RE: The Grand OC! [CONTEST XXVI: POSTAL!]
09-24-2014, 12:33 AM
Username: Sai
Name: Gurska Karr - "The Immolator"
Species: Taurus
Gender: Female
Color: Never really liked coloring
Background:
When explorers discovered the literally and figuratively bull-headed sentients living on the fifth planet in the Zeta Tauri system, they were shocked by the race’s humanoid appearance. They believed that they had to be either the result of a seed ship that had been lost in that sector whose colonists must have undergone some sort of accelerated speciation or the result of a genetic experiment whose creator had since perished without releasing his notes. The latter was a far more popular theory on account of their resemblance to the minotaur of Earth’s mythos, but remnants of a seed ship’s materials found scattered throughout the Tauri settlements gave credence to the former. Because they were believed to be an offshoot of an existing spacefaring civilization, they became partially integrated into galactic society before a more comprehensive analysis could be performed. As fate would have it, the Tauri technological ascension occurred at the same time as the border skirmishes which would eventually escalate into the Nyxian-Nihensei War, so most of the galaxy paid little attention to the fairly isolated world as its denizens began to adopt modern weaponry and spacecraft.
As it turned out, they were natives to the planet, and at least as violent and bloodthirsty as humans had ever been in their own developmental period on Earth. Having already destroyed a human colony with only medieval weaponry, their rapid ascension to space age technology without a corresponding cultural acclimation would prove to be devastating. Within a decade, almost a quarter of their population had been wiped out. A decade more and fully half of their species was dead and a significant portion of their population centers had been rendered uninhabitable. A response force was finally sent to help deal with the planetary conflict from the Nihensei Republics, but with no true global government to work with, there was little that they could hope to do to help establish peace and were at first limited to providing humanitarian aid. Their support instead helped spark the first wave of mass emigration from Tauri V, and there was little they could do to ensure that the departing Tauri would remain (or, indeed, ever were) peaceful. While most of the refugees genuinely sought an escape from the catastrophic destruction of their homeworld, a significant number were devoutly warlike. These emigrants scattered across the galaxy, with most joining the burgeoning Mercenary Coalition, where their aptitude for destruction was welcomed with open arms, while others would join various pirate collectives hidden in backwater worlds. Meanwhile, the war on Tauri V raged on.
The ineffectiveness of the task force in even reducing the violence surrounding them would prove to be too frustrating for many of their members to stomach. A rogue detachment led by one of the group’s sociologists, Dr Timothy McCullen, decided that the only way to ensure peace would be for one faction to attain total dominance of the planet. Supporting one of the largest clans, the Karr, they began to fight in the world wide war themselves.Tauri histories would later elevate these humans to mythical status, especially given the fact that the genetic lock on their weapons initially prevented them from being used by the Tauri themselves. Following a human’s demise in combat, highly ranked members of the clan they supported would use preserved parts of their body to allow them continue to use these tools in combat. As a result, swearing by body parts of the fallen leader of this group entered the the Tauri lexicon (eg - “Timmy’s Fist, that’s a fine gun!”). Additionally, because native weapon technology would not catch up with the galactic standard for years to come, the Karr were able to maintain technological dominance until they finally achieved total victory in their war for unification. Though he did not live to see it, Timmy’s rogue detachment succeeded in bringing some measure of peace to the Tauri and preventing their self inflicted genocide.
Gurska was born in the middle of the winter birthing season of 11 BKD (Before Karr Dominion). In her childhood she saw her clan win battle after battle, subduing numerous rival tribes as their domain expanded to encompass the entirety of the supercontinent on which the Tauri lived. In her teenage years, the first ever Tauri world peace began to show cracks as numerous minor revolts broke out amongst the conquered clans and political conflicts between neighboring groups turned violent. Though these were quickly and brutally put down by Karr soldiers, the clan elders realized that without a global project to capture the focus of their people, their empire would collapse a mere generation after it had been established. Though being small and out of the way allowed them emerge as an independent world, their race was far too small and technologically primitive to hope to challenge the pan-galactic establishments themselves. Through the Tauri emigres that had enlisted in the Mercenary Coalition years before, the Tauri elders were able to make contact with the now vast nomadic fleet and concluded a formal alliance between their world’s government and this wayfaring bloc.
