Jones, Achilles [Hired Gun/Linguist]

[Deleted]

Achilles Marshall Jones




"Define your meaning of war. To me it's what we do when we're bored. I feel the heat comin' off of the blacktop. And it makes me want it more. Because I'm hyped up out of control. If it's a fight, I'm ready to go. I wouldn't put my money on the other guy. If you know what I know that I know"

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Full Name - Achilles Marshall Jones
Nicknames/Alias - He often uses his former call - sign as an alias "Specter".
Age - 51
Date of Birth - 2469/03/31
Place of Birth - Londinium, White Sun System
Gender - Male
Sexual Orientation - Heterosexual
Affiliation - Himself
Occupation - Hired Gun/Linguist

Play-By - Dwayne Douglas Johnson
Build - Muscular
Height & Weight - 6' 5" (1.9558 m) & 286 Lbs (129.727 kg / 20.4286 Stone)
Hair

• Cranial: Shaved Bald, Black
• Facial: Full Goatee, Black

Eyes - Dark Brown
Unique Features - Not as of yet
Dressing Style

• Formal: Dark blazer, matching color trousers with black leather belt with silver buckle, light colored long-sleeve button-up shirt, dark tie, silver tie clasp, and black leather dress boots. The coat is cut to be semi-form fitting.
  
• Casual: Dark trousers with black leather belt with silver buckle, light or medium colored short-sleeve polo, and black leather dress boots.
• Athletics: Black long-sleeved moisture-wicking & form-fitting compression shirt with alliance emblem on upper right chest, Black long-sleeved sweatshirt with the symbol of the alliance on upper right chest, black ankle-length drawstring sweatpants with alliance emblem on lower left thigh, black knee-length moisture-wicking drawstring shorts with alliance emblem on lower left thigh, black athletic socks, black knit cap, and black leather combat boots.
• Combat: Terrain-Dependent Camouflage
  
  • Blouse: Two slanting chest pockets with velcro closure, two shoulder sleeve pockets with button closure, reinforced elbows, internal pockets for elbow pads, adjustable cuffs, alliance emblem embroidered on the left chest pocket.
  • Trousers: Two front slash style pockets, two rear pockets with button closure, two thigh level bellows cargo pockets with elastic closure, button fly, reinforced knees and seat, partially elastic waistband, internal pockets for kneepads.
  • Headwear: Ballistic Helmet, Balaclava.
  • Shirt: Long-sleeved compression, moisture wicking FROG shirt.
  • Gloves: Tactical Assault Gloves
  • Belt: Webbed rigger's belt.
  • Eyewear: Black Ballistic Goggles.
  • Ear Protection: Ballistic shooting headphones.
  • Ballistic Elbow Pads
  • Ballistic Knee & Shin Pads
  • Footwear: Black leather combat boots.

Other - anything else you'd like to add?

• Longarm: U.S. Ordnance AR-57 (Family Heirloom)
  • Bolt & Carrier Group: Daniel Defense Complete Bolt Carrier Group
  • Trigger: 04 Lbs (1.81437 kg / 0.285714 Stone) Geissele
  • Trigger Guard: Enhanced Trigger Guard™
  • Barrel: AR57 09" (228.6 mm) Full Helical free-floating Barrel / 4140 / Std. 1/2 X 28 muzzle threads
  • Stock: UBR®Collapsible Stock
  • Butt-Pad: Enhanced Rubber Butt-Pad™
  • Strike Plate: UBR® Aluminum Strike Plate
  • Charging Handle: BCM Gunfighter w/ Mod 4 Medium Latch
  • Sight, Dot: Aimpoint® CompM4s with Arms LRP Mount, Flip-Up Front cover, ARD KillFlash® Filter, Polarization Filter, and Flip-up Rear Cover
  • Sight, ACOG/Thermal Sight: Trijicon ATWS® with Arms mount
  • Sight, Iron, Rear: A.R.M.S.® #40™L-P
  • Sight, Iron, Front: 41-B-L A.R.M.S.® #41™-B-L Silhouette™
  • Laser: MFV-515
  • Light: M620V Scout Light®
  • Grip, Handle: MIAD® Grip Kit
  • Grip, Fore: AFG2™
  • Hand Guard: MOE® Hand Guard, Mid-Length
  • Rails: 13.25” Ladder Rail Panel
  • Suppressor: SFN-57
  • Sling: Original S.O.E. 2 to 1 Point Convertible
  • Rail Sling Mount: RSA® - Rail Sling Attachment
  • Assist Device: B.A.D. Lever®
• Sidearm: FN FiveseveN (Reproduction)
  
