Hmmmmm. I see we've got a character sheets forum.<br/><br/>Should we put background writeups there?<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Pretty much most of Ghrreigh's background</div><div class="spoiler_body"><div class="floatright">(https://pre00.deviantart.net/a834/th/pre/i/2012/267/1/3/arctic_fox_by_komodoempire-d2ut2x1.jpg)</div><strong>Drifter/Scavenger:</strong><br/>Ghrreigh was born to a loose clan of Vargr prospectors in the asteroid belt of the Quhaiathat system. The clan was effectively treated as an extraorbital ghetto by the planet's totalitarian government, which made a habit of aggregating the Vargr off-world in a semi-effective quarantine. The Quhaiathat belt is almost entirely stony asteroids, with nearly no iceteroids, meaning that the Core was able to use the same tactics on the Vargr which it did on its own people: restricting and rationing air and water in return for mining trace elements which were rare under Quhaiathat's own icy surface. <br/><br/>The Vargr enclave was predominantly Irilitok in genetic makeup, separated from the Vargr extents for over a century during which genetic drift and humanocentric reinforcement emphasized the Irilitok geneline characteristics (slightly larger eyes, floppy ears, smaller physical frames). In short, they're 'domesticated,' but calling them such is a definite way to find one's self in a fight. In keeping with the rigger-risk work-hard/play-hard sport-death culture of Quhaiathat, the most common daredevil game in the enclave was untethered orienteering races around the asteroid (and for the truly daring, sometimes multi-hour free jumps between nearby tethered rocks). As a result, Ghrreigh grew up in microgravity and is sometimes outrageously casual about untethered maneuvering in deep space.<br/><br/>Unfortunately, a smuggler who routinely visited the Vargr enclave made the mistake of granting passage to a hothead who convinced many of the younger Vargr to organize a 'strike' against the Core. The Core cheerfully responded by letting them know that their next air shipment would be delayed. Ghrreigh was a member of the pack of youngsters who tried to take the Warden hostage, only to find that the Core considered the warden just as expendable as everyone else. In disgust, the strikers hijacked a mining vessel and undertook a career of piracy, using the mining vessel's systems to bore the airlock of an ore carrier and transferring over to the jump equipped freighter to make their escape from the system. The Warden was honest and responsible enough to limit his recriminations to those directly involved in the strike and subsequent riot, but he specifically wants the pelts of the handful who kidnapped him, Ghrreigh included. <br/><br/><strong>Rogue/Pirate</strong><br/>Using their smuggler contacts, the Vargr managed to swap the ore freighter for an aging corsair, and set about a brief and inconclusive career of piracy. The pack established its own semi-traditional tattoos (although there's a fair bit of human iconography in them that the practiced eye might notice, such as the green shamrock in the short fur right between Ghrreigh's eyes) and she got into the habit of wearing splints in her ears so they weren't quite so floppy and she looked more like a 'real Vargr pirate' from the holoshows. During these years, Ghrreigh made her first kill and started learning her way around a ship's boat and a boarding party. She also spent a fair bit of time practicing traditional Vargr (many of the Irilitok spoke Anglic) to the point where she can handle "Heave to and prepare to be boarded!" and similar useful tourist phrases in the snarling language pretty well. Unfortunately, the pack leader was killed during a boarding that went bad, and the remnants of the pack divided between two subordinates who were remarkably equal in strength and charisma. They couldn't handle the ship and coordinate as well as they had, and by mutual agreement after several weeks had produced no clear victor, they agreed to split into two packs, one of which would receive the ship while the others were paid out in loot and dropped at Emape (a relatively friendly world to ships of questionable purview). Ghrreigh ended up with the latter group, and while they parted in mutual respect there's still a bit of sullen-ness between the two packs.<br/><br/>The pack tried to inveigle itself among the criminals in Emape's practically above-board underworld, and Ghrreigh actually fared better than most of her companions, developing a fondness for shotguns that resulted in her becoming more infamous as a recoil queen than an enforcer. About a year later, in an effort to reduce the rampant piracy in the immediate area, the Navy instituted a brief period during which they issued pardons in return for service. After a really bad argument with her alpha and with her pack still stuck on Emape, disintegrating and unhappy, Ghrreigh got profoundly drunk and stuck her nose in the Navy Base, where her drunken stories of piracy in high space were largely ignored as exaggeration (frankly, most of them were). She woke up to her first muster with a hangover, but decided to treat her squad as the most disfunctional pack ever (admittedly, it wasn't much of a step down from how bad her previous pack was) and make the best of it.