Post by MAL REYNOLDS on Aug 5, 2013 20:44:27 GMT -5
CAPTAIN MALCOLM 'MAL' REYNOLDS
AGE: 30 (September 20th, 2486)
GENDER: Male
NICKNAMES: Mal, Sir, Captain Tight-pants, Captain Harbatkin (alias rather than nickname)
MEMBER GROUP: Serenity Crew
BRIEF HISTORY:
The twentieth of September of the year 2486 was a memorable year for the people of Shadow and the Reynolds family in particular. It was a long, warm and wet year, leading to plentiful harvests and fat youngstock - as well as plentiful babies under the human population. Malcolm Reynolds was one of them, only son to a widow who wasn't per se rich, but certainly well-off with a big ranch on good soil and with enough water. And enough ranch hands - young Malcolm may be growing up without a father, but he had about forty 'uncles'. Between the school in the nearest congregation of homes, his surprisingly well-read mother, their well-stocked library and the practical knowledge of the ranch hands, he grew up with a proper education to stimulate his intellect and enough time about to not only learn how to ride horses and shoot a gun (and various other things), but also learn about cattle, grains and soil and water.
Young Malcolm Reynolds knew exactly how his life would go. He'd spent his life on Shadow, inheriting the ranch when his mother, an iron lady if he ever knew one, would grow too old to run it. He'd court one of the prettier girls in the area, marry her, get a few kids, dote on them, and one day, they'd take over for him so he could watch his grandkids while they worked on the ranch. It wasn't exciting, but it would be good.
Unfortunately, that's not the way his life went. The ever-growing influence and pressure of the Anglo-Sino Alliance caused unrest and a growing rebelliousness on Shadow. It was only a brief while that Malcolm struggled with faith in the Lord and rebellion, but when war broke lose, it wasn't too hard a decision for the then twenty year old rancher to enlist, as so many others of the young men on Shadow did. He met Zoë Alleyne after training when he was assigned to the 57th Overlanders Brigade, also called the 'Balls and Bayonets Brigade' - that is, after a few months of having Reynolds in their midst. He didn't do orthodox ideas, went against all their rules, but got home every time. Bruised, battered and bloody sometimes, but back he got.
He was there every big battle in the five years of the war: New Kasmir, the Siege of Du-Khang, the Battle of Sturges and, last but most certainly not least, the Battle of Serenity Valley on Hera. They held seven weeks, Sergeant Reynolds and his Corporal Alleyne starting with a handful of man under his command, ending with him being field-promoted to Captain Reynolds in order to keep control of the two-thousand men without a commanding officer left. Should he ever speak of it, he will regale what a hell it was down there, in the bloody mud (literally bloody, by the way) with his men falling left and right. It was the end of their war, and he and Zoë were the only two survivors of their original unit, part of the 150 left of the 2.000 he lead during the seven weeks it lasted. It permanently soured him to the Alliance - the week without any supplies whatsoever as the higher ups negotiated their surrender. The weeks spent in a camp afterwards where the Alliance sorted out the trouble-makers from the dim-witted enlisted. No surprise that Reynolds fell within the first part. Still, he got out (on U-day, of all days), got into a bar fight, spent two nights in jail and, with that, set a pattern. Jobs were hard to find, especially for unrepentant Browncoats with a reputation, and even planet-hopping didn't help much. Then luck befell him: first he found enough money to buy a ship, an idea that had been pestering him for a few months at the time, and then he found a derelict Firefly. Mal was sold - and so was the ship. Zoë not so much, when he introduced her to Serenity, the name as obvious to him as could be. After all, no one leaves Serenity, you just learn to live there.
Of course, a new way of life didn't really turn him into an upstanding citizen. Far from it, even. It afforded him with the option to disappear from the Alliance's radar, flying at the Rim and border planets, leaving for further away when the Alliance become more prominent. It wasn't the best of lives, but it was his, and that of his crew: faithful Zoë,
His ragtag crew wasn't wholly involved with purely legal jobs: smuggling was part of their repertoire as well. Smuggling not entirely legal cargo as well - they were pretty good at it, too, the Firefly very suited to it. It's how they picked up Jayne, their mercenary, Mal's quick mouth once more doing the job (and well, there was always Zoë's gun). It wasn't enough to make 'em rich, but they had food and fuel and a home and each other: it was enough. Of course, fate couldn't leave it well enough alone.