With their aid, the Karr began to take control of multiple neighboring star systems, but the close contact with the Coalition began to influence them culturally as well. While the Tauri as a whole and the Karr especially valued loyalty to the clan above all, the Mercenary Coalition thought differently. A large portion of the Coalition’s revenue came from small groups leaving the fleet to provide support in smaller conflicts wherever they may break out, and as a result they placed a high value on individual initiative. Additionally, the very nature of their organization made loyalty to a specific cause (aside from violence itself and self interest) an unreasonable ideal. The fact that they were the stronger partner in their relationship made these values seem appealing to many of the Tauri. None felt this more strongly than Gurska’s generation, which were just then entering adulthood and seeking to prove their worth.
With conquest still in the Karr clan’s eyes as she was growing up, Gurska lived and breathed warfare, learning everything from her race’s traditional style of combat with horns and melee weapons to the use of their distinctly modern arsenal and tactics. Her heritage as a member of the core family of the Karr clan, which essentially placed her amongst the aristocracy if not outright royalty as far as the Tauri were concerned, allowed her to receive training in both the cutting edge of Tauri technology and adopted alien materiel. She spent the years of peace frustrated and joined her clan’s suppression forces at every available opportunity. When their alliance with the Mercenary Coalition allowed the Tauri to begin waging war on neighboring worlds, she quickly became recognized for her talents as a combat pilot. While she was not particularly talented when compared to those born on the migratory worldships of the Coalition, the Tauri were generally awful at flying, and simply being adequate amongst the spacefaring mercs made her an ace amongst her own kind. Constantly seeking to improve herself, she spent more and more time amongst the other races of the Tauri’s allies, and eventually accepted a contract to become a full fledged mercenary soldier. She quickly came to adopt their migratory lifestyle for her own, and left the territorial wars of her people to lead small strike forces in minor conflicts across the galaxy. Born to battle, she soon acquired a reputation as a bloodthirsty warrior and a fearless commander.
Description:
Standing a full ten feet in height and bulging with muscle, Gurska is an intimidating figure even without her arsenal. With it, she is simply nightmarish. Clad in overlapping plates of reflective metal over the black gel of her modern encounter suit, her combat garb looks anachronistic in design, as though a medieval knight were to have their mail commissioned from modern materials. Designed to reduce the impact of lasers, small arms fire, and even melee weapons in the rare instances which they are used, the similarities carry over to its function as well as its form.
If her armor gives the impression of a mix between a medieval aesthetic with modern utility, her weaponry solidifies it. Her weapon of choice is a 40 mm autocannon which had been torn from the smoking hull of a downed interceptor. Designed for ship to ship combat, wide, black heat sinks run down the length of the weapon. Though large enough for a human force to consider it an artillery piece, she wields it as a hand-held device fed from a belt that feeds out of a case of ammo that she wears on her left hip. When not spitting out depleted uranium death to an effective range measured in kilometers, this weapon is worn on a strap slung over her back. When facing enemies at closer ranges, she uses the weapon with which she earned her nomme de guerre - a massive flamethrower, capable of emitting blue streams of fire that can arc out over thirty meters. Given the importance of oxygen in ships and stations, few of her opponents expected the use of this weapon, which is easily capable of clearing out corridors of enemies that she will never even see while alive. She wears this weapon in mirror to her autocannon, slung over her back when not in use and fed from a tank on her right leg. For melee combat, in the few times in which she is granted that particular pleasure, she wields an axe. Her axe, as can be expected given her size and inhuman strength, is heavy, blunt, and just as effective at taking down a door as it is at killing an enemy. It has, in fact, been used far more often as a tool than an actual weapon. Though this allows her to logically justify carrying it, it is still the source of some private embarrassment.
She bears the gravitas of those assured of their competence, and speaks with a low, firm tone. Her speech is characterized by the elongated vowels and guttural slur which are endemic to the Tauri. She prefers to phrase questions as requests for information (eg “Tell me how this device works.” rather than “How does this device work?”) and tends to be more comfortable in a position of command than speaking to others as equals. It is in part on account of this trait that she prefers to spend so much of her time deployed with soldiers under her command rather than surrounded by the generally egalitarian minded bulk of the Mercenary Coalition. It would be safe to conclude that Gurska does not know the true meaning of friendship.