<br/><br/><strong>Naval Engineer/Gunner</strong><br/>The Navy has millenia of experience in taking near-savagely full-of-themselves young types and turning them into grist for the Imperial war machine, and Ghrreigh was hardly an exception in their eyes. They put her through a battery of tests before assigning her to the Destroyer <em>Baroness Raquel</em> and giving her a job in the lower decks as an engine-wiper on jump-drives. At battle-stations, she was assigned to managing defensive screens in one of the belly turrets while more experienced techs maintained the drives. In between, she tried to put her skills to use, but the <em>Raquel</em> already had an excellent distillery in a back locker of the engine room, and her brief experience with gambling only demonstrated that she couldn't afford to pay for the education it'd take to get good at it. Somewhere along the way she got excessively drunk in the after ward and (in typical Vargr fashion) tried to challenge her superior officer. The ensuing fleet battle simulation resulted in her resounding defeat, but some of the sneaky tricks she'd picked up during her pirate years amused the officer of the deck enough that he decided to run her through a tactics course. Surprisingly, she went at it full tilt; as far as she was concerned, he'd put her in her place and was now her effective alpha. When the results came back, he encouraged her to study for OCS. <br/><br/><strong>Naval Engineer/Gunner, Term 2</strong><br/>After a few years of hard work, Ghrreigh was brevetted to Ensign and assigned as Junior Engineering Officer to the cruiser <em>Vasilisa Katin</em>, studying Vargr culture and language in her spare time. Assignment to the <em>Vasilisa</em> was regarded as a relatively cush job by naval standards as the strike cruiser spent much of her time under flag and on diplomatic or covert duty when the Third Imperium was at war with the Vargr government ruled by the so-called "40th Squadron." On one such "diplomatic" mission near Beck's World, Ghrreigh got tapped to meet with a Vargr renegade leader as part of a secret negotiation and handled it flawlessly. <br/><br/><strong>Naval Engineer/Gunner, Term 3</strong><br/>During her third term in the Navy, she was promoted to Sublieutenant and her technical skills were again honed, this time with an emphasis on computer skills to go with her previous tactical course. In accordance with her promotion, she attended a leadership course which focused on both her role in the Empire's fleet and a subcourse on working with allied Vargr auxiliary troops. When she wasn't studying to be a Vargr liaison, she spent a great deal of her time analyzing corsair tactics, mildly bemused at the naivete of her early pirate years.<br/><br/><strong>Naval Engineer/Gunner, Term 4</strong><br/>Having finished her coursework, Ghrreigh again managed a promotion after providing covert support and computer analysis during another diplomatic mission near the Vargr world of Kousuesi, out past the border of Regina sector. Unfortunately, it was a near thing, as she was recognized by Vargr analysts and the ship's marine commando was barely able to extract her alive. As a result she was transferred off the <em>Vasilisa</em> and returned to engineering duties aboard the Strike Carrier <em>Audacity</em>, where she was a second-tier officer in the Engine room. However, the stresses of the escape from Kousuesi had resulted in visible aging deterioration of the peak training which she'd undergone in previous terms, and while she was nowhere near crippled, she was gently encouraged to take retirement.<br/><br/>Ghrreigh mustered out by default at her port of registration, and found herself on Emape with surprisingly little in the way of finances, just an air/raft with a particularly nicely stocked weapon locker and a number of lien-tickets on ship-loans which would only be useful to someone trying to consolidate them to purchase a vessel.<br/><br/><strong>Description:</strong><br/>Ghrreigh is unusually fluffy and short for a Vargr, barely five feet tall even though she has a more upright stance due to her Irilitok heritage. When she doesn't have her ear-splints in, her ears are floppy and she stops looking so much like a white-furred husky and more like a notch-eared malamute. NPCs familiar with main-lineage Vargr will also note her upright stance, shorter muzzle and larger eyes. There are a variety of pack tattoos visible on her where her fur is short, including (most visibly) a bright-green shamrock right between her eyes, a yellow broken bone in the thinner fur in front of her left ear, and twenty-three tooth-like red triangles on the inner edge of her right ear (ship kills, but only nine are authentic (and only seven of those took place when she was a corsair) while the rest were added by the Navy to make her seem more experienced/intimidating when she went undercover at Beck's World). She also sometimes is given to painting other markings (which presumably mimic tattoos hidden under her fur elsewhere) on her armor in traditional Vargr style. Ghrreigh is generally cheerful-seeming even when guns are out, both because her fight/flight reaction is oddly connected to excitement (hooray, puppy adrenaline junkie!) and simply as a matter of biology...Unless she's actually snarling, her basic expression looks like a smile whether her teeth are bared or not. Those who know her well will know that she is somewhat aggressively cheerful (perhaps sometimes even as a practice of denial), but also waffles oddly back and forth between being somewhat domineering and being somewhat submissive to different people at different times.<br/><br/>I couldn't find a fluffy looking Vargr image that suited me, so have something fluffy and non-cartoony (also without the correct tattoos, but what can you do?)</div></div>