One Man's Aspirations

[Mighty Glacier]

If one were to try and sum up this man in a single phrase, it would be 'simplistic, yet erratic'. Most of the time, all it takes to keep him going is simplicity, but there are days he yearns for something greater.

NAME
James Maxwell Claude

GENDER
Male

NATIONALITY
Liberty

DATE & PLACE OF BIRTH
November 28, 790 A.S., on Planet Denver

APPEARANCE
The most striking thing about this man is his short height. He just barely reaches five and a half feet in height, and is quite bony and overall scrawny as well. His hair reaches halfway to his shoulders and is a light shade of mahogany. Now come the two eyeballs he has on his face, which come equipped with a brown-green color. He dresses rather plainly, always sporting something that seems standard-issue in the Freelancer 'verse about now, a black leather jacket. Underneath this jacket is a regular brown tee shirt, coupled with a pair of dark green, tattered jeans. He seems to have an affinity for precious metals, since he's always seen wearing numerous pins of gold and silver on his jacket that he's managed to collect over the years. They have no designs on them, and seem to be of low purity.

HISTORY
James is a member of a family that much resembles the common middle-class American family seen today. He has received an average education and went to college, all that stuff. Since before his birth and even before, the family has always valued peace and quiet, and have always been against warfare of any kind...which is why this man was commonly known as the black sheep, for he had voiced his desires to join the Liberty Navy since he was little. His life was, much to his chagrin, rather quiet until he was nearly ten years of age...also known as the year the great Nomad War began. His father and older sister, Sarah, had been drafted into the Navy to help fight for a corrupted government, something that caused a major upset in James' family. The number of times they came close to losing a member of their family was uncomfortably high, with the tension breaking with the death of his older sister, something which has haunted James to this very day. His father did survive the war, however.

An incident occurred durng this time in which, at the time, the young man's father had been selected to be the guinea pig for a secret test. The Liberty government had developed a prototype radiation shield strong enough to defend against nearly any form of radiation, in the hopes of being able to turn anomalies such as neutron stars and nebulae such as the Grande Negra in Texas against their enemies. As James' father was to depart for the test, the young man snuck on board his father's ship to find out what was going on. He had never been inside a nebula before, so what happened next became the reason James would develop a massive fear of all nebulae - the radiation shield failed after only a few seconds and the ship nearly fell apart. It was sheep luck they managed to make it to the nearest base in time. The experimental shield would later be declared a complete failure.

Soon after the war, James managed to cobble together some money, buy a used mining that was still in good condition, and has worked doing odd jobs and mining since to finance himself and his family until he can break lucky. Not too long ago, his mining ship was destroyed and he barely made it out alive, thus forcing him to take what little credits he had left and buy an old Starflyer. He's finally decided upon a goal that lies with his very Naval desires, and a rather simple one at that: there's nothing he'd like more than to be in command of his own Liberty Dreadnought. Considering the above mentioned, and a few other matters, this may well be an extremely difficult goal to attain.

Recent events have brought a major change to the above. He's recently obtained a job with an OS&C trader, and the routes take him through many nebula, therefore causing his aforementioned nebula phobia to dwindle a bit. Furthermore, he's heard bad news of the Liberty Navy and it's successes with such factions as pirates, and has decided to seek out others instead once his time with his current job ends, or he becomes too bored.

PERSONALITY
While mostly capable of switching to a more collected and calm persona when necessary, James Claude is best described as a playful spirit with a relatively simple mindset. He's always looking for the simplest solution to problems, and is not above cracking jokes to anyone, even admirals and other similar higher-ups (if they have a sense of humor). He tends to try and be friendly, despite what his almost thuggish appearance would suggest, and usually has good intentions at heart...even when things go wrong, due to an innate curse of clumsiness he has. He manages to be a somewhat proficient shot despite this, however. As mentioned earlier, he has an extreme phobia of nebulae (dark matter clouds having the biggest effect, with Edge nebulae not being too far behind) and will never enter one unless it is absolutely necessary.