Pollock, Rhys

PRC	STAR FLEET PERSONNEL COMMAND FILE  SECURITY RATING 3, CONFIDENTIAL

RETIRED
Rhys Pollock
Career Occupation
Position:	Unassigned
Assignment:	USS Ticonderoga, CA-1471
Rank:	Ensign
Biographical Attributes
Species:	1/2 Human, 1/2 Vulcan
Gender:	Male
Height:	5'11”	Weight:	167lbs
Eye Color:	A mechanical grey – his eyes are clearly prosthetics
Hair Color:	Strikingly white
Hairstyle:	Thick, but cut short, normally kept in a mess of spikes using product.
Physique:	Thin – not gaunt, but closer to that of a runner or cyclist.
Complexion:	A very slight olive hue, referencing his Vulcan heritage.
Voice:	Rhys has a salesman’s voice – a naturally commanding tone that can heard over a crowd
Affiliation:	United Federation of Planets
Birthplace:	Luna Colony
Born:	18303.03	Age:	29
Familial Relationships
Father:	Alan Pollock
Mother:	T’Bol Pollock
Status of Parents:	Mother dead, Father missing, presumed dead
Siblings:	None
Marital Status:	Single
Children:	None

Personal History

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Early Years:

Rhys was born to parents that existed on the fringes of society. The couple were nomadic traders, spending little time in one place and instead living largely aboard a freighter from which they would sell anything that had value. Alan had met T’Bol on one of his trading runs – she was wandering through a marketplace alone, trying to find passage to a neighbouring star system when he agreed to offer her a ride. Alan was in a similar situation to her; neither of them had any real family or place to call home and the two of them ended up staying together.

A lifetime of deals, trades and sales followed for the pair of them. Alan and T’Bol scaled the majority of the alpha quadrant in a freighter that was held together with technology from a hundred different species. It wasn’t much of an existence, but it was home and the two loved each other; T’Bol’s lifetime away from the Vulcan culture had dulled her emotional guards somewhat.

The desire to start a family led them to try and settle down on Lunar colony. With some help from the doctors, Rhys was born. He was a healthy boy, a prominent Vulcan physicality inherited from his mother, and his father’s inquisitive and opportunistic nature. His early years were fairly typical – his father worked in the shipping ports as a domestic trader, his mother stayed at home and looked after Rhys. It was what most people would consider to be normal.

Shortly after Rhys’ second birthday, T’Bol was diagnosed with a neurological disease that quickly took hold of her mind. Rhys, too young to understand what was going on shared an empathic link with his mother and experienced her pain. As she got worse, Rhys began to exhibit similar symptoms of confusion and delirium whenever he was around her; Alan took the difficult decision to remove Rhys from his mother before the damage became irreversible. With tears in his eyes, Alan kissed his wife goodbye and left her in the care of the Lunar Colony medical centre.

His marriage destroyed, Alan returned to the only other life he’d ever been happy in. The freighter that had served him for so many years became his and Rhys’ new home and the life of a drifter shortly became the only thing Rhys would ever know. A few years later, T’Pol finally succumbed to the disease, and the half breed would never know his mother.

Childhood/Teenage Years:

As a young teenager, Rhys’ Vulcan blood slowed the rate at which he aged – by the time he was 12 he still had the appearance of a young boy; His mind was still much older. Nearly a decade of ducking and diving, watching his father make a successful businessman out of himself once again and learning from the hundreds of cultures and societies that they passed through had turned Rhys into a character of guile and cunning mirroring that of Alan. He could speak half a dozen languages; his memory near photographic and his ability to read people was almost as good as true empaths.

The accident that would change Rhys’ life forever happened on a trade with Klingon bounty hunters when he was 15. By now, Rhys was running his own deals, independently of Alan and making a comparable profit to his mentor and teacher. The Klingon party were in need of new plasma injectors, and Rhys had negotiated a fair price for them.

Alan was never enthusiastic about dealing with Klingons – they were impulsive, quick to anger and far too prone to bartering with force rather than coin. He implored his son to walk away, but Rhys was determined to see the deal through. A competitive nature and a lack of experience with Klingon’s made Rhys turn a deaf ear to the warnings, and with the deal struck, Alan could only accompany his son; a phaser tucked away just in case.

The deal was for two bars of latinum and an EPS manifold – part used, but in good condition. The location for the trade was in an un-noticed sector, far from the normal bustle of traffic through Federation territory. Alan made one final plea to his son. They could walk away now; he wouldn’t think less of him. Rhys played down his father – they were almost there.

The Klingons agreed to come unarmed and beamed aboard the freighter. They were an enormous people – Rhys had only met a handful in his whole life. His research on their customs and their imperative to remain honourable must have lulled Rhys into a false sense of security. After all, surely their code would prevent them from cheating on a deal, right?

Rhys handed the plasma injectors over to the leader. He was a gruff character – a long beard, jagged teeth and towering above his shipmates. He grunted at one of his subordinates who stepped over with the EPS Manifold and latinum. Rhys took the manifold and looked over it – he’d seen a countless numbers of these, from a variety of different societies and this one seemed to be in decent condition. Then everything changed.

“The human has a weapon!”

Alan’s phaser, supposedly hidden from view had partially slipped out from his pocket. The faintest glint of Federation silver had been enough to enrage the Klingon party, and the leader pulled a hidden weapon of his own and fired. Instinctively, Rhys pulled his hands over his face – still holding the manifold.

As the disruptor bolt sheared off the manifold, conduction fluid and remnants of spent plasma exploded at Rhys’ face. When he awoke, his world was dark – his eyes had been burnt away from the blast, and the burns on his hands and face were a pain like nothing he’d ever felt before. He called out for Alan; there was no reply. Fumbling helplessly around, Rhys could discern no trace of his father or the Klingon party that had left him blind and bleeding.

There was just enough strength left in him to order an emergency autopilot before he passed out from the pain. The nearest hint of civilisation was a Federation outpost, and as the ship hurtled towards the small station broadcasting a distress signal, Rhys stirred into just enough consciousness to feel his body dematerialise in a transporter beam.

The medical facilities on the outpost were limited – it was primarily a stellar observatory and the crew were mostly Federation scientists and a light Starfleet detachment. The doctor on board did the best she could- the burns were fairly easy to fix, his hands and face were cleared up without too many complications. His eyes were a different matter. There was almost no optic nerve remaining in his sockets, and the black new world that Rhys had just entered into was a cold and lonely place.

Rhys was eventually transferred to a medical facility back on Lunar Colony – it was the only place that had ever held any significance to him and without his sight, his nomadic lifestyle was ground to a halt.

Rhys never found his father, to this day only ever hearing rumours of places he may have been. The official word was that he had been killed by the Klingons, however without any evidence of a body and the bounty hunters having disappeared without a trace, Rhys always held some hope that he might still be alive.

Blindness and the Academy:

Rhys was blind for just over a year whilst the treatments that would eventually allow him to have prosthetics were administered. The sale of his freighter, as well as a comfortably sized nest egg left after the loss of both parents provided a suitable platform for him to try and start a new life for himself. He was nearly 17; he had no real qualifications other than his life experience and for a time, severely handicapped. He began to draw into himself socially – the commanding salesman’s demeanour remained, however he was less interested in others. The emotional guards inherent to his Vulcan side became more prominent at times, and Rhys would find it difficult to connect with anyone every again.

When the prosthetic eyes were fitted, it took several months for Rhys to learn how to interpret the images that were projected in his mind. The spectrum of his vision was much wider, and he could see both into the infra-red and ultraviolet ranges – the vision was an alien one. In the beginning, Rhys often wept as he realised he’d never ‘truly’ see again; his life would forever be a noise of colours and signals.

As the years past, Rhys gradually became used to it. The headaches associated with the tech in his brain were infrequent, but bright flashes of light often would overload his sensory buffers and break out into migraines. This was all manageable – what was becoming unbearable was the sedentary lifestyle that had almost been thrust upon him during his recuperation. Rhys was a roamer – he didn’t belong on the ground, with no ship or freedom to travel. The problem was that most of his money had gone on his eyes – there was barely enough to pull together for passage off world, let alone a new freighter.

There was but one option – Starfleet. Rhys didn’t have any formal schooling, and to be accepted into the Academy he’d have to first go through the education system. At nearly 20 years of age, Rhys was already a lot older than most of the teenagers around him, however this meant he was able to fast-track a lot of high school and college. There was a lot for him to learn, and by the time he was 24, Rhys had done enough schooling to be accepted onto the Academy program.

Rhys’ time at the academy was decidedly less exciting than the early years in his life, and to a degree he was thankful for this. He routinely engaged in various deals while he was there, becoming far less scrupulous now he’d gotten older. Rhys would sell all manner of things, picking up a reputation that would rival most Ferengi.

Through his deals, barters and trades, Rhys lived a comfortable life at the Academy. By the second year, he was able to afford his own accommodation – Rhys had still found it difficult to truly connect with other people and lived alone, occasionally venturing into campus whenever he needed company.

During the third year, a group of Ferengi that were visiting the campus proved to be his undoing. A hefty reward was dangled in front of Rhys’ face for him to act as middleman to sell unlicensed deuterium. The reward? As well as enough latinum to buy him a ship, the Ferengi also promised him information on the location of his father. Left between a rock and a hard place, Rhys couldn’t refuse.

The deal went bad. The buyers never showed up, and Rhys was left standing in the middle of San Francisco with a case full of restricted goods. At his hearing, Rhys’ flair for speech served him well, and with a full account of his story as well as several promises and deals to catch the Ferengi that had set up the original trade. Whilst his offence was a minor one he avoided a custodial sentence, however Rhys was convicted with possession of selling unlicensed goods and was suspended from the academy for a year and fined a large sum of money.