  • Trigger: 03 Lbs (1.36077711 kg / 0.214285714 Stone) Geissele
  • Trigger Guard: Enhanced Trigger Guard™
  • Suppressor: SFN-57
    Barrel: 4.8" (122 mm) threaded.
  • Sights, Iron: Tritium illuminated dot sights.
  • Laser: C5L
  • Light: X300® Ultra
• Knifes: Ka-Bar Combat Knives & Sheaths

Likes

• Chess: Due to his innate skill at speed chess, and his experience as both captain of the chess team, and president of the chess club, he truly enjoys chess to this day.
• Women: Achilles really enjoys women. He has his preferences, but enjoys the company of most women a great deal.
• Guns: Guns have been the number one tool in how Achilles lives his life, and makes his living. Therefore, he has grown to have an extreme appreciation for them.
• Music: Achilles loves to play guitar, especially bass guitar, and sing.
• Weightlifting: Achilles has always enjoyed exercise, especially weightlifting. However, due to his advanced age he has to do longer reps of lighter weight so his older muscles can keep up with recovery.

Dislikes

• Intelligence Deficient People
• Government Bureaucrats
• He HATES licorice.
• Wastefulness / Inefficiency.
• Open flames.

Quirks/Habits

• He spends all of his solitary free time training or maintaining his weapons, and he's constantly cracking his knuckles.
  
  

Fears

• Fear of being forgotten, that his deeds will go unremembered by history.
• Fear of dieing alone, that his mission will eventually lead to him being unable to find a good woman.
• Fear of getting old. He fears that his mission will take so long that he'd be too old to accomplish it.

Secrets

• His actions led to the deaths of several children.
• His status as a rouge Operative.

Strengths

• Strongly sarcastic sense of humor.
• Significant historical knowledge of Earth-That-Was.
• High I.Q.

Weaknesses

• Achilles has the problem of over estimating himself. Due his training, and knowledge of his training, he often forgets that his skills have diminished over the years due to his advancing age. He forgets that knowledge of the skill doens't always equal ability to act on it.
• Achilles has an almost debilitating reaction to large open flames. Ever since that horrible night, large open flames give Achilles flashbacks and cause momentary hesitation.
• Due to his obsessive drive to get back at the Alliance, Achilles often feels he needs to do things himself and slow to accept assistance from others.

Talents/Special Abilities - 

• Hand-To-Hand Combat
• Small Unit Tactics
• Linguistics

Aspirations

• To destabilize the Alliance's regime.
• To make himself super wealthy.

Overall Personality - Achilles' outlook on life is quite pessimistic at times. His philosophy could be most easily described by "If we have to die, we should take as many of them with us as possible."

When it comes to other people, they are all tools to achieve his objectives, whatever he deems them to be. He LOVES women... not that he's a womanizer, he is always looking for a serious relationship, but will sleep with any woman, he finds attractive, and willing, as long as he's not in a relationship.

When it comes to personal combat and war, he is physically courage to the extreme, almost always willing to lead the assault. However, moral courage is another matter. He can be just are ruthless and fickle as all other people. Whenever anyone crosses him, his automatic reaction is to utterly and completely crush his enemy. This can happen in either one of two ways. first, if the offender is within immediate striking range, he will confront them physically in close combat. And if that is not practical he will follow Machiavellian-like methods of destroying their worlds and personal life before finally confronting him. seize your enemy's resources, alienate their friends, eliminate their wealth, disrupt their supply lies, destroy their alliances, and THEN they will be ready for death.

Father - Jones, Marcus, T.: Former Alliance Army Chief Of Staff. - Living
Mother - Jones (Brown), Sarah, L.: School teacher.- Living
Siblings - Jones, Michael, K.: Alliance Marine.- Living
Other Significant People - N/A
Pets - Tarantulas
Your History - Achilles Marshall Johnson was born to Major General Marcus Anthony Jones, and an 10th grade history teacher named Sarah Elizabeth Jones (Brown) on Londinium at 00:00 hours. Achilles always did well through elementary school, being home-schooled at night by his parents.

When Achilles was 11 years old, Sarah was promoted from substitute to full time teacher at a Religious School. As a direct result of his mother's new employment, Achilles was now attending private school. Achilles' years in middle school were not that eventful. Seventh grade, however, was the year he began to be involved with girls. Chelsea was the first to catch his eye. The beautiful girl was 13, the standard age for eighth grade, but she looked as though she could be 16 or 17. She would be the fair skinned, blond haired, blue eyed standard from which he would judge all girls for years to come.

Once the time for high school came around, Achilles was moved to public school for two reasons. First, his parents felt he needed to be moved away from Chelsea's influence, and secondly, to improve his socialization skills. During his years attending high school at T.C. Williams Achilles became captain of the chess team, president of the chess club, a bass in advanced chorus, learned Spanish in his foreign language class, and then became operations major in the Alliance Army J.R.O.T.C. program.

After high school, Achilles went into studies at a University on Osiris. During his sophomore year, he ran into his former love, Chelsea. After a couple weeks of encounters, the two of them hit it off and became a serious couple. In the junior year's summer, the two of them became engaged, and he signed a delayed entry enlistment contract for Alliance Army Special Forces Candidate in the Alliance Army. On 2491/05/31
, Achilles graduated with dual majors in political science and economics, with his minors in psychology and sociology.

The week after graduation, Achilles found Chelsea in bed with one of his former room mates. As a result, he left her and they went their own separate ways. Two weeks later, he shipped off to boot camp under the advanced enlistment due to his four year college degree.

As per standard operations, the advanced part of Achilles' advanced enlistment contract didn't take effect until after graduation from boot camp. This left him as just as low on the totem pole as the other younger, less experienced grunts around him throughout basic training.

Upon graduation from Basic Combat Training he went on to his Advanced Individual Training, and Infantry School.

After AIT, he went onto Alliance Army Airborne School, then Alliance Army Special Forces Preparation and Conditioning followed by Alliance Army Special Forces Assessment and Selection, and finally Alliance Army Special Forces Qualification Course for a total of 52 weeks in conjunction with his enlistment contract, learning Arabic in Phase II.

After Q Course, Achilles took the required Warrior Leader Course.

After the completion of that course, he took the following;

• Achilles attended and completed Basic Mountaineering Course from from 2492/08/18 until 2492/09/21.
• Achilles attended and completed Cold Weather Leaders Course from 2492/11/24 until 2492/12/03.
• Achilles attended and completed Alliance Army Air Assault School from 2493/01/05 until 2493/01/15.
• Achilles attended and completed Alliance Army Zero-G Combat School from 2493/02/16 until 2493/03/08.
• Achilles attended and completed Alliance Army Sniper School from 2493/04/06 until 2493/05/10.
• Achilles attended and completed Alliance Army CBRN School from 2493/10/12 until 2493/12/20.
• Achilles attended and completed Alliance Army Combat Operations Group Operator Course from 2494/06/21 until 2494/12/17.
• Achilles attended and completed Senior Enlisted Joint Professional Military Education from 2495/01/17 until 2495/04/25.
• Achilles attended and completed Advanced Joint Professional Military Education from 2495/05/23 until 2496/02/26.
• Achilles attended and completed Advanced Leader Course from 2497/01/07 until 2497/01/20.
• Achilles attended and completed Alliance Army Officer Candidate School from 2502/06/26 until 2502/09/17.
• Achilles attended and completed Joint Command, Control, and Information Operations School from 2503/03/26 until 2503/04/12.
• Achilles attended and completed Joint and Combined War-fighting School from 2503/05/14 until 2503/05/17.
• Achilles attended and completed Joint Interagency Multinational Planner's Course from 2503/06/18 until 2503/06/21.
• Achilles attended and completed Homeland Security Planner’s Course from 2503/07/23 until 2503/07/26.
• Achilles attended and completed JFSC Elective - Counter-Terrorism: The Inter-agency and Intelligence from 2503/08/29 until 2503/09/04.
• Achilles attended and completed JFSC Elective - Military Deception & Operations Security from 2503/09/12 until 2503/09/18.
• Achilles attended and completed JFSC Elective - Non-Lethal Weapons - Support to IW & DSCA from 2503/09/26 until 2503/10/02.
• Achilles attended and completed Joint Advanced War-fighting School from 2503/11/05 until 2504/09/25.

In 2506, the Parliament in all of it's grand wisdom decided to spread it's light and advantages to the other worlds. For some reason those backwards idiots would rather live in dirty poverty, without the advances of modern civilization. They rejected it so hard, there was war. The war was hard and long fought. However, the rebels were thankfully put down in 2511, and after they surrendered, life resumed as per normal.

In April of 2514, Achilles was approached by a man of clearly African descent, who worn tactical clothing, but no apparent weaponry, uniform or rank insignia, and was escorted by a squad of alliance marines.

After a few short moments of conversation, Achilles noticed this stranger began asking questions about classified operations, which led Achilles to ask; "Excuse me sir, I need to see your Identification with your clearance rating on it to proceed in this conversation."

The man responded by saying "You are correct to request it. I was curious how long it would take. The mysterious man then proceeded to place his fingertips on the computer touch screen at the logon page.

In response the computer spoke out loud "Full, Unrestricted Parliamentary Override Access"

Achilles spoke again. "Full override huh? Alright mystery man, what brings you here?"

The mystery man dismissed the marines near him so that they could speak in private.

"I've searched your record Colonel..."

The man paused for a moment as the cortex brought up Achilles' service file which listed his training information, his battle record, and promotion record.

Battle Record
(To be filled in after obtaining such information)

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Promotion Record

• Private No Insignia: N/A - Advanced Enlistment: College Degree
• Private: N/A - Advanced Enlistment: College Degree
• Private First Class: N/A - Advanced Enlistment: College Degree
• Specialist: 2491/06/18
  
• Corporal: 2493/6/11
  
• Sergeant: 2494/6/11
  
• Staff Sergeant: 2495/6/11
  
• Sergeant First Class: 2497/6/11
  
• Master Sergeant: 2499/6/11
  
• Sergeant Major: 2500/6/11
• Officer Candidate: 2501/6/13
  
• 2nd Lieutenant: 2501/9/03
  
• 1st Lieutenant: 2503/3/05
  
• Captain: 2505/3/02
  
• Major: 2508/3/05
  
• Lieutenant Colonel: 2511/3/09
  
• Colonel: 2514/3/12
  

The man continued speaking. "Your record indicates a dedicated, skilled, and loyal soldier of the Alliance"

Achilles immediately stood at attention and spoke again. "Damn Strait I am!"

"Well then Mr. Jones... I have an opportunity for you to serve the Alliance some more, in a greater capacity. To make better worlds."

"I gladly, accept." Achilles said.

After their conversation, Achilles' command was transferred to another officer, and he was placed in a new specialized training.

Achilles wondered why they had picked him now, in his advanced age. After questioning his training officer about this, he was told the following;

"We have decided to try a new approach. Many of our younger operatives has a problem leaving evidence and trails in their wake. They have the skills to do the job, but not the wisdom of age to temper their passion. We are training a few older Operatives to do missions that require more stealth. And possibly in the future, act as mentors to the younger ones through training and operations"

One and a half years later, this specialized training was over, and Achilles was given his final exam.

The course officer spoke to Achilles. "Jones, your final test is to eliminate a former "Browncoat" general. He has been elected as the governor of a settlement on Haven. This mayor has decided to start speaking out against the Alliance publicly and calling for rebellion again."

Achilles went off and did as he was told.

Once he arrived on Haven, it took him about a week to locate the target and get to him in an isolated location.

"Mr. Mayor, you have been deemed seditious, rebellious and a threat to the harmonious continuation of our people. Therefore, I must eliminate you."

After a VERY brief hand-to-hand combat, the mayor ended up with a sword being thrust from his left collar bone area down and to the right through his abdomen.

After completing his assignment, Achilles returned to Londinium for debriefing. After the debriefing, Achilles was graduated into the program officially as Operative 116, and his information was purged from the database.

In July of 2517, Achilles' alliance loyalty began to wain after he was forced to shoot a civilian transport out of the sky to kill a military officer who had decided to go rouge.

In 2518, the browncoat captain of a transport/courier ship and his crew risked their lives to thwart another operative of the Parliament and broadcast the story of Miranda. Achilles happened to be on one of the worlds reached by the wave broadcast, and was horrified. There's no way the Parliament would sanction such and action, but it just had to either be a hoax or a rouge science department operation.

The final straw that broke the back of his loyalty to the Alliance, came in March of 2520. March 27th, 2520, Achilles was sent to capture an Alliance military researcher who decided to go AWOL.

After tracking him down to the researcher to Haven, the target took refuge in an orphanage. After requesting clarifications for orders, his superiors ordered him to burn down the building, which he did so.

Achilles stood there that night and watched it burn. As he stood there proud of his work, that pride didn't last for long. About three minutes of burning, he noticed that there were high pitched shrieks and yells coming from flaming children trying to run away from the burning building. Oh my god there were children still inside. Achilles immediately ran over to the children and tried to save as many as possible.

That day is the worst day in Achilles' life. That day was the first day Achilles had failed to achieve his mission, as the traitor got away while he was saving the children. It was the day that his body was scarred for life, as he now has a large burn on his left pectoral region. This was the day his mind was scarred at the horror of the site and sound of burning children. This was the day that destroyed his faith and belief of the righteousness of the Alliance. Those bastards had decided that the lives of those children mattered little or not at all in comparison to slaying their traitor.

The next day, Achilles typed up his resignation, sent it in to Londinium, and went off on his own to make his own way in the worlds.

Achilles is now a very troubled man. His entire adult life has been dedicate to self-sacrifice, and the fighting of others because his government he trusted told him so. If they could carelessly caste aside those children, then they could lie about the Reavers. And if that's true they could've lied to him every-time they told him someone had to die. If that's true then his life's work was a waste and built on a lie.


Two weeks later, Achilles Jones was killed while being a dumbass in a bar on the dwarf planet Dukkha.  Renowned badass Harper Montgomery shot Jones with his six shooter twelve times in the chest while a bar full of patrons watched and then cheered.  The former Alliance operative had just moments earlier openly boasted about his past exploits in the haven for criminals and Brownocats like the idiot he is.  The big tough guy managed to stumble away despite the gravity of his wounds, but fortunately Desmond Matheson of Peerless fame arrived, and despite being a midget, managed to push Achilles into a nearby airlock and space him out onto unterraformed Dukkha where his head shortly thereafter exploded Total Recall style.

What should we call you? - Sterling
Roleplaying Experience -13 years live action; 11 years online, 8-ish table-top.
Where did you find us? - I saw your post in the chatngo box on Watch As I Soar.
Prove Yourself - Dfkloohv Pduvkdoo Mrqhv
Post Script - absolutely anything else you would like to mention about your character should go right here.
Other characters - Nope.
How we should contact you

• AOL IM = Sterling Clifton
• Yahoo IM = appollyon33
• MSN IM = [e-mail]
• Skype = theestc

Roleplay Example
Today is the day. Today is the first day of the rest of his life. The first day of his life as a free man. A man free of the Alliance's lies and propaganda, propaganda and lies that have both blinded him and sheltered him from the greatness he could achieve on his own.

From this day forward Achilles would now look out for numero uno, for number one. It is time to find work, build up a nest-egg and then settle down with a good woman on a good homestead or ship and raise some good children.

But before that, the Alliance must be brought to understand the error of it's ways. Before Achilles could settle down truly, he must destabilize the regime, in order to have true freedom. And that's what has brought him to this place at this time.

Here is Dukkha. The pirate haven itself. What better place would there be to find a ship to join up with that didn't like the government? Achilles could think of none, so here he is.

SYR INTEGRA of CAUTION 2.0 created this and she will happily hunt you down, rip out your spinal cord, and beat you to death with it if you steal her hard work and claim it as your own. especially since she will gladly share it with any and all who wish to use it, provided they leave her nice, little credit attached.

[Deleted]

FIN

[Roger]

Alrighty, here goes...

1) Age - I understand that his age is important for his timeline, but just making clear that the Rock is actually 41 not 51. I'm also a bit confused since his new life long goal is to get back at the alliance and then settle down and have a family. Isn't he a little old to start doing that? Especially if he's attracted to girls who look like they're 16/17 years old.

2) You only have three each of likes and dislikes. The minimum is five each.

3) In his history you have the following about his mother, “Sarah was promoted from substitute to full time teacher at Religious and School.” of religion at the school?

4) You have him as both the captain of the chess team and president of the chess club. Is that a repeat or is this a school that has both a club and team and Achilles is a major nerd who eventually becomes a major badass?

5) Foreign Languages - Spanish is of course very important in school and Arabic is important in the military... on present day Earth. But what is the great importance of those languages in the 'Verse where nearly everyone speaks Chinese or English or both and those few places where other languages exist are the great minority? I know part of his selling point is as a linguist, but how much is that really needed especially if he only knows two potentially obscure languages?

You have all this training which is mirrored after RL military training. I really don't care because we haven't gone so far in depth that we have named all the various schools in the Alliance military, but it's still very much set in the past. Was he ever trained to fight aboard space ships/in space? I think that would be more useful than some of the other training.

6) Unless I'm missing something, your dates for that big long list are all off. He graduates college in '92 presumably in the late spring and then has some time off to get married and such. The list of his training then beings in August of 92. Okay, but you clearly state that he had at least 76 weeks of training before the big long list starts and I'm pretty sure it's not just overlap.

7) What the hell happened to the love-of-his-life/wife? They get married and then we go into all of his training. Did she die? Did she run off with someone else because he was too busy with his career? Did Achilles just forget about her and only remember some vague ideas about starting a family when he quit the Alliance at age 51, 28 years after he got married?

8) The list of every single thing he did (and every piece of clothes he wears) is not required. Your history does a weird jump from talking about his childhood to a robotic list of his military training and then straight to an in depth story about meeting the Operative down to the words they spoke. The military was Achilles' life for 22 years. All we know is that he spent lots of time in training. We don't know anything about where he was posted or what action he saw. We don't know how he personally felt about his experiences. The Unification War barely even gets a paragraph. I didn't even know that Achilles was a Colonel until the Operative referred to him by title.

9) Speaking of which, how is he a colonel? Yeah, he has been in the military for 22 years which would be about Colonel, but Achilles started his career enlisted and only became an officer in '92 (presumably even later once you fix those missing 76 weeks). He'd probably be a major with just those 12 years under his belt.

10) Unification War stated in 2506 not 2505.

11) The Unification War was not the suppression of a massive rebellion. The Browncoats were not traitors nor did they fight against their own government. Yes, you could say "the Alliance wasn't good enough for them" but that's it.

I'm currently working on a big long thread about the Alliance which further explains things. "Oh great, you posted that last night!" Yeah, poor timing for you, but I'm working from material straight from Joss Whedon himself. The Unification War was the Alliance trying to bring the rest of the 'Verse under their control, not the Rim breaking free. They weren't declaring independence but fighting to remain independent.

12) You refer to the Operative as of "African-American descent." As politically correct as that is, it's wrong in this context. There hasn't been an America for centuries and even so how would you know his ancestors came from America? It would be more correct to just say he was from African descent since his ancestors could have come from any number of nations from Earth-That-Was... or you could just say he was black.

13) The orphanage scene. Moving past the cliche of orphanages, the part that makes the Alliance look bad doesn't make sense. So Achilles was physically present on the ground and instead of just going in to get the guy from the presumably abandoned orphanage, the bad ass operative burned the entire place down. Yet while tracking the guy to this building, presumably dumping flammable material on it, and then watching all night as it burned, Achilles didn't notice that there were tons of people living inside?

None of the kids made it out alive? Is that because Achilles shot every little brat that ran through the front door, thinking it was the researcher trying to escape the blaze? Did he board up all the windows so they couldn't climb out yet while doing so he never looked inside to see the little orphans in their beds?

