(no subject)

[boneitis]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Inky
AGE: 25
JOURNAL: inkblotmeringue
IM / EMAIL: Aim: inkblotmeringue
PLURK: inkblotmeringue
RETURNING: n/a

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Jeff ‘Joker’ Moreau
CHARACTER AGE: 31
SERIES: Mass Effect
CHRONOLOGY: Mass Effect 3, just before the final mission
CLASS: Leaning towards hero
HOUSING: Yes, but he’ll be getting his butt out of there as soon as possible

BACKGROUND:

The Mass Effect trilogy takes place in the Milky Way Galaxy between 2183-2185. All technology in this world is based on Element Zero—a fictional material that, when you run an electrical current through it, basically gives physics the finger and produces a field that can affect the mass of an object.

This field is called

THE MASS EFFECT

/title drop

In Mass Effect, Commander Shepard, Systems Alliance soldier extraordinaire, must take his/her ragtag team of misfits across the galaxy in their top-of-the-line, shiny spaceship SSV Normandy in order to save it from the Reapers, a billions-years-old race of sentient organic-synthetic starships that like to just bust in every 50,000 years or so and harvest all organic life. Along the way, s/he must overcome obstacles that include, but are not limited to, terrorist organizations, giant angry space spiders, your squad mates demanding that you listen to all their daddy issues, one of your squad mates being the daddy issue, obstructive bureaucracy, issues involving long-standing socio-politicial conflicts and systematic genocide, and remembering to feed your fish. There are several main groups that Shepard has to interact with while going on his/her space adventure:

THE SYSTEMS ALLIANCE: This is the human military organization that protects human interests throughout the galaxy. It was formed after humanity discovered prothean ruins on Mars and figured out how to work the Sol mass relay, which jumped technology forward a few hundred years and started a massive colonization spree. Eventually, this got the attention of the turians, and a war broke out: the turians called it the Relay 314 incident, while humanity knew it as the First Contact War. After the Council broke up the fighting and humanity joined the galactic community, they mainly interact with it through the Alliance. It's run in a parliamentary-style fashion, but Shepard mostly receives orders through Admiral Hackett throughout the games.

The Alliance is split into two main military branches: marines and navy. Both of these work together so often that it basically seems like they’re one military, because without orbital support the ground troops are useless, but they are still technically two different parts. Ranks go in the usual anglo-military fashion, from private at the bottom to admiral at the top. The Alliance also uses an alphabet-number system to denote career path and skill level; the letter is your career, the number from 1-7 indicates skill. The only mentioned letter vocation is ‘N’, which is Alliance Special Forces. Commander Shepard is an N7, indicating that s/he is at the highest level of his/her specialty.

THE CITADEL COUNCIL: Once Shepard is admitted into the SPECTREs, essentially the galaxy's equivalent of James Bond, s/he is beholden to the Citadel Council. This consists of representatives from the main galactic powerhouses: the turians, the asari, the salarians, and, after the first game, the humans. They govern most of the galactic community from Citadel Station, and therefore pretty much everyone wants a seat on it. It's extremely difficult, however, to get there, and most of the other races are resentful or suspicious of humanity's rapid ascent to power. Everyone who doesn't have a seat has to petition the Council via ambassadors, to greater or lesser effect. They are also notorious during the games for being extremely unhelpful, and most of the time Shepard spends his/her efforts on getting them to believe that there's a problem or working around them to solve the aforementioned problem. Being a SPECTRE agent, however, has its perks; since they answer only to the Council, which is the highest authority, they are licensed to do pretty much whatever they want within Citadel space and can get away with a lot even outside of it.

CERBERUS: Cerberus is a terrorist human-supremacy paramilitary group who serves as one of the main antagonists during the games. It's headed by the Illusive Man and tends to involve itself in anything that he believes will help humanity become a dominant force within the galaxy. In the first game, the group is something more of a side-issue, generally getting itself into trouble with experiments-gone-awry rather than being the main threat. The organization is known for having very few scruples when it comes to getting things done, and is more than willing to get involved with espionage, sabotage, human experimentation, and other unsavory acts to produce results.

In Mass Effect 2, Cerberus returns as a main player in the story, but instead as Shepard's ally; the organization is responsible for bringing Shepard back to life and outfitting him/her with a ship and a crew, in exchange for his/her help in investigating the disappearance of human colonies. By the end of the game, Shepard has cut ties with them again, taking the loyal crew and the ship with him/her. By the time the events of Mass Effect 3 occur, Cerberus has gone from being a force in the shadows to being a major military organization, capable of mounting large assaults on multiple fronts and putting serious research into Reaper tech.