Name: Gurska Karr - "The Immolator"
Species: Taurus
Gender: Female
Color: Never really liked coloring
Background:
When explorers discovered the literally and figuratively bull-headed sentients living on the fifth planet in the Zeta Tauri system, they were shocked by the race’s humanoid appearance. They believed that they had to be either the result of a seed ship that had been lost in that sector whose colonists must have undergone some sort of accelerated speciation or the result of a genetic experiment whose creator had since perished without releasing his notes. The latter was a far more popular theory on account of their resemblance to the minotaur of Earth’s mythos, but remnants of a seed ship’s materials found scattered throughout the Tauri settlements gave credence to the former. Because they were believed to be an offshoot of an existing spacefaring civilization, they became partially integrated into galactic society before a more comprehensive analysis could be performed. As fate would have it, the Tauri technological ascension occurred at the same time as the border skirmishes which would eventually escalate into the Nyxian-Nihensei War, so most of the galaxy paid little attention to the fairly isolated world as its denizens began to adopt modern weaponry and spacecraft.
As it turned out, they were natives to the planet, and at least as violent and bloodthirsty as humans had ever been in their own developmental period on Earth. Having already destroyed a human colony with only medieval weaponry, their rapid ascension to space age technology without a corresponding cultural acclimation would prove to be devastating. Within a decade, almost a quarter of their population had been wiped out. A decade more and fully half of their species was dead and a significant portion of their population centers had been rendered uninhabitable. A response force was finally sent to help deal with the planetary conflict from the Nihensei Republics, but with no true global government to work with, there was little that they could hope to do to help establish peace and were at first limited to providing humanitarian aid. Their support instead helped spark the first wave of mass emigration from Tauri V, and there was little they could do to ensure that the departing Tauri would remain (or, indeed, ever were) peaceful. While most of the refugees genuinely sought an escape from the catastrophic destruction of their homeworld, a significant number were devoutly warlike. These emigrants scattered across the galaxy, with most joining the burgeoning Mercenary Coalition, where their aptitude for destruction was welcomed with open arms, while others would join various pirate collectives hidden in backwater worlds. Meanwhile, the war on Tauri V raged on.
The ineffectiveness of the task force in even reducing the violence surrounding them would prove to be too frustrating for many of their members to stomach. A rogue detachment led by one of the group’s sociologists, Dr Timothy McCullen, decided that the only way to ensure peace would be for one faction to attain total dominance of the planet. Supporting one of the largest clans, the Karr, they began to fight in the world wide war themselves.Tauri histories would later elevate these humans to mythical status, especially given the fact that the genetic lock on their weapons initially prevented them from being used by the Tauri themselves. Following a human’s demise in combat, highly ranked members of the clan they supported would use preserved parts of their body to allow them continue to use these tools in combat. As a result, swearing by body parts of the fallen leader of this group entered the the Tauri lexicon (eg - “Timmy’s Fist, that’s a fine gun!”). Additionally, because native weapon technology would not catch up with the galactic standard for years to come, the Karr were able to maintain technological dominance until they finally achieved total victory in their war for unification. Though he did not live to see it, Timmy’s rogue detachment succeeded in bringing some measure of peace to the Tauri and preventing their self inflicted genocide.
Gurska was born in the middle of the winter birthing season of 11 BKD (Before Karr Dominion). In her childhood she saw her clan win battle after battle, subduing numerous rival tribes as their domain expanded to encompass the entirety of the supercontinent on which the Tauri lived. In her teenage years, the first ever Tauri world peace began to show cracks as numerous minor revolts broke out amongst the conquered clans and political conflicts between neighboring groups turned violent. Though these were quickly and brutally put down by Karr soldiers, the clan elders realized that without a global project to capture the focus of their people, their empire would collapse a mere generation after it had been established. Though being small and out of the way allowed them emerge as an independent world, their race was far too small and technologically primitive to hope to challenge the pan-galactic establishments themselves. Through the Tauri emigres that had enlisted in the Mercenary Coalition years before, the Tauri elders were able to make contact with the now vast nomadic fleet and concluded a formal alliance between their world’s government and this wayfaring bloc.
