Zheng Gao [Character]
Jan 8, 2014 13:42:31 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2014 13:42:31 GMT -7
Zheng Gao
"What remains of a man when that man is dead and gone? Only memories and stories of his deeds will linger on. But if a man’s accomplishments aren’t in the tale they tell are the deeds that go unheralded his legacy as well?"
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Full Name - Zheng Gao
Nicknames/Alias - Commander officially. Now "Admiral" both by those few who know his true purpose as well as those in the business who merely know of his part in ship reclamation.
Age - 35
Date of Birth - January 17, 2485
Place of Birth - Priam
Gender - Male
Sexual Orientation - Heterosexual
Affiliation - Independence
Occupation - Anti-hero -> Crime Boss/Browncoat Commander
Play-By - Takeshi Kaneshiro
Build - Thin and athletic
Height & Weight - 5'9", 155 lbs.
Hair - Black, medium length, well kept
Eyes - Brown
Unique Features - None
Dressing Style - Transitions between a well kept suit for business (desk work, meetings, etc.) and more practical attire to fit the situation (i.e. he doesn't go to fight in a suit or work repairing a ship in his Sunday best).
Other -
Likes - Independence, Family, Duty, Priam and Ithaca, Military Life, Ships, Business, Smoking
Dislikes - Alliance, Injustice, Oppression, In-fighting, Cravens, Propaganda, Smoking
Quirks/Habits - Smokes, something he picked up during the war. Has quit and started again numerous times.
Fears - His fleet being discovered. A second war will never come. His "side business" drawing too much Alliance attention.
Secrets - He's secretly hiding a fleet of hundreds of ships and intends to overthrow the government. Nothing too big.
Strengths -
- Devotion to duty
- Mind for numbers and business
- Gregarious and just
Weaknesses -
- Duty and justice can bite him in the ass sometimes
- Ambitious aspirations potentially being too great a risk
- Holds on to a lost cause
Talents/Special Abilities -
- Expert businessman from running a general store to an interstellar ship reclamation business
- Magnetic personality that attracts loyal soldiers as well as run-of-the-mill laborers
- Criminal mastermind - a surprising hidden talent
- Like Onas Knox, he can go super saiyan and use all sorts of magical powers.
Aspirations - Ignite a second war of Independence and actually win this time.
Overall Personality - Zheng is a man stuck in time a decade past. For him the struggle for Independence is not and never will be over. Just because they won does not mean that the cause of the Alliance was right or that the fight was not worth it. While some might turn to little acts of defiance such as crime or might flee to the furthest reaches of space to worlds with little Alliance presence, Zheng intends to resist in a less subtle way.
The crimes of the Alliance have only become more pronounced over the years. Eight years of Alliance rule and the Rim is no better than it was before, there are tales of all kinds of atrocities and corrupt acts, and of course there was the Signal. The outer worlds are becoming more populous and more industrialized every day and the Core is beginning to see their government for what it is. The time will soon come for the people to rise up again and fight once more for Independence.
Zheng has led a secret life for the past eight years, hiding the fleet of warships that were neither surrendered to the Alliance nor scuttled at the end of the war. He has taken on the false guise of a master salvager and criminal boss to both conceal and support his true work and intentions.
Outside of his hidden plans, Zheng is a skilled business man who skillfully manages a large "army" of salvagers manning a large "fleet" of ships. He's fiercely loyal to his men, even the criminal ones. On a personal level he tends to be very jovial and fun loving. When not the stern commander or big boss man, he enjoys nothing better than to relax, joke, and laugh. Or is that just part of the charade too?
Father - Zheng Jianguo – Shopkeeper, Commander, Killed in Action at age 48 in 2509
Mother - Zheng Xue – Seamstress, Deceased at age 42 in 2504
Siblings - Sister – Zheng Xui Li – Psychiatrist on Pelorum, married, age 33
Other Significant People - Onas Knox - Somewhat recent business partner
Pets -
Your History - Gao was born in a small town on Priam, the double of larger Ithaca. For the better part of his life, Gao always thought his future was pretty well determined and he did not truly question it. From a very young age, he worked in his father’s store. As a toddler he’d hover near his father or explore the wonders of the store not far off. As a youth he’d sweep up, help stock, and sometimes clerk. When he was a teenager he’d often be left in charge of the store for entire shifts and as he neared adulthood he was very much set to be an equal partner in the business.
