Merrick, Rosalind
Sept 3, 2014 15:06:48 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2014 15:06:48 GMT -7
ROSALIND MERRICK
NAME Rosalind Merrick ALIAS Ros, Stella Burke AGE 31 DATE OF BIRTH 06/09/2550 GENDER Female | PLAY BY Claudia Black SEXUAL ORIENTATION Heterosexual AFFILIATION Neutral OCCUPATION Combat Medic PLACE OF BIRTH The Caliburn; Vesselside. |
HEIGHT
5'9"
WEIGHT
132 Lbs.
HAIR
Black, past shoulders, straight-ish.
EYE COLOR
Blue-GreyPHYSICAL BUILD
Tall, lean, physically fit.
DISTINGUISHING MARKS
-- Tattoo situated on the inside of her left forearm.
--A short, sharply curved nick of a scar just at the top of her backside, to the right.
GENERAL APPEARANCE
--Slight crook to her nose, healed from being broken.
CLOTHING STYLE
A variety of leather, mostly softened and worn-in. Well-loved jackets and pants. Jeans, shirts. Colours are usually dark and dulled. Parts of her clothing are reinforced and lined, although if you put a bullet in it, it's probably going to punch through. For all the world she probably looks like a Bounty Hunter herself.
--General Idea
--Jacket
LIKES
| STRENGTHS
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OVERALL PERSONALITY
At first, Ros seems to be this dark and mysterious type. Not too chatty with strangers. Little brooding from time to time, but she is no tragic soul. There is a strong sense of self-reliance about her. She isn't one to ask for help or bother people with any problems of her own. She's not a huge fan of people she's unfamiliar with asking too many questions, however can be quite brutally honest when she feels like it. She was raised by Bounty Hunters, so that attitude of being rather used to all the terrible things in the 'Verse has dulled her to the shock of it. Although, surprisingly, she's not much of a hunter herself. She never killed or kidnapped people for money and was thwarted before she even tried to start. Not exactly a 'killer', but not about to grieve over anyone she tries to shoot. Her temper can get the better of her, dashing the visage of her cool and collected self. If you know how to push all her buttons it's pretty easy to tick her off. Depending on the length of interaction, and possible acquaintance, Ros can somewhat warm to folks, though no doubt would find more friendship in back and forth insults.
FATHER Victor "Vic" Merrick, Sixties, Bounty Hunter, whereabouts unknown, status unknown. MOTHER Stella Burke, Former Bounty Hunter, deceased. SIBLINGS None OTHER NOTABLE RELATIVES None | SIGNIFICANT OTHER Nope CHILDREN N/A OTHER SIGNIFICANT PERSONS --Thomas "Tommy" Forsythe ; An old contact of Vic's that has been trying to help Ros track him down. Or at least find out something. --Jack Dawes ; Huntsville Dusters crime boss, old employer. PETS Hector, H, cat, Maine Coon, deceased. |
BACKSTORYSome are born in the lap of luxury with all the prospects and schooling of a 'good' life. At least an easier life, anyway. Some are born out on the raggedy edge either to a cleaner, healthier life on some farmstead, or in the gritty, crime-riddled cities. Rosalind Merrick was born aboard a ship, the Caliburn in transit to some place 'nice'. A week early by estimation. Her parents? A pair of Bounty Hunters by the names of Merrick and Burke. Former rivals, turned partners, turned lovers. That is a whole other story in itself, however. The arrival of little Rosalind was enough to spark an end to an era for the pair. They knew this meant they had to give up their work. At first, Vic hadn't rightly stopped. He had figured it was okay to carry on, but Stella had reminded him sorely, and with fists, what was more important now.
You would think the Core would be a nice and safe environment to raise a child. Ros grew up seeing it's darker corners. The black-out zones, the seedy underbelly. Crime was just as rampant here as it was on some place like Persephone. The only difference is that it was so covered up and swept under the rug you couldn't see it. Schooling happened, but moving about so much meant Ros barely made any friends. Not around long enough to get settled. Stella knew full well they had to think of Ros first. They couldn't keep dragging her around like this. Especially since she found Vic still disappearing to do jobs on the side. At 'home', though? He was one hell of a father. A terrible man with a heart of gold, apparently. He loved his little girl, but at the same time he was going to either get himself or all of them killed. Stella tried to talk to him, but it never went through his thick skull. She did, however, manage to convince him to settle on a planet somewhere. Beaumonde was just as good a place as any. Some old, trusted contacts still lurked in the corners. Though, you could never be too sure that was a good thing. Rosalind was around fourteen at this point, finally having some solid ground beneath her. Ship-life was fun and all-- and the Caliburn the only home she'd ever know-- but the kid needed space.