THE REAPERS: These are the main antagonists of the game, and are a group of synthetic-organic starships who come from dark space every 50,000 years to harvest organic life from the galaxy. They are extremely powerful, technologically advanced, and highly intelligent, and are outfitted with a variety of tech to make them nearly unstoppable forces. Reaper capital ships are several kilometers long and have main cannons powerful enough to destroy a dreadnought-class ship in a single strike and can carry large numbers of ground troops. By implanting tech into corpses using tall spikes called Dragon's Teeth, they can create ground forces that are essentially cyborg zombies from the bodies of whatever civilization they're attacking, and living organics that remain in their presence too long, either by choice or by force, can be indoctrinated by a frequency they emit. Indoctrinated people become loyal to the Reapers and will obey them, though the more indoctrinated they become, the less autonomy and intelligence they exhibit. Useful sleeper agents have to be the right amount of indoctrinated and independent, but the Reapers have had billions of years to perfect this ability. By the beginning of ME3, the Reapers have invaded the galaxy and have attacked Earth, forcing Shepard to leave it in order to acquire enough allies and resources to retake the planet.

Joker's particular role in this space opera free-for-all is to pilot the Normandy, provide commentary on people and events to Shepard, and, on one brief occasion, be the only PC in the series other than Shepard.  Unlike the other major characters, who come in and out of the story depending on the game and can die or survive based on player choices, Joker is a constant presence on the Normandy and can always be found up at the helm, cracking jokes (funny and otherwise) and flying the ship.

The actual events of the game can vary wildly between play-throughs due to player choices, but the general plots of the games are as follows:

MASS EFFECT 1:  SPECTRE agent Saren Arterius betrays the Citadel Council and allies himself with a mysterious entity known as Sovereign; Shepard assumes command of the SSV Normandy and is appointed the first human SPECTRE to apprehend him and foil his dastardly plans.  Along the way, s/he assembles a crew of intergalactic misfits and discovers that the Reapers, previously thought to be only a myth, are very real.  No one believes him/her, even though Sovereign is a Reaper and literally attacks them while trying to open a mass relay to let all his friends come in and join the party.  Sovereign is destroyed in time and Shepard becomes known as the Savior of the Citadel.

MASS EFFECT 2:  Shepard dies while trying to save Joker during a routine assignment gone wrong and is resurrected by the Lazarus project, run by Cerberus.  S/he is reunited with Joker and the newly rebuild Normandy after agreeing to work with the Illusive Man to uncover the truth behind disappearing human colonies.  S/he discovers that the Collectors, a mysterious, rarely-seen race, are behind the kidnappings, and gathers another crew of intergalactic misfits to stop them.  They find that the Collectors are just pawns of the Reapers and blow up their base, destroying the fledgling Reaper they were constructing within.  Shepard commandeers the Normandy from the Illusive Man, severing his/her ties with Cerberus and returns to the Alliance.

MASS EFFECT 3:  The Reapers finally arrive en force, blitzkrieging Earth and the other major homeworlds.  Shepard is reinstated into the Alliance after six months of waiting to possibly be court martialed for events that took place during the previous game's DLC.  S/he finds the plans for an ancient Prothean weapon stored in the archives on Mars and is tasked with gathering supplies to build it and raising an armada to fight off the Reaper invasion.  Previous intergalactic misfits return to the crew to help him/her shout some sense into every race in the galaxy in time to stop the Reapers from literally killing everyone.
 

PERSONALITY:

Jeff Moreau was born with moderate-to-severe Vrolik’s syndrome, also known as osteogenesis imperfecta, which has left many of the large bones in his body brittle and easily broken due to improperly formed collagen. For most of his life, he has had difficulty getting around, and had to rely on braces and crutches, as there is no effective cure for his disease. Because of this, he’d been judged for things he can’t do—running, lifting, shooting a pistol without cracking his wrist—rather than the things he can. Since he was a kid, he’d been overlooked and disregarded in favor of the more able-bodied.

There was one thing that he loved, though—ships. His mother was a civilian contractor on the Arcturus station, so Jeff grew up in a place where spacecraft was common. He was fascinated by them—both because they were damn cool, and because a ship’s pilot didn’t need their legs to fly. The moment that he was old enough to, Jeff signed up for the Alliance Navy to train to become a pilot.

It wasn’t easy getting through flight school, though—he got more than his share of remarks and shit for being the kid with the creaky legs and the crutches. But the more shit he got for it, the more determined he was to prove them all wrong, to show them all that having this disease didn’t mean that he couldn’t fly and didn’t mean that he couldn’t be a better damn pilot than all the rest of them combined. That was the reason that one of his instructors gave him the nickname ‘Joker’—because he was so serious about his training, working his ass off day in and day out, that he never cracked a smile. He learned damn well that if he wanted to succeed, he had to be the best fucking pilot that ever went through those doors—so he was grim as hell all throughout his training, never cracking a smile and never showing weakness. At graduation, though, when he was top of his class and could out-fly even his instructors, Joker was damn well smiling. Coming out top of his class didn’t get rid of that chip on his shoulder, though, and won’t hesitate to make it very clear that his condition doesn’t affect his abilities as a pilot, nor has it stopped him from becoming one of—if not the most—skilled pilots in the fleet. One of the few ways to get on his bad side quickly is to insinuate that his physical state will somehow impair him in doing his duties.

Joker has lightened up a little since his flight school days, though, and often will make wisecracks and snarky comments from the helm, especially about the people that Commander Shepard brings aboard. He does take his job seriously, though—when push comes to shove and things get dangerous, the jokes stop and Jeff gets the job done, no matter how impossible it may seem.