Gao was content with this life and he had a mind for business like his father. After his 19th birthday, Gao was actually entrusted with the store for a full month because both his parents were travelling to the Core. His Mother, Xue, had some unique illness, not terribly threatening but rare enough that they needed to seek a specialist to treat it. While away, there was some sort of complication and Xue died. Jianguo, Gao’s father, blamed the doctors for malpractice and the Alliance for not permitting the required treatment to cover the mistake of the doctors. He spent the better part of a year yelling at whatever officials he could find, talking off the ear of anyone who would listen, and filing whatever forms and law suits he could get his hands on. In the end all he had to show was the corpse of the woman he loved and Alliance red tape preventing any sort of justice, not even a pittance of monetary damages or a refund of the expensive procedure which caused her death.
Two years later it was no surprise when Jiangou raised the banner of Independence against the Alliance that he had become embittered against. In his youth, Jiangou had served in the Alliance Fleet for a few years. As a leader of his community on Priam he found his way to an officer’s commission and eventually the rank of commander and assignment of XO of one of the Independent Fleet’s largest vessels. His son, now 21, followed his father to war and became an officer in the Fleet as well. As good as Gao had been as a shopkeeper, he was even better as an officer.
His father may have been fast-tracked up to a lofty rank, but Gao began his career as a junior officer aboard a small ship. It just so happened that the Lieutenant Commander of that ship noticed the talented young ensign and when he was offered a promotion to Commander and a new ship, he promoted Gao and brought him along to the new ship as well. It was there on the Farsight, a corvette, that Gao spent the first part of the war from the end of ’06 through ’08. Those were the “happy days” when the Independent Fleet was winning at least as often as they were losing and the full might of the Alliance’s overwhelming manpower and industry had not been fully mobilized. By the end of this period, Gao was a seasoned senior lieutenant and was picked for a new assignment aboard the destroyer Patmos.
Gao’s time on the Patmos was as short lived as that ship. In early 2509 the Patmos was destroyed by the Alliance along with a dozen other vessels. The Independents won the day despite these heavy losses and Gao was among those survivors picked up by friendly craft after the battle was over. However, in the same battle his father’s ship had also gone down and Jiangou was not found among the survivors. Gao was only mildly consoled by reports of his father’s heroism in his final moments which led to both ultimate victory in the battle as well as the survival of much of his crew. But there was no time to grieve. In war thousands die every day and Gao still had his duty.
Following the loss of the Patmos, Gao was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and assigned to the cruiser Orion. In the ship’s first major battle since Gao came aboard, it too suffered heavy damage. The entire command staff was killed leaving the new transfer, a 24 year old Gao, the most senior officer on board. Expecting to go out much like his father had only months before, Gao took command and led his damaged ship directly at the enemy. However, instead of going down like his father, the Orion actually survived the battle. Gao was decorated for his actions both taking command of the vessel and even leading the Browncoat squadron to victory. In the wake of the battle, even after Orion was repaired and reinforced, he surprisingly was not relieved of command but left as a lieutenant commander with a command typically reserved for a captain.
Gao spent the rest of the war commanding the Orion in numerous engagements, escorts, bombardments, and the like. The young officer never gave anyone in the admiralty a reason to regret leaving him with command of the ship. He performed his duties as well as anyone else and the war had left the Fleet with few enough capable officers to potentially replace him. In late 2510 Gao was promoted to commander, a rank more fighting of his command, but that is as high as he ever rose.
People like to say that the war was lost in Serenity Valley. Yes, perhaps the Independent spirit was broken there and it certainly had the body count to indicate its importance, but the war was truly lost in the black. The Alliance had better tech and by far more numbers. By war’s end they were out producing Independent shipyards by a factor in the double digits making the battles in space even more lopsided and “uneven” than those Browncoat troops on the ground often faced. Serenity Valley was lost because the Independent Army there was cut off by the enormous Alliance fleet. Wounded could not be evacuated, reinforcements could not be flown in, supplies could not be sent to the troops fighting, air support could not be called in, and enemy air support raided with impunity.
Serenity Valley wasn’t the cause of the Independent defeat but a result of it. Numerous attempts were made to break the Alliance cordon around Hera but each resulted in defeat after defeat for the Browncoats. At the time Gao’s Orion and its squadron of ships were one of the few groups that were not fighting desperately in the Georgia System but instead were in the relative quiet of Kalidasa. When Hera was finally lost for good, the Independent Fleet was smashed, and all hope seemed lost, Gao commanded one of the last groups of Browncoat ships still in the black. Stragglers from distant outposts and survivors of defeats against the Alliance began to retreat and join up with the squadron forming a paper tiger of a fleet. Of the entire group only the Orion was a cruiser, and even she couldn’t go toe-to-toe with one of those top-of-the-line Alliance capital ships of which there were dozens. Most of the rest of the fleet were frigates and corvettes with a few larger destroyers and a few smaller patrol craft and even a bunch of noncombatant transports, tankers, and the like mixed in. Many of them were severely damaged, had only skeleton crews, were low on ammunition, or had other ailments that prevented them from being at fighting strength.
Fortunately, it never came to one final battle with Gao’s mosquito fleet getting completely obliterated. Unification Day came before any Alliance fleet reached them or the remnants of the admiralty gave any suicidal orders. The last order that did come down from the admiralty, however, was a last act of defiance. All remaining Independent captains were to scuttle their ships rather than surrender them to the Alliance. Although known as a dutiful soldier, this was one order that Gao chose not to follow. It was the command of old men that had given up. Gao however was still young, believed in the cause, and was still looking to the future.
Gao’s fleet immediately made for Newhall where the vast majority of the men disembarked and awaited the arrival of the Alliance to officially accept their surrender or barring that they’d find their way home now that the war had ended. Gao and skeleton crews of handpicked men took the fleet out away from Newhall to “scuttle” it before returning to Newhall to join their comrades, and so the official story goes. Yet when they left Newhall, the large assortment of warships were flown instead to Six Sigma and hidden among the debris.
For the past eight years, Gao has commanded this ghost fleet of warships. He and only his most loyal men know of the fleet and have dedicated themselves to keeping the secret and keeping the fleet in fighting shape should a second war ever come, and every year it looks more and more likely. A skeleton force maintains the large number of ships, stocks them for combat, has repaired battle damage, and upgrades them from time to time. Gao absolutely does not have the manpower to crew his fleet, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to keep this great asset ready to be manned by citizen soldiers should a second war ever truly begin.
Now maintaining a fleet of warships is expensive business. It’s also hard to do without drawing notice. Therefore, in the public eye, Zheng Gao has become a major player in starship salvage and dominates the market in the Kalidasa system with his main business touching the Ita impound and the Beylix scrapyards. Much of what Gao does is legal or at least borderline. His men pick through trash to find treasures or they find discarded ships and fix them up. Some of these parts and ships are sent to the ghost fleet while others are sold or turned right around to join the salvage fleet Gao has also built.
Gao’s operations also dip into the criminal, namely the starship supertrade. His salvage operations are expertly situated to find deadlined ships for ID swaps or to even refurbish ships to be the actual finished product. Ships that need to “disappear” because their IDs have been swapped either join the ghost fleet or more frequently are completely scrapped for spare parts. Occasionally Gao will even steal ships, preferably those belonging to or with ties to the Alliance. Through both legal and illegal operations, Gao has a large civilian fleet as well as a large civilian workforce that both pay for and obscure his true operation, the ghost fleet.
What should we call you? -Smartass Google or just Roger
Roleplaying Experience - Years
Where did you find us? - Magic
Prove Yourself - Ckhqj. Trust me, I wrote the rules.
Post Script - 1) Gao is not a maniac who will take his ghost fleet and become some insanely powerful crime boss. If a second war never breaks out then the fleet might never actually be used and that’s perfectly fine with me.
2) Gao is currently supporting the sparks of rebellion on Beylix though he does so carefully lest he draw too much attention to himself before the time is actually ripe for war.
Other characters - Davis, Hoffman, Miller, Rickart, Travis
How we should contact you - PM to my staff account
Roleplay Example - Zheng sat at his desk staring at the pile of reports in front of him. With such great volume one would expect a man to be overwhelmed, but Zheng had each ordered neatly and in its place. Quickly yet carefully he proceeded over each in turn and before long the massive piles were being handled or marked for delegation.
On the whole, things were looking good. Three incredibly rare parts had been recovered, one from Ita and two from Beylix, which each gave life to an otherwise perfectly good ship. They'd turned around seven new ships this week through reclamation and had pulled the Idents from another dozen before scrapping them. The men had even managed a flawless raid on an unmanned Alliance supply vessel as well as picking off a Cortex comm relay station and re-purposing it.
Of course there was the bad with the good. Only about half of the orders coming from Seph could be filled. It was not for lack of manpower or time, but simply that the requests were for ships that currently Zheng had none of. Unless he were to start a custom shipyard or went scouring the entire 'Verse to steal one then they'd be SOL. The others would be no problem and they'd be cheap too. That's why business partners could tolerate such a low percent completion rate, because the orders that were filled could not be beaten at that price. Maybe half of the rest could be solved through spare parts rather than new IDs but time would tell how well that solution worked for them.
Then, after two hours of sorting, Zheng got to the last bit of news in his "In" pile. The man sighed when he saw who it was from and simultaneously was thankful and angry that it had drifted to the bottom of the pile. It was a wave from Minerva Colt which could only mean bad news.
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.
Jules! 