And then the fun starts. Or problems. Well, one big problem. With his refusal to stop taking hits, Vic was greeted with the appearance of enemies. Someone somewhere was looking for revenge. Payback for someone he was no doubt hired to kill. Probably a bad person to begin with, well, that didn't really stop angry, equally bad family members from barreling down your door looking to settle the score. If Stella knew the full reason why Victor had to leave? She never told Ros. The sixteen-year-old just knew her father was gone. Was he coming back? Stella really didn't know that one.
So, of course, with Victor gone, Rosalind had to fly off the handle, right? A sense of feeling lost and confused had pushed the girl to her limit the day a contact left a job for Stella Burke to take. Of course, Ros overhearing and subsequently jacking the job her mother had refused, hadn't been the plan. She hadn't realised just how sneaky and underhanded her daughter was starting to get. But not enough to cover her tracks. Ros had botched the job so badly, and almost lost her life for it. A teenager wearing her mother's coat and toting around some of her toys was a pretty laughable sight, much to the kid's fury. In the end, Stella had intervened-- she'd had to-- and the job had been done rather quickly. Rosalind? Rosalind didn't get off so lightly. Stern talks were had, and Ros was certain she'd never do anything stupid again. So Stella decided to push her in an opposite route. Instead of taking lives, she was going to try and help them. The local clinic wasn't the most healthy place. Not the prettiest. No fancy hospital, but it would do. Training and a lot of minor duties slowly developed some affinity for medicine, if only first-response. But it was good work.
So how does a woman go from back-street medical assistant to combat medic? Well, with the 'Verse tipped on it's ass, and everyone set to eke out their own existence however they chose, naturally there was a lot of conflict created from that. Rosalind hadn't enjoyed being settled - not her whole life. A missing dead-beat of a father didn't help matters, and she grew distant from her mother. Her medical abilities were still very work-in-progress. Learning from the clinic, in a very unlicensed manner, was a very rough guide to doctoring. In all it's forms. She shouldn't have been cutting on people so soon, but then her peers were desperate for more help, you know? At least she was marginally better at it than their resident alcoholic doctor. Merrick took her abilities away from Beaumonde and out into the 'Verse. Part hoping to find a sign of Victor, and part hoping for something to come along. Well, something did come along. Persephone was a hub-world, full of opportunity for an unlicensed medic. That was where she met a man by the name of Roger Davis. His new crew were looking to aid a war effort, and they were pretty much as rag-tag as they come. A melting pot of unaffiliated and non-military folks that just wanted in on the action in some way. Somehow, Ros figured this was a good opportunity. A good idea. For the next year, Merrick would be the main medic of the Peerless. As it turns out? Ros was pretty decent at helping to save lives. Her ability to patch folks up wasn't pretty, however, not like some Core-trained physician. A combat medic, not necessarily the best shot in the 'Verse, but she could still aim a gun. Further training from the crew themselves proved useful. Firing a gun was probably going to be a needed skill, right? Well, technically she already knew how to handle a sidearm, but never hurt to have a refresher course. When that year finished, Ros bid the Captain and his crew farewell, figuring it was time she went back home.
Ros went back to Beaumonde to find her father still hadn't returned-- and no one had seen or heard of him since he left. Feeling disappointed and forgotten about had gotten old for Merrick a while back, and she aimed to just carry on with her life. Though it nagged at her, and she still refused to stop looking into his whereabouts on the side. After settling back into her old work, Ros took the worst day to try and visit her mother. Stella had remained on Beaumonde, in her own little corner of the bad side of a city. With the growing strain between the criminal gangs, fights were starting to happen more and more. They'd just break out in the middle of a street - and, well, Stella? She was caught in the crossfire. A terrible way to go for a seasoned Hunter, right? Rosalind never made it to her in time. Simple as that. They'd always had a strained relationship, but Ros had always seen her mother as invincible. Unstoppable. A force to be reckoned with. Childish, she knew, but with that image shattered... Ros returned to her work. Something to keep her focused. Well, that and her side-project of tracking a man probably long dead.
Beaumonde definitely had it's own problems. The gangs always fought over turf, but it hadn't been this big in a long time. Close enough to an all-out war between the different groups and factions. Each side wanted more power than the other. It was a struggle between three of the bigger names, and all of them were after that bigger piece. Naturally, it was something that took up a lot of attention. The clinic Rosalind worked in was right in the middle of Duster territory - the Huntsville Dusters were a gang lead by a man called Jack Dawes. Taking a look at his former associates, or current, might dig up the name of one Onas Knox. Always sent him some local whiskey from the Earth-That-Was Distillery at Christmas. His boys had been coming to the clinic for a while now, before the conflict. They needed the help. Merrick and the rest of her colleagues weren't really in any position to say no. So, in a sense, they were all Dusters now. It was also safe to say that Rosalind wasn't exactly the biggest fan of any of these gangs, though it had been a spat between the other two - and not the Dusters - that had gotten her mother killed. So maybe there was at least that, and cause for some personal involvement in all this. Ros wasn't exactly out for revenge, but if this gang war meant less innocent casualties, who was she to refuse, right? Dawes knew having that clinic under his control would be an advantage against the other two gangs. Those two gangs being the Deadman's Hand, lead by Yuriy The Red, and the Guǐyǐngbāng (Ghost Shadows), lead by Maggie Yeung.
Spending the majority of her time and effort patching up wounded Dusters was far from a highlight to Ros's day to day, but it was better than the times they started to call her out. Jack liked to put all of his people to work, and that also meant assets such as Ros and the other medics. She found herself in literal mini-warzones about the streets of New Huntsville. A handful of moments that she thought would be her last. One such operation she recalled involved a lot of gunfire, and a young kid of barely eighteen - Jack didn't discriminate against age in his 'outfit' - bleeding from the chest. Ros was stuck stabilizing him, and occasionally blind-firing over their pock-marked, concrete cover. The kid never had a chance, riddled as he was, and well, they only made it out after hours of waiting for reinforcements. Dawes said a few words for the lost, and even sent out some money to their families - he liked to pretend he was a 'good man', and maybe in the criminal world he was a little closer to that, but it was all a matter of balancing out the scale.
The way things turned out, well, Ros ended up somehow present for part of the deciding factor. Maggie Yeung was a ruthless woman, and Yuriy The Red was coined a 'butcher' - even had his own chain of shops selling meat, for the illusion - and all three had met to discuss terms. The fighting had been going on long enough, you know? Jack had been the one to promote honesty with this meeting. He had been clear on how many people, how many guns, and where. A few more terms were hashed out by Maggie and Yuriy, but essentially they all managed to meet on neutral ground. Ros had been promoted to Jack's 'personal doctor' at the time. A job she loathed, despite the safety of it. Naturally, someone had to double-cross someone else. In this instance, Jack had called in on a favour - gotten some backing from the Syndicate itself - and well, long story short, Yuriy was dead first. There was no finding a compromise with the bear of a man, and Jack didn't even think twice before making sure he was dead first. Ros had never seen so many bullets put into one person. Every last one of the men with him were also killed, and that left Maggie and her boys and girls. Jack called a cease fire, and then told the Shadows leader what he wanted. He was allowing her to keep a good chunk of her territory, but everything else? It was to belong to the Dusters. There happened the second double-cross. Maggie had ties to a Sabine Wei - pretty powerful in her small corner of the 'Verse. Mostly untouched and uncontested. Had hesitated given Jack Dawes' tie to Onas Knox, but in the end, this whole Beaumonde war didn't dent either of their enterprises in the long run. Another firefight later, Jack caught a bullet to the leg. Nothing big. Walk with a limp for a while, but he was still alive. Maggie was hit bad, and Ros had somehow found herself right beside the dying woman. A piece of Hippocratic oath struck her, and she tried to give her some aid while everyone was still dazed in the aftermath. With blood running from the corner of her mouth, she asked her her name, and why she would bother to help. Ros told her it was "Merrick", and Maggie laughed. Said she 'knew a man with that name'. Of course, that piqued her interest. As much as Ros tried to get more information out of her, even attempting to save her life for it, Jack limped over and put a bullet in her skull. End of that story, and one shred of a lead on what could've been an explanation about her old man.
After that, the gang structures broke down. The Shadows and the Hand fell into disarray. Some cut their losses and joined the Dusters, and others split off into other, smaller gangs. No threat to Jack Dawes and his grip he had over New Huntsville, with the possibility to expand further. Ros went back to work at her clinic, only to have an unlikely face come crashing through the back door. A lot of different crime continued to operate around the area, either under Jack's nose, or in his pocket. A lot of things were beyond his concern, and the hunt for Marcus Lee was one of them. This led Ros to bumping into the Hero of Verbena himself. With their shot-up prisoner in tow. Captain Davis and the Peerless were apparently still around, and now they were a mercenary crew doing a certain job for Onas Knox and his Syndicate.
So, when offered to rejoin this new and improved motley crew, who was Rosalind Merrick to say no? Ulterior motives aside.ROLEPLAY SAMPLEThe 'Verse is very rarely kind enough for a good second chance. Maybe terrible ones abound, but there is never a good compromise to doing something utterly stupid in the name of... what had she been doing this in the name of? Following footsteps? At the time she had been cock-sure, confident. The leverage of her mother's 'good' name supposedly sparked an interest. Stella had already refused the offer-- she wasn't in the business any more. Without her partner? It just almost wasn't the same. Rosalind herself had nothing to prove, yet felt like it would mean everything for her to do this. There was no true path for her to walk down and she was lost. At a blurry crossroads leading to either what her mother already told her adamantly not to get involved with, and whatever else the 'Verse had to offer. Whatever else the 'Verse would do to her. If she happened to survive this.
Somehow? Getting in hadn't been too difficult. Ros was a bit of a lanky, slip of a girl, dark clothing and dark looks aiding in the miracle of her not getting caught. Up until this point. As ungraceful as ever, she had fallen through a window. Not too high up, but the landing hadn't been soft and there she was dazed and on her pigu with a small circle of gun muzzles situated around her.
The hideout was seedy, it was dark and dank and probably far too cliché for the man she was sent to capture. A supposedly bad man. Small-time criminal, but with some firepower to make up for his lack of reputation. Though, apparently he'd caught someone's eye if kidnapping or killing him was the best option.
"Stand up." Orders, and Rosalind already ached all over. It took some effort, but she slowly stood upright.
The guards just stared at her. Young. Nineteen at the most. All dressed up in dark leathers and sweeping long coat. Strapped up with a pistol and some other accessories. The coat was a little too big for her. Someone was stifling a laugh and blue eyes glared daggers at him. But now she was here? Rosalind couldn't rightly deny how ridiculous she appeared. A kid wearing her mother's jacket, toting around her mother's name. Ruining it.
"You two, take 'er to the boss."
Nods and affirmations were given, the butt of a gun forcing into her lower back to shove her forwards, gruff words telling her to move it, kid. And if that just didn't make her even more furious. With herself, and with this situation. A move had been made to turn, to try and knock the gun up into his own face, and hopefully wrestle it free. It didn't work so well. She ended up in a brief struggle, a sound whack that sent her hunched over on the ground, then found the barrel of his comrade's gun pressed to her temple as her head rose up. She had defiance and fury in her eyes, but it just amused them even more. Futile, she fumed in silence, raised herself, her hands and kept walking.
The office was just as dirty as the rest of this little establishment. The mockery of a crime boss's inner sanctum and more the picture of dirty little start-up operation. Guns, papers and even money strewn about on various surfaces. A man in a frayed and dirty suit sitting behind what was possibly a desk. Ros was shoved into the middle of the room.
"Well, aren't you just adorable?"
Still nothing said from her lips.
"Tell me, little bird, what made you fly into my window?"
Her jaw set, her eyes narrowed, and she tried to keep her heart from hammering inside her chest. It wasn't easy. It also wasn't easy to not flinch at the sound of gunshots. One, two. Clean, clear and the two men either side of her were dropped like a sack of refuse each. Ros had peered down, expected to see blood starting to soak the front of her shirt, and frowned in confusion. A glance either side at those sound thuds of people dying. Her eyes widened just a touch.
"Just a mistake. A stupid mistake."
That was enough to cause Ros's shoulders to hunch, and her eyes to screw shut for but a moment. Every word punctured through her confidence and self-worth. But the mark in this little job? He looked a mite more worried than Ros. He had been scrambling around at his desk, looking for a gun that was actually loaded, money and documents hitting the floor. Stella Burke just walked up into the room-- minus her jacket-- just as calm as you please. Like she'd walked in through the front door without a single problem. Ros avoided eye contact, but Stella was looking only upon her daughter. The mark? Almost forgotten.
"I clearly don't need to ask what the good gorram you're doing here, but I'm thinkin' my first question is what the ta ma de is wrong with you?"
Finally, Mr Unclean Suit had found himself a proper weapon, but as he moved to raise it, and maybe just fire upon either one of them, Burke's gun came back up in one smooth motion, an afterthought. Her gaze not really leaving Ros as she shot him, cleanly, in the chest. He fell back into his chair, gasping. Stella turned her gaze upon him rather briefly and dismissively with a frown.
"Rosalind. Look at me."
It took a lot to raise her head. It took even more to meet the angered, stern glare of her mother. She held her head high, and set her shoulders straight.
"Never. Again. Dong le ma?"
A nod, a promise. Stella Burke turned to the side, walked towards the door, inclined her head in that direction and didn't stop to wait.
"Let's go home, kid."
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