Aside from being just his sense of humor, the snark is also something of a defense mechanism—after having enough people try to put him down, he’s learned to use his sharp tongue as a way to keep people at a distance. It’s that chip on his shoulder at work; he’s always had something to prove, so he always figures that he’s going to have to keep proving himself. His first assumption when Shepard first talked to him in Mass Effect was that s/he’d read his file and was trying to figure out if he was really a good pilot or if he’d just gotten the position on charity because of his disease. Joker gets defensive easily and won’t hesitate to react sharply when he feels threatened or questioned; it’s not a good way to make friends, but making friends hadn’t been high on his list of priorities when there had been a lot of people waiting for any opportunity to remove him from his position. His record has a lot of complaints in it about his attitude, but it has a lot of commendations for his incredible job performance—most of them placed by the same CO.

Despite that rocky start, he warmed up to Commander Shepard throughout their mission—Joker keeps a friendly sort of repartee going between himself and his superior, and obviously respects the commander greatly. He’ll follow Shepard to hell and back, and, between going after the geth, the Collectors, Cerberus, and even Reapers, probably has done just that. His loyalty towards Shepard is so apparent that Anderson, the admiral leading the resistance on Earth, tells him to make sure that he takes care of him/her, and he does his best to make good on that promise. Getting on Joker’s good side isn’t an easy thing, but once you’re there, he’s a damn good friend to have. He won’t always be too easy to get along with, but he’s loyal to a fault and will always have your back.

And speaking of ‘not easy to get along with’, Joker’s also a bit of a control freak; he’s big on always being in control of a situation and he doesn’t much like it when people start invading his territory. It’s one of the reasons that he was so heavily against EDI being a part of the ship at the beginning of ME2—not only was she a potentially dangerous AI, but she was a potentially dangerous AI who was taking over part of his job. He doesn’t like it when people try to take responsibilities from him or try to ‘help him out’, even if their intentions are genuinely good, since he views it as them thinking he isn’t capable of handling those tasks; he’s very independent and wants to do things his own way or not at all. He spent his whole damn life trying to prove that, no, he’s fine and he can take care of himself and be an awesome pilot, so mind your own damn business and let him get his job done.

POWER:
In the Mass Effect universe, Joker has no unusual powers to speak of. In Mask or Menace, he’ll gain the following abilities:

Electrokinesis – the ability to generate, absorb, conduct, and manipulate electricity. Joker would be able to manipulate various forms of electricity and even generate some of his own; his 'native' source, however, is limited and can be quickly depleted, which would also physically exhaust him. He can only conduct so much electricity through his body at a time, as well, because his body's own electrical resistance will cause damage and burns if he tries to push too much through. Well insulated sources of electricity will be difficult for him to affect, unless he has some break in the insulation that he can exploit. He can generate small, fairly weak, localized magnetic fields. He'll also have a constant static charge and will be slightly magnetic, which can get awkward really fast but makes for a neat party trick.

Technopathy – a partial subset of electrokinesis; the ability to mentally interface with technology and control it. Joker does not require direct contact to interface, but he does need to be in the same room, or at least line-of-sight, as whatever he’s interacting with. He can’t manipulate anything that doesn’t have some kind of processor—purely mechanical devices will not be affected. Additionally, forms of protection software or programs can affect him in turn, such as firewalls or computer viruses, with varying physiological results. Running into a firewall that he can’t circumvent might give him a headache, whereas a virus or Trojan might make him physically ill. Once he gains full access into an instrument, he can do almost whatever he likes with it, from pulling data to linking into other devices on its network to overloading circuits. Depending on the difficulty of the task, however, he may be vulnerable, because he’ll lose track of what’s going on in the outside environment as more of his attention is directed to whatever he’s doing.

Healing factor – To compensate for his brittle bones, Joker will have a minor healing factor that allows him to heal up significantly faster than the average person.  While it wouldn't help against lethal injuries-- with Joker, as with zombies, aim for the head-- it would allow him to recover from fractures within minutes instead of weeks, depending on the severity and multitude.  More serious injuries or multiple smaller ones will take longer to heal and will also be more exhausting.  It also has a saturation point, after which his body can no longer keep up with the energy requirements for healing so many injuries.  So, headshots or death by a million cuts can be equally effective in circumventing this power. 

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[There's a lot of static on this line.]

Breaker, breaker, this is Joker, and, uh.

[A loud pop sound can be heard, even over the poor reception. It sounds a little like the sound glass makes when it gets blown out.]

So, should I start this off like an AA meeting? Hi, my name is Joker, and I have this weird problem where lights keep exploding when I walk into a room. Sort of annoying and I keep having to replace all my light bulbs, so that's... a thing. The first step is admitting you have a problem or whatever.

[There it is again.]

For the love of--

[The reception is briefly drowned out by static and interference.]

I am also magnetic. And I don't mean just my sheer animal magnetism, I mean that I am literally magnetic. I have refrigerator magnets stuck to my arm right now and I can't get them off.

Help me, Obi wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.


LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:TDM post

FINAL NOTES: