Name: Feral Hops
Nickname: Slapstick
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Age: 42
Profession: Soldier/Infiltrator - Bore Jumper
Description: Feral Hops is a fairly tall man, standing at around 6'9" with a head of jet-black hair tied in a short ponytail. While not broad-shouldered, he certainly isn't thin either, and is built rather steadily, certainly steadily enough for his line of work. He typically dresses in drab fatigues, which contrasts starkly with his generally bright and rather witty persona and his rather boyish facial features, which he manages to use to great effect in conversation and small talk. Some people can find his jabs to be rather grating. Though people look down on him for his young age, behind the mask of smiles and bad jokes, he conceals a calculating mind, honed by years on the field of battle with the ability to mentally assess any situation and take the most efficient way out. Honestly, most people doubt it's existence, it typically only coming into use behind the scenes when he figures out the most distracting way to make his sudden entrance.
If there was some weakness of Feral's personality that you could point out, and quite possibly take advantage of, it is his tendency to hold grudges against people who he feels has wronged him in some way. Things like bad trading deals or people who have hurt those who holds dear get the worst of him. In battle Feral becomes something of an enigma, laughing crazily while teleporting unpredictably, adding to the appearance of that-is-one-crazy-guy-holy-hell-is-that-a-bomb-run-away.
While his formal clothing (which is to say his most formal; not necessarily actually formal) consists of loose clothes dyed in hues of grays and browns, tied at the waist, wrists, and ankles with some dark-colored material he has on hand, in the privacy of his room and in whatever ship he;s currently serving on he prefers to wear close fitting pieces of clothing, some of which are covered in delicate patterns of brightly colored but thread-like lines, concealing the thin web of augments stretched across his skin that cover up the physical scars which he got from soldiering. Additionally, on special occasions, he sometimes wears a rather beautiful red scarf with gold fringes at either end that he seems to have a rather peculiar attachment to. It doesn't really match the rest of his outfit.
Background:
Feral was born the son of star-merchants, small men and women with ships who chugged across the vast expanse of space in search of goods both mundane and exotic, perhaps carrying people too, in search of a profit. Growing up, he saw his father very little. In fact, his father seemed to care more about his work and driving the ship than caring about him, delegating the work of being a parent largely to Feral's mother, and also partially to the mechanic on the ship, the only other person there full-time. Despite this, he loved his father very much, and his father loved him in turn.
Feral's first memory is of his father showing him the bore drive in the ship, showing him the mechanisms, and when asked how it worked, being confused and admitting to not knowing it. The drooling 5-year old fell in love with it immediately. Soon after his family settled down from the merchant business for the sake of Feral's education, he expressed a keen interest in studying physics, to which his father simply said "Go you." A couple of years saw Feral in one of the most revered universities in the cosmos, studying to complete his degree in Bore physics. A set of complications that arose out of bad habits and easy side-tracking resulted in him failing his degree, however, and while he could have studied more in the hopes of completing the degree, he decided not to. The mounting fees associated with studying combined with the fact that he was already too far into his life (at least in his opinion) turned off his hopes for his future in a lab making huge contributions to the accuracy of bore jumps, and he started serving on ships just as his mother and father had in their day.
Naturally, when he heard that the military was in need of Bore Jumpers, he signed up straight away, quickly abandoning his old job and getting a state-of-the-art bore drive installed by a military surgeon. The backbreaking training woke him up to what he had signed up for, but he was too stubborn to stop, and simply persisted. In fact, his stubborn behavior was what got him through in the end, barely passing examination into the army proper. For the next few years he worked alongside all kinds of people; he even had somebody from every species in his squad. Being a bore jumper had become a reality for Feral, and his name was most appropriate. His mother even gave him her scarf, with a note saying "Do be careful. I'm not sure even teleporters can survive being shot."
However, being shot at on a regular basis proved to be bad for Feral's health, and though he somehow never was killed in action, he accumulated an impressive number of scars over the course of his career. Feral quit the military at 35, but seeing as he still had a miniaturized bore drive embedded into his body and there were no other jobs requiring somebody who could teleport, he started working on mercenary crews who needed somebody who could teleport in, blow stuff up, and generally cause havoc, or simply stay in the back as a reserve and teleport in to scare people if things got too bad. He loves his line of work, and is not afraid to show it, laughing euphorically in the heat of battle or simply exaggerating his feats at the table. Perhaps he was always the fighting kind of guy. Or at least that's what he says when people ask him how he failed his bore physics degree.
Notable Quotes:
"Seriously, who even needs a gun when you can teleport."
"Asshole." Habitual, after he's knocked someone out in the pub or something.
FERAL: "Hey, did I ever tell you about that time when-"
NEO-CROW: "Yes."
FERAL: "You didn't even hear what I was going to-"
NEO-CROW: "Shut up."
FERAL: "Come on, you can't deny I'm roguishly-"
NEO-CROW: "Would you shut up? I'm trying to fix this bore drive, I've still got the set your broken leg, and I have no time for advances by annoying humans."
"Well, look at you. Half-dead, in a smoking wreck of a mech and with no help for miles. Dang. I missed out on all the fun."
"Lady, I've been doing this since I was a baby - okay, maybe not quite that long - but siddown and let me do what you paid me to do."
Traits:
- Obsessed with bore drives
- Kind of annoying
- Bad cook
- Loves fighting
- Stubborn
- Failed physicist
- Boisterous