worlds with his mind alone. And Owen loves listening to them.
- Running: if you were cooped up on the Auburn Liberty all the time, you'd enjoy running too.
- Spending time with his family: Abe has no family of his own, but his sister has always been welcoming to him, as has her husband and their child, Abe's nephew, Owen.
- Cooking, despite the number of times he's set things alight while doing so. He doesn't get the chance to cook much when aboard the Auburn Liberty, so he cooks when he can, and he's actually pretty decent at it.
- Rescuing Animals: Abe is a sucker for pets, cats especially, even though he can't realistically keep on on board the Liberty. Mary-Anne would chew him up alive, and spit the poor creature out the airlock.
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Fears: - Being caught by his one of his father's employees: so far, he's managed to stay hidden from Vaughn-Co. officials, operating under an assumed name and a very, very good set of fake credentials. It only takes on slip up, though, and Abe can't talk his way out of his father's deathly stare.
- Cults, Obsessions: Something about a group of people being mindlessly obsessed with a being or ideal creeps Abe the fuck out. His father is that way about profits and the "family name". He also fears that he will become the same way, and has told Mary-Anne to ground him in some obscure location, should he ever fly off the deep end.
- Mary-Anne, Ship AI
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Personality: Abe has a heart of gold. Or at least, he would if he wasn't stuck on a slightly decrepit spacecraft with a slightly crazy AI by the name of Mary-Anne. Couple that with a need to eat, repair the ship, and refuel, and you get a pilot under quite a lot of pressure to succeed. As a result, Abe copes with the stress through a biting wit and a good, stiff drink whenever he feels particularly overwhelmed.
Despite the stress, sarcasm, and sadness, Abe manages to be a pretty easy-going, talkative guy: it's necessary in his line of work. Closing contracts and getting customers is how he affords food for himself, so he can be as charismatic as a king when necessary. Necessity aside, talking with others who are not ship AI does wonders for Abe's mood. It's then that the true Abraham comes out: an artist at heart, who dotes on his nephew and has high hopes for the future. There's a hint of idealism in him somewhere, and it's never going to get put out, even when his cleverness, cynicism, and experience do everything they can to snuff it.
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Backstory: Abraham Vaughn was born to be a high-caliber merchant. His father, Anton Vaughn, is the latest CEO of Vaughn-Co (from a line of six Vaughns), and in charge one of the biggest distributors of luxury goods in the region. He intended Abraham to be his successor, and from a young age, Abe was raised to appreciate luxury, and more importantly, appreciate how to make luxury look attractive to outsiders. Plenty of people had wealth, but fewer had wealth and sought to sell it as well.
Through his child years, he was raised by one of the best planetside school affordable to people of his status, with the intent of teaching him the qualities his father sought in him. Afterwards, Abe spent his teenage years at home, mostly: being instructed by world-class tutors and cutting-edge professors about the important facets of trading and economics. Aside from that, Abe spent much of his time attending various high-class functions, and getting to know his peers in society. Never mind making friends, his father said, make allies instead.
When he was eighteen, his father slide him in the door of Weber-Ross University, one of the premier schools for business in the known regions of space. Wealth definitely had its perks. From there, he was instructed in all manner of high-level classes, from navigation to survival to things he couldn't possibly understand to be useful until later. He was being groomed for true success in life.
Abe hated it. He hated the preppy people he spent so much time around. Everyone so glib and content with their lot in life. There was Anardo, heir to an asteroid-mining empire. Elyia was just passing by: her mother made jewelry from crystals tempered in solar-radiaton, or some other such nonsense. Everyone knowing that wealth was assured. And, somehow, almost everyone being an only child.
Most of Abe's resentment came from that one key fact. In wealthy circles, it appeared that to have more than one child was only fashionable if one needed a male heir, as was the case of the Vaughn family. Before Abraham, there was Cara, his older sister. Once he was born, she was metaphorically tossed aside. Oh, their mother and father gave her an excellent education, and a place to sleep and food to eat, but he could tell: they really had no interest in her from the moment he had been born. Raya, his mother, did not give her gifts on her birthdays, like she did for him.