With their aid, the Karr began to take control of multiple neighboring star systems, but the close contact with the Coalition began to influence them culturally as well. While the Tauri as a whole and the Karr especially valued loyalty to the clan above all, the Mercenary Coalition thought differently. A large portion of the Coalition’s revenue came from small groups leaving the fleet to provide support in smaller conflicts wherever they may break out, and as a result they placed a high value on individual initiative. Additionally, the very nature of their organization made loyalty to a specific cause (aside from violence itself and self interest) an unreasonable ideal. The fact that they were the stronger partner in their relationship made these values seem appealing to many of the Tauri. None felt this more strongly than Gurska’s generation, which were just then entering adulthood and seeking to prove their worth.
With conquest still in the Karr clan’s eyes as she was growing up, Gurska lived and breathed warfare, learning everything from her race’s traditional style of combat with horns and melee weapons to the use of their distinctly modern arsenal and tactics. Her heritage as a member of the core family of the Karr clan, which essentially placed her amongst the aristocracy if not outright royalty as far as the Tauri were concerned, allowed her to receive training in both the cutting edge of Tauri technology and adopted alien materiel. She spent the years of peace frustrated and joined her clan’s suppression forces at every available opportunity. When their alliance with the Mercenary Coalition allowed the Tauri to begin waging war on neighboring worlds, she quickly became recognized for her talents as a combat pilot. While she was not particularly talented when compared to those born on the migratory worldships of the Coalition, the Tauri were generally awful at flying, and simply being adequate amongst the spacefaring mercs made her an ace amongst her own kind. Constantly seeking to improve herself, she spent more and more time amongst the other races of the Tauri’s allies, and eventually accepted a contract to become a full fledged mercenary soldier. She quickly came to adopt their migratory lifestyle for her own, and left the territorial wars of her people to lead small strike forces in minor conflicts across the galaxy. Born to battle, she soon acquired a reputation as a bloodthirsty warrior and a fearless commander.
Description:
Standing a full ten feet in height and bulging with muscle, Gurska is an intimidating figure even without her arsenal. With it, she is simply nightmarish. Clad in overlapping plates of reflective metal over the black gel of her modern encounter suit, her combat garb looks anachronistic in design, as though a medieval knight were to have their mail commissioned from modern materials. Designed to reduce the impact of lasers, small arms fire, and even melee weapons in the rare instances which they are used, the similarities carry over to its function as well as its form.
If her armor gives the impression of a mix between a medieval aesthetic with modern utility, her weaponry solidifies it. Her weapon of choice is a 40 mm autocannon which had been torn from the smoking hull of a downed interceptor. Designed for ship to ship combat, wide, black heat sinks run down the length of the weapon. Though large enough for a human force to consider it an artillery piece, she wields it as a hand-held device fed from a belt that feeds out of a case of ammo that she wears on her left hip. When not spitting out depleted uranium death to an effective range measured in kilometers, this weapon is worn on a strap slung over her back. When facing enemies at closer ranges, she uses the weapon with which she earned her nomme de guerre - a massive flamethrower, capable of emitting blue streams of fire that can arc out over thirty meters. Given the importance of oxygen in ships and stations, few of her opponents expected the use of this weapon, which is easily capable of clearing out corridors of enemies that she will never even see while alive. She wears this weapon in mirror to her autocannon, slung over her back when not in use and fed from a tank on her right leg. For melee combat, in the few times in which she is granted that particular pleasure, she wields an axe. Her axe, as can be expected given her size and inhuman strength, is heavy, blunt, and just as effective at taking down a door as it is at killing an enemy. It has, in fact, been used far more often as a tool than an actual weapon. Though this allows her to logically justify carrying it, it is still the source of some private embarrassment.
She bears the gravitas of those assured of their competence, and speaks with a low, firm tone. Her speech is characterized by the elongated vowels and guttural slur which are endemic to the Tauri. She prefers to phrase questions as requests for information (eg “Tell me how this device works.” rather than “How does this device work?”) and tends to be more comfortable in a position of command than speaking to others as equals. It is in part on account of this trait that she prefers to spend so much of her time deployed with soldiers under her command rather than surrounded by the generally egalitarian minded bulk of the Mercenary Coalition. It would be safe to conclude that Gurska does not know the true meaning of friendship.
![[Image: WFQLHMB.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/WFQLHMB.gif)