Starlance — Roleplayer Guild

Engines - check, life support - check, ammo - check. Astrid tightened her shoulder straps, making sure she still had enough freedom of movement to look over her shoulders. Ejection capsule - armed. Let’s hope that doesn’t get used. “Allfather Odin, who art in Valhalla, may I prevail in the battle ahead and the damn sensors stay functioning throughout this sortie.” She whispered a mock prayer under her breath, giving the Wildcat an encouraging pat on the dashboard “Hear me, you beautiful thing? Make your designers proud.” And then, the wait. The worst part of any sortie, barring a few exceptions. Then sirens, ship weapons firing and instructions from the shooter. At last, they’ve arrived. With Ebony doling out some last minute orders, she keyed her mic twice in affirmative response and gave the shooter a salute and a thumb up.

Thrown out of the Wandering Star by the invisible hand of the electromagnetic catapult, Astrid quickly turned and burned to form up on her lead. Having cleared the ship and planting her fighter half a klick off Ebony’s five o’clock, she locked onto her fighter to better keep track of the wing leader and rolled her Wildcat so the bottom was facing the star to keep its rays out of her eyes.
She spared a look of pity at one of the troop transports. Last time she’d flown a sortie during a planetary invasion, the Midgard War had just swung into its second month and she was on the other side. Over a third of her aerial victories of that war were transports making planetfall, interceptors having been sent up to put up token resistance and keep their escort fighters busy while the multiroles, supported by bombers hastily refitted to carry a large number of long range air to air missiles guided by AWACS planes, tore the sluggish transports apart.
“One, you think they’ll wait at high altitude to jump us while we’re vulnerable during the descent, or try to meet us in orbit to get at the dropships as early as they can? How many do we expect anyway? The briefing was pretty sparse on details.”

Name: Astrid Weiss

Callsign: Cataract

Age: 29

Gender: Female

Species: Human

Hauptmann Weiss, early CE 2083

Height: 157 cm (5’2”)

Weight: 70 kg (154 lbs)

Miscellaneous:As with most native to worlds with higher gravity and atmospheric oxygen content, Astrid is shorter and has more muscle mass than an average Human.
Transhumeral prosthesis of the left arm (Painted bright orange with a Gungnir multirole fighter attacking a disintegrating Imperial bomber on the back of the hand, leaving a trail of smoke and debris spiraling up to where the prosthesis connects to her shoulder.).
Scarring on the left side of both lips, chin and cheek caused by glass fragments during a crash. Exhibits a muscle tic when agitated or nervous.
Off duty wear consists of various pieces of Midgard Military issued apparel she’d “lost” over her career.

Born: 13/01/CE 2054 - 29, Norden, Midgard
Midgard is perhaps the most successful failure of the Human colonial effort. With the successful spread into even the furthest corners of Sol, the most daring of Humans started looking even further. Long before Relativistic speeds jumped out of Sci-Fi into the real world, a massive collaborative effort of private parties gave birth to the Trailblazer - A class of ship designed to carry daredevils beyond the Kuiper Belt, and soon after, four ships of the class - the Trailblazer, Pathfinder, Pilgrim and Explorer -  left their home and bravely raced off into the unknown. Neither was ever heard from again. This torpedoed any further missions until humanity found a new way to explore the stars, and the Trailblazers became a mostly forgotten historical footnote.

Which is why the discovery of a planet inhabited by Humans in mid CE 2081 came as a bit of a surprise. Long after their departure, the descendants of the crews of the Trailblazers had thrived, despite losing the Pilgrim to an asteroid belt that appeared in the time it took them to reach their new home - an archipelago planet with a thick Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere about 1,6 Earth’s masses and 17% larger. The settlers cannibalized the Pathfinder, Explorer and the gutted husk of the Pilgrim into a permanent station and continued their mission despite the loss of their long-range communications equipment which caused them to drop out of contact. It was the presence of the Trailblazer, by then preserved as a museum ship, that confirmed their identity when the Empire found them by accident, and the decision was made to reintegrate these stray souls back into Human society.

And that’s when things got difficult. Because the Midgardians enjoyed their independence - unwilling to join a nation they had barely any connection to that demanded their cooperation based on their ancient, long forgotten ancestry alone - but underestimated the spread and technological advancement of the Empire, and they in turn underestimated the willingness of the “Colonists” to put their warheads where their mouth was. Hostilities broke out in late CE 2082. Mere minutes after a public broadcast in which the leaders of Midgard announced they will give no quarter to anyone wishing to threaten their independence, strike craft attacked Imperial ships throughout the Yggdrasil system, causing more damage than even the Midgardians expected.

And then things got even more difficult. What the lost colony expected to be a brief period of skirmishes after which both sides would reach a mutually agreeable compromise spiraled out of control into a brief but vicious war. For two months, the outnumbered and technologically outclassed military of Midgard traded blows with the Imperial military, lasting twice as long as anyone expected through tactics just barely qualifying above guerilla warfare, their short-ranged but fast-cooldown Sprint Drives and the fact the Empire had to work to find their targets, whereas the colonials had free reign to wreak havoc in what fit the definition of a target-rich environment to a T.