When Cara met Wilhelm, a broker within one of Anton's partners' firms, and they fell in love, Abe was very happy indeed. They were married three weeks after Abe graduated from his high school program, and moved off-world to another planet, in an area of sunshine and relaxation. Wilhelm certainly did just fine with his brokering. Three months later, and the news broke that Cara was expecting. Abe was going to be an uncle, and he thought for sure his parents would be thrilled. Raya was as ecstatic as he was, but Abe could not miss the look of faint disinterest on his father's face. The rift between the two only deepened from there.
Abe ended up dropping out of Weber-Ross at the end of his junior year, three years later. He did not come home to a warm welcome. A furious Anton demanded to know exactly what his son was thinking, because he had just left the best opportunity he would ever have, and only crazy people would have given up such a future. Raya watched in deepening horror as Abe finally exploded, calling his father a monster, an addict, a man with "profits" stuffed so far down his throat that it was a miracle he wasn't shitting gold. Then he politely suggested that perhaps instead of trying to force him into a legacy he wanted no part in, his parents might consider giving his sister some love, which was really all she ever wanted from them.
Anton Vaughn told Abe no son of his would ever dare to say such things, and to get out of his sight. Abe promptly did so, running to the family's freighter hangar, stealing the first ship he could gain access to, and leaving. It was only after he left orbit that he realized how horribly screwed he now was. With his father likely calling in every favor he had at the local Astro-Defense district, Abe did the only thing he could think of.
He used his high-quality knowledge of ships, drilled into him year after year, to rip out the Auburn Libety's tracking beacon. And the backup. It was probably then that he damaged Mary-Anne: there was no time to be careful, and it was only a little bit of collateral either way. Now off the radar, Abe went to see his sister.
She of course, was furious with him for being so rash, but they could never stay angry at each other for long. She and Wilhelm swore not to tell of his whereabouts, and provided him with fuel and food. Unfortunately, he could not stay: it would be one of the first places his father would. He patted little Owen on the head, kissed his sister on the cheek, and shot off into the sky.
From there, it wasn't hard to decided what to do next. A now-unhinged ship AI was more than happy to find darknet information for Abe about how he could change his identity, and some siphoned funds from his fathers accounts before he was shut out was enough to do the deed. All cash transaction, and after lots of money and a bit of time, Abraham Vaughn was replaced by Abe Varker the freelance merchant. From then on, it was going to be a tough life, but Abe knew it would be more fulfilling than what he had left behind. He hoped so, at least.
For the next seven years, Varker quickly established himself as a go-to guy for anything that needed to get from one place to another fast. Even the not-strictly-allowed-stuff was fair game, and that only added to his appeal. With Mary-Anne's help, and a slowly-growing yet loyal network of like-minded individuals, Abe's infamy began to grow.
Whenever he makes a particularly good score, he goes to visit his nephew. Generally it happens once a year, but those two weeks are the best weeks of his year, without fail, and always keep him going until the next time. His parents may have given him up for dead, but his sister's family treats him how family should.
His latest endeavor brought him to Port Hope, where his little network had heard whisperings of a big score up for grabs. No word on that as of yet, but he has one ear to the ground, and both eyes looking. Something big had to be going down.
Theme Song:
Dangerous - Built by Titan/Jesse McCartney
You don't have to worry if you're good enough
You'll be sitting pretty while they talking tough
Guess they never knew that you were made for this
You're dangerous...
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E X T R A I N F O- Abe's nephew Owen is one of his favorite people to be around. The little 10 year old is fascinated by Abe's adventures and his fictional stories.
- On Mary-Ann: The Auburn Liberty's AI has seen better days. Identifying itself as female, Mary-Anne assists Abe with charting courses, finding safe havens for slightly-illegal trade, cooking with the meager on-board supplies, and much, much more. Highly intelligent and pseudo-self-aware, Abe feels comfortable calling Mary-Anne a friend, at least partially. Unfortunately, Mary-Anne is prone to attitude, and opening the airlocks of the Auburn Liberty when irritated. Although she can be stubborn, unwilling to comply, and in certain situations, downright dangerous, she has never actually threatened his life, only his patience and his deadlines. In fact, he finds her quirks almost endearing.
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