Paying customers, he insisted. Paying customers he got, courtesy to Kaylee. One a shepherd paying with real fruit
FACE CLAIM: Nathan Fillion
EYE COLOR: Blue
HAIR COLOR: Brown
OTHER FEATURES: Suspenders and his brown coat are standard dress for him, as is his weapon, a Liberty Hammer. Beyond that there's an assortment of scars scattered across his body - where Niska tortured him, where he got shot, stabbed, punched, trampled... Well, you catch the drift. There's also a tattoo on his right hip, though it's seldom if ever shown and he doesn't talk about it.
GENERAL: At the surface, Mal's a disillusioned guy who's seen too much of the ugly side of life. This is quite true, frankly. The man carries his scars on his soul and his skin, and neither are likely to ever completely vanish. If he ever speaks about God and religion, it's to denounce it, warning Shepherds to keep their message to himself. He doesn't seem to care about the world at large, and credits appear to be one of his main goals. It's not a surprise then that he is in fact a criminal, ranging from petty thief to smuggler. He needs to keep his boat afloat and the crew alive out there in the Black, and that's what his main concern is. He's loyal to them and to Serenity, and a select few old friends, but there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for living for him other than that. Maybe that's one of the reasons his morals are a little skewed and his honor's a bit 'off' sometimes. He's not a bad guy, but he's not strictly a good guy either - he's the kind that shoots first and asks questions later if his guts tell him too; the kind of guy that doesn't mind fighting dirty if it means he'll win.
Deep inside the Browncoat hero still lives, though, the man that grew up on a farm on Shadow with a mother and forty 'uncles', that went to war early to stand for what he believed in. Once full of faith in the Lord, he now only has his faith in the goodness of humanity left, battered and dented as it is. He is compassionate and noble, tries to be ever so honorable, but a man like that simply does not live long in the world today. That spark of hope and belief has long since flickered out, merely glowing like an ember every now and then when his crew needs him - and he's fiercely protective of them. He stands by his beliefs, whatever they are, like the fact he chose the losing, but right side of the Unification war.
And then there's of course the middle road - the practical, calculating side of him that, once again, is loyal to ship and crew, but serves as captain as well. It's that part that makes the hard decisions, that can kill with so little provocation and haggle with the best. He's sharp and perceptive, far more intelligent than people give him credit for, and snarky like the best of them. Of course, it doesn't hide the bitterness and the distrust to people and, more importantly, the authorities. At least he doesn't lie about it - honesty is something he both values, tries to practice and in a way abhors: the man's got a lot of secrets.
Of course, there's also the part that's so truly, uniquely him: his occasionally utterly crazy ideas, almost sacrificial tendencies (for those select few he likes, cares about and calls friends, family, crew or unit, he's happy to die. He'd just, y'know, rather not) and utter indifference where it comes to rules: aren't they there to be broken? And there is the bit where he is oddly inspiring, managing to keep people's spirits up long after they actually should.
WEAKNESSES:
-- Damaged
-- Petty
-- Distrustful
-- Embittered
-- Vengeful
STRENGTHS:
++ Survivor
++ Leader
++
++ Practical
++ Compassionate
RP SAMPLE
Captain Mal Reynolds had only one home left these days - Serenity. Not the Valley, never the valley, but his ship, named after that hell that had shaped him into the man he was today. Harsh and cruel at times, seemingly indifferent, he knew his mama would roll over in her grave if she saw him now - that was, if she had had a grave, hadn't been turned into only a part of the dusty ash covering the charred rock of what was once had been the lush prairies of his homeworld. He shrugged it off, though - memories could do a lot of harm, but nary a good thing. Not his, anyway. Mal had been a foul mood all day, the double-triple-cross from Badger not wholly unexpected, but stinging in its betrayal nonetheless, even if he never really had trusted the rodent of a man. The arrogant sod. But what happened, had happened, and if he was currently nursing a broken rib or two and a sizeable gash over them... Well, it'd heal in time. He'd come back from worse, as the scars evidence on his body. Too bad those on his souls weren't visible for anyone but Zoë. Zoë and River, these days.
He was glad the lithe girl wasn't on the bridge with him. She didn't do 'social conventions' very well (not that any on the ship did that, but who cared) and had the tendency to pop up where you least expected it, often with a few incomprehensibly cryptic-like remarks, but he had been in dire need of some solitude. The crew understood that, apparently, given he'd been alone here for a good part of the night already. So it felt like, anyway. It was therapeutic in a way to fly the ship through the black of space, distant starts breaking the maddening dark outside. Mal couldn't help but wonder what the future'd bring - they were wanted still, with a girl the Alliance had an unholy amount of interest in and who was... Unique. Scary as hell, even without her bouts of violent behavior or obvious skills with firearms. She was a firecracker, that one, and he just hoped she wouldn't get 'em all killed. Crappy as it was sometimes, he still appreciated his life.