A Gap Year and Graduation:

During his year out of the academy, Rhys spent a lot of the time exploring both his planets of origin. Despite looking more Vulcan than Human, the planet was very alien to him – he’d never truly embraced his Vulcan heritage, and whilst he learnt a few meditation techniques that helped with his headaches, Rhys never got to grips with their way of life. He would always be more comfortable around humans, and travelling the Eurasian continent was far more enjoyable.

Rhys returned to the Academy the following year and pushed on with his studies. Having spent most of his life around starships (whether operating them or selling parts of them), Rhys stuck to a tactical major with several engineering minors. His piloting skills were well above average in his class, but his talents lay in tactical and strategic operations. Having spent plenty of time out in the field with less scrupulous individuals from his trading days, he spent a lot of time coming up with interesting compromises with semi-functional shields and rusty phaser banks. On the field, Rhys was incredibly talented in deciphering the signals being sent out from an opponent and utilising the equipment available to scavenge a win from seemingly hopeless situations – a talent he pays homage to his father for.

Personality Profile

Academy Major(s): Tactical Operations
Academy Minor(s): Engineering modules: Defensive Systems; Offensive Systems
Hobbies and Pastimes: Apart from business, he loves the study of Xeno-Languages – having picked up several as a child; Rhys finds language fascinating purely from a business perspective. Many people find the practise a little bizarre – with the invention of the UT, learning to read and speak other languages has become as alien as the languages themselves. He also took up Close Quarters Combat classes during his later years; becoming relatively proficient but by no means a master.
Short-Term Goals: To get back into space, serving aboard a starship and rising high enough to earn his own ship.
Long-Term Goals: Discover what happened to his father and the Klingons he can only assume took him
Personality: hys is outwardly quite social – many people will identify him as an ex-salesman. On the inside however, he rarely genuinely opens up to people and it will take an incredibly special person for him to drop the barriers that have been built during his life.

Sense of Humour: He’ll generally adapt his sense of humour to those around him – however if pressed into an answer he’ll normally offer sarcasm.
Phobias: None
Likes: Making money, alien culture and language, tinkering.
Dislikes: Red meat, charity (whether it’s to him or to someone else)
Pet Peeves or Gripes: Scroungers and moochers – Rhys can’t stand people that expect hand-outs from others.
Bad Habits or Vices: Rhys hates waste, and finds it difficult to throw things away. Some say he hoards things he considers to be of value without even realising it.
Achievements: Rebuilding his life more than once
Disappointments: losing his father, and never knowing his mother
Illnesses: apart from his accident, the usual childhood ailments.
Strengths: Physically, his Vulcan heritage provides some advantage. He also speaks Vulcan, Ferengi, Andorian and Tellerian near fluently as well as being able to muddle through some Klingon and Bolian. His prosthetic eyes open his vision to a wider spectrum than normal (infra-red and ultraviolet).
Weaknesses: His prosthetic eyes cause him all sorts of problems – regular headaches and migraines as well as being sensitive to bright flashes of light. He also finds it difficult to say no to a good deal – with Rhys, money talks.
Fears: Whilst Rhys would never admit it, he’s terrified of relationships
Prejudices: Rhys finds it difficult to be around Klingons – they were the last thing he saw before the accident and they are linked to a lot of painful associations with that time.
Off Duty Clothing Tastes: Typically, he’ll be wearing functional, all weather attire – rugged fabrics, dark colours, pockets.
Distinguishing Features: Rhys’ Vulcan heritage is fairly obviously when you look at him – his complexion, his dark green blood as well as the mild point to his ears. The main point of conversation however is the reconstructive work to his face and head – most of which took place long after the accident. Rhys has prosthetic eyes, and his eyelids are made of a synthetic membrane that causes his blinks to be a little more pronounced. The skin around his eyes is also slightly discoloured, almost creating a blotchy mask effect.
Pets: None
Friends: Since the loss of his dad, Rhys has never really considered anyone else to be a ‘best friend’. Many acquaintances, even a few friends – but Rhys otherwise keeps people emotionally at an arm’s reach.

Personal Paradigm Shifts

Most Painful Experience: Losing his eyes, and his father in the accident. Rhys lost a lot that day, and there are a lot of emotions that have been repressed ever since.
Best Time: His childhood on the open space with his dad. If it hadn’t been for the accident, Rhys wouldn’t have changed his life in any way.
Most Crucial Experience: Spending nearly a year being blind and then finally learning to see again – getting used to the new vision put a new perspective on life for Rhys.
Role Model: His father – Alan raised and taught Rhys everything he knew.

Career History

Stardate 21205.02 - Graduated Star Fleet Academy. Promoted to Midshipman, USS Ticonderoga, CA-1471
Stardate 21208.01 - Awarded RPG'er of the Month, USS Ticonderoga, CA-1471
Stardate 21208.01 - Promoted to Ensign, USS Ticonderoga, CA-1471
Stardate 21209.01 - Awarded Gold Star, USS Ticonderoga, CA-1471

Contact Information

E-Mail: drewhales.uk@googlemail.com

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