I'm being excessive and over the top in my descriptions of course, but you see what I'm saying. Achilles would have to be a complete idiot to not know until morning that there were kids inside. Maybe he didn't know when he started the fire and then he was horrified to hear the screams of kids. Then he runs into the flames and tries to save as many as he can. He of course can't save them all so he's blames the Alliance for their deaths. Maybe the target managed to escape while Achilles was saving kids so the Alliance blames him for a failure which only makes Achilles even more upset because they valued the death of the target over the dozens of kids Achilles did manage to save.

14) How does he have so much stuff? The way I see it, Achilles just walked away from the Alliance in a huff. How does he have a full wardrobe including two tuxedos and other clothing for all occasions, three sets of combat gear and each set in six different situational camo designs? Sure, if he were established on a ship he could acquire a large wardrobe like that but as a guy who just cut all ties with the Alliance and is now trying to get aboard a ship I don't he'd be able to haul all that shit around.

15) Has anyone ever told you that Achilles might be a bit overpowered? He's physically huge and strong. He's also incredibly smart and educated, fluent in at least four languages. He has spent nearly the last 30 years being trained to kill both in hand-to-hand, with swords, guns, arson, etc. while also going to every freaking school and training program the military offers. His father is the Chief of Staff of the army and he's an Operative of the Parliament. To balance all this he has the terribly debilitating fear of being forgotten, he can be an asshole sometimes, he's so good that he's over confident, and licorice is like kryptonite to him.

If he were to be accepted, he'd need to be toned down. Yeah, he's a big tough veteran but he's also in his fifties and his body is starting to wear down. Maybe he's deeply emotionally troubled what with that wife he presumably forgot about, pissing his life away for the Alliance he now hates with a burning and blinding passion, never started a family like he always wanted to, etc.

Basically he can be an emotional wreck at times and rightfully so. He's also a very skilled and knowledgeable warrior but lacks the speed and endurance of most others. Maybe he's also got that as another one of his problems, trouble letting go and accepting his age.

16) I do love the avatar.

[Deleted]

My bad. I copied an app I had already premade that I like to use and alter for various sites... I see where I messed up and agree with most if not all fo your critiques. It should be fixed in a couple of hours.

[Deleted]

Updated

[Roger]

Looking much better. Most loose ends have been tied up, parts of his military career have been Firefly-ed up a bit more, and the character is more balanced and has greater depth.

There are only issues I still see.

1) Your wording of the Unification War still has the Independents as traitors rebelling against their government.

2) The big one, why was Achilles approached and made an operative? Yeah, he's a total badass. He's the Rock! But when he was "recruited" for it he was 45 years old, a Colonel who hadn't been to any advanced schools or training programs in ten years. The operative who approached Achilles would have been only about 25 years old (assuming it's the same actor from the movie).

So basically, what I'm asking is why now? Why recruit a man who is beyond his peak and into the later half of his military career? Wouldn't it make more sense for Achilles to have been recruited for it a decade earlier when he was a Captain and just finishing all of his advanced training? Or maybe he was recruited only three years earlier right when the war ended and the need for operatives probably increased. I'm of course also open to keeping him recruits as a colonel in '14 when you have it happening if you can come up with a compelling reason.

[Deleted]

i see my reply to your critique didn't take.

What I said was that I assumed the Alliance assumed it was the rightful authority on all humanity, and I was writing it from that perspective. I'll change it if necessary.

[Deleted]

Updated again.

[Roger]

What reply to my critique? "I see where I messed up and agree with most if not all of your critiques" doesn't tell me much. And to be clear, the application process does not require you to just keep updating and telling me it's ready for another review. Some if not all of my questions might be better answered in an actual reply or by PM rather than by editing in an explanation.

Re: The War
There's a difference between believing the war was justified and framing it in a way contrary to fact. Your current edit reflects that sentiment nicely. You can call them foolish upstarts but calling them traitors to their established government would just be false.

Re: Achilles being picked at his age
A very good explanation that is perfectly acceptable. Overall I'm very pleased with how much you've worked and how open you've been to suggestion to mold Achilles.

DENIED