They fought a losing battle from day one, owing to their inability to strike the supply lines of their enemies capable of interstellar flight or outpace their industrial might, and a ceasefire was called in early CE 2083, ending the Midgard War with their defeat and integration into the Empire, leaving a tired and bitter people to get used to the new normal or look for another way to fight back.

Personality: A cocky fighter pilot embittered by Midgard’s defeat in the eponymous war and the subsequent loss of her nation’s independence, Astrid nevertheless remains a stout - and loud - patriot. Shaped by the fighter pilot culture, she sees her fellow pilots as a caste above others in the spirit of the usual interservice rivalry, something that usually shines through when she runs out of patience with someone. That being said, she is aware that ground forces are and always will be the be-all end-all of armed conflict, though she’d rather chew off her other arm than admit this within a grunt’s earshot.

As with many of the ex Midgard Aerospace Corps pilots who joined the Resistance, she is more motivated by hitting the Empire rather than fighting for the Resistance itself, seeing it as a convenient means to their liberation. With some experience as a wing leader fighting an enemy that outnumbers her, she’d grown used to the necessity to fight smart and conserve resources, leading to her being protective of inexperienced pilots.

Bio: Born to an Aerospace Corps officer and a historian, there was little doubt of where Astrid’s path would lead. Names of superheroes and fairy tale characters meant nothing to her. Her childhood heroes were the likes of Yi Sun-sin and Franz Stigler. It was a parable based on the latter’s tale (and her father’s stylish uniform) that first paved the way to museums and airshows since 4, a nearby general aviation field for ultralight pilot’s license at 15, a private pilot’s license at 17 and finally enlisting and making the cut to the Aerospace Corps Academy at 18.

By any metric, she was an average student in the classroom, but she led the class whenever she was in the flight seat. The number of times she’s been shouted up for running her mouth and other small transgressions was likewise impressive. Her scores were enough to keep that from being a significant problem, and in CE 2073, she graduated into active service. But peacetime was boring to the newly-minted Leutnant, so she took every extra course she could. Fighter Weapons School? Why not? Transorbital flight? Of course. Advanced weapons qualification? Hell yes! And then the big chance came. With the appearance of not-quite aliens making laughable demands and being serious about them, the Aerospace Corps increased the production of their newest multirole fighter and thus opened up more positions for pilots. Rather than putting new pilots into these cutting-edge fighters, experienced pilots could apply for a transfer. Astrid was an experienced pilot, and most definitely interested. Not only did she upgrade to a better fighter, but with her recent promotion to Hauptmann, she was assigned to the position of a flight leader. A month after the ‘Second Contact’, her transition was complete with a few months of peace time left to gain experience on this particular type and synergize with her new wingmates. 

And that experience would come in handy, as in CE 2082, her wing was chosen to be among those taking part in the initial strike against Imperial targets in the Yggdrasil system. The target of Astrid’s flight was Alan Shepard, a carrier serving as the flagship of Imperial forces in the system. Flying Gungnir-class multirole fighters, the pride of Midgard fighter corps, Astrid was among the pilots responsible for the fighter doctrine used in what would become known as the Midgard War - approach fast and fight at close range where the Empire’s superior sensors and long-range weapons were of little use. Due to her less-than-stellar aim, she took this to the extreme, earning the callsign “Katarakt” as well as several early returns due to damage from debris falling off of her prey.

But all good things must come to an end, and in early CE 2083 she, too, found herself on the receiving end of no small amount of explosive ordnance. It wasn’t even a hostile fighter that brought her down, much to her chagrin. Instead, she got her wings clipped by some trench monkey with a tube on his shoulder. The gall. Injured by shrapnel, down one engine and losing systems left and right, Astrid realized she wouldn’t make it back to base. In its death throes, her fighter stayed aloft long enough to reach a city big enough to have a decent hospital and get her down safely. The landing was rough, more of a controlled crash, and earned Astrid some extra scars on both flesh and pride. Coming down on a beach next to a city proved prudent, as it got her medical care quickly, but that same city fell to Imperial troops mere hours later. The war outlasted her involvement by only four days.

Following the war’s end, the Midgard military had been disbanded and its former members forbidden from serving in the Empire’s armed forces. Discharged and thoroughly mad, she sought out ways to keep her in a flight seat, turning to the Resistance along with many others.

Fighter: Mithria Arsenal AS-96 Wildcat

Fighter Customization:

Her name, callsign and a cloudy green eye painted on the left side of the canopy.
Emblems of the Midgard Aerospace Corps 11th Fighter Squadron next to Resistance roundels.
Matte black low-vis paint.
Often writes insults on her missiles.

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